Can Trump Start a Nuclear War?

My last post got mixed reviews.

It seems that people agreed with the bulk of my argument but I lost them at the conclusion. Trump starting a war to save his presidency was too far-fetched for many of my readers.

Their point was not that the "short-fingered vulgarian" would be incapable of incinerating millions of people: they all agreed that he would do so with glee.

But surely, they said, someone would stop him.

You know, the Secretary of Defense, one of the generals, Javanka, someone.

Instead of replying "don't call me Shirley," as I should have, I Googled the question "can anyone stop Trump if he starts a nuclear war?" and I got 4,600,000 hits.

I am sure not all of them are on this topic but I went three pages deep and discovered that, as early as 1 December 2016, Washington Post had a piece declaring that Trump could start a nuclear attack if he felt like it and no one could prevent it.

More significantly, after his Arizona speech last weekend (where he hinted Arpaio's pardon), former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper issued a warning about Trump's likelihood to launch a nuclear attack.

Clapper described a plausible scenario with North Korea. “In a fit of pique he decides to do something about Kim Jong-un, there’s actually very little to stop him,” Clapper warned, “The whole system is built to ensure rapid response if necessary. So there’s very little in the way of controls over exercising a nuclear option, which is pretty damn scary.”

Around the same time, dozens and I mean dozens of magazine articles were published on this very topic and they all suggested that Trump was a thin skinned bully who would think nothing of destroying countries and killing millions.

Clearly, I wasn't the only one who had this macabre thought.

The so-called nuclear football was designed to start the launch in four minutes, there is nothing that can be done once the attack is underway and the targets will be hit within 30 minutes.

Trump needs no second person (unlike the military personnel who actually launch the missiles) to sign off on his command and there is no other impediments once he issued the order and entered the code.

Okay, you might say, surely, there would be serious repercussions for him if he did that.

Unsurprisingly, I disagree with that premise. In fact, the point in my previous post was that starting a nuclear war with North Korea had absolutely no downside for a cornered Trump and many upsides.

In case you are under the mistaken impression that America's political leaders would find a nuclear war abhorrent, this is Lindsey Graham talking at the beginning of this month:

“If there’s going to be a war to stop [Kim Jong Un], it will be over there. If thousands die, they’re going to die over there. They’re not going to die here. And [Trump’s] told me that to my face,” Graham said. “That may be provocative, but not really. When you’re president of the United States, where does your allegiance lie? To the people of the United States.”

Let me repeat the cold and callous phrase: "it will be over there."

See how easy it would be to defend such a decision?

Think about it, if Trump were to attack North Korea, other than a bunch of hippies, most Liberals would stand behind the president, as they did in the Iraq War.

Trump would suddenly become presidential, just like Dubya.

North Korea would try to retaliate but they can only reach Guam and chances are US anti-ballistic missiles would stop their rockets. And even if they can't, it's only Guam and brown people.

In such a scenario, experts believe that Kim Jong-un would punish South Korea by trying to kill as many of their people with conventional weapons before the radiation clouds get to them.

I firmly believe that, in the US, such a horrific scenario would not make people upset. Asians are killing each other, people would say, we have nothing to do with it.

Just like they had nothing to do with the tens of millions of people who died in the Middle East.

Stuff happens. Let's watch Entertainment Tonight honey!

Breitbart might even present the catastrophe as something beneficial for the US, like you know, Korea's manufacturing jobs might come back to America.  The ones they stole from us in the first place.

And Trump would use this as a talking point in one of his rallies to thunderous applause from Americans of all walks.

I made America great again!

The upside includes the potential damage to be done to China. As a neighbouring country they might get radiation poisoning. Serious pollution and agricultural problems.

Would that bother Trump? Or anyone else?

In short, if Trump is cornered, and he will be at some point, his most obvious move would be (besides first pardoning himself) to start a nice little nuclear war "over there."

Kim Jung-un is the perfect foil. And he will provide the unassailable pretext.

One final thought: What we learned from new leaders like Erdogan or Duterte or Trump is that they will go to places where no decent person would go and no politicians had gone previously.

They do so because there is no penalty for it.

In fact, they are rewarded by a tribal electorate who declared that there is nothing that would change their minds about their Dear Leader.

Surely, fire and fury then.

Yes and at that point you can call me Shirley.

Or Ishmael.

How Will Trump Try to Save His Presidency

In my previous post, I outlined the elements that could sink Trump's presidency.

Losing the support of corporate titans is a big deal as it will make governing much harder: If they all take a risk averse position, like Waterbridge, the currency and bond markets could sink.

And if stock prices tanked as well, collectively they could drag down the entire US economy.

Already, Trump's threat to shut down government over the funding of his "big beautiful wall" had a sgnificant impact: the "rate on Treasury bills maturing Oct. 12 jumped by as much as 5 basis points Thursday, the largest intraday move since March."

Expect more economic turbulence during the upcoming debt-ceiling debate.

Trump's other problem is more pressing. Robert Mueller is gathering evidence on the link between Russian dirty money and Trump Organization's decades long efforts to launder it.

A smoking gun, or as it is more likely, an arsenal of smoking guns on those shady deals would be much more damaging in the eyes of Trump supporters than a tenuous link between Russian hackers and US elections.

The latter could be dismissed as fake news, the former reveals Trump as a crooked One Percenter.

To make matters worse, Trump's unhinged tweets and his approving reaction to neo-Nazi violence led the Establishment to question his fitness for the office.

