o [url=https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/01/28/us/refugees-detained-at-us-airports-prompting-legal-challenges-to-trumps-immigration-order.html]Judge Blocks Trump Order on Refugees Amid Chaos and Outcry Worldwide[/url] | NYT

o [url=https://theintercept.com/2017/01/28/trumps-muslim-ban-is-culmination-of-war-on-terror-mentality-but-still-uniquely-shameful/]Trump’s Muslim Ban is Culmination of War on Terror Mentality but Still Uniquely Shameful[/url] | The Intercept. Glenn Greenwald
[quote]...the reason Trump is able so easily to tap into a groundswell of anti-Muslim fears and bigotry is because they have been cultivated for 16 years as the central fuel driving the war on terror. There are factions on both the center-left and right that are primarily devoted to demonizing Muslims and Islam. A government can get away with bombing, invading, and droning the same group of people for more than 15 years only by constantly demonizing and dehumanizing that group and maintaining high fear levels, which is exactly what the U.S. has done under two successive administrations. Both the Bush and Obama administrations ushered in all-new and quite extreme civil liberties erosions aimed primarily if not exclusively at Muslims.

Trump did not appear out of nowhere. He is the logical and most grotesque expression of a variety of trends we have allowed to fester: endless war, a virtually omnipotent presidency, unlimited war powers from spying to due process-free imprisonment to torture to assassinations, repeated civil liberties erosions in the name of illusory guarantees of security, and the sustained demonization of Muslims as scary, primitive, uniquely violent Others.

A country that engages in endless war against multiple countries not only kills a lot of people but degrades its own citizenry. Trump is the rotted fruit that inevitably sprouts from such fetid roots.

Trump is not a Russian phenomenon, nor an Italian one, nor Latin American: He is distinctly and consummately American, merely the most extreme face yet from America’s endless war on terror and its post-2008 lurch toward oligarchy. Pretending that Trump is some grand aberration, some radical departure from U.S. history and values, is simply a deceitful way of whitewashing what we have collectively endorsed and allowed.

Thus did we witness the spectacle last week of many acting as though Trump’s plans for CIA black sites, torture, and rendition were shocking Trumpian aberrations even though many of those denouncing the plans were the ones who advocated or implemented those policies in the first place or protected those who did from criminal prosecution. Denouncing and opposing Trump should not serve to obscure sins of the recent past or whitewash the seeds planted before him that have allowed him to sprout. Opposing Trump’s assault on basic liberties requires a clear understanding of the framework that gave rise to it.[/quote]
Note that extreme anti-Islam views are most definitely not a right-vs-left issue - the article mentions e.g. new WH comms director Steve Bannon by name, but the left has its own prominent virulent Islamophobes, for instance TV personality Bill Maher. Possible silver lining: If Trump's inane executive order here finally rouses many of the folks who failed to publicly object to the various different-in-degree-but-not-kind such actions by W. Bush and Obama, that will be a good thing.

o [url=https://patriotpost.us/opinion/47145]Trump Tries to Build a ‘Different Party’[/url] | Patriot Post -- An important beyond-the-headlines take on Week 1:
[quote]Substantively, what we’ve seen the past week was daring and bold. The administration is taking shape before our eyes, with unusual speed. Normally it takes time for the ideological disposition of an administration to emerge. Normally presidents ease into the job, rejecting the dramatic: “Don’t frighten the horses.”

That’s not what’s happening.

What happened from day one was a dramatic, almost daily barrage of executive orders. Among them: reinstating the 1984 ban on U.S. taxpayer funding of groups that provide abortions overseas; declaring the intention to create a physical barrier to secure the border with Mexico; moving forward on construction of the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines; relieving the burdens of ObamaCare; and withdrawing from the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

All this marked more than the keeping of political promises, though that’s startling enough. It was a programmatic expression of the central assertion of President Trump’s inaugural address: I am a populist independent, allied not with the two major parties but with the working men and women of America. That it came like a barrage — [i]Boom[/i], pipeline! [i]Boom[/i], trade! [i]Boom[/i], abortion! — made it more unmistakable. But in case you missed his point, he told Maggie Haberman of the New York Times that yes, he’s chosen a presidential portrait to put in the Oval Office. It is fiery Andrew Jackson, tormentor of elites, champion of the 19th century’s deplorables.

