On April 12, 2019, the Los Angeles Times published an article headlined “Trump Threatens to Dump Immigrants into California’s ‘Sanctuary Cities.” The article explains that the plan involves busing migrants held in detention centers near the border and releasing them into districts of Democratic lawmakers who oppose the president’s immigration policies.

Trump told reporters, “California certainly is always saying, ‘Oh, we want more people…and they want more people in their sanctuary cities. Well, we’ll give them more people. We can give them a lot. We can give them an unlimited supply. Let’s see if they’re so happy.”

There is nothing in these statements to leave anyone with the impression that Trump is concerned about the consequences or legality of this proposal.

According to the Times, “It’s not clear what legal authority, if any, the government would have to transport detainees a long distance before releasing them.”

As I explained in a previous article, the federal government has no constitutional authority to declare whether immigrants are here legally or not, much less to bus people to other cities. Article I section 8, clause 4 of the United States Constitution empowers Congress to “establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization.”  Naturalization is the process by which an individual becomes a United States citizen. It has nothing to do with immigration – controlling who may or may not cross the country’s borders.

In Federalist #39, James Madison explained that establishing the Constitution would not be a national, but a federal act. What does this mean in terms of immigration? It means that the authority to control immigration rests with the states. The states should also be fiscally responsible for the consequences of their policies in this area.

People are confused because they mistakenly consider immigration and naturalization synonymous. Another source of confusion is an erroneous interpretation of the Supremacy Clause, found in Article VI of the Constitution, which states, in relevant part, that the Constitution, and the laws of the United States made in pursuance thereof are the supreme law of the land.

The Tenth Amendment says that “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited to it by the States, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

Accordingly, the power to determine immigration statuses and policy rests with the states. This administration has no authority to detain immigrants or bus detainees anywhere, let alone to the districts of political opponents.

Former President Obama was accused of abusing the system in the same manner, by using his refugee policy to plant Muslims in areas politically opposed to his administration. One of the consequences was the election of Democrat Congresswoman Ilhan Omar of Michigan, a Somali who married her brother so she could stay in the United States.

Critics of the previous administration’s abuses are now applauding the abuses of the current administration, for purposes of payback and political one-upmanship. They find the president’s statements to be humorous, and at best, we are told not to take him too seriously.

Fear not, both sides of the issue can look to history as a precedent for this behavior.

On January 1, 1863, President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which “freed” slaves. Thanks to this act, he is falsely hailed by the indoctrinated as “The Great Emancipator,” yet what has been taught as a humanitarian act was nothing more than a military tactic. First, Lincoln wanted to keep England out of the war, and from acknowledging the CSA as a belligerent nation. The second was the logical and likely intended outcome – slaves would revolt against their masters, meaning woman and children left home while the men fought. Slaves in States remaining in the Union were not affected, nor were slaves in the South in areas of federal control; any State rejoining the Union within 100 days would be allowed to keep their slaves.

United States immigration policies, particularly since 1965, have been aimed at shifting political dynamics. Federal policies have, however, benefited one entity, and that is Big Government. The importation of people from third world countries has fundamentally changed the political climate, to the benefit of top-down central government the founders and ratifiers rejected.

Rather than seeing the current debacle as amusing a form of payback, no one seems to realize that actual human beings are affected. We have dehumanized real, living, breathing people for political theater. Obama brought migrants IN to benefit his policy objectives; Trump is advocating keeping them OUT to keep his campaign promises. Trump cannot, in good faith, argue that these immigrants are a danger to society, and subsequently threaten to relocate them as punishment into communities not supportive of his political policy objectives.

Ignored completely is the system put into place when the Constitution was ratified; a system to intended avoid this very crisis, yet we have sunk to new lows. Those who care not for the rule of law claim they are right and demand open borders; those citing the Constitution claim they are right, and demand the nation’s borders be shut down and illegals be removed. What both sides are guilty of is failing to understand the original intentions of the Constitution which was put in place to ensure that the states would be the ones to determine who would remain within their sovereign borders.

