“The faraway king would soon learn a timeless lesson about the people of this majestic land,” Trump said. “Americans love our freedom and no one will ever take it away from us.”

Three days later, history did not seem so cold or distant as UK-US relations, taken for granted since the second world war and cemented by Trump’s recent state visit, were shaken to the core.

A devastating leak of diplomatic cables led to an angry rebuke from the president and the resignation of the British ambassador. It also raised once unthinkable questions about whether the looming nexus of President Trump and Prime Minister Boris Johnson, arguably kindred narcissists, poses unique dangers to both countries and the world.

Read more:

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/jul/14/donald-trump-boris-john...

Our Scummo has joined this circus with trepidation. Scummo is now in charge of shovelling elephant dung in the Trumpo circus. As Aussies, your duty is to sing along with the national anthem to inspire our shoveller in chief. 

In all probability, the next prime minister of Great Britain will be Boris Johnson of the Conservative Party. Americans, like Conservative Party members, might think that Johnson’s charisma, un-PC irreverence, and firm pro-Brexit stance will make him the kind of energetic, straight-talking, patriotic leader that Britain needs. There is no reason to be optimistic.

As with President Trump, criticism of Johnson tends to focus on his private life, and, more specifically, his string of affairs. In fairness, one must admit that a disgraceful private life need not make for a disgraceful public life. Benjamin Franklin might have made the most of his status as a ladies man but his face still adorns the hundred dollar bill.

To say that Boris Johnson is no Benjamin Franklin is like saying that Adrien Broner is no Floyd Mayweather, Jr. Johnson’s public life, as a journalist and as a politician, has been marked by misbehavior, incompetence, and egoism.

Boris Johnson was a child of privilege. He rose up through Eton and Oxford to become a journalist for the Times. He was promptly sacked after fabricating a quote from his own godfather, the academic historian Sir Colin Lucas. Never mind. Johnson soon landed a job with The Telegraph, where his reports from Brussels on the EU’s bureaucratic lunacies stoked anti-EU feeling among conservatives, despite his often cheerfully indifferent stance towards the truth.

Read more:

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/beware-the-boris-in-tru...

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45 is a Titus... In this fake seal projected behind Trump, the eagles with two heads (germanic symbol) holds golf clubs in its claws... see: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-07-26/donald-trump-doctored-presidential-seal-turning-point-usa/11348526. The motto is 45 ES UN TITERE which roughly translates as "45 is a Titus"

Titus (/ˈtaɪtəs/; Latin: Titus Flavius Caesar Vespasianus Augustus;[a] 30 December 39 AD – 13 September 81 AD) was Roman emperor from 79 to 81. A member of the Flavian dynasty, Titus succeeded his father Vespasian upon his death, thus becoming the first Roman emperor to come to the throne after his own biological father.

Before becoming emperor, Titus gained renown as a military commander, serving under his father in Judea during the First Jewish–Roman War. The campaign came to a brief halt with the death of emperor Nero in 68, launching Vespasian's bid for the imperial power during the Year of the Four Emperors. When Vespasian was declared Emperor on 1 July 69, Titus was left in charge of ending the Jewish rebellion. In 70, he besieged and captured Jerusalem, and destroyed the city and the Second Temple. For this achievement Titus was awarded a triumph; the Arch of Titus commemorates his victory to this day.

During his father's rule, Titus gained notoriety in Rome serving as prefect of the Praetorian Guard, and for carrying on a controversial relationship with the Jewish queen Berenice. Despite concerns over his character, Titus ruled to great acclaim following the death of Vespasian in 79, and was considered a good emperor by Suetonius and other contemporary historians.

As emperor, Titus is best known for completing the Colosseum and for his generosity in relieving the suffering caused by two disasters, the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79 and a fire in Rome in 80. After barely two years in office, Titus died of a fever on 13 September 81. He was deified by the Roman Senate and succeeded by his younger brother Domitian.

Read more:

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

Titus was famous (according to Gus) for installing sewers (and providing much of the content) in Rome Washingtonus.

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British journalist Alastair Campbell shared some rather hypocritical views on populism on a recent episode of Q&A, writes Daniel Safi.

