David Hemond
Perhaps, like me, you spent too much time yesterday wondering if the “firing” of Steve Bannon from the National Security Council was meaningful news. Was Bannon really in disfavor, or did Bannon orchestrate his removal to address the criticism, or orchestrate it as a diversion? Or perhaps, his leaving really signaled that major foreign policy decisions, including those affecting security, were taking place in the White House. Why should Bannon waste time at the Council meetings? Pay him now or pay him later. I’ll tell you what – it doesn’t mean squat. It’s not where the action is, one way or the other.The Perfect Storm
William Manchester’s The Arms of Krupp describes how Hitler’s rise in Nazi Germany was enabled by his alliance with Germany’s “military-industrial complex” (the Krupps) and Germany’s conservative Junker class. Each party perceived it could use the other two to further its goals. Arguably Hitler came out on top, but the alliance was necessary to get him there.
Similar dynamics have been at work in Trump’s rise to power. See my blog at The Tripartite Coalition. To get elected, Trump, Manafort, Stone, and Flynn – the shady dealers – allied (1) with Steve Bannon and the Robert Mercer forces, and (2) with the Republican establishment, which is enthralled to the conservative corporate and military industrial complex and led by Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell. Trump, Manafort, Stone, and Flynn brought long-standing contacts with Putin and the Russian oligarchy to the party. The Russians were key because of their access to resources to hack Democratic emails and disseminate misinformation. The evidence of collusion, given the timeline of contacts, is self-evident. See Hannah Levintova’s Mother Jones timeline. Ryan and McConnell provided the legitimacy and political base and ideological support necessary to run. So what did Bannon and Mercer supply?
Jane Mayer in her New Yorker article “The Reclusive Hedge-Fund Tycoon Behind the Trump Presidency” exposes Robert Mercer as the force behind Bannon and Breitbart. Her article also describes how Mercer made his millions as an innovative computer programmer who figured out how to use computer algorithms to game the stock market. In essence, he figured out that, for short-term trades, he could use computers to crunch massive amounts of data to understand where the market would go next – getting a significant advantage over other market investors. Just like the casino house in a gambling operation, he used his computers to create a “house” edge by being able to predict future behavior. Mercer understood that what worked in the stock market could also be used to analyse behavior in politics. He brought that expertise to at least one company, Cambridge Analytics, for use in advancing his right-wing political goals.
From all appearances, the Mercer analytics were used to maximize the benefit of the Russian and Breitbart disinformation campaign. In an election determined by approximately 70,000 votes in three key states, that alliance almost certainly tipped the election in Trump’s favor. See this article by Bill Palmer, “FBI now investigating Breitbart and InfoWars as part of its probe into Donald Trump and Russia.” Here’s Palmer, “Just hours after FBI Director James Comey confirmed on live national television today that his agency is actively investigating Russia and the Donald Trump campaign for their roles in rigging the 2016 election, it turns out the probe is even wider than acknowledged. McClatchy is now confirming that the FBI is also investigating the actions of two far right news outlets with direct ties to the Trump administration, as part of its Trump-Russia probe.
Part of the Russian government’s strategy for rigging the election involved using automated internet bots to spread pro-Trump news stories from sites like Breitbart and InfoWars in rapid fashion, helping those stories artificially go viral on social media, and giving Donald Trump a boost in the process.”
As has been well established, Breitbart was funded by Robert Mercer and led by Trump chief strategist Steve Bannon.
Finally, we have the further circumstantial evidence that Trump, himself, personally amplified the effect of the misinformation campaign by publicly asserting, repeating, and insisting on the truth of various allegations. See this article by Aaron Rupar at ThinkProgress: “Former FBI agent details how Trump and Russia team up to weaponize fake news“.
As Rupar notes: “During the first public Senate Intelligence Committee hearing about Russia’s meddling in the presidential election on Thursday, former FBI special agent Clint Watts explained how Russia and the Trump campaign team up to weaponize fake news.
Asked by Rep. James Lankford (R-OK) about why Russian President Vladimir Putin decided to make more of an effort to interfere in the 2016 presidential election than in years past, Watts, who is now a a fellow at George Washington University’s Center for Cyber and Homeland Security, said, ‘the answer is very simple and it’s what nobody is really saying in this room.’
‘Which is, part of the reason active measures have worked in this U.S. election is because the Commander-in-Chief [Trump] has used Russian active measures at times, against his opponents,’ Watts continued.” Watts goes on to detail two specific circumstances.
