CAMBODIANS — AND OTHER NICE PEOPLES

Almost every visitor to Cambodia is struck by how nice the Cambodians are. I know that my critics will say, “People everywhere are the same; there are good and bad people in every country.” However, anyone who has travelled abroad will aver that people in different cultures and countries are very, very different.

So why are Cambodians so nice: friendly, smiling, helpful, considerate…? My first question is, have they always been that way, or is this personality a recent phenomenon? One obvious answer is their thorough grounding in Theravada Buddhist culture. Two words that you hear quite often in Cambodia are mettá and karuná, as defined by Wikipedia:

  1. Metta (Loving-Kindness): This is perhaps the most visible aspect of Buddhist influence. Metta is the wish for the happiness and well-being of all beings, without discrimination. It fosters a spirit of benevolence, patience, and non-aggression towards others, which translates into the gentle and accommodating nature many visitors observe.
  2. Karuna (Compassion): This principle encourages empathy and a desire to alleviate suffering. Many Cambodians possess a heightened sense of compassion for others, leading to acts of kindness and understanding.

On the other hand, perhaps the horrors and suffering of the Khmer Rouge era may have had an influence. “Many observers note that having experienced such deep suffering, Cambodians often possess a unique perspective on life. They value peace, community, and the simple joys of human connection perhaps even more profoundly. This collective experience of rebuilding and moving forward with hope has cultivated a generous and forgiving spirit, often expressed through kindness towards others.”(Wikipedia).

By the way, if you read accounts of Pol Pot, such as Brother Number One, you will find that he was very charismatic, in the sense that people were immediately drawn to his warmth and friendliness. He was, like most Khmer, a very personable figure.

In my wide travels, I have visited a few countries with equally nice people, mostly in Africa, which is not a Buddhist continent.

Guinea. When I entered Guinea, in West Africa, I immediately noticed the politeness and warmth of the people there.

A former French colony, Guinea was liberated by the famous Sékou Touré, revered by many anti-colonialists around the world.

The charismatic Sékou Touré turned out to be a tyrant, who murdered or tortured thousands of his opponents in the infamous Camp Boiro prison, where as many as 50,000 persons may have died. When I visited Guinea after Touré had died, the people still lived in fear of the oppressive one-party state with spies everywhere. Worldhistoryedu.com describes it as:

  1. Authoritarian Rule: Touré’s government gradually became repressive, with widespread surveillance, a one-party state system, and harsh treatment of political opponents.
  2. Economic Decline: Despite early successes in nationalization, Guinea’s economy suffered from mismanagement, leading to shortages, stagnation, and dependence on foreign aid.

Uganda. Similar to Guinea was Uganda, home of Idi Amin. He was charming, jovial, and extremely charismatic. I was in West Africa at that time, and my Nigerian students were celebrating an iconic photo of Idi Amin being carried in a royal sedan chair by four WHITE servants.

Idi Amin’s charisma was a significant factor in his rise to power and his ability to maintain his régime. This allowed him to build a cult of personality and maintain control over his people and the international community.

Like Sékou Touré, Amin became a ruthless tyrant, wantonly murdering his opponents. International observers and human rights groups estimate that between 100,000 and 500,000 people were killed under his regime.

Perhaps you have seen the movie “the Last King of Scotland”, about a Scottish doctor named Garrigan, who becomes a trusted confidant of Amin’s, but gradually comes to see the horrors perpetrated by the dictator. 

When I moved to Uganda years later, I found nice, polite people. I did a lot of walking in remote villages, where people would pleasantly tell me of how their villagers had been massacred under Idi Amin. Again, did the Idi Amin experience cause the local people to be kinder and more considerate, or had they always been that way?

Mozambique. Finally, I come to Mozambique, where I spent two years with the United Nations. The country was just recuperating from years of authoritarianism, mismanagement, and bloody warfare under Samora Machel. Like Touré in Guinea, Machel was hailed as the liberator of Mozambique from the Portuguese. He wanted to instill his Marxist-Leninist views on the country and he brooked no dissent.

