As astonishing as the election of a Black American to the US presidency was in 2009, even more astonishing is the fact that a Bulgarian clairvoyant who went by the name of Baba Vanga actually predicted that the 44th President of the USA would be a Black American. That event became fulfilled with the triumph of Barack Obama in the presidential elections carried out in 2008. It should be remarked that Baba Vanga passed away in 1996, long before Obama could have been considered as a serious contender for the White House, and certainly at a time when the triumph of a Black American in a race for the US presidency was considered as a near impossibility. Baba Vanga was a blind woman, which makes her prediction even more significant. However, that prediction of Baba Vanga was only one of two predictions concerning the USA. Her second prediction actually spoke of the USA coming apart after the presidency of the Black America was fulfilled, once his successor -Donald Trump- had taken the oath of office.
It goes without saying that the 2016 presidential election left the USA seriously divided. The man who won is actually someone who lost the lost the popular vote by nearly three million, which is hardly the result of anything that could be considered a democracy. Even more, there are many Americans who consider Donald Trump as an illegitimate President, whose triumph was artificially boosted by an intervention of his beloved friends the Russian hackers without whose help Trump would could very well have lost.
The issue of the illegitimacy of Donald Trump who during his first ten days in office has governed as if he were a King by issuing one executive order after another without the need of any kind of approval or debate by Congress is no small issue. Who wants to be governed for several years by a megalomaniac narcissistic man whose claim to victory is tainted by the meddling of a foreign government that very likely affected the outcome of the presidential election? And herein lies the possibility, no longer consider remote, that Baba Vanga may have the second part of her prediction turning out to be true.
Before the unanticipated defeat of Hillary Clinton, a defeat made possible by an archaic Electoral College which should have been done away with a long time ago, was considered an impossibility, and even most of the followers of Baba Vanga considered that this part of the predictions was impossible to fulfill, that such a thing would never happen. After all, the US Civil War was fought precisely over this issue, under the legal argument that once a state had joined the Union it could not break off from the Union, it was heavily bonded to the Union for all time to come. The validity of the argument was upheld by the fact that the Confederacy lost the war; had the Confederacy won the Southern states would have constituted what today would be known as the Confederate States of America, a nation in which slavery would perhaps be practiced today in the third millennium. Thus dismantling of the Confederacy was not merely resting on a legal argument over the impossibility of legally leaving the Union, it also had a moral overtone, the overtone of slavery. The fight carried out by Abraham Lincoln lied upon solid ethical and moral grounds. But such is not the case today. Few, if any, consider Donald Trump to be the epitome of ethical morality, not even his closest followers believe he can stand up to the stature of a leader such as Abraham Lincoln.
Baba Vanga’s prediction of the USA coming apart can be interpreted in two ways: it can either mean that the US society would become seriously divided in two irreconcilable sides with the split lasting for as long as Donald Trump remains in the Oval Office, in which case her prediction has already come to pass, or it can mean something far deeper with far reaching historical consequences. It can mean that the USA will begin to break apart as a nation, breaking apart into at least two independent states.
Governing via executive orders and thus making an acquiescing Republican-controlled US Congress obsolete, which by the way kills the concept of separation of powers that was once thought to be a guarantee of fair government, this leaves only one alternative to those who consider Donald Trump an illegitimate President and who refuse to be governed by a quasi-King issuing one executive order after another: separating the state from the rest of the Trump-dominated USA. And indeed there is already one state that is seriously considering separating itself from the rest of the USA. That state is California, and its secession drive under YesCalifornia is being called California Exit or Calexit (after Brexit). Again, as with the Baba Vanga prediction that the 44th President of the USA would be a Black American, this secession proposal just two or three years ago would have been unthinkable and impossible.
