Islamist Governments on Trump's Islamophobia

As I have written several times over the years, the Koran bans unequivocally any negative reaction to perceived or real insults to Islam, its prophet, or even to its deity.

There are no exceptions, no ifs or buts.

However, despite this very clear edict from Allah (whose voice is what Muslims hear in the Koran) there is not a single Muslim-majority country in the world without very strict and harsh blasphemy laws in its books.

In places like Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf countries even expressing a mild disagreement with the pronouncements of the Ulema could cost you your life or at the very least your liberty for a very long time.

And elsewhere things are not rosier.

Take Indonesia, a multi-ethnic, multi-party, pluralistic country. Last year, Jakarta's Christian governor Ahok was charged with blasphemy for questioning some politicians use of a Koranic verse about Muslims not bound by the authority of non-Muslims. That was enough for massive uprisings by Islamists and a tearful defense by him in court.

The jury is still out. Literally.

These governments and their Islamist followers defend themselves by arguing that there is nothing more sacred for them than their religion and they would go to any length to protect it from any disrespect and insult.

Even disobey Allah in the process.

And that's a tall order in Islam.

Enter Donald Trump.

On the campaign trail, he constantly claimed that Islam was a violent religion and Muslims were terrorists, Islamist terrorism was the biggest threat to the US and he would take drastic measures to protect the American people from bloodthirsty Muslims.

Do you remember how the King of Saudi Arabia, the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, reacted to these statements?

Me neither.

How about the two Sunni powerhouses in the region?

There is Erdogan, Turkey's bombastic president who is so touchy about the term Islamist terrorism. And Egyptian strongman al Sisi, a devout Muslim who is very close to the House of Saud.

Anything?

Nary a peep.

And when Donald J Trump became president he implemented what he promised. He placed a complete travel ban for seven Muslim-majority countries.

And what did all these extremely touchy governments about perceived attacks on Islam?

Absolutely nothing.

Saudi Arabia was eerily silent.

Actually, that is not true, a Princess belonging to the Royal family went on TV to defend Donald Trump and the travel ban.

I guess they couldn't find a Prince to do this job.

How about Egypt?

Not a word.

In fact, they volunteered to help out the President-elect by trying to postpone a UN resolution critical of Israeli settlements when they knew that the US was not going to use its veto to spare Israel.

Yes, you read that right. They were assisting Trump to protect Israeli settlers.

United Arab Emirates?

Not only did they not say anything, actually, their foreign minister Abdullah bin Zayed defended the ban and argued that it was not Islamophobic.

Turkey's President who routinely chastises any foreign dignitaries about the use of the term Islamist terrorism had no reaction to Trump using the very term to ban Muslims from travelling to the US.

Pakistan, where they frequently persecute and kill Christians for blasphemy, the government was initially mum about Trump's ban. But when rumors began to circulate that Pakistan could be next on the list, their Minister of the Interior meekly stated that the ban was not helping the Global War on Terror.

You have to wonder why Asia Bibi was sentenced to death but Trump could not even be criticized.

Indonesia and Malaysia?  They were not just silent, they actually urged their population to shut up about the ban.

This is why this blog always maintains that nothing is essentially about ideas, religion, morality or whatever.

As both Karl Marx and Bill Clinton put it:

Putin vs The Military Industrial Complex: The Winner?

In the corporate media, Putin is always presented as a ruthless dictator, a cold blooded killer and an implacable enemy of  the US.

This is such a truism that if someone disagrees with this portrayal, journalists and pundits are completely thrown off as witnessed in the exchange between Bill O'Reilly and Trump.

When O'Reilly declared that Putin was a killer, Trump retorted:

“There are a lot of killers. We have a lot of killers,” Trump said. “Well, you think our country is so innocent?”

And unleashed a bipartisan storm of indignation. False moral equivalence, American exceptionalism etc.

This incident perfectly illustrates how narratives are created and maintained by the American establishment. In one corner there is the repugnant bloodthirsty autocrat, in the other there is a benevolent, avuncular president with a democracy and human rights agenda.

But this is rubbish. In fact, the New Cold War was designed and created by Eisenhower's Military Industrial Complex which needs enemies to continue to siphon off the greater portion of American budgets.

The problem for them is that while Putin is not the instigator of the New Cold War he seems well placed to win it.

Especially with the Orange Man as POTUS.

Let me explain.

Cold War 2.0: Poking the Russian Bear

If you are like most people, you probably don't remember how the new Cold War began.

In 1990, a year before the Soviet Union imploded, Helmut Kohl decided to unify East and West Germany.

No one knew how the Kremlin was going to react. To everyone's great surprise, Gorbachev nicely acquiesced.

In exchange, Bush père promised Russia that there would be no more enlargement of NATO and the US would not provoke Russia.

In 1999, the year Putin became the Prime Minister the first time, NATO accepted Poland, Hungary and Czech Republic as new members.

When Bush fils faced 9/11, Vladimir Putin did this:

In a stunning decision, the Russian president coordinated with central Asian nations to allow U.S. forces, for the first time, to use military bases of the former Soviet Union.

How did W respond?

Barely three months after the Russian goodwill gesture, he announced that the US was unilaterally withdrawing from the 1972 ABM Treaty. Six months later, NATO had its second enlargement, this time the new members were Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia.

How is that for keeping your word or cultivating goodwill?

Then there were the Rose Revolution in Georgia and the Orange Revolution in Ukraine which were perceived as US-instigated regime change activities within Russia's own backyard. In the case of Ukraine America's siginificant involvement is not even disputed.

