If You Are Looking for Consistency, Trump Ain't Your Man by Publius Tacitus

Christmas came early for Donald Trump. He signed a historic tax cut, kept the Government funded and operating and, to the delight of many in his base, used UN Ambassador Nikki Haley as a mouthpiece to tell the rest of the world to go pound sand. He is feeling groovy. But Donald Trump is still his own worst enemy. And his Presidency will be fatally harmed if he continues with his erratic foreign policy and his empty talk on dealing with the opioid plague.

Let's start with his wildly fluctuating foreign policy. There is no consistency nor is their a theme. When he announced that he was recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, many assumed he was on the Israeli leash and was behaving as any obedient dog would. Perhaps.

How then do you explain yesterday's (Thursday) decision to arm Ukraine as a show of force to Russia:

The Trump administration has approved the largest U.S. commercial sale of lethal defensive weapons to Ukraine since 2014. . . . Administration officials confirmed that the State Department this month approved a commercial license authorizing the export of Model M107A1 Sniper Systems, ammunition, and associated parts and accessories to Ukraine, a sale valued at $41.5 million. These weapons address a specific vulnerability of Ukrainian forces fighting a Russian-backed separatist movement in two eastern provinces.

The people we are arming in the Ukraine are the actual and intellectual descendants of the Nazi sympathizers who helped the Einsatzgruppen murder more than a million Jews after Hitler invaded the Soviet Union. Scholar Richard Sakwa provides the horrifying details on the pro-Nazi ideological foundation of the key Ukrainian political groups we are backing:

“The Orange revolution, like the later Euromaidan events, was democratic in intent but gave an impetus ‘to the revival of the radical versions of [the] Ukrainian national movement that first appeared on the historical scene in the course of World War II and a national discourse focused on fighting against the enemy’.41 ” . . . . 

“In Dnepropetrovsk, for example, instead of the anticipated 60 street-name changes, 350 were planned. Everywhere ‘Lenin Streets’ became ‘Bandera Avenues’ as everything Russian was purged. One set of mass murderers was changed for another. Just as the Soviet regime had changed toponyms to inscribe its power into the physical environment, so now the Euromaidan revolution seeks to remould daily life. In Germany today the names of Nazis and their collaborators are anathema, whereas in Ukraine they are glorified.”

Excerpt From: Richard Sakwa. “Frontline Ukraine : Crisis in the Borderlands.” from the Afterward

At the very moment we are signaling our support for Israel, the country founded largely because of the horror over the Shoah, we are also giving weapons to political groups whose parents and grand parents helped carry out the Shoah. Oh yeah, in the process of doing this we are providing a tangible threat to Russia. Imagine what our reaction would be if Russia decided to step up its weapons supplies to Cuba.

Then we have Trump's tough talk on the opioid slaughter taking place across America. Let me be clear. He is not responsible for the start of this plague. The Obama Administration carries a heavy burden on that front. CBS 60 Minutes has done a magnificent job in exposing the role that the Obama Justice Department refused to play in going after the major corporate opiate drug pusher--i.e., the McKesson Corporation:

In October, we joined forces with the Washington Post and reported a disturbing story of Washington at its worst - about an act of Congress that crippled the DEA's ability to fight the worst drug crisis in American history - the opioid addiction crisis. Now, a new front of that joint investigation. It is also disturbing. It's the inside story of the biggest case the DEA ever built against a drug company: the McKesson Corporation, the country's largest drug distributor. It's also the story of a company too big to prosecute.

In 2014, after two years of painstaking inquiry by nine DEA field divisions and 12 U.S. Attorneys, investigators built a powerful case against McKesson for the company's role in the opioid crisis.

[According to DEA Agent Schiller]  This is the best case we've ever had against a major distributor in the history of the Drug Enforcement Administration. How do we not go after the number one organization? In the height of the epidemic, when people are dying everywhere, doesn't somebody have to be held accountable? McKesson needs to be held accountable. 

Holding McKesson accountable meant going after the 5th largest corporation in the country.  Headquartered in San Francisco, McKesson has 76,000 employees and earns almost $200 billion a year in revenues, about the same as Exxon Mobil. Since the 1990s, McKesson has made billions from the distribution of addictive opioids. 

So what has Donald Trump done? That is the wrong question. What has he failed to do? We are approaching the one year anniversary of his Presidency and Trump has failed to nominate a Director for the Drug Enforcement Administration, a Director for the Office of National Drug Control Policy, a Director for the National Institute of Justice and an Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs . In other words, none of the people who would be on the policy frontline putting the President's tough words into action have been nominated. Not one. And those agencies and departments are drifting like a rudderless ship on stormy seas.

