Donald Trump Is the War Crimes President

The barbarism of the Nazi regime in the 1930's and during WWII did no come to pass overnight.  There were numerous steps along the way that involved dehumanizing a targeted scapegoat population - e.g., Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, "communists, and others. Long before the orchestrated extermination of 6 million European Jews commenced in earnest, torture became normalized and callous brutality became accepted. Along the way, the Geneva Conventions were ignored by Hitler and his brutal regime. Here in America, the slide towards moral bankruptcy began under the Bush/Cheney regime - probably at Cheney's instigation -  and America began ignoring the Geneva Conventions and making illegal torture a part of America's policies.  Obama reversed the torture policy, but failed to hold those guilty under the previous Bush/Cheney regime accountable.  Now, under Trump, America is careening toward complete moral bankruptcy.   It is now American policy to place refugee children in cages and torture and war criminals are lauded by the occupant of the White House.  In a long piece, Andrew Sullivan looks at America's moral decline.  The only way to reverse this is by voting Trump out of office in November, 2020, since it appears clear Senate Republicans will ignore their oaths of office and will put party over country and morality.  Here are article excerpts: 

I saw the gripping New York Times documentary on Hulu this past week about the case of Navy SEAL Commander Eddie Gallagher, a rogue soldier who routinely shot civilians in Iraq for the hell of it, and finally stabbed to death a barely conscious captive young ISIS fighter who was the lone survivor of a missile hit on an enemy house. The documentary has video of the testimonies of his fellow SEALs, all of whom were in obvious anguish and pain as they told the truth to investigators. It also shows a photograph of Gallagher holding up the murdered kid’s head like a trophy in a wild-game hunt. The image is difficult to put out of your mind.

This kind of dehumanizing barbarism started, of course, with a euphemism. “Enhanced interrogation techniques,” we were assured, were nothing like torture. They were just a very intense form of questioning. “I want to be absolutely clear with our people and the world: The United States does not torture,” president George W. Bush insisted with a straight and serious face.

And then we discovered that these “enhanced techniques” were actually extremely similar to the verschärfte Vernehmung (intense interrogation methods) that the Gestapo once used. . . . . Nor did we have to imagine these horrors: Many of these techniques were ubiquitous at Abu Ghraib prison and photographed. The administration insisted that all of this was invented by a few rogue grunts on the ground, even though we now know that what we saw was the very low end of the abuse of prisoners that George W. Bush and Dick Cheney directly authorized.

The official black sites were dystopian torture chambers. When the torture started, many U.S. personnel, at first, couldn’t watch. Seeing human beings treated by Americans the way they had been treated by the Nazis sickened them. Cables were sent, and ignored. Tapes of the grotesque torture sessions were destroyed.

In short, the United States abandoned the Geneva Conventions it had once been instrumental in creating. And this continued under the Obama administration. Yes, the torture program, mercifully, was ended by executive order on Obama’s second day. But Geneva also requires member states to investigate all claims of war crimes and prosecute the perpetrators. The new president, leery of the divisive and emotional issue as he began his term in an economic crisis, decided to ignore them. In fact, for eight years, no one was even fired or demoted for war crimes, let alone prosecuted, and some were even promoted within the CIA. The message was clear: Americans who torture are essentially immune from prosecution. Torture thereby became normalized.

So it was not surprising that in 2016, a presidential candidate emerged who openly espoused torture as something he would bring back if he were elected. . . . . And it was unsurprising that this position won support from Republican primary voters, as if it were just one of many policy proposals, and not an unthinkable violation of domestic and international law.

Only Jim Mattis was able to restrain the commander-in-chief from restoring the torture program, even if it is clear that Trump still regards war crimes as a sign of strength. But signs were sent to the military and the world that this president admired the tactics of dictators and found democracies pathetic in comparison.

This is how liberal democracies disintegrate. A violation of core moral norms happens in one specific, exceptional case, such as after 9/11. Some even find reasons to justify it as an emergency measure (something Geneva rules out as a legal excuse). But torture then entrenches itself into the government apparatus and bureaucracy. There’s a record. There are government employees involved and doctors and psychologists. And any president has a choice.

Trump took the new normal and boosted it. “Torture works!” he declared. In the 2016 campaign, he was asked what he’d do if a military officer refused to obey an illegal order from him, and he responded: “They won’t refuse. They’re not going to refuse, believe me.”

After a group of six Navy SEALs decided, in great anguish, to report their murderous platoon chief for war crimes, and Gallagher was arrested and arraigned, Gallagher’s brother, Sean, went on Fox & Friends and appealed to Trump to step in. Trump first said he might pardon him after the trial.

Gallagher was acquitted, except for the charge of arranging the photograph of what he called a “deer kill,” holding the dead kid’s head up as a trophy. When the Navy, in a final weak attempt to punish him, tried to take Gallagher’s SEAL pin away from him, Trump personally intervened and insisted this war criminal would keep his pin, and that he was one of the “great fighters” in the U.S. military. Fox News celebrated . . .

A president who believes a war criminal is among the finest fighters the U.S. has and suggests he will pardon him after his trial is, quite simply, unique in the history of the U.S. So too is a president who threatens another country with the destruction of its cultural sites in revenge for any response to the assassination of one of its military and political leaders. In mere decades, we went from the architect and guardian of the Geneva Conventions to their nemesis.

The world once knew that the U.S. government would do its best always to follow those laws. There are likely to be war crimes in any real-world conflict, and the U.S. has committed its share of them. But George W. Bush was the first president to directly authorize something that George Washington had ruled out of bounds in the Revolutionary War. Washington’s words ring ever more tragically in the age of Trump: “Should any American soldier be so base and infamous as to injure any prisoner … I do most earnestly enjoin you to bring him to such severe and exemplary punishment as the enormity of the crime may require. Should it extend to death itself, it will not be disproportional to its guilt at such a time and in such a cause … for by such conduct they bring shame, disgrace and ruin to themselves and their country.”

