Rise of Fascism in the United States [SPLIT]

[rareboy]

^ This belongs in the Media Death thread as well.

Bari thinksm she is the provocateur that CBS needs. The Ellisons apparently think so as well.

She really isn't that good at her job and this kind of reminds me of Chris Licht's short run at CNN before he blew up his career.

But it is apparent that der lustige witwe is looking to prop up her claim to the TPUSA org and prove her chops with the fascist oligarchs who have been bankrolling this circus.

And frankly, this just isn't going to make for the kind of TV that the ossified CBS audience will likely want to watch or that will sell soap.

 

[NotHardUp1]

And frankly, this just isn't going to make for the kind of TV that the ossified CBS audience will likely want to watch or that will sell soap.

dead on

 

[NotHardUp1]

WTF?

View attachment 3406079

And the network is subtlely using "town hall" to imbue Kirk with authority. A town hall is a meeting between representative officials and their constituents. Kirk is no one's official.

It reminds me of the local coverage here this week of Secretary Hegseth's opening of the Space Command's return to Huntsville. The Huntsville Times referred to him as the "Department of War Secretary Pete Hegseth".

We have no Department of War. Our departments are federally funded by Congressional appropriation, and there is no Department of War funded. The fantasy these corrupt men propagate, and now with the help of major networks that are not Fox, is stunning.

It's just like Washington Post article about the White House Ballroom being challenged in a lawsuit by the preservation authority that controls federal landmarks. No word of why the suit is coming too late to stop the demolition of the East Wing. The president's own game of sue now and let the court take forever to rule could have been used against him. The People could have moved for an injunction to probibit the demoliltion from starting. But now, after there is rubble, a lawsuit. Bad theater.

 

[KaraBulut]

And the network is subtlely using "town hall" to imbue Kirk with authority. A town hall is a meeting between representative officials and their constituents. Kirk is no one's official.

That's actually a good observation about how language is being used in an Orwellian fashion.

 

[rareboy]

And TrumpCo. is well aware of what they are trying to establish with this narrative as pretext ...


​

 

[KaraBulut]

Trump was probably a shit poker player. He sucks at bluffing. He always "tells" when his hand is shitty.

Exclusive: US threatens new ICC sanctions unless court pledges not to prosecute Trump

President Donald Trump's administration wants the International Criminal Court to amend its founding document to ensure it does not investigate the Republican president and his top officials, a Trump administration official said, threatening new U.S. sanctions on the court if it did not.

www.reuters.com

• Washington wary of ICC action against Trump, officials after his term ends in 2029
• US also wants ICC to drop probes into Israeli leaders and US troops
• ICC's jurisdiction includes prosecuting sitting heads of state for alleged crimes

WASHINGTON, Dec 10 (Reuters) - President Donald Trump's administration wants the International Criminal Court to amend its founding document to ensure it does not investigate the Republican president and his top officials, a Trump administration official said, threatening new U.S. sanctions on the court if it did not.
If the court does not act on this U.S. demand and two others - dropping investigations of Israeli leaders over the Gaza war and formally ending an earlier probe of U.S. troops over their actions in Afghanistan - Washington may penalize more ICC officials and could sanction the court itself, the official said.

Now, why would the Trump White House worry about a court that investigates and punishes political figures for their "crimes against humanity"?

Cut off by their banks and even iced out by Alexa, sanctioned ICC staffers remain resolute

International Criminal Court judges and prosecutors are trying to live and work under the same financial and travel restrictions brought against Russian President Vladimir Putin and Osama bin Laden.

apnews.com

Judges and prosecutors at the International Criminal Court are trying to live and work under the same U.S. financial and travel restrictions brought against Russian President Vladimir Putin and Osama bin Laden.

Nine staff members, including six judges and the ICC’s chief prosecutor, have been sanctioned by U.S. President Donald Trump for pursuing investigations into officials from the U.S. and Israel, which aren’t among The Hague court’s 125 member states.

Typically reserved for autocrats, crime bosses and the like, the sanctions can be devastating. They prevent the ICC officials and their families from entering the United States, block their access to even basic financial services and extend to the minutiae of their everyday lives.

The court’s top prosecutor, British national Karim Khan, had his bank accounts closed and his U.S. visa revoked, and Microsoft even canceled his ICC email address. Canadian judge Kimberly Prost, who was named in the latest round of sanctions in August, immediately lost access to her credit cards, and Amazon’s Alexa stopped responding to her.

Perhaps it's because there's one court left that might not be willing to grant absolute immunity to the US President for war crimes and for the slaughter of innocent civilians? Something 6 members of the US Supreme Court are unwilling to do?

"This parallels one of the first moves by the 73-year-old Russian president, Vladimir Putin, when he came to power. He made it impossible to prosecute a sitting president, and later, expanded the law to give ex-presidents lifetime immunity. Now, 26 years after first coming to power, despite international indictments for war crimes, he’s still running his decrepit empire."

