The Media's Self-Defeating Outrage over Trump and Russia
A comparison is not the same thing as an equivalence.
Daniel McCarthy
February 8, 2017
http://nationalinterest.org/feature/the-...?page=show
Quote:All states lie, and all states kill. This is a truth every adult is aware of, but one easily forgotten in free countries such as our own, where citizens are so safe in their opinions that they can easily persuade themselves that our government never willfully does wrong, it only makes mistakes. So when Bill O'Reilly recently asked President Trump how he can respect Vladimir Putin, even though "Putin is a killer," the president shocked the gatekeepers of orthodox opinion in our land by responding, "There are a lot of killers. We have a lot of killers. Well, you think our country is so innocent?"
A comparison is not the same thing as an equivalence. President Trump was not saying that political murders in Russia are morally identical to the Iraq War, which was the example he gave of killings connected to our government. Rather, the president was deflating the presumption that U.S.-Russia relations should be conducted as if between a confessor and a penitent or a jailer and an inmate. Killers come in many different kinds, but they all have to mingle in the prison yard. That's the nature of relations between states, and respect is called for, though moral approval certainly is not.
The New York Times editorial board is among the authorities to take exception to this. The paper's objections are, however, a study in democratic delusionnot about the nature of Putin's Russia, which is indeed increasingly illiberal and deadly dangerous for Putin's critics, but about the U.S. government's moral standing and what Washington can accomplish by adorning its policies with a tinsel halo.
The Times calls catastrophic initiatives like the Iraq War "terrible mistakes." But the editorial pardons "presidents who took military action" whenever "driven by the desire to promote freedom and democracy"as if the ends justify the means. This is confused thinking, a mixture of mythology and half-understood Realpolitik. The successful examples the Times gives are those of Japan and Germany being democratized after World War II. But the United States did not enter the Second World War to promote democracy or freedomthe United States got into the war because it had been attacked. Even before Pearl Harbor, U.S. policy was not primarily ideological but interest-based: the United States had the most practical of concerns about Japanese and Nazi supremacy in Asia and Europe. More ideologically driven wars have been less successful.
That leads to a second point that must be driven home: in reality, the ends only justify the means when the means are successful, or at least have excellent odds of success. (This is in fact a criterion of traditional just-war theory.) To go to war in the way George W. Bush did in Iraq, without anything other than wishful thinking as a contingency plan for dealing with an insurgency or whatever else might go wrong, is worse than a mistake; it's morally criminal.
The myth of the United States as an almost angelic enforcer of justice, if sometimes an inept one, gives rise to much mischief, in the press as well as in the policy realm. It creates the temptation to overlook difficult details in the name of simple moral clarity. Journalists pressure one another, and together pressure officeholders, to substitute dudgeon for careful calculation. Moral mythologizing also creates a misleading impression of what states really are and what they are capable of doing. Even the most liberal, democratic and benign of states is not designed for the promotion of values; rather, what states excel at, when they excel at anything, is establishing security for themselves. President Trump plausibly claims that Russia can be beneficial to American security in the fight against ISIS. The president's critics would forgo that benefit and pursue a moral objective instead. That would be appropriate for a church, or indeed a newspaper. But for a state, it's a misplaced priority.
There is a grave need for more realistic and historically grounded thinking from the press and policymaking class, and more self-awareness, too. It's hard to imagine there would have been such uproar if President Trump had said he respects China's Xi Jinping. Would Bill O'Reilly have replied that Xi is a killer? Yet China's human-rights abuses dwarf those of Russia: there is good reason to think the regime executes Falun Gong religious dissenters and harvests their organs, a horror less comparable to Putin's Russia than to Stalin's USSR. The Chinese, however, are economically indispensable to the West, and indeed have much closer business relations with Western media, and the companies that advertise in print and on the air, than the Russians do.
The selective outrage in which our media indulges is not really moral at all, it's in part merely faddishonce a critical mass of pundits adopt a message, too many others parrot alongand in part self-deceiving, arising from a failure to be honest about the ugliness of power politics always and everywhere. There is also a cynical selectivity engaged in by outright ideologues and partisans who favor (or disfavor) some repressive regimes over others. Russia is a particular target for multifarious reasons, not least the residual Cold War enmity that persists in neoconservative and liberal hawk circles.