It has been evident for some time that Trump successfully used a campaign of innuendo, smears, and misinformation to steal the 2016 election. The degree to which his election was further enabled by the perfect storm of Russian collusion and the computer expertise of Robert Mercer to leverage the disinformation campaign is now coming into focus. Given that the collusion was illegal and covert, it is reasonable to anticipate that substantially more activity will come to light as law enforcement investigates and as those who are culpable face subpoenas and are required to testify under oath. This reddit link “magicsonar comments” contains some of the anonymous research and speculation that deserves mainstream attention.
In summary, Trump’s election was illegitimate. He should be investigated and removed from office and the election nullified.
Something’s Happening Here
“Those who fail to learn from history are bound to repeat it.” George Santayana.
What was not in the news this week was discussion of the US ramping up of troop deployments in Iraq and Syria. Well, it was there if you looked carefully but it wasn’t anything advertised by our administration.
See this article by W. J. Hennigan in The LA Times, Trump administration stops disclosing troop deployments in Iraq and Syria. Here’s Hennigan, “Even as the U.S. military takes on a greater role in the warfare in Iraq and Syria, the Trump administration has stopped disclosing significant information about the size and nature of the U.S. commitment, including the number of U.S. troops deployed in either country.
Earlier this month, the Pentagon quietly dispatched 400 Marines to northern Syria to operate artillery in support of Syrian militias that are cooperating in the fight against Islamic State, according to U.S. officials. That was the first use of U.S. Marines in that country since its long civil war began.
In Iraq, nearly 300 Army paratroopers were deployed recently to help the Iraqi military in their six-month assault on the city of Mosul, according to U.S. officials.
Neither of those deployments was announced once they had been made, a departure from the practice of the Obama administration, which announced nearly all conventional force deployments.”
The article continues:
“’In order to maintain tactical surprise, ensure operational security and force protection, the coalition will not routinely announce or confirm information about the capabilities, force numbers, locations, or movement of forces in or out of Iraq and Syria,’ said Eric Pahon, a Pentagon spokesman. That move deprives the public of information it has a right to know about the wars in which the U.S. is engaging, said Ned Price, National Security Council spokesman under Obama.”
So when was the last time an American administration boosted troop levels without public acknowledgement? The President was Lyndon Baines Johnson. He was increasing troop levels for some kind of “enforcement” action in a place called Vietnam.
Collusion in Plain Sight
For those of you following the Trump-Russia collusion story, Hannah Levintova of Mother Jones has prepared a revealing timeline . See “The Long, Twisted, and Bizarre History of the Trump-Russia Scandal“. The various Trump loyalists continue to insinuate, nothwithstanding Michael Flynn’s request for immunity in exchange for testimony, that there is no “there” there. What seems more plausible is that this torturous timeline – implicating most of Trump’s confidants – is just the tip of an iceberg of treasonous acts.
For more on Flynn, see the article in The Guardian by Luke Harding, Stephanie Kirchgaessner, and Nick Hopkins, “Michael Flynn: new evidence spy chiefs had concerns about Russian ties”. Flynn, like Trump, Manafort, and Page, was deeply entwined with Russian dealings. The Guardian article has him associating with a Russian-British graduate student, Svetlana Lokhova, noting “[a] historian and a leading expert on Soviet espionage, Lokhova has claimed to have unique access to previously classified Soviet-era material in Moscow.”
Finally, there is this article by Paul Wood of the BBC, “Trump Russia dossier key claim ‘verified’” concerning efforts to validate former British agent Christopher Steele’s dossier – which purports to be a roadmap to the Trump-Russia collusion. The article is focused on verification of one of the prime alleged facts, Here’s an excerpt from Wood: “Steele’s “dossier”, as the material came to be known, contains a number of highly contested claims.
At one point he wrote: ‘A leading Russian diplomat, Mikhail KULAGIN, had been withdrawn from Washington at short notice because Moscow feared his heavy involvement in the US presidential election operation… would be exposed in the media there.’
There was no diplomat called Kulagin in the Russian embassy; there was a Kalugin.
One of Trump’s allies, Roger Stone, said to me of Steele, scornfully: ‘If 007 wants to be taken seriously, he ought to learn how to spell.’
The Russian Foreign Ministry said Kalugin was head of the embassy’s economics section.”
Wood’s article focuses on the fact that Kalugin’s status as a Russian spy was now affirmed – giving further credence to other dossier claims. Here’s the dossier claim that caught my attention:
“In early December, the whole thing [Steele’s dossier], 35 pages, was sent to Senator John McCain, who pressed the FBI director to investigate exhaustively.
