Wednesday, May 03, 2017

First it's FAKE NEWS and now FAKE HISTORY by The Wayne Madsen Report



First it's FAKE NEWS and now FAKE HISTORY by The Wayne Madsen Report
Trump World is turning into the worst sort of LSD trip imaginable. First, Donald Trump's Twitter tirades lambasted in all capital letters -- meaning shouting -- FAKE NEWS, which in his mind is any press account with which he disagrees. Now, Trump is re-inventing history, suggesting in an interview that what we know from history books; first-hand accounts, including handwritten letters and diaries; and countless films and television documentaries is FAKE HISTORY. According to Trump, Andrew Jackson, a vicious slave owner and genocidaire of Native Americans, could have prevented the Civil War, even though Jackson died sixteen years before the war began.

The attempt to re-write history to fit some preconceived notion did not start with Trump. That distinction largely falls to Lynne Cheney, who pushed for changes in public school history curricula as early as 1994. Ms. Cheney decided that American school children were exposed to too many "grim and gloomy" subjects like the Ku Klux Klan and Joe McCarthy's Communist witch hunts. Cheney favors a revised view of history, one that paints the antebellum and Reconstruction South as some sort of Uncle Remus paradise, where whites and blacks got along just fine -- with the enforced stipulation that blacks "knew their place."  And for good measure, school children should be taught that all that nonsense about George Washington and the cherry tree and tossing a half dollar across the Potomac River, coupled with young Honest Abe Lincoln's numerous ten-mile foot treks to the library to return books on time, really occurred. So, for Cheney and her like-minded white country club biddies, school children should learn all about Uncle Remus and Uncle Tom but never Frederick Douglass -- who Trump believes is still alive -- and Dred Scott.

In his recent interview, Trump said, "The Civil War, if you think about it, why? People don’t ask the question, but why was there the Civil War? Why could that one not have been worked out?” Trump believes that Americans don't ask enough questions about the Civil War, as if the thousands of books on the subject do not exist and one of the most-watched Public Broadcasting System series, "The Civil War," never aired. Trump obviously never walked into a bookstore when the Civil War series was first aired. Americans bought books on the Civil War by the hundreds of thousands and, eventually, into the millions. It is doubtful that Trump has ever read a book, including the "Art of the Deal" that was ghost-written for him. One has to wonder where Trump gets his "Fractured Fairy Tale" version of history.

Obviously, in Trump's alternate universe, Jackson would have mollified the southern states to the point they would not have wanted to secede from the Union. What Trump does not appreciate is that when Jackson, like Abraham Lincoln, was faced with a South Carolina that decided to go its own way, Jackson threatened military force.

In 1832, South Carolina state legislators nullified a federal tariff within its borders. The issue of states' rights was so intense, Jackson's Vice President, John C. Calhoun of South Carolina, resigned in protest of Jackson's dispatch of federal troops into South Carolina. Jackson would have likely been tougher on the 1850 Southern secessionists than Lincoln.

Faced with South Carolina's Nullification Act in 1832, Jackson said to a South Carolina U.S. Representative in very non-Lincolnesque language, "if one drop of blood be shed there in defiance of the laws of the United States, I will hang the first man of them I can get my hands on to the first tree I can find.” In fact, one of those who Jackson threatened to hang for treason was former Vice President Calhoun, who was appointed a U.S. Senator from South Carolina by the secessionist governor of the state.

Far from assuaging the South, if Jackson were president in 1860, instead of Lincoln, the Confederacy would not have only been put down quickly by force, but Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, and their allies would have all been hanged as traitors. However, with Jackson as president, slavery would have survived intact. Perhaps that is Trump's perfect alternate history: a Southern rebellion put down with a bloodbath meted out to the insurrectionists but with the benefit of the continuation of slavery.

In his view of Jackson and the Civil War, it is obvious that Trump despises Lincoln. In fact, a portrait of Jackson now hangs in the Oval Office with Lincoln nowhere in sight. This is a view of history that Lynne Cheney must love. She has bemoaned the attention that Harriet Tubman and her Underground Railroad receives in American history textbooks. Cheney falsely believes that American black revolutionary soldier Crispus Attucks receives more attention in history books than Paul Revere. Cheney, like Trump, are just dog whistling to racists across the country.