Our media is on a firm footing in criticizing all oppressive regimesas well as in holding our own government to account for its abuses, no matter how noble we wish to believe its motives to be. But in examining relationships between states, power and history can never be afterthoughts. A president cannot afford to place ideals first and security second. And while the press is never wrong to condemn injustice, wherever it occurs, the press also has a duty to inform the public about just how complex and distant the relationship between statecraft and morality can be. In each of the past two administrations, the president's moral reach far exceeded his practical graspleading to debacles in places like Iraq and Libya. President Trump seems to have learned from his predecessors' mistakes, but it's not clear that his critics have.
Daniel McCarthy is editor at large of The American Conservative.
Interestingly, Alaistair Crooke sees Trump's foreign and domestic policy as one and regards the Kissinger plan to split Russia away from China as "old thinking" and suggests that Trumps entire strategy is to bring jobs back to America and be rid of endless foreign wars that have so far cost the US taxpayer approx. $14 trillion.
Quote:The notion that America needs to divide Russia from China (or Iran) for strategic reasons (though one probably embraced by some of his team) is essentially "old think." It belongs to the neoconservative era, which held that America must remain as a global defense and financial hegemon. And therefore must contain and weaken any contending rising power.
It will be interesting to see if Crooke's perceptions about this are accurate, because God alone knows that decades of endless neocon wars have spread more than enough misery across the world as it is.
Quote:Trump's Embattled Revolution'
February 25, 2017
President Trump's domestic "revolution" on behalf of "forgotten" Americans requires a complementary foreign policy of reduced warfare and a weaker dollar, explains ex-British diplomat Alastair Crooke.
By Alastair Crooke
Pat Buchanan perhaps the U.S. politician with the greatest feel (as a thrice-times U.S. presidential candidate himself) for what President Trump is trying to achieve tells us compellingly, just why Trump is now the US President:
A sign supporting Donald Trump at a rally at Veterans Memorial Coliseum at the Arizona State Fairgrounds in Phoenix, Arizona. June 18, 2016 (Photo by Gage Skidmore)
[Simply,] …"He [Trump], read the nation and the world, better than his rivals. He saw the surging power of American nationalism at home, and of ethno-nationalism in Europe. And he embraced Brexit. While our bipartisan establishment worships diversity, Trump saw Middle America recoiling from the demographic change brought about by Third World invasions. And he promised to curb them.
"While our corporatists burn incense at the shrine of the global economy, Trump went to visit the working-class casualties. And those forgotten Americans in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin, responded. And while Bush II and President Obama plunged us into Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, Syria, Trump saw that his countrymen wanted to be rid of the endless wars, and start putting America first. [And] He offered a new foreign policy … Putin's Russia is not our number one geopolitical foe.'"
That's it. That's Trump's domestic, and his foreign policy, in one.
What we all presently are obsessed with, is the bellicosity and hysteria to which Trump and his agenda has given rise: Is détente with Russia now effectively dead, as a consequence of the new Russo-phobic McCathyism? Or, is that which we are witnessing nothing more than "a mere tantrum by a clutch of spooks' whose jobs are under threat … along with the liberal press having a parallel tantrum': [not believing] that they lost the election to Donald Trump" as one American commentator told MK Bhadrakumar? Or, are we seeing a brittle American Establishment splitting apart, in a more profound way?
We do not know the answer. The notion of removing Trump from office seems somewhat far-fetched (see here). Certainly, America is deeply divided: Trump plainly evokes strong, emotional reactions. Three-fourths of Americans react to him strongly either positively or negatively.
The Pew Research Center's latest survey shows that only eight percent of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents approve Trump's job performance, which is the lowest rating for any new president from the opposing party in more than three decades. But interestingly, Pew also finds that 84 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaners, regard Trump's initial job performance as president "favorably."
A Divided Administration
But then, Gilbert Doctorow relates, as the new Administration got underway, "came a stunning about-face in the early roll-out of Donald Trump's new foreign policy, which looked a lot like Barack Obama's old foreign policy. We heard presidential press secretary Sean Spicer say Trump expected the Russian government to … return Crimea' to Ukraine.
Donald Trump at CPAC 2011 in Washington, D.C. (Flickr Gage Skidmore)
"Then we heard Defense Secretary James Mattis in Brussels (NATO headquarters), Secretary of State Rex Tillerson in Bonn (G20 Foreign Ministers meeting) and Vice President Pence in Munich (Security Conference) collectively pledge unswerving loyalty to the NATO alliance, insist that any new talks with Russia must be conducted from a position of strength,' and vow to hold Russia accountable for the full implementation of the Minsk Accords, meaning all sanctions stay in place pending that achievement which the Ukrainian government has consistently blocked, while blaming Moscow.
