Today’s News 13th March 2018

• U.S. Spy Drone Spotted Near Crimea After $47 Million Defense Purchase By Ukraine: Report

  A U.S. surveillance drone was spotted flying above Crimea, presumably doing reconnaissance over eastern Ukraine before returning to Naval Air Station Sigonella in Sicily, according to flight tracking services.

  

  🇺🇸 US Air Force RQ-4 Global Hawk

  53,000ft heading over Greece after a day’s reconnaissance over eastern #Ukraine, around Crimea & along the Russian coastline. pic.twitter.com/kDGRWlP55h

  — CivMilAir ✈ (@CivMilAir) March 8, 2018

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  The RQ-4 Global Hawk’s flyover is the latest in a series of US and NATO air patrols near Russian teritory. Last June a NATO F-16 fighter jet tried to approach the Russian defense minister’s plane above the neutral waters over the Baltic sea. It was warded off by a Russian Su-27, and the flight continued to Kaliningrad for a discussion on security issues.  The F-16 was warded off after the Russian jet tipped it’s wings, showing its armament. 

  And in January, a Russian Su-27 intercepted a Navy EP-3 Aires surveillance plane over the Black Sea – which drew a sharp rebuke from the Pentagon who said the Russian jet flew too close to the U.S. plane. 

  Arming Ukraine

  The latest surveillance flyover comes on the heels of the Trump administration approving a deal to arm Ukraine with 210 Javelin anti-aircraft missiles and 37 launchers for $47 million. The deal was announced in December, however it follows Obama-era legislation to export weapons to the war-torn country. 

  

  As we noted two weeks ago, the sale marks a significant increase in U.S. military support for Ukraine and another major deterioration US-Russian relations, and is the first lethal weapons sale of its kind since the breakout of a Russian-backed proxy civil war against the central government in Ukraine’s eastern provinces. 

  President Trump approved the plan right before Christmas 2017, and Congress has until the end of March days to sink the deal or it will go through, which is expected. Trump says the sale represents a “tougher” stance on Russia than Obama, however the Special Representative for Ukraine Negotiations tried his best to downplay the comment.

   “There is what I view as an artificial distinction between lethal and non-lethal military equipment,” Ambassador Kurt Volker said in Washington on Monday, comparing anti-tank missiles to a counter-battery radar that improves targeting to attack and kill an enemy firing mortars. “That’s non-lethal and an anti-tank missile, which sits in a box and doesn’t get used unless you have a tank coming at you, is lethal. Both are clearly defensive weapons.”

  Russia’s deputy foreign minister, Sergei Ryabkov – the guy NATO buzzed, issued a harsh rebuke in December when the news of the sale first broke. 

  “The United States in a certain sense crossed the line, announcing the intention to transfer weapons of direct damaging action to Ukraine,” the statement said, translated from Russian. “American weapons can lead to new victims in our neighboring country, to which we cannot remain indifferent.“

  Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said then that the sale “will once again motivate the hotheads” in the Ukrainian government and “unleash bloodshed again.”

  Trump’s approval of the arms deal was a major shift from the Republican party platform, which was amended when Trump was the party’s nominee for president, from supporting “lethal defensive arms” to Ukraine to the more vague “appropriate assistance” — language that ran counter to traditional Republican foreign policy.

  Needless to say, Trump himself promised a reset with Russia, but since taking office, relations with Moscow have not improved.

  And after years of covert American involvement in the Ukrainian proxy and civil war which has raged since 2014 – and which a leaked recording confirmed was precipitated by the US State Department – it appears that neocon hawks like McCain, Cotton, and Corker are finally getting their way. 

  Perhaps more scary in terms of escalating an unnecessary war which has already taken more than 10,000 lives since 2014, the Kiev government and some in Washington are already pushing for putting anti-aircraft weapons in the hands of Ukrainian forces.

  “What we are awaiting and have called for is the provision of lethal defense weapons that are more advanced – a larger package that is under consideration right now, including anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles,” a Ukrainian official told ABC News. “We are expecting this decision and would welcome it.”

  Putin, or course, just rolled out a series of brand new nukes. His new “toys” include tactical and hypersonic nuclear devices which are said to be able to overcome missile defense systems. 

  “Efforts to contain Russia have failed, face it,” Putin said in a nearly two-hour address he illustrated with video clips of the new arms, which included underwater drones, intercontinental missiles and a hypersonic system he said “heads for its target like a meteorite.” –Bloomberg

  Russia has also accused the US of violating the nuclear nonproliferation treaty by “preparing the militaries of European states to use tactical nuclear weapons against Russia“

  He [Putin] said Russia had long warned Washington not to go ahead with anti-missile systems that Moscow feared could erode its nuclear deterrent. “Nobody listened to us. Listen now,” he said, to a loud ovation from the crowd of legislators, officials and dignitaries. –Bloomberg

  We won’t hold our breath for the Olympic-level mental gymnastics from anti-Trumpers trying to explain how Putin convinced Trump to sell Ukraine all that hardware which will soon create quite a few Russian army widows.

  

• Why The Super-Rich Are Rushing To Buy Nuclear-Proof Bunkers

  Authored by Eric Zuesse via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

  The rush amongst the super-rich started after the key event of 2014; this single stunning event suddenly sparked that rush by the super-rich to buy nuclear-proof bunkers, and the rush has been nonstop since that event. Though many news-media in The West have reported on the existence of this suddenly booming market for luxurious and supposedly nuclear-proof bunkers, none has reported on what actually caused it — the event that had sparked it. In fact, that event is still a secret in The West — not publicly mentioned here; it is, practically speaking, bannedfrom being publicly even mentioned, in The West. So: since that event is necessarily mentioned in this article, and is even linked-to here, so that the reader can see videos of it that were posted of it online while it was happening, and there is even “smoking gun” evidence showing government officials actually planning it, and covering it up, and blatantly lying about what they had done, this report, explaining why the super-rich rush now to buy nuclear-proof bunkers, violates that ban. As a consequence, probably none of the hundreds of major news-media in The West that this news-report is being submitted to for publication, will publish it. But perhaps a half-dozen of the small ones will publish it. After all: a few small news-media cannot have much impact. The government and media don’t need to fool everyone in order to succeed, but only to fool the vast majority of people. (However, maybe now they don’t any longer even need to continue worrying about public opinion, at all. So: maybe they no longer need to continue such bans. But they do continue them, perhaps simply out of institutionalized bad habit.)

  Wherever you’re so fortunate as to be reading this: here is the reason why the market for luxurious deep-underground nuclear-resistant bunkers has so suddenly blossomed:

  

  In February 2014, an extremely violent, and US-engineered but ‘democracy’-masked, coup in Ukraine on Russia’s very doorstep, was successfully culminated by its overthrowing Ukraine’s neutralist and democratically elected leader, and then by its installing there a rabidly anti-Russian government, out for Russian blood, just like Hitler had been, and, in fact, strongly inspired by him, in many ways, including an ethnic-cleansing campaign. Within less than a month, Russia responded to that coup by accepting the still predominantly Russian Crimea back into Russia. (Crimea had been part of Russia until the Soviet dictator had arbitrarily transferred it to Ukraine in 1954.) For Russia’s having done that, US President Barack Obama (and America’s foreign vassals) slapped economic sanctions against Russia and mobilized NATO troops and weaponry onto and near Russia’s borders — as if they wanted to out-do 1962’s Cuban Missile Crisis, which they are doing, but in reverse direction (against not America, but, this time, against Russia). 

  Ever since that singular 2014 event — that coup (which destroyed Ukraine) — the hottest market amongst the super-rich has been nuclear-resistant bunkers deep underground: such as here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here. 

  I think that the three best of these articles about luxury nuclear bunkers, are this (with the best pictures of one of these facilities) and this (with the best commentary about the entire phenomenon), and this, which discusses the increasing number of builders of these facilities. Some billionaires, however, are instead moving to New Zealand. 

  So: ever since 2014, private planning to survive a nuclear war is the most booming field amongst the super-rich. This is a real-estate market that no ordinary person could afford to buy into. These people are either principals themselves in the aristocracy, or else prime agents for them and thus likewise extremely wealthy and already well on their own personal ways to entering the aristocracy — the aristocracy of extreme wealth. They’re thus all well-connected; they’ve got the best contacts and sources inside governments. And, since 2014, they are rushing to prepare: to prepare for a nuclear war.