Military honor and the laws of war are the mark of civilization, and something that takes centuries to build and one feckless decision to destroy. For an American president actually to celebrate such crimes, and even personally threaten to commit them, was unimaginable before now, before the shame and disgrace of Trump.

There were a few hours this past week when we were shaken out of the denial that comes with exhaustion. There we were, risking a real outbreak of war, and all we had was him. And this was not an exception in this presidency — just the most extreme example we have yet had of our collective helplessness in the face of one man’s fecklessness.

The administration has been incapable of providing any evidence for the “imminent” attack they used to justify the assassination of General Qasem Soleimani. It appears to me to have been invented. Regardless, there was time to consult allies, and to seek authorization from Congress for what was plainly an act of war.

But, of course, that didn’t happen. . . . The word for this is tyranny, as I noted three and a half years ago. Not tyranny in the sense that we do not still live in a free country, but tyranny in the classic sense: one-man, strongman rule.

In Plato’s words, when describing how a strongman’s rule unfolds: “Some of those who helped in setting him up and are in power — the manliest among them — speak frankly to him and to one another, criticizing what is happening … Then the tyrant must gradually do away with all of them, if he’s going to rule.”

And he [Trump] has pretty much done away with all of them. We’re left with a new and weak defense secretary, Mark Esper, constantly contradicted by his boss; Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, a toady obsessed with Iran; and a war criminal as CIA director, Gina Haspel, who owes her job entirely to a torture-loving president. With this supine clique, Trump ordered the assassination of the top military leader of a country with which we are not at war. Congress was sidelined almost entirely; allies were blindsided. This was not a sane process of deliberation about potentially starting yet another war in the Middle East, considering its consequences, and calibrating a strategy. It was a strongman’s impulse.

Be very, very afraid.

No One Is Safe: How Saudi Arabia Makes Dissidents Disappear

Brutal Saudi Crown Prince MBS.

Saudi Arabia is allegedly an ally of the United States notwithstanding the reality that it supplied the vast majority of the 9-11 hijackers and is the leading financier of the indoctrination of Islamic extremism in the world. Moreover, it treats those perceived to be dissidents in a manner all too reminiscent of the Gestapo's approach to perceived enemies of the Nazi regime: one disappears or ends up dead. Human rights violations are the norm and there is no respect for the borders of other sovereign nations as "enemies" of the brutal regime are hunted down.   Indeed, Saudi Arabia in many respects ought to represent the type of regime America opposes.  Yet, thanks to oil and likely shady dealings between the Saudi regime and Donald Trump and Jared Kushner, Saudi Arabia gets special treatment and the Trump/Pence regime looks the other way as human rights abuses pile up and a reign of terror continues against those labeled and "dissidents."  A long piece in Vanity Fair looks at this behavior of America's false ally.  Tell you representatives in Congress to hold Saudi Arabia accountable. Here are article excerpts:

Prince Khaled bin Farhan al-Saud sat in one of the few safe locations he frequents in Düsseldorf and ordered each of us a cup of coffee. With his close-cropped goatee and crisp gray suit, he looked surprisingly relaxed for a hunted man. He described his constant fear of being abducted, the precautions he takes when venturing outside, and how German law enforcement officials routinely check on him to make sure he is all right.

Recently, bin Farhan, who rarely grants interviews to Western reporters, had incensed the kingdom’s leaders with his calls for human rights reforms—an unusual grievance for a Saudi prince. What’s more, he spoke openly of his desire to establish a political movement that might eventually install an opposition leader, upending the kingdom’s dynastic rule.

As we sat over coffee, he relayed a story that at first sounded innocuous. One day in June 2018, his mother, who lives in Egypt, called him with what she thought was good news. The Saudi Embassy in Cairo had contacted her, she said, and had a proposal: The kingdom wanted to mend relations with the prince and was willing to offer him $5.5 million as a goodwill gesture. Since bin Farhan was struggling financially (reportedly due, in part, to a dispute with the ruling family), his mother welcomed this chance for a reconciliation. But as tempting as the overture was, he claimed he never considered it seriously. And when he followed up with Saudi officials, he realized the deal had a dangerous catch. They had told him he could collect his payment only if he personally came to a Saudi embassy or consulate. That immediately set off alarm bells. He declined the offer.

Two weeks later, on October 2, 2018, bin Farhan saw a startling news report. Jamal Khashoggi—the Saudi Arabian journalist and Washington Post columnist who had been writing articles critical of his homeland and working clandestinely to undermine some of the government’s social media initiatives—had gone to the Saudi consulate in Istanbul to pick up paperwork required for his pending marriage. Minutes after his arrival—as revealed in leaked audiotape transcripts compiled by Turkish authorities—Khashoggi was tortured and strangled by a Saudi hit squad. His body was then presumably carved up with a bone saw, the remains later carted away. The assassination was condemned by nations around the world, though Donald Trump, Jared Kushner, and others in the Trump administration are still on close terms with the Saudi leadership and have continued to conduct “business as usual” with the kingdom. 

Among those present at the consulate the day Khashoggi was killed was Maher Abdulaziz Mutreb, a close aide to Mohammed bin Salman, colloquially referred to as M.B.S., who since 2015 has been steadily consolidating power. Mutreb, according to the transcripts, made multiple calls during the ordeal, possibly to Saud al-Qahtani, the kingdom’s cybersecurity chief and overseer of clandestine digital operations. He may have even phoned M.B.S. himself, who was singled out this spring in a scathing U.N. report, which found “credible evidence” that he was likely complicit in Khashoggi’s “premeditated execution” . . . . Mutreb—well-known in diplomatic circles, and one of the advisers who accompanied M.B.S. on his high-profile visit to the United States last year—gave a particularly chilling sign-off: “Tell yours: The thing is done. It’s done.”Omar

Abdulaziz, like bin Farhan, is a Saudi dissident. An activist living in Canada, he had been an associate of Khashoggi’s. Together, they had planned to publicize the plight of the kingdom’s political prisoners and tried to sabotage the Saudis’ online propaganda efforts by sending out anti-government videos, mobilizing followers, and devising social media schemes to counterprogram messages posted by the regime.