"Amid these signals of surrender from the Trump Administration suggesting continuation of the disastrous foreign policy of the last 25 years the newly revived enemies of détente on Capitol Hill added more anti-Russian sanctions and threats. In response to alleged violations by the Kremlin of the Treaty on Intermediate and Short-range Missiles (INF) dating back to 1987, Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Arkansas, introduced a bill enabling the re-installation of American nuclear-tipped cruise missiles in Europe. If enacted, this would undo the main achievements of disarmament from the Reagan years, and bring us back to a full-blown Cold War."
This has unnerved Trump supporters; apparently disappointed some in Moscow; and also failed to reassure anxious Europeans at the Munich Security Conference. They are puzzling over which Administration faction to believe more correctly reflects future U.S. policy: the Pence/Mattis/Haley wing', that Europeans would like to hope is dominant; or, the Trump/Bannon/Miller triumvirate, which Steve Bannon hints views the European Union as a flawed construct, and who foresees conducting future relations with Europe, on a bilateral basis.
Which of these two, reflects America's likely path, more accurately? Has the Establishment now succeeded in walking-back Trump's agenda? Who now speaks for the President?
The answer is not hard to fathom: return to Pat Buchanan's clear explanation of how Trump became President: "He saw the surging power of American nationalism at home, and of ethno-nationalism in Europe. And he embraced Brexit. While our bipartisan establishment worships diversity, Trump saw Middle America recoiling from the demographic change, brought about by Third World invasions. And he promised to curb them."
Obviously, it is the Trump-Bannon wing. Were Trump to abandon his reading of the nation and of the Europeans that brought him to the Presidency, he might as well throw in the towel now. He will not be re-elected.
Weakening the Dollar
And Mr. Trump is showing no signs of reversing (for all the mixed messaging that has emanated from his diverse team). So, back to basics. What then is his foreign policy? Simply this: If President Trump wishes to keep his 84 percent (Republican) approval rating and stay elected there is only one way that he can do that: he must continue to carry "the working-class casualties and those forgotten Americans" (as Buchanan called them) of the Midwest, Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.
The run-down PIX Theatre sign reads "Vote Trump" on Main Street in Sleepy Eye, Minnesota. July 15, 2016. (Photo by Tony Webster Flickr)
And the only way to do that is to bring back manufacturing jobs to this (white), Middle America, (hurting) constituency. And the only way you can bring those jobs back, is with a weak dollar. A strong dollar would be deadly to Trump's project.
Today, the dollar is too strong to allow any real return of manufacturing to the U.S. Trump needs to staunch any propensity for the dollar to rise. And, in his very first interview upon taking office (with the Wall Street Journal), Trump's main point, was that he wanted the U.S. dollar "down."
Here it is, then: Trump's main foreign policy objective is the return of jobs to Middle America and that means, in practical terms, avoiding a strong dollar. Secondly, the ultimate point of détente with Russia apart from Trump's reading that Middle America is experiencing war fatigue is that détente can release a "peace dividend" which would be vital for the task of rebuilding America's frayed infrastructure. (His tax proposals ultimately will have to be revenue neutral if Trump is to avoid an ugly row with his Tea Party supporters, who are aggressively fiscal conservative.)
Again, détente with Russia is a domestic need, required to attend to the re-building of the frayed structures of the communities who voted him into office. It is not anchored in any particular foreign policy ideology, but merely in a sense of peoples' fatigue.
Of course, wanting a weaker dollar and wanting détente with Russia, does not mean that Trump will get either; he will continue to face stiff internal resistance and filibustering. But these two aims, as it were, may be seen to constitute the overriding prism by which Trump views his foreign policy aims, in the longer term.
In the shorter term perhaps what we are seeing now, is a tactical pause, dictated by the malicious leaks from within the system, and by the unrelenting "war" being waged by the mainstream media a pause to allow Trump to get on with sorting out his Administration purging the leaks, putting in place his people, and contending with certain of the mainstream media.
It seems the purge is slowly happening (it must be a huge process, and be imposing a heavy demand on time). It is however, simply not very realistic for Trump to pursue an accord with either Russia or China while he is under siege, and when his very survival is being widely questioned. And, as is now widely known, Trump believes in negotiating from a position of strength, and not weakness. Pence and Mattis may well have been dispatched to Europe to apply some anaesthetizing balm, while the difficulties of the first month are being resolved.
