Thomas Paine's version of "you didn't build that":
"Separate an individual from society,and give him an island or a continent to possess,and he cannot acquire personal property. He cannot be rich. So inseparably are the means connected with the end,in all cases,that where the former do not exist the latter cannot be obtained. All accumulation, therefore,of personal property,beyond what a man's own hands produce, is derived to him by living in society; and he owes on every principle of justice,of gratitude,and of civilization,a part of that accumulation back again to society from whence the whole came"
Submitted by Leah
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Nearly all of these are English-edition daily newspapers. These sites have interesting editorials and essays, and many have links to other good news sources. We try to limit this list to those sites which are regularly updated, reliable, with a high percentage of “up” time.
“We have begun to drain the swamp of government corruption by imposing a five-year ban on lobbying by executive branch officials, and a lifetime ban on becoming lobbyists for a foreign government,” said this jackass, (my apologies to the animal) a lobbyist for Vladimir Putin. Doubtful?, then ask the Trump Organization’s ethics officer to check the president’s tax returns, just to be sure everything is kosher.
He promised that soon he would build a wall on the southern border. But Congress has not given him the money to do so. He assured us that he was deporting bad hombre criminals, as well as many who are just any kind of criminal. Already he was blocking the uncontrolled entry of so many Muslim foreigners, after so many Syrian refugees have wasted their green cards sitting in squalid camps on Greek islands.
This jackass is a Fascist.
The McGlynn
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The president claimed to offer an optimistic vision to Americans, pledging ‘a great, great wall’ and promising ‘dying industries will come roaring back to life’
Donald Trump promised a ‘new chapter of American greatness’ in his first speech to Congress on Tuesday night that touched on immigration, healthcare and national security. Trump struck a largely positive tone in the address, in what was arguably his most presidential speech to date. Watch full highlights
TO THE CONGRESS OF THE UNITED STATES:
Mr. Speaker, Mr. Vice President, Members of Congress, the First Lady of the United States, and Citizens of America:
Tonight, as we mark the conclusion of our celebration of Black History Month, we are reminded of our Nation’s path toward civil rights and the work that still remains. Recent threats targeting Jewish Community Centers and vandalism of Jewish cemeteries, as well as last week’s shooting in Kansas City, remind us that while we may be a Nation divided on policies, we are a country that stands united in condemning hate and evil in all its forms.
Each American generation passes the torch of truth, liberty and justice –- in an unbroken chain all the way down to the present.
That torch is now in our hands. And we will use it to light up the world. I am here tonight to deliver a message of unity and strength, and it is a message deeply delivered from my heart.
A new chapter of American Greatness is now beginning.
A new national pride is sweeping across our Nation.
And a new surge of optimism is placing impossible dreams firmly within our grasp.
What we are witnessing today is the Renewal of the American Spirit.
Our allies will find that America is once again ready to lead.
All the nations of the world — friend or foe — will find that America is strong, America is proud, and America is free.
In 9 years, the United States will celebrate the 250th anniversary of our founding — 250 years since the day we declared our Independence.
It will be one of the great milestones in the history of the world.
But what will America look like as we reach our 250th year? What kind of country will we leave for our children?
I will not allow the mistakes of recent decades past to define the course of our future.
For too long, we’ve watched our middle class shrink as we’ve exported our jobs and wealth to foreign countries.
We’ve financed and built one global project after another, but ignored the fates of our children in the inner cities of Chicago, Baltimore, Detroit — and so many other places throughout our land.
We’ve defended the borders of other nations, while leaving our own borders wide open, for anyone to cross — and for drugs to pour in at a now unprecedented rate.
And we’ve spent trillions of dollars overseas, while our infrastructure at home has so badly crumbled.
Then, in 2016, the earth shifted beneath our feet. The rebellion started as a quiet protest, spoken by families of all colors and creeds -– families who just wanted a fair shot for their children, and a fair hearing for their concerns.
But then the quiet voices became a loud chorus — as thousands of citizens now spoke out together, from cities small and large, all across our country.
Finally, the chorus became an earthquake – and the people turned out by the tens of millions, and they were all united by one very simple, but crucial demand, that America must put its own citizens first … because only then, can we truly MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN.
America has undergone a transformation since the 9/11 attacks – and the ascent of Donald Trump has merely shoved that reality directly in our faces
Donald Trump speaks at the Pentagon, flanked by Vice-President Mike Pence and the defense secretary, the retired general James Mattis. Photograph: Susan Walsh/AP
It’s been epic! A cast of thousands. A spectacular production that, five weeks after opening on every screen of any sort in the US (and possibly the world), shows no sign of ending.