According to a news report published by the Associated Press, a proposal was submitted Thursday January 26th 2017 to state election officials in California that would ask voters to repeal part of the state constitution that declares California an inseparable part of the United States. If the proposal qualifies for the ballot and is approved by voters, the proposal could be a step to a future vote on whether California should break away from the U.S. Supporters Thursday were cleared to begin attempting to collect nearly 600,000 voter signatures needed to place the plan on the ballot. Similar attempts to make California a nation, or break it into multiple states, have failed. The election of President Donald Trump in November rekindled talk of California seceding from the union. The proposal makes no mention of President Donald Trump, who was trounced by Hillary Clinton by more than 4 million votes in California, raising the possibility that this time Californians who want to be independent of a Trump ridden nation may finally get their wish. Secretary of State Alex Padilla said the group behind the proposal, Yes California Independence Campaign, was cleared to begin attempting to collect nearly 600,000 voter signatures needed to place the plan on the ballot. The proposed constitutional amendment, titled California Nationhood, would also ask voters to repeal language that states the U.S. Constitution is the supreme law. If approved, it calls for scheduling a vote in 2019 to ask voters, "Should California become a free, sovereign and independent country?" Threats to secede from the United States have been a part of American politics almost since the nation was founded. The most serious attempt came before and during the Civil War, when 11 Southern states left to form the Confederacy. Another hurdle would be the U.S. Constitution, which does not provide for state secession in a peaceful manner letting each state decide at any point in time if it wants to remain part of the Union. The campaign must submit the valid voter signatures by July 25 to qualify for the November 2018 ballot.
One immediate advantage of Californians once the separation of California from the rest of the Union becomes a reality is that they would no longer be governed by Donald Trump as President. That’s about the only way they can take off Donald Trump from their backs.
But wouldn’t President Trump object to the wishes of Californians in case they decide to break off from the USA? It would be sheer hypocrisy for him to do so, considering that he himself applauded the separation of England from the European Union, i.e. Trump approved and applauded the beginning of the breakup of the European Union. So why should he complain if the USA becomes splitting apart with the separation of California from the USA? Trump has even gone on record by saying that Brexit will give British ‘their own identity’. Likewise, the separation of California from Trumpland will give Californians -finally- their own identity. So, why shouldn’t Californians have the same right that President Trump is giving to the Britons? A right to their own identity. If Trump wants to rule as King what remains of the USA, let those who accept his purported illegitimate presidency enjoy or suffer the consequences.
As if all of the above was not enough, there is a newer more urgent issue that needs to be addressed by Californians. The US Constitution is grossly outdated and is no longer useful for the current needs of society. The current electoral system forged by the founding fathers that allows anyone -even a mentally unfit candidate- to receive the US presidency in spite of having lost the popular vote not by hundreds or thousands or even hundreds of thousands but by millions of voters is quite an aberration, and calls not for an amendment to the US Constitution but to the entire Constitution itself, in such a way that we would be referring to “the Old Constitution” and “the New Constitution”. The current stalemate in Capitol Hill makes it nearly impossible to refurbish the US Constitution by taking the best of the Old Constitution in the drafting of a refurbished Constitution more suited for the needs and times of the Third Millennium. Which means in turn that it is impossible to do away with the outmoded Electoral College. The only way to break off from the choke hold of the anachronic Electoral College is to break off from the USA itself and begin work on a new Constitution for the nation of California, without any Electoral College.
It was stated above that one hurdle in the attempts of California for becoming an independent nation is the US Constitution. Those behind Trump argue that California is binded to the USA for all times -and thus to the Trump presidency- since it is illegal for any state to separate from the Union. However, it must be recalled that when the Thirteen Colonies proclaimed their independence from England, such an act of rebellion was also considered illegal, and it was considered so illegal that a bloody war was waged against the colonists by the British Empire, but in the end England lost and the independentists won after an enormous sacrifice. If the US Constitution forbids California and Californians from leaving a land dominated by Donald Trump and people who think like Donald Trump, if the US Constitution allows coercion against any of its member states and tries to retain a state such as California in the Union against the free will of Californians, then the time has come to enact a new Constitution allowing the separation of California or reject the US Constitution altogether as a document whose time has passed. After all, the European Union which Trump himself hates and condemns allows any of its member nations to separate peacefully without the spilling of blood, otherwise the Brexit initiative would not have been possible. So if the Constitution of the European Union allows for the peaceful separation of any of its member states with full respect to their free will, and the US Constitution does not allow such a thing, then it is fair to say that the Constitution of the European Union enacted in modern times is far superior to a US Constitution that provides no respect for the free will and wishes of Californians. This would be yet one more reason, and a very important one, to break off from the Union.