Worldhistoryedu.com describes his Frelimo régime as follows:

That approach meant political intolerance and the repression of “dissidents”, as well as the marginalization of certain ethnic groups,

The treatment of leaders who opposed Frelimo’s vision was harsh. On their return from abroad, many were imprisoned in concentration camps. They were put on arbitrary trial and executed. It turned into arbitrary detentions and displacement of entire families, increasing the systematic violation of human rights by the state.  

Mozambicans are perhaps the nicest people in all Africa. Now here’s the kicker: when the Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama visited the country in 1498, he called it “a terra de boa gente”, that is, “the land of nice people”. This is a partial answer to the question, “Were Mozambicans always nice?”  Apparently, they were, as their niceness was observed centuries before the terrors of Frelimo.

To return to Cambodia. My thesis is that the Khmer people have always been nice people, perhaps because of Theravada Buddhism, but perhaps not, as certain African peoples have been nicer than others with no reference to Buddhism.

All of the countries I have described have undergone the horrors of genocidal dictators – Pol Pot, Sékou Touré, Idi Amin, and Samora Machel. Is it possible that these cultures had bred such nice people that they were easily exploited by tyrants? Did the Khmer people and others fall prey to charismatic leaders because they were too nice or too trusting and tolerant?

I spent a year in Samlot District, the last bastion of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. Many of the people there were either former KR cadres, or had suffered from the KR. They all expressed the feeling that they would do anything to avoid a repeat of the horrors of Pol Pot. This entailed putting up with corruption and bad behavior by government officials, as long as the people were left alone.

It would seem that in none of the four countries mentioned was there ever a bloodthirsty cry for revenge. None of the four peoples appear to be particularly vindictive.

I also note that none of the four mass murderers mentioned was ever held accountable. Pol Pot may have committed suicide or had a heart attack, but he was never arrested. Touré died of a heart attack in New York, still in power in the failed state of Guinea after 30 years; Idi Amin died in exile in a mansion in the Ivory Coast, and Machel died in a plane crash while still in power in 1986.

HUNGER IN THE SAHEL

I first moved to the Sahel in Bornu, northern Nigeria, in 1977. The population of Nigeria was 67 million. In the Sahel, life was hard, as there were not enough resources to support the population. Most villages had no electricity or clean water in the 43-degree heat and drought. Women walked several kilometers in the heat to the nearest well, to lug buckets back to the village for the family. In years of good rain and crops, people moved onto marginal lands for a couple of years, but in the dry years, they had nothing to eat. I saw desertification spreading south. At the time, economists were wringing their hands over the increasing population, with dire predictions of future starvation.

Now here we are in 2026, almost half a century later. The population of Nigeria is now 242 million, over triple the 1977 figure. Where are all those people living these days? Bornu must be a living hell, like all the countries across the African Sahel. It seems like Malthus’ gloomy predictions are coming true.

In Bornu and across the Sahel, there are herder tribes like the Fulani who need free range for their cattle. They are clashing with sedentary farmers who fence off their land to grow food. Tribal hatreds and wars are the result.

Economists back in 1977 predicted wars over land and other scarce resources. Indeed, that has come to pass in Bornu, with the Boko Haram abducting schoolgirls and creating havoc. Wars are occurring all across the African Sahel – Mali, Burkino Fasso, Sudan.

These wars are creating a humanitarian crisis of gigantic proportions, as millions of displaced people are at risk of starvation, and as roving tribal armies massacre them.

Every day, I see ads on Facebook and elsewhere asking donors for food aid to the starving children in Sudan or Somalia. I have been seeing versions of the same ads for the past 50 years. The situation never changes, or rather, it gets worse as the population triples. Governments in those countries are of little help; indeed, they are usually part of the problem.