Then there is Trump's other FAKE HISTORY escapade. After buying a northern Virginia golf course in 2009, now known as the Trump National Golf Club, he had erected along the banks of the Potomac River a flagpole and plaque commemorating the Civil War's "battle" at "Blood River." The only problem is that there was never any such battle on the site of the plaque, which actually reads: The River of Blood: Many great American soldiers, both of the North and South, died at this spot, "The Rapids," on the Potomac River. The casualties were so great that the water would turn red and thus became known as "The River of Blood." It is my great honor to have preserved this important section of the Potomac River. - Donald John Trump.
The only recorded Battle of Blood River occurred in 1838 between warring Zulu tribes and involving Boer mercenaries on the banks of the Ncome River in Zululand, South Africa, years before the U.S. Civil War and on another continent.

Trump's "River of Blood" Civil War battlefield site. Phony as a three-dollar bill.
The battlefield site is as fake as Kellyanne Conway's Massacre of Bowling Green and White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer's Atlanta terror attack, both allegedly carried out by jihadist terrorists. The problem for the country is that Trump has so many brain-dead sycophantic loyalists, that they will always believe in the Blood River battle and the Bowling Green and Atlanta massacres. But, just as with Trump believing that Barack Obama was born in Kenya and that Lee Harvey Oswald had breakfast with Rafael Cruz in New Orleans in August 1963, many Trump fans believe that NASA never landed twelve astronauts on the moon and that the Earth is flat.

Trump's view of foreign history is as skewed and bewildering as his command of American history. In an interview with Fox News, Trump criticized Presidents Clinton and Obama for being "outplayed" by "this gentleman" in North Korea, meaning Kim Jong Un. However, Clinton's negotiations with North Korea were under the rule of Kim Jong Un's grandfather, Kim Il Sung, while Obama negotiated with Kim Jong Un's father Kim Jong Il. Apparently, Trump believes that the 33-year old Kim Jong Un has been in power in North Korea for the last 25 years.

During the miserable eight years of George W. Bush, this editor often riled up Washington's literati with the simple statement that George H. W. Bush signed the Americans with Disabilities Act and chose Dan Quayle as his vice president to prepare America for its first mentally-retarded president. In retrospect, the charge was unfair. Donald Trump now makes George W. Bush look like an American version of Rome's Pliny the Younger -- a thoughtful statesman.

Monday, May 01, 2017

Happy Loyalty Day By The Wayne Madsen Report




Happy Loyalty Day
By The Wayne Madsen Report

This past Friday, President Trump proclaimed today, May 1, Loyalty Day. Trump urged all Americans "to observe this day with ceremonies in schools and other public places, including reciting the Pledge of Allegiance." He also requested "all government officials to display the flag of the United States on all government buildings and grounds on May 1."

Before everyone mounts the ramparts to decry what appears to be another dictatorial move by Trump, it should be noted that all of Trump's predecessors from Eisenhower to Obama, have proclaimed May 1 as Loyalty Day.

Loyalty Day, first celebrated in 1921 as "Americanization Day" and recreated during the anti-Communist Red Scare of the 1950s, was intended by Wall Street and its lap dogs in the American labor movement to be a rejection of the international workers' holiday of May Day. Instead, Americans and Canadians are forced to mark "Labor Day" in September, a day that does not really honor labor or workers but marks the commercial end of summer with a three-day weekend of store sales.

What passes for the American "Left" has gladly gone along every year, since 1958, with the celebration of the fascism-overtoned Loyalty Day. Rather than demand that May 1 be celebrated as a labor holiday as it is in France, Britain, Australia, Japan, India, China, Brazil, Jamaica, Bahamas, Hong Kong, Lebanon, South Korea, Denmark, Egypt, South Africa, Israel, Morocco, Poland, Ireland, and every other country in the world, minus Canada, the Democrats, Bernie Sanders's "independent socialists," the Green Party, and the American labor movement are happy to celebrate a holiday, with overtones of Nazi Germany, in lieu of international May Day.

Trump's pronouncement of Loyalty Day does come with some troubling baggage that is unique to his administration. On April 30, White House chief of staff Reince Priebus told ABC News that Trump was considering suing the news media for stories unfavorable to the president. This announcement, coming on the heels of Trump's congratulatory phone call to Turkish President Tayyip Recep Erdogan on the occasion of the passage of a referendum in favor of establishing a virtual dictatorship in Turkey and Trump's invitation to the dictator-like Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte to visit the White House, should have all Americans worried this Loyalty Day.

