Click on the link folks:

https://static01.nyt.com/video/players/offsite/index.html?videoId=100000004269364

Well, Donald Trump has just lifted another rock and from underneath plucked a Labor Secretary to add to his cabinet-from-hell.

He’s a fast-food executive known for his opposition to raising the minimum wage, is against widening eligibility for overtime pay and has criticised Obamacare because the health care premiums working class people must buy means they don’t spend as much time and money in his restaurants (but presumably they are a lot healthier as a result).

The guy’s name, believe it or not, is Puzder and he is CEO of fast food outfits called Carls Jr and Hardee’s, neither of whose premises or food I have ever sampled or would want to sample.

This is what he looks like:

Trump’s Secretary of Labor, Andrew Puzder, who opposes minimum wage increases

Puzder’s advertising strategy is a simple one. Link unhealthy, fat-friendly food with sexy young Ivanka Trump-like women in suggestive ads.

Presumably that is what brought Puzder to Trump’s attention. And presumably this is what the populist President-elect thinks populism is about: less bread and more circuses.

Here is a sample:

Here’s another:

Trump is far from finished, by the way. He still has to fill the most important Cabinet slot, Secretary of State, who will, God help us, be responsible for implementing Trump’s foreign policy ideas.

Distressing to learn of the death of Phillip Knightley who died today (December 7th), aged 87, a towering figure in British journalism and an inspiration and role-model to my generation of reporters. His book on war reportage, ‘The First Casualty’ was a classic.

The full, depressing story can be read here.

Recently, i.e. in the last month or so, David Gordon de-friended me on Facebook after I had asked him some pertinent questions relating to his appointment as spin doctor to the Foster-McGuinness politburo, such as how much is he being paid to shill for the power-sharing Executive?.

But the former Belfast Telegraph and BBC journalist was unwilling to shed any light on the circumstances of his appointment, which was facilitated outside normal procedures via Royal Prerogative powers, and the next day I discovered his Facebook move to cut me off.

Isn’t that another way to exercise censorship, something that Donald Trump or Vladimir Putin might do?

But he is not alone. The story below, from today’s News Letter, demonstrates that his reticence is shared by his employers at Stormont Castle who have declined to disclose the code of conduct covering his employment terms on the grounds that to do so would infringe his privacy rights.

The same rebuff was delivered recently to a couple of Assembly members who wrote the Executive asking for an explanation of his role and the circumstances of his employment.

So, the taxpayer is paying his salary and various emoluments but is not allowed to know what rules govern his employment, what were circumstances governing his hiring and just exactly what his role is?

It is enough to make one think that the Foster/McGuinness cabal have something to hide. If so, I wonder what it is?

Stormont’s incredible Kafkaesque reply to questions about spin doctor

This answer from Gerry Adams to a question from Radio Louth’s Michael Reade about the Brian Stack affair last week, jumped out at me:

GA:  Michael, I work quite closely with An Garda Siochána. I have passed information on to them over the years about criminal activity along the border. I have given them the names of those who have been suspected of being involved. I’ve given them other information – that’s my duty as both a citizen and as a public servant.

Since the killing of Portlaoise prison warder, Brian Stack was carried out by the IRA, and since the SF president passed on to the Gardai the names of several alleged culprits and has revealed in the same interview with Michael Reade that the senior IRA figure who authorised the killing has been disciplined, some interesting questions follow.

To begin with, the claim from Gerry Adams that the gun attack on Brian Stack was not authorised by the IRA leadership should be taken with a generous pinch of salt.

Since 1948, when General Army Order No 8 was issued by the Army Council, the IRA forbad any military action against the Southern state and that, presumably, included prison officers.

The IRA issued that order so that its efforts to destabilise the Northern Ireland state, either by attacking security forces in the North or in Britain, would not be distracted by unnecessarily causing antagonism in the South, where the IRA trained and stored many arms dumps. The IRA could not fight a war on two fronts and hope to win.

That doesn’t mean that the IRA didn’t clash with members of the Irish state’s security apparatus. Since June 1972, six members of the Garda were killed by the Provisional IRA, mostly in the course of robberies, Border bombings and kidnappings.

Although some will object to this characterisation, nearly all of the police deaths at IRA hands in the South during the Troubles were not planned or deliberate operations, but rather the by-product of activity primarily directed at sustaining the IRA’s war in the North.

