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Investigate POTUS’ Health Cover-Up

[NB: check the byline, thanks. /~Rayne]

Congress needs to investigate the cover-up of the president’s health.

No, not Biden’s health, which has become an excuse for avoiding the obvious problems with Trump’s health.

Biden’s no longer the president. He’s no longer making decisions affecting the nation’s security.

This guy, though, is:

Link to original post including the video.

This kind of confabulation is familiar to me, having a parent with dementia. They fake reality to fill in gaps in what they actually recall, and as long as they’re not called out on it they continue to roll with it. They may even believe their fabrication because they can draw on nothing that undermines it.

Depending on the time of day and who corrects them, they may back off or they may become petulant and act out if they are sundowning.

Nobody confronts him. They just let him spew that garbage and replay it to the public without context to call it into question, cementing it as alternative reality.

This is dangerous as fuck, a threat to national security.

The video in the post above was recorded August 26 in a close cabinet meeting. The meeting was held during a period when Trump wasn’t seen by the public, between August 24 and September 2, sparking questions across social media platforms asking if Trump was dead.

Photos taken of him on August 30 preparing to get into a vehicle did not assure the public of his health. He looked pale, pasty, and not very energetic.

Trump’s slack jaw open mouth appearance in several photos that day caused many to ask if he’d had a stroke.

Yesterday there was more evidence yet that Trump may have had a recent neurological event. Lauren Esposito at The Daily Beast offered several perspectives in her report:

President Donald Trump was sporting a doozy of a droopy face as he ventured outside the White House Thursday amid mounting questions about his health.

The 79-year-old president appeared at a Pentagon event commemorating the 24th anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks, where the right side of his face sparked a wave of online speculation.

Matt Binder of Substack newsletter Disruptionist asked if this may be an AI avatar of Trump:

Link to original tweet on Xitter including video clips.

It’s not just the glitch Binder noted which is concerning; Trump’s right hand is covered by his left. It could be an attempt to hide the bruising frequently noted on his hand, or it could be an effort to hide both a spasm like dystonia or tardive dyskenia, or a decreasing ability to freely using his right hand and fingers. Whatever it is looks awkward and unnatural because Trump talks with his hands.

How would the average American know whether they’re looking at a sick man faking it through his duties, or an artificial construct created to replace him, operated by unelected handlers?

Some have speculated Trump has had Bell’s palsy which frequently manifests as paralysis of one side of the face – but not paralysis or weakening of one half of the body. There’s been no deeper speculation about the underlying cause of the palsy.

Has Trump one or more major neurological events which could affect his ability to fulfill his duties as president?

Has he already subordinated his duties to others around him — outside of the Constitution’s 25th Amendment — including whomever may have made an AI avatar of him used yesterday?

Why aren’t any of the White House staff speaking with media to address Trump’s obvious health problems, instead of covering it up by ignoring it?

When is Congress going to investigate this immediate concern rather than wasting time on a political witch hunt focusing on a former president?

And when is the GOP caucus in Congress going to grasp the reality they are under the thumb of a guy who’s health is clearly compromised? What happens to the GOP both in Congress and the party machine if Trump becomes further debilitated?

~ ~ ~

There is one more huge problem Congress won’t address, regardless of the party helming either house.

That’s the failure of U.S. media outlets. It’s clear based on the complete lack of coverage of Trump’s health that the largest and most influential newspapers conducted a partisan hit job on Joe Biden during his last year in office.

There has been little coverage of Trump’s disappearance for four days by The New York Times, the Washington Post, or the Los Angeles Times.

There has been limited coverage of Trump’s obvious hand bruises and his edema, but not a daily report on his health — not like that NYT and WaPo published day after day.

Biden’s health problems were far less obvious and yet they drew magnitude more coverage.

Trump’s latest health problem was picked up in The Daily Beast. Not a single story in any of the major newspapers or cable outlets over the last 20 hours.

It’s rather sad to see multiple Indian news outlets — Hindustan Times, Times of India, Times Now, for example — are doing a far better job of covering Trump’s health on a timely basis.

We’re going to have to build a better media ecosystem if we’re going to get the news we need because the major U.S. outlets prove repeatedly they are not capable of meeting this moment in history.

Their wall-to-wall coverage of a political pundit’s death avoiding altogether coverage of the seated president’s health is yet more evidence of the problem we need to fix and quickly.

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UN Official: Prosecute “Systematic Crimes and Gross Violations of International Human Rights Law”

Ben Emmerson, UN Special Rapporteur for counterterrorism and human rights. (UN photo)

Ben Emmerson, UN Special Rapporteur for counterterrorism and human rights. (UN photo)


Ben Emmerson is the UN’s Special Rapporteur on counterterrorism and human rights. His statement released yesterday in response to the SSCI torture report points out the clear responsibilities that the US has under the Convention Against Torture and other international human rights laws to prosecute not only those who carried out torture, but those who designed the torture program and gave orders for its implementation.

