position:president of the united states

Trump starts fundraising minutes after his first primetime Oval Office address – Alternet.org
▻https://www.alternet.org/2019/01/trump-starts-fundraising-minutes-after-his-first-primetime-oval-office-add

https://www.alternet.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Trump-address.jpg

Non, mais on vit où là ?
Ainsi donc Trump constitue un fichier des « vrais américains » qui payent pour construire son mur... que fera-t-on des autres demain ?

The Trump presidency has been little more than an extension of his presidential campaign, starting when he filed papers for re-election the day he was sworn in to office.

So perhaps it comes as no surprise that literally minutes after delivering his first primetime Oval Office address to the nation on what he labeled the “crisis” at the border, Trump was fundraising off his speech.

A primetime address from the Oval Office is generally reserved for the absolute, most important events in a president’s time in office. It is literally an attempt to place the weight and magnitude of the entire presidency in view of the American people, in order to convey the extreme magnitude of the President’s speech and the issue at hand.

President John F. Kennedy addressed the nation on the Cuban Missile Crisis from the Oval Office.

President Ronald Reagan spoke to comfort the nation from the Oval Office after the Challenger space shuttle disaster.

President George W. Bush addressed the nation from the Oval Office the night of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

President Barack Obama used the Oval Office to address the nation on the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

None of them fundraised off their speeches.

On Tuesday night, about 15 minutes after President Trump finished his speech, likely thousands if not millions of supporters received a text asking them to “Donate to the Official Secure the Border Fund NOW.”

MSNBC’s Joy Reid posted a screenshot of the text:

If that weren’t enough, Trump sent a fearmongering fundraising email, trashing Democratic leaders and urging supporters to donate half a million dollars by 9 PM, the time of his speech. The email was sent around 5:30 PM.

“Drugs are poisoning our loved ones,” it reads. “MS-13 gang members are threatening our safety.” “Illegal criminals are flooding our nation,” it warns.

“I want to make one thing clear to Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi: Your safety is not a political game or a negotiation tactic!”

If these scare tactics weren’t enough, Trump used high-pressure tactics to eek every dime out of his supporters – many of whom are low income earners or retirees.

“I want to know who stood with me when it mattered most so I’ve asked my team to send me a list of EVERY AMERICAN PATRIOT who donates to the Official Secure the Border Fund,” the email reads.

In other words, the President of the United states is saying if you don’t send him money, you’re not a patriotic American. And he’s taking names. Literally.

“Please make a special contribution of $5 by 9 PM EST to our Official Secure the Border Fund to have your name sent to me after my speech.”

The Official Secure the Border Fund is not a fund that will actually secure the border. It’s just Trump’s re-election campaign fund.

Here’s the email:

#Trump #Fichier

A historian explains Fox News’s nefarious role in misinforming Trump voters – Alternet.org
▻https://www.alternet.org/2019/01/a-historian-explains-fox-newss-nefarious-role-in-misinforming-trump-voters

https://www.alternet.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/donald_trump__sean_hannity_16677430141.jpg

During the past two years in which Donald Trump has stumbled through his presidency, critics have been asking why so many Americans continue to back him despite mounting evidence of deeply flawed leadership. Often, these critics express contempt for the millions of Americans who constitute Trump’s “base.” They complain that Trump’s partisans are uniformed people who refuse to acknowledge that the president’s lying, ethical lapses, and failed policies are harming the nation. Trump remains in power, these critics argue, largely because starry-eyed followers ignore the facts.

These critics cast blame in the wrong place. Trump’s supporters, representing 38% of the electorate according to a recent poll, do not deserve all the censure that is directed at them. They did not create the pro-Trump narrative. They are its recipients. Conservative media have been especially influential in promoting optimistic judgments about Trump’s leadership. Fox News serves as command-central for the perspective. It draws a large audience. In October 2018, according the Nielson’s research, Fox racked up its 28thconsecutive month as the No. 1 basic cable news channel. Fox drew more viewers than CNN and MSNBC combined.

A pattern in the reporting and commentary on Fox was evident in these four prime-time programs. By focusing on old news stories that had been red meat in right-oriented media commentary for years, there was little time left for an analysis of stunning developments in the previous 24-hours. General Mattis’s resignation letter hardly got a nod. The outcry by national and international leaders regarding President Trump’s plan to withdraw from Syria and Afghanistan received little or no attention. The impact of a government shutdown on the American economy and the American people was almost completely ignored. There was hardly a word about the stock markets’ plummet that day or the huge slide of recent weeks. Instead, viewers heard about scary threats from immigrants, Democrats, university administrators, and Chinese hackers. They were reminded often that President Trump fights tenaciously for ordinary Americans.

Much of the discussion did not reflect what used to be identified as mainstream Republican stands on economic and political affairs. Instead, viewers got an earful of analysis from individuals who spoke from the margins of political debates. Hosts and commentators seemed eager to please their most important viewer, the President of the United States. Most of them endorsed and celebrated Donald Trump’s statements and actions, despite their sharply controversial nature. Dan Bongino, substituting as host for Sean Hannity, provided an example of the slant by promoting his co-authored book, Spygate: The Attempted Sabotage of Donald J. Trump.

