Sunday, January 15, 2017

Will Trump-- Should Trump-- Ever Get Out From Under The Cloud Of Illegitimacy?

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What does Putin want? He has some very legitimate gripes with Western policy-- especially the way NATO has moved to encircle Russia. Russians are historically touchy about that-- and for good reason. "The West" killed 11 million Russian soldiers and between 7 million and 20 million civilians during World War II. (In comparison, the U.S. lost around 400,000 soldiers in that war.) Weakening the EU and destroying a hostile NATO certainly appears to be in Russia's national interest, irrespective of Putin's penchant for kleptocracy and tyranny.

Putin would be remiss in his job if he weren't supporting right-wing nationalist movements in the West that seek to undermine the EU and NATO. That includes Señor Trumpanzee. And it's working out better than Putin could have ever imagined it would. Over the weekend, Alex Barker, reporting from Brussels for the Financial Times noted that, according to the US ambassador to the EU, members of the Trumpanzee transition team (TTT) have called EU leaders to ask "what country is to leave next" with a tone suggesting the union "is falling apart" this year.
In a pugnacious parting press conference, Anthony Gardner warned of "fringe" voices such as Nigel Farage, the former UK Independence party leader, holding influence in Washington over Mr Trump's team.

Speaking days before leaving office, Mr Gardner said it would be "lunacy" and "the height of folly" for the US to ditch half a century of foreign policy in order to support further EU fragmentation or become a "Brexit cheerleader" in Brussels.

"I was struck in various calls that were going on between the incoming administration and the EU that the first question is: what country is about to leave next after the UK?" he said.

The perceived sense is that 2017 is the year in which the EU is going to fall apart. And I hope that Nigel Farage is not the only voice being listened to because that is a fringe voice... He argued that the next administration needed to be told plainly that the EU "was not falling apart" and was in fact finding more sense of purpose in the wake of Brexit.
Trumpanzee was firmly rebuffed when he tried to strong-arm the British government into naming his neo-fascist crony, Farage, ambassador.


All that said, we still don't have any way of knowing for sure the extent of interference by the Russians in placing Trump into the White House. The Russian and American intelligence services aren't exactly known for veracity or integrity. The Christopher Steele story and his golden showers dossier is still fascinating, regardless of what you believe about it. On Saturday, The Independent revealed the FBI's role in this sordid affair. Steele is a former MI6 agent-- a kind of James Bond character-- who was freaking out about what he claims to have found between Trump and the Russians. He sent his information to both the U.S. and U.K. intelligence services "after concluding that such material should not just be in the hands of political opponents of Mr Trump, who had hired his services, but was a matter of national security for both countries." It looks like Giuliani and his cronies at the FBI were able to keep the information off the Bureau's front burner.
Steele became increasingly frustrated that the FBI was failing to take action on the intelligence from others as well as him. He [and a colleague, a former Wall Street Journal reporter named Glenn Simpson,] came to believe there was a cover-up, that a cabal within the Bureau blocked a thorough inquiry into Mr Trump, focusing instead on the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails.

...[In July] Steele produced a memo, which went to the  FBI, stating that Mr Trump’s campaign team had agreed to a Russian request to dilute attention on Moscow’s intervention in Ukraine. Four days later Mr Trump stated that he would recognise Moscow’s annexation of Crimea. A month later officials involved in his campaign asked the Republican party’s election platform to remove a pledge for military assistance to the Ukrainian government against separatist rebels in the east of the country.

Mr Steele claimed that the Trump campaign was taking this path because it was aware that the Russians were hacking Democratic Party emails. No evidence of this has been made public, but the same day that Mr Trump spoke about Crimea he called on the Kremlin to hack Hillary Clinton’s emails.

By late July and early August MI6 was also receiving information about Mr Trump. By September, information to the FBI began to grow in volume: Mr Steele compiled a set of his memos into one document and passed it to his contacts at the FBI. But there seemed to be little progress in a proper inquiry into Mr Trump. The Bureau, instead, seemed to be devoting their resources in the pursuit of Hillary Clinton’s email transgressions.

The New York office, in particular, appeared to be on a crusade against Ms Clinton. Some of its agents had a long working relationship with Rudy Giuliani, by then a member of the Trump campaign, since his days as public prosecutor and then Mayor of the city.

