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DTomlinson

DTomlinson's Journal
DTomlinson's Journal
July 19, 2020

If you're arguing with a narcissistic psychopath, you've already lost.

You have to demonstrate to other people, in no uncertain terms, that the narcissist/psychopath is a menace to them, and them specifically.

Often, people learn the hard way, by being victimized by such people. Some people refuse to admit that they’ve been conned, and get angry and resentful at those who desperately try to enlighten them to the danger, to the destruction.

You have to pick your battles with the narcissistic psychopath’s victims: find those who could be persuaded to “see the light” but aren’t there yet, move on from those who are a lost cause, and stand in solidarity and organize with all of those who recognize the damage, the destruction, and the gravity of the continued threat - and are prepared to fight back.

July 18, 2020

Abolish DHS, and start with ICE and CBP. They are indisputably Trump's paramilitary goons

and thus, an active menace to the American people.

Fascists.

July 14, 2020

The dazzling rise and tragic fall of Saudi Arabia's Mohammed bin Nayef (WaPo).

A grim new chapter in the Saudi “Game of Thrones” battle for control of the kingdom appears to be underway, as Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman prepares corruption and disloyalty charges against his predecessor and onetime rival, former crown prince Mohammed bin Nayef — a man who was once the United States’ champion in the war against Islamist terrorism.

This royal family showdown has been building ever since MBS, as he’s known, deposed his predecessor in June 2017. The roots lie even deeper, in the bitter rivalry between supporters of the late King Abdullah, who had championed MBN, as the former crown prince is called, and the courtiers who surrounded his successor, King Salman, and his impulsive son MBS, when the new king assumed power after Abdullah’s death in January 2015.


John Brennan, a former CIA director who worked closely with MBN for more than a decade, explained in an interview: “The Interior Ministry was provided with a budget so they could build up capabilities, recruit personnel and develop intelligence service contacts to penetrate al-Qaeda. … Abdullah’s view was that he had to be invested in the activities that MBN was leading. MBN was one of his favorites.”

Brennan addressed the allegation, made to me by Saudis who are close to MBS, that MBN had skimmed money from intelligence accounts. “Over the course of my interaction with MBN, he wasn’t someone I thought was engaged in corrupt activity or was siphoning off money,” Brennan said.

George Tenet, who was CIA director when MBN took control of the counterterrorism portfolio at the Interior Ministry in 2003, spoke glowingly of MBN in his memoir, “At the Center of the Storm: My Years at the CIA,” published in 2007. “He is someone in whom we developed a great deal of trust and respect,” he wrote. “Many of the successes in rolling up al-Qaeda in the kingdom are a result of his courageous efforts.”


The Saudi security establishment sleepwalked toward the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States. Nayef was convinced the attacks were a conspiracy designed to defame the kingdom’s reputation. This Saudi attitude of denial continued until May 2003, when al-Qaeda bombers attacked a foreign housing compound in Riyadh, killing 35 people, including 10 Americans. Tenet rushed to Riyadh for an urgent meeting to warn Abdullah that the royal family was facing a dire threat.

Tenet recalled the scene in an interview. Gathered with him and Abdullah were Nayef and his son MBN, and Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the Saudi ambassador to Washington, who acted as interpreter. Tenet admonished Abdullah that al-Qaeda’s plots were “directed against your family and religious leadership” and urged him to “declare war,”he wrote in his memoir.

Abdullah nominated his commander on the spot. As Tenet recalled in the interview, “the king looked at MBN and said in front of the others, ‘You’re going to handle the counterterrorism account.'



For the U.S. government, which only a few years before had feared that Saudi Arabia might by overrun by al-Qaeda, MBN’s well-financed mobilization against extremists was a godsend.

A March 30, 2009, cable from the U.S. Embassy in Riyadh to the intelligence and national-security agencies back in Washington boasted that the Interior Ministry was “THE BIGGEST DOG … the largest and most domestically influential Saudi ministry.” MBN, the cable said, “is held in high regard” by Abdullah and “well-respected by the Saudi populace for his effective work in beating down Al Qaeda in the Kingdom and running an effective deradicalization program which has gained wide local and tribal support. ... The result is operations in the USG interest can be conducted in a highly effective and cooperative manner within the Kingdom.”


Abdullah had placed extraordinary trust in MBN. This commitment deepened after an assassination attempt nearly killed MBN on Aug. 27, 2009. An AQAP operative named Abdullah al-Asiri visited MBN’s palace in Jiddah on the pretext of surrendering personally to the ministry’s terrorist rehabilitation program. He detonated an explosive hidden in his rectum, and MBN was injured in the blast. Abdullah rushed to see him in the hospital.

Abdullah’s support for his counterterrorism chief seems never to have wavered. MBN succeeded his father as interior minister in 2012 and, even after Adbullah’s death and Salman’s succession, MBN was named crown prince in April 2015 — suggesting that he would eventually become king. But MBS was named deputy crown prince at the same time, an ominous sign for MBN.


The last chapters of MBN’s story have a sad inevitability: He simply wasn’t a match for MBS in his ability to protect his friends and punish his enemies. American and Saudi friends of MBN say that he may have been limited by substance-abuse problems that began with the painkillers he took after being wounded in the 2009 assassination attempt.

