Trump to replace Secretary of State Tillerson with CIA director Pompeo

[SkepticCat]

This seems ominous indeed... another indicator of the nefarious nature of the satanic 'White House' government, as far as I'm concerned.

http://theantimedia.org/white-house-threatens-tillerson-new-york-times/
http://news.antiwar.com/2017/11/30/report-trump-to-oust-tillerson-replace-him-with-mike-pompeo/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rex_Tillerson

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Pompeo

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I don't know anything about Tillerson but Pompeo sounds like a man sooner belonging in a mental institution than in a leadership role in a supposedly peaceful democratic nation - these kinds of view points and rhetoric resemble those of the neocons of the Bush administration era.

Tillerson assured North Korea the US didn’t seek regime change, Trump declared Tillerson to be “wasting his time” on diplomacy, and Pompeo has been advocating aggressive moves against North Korea, which fit more neatly into Trump’s “totally destroy North Korea” threats.

Does war with North Korea sound like a good idea to anyone? What would be the purpose - nuke them to prevent them from building nukes? Would going to war with North Korea 'make the world more safe'? SMH.

Sen. Cotton taking over the CIA is also likely to be controversial, as Cotton is an outspoken supporter of torture. This too is likely to earn him favor with President Trump, who has repeatedly claimed torture “works,” despite assurances from experts to the contrary.

I believe the question of the use of torture should have been raised ages ago (it is not acceptable!) but in light of the revelations of the US government's obvious satanist-Illuminati leanings I feel the issue is more pertinent than ever. A 'democratically elected' president and a CIA director who believe in the value of torture... Hello? Land of the Free? America or Amerikkka?

WikiLeaks
In a 2017 speech addressing the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Pompeo referred to WikiLeaks as "a non-state hostile intelligence service" and described founder Julian Assange as a narcissist, fraud, and coward.

"... we can no longer allow Assange and his colleagues the latitude to use free speech values against us. To give them the space to crush us with misappropriated secrets is a perversion of what our great Constitution stands for. It ends now.... Assange and his ilk make common cause with dictators today. Yes, they try unsuccessfully to cloak themselves and their actions in the language of liberty and privacy; in reality, however, they champion nothing but their own celebrity. Their currency is clickbait; their moral compass, nonexistent. Their mission: personal self-aggrandizement through the destruction of Western values."[52]

Edward Snowden
In March 2014, Pompeo denounced NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden's inclusion in the South by Southwest conference in Austin, Texas, and called for Snowden's invitation to speak via telecast at the annual Texas event to be withdrawn, lest it encourage "lawless behavior" among attendees.[53]

In February 2016, Pompeo said Snowden "should be brought back from Russia and given due process, and I think the proper outcome would be that he would be given a death sentence."[54] But he has spoken in favor of reforming the Federal Records Act, one of the laws under which Snowden was charged, saying it "clearly needs updating to reflect the different ways information is communicated and stored."[55]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Pompeo#cite_note-55

I suppose if you unquestioningly trust the US government you may be OK with Pompeo's statements on the nature of freedom of speech herein.

Assange, the 'narcissistic coward' who apparently must be so narcissistic he's been willing to basically face imprisonment and death threats just for the sake of the publicity.

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So, USA - happy with the policies, personalities of MAGA warmonger Trump and his torture-favoring, death-sentencing cohorts?

 

[DesertRose]

Col. Larry Wilkerson at the Veterans for Peace convention:

 

[Aero]

From what I've been reading. Tillerson has been awful. They are cutting diplomatic ties all over the world, while increasing the military budget. Huh?? That literally makes no sense. He's a businessman, not a leader. So all his policies are probably designed to benefit one person. Him.

How can it get any worse than that? I'm not afraid of any CIA boogeymen. Those guys are lightweights

 

[mecca]

Col. Larry Wilkerson at the Veterans for Peace convention:

That guy's good.

 

[DesertRose]

That guy's good.

....And he is anti-racist....

