Gomig-21
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cloud4000
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I wonder if Trump will tweet about the trillions spent on Afghanistan, including supporting a vehemently corrupt and consistently incompetent Kabul government. I doubt it.
Gomig-21
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Funny, that was the first thing that came to my mind after seeing this tweet. The $4.5 billion in aid is on top of US military expenditure which is really staggering. It's hard to answer whether it's been effective or not, since the only way we -- as the laymen civilians -- can measure it is by noticing less terrorism originating from there. If that's a good way to judge the return in investment, I guess it is working. But it begs the question if that level of success can be attained without such a high cost.
There was a program (I think it was VICE) where they showed how terribly managed a lot of the funding is in Afghanistan. Hundreds of millions in contracts on foolish projects, many of which are standing still or abandoned and squandered or wasted and robbed. In a sad and kind of twisted way of looking at it, the vermin of 9/11 succeeded in the end, beyond the death and destruction they inflicted that terrible day. Our everyday lives have changed to some extent or another and the perpetual cost of that day has been beyond comprehension.
RabzonKhan
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Trump is China's Gorbachev. I was reading a fascinating piece by Evan Osnos about how Trump is making China great again. It’s long, but worth the read.
Making China Great Again
As Donald Trump surrenders America’s global commitments, Xi Jinping is learning to pick up the pieces.
By Evan Osnos
When the Chinese action movie “Wolf Warrior II” arrived in theatres, in July, it looked like a standard shoot-’em-up, with a lonesome hero and frequent explosions. Within two weeks, however, “Wolf Warrior II” had become the highest-grossing Chinese movie of all time. Some crowds gave it standing ovations; others sang the national anthem. In October, China selected it as its official entry in the foreign-language category of the Academy Awards.
The hero, Leng Feng, played by the action star Wu Jing (who also directed the film), is a veteran of the “wolf warriors,” special forces of the People’s Liberation Army. In retirement, he works as a guard in a fictional African country, on the frontier of China’s ventures abroad. A rebel army, backed by Western mercenaries, attempts to seize power, and the country is engulfed in civil war. Leng shepherds civilians to the gates of the Chinese Embassy, where the Ambassador wades into the battle and declares, “Stand down! We are Chinese! China and Africa are friends.” The rebels hold their fire, and survivors are spirited to safety aboard a Chinese battleship.
Leng rescues an American doctor, who tells him that the Marines will come to their aid. “But where are they now?” he asks her. She calls the American consulate and gets a recorded message: “Unfortunately, we are closed.” In the final battle, a villain, played by the American actor Frank Grillo, tells Leng, “People like you will always be inferior to people like me. Get used to it.” Leng beats the villain to death and replies, “That was fucking history.” The film closes with the image of a Chinese passport and the words “Don’t give up if you run into danger abroad. Please remember, a strong motherland will always have your back!”
When I moved to Beijing, in 2005, little of that story would have made sense to a Chinese audience. With doses of invention and schmalz, the movie draws on recent events. In 2015, China’s Navy conducted its first international evacuation, rescuing civilians from fighting in Yemen; last year, China opened its first overseas military base, in Djibouti. There has been a deeper development as well. For decades, Chinese nationalism revolved around victimhood: the bitter legacy of invasion and imperialism, and the memory of a China so weak that, at the end of the nineteenth century, the philosopher Liang Qichao called his country “the sick man of Asia.” “Wolf Warrior II” captures a new, muscular iteration of China’s self-narrative, much as Rambo’s heroics expressed the swagger of the Reagan era.
Recently, I met Wu Jing in Los Angeles, where he was promoting the movie in advance of the Academy Awards. Wu is forty-three, with short, spiky hair, a strong jaw, and an air of prickly bravado. He was on crutches, the result of “jumping off too many buildings,” he told me, in Chinese. (He speaks little English.) “In the past, all of our movies were about, say, the Opium Wars—how other countries waged war against China,” he said. “But Chinese people have always wanted to see that our country could, one day, have the power to protect its own people and contribute to peace in the world.”
As a favored son of China, celebrated by the state, Wu doesn’t complain about censorship and propaganda. He went on, “Although we’re not living in a peaceful time, we live in a peaceful country. I don’t think we should be spending much energy thinking about negative aspects that would make us unhappy. Cherish this moment!”
China has never seen such a moment, when its pursuit of a larger role in the world coincides with America’s pursuit of a smaller one. Ever since the Second World War, the United States has advocated an international order based on a free press and judiciary, human rights, free trade, and protection of the environment. It planted those ideas in the rebuilding of Germany and Japan, and spread them with alliances around the world. In March, 1959, President Eisenhower argued that America’s authority could not rest on military power alone. “We could be the wealthiest and the most mighty nation and still lose the battle of the world if we do not help our world neighbors protect their freedom and advance their social and economic progress,” he said. “It is not the goal of the American people that the United States should be the richest nation in the graveyard of history.”
Under the banner of “America First,” President Trump is reducing U.S. commitments abroad. On his third day in office, he withdrew from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a twelve-nation trade deal designed by the United States as a counterweight to a rising China. To allies in Asia, the withdrawal damaged America’s credibility. “You won’t be able to see that overnight,” Lee Hsien Loong, the Prime Minister of Singapore, told me, at an event in Washington. “It’s like when you draw a red line and then you don’t take it seriously. Was there pain? You didn’t see it, but I’m quite sure there’s an impact.”
