Month: October 2019

Waving around loaded hints
by Tom Sullivan

Still image from mashup video reportedly shown last week at pro-Trump conference at Trump National Doral Miami. YouTube

The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in 2003 convicted three former media executives from Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines (RTLM) for their role in broadcasting lists of people to be killed in the 1994 Rwandan genocide.

Kennedy Ndahiro, editor of The New Times, wrote in The Atlantic in April this year:

Twenty-five years ago this month, all hell broke loose in my country, which is tucked away in the Great Lakes region of Africa. Hordes of members of the Hutu ethnic majority, armed with machetes, spears, nail-studded clubs, and other rudimentary weapons, moved house to house in villages, hunting for Tutsis, the second largest of Rwanda’s three ethnic groups. The radio station RTLM, allied with leaders of the government, had been inciting Hutus against the Tutsi minority, repeatedly describing the latter as inyenzi, or “cockroaches,” and as inzoka, or “snakes.” The station, unfortunately, had many listeners.

The promoters of genocide used other metaphors to turn people against their neighbors. Hutus, by reputation, are shorter than Tutsis; radio broadcasters also urged Hutus to “cut down the tall trees.”

With that in mind, The New York Times reported this incident Sunday night:

A video depicting a macabre scene of a fake President Trump shooting, stabbing and brutally assaulting members of the news media and his political opponents was shown at a conference for his supporters at his Miami resort last week, according to footage obtained by The New York Times.

Several of Mr. Trump’s top surrogates — including his son Donald Trump Jr., his former spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders and the governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis — were scheduled to speak at the three-day conference, which was held by a pro-Trump group, American Priority, at Trump National Doral Miami. Ms. Sanders and a person close to Mr. Trump’s son said on Sunday that they did not see the video at the conference.

The video, which includes the logo for Mr. Trump’s 2020 re-election campaign, comprises a series of internet memes. The most violent clip shows Mr. Trump’s head superimposed on the body of a man opening fire inside the “Church of Fake News” on parishioners who have the faces of his critics or the logos of media organizations superimposed on their bodies. It appears to be an edited scene of a church massacre from the 2014 dark comedy film “Kingsman: The Secret Service.”

Politico adds details of “targets” from the video:

Besides journalists, other targets depicted include the late John McCain, California Reps. Adam Schiff and Maxine Waters, Utah Sen. Mitt Romney, and former Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.

The Trump character in the video shoots, stab and beats his victims; at one point, he sets Bernie Sanders’ head on fire. Other past and present election rivals also are depicted.

NBC News reports a video matching this description appeared on YouTube in September 2018.

The White House Correspondents Association responded in a statement:

“All Americans should condemn this depiction of violence directed toward journalists and the President’s political opponents. We have previously told the President his rhetoric could incite violence. Now we call on him and everybody associated with this conference to denounce this video and affirm that violence has no place in our society.”

Organizers denounced the video and claim it was part of a “meme exhibit” submitted by third parties. An American Priorities spokesman told NBC News, “The organizers of #AMPFest19 were not even aware of the video until they were contacted by the New York Times.” A Trump campaign spokesman, Tim Murtaugh, told the Times he had no knowledge of the video and said, “That video was not produced by the campaign, and we do not condone violence.”

Someone at the campaign ought to alert the boss:

“I want to know who’s the person who gave the whistle-blower the information because that’s close to a spy,” Mr. Trump said. “You know what we used to do in the old days when we were smart with spies and treason, right? We used to handle it a little differently than we do now.”

A federal judge ruled in April 2017 people were injured as a “direct and proximate result” of Trump’s comments. ABC News in August found “at least 36 criminal cases where Trump was invoked in direct connection with violent acts, threats of violence or allegations of assault.” The report continues:

In nine cases, perpetrators hailed Trump in the midst or immediate aftermath of physically attacking innocent victims. In another 10 cases, perpetrators cheered or defended Trump while taunting or threatening others. And in another 10 cases, Trump and his rhetoric were cited in court to explain a defendant’s violent or threatening behavior.

Seven cases involved violent or threatening acts perpetrated in defiance of Trump, with many of them targeting Trump’s allies in Congress. But the vast majority of the cases — 29 of the 36 — reflect someone echoing presidential rhetoric, not protesting it.

ABC News could not find a single criminal case filed in federal or state court where an act of violence or threat was made in the name of President Barack Obama or President George W. Bush.

