There is history worth remembering as Trump is lauded in certain circles on the so-called “right” and “left” as a peacemaker with Russia over the US/NATO proxy war against Russia via Ukraine: President Richard Nixon, who ran as the peace candidate in 1968 with a “secret plan” for peace in Vietnam that was actually a plan for more war, visited China in February 1972 in a move to exploit the Soviet-China split, and yet the US war against Vietnam went on until April 30, 1975 when the U.S. was driven out of Vietnam.
I think extreme caution is advised when it comes to Trump’s plans to end the U.S. proxy war against Russia, which, following the Nixon-Kissinger script, seems to be aimed at splitting the Russian-Chinese partnership now threatening U.S. world domination.
Trump, like his predecessor Joseph Biden who presided over the proxy war against Russia and the genocide of Palestinians by Israel, is no man of peace. He is fully in support of the extinction of the Palestinians and behind Israel’s war aims in the Middle-East. So when it comes to his recent overtures to Russia and a resolution to the U.S./NATO proxy war against Russia, one needs to reflect on history and Trump’s inclination to make “a deal.” The man, after all, was a reality-television star and has long reveled in radical reversals of previous statements and intentions. For example, in his first term, he often talked of withdrawing from NATO but never did; NATO, in fact, expanded under his watch. He talked about ending the U.S./NATO support for Ukraine’s bombing of Russian-speaking areas of eastern Ukraine, only to withdraw from the Minsk Accords and send military equipment to Ukraine to bomb those areas.
Those who are praising him now say he is a changed man after time “in the wilderness” these last four years (one is reminded of Nixon’s wandering wilderness days from 1960-1968). Would a changed man have Elon Musk as his right-hand man or have as Vice President JD Vance whose career has been backed by Palantir Technology’s Peter Thiel?
Investigator journalist Whitney Webb has reported extensively on Thiel and Vance’s ties and the interconnections between them and other supporters of the surveillance state tied to the Democrats, such as former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, among others. If you assume the surface war between Trump and the Democrats is the real deal, Webb’s work will have you wondering. They have their differences, of course, but a reading of history would suggest both fully back the surveillance panopticon that has stolen American’s freedom and privacy in the name of what else – freedom and privacy.
Now Trump-Musk-Vance are touting their dedication to free speech and their opposition to censorship, which are clearly admirable goals. But one needs to remember Marshall McLuhan’s adage that the medium is the message, and that the medium touted by Trump – front and center – is represented by the omnipresence of Elon Musk, whose face symbolizes the smirking machine and the use of digital technology to accumulate and exert power. In a digital age, technological technique is King Propaganda, and technique transforms everything it touches into a machine.
As in Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass, the brothers Tweedledee Democrat and Tweedledum Republican fight over their rattle as the audience focuses on their battle while their joint racket goes unattended.
‘I know what you’re thinking about,’ Tweedledum; ‘but it isn’t so, no how.’
‘Contrariwise,’ continued Tweedledee, ‘if it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn’t, it ain’t. That’s logic.’
‘I was thinking, Alice said very politely, ‘which is the best way out of this wood: it’s getting so dark. Would you tell me please?’
It is dark. Of course, the way out is to stop reacting and do what the press is obligated to do: be skeptical, question authority, and don’t be cheerleaders for anyone in power, whether they be Biden or Trump or someone else.
The opposite of such skepticism has been happening, and many in the alternative press, who [including me] have correctly accused Biden and the Democrats of war crimes, lies, censorship, Russiagate propaganda, etc., are now awash with grandiose praise for Trump, many calling him a revolutionary in a good sense. This is absurd.
Such hyperbole is quite naïve, as has been the calling of Vice-President JD Vance’s Munich Security Conference speech historic and Ciceronian. It was a good speech [text here] in many ways, but . . . .
He rightly ripped the Europeans for their censorship of dissidents and their repression of alternative voices, although his examples were weak and narrowly focused.
His statement, while surely partisan, was true that “I will admit that sometimes the loudest voices for censorship have come not from within Europe, but from within my own country, where the prior administration threatened and bullied social media companies to censor so-called misinformation.”
His defense of democratic mandates was strong when he said:
You cannot win a democratic mandate by censoring your opponents or putting them in jail, whether that’s the leader of the opposition, a humble Christian praying in her own home, or a journalist trying to report the news. Nor can you win one by disregarding your basic electorate on questions like who gets to be a part of our shared society.
When he criticized European leaders for allowing mass migration into their countries, his hypocrisy stood out. As any fair person should recognize, immigration policies have long been an issue in need of reform. But the mass creation of people fleeing their countries for safe havens in Europe are the direct result of US/NATO war policies in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Serbia, Syria, etc., policies supported by Republicans and Democrats alike and seconded by their lapdogs in Europe.
The same is true for immigration here in the U.S.A. where immigration policy has long been in need of reform that neither party would undertake, but the main contingent of immigrants entering this country comes here to escape horrendous conditions in their home countries due in great part to U.S. foreign policies in support of repressive regimes and economic policies favoring the rich amid U.S. efforts to control Latin America. Without those immigrants, the U.S. economy would collapse.
But Vance’s speech is a minor part of my argument here.
The real issue is Trump and the question of whether or not he is for real in his efforts for peace in Ukraine. I am very skeptical and think it is justified.
I am convinced that the US/NATO war against Russia will not be ending unless NATO is dissolved, which Trump is not proposing. He only wishes to strengthen NATO with European money, not that of the U.S. NATO’s only raison d’être is to destroy Russia as an independent country and create regime change there through multiple means. This has always been so. This is why NATO has existed for so long and has expanded. Open warfare in Ukraine is just one means among many they have used over the years. You can end the overt war and continue the covert.