From Lincoln to present-day administrations, we are witness to the weaponization of marginalized classes of people for political gain. Those cheering this behavior on should take a hard look at the real issue and ask whether those who fought and died for our independence would wish they had simply stayed home.

The US has issued a new map showing the occupied Syrian Golan Heights as Israeli territory, just three weeks after US President Donald Trump announced he would recognise the region as belonging to Israel.

The US’ Special Representative for International Negotiations, Jason Greenblatt, yesterday tweeted a picture of the new map with the words “welcome to the newest addition of our international maps system after [President Trump] issued a proclamation recognizing Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights”.

The map shows the 1974 ceasefire line between Israel and Syria – which was imposed after Israel captured the Syrian Golan Heights in the Six Day War of 1967 and reaffirmed after the 1973 October War – as a permanent border, using a solid line as opposed to the dashes usually used to demarcate such armistice lines. In contrast, the other armistice lines separating Israel from Lebanon, the occupied West Bank and besieged Gaza Strip are still shown with dashed lines.

The move represents further entrenchment of Trump’s decision in March to recognise the Golan Heights as Israeli. In a tweet, President Trump wrote: “After 52 years it is time for the United States to fully recognize Israel’s Sovereignty over the Golan Heights, which is of critical strategic and security importance to the State of Israel and Regional Stability!” His decision reversed years of official US policy which, in line with international law, designated the Golan as “Israeli controlled”.

President Trump’s decision was slammed by the international community, with Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Iran, the Arab League and Russia all lambasting the move.

A week later, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited Washington DC to attend the signing of an official proclamation of the US’ new policy on Golan. Netanyahu praised the decision, saying “just as Israel stood tall in 1967, just as it stood tall in 1973, Israel stands tall today. We hold the high ground and we should never give it up.”

The announcement was seen as a gift to Netanyahu before Israel’s general election on 9 April. Throughout his re-election campaign, Netanyahu repeatedly emphasised his strong relationship with Trump, claiming to have “got things done” during his premiership and won a number of “successes” such as moving the US embassy to Jerusalem and the recognition of the Holy City as Israel’s capital.

Netanyahu has since been emboldened by the Golan recognition, vowing to annex the occupied West Bank to Israel during his new term as prime minister. Speaking in an interview with Israel’s Channel 12 News, Netanyahu said: “I am going to extend [Israeli] sovereignty [to the occupied West Bank] and I don’t distinguish between settlement blocs and the isolated settlements.”

Facing criticism that the idea was simply an unfulfillable election promise, he then doubled down on his position, saying: “I prefer to do this [annex the West Bank] with agreement. I discussed this with representatives of President Trump and I told them, in my opinion, there is no way around it, and I think it is also the right thing to do. But it is going to happen. This isn’t something I cooked up for the elections.”

Commentators have seen both the US’ Golan recognition and Netanyahu’s West Bank annexation promise as evidence that these two issues will not be included in the long-awaited “deal of the century”. Repeatedly delayed, the so-called peace plan is widely expected to be biased in favour of Israel, with US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo saying that Israel’s plan to annex the West Bank will not harm the deal.

President Trump wants the Federal Reserve to relaunch Obama-era monetary stimulus. That means inflation.

Trump started ratcheting up criticism of Federal Reserve monetary policy months ago. As the stock market plummeted last fall, the president blasted the central bank for gradually hiking rates in the preceding months. Trump said, “The problem I have is with the Fed. The Fed is going wild. They’re raising interest rates and it’s ridiculous.” He also said the Fed is “going loco.” A short time later, the president doubled down, saying “I’m paying interest at a high rate because of our Fed. And I’d like our Fed not to be so aggressive because I think they’re making a big mistake.”

Trump got his wish in January when the Fed put the brakes on interest rate normalization. The Fed turned even more dovish during the March Federal Open Market Committee meeting, saying it plans on ending efforts to reduce its balance sheet.

