There’s a certain unease in the French air. On the surface everything appears normal: the birds are singing, the sun is shining, people are going about their business while making preparation for tomorrow’s holiday – July 14th, Bastille Day. It’ll be one year to the day that a mad jihadist drove a truck down the promenade at Nice, killing eighty-four people. But it’s not that which stirs unease in the air of France.
Trump is in town. The U.S. president was invited to spend Bastille Day in Paris by the new French president, Emmanuel Macron. Nobody’s asking, “Why?” Everybody’s thinking it. Trump’s already caused a degree of embarrassment by telling the French first lady, “You know you’re in such great shape.” She’s twenty-five years older than her husband.
There’s huge security around Paris and French fighter jets have been regularly boring holes in the sky over northern France all day. It’ll likely continue tomorrow, also. There’s a bevy of protesters hanging around the city, but violence isn’t really anticipated. Most Parisians, indeed most French people, just shrug and pretend to carry on as normal.
As one man told the Independent:
“Donald Trump is a real fool, but I’m not concerned by him coming here,” says Maxime Adam, sitting on a park bench in central Paris.
While thousands of Parisiens were preparing to protest the US President’s visit to France, the rest of the capital gave a collective shrug as life continued as normal.
“I don’t like him but if Emmanuel Macron decided to invite him it’s for some reason,” Mr Adam added.
“Mr Trump can do whatever he wants – I don’t agree with it but it’s not like that here.” [1]
Tomorrow there’ll be a military parade in the Champs-Elysees, with Trump as guest of honour. It’s to mark the centenary of America entering the First World War in 1917, just a year before it ended (1914-1918).
Then Trump will return to America in Air Force One and the country will breathe a quiet sigh of relief when he’s gone. The birds will continue to sing, the sun will still be shining, and people will go quietly about their business. Trump will be soon forgotten. In the cafes of Paris and the rural farmhouses of Brittany, French folk will sip their wine and break open their baguettes as they relax over their ninety-minute lunch breaks.
For that’s France, and that’s the French. It’ll take more than Donald Trump to change anything here.
May is entertained by Salman of Saudi ~ April 5th 2017
I’ve been saying it for years. I’ve been writing about it for years. In fact, I’ve been doing so till I’m as blue in the face as that darned budgie staring balefully at you now from the top of the page. Finally, it seems someone has evidence of the truth. The BBC actually headlined it on their website this morning, but by this evening I couldn’t find it anywhere on the BBC. And, so far as I can tell, it never came up on the BBC news either.
(I did eventually locate it hidden away in the “UK Politics” section, somewhat subdued from the major headline of the morning).
When David Cameron was U.K. Prime Minister, he instigated a government investigation into who was funding terrorism in the U.K.. That investigation is, according to the present lot in power, “still ongoing.” It was due to be completed by last Easter. In fact Theresa May’s been sitting on it for the past six months.
According to the Independent:
Theresa May has been accused of burying a report about Saudi Arabian funding of Islamist extremism in the UK for fear it may damage relations with their ally.
The report, which was originally commissioned by David Cameron in January last year, was due to be completed by last Easter and is believed to have been in Mrs May’s possession for at least six months.
The study, which began while Mrs May was still Home Secretary, was designed to examine the origins and scale of funding of terror groups in the UK with an additional remit to follow international funding streams…
…Last month, a spokesman for the Home Office admitted to The Guardian that the report may never be published as its contents were “very sensitive”. [1]
However, today an independent report was published into the funding of terrorist groups in the U.K., by the Henry Jackson Society (a somewhat right-wing think-tank that originated in Cambridge University, U.K. but is headquartered in London). It was this the BBC reported on this morning – in big headlines on their front page.
According to the BBC:
Saudi Arabia is the chief foreign promoter of Islamist extremism in the UK, a new report has claimed.
The Henry Jackson Society said there was a “clear and growing link” between Islamist organisations in receipt of overseas funds, hate preachers and Jihadist groups promoting violence. The foreign affairs think tank called for a public inquiry into the role of Saudi Arabia and other Gulf nations…
…The Henry Jackson Society is a foreign policy think tank that advocates the robust spreading of liberal democracy, the rule of law and the market economy. Their report says a number of Gulf nations, as well as Iran, are providing financial support to mosques and Islamic educational institutions which have played host to extremist preachers and been linked to the spread of extremist material.
At the top of the list, the report claims, is Saudi Arabia, the UK’s closest ally in the Middle East and biggest trading partner. It alleges individuals and foundations have been heavily involved in exporting what it calls “an illiberal, bigoted Wahhabi ideology”, quoting a number of examples. [2]
Saudi Arabia tops the list as the biggest sponsor of terrorism, NOT Iran as the United States continues to insist, and it’s fairly certain that the government report Theresa May is refusing to publish states the same.
Isn’t it time a) May released that report so we may confirm what it says, and b) that she resigned from government for continually denying that the Arab nation she’s so politically entwined with is responsible for the deaths of numerous British citizens, and those of other nations, on the streets of the country she’s responsible for governing?