If NATO is not dissolved, the undermining of Russia will continue under Trump, who seems to recognize that the proxy war is lost on the battlefield, a fact obvious for years despite U.S. government and mainstream media propaganda to the contrary – propaganda so blatantly false that it raises questions about people’s gullibility. How many foreign leaders does such media need to call the new Hitlers before people wise up?
Trump’s theatrical antics will persist, however, and Trump and Putin will probably eventually meet and some deal may be struck on Russia’s terms, but if Russia doesn’t want to be tricked again, it should beware the possibility of a Trump Trojan horse.
Apropos today, in 1964 and then in 1965, the great French sociologist Jacques Ellul published his classic studies. First came The Technological Society to be quickly followed by Propaganda, linked books in which he brilliantly shed an early light on what we now find everywhere – a digital world where propaganda is vital for the state’s functioning and where words like democracy, truth, and fact yield to the technologue’s magic wand.
Another French social thinker, Paul Virilio, spoke of the information bomb, the glut of information produced by digital media and the Internet. One key aspect of this marriage is speed, Virilio’s specialty being dromology, the study of speed. It is worth noting how fast Trump has acted in his first month in office. This is no doubt aided and abetted by his right-hand man Elon Musk, Mr. X., Mr. Space Shot, Mr. Digital World himself, who is prominently displayed by Trump’s side at every photo op. Unlike the Biden warmongers who presented themselves in a more circumspect manner while propagandizing the American public, Trump makes it very clear that digital technology is his key to rule. And flooding the information superhighway with a rapid-fire series of orders and pronouncements is presented as government efficiency at its finest. But things happen so fast one can’t keep pace with them.
Elon Musk and Peter Thiel are two technological billionaires who should be considered crucial to Trump’s plans. As Ellul’s work makes clear, such men are key to effective propaganda. How can anyone consider such men benign supporters of democracy and justice?
I think the talk of a Trump revolution in favor of peace and democracy is hyperbolically irresponsible. It is unworthy of good journalism that requires prudence and patience when the powerful pitch their deals. The propaganda from the Biden administration and their mainstream media accomplices should have taught everyone that. But the appeal of a savior is very powerful.
You know, ‘if it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn’t, it ain’t. That’s logic.’
Compos mentis was missing in the Oval Office on Monday morning. French President Emmanuel Macron recognized it, and was so pleased, he repeatedly said: “Thank you, dear Donald”.
The answers to press questions given by President Donald Trump, sitting beside Macron, revealed that Trump doesn’t understand what end-of-war terms President Vladimir Putin has announced, nor the substance of the conversations, back channel and front in Riyadh, which have been going on between the Russians and Trump’s representatives.
In the 28-minute morning presser, Trump spoke in repeated slogans except for a handful of new briefing points he was given by his staff: the President stressed he has no points of difference with the French, the other Europeans, or NATO on how to negotiate an end to the Ukraine war. “There was great unity in that room”, Trump claimed of the first round of meetings with the Macron delegation, which included a videolink to other G7 leaders.
“Take back some of the land”, Trump then claimed after being asked what end-of-war terms in the Ukraine he has discussed with Macron. “We’ll see if we get some land back”, Trump repeated.
Asked if he planned to go to Moscow on May 9, Trump revealed he does not know the significance of the May 9 celebration in Russia. “If this all gets settled out, sure I would go, and he could come here, too. I don’t know Ninth of May, no – I, err, that’s pretty soon. At the appropriate time I would go to Moscow…Within weeks. I think we could end it within weeks if we’re smart. If we’re not smart, it’ll keep going…” Trump revealed, however, that he has given up his effort to hold a summit meeting with Putin without preparatory agreement of terms for an end of the Ukraine war.
In the Oval Office, and in a simultaneous social media post, Trump repeated his interest in getting “payback” for US war spending in the Ukraine by negotiating a “rare earths” agreement. “I emphasized”, the media post said, “the importance of the vital ‘Critical Minerals and Rare-Earths Deal’ between the United States and Ukraine, which we hope will be signed very soon! This deal, which is an ‘Economic Partnership’, will ensure the American people recoup the Tens of Billions of Dollars and Military Equipment sent to Ukraine, while also helping Ukraine’s economy grow as this Brutal and Savage War comes to an end. At the same time, I am in serious discussions with President Vladimir Putin of Russia concerning the ending of the War, and also major Economic Development transactions which will take place between the United States and Russia. Talks are proceeding very well!”
In repeating to Macron his preoccupation with “rare earths”, Trump revealed in the Oval Office that he has no idea of the geography of the minerals he is negotiating to take over, so that “we get our money back over a period of time. But it is also beneficial to their economy, to them as a country.” Trump does not comprehend that the minerals — “rare earths and other things”, he called them — are mostly located, no longer in Ukraine but in the four new provinces of Russia and on the seabed off Russian Crimea.
Trump also revealed he has no idea of how his proposed US investment in the minerals would be protected and by whom.
Reporters pressed to see if the minerals agreement is subterfuge for a US security pledge to the Kiev regime, substituting for NATO membership. Asked explicitly if the minerals deal will engage a US security guarantee for the Ukraine, Trump answered: “Well, uhh, it’ll be — Europe is going to make sure nothing happens. I don’t think it’s going to be much of a problem. I think once we settle, ahhh, there’s going to be no more war in Ukraine. You’re not go – uhhh, it’s not going to be a very big problem. That’s going to be the least of it.”
Several hours later, when the French president was asked at the second press conference after the talks had concluded, Macron hinted at a division and combination of military “deterrence capacity” between European and US forces which, he said, is a “turning point in my view, and one of the great areas of progress we have made during this trip.” Trump was uncomprehending; he did not remember what Macron had been saying over lunch.