  If these people aren’t well-informed about the global situation, then no one is. And they’re investing accordingly. Lots of people invest in stocks, bonds, gold, etc, but only the richest few can afford to invest in nuclear-resistant bunkers, and that’s where the boom nowadays especially is, amongst only the super-rich. (We’re not talking here about high government-officials; they’ve got their Spartan nuclear bunkers long-since paid for by US taxpayers; but these are all just private and extremely wealthy individuals.) Maybe their attitude is: if you’ve got three-or-more homes, then at least one of them should be designed for the post-WW-III world and near enough to your main home so that maybe you can reach it before any missiles will be flying.

  A nuclear war between US and Russia would be over within less than 30 minutes, start-to-finish; so, there won’t be any time to plan if the nuclear phase of the NATO-v.-Russia (plus, maybe China) war appears to be imminent — waiting that long in order to depart for one’s private bomb-shelter would already be too late. A quick ‘vacation’ to the secret location would thus necessarily be of the unplanned sort, which means that the system by which the owner will reach the spot, needs to be operational 24 hours every day, and needs to be maintained continuously, until — if and when — the nuclear exchange starts. Therefore, these facilities have airports and helicopter-access, and are continuously staffed, so that the richest people in the US and its allied countries, can arrive there at any moment’s notice and receive the full range of services that they are accustomed to.

  Any of these billionaires and centi-millionaires could have chosen instead to establish (either alone or in combination with one-another) the first foundation or other propaganda-operation to publicize the fraudulence of the US-and-allied case for sanctions against Russia, and the fraudulence of NATO’s continuing assertions after 1991 that it’s a ‘defensive’ military alliance (it’s no longer that, at all), and the fact (contrasted against that fraud) of NATO’s being nowadays purely an alliance for aggression against Russia and China, as if the Cold War had never ended (and it never really did end except on the Russian and Chinese side, which now recognize that the US and its allies had lied in 1990); so, all of these billionaires rather buy private nuclear-bomb shelters, than establish a foundation to expose to the public the US side’s apocalyptic lies, which actually cause the danger that’s heading to destroy the entire world.

  America’s own leading scientists on strategic weaponry have recently (on 1 March 2017) documented that the US nuclear-weapons-modernization program against both Russia and China is “planning to have the capacity to fight and win a nuclear war by disarming enemies with a surprise first strike.” Obviously, only the most-insiders of insiders will know in advance about this “surprise first strike.” (Otherwise, it wouldn’t be a surprise, and the advantage of being the first to attack will be gone.) However, nuclear-proof bunker-space is presumably so limited so that the people who are buying these few spots will be amongst those few. (Of course, high federal officials will be taken care of elsewhere.)

  Ever since at least 2006, America’s Establishment — its billionaires and their agents — have been virtually unanimously and actively supporting the abandonment of the “Mutually Assured Destruction” concept that had long dominated nuclear thinking on both sides (not only on the Soviet and continuing under the Russian side, but also on that of America and its NATO military alliance) and have been replacing that paradigm, the “M.A.D.” paradigm (which has staved off WW III ever since 1945). They replaced it by the US-NATO paradigm (ever since at least 2006) of “Nuclear Primacy,” in which The West’s nuclear weapons are to be used not to stave off WW III, but instead so as to achieve ‘victory’ in an actual US-v.-Russia nuclear war. Ever since 2014, US-and-allied military moves cannot be coherently explained on any other basis than that the US and NATO are planning a blitz nuclear attack against at least Russia — and perhaps also against China.

  Clearly, whoever are buying these luxury-pads for the post-apocalypse, are hoping for a NATO ‘victory’ in WW III, and are certainly not favorably inclined to preventing that armageddon, which they know is based on lies (unless they’re too stupid to be able to distinguish between their own propaganda versus the actual historical reality, which is documented in the links here, which links show that any decent billionaire in The West would instead be publicly exposing the horrific fraud that’s perpetrated by all of themselves, not trying to protect themselves from that fraud’s immediate global consequences).

  Unfortunately, these people are the ultimate “conformists.” It’s clear by their 100% unity on this. They’ve become so gated-community, one-way-glassed, that they’ve no concern remaining (if they ever did) for the billions of people (not to mention entire planet) that they’re placing into the severest form of danger: global annihilation. Instead, their only concern (quite evidently) is to be ‘winners’. Like I had said at that last link: “In military parlance, the side that suffers the less harm is the ‘winner’, regardless of any other factor. That’s the basic reality of military strategy: it’s inevitably win-lose, not win-win.” However, M.A.D. was the first-ever exception to that strategic principle; and, now, it’s gone — as of 2006 in US, and by now also in Russia (if not also in China). M.A.D. is gone; it’s been replaced by a real insanity, which is clearly psychopathic and clearly pervasive amongst the super-rich: “Nuclear Primacy”.

  The psychological reality that had long staved off a WW III is completely gone. And the people who have caused it to end are now buying all these nuclear bunkers for themselves.

  In a rare exception to the unanimity of the US aristocracy’s voices regarding what’s behind this change (which cause is the stifling nazi or racist-fascist ideology at the top in America), the capitol-hill newspaper, The Hill, allowed to be published on 9 November 2017, an article — even with numerous links to high-quality sources — titled “The reality of neo-Nazis in Ukraine is far from Kremlin propaganda”. An indication of just how extraordinarily thorough the takeover of the US Government by nazis has become, is that both under President Barack Obama and under President Donald Trump, the US has been among the only 3 countries (in Obama’s case) and the only two countries (in Trump’s) that officially stood up at the United Nations in support of nazism, even of its Holocaust-denial. On both occasions, Ukraine joined with the US on that vote. On one occasion, Canada also did (thus being the third). This scandal was virtually entirely ignored in the Western ‘news’ media.

  This is the world we are living in today. How many ‘news’ media are reporting this reality? How many have reported it? Just one billionaire standing out from the pack, so as to reach the masses with these truths, could make a whole world of difference. But, instead, perhaps they’re all just buying nuclear bunkers, so as to be amongst the few ‘winners’, in a war on behalf of the global regime that represents, actually, only themselves.

  This is the catastrophe of our times.

  

• Visualizing America's Gold-Plated Cabinet

  When President Trump was elected to the Oval Office with a net worth in the billions, it was clear that this presidency would be unique.

  Not only did he himself come a successful business background, but, as Visual Capitalist’s Jeff Desjardins notes, he wanted the people surrounding him to have similar backgrounds as well.

  In 2016, the newly elected Trump was quoted as saying he wanted to have people in his cabinet that “made a fortune”, also stating that he was putting together “one of the great cabinets that has ever been assembled in the history of our nation.”

  COMPARING FIRST-TERM CABINETS

  Today’s chart, which also appears on the back cover of Politico Magazine (web version found here), shows the wealth of initial cabinets put together by the last three presidents: Trump, Obama, and Bush.

  

  Courtesy of: Visual Capitalist

  Here’s how they stack up, in terms of aggregate wealth:

  

  Trump’s cabinet is worth a cool $2.33 billion – about 35x the size of Barack Obama’s initial cabinet, and 7x the size of George W. Bush’s first.

  Interestingly, the top four people (in terms of wealth) are all in Trump’s:

  

  Betsy DeVos ($1.1 billion) sits atop as the wealthiest person in all three initial cabinets – and Wilbur Ross ($506.5 million), Rex Tillerson ($294.5 million), and Steve Mnuchin ($252.0 million) round out the other top spots.

  Meanwhile, Donald Rumsfeld ($151.9 million) was the richest person outside of Trump’s cabinet.

  OBAMA’S SECOND TERM

  While the comparisons in the chart are all for initial cabinets, it is worth noting that Obama’s second cabinet was not so modest.

  He elected to bring in Penny Pritzker as the U.S. Secretary of Commerce, who was worth $2.2 billion – almost the combined net worth of Trump’s cabinet today!

  

• Are Nuclear Weapons In A Multipolar World Order A Guarantee For Peace?

  Authored by Federico Pieracinni via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

  In the previous article I explained how the invention of the nuclear device altered the balance of power after WWII and during the cold war era. In this second article I intend to explain why nuclear-armed powers decrease the likelihood of a nuclear apocalypse, as counterintuitive as it seems.