The Last Defence Against Trump's Total Immunity

Donald Trump’s recent threat to the International Criminal Court is a sign that he is in far more trouble than he is willing to admit, reports Heidi Siegmund Cuda

www.bylinesupplement.com

Donald Trump’s administration this week threatened new US sanctions on the International Criminal Court, in an attempt to strong-arm it into not investigating him and his top officials. Such a move is an admission of guilt. An innocent man would have no reason to demand that the ICC amend its founding document. Reuters first reported the threat on Thursday.

It’s just the latest in a series of coups in America.The media coup came first. Billionaires aligned with foreign autocrats own almost all our media and have spent the last decade tilting the playing field toward fascism.

Then came the judicial coup. In 2024, a Supreme Court heavy with religious extremists gave 79-year-old felon Donald Trump what he longed for — total immunity.

This parallels one of the first moves by the 73-year-old Russian president, Vladimir Putin, when he came to power. He made it impossible to prosecute a sitting president, and later, expanded the law to give ex-presidents lifetime immunity. Now, 26 years after first coming to power, despite international indictments for war crimes, he’s still running his decrepit empire.

If you view the so-called ‘peace talks’ as a meeting of crime bosses and not acts of diplomacy (why else the son-in-law?), everything comes into sharper focus.

 

[rareboy]

I don't get it though. The US doesn't recognize the ICC. So why worry?

We've seen with Putin how signatory nations will overlook the presence of war criminals and it isn't likely that Trump could be kidnapped and brought to the Hague any more than the other war criminals out there at large.

And increasingly, Trump is unable to travel outside of the US because of health.

 

[KaraBulut]

I don't get it though. The US doesn't recognize the ICC. So why worry?

We've seen with Putin how signatory nations will overlook the presence of war criminals and it isn't likely that Trump could be kidnapped and brought to the Hague any more than the other war criminals out there at large.

And increasingly, Trump is unable to travel outside of the US because of health.

Because DJT is scared shitless of being in a jail cell.

Duterte case

.node--type-victim #block-icccpi-page-title{display: none;} Updated on 28/11/2025Key Messages1. What is the current stage of proceedings in the Duterte Case?2. Why are some ICC documents confidential and not accessible to the public?3. Why was the Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan disqualified from...

www.icc-cpi.int

 

[rareboy]

Maybe so. But in a million years, I can't see the US arresting and sending any leader or senior official to the ICC whose jurisdiction the US doesn't recognize.

Duterte was arrested by the Phillipine police with assistance from Interpol.

 

[KaraBulut]

The Trump Second Reich released it's National Security Strategy document. It reads like a hodge-podge of college freshman term papers.

In past Administrations, the NSS laid out a vision, from multiple perspectives, of the United States' foreign policy goals.

The document issued this week is incoherent. It's also chock full of praise for "Dear Leader". double-speak and double-think. It is absurdly Orwellian and would make a great example for a high school class studying fascism and Orwellian governments.

Orwell + Baron Harokkonen=

https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/2025-National-Security-Strategy.pdf

IV. The Strategy

1. Principles

President Trump’s foreign policy is pragmatic without being “pragmatist,” realistic without being “realist,” principled without being “idealistic,” muscular without being “hawkish,” and restrained without being “dovish.” It is not grounded in traditional, political ideology. It is motivated above all by what works for America—or, in two words, “America First.”

President Trump has cemented his legacy as The President of Peace. In addition to the remarkable success achieved during his first term with the historic Abraham Accords, President Trump has leveraged his dealmaking ability to secure unprecedented peace in eight conflicts throughout the world over the course of just eight months of his second term. He negotiated peace between Cambodia and Thailand, Kosovo and Serbia, the DRC and Rwanda, Pakistan and India, Israel and Iran, Egypt and Ethiopia, Armenia and Azerbaijan, and ended the war in Gaza with all living hostages returned to their families.

 

[rareboy]

I would say it is hilarious, but it isn't...not even in the sense of self-parody

And it is underpinned by a dark, racist, xenophobia.

It is grounded in 'Fortress America'...that sees the US taking anything and everything it wants from everyone else...a zero sum game.

It is the kind of fantastic thinking that topples empires because it is based on military invincibility.

 

[KaraBulut]

I would say it is hilarious, but it isn't...not even in the sense of self-parody

And it is underpinned by a dark, racist, xenophobia.

It is grounded in 'Fortress America'...that sees the US taking anything and everything it wants from everyone else...a zero sum game.

It is the kind of fantastic thinking that topples empires because it is based on military invincibility.

The document is just weird. It lauds Trump highly for his foreign policy but it also uses terms like "America First" while also championing very decrepit policies that date back hundreds of years.

Back in high school, we learned about the "Monroe Doctrine" and "Manifest Destiny". These were obscure historical references that most of us learned for the test and then forgot.