What a hit it’s been. It’s driving people back to newspapers and ensuring that our everyday companions, the 24/7 cable news shows, never lack for “breaking news” or audiences. It’s a smash in both the Hollywood and car accident sense of the term, a phenomenon the likes of which we’ve simply never experienced.
And you know exactly what – and whom – I’m talking about. No need to explain. I mean, you tell me: what doesn’t it have? Its lead actor is the closest we’ve come in our nation’s capital to an action figure, a version of Batman and the Joker rolled into one, a president who, as he told us at a news conference recently, is “the least antisemitic person that you’ve ever seen in your entire life” and the “least racist person” as well.
As for his supporting cast? Islamophobes, Iranophobes, white nationalists; bevies of billionaires and multimillionaires; a resurgent stock market gone wild; the complete fossil fuel industry and every crackpot climate change “skeptic” in town; a White House counselor whose expertise is in “alternative facts”; a White House chief of staff and liaison with the Republicans in Congress who’s already being sized up for extinction; as well as a couple of appointees who were “dismissed” or even frog-marched out of their offices and jobs for having criticized him.
And don’t forget that sons Donald and Eric are already saving memorabilia for the future Trump presidential library, a concept that should take your breath away.
A government of billionaires and generals
Even 20 months after it began, it’s all still so remarkable and new and if it isn’t like being in the path of a tornado, you tell me what it’s like. So no one should be surprised at just how difficult it is to step outside the storm to find some – any – vantage point offering the slightest perspective on the Trumpaclysm that’s hit our world.
Still, odd as it may seem under the circumstances, Trump’s presidency came from somewhere, developed out of something. To think of it (as many of those resisting Trump now seem inclined to do) as uniquely new, the presidential version of a virgin birth, is to defy both history and reality.
Trump’s presidency already offers a strikingly vivid portrait of the America we’ve been living in for some years now
Trump’s new radical nature should serve as a reminder of just how radical the 15 years after 9/11 actually were in shaping American life, politics and governance. In that sense, his presidency already offers a strikingly vivid and accurate portrait of the America we’ve been living in for some years now, even if we’d prefer to pretend otherwise.
After all, it’s clearly a government of, by, and evidently for the billionaires and the generals, which pretty much sums up where we’ve been heading for the last decade and a half anyway.
Let’s start with those generals.
In the 15 years before Trump entered the Oval Office, Washington became a permanent war capital; war, a permanent feature of our American world; and the military, the most admired institution of American life, the one in which we have the most confidence among an otherwise fading crew, including the presidency, the supreme court, public schools, banks, television news, newspapers, big business, and Congress (in that descending order).
Support for that military in the form of staggering sums of taxpayer dollars (which are about to soar yet again) is one of the few things congressional Democrats and Republicans can still agree on. The military-industrial complex rides ever higher (despite Trumpian tweets about the price of F-35s); police across the country have been armed like so many military forces, while the technology of war on America’s distant battlefields – from Stingrays to MRAPs to military surveillance drones – has come home big time, and we’ve been Swatified.
This country has, in other words, been militarized in all sorts of ways, both obvious and less so, in a fashion that Americans once might not have imagined possible. In the process, declaring and making war has increasingly become – the constitution be damned – the sole preoccupation of the White House, without significant reference to Congress. Meanwhile, thanks to the drone assassination program run directly out of the Oval Office, the president, in these years, has become an assassin-in-chief as well as commander-in-chief.
Under the circumstances, no one should have been surprised when Donald Trump turned to the very generals he criticized in the election campaign, men who fought 15 years of losing wars that they bitterly feel should have been won.
In his government, they have, of course, now taken over – a historic first – what had largely been the civilian posts of secretary of defense, secretary of homeland security, national security adviser, and National Security Council chief of staff.
Sabrina de Sousa, who was convicted for her role in the Bush-era ‘extraordinary rendition’ of Egyptian cleric Abu Omar, granted last-minute partial pardon
Sabrina De Sousa has always claimed she was a low-level scapegoat for crimes committed by senior Bush administration officials in connection to the ‘war on terror’. Photograph: Nikki Kahn/Washington Post via Associated Press
A former CIA officer who was poised to become the first intelligence official to face jail in connection to crimes committed during George W Bush’s “war on terror” has been granted a last-minute pardon by Italy.
