President Trump has done business with royals from Saudi Arabia for at least 20 years, since he sold the Plaza Hotel to a partnership formed by a Saudi prince. Mr. Trump has earned millions of dollars from the United Arab Emirates for putting his name on a golf course, with a second soon to open.He has never entered the booming market in neighboring Qatar, however, despite years of trying.Now a feud has broken out among these three crucial American allies, and Mr. Trump has thrown his weight firmly behind the two countries where he has business ties, raising new concerns about the appearance of a conflict between his public role and his financial incentives.Mr. Trump has said he is backing Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates because Qatar is “a funder of terror at a very high level.” But his stance toward Qatar, which is host to the largest American air base in the region, has differed sharply from the positions of the Pentagon and State Department. The secretaries of defense and state have stayed neutral, urging unity against the common enemy of the Islamic State.Mr. Trump is the first president in 40 years to retain his personal business interests after entering the White House. Other senior officials in the executive branch are required to divest their assets. Critics say his singular decision to hold on to his global business empire inevitably casts a doubt on his motives, especially when his public actions dovetail with his business interests.
Category Archives: Profiteering
This Is What Kleptocracy Looks Like | Dame Magazine
Think of the CREW lawsuit as a lawsuit on behalf, essentially, of every private entity that will lose money to Trump over the years—restaurant owners, hotel bookers, hotel owners, wedding planners, and so on. Trump has already made clear he’s happy to promote his businesses generally by linking them to his presidency. Look at Mar-a-Lago: An official State Department website praised the virtues of Mar-a-Lago as the Winter White House. Trump doubled the cost of Mar-a-Lago membership (to a cool $200K) right after he took office. Actual people are losing actual money when foreign government personnel book with Trump instead of the competition.
Trump granted approval for nine more trademarks in China that had previously been rejected: Shanghaiist AKA: Chinese Bribe #TraitorTrump; US workers – “forget you!” #LoserTrump
After struggling in Chinese courts for years to defend his brand, Trump has had dozens of trademarks granted approval since he took office in January. Thanks to this winning streak, the president’s company has the legal rights in China to sell Trump-branded hotels, gold clubs, real estate services and, most intriguingly, Trump escort services.
Whitewashing by brown hands – sister-hood magazine. A Fuuse production by Deeyah Khan.
Kendall Jenner on the cover of Vogue India’s tenth anniversary edition is the tip of the iceberg. There are more disturbing goings-on in India and colourisation. The colour-struck media industry is seeking to destroy the idea that brown skin is beautiful by integrating more foreign actresses who have only the skill of light skin, through promoting skin whitening creams via Bollywood heavyweights and devoting entire shows to the idea that nobody would ever consider a darker skinned girl beautiful.Before we can confidently wage war on the lack of diversity in Western countries, we must work together to ensure that brown countries aren’t the first to jump at the chance to wash out brown beauty and talent.
Source: Whitewashing by brown hands – sister-hood magazine. A Fuuse production by Deeyah Khan.
We Don’t Need Megyn Kelly To Shine a Light On a Dumpster Fire | Dame Magazine
The way Jones sees it, shadowy groups within the U.S. government orchestrated—or at least refrained from preventing—the 9/11 attacks, the Boston Marathon massacre, the bombing of Oklahoma City’s Murrah federal building, and the mass shootings in Aurora, Colorado, and at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut. He has even suggested that President Obama was responsible for the 2013 Oklahoma tornado outbreak. When Jared Lee Loughner went on his January 2011 rampage in Tucson, killing six people and severely wounding U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.), Jones told Rolling Stone: “This whole thing stinks to high heaven. … My gut tells me this was a staged mind-control operation. The government employs geometric psychological-warfare experts that know exactly how to indirectly manipulate unstable people through the media.”Kelly’s assertion that many don’t know him is probably true. He only has around 600,000 followers on Twitter (though that number will likely jump post NBC interview). And even though that may be true it is irrelevant. In fact, it is actually a good thing.Shining a light? Honestly, Kelly missed the boat on that one. Jones has been outed, debunked, marginalized, and ridiculed into relative silence. And anyway, according to Jones’s divorce lawyer the Alex Jones on Infowars is just a persona, a character:
Source: We Don’t Need Megyn Kelly To Shine a Light On a Dumpster Fire | Dame Magazine
U.S. seeks to dismiss lawsuit against Trump over foreign payments | Reuters
The U.S. Department of Justice on Friday called for the dismissal of a lawsuit alleging President Donald Trump violated the constitution by accepting foreign payments at his hotels.
Source: U.S. seeks to dismiss lawsuit against Trump over foreign payments | Reuters
When Did Running for Office Become So Dangerous? | Dame Magazine
the 12th (death threat), well, that’s the one that changes your life; it’s the picture of your home or your office, it’s the one with white powder in the envelope, it’s the one that mentions the hair color of your teenage daughter, or with screencaps of your teenage son’s Snapchats. It comes from a person who is really committed to fucking with you, the kind of crazy person you imagined was behind the first threat you ever received, it’s the one that makes the jaw of the cop who responds to your freaked-out call tighten as he tried to keep his poker face but you can tell he’s worried. It’s the one that makes you take an unscheduled vacation, or break your lease, or drop out of your political race or stop writing on the internet for a while; it’s the one that makes you question whether you should’ve been so sanguine about numbers one through 11, because maybe they’re more realistic than they sounded at the time.They’re the kind of threats that upend the basis of our democracy and our society, by silencing and scaring away and driving out everyone but the people who would never be silent or scared, no matter how realistic the risk—and, goodness knows, having rational actors who think through risk and reward is reasonably important in government—and by driving out the people more likely to receive the more serious threats. They’re the kind of threats that true public servants, even those who benefit, ought to condemn and discourage, not dismiss and ignore.Or else, you’re essentially guaranteeing that there will be more. And, with 2018 coming, there probably will be.
Source: When Did Running for Office Become So Dangerous? | Dame Magazine
Inoreader – Profiting from the Working Class: How the Opioid Epidemic Echoes the Mortgage Crisis
How successful was that marketing campaign? Very. As the Charleston Gazette-Mail noted in an explosive report on the epidemic, between 2007 and 2012 pharmaceutical companies sold 780,000,000 hydrocodone and oxycodone pills in West Virginia. That’s 433 pills for every man, woman, and child living there. Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Florida, and New York have also been flooded with these drugs.
Source: Inoreader – Profiting from the Working Class: How the Opioid Epidemic Echoes the Mortgage Crisis
VIDEO: ‘Make our planet great again’ – Macron rebukes Trump (in English) for ditching Paris climate deal – The Local
“Don’t be deceived about climate. There is no plan B, because there is no planet B,” Macron said.Referring to Trump’s idea of redrawing the 2015 accord, he said, in the French version, “we will not in any way renegotiate an agreement that is less ambitious” than the present one.
Rebecca Solnit: The Loneliness of Donald Trump | Literary Hub
The man in the white house sits, naked and obscene, a pustule of ego, in the harsh light, a man whose grasp exceeded his understanding, because his understanding was dulled by indulgence. He must know somewhere below the surface he skates on that he has destroyed his image, and like Dorian Gray before him, will be devoured by his own corrosion in due time too. One way or another this will kill him, though he may drag down millions with him. One way or another, he knows he has stepped off a cliff, pronounced himself king of the air, and is in freefall. Another dungheap awaits his landing; the dung is all his; when he plunges into it he will be, at last, a self-made man.
Source: Rebecca Solnit: The Loneliness of Donald Trump | Literary Hub





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