As the election approached, FBI director James Comey made public his bombshell letter saying that Ms Clinton would face another email investigation. Two days before that Mr Giuliani, then a part of the Trump team, talked about “a surprise or two you’re going to hear about in the next few days. We’ve got a couple of things up our sleeve that should turn things around.”

After the letter was published Mr Giuliani claimed he had heard from current and former agents that “there’s a kind of revolution going on inside the FBI” over the original decision not to charge Ms Clinton and that Mr Comey had been forced by some of his agents to announce the reinvestigation. Democrats demanded an investigation into how Mr Giuliani acquired this knowledge without getting an answer.

In October a frustrated and demoralised Mr Steele, while on a trip to New York, spoke about what he has discovered to David Corn, the Washington editor of the magazine Mother Jones. There was a little flurry of interest that quickly died down.


Mr Trump’s surprise election victory came and the Democrat employers of Mr Steele and Mr Johnson no longer needed them. But the pair continued with their work, hopeful that the wider investigation into Russian hacking in the US would allow the Trump material to be properly examined.

It was against this background that Senator John McCain, who had been hearing with growing alarm reports about Mr Trump and the Kremlin, met Sir Andrew Wood, a former British ambassador to Moscow, who had spent 10 years in Russia and is highly respected for his knowledge of Russian affairs, at a security conference in Halifax, Canada.

Sir Andrew stressed to Senator McCain that he had not read the dossier, but vouched for Mr Steele’s professionalism and integrity. The chair of the Senate Armed Forces Committee then sent an emissary to London who picked up the dossier from an intermediary acting on behalf of Mr Steele. The Senator personally took the material to Mr Comey.

Mr Trump and Barack Obama were briefed about the allegations as part of a report into Russian hacking a week ago. Mr Trump remained silent about them until they were published this week and then he angrily denounced them as lies. His spokesperson said he could not recall the briefing.

Mr Steele is now in hiding, under attack from some Tory MPs for supposedly trying to ruin the chances of Theresa May’s Government building a fruitful relationship with the Trump administration. Some of them accuse him of being part of an anti-Brexit conspiracy. A right-wing tabloid has “outed” him as being a “confirmed socialist” while at university.
I wonder how closely Giuliani will be questioned by the various investigatory bodies that are getting ready to take on the task of getting to the bottom of all this. No waterboarding, right?


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4 Comments:

At 4:56 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Part One

Yes, "the West" of Nazi Germany killed some 25 million Russians in its failure on the WWII European eastern front. The Nazi killing fields were concentrate geographically in the Ukraine and whatever temporary success Hitler realized there was due in no small part his Ukraine collaborators

So Putin surely had to be alarmed about the 2014 US-engineered putsch that lead to regime change in the Ukraine. In it, the US "West" installed a regime replete with the ideological descendants of the Ukrainian Nazi collaborators.

This time among the clearly identifiable collaborators were non other than on US Senator McCain (tinyurl.com/hxdoufk) and HRC-crony at the Dept of State, Victoria Nuland. Here
(tinyurl.com/hu5ydyk) she, in-law of the Kagan neo-con dynasty, is shown passing out cookies in Kiev in support of the actual "rebels" who ultimately deposed the government that she, McCain and the new "West" deemed too favorable to the Russian/Putin government. It's not clear if the price of the cookies or her plane fare/lodging for this junket were included among the $5 billion of US tax-payers that she proudly revealed as cost of the project.

The Crimea is the historic site of the only Soviet Union warm water port. It houses the SU Black Sea fleet. The treaty that gave the Ukraine its independence from the then crumbling Soviet Union allowed the SU to keep its control of the port along with all ships, equipment and up to 25,000 troops.

The regime change described above had two major causes.

A) In 2010, the Ukraine extended the Crimea treaty for a few decades. Presumably the US was annoyed that it had lost its opportunity to acquire control of that port.
(tinyurl.com/hcldrh8)^^^ Look at the map, linked below, that shows how nicely a US Naval base in the Crimea would have complemented our beautiful choker necklace of bases surrounding Russia. Notice also, that denying that base to the Russians would block any effective deterrent it would have against that US necklace. tinyurl.com/z5b8um9

B) The territory of the Ukraine is the site of many kilometers of pipelines carrying natural gas from Russia* to Europe**. Putting the US "West's" government in charge*** in Ukraine allows control, ie more choking, of Russian gas flows. Europe would need no less gas, however. The approved substitute-supplier is Saudi Arabia & Qatar, apparent large contributors to the Clinton Foundation. The path of pipelines from SA/Qatar to Europe cannot avoid Syria, a Russian ally and geographical neighbor.