Another problem for Trump is his mixed signals on getting entangled in foreign wars. During the campaign he made a point of ridiculing those candidates who wanted to go to war in Syria. Now that he is in office, Trump, along with several members of his cabinet, are threatening Iran on almost a daily basis. The Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity just put out a memo on this very subject (which, I'm happy to note, reflects some of the themes I've written about previously):

Iran has come out ahead in Iraq and, with the 2015 nuclear agreement in place, Iran’s commercial and other ties have improved with key NATO allies and the other major world players—Russia and China in particular.

Official pronouncements on critical national security matters need to be based on facts. Hyperbole in describing Iran’s terrorist activities can be counterproductive. For this reason, we call attention to Ambassador Nikki Haley’s recent statement that it is hard to find a “terrorist group in the Middle East that does not have Iran’s fingerprints all over it.” The truth is quite different. The majority of terrorist groups in the region are neither creatures nor puppets of Iran. ISIS, Al-Qaeda and Al-Nusra are three of the more prominent that come to mind.

You have presented yourself as someone willing to speak hard truths in the face of establishment pressure and not to accept the status quo. You spoke out during the campaign against the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq as a historic mistake of epic proportions. You also correctly captured the mood of many Americans fatigued from constant war in far away lands. Yet the torrent of warnings from Washington about the dangers supposedly posed by Iran and the need to confront them are being widely perceived as steps toward reversing your pledge not to get embroiled in new wars.

We encourage you to reflect on the warning we raised with President George W. Bush almost 15 years ago, at a similar historic juncture:

“after watching Secretary Powell today, we are convinced that you would be well served if you widened the discussion … beyond the circle of those advisers clearly bent on a war for which we see no compelling reason and from which we believe the unintended consequences are likely to be catastrophic.”

Finally, there is the recognition of Jerusalem as the Capital of Israel. I defer to Colonel Lang on this. He believes that this single decision has planted an odious seed that will sprout into a global anti-U.S. sentiment that will reduce our global influence and tangibly damage our leadership on the world stage. While I suppose there always is a chance for a different kind of outcome, I learned long ago not to bet against the old warrior on matters like this.

Taking all of this together I think we are looking at a 2018 where U.S. foreign policy will continue to careen around the globe devoid of a strategic vision. 

 

Comments

[Babak Makkinejad]

You cannot be serious about the Mckesson corporation being held accountable for opioid epidemic, it self a further elaboration of the 1960s anarchic drug culture of the Rich White Kids.

[Babak Makkinejad]

The drug users are accountable foremost.

[mongo]

Hi Babak,

Wow. It's difficult to decide on exactly how to respond to this assertion. Modern opioids are astoundingly addictive, and that's a simple fact of biology. Fentanyl is 50-100 times more powerful than morphine in this regard. Morphine.

If the users bear the primary accountability, then why is it that criminal penalties for the producers and distributors of, say, cocaine are subject to much more serious levels of accountability under the law?

Since you mention the 1960s, would you similarly say that women who took thalidomide bear the primary responsibility to what happened to their children? After all, they didn't *need* it to ensure a successful pregnancy; it was merely a way to make pregnancy more comfortable.

Many who are addicted to opioids became that way because they accepted a doctor's advice and prescription in good faith.

Regards,

mongo

[catherine]

'' The people we are arming in the Ukraine are the actual and intellectual descendants of the Nazi sympathizers who helped the Einsatzgruppen murder more than a million Jews after Hitler invaded the Soviet Union''

They are also the descendants of the Ukrainians who were starved to death by the Bolsheviks plundering of their crops first then starved again by Stalin.
That Jews figured large in the Bolsheviks is a fact and noted:..then and later.

A collection of reports on Bolshevism in Russia
by Great Britain. Foreign Office

https://www.archive.org/stream/collectionofrepo00greaiala/collectionofrepo00greaiala_djvu.txt

''..anti-Semitism is growing, probably because the food supply committees are entirely in the hands of Jews and voices can be heard sometimes calling for a " pogrom."

So I am giving Ukraine a pass on their so called threat to the Chosen.

[Babak Makkinejad]

Yup, every one and everything under the sun bears some responsibility except the poor, abused, manipulated, down-trodden users.

[Publius Tacitus]

You make my point. The NAZIS came up with lots of nifty reasons to justify exterminating Jews. Starvation by Stalin, therefore kill the Jews. Yeah, that makes sense (sarcasm fully intended).

