- Number Of Terrorist Attacks Decreases Globally
The number of terror victims has decreased globally, from more than 27,000 in 2016 to more than 13,000 in 2018, and as Statista’s Katharina Buchholz notes, the number of global terror attacks decreased during the same time from more than 24,000 to more than 15,000, according to data from the 2018 Global Attack Index by security analyst IHS Markit.
Less people fell victim to terrorists in countries like Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Somalia, but still the number of terrorist victims remained at a high level, with thousands of victims per country and year in some cases.
You will find more infographics at Statista
The terror group that claimed the most lives in 2018 was the Islamic State, even though less people lost their lives in IS attacks compared to 2017.
Afghanistan was the country most heavily affected in 2018 in terms of loss of life, followed by Syria and Iraq. Egypt is an outlier in the statistic, with the lives of 700 people claimed by terror in 2017, including the more than 300 people killed in an attack on a Sufi mosque on the Sinai peninsula in November.
- Letter From Britain: An Establishment Blinded By Russophobia
Authored by Alexander Mercouris via ConsortiumNews.com,
A British elite challenged by large parts of the British population is rallying around trumped-up fear of Russia as a means of protecting its interests…
Hostility to Russia is one of the most enduring, as well as one of the most destructive, realities of British life. Its persistence is illustrated by one of the most interesting but least reported facts about the Skripal affair.
This is that Sergey Skripal, the Russian former GRU operative who was the main target of the recent Salisbury poisoning attack, was recruited by British intelligence and became a British spy in 1995, four years after the USSR collapsed, at a time when the Cold War was formally over.
In 1995 Boris Yeltsin was President of Russia, Communism was supposedly defeated, the once mighty Soviet military was no more, and a succession of pro-Western governments in Russia were attempting unsuccessfully to carry out IMF proposed ‘reforms’. In a sign of the new found friendship which supposedly existed between Britain and Russia the British Queen toured Moscow and St. Petersburg the year before.
Yet notwithstanding all the appearances of friendship, and despite the fact that Russia in 1995 posed no conceivable threat to Britain, it turns out that British intelligence was still up to its old game of recruiting Russian spies to spy on Russia.
Britain’s Long History of Russophobia
This has in fact been the constant pattern of Anglo-Russian relations ever since the Napoleonic Wars.
Brief periods of seeming friendship – often brought about by a challenge posed by a common enemy – alternating with much longer periods of often intense hostility.
This hostility – at least from the British side – is not easy to understand.
Russia has never invaded or directly threatened Britain. On the only two occasions when Britain and Russia have fought each other – during the Crimean War of 1854 to 1856, and during the Russian Civil War of 1918 to 1921 – the fighting has all taken place on Russian territory, and has been initiated by Britain.
Nonetheless, despite its lack of any obvious cause, British hostility to Russia is a constant and enduring fact of British political and cultural life. The best that can be said about it is that it appears to be a predominantly elite phenomenon.
British Russophobia Peaks
If British hostility to Russia is a constant, it is nonetheless true that save possibly for the period immediately preceding the Crimean War, it has never been as intense as it is today.
Moreover, not only has it reached levels of intensity scarcely seen before, but it is becoming central to Britain’s politics in ways which are now doing serious harm.
This harm is both domestic, in that it is corrupting British politics, and international, in that it is not only marginalising Britain internationally but is also poisoning the international atmosphere.
Why is this so?
Elite British Consensus
For Britain’s elite, riven apart by Brexit and increasingly unsure of the hold it has over the loyalty of the British population, hostility to Russia has become the one issue it can unite around. As a result hostility to Russia is now serving an essential integrating role within Britain’s elite, binding it together at a time when tensions over Brexit risk tearing it apart.
To get a sense of this consider two articles that have both appeared recently in the British media, one in the staunchly anti-Brexit Guardian, the other in the equally staunchly pro-Brexit Daily Telegraph.
The article in the Guardian, by Will Hutton and Andrew Adonis, is intended to refute a narrative of British distinctiveness supposedly invented by the pro-Brexit camp. As such the article claims (rightly) that Britain has historically always been closely integrated with Europe.
However when developing this argument the article engages in some remarkable historical misrepresentation of its own. Not surprisingly, Russia is the subject. Just consider for example this paragraph:
“…..note for devotees of Darkest Hour and Dunkirk: Britain was never “alone” and could not have triumphed [in the Second World War against Hitler] had it been so. Even in its darkest hour Britain could call on its then vast empire and, within 18 months, on the Americans, too.”
Russia’s indispensable contribution to the defeat of Hitler is deleted from the whole narrative. The U.S., which became involved in the war against Hitler in December 1941, is mentioned. Russia, which became involved in the war against Hitler in June 1941, i.e. before the U.S., and whose contribution to the defeat of Hitler was much greater, is not.
Whilst claiming to refute pro-Brexit myths about the Second World War the article creates myths of its own, turning the fact that Russia was an ally of Britain in that war into a non-fact.
The article does however have quite a lot to say about Russia:
“Putin’s Russia is behaving like the fascist regimes of the 1930s, backed by sophisticated raids from online troll factories. Citizens – and ominously younger voters in some European countries – are more and more willing to tolerate the subversion of democratic norms and express support for authoritarian alternatives.
Oleg Kalugin, former major general of the Committee for State Security (the KGB), has described sowing dissent as “the heart and soul” of the Putin state: not intelligence collection, but subversion – active measures to weaken the west, to drive wedges in the western community alliances of all sorts, particularly Nato, to sow discord among allies, to weaken the United States in the eyes of the people of Europe, Asia, Africa, Latin America, and thus to prepare ground in case the war really occurs. To make America more vulnerable to the anger and distrust of other peoples.”
Churchill and Stalin in Moscow in 1942.
History is turned on its head. Not only is the fact that Russia was Britain’s ally in the war against Nazi Germany now a non-fact, but Russia it turns out is Nazi Germany’s heir, a fascist regime like Nazi Germany once was, posing a threat to Britain and the West like Nazi Germany once did.
Moreover who does not agree, and who does not see facing up to Russia as the priority, is at best a fool:
“In Brexit-voting Weymouth, Captain Malcolm Shakesby of Ukip is unruffled by Putin or European populism. He inhabits the cartoon world of British exceptionalism, and his main concern today is Mrs May’s “sellout” of the referendum result.”
Compare these comments about Russia in the staunchly anti-Brexit Guardian with these comments about Russia by Janet Daley in the staunchly pro-BrexitDaily Telegraph.
Janet Daley does not quite say like Hutton and Adonis that Russia is a “fascist regime”. However in her depiction of it she comes pretty close:
“The modern Russian economy is a form of gangster capitalism largely unencumbered by legal or political restraint. No one in the Kremlin pretends any longer that Russia’s role on the international stage is to spread an idealistic doctrine of liberation and shared wealth.