Apparently, someone in the White House and National Security Council thinks that making America great again involves a return to 19th century American colonialism and "spheres of influence".

If so, the Venezuela obsession seems to make more sense. Venezuela has been exchanging oil with Cuba, to the tune of 100,000 barrels per day. The Venezuelan tanker that the US seized was likely headed toward Cuba. The Miami Calle Ocho crowd (which produced Marco Rubio) is still stuck in the idea that if we starve the people of Cuba, they'll get fed up with communism and overthrow the communist government and ally with the US. They still haven't figured out that communism in Europe failed in the 20th century not because of embargoes, sanctions and western interference, but instead because, if left alone, it eventually reverts back to the feudal state that it replaced, where the state becomes the landowner and the public is the vassals that exist to serve the state.

 

[rareboy]

We know that Musk was one of the Trump whisperers about Manifest Destiny because it was a thing with Musk's own NAZI grandfather.

And for Musk, Canada and Greenland are about the rare earth and other minerals he needs to get to Mars.

I have pointed out in the thread on dividing the world into spheres that Trump bought the Putin vision that the US would dominate the Americas, that PutinCo. and his oligaqrchs would control Europe, that China would be allowed to dominate Asia and that the oil-gaqrchs would dominate the Middle East.

And somehow, magically, they would all get along and leave one another to their own spheres...because at the heart of it, the real power belongs to the effectively stateless billionaire and true trillionaire classes who see all the rest of this as performance theatre.

Kind of similar to the uneasy years before WWII when this worked until it didn't. Even though the power brokers were willing to appease a few madmen right up to the very last.

Even the UN was a marvellously clever trick to freeze the post WWII world into some kind of Cold War order with tons of rules and only a couple of times has it really risen to the moment. Again, now, in a post Soviet era where the rrrZZIan crime bosses were allowed to pretend they are still a super-power, only pure theatre with zero clout against any super-power or their client states.

Evdentually though, there will be the tiping point. One of those little events where some of the players turning up in Davos are taken by surprise by the wrong assassination, or suprise uprising that can no longer be defused through a proxy war.

 

[NotHardUp1]

I'm beginning to think Rubio will leave his post more hated than Dick Cheney.

The White House has placed a ban on visas for five EU members over the digital safety and freedom they have been working. Rubio defended the policy, and is getting excoriated in reply.

https://www.theguardian.com/technol...condemn-us-visa-bans-row-censorship-escalates

Raphaël Glucksmann, a French socialist MEP, said in a message to Rubio: “For far too long, Europe has been weak in implementing its own laws and defending its own interests. You have chosen to cosy up tyrants and confront democracies. The time has come for us to stand up. Kneel as much as you want in front of Putin, we are the free world now.

 

[rareboy]

I'm beginning to think Rubio will leave his post more hated than Dick Cheney.

The White House has placed a ban on visas for five EU members over the digital safety and freedom they have been working. Rubio defended the policy, and is getting excoriated in reply.

https://www.theguardian.com/technol...condemn-us-visa-bans-row-censorship-escalates

No question. Leaders see a weak man carrying water for a tyrant and thinking the US can write the rules for the rest of the world and just bully other sovereign nations.
Does anyone even take Rubio seriously when he speaks...all he is doing is mouthing the sounds that come from Trump's ass.
The Visa ban only serves to isolate the US more and more from other democratic countries that no longer see it as a leader in the west as Trump drags it down into the muck.

The irony, as I noted in another thread, burns so hot when TrumpCo...busy censoring media and banning words and ideas thinks it can lecture the rest of us about freedom of speech.

 

[Norri]

I'm beginning to think Rubio will leave his post more hated than Dick Cheney.

The White House has placed a ban on visas for five EU members over the digital safety and freedom they have been working. Rubio defended the policy, and is getting excoriated in reply.

https://www.theguardian.com/technol...condemn-us-visa-bans-row-censorship-escalates

The Chinese and the Russians both censor but Trump respects them so they get a pass but he hates the Europeans so they get the shaft, not that Trump is against censorship as any TV network can attest to. I once read a biography of Sam Rayburn and when he left home for the first time to go to DC and be a rep the advice his father gave him was ‘be a man’ I can’t help but wonder what Rubio’s father might have whispered in his ear on his way to DC.

 

[rareboy]

" Hey l'il Marco. Sell your soul to a rapist in exchange for access to power"???

 

[rareboy]

The Christmas Eve jazz concert at the Kennedy Center has been canceled.

The show’s host, musician Chuck Redd, said, “When I saw the name change on the Kennedy Center website and later on the building, I chose to cancel our concert.”

Trump probably hates jazz anyway. But it is a litmus test to see now how many artists will cancel their gigs or refuse to play at the Kennedy Center. All those who now do can only be assumed to
be supportive of Trump's attempt at autocracy.

 

[rareboy]

 

[rareboy]