So, how might this "foreign policy" be conducted in practice? Well, if Trump were to impose protectionist measures on other states (China, say), this would likely result in their currencies depreciating, as a consequence. A 30 percent tax might result in a 30 percent currency devaluation. We have seen something of the sort happening with the peso, in the case of Mexico. And, ipso facto, if the Mexican or Chinese currency weakens, the dollar appreciates (thus weakening U.S. capacity to compete).
There are two possible routes ahead: one is for Trump to negotiate bilaterally with (say) Germany, Japan, China and others, to warn them that either they revalue their currencies (or, at minimum, hold their foreign exchange value stable), or else to suffer the consequences of a U.S.-imposed protectionism, which would badly damage the health of their economies.
Or, Trump can revert to the Reagan tactic of the mid-1980s, when the then the U.S. President pulled together all the main global central banks and finance ministers in Paris, to instruct that the dollar was not to be allowed to rise in value any further (after its rapid appreciation in the early 1980s). This was known as the "Plaza Accord."
Going with Bilateralism'
It seems that Trump will pursue the first course (bilateralism), as he has already made it clear that he wants to negotiate on a fuller field than just the stability of foreign exchange values. Specific trade deals, and inward investment into the U.S., will be on the agenda as well as his declared aim of leveraging U.S. defense provision as a bilaterally negotiated quid pro quo, in return further economic benefit to the U.S. rather than having the U.S. defense umbrella being provided as a highly subsidized "good."
President-elect Donald Trump and his running mate Mike Pence thank their supporters for the upset victory on Nov. 8, 2016. (Photo from donaldjtrump.com)
The implications of this bilateral approach are significant. It does not imply, per se, that Trump should want to split Russia from China. Trump, by his own logic, would not want, ultimately, to resort to protectionism against China (other than as a negotiating ploy). Imposing punitive tariffs on China would likely lead to a strengthening of the dollar, and risk a devaluation of the yuan even possibly a maxi-devaluation of the yuan. Rather, he wants a deal. One that would bring additional jobs and Chinese infrastructure investment to America.
The notion that America needs to divide Russia from China (or Iran) for strategic reasons (though one probably embraced by some of his team) is essentially "old think." It belongs to the neoconservative era, which held that America must remain as a global defense and financial hegemon. And therefore must contain and weaken any contending rising power.
Russia will not, in any case, break with China. But in the Trumpian logic, why should that matter, so long as Trump has achieved satisfactory commercial deals with each? (Kissinger though, may try to persuade Trump otherwise.)
Again, pursuing the war on radical Islam (for which Trump has called for proposals from the Pentagon) would not necessarily call for decisive military U.S. interventions in the Middle East, on this logic. A change in policy, and in ethos, by a reformed CIA away from using radical Islam as "a tool" by which to pursue its "interests" (as it has from Afghanistan in the 1980s to Syria in recent years), would in and of itself, bring about a profound change. It would quickly percolate through to European intelligence services and more slowly marinate Gulf thinking.
Changing the Group Think'
Pat Lang, a former senior U.S. Defense Intelligence officer, notes how a small shift in bureaucratic "group think" from one paradigm to another can bring crucial change, simply by virtue of approaching a problem from a different direction:
A protest placard in the Kafersousah neighborhood of Damascus, Syria, on Dec. 26, 2012. (Photo credit: Freedom House Flickr)
"1. General Dunford, USMC, the uniformed head of the US armed forces, is meeting the week at Baku in Azarbaijan with General Gerasimov, the head of the Russian General Staff.
"2. My sources tell me that US and Russian air forces are increasingly coordinating and de-conflicting their air actions in Syria and Iraq. This can clearly be seen in USAF and US Navy air attacks on moderate' (in fact jihadi forces) in Idlib Province. These obviously have been coordinated with Russian air defenses.
"3. The CIA has stopped providing assistance to aforesaid moderate' jihadi and FSA forces in Syria. They would not have done that without instructions from outside and above CIA.
All of that tells me that sanity reigns in the Trump Administration no matter what lunatics like Schumer, Waters and McCain may do, think or say." (emphasis added).
What then are the major risks to the Trump "paradigm"? They are not negligible. Any increase in international tension usually will lead to a flight to the "safety" of the U.S. dollar thus to a "strengthening" of the dollar. (One good reason why Trump may stick with rhetoric against Iran, rather than action).
Secondly, although Trump has been trying to "talk down" the value of the U.S. dollar, most of his policies (de-offshoring of corporate cash, de-regulation and tax cuts) are seen as inflationary and therefore are pushing the dollar upwards. So, too, are pronouncements by the Federal Reserve about the prospects for an interest rate hike next month. It is not clear that Trump will be able to keep the dollar weak, against a general sense that interest rates are heading upwards. David Stockman's inflation index for the U.S., which uses more realistic values for energy, food, shelter and medical insurance than the official CPI index, is now rising at better than a 4 percent annual rate.