In a speech to Communist Party officials last January 20th, Major General Jin Yinan, a strategist at China’s National Defense University, celebrated America’s pullout from the trade deal. “We are quiet about it,” he said. “We repeatedly state that Trump ‘harms China.’ We want to keep it that way. In fact, he has given China a huge gift. That is the American withdrawal from T.P.P.” Jin, whose remarks later circulated, told his audience, “As the U.S. retreats globally, China shows up.”
For years, China’s leaders predicted that a time would come—perhaps midway through this century—when it could project its own values abroad. In the age of “America First,” that time has come far sooner than expected.
Barack Obama’s foreign policy was characterized as leading from behind. Trump’s doctrine may come to be understood as retreating from the front. Trump has severed American commitments that he considers risky, costly, or politically unappealing. In his first week in office, he tried to ban travellers from seven Muslim-majority countries, arguing that they pose a terrorist threat. (After court battles, a version of the ban took effect in December.) He announced his intention to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris Agreement on climate change and from unesco, and he abandoned United Nations talks on migration. He has said that he might renege on the Iran nuclear deal, a free-trade agreement with South Korea, and nafta. His proposal for the 2018 budget would cut foreign assistance by forty-two per cent, or $11.5 billion, and it reduces American funding for development projects, such as those financed by the World Bank. In December, Trump threatened to cut off aid to any country that supports a resolution condemning his decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. (The next day, in defiance of Trump’s threat, the resolution passed overwhelmingly.)
To frame his vision of a smaller presence abroad, Trump often portrays America’s urgent task as one of survival. As he put it during the campaign, “At what point do you say, ‘Hey, we have to take care of ourselves’? So, you know, I know the outer world exists and I’ll be very cognizant of that, but, at the same time, our country is disintegrating.”
So far, Trump has proposed reducing U.S. contributions to the U.N. by forty per cent, and pressured the General Assembly to cut six hundred million dollars from its peacekeeping budget. In his first speech to the U.N., in September, Trump ignored its collective spirit and celebrated sovereignty above all, saying, “As President of the United States, I will always put America first, just like you, as the leaders of your countries, will always and should always put your countries first.”
China’s approach is more ambitious. In recent years, it has taken steps to accrue national power on a scale that no country has attempted since the Cold War, by increasing its investments in the types of assets that established American authority in the previous century: foreign aid, overseas security, foreign influence, and the most advanced new technologies, such as artificial intelligence. It has become one of the leading contributors to the U.N.’s budget and to its peacekeeping force, and it has joined talks to address global problems such as terrorism, piracy, and nuclear proliferation.
And China has embarked on history’s most expensive foreign infrastructure plan. Under the Belt and Road Initiative, it is building bridges, railways, and ports in Asia, Africa, and beyond. If the initiative’s cost reaches a trillion dollars, as predicted, it will be more than seven times that of the Marshall Plan, which the U.S. launched in 1947, spending a hundred and thirty billion, in today’s dollars, on rebuilding postwar Europe.
China is also seizing immediate opportunities presented by Trump. Days before the T.P.P. withdrawal, President Xi Jinping spoke at the World Economic Forum, in Davos, Switzerland, a first for a paramount Chinese leader. Xi reiterated his support for the Paris climate deal and compared protectionism to “locking oneself in a dark room.” He said, “No one will emerge as a winner in a trade war.” This was an ironic performance—for decades, China has relied on protectionism—but Trump provided an irresistible opening. China is negotiating with at least sixteen countries to form the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, a free-trade zone that excludes the United States, which it proposed in 2012 as a response to the T.P.P. If the deal is signed next year, as projected, it will create the world’s largest trade bloc, by population.
Some of China’s growing sway is unseen by the public. In October, the World Trade Organization convened ministers from nearly forty countries in Marrakech, Morocco, for the kind of routine diplomatic session that updates rules on trade in agriculture and seafood. The Trump Administration, which has been critical of the W.T.O., sent an official who delivered a speech and departed early. “For two days of meetings, there were no Americans,” a former U.S. official told me. “And the Chinese were going into every session and chortling about how they were now guarantors of the trading system.”
By setting more of the world’s rules, China hopes to “break the Western moral advantage,” which identifies “good and bad” political systems, as Li Ziguo, at the China Institute of International Studies, has said. In November, 2016, Meng Hongwei, a Chinese vice-minister of public security, became the first Chinese president of Interpol, the international police organization; the move alarmed human-rights groups, because Interpol has been criticized for helping authoritarian governments target and harass dissidents and pro-democracy activists abroad.
By some measures, the U.S. will remain dominant for years to come. It has at least twelve aircraft carriers. China has two. The U.S. has collective defense treaties with more than fifty countries. China has one, with North Korea. Moreover, China’s economic path is complicated by heavy debts, bloated state-owned enterprises, rising inequality, and slowing growth. The workers who once powered China’s boom are graying. China’s air, water, and soil are disastrously polluted.
And yet the gap has narrowed. In 2000, the U.S. accounted for thirty-one per cent of the global economy, and China accounted for four per cent. Today, the U.S.’s share is twenty-four per cent and China’s fifteen per cent. If its economy surpasses America’s in size, as experts predict, it will be the first time in more than a century that the world’s largest economy belongs to a non-democratic country. At that point, China will play a larger role in shaping, or thwarting, values such as competitive elections, freedom of expression, and an open Internet. Already, the world has less confidence in America than we might guess. Last year, the Pew Research Center asked people in thirty-seven countries which leader would do the right thing when it came to world affairs. They chose Xi Jinping over Donald Trump, twenty-eight per cent to twenty-two per cent.