This was followed by Kosovo's declaration of independence in 2008 and Bush's NATO invitations to Ukraine and Georgia. Since Crimea was part of Ukraine, a NATO membership would have meant Russia losing its only warm water naval base. The membership was blocked by France and Germany but by then Putin knew what the American message was.

The aggressive and snubbing narrative remained intact during the Obama presidency, despite the "reset" he announced at the outset. For instance, during his first visit to Moscow, Obama met with Medvedev and discussed all outstanding issues with him. He only paid a brief courtesy visit to Putin, even though Medvedev was the puppet and Putin the puppet master.

It was a deliberate snub.

Then, instead of engaging Putin on Syria and Iran, Obama and Clinton antagonized him at every step, constantly lecturing him on human rights.

The US envoy Michael McFaul was a vocal critic of Putin throughout his tenure and he very publicly cultivated opposition figures and rights activists.

Moscow was so unhappy with him that they pressured the White House to get rid of him before the end of his tenure. And once he was no longer the top diplomat, the Kremlin banned him from entering Russia.

That's pretty bad record for a diplomat.

I get that Putin is an autocrat, or a killer, or whatever else you want to call him. But I am not impressed with you lecturing him on human rights if you are simultaneously silent about all the terrible rulers in the Golf starting with King Salman of Saudi Arabia.

Speaking of, well, you know, the devil, Obama Administration's next move was to browbeat the Kingdom to push oil prices down to crush the Russian and Iranian economies (and Venezuela as a bonus). The gambit paid off reasonably well and sinking oil prices slowed down Putin quite a bit. In the end Saudis relented because of their own financial problems and prices recovered to give Russia some breathing space.

But Putin knew that the US was gunning for him.

In case there was any doubts the missile shields debacle confirmed that conclusion. They were to be built first in Turkey and subsequently, in the Baltic states and Poland and Romania.

Not surprisingly, the move angered Russia and made it feel threatened. If you surround a nuclear power with anti-missile defence systems, you reduce the deterrence factor and essentially you increase their chances of launching a first strike. It is an incredibly stupid move which serves no purpose other than aggravating your adversary.

To top it off, last June, Nato had it biggest military exercises in Eastern Europe since the end of Cold War with 31,000 troops and thousands of vehicles.

As a follow up, this January, NATO started a massive military build-up in the Baltic states dispatching thousands of tanks and heavy equipment. Some of it were to be part of more war games at the end of January (and later in the Spring), others, including four battalions will be deployed as a permanent military force.

I know I am the resident contrarian but when you look at this picture can you honestly say that Putin is the bad guy and the US has done nothing wrong?

The Empire Strikes Back

Putin is a lot of things, including killer and dictator, but one thing he is not, is stupid. You "misunderestimate" him at your own peril.

Starting from 2008, he undertook a massive military modernization program and implemented a whole new doctrine which defined modern warfare as a "complex application of military, political, economic, information and other non-military means... applying indirect and asymmetric means of action."

Look at Russia's tactics in Crimea and Ukraine and its deployment speed and efficiency in Syria and you'll see what they mean by this.

Part of this new doctrine was an elite cyberwarfare program which recruited the best Russian hackers. And, as you know, there are many.

When no reset took place with the new Obama Administration, Putin went ahead with his new strategy and began using force swiftly whenever he was faced with a problem. He did it in Chechnya, Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Not to mention his quickfire annexation of Crimea and his blindingly fast mobilization in Syria which altered the course of the civil war.

When the Americans leaned on Saudi Arabia to continue pumping oil to push prices down, Putin coolly doubled down on energy as he knew the House of Saud could not continue on that path given their regional wars and massive budget deficits.

When he faced economic sanctions from the US and EU, he moved to change the course of the Syrian civil war and eliminate any future possibility of a Pipelineistan, (a.k.a the Islamic State) the home of the Qatari natural gas pipeline. Given their dependence on Gazprom, Europeans made a swift U-turn and allowed the financing and construction of Nord-Stream II.

His military success in Syria made him an indispensable partner in the fight against ISIS and even the US reluctantly began to collaborate with Russia. He even forced a complete about face to Turkey's bombastic president Erdogan by making him drop his opposition to al Assad and get him to adopt Russian goals in the civil war.

But by far his crowning achievement was the complicated scenario he put in motion to establish a significant influence over Donald Trump.

There are a lot of shadowy details around that story and Russia cultivates them deliberately.

The hacking of DNC servers is not in any doubt but there is no actual evidence connecting Russian hackers to the breach. What is known is the fact that the same hackers also broke into GOP servers but elected not to make any of their information public.

When the US intelligence agencies declared that they had solid evidence that Russia was behind the attack, and said that they cannot make it public without jeopardizing their sources, Russia arrested two senior officers in their cyber-espionage unit. The odd thing about it was the very public nature of the arrest and the underlying message that it was about the Trump affair.

It was as if someone was trying to confirm the claim that Russian hackers were helping Trump while officially the Kremlin kept denying it.

That impression was strengthened by the fact that Russia had been making irresistible business offers to lure Trump. The corporate media reported that Trump did not take the bait but was it really the case?

Consider the case of Carter Page, the CEO of a oil and gas investment firm dealing mainly with Russia and one of Trump's foreign policy advisors during the campaign.