From evidence in Moscow of talks on Trump’s priority “major Economic Development transactions”, Putin has promoted his negotiator, Kirill Dmitriev, to ministerial rank with the title “Special Representative of the President of Russia for Investment and Economic Cooperation with Foreign Countries.” The text of the decree was signed on Sunday evening.
The Kremlin was asked if Dmitriev has been promoted to ministerial rank, and if in future negotiations with the Americans he will be equal in precedence with Foreign Minister Lavrov and Presidential Assistant Yury Ushakov, the Kremlin spokesman said: “I don’t know.”
Dmitriev was talkative in Riyadh on February 18 on the prospects for the return to Russia of US businesses, product brand-names, and investors. But on the US agreement with Kiev for takeover of coal, iron ore, oil, gas and other resources in Novorossiya and the Crimea, Dmitriev has been silent.Late on Monday evening at his country residence, Putin called in a reporter to respond to the Oval Office record. “We would be ready to offer [cooperation] and our American partners, when I say partners, I mean not only administrative and government structures, but also companies – if they showed interest in working together… We would be happy to work with any foreign partners, including those of American ones. Yes, by the way, as for the new territories, the same thing: we are ready to attract foreign partners, and the so-called new our historical territories, who have returned to the Russian Federation, there are also reserves certain. We are ready with our foreign partners, including with American ones, work there too.”
The display of Trump’s incomprehension was emphasized by Macron who prompted him at several points. Click to follow the 28-minute Oval Office press conference: https://x.com/ Note the presence at right of Vice President J.D. Vance. Sitting next to him was Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Behind them was Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. Bessent made a single remark; Vance and Rubio remained silent.
Replying to a question of whether he is preparing to abandon the Ukraine, Trump insisted: “No, we’re going to help Ukraine like nobody’s ever helped Ukraine before.”
He then became confused when asked what form this US help would take. “European troops may go into Ukraine as peacemakers [sic]…I don’t think that’s going to be a problem.” Asked if such a European force would have US backing, he said: “Well, we’re going to have a backing of some sort. Obviously, the European countries are going to be involved. And, errr, I don’t think you are going to need much backing. It’s not going to be a problem. Once an agreement is signed, Russia is going to get back to its business, and Ukraine and Europe are going to get back to their business. I don’t think it’s going to be a problem.”
“We’re trying to do some economic development deals with Russia. They have a lot of things we want, and we’ll see – I mean, I don’t know if that will come to fruition. But we’d love to be able to do that. We could — you know, they have massive rare earth – it’s actually the largest, in terms of land, it’s by far the largest country. And they have very valuable things we could use, and we have things they could use, and it would be very good if we could do that.”
As Trump stumbled over what he could remember and was trying to say, his staff published a tweet on the Truth Social platform, repeating Trump’s idée fixe on rare earth minerals, and insulting Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau once again.
It is apparent that if Trump’s staff and advisers have drawn his attention to the US Geological Survey (USGS) tabulation of rare earth mineral reserves by country, Trump cannot remember. The table published in January 2025 shows that China leads in both production and reserves; that Russia trails in fifth place; and that the Ukraine’s rare earth reserves are minuscule by comparison.
RARE EARTH MINERAL PRODUCTION AND RESERVES, BY COUNTRY, JANUARY 2025
In Putin’s response to the Trump tweet, the Russian president corrected Trump’s geography: “we have an order of magnitude – I want to emphasize this – an order of magnitude more resources of this kind than in Ukraine. Russia is one of the undisputed leaders in the reserves of these rare earth metals. We have them in the North – in Murmansk, in the Caucasus – in the Kabardino-Balkaria, in the Far East, in the Irkutsk region, and in Yakutia, in Tuva. These are quite capital-intensive investments, projects capital-intensive. We would be happy to work with any foreign partners, including those of American ones… Pavel Zarubin: In the new regions too? Vladimir Putin: Yes, of course.”
Following further talks with Macron over lunch at the White House, a second press conference was held. This ran for 43 minutes. Trump began by reading from a script which repeated the slogans of his Oval Office presentation. Click to follow here.
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_icClkj0Eo The White House House has released the videotape, but after almost 24 hours, it has issued no transcript. There is also no official White House listing of the US officials who participated in the talks.
Trump continued to repeat himself. Then Macron made the only detailed disclosure of what agreements he and Trump had reached during the day. “Can you confirm there is an agreement,” a French reporter asked, “to send European peacekeeping troops? Will France participate in that? How many troops? What will they be doing?”
“Well,” Trump began, “I guess, this is a little strange question”. He then avoided answering, speaking instead for the third time in the day on the restoration of the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. “I was there. I saw the work. I’m very good at construction. I know good construction and I know bad construction. They did a beautiful job, and this man has to be given a lot of credit for that.”
Macron responded directly to the question of the end-of-war settlement. He said there had been three areas of discussion on which Trump and the US delegation had agreed during the day at the White House. The first, Macron said, was the terms Vladimir Zelensky will sign in a few days’ time on US takeover of Ukrainian minerals. The second was the sequence of truce, ceasefire, and peace settlement which Trump agreed his negotiators will pursue with the Russians. The third agreement with Trump, according to Macron, was “a clear American message that the US as an ally is ready to provide that solidarity for that approach. That is a turning point in my view. And that is one of the great areas of progress we have made during this trip. And during this discussion.”
What Macron meant is an idea he said he has already worked out with British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer for preserving the Ukraine politically and territorially with a combination of the NATO forces currently on the Ukrainian battlefield, in a change of deployment and engagement conditions.