#Médias #Fox_news

2019 AD : Ready for takeoff
▻https://hackernoon.com/2019-ad-ready-for-takeoff-99e6fb8f308f?source=rss----3a8144eabfe3---4

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On May 25, 1961, the then President of the United States, John F. Kennedy, set a national goal: perform a crewed lunar landing and return to Earth. After several historic attempts, his goal was achieved on July 20, 1969, when Apollo 11 commander Neil Armstrong stepped off the Lunar Module’s ladder and onto the Moon’s surface.It took 8 years of relentless effort, sacrifice, persistence and finance to land a man safely on the Moon.While there’s no comparison between the effort behind a rocket and a #startup, pictures like the following are quite common:And when I look back at the years gone by, it all makes sense. Here’s a thing(or two) about 2018:“When you make a mistake, there are only three things you should ever do about it: admit it, learn from it, and don’t repeat it.”2018: The Year of (...)

#advertising #zero1 #z1 #entrepreneurship

THE #C.I.A. AND #LUMUMBA - The New York Times
▻https://www.nytimes.com/1981/08/02/magazine/the-cia-and-lumumba.html

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Article de 1981

Madeleine G. Kalb is author of the forthcoming book ’’The Congo Cables: From Eisenhower to Kennedy,’’ from which this article is adapted. By Madeleine G. Kalb On Sept. 19, 1960, the Central Intelligence Agency’s station chief in Leopoldville, capital of the newly independent Congo, received a message through a top-secret channel from his superiors in Washington. Someone from headquarters calling himself ’’Joe from Paris’’ would be arriving with instructions for an urgent mission. No further details were provided. The station chief was cautioned not to discuss the message with anyone.

’’Joe’’ arrived a week later. He proved to be the C.I.A.’s top scientist, and he came equipped with a kit containing an exotic poison designed to produce a fatal disease indigenous to the area. This lethal substance, he informed the station chief, was meant for Patrice Lumumba, the recently ousted pro-Soviet Prime Minister of the #Congo, who had a good chance of returning to power.

The poison, the scientist said, was somehow to be slipped into Lumumba’s food, or perhaps into his toothpaste. Poison was not the only acceptable method; any form of assassination would do, so long as it could not be traced back to the United States Government. Pointing out that assassination was not exactly a common C.I.A. tactic, the station chief asked who had authorized the assignment. The scientist indicated that the order had come from the ’’highest authority’’ - from Dwight D. Eisenhower, President of the United States.

#Etats-Unis

Here’s why this media scholar changed her mind and now thinks there’s a ’very strong’ case Russia won the 2016 election for Trump | Alternet
▻https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/heres-why-media-scholar-changed-her-mind-and-now-thinks-theres-very-strong

https://www.alternet.org/sites/default/files/story_images/screen_shot_2018-12-19_at_8.25.19_pm.png

I originally thought that the idea that the Russians could have used social media to create a substantial impact on the election was absurd. I started to change my mind when I saw the first release of Russian social media and troll campaign ads and messaging during the U.S. Senate hearings in October and November of last year. These ads were a coherent plan and understanding of the presidential election which was consistent with Donald Trump’s political needs.

If acted on systematically, these ads would have produced a communication effect that on the margins could have affected enough votes to change the outcome of the election in his favor. If the Russians didn’t have a coherent theory of what it took for Donald Trump to win — or what it would take to make it more likely that Hillary Clinton would lose — then all their machinations would not have mattered. But the Russians knew who to mobilize.

The Russians were trying to mobilize evangelicals and white conservative Catholics. The Russians also knew that they needed to mobilize veterans and military households. The Russians knew they had to demobilize Bernie Sanders supporters and liberals, especially young people. The Russians were also attempting to shift the voters they could not demobilize over to Jill Stein.

You add that together with demobilizing African-American voters with messaging that Hillary Clinton is bad for the black community, and then Clinton’s whole messaging strategy is at risk. If Hillary Clinton can’t mobilize the black vote at levels near Barack Obama’s, although not the same level, then she is in trouble.

I then started to examine where the Russians and their trolls spent their time and attention. They were spending more of it on trying to demobilize African-American voters by emphasizing things that group may not like about Hillary Clinton. When a person casts a vote they are not thinking about every detail or issue relative to a candidate. Voters make decisions based on what is most important in that moment of time, what is on the top of their mind.

So if you remind voters who are African-American that at the end of Bill Clinton’s presidency there was a very high level of increased incarceration of African-Americans on drug charges then an African-American voter may say, “Maybe I should think about Hillary Clinton differently.”

If you remember her “superpredator” comment and take it to be about black people in general and not about gangs specifically, then you as an African-American voter may be less likely to support her.

By featuring these types of messages, the Russians were increasing the likelihood that while you may not be likely to cast a vote for Donald Trump, you are more likely to stay home and not vote for Hillary Clinton.

I then started to wonder whether maybe there was enough troll activity that was addressed to the right constituencies to have impacted the margins of the vote. The question then becomes, did the Russians and their trolls target the right voters in the right places? We still don’t know that.