The significance and velocity of the orders unnerved and upset Mr. Trump’s critics and took aback some of his friends. But those orders — even though their use makes the presidency more imperial, even though it’s no way to govern, even though Mr. Obama did it, too — will likely not be unpopular in the country. It actually looked as if someone was doing something.

More important than the orders were the White House meetings. One was a breakfast with a dozen major CEOs. They looked happy as frolicking puppies in the photo-op, and afterward talked about jobs. Marillyn Hewson of Lockheed Martin said she was “encouraged by the president’s commitment to reduce barriers to job creation.” In a statement after the meeting, the glassmaker Corning, whose CEO attended, announced plans to expand its U.S. manufacturing base significantly over the next few years. Because I live in New York and work at the [Wall Street] Journal, I see and talk to American CEOs. I’ve never heard them bang on about a need to boost American jobs and manufacturing, ever. They usually talk about targeted microloans in India, and robots.

More important still — the most important moment of the first week — was the meeting with union leaders. Mr. Trump gave them almost an hour and a half. “The president treated us with respect, not only our organization but our members,” said Terry O'Sullivan, general president of the Laborers' International Union of North America, by telephone. Liuna had not endorsed Trump in the campaign, but Mr. O'Sullivan saw the meeting’s timing as an expression of respect: “He’s inaugurated on Friday and we’re invited in Monday to have a substantial conversation.” The entire Trump top staff was there, including the vice president: “His whole team — we were very impressed.” They talked infrastructure, trade and energy. “The whole meeting was about middle class jobs, how do we create more?” Mr. O'Sullivan believes the Keystone pipeline will eventually generate more than 40,000 jobs. Mr. O'Sullivan said he hopes fixing “our crumbling transportation infrastructure” will be “the largest jobs program in the country.”[/quote]

Statements from university associations around the world about the new US immigration policy.

Association of American Universities: [URL]http://www.aau.edu/news/article.aspx?id=18366&_cldee=bGVzbGV5LndpbHNvbkBldWEuYmU%3d&recipientid=contact-4029cff9a523e61180e2c4346bb508dc-8b6d8969c4734365aa069a542d1db5ba&esid=cfb20943-b1e6-e611-80fa-c4346bc5779c[/URL]

American Association of State Colleges and Universities: [URL]http://www.aascu.org/MAH/Statement/Immigration/[/URL]

European University Association: [URL]http://www.eua.be/activities-services/news/newsitem/2017/01/30/european-universities-call-for-immediate-rethinking-of-trump-s-executive-order[/URL]

Universities Canada: [URL]http://www.univcan.ca/media-room/media-releases/statement-response-u-s-executive-order/?_cldee=bGVzbGV5LndpbHNvbkBldWEuYmU%3d&recipientid=contact-4029cff9a523e61180e2c4346bb508dc-8b6d8969c4734365aa069a542d1db5ba&esid=cfb20943-b1e6-e611-80fa-c4346bc5779c[/URL]

Universities Australia: [URL]https://www.universitiesaustralia.edu.au/Media-and-Events/media-releases/Concern-at-US-executive-order#.WJHYjp-ayV5[/URL]

I was just musing today that the US could comfortably pay for a southern wall twice over merely with the money committed to Israel for the next decade. Walling off Canada might be harder; it is longer and the Alaska side alone would need a lot of brickage. Good news is that none of that construction would interfere with scenic views of Russia.

Here is a German language show with a Trump impersonator planning to wall off Canada (because bears), to wall off Congress and to put a wall around himself.