There is a growing sense of urgency among some Californians on the need to carry out the separation from Trump’s land as soon as possible, and it has to do with Mexico. By now it is no secret that Donald Trump hates Mexico and hates all Mexicans in spite of some declarations to the contrary. The wall he wants to build all along the US-Mexico border and make Mexicans pay for his wall against their will and wishes is just one proof of his hatred towards Mexicans. But this goes a lot deeper than just the wall. Trump enjoys humiliating Mexicans, and his hatred towards the US neighbors to the South treating Mexicans as a bunch of beggars inhabiting a third world banana republic became so unbearable that Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto, with the support of all Mexicans uniting around him, called off his first scheduled meeting with Trump as US President that was to take place on Tuesday January 31st, with no new date set for another meeting. This is considered by almost all Mexican historians (and many US historians) as the worst rupture in otherwise cordial relations between both countries since 1849 when the war between both nations took place. Indeed, some voices in Mexico are already calling for a full rupture in US-Mexico diplomatic relations and the opening of a new era without the USA as a trading partner, which is precisely what Trump wants anyway for he has already made it clear that if 200 days after he has taken office Mexico cannot agree with the Trump presidency on a new renegotiated NAFTA under his own Draconian terms then he will pull the USA out of NAFTA completely thus destroying NAFTA as he just did with the TPP.
Yes, Donald Trump can unilaterally destroy NAFTA, but once this is done it will be impossible to try to come up with a new trade deal with Mexico after NAFTA has been destroyed by Trump. Mexicans will take such unilateral action as a serious offense, and since Mexico is no longer ruled by a single one-party system as it used to be under the PRI for close to seven decades (which helped get NAFTA approved through a docile rubber-stamp Mexican Congress in 1994), regardless of who rules Mexico from 2018 to 2024 the opposition parties in Mexico supported by almost all the Mexican people will most likely adamantly refuse any kind of new trade deal that can be scraped at any moment by the whims of a lunatic in the Oval Office. In other words, once NAFTA is gone -and the clock is ticking at this very moment with 169 days left to go- it will be gone for good, and with Trump in the Oval Office his wall will become much more than a symbolic measure to stop illegal immigration, it will become a symbol of a relationship ruined for good. It will be a new version of the Iron Curtain that separated the West from Eastern Europe.
If California were a state (or a nation) far away in some continent like Asia or Australia, the break off of diplomatic relations between the USA and Mexico would be no big deal. However, California shares a border with Mexico, and a very important section of its economy lies on a fluid border with goods and people crossing the international bridges. If the border with Mexico becomes sealed under the Trump presidency, a major disruption is to be expected on the lives of many Californians who live in border cities as San Diego. Just take a look at the map.
Donald Trump doesn’t care about the human cost of the hoards of executive orders he issues and the actions he takes, be it Mexicans, Muslims, or even fellow Americans. He has already proven that. If he kills NAFTA, and many Mexicans are already getting ready for that possibility, it is a sure bet he will bring utter chaos to the California economy already devastated by several years of drought.
It goes without saying that for a state such as California, heavily dependent on its agricultural industry, Californian farmers would pay very dearly for any decision Trump takes to bring all trade between Mexico and the USA to a screeching halt. He himself, with all his millions, would be unaffected, his wife Melania would still be flaunting designer clothing at high class cocktail parties, he would keep on hiding his tax returns even from his most ardent followers, and both would keep enjoying the lifestyles of the rich and famous, but the little people Trump claims to look after would be mauled and devastated. Some with a lot more brains and knowledge than the buffoon who now rules over the entire USA as King are warning of the dire consequences of Trump's actions against the very same people he says he is trying to defend, but Trump believes that he is right 100 per cent of the time and those who question his judgment are evil doers concocting plots to ruin his majestic legacy. For all practical purposes, he is deaf. He cannot and will not admit to the fact that some of the core policies he wants to set in motion, dressed under a veil of isolationism, protectionism and populist nationalism, are the very same things that sent the US and the entire world into the 1929 Economic Depression that paved the way for World War Two.
In his quest to destroy Mexico and the Mexican economy Trump has the potential to carry many Californians to an economic calamity, but he really doesn’t care, because in his egotistical frame of mind he believes himself to be some kind of god, and gods never make mistakes. That’s one of the reasons of why Calexit is gaining momentum.
California has the sixth largest economy in the world, and thus California has the ability to secede from the USA and go independent. But will Donald Trump oppose the California secession denying Californians the same decision and right he is applauding as regards to the Brexit that carries along the possible breakup of the entire European Economic Community? As unpredictable as Trump is, he could very well try to resort to brute force in order to keep California and Californians as part of the Union, even if this means spilling a lot of blood with a lot of dead Californian corpses. A violent response from the man without a heart in one of his fits of mistemper perhaps can and should be expected. Yes, he is capable of that, and much more. The inhabitants of California should know this by now.
