An Arms Dealer Says Life Under Trump Is a ‘Win-Win’

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By ERIC ADAMS

DAVID MARKS—NOT HIS real name—is an international arms dealer. He acquires military technology, including weapons, aircraft, tanks, missiles, and computers, on behalf of governmental clients around the globe. He operates legally, working only works with countries that are allied with the West. He has modest homes in two locations around the globe–his primary residence is in Europe–as well as offices that anchor his presence in the countries within which he does business.

Marks closes hundreds of millions of dollars in arms deals every year, taking a single-digit percentage for each as his company’s compensation. He travels monthly around the world to meet clients and governments, brokering deals and conducting due diligence on both the buyers and sellers. He works with large prime contractors, civilian corporations, and small weapons manufacturers. He describes his role as an “outsourcing specialist,” someone who can step in to manage transactions and acquisitions that might be sensitive or politically unpopular.

By virtue of his network of clients and sources, he can offer unique insight into international geopolitics. (He describes his personal politics as centrist, though slightly more right-leaning as he gets older.) I spoke with Marks via a secure communications app to find out what impact the Trump administration might have on global security.

WIRED: First, some background. How do you gather your information when conducting business?

Marks: You establish a network over a long period of time. I have contacts in intelligence, government, commerce, and banking. It behooves you to have a diverse range of sources. They all have their own vantage points, so you use your experience and knowledge about how the world really works, and then balance all of that input so you can gauge things for yourself. You have to judge whether to go ahead with a given deal or deem it too risky. A lot of it has to do with experience and common sense, but also understanding geopolitics and global business. We walk the line in the middle.

What’s an example of a deal that’s too risky for you?

There was an incident a few years ago in the Ukraine—which, I’m sorry to say, is a tough place to do business. We were invited to participate in the procurement of non-military vehicles that were going to be used by a government agency. I had access to extremely good products, and have sold hundreds of these vehicles in the past, so I thought it would be a piece of cake. It’s close to Europe, the Ukraine is our friend, etc. But then I got a phone call from a friend at three-letter US agency: ‘We have actionable intelligence that you might get kidnapped.’ This is a person with 30 years of experience. I don’t take comments lightly from someone like this, so I backed out.

What do you think of the Trump administration so far?

What I see is what I expected to see. The first year is going to be a reality show—and yes the early stuff out of DC is mind-boggling. From a geopolitical perspective, countries know they at least can’t bullshit him the way they could past administrations. If they do try to bullshit him he’ll come at them full-power, so they’re going to have to sit down and negotiate. This scares the crap out of both allies and adversaries.

How will that manifest itself?

There are a lot of niceties and protocols involved in foreign policy and structuring international deals. Trump can’t stay ignorant of those details, and you must respect international laws and protocols, but he’s going to run this like he runs a business. In the last 25 years, international relations deviated from focusing on statecraft to all the politics and niceties. Now there will be more dialogue, lots of back and forth, and this administration will try to find a medium between statecraft and business. We’re going to get a dose of realism, and frankly we need that. Sure, it’s all going to be filtered through the Trump lens, and we don’t really know what that means yet, but we’ll get clarity. I truly believe that.

What are others in the global military community saying about the new administration?

They’re confused. A lot of them don’t know what to expect. Take the fact that he hung up on the Australian prime minister. Contrary to what people might think, I really, really don’t believe he’d act like that if he didn’t feel the need, given his desire to change the tenor of conversations even with our allies. He knows what it means to be President of the United States. But that doesn’t change the fact that people are confused.

How will the arms business in general change?

Trump has been all over the likes of Boeing and Lockheed Martin, telling them to get their act together in terms of pricing and accountability. They used to shoot from the hip when pricing their defense systems, and that’s going to end. The Joint Strike Fighter program—just as a top-level example—has been mind-boggling in this respect. We’ve been lied to, as have our allies, and now those nations are looking elsewhere for their military systems. That makes the US look bad. You just can’t say an airplane is going to cost x and then say oh never mind, it’ll be y. They need to be more fair and even-handed, and they need to not act like we’re the only show in town. Things need to be more rational and business-minded in the defense industry. You cannot keep inflating prices and expect your buyers to pay any price you deem correct.