Police arrested a Minnesota Trump supporter last week for waving a loaded gun at another driver whose car displayed an Elizabeth Warren bumper sticker.

“You know what we used to do in the old days when we were smart with spies and treason, right?”

His followers have taken the hint.

A little bit of good news in a dark time

by digby

This is from Mark Goldberg’s UN Dispatch:

Ethiopia’s young Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed Ali has been awarded the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize. In conferring the honor, the Nobel Prize Committee said the Ethiopian leader was awarded the prize “for his efforts to achieve peace and international cooperation, and in particular for his decisive initiative to resolve the border conflict with neighboring Eritrea.”

These peace efforts between Ethiopia and Eritrea began in earnest in 2018, culminating in a truly remarkable moment 0n June 26 that year, when Eritrean leaders flew to the capitol of Ethiopia for peace talks. This was the first a high level meeting between these erstwhile foes in nearly twenty years. In the late 1990s, the two countries fought a brutal war and despite a ceasefire agreement, the two countries remained actively hostile to each other. But in June 2018, that suddenly–and swiftly– began to change. Peace was breaking out in the Horn of Africa — and the peace agreement they signed has held.

This can help explain why Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has won the Nobel Peace Prize.

At the time, I spoke with Michael Woldermairam, an Assistant Professor of International Relations and Political Science at the Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University who explained how these two irreconcilable foes so quickly came to the peace table. What changed, he explained, was a change in leadership in Ethiopia that brought the reformer Abiy to power in April 2018.

If you have 20 minutes and want to learn the background to the Ethiopia-Eritrea conflict and how this peace agreement came to life, have a listen to the Global Dispatches podcast episode.

I highly recommend listening if you have the time. It’s a bright spot and one from which the world can learn. Reformers can make a difference.

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How Wingnut Bizarro World is making us all unsafe

by digby

This piece by Michelle Goldberg in the NY Times is the most informative Ukraine explainer I’ve seen:

In 2014, Ukraine’s wildly corrupt president, Viktor Yanukovych, fled to Russia after mass protests on the Maidan, Kiev’s central square. During what Ukrainians call the Revolution of Dignity, police snipers killed dozens of demonstrators. In the revolution’s aftermath, a number of young idealists decided to plunge into politics, hoping to reform their troubled country from the inside. One of them was Serhiy Leshchenko, at the time perhaps the country’s most famous investigative journalist.

The American political scientist Francis Fukuyama had encouraged Leshchenko and some of his friends to run for Parliament. He’d met Leshchenko in 2013, when the journalist took part in a three-week summer course run by Fukuyama at Stanford that aims to teach activists from around the world about building democratic institutions. “After the Maidan revolution, I thought that it was particularly important that all these people in civil society actually go into the government,” Fukuyama said.

Many of them did. That October, Leshchenko, a lanky, bearded hipster with a passion for rave culture, became part of a cadre of Western-oriented newcomers elected to Parliament, even as he continued to work as a journalist exposing corruption. This year, after Volodymyr Zelensky won the presidential election, Leshchenko advised him during the transition.

Then Rudy Giuliani began attacking Leshchenko as a conspirator against America.

In 2016, Leshchenko had helped expose the “black ledger,” an accounting book of hundreds of pages found in Yanukovych’s former party headquarters. Among its many entries, it showed $12.7 million in secret payments to Paul Manafort. At the time, Manafort was running Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, but before that, he was one of Yanukovych’s most important advisers.

One of the reasons Manafort is in federal prison is that he failed to disclose or pay taxes on millions of dollars from Ukraine. But if you believe Giuliani, the black ledger was part of a plot to damage Trump.

During a Fox News appearance on May 10, Giuliani described the ledger as a “falsely created book” and Leshchenko as part of a group of “enemies of the president, in some cases enemies of the United States.” Last month, in an epic, ranting interview on CNN, he accused Ukraine’s leading anti-corruption organization, the Anti-Corruption Action Center, or AntAC, of developing “all of the dirty information that ended up being a false document that was created in order to incriminate Manafort.”

In Giuliani’s fevered alternative reality, Ukraine’s most stalwart foes of corruption are actually corruption’s embodiment. Deeply compromised figures with vendettas against the activists — particularly the ex-prosecutors Viktor Shokin and Yuriy Lutsenko — are transformed into heroes.

