monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

If I'm not mistaken, wasn't Trump an anti-vaxxer?

I'm antifa, but that doesn't mean I'm not against all fascists, because I am.

If you understand the efficacy of at least certain vaccines, how are you antivax?

... you would have to come to terms with the root causes of fascism

I doubt you are against any left-wing fascism.

livinglava wrote:

... you would have to come to terms with the root causes of fascism

Well, not everyone is so good educated about the situation in Italy during WWI as you are.

Narrowing the definition of fascism to a particular historical expression of it doesn't help make sense of it as a broader social-psychological/cultural phenomenon.

Quote:

I doubt you are against any left-wing fascism.

Do NOT doubt. I am against Marxists and Maoists in particular. Any group with no sense of humor, I am against. Any collectivist system, I am against. Any system with fences, I am against. Any group that forces its will "for the greater good", I am against.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday issued an executive order authorizing sanctions against individuals involved in an International Criminal Court investigation into whether U.S. forces committed war crimes in Afghanistan.

A senior Trump administration official, without providing details, said the ICC investigation is “being pushed forward by an organization of dubious integrity” and accused Russia of having a role.

The order authorizes Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, in consultation with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, to block assets in the United States of ICC employees involved in the probe, the official said.

It also authorizes Pompeo to block entry into the United States of these individuals.

Trump has repeatedly assailed The Hague-based ICC set up to prosecute war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity. It has jurisdiction only if a member state is unable or unwilling to prosecute atrocities itself.

Afghanistan is a member of the ICC, though Kabul has argued that any war crimes should be prosecuted locally. The U.S. government has never been a member of the court, established in 2002. The Trump administration imposed travel restrictions and other sanctions against ICC employees a year ago.

The ICC decided to investigate after prosecutors’ preliminary examination in 2017 found reasonable grounds to believe war crimes were committed in Afghanistan and that the ICC has jurisdiction.

The senior administration official, describing the order to a group of reporters on a conference call, said the directive authorizes sanctions against any individual directly engaged in any effort by the ICC to investigate U.S. personnel without American consent.

The official said the probe threatens to infringe on American sovereignty and that while the ICC was established to provide accountability, “in practice the court is an unaccountable, ineffective and out-of-control international bureaucracy that threatens American service members and intelligence officers and those of our allies.”

ICC prosecutor Fatou Bensouda wants to investigate possible crimes committed between 2003 and 2014, including alleged mass killings of civilians by the Taliban, as well as the alleged torture of prisoners by Afghan authorities and, to a lesser extent, by U.S. forces and the CIA.

“We have reason to believe there is corruption and misconduct at the highest levels of the ICC’s office of prosecutor, calling into question the integrity of this investigation into American personnel. We are concerned that Russia may be manipulating the ICC by encouraging these allegations into U.S. personnel,” the U.S. official said.

‘I should not have been there,’ Milley says of Trump photo op.

The country’s top military official apologized on Thursday for taking part in President Trump’s walk across Lafayette Square for a photo op after authorities used tear gas and rubber bullets to clear the area of peaceful protesters.

“I should not have been there,” Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in a prerecorded video commencement address to National Defense University. “My presence in that moment and in that environment created a perception of the military involved in domestic politics.”

His first public remarks since Mr. Trump’s photo op, in which federal authorities attacked peaceful protesters so that the president could hold up a Bible in front of St. John’s Church, are certain to anger the White House, where Mr. Trump has spent the days since the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis taking increasingly tougher stances against the growing movement for change across the country.

On Wednesday, the president picked another fight with the military, slapping down the Pentagon for considering renaming Army bases named after Confederate officers who fought against the Union in the Civil War.

The back and forth between Mr. Trump and the Pentagon in recent days is evidence of the deepest civil-military divide since the Vietnam War — except this time, military leaders, after halting steps in the beginning, are now positioning themselves firmly with those calling for change.

Mr. Trump’s walk across Lafayette Square, current and former military leaders say, has sparked a critical moment of reckoning in the military.

“As a commissioned uniformed officer, it was a mistake that I have learned from,” General Milley said. He said he had been angry about “the senseless and brutal killing of George Floyd,” and repeated his opposition to Mr. Trump’s suggestions that federal troops be deployed nationwide to quell protests.

General Milley’s friends said that for the past 10 days, he had been agonized about appearing — in the combat fatigues he wears every day to work — behind Mr. Trump during the walk across Lafayette Square, an act that critics said gave a stamp of military approval to the hard-line tactics used to clear the protesters.

The general believed that he was accompanying Mr. Trump and his entourage to review National Guard troops and other law enforcement personnel outside Lafayette Square, Defense Department officials said.

His motives are immaterial, unknowable and irrelevant. Maybe he did it because his wife enjoyed black cocks a little too much. Who cares?

The important thing is that the sanction must be exemplary so as to send a clear message to other cops. Period.

You lost me after "silly".

Palestine is one of the last surviving (and longest running) colonization attempt on the planet.

Deport people,

steal their land,

and then shoot them when they revolt...

Quote:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday issued an executive order authorizing sanctions against individuals involved in an International Criminal Court investigation into whether U.S. forces committed war crimes in Afghanistan.

A senior Trump administration official, without providing details, said the ICC investigation is “being pushed forward by an organization of dubious integrity” and accused Russia of having a role.

The order authorizes Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, in consultation with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, to block assets in the United States of ICC employees involved in the probe, the official said.

It also authorizes Pompeo to block entry into the United States of these individuals.

Trump has repeatedly assailed The Hague-based ICC set up to prosecute war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity. It has jurisdiction only if a member state is unable or unwilling to prosecute atrocities itself.

Afghanistan is a member of the ICC, though Kabul has argued that any war crimes should be prosecuted locally. The U.S. government has never been a member of the court, established in 2002. The Trump administration imposed travel restrictions and other sanctions against ICC employees a year ago.

The ICC decided to investigate after prosecutors’ preliminary examination in 2017 found reasonable grounds to believe war crimes were committed in Afghanistan and that the ICC has jurisdiction.

The senior administration official, describing the order to a group of reporters on a conference call, said the directive authorizes sanctions against any individual directly engaged in any effort by the ICC to investigate U.S. personnel without American consent.

The official said the probe threatens to infringe on American sovereignty and that while the ICC was established to provide accountability, “in practice the court is an unaccountable, ineffective and out-of-control international bureaucracy that threatens American service members and intelligence officers and those of our allies.”

ICC prosecutor Fatou Bensouda wants to investigate possible crimes committed between 2003 and 2014, including alleged mass killings of civilians by the Taliban, as well as the alleged torture of prisoners by Afghan authorities and, to a lesser extent, by U.S. forces and the CIA.

“We have reason to believe there is corruption and misconduct at the highest levels of the ICC’s office of prosecutor, calling into question the integrity of this investigation into American personnel. We are concerned that Russia may be manipulating the ICC by encouraging these allegations into U.S. personnel,” the U.S. official said.

Reuters

which amount to virtual israeli control of most vital functions of life and autonomy.

The United States...and the rest of the world must be quickly rid of this disgusting abomination.
I hope the electorate will do the job in November.

Israel took Palestinian land within israel which they refuse to give back or make reparations for,

they make illegal settlements of israelis in the occupied territories which they want to keep,

and their offers of pittances of land

come with not just strings but high tensile steel cables of conditions, which amount to virtual israeli control of most vital functions of life and autonomy.