Over the past 50 years, I have developed compassion fatigue. I know that no matter how much food aid is sent to the Sahel, more and more will be required for the next 50 years, as populations spin out of control, deserts expand, and tribal wars over scarce resources increase.

IS DIVERSITY A GOOD THING?

I could say that I have devoted my life to diversity. I have traveled and lived in the most remote and bizarre cultures, always with the mindset that these people have something valuable to teach me. I feel enriched by the wide array of philosophies, ways of thinking, foods, arts, etc. For me personally, then, diversity is a good thing.

However, I have made some disturbing observations in my travels. The first disappointment was in working closely with Christian missionaries in Africa. They were there because God had given them all the answers, and their mission was to spread the light of Jesus to the benighted savages. They had nothing to learn from Africans. They cared nothing for diversity; in fact, their goal was to diminish diversity by destroying the original beliefs of the Africans.

Also in Africa, I noticed that the many ethnic groups in Africa were not interested in diversity. The tribe with, say, an elephant god, thought that the tribe across the river with a lion god were evil savages. In the past month or so, South Africans have been killing and expelling other African immigrants. The history of Africa has never offered an image of peace and harmony.

Back in my home country, I had thought that progress was being made in race relations, as more and more non-white people were entering into positions of authority and respect. But in recent years, Trump has seemingly unleashed a latent racism and hatred for anyone not like the stereotyped white nationalist. This includes culture-war issues like homosexuality and transgenderism. Trump has even mocked disabled people and been applauded for his cruelty.

After witnessing the hatred engendered by diversity around the world, maybe I should conclude that it is a bad thing. Maybe humans are programmed to hate diversity, so that mixing cultures leads to what amounts to tribal warfare. Maybe humans are naturally like the kids in Lord of the Flies, where they naturally split into tribes that hated each other. Maybe cultures should be isolated and not allowed to mix with other cultures. Unfortunately, that has not been possible.

Golding’s Lord of the Flies exposed a darker, tribal nature of mankind.

Maybe Orwell was right, in 1984, to suggest that society should have a mythical enemy to hate, and that there should be a “two-minutes-hate” to hurl obscenities at the unknown enemy. Humans need an enemy to hate.

I recently read of a tribe of around 200 chimpanzees who lived as a single tribe for centuries, but who split into two tribes, which declared war on each other and killed each other. Chimpanzees!

My conclusion, therefore, is that diversity can be a wonderful thing, with each cultural group ideally learning from each other and contributing to a general increase in wisdom and knowledge. In order to achieve this, however, it is necessary for people to shed their (innate?) tribalism and to realize that people of other cultures have something to teach them.

ISRAEL KILLS THE AGREEMENT — OF COURSE!

Something that I don’t get, and that I’m not hearing in the media: the US-Iran agreement commits both Israel and Hezbollah to stop fighting, although neither Israel nor Hezbollah agreed. That sounds impossible; how could Iran and the US be so stupid as to write Israel and Hezbollah into an agreement that Israel and Hezbollah didn’t agree to? On second thought, maybe they weren’t so stupid.

Including Lebanon was the very first sentence of the very first of the 14 points of the agreement:

Of course, both the US and Iran knew that Netanyahu could sabotage the deal.

In other words, both Iran and that US agreed to a condition that could not stand. It was deliberate sabotage of the deal before it even got off the ground. Why don’t I hear this in the media?

So who wrote the deal? It appears that Iran proposed the 14 points, one of which was the Lebanon deal breaker. Therefore, it appears that Iran didn’t really want a deal. Why would it be to Iran’s advantage to prolong the war?

Maybe Iran figured that Trump was so desperate to surrender, he would agree to rein in his surrogate Netanyahu by any means possible. That is still a possibility, as many voices in Congress, such as Thomas Massie, are calling on the US to stop funding the Israeli war effort, or at least threaten to do so. For the moment, at least, it appears that Netanyahu is not backing down. Perhaps Iran underestimated the clout of the Israeli lobby in Washington.