This addled, through-the-looking glass fantasy came to drive American foreign policy in Ukraine. Trump withdrew the American ambassador to the country, Marie Yovanovitch, whom reformers saw as their champion. He withheld military aid that Ukraine desperately needed, while asking Zelensky to do him a “favor” and investigate deranged fictions about Ukrainian interference in American elections, as well as Joe Biden and his son, Hunter.

Given how much Ukraine depends on American support, Giuliani’s smears made it politically impossible for Leshchenko, who left Parliament in August, to continue advising Zelensky. Now, with Ukraine at the center of a world-historical international scandal, he is stupefied to find himself defamed by powerful forces in the United States, once the world’s strongest backer of those fighting for democracy in his country.

“I could imagine that maybe some Ukrainian prosecutors will create a fake case against me, or some criminals will attack me, or I could be attacked by trolls on social media,” Leshchenko told me when I met him in a Kiev cafe. “But I never imagined before that my real problems will appear because of the statement of the personal attorney of the American president.”

If America can be said to have a foreign policy at this debased stage of the Trump administration, it mostly consists of sucking up to strongmen while betraying everyone who ever believed in America’s putative ideals. Trump has given Turkey his blessing to assault the Syrian Kurds, America’s crucial allies against ISIS. In June, he reportedly promised China that he wouldn’t speak out in favor of pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong, some of whom have been carrying American flags, as long as trade talks progressed.

Here in Ukraine, a country locked in a proxy war with Russia, coping with a deluge of disinformation and propaganda and struggling to transcend a history of corruption, reformers are trying to figure out what it means when the American president sides against them.

Pro-Western reformers, the Ukrainian philosopher Volodymyr Yermolenko told me, had seen the United States as a “a perfect democracy functioning very well,” with an admirable system of checks and balances. “And now this image is crumbling and that’s very dangerous.”

The Ukrainians I spoke to aren’t naïve; they understand that America, like any other country, generally acts from self-interest rather than high principle. But there was a time when America at least viewed the projection of democratic values as being in its self-interest. That gave liberals in countries like Ukraine leverage against recalcitrant officials.

“The majority of the reforms, especially on anti-corruption, were passed because there was a very strong demand from civil society, and there was the I.M.F. and the U.S. Embassy pushing it hard,” said Oleksandra Ustinova, a former board member of AntAC who was elected to Parliament this year.

The U.S. also provided a degree of protection to local activists and journalists. When Lutsenko was prosecutor general in Ukraine — a position roughly equivalent to our attorney general — he would, said Ustinova, harass anti-corruption campaigners with spurious criminal investigations. “The U.S. ambassador and the E.U. ambassador were going out publicly saying you cannot do this,” Ustinova said.

Now that’s all changed. As The New York Times reported, after Trump recalled the U.S. ambassador, Lutsenko gloated to the head of AntAC that he had “eliminated your roof,” using Russian mafia slang for guardian.

“We’ve been exporting our corruption to them, rather than trying to export good governance,” said Fukuyama.

When he said that, Fukuyama may not have known how right he was. A few hours after I met Leshchenko, news broke that two Ukrainian-born clients of Giuliani, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, had been arrested on charges of campaign finance crimes as they were preparing to leave the United States with one-way tickets.

According to an indictment, the two “sought to advance their personal financial interests and the political interests of at least one Ukrainian government official with whom they were working.” (In one of those preposterously on-the-nose details that make the Trump era feel like a computer simulation on the fritz, Parnas had a company called Fraud Guarantee.)

As soon as news of the indictment broke, I messaged Leshchenko, who guessed that the unnamed Ukrainian official was Lutsenko. It was a natural assumption; it had already been reported that Parnas and Fruman connected Giuliani with Lutsenko, who had been feeding Trump’s lawyer conspiracy theories about the journalist, the former American ambassador and Joe Biden.

Sure enough, on Saturday NBC News reported that Lutsenko was the official in the indictment. Yovanovitch might have been referring to Lutsenko when she said, in her Friday congressional testimony, that “individuals who have been named in the press as contacts of Mr. Giuliani may well have believed that their personal financial ambitions were stymied by our anti-corruption policy in Ukraine.”