When it intervenes in places such as Syria, there is no pretence of leading that country toward a great socialist enlightenment. Even the pretext of fighting Isil has grown impossibly thin. All illusions are stripped away and the fight is reduced to one brutal imperative: Assad is Putin’s man and his regime will be defended to the end in order to secure the Russian interest. But what is that interest? Simply to assert Russia’s power in the world – which is to say, the question is its own answer.”
Though Moscow has made clear in both word and action that intervention in Syria at Syria’s invitation was to prevent it becoming a failed state and a terrorist haven, Russia it turns out is focused on only one thing: gaining as much power as possible. This is true both of its domestic politics (“gangster capitalism largely unencumbered by legal or political restraint”) and in its foreign policy (“what is that [Russian] interest? Simply to assert Russia’s power in the world – which is to say, the question is its own answer”)
As a result it must be construed as behaving in much the same way as Nazi Germany once did:
“…..we now seem to have the original threat from a rogue rampaging Russia back on the scene, too. A Russia determined to reinstate its claim to be a superpower, but this time without even the moral scruples of an ideological mission: the country that had once joined the respectable association of modern industrialised nations to make it the G8, rather than the G7, prefers to be an outlaw.”
On the question of the threat from Russia both the pro and anti-Brexit wings of the British establishment agree. Standing up to it is the one policy they can both agree on. Not surprisingly at every opportunity that is what they do.
Intolerance of Dissent Construed as a “Threat from Russia”
In this heavy atmosphere anyone in Britain who disagrees risks being branded either a traitor or a fool.
Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour leader, who is known to favour dialogue with Russia, recently had to endure an ugly media campaign which insinuated that he had been recruited as in effect a Communist agent in the 1980s by Czech intelligence.
That claim eventually collapsed when a British MP went too far and said openly what up to then had only been insinuated. As a result he was forced to retract his claims and pay compensation under threat of a law suit. However the question mark over Corbyn’s loyalty is never allowed to go away.
During last year’s general election Corbyn also had to endure an article in the Telegraph by none other than Sir Richard Dearlove, the former head of Britain’s external intelligence agency MI6 (the British equivalent of the CIA). Dearlove also insinuated that Corbyn had been at least a Communist sympathiser or fellow traveller during the Cold War whose sympathies were with the Eastern Bloc and therefore with the various anti-Western and supposedly Communist backed terrorist groups which the Eastern Bloc had supposedly supported:
“Today, Britain goes to the polls. And frankly, I’m shocked that no one has stood up and said, unambiguously, how profoundly dangerous it would be for the nation if Jeremy Corbyn becomes Prime Minister. So let me be clear, the leader of the Labour Party is an old-fashioned international socialist who has forged links with those quite ready to use terror when they haven’t got their way: the IRA, Hizbollah, Hamas. As a result he is completely unfit to govern and Britain would be less safe with him in No 10.
I can give an indication of just how serious this is: if Jeremy Corbyn was applying to join any of this country’s security services – MI5, GCHQ or the service I used to run, MI6 – he would not be cleared to do so. He would be rejected by the vetting process. Far from being able to get into MI5, in the past MI5 would actively have investigated him. And yet this is the man who seeks the very highest office, who hopes in just 24 hours time to run our security services.
Young people in Britain have been terribly affected by recent terror attacks. It is only natural that they should be desperately worried about security problems, and to me it is just such a great shame that they don’t understand the political antecedents of the Labour leader. It is these young people, in particular, I am keen to address. I want to explain just what Corbyn’s whole movement has meant.
During the Cold War the groups he associated with hung out in Algeria, and moved between East Germany and North Korea. It is hard, today, to understand the significance of that. When I talk to students about the Cold War, they assume I am just talking about history. But it has a direct bearing on our security today. Only a walk along the armistice line between North and South Korea, with its astonishing military build up, might give some idea of what was at stake.
……Jeremy Corbyn represents a clear and present danger to the country.”
In light of this the crescendo of criticism Corbyn came under during the peak of the uproar in March following the
Dearlove: Corbyn is a “clear and present danger” (to the establishment.)
Salisbury poisoning attack on Sergey and Yulia Skripal is entirely unsurprising.
Corbyn’s call – alone amongst senior politicians – for the investigation to be allowed to take its course and for due process to be followed, simply confirmed the doubts about his loyalty and his sympathy for Russia already held by the British establishment and previously expressed by people like Dearlove. His call was not seen as an entirely reasonable one for proper procedure to be followed. Rather it was seen as further proof that Corbyn’s sympathies are with Russia, which is Britain’s enemy.
Corbyn is not the only person to be targeted in this way. As I write this Britain is in the grip of a minor scandal because the right-wing businessman Arron Banks, who partly funded the Leave campaign during the 2016 Brexit referendum, is now revealed to have had several meetings with the Russian ambassador and to have discussed a business deal with a Russian businessman.
Though Banks claims to have reported these contacts to the CIA, and though there is not the slightest evidence of impropriety in any of these contacts (the proposed business deal never materialised) the mere fact that they took place is enough for doubts to be expressed about Banks’s reasons for supporting the Leave campaign. Perhaps even more worrying for Banks is that scarcely anyone is coming forward to speak up for him.
Even a politically inconsequential figure like the pop singer Robbie Williams is now in the frame. Just over a year ago Williams gained wide applause for a song “Party like a Russian” which some people interpreted (wrongly in my opinion) as a critique of contemporary Russia. Today he is being roundly criticised for performing in Russia during the celebrations for the World Cup.
Russophobia Undermining British Democracy
The result of this intolerance is a sharp contraction in the freedom of Britain’s public space, with those who disagree on British policy towards Russia increasingly afraid to speak out.
Since establishment opinion in Britain conceives of itself as defending liberal democracy from attack by Russia, and since establishment opinion increasingly conflates liberal democracy with its own opinions, it follows that in its conception any challenge to its opinions is an attack on liberal democracy, and must therefore be the work of Russia.
This paranoid view has now become pervasive. No part of the traditional media is free of it. It has gained a strong hold on the BBC and it is fair to say that all the big newspapers subscribe to it. Anyone who does not has no future in British journalism.
This is disturbing in itself, but as with all forms of institutional paranoia, it is also having a damaging effect on the functioning of Britain’s institutions.
Amid Growing Influence of Intelligence
One obvious way in which this manifests itself is in the extraordinary growth in both the visibility and influence of Britain’s intelligence services.
Historically the intelligence services in Britain have operated behind the scenes to the point of being almost invisible. Until the 1980s the very fact of their existence was in theory a state secret.
Today, as Dearlove’s article about Corbyn in the Daily Telegraph shows, their leaders and former leaders are not only public personalities, but the intelligence services have come increasingly to fill the role of gatekeepers, deciding who can be trusted to hold public office and who cannot.
Corbyn is far from being the only British politician to find himself under this sort of scrutiny.
Boris Johnson, some time before he became Britain’s Foreign Secretary, made what I am sure he now considers the mistake of writing an article in the Telegraph praising Russia’s role in the liberation of the ancient city of Palmyra in Syria from ISIS.