On the other hand, why didn’t Trump complain about it? Why did he accept the condition, knowing that Netanyahu could bring down the deal at any time?

Probably he actually thought he could browbeat Netanyahu. After all, our narcissist-in-chief has been claiming, “I’m the boss”, and “I hold all the cards.” He was genuinely furious with Bibi for continuing to fight in Lebanon.

Trump is notorious for signing agreements that he has no intention of keeping. Perhaps he figured that Israel might break the deal, but Iran wouldn’t react.

Then again, perhaps this has something to do with the Epstein files. Like, maybe Iran knows that Bibi has the files and can blackmail Trump, but Trump either doesn’t know, or else refuses to believe that Bibi or Iran have any dirt on him.

As I write, ‘negotiations’ have stopped between Iran and the US. After Trump threatened Iran, their delegation walked out, with a statement that Trump must apologize and Israel must withdraw from Lebanon. What is there to negotiate? They’ll have to re-write the deal that both sides had already agreed to. Pretty clearly, the Lebanon clause will have to be removed or greatly modified.

THE $300 BILLION IS NOT TAXPAYER MONEY

The widely discussed (and mostly condemned) $300 billion to be given to Iran is not what the media are portraying. It is NOT a donation from American taxpayers to Iran for reparations. Rather, it is an investment fund, the money to be provided by private investors. (Have I heard this story somewhere before?) Apparently, about half of the total has already been promised. Before the war, Trump’s sanctions did not allow investment in Iran, but now that a lot of infrastructure has been destroyed, reconstruction will become an investor’s bonanza. There are hundreds of billions of dollars in profits to be made from these investments.

JD Vance has suggested that the funding will come from Gulf countries. I doubt this, since Iran has bombed those countries, and they will not be keen to reconstruct Iran with their own money. However, private investors in those countries might provide the capital.

The situation reminds me of Gaza and the Board of Peace. Remember Trump’s plan to build a ‘Riviera’ with luxury hotels and Trump towers? That’s what could happen in Iran. Maybe the same Board of Peace can move in. Heaven forbid!

Trump Tower Teheran?

One important factor is that Trump will decide who can invest and who can’t. He will choose his cronies and family to build the Teheran Trump Tower.

If done correctly, the $300 billion could be a good thing. Iran will need a lot of capital investment, which could help to rebuild the country.

On the other hand, Trump’s well-known and ubiquitous corruption could derail the whole process, if the $300 billion were to find its way into Trump’s pockets and not into reconstruction. I fear that is the most likely outcome, with a few billion spent on showcase projects, just to prove that the money is being spent, but the vast majority disappearing down a Trump black hole. I think most people are aware of this.

WAS THE BUDDHA HAPPY?

The essence of Buddhism is renunciation as the avoidance of suffering. While the renunciation of food and health causes too much suffering, it is possible to thread a ‘middle way’, the key to which is not to become attached to anything. After all, the Buddha was a prince, brought up in a luxurious life with a wife and young son, but he escaped all that, became a monk, and spent the rest of his long life as an unattached, itinerant preacher.

The Buddha refused to fall in love or have more children, because that would be attachment, which could be broken and cause suffering. You could almost conclude that he thought love was a bad thing, to be avoided.

I have experienced love and children. They provided me with great joy, even though previous attachments have caused me great anguish at their loss. In the end, however, I started over again, and again I achieved love in marriage and children. I feel that it was all worth the risk of loss.

I spent the first 50 years of my life a bachelor, free to roam the world and experience all sorts of amazing adventures. You could say that I followed a Buddhist philosophy, moving from place to place and avoiding attachments.

When I finally married, I experienced a kind of happiness that I had not felt previously. I became attached to my wife and offspring. How un-Buddhist! That makes my whole life worthwhile, while I risk the suffering that their loss might bring me.

