Tag: middle east
California National Guard

My Son Is A California National Guardman, Swept Into Trump's Power Grab

I served in the U.S. Army 36 years ago. And my son—who’s had opportunities I never did as a Salvadoran immigrant—chose to follow in my footsteps, joining the California National Guard.

After spending a year in the Middle East, he returned home and was activated to help in the aftermath of the wildfires that devastated Southern California in January. He was stationed in Altadena, a hard-hit, working-class city, where he did what the Guard is meant to do: help people in crisis.

That experience changed him. Even after being deactivated, he still drives an hour each way, several times a week, to keep helping as the city and its residents rebuild. That’s who he is. And yeah, I’m tearing up just thinking about it. I am so incredibly proud of him.

He signed up to serve his community, not to be a pawn in President Donald Trump’s fascist cosplay. But now? His unit has been activated again, and this time not to help people.

You can’t imagine the rage I feel.

Trump has spent his entire presidency railing against dissent. Now that he’s losing in Congress, in the courts, and in the court of public opinion, he’s escalating—using peaceful protests as a pretext for his dream of military dictatorship.

In January, my son and his fellow first responders were welcomed by Southern Californians with food, gifts, and gratitude. Today, Trump is sending them into those same communities as symbols of repression. He’s destroyed the goodwill they built—and he doesn’t care.

He wants confrontation. He wants escalation. He wants violence, because he thinks it gives him license to go even further.

Trump is trying to break this country before it breaks him.

I’m scared for my son. But I’m proud. Proud of him. Proud of this community. Proud of the people in the streets refusing to back down. This moment feels inevitable. We saw it coming. We warned it was coming. We hoped it wouldn’t, but now it’s here.

So yes, I’m scared. But I’m also burning with righteous fury. And that fury is stronger than Trump’s cruelty or the bloodlust of his followers.

Let’s fuck Trump up.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

Trump and MBS Saudi

One Thousand And One Nights Of Trump Grift

For generations, American foreign policy in the Middle East has been crafted with willful ignorance by people who see the region through the lens of Israel and oil. From the CIA coup in Iran in the 1950s to Cheney and Rumsfeld’s Iraq war folly – arguably the event that destabilized the entire planet by creating tens of millions of refugees, leading to rising fascism in Europe and the U.S – our history in the region is one of murder, mayhem, fecklessness and greed. Major and deadly decisions are routinely made without any appreciation of the history or understanding of the many, heterogeneous communities that live there. Ay-rabs, Eye-rack. In the 1990s, a purge of the “Arabists” in the State Department was even underway. It took 9/11 for the DOD and State to bring back a few Arabic speakers.

However, in the last few weeks, it’s started to become clear that the U.S. is taking a strange new tack.

During Trump One, the grift was mostly on in Ukraine and Russia. Paul Manafort, Roger Stone, and Rudy Giuliani reeking of duty-free cologne in first-class seats out of Eastern European airports, hauling suitcases of oligarchy pelf. Now, Trump Two has located far greater pots of gold. The Mother of all Piles, the trillions of dollars controlled by a tiny clan of Gulf oil potentates – wealth, which, it must be said, our gas addiction created.

Ever since Mohammed bin Salman, the millennial de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia, had his henchmen chop off a Washington Post writer’s fingers and then murder him within earshot of Turkish audio surveillance, it has been clear that the men who control trillion-dollar sovereign wealth funds can do whatever the hell they want to any man, woman, child, or beast on planet Earth.

This week, Trump is being feted by that very finger chopper. He is very much in his element, sipping Diet Cokes under “tank size chandeliers” and parking himself on gilded chairs to talk business with the leaders of the three major Gulf oil fiefdoms. In Trump Twos’s pay-to-play, even Israel is out in the cold. Miriam Adelson’s $100 million campaign donation, reportedly handed over to make sure Trump would not object to Israel seizing the West Bank? Sorry, chump change! Trump blew past Jerusalem on his way to sword dances with the sheiks -- causing intense but veiled terror among the Israeli leaders accustomed to carte blanche in the halls of American power.

In the last few weeks, Don Junior has been on a business tour around Europe, and Eric has also preened around the Middle East. The boys are riding on the U.S. Presidency, raking in tens of millions for the family business with hotel projects and condos in Dubai, Jeddah, and Qatar, where one project’s motto is “Challenge Everything Stop at Nothing.” The bros are not the first presidential relatives to cash in on Dad’s position, but they are the first to openly rake in money that directly benefits the Man in the White House.

Besides the projects, they are road-testing Dad’s meme coin and the family crypto bank, World Liberty Financial. WLF, created just weeks before the election, is an untraceable intake valve for influence buying. And WLF is now humming away, having reportedly sucked in $2 billion from the emirs of Abu Dhabi and the crypto firm Binance, which has been linked to money laundering for terrorism and sex traffickers. Few MAGAs understand what WLF does, and neither do most elected officials, who have been asleep at the wheel while the now even less regulated crypto industry runs amok.