Thanks to Giuliani’s escapades, the domestic grudges of a crooked Ukrainian prosecutor have blossomed into a scandal that’s likely to lead to the impeachment of an American president. Federal prosecutors are now investigating whether Giuliani himself broke the law.

Lutsenko has since left Ukraine for London, and Ukrainian authorities have opened a criminal case against him for allegedly abusing his authority in an unrelated matter. In a recent interview, he told reporters for The Times that in speaking to Giuliani, he sought to tell Trump’s lawyer what he wanted to hear. “I understood very well what would interest them,” Lutsenko said, adding, “I have 23 years in politics.”

He should be seen as wholly discredited, but in our polarized, frenzied media environment, lies never really go away. Trump’s defenders will continue to take Lutsenko’s stories at face value. Worse, long after America has forgotten them, these slanders, which Trump and Giuliani magnified to gargantuan scale, will linger in Ukraine, undermining the people our country once sought to help.

“This smear campaign circulates everywhere: in American media, then in Ukrainian media,” said Leshchenko. Those in Ukraine who want impunity for corruption, he said, can now say, “Look at these anti-corruption activists and journalists and members of Parliament. They are not welcome in the U.S., so don’t listen to them. So it suppresses our reputation here in Ukraine as well.”

Ukrainians are no strangers to post-truth politics. The first time I ever heard the term “fake news” was in 2015, when I learned about the Ukrainian fact-checking organization StopFake. It was created by a group of journalists to push back against the torrents of Russian disinformation sowing chaos in the country’s politics. At the time, it would have been hard to imagine that the United States would soon join Russia as a source of weaponized untruth in Ukraine.

“This is very new, because now it seems it’s not only Russia influencing Ukrainian politics, but Ukraine is also influencing the U.S., and things happening in the U.S. are greatly influencing Ukraine,” Yevhen Fedchenko, one of StopFake’s founders, told me. “So it becomes much more complicated.”

Here’s what’s not complicated. Throughout our history, America has committed many sins against democracy around the world, but we used to be on the right side in Ukraine. Not anymore. As one former U.S. diplomat said to me recently, “The beacon has gone out.” We’re with the oligarchs now.

Indeed we are. And not just in Ukraine.

And I want to warn the Villagers and the Masters of the Universe and all the handwringing Republicans and Centrist Democrats that before they start having a fit over the systemic reforms being touted by Democrats, they need to reckon with this. It didn’t have to happen. They have been profiting from it. They could have been part of the solution but they refused to do it.

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I don’t think this “show of support” is what people think it is

by digby

The NYT:

President Trump had lunch on Saturday with Rudolph W. Giuliani amid revelations that prosecutors were investigating Mr. Giuliani for possible lobbying violations and speculation that his position as the president’s personal lawyer was in jeopardy. 

The lunch, at Mr. Trump’s golf course in Sterling, Va., was among several shows of the president’s support for Mr. Giuliani on Saturday. They seemed meant to tamp down questions about Mr. Giuliani’s status with a client famous for distancing himself from advisers when they encounter legal problems of their own. 

Mr. Trump, during a Saturday night appearance on Fox News, called Mr. Giuliani “a great gentleman” and said he is still his lawyer. “I know nothing about him being under investigation. I can’t imagine it,” he told the host Jeanine Pirro.

Uhm, if it was supposed to be a show of support wouldn’t you think they’d have had a photo op? Announced it to the press? Included some other people who could testify to how much faith Trump has in his personal lawyer?

I’m going to guess that this was actually a private meeting, in person at a Trump property, to get their stories straight. They couldn’t keep it secret so they’ve told people it was a “show of support.”

In reality, Trump has only been tweeting and saying that he doesn’t know anything about Rudy’s “clients” and that he’s a good man even though he’s a little rough around the edges.

He can’t completely kick him to the curb because he knows way too much. He’ll treat him like Manafort — both men pretty much blackmailing him in order to keep the presidential pardon on the table.

Giuliani has now officially entered the pantheon of partisan hatchetmen like G. Gordon Liddy. Of course Liddy went to prison and made a living as a heroic, tightlipped loyalist. I doubt Rudy will be willing to do that. He’s a lot older than Liddy and prison is a dangerous place for a big-mouthed former prosecutor.

