USA - Freedom of the Press: Trump Allies Target Journalists Over Coverage Deemed Hostile to White House - by Kenneth P. Vogel and Jeremy W. Peters

A loose network of conservative operatives allied with the White House is pursuing what they say will be an aggressive operation to discredit news organizations deemed hostile to President Trump by publicizing damaging information about journalists.

It is the latest step in a long-running effort by Mr. Trump and his allies to undercut the influence of legitimate news reporting. Four people familiar with the operation described how it works, asserting that it has compiled dossiers of potentially embarrassing social media posts and other public statements by hundreds of people who work at some of the country’s most prominent news organizations.

The group has already released information about journalists at CNN, The Washington Post and The New York Times — three outlets that have aggressively investigated Mr. Trump — in response to reporting or commentary that the White House’s allies consider unfair to Mr. Trump and his team or harmful to his re-election prospects.

Operatives have closely examined more than a decade’s worth of public posts and statements by journalists, the people familiar with the operation said. Only a fraction of what the network claims to have uncovered has been made public, the people said, with more to be disclosed as the 2020 election heats up. The research is said to extend to members of journalists’ families who are active in politics, as well as liberal activists and other political opponents of the president.

It is not possible to independently assess the claims about the quantity or potential significance of the material the pro-Trump network has assembled. Some involved in the operation have histories of bluster and exaggeration. And those willing to describe its techniques and goals may be trying to intimidate journalists or their employers.

It is clear from the cases to date that among the central players in the operation is Arthur Schwartz, a combative 47-year-old conservative consultant who is a friend and informal adviser to Donald Trump Jr., the president’s eldest son. Mr. Schwartz has worked with some of the right’s most aggressive operatives, including the former Trump adviser Stephen K. Bannon.

Read more at: Trump Allies Target Journalists Over Coverage Deemed Hostile to White House - The New York Times: 

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EU under Attack: America’s Billionaires Battle Each Other for Political Control over Europe - by Eric Zuesse

A contest for political control of Europe is gearing up between two American teams, one headed by the long-established George Soros, and the other now being set up by the upstart Steve Bannon, US President Donald Trump’s former campaign-manager. Soros has long led America’s liberal billionaires in controlling Europe, and Bannon is now organizing a team of America’s conservative billionaires to wrest that control from the liberal ones. 

Whereas Soros claims to represent the public’s interests, Bannon claims to represent the population’s interests — that’s the ‘populist’ side of America’s billionaires, versus the established ‘public-interest’ (Soros) side of them.

Two American brands of ‘philanthropists' will thus now be fighting for control over Europe's political markets (or institutions).

It’s a battle to serve either ’the public’ or else ’the people’, and each political brand will be struggling to keep Europe as an ally in American billionaires’ war against Russia (which all American billionaires want to defeat), but each team does this from a different ideological perspective, one being ‘liberal’, and the other being ‘conservative’. 

Just as there is liberal-conservative political polarization between billionaires domestically within a nation, there also is such political polarization between billionaires regarding their given nation’s foreign policies; and America’s billionaires are politically very highly polarized, both nationally and, increasingly, internationally as well. None of them is progressive, or left-populist. The only ‘populism’ that any billionaire currently promotes is right-‘populist', which is Bannon’s team. (Stalin was left-‘populist’; and Hitler was right-‘populist’; but neither dictator really was at all populist, which is simply democratic and against the aristocracy.) Both teams demonize each other within the United States for control over the US Government, but both are now competing against each other internationally for control over the entire world, by two different brands: liberal versus conservative. Both brands endorse ‘democracy’ or “the allies”; and both support spreading that ‘democracy’ by means of invading and occupying ‘dictatorships’ or “the enemies.” 

In Europe, this is called “imperialism”; in America, it is called “neo-conservatism” or “neoconservatism”; but no American billionaire actively opposes it (because to oppose it would be to oppose the aristocracy itself, the billionaires’ control over the Government — the very system that has been enormously successful for them, far more than the public itself recognizes)

For the complete report click on: America’s Billionaires Battle Each Other for Political Control over Europe

Britain: Ukip to team up in 'unholy alliance' with Steve Bannon's new far right European movement -

Ukip has pledged to work with Steve Bannon’s new European alt-right movement, forging what critics have branded an “unholy alliance” to bring down the EU and fuel populism across the continent.