Abdulaziz met me in a Montreal hotel where, the previous year, he had been living in hiding. . . . In May 2018, he said, two representatives of the royal court had shown up in Canada, bearing a message from M.B.S. The pair, accompanied by Abdulaziz’s younger brother Ahmed, a Saudi resident, arranged a series of rendezvous in Montreal cafés and public parks. They encouraged him to stop his activism and return home, urging him to visit the Saudi Embassy to renew his passport. The implicit understanding, he told me, was that if he continued with his political activities, his family might be endangered.

Abdulaziz became convinced that his brother was under duress from his Saudi companions. He recorded their conversations. He decided to turn down their offer. But his choice, he acknowledged, came with a heavy price. When his brother returned to the kingdom, according to Abdulaziz, he was put in jail, where he supposedly remains to this day. A month after his brother’s visit—and four months before Khashoggi’s murder—Abdulaziz discovered that his phone had been hacked, compromising sensitive plans he had been developing with Khashoggi.

Saudi officials did not answer VANITY FAIR’s questions about whether the kingdom attempted to forcibly repatriate Omar Abdulaziz and several others mentioned in this report.

The prince, the activist, and the officer are the lucky ones. They are merely three examples of the untold number of dissidents who have become entangled in a far-reaching dragnet the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia uses to coerce, bribe, and entrap its critics. Sometimes the Saudi enforcers send operatives to foreign countries to silence or neutralize their perceived foes. Of those who are caught and detained, many end up “disappeared”—a phrase popularized in Latin America during the deadly roundups of the 1970s and ’80s. Some are imprisoned; others are never heard from again. While the first known Saudi abduction occurred in 1979 (when a prominent dissident vanished in Beirut), the practice has only escalated on M.B.S.’s watch.

The targets tend to be those whom the Saudi leadership consider to be working against the interests of the state: dissidents, students, rogue royals, prominent businessmen, and M.B.S.’s personal enemies in nearly a dozen countries, including the U.S., Canada, the U.K., France, Switzerland, Germany, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Morocco, and China. Saudi Arabian residents, of course, are not immune. This past April, 37 Saudis accused of insurgent views, including a man who was a minor when taking part in student demonstrations, were executed. 

Through interviews on three continents with more than 30 individuals—activists, national security experts, relatives of the forcibly disappeared, and American, European, and Middle Eastern government officials—a clearer picture has emerged about the extent to which Saudi authorities have gone to imprison, repatriate, and even murder countrymen who dare to protest the kingdom’s policies or somehow malign the image of the nation. On these pages are the stories of eight recent abductees—and those of four others who managed to elude capture—part of a systematic program that goes far beyond the killing of Jamal Khashoggi.

The Saudi campaign is ruthless and relentless. And it has more similarities with, say, the codes of a crime syndicate than it does with those of a traditional, modern-era ally of the United States of America. 

Just days after Khashoggi’s murder, the kingdom rushed to contain the diplomatic fallout by calling the crime a “rogue operation.” But it was hardly an anomaly. It soon came to light that the regime had been sending squads across sovereign borders to physically repatriate Saudi dissidents. Indeed, shortly after the grisly hit job in Istanbul, a journalist from Reuters, who was briefed in Riyadh by an unnamed government official, was presented with what the reporter described in an article as “internal intelligence documents which appeared to show the initiative to bring back such dissidents as well as the specific one involving Khashoggi. 

Similar threats have surfaced in Canada (as described above) and Europe. In April, Iyad el-Baghdadi, an exiled Arab activist living in Oslo, was surprised when Norwegian security officials came to his apartment. According to el-Baghdadi, they told him they had received intelligence, passed along from a Western country, that suggested he was in danger. . . . El-Baghdadi had been warned that M.B.S.’s leadership considered him an enemy of the state. In fact, according to el-Baghdadi, just weeks before the Norwegian officials paid him a visit, he had been helping Amazon determine that its CEO, Jeff Bezos, had been the subject of a Saudi hack-and-extortion plot. The Norwegians were not taking any chances, as el-Baghdadi recalled; they whisked him and his family to a safe house.

Some of these missions to silence or harm Saudi critics have occurred in countries closely allied to Riyadh. One brazen operation in France, for example, involved Prince Sultan bin Turki, who had lived in Europe for years. A grandson of King Ibn Saud, the kingdom’s founder, the prince had a longtime feud with powerful members of the monarchy, having accused them of corruption.

Like bin Turki, two other notable princes, both living in Europe, were similarly kidnapped. Prince Saud Saif al-Nasr, while residing in France, tweeted a message publicly endorsing a 2015 letter by activists calling for a coup. He would mysteriously disappear. One exiled Saudi friend of his told me that he believes the prince had been lured into participating in a dubious business project that was actually a ruse meant to force him to come to the kingdom against his will. A second prince, Turki bin Bandar—a senior officer in the Saudi police force who had fled to Paris—used his YouTube channel to demand political change back home. He even recorded and posted a phone conversation in which a Saudi official could be heard trying to tempt him to come home. In 2015, however, he was stopped at an airport in Morocco on what Rabat authorities claimed was an Interpol warrant and forcibly transferred to Saudi Arabia. 

[W]ell-heeled princes are not the only targets of the long arm of the regime. So, too, have been a variety of others, including businessmen, academics, artists, Islamists critical of the regime, and, according to Reporters Without Borders, 30 journalists who are currently in detention. 

Also at risk, according to academic and diplomatic sources, are Saudi foreign exchange students. Some who have been vocal about the kingdom’s human rights record have suddenly had their financial aid suspended. One graduate student—as revealed in emails obtained from the Saudi Embassy in Washington, DC—was informed that the only way to resolve an impending suspension would be to immediately return to Saudi Arabia to file an appeal. The case of Abdul Rahman al-Sadhan is particularly troublesome. A Saudi citizen—and the son of an American—al-Sadhan was a 2013 graduate of Notre Dame de Namur University in Belmont, California. After earning his degree, he returned to the kingdom to be part of what he thought would be a changing nation. He worked for five years in the Saudi Red Crescent Society, a humanitarian organization. Then, on March 12, 2018, uniformed men showed up at his office, saying he was wanted for questioning. He left with the authorities and, according to his U.S.-based mother and sister, would never be heard from again. 