 
At 4:58 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Part Two
Part Two

So we can conclude that:
1) OUR regime change don't stink! That of others, IF true (especially retaliation in kind to our provocations, if nowhere near degree, and however justified) is reason for a government-sponsored national nervous breakdown and collective pants soiling.

2) It has nothing to do with the now meaningless term "tyranny" but, rather, with disguising economic warfare regarding energy source profits.

3) If the US can't get the WWIII it wanted from failed presidential candidate HRC, then it will take the WWIII the deep state can get by tormenting the president-elect who alleges to not want that particular war.

4) OUR tyranny don't stink!

5) US hypocrisy IS truly exceptional

6) A good summary of the Ukraine/Crimea issue: tinyurl.com/ho96n8m
----------------------------------

* The CIA world fact book ranks Russia #1 in proven natural gas reserves, Qatar #3, SA #5 and, for introduction to the upcoming national hysteria, Iran is #2. (US #4 >>20% of Russia)

**Berlusconi was Italy's version of Herr Hair both in coiffure and idiocy. All were relieved and somewhat mystified when he was banished from apparent, unending power in 2011. I'd suggest he was the victim of his own "unacceptable" amicability with Putin (as in gas imports). He suffered the first detectable retaliation for the 2010 Crimea treaty extension and the simultaneous US/HRC love affair with fracking and the integrally attached, extreme, fantasy of selling the gas so obtained to "our European allies" ... via tanker ship.

*** Including Biden's son's appointment to the board of a major Ukraine gas company - tinyurl.com/hcwvhbv

^^^ This web site linked here has the word "pravda" in it. So you view it accepting full responsibility for possible repercussions. I suspect that if the WaPo and it's Amazon/ProOrNo hens-assholes find out, your eyeballs will be plucked out and the resultant voids will be filled with molten lead - probably by a person recently laid off from the Clinton Foundation flown in on a really keen drone. You've been warned!
-------------------

John Puma

 
At 6:27 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Thanks again, John. To summarize, neolib/cons in obamanation's admin fomented another (ho hum) coup by fascists (some really nasty ones too; that we supported and encouraged) to overthrow a legit democratically elected government BECAUSE they had the temerity to play nice with their neighbor. And because we could!

As to der fuhrer's legitimacy... well, according to the rube Goldberg rulebook we created so that slave states' minority could rule over the majority... kind of.

You have to also consider that each president since... well FDR I suppose, has been elected by no more than about a third of the eligible electorate. The loser gets a bit less than a third. And a third never participate. Those have become approximate quartiles in most of the recent elections with nearly half no longer participating.

Given this, NONE of our presidents is unquestionably legit. In my mind, when 28% can force their version of fascism and totalitarianism upon everyone else, it's tyranny of the few over the many. But that's kind of how it was set up, though not exactly in the form it's taken.

It started out as the tyranny of the white male gentry. For the past 8 years it's been the tyranny of the ultra rich masquerading, lamely, as tyranny of altruism. It's now the tyranny of the ultra rich masquerading as tyranny of white xenophobes.

Given that the system is designed to give us nondemocratic results; that the electorate has been so thoroughly suppressed that almost half don't participate; that the participatory electorate is provably evil and stupid; that the money controls and corrupts the candidates and dictates policy; and that the election process is typically corrupt and illegitimate, this president and all before going back probably to HST have been nondemocratically chosen and not legitimate. The bushbaby was installed via a coup by the courts. And this piece of shit was probably aided by foreign influences, though the money screwed the pooch by forcing $$HRC$$ as their chosen "opponent".

 
At 12:29 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

The emoluments clause doesn't say we can't "elect" someone as openly corrupt and intractibly engaged in profiting (and defrauding) foreign governments and oligarchs. Though us voters certainly are morons for electing this ghastly piece of shit in spite of his foreign profitmaking entanglements.

It says that a duly elected official cannot engage in such things while in office. So either der fuhrer must divest or he must be impeached. There isn't any gray area in the constitution.

Which will or should shine a bright light on the common gummint practice of enforcing only what the money demands they enforce and ignore all other transgressions. Think of Dimon and Blankfein still defrauding after all these years of committing felonies and cheney still skulking among the underworld after all that kidnapping, torture and murder.

 

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