Facing criticism for his lack of interest in global leadership, Trump, in December, issued a national-security strategy that singled out China and Russia and declared, “We will raise our competitive game to meet that challenge, to protect American interests, and to advance our values.” But, in his speech unveiling the strategy, he hailed his pullout from “job-killing deals such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the very expensive and unfair Paris climate accord.” The next day, Roger Cohen, of the Times, described the contradictions of Trump’s foreign policy as a “farce.” Some allies have taken to avoiding the Administration. “I’ll tell you, honestly, for a foreigner, in the past we were used to going to the White House to get our work done,” Shivshankar Menon, India’s former foreign secretary and national-security adviser to the Prime Minister, told me. “Now we go to the corporations, to Congress, to the Pentagon, wherever.”
On his recent visit to Washington, Prime Minister Lee, of Singapore, said that the rest of the world can no longer pretend to ignore the contrasts between American and Chinese leadership. “Since the war, you’ve held the peace. You’ve provided security. You’ve opened your markets. You’ve developed links across the Pacific,” he said. “And now, with a rising set of players on the west coast of the Pacific, where does America want to go? Do you want to be engaged?” He went on, “If you are not there, then everybody else in the world will look around and say, I want to be friends with both the U.S. and the Chinese—and the Chinese are ready, and I’ll start with them.” Read more
https://www.newyorker.com/cartoon/a21524
As far as Trump threats are concerned, Pakistani leaders, and especially its military establishment very well known that it’s all hot air, before Trump, Bush did it, Obama did it, and guess what, nothing happened.
To make a long story short, the bottom line is that Pakistan very well knows that America is not going to destabilize a nuclear Pakistan to stabilize Afghanistan.
Making China Great Again
As Donald Trump surrenders America’s global commitments, Xi Jinping is learning to pick up the pieces.
By Evan Osnos
When the Chinese action movie “Wolf Warrior II” arrived in theatres, in July, it looked like a standard shoot-’em-up, with a lonesome hero and frequent explosions. Within two weeks, however, “Wolf Warrior II” had become the highest-grossing Chinese movie of all time. Some crowds gave it standing ovations; others sang the national anthem. In October, China selected it as its official entry in the foreign-language category of the Academy Awards.
The hero, Leng Feng, played by the action star Wu Jing (who also directed the film), is a veteran of the “wolf warriors,” special forces of the People’s Liberation Army. In retirement, he works as a guard in a fictional African country, on the frontier of China’s ventures abroad. A rebel army, backed by Western mercenaries, attempts to seize power, and the country is engulfed in civil war. Leng shepherds civilians to the gates of the Chinese Embassy, where the Ambassador wades into the battle and declares, “Stand down! We are Chinese! China and Africa are friends.” The rebels hold their fire, and survivors are spirited to safety aboard a Chinese battleship.
Leng rescues an American doctor, who tells him that the Marines will come to their aid. “But where are they now?” he asks her. She calls the American consulate and gets a recorded message: “Unfortunately, we are closed.” In the final battle, a villain, played by the American actor Frank Grillo, tells Leng, “People like you will always be inferior to people like me. Get used to it.” Leng beats the villain to death and replies, “That was fucking history.” The film closes with the image of a Chinese passport and the words “Don’t give up if you run into danger abroad. Please remember, a strong motherland will always have your back!”
When I moved to Beijing, in 2005, little of that story would have made sense to a Chinese audience. With doses of invention and schmalz, the movie draws on recent events. In 2015, China’s Navy conducted its first international evacuation, rescuing civilians from fighting in Yemen; last year, China opened its first overseas military base, in Djibouti. There has been a deeper development as well. For decades, Chinese nationalism revolved around victimhood: the bitter legacy of invasion and imperialism, and the memory of a China so weak that, at the end of the nineteenth century, the philosopher Liang Qichao called his country “the sick man of Asia.” “Wolf Warrior II” captures a new, muscular iteration of China’s self-narrative, much as Rambo’s heroics expressed the swagger of the Reagan era.
Recently, I met Wu Jing in Los Angeles, where he was promoting the movie in advance of the Academy Awards. Wu is forty-three, with short, spiky hair, a strong jaw, and an air of prickly bravado. He was on crutches, the result of “jumping off too many buildings,” he told me, in Chinese. (He speaks little English.) “In the past, all of our movies were about, say, the Opium Wars—how other countries waged war against China,” he said. “But Chinese people have always wanted to see that our country could, one day, have the power to protect its own people and contribute to peace in the world.”
As a favored son of China, celebrated by the state, Wu doesn’t complain about censorship and propaganda. He went on, “Although we’re not living in a peaceful time, we live in a peaceful country. I don’t think we should be spending much energy thinking about negative aspects that would make us unhappy. Cherish this moment!”
China has never seen such a moment, when its pursuit of a larger role in the world coincides with America’s pursuit of a smaller one. Ever since the Second World War, the United States has advocated an international order based on a free press and judiciary, human rights, free trade, and protection of the environment. It planted those ideas in the rebuilding of Germany and Japan, and spread them with alliances around the world. In March, 1959, President Eisenhower argued that America’s authority could not rest on military power alone. “We could be the wealthiest and the most mighty nation and still lose the battle of the world if we do not help our world neighbors protect their freedom and advance their social and economic progress,” he said. “It is not the goal of the American people that the United States should be the richest nation in the graveyard of history.”