Mr Bannon, a former investment banker who founded the website Breitbart, has pledged to bolster the continent’s far right with a new foundation called The Movement that would dole out resources to eurosceptics and anti-EU populists.

The former chief strategist of Donald Trump has rattled Brussels after stating his intention to create a “supergroup” in the European parliament after next’s year’s EU elections, with extreme right-wingers taking as many as a third of the legislature’s seats.

Though Ukip MEPs will not be able to participate directly in the parliament because of Brexit, a spokesperson pledged that the party would share experience with Mr Bannon’s project to give it a leg up, stating they expected the group to have a “large impact” on European politics and hoped for “a new army of eurosceptic MEPs”.

Mr Bannon’s move into Europe also appears set to have an impact on the dynamics of Brexit talks, with one source close to Brexit negotiations telling The Independent that Brussels has been spooked by the alt-right project.

As a result, EU officials are increasingly resistant to calls for the Article 50 negotiating period to be extended, so as to avoid eurosceptic Britain participating in the European parliament elections scheduled for next May.

The EU is said to fear that such an outcome would see Ukip, which won the 2014 European elections in the UK, return to the parliament and bolster the numbers of Mr Bannon’s new anti-EU group.

Note EU-Digest: Democratic EU member states and the EU Commission better wake-up to this threat, which certainly is no laughing matter and must be taken very seriously. 

Read more: Ukip to team up in 'unholy alliance' with Steve Bannon's new far right European movement | The Independent

Right-Wing Populism: Steve Bannon plans Brussel based Populist Foundation

Read more at:

https://www.dw.com/en/steve-bannon-plans-brussels-based-foundation-the-movement-for-eu-far-right/a-44774972

USA: Former Top Trump Advisor Steve Bannon calls on Jews to join him in his battle against GOP establishment.- by Tom Porter

Former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon has called on Jews to join him in his battle against the GOP establishment.

Speaking at the annual awards dinner held Sunday night at the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) in New York, Bannon urged members to “work as partners” in his crusade against Republican party leaders.

“We’re leading an insurgency movement against the Republican establishment,” Bannon said, as cited by the Associated Press, and accused his adversaries in the establishment of playing games.

Read more: Former Top Trump Aid Steve Bannon has called on Jews to join him in his battle against the GOP establishment.

USA Gun Control: Bannon warns: "end of everything" if Trump supports gun controls - Jonathan Swan

President Trump may say he's a defender of gun ownership rights, but with all the gun control pressure he'll be under after Las Vegas, how do we know he'll resist it — especially after the debt limit deal with Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi, and his flirtation with a deal on DACA?

Bottom line: Trump's allies, both inside and out of the White House, are mostly sure he'll resist because he owes too much to the NRA and its supporters — but even some of them aren't 100 percent sure.

 What they're saying: Since the Las Vegas shooting, we've spoken or texted with more than 20 sources inside and out of the White House — all people who've worked close enough to Trump to have something useful to say about his likely next moves. Most say they can't imagine him doing a Chuck-and-Nancy deal on gun control. 

They say that while he bathed in the glowing media coverage after his surprise debt ceiling deal with the Democrats; he'll be very reluctant to do anything like that on guns:

• He feels closer to the NRA than just about any outside group.
• He believes his un-nuanced support for the Second Amendment was crucial to his election victory.
• He's been instinctively allergic to Democrats who argue for gun control in the immediate aftermath of mass shootings.

Besides, as former Trump adviser Roger Stone told me: "Base would go insane and he knows it."

I asked Steve Bannon whether he could imagine Trump pivoting to the left on guns after the Las Vegas massacre. "Impossible: will be the end of everything," Bannon texted. When asked whether Trump's base would react worse to this than they would if he supported an immigration amnesty bill, Bannon replied: "as hard as it is to believe actually worse."