"Republicans in Congress, the highest of intelligence officials, the highest of military officers in our country, leaders of the business community -- all of whom have dealt with the White House, and many of them dealt personally with Donald Trump -- have come to believe that he is unfit for the presidency," Bernstein told CNN's Brian Stelter on Sunday. He said those people are "raising the very question of his stability and his mental fitness." 

Given this background, the question for people around him is this: how do you save a senile thin-skinned bully with a narcissistic personality disorder?

My somewhat educated guess is that Javanka and John Kelly have a comprehensive plan.

They are responsible for the entire portfolio of Trump Administration, after all.

But will it work?

Let's start with the plan.

Mollifying the Establishment

The first step would be to repair Trump's relationship with the business community and what better way to do it than passing a massive tax cut for One Percenters.

The Trump administration has decided to push hard for tax reform and dial down a controversial national security investigation into steel imports in a bid to swing Republican support behind the president after the turmoil of recent weeks, according to senior officials. 

They said that former marine general John Kelly, the new chief of staff, was leading efforts to restore order to the White House and reassure Republican leaders alarmed by Donald Trump’s equivocal reaction to white nationalist-fuelled violence in Virginia last week and the subsequent open criticism from business leaders.

Along with that, the plan would call for him to persuade Congress to review and shrink the Volcker rule so that Wall Street firms and banks can play the stock market with their own money.

If Trump succeeds, this might even stop Lloyd Blankfein from trolling him on Twitter.

Vampire squid tamer Matt Taibbi is pleased as there are signs that this is already happening.

Next step would be to give the Pentagon some generous war goodies.

Which has already happened, in the form of the Afghanistan announcement that calls for troop increase.

I say "war goodies" because Trump's shiny new Afghan policy does not have achievable goals or an exit strategy or even a timeline. It has no purpose other than appease the generals, especially the ones who think he is unfit for the office.

Naturally, the "warrior monk" James "Mad Dog" Mattis is pleased.

The third step would be to move Trump away from the alt-right discourse, soften his interventions to make him more presidential and establish some message control.

In that respect, Steve Bannon's exit is significant and it shows that Kelly is now in charge. Same with the recent departure of the rather ghoulish Sebastian Gorka.

His guiding hand is also evident in persuading Trump (after his rambling and angry speech in Arizona) to use a teleprompter and to stay on message for his rally in Reno, Nevada where he called for unity.

But is it possible to keep Trump under control?

After all, he has a beautiful brain and he is his own counsel.

So this is the question:

Could This Plan Work?

To put it bluntly, I seriously doubt it.

That's not just because Trump is Trump. He is. And that's a big obstacle.

But more importantly, the plan's implementation requires Trump to overcome some contradictory elements and that might not be possible.

Let's go through the items.

Tax reform is unlikely to pass.

Sure, all the deficit scolds like Fix the Debt folks are shamelessly supporting a plan that would reduce tax revenue by a staggering 3.9 trillion over the next decade.

Some of the same people who were anxious about the debt sounded delighted by Donald Trump’s plan to cut taxes for corporations and high earners, trumpeting it as a way to fuel growth. Never mind that estimates from the conservative-leaning Tax Foundation showed Trump’s campaign plan could reduce federal revenue by $3.9 trillion over 10 years. 

And under normal circumstances GOP would only be too happy to oblige, as they have every time they were in power.

You know, #StarveTheBeast.

But Trump is in the middle of another nasty feud with Mitch McConnell, John McCain and a number of prominent Republicans so it is hard for the White House to expect much support at the Hill for their legislative agenda.

Moreover, his vicious attacks and his tendency to hog all the credit and deflect all the blame is already making the Republican Congress trepidatious.

In that context, if the Senate Democrats held firm as they did for the Obamacare repeal efforts, it would be difficult for the GOP leadership to find the requisite 60 votes in the Senate.

In fact, since this massive giveaway to the ultra-rich would make a touchy campaign issue during next year's midterm elections, some vulnerable GOP Representatives might balk, fearing electoral backlash from their constituency.

As I said, it is unlikely.

The second leg of the plan, which is expanding the war in Afghanistan with a troop surge, is easier to implement, as it might go unnoticed for a while.

As we know from the Iraq War, all you need to do is to populate Sunday morning talk shows with a bunch of Very Serious People (VSP), in Atrios' phrase, and soon folks will believe that America's longest war is actually winnable.

If you can also control the information about body bags, as Bush successfully did, the time frame for maintaining this illusion is quite large.

These efforts will also be helped by the fact that there is nothing more presidential than blowing up people, as we know from the Syria strike and the subsequent media lovefest.

So, this one could work.

The third element is the trickiest.

Leaving MAGA Nation Behind

The third element, that is, moving Trump away from his racist, divisive and belligerent discourse and gently nudging him towards a more acceptable platform might be the biggest problem.

You see, before Charlottesville, the MAGA Nation was showing signs of support erosion.

Last month, Gallup found that Trump’s approval rating was underwater in 31 states nationwide—including 11 that he won in the election. FiveThirtyEight’s adjusted poll aggregator shows that his popularity has hit an all-time low of 36.6 percent—worse than any other president at the same 200-day mark in more than 60 years of polling.

An Investor's Business Daily (IBD) poll puts his disapproval rating at %32, the lowest figure for his entire presidency.

That general decline has also seeped into his Republican base. Overall, between July and August, there is a drop of 11 to 12 point in all categories of voters.

However, as CNN noted, the fall is less steep among non-college whites, which was his core group in the election. But even in that group, there is a significant decline.