The result was that on his appointment as foreign secretary, Johnson had a meeting with British intelligence chiefs who ‘persuaded’ him of the need to follow a tough line with Russia. He has in fact followed a tough line with Russia ever since.
Russophobia Infects the Legal System
Steele: Paid for political research, not intelligence.
Establishment hostility to Russia is also enabling interference by the intelligence services in the British legal process.
There is a widespread and probably true belief that the British intelligence services actively lobbied for the grant of asylum to the fugitive Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky, who they seem to have considered some sort of ‘agent of influence’ in Russia. This despite the fact that it is now widely acknowledged that Berezovsky’s background and activities in Russia should have denied him asylum in Britain.
However what is still largely rumour in Berezovsky’s case is indisputable fact in the Alexander Litvinenko case and in the Skripal cases.
I have previously explained how in the Litvinenko case the claim of Russian state involvement in Litvinenko’s murder made by the British public inquiry is not supported by the publicly available evidence.
What has now become clear is that the main evidence of Russian state involvement in Litvinenko’s murder was not the publicly available evidence, but evidence provided to the public inquiry in private by the British intelligence services. This evidence was seen only by the Judge who headed the inquiry, but seems to have had a decisive effect in forming his view of the case and shaping his report.
American readers may be interested to learn that this evidence was put together by none other than Christopher Steele, the person who gave us the “golden showers” dossier, which has played such an outsized role in the Russiagate affair.
How strong or reliable this evidence is it is impossible to say since, as it is secret, it cannot be independently scrutinised. All I would say is that on two other occasions when Steele is known to have produced similar reports about Russian state activities subsequent enquiries have failed to support them. One is Steele’s “golden showers” dossier, which the FBI has admitted it cannot verify, and which scarcely anyone any longer believes to be true. The other is a report produced by Steele which alleged that Russia had bought the 2018 World Cup by bribing FIFA officials, which subsequent investigation has found was untrue.
It turns out that the evidence used to support the British claim of Russian guilt in the Skripal case is the same: evidence provided in private by British intelligence, which is not subject to independent scrutiny. As in the Litvinenko case, the British authorities have nonetheless not hesitated to use this evidence to declare publicly that Russia is guilty. This whilst a police investigation is still underway and before any suspect has been identified.
Indeed in the Skripal case the violation of due process has been so gross that it is not even denied. Instead articles have appeared in the British media which say that due process does not apply in cases involving Russia.
That there can be no rule of law without due process, and that excluding cases involving Russia from the need to follow due process is racist and discriminatory appears to concern no one.
Discrimination in Britain Against Russians
Where the intelligence services have led the way, others have been keen to follow.
Recently a House of Commons committee published a report which openly puts pressure on British law firms to refuse business from Russian clients. The best account of this has been provided by the Canadian academic Paul Robinson:
“……that leads me onto the thing which really struck me about this document [The House of Commons committee report – AM]. This was a statement about the British law firm Linklaters, which managed the flotation of EN+. Shortly before this, the report says ‘Both the EN+ IPO [Initial Public Offering] and the sale of Russian debt in London appear to have been carried out in accordance with the relevant rules and regulatory systems, and there is no obvious evidence of impropriety in a legal sense.’Yet, it then goes on to say the following:
“We asked Linklaters to appear before the committee to explain their involvement in the flotation of EN+ … They refused. We regret their unwillingness to engage with our inquiry and must leave others to judge whether their work at ‘the forefront of financial, corporate and commercial developments in Russia’has left them so entwined in the corruption of the Kremlin and its supporters that they are no longer able to meet the standards expected of a UK-regulated law firm.”
This is quite outrageous, and also cowardly. The committee in effect accuses Linklaters of corruption, while avoiding complaints of libel by use of the weasel words ‘we leave to others to judge’ – a way of making an accusation while claiming that one hasn’t. What’s so outrageous about the statement is that comes straight after a confession that the EN+ flotation was completely above board. Linklaters didn’t do anything wrong, and the House of Commons committee knows it. Nevertheless, it sees fit to suggest that the company is ‘no longer able to meet the standards expected of a UK-regulated law firm.’
The implication here is that any company which has extensive dealings with Russian enterprises is ‘entwined in the corruption of the Kremlin’and so unfit to do business. I cannot interpret this as anything other than an attempt by the committee to threaten British companies and intimidate them into dropping their lawful activities. I consider this disgraceful.
The committee’s attitude can be seen again towards the end of the report, when it writes that ‘instead of participating in the rules-based system, President Putin’s regime uses asymmetric methods to achieve its goals, and others – so-called useful idiots – magnify that effect by supporting its propaganda. So, there you have it. People who do with business with Russia are to be publicly shamed as unworthy of the standards expected of the British people, while those who would dare to point this sort of thing out are to be denounced as ‘useful idiots’. Having any dealings with Russia makes one a Kremlin stooge.”
Taking their cue from the House of Commons committee, identical pressure on British law firms to refuse to act for Russian clients is now coming from the media, as explained in this article by the Guardian’s Nick Cohen, which talks of potential Russian clients in these terms:
“In this conflict, it’s no help to think of oligarchs as businessmen. They are closer to the privileged servants of a warlord or mafia boss. Their wealth is held at Putin’s discretion. If they are told to buy influence in the Balkans or fund an alt-news website, they obey. Companies that raise funds on the London markets or oligarchs who move into Kensington mansions may look like autonomous organisations and individuals but, as Garry Kasparov told the committee: “They are agents of a rogue Russian regime, not businessmen. They are complicit in Putin’s countless crimes. Their companies are not international corporations, but the means to launder money and spread corruption and influence.”
To which I would add that in law-governed states even criminals have the right of legal representation and advice. In Britain, if the House of Commons committee and Nick Cohen gets their way, Russians – whether criminals or not – will be the exception.
What is so bizarre about this is that the spectre of massive Russian economic penetration of Britain conjured up by the House of Commons committee is so far removed from reality. The Economist (no friend of Russia) provides the actual figures:
“….the high profile of London’s high-rolling Russians belies the relatively small role that their money plays in the wider economy. Foreigners hold roughly £10 trillion of British assets. Russia’s share of that is just 0.25%, a smaller proportion than that of Finland and South Korea.
Parts of west London have acquired many new Russian residents, and shops to serve them (including an outfitter of armoured luxury cars). Yet even in “prime” London – that is, the top 5-10% of the market – buyers from eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union account for only 5% of sales, according to data from Savills, a property firm. Outside the capital’s swankiest districts, Russians’ influence is minuscule. The departure of oligarchs might affect prices on some streets in Kensington, but not beyond.
The same is true of Britain’s private schools. Some have done well out of Russian parents. But of the 53,678 foreign pupils who attend schools that belong to the Independent Schools Council, only 2,806 are Russian. China, by contrast, sends 9,008 pupils from its mainland, and a further 5,188 from Hong Kong.
Looking at these figures it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that it is the mere presence of Russians, not their number or their wealth or the illicit way in which some of them supposedly came by their money, which for the British establishment is the problem.”