Emmerson opens by noting the delay in release of the report’s summary:

I welcome the belated publication of the summary report by the United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence into the crimes of torture and enforced disappearance of terrorist suspects by the Bush-era CIA. It has taken four years since the report was finalised to reach this point. The Administration is to be commended for resisting domestic pressure to suppress these important findings.

In my 2013 report* to the Human Rights Council as SpeciaI Rapporteur, I called on the US Government to release the report without further delay, and to ensure that it was published in full, without excessive and unnecessary redactions.

It seems a bit strange to me that Emmerson would commend the “administration” for “resisting domestic pressure to suppress these important findings”. We can only presume that “administration” refers to the Obama administration. It has been clear that in many instances of the struggle by the SSCI to release the report, the Obama administration has come down more on the side of the CIA than the committee. Only if the committee itself is included in Emmerson’s view of the “administration” does the comment make sense.

Emmerson then gets down to business:

The summary of the Feinstein report which was released this afternoon confirms what the international community has long believed – that there was a clear policy orchestrated at a high level within the Bush administration, which allowed to commit systematic crimes and gross violations of international human rights law.

The identities of the perpetrators, and many other details, have been redacted in the published summary report but are known to the Select Committee and to those who provided the Committee with information on the programme.

So we know that crimes have been committed. Further, the committee also knows who is responsible for those crimes. What to do about it?

It is now time to take action. The individuals responsible for the criminal conspiracy revealed in today’s report must be brought to justice, and must face criminal penalties commensurate with the gravity of their crimes.

The fact that the policies revealed in this report were authorised at a high level within the US Government provides no excuse whatsoever. Indeed, it reinforces the need for criminal accountability.

Note the language here. Emmerson doesn’t say that those responsible for the crimes should be brought to justice. He says outright that they MUST be brought to justice. Emmerson further points out that being authorized at a high level in the government gives no protection. Further, he notes a “conspiracy” to carry out the crimes.

Emmerson then goes on to destroy Barack Obama’s “look forward” bullshit and John Durham’s coverup disguised as an investigation:

International law prohibits the granting of immunities to public officials who have engaged in acts of torture. This applies not only to the actual perpetrators but also to those senior officials within the US Government who devised, planned and authorised these crimes.

As a matter of international law, the US is legally obliged to bring those responsible to justice. The UN Convention Against Torture and the UN Convention on Enforced Disappearances require States to prosecute acts of torture and enforced disappearance where there is sufficient evidence to provide a reasonable prospect of conviction. States are not free to maintain or permit impunity for these grave crimes.

Obama, Holder and Durham simply cannot grant immunity for these crimes. International law forbids it. More specifically, the Convention Against Torture, to which the US is a signatory, prohibits it. Similarly, the Convention on Enforced Disappearances also comes into play in the crimes committed by the US and also prevents the granting of immunity that Obama has tried to orchestrate.

Emmerson’s conclusion reiterates those points and provides a warning to those guilty of these crimes:

It is no defence for a public official to claim that they were acting on superior orders. CIA officers who physically committed acts of torture therefore bear individual criminal responsibility for their conduct, and cannot hide behind the authorisation they were given by their superiors.

However, the heaviest penalties should be reserved for those most seriously implicated in the planning and purported authorisation of these crimes. Former Bush Administration officials who have admitted their involvement in the programme should also face criminal prosecution for their acts.

President Obama made it clear more than five years ago that the US Government recognises the use of waterboarding as torture. There is therefore no excuse for shielding the perpetrators from justice any longer. The US Attorney General is under a legal duty to bring criminal charges against those responsible.

Torture is a crime of universal jurisdiction. The perpetrators may be prosecuted by any other country they may travel to. However, the primary responsibility for bringing them to justice rests with the US Department of Justice and the Attorney General.

Emmerson specifically calls out those who planned and authorized the torture as deserving the “heaviest penalties”.

And they need to be careful. Even though they are facing no punishment in the US for their crimes, these criminals can face prosecution should they travel abroad because torture is a crime subject to universal jurisdiction. Under universal jurisdiction, other countries would normally defer to the US for prosecution of crimes carried out by citizens of the US. However, once it is clear that no such prosecutions will take place, other countries are free to act.

Although I’d like to see them inside cells of much smaller dimensions, it appears that for now those who designed the CIA torture program and ordered its implementation are now imprisoned within the borders of the US because they are at risk of real prosecution while traveling outside the borders.

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