  

  With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989, the power that had hitherto counterbalanced the US ceased to exist. The world order changed again, this time becoming unipolar, bringing in its wake 30 years of death and destruction to practically every corner of the globe, particularly to the Middle East, Europe and Asia. With the end of a balance of power, the prospect of an American century (PNAC), so cherished by the neoconservatives and other fanatics of American exceptionalism, became real (see parts 2, 3 and 4 of an earlier series). For policymakers in Washington, the world was transformed into a battlefield, and the quest for global hegemony was the new (unrealistic) goal to be achieved.

  What has happened over the last thirty years is still fresh in everybody’s minds, with the United States ready to invade and bomb dozens of countries, in particular Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Serbia, Syria and Libya. Further chaos was wrought on the globe through the Arab Spring, armed coups and color revolutions. Every means was used to spread the influence of the United States across the globe, from the financial terrorism of bodies like Wall Street and the IMF, to the real terrorism of battalions of neo-Nazi extremists in Ukraine or fanatical Islamists in Syria and Libya. Washington’s actions have placed continuous pressure on those it deems its mortal enemies, particularly over the last 10 years. Iran and North Korea have been living under this pressure for decades. China and Russia, thanks to economic growth and military power, have been able to put to a halt the attempts of American neoconservatives and liberal interventionists to alter the balance of power in the world. Until only recently, Washington did not even recognize any peer competitors. But we could suggest that since Crimea returned to being part of the Russian Federation in 2014, the America’s unipolar moment has been fading.

  The focus of this analysis therefore concerns the current state of international relations that is passing into a new phase. Rather than focusing on the two Eurasian powers (as has been done in the past), attention is brought to the entirely new multipolar world order together with the need to take into account the existence of nuclear weapons. This is a new situation never seen before: multiple world powers contending with the famous doctrine of MAD.

  In fact, if we look at the world since the introduction of nuclear weapons, we recognize three distinct periods. The first one goes from 1945 to 1949; the second from 1949 to 1989; and the third from 1989 to 2014. Undoubtedly the greatest danger existed during the first phase, even if history has managed to hide it well. The US intended during that time to eliminate the USSR while it still enjoyed a monopoly on nuclear weapons. Fortunately, the Soviet acquisition of its own nuclear weapons took this option away from the United States. It was only after the disappearance of the world’s other balancing power that the remaining hegemonic power felt free to do as it wished, acting like a bull in a China shop and unleashing conflagrations around the globe.

  The new era before us opens up many risks, with the rivalry between Russia and the United States escalating and with Beijing and Washington at loggerheads in Southeast Asia. But it could also be the beginning of an era of absolute strategic parity. The major point is that we have never seen a similar situation in history, where contending powers have the ability annihilate each other in the space of a few minutes, probably bringing humanity to extinction in the process. Such a destructive scenario is improbable precisely because of its destructiveness. If it is not to be outright excluded as a possibility, then it ought to be considered highly unlikely. The famous One Percent ruling over and controlling much of our lives would have a hard time thriving with five to six billion less human beings on the planet. The prospect of Armageddon cannot be contemplated by countries whose primary objective is survival. Trump, Putin and Xi Jinping must ensure the survival of their societies at any cost, and the use of nuclear weapons against other nuclear powers does not cohere with the natural instinct for survival.

  In recent years, the impetus for a multipolar order must be attributed to Washington’s continuous quest for global hegemony, spreading wars and terror across the globe in the process. Given that national survival is the priority of states, it is easy to see why counterweights to American domination have arisen in Europe, the Middle East and Asia. Small countries have seen the need to rely on more powerful countries like Russia and China to help protect them from the playground bully. Recent developments in the Middle East, Europe and Asia have had something to do with the confrontation between Washington and Beijing or Moscow and its regional allies. In the Middle East, Iran is targeted as well as other countries within Tehran’s orbit. In Europe, countries that are politically close to Moscow are frowned upon. And in Asia, Washington’s priority seems to be to undo any alliances Beijing has managed to create with its neighbours.

  The delusive quest for global hegemony, combined with continuous US military failures, has led to the emergence of a multipolar reality, with two new poles now opposing Washington. Twenty years after the end of the bipolar era, the unipolar era has also come to an end.

  The tension has continued to build up in recent years, with Moscow and Beijing responding with various countermeasures, especially in the field of delivery vehicles for nuclear weapons and anti-ballistic missile systems. The efforts of Beijing and Moscow have been notable in the creation of nuclear systems able to overcome any recent missile-defence systems. Likewise, US nuclear deterrence is being questioned in the recently released US nuclear doctrine. Trump wants to spend nearly $1 trillion over 10 years to upgrade and replace many of the essential elements of the US nuclear package, ranging from ICBMs and strategic bombers through to nuclear submarines. Even Beijing plans to create stealth bombers that can deflower America’s virgin skies and devastate the country. In the experimental field are included such things as the Russian nuclear-powered underwater drone, as well as other systems as yet unknown to the public. Another important note is to assess a country’s defence capabilities against a nuclear attack.

  This is a military program that Russia, the United States and China have worked hard on, given the importance of advancing technologically with anti-ballistic missile (ABM) systems. The primary objective of governments is the defence of their country. In a context where other nations are armed with nuclear devices, ABM systems become a priority to impede foreign aggressions with nuclear weapons. Fortunately for the human race, the ability to stop a nuclear attack is not the sole reserve of any one nation, and it will be difficult to change certain balances of power in the short term. Acquiring a fully functional missile shield as the ABM intend to be is understandably on the bucket lists of Moscow, Beijing and Washington. Contrary to what one would think, it is precisely because ABM systems are unable to stop nuclear strikes that a nuclear war is highly improbable.

  The multipolar world order exists in an environment that contains nuclear weapons, representing an unprecedented situation for humanity, one that could entail a new balance between powers. The same reason that led NATO not to participate directly in the Ukrainian crisis of 2014 also led Washington to be reluctant to arm its Islamist proxies on the ground in Syria with particularly effective weapons like surface-to-air missiles. The reason was to avoid entering into a direct conflict with Moscow in both Ukraine and Syria. The prospect of such a clash raises fears of an escalation that could easily get out of hand and become nuclear.

  Such a prospect of a clash between powers that could lead to an escalation that is unacceptable highlights what has been discussed thus far. In a multipolar world order, instability is a constant factor, the actions of one’s opponents being unpredictable. But when nuclear weapons are a factor, uncertainty is replaced with certainty, such that a decapitating strike by Washington on Moscow or Beijing would certainly entail a nuclear response by the latter. With such certainties, the likelihood of direct or indirect contact between peer competitors becomes highly unlikely. Even when involving smaller countries, confrontation can advance only to a certain level, becoming untenable once it threatens the involvement of bigger, nuclear-armed powers. The recent shooting down of an Israeli aircraft, and the exchange of missiles between Israel and Syria, shows how a regional clash, even if limited, is ruled out by the danger of Russia and America becoming involved. The same situation obtains in Asia, with tensions being present between Pakistan and India, India and China, and the DPRK and the United States. Mutually assured destruction is certainly an effective means of keeping a lid on things and maintaining regional balances.

  The next fifty years are likely to continue under a multipolar world order, with the four possible poles of Beijing, Moscow, New Delhi and Washington. These four great powers, with strong nationalistic sentiments, reminds one of the situation in the early twentieth century. Normally we would be in a World War I scenario, with powers struggling with each other for dominance. But because of the likely escalation of confrontation between powers into nuclear warfare and Armageddon, the contemporary world order seems to promise a return to political realism and the balance between powers.

  We are facing an unprecedented situation for humanity, one where a stability lasting several decades may be achievable. The greatest danger comes from placing too much stock in ABM systems, which beguiles the foolhardy with the delusion that a decapitating strike may be possible thanks to a magic shield that protects the aggressor from any nuclear retaliation. As long as the principle of MAD remains intact, we will avoid a global catastrophe. Which is fortunate for humanity.

  

• Hillary: Trump Voters "Didn't Like Black People Getting Rights" or "Women Getting Jobs"

  Taking a break from her girls’ trip to India with top aide Huma Abedin and an unknown blonde woman, Hillary Clinton told a Mumbai audience that Americans don’t “deserve” Donald Trump as President, and that Trump voters hate black people, women, and Indian Americans.