Quite simply, Russians are not welcome, not because they are wealthy or because they are corrupt, but because they are Russians.
Against Russian Media
The same discriminatory approach appears to inform the persistent attacks launched by the British authorities against the Russian television broadcaster RT.
Over the last two years RT has had to repel an attempt by the British authorities to close down its British bank account, has been forced to respond to a succession of complaints from the British media regulator Ofcom, has faced threats of having its British broadcasting licence withdrawn, and has had to endure a campaign of vilification aimed in part at dissuading British public figures from appearing as guests on its programmes.
As to what exactly RT has done – other than vague and unspecific claims that it is a ‘propaganda’ channel – which justifies this treatment, has never been fully explained.
Again it is difficult to avoid the impression that the British establishment’s fundamental problem with RT is that it is simply a Russian channel broadcasting in Britain that scrutinizes establishment policies and actions – a fundamental responsibility of journalism, which is largely missing in British media.
Free speech is a human right in Britain except apparently for Russians.
This discriminatory approach towards Russia and Russians replicates the increasingly ugly and frankly racist way in which Russians are regularly depicted in Britain today.
As to the general effect of that on British society, I repeat here what I wrote back in 2016:
“Racial stereotyping is always something to complain about. It is dehumanising, intolerant and ugly. It is racist and profoundly offensive of its target. This is so whenever it is used to mock or label any ethnicity or national or cultural group. Russians are not an exception.
A society that indulges in it, and which tolerates those who do, forfeits its claim to anti-racism and interracial tolerance. The fact that it is treating just one ethnic group – Russians – in this way, denying them the moral and legal protection which it accords others, in no way diminishes its racism and intolerance. It emphasises it.”
British society is not just the poorer for it. It is deeply corrupted by it, and this corruption now touches every aspect of British life.
Britain Becoming Marginalised
If the result of the British establishment’s paranoia about Russia is deeply corrosive within Britain itself, its effect on British foreign policy has been entirely negative.
At its most basic level it has meant a total breakdown in relations between Britain and Russia.
British and Russian leaders no longer talk to each other, and summit meetings between British and Russian leaders have come to a complete stop. Boris Johnson’s last visit to Russia is universally acknowledged to have been a complete failure, and following the Skripal affair British officials and members of Britain’s Royal Family are now even boycotting the World Cup in Russia.
Indeed British public statements about the World Cup have been all of a piece with the British establishment hostility to Russia, with Johnson recently comparing it to Hitler’s 1936 Olympics and with another House of Commons committee warning British fans of the supposed dangers of going to to Russia to watch them.
This complete absence of dialogue with Russia is a serious problem for Britain as some British officials quietly acknowledge.
Russia is after all a powerful nation and any state which still wishes to exercise influence on world affairs must engage with Russia in order to achieve it. The British establishment’s hostility to Russia however makes that impossible.
The result is that major international questions such as the Ukrainian crisis, the Syrian conflict and the gathering crisis in the Middle East caused by the U.S.’s withdrawal from the Iranian nuclear deal – in all of which Russia is centrally involved – are being handled without British involvement.
May: Becoming a bit player.
Where Angela Merkel of Germany and Emmanuel Macron of France talk to Russia and have thereby managed to carve out for themselves important roles in world affairs, Britain’s Theresa May is a bit player.
However, instead of drawing the obvious conclusion from this, which is that refusing to talk to the Russians is the high road to nowhere, the British have doubled down, seeking to regain relevance by leading an international crusade against Moscow.
The strategy – which bears the unmistakeable imprint of Johnson – was set out in grandiose terms in a recent article in The Guardian:
“The UK will use a series of international summits this year to call for a comprehensive strategy to combat Russian disinformation and urge a rethink over traditional diplomatic dialogue with Moscow, following the Kremlin’s aggressive campaign of denials over the use of chemical weapons in the UK and Syria.
British diplomats plan to use four major summits this year – the G7, the G20, Nato and the European Union – to try to deepen the alliance against Russia hastily built by the Foreign Office after the poisoning of the former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal in Salisbury in March.
“The foreign secretary regards Russia’s response to Douma and Salisbury as a turning point and thinks there is international support to do more,” a Whitehall official said. “The areas the UK are most likely to pursue are countering Russian disinformation and finding a mechanism to enforce accountability for the use of chemical weapons.”
Former Foreign Office officials admit that an institutional reluctance to call out Russia once permeated British diplomatic thinking, but say that after the poisoning of Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, that attitude is evaporating…..
Ministers want to pursue a broad Russian containment strategy at the coming summits covering cybersecurity, Nato’s military posture, sanctions against Vladimir Putin’s oligarchs and a more comprehensive approach to Russian disinformation.”
It has taken no more than a few weeks since that article appeared on 3 May 2018 for this whole grandiose strategy to fall apart.
Not only have Merkel and Macron each visited Russia since the article was published, but Italy now has a new Russia-friendly government, and Spain may soon do so also. Adding insult to injury, Germany is now casting doubt on Britain’s actions following the Salisbury poisoning attack,
All of this however is eclipsed by Donald Trump’s comments at the G7 saying that Russia should be readmitted to the G7 and having his officials inform the British media that he is becoming increasingly irritated by the British prime minister’s lectures.
In the event not only did Trump fail to meet May one-to-one at the G7 summit, but he refused to agree the summit’s final communique, which criticised Russia.
Needless to say, amidst the collapse of the summit, the plan May had apparently intended to unveil at the summit for anew international rapid response unit to respond to Russian-backed assassinations and cyber attacks fell by the wayside.
Far from gaining relevance by leading an international crusade against Russia, the British are increasingly finding that no one else is interested and that May’s and the British establishment’s obsession with Russia instead of enhancing Britain’s importance is making Britain increasingly irrelevant.
Poisoning the International Atmosphere
The British establishment is in fact making the fundamental mistake of thinking that other countries not only share their obsession with Russia, but that they necessarily value their relations with Britain more than with Russia.
This is a strange view given that Russia is arguably a more powerful nation than Britain.
It is nonetheless true that the British establishment’s anti-Russian fixation is having an internationally damaging effect.
Many Western governments have their own issues with Russia, and in such a situation it is not surprising that British paranoia about Russia finds a ready echo.
The most recent example of this is of course the orchestrated expulsion by various Western governments of Russian diplomats in the immediate aftermath of the Salisbury poisoning attack.
However the most damage has been done in the U.S.
Britain and Russia-gate
The full extent of the British role in the Russiagate scandal is not yet clear, but there is no doubt that it was both extensive and crucial.
The individual who arguably has played the single biggest role in generating the scandal is Christopher Steele, the compiler of the “golden showers” dossier, who is not only British but who is a former British intelligence officer.
It is now becoming increasingly clear – as Joe Lauria wrote last year in Consortium News– that the dossier has played a key role in the whole scandal, being accepted for many months by U.S. investigators – including it turns out by Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigators – as providing the ‘frame-narrative’ for the case of alleged collusion between the Russians and the Trump campaign.