The dossier [compiled by former MI6 agent Christopher Steele] claims that a representative from Trump’s presidential campaign, Carter Page, met last July with Igor Sechin, head of the Russian oil monopoly Rosneft and a senior Kremlin official. Sechin reportedly offered brokerage on a 19 percent stake in Rosneft in exchange for lifting sanctions, and Page was “non-committal in response.”

Curiously,

Page was also in Moscow five months later on Dec. 7, one month after Trump’s electoral victory, when Putin and Sechin announced on Russia’s national television that the country had sold to foreign investors 19.5 percent of Rosneft, almost exactly the portion cited by the dossier.

Curiouser still,

According to the dossier, Steele heard of the Page-Sechin meeting from a “source close to Rosneft president.” That source, Russia watchers speculated, was possibly a man well-known in intelligence circles, a former general at the KGB and its successor agency, the FSB, named Oleg Erovinkin. 

Erovinkin turned up dead in late December. He had been personally named by Putin to become Rosneft’s chief of staff. Sechin, too, a former deputy prime minister, was handpicked by Putin.

Carter Page is well known for his opposition to Russia sanctions.

Against that background another opponent of sanctions became Secretary of State. Rex Tillerson, the CEO of Exxon-Mobil has no government or diplomatic service experience, yet, inexplicably, he was given the job. He is known to have excellent relations with Putin and he is likely to push for the removal of sanctions.

Michael Flynn, another person with extensive ties to Kremlin. That's him dining with Putin in December 2015.

In fact, he had to resign from his White House position because of these ties. That's another interesting tale.

After the election but before the inauguration, Flynn, as the future National Security Adviser of President Trump, talked on the phone three times with Russian ambassador Sergei Kislyak and they texted once. Apparently he suggested that sanctions are likely to be lifted once Trump was in office. Obviously, the conversation was being recorded by NSA.

They passed on the information to the FBI and the acting Attorney General Sally Quinlan informed the White House. Flynn denied it and so did the White House and the Vice President. When the transcript was forwarded to them it became clear that Flynn did make the suggestion and he had to resign.

There are two interesting points about this. One is the fact that Kislyak must be aware that his phone was being monitored. It is standard operation procedure. Everybody does it and especially the Americans. If he didn't want Flynn discussing sanctions on the phone he would have arranged for a meeting. Instead he held three conversations with him and when it became public he denied sanctions were mentioned. It was as if he was providing an alibi to Flynn after he exposed him.

The second point is that Flynn was not a rogue agent conducting foreign policy without the knowledge of Trump and the White House. Around the same time, Flynn was also working very hard (with other Trump aides) to prevent the UN Security Council to vote on Israeli settlements. Which is a breach of the 1799 Logan Act.

This carefully selected ambiguity is best seen in Putin's decision not to retaliate to Obama's expulsion of 35 Russian diplomats. When everyone was expecting harsh measures against US diplomats in Russia, including the closure of an international school where they send their children, Putin simply said that Obama was no longer his interlocutor and he was looking forward to working with President Trump.

“It is a very smart move,” Lukyanov says. “It will humiliate Obama even more.” 

Putin’s magnanimous gesture also eliminates any doubt as to the likely direction of Russia policy under the Trump administration. 

“Trump is now boxed in,” Frolov says. “He has become an unwitting Russian agent — everything he does now will be considered payback for this and earlier election services.” 

When pundits discuss whether Trump was helped by Putin or that he owes him something, they are missing the point.

Putin ensured that regardless of the veracity of the allegations thanks to the suggestive ambiguity surrounding them, Trump has no independent moves open to him: whatever he does will be seen either as a payback to Putin's favors or a reaction to the appearance of dependence.

As a good chess player, Putin seems to have taken the other side's queen hostage.

If I were part of the Military Industrial Complex, I would be worried.

Clinton vs Trump: Double Standards

Next time an acquaintance of your casually states that Hillary Clinton was a lying dishonest crooked politician, show them this table.

It was created by Robert Mann using Politifact data. They are an independent fact-checking organization.

Do you see where she stands? At the bottom of the dishonesty scale.

Do you see where The Donald stands? He is the liar-in-chief with inflammable trousers.

Next time an acquaintance of your tells you that Clinton's use of email servers was a terrible thing, don't bother linking them to my Clinton post to refute the argument.

Instead ask them what the Trump White House is doing about hiding and destroying paperwork behind executive orders and National Security Council (NSC) decisions.

They will be surprised because the corporate media did not have much interest in the issue.

When the Orange Man gave the white nationalist Steve Bannon a permanent seat at the NSC's principals committee (while removing the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the director of national intelligence, and the secretary of energy) he immediately moved to eliminate paper trails and remove National Security Council staff from the decision making process.

Under previous administrations, if someone thought another person or directorate had a stake in the issue at hand or expertise in a subject area, he or she was free to share the papers as long as the recipient had proper clearance.

With that standard in mind, when some officials saw Trump’s draft executive orders, they felt they had broad impact and shared them more widely for staffing and comments.

That did not sit well with Bannon or his staff, according to the official. More stringent guidelines for handling and routing were then instituted, and the National Security Council staff was largely cut out of the process.

Apparently, the NSC staff no longer produce the text of the decisions nor do they write Summary of Conclusions (SOC) to preserve the main points leading to decisions.

During the first week of the Trump administration, there were no SOCs, the intelligence official said. In fact, according to him, there is surprisingly very little paper being generated, and whatever paper there is, the NSC staff is not privy to it. He sees this as a deterioration of transparency and accountability.

