We stand at a tipping point: do we fire up the popcorn maker or start digging a fallout shelter in the garden? (Trump cont)

[boatyardblues]

Old thread here: www.mumsnet.com/Talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/3207431-When-a-nation-s-children-marched-and-their-President-ignored-them-Trump-cont

I’m all out of inspiration for the rest of this opening post. Send the St Bernard with the brandy please.

holy shit, Hannity is really going after Trump for bombing Syria! no wait, this is a tweet from 2013
twitter.com/jefftiedrich/status/984990259250376704?s=21

WTAF are UK playing at with the immigrants from decades ago. I have tried to sign the petition but I'm not in England at the moment so it won't let me (obviously picking up foreign ISP address) will do it when I get home

So I wake to these airstrikes, just waiting for the news and reading Twitter, taken aback by the proximity to Damascus
Just heard 45 telling saying about the strikes, he sounds like he has some new teeth, very strange enunciation

From one of The Guardian's ME correspondents:

We have an Arabic idiom that encapsulates what just happened in Syria: the mountain went into labor and gave birth to a mouse.
twitter.com/kshaheen/status/984988091453706240?s=21

Again, an old tweet for every occasion-

Donald J. Trump
@realDonaldTrump
What will we get for bombing Syria besides more debt and a possible long term conflict? Obama needs Congressional approval.
7:14 pm · 29 Aug 2013

mobile.twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/373146637184401408

I’m loving the counterpoint of the reanimated 2013 tweets.

@krassenstein
1h1 hour ago
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This is the perfect time to remind America that as Trump attacks Syria, we currently have NO Secretary of State and 8 of the top 10 state department positions remain vacant.

@4everNeverTrump
2h2 hours ago
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Trump's attacking Syria because he thinks being a "war president" will make him popular.

He doesn't give a shit about Syrians. In 2016, his son compared Syrian refugees to poisoned Skittles and he's essentially blocked all refugees from entering the US.

Gotta say, Trump’s 2013 tweets read as a whole lot saner.

@AdrienneMahsa
Follow Follow @AdrienneMahsa
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The United States has accepted only 11 Syrian refugees this year

'"We are seeing the impact of the Trump administration's words and policy and actions," says Noah Gottschalk, senior policy adviser at Oxfam America. "That slams the door on refugees, and Syrian refugees in particular."

Gottschalk says that refugee resettlement has slowed to a trickle, with only 44 Syrians admitted since October 2017. He charges that administration policies aim to dismantle a refugee program mandated by Congress.

"What about the humanity of the people who are fleeing those attacks? These are the very people who need our support," Gottschalk insists.

www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2018/04/12/602022877/the-u-s-has-welcomed-only-11-syrian-refugees-this-year

Kanisha J
‏ @KaniJJackson

Defense Secretary Jim Mattis: "I've never seen refugees as traumatized as coming out of Syria. It’s got to end."

Number of Syrian refugees admitted to the US:

2016: 15479

2017: 3024
2018: 11
8:28 AM - 14 Apr 2018

'On Friday morning, Fox & Friends host Ainsley Earhardt suggested that military strikes in Syria could be useful to divert attention from the unflattering portrayal of President Trump contained in former FBI Director James Comey’s book.

“If the president, and France, and the U.K decide to strike Syria, don’t you think that story would be a bigger story than Comey’s book that’s released on Tuesday?” she said.'

Just as an aside.... I ate last night in a restaurant run by a Syrian man who fled Aleppo a few years ago. This guy has managed to scrape together enough to open this lovely atmospheric tiny little eating place in a back street and he was working like a madman, the syrian food he kept coming was delicious, I'll be going back.

Just got up and put on the news, wow.

Last week we were discussing the quantity of propaganda in the news and began wondering what it was like to live in early 30s Germany.

Well that's a thing to wake up to.

Pain, many thanks for the link to the petition. Signing that's probably the only useful thing I'll do today.

Went to bed with the rumour of planes in the air and woke up to my DS asking questions about who actually has control of America's nuclear bombs: 'It's not just Trump, is it?'

thehill.com/policy/national-security/383121-ex-russian-spy-involved-with-trump-moscow-venture-report

Lots of questions on social media about the legality of the US action (with no congressional approval).

The British version seems to be couched in less legalistic terms: 'not really on, is it chaps?'

Australia has commended the bombing and expressed full support.

Feeling glum this morning. This is not a good development. Not good at all. Of course the use of chemical weapons on a civilian population cannot be tolerated, but there are international laws and good governance principles which govern this kind of intervention. Shooting from the hip, so to speak, is not the right way to go about things.

I'm sure that if we lived in a world without nuclear weapons this would have been an incident which would kick off a world war. Mutual assured destruction is our only safe guard i'm thinking.

@boatyardblues, Yes, you are right. Feeling sick, old and full of deja vu . Bush's poodle, Trump's poodles and now a Mad Dog Mattis.

www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-crisis-syria-putin/russia-calls-for-un-meeting-on-syria-mulls-supplies-of-s-300-systems-idUSKBN1HL0GV

www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-crisis-syria-assessment/pro-assad-official-says-targeted-bases-were-evacuated-on-russian-warning-idUSKBN1HL07R

Operation Desert Stormy.

At the very least it's CW2.

Out of interest, lion - how did you respond?