The killing of Brian Stack fell into a different category, however, being planned and directed to end the life of a prison warder who, presumably, had wronged the IRA in some way, mostly likely its inmates in Portlaoise jail.

Had the IRA admitted that Mr Stack had been deliberately targeted on the orders of its leadership that would have invited the toughest of responses from the then government in Dublin, headed by Garret Fitzgerald and Dick Spring.

Mr Stack was killed in March 1983 when Sinn Fein was enjoying considerable electoral success in the North – where Gerry Adams had been elected MP for West Belfast – and was gearing up to mount an electoral challenge South of the Border.

Had the IRA admitted the Stack killing it is difficult to imagine the Fitzgerald government reacting in any way other than by grasping a heaven-sent opportunity to stick the boot into Sinn Fein.

So, the Provo leadership had more than a normal incentive to lie, at least lie by silence, about killing Mr Stack. It wasn’t until August 2013, that the Provos owned up, thirty years after the deed was done.

As I wrote above, it is advisable to take the claim that the attack on the prison official was unauthorised and that the culprit was ‘disciplined’, with a large portion of sodium chloride! It falls into the category of: ‘They would say that, wouldn’t they?’

Mr Adams can move this story on quite easily by answering this question: was the IRA leader who embarked on the unauthorised operation against Mr Stack, one of the names that he passed on the Garda commissioner?

If not, how could he now possibly object to giving the authorities the name? After all, that is his duty ‘as both a citizen and as a public servant’.

Because I’m watching the Rachel Maddow show again!

Well, maybe not them. But their children!

According to The New York Times, Donald Trump is considering making retired US Marine General James N Mattis, his Defence Secretary. The Times quotes Trump as saying of the General, who goes by the nickname ‘Mad Dog’ Mattis: “(He is) just a brilliant, wonderful man. What a career — we are going to see what happens, but he is the real deal.”

Mattis is known for his especially hawkish attitude towards Iran, advocating a tough military posture which, according to the Times, clashed with the views of President Obama and his security team. His voice at Trump’s cabinet table could mean the scrapping of the nuclear deal with Iran and the unraveling of the Middle East, if more unraveling were possible.

He commanded the US Marines during the invasion of Iraq and led the military onslaught against Falujah, rendering the city a slaughterhouse and decisively turning moderate Iraqi Sunni opinion against the Americans, which paved the way for the emergence of Al Qaeda in Iraq and arguably ISIS also.

 The following quotes from Mattis, taken from Business Insider, reveal views  that could easily have been expressed by ‘General Buck Turgidson‘, the cynical, hawkish and quite mad military adviser to ‘President Merkin Muffley’, in Stanley Kubrick’s memorable but terrifying movie, ‘Dr Strangelove’.

Here is a sample of ‘Mad Dog’ Mattis’ military philosophy. Soon, he may be the man in charge of the American military. Truly, America is becoming a lunatic asylum in which the inmates have taken charge.

“Be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everybody you meet.”

“You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for five years because they didn’t wear a veil. You know, guys like that ain’t got no manhood left anyway. So it’s a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them. Actually it’s quite fun to fight them, you know. It’s a hell of a hoot. It’s fun to shoot some people. I’ll be right up there with you. I like brawling.”

“I come in peace. I didn’t bring artillery. But I’m pleading with you, with tears in my eyes: If you f* with me, I’ll kill you all.”

“The first time you blow someone away is not an insignificant event. That said, there are some *******s in the world that just need to be shot. There are hunters and there are victims. By your discipline, you will decide if you are a hunter or a victim.”

“We’ve backed off in good faith to try and give you a chance to straighten this problem out. But I am going to beg with you for a minute. I’m going to plead with you, do not cross us. Because if you do, the survivors will write about what we do here for 10,000 years.”

“There are some people who think you have to hate them in order to shoot them. I don’t think you do. It’s just business.”

“Marines don’t know how to spell the word defeat”

“Find the enemy that wants to end this experiment (in American democracy) and kill every one of them until they’re so sick of the killing that they leave us and our freedoms intact.”

“Fight with a happy heart.”

In the wake of Donald Trump’s elevation to the White House, the First and Deputy First Ministers should stay at home in Belfast, get their act together and resist the temptations of Washington until then, writes Michael McDowell….

Greetings to Stormont from Washington, DC – now stay home and put your own house in order

 By Michael HC McDowell

Published 19/11/2016

Dear Arlene and Martin:

So, you have congratulated President-elect Donald Trump on his election. Very polite, but a bit pompous, indulging in hubris and inviting the sharp question he may ask: “Who on earth are these people? And why should I care about this little place off Scotland, somewhere?