Sabrina de Sousa, who was convicted in absentia in 2009 for playing a part in the extraordinary rendition of a radical Egyptian cleric known as Abu Omar, was expected to arrive in Italy from Portugal this week to serve a four-year sentence following months of legal wrangling over her controversial conviction.
But the office of Sergio Mattarella, the Italian president, released a statement late on Tuesday saying that De Sousa had been granted a partial pardon, which would reduce her four-year sentence of detention by one year. The statement said that De Sousa would be able to serve her sentence with “alternative measures” to detention, meaning that she could avoid spending any time in jail.
The statement did not clarify whether De Sousa, who is a dual US and Portuguese citizen, would have to remain in Italy to serve the sentence.
Mattarella’s office said the decision also reflected the fact that the US had “interrupted” the Bush-era practice of extraordinary renditions, a classified counter-terrorism programme in which terror suspects were kidnapped and taken to black sites, where they were tortured.
The news will likely be met with relief by the US and Italian governments and will mean that the two countries will avoid diplomatic tensions ahead of Donald Trump’s planned visit to Italy in May, when the US president attends the G7 meeting of world leaders in Sicily.
De Sousa, who is 61, had in effect been under house arrest in Portugal since 2015, after she made the decision to leave the US and travel to Portugal to visit her family despite the fact that she was the subject of a European arrest warrant. She was stopped from leaving the country and had her passport confiscated.
After more than a year of legal wrangling over her case, De Sousa was taken into custody by Portuguese authorities last week and had been expected to arrive in Italy this week.
The case has been a thorny issue between the US and Italy ever since the former CIA officer became one of more than a dozen officials to be convicted in absentia in 2009 for playing a part in the kidnapping of Omar.
De Sousa, who has always claimed she was a low-level scapegoat for crimes committed by senior Bush administration officials in connection to the “war on terror”, has been a vocal critic of the US government and the rendition programme.
She has told the Guardian in multiple interviews since 2015 that the US government failed to adequately use back channels in Italy to secure a pardon for her, even as the Obama administration successfully lobbied for the pardon of other CIA officials who were convicted in the Omar case.
The case against De Sousa and more than a dozen other CIA officers was brought by an independent Italian prosecutor who investigated the rendition and pieced together the US involvement in Omar’s kidnapping through a forensic investigation of telephone records, among other investigative tools. The case has never been formally backed by the Italian government, which had never sought De Sousa’s extradition from the US or that of any other US officials.
An attorney for De Sousa was not immediately available for comment.
Exclusive: letter from more than 60 law enforcement heads asks to soften push to include police in round-ups, saying it makes their communities less safe
In the joint letter, the officials objected to being thrust into ‘new and sometimes problematic tasks’ that will undermine the balance between serving their communities and the federal government. Photograph: Charles Reed/AP
Police chiefs from across the US, including several from states that voted for Donald Trump, are pushing back on White House moves to force them to become more involved in deporting undocumented immigrants.
In a joint letter, more than 60 law enforcement heads are appealing to Trump in all but name to soften his aggressive drive to enlist police officers in the highly contentious job of deporting millions of immigrants living without permission in the country. They object to being thrust into “new and sometimes problematic tasks” that will undermine the balance between the local communities they serve and the federal government, and “harm locally-based, community-oriented policing”.
The letter is signed by 61 current and former local police chiefs and sheriffs, many of whom come from states won by Trump last November including Alabama, Arizona, Florida, South Carolina and Texas. The political diversity and geographic spread of the signatories underlines the deep apprehension felt by many within the law enforcement community toward the president’s plans to beef up their role in rounding up, detaining and ultimately deporting huge numbers of people.
The letter, written under the auspices of the Law Enforcement Immigration Task Force, a coalition of senior law enforcement experts convened by the National Immigration Forum, does not mention Trump by name. But it indirectly references his administration’s efforts to force police to play a more central role in the deportation business.
It was released to coincide with a hearing on Tuesday of the US Senate committee on homeland security and governmental affairs, convened by Republicans under the provocative title “the effects of border insecurity and lax immigration enforcement on American communities”.
The letter writers – who include the commissioner of the Boston police department, William Evans; commander of the Los Angeles county sheriff’s office, Jody Sharp; and chief of the Salt Lake City force, Mike Brown – make plain their objection to being drawn into the immigration fray. They state bluntly: “Immigration enforcement is, first and foremost, a federal responsibility. We believe we can best serve our communities by leaving the enforcement of immigration laws to the federal government.”