Every year on the Pchum Ben holiday, I go with my wife to her rural family reunion. It is always an enlightening experience for me, as I witness the generations of the family moving through their lives: infants, children, adolescents, adults, middle age, and old age. It’s a bit depressing, seeing some beautiful young girls, and simultaneously seeing the old, decrepit women they will become. Is their whole purpose in life just to grow up, procreate, and finally fade away?

This empty feeling is captured in an opera by Paul Hindemith, called ‘The Long Christmas Dinner.’ Characters enter as young people from one side and chat at the Christmas table. Throughout the opera, they secretly apply make-up, like gray hair, to become old people, and then they quietly slip out the other side, as the dinner conversations go on.

No, I believe that those who find happiness do so through love. They don’t run away to live in the forest or a cave, just to avoid the suffering of loss. They engage with the risk. I see happy people in the village, secure in the love of their extended family. When I go to my wife’s village, I’m always impressed by their joy in the company of their loved ones.

This un-Buddhist notion is expressed in the old Barbara Streisand song, “People who need people are the luckiest people in the world.”

Love and joy are emotions that the Buddha intentionally avoided; but without love, life is empty and meaningless. What, then, was the purpose of his life, just to float from birth to death avoiding attachments?

WHY SHOULD I OPPOSE SLAVERY?

The thousands of world religions have one thing in common: NONE of them condemns slavery. The Bible is no exception; the 10 Commandments do not forbid slavery. Moses tells the Israelites to kill the male children and non-virgin females, but take the young virgins for themselves. Even in the New Testament, in Ephesians 6:5–8, Paul states “Slaves, be obedient to your human masters with fear and trembling, in sincerity of heart, as to Christ.” Slavery was considered to be part of daily life.

What about slavery in Islam? Wikipedia states:

Slavery was a mainstay of life in pre-Islamic Arabia and surrounding lands. The Quran and the hadith (sayings of Muhammad) address slavery extensively, assuming its existence as part of society. Islamic sources indicate that Muhammad acquired slaves.

The Roman Empire acquired slaves from their military campaigns. I could go on and on about slavery around the world. Slavery has always been a global, unquestioned phenomenon.

Even in pre-colonial Africa, slavery was prevalent, although in many different forms. I think it is pretty safe to say that the myth perpetuated in the book Roots – of white men going into African villages and enslaving the population – was not the way the system worked. In fact, Africans enslaved Africans, in tribal wars for example, and then took the slaves off to coastal markets like Ile de Gorée in Senegal, to sell to the waiting white men and their transatlantic ships.

Africans enslaved by Africans

Of course, we know that the American founding fathers like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson owned slaves, and thought nothing of it. That was the social and economic practice of the day.

With all this background of thousands of years and billions of people, how can it be that I KNOW that slavery is wrong? It’s ingrained in me, like a priori knowledge, or gnosis. How can I be right while history and all religions are wrong? Even all around our modern world, there are some 36 million slaves, as shown in this map:

In the end, this is not an essay about slavery, but about the grounds for morality. How can I be so sure of my moral position? It’s not a rational argument. How can I even argue with someone who owns slaves? If I say, “Slavery is wrong,” they could just reply, “Well, I say it’s right,” or, “The Bible says it’s right.” End of discussion.

It seems that it would be even harder for Christians to oppose slavery. After all, the Bible – the irrefutable word of God – supports it. Christians, whose morality is the Bible, should all be supporting slavery.

Is my opposition to slavery simply societal conditioning? Can ALL my firmly-held beliefs be traced back to simple societal or parental conditioning? If I had been born into another society, would my views be different?

CAN CORRUPTION BRING DOWN THE WHOLE SYSTEM?

Corruption is everywhere you look. Trump’s order to the DOJ to simply hand over $1.8 billion is not only the worst corruption ever seen in Washington, but it is right out in the open for all to see. Trump is stealing all that money and daring anyone to stand in his way.