But Trump wants more than just a pause in rate hikes. He wants rate cuts and a new round of quantitative easing – in other words, monetary-printing stimulus like Obama got.

During an interview Friday, the president once again complained about the Fed’s 2018 interest rate increases, saying “they really slowed us down.” Trump went on to demand stimulus and called on the Fed to resume Obama-era QE.

Well, I personally think the Fed should drop rates. I think they really slowed us down. There’s no inflation. I would say in terms of quantitative tightening, it should actually now be quantitative easing. Very little if any inflation. And I think they should drop rates, and they should get rid of quantitative tightening. You would see a rocket ship. Despite that, we’re doing very well.”

In simplest terms, Trump wants the Fed to create more money out of thin air to stimulate the economy just like it did at the height of the Great Recession.

The Nuts and Bolts of Quantitative Easing

In effect, quantitative easing is a fancy term for money printing. The Fed doesn’t literally fire up the presses and print dollar bills, but the policy has the same effect on the economy. During QE, the central bank creates money out of thin air and uses it to buy securities and government bonds. This serves two purposes. It monetizes the national debt and it simultaneously injects new cash directly into the economy.

The Fed engaged in three rounds of quantitative easing during the Great Recession. Between 2008 and 2015, the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet ballooned from $900 billion to $4.5 trillion.

Many economists warned that the massive QE program would spark price inflation. Since that hasn’t happened – at least not so far, Keynesian economists argue that money creation during a recession doesn’t harm the economy. But while we didn’t see the massive rise in prices some economists predicted, we did witness a surge in asset prices – particularly the stock market. In the same way, the loose monetary policy after the dot-com bubble burst in 2000 inflated the housing bubble that led to the 2008 crash.

You can’t say money creation doesn’t cause inflation. Money creation is inflation – by its very definition. Rising prices aren’t inflation. They are one symptom of inflation. Just because we don’t see a rise in consumer prices doesn’t mean that money isn’t impacting the economy. In fact, the manipulation of the money supply through interest rates and quantitative easing serves as the primary driver for the boom-bust business cycle.

Winding It Down

The Fed began efforts “normalize” monetary policy in December 2016 with its first interest rate hike in nearly a decade. Over the next two years, the Fed gradually pushed rates up from 0 percent to 2.5 percent. This may seem like a significant boost, but it hardly qualifies as normalization. Consider that before the 2008 crash, the Fed’s interest rate was at 5.25 percent, and before the dot-com bubble burst, it was 6.5 percent.

Last year, the Fed began quantitative tightening to shrink its balance sheet. It didn’t get very far. According to the most recent numbers released by the Fed, it has shed about $535 billion from its balance sheet. At this time, the Fed still holds about $3.94 trillion in assets. In February, the Fed Chair Jerome Powell said the central bank would be in a position to “to stop runoff later this year.” In other words, this bloated balance sheet will become the new “normal.”

According to the Fed chair, the balance sheet will remain at about 16 to 17 percent of GDP. Given that figure, the new normal for the Federal Reserve balance sheet will come in at between $3.2 trillion and $3.4 trillion. In other words, almost all of the mortgages and Treasurys that the Fed purchased at part of its three rounds of quantitative easing during the Great Recession will remain on its balance sheet.

When Ben Bernanke launched the first round of QE in December 2008, he insisted the Fed was not monetizing national debt. He said the difference between debt monetization and the Fed’s policy was that the central bank was not providing a permanent source of financing for Uncle Sam. He said the Treasurys would only remain on the Fed’s balance sheet temporarily. He assured Congress that once the crisis was over, the Federal Reserve would sell the bonds it bought during the emergency.

Clearly, that will never happen. The Fed did, in fact, monetize the debt during the Great Recession.