Trump has pledged to deport millions of undocumented immigrants by widening the definition of those who should be removed, increasing numbers of federal immigration agents and detention centers, and co-opting police forces into the task. He did, however, signal late Tuesday that he might be willing to endorse legislation that protected some undocumented immigrants from deportation, though he gave no details and failed to make any mention of the idea in his address to Congress.
The prospect of police officers and sheriff’s deputies effectively acting as immigration agents while going about their daily affairs – for instance, stopping a Latino individual for driving a car with a broken tail light and then apprehending them for visa violations – has spread fear across communities with large immigrant populations across the US.
But the letter suggests that there is no shortage of opposition to Trump’s apocalyptic plans within law enforcement circles. The authors put forward a very different vision, arguing that police engagement should be strictly limited to targeting “threats such as dangerous criminals and criminal organizations causing harm”.
They also appeal to the Trump administration to draw back from its threat to penalize so-called sanctuary cities that are resisting the immigration crackdown. They point out that there is no agreed definition of what a sanctuary city is, and warn that a withdrawal of federal funds from those areas as punishment “would not make our communities safer”.
In one of his first executive orders issued from the White House, Trump tore up a recently implemented element of Barack Obama’s approach to immigration by rescinding the Priority Enforcement Program (PEP), under which customised agreements were negotiated between the federal government and local law enforcement jurisdictions over joint working. The program focused on undocumented immigrants who had committed serious violent offenses, in contrast to the previous enforcement policy, Secure Communities, that swept up thousands of people with minor criminal convictions or no criminal history at all.
Cecilia Muñoz, former director of the White House domestic policy council under President Obama, told the Guardian that by ditching the PEP agreements that had been painstakingly reached with local police chiefs, the incoming Trump administration was paradoxically running the risk of making communities less secure. “For all the Trump administration’s tough rhetoric on security and safety, they are in practice discarding reasonable agreements in order to force local police chiefs into something that they think is unwise,” she said.
Opposition and rights groups attack arrest of Deniz Yücel as German foreign ministry summons Turkish ambassador to Berlin
The arrest of Deniz Yücel is the latest in a broad crackdown on the media in Turkey after July’s failed coup. Photograph: Karlheinz Schindler/AFP/Getty Images
Opposition officials and human rights groups have condemned the arrest in Turkey of a German newspaper correspondent as an “assault on freedom of expression” and attempt at intimidating foreign press in the country.
Deniz Yücel, a Turkish-German journalist for Die Welt, was formally arrested on the order of a Turkish judge on Monday pending a trial on charges of propaganda and incitement to hatred. He has been held since 14 February.
Germany’s foreign ministry summoned the Turkish ambassador to Berlin on Tuesday, with the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, having described the arrest decision as “bitter and disappointing”.
“Turkey now has the dubious honour of being the world’s biggest jailer of journalists, and free media in the country is in its death throes,” said John Dalhuisen of Amnesty International. “We are urging the Turkish authorities to release Deniz Yücel and all other journalists in pre-trial detention immediately and unconditionally, and to cease this assault on freedom of expression and dissident voices. Journalism is not a crime – the media blackout in Turkey must end now.”
Yücel was arrested after reporting on the hacking of the private emails of Berat Albayrak, Turkey’s energy minister and the son-in-law of the country’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdo?an.
The court also accused him of propaganda on behalf of the Kurdistan Workers’ party (PKK), a designated terror group fighting an insurgency against the Turkish state, partly because of an interview he conducted two years ago with Cemil Bay?k, one of the PKK’s founders.
The journalist’s arrest was the latest in a broad crackdown on the media in Turkey after a failed coup last July. But it was the first time a German journalist was arrested in what was interpreted as an attempt to intimidate the foreign press reporting from inside the country.
“This verdict is a message to foreign journalists and journalists who are reporting from Turkey to international media outlets,” said Sezgin Tanr?kulu, a MP with the opposition Republican People’s party (CHP) who is monitoring the lawsuit against Yücel.
The CHP said there were now 152 journalists in custody in Turkey including Yücel, and that 173 media organisations had been closed down since the attempted coup, including magazines, newspapers, radio stations, news agencies and websites. More than 2,500 journalists have been laid off because of the closures and 800 journalists have had their press cards cancelled by the authorities, according to Bar?? Yarkada?, a CHP MP who monitors the trials of journalists.
Nearly all of these are English-edition daily newspapers. These sites have interesting editorials and essays, and many have links to other good news sources. We try to limit this list to those sites which are regularly updated, reliable, with a high percentage of “up” time.
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