  

  “I would have to say, no, we did not deserve that,” said Clinton at the Saturday event, adding “He ran the first reality TV campaign and he was the first reality TV candidate.”  

  “If you watch reality TV, you know it means that the person who is the most outrageous, the person who says the politically incorrect things, the person who’s insulting and attacking, drives big ratings,” said the failed presidential candidate. 

  Hillary then called Trump voters racists and misogynists: 

  …I won the places that represent 2/3 of America’s gross domestic product. So I won the areas that are optimistic, diverse, dynamic, moving forward. And his whole campaign “Make America Great Again,” was looking backwards.

  You know, you didn’t like black people getting rights, you don’t like women, you know, getting jobs, you don’t wanna see that Indian American succeeding more than you are. 

  Bitter Hillary Clinton suggests to audience in Mumbai, India that voters who supported Trump in 2016 did so because they “didn’t like black people getting rights,” or women getting jobs. pic.twitter.com/bJGkvMhEHS

  — Josh Caplan (@joshdcaplan) March 12, 2018

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  Perhaps Clinton – whose “charitable” foundation paid top executive women $190,000 less than men, and had an average gender pay gap of $81,000 – forgot that black unemployment recently hit at an all time low under President Trump. But hey, all the racist Trump voters are why she lost…

  Speaking of excuses, the Daily Mail has created a handy list of all the other reasons Hillary failed to win the White House that’s simply too comprehensive not to share:

  JAMES COMEY

  Clinton is furious that Comey, then the FBI director, publicly revealed the re-opening of the secret email server investigation just before election day – and has said so time after time after time.

  THE FBI  

  Comey’s entire organization does not escape her wrath. 

  ‘The FBI wasn’t the Federal Bureau of Ifs or Innuendoes. Its job was to find out the facts,’ she writes in What Happened.

  VLADIMIR PUTIN

  ‘There’s no doubt in my mind that Putin wanted me to lose and wanted Trump to win,’ she told USA Today in September last year while promoting What Happened. 

  It was hardly a new theme. As early as December the New York Times obtained audio in which she told her donors: ‘Putin publicly blamed me for the outpouring of outrage by his own people, and that is the direct line between what he said back then and what he did in this election.’  

  THE RUSSIANS

  Putin’s entire apparatus gets a name-check. In May she told the Codecon convention how ‘1,000 Russian agents’ had filled Facebook with ‘fake news’.

  She told NPR ‘my path toward November was being disrupted with Russians’.

  WIKILEAKS 

  The ‘transparency website’ is consistently ranked along with Comey by Clinton at the top of her blame list.

  She told NPR : ‘Unfortunately the Comey letter, aided to great measure by the Russian WikiLeaks, raised all those doubts again.’

  And she writes of its founder Julian Assange in What Happened: ‘In my view, Assange is a hypocrite who deserves to be held accountable for his actions.’

  LOW INFORMATION VOTERS

  ‘You put yourself in the position of a low information voter, and all of a sudden your Facebook feed, your Twitter account is saying, “Oh my gosh, Hillary Clinton is running a child trafficking operation in Washington with John Podesta.”,’ she told the Codecon convention in May.

  ‘Well you don’t believe it but this has been such an unbelievable election, you kind of go, ‘Oh maybe I better look into that.”

  THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE

  ‘We have an electoral college problem. It’s an anachronism,’ she told Vox. 

  ANTI-AMERICAN FORCES

  ‘I think it’s important that we learn the real lessons from this last campaign because the forces that we are up against are not just interested in influencing our elections and our politics, they’re going after our economy and they’re going after our unity as a nation,’ she told Codecon in May.

  ‘What is hard for people to really accept – although now after the election there’s greater understanding – is that there are forces in our country – put the Russians to one side – who have been fighting rear guard actions for as long as I’ve been alive because my life coincided with the Civil Rights movement, with the women’s rights movement, with anti-war protesting, with the impeachment.

  EVERYONE WHO ASSUMED SHE WOULD WIN

  ‘I was the victim of a very broad assumption that I was going to win,’ she told the Codecon convention.

  BAD POLLING NUMBERS

  Clinton says polls in key states did not serve her. 

  ‘I think polling is going to have to undergo some revisions in how they actually measure people,’ she told the Codecon convention.

  ‘How they reach people. The best assessments as of right now are that the polling was not that inaccurate, but it was predominantly national polling and I won nationally.’

  BARACK OBAMA 

  Clinton has two beefs with Obama: one of them being that he won two terms. Clinton says that succeeding an incumbent is almost impossible for a Democrat.

  ‘No non-incumbent Democrat had run successfully to succeed another two-termer since Vice President Martin Van Buren won in 1836,’ she writes in What Happened.

  But she also says his response to the Russian campaign of interference wasn’t enough.

  ‘I do wonder sometimes about what would have happened if President Obama had made a televised address to the nation in the fall of 2016 warning that our democracy was under attack,’ she writes in What Happened. 

  WHITE WOMEN

  ‘I believe absent Comey, I might’ve picked up 1 or 2 points among white women,’ she told Vox in September.

  ‘White woman… are really quite politically dependent on their view of their own security and their own position in society what works and doesn’t work for them.’

  THE NEW YORK TIMES

  The newspaper was blamed as early as May at the Codecon conference in Rancho Palos Verde, California.

  She singled out its managing editor Dean Baquet – the paper’s most senior editor – and said of coverage of her email issue under his direction: ‘They covered it like it was Pearl Harbor.’

  JOE BIDEN

  Biden could have run against her and didn’t. But Clinton writes: ‘Joe Biden said the Democratic Party in 2016 ‘did not talk about what it always stood for—and that was how to maintain a burgeoning middle class.’

  ‘I find this fairly remarkable, considering that Joe himself campaigned for me all over the Midwest and talked plenty about the middle class.’

  BERNIE SANDERS

  ‘His attacks caused lasting damage, making it harder to unify progressives in the general election and paving the way for Trump’s ‘Crooked Hillary’ campaign,’ she writes in What Happened.

  ‘I don’t know if that bothered Bernie or not.’

  BERNIE BROS 

  ‘Some of his supporters, the so-called Bernie Bros, took to harassing my supporters online. It got ugly and more than a little sexist,’ she writes in What Happened. 

  PEOPLE WANTING CHANGE

  ‘I thought, at end of day, people would say, look, we do want change, and we want the right kind of change, and we want change that is realistic and is going to make difference in my life and my family’s life and my paycheck,’ she told Vox.

  ‘That’s what I was offering. And I didn’t in any way want to feed into this, not just radical political argument that was being made on other side, but very negative cultural argument about who we are as Americans.’

  MISOGYNISTS

  Asked by CNN’s Christine Amanpour at the Women for Women International event in new York in May if misogyny was to blame she said: ‘Yes, I do think it played a role.’  

  TELEVISION EXECUTIVES

  ‘When you have a presidential campaign and the total number of minutes on TV news, which is still how most people get their information, covering all of our policies, climate change, anything else was 32 minutes, I don’t blame voters,’ she told The View.

  ‘They don’t get a broad base of information to make decision on. The more outrageous you are, the more inflammatory you are, the higher the ratings are.’

  NETFLIX

  Hillary does not do Netflix and chill – or if she does, she doesn’t find it very relaxing.

  ‘Eight of the top 10 political documentaries on Netflix were screeds against President Obama and me,’ she claimed at the Codecon convention.

  FACEBOOK

  ‘If you look at Facebook the vast majority of the news items posted were fake. They were connected to as we now know the 1,000 Russian agents who were involved in delivering those messages,’ she told Codecon.

  TWITTER

  Usually mentioned in the same breath as Facebook, the micro-blogging site is seen by Clinton as one of the reasons for her loss. 

  She told the Codecon convention in may that Trump had a method in his tweets.

  ‘They want to influence your reality. That to me is what we’re up against, and we can’t let that go unanswered,’ she said.

  CONTENT FARMS IN MACEDONIA

  ‘Through content farms, through an enormous investment in falsehoods, fake news, call it what you will – lies, that’s a good word too – the other side was using content that was flat out false,’ she told the Codecon convention in May. 