And thirdly, China may yet undo Trump's plans. As one well-versed economic commentator notes:
"I strongly contend that a more than one-half Trillion ($) one-month Chinese Credit expansion in early 2017 will exert divergent inflationary impacts to those from early 2016…
"Inflationary biases evolve significantly over time…Liquidity will tend to further inflate the already inflating asset class(s); hot money' will chase the hottest speculative Bubble. Inflationary surges in Credit growth can, as well, have profoundly different impacts depending on inflationary expectations, economic structure and the nature of financial flows.
"I would argue that Chinese officials today face a more daunting task of containing mounting financial leverage and imbalances than just a few months ago. The clock continues to tick, with rising odds that Beijing will be forced to take the types of forceful measures that risk an accident."
These inflationary risks threaten Trump, more than the unlikely prospect of impeachment. He has been consistent in warning that whomsoever won this Presidential election, would, sooner or later, face a financial crisis and then possibly a concomitant social crisis. Like most revolutions, Trump's revolution cannot afford to stand still: if it cannot, or does not, go forward, it will go backwards. We will return to the past. Trump, no doubt, grasps this.
Alastair Crooke is a former British diplomat who was a senior figure in British intelligence and in European Union diplomacy. He is the founder and director of the Conflicts Forum.
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Lauren Johnson Wrote:
What a fantastic interview. Thanks for finding this Lauren. I have also shared it on fb directly from youtube.
The argument in the below article is that no matter how odious Trump is, this is not regarded by the elites as at all significant. The elites themselves are just as odious albeit in different ways.
Trump's "mistake" was to want peace with Russia, end the war in Syria and, most repugnant of all, pull back from the disastrous and cruel American global hegemony. These ideas threatened the entire US post WWII rationale as well as dangerously threatening the balance sheets of the so called defence industry (actually the "war" industry). This could not be tolerated.
Quote:The Deep State Goes Shallow: A Reality-TV Coup d'etat in Prime Time
by Edward Curtin
In irony a man annihilates what he posits within one and the same act; he leads us to believe in order not to be believed; he affirms to deny and denies to affirm; he creates a positive object but it has no being other than its nothingness."
Jean-Paul Sartre
It is well known that the United States is infamous for engineering coups against democratically elected governments worldwide. Voters' preferences are considered beside the point. Iran and Mosaddegh in 1953, Arbenz in Guatemala in 1954, Indonesia and Sukarno in 1965-7, Allende in Chile in 1973, to name a few from the relatively distant past. Recently the Obama administration worked their handiwork in Honduras and Ukraine. It would not be hyperbolic to say that overthrowing democratic governments is as American as apple pie. It's our "democratic" tradition like waging war.
What is less well known is that elements within the U.S. ruling power elites have also overthrown democratically elected governments in the United States. One U.S. president, John F. Kennedy, was assassinated because he had turned toward peace and opposed the forces of war within his own government. He is the lone example of a president who therefore was opposed by all the forces of imperial conquest within the ruling elites.
Others, despite their backing for the elite deep state's imperial wars, were taken out for various reasons by competing factions within the shadow government. Nixon waged the war against Vietnam for so long on behalf of the military-industrial complex, but he was still taken down by the CIA, contrary to popular mythology about Watergate. Jimmy Carter was front man for the Tri-Lateral Commission's deep-state faction, but was removed by the group represented by George H. Bush, William Casey, and Reagan through their traitorous actions involving the Iran hostages. The emcee for the neo-liberal agenda, Bill Clinton, was rendered politically impotent via the Lewinsky affair, a matter never fully investigated by any media.
Obama, CIA groomed, was smoothly moved into power by the faction that felt Bush needed to be succeeded by a slick smiling assassin who symbolized "diversity," could speak well, and played hoops. Hit them with the right hand; hit them with the left. Same coin: Take your pick heads or tails. Hillary Clinton was expected to complete the trinity.
But surprises happen, and now we have Trump, who is suffering the same fate albeit at an exponentially faster rate as his predecessors that failed to follow the complete script. The day after his surprise election, the interlocking circles of power that run the show in sun and shadows what C. Wright Mills long ago termed the Power Elite met to overthrow him, or at least to render him more controllable. These efforts, run out of interconnected power centers, including the liberal corporate legal boardrooms that were the backers of Obama and Hillary Clinton, had no compunction in planning the overthrow of a legally elected president. Soon they were joined by their conservative conspirators in doing the necessary work of "democracy" making certain that only one of their hand-picked and anointed henchmen was at the helm of state. Of course, the intelligence agencies coordinated their efforts and their media scribes wrote the cover stories. The pink Pussyhats took to the streets. The deep state was working overtime.