How do you think your business specifically will be impacted by Trump?

Business will be better in part because of Trump going after a lot of bloat at the higher echelons of the military-industrial complex. This frees up money for broader spending. In terms of political tension, if things stay the same, it’s a win-win proposition—assuming you are fair and deliver your goods and services with a reasonable margin, and don’t gouge prices. If tensions escalate, the US and NATO allies will all need more equipment. If tensions thaw, we will get access to new markets, including the CIS states like Armenia, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine.

Of course, a potential global recession would be a game-changer for everyone, including our business. NATO states will certainly cut spending on military technology, and the business environment would get more difficult and complicated with the general reduction of trade volume.

Have the types of weapons and hardware people have been buying changed, in anticipation of evolving types of conflict? In short, what’s hot these days?

The guns-and-ammo side will always be there. Frankly, Trump and his administration won’t really change anything for our business in that respect. Remember, we only deal with states that are allied with the US, and even there we have clear lines regarding exactly what can and cannot be sold or supplied to friendly states.

Having said that, what is always hot is what we refer to as disruptive technology—smart weapons, missiles, guided weapons, for instance, and any kind of game-changing technology specifically related to any particular conflict. This can be as simple as long-range artillery, advanced anti-tank missiles, or civilian aircraft modified to carry weapons. This is why we need to seriously and strictly control their proliferation, and not let them just “appear” on any battlefield or conflict zone. In the wrong hands, they can have catastrophic effects on society at large, world-wide.

What’s the short-term prognosis?

Everyone is in a holding pattern. People are giving him the benefit of the doubt, and I know myself that everything I’m saying here is nice and in a perfect world. But the truth is that we don’t know what’s going to happen. In US and foreign policy at this point in time, that’s a good thing. It’s not predictable, and our adversaries count on the predictability of US administrations. That predictability has worked to our detriment, and we paid price for that. But now there’s no predictability, and that’s given us kind of a reset button. Everyone is hoping for the best, but we still don’t know what to expect from him. The ball is absolutely in his court.

So should the world be worried?

No, I don’t think so. It’s going to be fine.

British teacher removed from New York-bound plane despite halt on Muslim travel ban

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By ERIN CORBETT

A British Muslim teacher was removed from a plane traveling from Iceland to New York City on Feb. 16, as a group of students and teachers was heading to the United States for a school trip, the Guardian reports.

Juhel Miah was removed from the plane by security personnel in Reykjavik just before take off, leaving students shocked and distressed. The incident occurred just days after the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals voted against reinstating President Donald Trump’s anti-Muslim travel and immigration ban.

The Neath Port Talbot Council, Miah’s employer, wrote to the London U.S. embassy for an explanation on the matter, and a spokesperson of the Council called the incident “an unjustified act of discrimination.” According to the Guardian, Miah had valid visa documentation.

“Juhel Miah was with a party from Llangatwg comprehensive who travelled initially to Iceland en route to New York last week,” the spokesperson said. “Mr Miah boarded the onward flight in Reykjavik on 16 February but was escorted from the aircraft by security personnel. Whilst the school trip proceeded as planned, Mr Miah’s removal from the flight left pupils and colleagues shocked and distressed.”

The U.K. offered the following statement in response to Trump’s executive order earlier this month:

We have confirmed with the US government that British passport holders (regardless of country of birth or whether they hold another passport/nationality) aren’t affected by the executive order.

The Neath Port Talbot Council spokesperson wrote, “We are appalled by the treatment of Mr Miah and are demanding an explanation. The matter has also been raised with our local MP.” According to the Guardian, Miah’s experience is cause for concern and doubt on the U.K.’s input about travel to the U.S.