The following month, the intelligence agencies briefed both then-President Barack Obama and Trump about the dossier – and the entire contents were published by Buzzfeed.
In the report, Steele spoke of an ‘established operational liaison between the TRUMP team and the Kremlin… an intelligence exchange had been running between them for at least 8 years.'”
At this point, Steele’s allegations remain just that – unproven allegations, albeit of a credible source. On the other hand, I find that they resonate.
Trump in Azerbaijan – Adam Davidson’s Follow Up
I blogged earlier about Adam Davidson’s revelations in The New Yorker concerning Trump’s partnering with the organized-crime Mammadov family in a Trump Hotel project in Azerba
Now Davidson has followed up in The New Yorker on his initial report in SENATORS ASK FOR AN INVESTIGATION INTO TRUMP DEALINGS IN AZERBAIJAN. Here’s Davidson, “The ranking Democratic members of the Senate’s Foreign Relations, Banking, and Judiciary committees have written a joint letter to several Trump Administration officials asking them to address the possibility that the Trump Organization violated several laws in its dealings in Azerbaijan. ” He continues, “The letter, by Senators Sherrod Brown, of Ohio, Dianne Feinstein, of California, and Ben Cardin, of Maryland, was sent to the Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, the Treasury Secretary, Steven Mnuchin, and the F.B.I. director, James Comey. The senators wrote, ‘It appears that the lack of due diligence by the Trump Organization described in the article exposed President Trump and his organization to notoriously corrupt Azerbaijani oligarchs, and may also have exposed the Trump Organization to the IRGC’—the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. ‘Even though the Trump Organization appears to have withdrawn from the Baku Tower deal, serious questions remain unanswered about the Trump Organization’s potential criminal liability.'”
Trump’s attorney denies that Trump faces any criminal exposure and the controlling Republicans have yet to respond. But here is what is interesting. If you read Davidson, the prima facie case of a violation of The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act looks strong and the details of the transactions would be available for investigation. Unlike the issues involving Russian collusion over the hacking and efforts to undermine the election, the Azerbaijan case has a paper trail to investigate. Trump can be asked to show that he undertook required due diligence. The money trails can be followed. The case for impeachment based on collusion is growing by the day and Trump is flagrantly violating conflict of interest rules and the Emoluments Clause in public view. And now, here is a case that shows verifiable entanglement with organized crime and which cannot be fogged away. Failure to follow up and investigate would be another crime.
Mozart in the Jungle
Jackie and I have belatedly discovered Mozart in the Jungle, a TV series set in the milieu of the New York Symphony. Through six episodes, it has been a witty delight, a play on all the passions, egos, frailties, and ambitions that make us human. Also an insight into the lives of artists in the big city and the pressures and pathos of making it. Throw in sex, music, great acting, great writing, and stir – here’s hoping, ever the optimist, that they can keep it up. And if you like Jungle, don’t miss the 2003 Canadian series Slings and Arrows with Paul Gross. Slings and Arrows uses a similar conceit; it revolves around a struggling Shakespearean theatre, not unlike Jungle, but substitute Shakespeare for Mozart. Shakespeare? Mozart? Which do you prefer? Great acting – great music. I’ll take one of each and the Billy Holiday on the side.
Which brings me to Trump. The philistines are not just at the gate, they have stormed and taken the castle. Trump is all about War, and Walls, and gratifying his swelled sense of entitlement. Virtually all that is good about our government – be it support for education, or healthcare, science or the arts – is on the chopping block. His sense of attainment is Scrooge McDuck wallowing in his bank vault. No one is going to throw him out unless we make it happen. No time like the present.
Trump Denies Climate Change – Arctic Melts
Yesterday Trump issued orders of idiotic proportions rolling back Obama era rules that protect the environment. See Coral Davenport’s report in The New York Times, “Trump Signs Executive Order Unwinding Obama Climate Policies.” The orders reflect the clearest indication yet that Trump will carry through on his promise to scrap efforts against global warming. Davenport notes: “analysts say Mr. Trump’s order signals that the United States will not meet its pledges under the Paris deal to cut its emissions about 26 percent from 2005 levels by 2025. ‘Meeting the U.S. terms of the Paris Agreement would require full enforcement of the current regulations, plus additional regulations,’ said Michael Oppenheimer, a climate scientist at Princeton University. ‘It takes a comprehensive effort involving every country doing what they committed to and more.’”
