\nby Chuck Baldwin<\/p>\n
The maniacal, Machiavellian, murderous monstrosities of the Trump White House fall upon the world like a monsoon. Small private boats continue to be bombed by Pete Hegseth and the new\u00a0Department of War Crimes<\/i>. The Trump-backed gangsters in Tel Aviv continue to slaughter innocent people in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon and Syria. The Trump-backed ISIS head choppers continue to murder Christians and Alawites. And now, in an act of brazen piracy, Trump seizes a Venezuelan oil tanker in international waters.<\/p>\n
Under the U.S. Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ), piracy and murder are punishable by life in prison or death. And prison is exactly where Donald Trump, Pete Hegseth and Admiral Mitch Bradley belong. Then again, that\u2019s where Joe Biden, Barack Obama and G.W. Bush also belong.<\/p>\n
Kevin Barrett writes:<\/a><\/p>\n If you\u2019ve been following Trump\u2019s build-up for war on Venezuela, and are experiencing feelings of d\u00e9j\u00e0 vu\u2014specifically, the uncanny premonition that it\u2019s 2003 all over again\u2014your feelings are fully justified. Like George W. Bush in 2003, Trump is amassing forces off foreign shores in preparation for an invasion of an oil rich sovereign nation. And like his predecessor, Trump is working overtime to sell the war under ludicrously false pretenses.<\/p>\n Like Bush Jr. in 2003, Trump is mendaciously hyperventilating about a nonexistent but terrifying-sounding threat. For Bush, it was mythical Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. For Trump, it\u2019s another kind of alleged \u201cchemical weapon\u201d: fentanyl. In both cases, the link between the planned US invasion and the pretext is purely imaginary.<\/p>\n There was never any credible evidence that the relatively stable, prosperous, but sanctions-crippled pre-2003 Iraq possessed an arsenal of chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons. That story was pure propaganda, the product of overheated neoconservative imaginations. The neocons knew that to stampede the public into war, they needed to invent a terrifying big lie. \u201cFacing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof\u2014the smoking gun\u2014that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud,\u201d Bush famously\u00a0intoned<\/b><\/a>. In other words,\u00a0who needs proof? Who needs evidence? Let\u2019s just launch a huge war, slaughter hundreds of thousands of people, and ruin a whole nation, based on preposterous accusations backed up by nothing at all.<\/i><\/p>\n Trump\u2019s claims about Venezuelan fentanyl are every bit as ludicrous as Bush\u2019s WMD flim-flam. Trump has killed more than 80 people on the 20 boats his military has summarily blown up in extrajudicial killings that amount to premeditated first degree murder. But the Killer-in-Chief has not presented a shred of evidence that even one of those boats was carrying fentanyl. And we can safely surmise that they were not, for the obvious reason that almost all fentanyl consumed in the USA is manufactured in Mexico, not Venezuela or Colombia! Trump, whose cronies say has never read a book in his life, is no geographer, so he presumably doesn\u2019t realize that Mexico lies immediately south of the US, in North America, while Venezuela and Colombia are in South America and cannot have anything to do with Mexico-produced fentanyl.<\/p>\n Trump’s unhinged lies on the subject almost beggar belief. In one speech, Trump claimed that \u201cevery Venezuelan (fentanyl) boat\u201d\u2014of which there are none, as we have seen\u2014\u201ckills 25,000 people.\u201d In another speech, the orange baboon stated that each boat he blows up \u201csaves 25,000 American lives.\u201d These are bizarre claims for many reasons, not the least of which is that if they were true, it would only take three drug boats to kill the roughly 75,000 Americans who overdose on Fentanyl every year. Since Trump has blown up 20 boats, he claims to have saved 500,000 people. Those numbers obviously do not add up. But they don\u2019t need to, since there are no Venezuelan fentanyl boats. The whole thing is preposterous hogwash, a gross insult to the intelligence of the American people, the US armed forces, and the world.<\/p>\n While he murders innocent fishermen and boaters, Trump pardons actual drug smugglers. On December 3,\u00a0Trump pardoned former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hern\u00e1ndez<\/b><\/a>, who was serving a 45-year sentence for smuggling hundreds of tons of cocaine into the United States. Even Republicans were shocked and baffled by the pardon, which revealed the whole \u201cwar on drugs\u201d pretext for war on Venezuela as a total sham.