The Steele dossier is in fact very much of a piece with the paranoid conception of Russia which has taken hold in Britain, though (as I have pointed out previously) the dossier’s description of how government decisions are made in Russia isabsurd.
Critics of the dossier in the United States rightly draw attention to the fact that it is ‘research’ paid for by Donald Trump’s political opponents in the Hillary Clinton campaign, whilst there is also a view popular amongst some Republicans (wrongly in my opinion) that it is a provocation concocted by Russian intelligence in order to disrupt the U.S. election process and embarrass Trump.
By contrast, insufficient attention is paid, in my opinion, to the fact that it is a British compilation put together in Britain by a former British spy at a time when Britain is in the grip of a particularly bad bout of Russia paranoia.
Steele himself is someone who by all accounts has fully bought into this paranoia. Indeed his previous role in preparing reports about Russia’s supposed role in Litvinenko’s murder and the World Cup bid, and also apparently in the Ukrainian crisis, suggests that he has played no small role in creating it.
Steele is not however the only British official or former official to have played an active role in Russia-gate.
Steele himself is known for example to have a close connection to Dearlove, the former MI6 Director who called Corbyn “a clear and present danger.” It seems that Dearlove and Steele discussed the “golden showers” dossier at a meeting in London’s Garrick Club at roughly the same time that Steele was in contact about it with the FBI.
Another far more more important British official to have taken an active role in the Russiagate affair was Robert Hannigan, the head of GCHQ – Britain’s equivalent to the NSA – who visited the U.S. in the summer of 2016 to brief the CIA about British concerns over alleged contacts between the Russians and Trump’s campaign.
Hannigan: Brought Steele dossier to the CIA.
Though Hannigan’s trip to Washington in the summer of 2016 was first spoken of in April 2017, it has never been confirmed that the Steele dossier, which he brought with him to show to the CIA, was part of the evidence of supposed contacts between the Russians and Trump’s campaign. That it was, however, is strongly suggested by an article in The Washington Post on June 23, 2017, which amongst other things said the following:
“Early last August, an envelope with extraordinary handling restrictions arrived at the White House. Sent by courier from the CIA, it carried “eyes only” instructions that its contents be shown to just four people: President Barack Obama and three senior aides.
Inside was an intelligence bombshell, a report drawn from sourcing deep inside the Russian government that detailed Russian President Vladimir Putin’s direct involvement in a cyber campaign to disrupt and discredit the U.S. presidential race.
But it went further. The intelligence captured Putin’s specific instructions on the operation’s audacious objectives — defeat or at least damage the Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton, and help elect her opponent, Donald Trump…..
The CIA breakthrough came at a stage of the presidential campaign when Trump had secured the GOP nomination but was still regarded as a distant long shot. Clinton held comfortable leads in major polls, and Obama expected that he would be transferring power to someone who had served in his Cabinet.
The intelligence on Putin was extraordinary on multiple levels, including as a feat of espionage.
For spy agencies, gaining insights into the intentions of foreign leaders is among the highest priorities. But Putin is a remarkably elusive target. A former KGB officer, he takes extreme precautions to guard against surveillance, rarely communicating by phone or computer, always running sensitive state business from deep within the confines of the Kremlin.”
This almost certainly refers to the early entries of Steele’s dossier, which is the only report known to exist which claims to have been “sourc[ed from] deep inside the Russian government [and to have detailed] Russian President Vladimir Putin’s direct involvement in a cyber campaign to disrupt and discredit the US Presidential race”.
The Washington Post says that the CIA’s report to Obama drew on “critical technical intelligence on Russia provided by another country”.
That points to Hannigan being the source, with Hannigan being known to have visited the U.S. and to have briefed the CIA at about the time the CIA sent its report to Obama.
Hannigan likely provided the CIA with a mix of wiretap evidence and the first entries of the dossier.
The wiretap evidence probably detailed the confused but ultimately innocuous contacts the young London- based Trump campaign aide George Papadopoulos was having at this time with the Russians. It is highly likely the British were keeping an eye on him at the request of the U.S., which the British would have been able to do for the U.S. without a FISA warrant since Papadopoulos was based in Britain.
Taken together with the first entries of the dossier, the details of Papadopoulos’s activities could easily have been misconstrued to conjure up a compelling case of collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians. Given the paranoid atmosphere about Russia in Britain it would not be surprising if this alarmed Hannigan.
Needless to say if extracts from the dossier really were provided to the CIA by the head of one of Britain’s most important intelligence agencies, then it becomes much easier to understand why the CIA and the rest of the U.S. intelligence community took it so seriously.
Halper: Infiltrated Carter and Trump campaigns.
Then there is the case of Stefan Halper, an American academic lecturing at Cambridge University, who is friends and a business partner with Dearlove. Halper was inserted by the FBI into the Trump campaign in early July 2016 to befriend Papadopoulos in London. In 1980, the CIA inserted Halper into Jimmy Carter’s reelection campaign to help the Reagan camp by stealing information, including a Carter briefing book before a presidential debate.
Suffice to say that just as the British origin of the dossier has in my opinion been overlooked, so has the extent to which it circulated and was given credence in top circles within Britain before it made its full impact in the United States.
Overall, though the extent of the British role in the Russiagate affair is still not fully known, what information exists points to it being very substantial and important. In fact it is unlikely that the Russiagate scandal as we know it would have happened without it.
As such the Russiagate scandal serves as a good example of how British paranoia about Russia can infect the political process in another Western country, in this case the U.S.
Campaigning against Russia
Russia-gate is in fact only the most extreme example of the way that Britain’s anti-Russian obsession has damaged the international environment, though because of the effect it has had on the development of domestic politics in the United States it is the most important.
There have been countless others. The British have for example been the most implacable supporters amongst the leading Western powers of the ongoing sanctions drive against Russia. Britain for instance is known to have actively – though so far unsuccessfully – lobbied for Russian banks to be cut off from the SWIFT interbank payments system, which were it ever to happen would be by far the most severe sanction imposed by the West on Russia to date.
Beyond the effect on the international climate of the constant anti-Russian lobbying of the British government, there is the further effect of the ceaseless drumbeat of anti-Russian agitation which pours out of the British media and various British-based organisations and NGO.
These extend from well-established organisations like Amnesty International – which misrepresented the case against the Pussy Riot performers by claiming that they had been jailed for “holding a gig in a church” – to other less established organisations such Bellingcat and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, both of which are based in Britain. As it happens, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights is known to have received funding from the British government, as apparently have the White Helmets.
In addition Bill Browder, the businessman who successfully lobbied the U.S. Congress to pass the Magnitsky Act, and who has since then pursued a relentless campaign against Russia, is now also based in Britain and has British citizenship.
The great international reach of the British media – the result of the worldwide use of the English language and the international respect some parts of British media such as the BBC still command – means that this constant stream of anti-Russian publicity pouring out of Britain has a worldwide impact and is having an effect that has to be taken into account in any study of current international relations.