During the election campaign, Trump repeatedly said he would "open up our libel laws" in order to "have people sue you like you’ve never got sued before." Since libel laws are controlled by the states, Trump would have to amend the First Amendment of the Constitution to enable the president to sue the press. It might come as a surprise to Mr. Trump, that journalists are the only profession protected by the Constitution. Even the powers of the president are limited by the Constitution in word and spirit.

Image result for the man in the high castle
Around the world, May 1 is labor and workers' day. In the United States, it's Loyalty Day.

Threats of law suits by Trump and his surrogates will not stop this pocket of on-line journalism from continuing to investigate Trump's alleged past, bolstered by civil law suits, of the sexual abuse of female minors. A cardinal goal of independent journalism is to "comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable." Women now in their 30s who claim they were sexually assaulted and raped in 1994 by the very comfortable Trump, along with his very comfortable friend, convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, will continue to find a champion in this web site. Trump brought his personal baggage into the White House and that baggage will eventually be his undoing.

The corporate media can really blame itself for the sorry state it finds itself in. Rather than be confrontational with the Oval Office and West Wing, it has sought to curry favor with the Executive Branch. After all, criticism of the president means no invites to White House state dinners, special junkets on Air Force One's foreign trips, and may even result in forfeiting the all-important daily or "hard" press credential to the White House. Access over journalistic ethics has been the name of the game between the White House Press Corps and the Oval Office for years and under Trump, the situation has become graver than at any time in recent history, including Watergate.

Priebus's warning about Trump suing the press came the day after Trump boycotted the annual White House Correspondents' Association dinner in Washington, DC. It was the first time a president passed on attending the dinner since 1981, when Ronald Reagan failed to show. Reagan has a legitimate reason for not attending as he was still recuperating from a would-be assassin's bullet. Reagan did attend the remaining dinners during his term. So, the only president who stood up the dinner hosts out of pique was Richard Nixon, who failed to attend in 1972 and 1974, the bookend years for the Watergate scandal.

Rather than the usual paparazzi-attracting Hollywood celebrities attending this year's Trumpless dinner, most stayed away. They are fond of criticizing Trump, but rather than demonstrate a show of support to the press, they avoided the dinner, just like Trump. Had Trump and such recent media-crowned celebs as Press Secretary Sean Spicer, presidential aides Kellyanne Conway and Steve Bannon, Generals H. R. McMaster and John Kelly, the creepy and soon-to-be-sacked Hungarian Nazi adviser Sebastian Gorka, and Vice President Mike Pence been present at the gala, so, too, would have been the Hollywood crowd. Because in DC and Hollywood, the power of celebrity is a mutually-attracting force and the Hollywood types, no matter how "liberal," want nothing more than to have a "selfie" taken with a Bannon, Spicer, or Pence. For that reason, Defense Secretary General James "Mad Dog" Mattis broke ranks with the rest of the Trump Cabinet and attended a Friday night pre-party, along with the likes of Susan Rice and Obama body man Reggie Love, at the northwest DC home of the publisher of The Atlantic, a NATO- and globalist-friendly publication.

Leonardo Di Caprio was in DC for Saturday's climate change march. But he flew out of town after lunch. The usual Hollywood watchers at this year's dinner were disappointed, to say the least. Rather than Angeline Jolie, they had to settle for Madeleine Albright. There was no Will Smith, but there was Al Sharpton. This year's dinner did not attract the B List but something further down the totem pole, perhaps the "O" List, as in "over," or the "Y" List, as in "yesterday."


The normally star- and starlet-strewn red carpet at the Washington Hilton hotel, known locally as the "Hinckley Hilton" because President Reagan exited the revolving doors seen in this photograph before he was shot by John Hinckley, was idle at this years correspondents' dinner.

The White House Correspondents' Dinner is a true DC "navel-gazing" event. It is a must for those who want to see and be seen. But, with Trump threatening the independent press with law suits and other forms of intimidation on the eve of Loyalty Day, it would have been nice to see all those Hollywood celebs, who have an opinion about everything from vaccines and Darfur to manatees and blood diamonds, endeavor to make a show of support for the press at its gala annual event. They, like Trump, were no where to be seen.