This comes on the heels of Trump’s millions of dollars in stock trading in companies that he can influence. Members of Congress also do this; the Democrats proposed a bill saying that Congressmen should not be allowed to trade stocks, but the Republicans shot that down. Johnson’s response was so pathetic: those poor Congressmen make only $174,000 per year. How can they survive without insider trading?

A problem with all this corruption, not often analyzed, is that it kills any trust in the system by ordinary Americans. It shows that the upper leg of the K-economy is playing the lower leg for suckers. If the suckers realize that they have been taken (although they usually don’t), they may hesitate to take the plunge into the markets for a second time.

The green upper leg is playing the red lower leg for suckers and robbing them blind.

I realized this many years ago when I had an account with a major American brokerage firm. They recommended a certain company’s stock, which I bought. The VERY NEXT DAY, a regulatory decision caused the stock to fall. I immediately realized that one of the brokerage firm’s REAL clients learned about the impending disaster and requested (paid?) the firm to dump the shares on some unsuspecting chump (me).

It is tempting for the chumps to study their graphs and charts, and to actually believe that they have figured out the direction of the share price. They are fools. They watch the business shows on TV, and trust the circus-barker pundits’ recommendations, without realizing that the pundits are paid by the companies to hawk their shares.

I fear this is the way most financial transactions take place. Even 50 years ago, I learned a cardinal principle about investment: you don’t just buy a stock. You must buy it from somebody. You buy as a bet that the stock will go up, and your opponent is selling the stock betting it will go down. Who is that somebody? At the very least, it is a powerful professional will all sorts of information and statistics to prove that the stock will go down, while you have nothing on your side. At worst, Mr. Somebody is a corrupt trader with inside knowledge and even the ability to cause the stock to sink.

This is what is happening lately. When Trump buys shares, he not only knows what they are going to do, but he can also influence what they will do. Why would you sell your shares to Trump?

Since my encounter with the brokerage, I have never bought shares in any company again, in the knowledge that the upper leg of the K-economy has the system rigged against me. The best I can recommend is some kind of ETF, where Mr. Somebody must manipulate an entire industry or sector of the economy in order to cheat you.

I fear that the result of all this ubiquitous corruption will be to drive investors like me out of the market. I, along with millions of others, am not going to put my money into a system rigged against me. As the corruption becomes more and more obvious, more and more chumps will opt out of the game, leaving only the insiders to play. Who will be left to fool?

On the other hand, maybe P. T. Barnum was right.

DO WE NATURALLY KNOW RIGHT FROM WRONG?

I must have clicked on something inadvertently, because for the past week or so I have been inundated with posts and articles about religion versus atheism.

The pro-religion folks often point out that without a religious framework of morality, there is no backstop to prevent someone from murder, rape, pillage, etc. The atheists counter by stating that we all know right from wrong. The threat of hell or punishment isn’t what keeps us from doing wrong; we just know that it’s not done.

This sounds a lot like the philosophy of Immanuel Kant’s concept of ‘categorical imperative’. It is imperative that you act in a certain way, for no reason other than you simply should not do it. Kant’s oft-quoted statement is that

6 Categorical Imperative Examples (Kant’s Ethics) (2026)

In defense of Kant, it is often argued that the Golden Rule is found as a universal law in all religions. On the other hand, how is it that it is immoral to eat beef in India, but immoral to eat pork in the Middle East? You might even claim that eating dog meat is immoral in Western countries, while it is perfectly normal in China and the Far East.

There is even a ‘Dog meat eating festival’ in China.

This line of reasoning opens the atheist up to the religious person’s criticism, “Where does that categorical imperative come from?  Who created it?”

I would take the argument even further, by asking, “Are the same acts moral in every culture of the world? Could an action be moral in one culture and immoral in another?” I think the answer is, ‘Yes’. Or maybe it’s a matter of degree: some immoral acts are more immoral than others. Just as there are thousands of gods and religions, so also there are thousands of moral systems. How do you know yours is the correct one?