The social media platforms know the answer, but they have not released the information. The trolls alone could have swung the electorate. But in my judgment the WikiLeaks hacks against the DNC is a much stronger case. There we see a clear effect on the news media agenda. We know from decades of communication scholarship that if you change the media agenda you then change the criteria that people vote on. The shift in the media agenda from October forward was decisively against Hillary Clinton. And the questions in the presidential debates which were based on information stolen by WikiLeaks and the Russians disadvantaged Clinton and, looking at the polling data, predicted the vote.

President Trump is better at commanding the agenda than he is at any other single thing that he as a communicator does. The press has been an accomplice in the process of ceding agenda control to him by virtue of his tweeting — and having the press respond immediately, as if every tweet is presumed to be newsworthy. Donald Trump has the capacity to get whatever he wants the public to focus on by directing the cable news agenda. We really should ask: Aren’t there other things we ought to be paying more attention to? How often are we being distracted from something that Trump does not want us to pay attention to? Being distracted by his effective use of tweets to set an alternative agenda.

Fox News is de facto Trump’s state-sponsored media. How does this impact American political culture?

We are increasingly going into ideological enclaves to get our news. To the extent that people find the news compatible with what they already believe, that means they are not being exposed to alternative interpretations of reality and alternative points of view. What is unprecedented about the relationship between Fox News and the president of the United States is the extent to which what is said and shown on Fox News appears to influence what is said and featured by the president of the United States. The traditional model of agenda-setting is that the president sets the agenda and the news media follows. This reversal with Donald Trump and Fox News is something new.

#Politique #Médias_sociaux #USA #Trump

Israel is too strong
If Israel were weaker, it would work harder to be accepted in the region. If it were less strong, Israel would have had to put an end to the curse of the occupation
Gideon Levy | Sep 08, 2018 11:36 PM
▻https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-israel-is-too-strong-1.6464641

https://www.haaretz.com/polopoly_fs/1.6464648.1536437744!/image/611577387.jpg_gen/derivatives/headline_1200x630/611577387.jpg

In the end, after deducting all the other ills, we find that the worst of them all, the mother of all disasters, is that Israel is too strong. If it weren’t so strong – too strong – it would be more just. If it couldn’t do whatever it felt like doing, its conduct would be more moral and more considerate. A good part of its crimes and whims comes from its power drunkenness. A good part of what it does stems from the fact that it simply can. It can thumb its nose at the whole world; ignore international law; control another people by force for generations; infringe on the sovereignty of its neighbors; act like it’s the be-all and the end-all, only because it has the power to do so.

Like any other country, Israel needs to be strong. Weakness might indeed lead to its destruction, as Israelis are told constantly from the day they are born. But too much power has ruined it and caused it damage of a different kind. It’s not its weakness, as it describes itself – surrounded by enemies that seek only to destroy it, little David facing Goliath – that molded its character. It’s the overabundance of power that it has accumulated that has molded it more than anything else. If Israel were weaker, it would work harder to be accepted in the region. If it were less strong, Israel would have had to put an end to the curse of the occupation.

Even if it was born in sin, Israel is not a country of particularly bad people. Even the arrogance Israelis show the whole world is not an inborn trait. Israel probably did not intend to become what it is: a regional power, which largely dictates to the most powerful country, the United States, how it should conduct itself; a country that many others court and even fear and at the same time is considered an outcast by anyone with a conscience. Israel has become this way because it is brimming with power. It accumulated it gradually, and today it has reached its zenith.

Israel has never been stronger. It is not by chance that now its image is at the lowest point in its history. That’s the price of too much power.

Israel is walloping the whole world. Not only with the occupation, which it continues undisturbed despite the opposition of most of the world; not only in the horrific siege on Gaza and its cruel attacks on it, which include war crimes that Israel is never punished for; not only with the settlements, whose legitimacy most of the world also doesn’t recognize – the entirety of its foreign policy says hubris.

The daily bombings in Syria and other countries and regular flyovers of Lebanon as if there were no border and no tomorrow; arrogant, criminal, unrestrained international assassinations; leading the world to fight the Iranian nuclear program; the shocking international criminalization campaign against the BDS movement; the fact that it refrains from signing international treaties to which all democratic countries are signatories; that it endlessly disregards resolutions by international bodies; attempts to interfere in the domestic matters of its neighbors, becomes involved in wars that have nothing to do with it and even attempts to stir things up in the European Union and lead to disunity there; takes subversive action against the (former) president of the United States and closes its embassy in Paraguay only because the latter took a step that Israel didn’t like – doing all of these things like it’s a superpower.

It’s hard to think of another country that is not the United States, Russia or China that would dare to act like this. Israel can.

Ostensibly, this is a dizzying success of the Zionist enterprise. Who would have dreamed that we’d become like this? In fact, this is the greatest threat to its justness. Except for a few mishaps, like in 1973, this power drunkenness has so far continued without Israel having to pay any significant price, except in terms of its image, which it has also learned to disregard.

On the eve of the new year, Israel is not facing challenges that endanger its belligerent super-powerful status. It seems that it can probably go on doing what it is doing – in the occupied territories, the Middle East and the whole world.

Only history itself insists on reminding us from time to time that such shows of unbridled power drunkenness usually end badly. Very badly.