Trump, probably never having expected to win and as shocked as most people when he did, made some crucial mistakes before the election and before taking office. Some of those mistakes have continued since his inauguration. Not his derogatory remarks about minorities, immigrants, or women. Not his promise to cut corporate taxes, support energy companies, oppose strict environmental standards. Not his slogan to "make America great again." Not his promise to build a "wall" along the Mexican border and make Mexico pay for it. Not his vow to deport immigrants. Not his anti-Muslim pledges. Not his insistence that NATO countries contribute more to NATO's "defense" of their own countries. Not even his crude rantings and Tweets and his hypersensitive defensiveness. Not his reality-TV celebrity status, his eponymous golden tower and palatial hotels and sundry real estate holdings. Not his orange hair and often comical and disturbing demeanor, accentuated by his off the cuff speaking style. Surely not his massive wealth.
While much of this was viewed with dismay, it was generally acceptable to the power elites who transcend party lines and run the country. Offensive to hysterical liberal Democrats and traditional Republicans, all this about Trump could be tolerated, if only he would cooperate on the key issue.
Trump's fatal mistake was saying that he wanted to get along with Russia, that Putin was a good leader, and that he wanted to end the war against Syria and pull the U.S. back from foreign wars. This was verboten. And when he said nuclear war was absurd and would only result in nuclear conflagration, he had crossed the Rubicon. That sealed his fate. Misogyny, racism, support for Republican conservative positions on a host of issues all fine. Opposing foreign wars, especially with Russia not fine.
Now we have a reality-TV president and a reality-TV coup d'etat in prime time. Hidden in plain sight, the deep-state has gone shallow. What was once covert is now overt. Once it was necessary to blame a coup on a secretive "crazy lone assassin," Lee Harvey Oswald. But in this "post-modern" society of the spectacle, the manifest is latent; the obvious, non-obvious; what you see you don't see. Everyone knows those reality-TV shows aren't real, right? It may seem like it is a coup against Trump in plain sight, but these shows are tricky, aren't they? He's the TV guy. He runs the show. He's the sorcerer's apprentice. He wants you to believe in the illusion of the obvious. He's the master media manipulator. You see it but don't believe it because you are so astute, while he is so blatant. He's brought it upon himself. He's bringing himself down. Everyone who knows, knows that.
I am reminded of being in a movie theatre in 1998, watching The Truman Show, about a guy who slowly "discovers" that he has been living in the bubble of a television show his whole life. At the end of the film he makes his "escape" through a door in the constructed dome that is the studio set. The liberal audience in a very liberal town stood up and applauded Truman's dash to freedom. I was startled since I had never before heard an audience applaud in a movie theatre and a standing ovation at that. I wondered what they were applauding. I quickly realized they were applauding themselves, their knowingness, their insider astuteness that Truman had finally caught on to what they already thought they knew. Now he would be free like they were. They couldn't be taken in; now he couldn't. Except, of course, they were applauding an illusion, a film about being trapped in a reality-TV world, a world in which they stood in that theatre their world, their frame. Frames within frames. Truman escapes from one fake frame into another the movie. The joke was on them. The film had done its magic as its obvious content concealed its deeper truth: the spectator and the spectacle were wed. McLuhan was here right: the medium was the message.
This is what George Trow in 1980 called "the context of no context." Candor as concealment, truth as lies, knowingness as stupidity. Making reality unreal in the service of an agenda that is so obvious it isn't, even as the cognoscenti applaud themselves for being so smart and in the know.
The more we hear about "the deep state" and begin to grasp its definition, the more we will have descended down the rabbit hole. Soon this "deep state" will be offering courses on what it is, how it operates, and why it must stay hidden while it "exposes" itself.
Right-wing pundit Bill Krystal tweets:
Liberal CIA critic and JFK assassination researcher, Jefferson Morley, after defining the deep state, writes:
With a docile Republican majority in Congress and a demoralized Democratic Party in opposition, the leaders of the Deep State are the most perhaps the only credible check in Washington on what Senator Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) calls Trump's "wrecking ball presidency."