<\/p>\n Hear! Hear!<\/p>\n However, even if the boats were carrying illegal narcotics, it is still murder to kill them without due process. The term \u201cnarco-terrorist\u201d is not a legal term. The court recognizes no such person. It is a political term to salve the conscience of the politicians and con the American people into allowing the politicians to violate the law. Drug enforcement is a police matter, not a military matter.<\/p>\n If Trump and Hegseth have the lawful right to kill unarmed, unnamed, unconfirmed \u201cnarco-terrorists\u201d in the ocean nearly 2,000 miles away from the United States, then they must have the lawful right to kill unarmed, unnamed, unconfirmed \u201cnarco-terrorists\u201d driving a truck travelling along I-95 in Florida. Or if DEA agents spot what they believe is a \u201cdrug-deal\u201d taking place in downtown Atlanta, Georgia, they have the lawful right to take out their firearms and kill the suspects on site. Right? WRONG!<\/p>\n America is a nation of laws, NOT men. That is Americanism 101. Under the laws of the United States, no man\u2014not even the President of the United States\u2014is above the law.<\/p>\n Scott Ritter<\/a>\u00a0states the facts of this matter in typical Ritter plain-speak:<\/p>\n If I hear one more vet bro or some wannabe tough guy who calls himself a Reagan conservative say, \u201cThis is what I voted for.\u201d You do understand that doesn’t matter, that your vote doesn’t change the law. I mean, that’s why we have a constitution, so that we have a rule of law and mob rule won’t sweep in. That’s why we protect due process. We [protect] people who have been accused of crimes from lynch mobs.<\/p>\n So, I don’t care that this is what you voted for. Nobody who has any authority cares either. For those people who say, \u201cThey’re drug runners.\u201d It doesn’t matter what you think. It’s the law. You do understand that narco-trafficking is not a death penalty. We intercept guys running drugs all the time in the United States and on the seas. We don’t kill them. We arrest them. What you’re saying is because they’re moving drugs, now we get to kill them. That’s not what US law is. And there are no military rules that allow you to do this.<\/p>\n Even Hegseth himself\u2014back before he became\u00a0Secretary of War Crimes<\/i>\u00a0under Trump\u2019s\u00a0Goldfinger Age<\/i>\u00a0of America\u2014publicly articulated the responsibility of the military to disobey unlawful orders and Trump\u2019s propensity to disregard the law.<\/p>\n Back when\u00a0Pete Hegseth<\/a>\u00a0was a Fox News host and\u00a0Donald Trump<\/a>\u00a0was a seemingly long-shot presidential candidate, Hegseth warned of Trump’s rhetoric about the\u00a0military not following the law<\/a>.<\/p>\n Back in the 2016 election, Trump struck controversy and even criticism from Hegseth when he indicated the military would follow his orders, even on illegal activities like\u00a0torture<\/a>. Here is what to know:<\/p>\n Hegseth: ‘<\/b>Donald Trump<\/b><\/a>\u00a0is oftentimes about Donald Trump’\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n In the 2016 Republican primaries, Trump said he supported waterboarding and that the military would carry out his orders. Multiple international organizations consider waterboarding torture and, therefore, illegal,\u00a0according to NPR<\/a>.<\/p>\n “If I say do it, they’re gonna do it,” he said. “That’s what leadership is all about.”<\/p>\n Trump received a great deal of pushback on his position and later walked back his position, saying he would not ask the military to disobey the law. Hegseth discussed Trump’s remarks on\u00a0Megyn Kelly’s show<\/a>\u00a0<\/u>on Fox News the following day, as shown in video archives.<\/p>\n “It’s typical Trump, all bluster, very little substance. He talked a tough game,” Hegseth said. “He’s an armchair tough guy.”<\/p>\n (Source)<\/a><\/p>\n In the truest definition, Donald Trump is a mad man; he is a full-fledged psychopath. The world is not safe\u2014America is not safe\u2014as long as this malignant narcissist is in the White House. At no point during the Cold War was the threat of global nuclear war greater than it is right now under the presidency of Donald J. Trump. Pick the enemy: Russia, Iran, China or Venezuela. Trump is a wholesale war provocateur. And Trump\u2019s psychotic nature means he is incapable of feeling the emotions of concern, compassion or consequence about any of it.<\/p>\n Take a look at Trump\u2019s\u00a0Grand Ballroom<\/i>\u00a0being constructed over the ruins of the East Wing of the White House and the\u00a0Arc de Trump<\/i><\/a>\u00a0that the Orange Man is planning to build: Caesaresque monuments to Donald Trump\u2019s indefatigable narcissism.<\/p>\n