“When it comes to troops,” Macron said, “in the past, a year ago specifically, we saw a reason to talk about sending troops for strategic reasons. Today, when we talk about troops, we are talking about sending them in after we have negotiated a lasting peace…. Then at that point … not to go to the front lines, not to go into occupied territory, but as a show of support for — to show we have a negotiated peace, signed by both sides, and that is a peace we will preserve. So these will be peaceful deployments of troops, not for combat. These will be deployments of an assurance force.”
Macron implied that Trump had agreed to provide US military backing for this “assurance force” in the Ukraine. During the talks the US Secretary of Defense, Peter Hegseth, was absent; he was hosting the Saudi Defense Minister at the Pentagon instead.
In his finale at the White House, Macron concluded: “The real change now, compared to 2014, is that we have this deterrence capacity on the American side. We have the capacity for engagement on the European side. And that’s something we are going to continue working on together.”
Trump was unable to respond to the details, nor to the strategic point Macron was claiming Trump has now agreed for a NATO-type military guarantee including US “deterrence capacity” inside the Ukraine. “Emmanuel,” Trump stopped the press conference, ” thank you very much. Great job. And it’s been wonderful being with you. Say hello to your beautiful wife, and we will see you again soon. “
NOTE: In his new interview, Putin made a pitch for US investment in low-cost Russian aluminium production as a counter to Trump’s raised tariffs on the imported metal from Canada and to the European Union’s new sanctions on exports of Russian aluminium.
Russian aluminium is controlled by the oligarch, Oleg Deripaska. For the archive on the metal, click. For the history of Deripaska, read the book.
Left, Oleg Deripaska with President Putin; right, the history of Deripaska’s business practices, including his attempt to assassinate me and then expel me from Russia. The book is available here.
“If it is decided to open the American market for our [aluminium] producers,” Putin said, “then we could sell about two million tonnes in the US market. This would not significantly affect the formation of the price, but, in my opinion, it would still have a restraining effect for the stabilization of prices. In addition, and most importantly in my opinion, is that we could, together with American companies, think about a joint work in this area. For example, in the Krasnoyarsk Territory in the Soviet time there were plans to build a new hydroelectric power plant and create additional production of aluminium production. Aluminium is before everything, energy, and preferably cheap energy. Hydropower is cheap, and among other things, it is also environmentally friendly.” Putin implied that Deripaska’s Rusal is already negotiating with US counterparts. “Yes, some of our companies are in contact with each other and such projects are discussed.”
The Deep State Wins Again: All the Ways ‘We the People’ Keep Losing Our Freedoms
John & Nisha Whitehead
February 19, 2025
“We’re gonna win so much, you may even get tired of winning. And you’ll say, ‘Please, please. It’s too much winning. We can’t take it anymore. Mr. President, it’s too much.’”—Donald Trump
Almost one month into the Trump presidency, and the Constitution and the entire section on the various branches of government and how they work together are still missing from the White House website.
This is no small thing.
This omission, deliberate or inadvertent, speaks volumes about the priorities of this current administration. It also explains a lot about the legal mindset that is driving the Trump train, which continues to push forward with a theory of unitary executive power.
You know what is not driving the Trump government? Any sense that it is bound by the rule of law, i.e, the U.S. Constitution. As Trump recently declared, “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law.”
Then again, Trump has never made any pretense of his aspirations to rule as a strongman. As the Washington Postreports:
In 2017, he claimed “an absolute right to do what I want with the Justice Department.” In 2019, he claimed that Article II of the Constitution gave him “the right to do whatever I want as president.” In 2020, he said he could override state and local public health orders related to the coronavirus pandemic by saying: “When somebody is the president of the United States, the authority is total. And that’s the way it’s got to be. It’s total.” In 2022, he said that purported voter fraud in the 2020 election “allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution.” In 2023, he mused that he would be a dictator, but only on Day One of his presidency. And a year ago, he argued that presidents should have total immunity from criminal prosecution, even for “EVENTS THAT ‘CROSS THE LINE.’ ”
Listen, when someone shows you who they are, believe them.
Then again, maybe the majority of Americans just don’t care about the Constitution anymore.
Maybe all they care about are the “endless wins” that the Trump administration never ceases to claim for itself, but if we’re being brutally honest about the state of the country, “we the people” are on a solid losing streak.
While the team colors and the police state’s outward allegiances may have changed, from a constitutional perspective, we’re still losing in all the ways that matter, and the Deep State is still winning.
Indeed, far from protecting our freedoms, the Trump administration is taking the Deep State’s unconstitutional disregard for civil liberties to new extremes.
When you step away from the polarizing rhetoric and government spin long enough to look at the many ways in which the American police state is continuing to lockdown our freedoms, you’ll notice that not much has changed for the better.
Has the Trump administration put an end to the police state’s use of surveillance on the American people? Has it scaled back the deployment of military forces domestically in violation of Posse Comitatus? Has it ceased the government’s war on cash? Has it stepped back from the NDAA’s threat of indefinite detentions? Has it de-militarized the police? Has it kicked the oligarchs out of the government’s inner circle? Has it been transparent and accountable in all of its dealings?
The answer to all of those questions is a resounding “no.”
Rather than minimizing the power of the police state, the Trump administration appears to be doubling down on its commitment to police state tactics of fear, intimidation and brutality.
Consider for yourselves.