But that standing still represents an erosion from his 2016 vote among blue-collar whites in 12 of those states; in five of them, he's declined by double-digits. Perhaps most important are the trends in four of the Rust Belt states that proved decisive last year: Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. In all of them exit polls found Trump won between 62 and 64% of non-college whites. (...)

In Wisconsin, for instance, Trump's approval among whites without a college degree now stands at 51%, close to Romney's 53% vote share in 2012 but far below Trump's own 62%. Likewise, in Pennsylvania, Trump is now at 55% approval with non-college whites, almost exactly Romney's 56% vote in 2012, but well below the president's 64% among them.

In that sense, Trump cannot afford to move his message to the center. Already, he is hemorrhaging support among the educated white conservatives which occupy that space. Moving into their field would not help him.

He needs to stay with his core constituency and he needs to stir them up. This is especially the case because when Mueller strikes they are the only ones who are likely to stay with him.

There is one more thing.

People refer to Trumpistas as fringe elements or extreme right wingers. They are not. They are the heart and soul of the Republican Party and they represent the vast majority of their primary voters.

After Charlottesville, most news outlets claimed that Trump's numbers sank. Google it and you'll see.

In fact they held steady. The downward trend noted above notwithstanding, there is less than one percent shift between pre and post Charlottesville.

As of Wednesday evening, Trump’s approval rating was 36.9 percent, according to the FiveThirtyEight average, down only slightly from 37.6 percent on the day before1 a counter-protester and two police officers were killed in Charlottesville. His disapproval rating was 56.8 percent, up only slightly from 56.3 percent before Charlottesville.

So his support of neo-Nazis did not negatively affect his standing within his constituency.

That's because the voters who flocked to Trump are not there for the issues.

They adore Trump because, like them, he feels aggrieved and wronged by others and he liberally lashes out at them. They feel exactly the same way.

And like him, they are frustrated that they are no longer allowed to express their martyrdom in an appropriate (i.e. aggressive) manner because of rampant Political Correctness.

These are the people who declare, poll after poll, that White Christians are the most discriminated against group in America.

Fully 77% of Trump voters think the president "did enough" to condemn white nationalist violence in Charlottesville. Two-thirds of them had no problem with the president's delay in mentioning neo-Nazis and white supremacists by name. 

Perhaps most remarkably, 48% of Trump voters think the Charlottesville white nationalists either "have a point" (37%) or were "mostly right" (11%). And 68% of Trump voters see "a lot of discrimination" against white people in the US.

To them, Trump's pro-white, racist, sexist and anti-liberal stances represent a time when men were men, women, kids and minorities knew their places and that was that.

Which is why, surprising as that may seem, he does have a considerable following among African Americans, Hispanics, Muslims and, of course, white women who do not mind an occasional pussy grab.

Trump is their warrior and he is avenging them and he is standing up to them (whoever "them" might be) and he is kicking them viciously.

As long as he does that, in their eyes, he can do no wrong.

This is how Nate Silver puts it.

Trump won 23 percent of everyone, regardless of party, who cast a vote in the Democratic or Republican primaries last year. Those are the people who were truly with him from the start. 

A recent Monmouth University poll found that 61 percent of Trump supporters said they’d never change their minds about him. 

That works out to about 23 percent of the country overall. About 20 percent of voters say they strongly approve of Trump.

In other words, despite his overall decline, Trump has not lost his core constituency. And more importantly, he cannot afford to turn them off.

Besides, Steve Bannon and alt-right already warned him that if he abandoned those aggrieved white nationalists they would launch the mother of all wars. And that is a credible threat: Any negative news coming from Washington Post may be shrugged off but coming from Breitbart and similar outlets, they will hurt.

With Mueller breathing down his neck Trump is stuck. So he will continue to be their fighter: Hence Joe Arpaio pardon.

However, that is a problem in and of itself.

He cannot govern with 23 percent of the electorate behind him.

The system that made One Percenters possible relies on a sanitized, bland environment where government is silently making changes for a continual upward income redistribution without ordinary people noticing: Do not wake them up and take their attention away from baseball, Survivor and Entertainment Tonight.

In that sense, Trump and his 24-hour Twitter cycle is making One Percenters very unhappy. Why cheer the neo-Nazis and get all this media attention on stupid and useless stuff, they say, people could start paying attention and then we are screwed.

OK, maybe not screwed, as we will continue the plundering, but why make the whole thing more difficult?

So if he cannot give them their tax cuts and deregulation they will turn on him.

On top of that, intelligence agencies will continue their regular leaks of damaging information.

And soon GOP will realize that 2018 midterm elections might become a bloodbath.

At that point Trump will have one card to play.

And that's starting a big and beautiful war.

His short fingers are already on the buttons.

Stay tuned.

----------------------
UPDATE

This is how Wall Street feels about Trump presidency:

Despite an initial excitement about having a “C.E.O. president” in the White House who would promote business-friendly policies and unleash growth the likes of which the world had never seen, Wall Street and business leaders have begun to get the sinking feeling that a six-time bankrupt real-estate developer might not turn out to be the savior they were promised. As Trump remains unable to focus for one freaking second in order to get his legislative agenda passed, insiders have been selling millions of their banks’ own shares, with sales by board members and executives outnumbering purchases by roughly 14 to one, according to the Financial Times. In total, top brass at the U.S.’s six biggest banks have dumped a net 9.32 million in shares since the beginning of the year. Since the election, UBS credit analyst Robert Smalley, bank stocks have become “a barometer” for “failure or success” of Trump’s policies. Given the lack of them, you can kind of see where Wall Street is coming from.