The ambitious, risk-taking MBS found a powerful new ally when Donald Trump became president in 2017. Aljabri fled the kingdom in May 2017. A month later, MBN was summoned by his nominal deputy, MBS, and told to resign. He asked to call two prominent princes, Mohammed bin Fahd and Khaled bin Sultan, the MBN associate said. They told him the game was up, they’d made their deals with his rival and MBN had no choice but to resign as crown prince.

MBN submitted and swore allegiance to MBS. A royal decree issued June 21, 2017, announced that he had been removed as crown prince and replaced by his deputy. Some of his former friends and allies, including senior officers of the Mabahith, had already switched sides and become MBS supporters. Others were arrested and reportedly tortured. The Ritz-Carlton arrests of prominent Saudi businessmen and princes in November 2017 intimidated any remaining dissenters.


https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/07/05/dazzling-rise-tragic-fall-saudi-arabias-mohammed-bin-nayef/
July 10, 2020

FBI Director, May 2020: Saudi officer who killed three in Pensacola was longtime Al-Qaeda associate

Meanwhile, Israel has attacked Iran, the Yemenis are still being murdered by the Saudis and Emiratis (with US help), and the autocrats of the Arab world in general are acting with more impunity and US support under President Donald "Muslim ban" Trump.

The evidence we’ve been able to develop from the killer’s devices shows that the Pensacola attack was actually the brutal culmination of years of planning and preparation, by a longtime AQAP (Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula) associate.

The new evidence shows that al-Shamrani had radicalized not after training here in the U.S. but at least as far back as 2015, and that he had been connecting and associating with a number of dangerous AQAP operatives ever since. It shows that al-Shamrani described a desire to learn about flying years ago, around the same time he talked about attending the Saudi Air Force Academy in order to carry out what he called a “special operation.” And he then pressed his plans forward, joining the Air Force and bringing his plot here—to America.

Thanks to a lot of hard work by our people, we now know that al-Shamrani continued to associate with AQAP even while living in Texas and in Florida; and that in the months before the attack, while he was here among us, he talked with AQAP about his plans and tactics—taking advantage of the information he acquired here, to assess how many people he could try to kill.

He was meticulous in his planning. He made pocket-cam videos as he cased his classroom building. He wrote a final will, purporting to explain himself, and saved it in his phone—the exact same will that AQAP released two months later when they initially claimed responsibility. He wasn’t just coordinating with them about planning and tactics—he was helping the organization make the most it could out of his murders. And he continued to confer with his AQAP associates right until the end, the very night before he started shooting.

We are still exploiting the evidence we’ve now obtained from al-Shamrani’s phones. And we’re continuing to run our investigation, now with the benefit of a lot more insight into the murderer’s mind and intentions, his relations with AQAP, and his tactics.

We have more to learn. But we know enough now to see al-Shamrani for what he was—a determined AQAP terrorist, who spent years preparing to attack us.


https://www.fbi.gov/news/pressrel/press-releases/fbi-director-christopher-wrays-remarks-at-press-conference-regarding-naval-air-station-pensacola-shooting-investigation

July 5, 2020

This is a man who said Obama was an illegitimate POTUS and HRC was rigging 2016. He's at it again.

The only way he can "win" is by de-legitimizing his opponent's win - which in turn, de-legitimizes the very process itself. As we saw in 2016 and as we see with his Presidency, Trump wins when our democratic institutions - to the extent they exist - are corrupted, undermined, and seen as illegitimate by just enough Americans, just enough voters.

Stirring up racist and white supremacist backlash is not separate from this at all. After all, what was the secession of the majority of slave states in 1860 but a white supremacist declaration of the illegitimacy of a democratically elected President (Lincoln in that case)? Or the first Ku Klux Klan and the "Redeemers" who violently restored white supremacist rule and defeated post-Civil War Reconstruction? Or the 1950s "Massive Resistance" of Southern segregationists to the Supreme Court's rulings against "separate but equal?" Or, of course, stating that "I really don't think that Barack Obama was born in this country?"

Classic American white supremacist projection: OUR election fraud, OUR illegitimate actions and defiance of legal, constitutional outcomes of American elections, court decisions, etc., are not actually fraud or illegitimate actions at all - because from their point of view, black people, people of color, cannot EVER be legitimate, regardless of whether they are ordinary voters or Presidents.

Trump is only legitimate in an illegitimate system. Never forget that.

June 26, 2020

Trump is desperate -- and dangerous (Michael D'Antonio, CNN).

Now wounded, Trump is resorting to a kind of political terror campaign, spreading blatant lies about foreign-based election fraud and a "RIGGED 2020 ELECTION." Trump's false claims, which have been repeatedly debunked by CNN and others, destroy public trust in the foundation of our democracy and set the stage for a potentially dangerous crisis if voters end up questioning the results on Election Day.

