Liberty Mourns

“You can keep your tired, your poor,
your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
the wretched refuse on your teeming shore.
Keep these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to yourselves,
I douse my lamp beside the bolted door.”

And on the pedestal these words appeared:
‘My name is Donald Trump, prince of bigots:
Look on my works, ye weak, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

The torch has been extinguished and replaced by an extended middle finger.

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/01/trump-signs-executive-order-bannin...

My apologies to Emma Lazarus [Words on the Statue of Liberty] and Percy Bysshe Shelley [Ozymandias].

Update:

Green card holders from listed countries are also to be barred, wtf?

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/live/2017/jan/28/world-digests-donal...

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Creosote.'s picture

@dfarrah
No rain and crop failure year after year made it impossile for people to stay where they and their people lived for many hundreds of years; yet global warming didn't originate there.

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edg's picture

@TJ to keep blundering around the world wrecking other countries and causing refugee crises that we leave to other countries to fix. It's not the US absorbing most of the M.E. refugees, but it was the US that created the conditions that caused those refugees.

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detained the children refugees by the tens of thousands and that Hillary Clinton called for their mass deportation to 'teach their parents a lesson'. Well, lessons were taught all right... fatal lessons for those we sent back.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/oct/12/obama-immigration-deport...

I'm not pointing this out to defend Trump, but the hypocrisy of Democrats protesting his moves is quite apparent and demonstrates that this is an issue of guilt on both sides of the aisle.

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"Without the right to offend, freedom of speech does not exist." Taslima Nasrin

@Fishtroller 02

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Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@Fishtroller 02 It will be forgotten.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

coloradoblue's picture

to destroy hospitals, wedding parties and others and then "double tap" the rescuers.

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Dear Dems: You lost the WH, Senate, House, dozens of governors, state level SOS and AG and about 1,000 state legislative seats. Maybe...you're doing something wrong.

@coloradoblue

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riverlover's picture

I am Caucasian! No surprises (lol) except for a scattering of Jewish, probably came from someone long ago in southern Europe.
But Viking product I find stunning. Rape and pillage product?

Doing a sleep vaca today. Something lacking recently. This is my afternoon wake break.

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Hey! my dear friends or soon-to-be's, JtC could use the donations to keep this site functioning for those of us who can still see the life preserver or flotsam in the water.

TheOtherMaven's picture

@riverlover
They also came looking for better farmland than they had (Scandinavia is rocky, mountainous and cold), and they came looking for trade, and they came exploring to see what lay behind the next wave.

They must have been delighted to find Iceland even though climate-wise it was not much improvement over Scandinavia - there wasn't anybody else (still) living there and they could have it all to themselves without fighting for it. (But, being quarrelsome people, they pretty soon were fighting each other.)

They fought the Saxons in northeastern England to a standstill, they grabbed off large portions of the Scottish Highlands and Islands, and they wore down the King of France until he gave them a whole county to settle down in and leave him alone. They found a sizable population of Slavs that "needed organization" in the Norse manner and proceeded to impose it upon them - then ran trade routes down the Russian rivers to Byzantium and points beyond. They also got toeholds in Ireland and elsewhere. (In some parts of Europe they were very serious competition for the local girls, because they were cleaner and better-dressed than the local young men, not to mention being "exotic foreigners".)

About the only people they didn't impress were the Arabs, who were just as fierce warriors, just as competitive traders, and much more obsessed with cleanliness - a bath once a week didn't cut it with them, when their religion required washing (hands, at least) five times a day. Smile

The short of it is, you might find "Viking input" from absolutely anywhere in the British Isles and from large stretches of coastal Europe as well.

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There is no justice. There can be no peace.

jwa13's picture

@TheOtherMaven just about everyone in the northern part of Europe has some Nordic material -- genetic or cultural; and sometimes, it's hard to distinguish.

1,000-year anniversary of Clontarf came up just a couple of years ago -- the Norse were getting feisty in Eire, and the High King (one "Brian Boru", as some knew him then) decided to put his foot down. One of the terriblest battles in the entire Middle Ages -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Clontarf; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsgvF-UZK90, but it pretty much marked the end of Nordic incursions into the more-southern parts of Europe (well, except for Stamford Bridge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Stamford_Bridge , and maybe Hastings https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Hastings -- hmmm, I guess maybe the Norse never really went away).