The speed with which the Trump family is enriching itself in Trump Two is dizzying. At this point, metaphors, like satire, are increasingly out of reach for your poor Freakshow scribe. A swarming of termites, hogs at the trough, Coney Island hot dog eating contest? “Virtually every detail of Mr. Witkoff’s announcement, made during a conference panel with Mr. Trump’s second-eldest son, contained a conflict of interest,” wrote the New York Times reporter dispatched to cover Zach Witkoff’s and Eric Trump’s press conference in Dubai. “There’s nothing like it,” said Douglas Brinkley, historian and author of books about U.S. presidents, of the Trump Two family financial windfalls.

And that was before the Qatari royal family offered Trump a Boeing 747-8 refitted as a flying palace, a gift that, according to the President, only a “stupid” person would turn down. In the Middle East, gifting is a common form of corruption known as baksheesh. Most U.S. ethics experts consider it illegal.

The gilded plane, though, seems to have woke the gag reflex of some leading MAGAs: Ben Shapiro, Loomer, and a few Republican Senators are making disgusted noises, and the commentariat from

Jennifer Rubin to Rick Wilson predicts that this gift could be the grift that breaks the camel’s back. But will it?

Could it be that a nearly half-billion dollar offering from an Arab potentate is what it takes to cure the so-far incurable Obama Derangement Syndrome, the racist Brown people are coming to get my stuff mind-virus behind the MAGA fever that turns Trump into a hallucination of white Jesus? There seems to be something about the plane, more than the crypto grift and Trump sons raking it in under their dad’s name, that might even get some action from a third branch of government in Washington.

But, so far, no hint of outrage ruffles the alabaster brow of the nation’s top law enforcement official, Attorney General Pam Bondi. In Trumpworld, there’s no PR stain that a blonde with a conspicuous crucifix can’t wash away.

Pam was a Tallahassee nobody when she first tangled with Trump, taking a $25,000 donation that she personally solicited in 2013 and then backing off a Trump University civil fraud case her office had filed.

Bondi went on to bigger fry. Besides representing Trump in his first impeachment, and eventually parroting the election Big Lie repeatedly in the media, she signed on as a lobbyist for Qatar with the Trump-connected Ballard firm, pulling down $115,000 a month. That job was public knowledge months ago, but it didn’t bother Republican Senators as they rubber stamped her along with one after another of the wackos, conspiracy theorists, and extremist flotsam and jetsam Trump nominated in nose-thumbing gestures to his civil society enemies. Now, though, it’s treated like big news. Hmmm…

Nina Burleigh is a a journalist, author, documentary producer and adjunct professor at New York University's Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute. She has written eight books including her recently published novel, Zero Visibility Possible.

Reprinted with permission from COURIER's American Freakshow.

Middle East War

Why Trump Will Wield Superpower Status In The New Middle East

While the Biden administration hasn’t been able to turn the tide for Ukraine in its war against Russian aggression, it has had better luck further south in the Middle East. Donald Trump will inherit the results of President Joe Biden’s support of Israel’s war on Hezbollah in Lebanon, its throttling of Syria’s military capability since rebels marched into Damascus ten days ago, and the damage Israel did to Iran’s military and its weapons manufacturing capabilities when it struck Iran in late October.

In less than two months, Israel has completely upset the balance of power in the Middle East, and it has done it from the air using stealth technology developed and deployed by the United States. Israel used stealth jets when it took out Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and much of Hezbollah’s top command at the militant group’s headquarters in the south of Beirut on September 28. Israeli stealth jets were used when they launched hundreds of strikes on Hezbollah military targets, knocking out all of its rocket sites that threatened the north of Israel.

But most importantly, Israel used both stand-off guided missiles fired from Iraqi airspace and heavier munitions dropped by U.S.-manufactured F-35 and F-15 jets when it retaliated against Iran for firing nearly 200 missiles at Israel on October 1 of this year. Israel used at least 100 jet aircraft to strike Iranian military targets in the first such attack on Iran by Israel in the history of the conflict between the two adversaries.

According to the Pentagon, the Israeli strikes on Iran crippled its missile manufacturing factories to such an extent that it will take Iran at least a year before they can begin producing missiles again. Israel struck other Iranian weapons facilities as well, including its drone manufacturing plants. Iran has been a major supplier of both missiles and drones to Russia in its war on Ukraine.

According to CNN and other news sources, Israel was able to destroy all of Iran’s S-300 Russian-supplied air defense batteries. “Israel now has broader aerial freedom of operation in Iran,” Israel’s military spokesman Daniel Hagari told the press after the Israeli strike on Iran.

What this means, without saying it out loud, is that Israel can now strike Iran with impunity, anytime, and anywhere it wants. Iran is blind to Israel’s use of stealth attack bombers and because its air defenses have been largely destroyed, unable to prevent another strike by air from Israel for the foreseeable future. Stephen Bryen, a former Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Trade Security Policy, who writes a Substack column entitled “Weapons and Strategy,” put it this way: “Israel used the F-35, which is a stealth fighter, to knock out Iran’s air defenses. That enabled F-15s to go in and destroy other targets – because now the Iranians couldn’t fight back.”