  ‘They were conveying this weaponized information and the content of it, and they were running, y’know there’s all these stories, about y’know, and you know I’ve seen them now, and you sit there and it looks like you know sort of low level CNN operation, or a fake newspaper.’

  CAMPAIGN FINANCE

  ‘You had Citizens United come to its full fruition.’ she told Codecon in May.

  ‘So unaccountable money flowing in against me, against other Democrats, in a way that we hadn’t seen and then attached to this weaponized information war.

  THE MEDIA

  ‘American journalists who eagerly and uncritically repeated whatever WikiLeaks dished out during the campaign could learn from the responsible way the French press handled the hack of Macron,’ she writes in What Happened. 

  Now-president Macron had a massive tranche of his emails hacked and released shortly before the French voted. Many outlets did not report on their contents.  

  STEVE BANNON AND BREITBART

  ‘Provided the untrue stories,’ she told the Codecon convention in May. 

  THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY 

  ‘I set up my campaign and we have our own data operation. I get the nomination. So I’m now the nominee of the Democratic Party. I inherit nothing from the Democratic Party,’ Clinton said told the Codecon convention in May.

   ‘I mean, it was bankrupt. It was on the verge of insolvency. Its data was mediocre to poor, nonexistent, wrong. I had to inject money into it.’

  THE REPUBLICAN PARTY

  The Republicans were far better prepared for a campaign than the Democrats she claimed, when it came to money and data, telling the Codecon convention: ‘So Trump becomes the nominee and he is basically handed this tried and true, effective foundation.’ 

  CAMBRIDGE ANALYTICA

  The data-targeting firm ultimately owned by Robert Mercer, the billionaire Breitbart backer, and his family, is said to have targeted voters to drive them away from Clinton.

  ‘They ultimately added something and I think again we’d better understand that. The Mercers did not invest all that money for their own amusement,’ she told the Codecon convention.

  WOMEN PROTESTERS

  The massive demonstrations in Washington and other cities in the wake of the election were organized as an immediate response to Clinton’s shock defeat.

  But that did not stop Clinton from writing in What Happened: ‘I couldn’t help but ask where those feelings of solidarity, outrage and passion had been during the election.’

  MATT LAUER

  The NBC Today show anchor quizzed both candidates at a ‘commander-in-chief forum’ on board Intrepid in New York. 

  But Clinton – who went first in the back-to-back interviews, complained about Lauer focusing on her secret server and whether it raised questions over her trustworthiness.

  ‘Lauer had turned what should have been a serious discussion into a pointless ambush. What a waste of time,’ she writes in What Happened. She later delighted in his firing for sexual misconduct, saying in December: ‘Every day I believe more in karma.’ 

  WHITE VOTERS

  ‘White voters have been fleeing the Democratic party ever since Lyndon Johnson predicted they would,’ she told Vox.  

  DEMOCRATIC DOCUMENTARY MAKERS 

  ‘We’re not making the documentaries that we’re going to get onto Netflix,’ she told Codecon.

  She was asked by the interviewer: ‘This is because Hollywood isn’t liberal enough?’

  ‘No, it’s because Democrats aren’t putting their money there,’ she replied. 

  BENGHAZI INVESTIGATORS

  The attacks on the U.S. diplomatic compound in the Libyan city of Benghazi on September 11, 2012, happened when Clinton was Secretary of State. It claimed four American lives, and was the focus of intense investigation by Congress.  

  Clinton told the Today show: ‘Take the Benghazi tragedy – you know, I have one of the top Republicans, Kevin McCarthy, admitting we’re going to take that tragedy – because, you know, we’ve lost people, unfortunately, going back to the Reagan administration, if you talk about recent times, in diplomatic attacks.

  ‘But boy, it was turned into a political football. And it was aimed at undermining my credibility, my record, my accomplishments.’

  VOTER SUPPRESSION

  Suppressing her voters was named by Clinton as one of the major factors in her defeat in her interview on the Today show when she rattled off her laundry list. ‘What was at work here?’ she said.

  ‘In addition to the mistakes that I made, which I recount in the book, what about endemic sexism and misogyny, not just in politics but in our society, what about the unprecedented action of the FBI director,  what about the interference of an adversary nation, what about voter suppression?’ 

  It was a return to a theme – she suggested it was a problem in Wisconsin in an interview in May with New York magazine.

  ‘I would have won had I not been subjected to the unprecedented attacks by Comey and the Russians, aided and abetted by the suppression of the vote, particularly in Wisconsin,’ she said. 

  ‘Republicans learned that if you suppress votes you win.’

  MITCH McCONNELL

  The Senate majority leader is accused of stopping the Obama administration from revealing what Clinton says the Russians were up to, helping tip the balance against her because he did not want a third successive Democratic term in the White House.  

  ‘Mitch McConnell, in what I think of as a not only unpatriotic but despicable act of partisan politics, made it clear that if the Obama Administration spoke publicly about what they knew [on Russia], he would accuse them of partisan politics, of trying to tip the balance toward me,’ she told the New Yorker.   

  THE SUPREME COURT

  Clinton claims the Supreme Court watered down the Voting Rights Act at the Codecon convention.

  ‘You had effective suppression of votes,’ she said.

  ‘I was in the senate when we voted 98-0 under a Republican president, George W Bush, to extend the Voting Rights Act and the Supreme Court says ‘oh we don’t need it any more’ , throws it out, and Republican governors and legislatures began doing everything they could to suppress the votes.’

  Clinton appears to be referring to Second 4(b) of the Act being ruled unconstitutional by the court in 2013, because it relied on out of date data which meant it was not in line with the 15th Amendment. 

  FATHERS, HUSBANDS, BOYFRIENDS, AND MALE BOSSES

  Clinton says that James Comey’s actions in re-opening the FBI investigation allowed men to influence their wives or girlfriends.

  ‘Women will have no empathy for you because they will be under tremendous pressure – and I’m talking principally about white women – they will be under tremendous pressure from fathers, and husbands, and boyfriends and male employers, not to vote for ‘the girl’,’ she told NPR. 

  THE INVISIBLE STATE

  The newest addition to the list: named by her confidante Lanny Davis as the reason she lost at a reading of his book while Hillary nodded along in approval. 

   

  

• Synchronized Global Growth is Ending: Shocks Come Next

  Authored by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk.com,

  Economic pleasant surprises are in the past, as is the buildup of the balance sheet. The future is deleveraging.

  Alarm bells are ringing. No one cares. By now, everyone knows stock only go up.

  For those in tune with other ideas, Financial Times writer Stephen King suggests the Global Economy is Due for a Downswing.

  

  Jim Bianco at Bianco Research comments on synchronized growth in his report Concerted Economic Growth is in Jeopardy of Ending.

  Summary

  Less than 50% of the world’s economies are now producing economic data surprises. Realized economic data following suit in the months to come would remove the tailwind of ‘concerted economic growth’ for risk assets and central banks. Emerging markets may be first on the list to experience higher volatility.

  Comment

  We have all been discussing ‘concerted global economic growth’ since early 2017 as a tailwind to risk assets and central bank policies. The chart below shows the percentage of the world’s economies producing economic data surprises (orange line) and above-average data changes (blue line) since 2004.

  Over 90% of economies were indeed posting realized data changes at above-average growth rates in mid-2017. However, reported data has slowed its ascent over the past month led by the Eurozone and Canada. The percentage of economies with upside surprises has fallen to 44%, which has been a leading indicator for actual data changes like payrolls, industrial production, and durable goods orders. Above-average data changes have also rolled over to 67%. A break below 50% would mean ‘concerted economic growth’ should no longer be proclaimed.

  Economic Misses

  

  The next chart offers the median returns by major asset classes after the percentage of economies growing above-average falls below 60%. The impact is not immediate, but higher volatility and drawdowns do ensue over the following months.

  We expect U.S. Treasuries will slow their climb in this event, helping promote more steady, positive returns by the likes of municipal bonds. Emerging markets, U.S. high yield, and the S&P 500 are not necessarily expected to tumble, but higher volatility will remain the theme.

  

  That’s a portion of the article, click on the link for a free trial and the rest of it. No credit cards required.

  Optimistic View

  Compared to me, John Hussman, GMO, and a handful of others, Bianco presents an optimistic view. Then again, I am not watching the next 3-4 months. I am concerned about the next seven years.