Free speech is still being undermined. The First Amendment prohibits the government from suppressing free speech activities by the public, the media, protesters, religious individuals, or by restricting the right of the people to assemble and associate with one another, yet we no longer have any real freedom of speech. We are moving fast down a slippery slope to an authoritarian society in which the only opinions, ideas and speech expressed are the ones permitted by the government and its corporate cohorts. In more and more cases, the government is declaring war on what should be protected political speech whenever it challenges the government’s power, reveals the government’s corruption, exposes the government’s lies, and encourages the citizenry to push back against the government’s many injustices. The ramifications are so far-reaching as to render almost every American who criticizes the government an extremist in word, deed, thought or by association. Although President Trump issued an executive order denouncing government censorship, primarily for speech with which he agrees, his administration has ostensibly engaged in a campaign of intimidation and coercion against news organizations that dare to disagree with or criticize his administration, as well as whistleblowers. Likewise, under the guise of fighting politically correct DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) policies and cancel culture, the Trump administration is engaging in its own campaign to cancel out expressive activities and content of which it disapproves, including anti-war protests.
We’re still being subjected to expansive surveillance. All of the monitoring tools and weapons in the government’s surveillance arsenal that are being used to identify, track and target those on the Trump’s administration’s enemies list—facial recognition, biometrics, license plate readers, fusion centers, cell phone location tracking, etc.—can and will be used against the American people. AI surveillance harnesses the power of artificial intelligence and widespread surveillance technology to do what the police state lacks the manpower and resources to do efficiently or effectively: be everywhere, watch everyone and everything, monitor, identify, catalogue, cross-check, cross-reference, and collude. Everything that was once private is now up for grabs to the right buyer. With every new AI surveillance technology that is adopted and deployed without any regard for privacy, Fourth Amendment rights and due process, the rights of the citizenry are being marginalized, undermined and eviscerated.
The government’s police powers are still being weaponized. With Trump claiming the power to target anyone or any group he perceives as a “threat,” i.e., an “enemy from within,” anyone who disagrees with the government could be placed on a government watch list. Having transformed local law enforcement into extensions of the military, the Department of Homeland Security, the Justice Department and the FBI are turning the nation’s police officers into techno-warriors, complete with iris scanners, body scanners, thermal imaging Doppler radar devices, facial recognition programs, license plate readers, cell phone extraction software, Stingray devices and so much more.
Americans are still being treated as suspects. The groundwork has been laid for a new kind of government where it won’t matter if you’re innocent or guilty, whether you’re a threat to the nation, or even if you’re a citizen. What will matter is what the government—or whoever happens to be calling the shots at the time—thinks. And if the powers-that-be think you’re a threat to the nation and should be locked up, then you’ll be locked up with no access to the protections our Constitution provides. Having launched a precrime program during his first administration, the Trump administration would have no qualms about using AI predictive and surveillance technologies to classify, segregate and flag the populace.
We’re still unofficially under martial law. We have what the founders feared most: a “standing” or permanent army on American soil. This de facto standing army is made up of weaponized, militarized domestic police forces which look like, dress like, and act like the military; are armed with guns, ammunition and military-style equipment; are authorized to make arrests; and are trained in military tactics. With Trump having pledged to deploy the military domestically to work in conjunction with local police to address domestic threats, including political enemies, dissenters and immigrants, the American homeland is increasingly being transformed into a battlefield.
We’re still being flagged based on our viewpoints, activities and associations. The government has a growing list—shared with fusion centers and law enforcement agencies—of ideologies, behaviors, affiliations and other characteristics that could flag someone as suspicious and result in their being labeled potential enemies of the state. Before long, every household in America will be flagged as a threat and assigned a threat score. It’s just a matter of time before you find yourself wrongly accused, investigated and confronted by police based on a data-driven algorithm or risk assessment culled together by a computer program run by artificial intelligence.
Police shootings of unarmed citizens will continue. In the wake of Trump’s decision to reverse and revoke many of the policies intended to implement police reform and discourage police misconduct and stem the time of police brutality, we can expect the use of excessive force by police to continue unabated.
We still don’t have a government of the people, by the people and for the people. In fact, a study conducted by Princeton and Northwestern University concluded that the U.S. government does not represent the majority of American citizens. Instead, the study found that the government is ruled by the rich and powerful, or the so-called “economic elite.” Moreover, the researchers concluded that policies enacted by this governmental elite nearly always favor special interests and lobbying groups. In other words, we are being ruled by an oligarchy disguised as a democracy, and arguably on our way towards fascism—a form of government where private corporate interests rule, money calls the shots, and the people are seen as mere subjects to be controlled.
We still have an imperial president. Although President Trump has made no secret of his authoritarian impulses, he is not the first president to rule by fiat through the use of executive orders, decrees, memorandums, proclamations, national security directives and legislative signing statements. These unchecked powers enable all sitting president to operate above the law and beyond the reach of the Constitution.
In other words, the seeds of chaos are still being sown, and it’s the U.S. government that will reap the harvest.
My friends, if this is winning, I can’t imagine what losing will look like, but it won’t be pretty.
All of this dismantling of government agencies, weakening of the economy, and fomenting of civil unrest feeds right back into the Deep State’s plot to destabilize the nation.
That’s barely five short years away now, but we’re being moved steadily in that direction.
According to “Megacities: Urban Future, the Emerging Complexity,” the U.S. military plans to use armed forces to solve future domestic political and social problems. What they’re really talking about is martial law, packaged as a well-meaning and overriding concern for the nation’s security.
The training video is only five minutes long, but it says a lot about the government’s mindset, the way its views the citizenry, and the so-called “problems” that the government must be prepared to address in the near future through the use of martial law.
Even more troubling, however, is what this military video doesn’t say about the Constitution, about the rights of the citizenry, and about the dangers of locking down the nation and using the military to address political and social problems.
Be warned: in the future envisioned by the government, we will not be viewed as Republicans or Democrats. Rather, “we the people” will be enemies of the state.
What the government failed to explain was that the domestic terrorists would be of the government’s own making, and that “we the people” would become enemy #1.
We’re already enemies of the state.