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Trump meltdown in living color

by digby

Trump has been melting down. For those of you who are too busy to follow his rantings or just can’t stand to hear his voice (I feel you) these clips from past few days are among the most grotesque moments of the historically disgusting Trump era. And that’s saying something:

Awful, open, undisguised racism (again) — another event that Republicans in Congress will pretend not to have seen. https://t.co/mdgR1jMFTL

— Rep. Don Beyer (@RepDonBeyer) October 12, 2019

Here are some more disgusting personal attacks on Ilhan Omar:

My goodness — Trump is now diving into conspiracy theories about Ilhan Omar’s marital status he read on a right-wing blog. Completely unhinged. pic.twitter.com/kjy3qCwK5i

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 11, 2019

This is particularly gross:

At his rally in Minneapolis, Donald Trump did an impression of former FBI agent Peter Strzok having an orgasm pic.twitter.com/JLms1il0xp

— Edward Hardy (@EdwardTHardy) October 11, 2019

He did it again the next night. And all of his “Christian” cult followers laughed and cheered and screamed in delight.

Trump’s biggest applause line is saying the word “bullshit.” We’re living through Idiocracy. pic.twitter.com/CH1E2abC5b

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 12, 2019

On Pelosi and Sanders

Trump mocks Bernie Sanders for having a heart attack pic.twitter.com/1sphsh8oyM

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 12, 2019

lunacy:

Trump pushes a ludicrous conspiracy theory about the media “turning their lights off so fast” when he starts talking about “the fake news.” In the next breath he suggests he may break the law and serve as many as 16 years in office. In the next breath he uses a racial slur. pic.twitter.com/2Rheo61w13

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 12, 2019

Here he is on Judge Jeanine Pirro’s Fox News propaganda hour on Friday:

Trump on Turkey: “They have been fighting with the Kurds for many years, for centuries. It’s like, some people go to lunch. That’s what they do, they fight with the Kurds. It’s time for to us leave. We’re gonna leave.” pic.twitter.com/NJfcDTZPau

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 13, 2019

He’s still that addled old know-it-all at the end of the bar. Nothing will ever change that.

And then on Saturday he went to the “Values Voters” Conference:

Trump is delivering an extreme speech: “On every front, the ultra-left is waging war on the values shared by everyone in this room … They are trying to use the courts to rewrite the laws, undermine democracy, and force through an agenda they cannot pass at the ballot box.” pic.twitter.com/2ZCoXk2BFs

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 12, 2019

Trump’s whining about impeachment is barely coherent pic.twitter.com/meunnff6mn

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 12, 2019

Here’s Trump mimicking a Middle Eastern accent while telling a story about how he ignored calls from world leaders advising him not to declare Jerusalem Israel’s capital before he went ahead and did it pic.twitter.com/Kua8fX20KV

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 13, 2019

Trump claims “the Kurds were going to fight the Iraqis about a year and a half ago” — the implication being that this justifies his decision to abandon them now pic.twitter.com/Qc7tNUMxyU

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 13, 2019

Here’s Trump making fun of Adam Schiff’s “pencil neck,” then saying, “you would not be impressed with him physically.” This is a speech to the Values Voters Summit. #WWJD #BeBest pic.twitter.com/zwLH2HMGGS

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 12, 2019

I noted reporters assumed that because he previously threatened to sue or impeach Pelosi and Schiff, when he said “we’re going after these folks” he meant he was going to file lawsuits.

I don’t think that’s what he meant.

Aaaaand:

Pastor Bruson, praying for Trump: “I ask that you give the president supernatural discernment to know who is trustworthy and who is not. Bring into the light all deception and intrigue. Expose and reverse the plans of those who would harm President Trump and this nation.” pic.twitter.com/NYwHzRvgBn

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 12, 2019

That’s the cult, right there. Don’t underestimate their numbers.

Anyway, those are just a few random clips of Trump’s psychosis just since Thursday. I’ve been watching him closely since he came down that elevator, watching at least 70% of his rallies all the way through.

He is getting worse. There is no doubt.

Update

Today on twitter, total gibberish

Very smart not to be involved in the intense fighting along the Turkish Border, for a change. Those that mistakenly got us into the Middle East Wars are still pushing to fight. They have no idea what a bad decision they have made. Why are they not asking for a Declaration of War?