After three-and-a-half years of his deceitful and chaotic reign, Trump's lies about voting come as no surprise. The same is true for the string of awful choices that have put him in a hole with the voters. In this case, Exhibit A is his administration's failed response to the Covid-19 pandemic. While Trump claimed all was well and played snake-oil salesman for a treatment that was not effective, the virus went on to kill more than 120,000 Americans. And now it's only getting worse. In states like Arizona, Texas, and Florida, where GOP governors followed his lead, the spikes in infections have helped push the nation to break the previous single-day record of new cases.


The pandemic, made worse by his failed leadership, has destroyed the economic record Trump hoped would earn him reelection. Then came the nationwide protests against the police treatment of Black Americans, sparked by the caught-on-camera killings of George Floyd in Minneapolis and Rayshard Brooks in Atlanta. A majority of Americans, according to the Pew Research Center, say they support the Black Lives Matter movement. But Trump has responded with little empathy for their concerns and repeated calls for "law and order." He has also proposed criminal penalties for flag burning, urged lengthy prison sentences for those who tear down statues honoring Confederates and personally instructed Interior Secretary David Bernhardt to restore the only Confederate statue in Washington, DC, after it was torn down last week.

Beset by these crises, the president has refused to alter course. (This is, it seems, a man who would rather double-down on a deadly decision than admit a mistake.) True to his dangerously divisive form, he's risking the safety of Asian Americans -- who have already been attacked as scapegoats for the pandemic -- by using a racist phrase to describe Covid-19. He has also continued to use social media to spread inflammatory videos; he retweeted clips that show Black people physically assaulting White people and shared a doctored "racist baby" video. (The video, which was manipulated to look like a CNN segment, was taken down by Facebook and Twitter after one of the children's parents lodged copyright objections.)

What's going on here? A recent New York Times and Siena College poll shows Trump is 14 points behind Biden. Never one for learning new tricks, Trump is responding by pushing all the buttons that worked for him as an outsider candidate in 2016. He indulges in stream-of-consciousness rants, like the one explaining his recent physical struggles at West Point. He pastes ugly nicknames on his opponents. And he continues to rail against immigration. In Arizona, the president didn't meet with brave nurses treating coronavirus patients or comfort the families of those who died from Covid-19. He did, however, tour a recently built barrier at the border with Mexico.

The trouble with Trump's rerun approach is that he's not an outsider anymore. He's the President -- which means he bears responsibility for the state our country is currently in. Things are so bad that he's even lost his chance to brag about the economy, which was once at the center of his claim to success. Unemployment is above 13%, and the economy is estimated to contract 5% in 2020. And while other nations are easing out of lockdown and kickstarting their economies thanks to strong public health measures, Trump's pandemic bungling threatens to make the economic price even steeper for Americans.


https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/25/opinions/trump-desperate-dangerous-reelection-strategy-dantonio/index.html

A beast is at its most dangerous when wounded and cornered.
June 26, 2020

Conservatives ​Threaten to Leave Twitter for Parler​--But for Real This Time

Right-wing commentators and media personalities are again threatening ​to abandon Twitter in favor of ​Parler, an alternative social media platform where they ​say they won’t be persecuted for holding conservative beliefs. Nearly identical calls for a Twitter exodus echoed through right-wing social media circles last year, but the transition failed to ​take hold at any major scale.​

The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday that President Donald Trump’s 2020 campaign was weighing alternatives to traditional social media platforms after Twitter and Facebook took moderation actions against posts from the president and his campaign. Facebook last week removed Trump campaign ads that contained red inverted triangles—a symbol used by Nazis to designate political prisoners in concentration camps—citing site policies against organized hate. Twitter has recently added warning labels and fact-checking links to Trump tweets that contain misinformation or content that violates Twitter community guidelines.

The Journal reported that the recent moderation action has “top campaign officials considering alternatives, such as moving to another, lesser known company, building their own platform or doubling down on efforts to move supporters to the campaign’s smartphone app, according to people familiar with the discussions.” One possibility reportedly floated by Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale is a Twitter alternative called Parler.

The social platform Parler​, launched in 2018, bills itself as an alternative to Twitter, closely resembling the all-but-defunct app Gab, which was quickly overrun with extremists and conspiracy theorists shortly after its inception. Like Gab, Parler has become home to its own pockets of far-right extremists who enjoy the platform’s loose content moderation policies. Although Parler claims to be nonideological, it exists currently as a bastion of almost exclusively pro-Trump​, right-wing content. Trump’s campaign teased nearly identical considerations to the press this time last year​, but a shift to Parler never materialized in any major sense.

The Daily Beast reported last year that Parler and Gab were locked in a heated standoff over which platform ​Trump would post on first, although as it stands Trump has yet to give up Twitter—where he is able to shape national news ​with 280 characters ​a tweet at a time and reach more than 82 million followers. No reporting since then has indicated serious plans for Trump to join either platform soon.

But with Parler in the news, Trump’s leading ​online sycophants are once again vowing to abandon Twitter once and for all.


https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/conservatives-%e2%80%8bthreaten-to-leave-twitter-for-parler%e2%80%8b-but-for-real-this-time/

So...which Nazi alternative to Twitter will be get Trump first? Or (more likely IMO) will Trump continue to post on Twitter while Nazi courtiers and social media grifters desperately try to get his attention?

Anyone want to take any bets?

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