You want to bring about real change? Start by wresting back control of our government from the oligarchs, technocrats and Deep State operatives who are still running the show.
Reject the propaganda and the polarizing rhetoric and the “us vs. them” tactics that reduce the mass power of the populace to warring, powerless factions.
Find common ground with your fellow citizens and push back against the government’s brutality, inhumanity, greed, corruption and power grabs.
Be dangerous in the best way possible: by thinking for yourself, by refusing to be silenced, by choosing sensible solutions over political expediency and bureaucracy.
As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, the solution to what ails this country is really not that complicated: decency, compassion, common sense, generosity balanced by fiscal responsibility, fairness, a commitment to freedom principles, and a firm rejection of the craven, partisan politics of the Beltway elites who have laid the groundwork for the Deep State’s ongoing authoritarian coup d’etat.
President Putin with Trump (2019) (by Presidential Press and Information Office (Михаил Метцель, ТАСС) | Wikimedia Commons
By Patrick Lawrence / Original to ScheerPost
This is the second of two essays considering President Trump’s unfolding offensive against the institutions and agencies comprising the deep state — the permanent state or the invisible government, as it is also commonly known. The first in this series is here.
Trump’s telephone conversation with the Russian president, which he disclosed at noon Wednesday, Feb. 12, lasted 90 minutes. Trump was quick to note that the exchange marked the start of negotiations to bring the Biden regime’s proxy war in Ukraine, three years running as of Feb. 24, to an end. But there was much more to the conversation, as Trump and the Kremlin described it. Here is how Trump cast the call on his Truth Social platform:
I just had a lengthy and highly productive phone call with President Vladimir Putin of Russia. We discussed Ukraine, the Middle East, Energy, Artificial Intelligence, the power of the Dollar, and various other subjects. We both reflected on the Great History of our Nations, and the fact that we fought so successfully together in World War II, remembering that Russia lost tens of millions of people, and we, likewise, lost so many! We each talked about the strengths of our respective Nations, and the great benefit that we will someday have in working together. But first, as we both agreed, we want to stop the millions of deaths taking place in the War with Russia/Ukraine. President Putin even used my very strong Campaign motto of, “COMMON SENSE….”
Since the telephone call, of course, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and other Trump officials have met in Riyadh with Russian counterparts, effectively serving as sherpas in advance of a Trump–Putin summit at some point this spring, if all goes to plan. I read this as a preliminary but important consolidation of Trump’s demarche: The more progress, the better the president is protected from deep state subversions. Trump’s swiftly advancing demarche in relations with Russia, we ought to note, requires that we cast his campaign against the deep state in a broader context. Sunday’s elections in Germany are the most immediate case in point. Exit polls available at writing indicate that, as long and widely expected, the Christian Democratic Union under the leadership of Friedrich Merz, a committed Europeanist, will form the next government.
But Merz will not form it alone. The CDU and the Christian Social Union, its conservative cousin with its strongest base in Bavaria, appear to have commanded a combined 29% of the vote. To understand this likely result, we have to put it against the 19% to 20% — again, according to the polls — that goes to Alternativ für Deutschland, the party of conservative populists that stands against precisely the neoliberal ideology Trump and his people are attacking at home. The CDU, like the Social Democrats (who lost big Sunday) and other mainstream parties, has vowed never to invite AfD — now Germany’s No. 2 party — into a coalition government. This means the CDU will either have to relent on this commitment — unlikely at the moment — or German politics are about to drift, messily enough, further in the post-democratic direction. Either way, the political representatives of Germany’s version of the deep state will remain under siege. “We have won it,” Merz declared in Berlin Sunday evening. Not quite, I would say. Not really. Not at all, actually.
We have to consider Trump’s war on the deep state, I mean to say, as something of a global phenomenon, or at least a phenomenon evident throughout the Western post-democracies. Among AfD’s core positions, those that win the party votes, are its opposition to excessive immigration and to the wasteful war in Ukraine, and the need to repair ties with the Russian Federation. In these aspects, AfD’s political combat bears a close resemblance to Trump’s.
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Restoring ties with Russia and negotiating a settlement of the Ukraine war would be big-enough blows to the deep state’s interests. Russophobia is a deep state perennial, and Ukraine has been the centerpiece these past years of the MICIMATT’s unceasing campaign to subvert the Russian Federation. But the other items on Trump’s list of topics discussed with Putin are not to be dismissed as knick-knacks. Taken together, they indicate Trump’s intention to end the Biden regime’s project to reduce Russia to pariah status by way of total isolation in the community of nations.
“The great history of our nations,” “the great benefit that we will someday have in working together:” This is a comprehensive restoration project, the neo-détente Trump favored during his first term with a lot of additional bulk to it. Implicit in Trump’s rhetoric is an assumption of equality deep staters such as Hillary Clinton have purposely dismissed. (Remember Barack Obama’s condescending description of Russia as a minor regional power?) In the bargain — I especially appreciate this — Trump acknowledged Russia’s role in the Allies’ 1945 victory over the Reich, which U.S. propagandists have disgracefully sought to erase from history at least since John Kerry’s years as Obama’s secretary of state.
The implications here are huge. The Europeans are in a state of shock — Europanic, we may as well start calling it — having sold their souls, their economies, and the well-being of their citizens to the Biden regime’s sanctions program and its cynical use of Ukraine as a battering ram at Russia’s borders. What now for them? Volodymyr Zelensky is more or less out of the conversation now — and at last. Trump, indeed, just dismissed the autocrat of Kiev as “a dictator.” He, Zelensky, appeared at the Munich Security Conference earlier this month as the helpless, hapless taker-of-orders he has always been but pretended not to be. There is much talk now of Trump’s new, improved plans for Russia decisively altering the post–1945 “order,” and I insist on the quotation marks in this reference.