Under the banner of “America First,” President Trump is reducing U.S. commitments abroad. On his third day in office, he withdrew from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a twelve-nation trade deal designed by the United States as a counterweight to a rising China. To allies in Asia, the withdrawal damaged America’s credibility. “You won’t be able to see that overnight,” Lee Hsien Loong, the Prime Minister of Singapore, told me, at an event in Washington. “It’s like when you draw a red line and then you don’t take it seriously. Was there pain? You didn’t see it, but I’m quite sure there’s an impact.”
In a speech to Communist Party officials last January 20th, Major General Jin Yinan, a strategist at China’s National Defense University, celebrated America’s pullout from the trade deal. “We are quiet about it,” he said. “We repeatedly state that Trump ‘harms China.’ We want to keep it that way. In fact, he has given China a huge gift. That is the American withdrawal from T.P.P.” Jin, whose remarks later circulated, told his audience, “As the U.S. retreats globally, China shows up.”
For years, China’s leaders predicted that a time would come—perhaps midway through this century—when it could project its own values abroad. In the age of “America First,” that time has come far sooner than expected.
Barack Obama’s foreign policy was characterized as leading from behind. Trump’s doctrine may come to be understood as retreating from the front. Trump has severed American commitments that he considers risky, costly, or politically unappealing. In his first week in office, he tried to ban travellers from seven Muslim-majority countries, arguing that they pose a terrorist threat. (After court battles, a version of the ban took effect in December.) He announced his intention to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris Agreement on climate change and from unesco, and he abandoned United Nations talks on migration. He has said that he might renege on the Iran nuclear deal, a free-trade agreement with South Korea, and nafta. His proposal for the 2018 budget would cut foreign assistance by forty-two per cent, or $11.5 billion, and it reduces American funding for development projects, such as those financed by the World Bank. In December, Trump threatened to cut off aid to any country that supports a resolution condemning his decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. (The next day, in defiance of Trump’s threat, the resolution passed overwhelmingly.)
To frame his vision of a smaller presence abroad, Trump often portrays America’s urgent task as one of survival. As he put it during the campaign, “At what point do you say, ‘Hey, we have to take care of ourselves’? So, you know, I know the outer world exists and I’ll be very cognizant of that, but, at the same time, our country is disintegrating.”
So far, Trump has proposed reducing U.S. contributions to the U.N. by forty per cent, and pressured the General Assembly to cut six hundred million dollars from its peacekeeping budget. In his first speech to the U.N., in September, Trump ignored its collective spirit and celebrated sovereignty above all, saying, “As President of the United States, I will always put America first, just like you, as the leaders of your countries, will always and should always put your countries first.”
China’s approach is more ambitious. In recent years, it has taken steps to accrue national power on a scale that no country has attempted since the Cold War, by increasing its investments in the types of assets that established American authority in the previous century: foreign aid, overseas security, foreign influence, and the most advanced new technologies, such as artificial intelligence. It has become one of the leading contributors to the U.N.’s budget and to its peacekeeping force, and it has joined talks to address global problems such as terrorism, piracy, and nuclear proliferation.
And China has embarked on history’s most expensive foreign infrastructure plan. Under the Belt and Road Initiative, it is building bridges, railways, and ports in Asia, Africa, and beyond. If the initiative’s cost reaches a trillion dollars, as predicted, it will be more than seven times that of the Marshall Plan, which the U.S. launched in 1947, spending a hundred and thirty billion, in today’s dollars, on rebuilding postwar Europe.
China is also seizing immediate opportunities presented by Trump. Days before the T.P.P. withdrawal, President Xi Jinping spoke at the World Economic Forum, in Davos, Switzerland, a first for a paramount Chinese leader. Xi reiterated his support for the Paris climate deal and compared protectionism to “locking oneself in a dark room.” He said, “No one will emerge as a winner in a trade war.” This was an ironic performance—for decades, China has relied on protectionism—but Trump provided an irresistible opening. China is negotiating with at least sixteen countries to form the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, a free-trade zone that excludes the United States, which it proposed in 2012 as a response to the T.P.P. If the deal is signed next year, as projected, it will create the world’s largest trade bloc, by population.
Some of China’s growing sway is unseen by the public. In October, the World Trade Organization convened ministers from nearly forty countries in Marrakech, Morocco, for the kind of routine diplomatic session that updates rules on trade in agriculture and seafood. The Trump Administration, which has been critical of the W.T.O., sent an official who delivered a speech and departed early. “For two days of meetings, there were no Americans,” a former U.S. official told me. “And the Chinese were going into every session and chortling about how they were now guarantors of the trading system.”
By setting more of the world’s rules, China hopes to “break the Western moral advantage,” which identifies “good and bad” political systems, as Li Ziguo, at the China Institute of International Studies, has said. In November, 2016, Meng Hongwei, a Chinese vice-minister of public security, became the first Chinese president of Interpol, the international police organization; the move alarmed human-rights groups, because Interpol has been criticized for helping authoritarian governments target and harass dissidents and pro-democracy activists abroad.
By some measures, the U.S. will remain dominant for years to come. It has at least twelve aircraft carriers. China has two. The U.S. has collective defense treaties with more than fifty countries. China has one, with North Korea. Moreover, China’s economic path is complicated by heavy debts, bloated state-owned enterprises, rising inequality, and slowing growth. The workers who once powered China’s boom are graying. China’s air, water, and soil are disastrously polluted.