Twitter was supposed to spread democracy, not Trump’s ravings | John Naughton | Opinion | The Guardian
▻https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/aug/19/twitter-supposed-to-spread-democracy-not-trumps-ravings

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Here’s the $64,000 question for our time: how did digital technologies go from being instruments for spreading democracy to tools for undermining it? Or, to put it a different way, how did social media go from empowering free speech to becoming a cornerstone of authoritarian power?

And then, one day, the internet arrived and the game changed. Suddenly, anyone could be a publisher. Every individual would be able freely to choose what to believe, with whom they would associate and where they would choose to direct their attention. The power of broadcast media would be attenuated. The public sphere could become a free “marketplace of ideas” in which good ideas would drive out the bad. Twitter seemed like the technological instantiation of this ideal: it promoted individual expression and helped to build social networks. Anyone could say anything (well, almost: there were always those vapid “community guidelines”). The first amendment ruled OK.
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Trump’s capture of the presidency, says Turner, has comprehensively refuted the democratising promise of digital media. The key feature of authoritarian capture is the projection of the charismatic personality of the ruler. In an analogue era, that meant that the bodies or minds of his audience had to be brought together in one place so that he could work his hypnotic magic. Think Nuremberg rallies or regular speeches like the ones Goebbels used to transmit, via the inexpensive radio receivers he dispensed and also by loudspeakers in public places.

Although Trump has used mini-Nuremberg-style rallies to great effect, he displays most ingenuity in using Twitter to project his charisma. Turner highlights two aspects of this. The first is the way he uses the medium to project his personality: the daft, tempestuous tweets that so infuriate liberals are taken by followers as a sign of his authenticity as a person. He’s “just being himself” – so unlike conventional politicians – and so claims the right to their attention and political support. The second significant aspect is that his tweets come as part of a follower’s twitterstream, interspersed with tweets from friends and a range of other sources. In that way, Trump uses the medium “to insert himself into the company of a user’s chosen conversation partners”, much as Franklin Roosevelt used his “fireside” radio chats during his presidency.

Turner’s analysis of Trump’s ascendancy is as depressing as it is acute. He concludes that “authoritarian charisma is not medium-dependent. Nor are authentic individuality, the intimate social sphere, or flexible collaborative networks necessarily enemies of totalitarianism.” And it’s not clear what, if anything, can be done to improve things. Of course, Twitter could ban Trump, but with 53.8 million followers it’s unlikely to do that. Mainstream media could start ignoring Trump’s tweets, which effectively allow him to control their news agendas, but they won’t, because he’s good for clicks and circulation. And besides, the guy is, after all, the elected president of the United States. Which, in a way, neatly summarises the problem we’ve got.

#Twitter #Trump #Fred_Turner

Top Climate Scientist: Humans Will Go Extinct if We Don’t Fix Climate Change by 2023
▻https://gritpost.com/humans-extinct-climate-change

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In a recent speech at the University of Chicago, James Anderson — a professor of atmospheric chemistry at Harvard University — warned that climate change is drastically pushing Earth back to the Eocene Epoch from 33 million BCE, when there was no ice on either pole. Anderson says current #pollution levels have already catastrophically depleted atmospheric #ozone levels, which absorb 98 percent of #ultraviolet rays, to levels not seen in 12 million years.

Anderson’s assessment of humanity’s timeline for action is likely accurate, given that his diagnosis and discovery of Antarctica’s ozone holes led to the Montreal Protocol of 1987. Anderson’s research was recognized by the United Nations in September of 1997. He subsequently received the United Nations Vienna Convention Award for Protection of the Ozone Layer in 2005, and has been recognized by numerous universities and academic bodies for his research.

#climat #extinction

Trump’s sending troops to the border to take on 200 kids and parents

According to President Donald Trump, the mightiest, richest country in the world is under a threat so huge and scary that it will require the deployment of military forces — as many as 2,000 to 4.000, Trump said Thursday — along its 2,000-mile southern border. The danger consists of a ragtag caravan formed by several hundred impoverished people, many of them children from tiny Central American nations. Yes, the time has come to protect America from marauding youngsters and their parents.

▻https://edition.cnn.com/2018/04/05/opinions/trump-has-no-shame-on-immigration-fernandez-kelly-opinion/index.html?sr=twCNN040518trump-has-no-shame-on-immigration-fernandez-ke
#Trump #frontières #armée #militarisation_des_frontières #USA #Etats-Unis

Je pense que ça va être le nouveau slogan de mon compte Seenthis :
▻https://mobile.twitter.com/hayder_alkhoei/status/949629911903371265

Actually, throughout my life, my two greatest assets have been mental stability and being, like, really smart.

#being_like_really_smart

Donald Trump, visionary of the (single) state - Opinion - Israel News | Haaretz.com
▻https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.827925

https://www.haaretz.com/polopoly_fs/1.827946.1512870255!/image/2577493513.jpg_gen/derivatives/headline_1200x630/2577493513.jpg

Theodor Trump, the visionary of the single state. Without Herzl’s beard or Basel, the site of the First Zionist Congress, Donald Trump may become the founder of democracy in Israel-Palestine. Just as his vulgarity and sexism boosted the #MeToo movement, his blatant bias toward Zionism and the occupation might create a backlash that could effect the only remaining conceivable solution. Sometimes you need a defiant bully to shake things up. Trump’s the guy. We should thank this dangerous man: He tore off the disguise and put an end to the masquerade.