In case you are wondering whether Steve Bannon's power grab and his central role in national security decision making and his efforts to remove all transparency and accountability let me note the following points.

This is a man who once claimed to be a Leninist:

“Lenin,” he answered, “wanted to destroy the state, and that’s my goal too. I want to bring everything crashing down, and destroy all of today’s establishment.”

This is a man who predicted a war with China within a decade.

 “We’re going to war in the South China Sea in five to 10 years, aren’t we?” he said in March 2016. “There’s no doubt about that. They’re taking their sandbars and making basically stationary aircraft carriers and putting missiles on those. They come here to the United States in front of our face — and you understand how important face is — and say it’s an ancient territorial sea.”

This is a man who foresaw a war in the Middle East within the context of the"clash of civilizations."

 “To be brutally frank, I mean Christianity is dying in Europe, and Islam is on the rise,” he said in an interview in January 2016 with a Breitbart reporter.

In November 2015, Bannon told his listeners it was time to have an “adult conversation” about national security.

“Some of these situations may get a little unpleasant,” Bannon said. “But you know what, we’re in a war. We’re clearly going into, I think, a major shooting war in the Middle East again.”

This is also the guy who "is running a cabal, almost like a shadow NSC,”according to a NSC staffer. Besides taking over NSC decisions, he is removing all records leading up to them.

And the corporate media that produced over half a million articles on Hillary Clinton's perfectly legal email server is once again largely silent.

Destroying Clinton was a vile and sexist act that made the Washington establishment and the corporate media giddy for unfathomable reasons.

I wonder how they will feel when the faux-Leninist, white supremacist President Bannon destroys them and start a new war with China.

My guess is that they will blame her for not winning the elections.
------------------------------
UPDATE

This is from the Associated Press

At least three top national security officials — Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly and Rex Tillerson, who is awaiting confirmation to lead the State Department — have told associates they were not aware of details of the directive until around the time Trump signed it. Leading intelligence officials were also left largely in the dark, according to U.S. officials.

But obviously President Bannon knew about it and that's all that matters.

Feel free to yell, "but her email servers..."

Trump's Soft Holocaust Denial: IOKIYAR

Donald Trump's statement on International Holocaust Remembrance Day made it crystal that he is beholden to the Alt Right movement and the real president is the notorious white nationalist Steve Bannon.


This is what Trump said:

It is with a heavy heart and somber mind that we remember and honor the victims, survivors, heroes of the Holocaust. It is impossible to fully fathom the depravity and horror inflicted on innocent people by Nazi terror. 

Yet, we know that in the darkest hours of humanity, light shines the brightest.‎ As we remember those who died, we are deeply grateful to those who risked their lives to save the innocent. 

In the name of the perished, I pledge to do everything in my power throughout my Presidency, and my life, to ensure that the forces of evil never again defeat the powers of good. Together, we will make love and tolerance prevalent throughout the world.

Do you see any sentence that refers to the systematic anti-Semitism which led to the massacre of six million Jews?

This is known as "soft Holocaust denial." Ask the leading Holocaust historian Deborah Lipstadt

The de-Judaization of the Holocaust, as exemplified by the White House statement, is what I term softcore Holocaust denial.

She first thought it was a rookie mistake and someone had screwed up. Then she read the defense provided by the White House:

In a clumsy defense Hope Hicks, the White House director of strategic communications, insisted that, the White House, by not referring to Jews, was acting in an “inclusive” manner. It deserved praise not condemnation. Hicks pointed those who inquired to an article which bemoaned the fact that, too often the “other” victims of the Holocaust were forgotten. Underlying this claim is the contention that the Jews are “stealing” the Holocaust for themselves. It is a calumny founded in anti-Semitism.

As Professor Lipstadt explains, there were millions of victims of the Nazi regime and no one is denying their suffering. But that is not what the Holocaust was:

 The Holocaust was something entirely different. It was an organized program with the goal of wiping out a specific people. Jews did not have to do anything to be perceived as worthy of being murdered. Old people who had to be wheeled to the deportation trains and babies who had to be carried were all to be killed.

To claim otherwise is soft Holocaust denial. Remember Mel-The-Passion-of-Christ-Gibson? This is the same argument he used:

 "I have friends and parents of friends who have numbers on their arms. The guy who taught me Spanish was a Holocaust survivor. He worked in a concentration camp in France. Yes, of course. Atrocities happened. War is horrible. The Second World War killed tens of millions of people. Some of them were Jews in concentration camps. Many people lost their lives. In the Ukraine, several million starved to death between 1932 and 1933. During the last century, 20 million people died in the Soviet Union." (h/t Atrios)

What is interesting, at least to me, is the subdued reaction to this issue.  

The New York Times did not cover it as a separate piece. It was mentioned bypassingly in an op ed on theocracy.

Most other publications quoted a tweet by the CEO of Anti-Defamation League (ADL) Jonathan Greenblatt. It was fairly tepid criticism.

“@Whitehouse statement on #HolocaustMemorialDay, misses that it was six million Jews who perished, not just 'innocent people',” Greenblatt tweeted.

What about other Jewish groups and leaders?

Well, the head of the World Jewish Congress Ron Lauder defended Trump's statement and slammed not the White House statement but ADL's criticism.

The combative Israeli ambassador Ron Dermer (who campaigned for Mitt Romney and raised money against Obama) gave a speech on the Remembrance Day to argue against the "universalization of the Holocaust" but did not mention the controversial statement.