AG Sessions Basically Endorsed the Worst of DHS' Harsh New Deportation Plan

White House claims new guidelines are still under review, but reporting suggests they are supported by 'mainstream of Trump administration'

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by

Lauren McCauley

After the Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) approval of a sweeping new deportation guidelines last week, new reporting on Monday revealed that the aggressive plan has already been endorsed by the recently installed Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

The guidelines, signed by Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly and dated Friday, would empower federal authorities to "hire thousands of additional enforcement agents, expand the pool of immigrants who are prioritized for removal, speed up deportation hearings, and enlist local law enforcement to help make arrests," the Washington Post reported.

Also under the new guidelines, parents of unaccompanied minors who travel from Mexico and Central America "could be prosecuted if they are found to have paid smugglers to bring the children across the border," according to The Post.

After the the memo was first reported, an unnamed White House official told reporters that the rules are still "under review by the White House Counsel's Office."

But as McClatchy's Franco Ordoñez pointed out on Monday, Sessions, the controversial new head of the Department of Justice, had specifically called for these harsh terms months prior while still serving in Congress, suggesting that the memos "are not out of the mainstream of Trump administration thinking in spite of the White House insistence that the orders have not yet been approved."

What's more, Ordoñez noted that "former Sessions aide Stephen Miller is now a top adviser to Trump and is believed to have been behind Trump's controversial immigration executive orders."

He reported:

In a July 6 letter to Obama administration officials, the then Republican senator from Alabama prodded then DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson and then Attorney General Loretta Lynch about two of the most controversial issues raised in the Kelly memos.

He pressed the administration to explain why unaccompanied minors were not "humanely sent back home" after being reunited with their parents living illegally in the United States. He also wanted to know why the children's parents had not been prosecuted for aiding and abetting human traffickers by paying them to bring their children illegally into the United States. 

"Strong leadership and a commitment to the faithful execution of the laws on the books would convey a clear message to the world that if you come to the United States illegally, you will be removed," read the letter, which was co-authored by Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) and obtained by McClatchy.

Coming amid a widespread immigration crackdown, with deportation raids now targeting law-abiding and long-term residents, the new terms raised alarm among rights groups who say they violate fundamental human rights.

"This is immigration enforcement under Trump: due process, human decency, and common sense are treated as inconvenient obstacles on the path to mass deportation," Joanne Lin, senior legislative counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union, said in a Friday statement. "The Trump administration is intent on inflicting cruelty on millions of immigrant families across the country."

"Immigrants and allies have proven that we can fight back against Trump," Lin vowed, "and we will not allow his radical, unprecedented combination of unconstitutional actions and terrible policy to become our reality."

These Fossil Fuel Bypasses Could Soon Be Science Fact

Innovative ideas by scientists and engineers to combat climate change build up a picture of what the world could be like without fossil fuels.

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by Tim Radford

LONDON, 14 February, 2017 – Here is a vision of the future in a warming world without fossil fuels.

You don’t have to switch on the air conditioning because your roof re-radiates the sun’s heat back into space.

You don’t have to worry that the current from solar energy will turn off at night, because the same sunlight that powered the refrigerator has also turned two greenhouse gases into hydrocarbon fuel that serves as battery back-up.

You don’t need a spare battery for your smart watch because your own clothing can turn heat, light and your own movement into electric current.

And – sorry about this – your own post-digestive output can be turned straight back into input as fuel for your energy-efficient motor.

Every one of these future visions to bypass the use of fossil fuels is still in the laboratory stage, but all could make it to the market. And they are further testament to the resource and ingenuity on offer in the world’s laboratories, as science reacts to the increasing threat of global warming and consequent climate change.

Fossil fuels combustion

At the 2015 climate change summit in Paris, the world’s nations agreed to limit global warming to 2°C or less.

That must mean a drastic reduction in the combustion of the fossil fuels that pump ever more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, raising global temperatures to drive potentially catastrophic shifts in the planet’s climate.

And scientists and engineers around the world have been experimenting with new approaches to the great energy challenge.

It took 100 million years to turn Carboniferous plant tissue into fossil fuel. Now researchers have synthesised an artificial “leaf” 10 times more efficient than nature to turn sunlight into energy.