The day after al-Sadhan disappeared, another student, Loujain al-Hathloul, vanished as well. Enrolled at Abu Dhabi’s Sorbonne University campus, she got into her car after a brief meeting, never to reappear at school. . . . Al-Hathloul would later resurface in a Saudi prison. According to accounts provided by human rights organizations, she was subjected to torture and sexual harassment. And during her periodic visits with family members, she identified one of the men who was involved in her interrogation: Saud al-Qahtani.

The Saudi government, despite multiple accounts to the contrary, denies it has tortured its detainees. The perpetrators of these crimes may never be brought to justice.

Turkey: Audio Offers Gruesome Details of Jamal Khashoggi Killing

Evidence mounts that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman order Khashoggi murder.

Both the dictatorial Saudi regime and the Trump/Pence White House are engaged in contortions and lies as they try to disseminate misinformation about the murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi.  What is most stunning is both the brazenness of the Saudis in thinking no one would notice their foul deed, and the extent to which the Trump/Pence White House is willing to try to distort the emerging facts about the murder and float ridiculous statements such as "rogue killers" might be responsible.  As if rogue killers could have gained access to the Saudi consulate without someone sending orders to allow their entry.  Now, Turkey is offering additional glimpses at the intelligence information they have and none of it is good for the Saudi and Trump/Pence disinformation campaign.  Here are highlights from the New York Times on new information released by Turkey:

ISTANBUL — Saudi agents were waiting when Jamal Khashoggi walked into their country’s consulate in Istanbul two weeks ago. Mr. Khashoggi was dead within minutes, beheaded, dismembered, his fingers severed, and within two hours the killers were gone, according to details from audio recordings described by a senior Turkish official on Wednesday.

The government of Turkey let out these and other leaks about the recordings on Wednesday, as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo visited Ankara, in an escalation of pressure on both Saudi Arabia and the United States for answers about Mr. Khashoggi, a prominent Saudi dissident journalist who lived in Virginia and wrote for The Washington Post.

The new leaks, which were also splashed in lurid detail across a pro-government newspaper, came a day after Mr. Pompeo and the Trump administration had appeared to accept at face value the promises of the Saudi rulers to conduct their own investigation into Mr. Khashoggi’s disappearance — regardless of Turkish assertions that senior figures in the royal court had ordered his killing.

[T]he brutality described in the leaks served as a reminder of why Mr. Khashoggi’s disappearance has triggered an international backlash more severe than countless mass killings or rights violations.

 Trump, for his part, pushed back by questioning the Turkish claims, . . . “I’m not sure yet that it exists, probably does, possibly does,” Mr. Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. . . .

American intelligence officials say they have growing circumstantial evidence that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was involved in the disappearance of Mr. Khashoggi . . .

Top Saudi officials have repeatedly denied any involvement in the disappearance — denials that they repeated to Mr. Pompeo when he visited Saudi Arabia on Tuesday. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, a friend of Mr. Khashoggi’s, has yet to publicly accuse the Saudis of abducting or killing him, or to make public any evidence to support such accusations.

But Turkish officials on Wednesday reiterated their conclusion that a team of 15 Saudi agents, some with ties to Crown Prince Mohammed, was waiting for Mr. Khashoggi inside the Saudi Consulate the moment he arrived, at about 1:15 p.m. on Oct. 2.

After he was shown into the office of the Saudi consul, Mohammad al-Otaibi, the agents seized Mr. Khashoggi almost immediately and began to beat and torture him, eventually cutting off his fingers, the senior Turkish official said, describing the audio recordings.

A top Saudi doctor of forensics had been brought along for the dissection and disposal of the body — an addition to the team that Turkish officials have called evidence of premeditation. And as the agents cut off Mr. Khashoggi’s head and dismembered his body, the doctor had some advice, according to the senior Turkish official.

Listen to music, he told them, as he donned headphones himself. That was what he did to ease the tension when doing such work, the doctor explained, according to the official describing the contents of the audio recordings.

Although several Turkish officials have described the audio recordings or other evidence related to Mr. Khashoggi’s disappearance in the consulate, all have declined to disclose how the material was obtained.

[P]eople knowledgeable about the Saudi plans said the royal court was preparing to acknowledge Mr. Khashoggi’s killing and punish what they would describe as a rogue operator in the Saudi intelligence service.

On Wednesday, however, the leaks resumed and escalated, a possible sign of Turkish frustration as the Saudis have delivered no such public explanation and the Trump administration has shown no rush to get one.

[T]he implication that the Saudi government orchestrated Mr. Khashoggi’s disappearance and possible death has created a stigma around Crown Prince Mohammed, who runs the country.

His plan for a financial conference in Riyadh next week has been upended by cancellations from high-profile Western financiers and media organizations. Christine Lagarde, managing director of the International Monetary Fund, on Wednesday became the latest to scrap plans to attend.

Former United States intelligence officials have said they consider their Turkish counterparts both competent and credible when it comes to domestic intelligence gathering, and it would not be surprising if the Turks possessed audio surveillance from within the Saudi Consulate.

The corrupt and brutal rule of the Saudi monarchy needs to end.  What should/would replace it is an open question. The take away is that murder is only too acceptable to the Saudi rulers.  It is disturbing that it is seemingly also acceptable to the Trump/Pence regime.