Damian Carrington in Mother Jones, in “Basically, the Arctic Is Melting, the World Has Gone Crazy, and It’s All Our Fault“, provides a dramatic review of what is going on. Carrington describes how global warming is leading to significant increases in extreme weather events. For example, scientists have found that global warming leads to conditions favoring stalled weather systems under which a given system – drought, or rain – can remain stationary for long periods.
The article notes: “‘Human activity has been suspected of contributing to this pattern before, but now we uncover a clear fingerprint of human activity,’ said Michael Mann, a professor at Pennsylvania State University in the US who led the study published in the journalScientific Reports.
Kai Kornhuber, at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) in Germany, and another member of the research team, said: ‘We looked into dozens of different climate models, as well as into observational data, and it turns out that the temperature distribution favoring planetary wave stalling increased in almost 70 percent of the simulations.’
Large scale wind patterns are largely driven by the temperature difference between the poles and the tropics. But global warming is altering this difference because the Arctic is heating up faster than lower latitudes and because land areas are heating up faster than the oceans.
Recent changes in the Arctic are particularly striking, with record low levels of ice cover and extremely unusual high temperatures. ‘Things in the Arctic are happening much faster than we expected,’ said Professor Stefan Rahmstorf, also at PIK.
‘It is not just a problem of nature conservation or polar bears, it is about a threat to human society that comes from these rapid changes,’ he said. ‘This is because it hits us with increasing extreme events in the highly populated centers in the mid-latitudes. It also affects us through sea level rise, which is hitting shores globally. So these changes that are going on in the Arctic should concern everyone.’
So, while you are contemplating the ever mounting evidence that Trump colluded with Russian operatives to steal the 2016 election, consider the undeniable fact that he is actively leading the fight to increase carbon emissions and bring about climatic disaster.
A Proposal for Reform
Here’s my premise.
The proper role of government is to protect and ensure the welfare of the people.
A government is most likely to carry out the interests, and thus welfare, of the people if it reflects the will of the majority – that is to say, if it is democratic.
Our existing government reflects the interests of a rich oligarchy. Its electoral process has been corrupted by the influence of money and has led to a dangerous level of income inequality. Our government protects and benefits the rich rather than the population at large.
Our government should therefore be reformed.
The following principles would ensure a public-interested democracy ;
Campaign finance reform. Private money in elections should be strictly limited. The precise mechanism is less important than the principle. A reasonable approach would be to provide a set amount of public financing to the top four parties in the prior election and limit private donations to $200 per individual per candidate. Corporate money should be prohibited.
Prohibit gerrymandering. In this computer age, gerrymandering – the creation of safe electoral districts – is highly effective in removing accountability. Accountability is the life blood of democracy. Therefore independent commissions should oversee reapportionment of all electoral districts, using advanced computer algorithms to maximize competitiveness.
Prohibit regressive systems of taxation. Government policies must not act to increase income inequality.
Guarantee universal health care. The point of government is the welfare of the people. What could be more central than protecting health?
Guarantee public education through four years of college or the equivalent. Education is necessary to the welfare of both the individual and the society.
Restore the Fairness Doctrine for mainstream broadcasting. Our system of government has been distorted by the twenty-four hour propaganda of media outlets such as Fox News and Breitbart which, for ideological purposes, spew a steady stream of false and malicious news. An independent, nonpartisan, commission should review mainstream broadcasts. Intentional broadcasting of political slurs without evidence – such as the Obama birthing movement – should lead to fines or loss of license.
Require adherence to environmental principles of sustainability. Protection of the environment is a necessary precondition to protection of public welfare.
Adopt a parliamentary system of governance similar to those used in Western Europe. The current American system has led to dangerous gridlock when control of Congress and the Executive have been split, while failing to provide useful checks on power when both are controlled by the same party. Its weakness is especially visible at this moment when there is no effective system to limit the authoritarian practices of Mr. Trump, or to remove him without an impeachment requiring proof of crimes or misdemeanors. Importantly, parliamentary systems allow removal of the executive by a vote of “no confidence”. The term of any particular government without election should be limited, perhaps to four years, to ensure accountability to the public.
The Constitution should be amended as necessary.
Investigating Trump
The Mayflower Hotel
When Richard Nixon was investigated for his role in Watergate, the underlying story was relatively straight-forward. A group of Republican operatives was caught breaking into the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate complex. The gist of the investigation was whether Nixon was somehow involved. Basically, there was one act and an ensuing cover up. No one got confused trying to understand which particular malfeasance was being talked about.