And yet the gap has narrowed. In 2000, the U.S. accounted for thirty-one per cent of the global economy, and China accounted for four per cent. Today, the U.S.’s share is twenty-four per cent and China’s fifteen per cent. If its economy surpasses America’s in size, as experts predict, it will be the first time in more than a century that the world’s largest economy belongs to a non-democratic country. At that point, China will play a larger role in shaping, or thwarting, values such as competitive elections, freedom of expression, and an open Internet. Already, the world has less confidence in America than we might guess. Last year, the Pew Research Center asked people in thirty-seven countries which leader would do the right thing when it came to world affairs. They chose Xi Jinping over Donald Trump, twenty-eight per cent to twenty-two per cent.
Facing criticism for his lack of interest in global leadership, Trump, in December, issued a national-security strategy that singled out China and Russia and declared, “We will raise our competitive game to meet that challenge, to protect American interests, and to advance our values.” But, in his speech unveiling the strategy, he hailed his pullout from “job-killing deals such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the very expensive and unfair Paris climate accord.” The next day, Roger Cohen, of the Times, described the contradictions of Trump’s foreign policy as a “farce.” Some allies have taken to avoiding the Administration. “I’ll tell you, honestly, for a foreigner, in the past we were used to going to the White House to get our work done,” Shivshankar Menon, India’s former foreign secretary and national-security adviser to the Prime Minister, told me. “Now we go to the corporations, to Congress, to the Pentagon, wherever.”
On his recent visit to Washington, Prime Minister Lee, of Singapore, said that the rest of the world can no longer pretend to ignore the contrasts between American and Chinese leadership. “Since the war, you’ve held the peace. You’ve provided security. You’ve opened your markets. You’ve developed links across the Pacific,” he said. “And now, with a rising set of players on the west coast of the Pacific, where does America want to go? Do you want to be engaged?” He went on, “If you are not there, then everybody else in the world will look around and say, I want to be friends with both the U.S. and the Chinese—and the Chinese are ready, and I’ll start with them.” Read more
https://www.newyorker.com/cartoon/a21524
Nothing new, the US–Pak relations has never been free of friction, even in the best of times, we always had ups and downs, and it’s quite sad that over all these years both countries have failed to develop broad base long-lasting ties based on mutual interest.
As far as Trump threats are concerned, Pakistani leaders, and especially its military establishment very well known that it’s all hot air, before Trump, Bush did it, Obama did it, and guess what, nothing happened.
To make a long story short, the bottom line is that Pakistan very well knows that America is not going to destabilize a nuclear Pakistan to stabilize Afghanistan.
RabzonKhan
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What a childish behavior, once again, his tweet shows he is unfit to be president.
Trump to North Korean leader Kim: My nuclear button ‘is bigger & more powerful’
by HASANI GITTENS
My button is bigger than yours.
President Donald Trump, reacting to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un saying he had a "nuclear button on his desk" and was ready to use it against the United States, said on Twitter late Tuesday that his own nuclear button "is a much bigger & more powerful one than his, and my Button works!"
In a televised speech Monday, Kim had said: "The entire United States is within range of our nuclear weapons, and a nuclear button is always on my desk. This is reality, not a threat."
While Trump boasted about his "nuclear button," the president doesn't actually have a physical one.
The process for launching a nuclear strike is secret and complex and involves the use of a nuclear "football," which is carried by a rotating group of military officers everywhere the president goes and is equipped with communication tools and a book with prepared war plans.
If the president were to order a strike, he would identify himself to military officials at the Pentagon with codes unique to him. Those codes are recorded on a card known as the "biscuit" that is carried by the president at all times. He would then transmit the launch order to the Pentagon and Strategic Command. Read more
Trump to North Korean leader Kim: My nuclear button ‘is bigger & more powerful’
by HASANI GITTENS
My button is bigger than yours.
President Donald Trump, reacting to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un saying he had a "nuclear button on his desk" and was ready to use it against the United States, said on Twitter late Tuesday that his own nuclear button "is a much bigger & more powerful one than his, and my Button works!"
In a televised speech Monday, Kim had said: "The entire United States is within range of our nuclear weapons, and a nuclear button is always on my desk. This is reality, not a threat."
While Trump boasted about his "nuclear button," the president doesn't actually have a physical one.
The process for launching a nuclear strike is secret and complex and involves the use of a nuclear "football," which is carried by a rotating group of military officers everywhere the president goes and is equipped with communication tools and a book with prepared war plans.
If the president were to order a strike, he would identify himself to military officials at the Pentagon with codes unique to him. Those codes are recorded on a card known as the "biscuit" that is carried by the president at all times. He would then transmit the launch order to the Pentagon and Strategic Command. Read more
RabzonKhan
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A bitter war of words has broken out between Steve Bannon and the Trump coterie. I’m loving it, and hoping that it further escalates.
Steve Bannon, Trump’s former chief strategist, called the meeting between Donald Trump Jr, Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner, Trump’s campaign chairman Paul Manafort and Russians in the Trump Tower treasonous.
He spoke to the author Michael Wolff for his upcoming book, Fire and Fury: Inside Trump White House. He sarcastically said: “the three senior guys in the campaign thought it was a good idea to meet with a foreign government inside Trump Tower in the conference room on 25th floor, with no lawyers. Even if you thought that this was not treasonous, or unpatriotic, or bad shit, and I happen to think it’s all of that, you should have called the FBI immediately”.
I agree with Steve Bannon 100%, he is damn right, no doubt, the meeting was completely unpatriotic and they should have contacted the FBI.
Steve Bannon also speculated that Trump Jr had involved his father in the meeting. “The chance that Don Jr did not walk these jumos up to his father’s office on the 26th floor is zero.”
I think that infuriated Trump, the White House released an angry statement from Trump.