They have found new ways to exploit natural waste, turned waste wood into solar panels and window glass, and recycled atmospheric carbon dioxide to boost an electric car battery. They have even tested a catalyst that could, in theory, enable a car to run on water.

And just as one set of researchers has warned that global warming will increase the demand for air conditioning that will in turn generate higher atmospheric temperatures, a group of scientists in the US has tested another answer: passive air conditioning.

“We have shown that our idea works,
and it has taken us from the realms
of science fiction to reality”

They report in Science journal that they have developed a transparent “metamaterial” made of glass and polymer just 50 thousandths of a millimetre thick, and with unusual properties.

It can let sunlight through, but will reflect 96% of the sun’s noonday heat back into space as infra-red radiation. This is called passive radiative cooling, and it happens naturally at night. But the new material works in broad daylight.

“Just 10 to 20 square meters of this material on the rooftop could nicely cool down a single-family house in summer,” says Gang Tan, associate professor of civil and architectural engineering at the University of Wyoming.

Xiaobo Yin, co-author of the report and assistant professor on the materials science and engineering programme at the University of Colorado at Boulder, adds: “Just by applying this material to the surface of a solar panel, we can cool the panel and recover an additional 1% to 2% of solar efficiency. That makes a big difference of scale.”

They say the technology can be scaled up, and the next step is a 200 square metre “cooling farm” prototype on the Boulder campus.

But having found a way to save energy and enhance photovoltaic cells, solar energy engineers still have one big problem: how to keep the lights on at night.

Solar energy stored

Swiss scientists report in the Energy and Environmental Science journal that they have a new chemical process that can use the sun’s thermal energy to cook carbon dioxide and water vapour – both, in the atmosphere, are greenhouse gases – into hydrogen and carbon monoxide, and then into fuel such as methane, petrol or diesel that could drive a turbine.

“This allows solar energy to be stored in the form of chemical bonds,” says Ivo Alxneit, senior scientist in the solar technology laboratory at the Paul Scherrer Institute in Switzerland. “It’s easier than storing electricity.”

The process, based on a compound of cerium and rhodium, has so far delivered only small amounts of fuel. “But we have shown that our idea works, and it has taken us from the realms of science fiction to reality,” says Dr Alxneit.

Researchers in the US have already tested technologies to convert the kinetic energy of a footstep into current, and even developed a fabric that could generate power from sunlight and from motion.

But scientists in Finland are claiming a threefold victory. They report in Applied Physics Letters that they have a perovskite crystal structure that is ferroelectric, pyroelectric and piezoelectric − that is, it can turn sunlight, heat and movement into electricity simultaneously.

They have yet to build a prototype energy-harvesting device, but once they demonstrate that they can, commercialisation could follow within a few years.

Sewage into energy

Human sewage could be delivering gasoline long before that. A $9 million wastewater treatment utility in Vancouver, Canada, is to test “hydrothermal liquefaction” in 2018 with a technique developed by Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.

Put simply, if immense spans of time and tectonic pressure are all that is needed to turn living tissue into crude oil, then mechanical pressure and high temperatures can recycle excrement into energy too, but at a much faster rate.

The laboratory calculates that US treatment plants handle 24 billion gallons of sewage each day − and this could be the raw material for 30 million barrels of oil a year. One single person could generate two or three gallons of biocrude a year.

“There’s plenty of carbon in municipal wastewater sludge and, interestingly, there are also fats,” says Corinne Drennan, who heads bioenergy technology research at the laboratory.

“The fats or lipids appear to facilitate the conversion of other materials − such as toilet paper − in the wastewater, keep the sludge moving through the reactor, and produce a very heavy high-quality biocrude that, when refined, yields fuels such as gasoline, diesel and jet fuels.”

US carrier group patrols in tense South China Sea

As a US navy force, including Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson, began operations in the disputed waters, China's Foreign Ministry warns Washington against challenging its sovereignty in the region

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A United States aircraft carrier strike group has begun patrols in the South China Sea amid growing tension with China over control of the disputed waterway and concerns it could become a flashpoint under the new U.S. administration.