In a nutshell, the easy-money policies launched after the dot-com crash inflated a giant housing bubble that burst in 2008. In response, the Fed doubled down with nearly a decade of 0 percent interest rates and three rounds of quantitative easing. This blew up another bubble-economy that we remain in to this day. The overvalued stock market serves as the most visible sign, but we have also seen housing prices rebound to surpass 2008 levels, along with bubbles in the auto sector and the bond market. On top of that, nearly a decade of low interest rates and easy money encouraged the U.S. government, corporations and individuals to rack up trillions of dollars of debt.

This explains why the Fed couldn’t normalize rates. You can’t maintain an economy built on debt in a normal interest rate environment. Even at a meager 2.5 percent, the air began coming out of the bubble. We saw it in the massive stock market selloff through the fourth quarter of 2018. It wasn’t until Powell indicated that he was hitting pause on interest rates and said he was reversing course on balance sheet reduction that the stock market stabilized.

Given this reality, it should come as no surprise that President Trump wants a return to Obama-era monetary policy. His administration, along with the Republican-controlled Congress, is spending money just like the Obama administration did. Last month, the federal government ran an all-time record deficit of $234 billion.

The federal government needs to Federal Reserve to buy U.S. Treasurys in order to finance the ever-increasing spending. It needs low interest rates to keep the air in the bubble and to keep the economy limping along. It can’t do that while simultaneously shrinking its balance sheet and raising interest rates.

Ironically, Trump was a big critic of QE when it was happening during the Obama years. And he was right to do so. But as Peter Schiff put it, now Trump wants the short-term benefits of QE because it will help him politically.

“Now it’s the Trump economy so it’s the Trump bubble. And so he wants the bubble to get bigger and bigger, and so he wants the Feds to make the same mistakes under his administration that it made under the Obama administration, and he no longer gives a damn about the long-term consequences that may be negative because the furthest in the future that Donald Trump can now see is the 2020 election, and he wants a second term.”

As Schiff hints at, this view is short-sighted. An economy can only run on printed money for so long. At some point, it will generate price inflation. And the asset bubbles will burst.

This is not “making America great again.” This is politics as usual. It’s President Trump begging for the same policies as President Obama. This serves as yet another example revealing that the distance between Trump and Obama doesn’t span nearly the distance that supporters of either man imagine.

As Benjamin Netanyahu returns from Washington to Jerusalem determined to keep his seat as Israel’s prime minister, it is clear that the Final Status issues — those pesky issues between Israel and the Palestinians that Israel never wants to discuss –  are being eliminated one by one in a regional scheme that is titled Deal of the Century. This so-called “Deal” will be the final undoing of Palestinian hopes for justice, self-determination and return.

From the reckless declaration by President Donald Trump that the United States recognizes Jerusalem as the capital city of Israel, to his more recent proclamation that the United States recognized Israeli sovereignty over the Syrian Golan Heights, it is becoming clear what the Deal of the Century will entail: disregard of the Palestinians and recognition of Israeli rights to all of Palestine.

The purpose of the declaration recognizing Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights at this particular moment is twofold: It is an enormous contribution to Netanyahu’s campaign for re-election on April 9, a clear signal that Trump favors Netanyahu; and, what is even more troubling, it is a precursor to what we may soon see happen with Judea and Samaria, also known as the West Bank.

Four elements

Four elements are likely to dominate the Deal of the Century: Palestinian self-determination; refugees; Jerusalem; and the future of what was formerly known as the West Bank and has been named by Israel Judea and Samaria. We have already been given a  preview of what is to come with the first three:

• Jerusalem, with the Trump declaration of December 6, 2017 recognizing the city as the capital of Israel;
• Recognition of Palestinian right to self-determination was de-facto reversed when in September 2018, on the 25th anniversary of the Oslo Accords, the Trump administration closed down the PLO mission in Washington;
• The refugee issue received an almost fatal blow when in August of 2018 the State Department announced that it will no longer provide funds for UNRWA , the United Nations agency created to take care of Palestinian refugees. Even more than financial significance, the $350 million cut to the UNRWA budget was a blow to the very existence of refugee issue. Trump, serving Netanyahu’s agenda, is attempting to eliminate the refugee issue altogether by questioning the right of the Palestinians to aid and by questioning the right of the descendants of the 1948 refugees to refugee status.