Provoking someone like Donald Trump carries an enormous amount of risk, especially if such individual is the Commander in Chief of the most powerful military establishment o the planet. Furthermore, it is naive to believe that if the California referendum advances he will remain idle doing nothing to prevent the breakup. After all, he is the man who ran his campaign under the slogan Make America Great and will not want to be remembered as the President under whose leadership the United States began to break apart. The same Donald Trump who supported Brexit is very likely to say “Not in my backyard!”. There are different outcomes to this story, depending on how deranged and out of his wits Donald Trump may be when he realizes that many Californians are talking seriously and expect to be treated seriously. One possible scenario is that as soon as he starts moving US federal troops around in the streets of California while resorting to his usual ominous threats warning Californians not to do so, the US Congress will remove him from power after a speedy impeachment procedure. But alas, it is a Republican dominated Congress, loyal to a President who calls himself a Republican, so expecting the current Congress to impeach and remove from power a deranged Donald Trump seems an unlikely event. The other possible scenario is that Donald Trump will let Californians decide for themselves which way they want to go and respect their decision in case they decide to break off from the Union. But then again, the man who ran his campaign under the slogan Make America Great will most likely take steps to retain California and Californians in the Union even against their will. This fight will not be different from the fight that was carried out by the Thirteen Colonies after they issued their Declaration of Independence, except that this time the enemy is not King George III but a man called Donald Trump who has deluded himself into believing he is some kind of a King. Oddly enough, Californians may find support from Europe in their independence quest from Trump land from the very same people whom Donald Trump supported in England in their separation quest from the European Union. Regardless, Californians can anticipate moral support from all over the world in case they have decided that the Union has gone too far down the gutters in its moral standing and stature as to make it worthy to remain in such a country.
And what if Californians get their wish and secede from the rest of the Union? Well, if they do so, riding themselves of the Donald Trump presidency for good, some other states will surely be getting the same idea. One interesting fact is that, according to an opinion poll made known by Reuters, one in four Americans want their state to secede from the U.S.:
And this was two years before it became known that Donald Trump, with the help of his Russian hackers who granted illegitimacy to his presidency, had won the November 2016 presidential election! So, if California secedes, it is likely that other states will try to follow suit rather than resign themselves to be dragged into a Trumpian nightmare. States such as Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania are expected to be loyal to the far right Trump presidency and remain in the Union, while other states may follow suit if Californians succeed in breaking off the shackles that bind them to Donald Trump and a US Constitution that has proven to be completely worthless in letting the people impede those who lost by the popular vote grab the US presidency anyway.
As things stands right now, there are only two choices left: remain in the Union and thus become a Trump accomplice, or secede from the Union and say goodbye and farewell to the American would-be Caligula. Likewise, there could be states choosing to secede from the Trumpian far right monarchy, such as California, and there will be those choosing to remain loyal to all that Donald Trump represents. In the latter category we may consider Texas, now governed by Greg Abbot who has already called for the border between the USA and Mexico completely sealed regardless of the economic impact on Texans especially the millions of Texans who live alongside the US-Mexico border.
There is yet another important and very profound reason that justifies the separation of California at this precise moment in time from the rest of the USA. By so doing, once California takes the initiative and breaks off from the rest of the Union, the capability of Donald Trump as President to initiate World War Three will be greatly diminished, if not crippled. How important can this be? Well, the Russian takeover of the Crimean peninsula by resorting to an outright military invasion employing overwhelming military superiority was motivated precisely because of the strategic military importance of Crimea to Russia as a base for the Russian navy and the importance of Crimea to the geopolitical power of Russia. Were it not for this, Russia would never have risked severe economic sanctions from the West besides becoming alienated with the rest of Europe and even the rest of the world. Such is the importance of Crimea. On a similar vein, without California, after a peaceful separation if indeed a peaceful separation can be carried out with Trump in power, once the Union is deprived of the valuable ports used by the US Navy throughout the coast of California, launching an attack against some other country becomes a harder task for Donald Trump. The best hopes of Americans, and indeed perhaps the best hopes of mankind, for stopping or at the very least moderating the warlike impulses of the hawkish man in the White House who so far by his actions has demonstrated to be careless and irresponsible, lie in depriving him of all the economic and manpower resources California has to offer. The defeat of Donald Trump at the hands of Hillary Clinton would have been the best option to take away from Donald Trump his capability to wage nuclear war, but with that option gone the only other option left is to diminish his power to do so, and this can be done by taking away from him some of the resources he needs to do as he pleases, and the Calexit proposal is the only viable means to do so. There are no other alternatives left.