Anyway, those Norse also

-- launched a "failed" settlement in Iceland (which was virtually abandoned by the western world for about 400 years);
-- founded the first truly "modern" European-style democracy, based on the concept of Althing -- a periodic assembly, which always (always) was intended to include the entire nation (=> anybody who cared to show up) at which anybody -- man or woman! -- could speak about any matter, and demand justice -- which was delivered by a "jury of their peers", supervised by individuals (not always men) versed in "The Law"
-- developed an oral/musical tradition (the "Saga" literature https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sagas_of_Icelanders ) which rivals the Homeric ballads in the understanding and expression of the human condition, and the ways by which individual foibles/"hubris" lead to disaster; and
-- oh, BTW, founded a series of colonies in one of the least-hospitable places on the planet (Greenland), which lasted for nearly 500 years, extended to much of the east coast of North America, and managed to develop a trading network across the Arctic (see some of the discussion regarding Norse trade w/Inuit -- "skraeling" -- in National Geographic and elsewhere https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Greenland)

... generally not any peoples with whom the modern, highly-efficient and productive "bankster" culture would wish to associate, fer sure --

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When Cicero had finished speaking, the people said “How well he spoke”.
When Demosthenes had finished speaking, the people said “Let us march”.

Not Henry Kissinger's picture

and certainly don't support either the idea or its implementation, there may be another deeper consideration here that most won't consider.

Think about it: without the ban, just who would be the refugees we'd allow in? Of course there would be a vetting process, and, considering the predilections of our security services, that process would almost certainly give preferential access to the regime change insurgents we have been supporting in the seven countries where the ban has been implemented.

What I think may be going on here is that Trump is afraid McCain and his neocon cronies will use the refugee crisis as an excuse to extract their al queada buddies from Putin's meat grinder, giving them a safe haven in the US and preserving a rump of mercenary cadres they can use for future covert missions. (IIRC McCain once talked about repatriating 50,000 'refugees', which is probably close to the number of foreign fighters (cum families) we are sponsoring.

It is also significant to note that the ban includes the seven countries where our previous regime change efforts have been most active, (Iraq, Iran, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Libya and Yemen) but does not include countries like Turkey, Egypt, or Saudi Arabia -countries where terrorism is certainly prevalent but have not been subjected to the same degree of overt US meddling (mainly because the governments of those countries have done a better job of purging foreign backed dissidents.)

In this light, the exclusion of Green Card holders makes sense because those fighter would be the ones with the deepest connections to the US government, and most likely the ones who've already received domestic training in regime change insurgency tactics.

Assuming my theory is correct, it would be nice if Trump had been forthcoming about the true reasons for the ban rather than hide his strategic intentions behind nativist demagoguery, but as he fights his rearguard action/purge of neocon elements within and without the borders of the US, he appears to want to keep a fairly low profile on at least this one issue.

Comments, criticisms, and outright scorn are all welcome.

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The current working assumption appears to be that our Shroedinger's Cat system is still alive. But what if we all suspect it's not, and the real problem is we just can't bring ourselves to open the box?

sojourns's picture

@Not Henry Kissinger that Trump is capable of thinking things through that deeply. His son-in-law, who wrote his campaign playbook, is calculated enough to see things along the lines that you are projecting.

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"I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm frightened of the old ones."
John Cage

Not Henry Kissinger's picture

@sojourns whether Trump or one of his advisers came up with the policy. (Most likely one of his Nat Sec. advisers rather than his son-in-law in any event.)

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The current working assumption appears to be that our Shroedinger's Cat system is still alive. But what if we all suspect it's not, and the real problem is we just can't bring ourselves to open the box?

sojourns's picture

@Not Henry Kissinger

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"I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm frightened of the old ones."
John Cage

asterisk's picture

@Not Henry Kissinger Interesting point. I had not thought about this and am glad you pointed it out.
I am not sure Trump thought about your idea himself, but there may be some people who suggested this policy to him for this reason.

Maybe we should start with a movement to allow widows with young children to to come here while the details about taking in other refugees are being considered? Perhaps we could also admit a few teenage girls who have been orphaned as well. Bringing in some non-threatening refugees might break down some of the public resistance. I wonder where we could get some good photos and bios of refugee women and girls who need to have a safe place to live. Focusing on a few sympathetic individuals would put faces on the refugee situation. We could call it 'fast-track vulnerable refugee status' or something.

TPTB may not want refugees telling us that the 'moderate rebels' the US has been supporting are really a bunch of violent thugs. This might be another reason they want to keep refugees out.

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@Not Henry Kissinger Everyone is trying to isolate Trump into one camp or the other but this man is so off the wall and unpredictable I wouldn't put a label on him just yet. After all, the song he picked for the inauguration (I did it my way) to me says something.

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Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@Not Henry Kissinger Oh shit. Now that's an ugly thought. I doubt Trump had it himself. anybody around him smart enough to have it?

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

Not Henry Kissinger's picture

@Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal There's an all out bureaucratic war going on right now between the neocons and the rest of the deep state establishment. While it raged pretty heavily during the late Obama years, with Obama and Biden fence riding/mediating the turf wars, Trump's election has clearly put the neocons on the defensive.

Make no mistake, there is going to be a big purge of neocons at the Agencies. Kennedy and Nuland were the biggest names this week but there are many other PNAC true believers who will also be losing their jobs.