The Hypocrisy of "Pro-Life," Anti-Gay Christians/Republicans

One of the sound bites that one hears ad nausea from Virginia's homophobic right wing, "pro-life" Christians is their deep concern for "the children."  One hears similar bleating from their political prostitutes within the Republican Party who will go to any lengths not to offend their Christofascist masters.  In reality, both groups only care about some children - those in utero and, after they are born, only white, heterosexual children.  The lives and well being of all the rest evaporates at birth  and we see these "devout Christians" doing all in their power to marginalize and make life a living hell for LGBT children, youth and adults. In respect to poor minority children, they support every effort to slash the social safety net and deprive them of health care assess.  They reserve something special for LGBT youth, however: (i) constant propaganda that being LGBT is wrong and shameful, and (ii) so-called "conversion therapy" - which is condemned by every legitimate medical and mental health association in America - that constitutes nothing less than a form of psychological and sometimes actual physical torture aimed at making LGBT youth "straight."  Yet through all of this we hear the disingenuous, hypocrisy laden claim that these people care about "the children."  A piece in GayRVA looks at the continued Christofascist/GOP effort to subject LGBT youth to what constitutes torture.  Here are excerpts:

Good afternoon, pro-lifers of Greater Virginia! I hope you’re sitting, because we need to talk.

You claim to be about the children, about their lives and safety. Do you just mean while they’re in utero? Or do you still care about them once they’re out of the womb — but only if they’re straight?

Because if you really care about children — ALL children — the way you say you do, then we need to know where you stand on conversion therapy.

The battle to ban conversion therapy continues to rage on here in Virginia. For years, bills have been proposed within the General Assembly to ban it. Sadly, all have failed.

As recently as January of this year, Sen. Scott Surovell (D-Fairfax) introduced a bill that would ban conversion therapy (defined within the bill as “any practice or treatment that seeks to change an individual’s sexual orientation or gender identity”) for minors in Virginia, and prohibit licensed therapists from performing it. Of course, the bill was sadly killed by Republicans on the Senate Education and Health Committee, 8-7.

Surovell explained to the Richmond Times-Dispatch that there is sufficient evidence proving the psychological and physical harm this plays on minors, including increased depression and suicide attempts. The American Psychological Association has outright stated that conversion therapy is harmful — a 2007 report on the practice by the APA stated that “results of scientifically valid research indicate that it is unlikely that individuals will be able to reduce same-sex attractions or increase other-sex sexual attractions through sexual-orientation change efforts.”

But, hey. Why listen to people who are actual experts? Silly talk!

In an interview with NBC12, Ted Lewis, Head Director of Side By Side, talks about what can happen to your child in conversion therapy.

“There are a lot of different things that can happen to a young person,” said Lewis. “First and foremost, there is a lot of shame that comes with the person being told they are not okay who they are. And on top of that, the tools used to get them to try and convert can be electric shock, hypnotizing the person, lots of shaming, and sometimes even forced intercourse.”

So, again I have to ask. Why do you seriously just not care about our queer children?  Do you seriously care that little that our children are being subjected to legalized torture? You’re okay with them being electrocuted or shamed for just being alive?

[E]ven the state licensing boards are over it, and recently aimed to ban it themselves despite the General Assembly’s continuous attempts to shut down any bills.

Last week, the Department of Health Professions held a work group to discuss this. Potential regulations were discussed that would prohibit anyone licensed to practice in Virginia from using conversion therapy to intentionally alter any child’s sexual or gender identity.

Naturally, Sen. Amanda Chase, R-Chesterfield, argued against these regulations, reminding the group that the bill had been killed in the General Assembly. “I voted against this bill (voted yes to pass by indefinitely) in the Senate Education and Health committee because it violates free speech, religious liberty, and endangers children who should be able to receive helpful counsel,” she posted on Facebook after the meeting.

Sen. Chase. You are specifically who I am calling out in this article. You are the real danger to our children, and people who think like you. You are why our children are dying.

So, I’ll just ask you flat out. Why do you want our queer children to suffer so badly?

So I’m going to ask again, my dear pro-lifers, who swear until they are blue in the face and writhing on the floor that they care about nothing more than the lives of our children. Do you genuinely care about our children once they leave the womb, or do you only care as long as they are cisgender and straight?

Because if you do care about all of our children, and yes I mean every single one of them regardless their gender and or sexual identity, then you need to stop allowing conversion therapy to be foisted upon them. If you’ll stand for that, you’re not pro-life.

The next time you hear Victoria Cobb of The Family Foundation or Republicans like Sen. Amanda Chase bloviating about caring for children, know that it is all a lie.  Better yet, call them out on it and, in case of Virginia Republicans, vote them out of office in 2019.

Exposing the Ugly Horrors of "Conversion Therapy"

Focus Features - In “Boy Erased,” the son of a Baptist minister is forced into
a “conversion therapy” program after he’s outed to his parents.

For the record, I never was subjected to the nightmare of so-called "conversion therapy" which promises to "cure" gays and make them heterosexual.  Instead, I did my own version of "praying away the gay" for decades and it did not work and only resulted in anger, self-hatred and suicide attempts.  I know others who were forced into conversion therapy programs and some still carry the emotional and deep psychological scars many, many years later all because their families believed the lies promoted by unethical licensed therapists, but mostly by religious "ministries" that often have no legitimate experts in the areas of mental health or medicine.  These witch doctor like programs can inflict severe harm, yet they persist and the Trump/Pence regime and an increasingly sectarian Republican Party are likely poised to protect them.  For the Christofascists, these fraudulent ministries achieve several goals: (i) they allow the lie that sexual orientation is a choice and not a God endowed characteristic, (ii) they back the lie that LGBT citizens do not need non-discrimination protections, and (iii) they make a lot of money for practitioners/"ministries." Two new movies hopefully will help shed light on the evils of these bogus therapies.  A piece in Huffington Post looks at these films and the hideous history of conversion therapy.  Here are excerpts:

Two new movies are shining a much-needed spotlight on the practice of gay “conversion therapy,” also known as the attempt to change the sexual orientation or gender expression of LGBTQ individuals.

In “The Miseducation of Cameron Post,” released earlier this month, Chloë Grace Moretz plays Cameron, an 11th grader whose parents send her off to a boarding school that claims it will “cure” her same-sex desires after they catch her with another girl.

“Boy Erased,” coming out this November, stars Lucas Hedges as Jared, the son of a Baptist minister who is forced into a “conversion therapy” program after he’s outed to his parents.