One possible path: Trump could make a modest concession to gun control advocates by opposing a controversial bill, backed by the NRA, to relax restrictions on the purchasing of gun silencers. Politico reported, citing GOP sources, that the bill "won't be reaching the House floor anytime soon after a horrific mass shooting in Las Vegas."

Read more: Bannon warns: "end of everything" if Trump supports gun controls - Axios

USA: Bannon is gone from the White House, but he has already laid eggs in everything - by Alexandra Petri

Stephen K. Bannon is out. After seven months as the chief strategist to the president of the United States, Bannon is gone.

I would have been more excited about this seven months ago. It is better to get rid of the termites before they have successfully laid eggs in all your possessions.

You cannot muster much enthusiasm over the fact that a man who promised he would take a sledgehammer to everything you held dear is finally, months later, not in the house any longer. It is hardly as though he did not get the chance to put cracks in all the things he wanted broken.

Besides, it is less than consoling to hear that someone has evicted the rat-king, when you can see full well that that “someone” is just a tangle of cockroaches hissing to themselves under an ermine robe.

Fine: There is one less hideous tangle of rats affixed to one another by the tails running amok in your home, but it is not as though you can fumigate.

And when the word comes that it was because the rat-king was too vocal in its complaints to the media about the cockroaches’ handling of household affairs, you wonder.

Read more: Bannon is gone from the White House, but he has already laid eggs in everything - The Washington Post

US Trump Administration: The Trouble With Trump’s White House Is Donald Trump - by Rick Wilson

It took Donald Trump 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles to buy himself one day of kind coverage at the end of another otherwise terrible week. But what the president himself described as an impulsive reaction to heartrending photos of Syrian children gassed by Assad on his watch isn’t a coherent strategy to punish Assad for using chemical weapons.

Even supporters who hoped the strike would show Trump as a he-man leader willing to grasp the saber of state in his tiny hands and rattle it firmly, it failed to paper over the political crisis consuming his White House as his staff and family have become warring factions seeking his favor so that the story has become not about the president’s goals, policies, or accomplishments, but a group of people around him who make the Borgias look like the Brady Bunch.

Trump is faced with terrible options when it comes to rearranging the deck chairs on the SS White House, and those of us who warned you this was inevitable are ordering popcorn. The cancer in the presidency isn’t his staff—though they reflect his shoddy intellect, his shallow impulsiveness, his loose grasp of reality, and Chinese-menu ideology. The problem is Trump himself, and nothing and no one can change that.

Let’s start with the leader of the Pepe Army sleeper cell at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., Steve Bannon. If Trump keeps his chief strategist, he keeps the poisonous, post-conservative nationalism and thinly-veiled racial and religious animus that helped put him in the Oval Office. Bannon was great at running a conspiracy blog, but his political instincts are those of an arsonist, not a strategist. He has led Trump into a series of unforced political debacles, tainted relations with Congress, and alienated members of America’s new royal family.

He’s already become persona non grata in Congress for his absurdly villainous performance trying unsuccessfully to browbeat them into accepting the ludicrously unpopular Trumpcare bill, and his economic nationalism is big-government statism wrapped in populist trade and industrial policies. Bannon is a famous brawler, and like many brawlers after too many beers, he lashes out any anyone for lookin’ at him funny.

A Bannon power center in the White House is as dangerous as its vacuum.

If he fires Bannon, Trump should prepare for war. The information warfare architecture Bannon built with the money of Robert and Rebekah Mercer is already restive and nervous that Trump has been co-opted by (((them))) and lured into being a more conventional president.

Since the Trumpbart/Bannon/Mercer propaganda platform helped elect Trump with its lurid “reporting” and its troll army (shoutout to Putin!), it can just easily be turned against him. Trump’s social media power was always boosted by—if not contingent upon—this system, and the idea of a vengeful Bannon turning those tools against him should keep Donald awake at night.