I love the smell of respect in the morning.
[YOUTUBE]bXLprPhNPgw[/YOUTUBE]

President Trump's first couple of weeks reminds me of a quirky 1980 movie called Simon. In many ways I am a sucker for quirky movies, including quite bad ones. Anyway, in this one, a think tank with too much time on its hands thought it would be funny to disrupt things like skewing music ratings in order to put Donny and Marie Osmond on the top of music charts every week but where they went further off into the weeds is when they decided to convince someone that he was actually an extraterrestrial alien. The dupe, Simon, makes a bunch of odd and disruptive proclamations that somehow resonated with society and (spoiler) when he eventually figures everything out and removes himself from public notice - society is actually better off having complied with removing the Simon-proscribed irritations such as tear-open ketchup packets, etc.

Google's scraped info sidebar says:
[QUOTE]6.3/10 IMDb
4/5 (stars) Amazon.com
60% Rotten Tomatoes

This bizarre comedy centers on Simon Mendelssohn (Alan Arkin), a preening professor of psychology who is mischievously duped into believing that he is an extraterrestrial. Dr. Carl Becker (Austin Pendleton) and the other idle think-tank members responsible for his condition also manage to convince the public that he's an alien, resulting in misadventures involving armed soldiers and eccentric commune dwellers when Simon escapes from the halls of academia and out into society.

Screenplay: Marshall Brickman, Tom Baum[/QUOTE]
[YOUTUBE]LOj5wptt-BU[/YOUTUBE]

o [url=www.counterpunch.org/2017/02/08/trump-plays-cat-and-mouse-with-iran/]Trump Plays Cat and Mouse with Iran[/url] | Mike Whitney, Counterpunch -- I consider the rapprochements with Iran and Cuba (under Kerry as Secretary of State) to be two of the very few good things Obama did during his tenure, foreign-policy-wise. Hillary is a standard-issue 100% hawkish neocon re. Iran, so Trump's positioning here is no worse, but still disappointing. Hard to see how he's going to reconcile deeper cooperation with Russia in Syria and other areas with a harder line toward Iran, as Russia is on friendly terms with Tehran.

o [url=thefederalist.com/2017/02/06/16-fake-news-stories-reporters-have-run-since-trump-won/]16 Fake News Stories Reporters Have Run Since Trump Won[/url] | The Federalist

An impressively well-sourced piece. By way of summary, here are the 16 stories in question and their originators / chief promulgators:

1. Early November: Spike in Transgender Suicide Rates | Tweet by [i]Guardian[/i] writer and editor-at-large of [i]Out[/i] Zach Stafford
2. November 22: The Tri-State Election Hacking Conspiracy Theory | New York Magazine
3. December 1: The 27-Cent Foreclosure | Politico [I still consider TreasSec Mnuchin to be a thoroughly odious character, based on the verified facts re. his foreclosure-crisis profiteering]
4. January 20: Nancy Sinatra’s Complaints about the Inaugural Ball | CNN
5. January 20: The Nonexistent Climate Change Website ‘Purge’ | New York Times
6. January 20: The Great MLK Jr. Bust Controversy | Time
7. January 20: Betsy DeVos, Grizzly Fighter
8. January 26: The ‘Resignations’ At the State Department | Washington Post
9. January 27: The Photoshopped Hands Affair | The Observer
10. January 29: The [Quebec City Mosque Massacre] Reuters Account Hoax | The Daily Beast
11. January 31: The White House-SCOTUS Twitter Mistake | Tweet by CNN Senior White House Correspondent Jeff Zeleny
12. January 31: The Big Travel Ban Lie | Fox affiliate, Detroit
13. February 1: POTUS Threatens to Invade Mexico | Yahoo News / AP, amplified by BuzzFeed and many others.
14. February 2: Easing the Russian Sanctions | Tweet by NBC News national correspondent Peter Alexander
15. February 2: Renaming Black History Month | TMZ, BET and others.
16. February 2: The House of Representatives’ Gun Control Measures | Associated Press

#PostcardstoBannon: the campaign to send missives to the 'real' US president
 

This is the kind of thing that sends the Cheeto in Chief ballistic. :grin:
[URL="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jan/31/steve-bannon-most-dangerous-man-in-america"]Who’s really calling the shots at the White House[/URL] – President Trump or chief strategist Steve Bannon?
That’s the question that has been circulating on social media over the past week and a half about the still-fledgling Trump presidency. Now, a new campaign has people sending postcards addressed to President Bannon and sharing them on social media using the hashtag #PostcardstoBannon.
It began when @cwardell suggested[URL="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/feb/09/postcardstobannon-the-campaign-to-send-missives-to-the-real-us-president"] a letter-writing campaign targeted at “President Bannon”: <(This is the actual link for the story in the title.)[/URL]
[/QUOTE]