“Miseducation” is set in the now-distant year of 1993, long before “Will & Grace,” “RuPaul’s Drag Race” and the legalization of same-sex marriage. And “Boy Erased” takes place in the world of small-town South, fundamentalist Christianity.

But the subject of both films is neither a historical artifact nor a rare event. Quite the opposite. As the Williams Institute at UCLA outlined earlier this year, about 700,000 American adults have undergone “conversion therapy” at some point in their lives, half of whom endured the experience as adolescents. Despite the opposition to “conversion therapy” by leading professional health organizations (including the American Medical Association and the American Psychological Association) and the widespread evidence that such treatments do not work and, in fact, can cause emotional and psychological harm. Thirty-six states still permit “conversion therapy” for underage minors; according to the Williams Institute, nearly 80,000 LGBTQ youth will receive the discredited therapy before they reach the age of 18.

“Conversion therapy” dates to the late 19th century, when the German psychiatrist Albert von Schrenk-Notzing claimed he’d turned a gay man straight through hypnosis sessions and several trips to a brothel. The practice accelerated through the 20th century even as the techniques remained crude and often barbaric. Historian Chris Babits, for instance, has found evidence of the widespread use of ice pick lobotomies performed on homosexual children in the 1940s and 1950s. Other techniques involved forced castration of homosexual men and electro-convulsive therapy. After the American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from its manual of psychiatric disorders in 1973, the medical establishment largely abandoned these practices. But efforts to turn gay people straight continued, carried out mostly by less-reputable counselors and religious organizations. Their methods tend to focus on talk therapy, but some, especially the so-called “ex-gay” ministries, often employ aversion treatments that amount to physical torture, including stimulating nausea and vomiting, inflicting electric shocks and subjecting patients to ice baths or extreme heat ― all while viewing homosexual photographs or videos.  In 2012, California became the first state to ban such treatment for minors. (California is currently considering outlawing the practice altogether for people of any age in the state.) Thirteen other states have followed suit, with five doing so just this year.

That trend may seem to indicate encouraging progress, but it could also have inspired a powerful counterresponse. Conservative groups have mobilized in defense of gay “conversion therapy” programs for minors. Just this year, anti-gay forces have helped to successfully defeat legislation that would ban the practice therapy for minors in Maine and Massachusetts. They have also helped keep similar measures from passing in New York for more than five years. That this is happening in these states – far from the Bible Belt – suggests the widespread nature of these programs.   

Yet even in states that have declared “conversion therapy” for minors illegal, those laws usually only cover licensed mental health care advisers. Religious and spiritual advisers generally remain exempt from the bans. Since religious-affiliated counselors and clergy form a significant portion of “conversion therapy” programs, state bans may actually do little to curtail the practice. [N]ow, in the era of President Donald Trump, the outlook appears even grimmer. The 2016 Republican Party platform called for “the right of parents to consent to medical treatment for their minor children,” which many interpreted as coded support for “conversion therapy.” The Trump administration includes several “conversion therapy” advocates in high-ranking positions, none more so than Vice President Mike Pence.

And while the Supreme Court previously turned down three challenges to California’s 2012 law, experts have pointed out that the current Supreme Court ― particularly if Judge Brett Kavanaugh is confirmed following next month’s scheduled hearings ― will likely rule to protect “conversion therapy” programs.

This is devastating news for the real LGBTQ teens living in unaccepting families and communities, not just those portrayed in movies.

[T]he shame and horror of gay “conversion therapy” must also be brought into the open so that it can be further shunned if not outlawed altogether. The very lives and well-being of thousands of LGBTQ Americans may well depend on making this often-hidden practice much wider known.

John McCain Dead at 81

When John McCain ran for president in 2000, I was an enthusiastic supporter.  That George W. Bush ultimately won the GOP contest and the 2000 election is a tragedy that, in my view, cost America and other parts of the world needless lost lives. By the time that the 2008 election rolled around, the cancer in the GOP was beginning to metastasize and  when McCain foolishly picked Sarah Palin - the insane idiot of Wasilla, in my view - there was simply no way that I could overlook the wrongheaded policies that McCain was embracing out of expediency to pander to the uglier elements of the GOP base.   All of that said, I never stopped respecting McCain as a man who, despite mistakes, tried to do the right thing, including voting against the effort to kill the Affordable Health Care Act. His sense of morality, opposition to torture and rejection of the racism of much of today's GOP is in stark contrast to the foul creature in the White House. An editorial in the New York Times looks at the man who died yesterday:  

With John McCain, you never quite knew. That was a big part of his appeal, one of the things that made him interesting, and also one of the things that drove people who value ideological consistency a bit batty.

As a professed maverick, Mr. McCain, who died Saturday at the age of 81, was bound to make somebody unhappy. Though for much of his career his votes on the Senate floor were mostly along party lines, his periodic challenges to Republican orthodoxy made him more popular among independents, Democrats and the tattered remnants of his party’s moderate wing than with the absolutists in the party’s base. Five years of torture in a North Vietnamese prison camp appeared to have left him with a pretty good idea of who he was, an ability to think for himself and the capacity to tune out partisan noises.

He had principles, and he had flaws, from time to time betraying those principles — most grievously in the 2008 presidential campaign. But in a Senate mostly devoid of the kind of commanding figures who once roamed its halls, he was a rare bird. And he could surprise you.

Especially his fellow Republicans. At a time of confusion and nastiness over immigration, it is worth recalling that he joined with Senator Edward Kennedy in 2005 and then again in 2007 to push a grand compromise that paired stronger controls at the border with a path to citizenship for the nation’s 11 or so million undocumented immigrants.

At a time when the political system is once again drowning in money from special interests, it is worth recalling that back in the early 2000s he co-wrote, with Russ Feingold, a Wisconsin Democrat, a landmark bill to tighten the post-Watergate campaign finance reform laws.

At a time when the man who now occupies the White House and his cabinet factotums deny the plain reality of climate change, it is worth recalling that back in the early 2000s, Mr. McCain and Joseph Lieberman, then a Connecticut Democrat, drafted the first serious bipartisan bill to limit greenhouse gas emissions by putting a price on carbon.