  What most caught my eye is Bianco’s view on the MSCI World Index and US treasuries.

  Typically, rot starts at the periphery, the spreads to the core. Anyone remember subprime? Eventually, it all became subprime.

  It’s going to happen again.

  Arithmetic of Risk

  Stocks are tremendously overvalued. In Sucker Traps and the Arithmetic of Risk I noted that some expect equities to decline as much as 67% from here.

  

  I think we are somewhere in the box as shown.

  Unlike Bianco, I won’t put a timeframe on much of anything. But note his big winner: 10-year US treasuries.

  This is at a time when most of the rest of the world is screaming inflation.

  My view is that Inflation is in the Rear-View Mirror.

  Debt-deflation is on the way and gold will be the beneficiary. If you disagree, please read the above article before moaning.

  My definition of inflation may not be the same as yours. Mine is based on real-world economics, and we are in for a world of hurt.

  

• Russia Retires "Satan": Moscow Replaces Massive Soviet-Era ICBM With Hypersonic Nuke

  Just as the US is in the process of modernizing its nuclear arsenal  (at a cost which could be north of $1 trillion), Russia too will begin scrapping its family of outdated Soviet-era R-36M ICBMs, better known by their NATO designation “Satan“, according to the Russian Defense Ministry. The replacement missile will be the recently introduced RS-28 Sarmat, which we learned two weeks ago boasts cutting-edge, hypersonic capabilities.

  The video below showcases the original “Satan” in its glory days:

  And here is the RS-28 Sarmat, aka “Satan II.”

  “[The Satan missile] is at the end of its life span, and we are about to start discarding that missile,” the Russian Deputy Defense Minister Yury Borisov said. Borisov did not elaborate on the exact model though.

  The R-36M intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) was first deployed in 1975, becoming the most powerful silo-based strategic nuclear munition in the world. Two further modifications of the missile were made since then, and its booster stage also received tweaks according to RT.

  The latest modification of the liquid-propelled missile is known in Russia as R-36M2 Voevoda, but in the West it’s dubbed with the fearsome name, “Satan.” The aging weapon will be replaced with new-generation Sarmat missiles, which are to become the latest additions to Russian arsenal, Borisov said.

  

  “There is no doubt that by the end of Voevoda’s resource capabilities, we will get new Sarmat missiles,” he said.

  The ICBM is capable of overcoming missile defense systems and has already completed tests, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced during his state of the nation address on March 1.

  The missile has “practically no range restrictions” and is capable of carrying a wide range of nuclear weapons. Sarmat missiles are compatible with existing R-36M silos and can fit into them with just some minor modification.

  Just hours after Russia showcased its latest nuclear ICBM, a Darpa director demanded  much more funding to avoid falling behind Russia (and China) in the hypersonic arms race.

  

• America's Troll Farm Media

  Authored by Gerald Sussman via CounterPunch.org,

  Despite all the smoke and mirrors, most Americans seem to see where the stenographers of corporate capitalism are taking us. A recent Gallup poll found that while 84% of Americans see media as “critical” or “very important” to democracy, only 28% see the corporatist mainstream news media (MSM) as actually supporting democracy. They’re right on both counts of course.  The quality of a democracy is only as good as the information people have to make informed judgements about public policy and politicians.

  

  Even as the mainstream news media continue to lose street cred, they persist in a rumor-saturated full court press against the “Trump-Putin presidency,” which only further exposes their lack of professionalism and increasing vulgarity. MSM management and their boardroom bosses have long understood that as long as they spice up their “nothing burger” news, ratings and advertising rates will keep them in business and please their commercial and government clients. Tabloid journalism, which can describe most American mainstream media these days, even when wrapped up as “all the news that’s fit to print,” is in constant search of sensation, scandal, gossip, and profit – and only occasionally in public-oriented investigative integrity.

  What else does the citizenry have to say? A mere 18% have “a lot” of trust in the MSM, while 74% see them as “biased” (Pew Research, July 2016). A study by the Harvard-Harris polling organization in May 2017 confirmed this, finding that 65 percent of Americans consider the so-called “free press” biased, obsessed with scandal, and full of “fake news” and therefore cannot be trusted. Among the concurring are a majority of both Democrats (53%) and Independents (60%) as well as 80% of Republicans. Amongst the “informed public,” trust in American institutions in general, that is, the government, business, NGOs, and the MSM, is going through the worst crisis in recorded history, according to the marketing firm Edelman in 2018. The US is the lowest rated of the 28 countries surveyed by the firm on this measure. This is not consistent with the image of a serious “democracy.”

  On the MSM coverage of national politics, Americans are equally skeptical. A June 2017 Rasmussen survey of likely American voters indicated that 50% think most reporters are prejudiced against the president, and only 4% believe most reporters are biased in Trump’s favor. Although this is weighted by the 76% of Republicans who support this view, the study also found that 51% of independent voters and even 24% of Democrats also agree. Aided by the billions of dollars of free, almost all negative, publicity the MSM provided, with apparent reverse effect during the presidential campaign, Trump’s standing is also supported by the 47 million American shock troops that faithfully follow him on Twitter.

  On January 27, 2018, the Washington Post editorial board issued this statement: “A foreign power interfered in the 2016 presidential election. U.S. law enforcement is trying to get to the bottom of that story. Congress should be doing everything possible to make sure the investigation can take place.” Obviously referring to Russia, the Post’s declaration, as the late investigative journalist Robert Parry and many other independent and respected writers have pointed out, was and remains without a shred of evidence. It’s WMD time all over again, only this time the propaganda is being trumpeted mainly by the Democrats. It would better serve the cause of democracy to investigate the Post for its covert coalition and collusion with the deep state and the Clinton (right) wing of the Democratic Party. The Post and the rest of their pack have constructed a wicked Russia foil in order to undermine Moscow’s presumed ally Trump and boost bigger Pentagon budgets. It’s an extremely dangerous game that is headed toward military confrontation and massive annihilation by the yahoos in government and the liberal media.

  But it’s not a new game, because despite their “free press” claims, American major news media have long been instruments of state propaganda. In the 1970s, Carl Bernstein exposed the fact that the overseas branches of US MSM had long served as eyes and ears of the CIA’s “Operation Mockingbird,” and it’s very likely than many amongst their ranks remain agency assets. Back then, Philip Graham, publisher of the Post, ran the agency’s media industry operations, a fact not mentioned in the currently showing eponymous film. During the GW Bush presidency, the Pentagon recruited over 75 military generals to spread propaganda in the mass media, fed in camera by leaders at the Defense Department, the State Department, the Justice Department, and the White House. Their responsibilities included their employment as “objective” foreign policy and war analysts for major network and cable news channels, many of them concurrently receiving pay by military contracting firms. The Pentagon referred to the on-air military propagandists as “surrogates” and “message force multipliers.”

  The Russians are Coming

  In February 2018, former CIA director John Brennan, the man who fed the Russian “hacking” story to the House Intelligence Committee, became a senior national security and intelligence analyst for NBC and MSNBC in what has become standard revolving door practice between government and the corporate world. Brennan was a well-known advocate for the CIA’s rendition and torture program, spying on its critics, and its use of drone bombings and assassinations in the Middle East. And he certainly knows something about hacking, as he was forced to admit, after first lying about it, that his CIA hacked the computers of Senate staffers who were investigating the agency’s role in torturing prisoners. A man the MSM apparently regard as having impeccable credentials for truth telling.

  If the Russia “hacking” story has no legs, the more interesting piece of news is the organized efforts of the Democrats and some Republicans to bring down Trump and turn over the White House to theocrat Mike Pence. Mainstream pundits and reporters are churning out unsubstantiated speculations about Russia and Trump by the hour. A number of Democrats, military brass, and mercenary journalist (and former country club caddy) Thomas Friedman have characterized alleged Russian intervention as a new “Pearl Harbor” or “9/11,” thereby building a case for war and for treason against the president. There’s no downside to making even the most absurd claims about Russia and Trump, no penalty for fabrications, misrepresentations, or getting facts wrong. If they were honest, their ledes might read: “This fictional news report is loosely based on a true story.” Or: “Any resemblance in this story to real people and events is merely coincidental.”