Indeed.

My advice to The Donald – not that he would heed it, I suspect – is not to invite you to his new house, the White House, until you have fixed up your own ailing house in Northern Ireland.

Please stay at home and don’t bother junketing out here and begging for tickets to the inauguration in January and then buying the first-class, or business class, airline tickets for another time-wasting visit to Washington in March.

You need to stay at home and fix up the Fresh Start, as it was supposed to be, and not the Stale Start, it has turned out to be.

The ‘Opposition’ powers in the Assembly have turned out to be an utter joke, thanks to your two tribal parties excluding others from decisions, not just because they left the Executive (they weren’t consulted when they were in the Executive, anyway), but because of the DUP and Sinn Fein carve-up of power, not sharing power, which suits you both very nicely.

For years now, in fact for almost two decades, we have had the spectacle of Northern Ireland First Ministers, deputy First Ministers, ministers, MLAs, senior public servants, and assorted bag-carriers traipsing off to DC every St Patrick’s Day, but with precious little to show for it on their return.

In the days after the Good Friday Agreement back in 1998, and before, and for about five years afterwards, there was focus and definite purpose to these trips and likely pay-off. In recent years, no.

Let’s take the so-called trips to drum up the elusive “US investment, jobs back home, exports from NI”.

Declan Kelly, a one-time reporter for southern Irish weeklies and The Cork Examiner, who hit the jackpot out here as a wunderkind PR man, was appointed Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s ‘economic envoy’ to Northern Ireland.

He won an office in the State Department, staff and produced, well, how many jobs? How much in investment? Export numbers?

No doubt Invest NI (an oxymoron, mostly) will tell us he did truly wondrous things. But he left within two years and he was doing other things, such as benefiting from the wonderful connection with the Clinton Foundation, Bill Clinton himself and the kudos that gave Mr Kelly and those at his company.

And then we have the well-staffed ‘Northern Ireland Bureau’, with splendid offices in DC and with an office in New York. Under the first Executive of David Trimble and Seamus Mallon and later Mark Durkan, this office – which I pushed to be set up in the late-1970s and early-1980s – no longer operates as a serious policy/communications virtual ’embassy’ for Northern Ireland.

It is, today, let’s face it, a truly wonderful high-end concierge and lodging and travel bureau, which arranges the very best hotels, hires shining stretch limousines to ferry our VIPs around DC and New York and books superb restaurants for these elected representatives. But what do we have to show for this large staff?

It’s time for the responsible Assembly committee to do a forensic audit of cost-and-benefit for these offices and also the other offices outside Northern Ireland, such as in Beijing.

Please stay at home and work on what, for me, is Issue Number One: integrated education.

The former First Minister, Peter Robinson, made a big speech years ago about what a difference the educating of girls and boys from the Catholic and Protestant communities together could make to a future Northern Ireland.

I liked that. And, then … nothing happened.

The DUP/Sinn Fein pantomime horse trotted out ‘shared education’, a pale, almost see-through imitation of the real thing. We still have only 7% of our schools integrated. Americans would be stunned and amazed that the taxpayer pays for Catholic and Protestant grammar schools.

And then we have the Assembly where you, Arlene, have pledged not even to have a vote on same-sex marriage, but have promised to use a Petition of Concern to block it. What are you afraid of? Democracy? And let’s be clear that Sinn Fein would do exactly the same if they wished. Fresh Start? Hardly.

Tell you what. Let me suggest how you could, legitimately, come back to DC on a future St Patrick’s Day (no, not 2017) and maybe at other times: when you, Arlene and Martin, have shown progress; joined-up government; given real teeth to A Shared Future, now toothless pabulum, and a boost to integrated education.

Sure, the perks of office are nice for your parties and for the too-numerous MLAs and their generous expenses. These jobs are nice earners – no question about it.

There was a time when the Northern Irish were famous for hard work and wanting value for money.

Not anymore, it seems.

Earn your back pay, Arlene and Martin, and I’ll be delighted to see you – even in the awful Donald Trump Republican Party-dominated USA. In the meantime, stay at home.

Yours,

Michael.

• Michael HC McDowell is an international affairs consultant and former Northern Ireland journalist who has worked in Cambridge, Massachusetts, New York City, Toronto and Washington DC, where he has lived since 1988

Belfast Telegraph