What these Dark Angel of the Apocalypse all decide to do about their uncerimonious fall from grace is anybody's guess, but one just needs to look at the state of the world right now to know what they are capable of. (Let's put it this way: I don't think it's a coincidence Trump hired a General to head of DHS.)

The next six months is going to be very interesting.

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The current working assumption appears to be that our Shroedinger's Cat system is still alive. But what if we all suspect it's not, and the real problem is we just can't bring ourselves to open the box?

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@Not Henry Kissinger That's what I've been sensing, too, but I had no real evidence. On the up side, the Deep State isn't sure it wants nuclear war. On the down side, the Deep State isn't sure it doesn't want nuclear war.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

@Not Henry Kissinger stringent of vetting processes for refugees it takes about 2 years to go through.

Green cards are very hard to obtain.

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Not Henry Kissinger's picture

@LaFeminista @LaFeminista @LaFeminista @LaFeminista @LaFeminista

@LaFeminista Green cards are very hard to obtain.

Trump would want to exclude those whom the US government specifically designated as 'friendlies' under previous Administrations.

Think about the countries involved. Then think of who those people might be.

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The current working assumption appears to be that our Shroedinger's Cat system is still alive. But what if we all suspect it's not, and the real problem is we just can't bring ourselves to open the box?

ZimInSeattle's picture

to visit often. Guess that won't be happening anymore. And she better not leave the country. It would seem the Pumpkin Fuhrer wants to start another Crusade. Who knows. The guy is so screwy, it seems he doesn't know what he's doing from one minute to the next.

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"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." - JFK | "The more I see of the moneyed peoples, the more I understand the guillotine." - G. B. Shaw Bernie/Tulsi 2020

MarilynW's picture

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/27/opinion/trumps-immigration-ban-is-ill...

But apparently it is already in effect stopping people who have already been vetted and processed. I wonder who is going to challenge this edict in court.

Furthermore why are Malaysia and Indonesia, both Muslim countries, left off Trump's list?
Malaysia connections to Trump
In fact, the 9/11 plotters met in Malaysia. The Trump tower in Vancouver owned by a Malaysian tycoon is managed in partnership with the Trump International Hotel & Tower Vancouver development in Canada. Also Trump is golfing buddy of corrupt Malaysian PM who is being investigated for the embezzlement of $1bn of public funds.

Indonesia connection to Trump

JAKARTA, Indonesia — One resort, planned as the largest in Bali, will overlook a spectacular Hindu temple. The other, in the verdant hills of West Java, will adjoin a theme park. The properties will be so luxurious, the Trump Organization says, that even an impressive five-star rating will not do them justice. So it will give them six stars instead.

Even as President-elect Donald J. Trump promises to end foreign business deals that could pose conflicts of interest — there will be “no new deals” while he is in office, he has said — his company is moving ahead with two Indonesian projects that illustrate how tricky that pledge might be.

None of the construction work to build or renovate structures at the Indonesian resorts has even begun, but Mr. Trump has forged relationships with powerful political figures in Indonesia, where such connections are crucial to pushing through big projects.
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/31/world/asia/indonesia-donald-trump-res...

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To thine own self be true.

Creosote.'s picture

@MarilynW
weren't on the list, according to a recent Jimmy Dore video, because they were not amontg those named in Obama's December 2015 memo listing the seven countries "of particular interest." See Azazello's post in this essay: http://caucus99percent.com/content/trumps-list-banned-countries-came-obama

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CA Senate Press Availability to discuss President Trump’s Recent Executive Orders on Immigration

The first ten minutes of that vid are of an empty podium. Don't say Idiocracy. Here is where he starts "speaking at a higher ground": https://youtu.be/aCNPiF7bhIA?t=46m01s

It was a struggle listening to the entire thing but I did hear about their emergency actions if anyone else is interested:
SB6 https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=201720180SB6
SB31 https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=201720180SB31

Reading both I can't help thinking Wikileaks Podesta, lol. Plus emergency money for lawyers coming straight out of the General Fund, nothing more for housing or living wages, but lawyers for employers. We'll see how many little people they actually do help. I mean, they are still talking about Russia how serious can they possibly be?

Corporations have lotsa lobbyists so it's all pols on deck for the paymasters. What hypocrites Ds are to speak of distractions when "6.3 million Californians live in poverty" right now, on their watch. "That's the system." the Ds are defending; eternally low wages for most, outrageous housing costs, and unending economic inequality. Trump is their perfect Wookie for non-action, in my view. They are having no ideas other than protection of entrenched plutocracy. Meh.

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We must push back and forgo pleasantries.

Kudos to Nydia Velazquez - who spoke out bravely today.
Con acento puertorriqueño, ella habló la verdad a América.

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Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@Jamawani I'm not surprised. Things were pretty horrific even before Trump.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

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