Take lying, for instance. In some cultures it is a terrible sin to lie, while in others it is only a minor infraction. In most cultures, murder is a lot more serious than lying.

Then my previous question becomes: “Who decreed that murder is worse than lying, if both are immoral?” The Western justice system metes out penalties for various crimes. Who decides whether some crimes deserve harsher punishment than others? It would be interesting to compare penalties among cultures.

Atheists in the websites I receive usually ask, “What evidence do you have that God exists?” But religious people could ask the atheists, “What evidence do you have that murder is wrong?” If your religion depends on where in the world you were born, it may also be the case that your morality depends on where you were born. Thus, both religion and morality are cultural phenomena.

CAN TRUMP STEAL ALL THE MONEY IN THE U.S. TREASURY?

I’ve been hearing a couple of words used by the media with increasing frequency: ‘brazen’ and ‘egregious’. That’s because Trump’s actions have become much more and more brazen and egregious these days. He has really ‘jumped the shark’ with his latest corruption: stealing 1.8 billion dollars from the Treasury to distribute to the thugs who attacked the capitol on Jan. 6 and injured many law officers.

As you’re probably aware, Trump ‘sued’ his own Justice Department for $10 billion, and then withdrew the case because he had made a ‘settlement’ with the DOJ for his $1.8 billion slush fund.

I have a couple of questions that seem important to me, but which I’m not hearing in the media.

  1. If he cancelled the lawsuit, then the 1.8 billion was not a settlement at all, but rather a deal made with his own team to empty 1.8 billion into his slush fund. He simply directed his minions to give U.S. Treasury money for his private use. Can that possibly be legal?
  2. More importantly, if he gets away with this one, there is nothing stopping him from pulling the same stunt with every other U.S. Government department. He could threaten to sue the FBI and then make a deal with Kash Patel to give him $10 billion. Then he could do the same with Hegseth in the Defense Department, then Lutnick in Commerce. Then Rubio, then Bessent, etc.  He could end up with 100 billion dollars. He could bankrupt the entire government.

In fact, why not just direct the Treasury Department to give him personal control of all U.S. money? He controls them all anyway, and they must do his bidding or be either fired or charged with some made-up crimes.

There’s even more to it. According to CNN, the ‘settlement’ states:

According to the new document, dated Tuesday and signed by acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, the federal government is “FOREVER BARRED and PRECLUDED” from prosecuting or pursuing “claims” or “examinations” arising from matters pending before the IRS, including “tax returns” filed by Trump before the agreement was reached. The language applies not just to Trump, but to his family, trusts, companies and other affiliates.

Again, this can’t be legal, can it? The President can’t just order that he not be investigated, even if it’s part of a real ‘settlement’.  This is one area where the courts could step in.

One final stipulation from the agreement: the American people must apologize to the rioters. “Sorry that your flagpole was bent when you struck the officer over the head with it.”

Is there any way this could be stopped? Well, for one thing, the timing of the cancellation of the lawsuit may matter. If the lawsuit were cancelled before the ‘settlement’, then there was no pending lawsuit, and therefore no settlement. There would be only an agreement between the DOJ and Trump. That agreement would be illegal, since the DOJ doesn’t control the purse strings of the government. On the other hand, Trump is justifying the deal on grounds that the DOJ already has a fund to compensate people unfairly treated by the government, and this fund was already used years ago. Do we know how much is still in the fund?

On the other hand, if the settlement happened while there was still a lawsuit pending, then the judge could order hearings to determine whether the suit was between adversaries, or where there was collusion. If the judge rules that there was no adversarial relationship, then the suit is again cancelled, and the $1.8 was just a deal and would again be illegal, as explained above.

In any case, the words ‘egregious’ and ‘brazen’ clearly apply to Trump’s latest grift.