These are men who ostensibly share different ideologies, yet agree, and state it publically, that the "deep state" should take out Trump. Both believe, without evidence, that the Russians intervened to try to get Trump elected. Therefore, both no doubt feel justified in openly espousing a coup d'etat. They match Trump's blatancy with their own. Nothing deep about this.
Liberals and conservatives are now publically allied in demonizing Putin and Russia, and supporting a very dangerous military confrontation initiated by Obama and championed by the defeated Hillary Clinton. In the past these opposed political factions accepted that they would rotate their titular leaders into and out of the White House, and whenever the need arose to depose one or the other, that business would be left to deep state forces to effect in secret and everyone would play dumb.
Now the game has changed. It's all "obvious." The deep state has seemingly gone shallow. Its supporters say so. All the smart people can see what's happening. Even when what's happening isn't really happening.
"Only the shallow know themselves," said Oscar Wilde.
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So Trump's daughter tweets that her father is going to take down the child rape ring in DC. Presumably via his AG, Sessions. Right on target MSM jumps in: Sessions lied in his confirmation hearings about talks/meetings with Russians during the campaign. If this is true he's done. If true you know they knew this all along but held it back for a moment like now. Lying to Congress can get you prison time. Why the hell did he do it?
Dawn
Is There More to the Flynn Story?
A strange resignation in a UK intelligence service suggests U.S. partners may have been involved.
By PHILIP GIRALDI February 28, 2017
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/a...ynn-story/
Quote:The American media is ignoring a story from London about the abrupt resignation of Robert Hannigan, the head of Britain's highly secretive Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), which is the codebreaking equivalent of the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA). Hannigan's resignation on January 23 surprised everyone, with only a few hours' notice provided to his staff. He claimed in a press release that he wanted to spend more time with his family, which reportedly includes a sick wife and elderly parents. Given the abruptness of the decision, it seems likely to be a cover story.
The British media is speculating that Hannigan was pushed out because he was resistant to sharing sensitive intelligence with the Trump White House, but that story makes no sense. The UK's formidable GCHQ does indeed have significant resources that make it the most valued partner for the NSA, but the bilateral flow of information is predominantly from Washington to London, making the relationship more valuable to Britain than to the U.S., no matter who is president.
Hannigan, who is only 51, was a senior civil servant brought into GCHQ in November 2014 for an anticipated four-year tour of duty. He was tasked with initiating reforms in the wake of the Snowden revelations. Hannigan promised more openness and accountability. But one of his first moves was to condemn attempts by mostly U.S. technology companies to restrict government access to their messaging systems, making them "the command and control networks of choice" for terrorists. More recently, he has authorized public relations demonstrations, including illuminating his headquarters building in the rainbow colors of the LGBTQ flag.
For those who have been following such developments, the European media's feeding frenzy regarding Donald Trump and his administration has made any but the most rabid U.S. news outlets look highly civilized by way of comparison. The British press has been a leader in that effort and anti-Trump demonstrations are both large and frequent in London and other cities. Hostility to Trump is consequently strong both within the British government and among the people, including motions in Parliament and petitions to ban the American president from Britain.
Britain, like the U.S., has three principal intelligence agencies: GCHQ corresponds to NSA; the Secret Intelligence Service (MI-6) is the British CIA; and MI-5 works on internal security like America's FBI. The CIA and NSA report to the president, while MI-6 and GCHQ answer to the UK foreign secretary, who in turn is accountable to the prime minister. MI-5 is under the British government's Joint Intelligence Committee, while the FBI is directed by the U.S. attorney general.
The heads of CIA, NSA, the FBI, GCHQ, MI-6, and MI-5 together constitute what is likely to be the world's most exclusive club. Though most intelligence is shared with the other "Five Eyes" English-speaking countries (Canada, New Zealand, and Australia), it is the Anglo-American relationship that drives the process and produces most of the information. As the Downing Street memo demonstrated in its assertion that the Iraq War intelligence and facts "were being fixed around the policy," Brits and Americans are frequently inclined to do each other favors, even when they know that the enterprise they might be engaging in is not "going by the book."
The Hannigan resignation is not occurring in a vacuum, and some in the large and highly networked retired intelligence community have come to believe that it is connected to the investigation and downfall of Trump's first national-security advisor, Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn. Former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy has detailed exactly how the Flynn case does not appear to fit into any acceptable category that would have mandated an investigation and interrogation by the FBI. Surveillance of a Russian official would be authorized under FBI guidelines, but to extend that type of monitoring or investigation to a U.S. citizen would require specific authority from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court to issue a warrant based on probable cause.