“After the Holocaust took away so much from the Jews, we must not take the Holocaust itself away from the Jews,” Dermer said.

The Republican Jewish Coalition, heavily funded by Sheldon Adelson stated that not mentioning Jews was an unfortunate omission but they said:

 "As supporters of President Trump, we know that he holds in his heart the memory of the six million victims of the Holocaust, and is committed not just to their memory, but ensuring it never happens again.”

The Zionist Organization of America was also chagrined somewhat but that was the extent of it.

Doesn't that surprise you?

As Atrios put it:

I don't know if Trump has any idea that he signed a holocaust denial proclamation - though not knowing is no excuse - but Bannon surely did. Priebus knows. Spicer knows. This is not secret stuff. If Obama had done this, Republicans, Democrats, and everyone in the US media would have lost their shit until he resigned. It's that bad.

When Trump does it. Nothing.

And this is not the first time this is happening.

Here is a short list of Trump's recent exploits.

Trump was slow to denounced KKK leader David Duke. He deployed a meme that imposed a Star of David and Hillary Clinton’s face on top of a pile of money and was widely perceived as anti-Semitic — then refused to back down or apologize. He adopted the phrase “America First,” associated strongly with anti-Semitic isolationism in the United States before World War II. His son, Donald Trump Jr., said that if Republicans had behaved like Hillary Clinton, the media “would be warming up the gas chambers” — an odd choice of phrase that neo-Nazi websites celebrated. 

The campaign ad Trump employed to make his closing argument against Hillary Clinton was a collection of anti-Semitic stereotypes, featuring image of George Soros, Janet Yellen, and Goldman Sachs chair Lloyd Blankfein — all Jews — while accusing them of being global special interests who “control the levers of power” and “don’t have your interest in mind.”

 I never thought that anti-Semitism would get a pass in the US.

As I mentioned before, IOKIYAR is now officially the law of the land.

Trump, Golden Showers and the Dangers of Feuding with Intelligence Agencies

Donald Trump was doing fine.

Just like Sarah Palin a decade earlier he was leading the corporate media by the nose through his early morning tweets. 140 characters at a time.

Since the elections, all his rubbish pronouncements made the headlines with reporters feverishly speculating about the upcoming Twitter Administration.

He criticized the sitting president, belittled his presidential record, sided with foreign powers against him, including with Russia over US sanctions, incited his trolls to make death threats to anyone who criticized him and viciously responded to any negative comments, regardless of the person's stature.

As we all know, if this was a Democratic President-elect, she would have been crucified, excoriated and accused of treason. But with the Republicans and especially with Trump there is the IOKIYAR principle at work and none of it caused any concerns or led to any serious discussions in the corporate media.

They wouldn't even bring up the point.

In any event, all was going swimmingly and the Orange Man began to feel emboldened.

When CIA and NSA went public with their concerns about Russian role in swaying the election to Trump, the thin-skinned buffoon assumed that this was an effort to minimize his electoral victory and went into attack mode.

First he made fun of them as incompetent fools who made serious errors leading to Iraq war. Then he ridiculed their conclusions and their questioning of Russia and worst of all, he made veiled threats about reforming and cutting down these vast bureaucracies.

Next thing we know, we have lurid descriptions of Donald Trump being peed on (which is what a golden shower is) by some Russian prostitutes in a Moscow hotel as an annex to a classified intelligence report submitted to the Gang of Eight.

Which ensured its becoming public in no time.

The corporate media which was treated by Trump not like a watchdog but like a stray dog to be kicked jumped in with glee. The word "kompromat" quickly became an essential part of the pundit lexicon, giving them an air of erudition.

In the ensuing breathless coverage, no one wanted to know the answers to some obvious questions:

1) Is Trump stupid enough to engage in such activities in Moscow hotels when he has access to many properties around the world which he could use much more safely for whatever fetish he might have?

I 'm not even questioning the implausibility of a scenario where a man with the most convoluted combover in history would pay to have it destroyed by warm bodily fluids.

Though, as one article noted, if true, it might explain the strange hue.

2) Secondly, if the allegations were true and the FSB taped him in compromising positions, would Kremlin be stupid enough to reveal their hand days before the inauguration?

Or to put it in terms we all understand: if you or I had material to blackmail the US President would we make it public before we had a chance of using it? And lose all leverage?

These allegations were known for at least six months by everyone in Washington. Every media outlet was approached with the dossier and none would use it or even mention it in their reporting.

If the content of the dossier was too weak to publish for corporate media who deals in falsehoods routinely, why would the intelligence agencies elevate these rumors that originated from opposition research into a classified report and share it with the Gang of Eight?

That is the question.

National Security State in Action

Here is what I think.

Trump may be a racist and misogynist buffoon but he is not stupid. He knows that his business is his brand. I don't believe for a second that he would engage in salacious activities in such a risky setting.

Because if the name goes so does the business.

Moreover, even if FSB managed to videotape him in one of his own hotels doing funny stuff, they would never in a million years talk about it. Especially if Russia was really behind the DNC hack and had a strong desire to see him becoming POTUS.

I don't have inside information, I am just going by Occam's Razor. It just doesn't make sense.

What is much more likely is the possibility that the US intelligence agencies, the cornerstone of the National Security State, (also known as the "Deep State") felt sufficiently threatened by the Orange Man to come out in the open with these innuendoes.

As Robert Parry notes, this was a move right out of Edgar J Hoover playbook. The message to Trump seems to be "look we know these allegations are bogus but we know of other stuff about you and we might have incriminating evidence on those."