Trump told the world the truth: The United States is not an honest broker, it never was and never will be. It is the greatest collaborator with the Israeli occupation, supporting, arming and funding it. It wants the occupation to continue. It never recoiled from it and of course did nothing to end it. Before Trump, it also mocked the world: the an endless “peace process” that never led (and was not intended to lead) to anything but the perpetuation of the occupation; countless purportedly balanced “peace plans” that America never tried to implement; countless purportedly neutral brokers, a majority of them Zionist Jews; and after all that, the appearance of an impartial peacemaker.

Trump came and put a stop to it. In deciding to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, and only of Israel, he left no room for doubt: America is with the occupation, with Israel and only with Israel. Of course that’s its right, and the right of its president — most Israelis are surely happy about it — but it won’t bring about peace or relative justice.

Trump also conducted the sad funeral of the two-state solution, after its long decline into death. Now the heir must be found. In his horrifically one-sided announcement, Trump declared that there aren’t two nations with equal rights in this land of two nations. There is one nation with one capital and all the rights, and another, inferior nation with no rights. That other nation is not deserving of a state if it is not deserving of a capital in Jerusalem. That other nation must now recognize its situation and adjust its goals to the reality declared by Trump.

The first to do so was Saeb Erekat, the veteran Palestinian negotiator. He said, fine, one state. The Palestinian Authority will have to go with it. It will no longer be able to talk about a two-state solution. It needs to start fighting for the obvious: equal rights for all. One person, one vote. One democratic state for two peoples. That’s the only remaining option other than apartheid. More than 700,000 Jewish settlers, including in East Jerusalem, were already there, and now America is officially behind them. The occupier received another prize, while the occupied received another blow.

The European Union will also have to adjust to reality and understand that winter is coming. Up to now, the EU has been in America’s shadow, its faithful servant when it comes to Middle East policy. Other than a few insignificant symbolic steps, it hasn’t pursued a policy in keeping with public sentiment in Western Europe, most of which is opposed to the occupation.

Perhaps Trump’s extremism will shake the EU out of its complacency and spur it to more courageous and, most important, more independent positions. And maybe Europe will also stop invoking the two-state mantra now that a few of its heads of state have recognized that it’s no longer viable. Perhaps Europe will take the lead in a new dialogue about equal rights for all.

And whom do we have to thank? The president of the United States. When the only genuine democracy in the Middle East is finally established, one day in the distant future, he should be invited. This American ultranationalist, who would have nothing to do with morality or justice or international law or human rights or minorities or Palestinians, should be made an honorary citizen of the new, just state.

Trump, Israel and the Art of the Giveaway - The New York Times
►https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/06/opinion/trump-foreign-policy-giveaway.html

Thomas Friedman sur Trump et Jérusalem : un cadeau qu’il aurait fallu mieux négocier.

Trump is susceptible to such giveaways, not only because he is ignorant, but because he does not see himself as the president of the United States. He sees himself as the president of his base. And because that’s the only support he has left, he feels the need to keep feeding his base by fulfilling crude, ill-conceived promises he threw out to them during the campaign. Today, again, he put another one of those promises ahead of United States’ national interest.

With a Journalist’s Murder in Malta, a Global Threat Grows - The New York Times
▻https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/17/opinion/journalist-murder-malta-daphne-galizia.html

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Mais que dit l’Union européenne sur Malte lui-même ?
Un paradis fiscal de plus en Europe, et l’impunité pour ses dirigeants.

At 2:35 p.m. on Monday, the fearless Maltese journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia published a characteristically blunt post on her influential blog accusing leading politicians of corruption.

“There are crooks everywhere you look now,” she concluded. “The situation is desperate.”

Less than 30 minutes later, the car she was driving was blown to pieces.

For journalists around the world, this is the new normal. They are rounded up en masse and imprisoned in Turkey and murdered in Russia and the Philippines. In India, they have been slapped with spurious defamation suits when they report on suspicious doings of the powerful, and beaten by mobs and killed for their reporting — Gauri Lankesh was gunned down last month in front of her home. Even the president of the United States questions the patriotism of journalists for doing their job and taunts them in front of angry crowds.

#Journalisme #Malte #Corruption #Paradis_fiscal

The Transnational Far Right
▻http://civic-nation.org/publications/the_transnational_far_right

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The transnational far right is currently flourishing. The unexpected election of the racist, nationalist and isolationist Donald Trump as president of the United States has galvanised far right groups across the world. In Europe, the rise of Trump combined with an increase in Jihadi Islamist terrorism and an influx of refugees escaping Middle Eastern war has led to a resurgence of far right activity. Politically, the far right has become mainstream in many countries, for example France, Germany and Austria, and far right themes (racism, xenophobia, anti-liberalism, nationalism and social conservativism, amongst others) are gaining traction with the European electorates at an alarming rate. Beyond the confines of the nation-state, moreover far right movements are also scoring victories and mobilising activists, as this report will emphasise.