  There’s room in the inferno for the Democrats’ deep state allies. Starting in mid-2015, Peter Strzok, the FBI’s H. Clinton personal email scandal investigator before taking the lead in the probe of Russian election interference, sent emails to his lover, FBI lawyer Lisa Page, which  clearly revealed that both of them were actively working for the Clinton campaign to undermine Trump in any way possible. The pair also exchanged references to a “secret society” that was operating within the Department of Justice and the FBI to block a Trump victory. Until their exposure, Strzok had been Robert Mueller’s right hand man on the Trump-Russia investigation.

  Meanwhile, two years later, the hunt for the smoking Kalashnikov continues. The best the MSM have come up with is that a St. Petersburg outfit called Internet Research Agency (IRA) placed $100,000 in ads on Facebook (compared to the $81 million Facebook ad spending by the Trump and Clinton campaigns), some of the Russian ads actually directed against Trump. As Jeffrey St. Clair pointed out in the pages of CounterPunch, in the key states where Clinton lost the election, the traditional Democrat strongholds of Michigan ($832 spent on token IRA buy ads), Pennsylvania ($300), and Wisconsin ($1,979), all but $54 of this amount was spent beforethe party primaries even started.

  Facebook’s vice president for advertising Rob Goldman said that in fact most of the total Russian ad buys occurred after the presidential election. “We shared that fact,” he tweeted, “but very few [news] outlets have covered it because it doesn’t align with the main media narrative” about Trump’s election victory. Winning the election for Trump was simply not the Russian objective, Goldman says. Alex Stamos, Facebook chief security officer, concurred. The ads, he said, were more about sowing discord, with messages about guns, immigrants, and racial strife, than on pushing a particular candidate. Think about all the blockbuster American (and British) movies that portray Russians as sinister, violent, and criminal. For starters, remember über-teutonic Ivan Drago, Sgt. Yushin, the many sadistic “Russian” mafia nogoodniks, along with the Cold War-for-children cartoon characters, Boris Badanov and Natasha Fatale? Among the many Russophobic films and TV shows over the decades: The Americans, Air Force One, The Peacemaker, The Saint, Rambo III, Red Dawn, Red Heat, the James Bond flicks, and the 2018 Oscar for documentaries, Icarus. Soviet and Russia-era films, not well tutored in ethnic caricatures, have no comparable stereotypical American counterparts.

  There are a few signs of life in mainstream journalism. New York Times correspondent Scott Shane was one of the few journalists who happened to notice that the US intelligence agency (the CIA, NSA, and FBI) report of January 6, 2017 on Russian “hacking” actually offered no evidence. “Instead,” he said, “the message from the agencies essentially amounts to ‘trust us.’” It took the mainstream media 6 months before they acknowledged that the Obama administration claim that 17 intelligence agencies backed the hacking claim was false, the real number was only 3, and even the NSA had only “moderate confidence” in the finding. Last January, the NSA made a significant alteration in its mission statement: it removed the words “honesty” and the pledge to be truthful from its list of priorities.

  Even if there were genuine evidence that Russian officials had hacked the Democratic National Committee and Clinton campaign manager John Podesta emails, as originally claimed by the intelligence agencies, one should put this in context of the long history of the CIA’s efforts to overthrow many democratically elected leaders who had the temerity to stand up to the superpower. These would include Allende, Arbenz, Mossadeq, Lumumba, Chavez, Goulart, Ortega, and others. The list of US interventions in foreign elections just since 1948 (Italy) is voluminous. Do the mainstream media suffer amnesia about Victoria Nuland and John McCain’s presence in the Maidan, egging on the coup against Yanukovych or her infamous leaked phone call to the US ambassador in Kiev in which she dictated the ousted president’s successors? And is it reasonable to expect Russia to be passive about a hostile NATO putting troops along its borders and reacting to efforts to install an anti-Russian regime next door in the Ukraine? In this recent historical context, US accusations of Russian political interference smack of complete hypocrisy.

  A study by Carnegie Mellon professor Dov Levin found that between 1946 and 2000 alone, the US intervened in foreign elections 81 times, which does not include its invasions, blockades, sanctions, assassination attempts, and other regime change initiatives. “The U.S. is no stranger to interfering in the elections of other countries,” he wrote. In 1996, the US intervened in the Russian election to prevent the Communist Party from returning to power. Have the MSM also forgotten the lies the government and the CIA told about Saddam Hussein’s WMD and connections to terrorist movements? Or that, thanks to Edward Snowden’s exposés, we know that Obama’s NSA bugged the phones of 35 foreign political leaders?

  If the MSM are still confused, perhaps they should listen to former CIA director James Woolsey. Interviewed by Fox News’ Laura Ingraham, Woolsey was asked directly whether the US ever interfered with other countries’ elections. He initially said, “probably, but it was for the good of the system in order to avoid the communists from taking over.” Ingraham followed up with the question, “We don’t do that now?” To this Woolsey responded, “nyum, nyum, nyum, nyum, nyum, only for a very good cause,” a rather frank admission that merely amused Ingraham, who failed to follow up with this obvious statement of US double standards. After leaving the CIA, Woolsey became chairman of Freedom House, a right-wing government-supported private NGO that putatively supports human rights causes and has been active in regime change operations around the world – far more actively than merely doing Facebook postings.

  William Binney, formerly with NSA as a high-level intelligence operative, subsequently becoming a whistleblower on the agency’s illegal surveillance operations, called the alleged Russian attacks on the DNC “a charade.” Speaking to Daniel Bernstein at Consortium News, Binney said that had any bulk transmissions come from across the Atlantic, the NSA would have known about it, as they tap every communication from abroad. The data from “Guccifer 2.0,” was a download “not a transfer across the Web,” which “won’t manage such high speed.” The intelligence agencies “have been playing games with us.  There is no factual evidence to back up any charge of hacking here.” It was likely no more than a USB transfer, he said.

  Is there any hope for the mainstream media to change? It would take a revolution to get the MSM to become more democratic. A Harvard Shorenstein Center report found that media coverage of the 2016 US party conventions contained almost no discussion of policy issues and instead concentrated on polling data, scandals, campaign tactics, and Trump and Russia bashing. Leslie Moonves, CEO of CBS, spoke for the media establishment: “It may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS …. The money’s rolling in …. It’s a terrible thing to say. But bring it on, Donald.”

  As Walter Cronkite would say, “And that’s the way it is.”

  

• Krieger: "Foreign Government Lobbying Is An Abomination, Should Be Eradicated Immediately" – Part 2

  Authored by Mike Krieger via Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,

  The sensitivities are especially important when it comes to the Qatari government — the single biggest foreign donor to Brookings.

  Brookings executives cited strict internal policies that they said ensure their scholars’ work is “not influenced by the views of our funders,” in Qatar or in Washington. They also pointed to several reports published at the Brookings Doha Center in recent years that, for example, questioned the Qatari government’s efforts to revamp its education system or criticized the role it has played in supporting militants in Syria.

  But in 2012, when a revised agreement was signed between Brookings and the Qatari government, the Qatar Ministry of Foreign Affairs itself praised the agreement on its website, announcing that “the center will assume its role in reflecting the bright image of Qatar in the international media, especially the American ones.” Brookings officials also acknowledged that they have regular meetings with Qatari government officials about the center’s activities and budget, and that the former Qatar prime minister sits on the center’s advisory board.

  Mr. Ali, who served as one of the first visiting fellows at the Brookings Doha Center after it opened in 2009, said such a policy, though unwritten, was clear.

  “There was a no-go zone when it came to criticizing the Qatari government,” said Mr. Ali, who is now a professor at the University of Queensland in Australia. “It was unsettling for the academics there. But it was the price we had to pay.”

  – From the 2014 New York Times article: Foreign Powers Buy Influence at Think Tanks

  The purpose of this short series is to give readers a small glimpse of how foreign governments spray around enormous sums of money throughout the Washington D.C. swamp to influence U.S. foreign policy.

  Part 1 discussed the role of lobbyists in this grotesque and dangerous scheme. Specifically, lobbyists who work on behalf of a foreign government are supposed to register as foreign agents under the 1938 Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA), but the law has no teeth in practice and is riddled with gigantic loopholes that ensure the sums of foreign lobbying happening is far beyond numbers reported under FARA.