They and not the Russians are the ones with the motive and opportunity. After all, they are the ones who attached it to a report and made sure it was leaked.

According to Glenn Greenwald, this is a perfectly plausible operation as CIA and other intelligence agencies were solidly behind the hawkish Hillary Clinton who was planning to let them loose in Syria. Whereas Trump was defending a rather isolationist and perhaps selective (Mafia-style) intervention policy.

There is also the fact that according to many media outlets, the "FBI was Trumpland."

And the non-stop leaks about her mail servers and Comey's double stunt about claiming "excessive carelessness" in handling her email server and announcing a fresh investigation weeks before the elections seem directly related to this animosity.

(In case you are wondering whether his judgement was warranted read my post on Clinton, as the email server story was pure, unadulterated BS from the beginning )

In any event, if, as I suspect, the golden shower story was leaked by the intelligence agencies to damage the President-elect, it points to a troubling trend.

For one thing, it indicates that these supposedly neutral bureaucracies are now quite politicized. There is no other term to describe a situation where the CIA supports one candidate and the FBI stands by her rival.

Also, it shows that they are no longer reticent about intervening directly into the political process and even altering the outcome of elections. While a new investigation was launched to determine whether James Comey the Director of the FBI acted inappropriately, since he was supporting the winner, I can safely predict that he will not be found guilty.

At this point I have two more questions.

What happens if the Donald decides to shrink the CIA and NSA and Homeland Security apparatus, as he has already announced? Will they quietly accept their fate, as they did in the past, or will they retaliate?

Thanks to Edward Snowden we know that these are enormously powerful organizations which acquired far reaching capabilities after 9/11.

And if these shenanigans are any indications, they are not likely to take anything lying down. I don't remember another situation the director of the CIA telling the next President "to watch his tongue."

So if I were the Orange Man, I would make nice with them, as Dixie Chicks put it.

And do so pronto.

Or we will very soon hear many more lurid stories about the Donald and his various proclivities.

As I keep saying, we live in interesting times.

President Trump: the End of Pax Americana?

As we now know, Angry White People (AWP) voted in droves for Donald J Trump because they believed that he was going to make America Great Again.


Now, this is a slogan The Donald plagiarized borrowed from Ronald Reagan and already this fact gives you a clue about the likelihood of America being great again.

Let me make a bold prediction.

Not only will America not become great again but Trump's presidency will hasten the end Pax Americana. And will prepare the way for the rise of Eurasia as the new power center.

Allow me to explain.

What the US needed for this election cycle was a president like Bernie Sanders or Elisabeth Warren, a Keynesian who would push for income redistribution. Real wages declined or stagnated for several decades (in fact since Reagan, save for a few short Clinton years), household debt is staggeringly high and savings are non-existent. Most Americans cannot afford to retire comfortably and cheap and comprehensive health care eludes middle class families.

If this trend is not reversed, the shrinking purchasing power of Americans will lead to a major contraction of the economy.

Contrary to what AWP believe, the current US economy is arranged to benefit the One Percenters. Look at its leading segments: Finance, Defense Industries, High Tech and Cultural products. Any openings for non-college graduate middle aged guys?

Moreover, according to American Society of Civil Engineers the US infrastructure is crumbling. They give it an overall grade of D+ and estimate the amount to be spent by 2020 would need to be as high as $3.6 trillion. It is not just the roads and bridges but transit, levees, aviation and of course the whole electricity grid.

Education is broken with the US students posting middling to dismal results compared to most developed countries. Public schools are under-funded and they have a hard time finding qualified teachers. College tuition has risen sharply and at $1.3 trillion, student debt is crippling many young adults. And many middle class families are unable to send their kids to college.

America's defense spending is unsustainable. At $598 billion, it represents 54 percent of the country's discretionary expenditures.The military industrial complex and its allies want to "freedom bomb" more and more countries to maintain the US in a permanent state of war.

One Percenters and companies that suck the system dry do not wish any of these funds diverted to climate change prevention. So they simply deny that it is happening.

I could go on.

Since borrowing costs are essentially negative for the US, the country needed a president who would spend a lot domestically to fix these problems and make peace abroad to get military spending in check.

Instead they got The Donald.

When you look at his cabinet you realize that he does not want to reverse these negative trends, he is set out to reinforce every single one of them.

One Percenters' Cabinet

Department of Health and Human Services is given to Tom Price who is a vocal opponent of Affordable Care Act (ACA, sometimes known as Obamacare). He has vowed to repeal it.

His choice of Education Secretary is billionaire Betsy Devos, called ""the most ideological, anti-public education nominee" since the position became a cabinet position." She is there to gut public schools and give the money to denominational institutions.

The Department of Labor will be headed by Andrew Puzder, the CEO of a fast food chain who opposes minimum wage laws and overtime compensation.

Department of Energy will be run by former Texas governor and Dancing With The Stars contestant Rick Perry. In 2011, he declared that if he was elected president he would abolish the Department of Energy. Except he couldn't remember its name. Now he is going to manage it.

Justice Department is relegated to Jeff Sessions whose candidacy to the federal bench was once rejected by the Senate "over allegations that he made racist comments and praised the KKK while criticizing the NAACP and the ACLU." He thinks Voting Rights Act is intrusive and NAACP and ACLU are un-American.