Rami Abdul Rahman: The one-man Observatory
The Price of an Obsession
The British establishment’s obsession with Russia is something of a puzzle.
Britain today is not a geopolitical rival of Russia’s as it was in the nineteenth century and as the U.S. is today. British antagonism to Russia cannot therefore be explained as the product of a geopolitical conflict.
Russia is not a military or political threat to Britain. There is no history of Russia threatening or invading Britain. Russia is not an economic rival, and Russian penetration of the British economy is minimal and vastly exaggerated.
It is sometimes said that there are things about modern Russia that the British find culturally, ideologically or politically distasteful, and that this is the reason for Britain’s intense hostility to Russia. However Britain has no difficulty being best of friends with all sorts of countries such as the Gulf Monarchies or China which are culturally, ideologically and politically far more different from Britain than Russia is. Logically that should make them more distasteful to Britain than Russia is, but it doesn’t seem to do so. In these cases economic interests clearly take precedence over any concerns for human rights.
Ultimately however the precise cause of the British establishment’s obsession with Russia does not actually matter. What does matter is that it is an obsession, which should be recognised as such, and that like all other obsessions is ultimately destructive.
In Britain’s case the obsession is not only corrupting Britain’s domestic politics and the working of its institutions.
It is also marginalising Britain, limiting its options, and causing growing exasperation amongst some of its friends.
In addition it blinds the British to their opportunities. If the British were able to put their obsession with Russia behind them they might notice that at a time when they are quitting the European Union Russia potentially has a great deal to offer them.
It is sometimes said that Britain produces very little that Russia needs, and it is indeed the case that trade between Russia and Britain is very small, and that most of Russia’s import needs are met by countries like Germany and China.
However Britain is able to provide Russia with the single thing that Russia arguably needs most at this stage in its development. This is not machinery or technology, all of which it is perfectly capable of producing itself, but the one thing it is truly short of: investment capital.
In the nineteenth century British capital played a key role in the industrialisation of America and in the opening up of the American West. There is no logical reason why it could not do something similar today in Russia. Indeed the marriage between Europe’s biggest financial centre (Britain) and Europe’s potentially most productive economy (Russia) is an obvious one.
In the twentieth century Britain’s long history of economic involvement in the U.S. paid handsome political dividends. Perhaps the same might one day be the case between Britain and Russia. Regardless of that, economic engagement with Russia would at least provide Britain with a plan for an economic future outside the EU, something which because of Brexit it urgently needs but which currently it completely lacks.
For anything like that to happen the British will first have to address the reality of their obsession, and the damage it is doing to them. At that point they might even start to do something about it. Britain’s relative success since the 1960s in overcoming other forms of racism and prejudice which had long existed in Britain shows that such a thing is possible if the problem is recognised and addressed. However I have to say that there is no sign of it happening at the moment.
In the meantime the rest of the world needs to understand that when it comes to Russia, the British are suffering from a serious affliction. Failing to do that risks the infection spreading, with the disastrous consequences we have seen with the Russia-gate scandal in the US.
There is even a chance that refusing to listen to the British about Russia might have a good effect on Britain. If the British realise that the world is no longer listening to them then they might start to understand the extent of their own problem.
If so than the world would be doing Britiain a favour, even if at the moment the British cannot see it.
- Can Japan Join The Multipolar Revolution – Or Will US Imperialism Bring It To Heel?
By Federico Pieraccini via Strategic Culture Foundation
Relations between Japan and Russia have long been the subject of discussion within international-relations circles. The meetings between Prime Minister Abe and President Putin have been going on for years, yet the situation regarding the peace treaty between the two countries, never signed since the conclusion of the Second World War, is difficult to resolve. While the discussions appear to be about the status of the Kuril islands, they are in reality more profound, covering the role that Japan and Russia play in Asia, especially with regard to the other two regional superpowers, namely China and the United States.
Vladimir Putin and Shinzo Abe have met 25 times over five years, an average of five meetings a year, one every two-and-a-half months. Such an active relationship not only demonstrates the closeness between the two leaders but also their difficulty in trying to reach an agreement to solve the longstanding territorial dispute surrounding the Kuril Islands.
Understandably, Moscow does not intend in any way to renounce its sovereignty over the islands, especially given the geostrategic significance of the port city of Vladivostok. This important Russian city hosts Russia’s Pacific Fleet; and when one looks at the map, it is easy to understand the importance of the Kuril Islands. If these islands were militarized against the Russian Federation, then they could effectively block the Russian fleet’s access to the Pacific. Moscow faces the same problem with the Black Sea Fleet, where it needs to navigate through the Turkish Straits to reach the Mediterranean; the same is the case with the Baltic Fleet, located in St Petersburg and Kaliningrad, with Russian naval vessels having to navigate between Finland and Estonia, if coming from St Petersburg, and then through the Danish straits, between Sweden and Denmark, to reach the Atlantic Ocean.
For military and strategic reasons, unfettered access to the oceans is an absolute necessity for a major power like the Russian Federation; hence the importance of the Northern Fleet’s position in Severomorsk, and of the naval base in Tartus, Syria, which effectively allows Moscow to have access to the Atlantic and the Mediterranean Seas without having to worry about Turkey or the Nordic countries vis-a-vis St Petersburg and Kaliningrad.
The question is more complex with regard to Vladivostok, given that Russia has little other option other than to sail through the Kuril Islands to gain access to the Pacific Ocean, making it imperative for Moscow to maintain control over these islands. Leaving aside the historical results of the Second World War, which conferred on the Russian Federation full sovereignty over the islands in question, today this dispute prevents the two countries from further deepening their economic and even political ties. Putin has repeatedly reiterated in Abe’s presence the need for both countries to sign the peace agreement and reach a compromise over the disputed islands. Putin proposed a mutual use of the islands by Japan and Russia in terms of ports and the free trade for goods and even proposed the issuing of a dual passport to the citizens of the islands in order to guarantee maximum freedom of movement.
Whenever Abe and Putin meet, the Russians make several overtures that only see their Japanese counterparts respond with such unacceptable proposals as the return of sovereignty over the entire Habomai, Shikotan, Kunashir and Iturup islands (as they are known in Japan). Russian diplomacy has even tried to separate the question of the islands from the post-WWII peace agreement between Tokyo and Moscow in order to accelerate one of the crucial aspects in the relations between the two countries, but to no avail.
Abe in particular seems to prefer to use the issue of the Kuril Islands and the peace treaty as a means of balancing himself between various regional powers. The South China Morning Post, which does not exactly represent a disinterested perspective, recounts the latest developments between the Russian and the Japanese premier:
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe sparked outrage in Moscow when he spoke of the need to help Russians on the islands “accept and understand that the sovereignty of their homes will change hands.” The Russians furiously summoned the Japanese ambassador to complain that Abe’s statements were an “attempt to artificially raise the temperature” over the issue of a possible peace treaty.