The refugees must cease to exist

The Deal of the Century is likely to include an attempt to eliminate the Palestinian refugee issue. In a statement he made in Hebrew to the Israeli cabinet, in July 2018, Netanyahu called the Palestinian refugee issue “fictitious.” He claimed that the sole purpose of UNRWA was to keep the Palestinian refugee issue alive forever and thus to threaten the state of Israel by perpetuating the notion of a right of return. Trump, for his part, is currently claiming that only the people who had actually lived in Mandatory Palestine before the 1948 ethnic cleansing — people who are now 70 years old or older — can be considered refugees; their descendants cannot.

Netanyahu’s problem is that when you ask Palestinians in the diaspora where they are from, they say Yaffa, Haifa, Ramle, and so on. When you ask Israelis where they are from, they say, Poland, Russia, Morocco, Yemen, and so on.

When you ask Jews around the world they say the same thing Israelis do. So, while the grandchildren of the 1948 refugees can tell you the name of the town or village from which their family came, even though the village has been destroyed, no Israelis — or Jewish people, for that matter — can trace their roots back to the ancient kingdom of Judea.

It is important to note and remind both Trump and Netanyahu that, according to international law, even refugees who were not born in Palestine but in the diaspora are refugees and have a right to return. This is because, under international human rights law, neither local integration nor resettlement forecloses the possibility of refugee return to their country of origin. Furthermore, after a large-scale displacement, such as the one that took place in Palestine in 1948, restitution may cover both public and private property.

Not only people

It is not only the return of the people, but it is also the rightful claim to restitution, which will surely be made, that Israel dreads.

The extent of abandoned property that Israel has taken over as a result of the 1948 ethnic cleansing of Palestine is enormous. Palestinians were expelled from entire cities including Jaffa, Ramleh, Haifa and all of west Jerusalem. In addition to that, there are vast tracts of agricultural land that were taken. After the population was expelled, profit-making orchards of citrus, olive and other agricultural products were handed over by the newly established state to Jewish agricultural settlements.

Netanyahu and the entire Zionist establishment are aware of all this and they fear the day when they will be held accountable for this theft of property. Restitution of Palestinian property has received little discussion, largely because of Israel’s refusal to engage and pressure by Zionist groups to keep this subject off the table. The Deal of the Century is likely to try to make it disappear for good.

Judea and Samaria is next

Israeli annexation of the West Bank used to be a far-fetched idea. That is no longer the case. The West Bank is now, and has been for many years, “Judea and Samaria.” It has cities and counties; it includes industry and a bureaucracy with its own police force. There is a highway system in place and shopping centers — all built exclusively for Jews. Official annexation of the area to Israel today — much like recognizing Jerusalem as the capital city of Israel and Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights — would be merely a formality, albeit one that contravenes international law.

It is realistic to expect that, as part of the Deal of the Century, the U.S. will, before long, recognize Israeli sovereignty over Judea and Samaria. This will mean officially creating one state over all of Palestine with exclusive rights for the minority Israeli Jews. While this may seem like a win for Israel, it will also give rise to serious problems for the Zionist state.

Israel controls the lives of 2 million Palestinians who hold Israeli citizenship, 2.2 million Palestinians locked up in the Gaza Strip and about 3 million Palestinians in what used to be the West Bank. That is a total of 7 million Palestinians living without rights in a state where about 6 million Israeli Jews have exclusive rights.

Careful what you wish for

Today, perhaps more than ever, U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East is being dictated by Israel and specifically by Benjamin Netanyahu. It is executed by Jared Kushner through his father-in-law, the president of the United States. Though the Deal of the Century will try to eliminate the Palestinian issue for good, what the architects of the “Deal” in their arrogance fail to see is that this so-called “Deal” is nothing more than an irresponsible, impractical and precarious plan that will fall just as soon as it is raised.