China’s Foreign Ministry on Wednesday warned Washington against challenging its sovereignty in the South China Sea.

The U.S. navy said the force, including Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson, began routine operations in the South China Sea on Saturday. The announcement was posted on the Vinson’s Facebook page.

The strike group’s commander, Rear Admiral James Kilby, said that weeks of training in the Pacific had improved the group’s effectiveness and readiness.

“We are looking forward to demonstrating those capabilities while building upon existing strong relationships with our allies, partners and friends in the Indo-Asia-Pacific region,” he was quoted as saying by the Navy News Service.

Friction between the United States and China over trade and territory under U.S. President Donald Trump have increased concerns that the South China Sea could become a flashpoint.

China wrapped up its own naval exercises in the South China Sea on Friday. War games involving its own aircraft carrier have unnerved neighbours with which it has long-running territorial disputes.

China lays claim to almost all of the resource-rich South China Sea, through which about $5 trillion worth of trade passes each year.

Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam also claim parts of the waters that command strategic sea lanes and have rich fishing grounds, along with oil and gas deposits.

The United States has criticised Beijing’s construction of man-made islands and build-up of military facilities in the sea, and expressed concern they could be used to restrict free movement.

'Not My President's Day' Actions Across the U.S. Call for Trump's Impeachment on President's Day Weekend

Americans are using the long weekend to resist the president's increasingly fascist agenda.

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By April M. Short

Americans are transforming President’s Day weekend into Not My President’s Day, a series of resistance efforts against the Trump White House and its increasingly fascist agenda. Many of the actions organized in cities across the U.S. include calls to impeach the new president.

As Donald Trump defiles American values left and right, spouting lies, demeaning the free press, attempting to barrel over the checks and balances that preserve the nation’s integrity, threatening to reinstate the worst Nixonian policies (like the racist war on drugs), and terrorizing immigrant and Muslim families, thousands of people have sacrificed their three-day weekend to gather and protest in U.S. cities.

On Saturday, New Yorkers held a mock funeral for the U.S. presidency, while in Los Angeles and Dallas, thousands marched in support of immigrants and refugees.

Thousands gathered Sunday in the Oregon State capitol of Salem for an Immigrants' March that invited people in all 50 states to fill the steps of their capitol building in support of immigrants’ rights. The march was a response to Trump’s anti-immigrant policies, including his proposed wall along the U.S.-Mexico border and the so-dubbed Muslim travel ban that would keep residents of seven predominantly Muslim nations from entering the U.S.

Also Sunday, more than 5,000 people are expected to take to the streets of Chicago for a one-month post-inauguration protest called Stop the Trump Agenda.

Not My President’s Day marches and demonstrations are scheduled on Monday across the nation, in New York, Los Angeles, D.C., Chicago, Kansas City, Denver, Milwaukee, Salt Lake City and Atlanta. Additional President’s Day weekend anti-Trump actions are also planned in towns and smaller cities, continuing through Monday.

Trump Adviser Stephen Miller Championed Big Tobacco's Alarming Lies

Miller and Mike Pence both had a history of spreading lies about the dangers of smoking.

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By Alex Kotch

The alarming past of President Donald Trump’s senior policy adviser has come under increased scrutiny lately after the 31-year-old archconservative repeatedly lied to the American public on several Sunday morning talk shows. Since his early teens, Stephen Miller has espoused hateful views on immigrants, people of color and liberals. At Duke University, where Miller studied political science, he wrote a biweekly column preaching Islamophobia, defending white lacrosse players accused of raping a black woman, denying the existence of racism, and attacking feminism and political correctness.

The voice composing those columns from a decade ago sounds awfully similar to the present-day Trump surrogate. In both cases, Miller propagates racist ideas and outright lies, delighting in the controversy and attention his hateful stances bring him.