The campaign finance reform effort eventually succeeded, named for a companion bill in the House sponsored by Chris Shays, a Republican from Connecticut, and Marty Meehan, a Democrat from Massachusetts. The climate and immigration bills did not succeed, partly for want of Republican support. But even in defeat, Mr. McCain, through his willingness to tackle thorny and even politically toxic issues, gave hope for the future. His example still does.

A military man to the core, and the son and grandson of two decorated admirals, Mr. McCain held views on foreign and defense policy that were relentlessly hawkish; He lobbied hard for the ruinously misguided invasion of Iraq, as well as the bombing of Libya. At the same time, and despite his brutal treatment as a prisoner of war, he strongly supported Secretary of State John Kerry’s efforts to normalize relations with North Vietnam.

Mr. McCain’s final years in the Senate were a similar mix of independence and fealty to party norms. Last summer, he dramatically entered the Senate chamber and cast a decisive vote against the administration’s ghastly health care bill, partly on grounds that it had been concocted in haste and without hearings and had thus failed the basic requirements of sound legislative process. But not long afterward, he voted in favor of a similarly ill-conceived, backward-looking tax bill. (Mr. McCain was absent for medical reasons when the bill came up for final passage three weeks later and he did not cast a vote).

That vote provided precisely the kind of opportunity for one last display of the adventurous bipartisanship for which Mr. McCain was so well known. It was not to be. Still, there had been plenty such moments in a long and distinguished career. Mr. McCain was a charming, imperfect man, driven by a code of honor and self-aware enough to know when he had violated it. A Senate where the phrase “happy warrior” is an oxymoron will miss him.

My sincere condolences to the McCain family.

John McCain's No Holds Barred Book

While I have often disagreed with his positions, I have always had respect for the man and still wish that he, rather than George W. Bush, had been the 2000 Republican presidential nominee. So much tragedy and needless deaths might have been avoided in Iraq and elsewhere.  And compared to the current occupant of the White House - who I never give the title of "president" - McCain has always tried to maintain a level of moral decency and "American values" if you will.  Now, leaving Congress and with likely not much time left on this side of life, McCain's new book, Restless Wave, seems written with a view of how McCain will be viewed by history and he confronts not only some of his own biggest mistakes but also the moral cesspool the Republican Party has become as best symbolized by Der  Trumpenführer.  A review of the book in the Washington Post gives a brief summary of points in the book.  Here are highlights: 

Unlike the previous six books McCain and Salter have composed together, this one wasn’t written for voters. It was written for history. In an era of all-caps tweets and angry denunciations of supposed “witch hunts,” the Arizona Republican’s final book, published Tuesday, casts him as a profile in courage. McCain highlights his advocacy for the Iraq troop “surge” when it was toxically unpopular in 2007 and his decisive vote against repealing Obamacare in 2017. He finally tells his side of his 2008 Sarah Palin partnership. With what time he has left, the “maverick” — an appellation he has worn throughout his career, at some times more comfortably than at others — is going to put country first and tell the truth.

He expresses regret that he did not pick Joe Lieberman to be his running mate 10 years ago. His best friend, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), “enthusiastically endorsed the idea” of bringing their colleague, who had been the 2000 Democratic vice-presidential nominee, onto “a national unity ticket.” But everyone else in McCain’s circle told him it would fatally divide the GOP.

McCain attributes the insufficient vetting of Palin, 44 and two years into her first term as Alaska’s governor, to his sulking about not being able to tap Lieberman. Taking the blame for her stumbles, he writes, “She was a skilled amateur performer asked to appear on Broadway twice a day.” I wish he had grappled more fully with the mayhem Palin’s selection created inside the GOP. It laid the groundwork for the ascent of Donald Trump a few years later.

Trump emerges as a bete noire in the book. When McCain after the 2016 elections received a copy of the “dossier,” detailing unverified allegations about the president compiled by an opposition researcher, he immediately turned it over to James Comey so the FBI could explore whether Trump was compromised by the Russians. “Anyone who doesn’t like it can go to hell,” writes McCain.

But he also portrays [Trump] the president as an outgrowth of tectonic shifts in a party for which, just 10 years ago, he was the standard-bearer. Now he sometimes struggles to recognize it. “Trump seems to vary from refusing to believe what [Russian President Vladimir] Putin is doing to just not caring about it,” he frets. “And some House Republicans investigating Russian interference seem more preoccupied with their own conspiracy theories than with a real conspiracy by a foreign enemy to defraud the United States.”

McCain repeatedly criticizes conservative “talk radio blowhards.” He calls the House Freedom Caucus “the say-no-to-everything crowd.” He says nativists “need to be confronted, not ignored or winked at or quietly dismissed as kooks.” He mocks his 2016 primary challenger, Kelli Ward, for attacking him as “a champion of compromise.” “You’re damn right,” he responds. Former Trump aides Steve Bannon and Sebastian Gorka are “self-proclaimed nationalist radicals.” “Bigger misfits haven’t been seen inside a White House since William Taft got stuck in his bathtub,” he writes.

All politicians self-mythologize. This book is an effort to codify McCain’s maverick brand. He puts extra emphasis on his work across the aisle, including a 38-page chapter about working with Sen. Ted Kennedy, the liberal lion from Massachusetts, on health care and immigration. He has kind words for other leading Democrats, too, including Hillary Clinton.

McCain says he’s a proud Reagan Republican. “Not a Tea Party Republican,” he writes. “Not a Breitbart Republican. Not a talk radio or Fox News Republican. Not an isolationist, protectionist, immigrant-bashing, scapegoating, get-nothing-useful-done Republican. Not, as I am often dismissed by self-declared ‘real’ conservatives, a RINO, Republican in Name Only.”

McCain’s maverick-iness has ebbed and flowed. He’s mostly been a reliable party-line vote since getting elected to Congress in 1982, but he’s broken with Republicans on a few key issues. He earned the enmity of appropriators in both parties by battling earmarks before that was in vogue, and he clashed with his own party leaders by agitating for campaign finance reform. 

