This cop only used his electro-shock torture gun on him instead of putting a bullet through his head.
It’s the little blessings in life, you know?
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The cops might kidnap and rape and murder you.
U.S. Threatened Europe With Auto Tariffs Over Iran Nuclear Program
“That’s what I love about America. We some God-damn bullies.” –Katt Williams
“The Trump administration has threatened to impose a 25% tariff on European automobile imports if Britain, France and Germany do not formally accuse Iran of breaking the 2015 nuclear deal, the Washington Post reported on Wednesday, citing unnamed European officials.
“The three European countries triggered a dispute mechanism under the agreement on Tuesday, amounting to a formal accusation against Tehran of violating its terms and could lead to the reinstatement of United Nations sanctions lifted under the accord.”
Jordan’s Abdullah: Israel Imposing ‘Unthinkable Solution’ On Palestinians
Jordan’s King Abdullah II accuses Israel of trying to “impose an unthinkable solution” on Palestinians as hopes fade for a two-state solution backed by the international community.
Speaking to lawmakers at the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France, he says Israel’s construction of settlements in the West Bank and “disregard of international law” could be summed up as “one state turning its back on its neighborhood, perpetuating divisions among peoples and faiths worldwide.”
The Jordanian monarch carries the hereditary title of “custodian” of holy Muslim and Christian sites in Jerusalem.
Trump Administration Flunks Trade Economics 101
International trade is one of the many areas in which the Trump administration has been egregiously bad. Trump himself seems to lack even the most basic knowledge about the principle of trade — he seems to think it is always zero-sum with a loser for every winner — and he’s surrounded himself with advisers who are just as ignorant.
We are indebted to George Mason University economist Donald Boudreaux for keeping a close eye on these reckless ignoramuses, who are so casual about our well-being. In the latest of a series of blog posts, Boudreaux again notes how militantly ignorant those advisers are. The latest post again demolishes trade adviser Peter Navarro, who’s never seen an American tariff he did not love. Boudreaux points that Navarro doesn’t even understand what a trade deficit is. On the one hand, Navarro praises Trump’s tariffs for combating the trade deficit while on the other he praises them for stimulating foreign investment in America. What’s wrong with that? Here’s Boudreaux:
Mr. Navarro apparently doesn’t understand the elementary fact that, because every dollar invested in the U.S. by foreigners is a dollar not spent on U.S. exports, the investments about which Mr. Navarro today boasts promote the very trade deficits that, in other contexts, he bemoans. [Emphasis added.]
When people complain about the trade deficit, they are referring to an imbalance in the merchandise account: they mean that the dollar amount of goods that Americans sell to people in a given country or all countries is less than the dollar amount of goods that Americans buy.
But merchandise is only about half the picture. A capital account also exists; that’s a comparison of the dollar value of foreign investment in America with the dollar value of American investment in other countries. When a foreigner earns a dollar from an export to America, he has a few options of what to do with that dollar, which he can’t spend at home. If he buys an American product, he leaves the merchandise account unchanged (a dollar out and a dollar in), but if he invests the dollar in America, he indeed contributes to a deficit in the merchandise account while also contributing to a surplus in the capital account. The accounts are roughly mirror images. But people ignore the capital account, and that’s just ignorant if not stupid.
So it is ridiculous to praise trade restrictions for remedying the merchandise-account deficit and for attracting foreign investment to America (which increases that deficit). If Navarro really understood or cared about the trade deficit (one need not care about it actually), he would condemn foreign investment and demand that foreigners buy American products. I’d like to see him try that.
Trump and his trade advisers would certainly flunk any course in elementary economics.
Presidential War Power
“It is, however, insane and intolerable that peace depends on the restraint of the Islamic Republic and an American president given to rage-tweeting war-crime threats,” the Cato Institute’s Gene Healy, who studies presidential power, writes in “Trump the Decider.”
“No one fallible human being should be entrusted with the war powers now vested in the presidency. Now, more than ever, Congress needs to do everything in its power to reclaim its authority over war and peace.”
By what authority did Trump order the drone-assassination of Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani and key Iraqi militia commanders in Iraq, all former allies in the fight against ISIS? Writes Healy:
For now, the official rationale is classified. In terms of public justification, all we have is some hand-waving by Trump’s national security adviser about the president’s “constitutional authorities as commander in chief to defend our nation” and the 17-year old Authorization for the Use of Military Force in Iraq (2002 AUMF). Neither comes close to vesting the president with the power to set off a whole new war.
The 2002 AUMF authorizes the president to use military force in order to “defend the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq” and enforce various UN resolutions “regarding Iraq.” Unless “45” is going to break out the presidential sharpie and change the “q”s to “n”s, that’s not going to cut it. Neither will the 2001 AUMF, as I’ve explained at length elsewhere (See: “Repeal Old AUMFs and Salt the Earth”).
Healy disposes of the “self-defense” rationale for Trump’s act of war without a congressional declaration of war. I’d only add that if no US troops were in Iraq, they would not be subject to attack by anyone there.
Year Zero 92: Soleimani Was An Imminent Threat, But Not To American Lives
The Trump administration has backed off of the narrative that Soleimani was in Baghdad to plot attacks on four American embassies, but they haven’t addressed the imminent threat he truly posed. While it’s true the Iranian general can’t be credibly linked to the deaths of Americans or a future plot; he is absolutely linked to plotting peace in Yemen without US support, threatening the world empire’s dominance in the region.
Listen to Year Zero
The Grammar of the Soleimani Assassination
By now we’ve heard enough official explanations of Trump’s assassination of Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani and others to realize they are all nonsense. (And Secretary of State Mike Pompeo now admits it.) Trump killed Soleimani because, egged on by his unsavory friends Saudi crown prince Mohammad bin Salman and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, he has it in for Iran. So when the opportunity to pull off the murder-by-drone came along, he took it. It’s not as though he thought he needed a special justification. It’s good to be the king — er, president.
Most official explanations have entailed some sort of threat to US military or diplomatic personnel, “interests,” or “assets.” And sometimes one US official has had no idea what another is talking about. Trump said four embassies were threatened, but his secretary of defense said that was news to him. Other explanations tie the killings to the breach of the US embassy in Baghdad that occurred after Iran and the US had exchanged strikes in Iraq that took the lives of 25 Iraqis and one American. In other words, it was retribution not prevention. (Killing Iran’s top general while on a peace mission to Iraq seems, let’s say, disproportionate to the temporary embassy breach in which no one was killed or injured.)
If all this is confusing, don’t worry about it: Trump says none of it matters.
But I want to focus on the the initial claim, namely, that Soleimani had been planning “imminent” attacks of some unspecified nature. This, by the way, is debunked by an NBC report that the assassination was planned seven months ago. But we’ll let that go right now.
Since no such attacks occurred, we are entitled to dismiss Trump’s claim. Had attacks been imminent, why would anyone believe that killing Soleimani would stop them? Assassinating him would seem more likely to guarantee them. They were imminent after all.
But let’s go a step deeper — into the grammar, or logic, of all this. I realize that people can use words in differing ways, but I can’t shake the thought that if you are planning to do something, the planned action cannot be imminent. If you tell me something is imminent, I take that to mean the planning is over; execution is next. (Pun unintended but noticed.)
So I would advise that the next time the government tells you it’s killed someone because he was planning an imminent attack, it’s lying.
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