On February 12, Miller spoke on four TV talk shows and blatantly lied to millions of viewers about voter fraud, and despite persistent questioning from the hosts, could not provide even a shred of evidence to back up his claims. In a single interview with George Stephanopoulos of ABC, he listed the most outrageous voter fraud allegations members of the Trump team have spewed at various points: Thousands of voters were bused into New Hampshire from Massachusetts to vote illegally last November; 14 percent of noncitizens are registered to vote; being registered in multiple states constitutes fraud; and the biggest whopper of all—three to five million “illegal immigrants” voted (allegedly costing Trump the popular vote).

The Washington Post fact-checked Miller’s lies and gave all of them the harshest possible rating: “Miller earns Four Pinocchios—over and over again.”

A look back at two of Miller’s college newspaper posts shows that Miller has been lying profusely and loudly for many years. Whether or not he actually believes these lies is hard to tell, but his bizarre standpoints appear to have hurt not only the country and his university community, but also his own personal health.

Two op-eds address the health effects of smoking tobacco and the "unrelenting health fascists" who regulate where one can smoke. In one piece that drastically minimizes the health risks of smoking, Miller, then a self-identified smoker, advances ideas that are patently false. Claiming “it is safer for college kids to smoke than to drive,” he overlooks a few key facts: Today, smoking kills 480,000 people in the United States each year, “more than AIDS, alcohol, car accidents, illegal drugs, murders and suicides combined.” While some college smokers may be able to quit long-term, most regular smokers who try to quit are not successful. In contrast, car crashes killed about 31,000 people in the U.S. in 2007, the year Miller wrote his opinion piece. 

Miller relies on several articles published by the "renowned Cato Institute,” a libertarian think tank funded by corporations and wealthy conservatives. And guess what? The Cato Institute has received funding from major tobacco companies RJ Reynolds and Philip Morris. Miller cites a Cato article that even the conservative American Council on Science and Health called “unscientific and inflammatory.”

He then brings up a Cato paper that cites a study on secondhand smoke from 1975—32 years before Miller wrote his piece. Miller attempts to convince his readers that secondhand smoke isn’t harmful in any way. The CDC, on the other hand, says secondhand smoke leads to over 41,000 premature deaths due to heart disease and lung cancer every year. You decide who’s right.

In an example of unmitigated irony, Miller writes, “the anti-smoking crusade is nearly impervious to truth or reason.”

“The real risks,” says Miller, are not the nearly half a million people killed by smoking every year; rather, Miller says they “are the fascistic tendencies that prohibit smoking in even private establishments.”

In a second piece, Miller proposes that Duke create a smoking lounge, which "would be a great place to watch sports, recreate and relax, and would allow me and my fellow smokers to enjoy our tobacco in rain, wet, cold and snow, and thus spare us from unnecessary risks to our health." 

Miller isn't the only tobacco truther on the Trump team. In 2000, Vice President Mike Pence wrote, "smoking doesn't kill." As Think Progress points out, Pence’s former family business operated hundreds of gas and cigarette stores, and he’s in the pocket of Big Tobacco, having raked in campaign contributions from the industry during his Indiana campaigns. Regarding his federal races, the National Association of Convenience Stores, which represents tobacco interests, is Pence’s fifth-largest donor ($62,000), and RJ Reynolds is his 20th-biggest donor ($39,000), according to data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics. Pence has consistently supported legislation favoring Big Tobacco.

Miller’s tactic of bleating bald-faced lies fits right in with Donald Trump and his deceitful team that includes Steve Bannon (a studied propagandist), Kellyanne Conway (who’s been blacklisted from at least two shows because of her outright lies) and Sean Spicer (who made hilariously false claims about Trump’s inauguration crowd). They've all done all they can to mislead the public and discredit the media.

But as even the mainstream media grows angrier, and Trump increasingly favors far-right outlets in his press briefings, it seems likely that the Animal Farm Administration’s propaganda scheme will come back to bite its malicious purveyors.

Paul Krugman Blasts Trump's Economic Arrogance

In Trumpworld, Krugman writes, "numbers are what you want them to be, and anything else is fake news."