Trumpgate is much more complex because the actions that are being unveiled are substantially more wide ranging. Here’s my list for keeping track:
The Trump-Russia Scandal: US intelligence has confirmed that Russian operatives actively undermined the integrity of the 2016 election, among other acts releasing hacked emails and misinformation intended to damage the Clinton campaign. Numerous Trump aides were in contact with Russian officials during this period and many of the contacts were initially denied. Several theories have arisen as to what was going on, including the possibility of direct collusion between Trump and Putin to swing the election, the possibility of an oil deal underlying such cooperation, and the possibility that Trump was compromised by Russian intelligence.
Here are a couple recent pieces addressing where that stands. Jefferson Morley article posted on Salon, “5 key questions about the FBI’s Trump-Russia investigation“. Read the Morley piece for five areas he would like investigated.
See also Seth Abramson’s Twitter threads. Following these threads is a bit more work – Abramson hasn’t yet collected it together, or if he has I didn’t find it. Still, the threads are compelling and raise questions concerning whether a deal for oil was cut at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, and concerning the Christopher Steele dossier.
Secondly, Was there a Domestic Manipulation of the Election? Did Trump operatives work with a faction in the FBI New York office to manipulate intelligence information? Again, see Abramson, in The Huffington Post, “The Domestic Conspiracy That Gave Trump The Election Is In Plain Sight.”
Here’s Abramson’s lead: “Information presently public and available confirms that Erik Prince, Rudy Giuliani, and Donald Trump conspired to intimidate FBI Director James Comey into interfering in, and thus directly affecting, the 2016 presidential election. This conspiracy was made possible with the assistance of officers in the New York Police Department and agents within the New York field office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. All of the major actors in the conspiracy have already confessed to its particulars either in word or in deed; moreover, all of the major actors have publicly exhibited consciousness of guilt after the fact. This assessment has already been the subject of articles in news outlets on both sides of the political spectrum, but has not yet received substantial investigation by major media.”
Read Abramson for the underlying allegations. I found the information concerning Erik Prince new and interesting. Abramson notes that “Erik Prince—the founder of Blackwater private security, one of Trump’s biggest donors, a conspiracy theorist who’d previously accused Huma Abedin of being a terrorist in the employ of the Muslim Brotherhood, and a man who blamed Clinton family friend and former Clinton Chief of Staff Leon Panetta for outing him as a CIA asset in 2009″ was actively involved in the Clinton disinformation campaign. Prince, it turns out, is Education Secretary Betsy DeVos’s brother. Consider this excerpt: “It seems clear that Giuliani, who was the top surrogate for the Trump campaign and in near-daily contact with the candidate, acted under orders from Trump, and that Prince either acted under orders from Trump or Steve Bannon—well-known to Prince from their mutual association with, and financial investment in, Breitbart and its ownership, including Robert Mercer—and, moreover, that all those associated with the conspiracy were subsequently rewarded. Erik Prince’s sister, Betsy DeVos, was named Education Secretary by Trump, despite having no experience for the job other than advocating sporadically for charter schools in Michigan. Prince himself was named a shadow adviser to Trump, even though, by November 8th, the fact that his statements to Breitbart had been part of a domestic disinformation campaign was clear. Prince is so close to Trump that he appears to have been present at the election-night returns-watching party to which Trump invited only close friends and associates…”
Violation of The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Third, while the questions of Trump’s collusion with Russia and manipulation of the FBI seem to be the most visible areas of investigation, Adam Davidson in The New Yorker, “Donald Trump’s Worst Deal”, presents a strong case that Trump violated The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act by partnering with organized crime in a Trump hotel project in Azerbaijan. I am puzzled that Davidson’s piece has gained so little traction in Congress, given that proof could be reasonably obtained through available paper and money trails.
Violation of the Emoluments Clause. Even more puzzling is the failure of Congressional members to pursue Trump’s violation of the Emoluments Clause, given that Trump is profiting from a world-wide web of business ventures that create an inevitable tangle of conflicts of interest. Trump, in public view, benefits every time a foreign entity contracts with a Trump facility. There was a brief flurry of headlines when China granted Trump valuable patents. It is difficult to construct an innocent explanation for the Republican leadership ignoring such a direct and visible Constitutional challenge.
Slip Sliding Toward War
Bombing in Mosul
Dave Hemond's Fleet Street 