 

[DesertRose]

Poison the Planet
By Eric Margolis
December 2, 2017
Merry Christmas to one and all from North Korea. Glorious Leader Kim Jong-un unwrapped a wonderful new intercontinental missile, the Hwasong-15, which experts believe might be capable of reaching Los Angeles, New York and Washington, depending on the weight of its nuclear warhead.

This was the big, earth-shaking story until Gen. Michael Flynn’s guilty plea in Washington seemed an even bigger bombshell than North Korea’s nukes. As of now, the Flynn scandal looks like a tempest in a teapot – unless FBI Inquisitors can produce real evidence that the wicked Russians were doing anything more in cahoots with Trump & Co. than all major powers, including the US, routinely do.

As a former French prime minister so well put it, ‘all government is permanent conspiracy.’

The best thing to come out of ‘l’affaire Flynn’ is that this loopy, wildly anti-Muslim general is out of government. But many more cranks and crazies still infest the Trump
After last week’s nasty exchange of tweets between British Prime Minister Theresa May and President Trump, and his posting of spurious anti-Muslim hate films made by Brit neo-Nazis, the depths of this administration’s hatred of Muslims was on view to the world. Previously, it had been kept somewhat below the surface.

Trump, a non-stop viewer of Fox TV `news’, has clearly become a zombie-like follower of Fox’s owner, Rupert Murdoch, who is a notorious hater of Islam and ardent supporter of Israel’s rightwing government. In the Fox view, any bad news about Muslims is good news for Israel – a very foolish way of thinking since the anti-Islamic prejudice now being spread throughout the US, Russia, and Europe is just one step away from 1930’s anti-Semitism.

Back to Glorious Leader Kim. It is astounding that his Hwasong-series missiles work so well. One recalls all those embarrassing US tests of the 1960’s, with missiles toppling over and blowing up or being destroyed right after launch.

Somehow, North Korea’s missiles have become so reliable that their launch is shown on TV, with you know who watching – from a safe distance of course.

A sure-fire way of gauging a missile’s efficiency is studying its tail’s exhaust pattern. The Hwasong-14 and now 15 appear strong, steady and totally effective. How did a threadbare nation of only 25 million people develop such a powerful weapon?

Of course, there were launch failures in the past, and even launch-pad explosions. But the new Hwasong series looks potent and reliable, and has caught Washington’s attention when it is not fussing about Donald Trump. South Korea’s 50 million citizens must have growing admiration for the North while their own government dances to Washington’s tune.

As a long-time military analyst, I suspect that North Korea has had a big helping hand from abroad in engine technology, electronics and systems integration. Who could have provided it? China, Russia, India or Israel.

The first two nations are the logical suspects. Either could have supplied the necessary technology as a very clever way of diverting Washington from its own imperial plans, which are now in disarray.

The Trump administration now has the choice of a total naval blockade of North Korea, mining its ports, and destroying the Yalu River bridges, over which flows oil, food and strategic materials. It sounds simple on paper but North Korea is quite capable of vigorous responses, like bombarding parts of Seoul or mining South Korean and Japanese ports.

It’s not the kind of spitting match in which any thoughtful American leaders ought to become engaged. Over 90% of Americans cannot name or locate the capital of North Korea or explain the reasons for a major war against this strategic but remote nation. But, of course, the US Imperium has been warring in remote Afghanistan for sixteen years for reasons few understand.

Afghanistan can’t shoot back. North Korea now can. Trump has put the US on a path to war in the Korean Peninsula that few want, neoconservatives and crazies aside, and that could poison the entire planet.
source: https://www.lewrockwell.com/2017/12/eric-margolis/kims-big-xmas-gift/

 

[DesertRose]

Lawmakers Are Scrambling to Prevent Trump from Launching a Nuclear War
By Lisa Fuller
December 01, 2017 "Information Clearing House" - Former National Security Council Director Peter Feaver recently told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that “even a single nuclear detonation” could “trigger an escalatory spiral that would lead to civilization-threatening outcomes.”