ON THE RECENT Q&A episode featuring Alastair Campbell, some thoughts about populism were exchanged.

A few perspectives were elaborated by the panellists before Kate Mills touched on the absolute core of what populist politics are and why they're on the rise. Just as this interesting conversation was about to unfold, cue Tony Jones and the voices in his head to shut it down. (Q&A wasn’t always like this.) [Gus: oh yest it was always...]

What Kate Mills touched on was populism understood as a reaction to a political class that is not speaking to people’s lived experience, to put it very mildly.

In other words, people know that the politics of the last few decades brought us:

• millions of dead and endless war;
• one of the biggest refugee crises in a hundred years;
• astronomical and still rising inequality across the West; and
• a fundamentally corrupt economic system that is destroying the middle/working class and the structures that make for economic mobility, total empowerment of corporations that have more political power than elected representatives.

People know all this and more because we see, hear and feel it every day, but we’re still being told by establishment voices like Alastair Campbell that:

“Everything is fine – or was before Trump – trust us and keep voting for us, because we're the experts and we know what is best.”

When the champions of this neoliberal status quo ponder in disbelief over the rise of personalities like Trump, they really need only look in the mirror.

Sure, we hear the word “inequality” being bandied about now by every political hack, but it rings hollow from defenders of neoliberal regimes who hand national economies over to banking and finance chiefs and foreign policy to arms manufacturers and security contractors.  

Of course, I am not saying Trump and his ilk are any better. They are as corrupt and full of false promises as their euphemistically styled “centrist” rivals, including about the solutions to the very problems causing these political ruptures. But in contrast to their centrist rivals, populists both Left and Right do acknowledge those problems and they are winning elections because of this.

(In my opinion, our recent Federal Election does not truly belong in this category of analysis. Despite echoes, Australia is actually a few years behind the trends that have brought forth genuine Leftist candidates in the U.S. and Europe, alongside populist Right-wing candidates.)

So, while Alastair Campbell, in a fine show of political theatre, situated himself as some kind of centre-Left opponent to the token conservative on the panel, he repeated a lie about the Iraq invasion which he elaborated more fully on ABC Breakfast Radio the following day.

In response to questions over the decision to invade Iraq, John Howard, Tony Blair, Dick Cheney, Alastair Campbell et al respond with a variation of: “based on the intelligence available at the time, we made the right decision.”

Over the years, this claim has been debunked so utterly from a number of different angles that even pro-war media outlets have had to report it. With former intelligence operatives coming forward with information, information surfacing from subsequent investigations and other facts that have been uncovered over the years, demonstrating that intelligence agencies knew there were no WMDs and their findings were ignored by the political leaders.

As stated by a former senior CIA official:

“The policy was set. The war in Iraq was coming and they were looking for intelligence to fit into the policy.”

During the 2016 election, Trump stated:

“They [the Bush Administration] lied. They said there were weapons of mass destruction; there were none. And they knew there were none. There were no weapons of mass destruction.”

Alastair Campbell was furiously questioning and condemning the horror and travesty of the rise of Donald Trump and other populists:

“They’re liars… they manipulate… Trump’s the biggest creator of fake news on the planet… he lies an average of 12 times a day.”

But he then goes on to repeat a lie that cost the lives of hundreds of thousands (or millions, depending on what we include), wrought total destruction to an entire region, devastated the lives of many thousands of his own countrymen and women, cost taxpayers trillions and this man has the audacity to call Trump a liar, a racist, and a fascist. To top it, he is surprised that many voters regard his political species as less trustworthy than the populists.

Alastair Campbell was a key functionary in a regime that was part of an alliance whose actions posterity will look upon just as darkly as some of the most criminal regimes of the last century — the plain facts will have to be seen as such. It was the U.S. and UK leadership of these years that so undermined Western democracy to the point we are at today, where Trump et al are seen by many as relative truth-tellers.

The academic on the panel that night, Anne Tiernan, stated:

“What people are very good at doing is describing [populism], analysing why it’s happened. Almost no one can tell us what to do about it.” 

There’s at least one simple answer to this — start telling the truth.

Read more:

https://independentaustralia.net/article-display/the-iraq-war-lie-is-sti...

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See also:

http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/8972