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By Ilana Novick

Donald Trump believes in fairy tales. We're already familiar with his favorites, like the Bowling Green Massacre and winning the popular vote, but as Paul Krugman points out in his Monday column, our next waking nightmare may be Trumponomics: Reagan era fantasies, back from the dead to convince America that growth through low taxes and cuts to government spending will benefit anyone other than millionaires. 

The Trump administration believes the American economy will see 3-3.5% growth over a decade. The Congressional Budget Office and the Federal Reserve have other, lower ideas, but why would a president, or Paul Ryan for that matter, listen to respected, bipartisan institutions when there is Social Security to slash? Didn't we have 3.4% growth during the Reagan years? 

Not so fast, Krugman writes. The number may be true, but, consider the context: "baby boomers were still entering the work force. Now they’re on their way out, and the rise in the working-age population has slowed to a crawl. This demographic shift alone should, other things being equal, subtract around a percentage point from U.S. growth." Plus, as Krugman continues, growth was even higher during the Clinton years, at 3.7%. Why was this the case? Turns out inheriting weak economies was a factor: 

Reagan and Clinton inherited depressed economies, with unemployment well over 7 percent. This meant that there was a lot of economic slack, allowing rapid growth as the unemployed went back to work. Today, by contrast, unemployment is under 5 percent, and other indicators suggest an economy close to full employment. This leaves much less scope for rapid growth.

Plus, Clinton actually raised taxes on the rich, and America had unprecedented growth and prosperity. So did Obama. What the right fails to mention, as they questioned his citizenship and blocked his Supreme Court picks, is that Obama presided over "much more rapid private-sector job growth than George W. Bush, even if you leave out the 2008 collapse. Furthermore, Krugman continues, "two Obama policies that the right totally hated – the 2013 hike in tax rates on the rich, and the 2014 implementation of the Affordable Care Act – produced no slowdown at all in job creation."

The only way we'd see the growth Trump is looking for, would be "a huge takeoff in productivity — output per worker-hour. This could, of course, happen: maybe driverless flying cars will arrive en masse. But it’s hardly something one should assume for a baseline projection."

Even if Trump were to continue his trademark economic strategy of bullying companies into keeping a small fraction of their jobs in the US, as with the Carrier plant, it would be a mere drop in the bucket. There's no guarantee they'd make air conditioners any faster. 

This magical economic thinking may have found its worst host in our current president, but Krugman rightly reminds us that this has been a cornerstone of Republican thought for decades. He explains, "belief that tax cuts and deregulation will reliably produce awesome growth isn’t unique to the Trump-Putin administration. We heard the same thing from Jeb Bush (who?); we hear it from congressional Republicans like Paul Ryan. The question is why. After all, there is nothing — nothing at all — in the historical record to justify this arrogance." 

The evidence, Krugman rightly hammers home, "is totally at odds with claims that tax-cutting and deregulation are economic wonder drugs." It is however, great for billionaires, and it's time for the rest of America to stop: "on such matters Donald Trump is really no worse than the rest of his party. Unfortunately, he’s also no better."

How a Real War on Terrorism Would Look and Why the US Isn’t Fighting One

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By Ulson Gunnar

Since 2001, when then US President George Bush announced his “War on Terror,” presidents and politicians both in the United States and among America’s allies, have repeated this phrase and have done their utmost to convince the public that indeed, the West was fighting a “War on Terror.”

Yet there is something disturbingly ambiguous about what exactly the “War on Terror” consists of, who it’s being waged against and how it could ever possibly be brought to a successful conclusion.

It is also often referred to as the “Long War,” and for good reason. America’s ongoing occupation of Afghanistan is the longest armed conflict in US history. Additionally, US troops still find themselves in Iraq, some 14 years after the initial invasion and occupation of the state in 2003.

Because of the ambiguous nature of the “War on Terror,” politicians have been given much room to maneuver their rhetoric, explaining why more wars must be waged, more liberties curtailed at home and more wealth and power channeled into fewer and fewer hands.

What’s Really Behind Terrorism? 

The fanatics, weapons, supplies, vehicles and finances that grease the wheels of global terror do not merely spring forth from the pages of the Qu’ran, as bigots across the West insist.