Two days later, Rep. Adam Smith (D-WA) introduced a bill that could therefore save civilization. The entirety of the No First Use bill reads: “It is the policy of the United States to not use nuclear weapons first.”

The risk of nuclear war is at an all-time high, according to Former U.S. Secretary of Defense William Perry and expert Scott Sagan. Smith’s bill could be one of the most effective ways to mitigate that risk. It would substantially reduce the likelihood that either the U.S. or North Korea would start a war, whether through a pre-meditated attack or as a result of miscalculation.

First, the policy would constrain the Trump administration from launching a preventative nuclear strike on North Korea — a scenario that has become a realistic possibility.

The problem isn’t only that nobody can stop Trump from realizing his long standing desire to use nuclear weapons. It’s also that Trump’s advisers may now be more likely to toss him the nuclear football than to pry it out of his hands.

Top administration officials — including Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, CIA Director Mike Pompeo, National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster, Chief of Staff John Kelly, and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Joseph Dunford — have all voiced support for using a preemptive strike to prevent North Korea from developing the capacity to strike the continental U.S., even while acknowledging the “horrific” ramifications.

As U.S. intelligence indicates that North Korea could attain such capabilities in early 2018, former U.S. General Barry McCaffrey’s predicts that we’ll be at war by summer 2018. North Korea’s latest missile test confirms that they are making rapid progress.

Rep. Ted Lieu and Sen. Edward Markey had enough foresight in January to introduce other legislation intended to prevent Trump from launching a pre-emptive strike. Unfortunately, their bill had too many loopholes to be reliable — including an exception in the event of an “imminent threat.”

Unfortunately, the restriction becomes impotent if the Trump administration uses “elastic definitions of the phrase ‘imminent threat,’” as the Cato Institute’s John Glaser puts it. Given Trump’s propensity for stretching the truth, it’s safe to assume that he considers definitions to be elastic as a general rule.
Smith’s bill, in contrast, allows scant wiggle room. Unless we fall down the Orwellian rabbit hole into a world where “war is peace and freedom is slavery,” it will be difficult to falsely claim that North Korea dropped a nuclear bomb.

Of course, a U.S. pre-emptive strike isn’t the only way to start a war — North Korea could also initiate hostilities. Smith’s bill would reduce the likelihood of that scenario as well.

While the CIA and independent experts agree that Kim Jong-un would only launch a pre-emptive attack if he believed that a U.S. offensive was imminent and unavoidable, the risk of miscalculation remains high. Misunderstandings and computer errors nearly led to nuclear war between the U.S. and the Soviet Union on at least seven occasions during the Cold War.

Given that U.S. and North Korea are not even on speaking terms, the risk of miscalculation is even higher now. Even when Cold War tensions peaked during the Cuban Missile Crisis, President John F. Kennedy and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev were in direct communication.

Plus, it would be understandable if Kim were feeling a little jumpy, given that the U.S. has deployed all of the military assets needed to launch an offensive over the last three months — including aircraft carriers, ships, and submarines armed with missiles, as well as bombers, munitions, and fighter jets — and has been practicing large-scale attacks off the Korean coast.

The most effective way to reduce the chances that Kim Jong-un will press the nuclear button would therefore be to convince him that the U.S. won’t drop the first bomb.

Opponents of Smith’s bill would likely claim that this strategy is counterproductive because it undermines U.S. deterrence capabilities. However, as Senator Ben Cardin points out, this argument is based on Cold War realities, and doesn’t apply to the North Korea crisis: Unlike the Soviet Union, North Korea doesn’t have the ability to obliterate U.S. nuclear assets in a first strike.

There is little reason to believe that the North Korea crisis will de-escalate if we continue on our current trajectory. Sanctions are unlikely to succeed, diplomatic deadlock has set in, and talks have ceased. Trump will continue to spout off threats and other dangerous rhetoric as long as he retains the ability to speak or tweet, and he may well undermine any serious attempts to restart diplomacy.

As long as Trump is in office, therefore, the No First Use bill is our best hope of preventing war.

Our survival may depend on it.


This article was originally published by Foreign Policy In Focus -