[mongo]

"At this festive season of the year, Mr Scrooge, ... it is more than usually desirable that we should make some slight provision for the Poor and destitute, who suffer greatly at the present time. Many thousands are in want of common necessaries; hundreds of thousands are in want of common comforts, sir."
"Are there no prisons?"
"Plenty of prisons..."
"And the Union workhouses." demanded Scrooge. "Are they still in operation?"
"Both very busy, sir..."
"Those who are badly off must go there."
"Many can't go there; and many would rather die."
"If they would rather die," said Scrooge, "they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population."

[Outrage Beyond]

There's some unfortunately specious conclusions in this piece. Here are a few points.

Regarding Ukraine, the key figures behind the 2014 coup d'etat are the neocons. They wanted to overthrow a government friendly to Russia as a way of bloodying Russia's nose. The Nazi associations of the new regime are not a concern to neocons, who are of course Zionists. Zionist invariably regard themselves as superior beings; in this regard, they are the flip side of the Nazi coin. Enabling these reverberations of Nazi history as a means to strike at Russia is, for them, fully justified. They imagine they can deal with this golem at a later date, if necessary.

Contradicting Trump's support for the UkroNazis with his Jerusalem declaration is simply not relevant. Trump has made it clear that he will do as the ideological descendants of Jabotinsky command, never mind the contradictions. During the campaign, Trump famously declared to the Republican Jewish Coalition that he didn’t need their money. In reality, he’s fronting: he’s not as rich as he declares, and he does need campaign cash. Specifically, the cash provided by Sheldon Adelson. Sheldon, along with the more fascist representatives of gun Zionism are rather clearly pulling his strings. Kushner, as a major asset of Netanyahu, is part of that control structure. Contradictions? No, Trump is a master of compartmentalization.

Also regarding Jerusalem, Trump is doing what Jared Kushner (and likely Ivanka as well) demand. Kushner is a myopic little twit, with marginal intelligence, who lucked into a position of great influence. Netanyahu is cackling with glee over having such a wonderful asset. Of course, if you infer that this shitty Zionist sitting on the shoulder of the American President is exercising undue influence, and speak out about this occupation of the Oval Office, you’ll be hearing from Mossad front groups like the ADL in short order.

Regarding Oxycontin, Trump simply doesn't give a shit. Now before we get into that further, it’s useful to note that Oxycontin was released in 1996. So any apportionment of blame must include Bill Clinton, (a Zionist captive) George W. Bush, (likewise) Obama, (ditto) and now Trump. None of them cared. They all have the Leona Helmsley outlook: only the little people OD on drugs. So what? It doesn’t impact their “beautiful minds” (to paraphrase the vicious cluelessness of that nasty old bitch Barbara Bush). Trump will make a few noises about Oxycontin, but it’s so far outside his life experience that he simply can’t comprehend it. As an extreme narcissist, he has no empathy and thus can’t be bothered to do more than pretend to care, from time to time.

[Morongobill]

Interestingly, one thing that seems to help break the opioid stranglehold, cannabis, is possibly about to be in the federal DOJ crosshairs again.

[Babak Makkinejad]

Dear Mongo,

When a man hangs a 9-year old boy from a tree under influence of drugs, he bears, you must admit, some responsibility.
For the rest of us, we have to be able to defend ourselves.

[Diane Mason]

There's not necessarily a conflict between Trump supporting radical Ukrainian nationalists and supporting Netanyahu's Israel. Ukrainian nationalism might have targeted Jews in WW2, but WW2 isn't the paradigm for relations between Ukraine and Israel today. Regardless of which side they were on in the war, radical Jewish nationalism today shares a common, ethnic view of nationalism with radical Ukrainian nationalists (and with the radical nationalists in power in Hungary, with whom Netanyahu has good relations despite their use of antisemitic imagery and veneration of their pro-Nazi forbears).

Regardless of where they stood in WW2, radical Ukrainian, Hungarian and Jewish nationalists share common ground now (not really surprising, as Zionism is essentially a central European blood and soil nationalism transplanted to Palestine). So it's not inconsistent if Trump gives support to both.

[FourthAndLong]

Such people as Sakwa describes and their confreres certainly exist within Ukraine and have a long and sordid history. IMO, you do well to remind people of it. And they certainly are as vile as anyone can possibly be. But they do not represent the entirety of the Ukraine anymore than the Klan and neo-Nazi filth at Charlottesville represent the United States of America. So far they've talked about only small arms - - not supplied by the US Government, but permission to sell. I'm not worked up about it, not yet.