Trump’s full statement:
Steve Bannon has nothing to do with me or my Presidency. When he was fired, he not only lost his job, he lost his mind. Steve was a staffer who worked for me after I had already won the nomination by defeating seventeen candidates, often described as the most talented field ever assembled in the Republican party.
Now that he is on his own, Steve is learning that winning isn’t as easy as I make it look. Steve had very little to do with our historic victory, which was delivered by the forgotten men and women of this country. Yet Steve had everything to do with the loss of a Senate seat in Alabama held for more than thirty years by Republicans. Steve doesn’t represent my base—he’s only in it for himself.
Steve pretends to be at war with the media, which he calls the opposition party, yet he spent his time at the White House leaking false information to the media to make himself seem far more important than he was. It is the only thing he does well. Steve was rarely in a one-on-one meeting with me and only pretends to have had influence to fool a few people with no access and no clue, whom he helped write phony books.
We have many great Republican members of Congress and candidates who are very supportive of the Make America Great Again agenda. Like me, they love the United States of America and are helping to finally take our country back and build it up, rather than simply seeking to burn it all down.
Steve Bannon, Trump’s former chief strategist, called the meeting between Donald Trump Jr, Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner, Trump’s campaign chairman Paul Manafort and Russians in the Trump Tower treasonous.
He spoke to the author Michael Wolff for his upcoming book, Fire and Fury: Inside Trump White House. He sarcastically said: “the three senior guys in the campaign thought it was a good idea to meet with a foreign government inside Trump Tower in the conference room on 25th floor, with no lawyers. Even if you thought that this was not treasonous, or unpatriotic, or bad shit, and I happen to think it’s all of that, you should have called the FBI immediately”.
I agree with Steve Bannon 100%, he is damn right, no doubt, the meeting was completely unpatriotic and they should have contacted the FBI.
Steve Bannon also speculated that Trump Jr had involved his father in the meeting. “The chance that Don Jr did not walk these jumos up to his father’s office on the 26th floor is zero.”
I think that infuriated Trump, the White House released an angry statement from Trump.
Trump’s full statement:
Steve Bannon has nothing to do with me or my Presidency. When he was fired, he not only lost his job, he lost his mind. Steve was a staffer who worked for me after I had already won the nomination by defeating seventeen candidates, often described as the most talented field ever assembled in the Republican party.
Now that he is on his own, Steve is learning that winning isn’t as easy as I make it look. Steve had very little to do with our historic victory, which was delivered by the forgotten men and women of this country. Yet Steve had everything to do with the loss of a Senate seat in Alabama held for more than thirty years by Republicans. Steve doesn’t represent my base—he’s only in it for himself.
Steve pretends to be at war with the media, which he calls the opposition party, yet he spent his time at the White House leaking false information to the media to make himself seem far more important than he was. It is the only thing he does well. Steve was rarely in a one-on-one meeting with me and only pretends to have had influence to fool a few people with no access and no clue, whom he helped write phony books.
We have many great Republican members of Congress and candidates who are very supportive of the Make America Great Again agenda. Like me, they love the United States of America and are helping to finally take our country back and build it up, rather than simply seeking to burn it all down.
TaiShang
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***
China has no intention of leading, replacing any country: FM
(People's Daily) 09:59, January 04, 2018
Geng Shuang, Spokesperson of China's Foreign Ministry presides a regular press conference/File photo
China reiterated Wednesday that its diplomacy in the new era aims to foster a new type of international relations and build a community with a shared future for mankind, and that it has no intention of leading or replacing any country in international affairs after a US think tank said China will fill the vacuum left by the US as President Donald Trump accelerates divisions and unravels the world order.
Geng Shuang, spokesperson of China's Foreign Ministry, told a regular press conference on Wednesday that the 19th CPC Congress has made it clear that major-country diplomacy with Chinese characteristics aims to foster a new type of international relations and build a community with a shared future for mankind. He said China follows the principle of achieving shared growth through discussion and collaboration in engaging in global governance.
The Eurasia Group released an outlook on the top 10 global risks for 2018, saying that the world is moving toward crisis and a state of "geopolitical depression" as the presidency of Donald Trump accelerates divisions among citizens and the unraveling of the global order, while China will fill the vacuum left by the US, which will be the top global risk in 2018.
Previously, the Eurasia Group's report said that China's political model is now perceived as stronger than it has ever been at a time when the US political model is weakened and will end up with a moment of global reordering.
"China has no intention to lead or replace any country in international affairs," Geng added.
http://en.people.cn/n3/2018/0104/c90000-9311553.html
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Gomig-21
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Since the new year, it seems the tweets are getting more and more deranged, hence the whispering of a worried White House about an "unstable" president. Fire & Fury is only going to flame things even more than it already has, especially after his reaction to it, threatening to sue if released is unbelievable!
And now this. This is how low we've sunk with this obsessive fool and child, and frankly, and complete tool bag.
cloud4000
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I doubt whether the book Fire & Fury will have the impact its author is claiming. For Trump haters, it's nothing more than confirmation. For his supporters, it will just harden their stance.
RabzonKhan
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Shamelessly Trump once again degraded the office of the President, he is digging himself and the Republican party into a shithole, and just continues to undermine the standing of United States around the world, his disgusting behavior and racist comments are alienating and embarrassing our friends and are encouraging our adversaries.
Trump referred to Haiti and African nations as ‘shithole’ countries
by ALI VITALI, KASIE HUNT and FRANK THORP
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump referred to Haiti and African nations as "shithole countries" during a meeting with a bipartisan group of senators at the White House, a Democratic aide briefed on Thursday's meeting told NBC News.