Trump's Downward Spiral

The Orange Man is in trouble.

A couple of months ago, I predicted that Trump was not going to be able to finish his first term.

I did not suggest that GOP might impeach him or that his core constituency would gradually turn against him.

In fact, I said the opposite.

GOP would never impeach one of their own, unless they reinforce social safety net, push for universal health care and increase taxes.

And at the rank and file level, polls indicated that there was no significant buyer's remorse among Trumpistas.

My prediction was based on the fact that Trump and GOP (and their wealthy donors) made a Faustian bargain whereby Trump was going to profit immensely from the presidency and, in exchange, he was going to deliver a specific legislative agenda designed to turn One Percenters into Point Five Percenters by repealing affordable health care, passing massive tax cuts for the rich and destroying the social safety net for the poor in any way he can.

I maintained that, because of his original feud with intelligence agencies, he was not going to be able to deliver an this legislative agenda as they were going to reveal all his money laundering deals with Russian oligarchs and organized crime in a steady drip, drip, drip movement.

And when that happens Trump will be toast, I said, because the One Percenters will desert him and along with them the GOP. He will be forced to resign.

Welcome President Pence.

I didn't think the downward movement would start this soon but it seems to be happening.

And exactly on the terms I suggested in my original post.

One Percenters are Leaving the Ship in Droves

If we follow my framework, we start with the fact that Trump has so far been unable to pass any legislation through Congress even though his party is controlling both chambers.

That in turn negatively affected his relations with One Percenters.

You already know that since June, five members of his business advisory councils have resigned (Elon Musk of Tesla and Bob Iger of ABC/Disney for pulling out of Paris accord and Kenneth Frazier of Merck, Kevin Plank of Under Armour and Intel's Brian Krzanich for Trump's reaction to Charlottesville).

And after his disastrous press conference on Tuesday, 15 August where he blamed the so called "alt-left" for the violent confrontation with neo-Nazis, many more CEOs headed for the door.

So much so that Trump announced that he was disbanding both of his advisory councils.

In fact, it turned out that it was not his decision.

On Wednesday morning, a dozen of the country’s most influential C.E.O.s joined a conference call, and, after some debate, a consensus emerged: The policy forum would be disbanded, delivering a blow to a president who came into office boasting of his close ties with business leaders.

With the collapse of the councils, the president has all but lost his most natural constituency — the corporate leaders who stood to benefit from his agenda of lower taxes and lighter regulation.

The bold rebuke by the CEOs is a big deal given Trump's penchant to attack companies on Twitter and the federal government's massive role in the economy. It is hard to govern if you have the captains of the industry against you.

Moreover, this is not a symbolic gesture. Wall Street is up in arms.

And I am not talking about Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein trolling Trump on Twitter.

Ray Dalio, founder of Bridgewater, one the world's biggest macro hedge funds with $150 billion in assets under management said that he was "cutting his exposure to risk because of his concerns about stability in Washington."

While I see no important economic risks on the horizon, I am concerned about growing internal and external conflict leading to impaired government efficiency (e.g. inabilities to pass legislation and set policies) and other conflicts.

See what I mean?

The high flying stock market was one of Trump's (unwarranted) selfies. It now looks like the markets are heading south.

“If you look at various valuation metrics, it’s hard to argue that this isn’t an overstretched market,” said Mohamed El-Erian, chief economic adviser to Allianz. 

Underscoring the view that the US stock market is overdue a correction, big investors such as Pershing Square’s Bill Ackman and Pimco’s Dan Ivascyn have recently said they have bought protection against any turbulence, and US equity funds have suffered nine straight weeks of outflows, with $4bn seeping out over the period according to EPFR.

 The currency and bond markets were especially hard hit.

US Treasury yields, which shot up after Mr Trump’s November victory in expectation of inflationary infrastructure spending, have sagged lower for much of 2017. The dollar has slid almost 9 per cent this year against a basket of other major currencies, and US small-cap companies, which would benefit from tax cuts and a stimulus-primed domestic economy, are down nearly 5 per cent in August. That puts them on track for their worst monthly performance since the global stock market slump in early 2016.

So that is the most damaging and consequential problem for Trump. And it will be the key to his undoing.

But the more pressing problem is the direction the Robert Mueller investigation seems to have taken.

Financial Shenanigans and Money Laundering

It is being reported that Robert Mueller has gathered a team of financial experts who are experienced in following dirty money, links to organized crime groups, campaign financing fraud and similar white collar crimes.

Which means that his focus is not obstruction of justice but rather financial shenanigans. And he is going after not just Trump but his sons and Kushner as well.

In that respect, FBI's  the pre-dawn raid to Trump's former campaign manager Paul Manafort's house to confiscate computers and various records is not a good sign for Trump. Manafort is a low hanging fruit (with his well publicized shady deals in Russia and Ukraine) and Mueller's move might have been designed to get his cooperation against bigger targets.

There is more.

The Guardian recently reported that Deutsche Bank executives were going to be subpoenaed by Mueller. In case you are wondering what might be behind this move, well, it is a complicated and potentially very damaging tale.

Trump had borrowed $640 million from the bank's real estate lending division before the 2008 crisis. When he was unable to pay the $40 million portion that came due, he sued the bank for its role in the subprime debacle to get out of his liability.

Unimpressed, Deutsche Bank countersued.

Then something amazing happened. The bank's wealth management unit lent the $40 million to Trump in order for him to pay back its own real estate division.

Trump then moved his business from real estate division to private wealth management unit. That unit continued to lend him another $300 million. And this, at a time when no US banks or Wall Street firms would do business with the Trump Organization.