Trump’s proposal for a new détente with Russia was childishly belittled in mainstream media during his first term, this on both sides of the Atlantic — kissed off as a matter of his affection for a dictator and nothing more. There were no significant policy concerns to be considered, no view of a world beyond the binaries the deep state has cultivated since the 1945 victories. We see the same this time. The New York Times coverage, typical of the rest, has been led by Maggie Haberman and Anton Troianovski, the former covering the White House and the latter the Kremlin, and there is no getting a sound report out of either of them. Read the stuff. It is all about Trump playing to his ego and Putin playing Trump with great dollops of flattery. No mention of the new security structure between Russia and the West, which is at bottom the very large and essential question.
Plus ça change, it seems to me so far.
It is far too early to draw conclusions, but I simply do not see the deep state taking this supinely. I have, indeed, been suspicious of Keith Kellogg, the retired general serving as Trump’s special envoy for Ukraine and Russia, ever since he began, immediately after he was appointed, to bark threats of more sanctions and military action against Russia if Moscow did not accept a settlement favorable to Kiev and its sponsors. In this Kellogg strikes me as just the kind of figure the deep state imposed on Trump last time around — John Bolton, H.R. McMaster, et al — who were in place to subvert every good idea Trump had.
I wonder if Kellogg is not a sign of the subterfuge to come. He was not, I note with approval, on the list of officials Trump dispatched to Riyadh this past week.
And so to more of the watching and waiting.
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Tulsi Gabbard said some surprisingly gutsy things during her hotly contentious confirmation hearings before the Senate Intelligence Committee earlier this month. And in view of those surprising things, it was a surprise again to read that she has won approval of her appointment as Trump’s director of national intelligence. Hmmm. What further surprises are in store as she takes up her post?
In mid–January, when Gabbard abruptly announced that she would support the continuation of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, I was among many who were stunned — full of surprises, Ms. Gabbard — by her capitulation on this important question. Section 702, added to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act in 2008, authorizes the National Security Agency to surveille Americans without first obtaining court-issued warrants. I described Gabbard at the time as “a figure who has done some good things but who, as is now evident, has no sound political principles, no intellectual discipline, anything that is not negotiable.” I am short of retreating from this judgment. But as I watched segments of her hearings on C–SPAN, it occurred to me that this conclusion may prove premature, too harsh, or both.
Gabbard gave as good as she got — or better, indeed — as her interlocutors drilled in with the righteous pomposity common when a candidate not in perfect conformity with Washington’s orthodoxies sits opposite them.
Michael Bennet, a Democrat from Colorado, fairly obsessed on whether Gabbard condemned Edward Snowden as a traitor. The exchange turned into one of those infra-dig “Yes or no, yes or no, yes or no?” scenes until Gabbard, who as a congresswoman sponsored a House resolution calling for all charges against Snowden to be dropped, at last responded handily, “The fact is, he also — even as he broke the law — released information that exposed egregious, illegal and unconstitutional programs.”
That seems to have finished off the ultra-clean cut senator from the Rockies.
It was that way on several occasions during Gabbard’s grilling. Here she is on her controversial talks with Bashar al–Assad while serving in Congress at the height of the CIA’s covert op against the Assad regime in Damascus. The transgression in this case was — oh, my goodness — talking to an adversary. I urge readers to consider Gabbard’s riposte thoughtfully. It goes to that 21st century imperative I note from time to time: To see from the perspectives of others is a sine qua non in international relations now.
Gabbard on this theme:
I asked him tough questions about his own regime’s actions, the use of chemical weapons, and the brutal tactics that were being used against his own people…. I believe that leaders — whether you be in Congress or the president of the United States — can benefit greatly by going and engaging boots on the ground, learning and listening and meeting directly with people, whether they be adversaries or friends.
The exchange that truly captivated me, though, concerned Gabbard’s previous statements that the United States in the course of the covert operation to depose Assad, had supported al–Qaeda, the Islamic State, al–Nusra and other savage jihadists of their kind. “What was your motive,” Senator Mark Kelly, the Arizona Democrat, wanted to know, especially since Gabbard’s assertions matched — Gasp! — what the Russians and Iranians were also saying at the U.N. and elsewhere. (Curious, or maybe not at all, that it was the Democrats who wielded the sharpest hatchets here.)
Gabbard in reply:
Senator, as someone who enlisted in the military, specifically because of al–Qaeda’s terrorist attack on 9–11, and committing myself and my life to doing what I could do to defeat these terrorists, it was shocking and a betrayal to me and every person who was killed on 9–11, their families, and my brothers and sisters in uniform. When, as a member of Congress, I learned about President Obama’s dual programs that he had begun, really, to overthrow the regime of Syria and being willing to, through the CIA’s Timber Sycamore program, that now has been made public, of working with and arming and equipping al–Qaeda in an effort to overthrow that regime, starting yet another regime-change war in the Middle East.
DoD train-and-equip program, again, begun under President Obama, is widely known, looked at, and studied, that ultimately resulted in over half a billion dollars being used to train who they called “moderate rebels” but were actually fighters working with and aligned with al–Qaeda’s affiliate on the ground in Syria, all to move forward with their regime change and not acknowledging what was obvious at the time and what has unfortunately born true, which was that a regime-change war in Syria, much like the regime-change wars in Iraq, the toppling of Gaddafi [in Libya, 2011] and Mubarak [in Egypt, 2011], while these were all dictators, would likely result in the rise of Islamist extremists like al–Qaeda taking power….