Trump's comments were first reported by The Washington Post, which said the nations referred to by Trump also included El Salvador.
The U.N. human rights office said the comments, if confirmed, were "shocking and shameful" and "racist," while Haiti's foreign minister summoned the U.S. Chargé d’Affaires Robin Diallo for clarification.
Two sources briefed on the conversation say that during the portion of the conversation about Haiti — which came at the top of the exchange that led to the “shithole” comment — the president questioned why Haitians should be given specific consideration.
“Why do we need more Haitians, take them out,” he said, according to sources. Someone else in the room responded: “Because if you do, it will be obvious why.” Read more
Trump referred to Haiti and African nations as ‘shithole’ countries
by ALI VITALI, KASIE HUNT and FRANK THORP
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump referred to Haiti and African nations as "shithole countries" during a meeting with a bipartisan group of senators at the White House, a Democratic aide briefed on Thursday's meeting told NBC News.
Trump's comments were first reported by The Washington Post, which said the nations referred to by Trump also included El Salvador.
The U.N. human rights office said the comments, if confirmed, were "shocking and shameful" and "racist," while Haiti's foreign minister summoned the U.S. Chargé d’Affaires Robin Diallo for clarification.
Two sources briefed on the conversation say that during the portion of the conversation about Haiti — which came at the top of the exchange that led to the “shithole” comment — the president questioned why Haitians should be given specific consideration.
“Why do we need more Haitians, take them out,” he said, according to sources. Someone else in the room responded: “Because if you do, it will be obvious why.” Read more
Muhammed45
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Trump's mind is like a diaper, self-absorb and full of shit
RabzonKhan
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Here is a small sample of how the world is reacting to Trump’s racist comments:
African UN ambassadors and the African Union have called for "a retraction and an apology" from US President Donald Trump after he reportedly described them as "s***hole" countries. Trump has denied using the phrase.
All 54 African ambassadors to the United Nations decried Donald Trump's reported remarks as "outrageous, racist, and xenophobic" on Friday, a day after US media reported that Trump had referred to African states, Haiti, and El Salvador as "s***hole countries."
The UN diplomats met for an emergency session before issuing a joint statement to demand a "retraction and an apology" from the US president.
"For once, we are all on the same page," an ambassador told the Agence France-Presse news agency.
The ambassadors also thanked American citizens "from all walks of life who have condemned the remarks." Read more
UN Human Rights Commissioner Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein's spokesman, Rupert Colville, did not mince words: "There is no other word one can use but racist."
"You cannot dismiss entire countries and continents as 'shitholes', whose entire populations, who are not white, are therefore not welcome," Colville added. "The future of the Dreamers should not be used as a bargaining chip to negotiate the most severe and restrictive immigration and security measures possible. These are human beings, not commodities."
Source: Sky News
Johannesburg (CNN) South Africa issued a diplomatic protest to the United States Monday over President Donald Trump's "shithole countries" comments, according to its foreign ministry. Read more
South African diplomats also met with the US Embassy's Charge d'Affaires Monday to express their concerns.
"We view the utterances by the current American President as highly irresponsible, reprehensible, and racist," the Ministry of International Affairs of Botswana said in a statement. Read more
African UN ambassadors and the African Union have called for "a retraction and an apology" from US President Donald Trump after he reportedly described them as "s***hole" countries. Trump has denied using the phrase.
All 54 African ambassadors to the United Nations decried Donald Trump's reported remarks as "outrageous, racist, and xenophobic" on Friday, a day after US media reported that Trump had referred to African states, Haiti, and El Salvador as "s***hole countries."
The UN diplomats met for an emergency session before issuing a joint statement to demand a "retraction and an apology" from the US president.
"For once, we are all on the same page," an ambassador told the Agence France-Presse news agency.
The ambassadors also thanked American citizens "from all walks of life who have condemned the remarks." Read more
UN Human Rights Commissioner Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein's spokesman, Rupert Colville, did not mince words: "There is no other word one can use but racist."
"You cannot dismiss entire countries and continents as 'shitholes', whose entire populations, who are not white, are therefore not welcome," Colville added. "The future of the Dreamers should not be used as a bargaining chip to negotiate the most severe and restrictive immigration and security measures possible. These are human beings, not commodities."
Source: Sky News
Johannesburg (CNN) South Africa issued a diplomatic protest to the United States Monday over President Donald Trump's "shithole countries" comments, according to its foreign ministry. Read more
South African diplomats also met with the US Embassy's Charge d'Affaires Monday to express their concerns.
"We view the utterances by the current American President as highly irresponsible, reprehensible, and racist," the Ministry of International Affairs of Botswana said in a statement. Read more
RabzonKhan
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Interesting times ahead!
NYT: Mueller subpoenas Bannon
Washington (CNN)Special counsel Robert Mueller subpoenaed former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon last week, The New York Times reported Tuesday.
Bannon was on Capitol Hill testifying before the House Intelligence Committee when the news broke that Mueller had issued the subpoena for the now-estranged associate of President Donald Trump to testify before a grand jury.
Bannon's testimony on the Hill on Tuesday was his first appearance before any of the congressional committees investigating alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election or potential coordination with Trump's associates, and it comes just days after the White Housebroke with Bannon over comments attributed to him disparaging Trump and the Trump family.
Several White House staffers have come forward voluntarily for interviews with the special counsel team. The New York Times, citing a person with direct knowledge, said the grand jury subpoena for Bannon "could be a negotiating tactic" and that Mueller would likely allow Bannon to speak with investigators instead of going before the grand jury.