According to reports by CNN and The Guardian, Israel refrained from hitting Iran’s oil infrastructure and its nuclear facilities…at least for now.

For all of the more than 40 years of the existence of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Israel and Iran have largely fought a shadow war, with Iran using proxies such as Hezbollah and Hamas to attack Israel. With Hamas and Hezbollah at least for the time being largely destroyed and Iran’s military capability to launch a counterstrike damaged, Israel has emerged as the sole superpower in the Middle East.

CNN quoted Trita Parsi, the executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, saying that Iran fears that “if they don’t do something now Israel will start treating Iran as they did with Syria, which means every once in a while, the Israelis will strike.”

Speaking of which, Israel is estimated to have struck more than 500 military targets inside Syria since rebels ousted the government of Bashar al-Assad on December 8. The attacks appear to be continuing. Israel has continued its attacks most recently with a massive strike on Syria’s weapons storage facility near the coastal city of Tartous, where Russia maintained a naval base until moving all of its ships from the port after the fall of Assad.

Russia is said to be “in talks” with the nascent regime that is in the process of establishing a government in Syria. “We are in contact with representatives of the forces that are currently in control of the situation in the country, and all of this will be determined in the course of dialogue,” Dimitry Peskov, Putin’s spokesman told reporters in a call from Moscow earlier today.

If that doesn’t sound like a realignment of power in the Middle East, I don’t know what is. The government of Russia’s client-state, Syria, gone. Russia’s ally, Iran, severely damaged by Israeli airstrikes. Russia’s terror proxy, Hezbollah, nearly destroyed. Meanwhile, Israel is talking about establishing settlements in the territory it occupies in the Golan heights, and there is nobody who can tell them to stop.

What Donald Trump will do with the situation he inherits in the Middle East is not known, although he has made no secret of his willingness, even eagerness, to hit Iran’s nuclear facilities. With Putin in a stalemate in Ukraine and his forces pushed out of Syria, if Netanyahu remains in power in Israel, and Trump takes power in this country, there won’t be a balance of power in the Middle East anymore. Donald Trump, for better or worse, will be in the driver’s seat.

Lucian K. Truscott IV, a graduate of West Point, has had a 50-year career as a journalist, novelist, and screenwriter. He has covered Watergate, the Stonewall riots, and wars in Lebanon, Iraq, and Afghanistan. He is also the author of five bestselling novels. You can subscribe to his daily columns at luciantruscott.substack.com and follow him on Twitter @LucianKTruscott and on Facebook at Lucian K. Truscott IV.

Reprinted with permission from Lucian Truscott Newsletter.


Vladimir Putin and Assad

Refuting Trump Prediction, Putin Grants Russian Asylum To Assad

Russian state-owned news agency TASS, citing a source in the Kremlin, confirmed overthrown Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his family are in Moscow “after being granted asylum in Russia,” CNN’s Jim Scuitto reports.

Syrian rebel forces on Sunday advanced into Damascus “unopposed … overthrowing” Assad “and ending nearly six decades of his family's iron-fisted rule,” Reuters reports. "In one of the most consequential turning points in the Middle East for generations, the fall of Assad's government wiped out a bastion from which Iran and Russia exercised influence across the Arab world. Moscow gave him and his family asylum."

Russia’s decision to grant Assad asylum comes as Trump, early Sunday morning,” claimed Putin “ was not interested in protecting [Assad] any longer.”

“Assad is gone. He has fled his country. His protector, Russia, Russia, Russia, led by Vladimir Putin, was not interested in protecting him any longer. There was no reason for Russia to be there in the first place. They lost all interest in Syria because of Ukraine, where close to 600,000 Russian soldiers lay wounded or dead, in a war that should never have started, and could go on forever. Russia and Iran are in a weakened state right now, one because of Ukraine and a bad economy, the other because of Israel and its fighting success. Likewise, Zelenskyy and Ukraine would like to make a deal and stop the madness. They have ridiculously lost 400,000 soldiers, and many more civilians. There should be an immediate ceasefire and negotiations should begin. Too many lives are being so needlessly wasted, too many families destroyed, and if it keeps going, it can turn into something much bigger, and far worse. I know Vladimir well. This is his time to act. China can help. The World is waiting!”

As New York Times reporter Glenn Thrush noted in a tweet, Trump’s take on the Syrian geopolitical crisis “is kinda wow.”

After his slated successor tweeted his analysis in the early Sunday morning hours, President Joe Biden on Sunday heralded his administration’s role in weakening Assad's regime.

“For years the main backers of Assad have been Iran, Hezbollah and Russia,” Biden said. “But over the last week their support collapsed, all three of them, because all three of them are far weaker today than they were than when I took office.”

You can watch that video below or at this link.

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

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