Trump is stupider than the day is long - - that worries me. And he is a sociopathic conman in control of the FBI, US Intel, and the most powerful military ever assembled, leaving aside total mobilization like the two world wars. Though in fact I guess it is more powerful than those - - I don't know how to estimate such things. Those things really worry me, to use an expression. I have much more serious personal worries if I wanted to worry, but I don't like worrying anymore, so I tend not to. But if I was inclined to worry about something beyond my narrow purview -- a creature of his ilk with such power would worry me sick.

You're more knowledgable about me about intel, espionage and so on by a long shot. So consider this and I ask, does this worry you? Namely Trump claims to have gotten off the phone with his new best friend Vlad the other day to tell all and bask in the glory of how gosh darn thankful and grateful his new best friend Vlad was to receive the priceless super secret intelligence tip-off about the dirty no-good evil IS cell in St. Petersburg Russian, Vlad's home town, where lawdy lawd sakes to goodness chile, Vlad and his FSB boys busted em afores they could say "Jack be Nimble" -- possibly saving thousands of lives. And only because of the tipoff coming from none other than President Donald J Trump, president of the United States of America. And mind ya, Vlad said make sure to thank CIA director Pompeo now for me, wouldn't ya pretty pretty please with sugar on top?

Now smartest man who ever lived and President of the United States of America Donald J Trump KNEW it was the honest to goodness undeniable lowdown truth, and the truest truth a truth could ever truly be !! How, ya say ? Because Tee VEE showed tapes of FSB agents arresting bad guys in St. Petersburg Russia, and with all the nasty arm caches and worse. And also CIA director Pompeo told him so? Well I'm not so sure about that last part, meaning I didn't hear anything about it. But just in case he did, in the off chance, keep in mind that CIA directors never ever ever make mistakes, as is well known. Why they can't figure out for two years or so that social networks can be weaponized after they obviously were several times recently before the US election and since, can they? Seems they can't according to Dana Priest in her NewYorker article of two weeks or so ago: "Russia's Election Meddling Was Another Intelligence Failure"

https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/russias-election-meddling-is-another-american-intelligence-failure

And also retired several times acting director and deputy director of the CIA MIchael Morell (podcast & full transcript) at:

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/12/11/the-full-transcript-michael-morell-216061

But failure is failure. Mistake is mistake.

So let me just ask you, or Colonel Lang, or anyone else here:

If an intelligence professional of the caliber of President Vladimir Putin of the Russian Federation -- a man with decades of experience, and once director of the FSB himself, if he called you on the phone and told you that it was because of your top notch tip that he and all the security forces of the Russian Federation were able to foil a terrorist plot, AND, you saw on Tee Vee too, would you possibly, even for the slightest fraction of a second in a million years not believe him ???

Well I know I ... well, that doesn't count, because I'm nobody. Would you PB ? Colonel Lang -- you'd believe it, right, if someone called to tell you on the phone to say so, and you saw it on a news report , right ??

Well, let be venture a wild guess and say that perhaps Colonel Lang just possibly might not be so sure about something like that.

But hold on now, hold your horses, because the President of the United States of America, President Donald Trump -- he believes it. So we are safe as safe can be, and can sleep the sleep of kings if I am not greatly mistaken. Because if he believes it, the President of the United States of America believes it, it must be true, correct -- how could it not be ??

[blue peacock]

PT

Trump as POTUS could have one potential huge benefit. That is the possibility of exposure of the "Deep State" cabal. The hatred for Trump among the NeverTrumpers in the MSM, political establishment and the highest levels of law enforcement & the IC, may have caused them to play their hand.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-12-22/if-libs-were-smart-they-would-push-mueller-firing-himself-now

...FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe’s testimony to the House Intelligence Committee all but confirms that the only ‘proof’ the FBI and Special Counsel Robert Mueller have of collusion is the discredited “Trump Dossier...McCabe has to stonewall on this issue otherwise he and the rest of the FBI are guilty of acting on behalf of Hillary Clinton to assist in spying on her political opponent. Because that’s where all of this leads if people would take their ideological blinders off for five seconds and look at what we actually know as opposed to what we ‘just know to be true.’ Everyone involved in this sordid affair should be tried for espionage and treason...

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-12-22/house-republicans-secretly-gathering-evidence-launch-case-against-doj-and-fbi-report

...A subset of the Republican members of the House intelligence committee, led by Chairman Devin Nunes of California, has been quietly working parallel to the committee’s high-profile inquiry into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election. […] The people familiar with Nunes’ plans said the goal is to highlight what some committee Republicans see as corruption and conspiracy in the upper ranks of federal law enforcement....