The subpoena came after Bannon's comments to author Michael Wolff became public, according to The New York Times. In Wolff's book "Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House," Bannon is quoted as saying a June 2016 meeting Donald Trump Jr., Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner and then-Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort had with a Russian lawyer promising dirt on Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton was "treasonous" and "unpatriotic."
Bannon also said he assumed Trump Jr. delivered information about the meeting to Trump, despite denials from the two, and downplayed the likelihood of illegal coordination with Russia while saying there was dread that Mueller's investigation could turn up something else nefarious, such as money laundering.
Trump disavowed Bannon, saying his former top aide had "lost his mind," and later nicknamed him "Sloppy Steve." A source close to Bannon subsequently provided a statement saying Bannon expressed regret over the timing of his response to the book and that he thinks Trump Jr. is a "patriot."
Trump appointed Bannon his campaign's chief executive at the outset of the general election, and Bannon, along with now-White House counselor Kellyanne Conway, led the Trump campaign through Election Day. Bannon assumed a top post as chief strategist in the White House after the election and left last August amid a major staff shakeup.
He returned to his perch atop Breitbart News but left the site in the wake of Wolff's book and Trump's rebuke. Source
NYT: Mueller subpoenas Bannon
Washington (CNN)Special counsel Robert Mueller subpoenaed former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon last week, The New York Times reported Tuesday.
Bannon was on Capitol Hill testifying before the House Intelligence Committee when the news broke that Mueller had issued the subpoena for the now-estranged associate of President Donald Trump to testify before a grand jury.
Bannon's testimony on the Hill on Tuesday was his first appearance before any of the congressional committees investigating alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election or potential coordination with Trump's associates, and it comes just days after the White Housebroke with Bannon over comments attributed to him disparaging Trump and the Trump family.
Several White House staffers have come forward voluntarily for interviews with the special counsel team. The New York Times, citing a person with direct knowledge, said the grand jury subpoena for Bannon "could be a negotiating tactic" and that Mueller would likely allow Bannon to speak with investigators instead of going before the grand jury.
The subpoena came after Bannon's comments to author Michael Wolff became public, according to The New York Times. In Wolff's book "Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House," Bannon is quoted as saying a June 2016 meeting Donald Trump Jr., Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner and then-Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort had with a Russian lawyer promising dirt on Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton was "treasonous" and "unpatriotic."
Bannon also said he assumed Trump Jr. delivered information about the meeting to Trump, despite denials from the two, and downplayed the likelihood of illegal coordination with Russia while saying there was dread that Mueller's investigation could turn up something else nefarious, such as money laundering.
Trump disavowed Bannon, saying his former top aide had "lost his mind," and later nicknamed him "Sloppy Steve." A source close to Bannon subsequently provided a statement saying Bannon expressed regret over the timing of his response to the book and that he thinks Trump Jr. is a "patriot."
Trump appointed Bannon his campaign's chief executive at the outset of the general election, and Bannon, along with now-White House counselor Kellyanne Conway, led the Trump campaign through Election Day. Bannon assumed a top post as chief strategist in the White House after the election and left last August amid a major staff shakeup.
He returned to his perch atop Breitbart News but left the site in the wake of Wolff's book and Trump's rebuke. Source
I don’t want to sound cynical, but it’s almost impossible to predict the future intentions of countries, because we don’t even know who will be running China in the next 20 years.
***
China has no intention of leading, replacing any country: FM
(People's Daily) 09:59, January 04, 2018
Geng Shuang, Spokesperson of China's Foreign Ministry presides a regular press conference/File photo
China reiterated Wednesday that its diplomacy in the new era aims to foster a new type of international relations and build a community with a shared future for mankind, and that it has no intention of leading or replacing any country in international affairs after a US think tank said China will fill the vacuum left by the US as President Donald Trump accelerates divisions and unravels the world order.
Geng Shuang, spokesperson of China's Foreign Ministry, told a regular press conference on Wednesday that the 19th CPC Congress has made it clear that major-country diplomacy with Chinese characteristics aims to foster a new type of international relations and build a community with a shared future for mankind. He said China follows the principle of achieving shared growth through discussion and collaboration in engaging in global governance.
The Eurasia Group released an outlook on the top 10 global risks for 2018, saying that the world is moving toward crisis and a state of "geopolitical depression" as the presidency of Donald Trump accelerates divisions among citizens and the unraveling of the global order, while China will fill the vacuum left by the US, which will be the top global risk in 2018.
Previously, the Eurasia Group's report said that China's political model is now perceived as stronger than it has ever been at a time when the US political model is weakened and will end up with a moment of global reordering.
"China has no intention to lead or replace any country in international affairs," Geng added.
http://en.people.cn/n3/2018/0104/c90000-9311553.html
Spy agency rules US.
The Feds(FBI) rule this country by extortion and intimidation. Many politicians committed sex crimes. Roy Moore unfortunately is pick up as the scapegoat to intimidate others, be obedient or otherwise be Moore likewise. The purpose is to push through new law - tax reform bill. Trump is the candidate of the Feds. So he is exempted from such accusations.
The Feds(FBI) rule this country by extortion and intimidation. Many politicians committed sex crimes. Roy Moore unfortunately is pick up as the scapegoat to intimidate others, be obedient or otherwise be Moore likewise. The purpose is to push through new law - tax reform bill. Trump is the candidate of the Feds. So he is exempted from such accusations.
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