The world is obsessed with Donald Trump. It’s impossible to open any newspaper, turn to any news channel, or access any news website without Donald Trump leaping out at you from the front pages. For him it’s a feeding frenzy of narcissism. He’s loving it. He’s the most powerful narcissist in the world and every moment is sheer heaven to his sad little ego.
Why is he still president of the United States? He should be removed as unworthy to hold the office. He’s an embarrassment, a low form of humanity with an even lower mentality. He behaves like a three-year old bully in the kindergarten playground. Every single day he brings the Office of President into disrepute with his bizarre tweets and ugly comments. Also, by these actions he’s opening the door to military-style organizations like the NRA, to whip up hatred and violence with the potential for wide-spread civil strife, or even low-grade civil war. Earlier this week we had the latest NRA ad go viral on the internet:
Yesterday, the media was full of Trump’s latest ‘animated tweet’ in his bitter and obsessive struggle with CNN: [1]
This glorification of violence is further reinforced in one of his latest tweets, presumably aimed at inducing more nationalistic fervour on Independence Day:
GOD BLESS OUR NATION’S VETERANS & THE UNITED STATES OR(?) AMERICA!
America’s men & women in uniform is the story of FREEDOM overcoming OPPRESSION, the STRONG protecting the WEAK, & GOOD defeating EVIL! As long as our country remains true to its values, loyal to its heroes,&devoted to its Creator, then our best days are yet to come. Happy Independence Day! God bless our nation’s VETERANS & the U.S.A. [2]
Since 9/11 the United States has become a violent and divided nation, held in check until recently by the thin veneer of ‘civilization’ that managed to maintain its credibility in the world. Iraq 2003 changed all that. Iraq showed the world the true America, its military cold, calculating, arrogant, hellbent on pursuing the power-crazed ideals of its politicians and corporate leaders. Americans have conveniently wiped the name ‘Abu Ghraib’ from their memories. They’ve been fed false tales via Hollywood and their media, of brave, kindly souls in uniform battling evil and coming out victorious to the plaudits of the oppressed and abused.
The truth is very different. In Afghanistan, where civilians have suffered horrendous abuses by the U.S. military. In Somalia where an ignominious U.S. defeat at the hands of one warlord followed massacres of innocent civilians (later turned into a tale of brave heroes winning against overwhelming odds in the film ‘Black Hawk Down’). In Yemen, where U.S. support is enabling wholesale slaughter of civilians by U.S.-supplied Saudi warplanes, bombs, and missiles; in Syria, where once again civilian slaughter by the U.S. military is couched under the phrase, ‘collateral damage’.
The idea of the U.S. military as some sort of world guardian angel, a bevy of Supermen rushing to the aid of the unfortunate, has long been part of American myth translated into fact by calculated propaganda. By further perpetrating the myth Trump plays to the nationalistic fervour rampant among many Americans.
America is a violent nation awash with firearms. The divide between the political left and right grows ever wider by the day. Why not have Trump removed from office? The conflict of interest regulations enshrined in the U.S. Constitution DO NOT apply to a POTUS, but there’s one law that does. It’s in the Ethics Reform Act of 1989, and as a report last October in the Atlantic states:
…it prohibits any senior “noncareer officer” of the government from permitting his or her name to be “used” by any firm that “provides professional services involving a fiduciary relationship.” While the conflict-of-interest statutes exempt the president, the text of the use-of-name law does not, though its use in court would require the repeal of a 25-year-old executive-branch regulation that does exempt the president and vice president. As important, Congress explicitly said this statute was meant to ban the use of an officer’s name not only in traditional fiduciary-based firms, such as law partnerships, but in a range of other ventures including “real estate, consulting and advising, [and] architecture.” The U.S. Office of Government Ethics regulations that apply the law adopted this broad definition. [3]
So, if Congress was to repeal that 25-year-old executive-branch regulation they’d be free to impeach Trump over his business interests. Will they do so? It’s extremely unlikely. Firstly, Congress is awash with Republican senators right now, and while some of them aren’t happy with Trump they’d never get the numbers in a vote to support such an act.
Secondly, Congress is somewhat betwixt a rock and the proverbial hard place in that removing Trump from office could spark just the sort of civil unrest discussed earlier. Of course, if they leave him in control, all sorts of problems may develop. America could find itself at the heart of a potential world war. Trump is a loose cannon and there’s no way of knowing where the ball might land.
The nation that believes itself to be the ‘leader of the free world’ is in a hole. Trump is, undoubtedly, an embarrassment and potentially dangerous to the government he heads. He has support, and is financed, by a number of powerful, wealthy, people. They happen to be the same people to whom Congress has been bowing the knee for quite a long time – making laws in their favour, acquiescing to the demands of their lobbyists, etc..
The Congress of the United States of America has rather neatly hog-tied itself. It will likely do nothing, apart from making noises about committees to investigate Trump, blow smoke-screens about Russia, and huff and puff like the wolf after the three little piggies.
Unfortunately for them, and possibly for the rest of us, they’ll likely find Mister Trump’s house is made of something a bit more substantial than straw.