[QUOTE]
We have at most a year to defend the Republic, perhaps less. What happens in the next few weeks is very important.
[/QUOTE]A new interview with Prof. Timothy Snyder (Yale):
[URL]http://international.sueddeutsche.de/post/157058066625/we-have-at-most-a-year-to-defend-american[/URL]

[QUOTE=Nick;452856]A new interview with Prof. Timothy Snyder (Yale):
[URL]http://international.sueddeutsche.de/post/157058066625/we-have-at-most-a-year-to-defend-american[/URL][/QUOTE]

Quick hits:

o "institutions have not thus far restrained him" - False. Courts struck down his immigration-related executive order, and the DC intelligence complex (a.k.a. "The Blob") in concert with various key players in the MSM just successfully pressured his pick for national security adviser, Michael Flynn, to resign, likely because Flynn, for all his 'pluses' (e.g. virulent Islamophobia and Iran-hatred), was not sufficiently rabid about certain key things the DC neocons care about, like fomenting war with Russia.

o Re. blather about 'the Constitution' and 'the rule of law' -- Yes, those were clearly help sacrosanct by the previous administration. The horrific excesses of the W. Bush era rolled back, war criminals - even the U.S. ones - and runners of the mega-crooked Wall Street banking cartels prosecuted, remote-control assassinations abolished, and the regime of mass domestic surveillance and the secret FISA kangaroo-court system giving it legal cover sharply curtailed. Oh, wait...

o "What happens in the next few weeks is very important." -- Is this intended to suggest that there is 'something' the author would like to happen in the next few weeks? A military coup 'to restore democracy', perhaps?

o The writer reveals his bias quite loudly with "Hillary Clinton did have actual policies that would have helped". Helped whom, exactly? Hoi polloi? 'Democracy'? World peace? Not bloody likely.

[QUOTE=ewmayer;452984]Quick hits:

o "institutions have not thus far restrained him" - False. Courts struck down his immigration-related executive order, [/QUOTE]

The 9th circuit affirmed an injunction on the basis that the groups arguing for the executive order to be struck down are likely to succeed on the merits of the case. No court has actually struck it down as of yet. I believe the 9th circuit is beginning the actual arguments on the case this week.

Edit: Changed a few words to better reflect what has happened.

[QUOTE=ewmayer;452984]Quick hits:...
[/QUOTE]
I find it noteworthy when serious academics feel the need to speak out about current events and draw on their expertise to do so, whether it is a(n) historian from Yale or a computer security researcher from Paul's group at Cambridge.
Their arguments tend to go deeper than those of the usual commentators and sometimes offer useful new insights.

More links on the Flynn ouster, which some people I respect as being nonpartisan outsiders are calling "an intelligence-community coup":

o The popular (for us watchers of the Deep State in action) [i]Moon of Alabama[/i] blog provides a nice round-up of links: [url=http://www.moonofalabama.org/2017/02/the-dangerous-precedence-of-the-hunt-against-flynn-and-trump.html]The Dangerous Precedence Of The Hunt Against Flynn ... And Trump[/url]

o Former Ohio Rep. Dennis Kucinich, who is anything but a neocon, says the intelligence community schemed against Michael Flynn:

[url]http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2017/02/ex-rep_dennis_kucinich_says_in.html[/url]

And a related [url=http://insider.foxnews.com/2017/02/14/kucinich-intelligence-community-games-trying-upend-trump]interview with Kucinich[/url], where he closes with
[quote]This is a much more serious issue, the White House, whether you are for Trump or against Trump, the White House is under attack from elements inside the intelligence community which are trying to elevate tensions between Russia and the United States, and at the bottom of that is money and an agenda for somebody to cash in on conflict between the US and Russia at any level.[/quote]

o [url=http://washingtonmonthly.com/2017/02/14/the-blackmail-story-doesnt-add-up/]The Blackmail Story Doesn't Add Up[/url] | Martin Longman, Washington Monthly (Bolds mine)
[quote] It’s very hard to believe that the Trump administration remained ignorant about the transcript(s) prior to getting the DOJ notice in “late January.” But, assuming that is actually true, they knew at least at that point the threat of blackmail was over and that Flynn still had a real problem. In fact, no later than that point, they realized that Spicer and Pence had a problem because they were on the record defending Flynn.