Ivanka and Jared also became clients of the same division. Reportedly, Kushner's mother was given an unsecured $25 million line of credit and Kushner also got a loan of $285 million last year.

Apart from the Trumps and Kushners, Deutsche Bank also has deep ties to Russia. In addition to settling allegations earlier this year that it allowed $10 billion to be laundered out of Eastern Europe, Deutsche Bank had a “cooperation agreement” with Vnesheconombank, a Russian state-owned development bank that is the target of U.S. economic sanctions.

In case the name of the Russian bank sounds familiar that's because you remember it from a meeting between Kushner and its CEO Sergey Gorkov arranged by the Russian Ambassador Kislyak, a meeting he conveniently forgot about until it was leaked.

Deutsche Bank is connected to Russia and money laundering in another way.

. . . in May, federal prosecutors settled a case with a Cyprus investment vehicle owned by a Russian businessman with close family connections to the Kremlin. The firm, Prevezon Holdings, was represented by Natalia Veselnitskaya, the Russian lawyer who was among the people who met during the presidential campaign with Donald Trump Jr. about Hillary Clinton. Federal prosecutors in the United States claimed Prevezon, which admitted no wrongdoing, laundered the proceeds of an alleged Russian tax fraud through real estate. Prevezon and its partner relied in part on $90 million in financing from a big European financial institution, court records show. It was Deutsche Bank.

Besides Deutsche Bank, Russian money connection is evident in various Trump projects like his infamous Soho building.

Trump's Russian partners include the Bayrock Group owned by Tevfik Arif of Kazakhstan, the Samir Group owned by Tamir Sapir of the former Soviet Republic of Georgia.

They were involved in several Trump projects. And by all accounts their main business is money laundering through real estate deals.

Felix Sater, a Russian-born American, who was the managing director of Bayrock is mentioned as a person of interest for Mueller. (He is the one on the right, the guy in the middle is Arif)

Sater is a convicted felon with extensive ties to Russian and American mob.

Before linking up with the company and with Trump, he had worked as a mob informant for the U.S. government, fled to Moscow to avoid criminal charges while boasting of his KGB and Kremlin contacts there, and had gone to prison for slashing apart another man’s face with a broken cocktail glass.

As I mentioned previously, one of Bayrock principals sued the company and accused them of being a front for a large money laundering operation.

“Tax evasion and money-laundering are the core of Bayrock’s business model,” the lawsuit said of the financiers behind Trump Soho. The financing came from Russian-affiliated business interests that engaged in criminal activities, it said. 

More specifically, the suit

alleged that Bayrock was “covertly mob-owned and operated,” “backed by oligarchs and money they stole from the Russian people,” and “engaged in the businesses of financial-institution fraud, tax fraud, partnership fraud, human trafficking, child prostitution, statutory rape, and, on occasion, real estate.

Finally, there is a long list of projects and real estate deals that are considered clear conflicts of interest.

It is only matter of time for Mueller to indict a Trump family member.

Firing Mueller is not a good option because the information he gathered would be leaked again in a paralyzing drip, drip movement.

Ok then, you say, what are Trump's option at this point?

That is the subject of my next post.

James Damore's Memo and How to Deal With Sexist Discourse

You might have heard that a software engineer at Google by the name of James Damore was fired after producing a 10-page memo that explained why women make lousy coders and why they are not motivated to climb up the corporate ladder.

Basically, he argues that there are fewer women in STEM (Science Technology, Engineering Mathematics) jobs because men and women are different and women's biologically determined traits make them less suitable for these jobs.

I actually read the whole thing. It is churlish text based on Rushton-style dubious science. You know, men are more interested in things and women are more interested in people type of rubbish.

He is probably a well meaning geek who read some sexist conservative text he found persuasive. And he was trying to convince others using the same points.

Once he was fired, he became the newest martyr of the American conservative movement, another victim of rampant political correctness.

Oh dear!

National Review came to his rescue, Julian Assange offered him a job at Wikileaks and he was interviewed by alt-Right's Youtube personality Stefan Molyneux.

Now, my intention is not to prosecute his thesis, as it is an exercise in futility.

I simply want to point out that sexism and discrimination against women is widely tolerated. If someone makes a blatantly sexist argument, people do not react to it the way they would react to blatant racism or anti-Semitism.

And if you object to it, more often than not, the person who made the sexist remark will go into a whiny tirade about rampant political correctness.

So I stopped objecting instead I give them a litmus test to show why their point is sexist.

I substitute the word women with the dominant identity of my interlocutor and construct a similar argument.

For instance, I mentioned this debate (dubbed culture wars in Silicon Valley) to a friend of mine who happens to be Jewish. He said that he disagreed with Google's decision to fire Damore as he was entitled to his opinion.

Besides, he said, the guy made some valid points.

I asked him if I were to substitute the word women with Jews and suggest that Jews were more suited for finance jobs, because "they are good with money" what would he say?

That's anti-Semitism, pure and simple, he cried.

Touché.

But the contention that women are not being suitable for STEM jobs might contain some valid points, right?

On various occasions, I tried the same technique with other people.

Two examples: with Muslims, I repeat the all too common discourse "they are too different to be able to live in Western societies", with Asians "they are good with math so they get all the tech jobs but they are not suited for much else."

Any sexist discourse about women became a horrible slur when it was about their ethnicity, culture or religion.

It works with any group, even LGBT folks.

The only group that is immune is white men. That is because they cannot see themselves as a minority. In their minds, they are the universal human identity and the rest is a bunch of minorities.