Read more: The Trouble With Trump’s White House Is Donald Trump - The Daily Beast

USA -"The Trump Goebels": Meet Steve Bannon, Trump’s front man to fight all wars

Steve Bannon

Furor and global protests over an executive order curbing immigration? Just some whiners who can’t get over the fact that Donald Trump is president. News media complaining about access and fake news? They should keep their mouth shut and “just listen for a while”. No mentioning of Jews in a statement on Holocaust Remembrance Day? No regrets.

The reactions emanating from the White House to the latest public controversies bear the fingerprints of a man who is emerging as the most important power centre inside Trump’s inner circle (with the possible exception of son-in-law Jared Kushner): Steve Bannon, top political advisor and former chairman of Breitbart News, an outlet that spreads white supremacist views and peddles racist and misogynist conspiracy theories.

Like pre-November Trump, Bannon has never been elected to office or gained governing experience. Before moving into Trump’s orbit he had been a naval officer, investment banker, minor Hollywood player, and political impresario whom Bloomberg Politics back in 2015 called “the most dangerous political operative in America”.

In the early stages of the 2016 presidential campaign, Bannon was instrumental in bringing down Jeb Bush and later Hillary Clinton by feeding information of alleged financial shenanigans to mainstream news media which gave those stories an aura of reliability – and contributed to constant negative headlines about the Clinton Foundation, for example.

After the election, Bannon’s appointment as a key Trump advisor and strategist with office space in the White House caused an uproar among Democrats and in the media. Countless Breitbart articles were quoted as proof that Bannon is anti-Semitic, anti-minority or anti-women. Bannon and Trump could not care less.

Last Friday, another outcry: Trump, reorganising the National Security Council, the top inter-agency group advising the president on national security, elevated his chief political strategist by making him a permanent NSC member.

At the same time, the director of national intelligence and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff will now attend meetings only when “issues pertaining to their responsibilities and expertise are to be discussed”, according to the presidential memorandum issued Saturday.

“It is a startling elevation of a political advisor”, wrote the New York Times, “to a status alongside the secretaries of state and defense, and over the president’s top military and intelligence advisors”.

In theory, the move puts Bannon on the same level as Michael Flynn, the national security advisor, a former Pentagon intelligence chief who was Trump’s top advisor on national security issues before a series of missteps reduced his influence.

But Bannon’s elevation does not merely reflect his growing influence on national security. “It is emblematic of Trump’s trust on a range of political and ideological issues. During the campaign, the sly and provocative Bannon played a paradoxical role — calming the easily agitated candidate during his frequent rough patches and egging him on when he felt Trump needed to fire up the white working-class base,” wrote the Times.

Trump respects Bannon because he is independently wealthy and therefore does not need the job, and both men ascribe to a shoot-the-prisoners credo when put on the defensive, according to the former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski.

Trump and Bannon share the same version of “America First,” something former labour secretary Robert Reich calls outright “dangerous”. “Such a vision would only alienate America from the rest of the world, destroying our nation’s moral authority abroad and risking everything we love about our country,” Reich, who is an economist at the University of California, Berkeley, writes on his blog.

“Unsupervised by people who know what they’re doing, Trump and Bannon could also bring the world closer to a nuclear holocaust,” Reich concludes.

Reich’s assessment might be seen by many as over the top. Yet Bannon believes that the West is already at war with a “new barbarity” of Islamic terrorism that threatens to wipe out centuries of progress.

“We are in an outright war against jihadist Islamic fascism. And this war is, I think, metastasizing far quicker than governments can handle it. We’re at the very beginning stages of a global conflict, and if we do not bind together as partners with others in other countries, then this conflict is only going to metastasize,” Bannon said at a conference in Rome in 2014.

“It’s going global in scale, and today’s technology, today’s media, today’s access to weapons of mass destruction, it’s going to lead to a global conflict that I believe has to be confronted today. Every day that we refuse to look at this as what it is, and the scale of it, and really the viciousness of it, will be a day where you will rue that we didn’t act.”

Read more: Meet Steve Bannon, Trump’s front man to fight all wars | Euronews