Miko Peled is an author and human rights activist born in Jerusalem. He is the author of “The General’s Son. Journey of an Israeli in Palestine,” and “Injustice, the Story of the Holy Land Foundation Five.”

In spite of president Donald Trump’s promise to cull the unnecessary wars that the United States is constantly involved in (or starting), they continue to use tax money to kill civilians with impunity. The blood the U.S. continues to spill is often that of innocents, such as civilians and children.

War is a racket. It always has been, and in the U.S., it enriches the political elites as innocents die overseas.  Far too many Americans have become far too comfortable with the killing being done in their name.  According to RT, the Trump administration has not only expanded the U.S.’ covert and lethal drone program but has taken the covering up of its civilian death toll to a whole new level.  For an administration claiming to be “pro-life,” this new revelation should be incredibly disturbing to everyone.

Like most of the battlefields opened more widely under the Obama administration, Donald Trump ramped up airstrikes against the infamous Al-Shabaab terrorist group in Somalia approximately two years ago. But at least Obama never claimed to be pro-life.  He was pretty open about his disregard for others. And, like most drone wars expanded under Obama and dramatically widened under Trump, the details of this covert assault are continuously swept under the rug, particularly when it comes to civilian casualties.

The Pentagon has openly said that its airstrikes in Somalia have killed zero civilians.

Yet, recently, an Amnesty International investigation into just five of the strikes carried out since March 2017 by both manned and unmanned Reaper aircraft found that the strikes resulted in at least 14 civilian deaths, with instances of eight civilian injuries as well. In total, the US has carried out more than 100 strikes in Somalia since 2017. –RT

Lying by governments to further wars is nothing new and no one should expect that it stop. The U.S. as a country is wholly obsolete if they cannot bomb and kill with impunity. The source of their power is the massive military-industrial complex they hold over the heads over everyone on the planet – including their own citizens. (This is seen daily as everyday Americans thank the troops for killing and following the orders of the political elitists without asking questions. In fact, it’s “un-American” to question the wars and those actually spilling the blood on foreign soil.)

Amnesty International has made it quite clear that these attacks have violated international humanitarian laws and may amount to war crimes (remember, they have only assessed five out of over 100 so far). Regardless of this, American media outlets won’t report the fact that the government is slaughtering people. The New York Times appeared to be protecting their “drone king” Barack Obama by failing to mention that he was also a murderer who committed war crimes and violated the most basic of human rights – the right to live.

In just the first few months of 2019 alone, the U.S. military has already carried out 24 strikes on Somali territory, compared to only 14 in the whole of 2016, prior to Trump taking office. In 2018, US airstrikes killed 326 people and yet, not a single civilian has died or been injured if you ask the government.

Just recently, Trump allowed the CIA to keep secret how many civilians are killed in its airstrikes outside of war zones. As it transpires, a law passed by Congress making it compulsory for the Pentagon to publicly report civilians killed in its operations applies to the Pentagon only, and not the CIA drone program.

The law is pointless anyway when one considers how the Pentagon assesses whether civilians have been killed or not. Donald Trump’s relaxation of the rules surrounding airstrikes are in and of themselves a pathway to a war crime tribunal. According to a retired US brigadier general who was consulted by Amnesty, Trump’s executive order widened the list of potential targets to include adult males living in villages sympathetic to Al-Shabaab who are located within range of known fighters. This was already a known tactic under the peace-prize-winning president Barack Obama, who counted all “military-age males” in the vicinity of a target as militants. –RT

The U.S.’ laws have become increasingly pointless over the past few decades.  That goes for all their laws – both to try to control the military and to exert control over the people.  Someday, people will realize laws are nothing more than commands written by ink on paper by men andwoment generally considered to be crooks and liars. Once the vast majority figures this out, the wars and violence and hatred against others will cease as government power dwindles.