How Trump Governs by Tweet: Start with Outrage, Then Escalate | The New Yorker
▻https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/how-trump-governs-by-tweet-start-with-outrage-then-escalate

https://media.newyorker.com/photos/59de648fe34db341b65a883f/16:9/w_1200,h_630,c_limit/Gessen-Trump-tweet-NBC-fake-news.jpg

The tweets of @realDonaldTrump express what the President of the United States is thinking, and that alone makes them noteworthy. On top of that, Trump appears to think that he can govern by tweet.

His Twitter attack on the news media has followed a similar trajectory: a hundred and forty characters at a time, he searches for instruments of power available to him. Prosecute leakers? Get the Senate Intelligence Committee to go after journalists? And, finally, today: “With all of the Fake News coming out of NBC and the Networks, at what point is it appropriate to challenge their License? Bad for country!”

#Trump #Twitter

The Killing of History
▻https://consortiumnews.com/2017/09/21/the-killing-of-history

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I watched the first episode in New York. It leaves you in no doubt of its intentions right from the start. The narrator says the war “was begun in good faith by decent people out of fateful misunderstandings, American overconfidence and Cold War misunderstandings.”

The dishonesty of this statement is not surprising. The cynical fabrication of “false flags” that led to the invasion of Vietnam is a matter of record – the Gulf of Tonkin “incident” in 1964, which Burns promotes as true, was just one. The lies litter a multitude of official documents, notably the Pentagon Papers, which the great whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg released in 1971.

There was no good faith. The faith was rotten and cancerous. For me – as it must be for many Americans – it is difficult to watch the film’s jumble of “red peril” maps, unexplained interviewees, ineptly cut archive and maudlin American battlefield sequences. In the series’ press release in Britain — the BBC will show it — there is no mention of Vietnamese dead, only Americans.

“We are all searching for some meaning in this terrible tragedy,” Novick is quoted as saying. How very post-modern.

All this will be familiar to those who have observed how the American media and popular culture behemoth has revised and served up the great crime of the second half of the Twentieth Century: from “The Green Berets” and “The Deer Hunter” to “Rambo” and, in so doing, has legitimized subsequent wars of aggression. The revisionism never stops and the blood never dries. The invader is pitied and purged of guilt, while “searching for some meaning in this terrible tragedy.” Cue Bob Dylan: “Oh, where have you been, my blue-eyed son?”

What ‘Decency’ and ‘Good Faith’?

Yes, Donald Trump really did look into the sky during the solar eclipse - CNNPolitics
▻http://www.cnn.com/2017/08/21/politics/trump-solar-eclipse/index.html

http://i2.cdn.cnn.com/cnnnext/dam/assets/170821152317-donald-trump-squint-point-eclipse-super-tease.jpg http://i2.cdn.cnn.com/cnnnext/dam/assets/170821151707-donald-trump-eclipse-exlarge-169.jpg

There’s literally only one rule with eclipses: Don’t look at the sun during them.

Which brings me to the President of the United States:

Il vérifiait sûrement que c’était pas une fake news...

The Treasonous Secession Of Climate Confederacy States
▻http://www.dedefensa.org/article/the-treasonous-secession-of-climate-confederacy-states

The Treasonous Secession Of Climate Confederacy States

After President Trump rejected the Paris Climate treaty, which had never been ratified by the Senate, the European Union announced that it would work with a climate confederacy of secessionist states.

Scotland and Norway’s environmental ministers have mentioned a focus on individual American states. And the secessionist governments of California, New York and Washington have announced that they will unilaterally and illegally enter into a foreign treaty rejected by the President of the United States.

The Constitution is very clear about this. “No state shall enter into any treaty.” Governor Cuomo of New York has been equally clear. “New York State is committed to meeting the standards set forth in the Paris Accord regardless of (...)

La dénonciation des « #fake_news » se révèle très utile pour les régimes autoritaires
▻http://www.lemonde.fr/international/article/2017/03/05/la-denonciation-des-fake-news-s-avere-tres-utile-pour-les-regimes-autoritair

La mode consistant à dénoncer les fake news (« fausses informations ») se révèle très utile pour les régimes qui entendent faire barrage à leurs opposants. Si le président des Etats-Unis – pays qui leur a longtemps fait la morale – utilise cette esquive en toute impunité, pourquoi pas eux ?

Cambodge, Malaisie, Chine

Why Are My Highly Educated Friends So Ignorant About Trade?
▻http://www.filmsforaction.org/articles/why-are-my-highly-educated-friends-so-ignorant-about-trade

Since Donald Trump was elected President of the United States, I’ve found myself talking for the first time with a lot of my 20-something friends about trade agreements.

My friends didn’t vote...

Trump names his Inauguration Day a ‘National Day of Patriotic Devotion’
▻https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2017/01/23/trump-names-his-inauguration-day-a-national-day-of-patriotic-devotio

“Now, therefore, I, Donald J. Trump, president of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim Jan. 20, 2017, as National Day of Patriotic Devotion, in order to strengthen our bonds to each other and to our country — and to renew the duties of government to the people,” the order says.