In addition to Russia’s national-security considerations surrounding the Pacific Fleet, there is an important aspect of Japan-Russia relations that needs to be mentioned. The trade between the two countries has increased by 18% in 2018 in comparison to the previous year, reaching almost $15 billion. This, in an environment where many agreements are not ratified for lack of a peace agreement, severely limits cooperation in certain strategic sectors.
There is also the regional and global aspect of this relationship, which is of considerable importance for several reasons. First of all, the geographical position of the two countries determines their influence in the Asian region, which is going to constitute the center of gravity for geopolitics in the 21st century. The second factor is the privileged relations Tokyo has with Washington and Moscow has with Beijing respectively.
To fully understand the multipolar revolution in progress, the quadrilateral scenario involving Japan, Russia, China and the United States seems to be the most suitable. Washington’s move to abandon the Trans-Pacific Partnership and impose sanctions and tariffs on allies and enemies alike has left few weapons available to Japan to offset China’s economic weight, thus forcing Abe to engage in constructive dialogue with Xi Jinping. The recent meetings between the two leaders have laid the foundations for a future economic cooperation that until a few years ago seemed practically unthinkable.
The progress being made between the two rival powers of Japan and China has prompted Putin and Russian diplomacy to bring about strong economic cooperation for the future. To this end, the Eastern Economic Forum held in Vladivostok saw the participation of Abe and Xi Jinping, together with Vladimir Putin, aimed at reaffirming how cooperation and economic development is an achievable goal for all parties involved.
Abe stated, “We will push bilateral ties to a new stage so as to construct a foundation for peace and prosperity in north-east Asia”, expressing the intentions of the three leaders to advance mutually beneficial cooperation.
Washington, as usual, is the elephant in the room, now relegated to a vanishing past where the superpower made the decisions and others obeyed. From Washington’s unipolar perspective, the rapprochement between Russia and China is seen as a nightmare, not to mention Japan’s dialogue with Russia over a peace treaty.
Abe seems to have adopted Erdogan’s ambiguous style, ready to balance himself against multiple powers to extract the most advantage for Japan. It is a strategy that often does not pay and may in fact only end up exasperating the other parties.
Japan, like the Europeans, should abandon its undue deference to the United States and the accompanying status as a colonial outpost. The pressing need to develop peaceful and fruitful relations with such neighbors as Russia and China should override Washington’s desire to sabotage them.
The emerging international multipolar reality is based on dialogue, cooperation, development, mutual respect, and deterrence. The Asian region is the place where important interests of regional and global powers will intersect in the immediate future. The need for China, Russia, India and Japan to put aside their differences and conflicting strategies will become imperative as Washington demonstrates its readiness to exacerbate existing differences for the purposes of preventing regional integration in a multipolar context.
The prospect of a peace agreement between Russia and Japan represents the first step in this direction, but it also requires a strong spirit of independence to resist Washington. The trade policies implemented by Trump, and his approach towards international relations, offers Washington’s allies like Tokyo the opportunity to advance an independent foreign policy free of Washington’s diktats. This can already be seen in such commercial partnerships as those involving Huawei and such technology fields as those involving 5G technology.
- US Concealed Secret 9/11 Tapes Of Alleged Mastermind Plotting With Co-Conspirators: Lawyer
The United States concealed the existence of taped telephone calls between the alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who spoke in code with three of his accused co-conspirators, according to the New York Times.
The tapes featuring Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and three of his accused co-conspirators were made between April and October 2001, prosecutors say. (United States Department of Justice) The existence of the tapes was revealed by their defense attorney, Jay Connell, as part of a protest over plans for prosecutors to use them as evidence at the death penalty trial more than 17 years after 19 hijackers took four commercial airplanes by force – crashing them into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a Pennsylvania field, killing nearly 3,000 people according to the 9/11 Commission Report – aspects of which have been refuted by groups such as Architects & Engineers for 9/11 truth.
Defense attorneys have known of the tapes since September 30, 2016 – when prosecutors handed over audio and transcripts of the conversations, making clear that they intended to use them against the men at trial. When the defense attorneys attempted to investigate the tapes – including the method used by the government to record the calls, they hit a brick wall. The original trial judge, Army Col. James L. Poul had secretly issued an order preventing them from knowing about the call collection system – or asking questions about it.
Connell – who questioned in court whether the tapes were recorded during the years that Mohammed and the other defendants were imprisoned in the CIA’s secret prison system – is now arguing that the tapes should not be allowed as evidence in the death penalty trial, as the defendants’ basic right to challenge the evidence being used against them are being violated.
Mr. Connell, who is representing Mr. Mohammed’s nephew, Ammar al-Baluchi, said that prosecutors secretly obtained a ruling in August 2018 from Colonel Pohl forbidding defense lawyers from learning how the phone calls were collected or investigating that question. The phone calls in at least two languages were made between April and October 2001.
Mr. Connell said the restriction on investigating the origins of the tapes violated a defendant’s basic right to challenge the evidence being used against him. He argued in court on Monday that the evidence should be suppressed or that the case should be dismissed. He said the constraints the defense faces regarding the tapes violate the Sixth Amendment, which sets out the rights of defendants in a trial. –NYT
According to the report, the military trial judges have yet to decide which aspects of the Constitution apply to military commissions – war courts established by President George W. Bush following the 9/11 attacks.
Arguing for the government, prosecutor Clayton Trivett responded that defense attorneys should be allowed to question an FBI linguist who analyzed the tapes and compared the defendants’ voices to determine that they belonged to Mohammed, his nephew al-Baluchi and the two other alleged plotters. Trivett added that the defense team should be able to question the FBI analyst who decoded the conversation.
The only catch? They still don’t get to know about how the calls were recorded.
The only restriction, he said, is on defense lawyers trying to investigate “how the United States government got those calls,” something prosecutors persuaded the judge would endanger national security.
Colonel Pohl had said prosecutors could describe the evidence as having been acquired from “telephone calls from between April and October 2001 that were later determined to pertain to the planned attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.” –NYT
The Times notes that “The Hunt For KSM” author Terry McDermott said that he found during his research that US satellites “randomly scooped up calls” between Mohammed and an alleged deputy, Ramzi bin al-Sihbh.
“The N.S.A. intercepted calls but didn’t listen to them or translate them until after 9/11,” McDermott said. “Afterward, they went through this stuff and found out what it was.”
Trivett denied that the voice samples were from the CIA black site prior to their transfer to Guantánamo in 2016 to stand trial.
This week, attorneys will argue in what will be the 24th round of pretrial hearings since the men were arraigned in 2012, in front of military judge Col. Keith Parrella of the Marines.
- Apologies To President Trump
Authored by Sharyl Attkisson, op-ed via The Hill,
With the conclusions of special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe now known to a significant degree, it seems apologies are in order.
However, judging by the recent past, apologies are not likely forthcoming from the responsible parties.
In this context, it matters not whether one is a supporter or a critic of President Trump.
Whatever his supposed flaws, the rampant accusations and speculation that shrouded Trump’s presidency, even before it began, ultimately have proven unfounded. Just as Trump said all along.