If the Congressional investigation gathers steam and with the potential help of some insiders uncovers a plot to interfere in a presidential election we could get some very beneficial cleansing in DC.

[blue peacock]

Now, the FBI's general counsel has been "re-assigned". Exactly the problem where no one is either prosecuted or fired. They instead get kept on the payroll and "re-assigned". What a great system for the top bureaucrats. Baker, Strzok. Who next?

https://www.politico.com/story/2017/12/22/trump-dossier-fbi-james-baker-david-corn-mother-jones-316157

...The GOP sources said the documents — made available recently to lawmakers by the Department of Justice — revealed that James Baker, the FBI's general counsel, communicated with Mother Jones reporter David Corn in the weeks leading up to the November 2016 election. Corn was the first to report the existence of the dossier on Oct. 31 and that it was compiled by a former high-level western spy...

[mongo]

Hi Babak,

Perhaps the real victims here are the drug manufacturers and distributors -- if the "poor, abused, manipulated, down-trodden users" did not generate the demand, then they would not have to work so diligently to create the supply to meet it.

McKesson Corporation shipped literally hundreds and thousands of pills to small towns. This is enough to dope every man, woman and child in these places to the gills on a continual basis. They were legally, ethically and morally bound to flag this as suspicious behavior yet somehow that didn't happen until their activities saw the light of day.

A quick review of the clinical literature establishes an unfortunate fact. Addiction cannot be cured; it can only be managed. The primary means to limit addiction is to control its source. So, circling back to your original comment, I for one certainly can be serious about holding McKesson and their ilk accountable.

[MRW]

They are also the descendants of the Ukrainians who were starved to death by the Bolsheviks plundering of their crops first then starved again by Stalin.

No, they aren’t. Ukraine did not become a separate country until 1954. You’re discussing Russia. Kiev was set up by Stalin to house and protect rich Jewish bankers and businessmen; that’s where Stalin sent them from Moscow and St Petersburg.

Publius Tacitus is accurate with " The people we are arming in the Ukraine . . . Hitler invaded the Soviet Union.” Those Nazi sympathizers were located in the western side of Ukraine; they weren’t Russia lovers, they backed Hitler. Jews and others (different political/religious views) escaping Russia on foot, in the dead of the night, et cetera, through that area were slaughtered. Nobody stopped to ask, "Hey, you a Jew?” They just slaughtered whoever was traveling on foot trying to escape to whatever was west of Ukraine.

Used to know this whole story in detail.

[jpb]

Purdue Pharma, owned by the Sackler Family, is primarily responsible for manufacturing and marketing OxyContin. IMO,The Sackler Family perps should be held responsible for the opioid epidemic; their assets confiscated and those responsible, prosecuted and incarcerated for operating a drug cartel which knowingly manufactures and distributes a dangerous narcotic drug. The Sackler Family uses their billions to buy political and legal cover from the highest levels of corrupt agencies charged with protecting Americans from predation by criminal drug gangs.

The facts are detailed in "The Family That Built An Empire Of Pain".

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/10/30/the-family-that-built-an-empire-of-pain

[jld]

It is absolutely pointless to argue with Babak about one of his hobby horses, drugs, Seljuk islam and Diocletian line.

[NancyK]

If a nonviolent drug user can go to prison for 27 years, then the real drug suppliers like McKesson should be facing prison and the breakup of their cartel.

[jld]

Trump administration isn't always idiotic:
Diplomatic Competence Brings Success at the United Nations...

[Babak Makkinejad]

Where is individual responsibility in this? Did Mckesson also put a gun to the head of these small-towners to force them to take opioids until they became addicts?
They were already habitual users of this or that substance long before opioids.

[Babak Makkinejad]

NancyK and PA:
So, drug users are akin to automota and have had no volition of their own.
Jpb:
I suppose gun manufactureres should be prosecuted for murder?

[Fred]

Pacifica,

"This is the only solution. There is no other" No, there are plenty of others but then that would include ending the cultural war on males and the theology of there being only victims and oppressors that the left has adopted as its path to return to power.

[Fred]

Mongo,

What laws bound them to report this pattern of sales and to whom were they supposed to report it?

[Fred]

jpb,

Which law should be sued to confiscate the assests? Do you mean the new, as in days old, presidential executive order:
https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/executive-order-blocking-property-persons-involved-serious-human-rights-abuse-corruption/

I don't see any US executives listed in Annex 1. Maybe they can be added at the whim of the executive branch, kind of like the prior administration did when obtaining FISA warrents.