Immanent critique, masterfully practiced. It was something not much short of brilliant to shove this much truth back down the throats of senators who presumed all the deep state’s lies could be deployed to discredit the candidate. There is more to Gabbard’s exchange with Kelly, and it is so exceptional I link that segment of the hearings here.
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There seems no arguing at this point that Trump decided, during his year in the wilderness of Mar-a–Lago, that, on his return to office, he would pursue a well-aimed, carefully calculated course of action against the deep state in as many of its manifestations as he could take on. Kash Patel, a former federal prosecutor, was confirmed this week as director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and so is the latest of Trump’s nominees preparing to open another line of attack.
Patel’s appointment has two things in common with Gabbard’s. The FBI, like the intelligence apparatus, was at the very center of the deep state plots that more or less neutered Trump’s first term by way of extravagant disinformation campaigns, breaches of law, and various other forms of corruption. And as Patel made generously plain in the weeks before his Senate confirmation hearings, he, like Gabbard, intends to break with his agency’s entrenched norms. Patel, indeed, has just begun a purge that, if it proceeds as he intends, is certain to go well beyond anything Gabbard may manage.
There is the volte-face in relations with Russia, which Trump and his national security people appear to be consolidating at a remarkable pace since the Feb. 12 telephone call with Putin. And there is Trump’s proposal to convene a summit with Putin and Xi Jinping, a sort of 21st century Yalta, at which he would negotiate with the Russian and Chinese presidents to cut their military budgets by 50%.
Trump’s first mention of this latter idea was a passing reference, a couple of sentences, during a press conference that covered sundry other matters. I took this to be another of his many improvisations — impromptu proposals that seem to come spontaneously into his head in the course of one or another kind of public exchange. I assumed it would go about as far as asserting sovereignty over Greenland. Then came The Washington Post report that Pete Hegseth has ordered the Pentagon to find budget reductions of 8% per year for the next five years. Since then The Associated Press has reported that Trump’s defense secretary wants to see $50 billion in cuts — not quite 6% of the Pentagon’s declared budget — during the current fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30.
Taking all this bureaucratic commotion at face value, only deep state denizens could possibly object as a new defense secretary takes a run at the military-industrial monster, or as a new D.N.I. commits to giving the White House “clean” intelligence — clean as in accurate daily briefs untainted as they pass through the soiled mitts of deep state ideologues. And if there is one agency that befouled itself more than any other during the Russiagate years, and again during the operations to keep Trump out of politics and protect Joe Biden from impeachment for his everywhere-you-look corruptions, it is the FBI, from Christopher Wray, its disgraced-in-public director, on down to a lot of special agents.
O.K., three cheers, a lot of people are saying. I would say two, and leave this number open to reduction.
Consider carefully the Hegseth memorandum that went out to top generals and civilian Pentagon officials. There are many categories of expenditure exempted from budget reductions, including but by no means limited to the nuclear modernization project, attack drones, submarines, and — will these Strangeloves never stop?—an “Iron Dome for America.” Hegseth’s declared intent is merely a “realignment” such as we have seen numerous times before.
Two points. One, there are those commentators who now cast Trump as some kind of “revolutionary.” These people should take a long walk and reconsider their thoughts: Pete Hegseth and his boss are not in the business of dismantling the imperium — that last, best hope of which the late Chalmers Johnson wrote. Two, the military-industrial complex has more arms than one of those exotic Buddhist bronzes you see in museums. All 435 congressional districts, every legislator on Capitol Hill, the spooks, the Pentagon itself, the weapons contractors, who knows how many lobbyists: They all have an interest in keeping the MIC ticking over just as it is. Is Hegseth powerful enough to overcome the vigorous resistance that will come from these powerful quarters? What — our question right now — is his bureaucratic constituency such that he will get this done?
It was interesting, as that Colorado senator was heckling Tulsi Gabbard about her view of Edward Snowden, to see the social media posts Snowden sent from Russia. Just say it, he said (I paraphrase) in addressing Gabbard. Just tell them yes, I’m a traitor. It will get you confirmed. This makes perfect sense if you review the confirmation hearings of, say Antony Blinken, as he stood as Biden’s nominee to serve as secretary of state. These hearings are somewhere between rituals and political showmanship. I watched the Blinken proceedings back then on C–SPAN. Such a load of horse droppings I have rarely heard: None of the commitments he made to the assembled senators — diplomacy first, military action last; constant consultation with Congress, etc. — was ever fulfilled and never was he called on any of it.
Gabbard, as earlier recounted, stood her ground and protected her integrity on the Snowden question. But — a big “but” here — her capitulation on Section 702, which she had previously sought to repeal during her years in Congress, remains a critical betrayal of principle, vastly more serious than the Snowden business for the D.N.I.
As to Patel, he presents a determined figure as he speaks publicly about the need to shovel a lot of manure out of the horse barn Wray and others have made of the FBI. Prior to his nomination, Patel declared rather flatly his intention to shut down the FBI’s building in Washington and turn it into “a museum of the deep state.” It does not get much more pointed. And on Friday he announced plans to disperse a thousand special agents from the D.C. headquarters to field offices across the country.
Patel is a lawyer: He is sure to remain within the bounds of the law as he goes at this. But it is an open question altogether whether he will clean out the agency or the agency will, so to say, clean him out. In my read, the deeper Patel goes into the FBI’s dark corners, the more likely he is to encounter resistance comparably fierce to what Hegseth is surely going to find the deeper he drills into the Pentagon budget.
The Trump-as-revolutionary routine is, as we used to say, very high school. Way too overblown. In the matter of the deep state, we have to take the president and his people one question at a time for now. My cheers go to Russia, and an end to the war in Ukraine. These advances are the most consequential to date and, it seems to me, have the best chance of withstanding the counterattacks we are simply wise to expect.
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