Steve Bannon is the Chief Counselor to the President and as such the most powerful person in the White House. He is a former Goldman Sachs banker and CEO of Breitbart and a white nationalist who hates all minorities, including Jews.

Department of the Interior will be managed by Ryan Zinke, a climate change skeptic who favors drilling everywhere. "Zinke "frequently votes against environmentalists on issues ranging from coal extraction to oil and gas drilling" and received a 3 percent rating from the League of Conservation Voters."

Department of the Treasury will be run by Steven Mnuchin, a former Goldman Sachs executive who made his fortune by buying mortgage lender IndyMac and selling it for a yuge profit. His appointment came as a bitter surprise to some Trump supporters whose houses were foreclosed by his bank.

Department of Defense goes to James "Mad Dog" Mattis a retired general who never passed any opportunity to "freedom bomb" some place in his long career. He calls himself a warrior-monk for having devoted his life to the army. He is an implacable enemy of Iran.

Another retired general, Michael Flynn, was appointed National Security Adviser. He is a white supremacist with a penchant for making up facts. His time at the head of the military's clandestine branch Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) was characterized as "Scorched-earth leadership." He believes that the infamous Pizzagate stories about a pedophile ring ran by Hillary Clinton were true. He is a rabid Islamophobe and he hates Iran. And he knows and likes Putin and had dinner with him once.

Trade Council chief will be Peter Navarro, "an economist known for his extreme anti-China stance who has accused the Asian superpower of waging an economic war against the United States."

Finally, the Secretary of State is Rex Tillerson, the CEO of Exxon Mobil. He made many deals in Russia and Putin awarded him the Order of Friendship in 2012. He opposed sanctions to Russia after the annexation of Crimea and border conflicts in Eastern Ukraine.

What about his Vice President, you might ask, the guy most likely to govern on Trump's behalf? He is something else. He hates gays and women.

Mike Pence also signed a “religious freedom” bill that allowed businesses to explicitly discriminate against LGBTQ customers. And he backed several “personhood bills” that granted legal status to zygotes (zygotes!) and which would effectively ban abortion outright—along with some types of birth control. Pence also wanted women seeking abortions to have to undergo forced ultrasound exams where the provider would “describe the embryo in detail to her.” And of course, there’s also that law he signed requiring women to bury or cremate their aborted fetuses.

I left a few people out like billionaire Wilbur Ross (Commerce) the CEO of Rothschild Inc or Elaine Chao (Transportation) former Labor Secretary and wife of Mitch McConnell or Ben Carson (Housing and Urban Development) who believes that Joseph built the pyramids to store grain, but you get the overall picture.

Collectively, the members of the Cabinet are worth $4.5 billion. That is without counting Trump's own $3.7 billion or Army Secretary Vincent Viola ($1.8 billion) or Deputy Commerce Secretary Todd Ricketts ($5.3 billion) or Small Business Secretary Linda McMahon ($1.16 billion).

If you add all up, the grand total (excluding mere multi-millionaires like Chao) is $16,460,000,000.

Very populist indeed.

As you can see from the list above, the cabinet, besides billionaires who aim to run their portfolios to the ground, is composed of hawkish generals, white supremacists, homophobes, Islamophobes, climate change deniers, China haters and people with special ties to Russia.

It is not much of a stretch to assume that they will work to make life more difficult for low income people and minorities. Social services will be dismantled, household income will plummet, minimum wage will no longer be applicable, health care will once again be a rare commodity, charter schools and vouchers will replace many of the public schools and women's reproductive rights will finally be eliminated.

It is also quite likely that vote suppression measures will be introduced and voter ID laws will become more restrictive.

And of course, despite Obama's last ditch efforts to ban drilling in the Arctic and elsewhere, oil exploration and mining activities will increase, climate change regulations will be rolled back. There are at least nine cabinet members who deny global warming is caused by human activities.

The heads of Donald Trump’s transition teams for Nasa, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of the Interior and the Department of Energy, as well as his nominees to lead the EPA and the Department of the Interior, all question the science of human-caused climate change, in a signal of the president-elect’s determination to embark upon an aggressively pro-fossil fuels agenda.

AWP will be angrier. And more destitute.

Deservedly.

But as bad as things are domestically, the real danger is in the foreign policy area.

The World According to Trump

There are four crisis points for the Trump Administration.

Middle East

Middle East used to be the most challenging region in the world even for highly knowledgeable and skilled politicians. This was before Putin turned it into an even more complicated place.

Shia-Sunni proxy war is always on the brink of engulfing many players. Shia Iran is the ascending super power while Sunni Turkey, the previous regional power, is in disarray.

Sunni Saudi Arabia that had been bankrolling all kinds of conflicts and Jihadi efforts has serious economic woes and its military is stuck in an expensive and unpopular quagmire in Yemen.

Putin formed an alliance with Iran and Syria and effectively destroyed any chance of Sunni powers creating Pipelineistan which was meant to get Qatari natural gas pipeline to Europe. In the process, he put Turkey in its place and made it subordinate to his plans.

He helped liberate Aleppo and dealt a significant blow to Islamist opposition groups. The end result of his engagement in Syria was to bolster Assad's government and reverse the course of the civil war.

Perhaps his most significant achievement was to prevent the US and EU countries to play a relevant role in the conflict. He brought together Turkey and Iran under Russia's leadership as the group with the final say. This clever move not only made the Geneva talks pointless, kicking the US off the table but also brought together the two regional powers, one Sunni, the other Shia.