Just like any national army, the army raised and wielded in the name of terrorism has several basic components. Examining these components reveals a very uncomfortable but somewhat poorly hidden truth.

In reality, fanatics must be indoctrinated. And they are, in Saudi-funded madras and mosque networks wrapping around the globe. In the United States and across Europe, these madrases and mosques often serve as both indoctrination centers and recruiting stations. They operate as such with the explicit knowledge, even cooperation of US and European security and intelligence agencies.

One such center can be found in Denmark at Grimhøjvej Mosque in Aarhus which openly serves as a recruiting station for militants meant to fight abroad in US-European backed wars in Libya, Syria, Iraq and Yemen. The government of Denmark openly collaborates with the mosque to integrate these individuals back into Danish society when they return.

The mosque in Aarhus is hardly an isolated example. Such mosques backed and protected by US-European-Saudi money and political influence dot the globe, feeding recruits into a global mercenary army carrying out proxy war and staging terrorist attacks whenever and wherever politically convenient.

Both Wikileaks and even the US’ own Defense Intelligence Agency has released documents exposing the role both the West and Gulf states such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar have played in the arming and funding of actual militants once they reach the battlefield.

Additionally, militants that have been indoctrinated, trained, armed, funded and battle-hardened by Western and Gulf sponsorship, return back to their respective nations where they are then cultivated for domestic operations. Terror attacks like those in Paris and Brussels, Berlin and elsewhere are carried out almost exclusively by militants US-European security and intelligence agencies have known about and even arrested but inexplicably released, allowing them to carry out their attacks.

What a Real War on Terrorism Requires

It is often said that states like Russia, Syria and Iran exist as natural allies to the United States and Europe in the fight against terrorism. And that would be true if not for the fact that said terrorism is actually a deliberate product of US-European foreign policy. Were the West to truly wage a war on terrorism, it would already be deeply cooperating with these  nations on the front line against groups like Al Qaeda and the self-proclaimed Islamic State.

However, terrorism is waged as a means of fighting the West’s proxy wars abroad, and to create divisive, paralyzing hatred, fear and hysteria at home.

Travel bans are created to intentionally stoke controversy and distract the public from the aforementioned reality driving  terrorism. As is evident in virtually all terror attacks carried out across the West, suspects are already know to security and intelligence agencies beforehand. These agencies simply need to stop them. Instead, they allow the attacks to take place, granting their respective governments political capital to channel more power into centralized hands.

While the US and Europe use terrorism as a function of foreign policy, they could not do it without their intermediaries in the Persian Gulf. Without the Saudis and Qataris serving as “handlers” for the West’s terrorist legions, it is unlikely such legions could be raised to begin with.

Targeting, rather than embracing, even protecting these state sponsors of all aspects of terrorism, from indoctrination and recruitment, to training, arming and financing terrorism on the battlefield, would be another essential step in a real “War on Terror.”

Yet from President Bush to President Obama and now during the administration of US President Donald Trump, the US and its European allies continue to coddle the regimes in Riyadh and Doha, rather than taking any measures whatsoever to disrupt this terror pipeline.

While the US remains in Afghanistan allegedly to “fight terrorism,” it refuses to take even the most basic steps to dismantle the ideological, political and financial structures in the Persian Gulf fueling that terrorism.

A final means of combating and defeating “terrorism” would be to educate the public of just how small a minority is actually involved in it, isolating those groups exploiting and perverting ideologies from the vast majority who practice these ideologies constructively.

Instead, US and European demagogues work ceaselessly to lump all of Islam into the “terror” basket, creating tension and hostility on both sides of an essentially manufactured strategy of tension. Instead of draining emotional and political resources from those seeking to recruit disillusioned individuals, the West is ensuring them an endless supply.

A real “War on Terror” is clearly not being waged. Nothing presented by President Trump before or after his campaign victory in 2016 indicates a real war is about to be waged. In fact, much of what has been done thus far, has simply been the placing of additional bricks on a very predictable path toward the infinite horizon of this “Long War.”