He admits to some big mistakes: “The principal reason for invading Iraq, that Saddam [Hussein] had WMD, was wrong,” McCain writes. “The war, with its cost in lives and treasure and security, can’t be judged as anything other than a mistake, a very serious one, and I have to accept my share of the blame for it.”

But the senator’s critique of [Trump] the current president is more sustained than any other. “For all our disagreements I never doubted President Obama shared the seventy-five-year bipartisan consensus that American leadership of the free world was a moral obligation and a practical necessity,” he writes. “I’m not sure what to make of President Trump’s convictions.” . . . . “He seems uninterested in the moral character of world leaders and their regimes,” McCain writes. “The appearance of toughness or a reality show facsimile of toughness seems to matter more than any of our values. Flattery secures his friendship, criticism his enmity.”

McCain does not want to be defined by opposition to Trump, . . . . He would, however, like to be remembered for his long crusade against torture. He devotes a meaty chapter to the topic and recounts apologizing personally to someone who suffered at the hands of his American captors while in Libya, over the objection of the CIA station chief. 

McCain wants to hold that moral high ground, and he’s peeved by any suggestion that he’s not worthy of claiming it. The senator tried to run an honorable campaign in 2008. He forbade his staff from mentioning Jeremiah Wright, Obama’s controversial former pastor. In many ways, this gesture seems much more impressive now — after Trump spent years insisting that Obama was born in Kenya and demanding to see his birth certificate.

“I worry that we are at a turning point, a hinge of history, and the decisions made in the last 10 years and the decisions made tomorrow might be closing the door to the era of the American-led world order,” McCain writes. “I hope not, and it certainly isn’t too late to reverse that direction. But my time in that fight has concluded.”

McCain is one of the few remnants of the GOP I was proud to be a part of.  Sadly, those days appear to be gone forever as the GOP sinks deeper and deeper into a complete moral cesspool.  From my own experience in the GOP, it is no surprise that the Christofascist have lead the way towards the GOP's moral bankruptcy. 

Is Trump's Impeachment Inevitable?

A piece in Huffington Post - which I hope proves accurate - argues that the impeachment of Donald Trump is inevitable.  Of course, impeachment hinges not only on Trump's actions and violation of the law and the U.S. Constitution but also on when Congressional Republicans will finally view Trump as more of a liability than an asset.  As he alienates the business community and foments the consolidation of opposition by the majority of Americans to not only himself but to Republicans in general, at some point the critical mass will be achieved where impeachment will become an attractive option and allow Republicans who have sold out the nation in favor of personal advancement and partisanship to actually appear as patriots.  Never mind that they prostituted themselves to Trump and played a role in his election.  Here are column highlights:

Trump has been trying to govern by impulse, on whim, for personal retribution, for profit, by decree ― as if he had been elected dictator. It doesn’t work, and the wheels are coming off the bus. After a week!

Impeachment is gaining ground because it is the only way to get him out, and because Republicans are already deserting this president in droves, and because the man is psychiatrically incapable of checking whether something is legal before he does it.

Impeachment is gaining ground because it’s so horribly clear that Trump is unfit for office. The grownups around Trump, even the most slavishly loyal ones, spend half their time trying to rein him in, but it can’t be done.

They spend the other half fielding frantic calls from Republican chieftains, business elites and foreign leaders. Trump did what? Poor Reince Priebus has finally attained the pinnacle of power, and it can’t be fun. 

It is one thing to live in your own reality when you are a candidate and it’s just words. You can fool enough of the people enough of the time maybe even to get elected. But when you try to govern that way, there is a reality to reality—and reality pushes back.

One by one, Trump has decreed impulsive orders, un-vetted by legal, policy, or political staff, much less by serious planning. Almost immediately he is forced to walk them back by a combination of political and legal pressure—and by reality.

Unlike in the various dictatorships Trump admires, the complex skein of constitutional legal and political checks on tyranny in the United States are holding—just barely at times, but they are holding. And the more reckless Trump’s behavior, the stronger become the checks. 

The more unhinged he becomes, the less will conservative judges be the toadies to ordinary Republican policies that they too often have been. Anybody want to wager that the Supreme Court will be Trump’s whore?

In the past week, Republicans from Mitch McConnell on down have tripped over each other rejecting his view of Putin. They have ridiculed his screwball claim of massive voter fraud. 

They are running for cover on how to kill ObamaCare without killing patients or Republican re-election hopes. 

Trump proposed to reinstate torture, but key Republican leaders killed that idea. Sen. John Thune (S.D.), the Senate’s third ranking Republican said Wednesday that the ban on torture was settled law and the Republicans in Congress would oppose any reinstatement. Trump’s own defense secretary holds the same view. After blustering out his new torture policy, Trump meekly agreed to defer to his defense advisers. 

The bipartisan group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, (CREW) has been conducting a detailed investigation. Senior legal scholars associated with CREW have filed a detailed legal brief in their lawsuit, documenting the several ways Trump is in violation of the Emoluments Clause, which prohibits a president from profiting from the actions of foreign governments. 

There are already plenty of other grounds for impeachment, including Trump’s putting his own business interests ahead of the country’s and his weird and opportunistic alliance with Vladimir Putin bordering on treason. A lesser-known law that goes beyond the Emoluments Clause is the STOCK Act of 2012, which explicitly prohibits the president and other officials from profiting from non-public knowledge.

Republicans at first thought they could use Trump for Republican ends. But from his embrace of Putin to his sponsorship of a general trade war, this is no Republican. One can only imagine the alarm and horror being expressed by Republicans privately.

In 1984, the psychiatrist Otto Kernberg described a sickness known as Malignant Narcissism. Unlike ordinary narcissism, malignant narcissism was a severe pathology.

It was characterized by an absence of conscience, a pathological grandiosity and quest for power, and a sadistic joy in cruelty. 

Given the sheer danger to the Republic as well as to the Republicans, Trump’s impeachment will happen. The only question is how grave a catastrophe America faces first.