There is no evidence that that was ever done. Flynn was not an actual or suspected foreign intelligence agent, and it would be ridiculous to suggest that he might be so inclined. Nor was he engaged in any criminal activity or unwittingly connected to an ongoing investigation. Indeed, apart from possibly dissimulating over what he said, he basically did nothing wrong. There were no grounds for him to be questioned ("grilled" according to the New York Times) by the FBI, and whether or not he misled Vice President Pence over the content of his December phone calls with Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak is a matter for the president and his advisers to sort out from a political perspective, which is indeed what eventually took place.
Regarding the actual development of the investigation of Flynn, recall for a moment that we are dealing with at least some individuals at the top levels of national-security organizations who did not hesitate to break the law, leaking information to the media on the highly classified telephone intercepts. Some government employees have gone to jail for doing just that. That revelation alone might be considered a major security breach, since the Russians learned they were being intercepted and have likely tightened up their communications procedures, meaning there will be no more freebies.
Why would these leakers do it? The investigation of Flynn was initiated by high-level Obama officials who had access to tightly controlled and normally inaccessible information. "Obama advisers" were reportedly working directly with the FBI to investigate Flynn. Many of those advisers and other high officials had lost much in the electoral outcome and some might certainly have been seeking payback, while the lame-duck White House could have been looking for ways to preemptively weaken the incoming administration.
The FBI or NSA would have been recording the conversations of the Russian ambassador as a legitimate exercise of their authority, but the normal procedure involving inadvertent intercept of a soon-to-be high-ranking American would be to redact that part of the conversation or otherwise "minimize" it to conceal his or her identity. Leaking the classified information thus obtained to the media portraying Flynn, and by extension Trump, in a bad light would require reconstruction of the original documents and might be risky to carry out. Even if the enterprise could be seen as a good move politically if one were a Democrat, it would not pay to do it too directly, as someone might eventually backtrack and find out the source.
That being so, it might not be too preposterous to consider discreetly asking the Brits what they might have in a folder somewhere on calls and other contacts made by Flynn. As Flynn was known to be in touch with senior government officials all over the world, GCHQ might well have content or corroboration that NSA could have missed. Pull together enough "foreign sourced" stuff that way, imply something possibly untoward about all of it, send it on over to the CIA liaison, and you have a prima facie case that would satisfy the admittedly willing-to-be-convinced Obama Justice Department that Flynn might be up to something that could potentially damage national security.
Enter the FBI at that point to open an investigation. And focus on the Russian aspect as it supports the official Democratic Party narrative that "Putin stole the election"and also satisfies the many in Congress, the intelligence community, and the media who are opposed to any détente with Moscow. It all looks and smells good because key evidence comes from outside the system and doesn't appear to derive from dedicated players harboring agendas on this side of the Atlantic. Pull it all together and it accomplishes three things: it enables an investigation of Flynn, provides cover for media leaks, and both embarrasses and weakens the authority of the new administration.
Yes, I know this is largely speculation, but former colleagues and I have come to suspect something does not smell right with the Hannigan resignation and would seem to be quite plausibly related to Flynn. It also explains how and why the investigation proceeded as aggressively as it did: information derived from a major foreign intelligence partner could not be easily dismissed or ignored and would have to be acted upon.
Hannigan's exit is almost certainly more than it seems, and the Flynn dismissal also would appear to have aspects that have not yet surfaced and, in truth, might never see the light of day. It is not unreasonable to argue that it can all be connected. Aggrieved senior officials closely tied to the outgoing White House might have surreptitiously sought assistance from a "special relationship friend" in a foreign government to make a case that would humiliate and ultimately bring down an unlovable and abrasive incoming national-security advisor. Of course, one still needs to learn who those senior officials were and consider whether they should be allowed to walk away from what they have done.
As for Hannigan, did the Trump White House discover what had occurred and did it back channel to British Prime Minister Theresa May demanding that someone's head roll? Or did May learn of the maneuvering independently and respond appropriately? However it is playing out right now, someday the whole story almost certainly will be leaked and whatever contrivance or sequence of events enabled the attack on Flynn will become public. You can be sure of that.
Philip Giraldi, a former CIA officer, is executive director of the Council for the National Interest.
How many times since the end of WW2 have caucasian folks warred with other caucasian folks?
Northern Ireland, the former Yugoslavia, Chechnya, and the eastern Ukraine.
That's it.
Wars are mostly fought with non-caucasian proxies.
The caucasian race is not going to cede already-shaky global hegemony with a hot war between the two largest caucasian-dominant nations.
White nationalism is the cornerstone of President Steve Bannon's ideology.