If we read between the lines here, it’s clear that something a little different happened. [b]The DOJ notice wasn’t really about the Russians blackmailing Flynn. It was about the Intelligence Community blackmailing Trump[/b]. If they didn’t get rid of Flynn voluntarily, then they’d leak the transcripts and expose them all for lying.

It wasn’t the only message that was fired across the administration’s bow. The CIA denied one of Flynn’s National Security Council appointee’s a security clearance. A senior Defense Intelligence analyst said, “since January 20, we’ve assumed that the Kremlin has ears inside the SITROOM [Situation Room],” and “There’s not much the Russians don’t know at this point.” There were “multiple current and former US law enforcement and intelligence officials” who told CNN that the British dossier was getting corroborated. “Two defense officials” were quoted saying that “the Army has been investigating whether Mr. Flynn received money from the Russian government during a trip he took to Moscow in 2015” in possible violation of the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution.[/quote]

o [url=https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-02-14/the-political-assassination-of-michael-flynn]The Political Assassination of Michael Flynn[/url] | Bloomberg
[quote]The neocons and liberal hawks also hated Flynn because – as director of the Defense Intelligence Agency – he oversaw a prescient 2012 analysis that foresaw that their support for the Syrian insurgency would give rise to “a declared or undeclared Salafist principality in eastern Syria.”

The DIA report, which was partially declassified in a lawsuit over the 2012 killing of the U.S. ambassador to Libya and three other U.S. personnel in Benghazi, Libya, embarrassed the advocates for an escalation of the war in Syria and the ouster of secular President Bashar al-Assad.

Flynn even went further in a 2015 interview when he said the intelligence was “very clear” that the Obama administration made a “willful decision” to back these jihadists in league with Middle East allies, a choice that looked particularly stupid when Islamic State militants started beheading American hostages and capturing cities in Iraq.
...
But “regime change” in Syria was dear to the neocons’ hearts. After all, Israeli leaders had declared Assad’s removal central to smashing the so-called “Shiite crescent” reaching from Tehran through Damascus to Beirut.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on Aug. 30, 2013, claims to have proof that the Syrian government was responsible for a chemical weapons attack on Aug. 21, 2013, but that evidence failed to materialize or was later discredited. [State Department photo]
The neocons and liberal hawks had come very close to getting the direct U.S. military intervention that they so wanted to destroy Assad’s army after a mysterious sarin gas attack outside Damascus on Aug. 21, 2013. The Obama administration quickly pinned the atrocity on Assad even though a number of U.S. intelligence analysts suspected a “false flag” attack carried out by jihadists.
...
Amid these heightened tensions, the mainstream media in the United States and Europe joined in the full-scale Russia/Putin-bashing. All rational perspective on the underlying reality was lost, except for a handful of independent Internet journalists and foreign-policy outsiders who rejected the over-the-top propaganda.

A Few Dissenters Too Many

But even a few dissenters were a few dissenters too many. So, to enforce the new groupthink – holding Russia at fault for pretty much everything – a new McCarthyism emerged, deeming anyone who dared disagree a “Moscow stooge” or a “Russian propagandist.”

The ugliness penetrated into the U.S. presidential campaign because Democrat Hillary Clinton took a belligerent line toward Russia while Trump broke with the Republican establishment and called for improved ties between Washington and Moscow. Clinton called Trump Putin’s “puppet” and – after Clinton’s stunning loss – the Obama administration floated unproven allegations that Putin had intervened in the election to put Trump in the White House.[/quote]