#the_great_dictator

Celebrity Is Not Just Harmless Fun – It’s the Lieutenant of Exploitation
▻http://www.filmsforaction.org/articles/celebrity-is-not-just-harmless-fun-its-the-lieutenant-of-exploitatio

Now that a reality TV star is preparing to become president of the United States, can we agree that celebrity culture is more than just harmless fun? That it might in fact be an essential...

USA : Septembre 2016 – Mois national de préparation aux États-Unis
▻http://www.brujitafr.fr/2016/09/usa-septembre-2016-mois-national-de-preparation-aux-etats-unis.html

Sources de cette nouvelle – Barack Obama , via le site de la Maison Blanche. NATIONAL PREPAREDNESS MONTH, 2016 - - - - - - - BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA A PROCLAMATION Americans have been tested by trial and tragedy since our earliest...

Bernie Sanders’ Democratic National Convention speech / Boing Boing
▻http://boingboing.net/2016/07/25/bernie-sanders-democratic-na.html

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Thank you. Good evening.

It is an honor to be with you tonight and to be following in the footsteps of Elizabeth Warren, and to be here tonight to thank Michelle Obama for her incredible service to our country. She has made all of us proud.

Let me begin by thanking the hundreds of thousands of Americans who actively participated in our campaign as volunteers. Thank you.

Let me thank the 2 1/2 million Americans who helped fund our campaign with an unprecedented 8 million individual campaign contributions . Anyone know what that average contribution was? That’s right, $27. And let me thank the 13 million Americans who voted for the political revolution, giving us the 1,846 pledged delegates here tonight – 46 percent of the total.

And delegates: Thank you for being here, and for all the work you’ve done. I look forward to your votes during the roll call on Tuesday night.

And let me offer a special thanks to the people of my own state of Vermont who have sustained me and supported me as a mayor, congressman, senator and presidential candidate.

And to my family – my wife Jane, four kids and seven grandchildren –thank you very much for your love and hard work on this campaign.

I understand that many people here in this convention hall and around the country are disappointed about the final results of the nominating process. I think it’s fair to say that no one is more disappointed than I am. But to all of our supporters – here and around the country – I hope you take enormous pride in the historical accomplishments we have achieved.

Together, my friends, we have begun a political revolution to transform America and that revolution – our revolution – continues. Election days come and go. But the struggle of the people to create a government which represents all of us and not just the 1 percent – a government based on the principles of economic, social, racial and environmental justice – that struggle continues. And I look forward to being part of that struggle with you.

Let me be as clear as I can be. This election is not about, and has never been about, Hillary Clinton, or Donald Trump, or Bernie Sanders or any of the other candidates who sought the presidency. This election is not about political gossip. It’s not about polls. It’s not about campaign strategy. It’s not about fundraising. It’s not about all the things that the media spends so much time discussing.

This election is about – and must be about – the needs of the American people and the kind of future we create for our children and grandchildren.

This election is about ending the 40-year decline of our middle class the reality that 47 million men, women and children live in poverty. It is about understanding that if we do not transform our economy, our younger generation will likely have a lower standard of living then their parents.

This election is about ending the grotesque level of income and wealth inequality that we currently experience, the worst it has been since 1928. It is not moral, not acceptable and not sustainable that the top one-tenth of one percent now own almost as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent, or that the top 1 percent in recent years has earned 85 percent of all new income. That is unacceptable. That must change.

This election is about remembering where we were 7 1/2 years ago when President Obama came into office after eight years of Republican trickle-down economics.

The Republicans want us to forget that as a result of the greed, recklessness and illegal behavior on Wall Street, our economy was in the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. Some 800,000 people a month were losing their jobs. We were running up a record-breaking deficit of $1.4 trillion and the world’s financial system was on the verge of collapse.

We have come a long way in the last 7 1/2 years, and I thank President Obama and Vice President Biden for their leadership in pulling us out of that terrible recession.

Yes, we have made progress, but I think we can all agree that much, much more needs to be done.

This election is about which candidate understands the real problems facing this country and has offered real solutions – not just bombast, not just fear-mongering, not just name-calling and divisiveness.

We need leadership in this country which will improve the lives of working families, the children, the elderly, the sick and the poor. We need leadership which brings our people together and makes us stronger – not leadership which insults Latinos, Muslims, women, African-Americans and veterans – and divides us up.

By these measures, any objective observer will conclude that – based on her ideas and her leadership – Hillary Clinton must become the next president of the United States. The choice is not even close.

This election is about a single mom I saw in Nevada who, with tears in her eyes, told me that she was scared to death about the future because she and her young daughter were not making it on the $10.45 an hour she was earning. This election is about that woman and the millions of other workers in this country who are struggling to survive on totally inadequate wages.

Hillary Clinton understands that if someone in this country works 40 hours a week, that person should not be living in poverty. She understands that we must raise the minimum wage to a living wage. And she is determined to create millions of new jobs by rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure – our roads, bridges, water systems and wastewater plants.

But her opponent – Donald Trump – well, he has a very different point of view. He does not support raising the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour – a starvation wage. While Donald Trump believes in huge tax breaks for billionaires, he believes that states should actually have the right to lower the minimum wage below $7.25.