And because this also the hegemonic view in our societies, the worst put down is that they can't jump. Unsurprisingly, it was not a good movie.

My point is that women are the last group in the world about whom discriminatory practices and sexist speech are widely tolerated.

In almost every country in the world, women are second class citizens with less access to opportunities and resources than any other group.

In most of the developing world, they have very few rights, they are pushed around, discriminated against, subjected to horrific violence and suffer all kinds of daily indignities.

And that does not move anybody.

No one would lift a finger about women in Saudi Arabia where they have even fewer rights than black South Africans during Apartheid. If you remember, people in the West rallied against that regime.

But women in Saudi Arabia? Who cares.

Instead, we still debate whether women are suitable for senior management roles or tech jobs or or how pregnancy could affect their political careers.

And if anyone objects to that discourse, like former Australian PM Julia Gillard did, she becomes a humorless harpy, a nutjob and, of course, a feminazi.

Even this term tells you how much hate speech is tolerated when it comes to women.

CNN just fired a conservative commentator for tweeting "Sieg Heil" but no one was ever sacked for calling feminists feminazi.

Need I say more?

Is Scaramucci A Poor Man's Surkov?

You remember Vladislav Surkov, the avant garde artist who removed meaning, facts and truth from the Russian political discourse.

If not, please read this Vanity Fair primer. It is worth the detour.

The Vanity Fair article argues that there might be a method to Trump's late-night-attacks-through-unhinged-tweets madness. Like Surkov's communication strategy for Putin, these strange outbursts might be designed to change the subject, subvert the agenda and hijack the media narrative.

Recently, within the context of Donnygate, I wondered if there was a deliberate Surkovian strategy in place at the White House, as it looked like running down Fredo Trump's inane adventures helped hide Kushner's Qatar financial links and a rather scary use of American foreign policy to secure building financing.

But I wasn't sure who was behind it, as Trump is too stupid or senile to be able to pull it off by himself. My money was on the Prince of Darkness Steve Bannon and Boy Blunder Kushner.

Now however, it looks like the dark forces behind the Surkov strategy were Javanka as they pushed for the hiring of Anthony Scaramucci or "The Mooch" as he is known. Steve Bannon was not involved.

He is the new White House Communication Director and unlike everyone else (save Steve Bannon) he reports directly to the President, not the Chief of Staff.

Apparently Kushner felt that White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer  and Trump's Chief of Staff Reince Priebus were Republican plants who worked for the party and not the President.

Why do I think The Mooch is there to pull a Surkov for Trump?

First let's remember what pulling a Surkov is:

In practical terms, this means that Surkov removes facts and truth and beliefs from the political discourse and sets the daily agenda by feeding a dizzying array of fake, contradictory and seemingly true narratives through various associations, small parties and news media outlets he controls.

He is also very good at changing the subject: when corruption accusations against Putin got traction, Surkov got him to pass a "gay-propaganda law" and next thing you know, everybody was discussing that.

Well, this is what Scaramucci did in his first week.

1) He went on ABC News to cite anonymous sources who claimed that there was no Russian involvement in electoral hacking only to reveal the source was Trump.

2) He seemed unmoved by his own negative Trump quotes from the 2016 campaign. At the time, he had called Trump "another hack politician" and "an inherited money dude from Queens County." And he praised Clinton.


3) He then began deleting those old pro-Clinton tweets. And he acknowledged doing so on Twitter where he endorsed her.

Astonishingly, the Narcissist-in-Chief who demands absolute loyalty sided with him.

4) He told Politico that he was planning to fire assistant Press Secretary Michael Short before telling him. Short resigned when he found out from the media that he was about to be axed.

5) He went on CNN to accuse Reince Priebus as the source of White House leaks. The two men, whose relationship Scaramucci likened to brothers, Abel and Cain, like each other very much, as you can tell from this revealing photo.

You know how that Biblical story ended, right?

6) Finally, to top it all off, he had a very colorful phone conversation with Ryan Lizza of The New Yorker:

“Reince is a fucking paranoid schizophrenic, a paranoiac,” Scaramucci said. He channelled Priebus as he spoke: “ ‘Oh, Bill Shine is coming in. Let me leak the fucking thing and see if I can cock-block these people the way I cock-blocked Scaramucci for six months.’ ” 

As for Steve Bannon, this is what The Mooch had to say:

Scaramucci also told me that, unlike other senior officials, he had no interest in media attention. “I’m not Steve Bannon, I’m not trying to suck my own cock,” he said, speaking of Trump’s chief strategist. “I’m not trying to build my own brand off the fucking strength of the President. I’m here to serve the country.” 

(On that last point, Trevor Noah noted:"I feel like if that were true, Steve Bannon would be a lot more chilled out. Like, I didn’t even know it was possible to drain your own swamp.”)

During the interview Scaramucci predicted that Priebus would soon be fired and it happened two days later.

The next day, The Mooch owned his words and The Donald reportedly loved the whole incident.

While The Mooch was doing with his colorful, contradictory and confusing theatrix, The Donald was busy doing this:

1) He gave a hyper-political and cringe-worthy speech at the annual jamboree of Boy Scouts of America. It was so bad that the Boy Scouts chief had to apologize afterwards.

2) He also held a campaign style rally in Ohio making new promises to his followers.

3) He "landed 3 punches against gay rights"

Without being asked, the Justice Department intervened in a private employment lawsuit on Wednesday, arguing that the ban on sex discrimination in the Civil Rights Act of 1964 does not protect workers on the basis of their sexual orientation. (...) 