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 13, 2019

Do you remember two years ago when Iraq was going to fight the Kurds in a different part of Syria. Many people wanted us to fight with the Kurds against Iraq, who we just fought for. I said no, and the Kurds left the fight, twice. Now the same thing is happening with Turkey……

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 13, 2019

…..The Kurds and Turkey have been fighting for many years. Turkey considers the PKK the worst terrorists of all. Others may want to come in and fight for one side or the other. Let them! We are monitoring the situation closely. Endless Wars!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 13, 2019

Dealing with @LindseyGrahamSC and many members of Congress, including Democrats, about imposing powerful Sanctions on Turkey. Treasury is ready to go, additional legislation may be sought. There is great consensus on this. Turkey has asked that it not be done. Stay tuned!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 13, 2019

Basically, he’s publicly giving Russia the green light. (Thumbs up Vladdie!) And it’s clear that he is going to slow-walk sanctions as long as possible. Maybe he’ll lock up some more babies or something to get people looking in a different direction. You certainly cannot count on Graham to hold the line. He’s already licking Trump’s boots for that silly tweet.

You can be sure that if sanctions are imposed they will be with Putin and Erdogon’s full knowledge and cooperation.

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FWIW, more polling on the Democratic presidential primary states

by digby

New CBS polling:


I think this shows that Democrats are both nervous and excited about the race and for good reason.

I have said this before and I’ll say it again. Nobody knows the formula for beating Donald Trump. He is an alien from outer space and he has a cult following that is impervious to all reason. It’s understandable that people believe that beating him is the most important issue but they are rightfully concerned that none of the Democrats will be able to do it no matter how obvious it is that he’s a monster.

So, none of this surprises me.

That is interesting because on all of the issues (other than impeachment, which is simply yes or no) there is no specific policy attached to it. So, I’m not sure what it means except that people really care about those issues and as far as I can tell, all the candidates have these issues at the top of their agenda.

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Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives 

by tristero

What is it about the NY Times and their obsession with diners? Here they go again:

Over lunch at the Frost Cafe, a corner diner in a picturesque pocket of Virginia that President Trump won handily in 2016… [followed by roughly 1800 — 1800!!! —more words that pretend that asking people in diners and steak frys their political opinions is a legitimate way to take the Pulse of the Nation]

At least they could go to a decent diner. My nominee: Bette’s OceanView Diner in Berkeley, CA.  And it’s not just the pancakes, which are indeed sublime. The fried eggs and toast I had there were the best, hands down, I’ve ever eaten. Also:

My guess is that you will have to talk to quite a few regular denizens of Bette’s before you find a Trump apologist.

“You have sold us. This is immoral.”
by Tom Sullivan

An SDF fighter in combat in Raqqa city, 8 June 2017. Photo public domain via VOA/Wikimedia Commons.

One day Donald Trump will discover the word FUBAR and begin using it at his febrile rallies. It perfectly encapsulates what his presidency has done to the United States of America. Naturally, he will apply it to his adversaries instead. You’ve noticed, it’s a thing he does.

U.S. allies in the fight against ISIS are dying in northern Syria. Trump had another of his infamous phone calls with foreign leaders and on this one gave Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan the green light to slaughter them. Ending U.S. support to the Kurds would unleash ethnic cleansing and genocide, critics warned. Turkish-allied Syrian fighters have already posted to social media a video of the executions of bound Kurdish prisoners.

Senior Kurdish political leader Hevrin Khalaf, 35, and her driver are among at least nine civilians the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported executed. Thousands are fleeing for their lives.

The political arm of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) attributes Khalaf’s execution to “Turkish-backed mercenary factions.” The Guardian elaborates:

The proxies are Syrian former rebels who had fought against the regime of the country’s president, Bashar al-Assad, before being co-opted early last year to fight Kurdish groups in the north-western town of Afrin. Some of the rebel factions among the Turkish alliance had previously been supported by the US and Qatar in the early years of the Syrian war.

But as the war morphed into a series of intertwined conflicts and the Syrian opposition steadily disintegrated, rebel alliances shifted. The Arabs now leading the fighting have received widespread training and support from Turkey.

The first video of the killings, posted on the Twitter account of the Ahrar al-Sharqiya rebel group, shows two people in civilian clothes kneeling on the ground as a fighter next to them announces they have been captured by the faction.

In the second, an unidentified fighter opens fire at a person on the ground wearing civilian attire.

The Observatory confirmed the authenticity of the videos but Agence France-Presse could not independently verify them.