Brothers and sisters, this election is about overturning Citizens United, one of the worst Supreme Court decisions in the history of our country. That decision allows the wealthiest people in America, like the billionaire Koch brothers, to spend hundreds of millions of dollars buying elections and, in the process, undermine American democracy.

Hillary Clinton will nominate justices to the Supreme Court who are prepared to overturn Citizens United and end the movement toward oligarchy in this country. Her Supreme Court appointments will also defend a woman’s right to choose, workers’ rights, the rights of the LGBT community, the needs of minorities and immigrants and the government’s ability to protect our environment.

If you don’t believe that this election is important, if you think you can sit it out, take a moment to think about the Supreme Court justices that Donald Trump would nominate and what that would mean to civil liberties, equal rights and the future of our country.

This election is about the thousands of young people I have met all over this country who have left college deeply in debt, and tragically the many others who cannot afford to go to college. During the primary campaign, Secretary Clinton and I both focused on this issue but with somewhat different approaches. Recently, however, we have come together on a proposal that will revolutionize higher education in America. It will guarantee that the children of any family this country with an annual income of $125,000 a year or less – 83 percent of our population – will be able to go to a public college or university tuition free. That proposal also substantially reduces student debt.

This election is about climate change, the greatest environmental crisis facing our planet, and the need to leave this world in a way that is healthy and habitable for our kids and future generations. Hillary Clinton is listening to the scientists who tell us that – unless we act boldly and transform our energy system in the very near future – there will be more drought, more floods, more acidification of the oceans, more rising sea levels. She understands that when we do that we can create hundreds of thousands of good-paying jobs.

Donald Trump? Well, like most Republicans, he chooses to reject science. He believes that climate change is a “hoax,” no need to address it. Hillary Clinton understands that a president’s job is to worry about future generations, not the short-term profits of the fossil fuel industry.

This campaign is about moving the United States toward universal health care and reducing the number of people who are uninsured or under-insured. Hillary Clinton wants to see that all Americans have the right to choose a public option in their health care exchange. She believes that anyone 55 years or older should be able to opt in to Medicare and she wants to see millions more Americans gain access to primary health care, dental care, mental health counseling and low-cost prescription drugs through a major expansion of community health centers.

And What is Donald Trump’s position on health care? Well, no surprise there. Same old, same old Republican contempt for working families. He wants to abolish the Affordable Care Act, throw 20 million people off of the health insurance they currently have and cut Medicaid for lower-income Americans.

Hillary Clinton also understands that millions of seniors, disabled vets and others are struggling with the outrageously high cost of prescription drugs and the fact that Americans pay the highest prices in the world for the medicine we use. She knows that Medicare must negotiate drug prices with the pharmaceutical industry and that drug companies should not be making billions in profits while one in five Americans are unable to afford the medicine they need. The greed of the drug companies must end.

This election is about the leadership we need to pass comprehensive immigration reform and repair a broken criminal justice system. It’s about making sure that young people in this country are in good schools and at good jobs, not rotting in jail cells. Hillary Clinton understands that we have to invest in education and jobs for our young people, not more jails or incarceration.

In these stressful times for our country, this election must be about bringing our people together, not dividing us up. While Donald Trump is busy insulting one group after another, Hillary Clinton understands that our diversity is one of our greatest strengths. Yes. We become stronger when black and white, Latino, Asian-American, Native American – when all of us – stand together. Yes. We become stronger when men and women, young and old, gay and straight, native born and immigrant fight together to create the kind of country we all know we can become.

It is no secret that Hillary Clinton and I disagree on a number of issues. That’s what this campaign has been about. That’s what democracy is about. But I am happy to tell you that at the Democratic Platform Committee there was a significant coming together between the two campaigns and we produced, by far, the most progressive platform in the history of the Democratic Party. Among many, many other strong provisions, the Democratic Party now calls for breaking up the major financial institutions on Wall Street and the passage of a 21st Century Glass-Steagall Act. It also calls for strong opposition to job-killing free trade agreements like the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
We have got to make sure that the #TPP doesn’t get passed by Cogress during a lame-duck session.

Our job now is to see that platform implemented by a Democratic Senate, a Democratic House and a Hillary Clinton presidency – and I am going to do everything I can to make that happen.

I have known Hillary Clinton for 25 years. I remember her as a great first lady who broke precedent in terms of the role that a first lady was supposed to play as she helped lead the fight for universal health care. I served with her in the United States Senate and know her as a fierce advocate for the rights of children, for the women, and for the disabled.

Hillary Clinton will make an outstanding president and I am proud to stand with her tonight.

Thank you all very much.

#USA #politique

“You Can Have Your Weak Nominee If You Wish” – the Sanders Endorsement Backfires on Hillary Clinton, Empowers Sanders in One Masterstroke
▻http://www.filmsforaction.org/articles/you-can-have-your-weak-nominee-if-you-wish-the-sanders-endorsement-b

The public at large was served with a Bernie Sanders endorsement of Hillary Clinton as the Democratic nominee for the President of the United States of America. Initially, there was much dismay...