The move ended a day that began with a tweet from President Trump announcing a ban on transgender people serving in the military, surprising Pentagon leaders and reversing a year-old Obama administration policy. 

Also on Wednesday, Mr. Trump announced that he would nominate Sam Brownback, the governor of Kansas and a vocal opponent of gay rights, to be the nation’s ambassador at large for international religious freedom.

4) He cyberbullied his own Attorney General, the Klan sympathizing garden gnome Jeff Sessions.

Scaramucci's contradictory moves are straight out of Surkov play book. So is Trump's gay bashing, something, as I noted above, Putin used many times to change the narrative.

Why do I suspect that these silly and petulant incidents might be an attempt to hijack the agenda, well look at what was happening at the same time. The Senate tried very hard to repeal Obamacare and it failed dramatically.

John McCain came back from brain surgery and cancer treatment to vote in favor of a procedural measure to have the Senate debate the House draft to repeal and replace Obamacare. It passed only with Mike Pence's tie-breaker vote.

Then, in a very cynical act (to collect maximum "maverick" points) he voted against the House draft, effectively killing the whole repeal idea.

This was, as you know, one of Trump's signature campaign promises.

If it wasn't for the dramatic circumstances (brain cancer patient returns to Washington) and the corporate media's endless love affair with St John McCain, we might not have heard about it as The Mooch and The Donald collectively sucked all the oxygen out of the news media.

Still, Scaramucci's expletive-filled rant with Ryan Lizza and Trump's transgender ban tweet received a lot more coverage than the health care bill.

And maybe that was the point.

After all, Trump voters do not care about how he governs, they like him as a reality TV star who kicks the other side in the teeth.

They don't care if he takes away their health care, as long he deports brown people and removes any safety net for black people and makes sure that black lives don't matter.

To them, Trump is making America white again and he does it with great fanfare and fun. And in the process, he makes liberals mad.

What more can you ask for?

And that is why The Mooch is now the Communications Director and he reports directly Boy Blunder's father-in-law.

A poor man's Surkov.

But The Donald does not deserve a better Surkov anyway.

Nor does his constituency.

---------------------
UPDATE

The Mooch is gone.

The media reports seem to suggest that it was the new Chief of Staff General Kelly who terminated him.

I have a feeling he was used by Boy Blunder to get rid of Priebus.

Something tells me that this is not the last time we see Anthony Scaramucci.

How Brexit, Trump and Macron Made France Relevant Again

I have to admit that I am in awe of Emmanuel Macron.

Don't get me wrong, I am not a fan. He is essentially a conservative politician and I am an old pinko who never liked leftwing politics.

Nor do I look at him as someone who could save the world and stop the decline of the American Empire.

It's something else, it's his ability to grasp a context and move quickly to seize the day.

#carpe diem.

Now, he is a lucky man. There is no doubt there.

Think of his meteoric rise from a middling investment banker in London to Minister of Economy and then to President of the French Republic in the span of five years.

This is a guy who has never held an elected office in his life.

Or his unbelievable feat of winning the legislative elections by a landslide with a party that was formed a month earlier, fielding a rag tag group of unknown candidates.

Each of these achievements would be proof of extraordinary luck, and collectively they are the equivalent of winning the Powerball or El Gourdo or Euromillions three weeks in a row.

But the reason I am in awe of him is the way he capitalized on the specific context that was created by Brexit and the election of Donald Trump and the way he positioned himself -in the span of few short weeks- as a world leader and France as a country to be reckoned with.

And that was not an easy achievement given the dismal setting he inherited.

Let me explain my thinking.

Europe and France Before Brexit

A year ago the European Union was a doomed project.

Germany was slowly destroying its weaker economies, the so called PIIGS countries, and was emerging as the dominant leader of the EU.

It was clear that there was an affluent club led by Germany and comprising the Netherlands and most of the Nordic countries and a second club of declining members who would soon be unable to implement the same policies as the first group and keep up with them.

On the Eastern front, the recent EU members made a radical shift to the right and formed a mini union (the Visegrad group) to resist and ignore policy directives from Brussels. They became a major disruption for Europe.

Then there were talks about resurrecting the "intermarium" as "a bulwark not only against Putinist “neo-Bolshevism” encroaching from Moscow, but also against the neoliberal, multicultural, secular and feminist “neo-Bolshevism” emanating from Brussels."

Or as Jon Stewart would have put it, fascism with a slavic accent.

Merkel's demographically motivated but incorrectly explained decision to take in one million refugees did not sit well with the rest of Europe.

France with its own five million Muslims was the target of several bloody terror attacks making French even more opposed to the idea of welcoming more Arabs from the Middle East.

European public were openly hostile to the avowedly only remedy available for EU's problems, i.e. more integration. In fact, the general mood in most member countries was to take back some of the components of their sovereignty.

In short, Europe was already an economically fragmented and politically divided union and, at that juncture, the infamous "Europe a la carte" or "Two-tier union" seemed inevitable.

As for France, the historically important Franco-German alliance was no longer relevant as the wheezing French economy barely kept the country out of the PIIGS club. With its chronic unemployment and underperforming economy, France seemed lost.

The UK, as the second largest economy in the union, was the only counterbalance to the German behemoth, especially since it kept its own currency and the special ties to the sole remaining superpower.

And then Brexit happened.

Why Brexit Was Important?

Essentially, it made the unthinkable possible.

While no one was really enamored with the EU, it seemed impossible to dismantle it and go back to the status quo ante. The UK, in one fell swoop, showed that it was quite possible to do it.