A commander of the SDF tells CNN:

“You have given up on us. You are leaving us to be slaughtered,” Gen. Mazloum Kobani Abdi told the Deputy Special Envoy to the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS, William Roebuck, in a meeting Thursday, according to an internal US government readout that has been obtained exclusively by CNN.

“You are not willing to protect the people, but you do not want another force to come and protect us. You have sold us. This is immoral,” Mazloum added.

[…]

Turkey launched its long-threatened incursion into Syria after President Donald Trump ordered a small contingent of about 50 US troops to be pulled back from the border area amid a belief that a Turkish incursion was imminent. Before that, as a confidence building measure with Turkey, the US convinced Kurds to dismantle their defensive fortifications along the border and pull their fighters back. The US said Turkey had agreed to the arrangement which sought to prevent unilateral Turkish military action.

“Trump has helped Turkey kill us,” said Lava Ibrahim, 24. She and her sister emigrated to the U.S. seven years ago and found safety in Columbus, Ohio. On Saturday, they joined hundreds of Kurds outside the White House protesting Trump’s abandonment of their relations. Former neighbors have died. Reuters reports their 70-year-old grandfather had to flee his home.

“He said he’s watching the situation closely, but what is he watching?” Ibrahim said. “We did everything for the United States, and he’s letting us die.”

Protesters are pleading for empathy from a damaged man who has none to give.

Trump’s 2016 voters wanted someone from outside government. Someone with no experience. They got one.

The Guardian reports “at least 750 people with suspected links to Islamic State” have fled a displacement camp in north-east Syria. Turkey’s Trump-assisted offensive could lead to a resurgence of the terrorist state.

Sometime back I created a meme depicting some of the men associated with the invasion of Iraq and the subsequent death and destruction there. That invasion helped create ISIS. Donald Trump claims credit for defeating ISIS. Don’t expect him to take credit for its rebirth.

The occasion may require a new meme featuring Don, Bill, Mike, and Stephen.

Saturday Night at the Movies

What’s on your DVR?

By Dennis Hartley

Years ago, in days of old (pre-internet or cable) when magic filled the air…around this time of year, we ancient folk used to look forward to TV Guide’s “New Fall Season” issue. Granted, one could say the very concept of TV “seasons” is now moot, with a growing wave of cable subscribers “cutting the cord” and saddling up to the digital streaming salad bar to power graze on Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, HBO Now, etc., etc.

But there remain some of us who still subscribe (literally) to the Old Ways. I don’t know, perhaps it’s that tactile sensation of brandishing a remote. Or maybe it’s the warm, special feeling I get when I see my monthly Xfinity “Triple Play” bill of $200+, which not only gives me access to the interwebs and 200 channels (out of which I only watch about 15 with any regularity), but provides me with a good ol’ reliable land line, which keeps me up-to-date on all the latest phone scams (“ Hello! I’m calling from Microsoft.”).

(To which I usually reply, “Eh, what’s that, young feller? Let me go fetch my ear horn!”)

If you dig around, you can still find worthwhile teevee for your viewing pleasure. It does require effort, as you must be willing to hold your nose and sift through a load of offal (read: reality TV overkill) to unearth the odd gem. For anyone who cares, here are my current top 10 Must See TV shows (with a wee bit of off-platform cheating… mea culpa).

Trump’s perfect phone calls

by digby

This AP report about Trump’s famous Ukraine call details his very stable genius method of dealing with foreign leaders.

One individual with firsthand knowledge of how the Trump calls with foreign leaders are handled said the president “hates” such “pre-briefs” and frequently has refused to do them. Trump doesn’t like written background materials either, preferring to handle the calls himself, often in the morning from the residence. Occasionally, while on the phone with foreign heads of state, Trump has handed the receiver to his daughter, Ivanka Trump, so she can talk with the leader, according to this individual.

The person said a six-page pre-brief with attachments was once prepared for Trump before a call to a foreign leader. But that turned out to be too long, as did a single-page version. Preparing pre-brief note cards that offered about three talking points for Trump to make on a call was the norm, according to this person, who feared retribution for describing this process and spoke on condition of anonymity.

The individual said that when Trump is done with the note cards, he often rips them up and tosses them in a burn bag. Staff who handle records have had to retrieve the burn bags from the residence, put the papers out on a table and tape them back together to preserve them as official presidential records, this person said.

A spoiled toddler is running the world.

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