President Vladimir Putin had said earlier they were in the process of organizing new peace talks that would exclude the United States and the United Nations and that such talks could be held in Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan. “All efforts by the United States and its allies to coordinate their actions have failed. None of their moves have really affected the situation on the ground,” Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said.

Donald Trump now faces a Middle East where Putin gets to decide almost everything and he has no way in.

Worse still, senior members of his cabinet wants to have a military conflict with Iran. While this might temporarily please Saudi Arabia and other Sunni countries, they will be more than upset by Trump's choice of ambassador to Israel and the imminent collapse of the two-state solution.

David Friedman is an extremist who wants Israel to annex West Bank outright. He is a vocal supporter of settlers. He called a liberal Jewish group J Street "worse than Kapos" referring to Jewish collaborators of Nazis. He labeled Obama an anti-Semite, a man who signed off on the largest military aid package ever to Israel. You can be sure that his actions will stir a lot of resentment in the Arab world.

Perhaps more importantly, Trump's blind support for right wing Israelis will force Netanyahu to take steps that even he deemed too radical and will push Israel down the racist road of one state solution.

China and the Pacific Region

As for the Pacific region, Trump has been provoking China with his words and actions. Calling Taiwanese President or suggesting he might end One China policy or selecting Peter Navarro as his Trade Tzar are all designed to get a reaction out of China.

The problem is that the US is in no position to put pressure on China.

Trump Administration is dealing with a very determined Chinese President who sees the Pacific region as China's backyard. Xi Jinping's impunity in militarizing South China Sea gives a good idea about how little he things of America's opinion on his actions. China already announced that it would ignore the UN Conference on Sea Arbitration for its dispute with the Philippines.

Trump's pledge to abandon Trans Pacific Partnership, which excluded China, put China in an even better position. It might even be a factor -besides chemical imbalance- in Duterte's decision to scrap his country's alliance with the US and establish closer ties with China. Given Trump's early actions, most of the region is likely to follow suit.

There is also a thorny issue of North Korea and its nukes. Reportedly, Dear Fat Leader is racing to get his nuclear weapons by next year. China is the only country with any influence in North Korea. Do you really believe that the Orange Man will succeed to persuade Xi Jinping to do America's bidding with his late night tweets?

Finally, China is part of Shanghai Cooperation Organization which has a military component. And Putin is part of that alliance. An actual confrontation with China would end in humiliation for the US or in a dangerous nuclear chicken game.

Either way, it would hasten the rise of Eurasia as the new center of power.

NATO

During his campaign, Trump frequently stated that he might abandon NATO unless member states paid the US more for its protection. You might call it the Don Corleone doctrine of protection. In fact, he specifically mentioned Article 5 for NATO members: "he suggested that, if one of them was attacked, the US would be entitled to ask "have they paid?" before deciding to go to their assistance."

Needless to say, this Mafia/landlord approach to collective defense is Putin's wet dream. He has been working to stop the expansion of the alliance and the inclusion of former Soviet states or satellite countries.

He has even been trying to lure Turkey out of NATO and into Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). You may be surprised to find out that Turkey, a non-member country, was invited to assume the chair of the Energy Club of SCO for 2017.

What happens if Trump begins to question America's commitment to NATO and its members?

This could open the way for Putin to throw Russia's weight around. There are the vulnerable Baltic countries. Georgia is another possible target. And obviously Ukraine would be on a very short list.

Even if outright annexation of these countries might not be in the cards, in terms of enlarging Russia's zone of influence this would accelerate the rise of Eurasia.

Trump Brand Under Attack

The fourth issue is what happens when Trump's brand is targeted.

Recently Tom Engelhardt wrote about an interesting scenario. An ISIS suicide bomber blows himself up in Trump Towers in Istanbul. Trump policies in Asia and Middle East result in terrorists targeting his properties, hotels, golf courses and resorts around the world, destroying the Trump brand, his most (perhaps only) valuable asset.

Next, take into account what you already know about Donald Trump, a man inordinately proud of his brand and hypersensitive beyond belief.  Now, try to imagine -- and in Trumpian terms we’re talking about a truly dystopian world here -- what American foreign policy might look like if, amid the fears of resort-goers, golfers, business types, and the like, that brand began to tank internationally, if raising those giant gold letters over any city immediately ensured either mind-boggling problems or staggering security costs (and, at a minimum, a life of TSA-style lines for consumers). 

Under these circumstances Engelhardt is convinced, and I agree, that the US diplomatic and military resources will be used extensively to salvage his brand.

Don’t for a second doubt that, under such circumstances, American foreign and military policy would end up being focused on saving the Trump brand, which, in turn, would be a nightmare to behold.

If that happens, the Trump presidency will become indistinguishable from a regular fascist dictatorship.

The problem is that his supporters will not see this as a dystopian setting as Engelhardt believes. They will think that he is making America great again.

Until it isn't, that is.
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UPDATE:

When I wrote:

Do you really believe that the Orange Man will succeed to persuade Xi Jinping to do America's bidding with his late night tweets?

I was being sarcastic. Well, he already did it.

First he claimed that Dear Fat Leader could be stopped from developing long range missiles, fully knowing he has ne way to stop him other than relying on China.

Then he chastised Xi to do his bidding with this highly persuasive tweet.

I think they should simply close down the State Department, Trump can handle diplomacy.

Presidenting is Hard Work

Remember W?

We thought he was the dyslexic President who thought "presidenting was hard work".

Well, make room for the heir apparent.

This is the President of the United States.

Take a bow America.