  As despicable as lobbyists running around D.C. as hired guns for foreign interests are, think tanks doing essentially the same thing are even more pernicious. At least lobbyists who register under FARA aren’t hiding what they do under an aura of respectability and academic rigor. Think tanks, on the other hand, act like prestigious paragons of policy formation and analysis, while taking enormous sums of money from foreign governments.

  

  In some cases what’s expected from these think tanks is explicitly stated and documented, while other times the expectations, while implicit, clearly exist. It’s the arrogance and dishonesty of many of these major think tanks that really gets under my skin.

  Bottom line.

  Think tanks are essentially lobbyists pretending not to be.

  — Michael Krieger (@LibertyBlitz) March 7, 2018

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  One of the more comprehensive articles on how foreign governments essentially pay for policy, access and research via think tanks was published back in 2014 in the New York Times titled, Foreign Powers Buy Influence at Think Tanks.

  Let’s take a look at some excerpts from that piece for some background on what’s going on:

  More than a dozen prominent Washington research groups have received tens of millions of dollars from foreign governments in recent years while pushing United States government officials to adopt policies that often reflect the donors’ priorities, an investigation by The New York Times has found.

  The money is increasingly transforming the once-staid think-tank world into a muscular arm of foreign governments’ lobbying in Washington. And it has set off troubling questions about intellectual freedom: Some scholars say they have been pressured to reach conclusions friendly to the government financing the research.

  The think tanks do not disclose the terms of the agreements they have reached with foreign governments. And they have not registered with the United States government as representatives of the donor countries, an omission that appears, in some cases, to be a violation of federal law, according to several legal specialists who examined the agreements at the request of The Times.

  As a result, policy makers who rely on think tanks are often unaware of the role of foreign governments in funding the research.

  The arrangements involve Washington’s most influential think tanks, including the Brookings Institution, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and the Atlantic Council. Each is a major recipient of overseas funds, producing policy papers, hosting forums and organizing private briefings for senior United States government officials that typically align with the foreign governments’ agendas.

  Most of the money comes from countries in Europe, the Middle East and elsewhere in Asia, particularly the oil-producing nations of the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Norway, and takes many forms. The United Arab Emirates, a major supporter of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, quietly provided a donation of more than $1 million to help build the center’s gleaming new glass and steel headquarters not far from the White House. Qatar, the small but wealthy Middle East nation, agreed last year to make a $14.8 million, four-year donation to Brookings, which has helped fund a Brookings affiliate in Qatar and a project on United States relations with the Islamic world.

  Some scholars say the donations have led to implicit agreements that the research groups would refrain from criticizing the donor governments…

  The scope of foreign financing for American think tanks is difficult to determine. But since 2011, at least 64 foreign governments, state-controlled entities or government officials have contributed to a group of 28 major United States-based research organizations, according to disclosures by the institutions and government documents. What little information the organizations volunteer about their donors, along with public records and lobbying reports filed with American officials by foreign representatives, indicates a minimum of $92 million in contributions or commitments from overseas government interests over the last four years. The total is certainly more.

  As noted above, the think tanks apparently do not disclose the terms of the agreements they’ve reached with foreign governments, which seems problematic since it provides a ripe environment for corruption and intellectual dishonesty. This also seems to be why Norway is so central to the NYT exposé — its relatively transparent open records laws provide much needed detail about how these relationships are structured.

  For example:

  The agreement signed last year by the Norway Ministry of Foreign Affairs was explicit: For $5 million, Norway’s partner in Washington would push top officials at the White House, at the Treasury Department and in Congress to double spending on a United States foreign aid program.

  But the recipient of the cash was not one of the many Beltway lobbying firms that work every year on behalf of foreign governments.

  It was the Center for Global Development, a nonprofit research organization, or think tank, one of many such groups in Washington that lawmakers, government officials and the news media have long relied on to provide independent policy analysis and scholarship…

  “In Washington, it is difficult for a small country to gain access to powerful politicians, bureaucrats and experts,” states an internal report commissioned by the Norwegian Foreign Affairs Ministry assessing its grant making. “Funding powerful think tanks is one way to gain such access, and some think tanks in Washington are openly conveying that they can service only those foreign governments that provide funding.”…

  The country has committed at least $24 million to an array of Washington think tanks over the past four years, according to a tally by The Times, transforming these nonprofits into a powerful but largely hidden arm of the Norway Foreign Affairs Ministry. Documents obtained under that country’s unusually broad open records laws reveal that American research groups, after receiving money from Norway, have advocated in Washington for enhancing Norway’s role in NATO, promoted its plans to expand oil drilling in the Arctic and pushed its climate change agenda…

  But Norway’s agreement imposed very specific demands on the Center for Global Development. The research organization, in return for Norway’s money, was not simply asked to publish reports on combating climate change. The project documents ask the think tank to persuade Washington officials to double United States spending on global forest protection efforts to $500 million a year.

  Don’t let the fact that it’s Norway and the issues involved are deforestation and Arctic drilling let you take your eye off the ball. The reason Norway is central to the exposé is because its open laws offer transparency into the details of these partnerships. If Norway’s doing it, you can be sure viciously brutal and autocratic regimes are doing the same.

  Moreover, the money being thrown around has real world consequences. Take, for example, what happened to Michelle Dunn:

  Michele Dunne served for nearly two decades as a specialist in Middle Eastern affairs at the State Department, including stints in Cairo and Jerusalem, and on the White House National Security Council. In 2011, she was a natural choice to become the founding director of the Atlantic Council’s Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East, named after the former prime minister of Lebanon, who was assassinated in 2005.

  The center was created with a generous donation from Bahaa Hariri, his eldest son, and with the support of the rest of the Hariri family, which has remained active in politics and business in the Middle East. Another son of the former prime minister served as Lebanon’s prime minister from 2009 to 2011.

  But by the summer of 2013, when Egypt’s military forcibly removed the country’s democratically elected president, Mohamed Morsi, Ms. Dunne soon realized there were limits to her independence. After she signed a petition and testified before a Senate Foreign Relations Committee urging the United States to suspend military aid to Egypt, calling Mr. Morsi’s ouster a “military coup,” Bahaa Hariri called the Atlantic Council to complain, executives with direct knowledge of the events said.

  Ms. Dunne declined to comment on the matter. But four months after the call, Ms. Dunne left the Atlantic Council…

  Ms. Dunne was replaced by Francis J. Ricciardone Jr., who served as United States ambassador to Egypt during the rule of Hosni Mubarak, the longtime Egyptian military and political leader forced out of power at the beginning of the Arab Spring. Mr. Ricciardone, a career foreign service officer, had earlier been criticized by conservatives and human rights activists for being too deferential to the Mubarak government.

  Surely just a coincidence.

  Let’s now fast forward to 2018. As the mass media bombards the U.S. public with Russia conspiracy theories nonstop, foreign interests have become more aggressive when it comes to influencing U.S. policy and personnel. Take for instance what we just learned regarding the UAE’s apparent attempt to get Rex Tillerson fired for his skepticism regarding the idiotic Saudi-UAE blockade against Qatar.

  The BBC reported:

  The BBC has obtained leaked emails that show a lobbying effort to get US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson sacked for failing to support the United Arab Emirates against regional rival Qatar.

  Major Trump fundraiser and UAE-linked businessman Elliott Broidy met US President Donald Trump in October 2017 and urged him to sack Mr Tillerson, the emails reveal.

  In other emails, he calls the top US diplomat “a tower of Jello”, “weak” and says he “needs to be slammed”…

  Mr Broidy’s defence company Circinus has hundreds of millions of dollars worth of contracts with the UAE, according to the New York Times newspaper.

  He had recently returned from the UAE when he met Mr Trump at the White House in October.

  According to a memorandum he prepared of the meeting, Mr Broidy urged continued support of US allies the UAE and Saudi Arabia and advised Mr Trump against getting involved in last year’s row with Qatar…

  He also said he advised the president on Mr Tillerson – who was “performing poorly and should be fired at a politically convenient time”.

  What have we learned? There’s simply too much money being thrown around the D.C. swamp by foreign governments to buy influence. Understanding this helps explain why U.S. foreign policy is so consistently wasteful, insane and suicidal.

  Unfortunately,  you won’t hear much about this from the mass media. Pointing it out isn’t particularly profitable.

  Part 1 if you missed it: Foreign Government Lobbying is an Abomination and Should Be Eradicated Immediately – Part 1

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