Soon, right wing parties everywhere began to talk about Nexit, Frexit and Italeave.

Moreover, the British exit made the future of EU an imminent issue to be dealt with, sooner rather than later.

What to do with the Euro? Should there be more financial and economic integration? Or should there be a Europe a la carte? What about the Visegrad Group? How to deal with terrorism? What about the refugees?

And of course, as the one of the two European countries to possess nuclear bombs and a decent army, the British departure shone a bright line on the question of European defense.

Putin began a massive military modernization program around 2008 -largely on Nato's prodding- which turned the old and clunky Red Army into an effective fighting machine as shown in the Crimea, Ukraine and Syria deployments.

European Nato members were spending less and less on defense and for the most part ignoring the rising Russian military power. The general feeling was that a membership to Nato was more than enough to protect them.

Take Bundeswehr, the German army.

Underfunding has been at times highly embarrassing, such as the revelation that during a Nato exercise in 2014 Bundeswehr tank commanders covered up their lack of machine guns by using broomsticks painted black.

More importantly, in military terms, Bundeswehr is a joke.

The Bundeswehr, born in the mid 1950s, was a deliberately modest force, meant only to defend West German territory, not fight abroad. Its recruits were taught to think of themselves as "citizens in uniform". 

Indeed the uniform itself, says historian James Sheehan, "really does resemble [that of] bus drivers rather than the old guards' regiments".

And then Trump happened.

Trump and Nato

While running for president, Trump stated that he was not going to take Article 5 seriously unless the member under attack had been spending 2 percent of its GDP on defense.

I called it the Don Corleone doctrine of collective protection.

He also thought that Nato was no longer relevant: he actually said that it was obsolete.

And then he became POTUS and his Putin connection was revealed.

About the same time, Nato's second largest (and battle hardened) army was dismantled by its own government. In fact, Nato Supreme Allied Commander Europe of Nato Curtis Scaparotti raised the alarm about the alliance much weakened capabilities.

Suddenly, there were calls for expanding the burgeoning European Defense Agency into a European Nato.

"NATO can no longer be used as a convenient alibi to argue against greater European efforts," Juncker said. He said the United States is "no longer interested in guaranteeing Europe's security in our place."

Even the traditionally pacifist Germany was in on it.

The first-tier EU members seriously debated a European nuclear deterrent.

Within that context, let's take a look at the French military and France's own military industrial complex.

Here is what a defense analyst says about them.

The French are the only ones in Europe who are almost self-sufficient in producing high quality military vehicles, firearms, ships and aircraft and weapons. Their products have been exported worldwide and have been the star in several major wars.

And he goes on to explain why.

Only 2 countries in the world have developed a self-propelled, self-contained SAM system capable of firing radar guided missiles, France and Russia. [...]

France is the third country in the world after the US and Russia, to develop and deploy long range Land Attack Cruise Missiles on its warships. The Scalp missile is a 1000+ km range missile launched from the A70 VLS and has a 450 kg warhead.

Their Landing Helicopter Dock (LHD) Mistral ships and their nuclear powered aircraft carriers (the only ones in the world outside the US Navy) are unique in Europe.

In that sense French army is almost self- sufficient, a distinction no other army in the world, besides the US and Russia, can claim.

They are also the third largest nuclear deterrent behind US and Russia.

In 2008 the French military issued a White Paper about the looming terrorist threat and the need to adapt armed forces accordingly. France has now 36,000 troops deployed in foreign territories.

All of these capabilities and attributes existed before Macron. What he did with them is the remarkable bit.

He approached Merkel as an equal and he coolly pushed the defense angle. No more French economy excuses that Hollande had to put forward to explain France's chronic deficit.

He said, we are the supreme military power in Europe and if Nato and Trump won't defend Europe, we are the only credible force you have. Especially with the Brits gone.

So within a month, he got Merkel to agree to develop a European fighter jet in collaboration with France, with French military industrial complex being the main beneficiary as they have the know-how.

Then he turned around and positioned himself as the natural European interlocutor for Donald Trump, in the absence of Britain.

He invited the Donald, the rich kid from Queens with a chip on his shoulder bigger than Texas, to Bastille Day celebrations, fully aware that the narcissistic President-child might perceive the military parade and procession as something specifically arranged just for him.

He did it at a time when Theresa May could not get Trump to agree to any state visit in 2017.

It is a simple move that turned him into the main European partner of the Orange Man.

And look at the handshake the day before with the Donald shy as a pre-teen girl in a Justin Bieber concert and Macron not letting his hand go in Trump's signature alpha-male move.



The clincher in al this is that with Brexit and the UK gone and Merkel and Trump in a pointless and pointed feud, Macron is now the point man for all EU-US and EU-Nato relations.

All I can say is "wow."

Or as they say in Canada, with characteristic understatement, "not too shabby."

Minnesota: White Lives Matter?

An Australian yoga instructor, Justine Diamond was shot dead in Minneapolis, by the police officers who responded to her 911 call.



She was reporting a rape.

The shooting is a non-event in the US. It is routine.

Last year, 968 people were killed by police. This year, so far, 554.

There were several issues with this one though.

Otherwise it would not have made the headlines.

First, she was a white woman.

Second she was from Australia, an English speaking and relatively powerful country where the media can ask questions.

Finally, the officer who shot her was called Mohamed Noor.

Remember Philando Castile? Also in Minnesota.

And countless others.

But I predict that this time they will indict the officer.

And throw the book at him.

Because he shot a white woman from Australia while being Mohamed Noor.