The current H2A visa program for temporary agricultural workers is a joke.This program that administers agricultural visas is steeped in bureaucracy, growers say. Many times the paperwork is exhaustive, complicated and the process takes so long that many farmers complain they don’t get workers in time. The broken system has led many to knowingly take on workers who have entered the country illegally. On the other hand, many growers have complained that “You end up hiring someone who comes to you with a document that looks legal”. The U.S. Department of Labor’s National Agricultural Workers Survey, which tracked farm workers between 2007 and 2009, estimated 48 percent of them entered the country illegally. Likewise, the National Center for Farmworker Health has estimated previously that there are about 3 million seasonal farm workers in the USA and nearly 1.5 million are in the USA illegally.
It has come down to the point that it is far easier for Canadian growers to bring in Mexican agricultural workers. Canada benefits from the same Mexican agricultural work force that the US federal government denies to its own citizens, and while the agricultural industry thrives in Canada it appears that Washington doesn't care a damn if the California growers go bankrupt taking down with them the entire state.
But the agricultural growers of California are not the only ones complaining against a US federal government that for quite some time seems to have been conspiring against the best interests of the state of California. In the high-tech industries of Silicon Valley, complains are growing louder and louder against a USA immigration system that is not only broken down, but even threatens to pilfer the US technological leadership that immigration from other countries has provided. They’ve just about had more than enough. After breaking off from the USA, Californians would perhaps be amused and entertained over the decades long squabble going on in Washington over the immigration issue, but California would not be harmed by the never ending squabbles in Congress.
The US federal government, now headed by the fiercest anti-immigrant President in a long long time, is not going to make things any easier in the near future for California, and quite the contrary, conditions are likely to deteriorate. As things stand at present, now seems as good a time as any, or even a better time than any other time, to secede from the USA and go on its own.
If California secedes from the Union, benefits are to be reaped almost immediately. Take for example the executive order signed by Donald Trump January 25 threatening cities like San Francisco and Los Angeles with a cutoff in federal funds if they do not comply with the Trump order to give up their status as sanctuary cities, an executive order that was challenged yesterday by San Francisco, thus becoming San Francisco the first city in the US to file a lawsuit over President Trump’s executive order targeting sanctuary cities. If California separates from the Union, that Trump executive order will become meaningless, and even more important, all Trump’s executive orders he may issue for as long as he remains President of the USA will be null and void in California. His threats against the independence initiative and his grip on California will become a thing of the past, just a fading memory of a bad nightmare.
Under the Trump fostered argument that every single newly arrived immigrant is taking a job away from a legal US citizen, that argument has been stretched to argue that high-tech talents and entrepreneurs brought from outside the USA should be barred for good since they too take away very good paying jobs that college graduates from US universities should be getting. But the argument is seriously flawed. In Silicon Valley, immigrants are seen as essential to the growth that has made it one of the most innovative places on earth. “You got to understand there has been for many years a brain drain from other countries to the United States, a lot of that to Silicon Valley,” said economist Robert Reich, who was labor secretary in the Clinton administration. Thirty-seven percent of Silicon Valley workers are foreign-born, nearly three times the number in the rest of the nation “There is no evidence they are taking jobs away from Americans. They are adding jobs because they are innovating,” Reich said. “That makes more jobs for everybody else, for more innovators”. For too long, the US federal government has made it harder and harder for the high tech industries in Silicon Valley to get all the foreign talent they need in order to remain competitive. Examples abound. Consider Sergey Brin, who escaped from the Soviet Union in 1979 and took refuge in the United States, and is the founder of Google, probably the most important company in the age of information. South African born Elon Musk is well known by now throughout the world. And what about Steve Jobs, whose biological father Abdulfattah “John” Jandali (born 1931) was born into a Muslim household and grew up in Homs, Syria? Yes, precisely the same country where Donald Trump has applied a permanent ban to all refugees escaping from Syria. And what about Ariana Huffington, who was born in Greece? And the list goes on and on. If California separates from the Union, all the problems that the California high tech industries have been having with the US federal bureaucracy in getting and keeping their foreign talent will become be a thing of the past, those problems would be over for good the only way they can be over for good, with the secession of California. Silicon Valley would have no problem bringing in from overseas the high-tech scientists and engineers it needs to remain competitive. If the poor uneducated white supremacists whom Trump adores and who live in Trump states like Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan truly believe that isolating the United States from the rest of the world and closing the doors on all immigration will bring them well paying jobs, let them keep on dreaming while California breaks off watching from afar how those who live in Trump country end up falling into a deep sinkhole.
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