Trump has handed over to polluters oil and mineral rights in US National Monuments. Mining will now deface what was before Trump protected national monuments, and oil drilling will destroy the Arctic National Refuge. He has appointed polluters to run the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and he has waived rules in order to comply with the polluting industries’ wish list.
Trump wants to cut EPA funding by 23 percent and to cut funding for restoration programs for the Great Lakes and Chesapeake Bay by 90 percent. He wants to pay for the upkeep of national parks by expanding oil and gas exploration on public lands. But he doesn’t hesitate to send the equivalent of the annual environmental budget in war criminal missile attacks on Syria and plans for attacking Iran.
To be quite clear, Trump is privatizing national property and allowing a small handful of polluting corporations to plunder public assets while he builds a case for war against Iran.
The assault on the environment started with VP Dick Cheney, but Trump has unleashed private plunder of public assets to an extreme degree.
No one has ever explained how assets owned by the American people can be turned over to a few friends and supporters of the ruling elite in Washington. In what law does the power exist for a president or federal agency chairman to expropriate public assets for plunder by politically connected friends?
The way America works, thanks to the Republican Supreme Court that legalized it, polluters bid with their campaign donations to be given permission to loot and despoil national monuments and refuges. The Supreme Court called the corporate purchase of the US government a constitutionally permitted exercise of free speech.
Existing law prevents the environmental looting, but law means nothing to Washington. We have experienced the entirety of the 21st century so far with Washington being in total noncompliance with international law, instead behaving consistently as a war criminal as defined by existing international law.
Trump has now escalated Washington’s war criminal behavior. He has unilaterally pulled out of a multi-nation agreement that ensures Iran’s nuclear non-proliferation, and he has imposed more illegal unilateral economic sanctions on Iran that punish US companies such as Boeing and corporations in numerous European countries. Trump’s foreign policy is under the control of Israel. Trump is unable to act in America’s interest or in the interest of Washington’s European, Canadian, and Australian vassals.
Trump’s stupid decision has caused rebellion among Washington’s usual compliant and well paid vassals—UK, France, and Germany. Europeans are saying that it is long past time that Europe represented its own interests instead of Washington’s. (See this)
The silver lining in Trump’s stupid decision is that it might cause Europe to become independent and to cease being a chorus praising Washington’s war crimes. Will we see a rebellion of European political figures, essentially Washington’s whores, that will break up the Empire and lead to an independent Europe?
Such a development would justify all of Putin’s hesitation to put his foot down.
As matters stand, “the coalition of the willing” is reduced to Washington and Israel. Not even a majority of Americans support Trump pulling out of the multi-nation Iran agreement, nor do they support his appointment of a war criminal, Haspel, as director of the CIA, nor do they support Trump’s permission to Israel to continue the war against Syria and to attack Iran.
But the people everywhere in the western “democracies” are powerless. They are never allowed to elect anyone who would do the right things. Invariably their votes put in office those who exploit them and peoples of other countries. This is why the other part of the world views the West as a plague upon all mankind, including the western peoples themselves.
Trump was expected to be a disaster for the environment. The hope was that the liberal/progressive/left would rally to his intent to withdraw from Syria and to normalize relations with Russia. By supporting Trump against the neoconservatives and the military/security complex, the liberal/progressive/left, it would have gained some chips that could be used to moderate Trump’s assault on the environment.
Unfortunately, the liberal/progressive/left aligned with Brennan’s CIA, Comey’s FBI, and Hillary’s DNC and committed to the orchestrated “Russiagate” allegations that were intended to discredit Trump and to force him out of office. I was very disappointed to see the environmental movement join in with the orchestrated “Russiagate” conspiracy against Trump.
As a result, Trump owes environmentalists and the liberal/progressive/left nothing. The consequence is that the environment, civil liberty and peace have been lost.
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This article was originally published on Paul Craig Roberts Institute for Political Economy.
Dr. Paul Craig Roberts is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