Yet, each time Trump said so, some of us in the media lampooned him. We treated any words he spoke in his own defense as if they were automatically to be disbelieved because he had uttered them. Some even declared his words to be “lies,” although they had no evidence to back up their claims.
We in the media allowed unproven charges and false accusations to dominate the news landscape for more than two years, in a way that was wildly unbalanced and disproportionate to the evidence.
We did a poor job of tracking down leaks of false information. We failed to reasonably weigh the motives of anonymous sources and those claiming to have secret, special evidence of Trump’s “treason.”
As such, we reported a tremendous amount of false information, always to Trump’s detriment.
And when we corrected our mistakes, we often doubled down more than we apologized. We may have been technically wrong on that tiny point, we would acknowledge. But, in the same breath, we would insist that Trump was so obviously guilty of being Russian President Vladimir Putin’s puppet that the technical details hardly mattered.
So, a round of apologies seem in order.
Apologies to Trump on behalf of those in the U.S. intelligence community, including the Department of Justice and the FBI, which allowed the weaponization of sensitive, intrusive intelligence tools against innocent citizens such as Carter Page, an adviser to Trump’s presidential campaign.
Apologies also to Page himself, to Jerome Corsi, Donald Trump Jr., and other citizens whose rights were violated or who were unfairly caught up in surveillance or the heated pursuit of charges based on little more than false, unproven opposition research paid for by Democrats and the Hillary Clinton campaign.
Apologies for the stress on their jobs and to their families, the damage to their reputations, the money they had to spend to hire legal representation and defend themselves from charges for crimes they did not commit.
Apologies on behalf of those in the intelligence community who leaked true information out of context to make Trump look guilty, and who sometimes leaked false information to try to implicate or frame him.
Apologies from those in the chain of command at the FBI and the Department of Justice who were supposed to make sure all information presented to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) is verified but did not do so.
Apologies from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court judges who are supposed to serve as one of the few checks and balances to prevent the FBI from wiretapping innocent Americans. Whether because of blind trust in the FBI or out of ignorance or even malfeasance, they failed at this important job.
Apologies to the American people who did not receive the full attention of their government while political points were being scored; who were not told about some important world events because they were crowded out of the news by the persistent insistence that Trump was working for Russia.
Apologies all the way around.
And now, with those apologies handled — are more than apologies due?
Should we try to learn more about those supposed Russian sources who provided false “intel” contained in the “dossier” against Trump, Page and others?
Should we learn how these sources came to the attention of ex-British spy Christopher Steele, who built the dossier and claimed that some of the sources were close to Putin?
When and where did Steele meet with these high-level Russian sources who provided the apparently false information?
Are these the people who actually took proven, concrete steps to interfere in the 2016 election and sabotage Trump’s presidency, beginning in its earliest days?
Just who conspired to put the “dossier” into the hands of the FBI?
Who, within our intel community, dropped the ball on verifying the information and, instead, leaked it to the press and presented it to the FISC as if legitimate?
“Sorry” hardly seems to be enough.
Will anyone be held accountable?
- DOJ Concludes Obamacare Unconstitutional And Should Be Struck Down
In a dramatic escalation of the Trump administration’s legal battle against President Obama’s health care law, Justice Department lawyers now say the entire Affordable Care Act should be struck down.
Having previously argued, under AG Jeff Sessions, that only the law’s pre-existing condition protections should be struck down, DoJ lawyers told a federal appeals court Monday it thinks the whole of ObamaCare is unconstitutional, siding with a Texas district court ruling that found Obamacare unconstitutional.
In a letter Monday night, the administration said “it is not urging that any portion of the district court’s judgment be reversed.”
“The Department of Justice has determined that the district court’s comprehensive opinion came to the correct conclusion and will support it on appeal,” said Kerri Kupec, spokesperson for the Justice Department.
The Hill points out that the case centers on the argument that since Congress repealed the tax penalty in the law’s mandate for everyone to have insurance in 2017, the mandate can no longer be ruled constitutional under Congress’s power to tax.
The challengers then argue that all of ObamaCare should be invalidated because the mandate is unconstitutional.
Most legal experts say legal precedent shows that even if the mandate is ruled unconstitutional, the rest of ObamaCare should remain unharmed, as that is what Congress voted to do in the 2017 tax law that repealed the mandate’s penalty.
Of course, at a moment when Trump’s political capital is soaring after the Mueller/Avenatti debacles have crushed the #resistance, as The Hill reports, the move is certain to prompt new denunciations from Democrats, who had already seized on the Trump administration’s earlier call for the pre-existing condition protections to be struck down.
“This lawsuit is as dangerous as it is reckless. It threatens the healthcare of tens of millions of Americans across the country — from California to Kentucky and all the way to Maine,” said California Attorney General Xavier Becerra in a statement.
“The Affordable Care Act is an integral part of our healthcare system… Because no American should fear losing healthcare, we will defend the ACA every step of the way.”
Specifically, as The Washington Times concludes, the administration’s decision to fully back the lawsuit will loom large on Tuesday when Democrats plan to propose measures that would make Obamacare more generous and combat Mr. Trump’s changes to the program, which they’ve dubbed “sabotage.”
- Foreigners Dump Most Chinese Stocks On Record As Rally Fizzles
While the stock market bubble for China’s locals may be a long way from bursting, with Shanghai margin debt still soaring by the day as more and more Chinese investors park cash into the best performing (for now) stock market of the year…
… foreign investors have seen, and had, enough, and on Monday, as Chinese stocks slumped, foreigners dumped the most Chinese shares on record via stock trading connects as they steered away from risk and the country’s benchmark index fell below the key 3,100 level.
According to Bloomberg calculations, overseas investors sold a net of 10.8 billion yuan ($1.6 billion) of mainland shares Monday, the biggest single-day sale since the second exchange link with Hong Kong opened in December 2016, as the Shanghai Composite joined a global rout on growth concerns, sliding 2%.
“Investors tend to be more risk-averse after recent data showed signs of economic slowdowns in major economies,” KGI Asia’s Ben Kwong told Bloomberg. “They’d sell high-risk assets such as Chinese equities. Some investors would lock in profits after such a big rally to avoid uncertainties.”
And, as the chart above shows, they clearly are doing so.
The question is whether they will continue to do so: even after Monday’s loss, the Shanghai Composite Index remains 22% higher in 2019 and is the best performing major index worldwide.
Alas, if historical precedent serves, this outperformance will not continue: foreign investors have had a history of successfully timing exits. As Bloomberg notes, the last two times they dumped a similar amount of Chinese shares via the exchange links, the Shanghai gauge dropped at least 7% over the following days.
- America's Fentanyl Problem: China Can Turn Off The Tap… If It Wants
Authored by Grant Newsham via AndMagazine.com,
In 2017, Islamic insurgents in Niger ambushed and killed a four-man US Special Forces team. It was front-page news and considered a catastrophe.
That same year, over 28,000 Americans died of overdoses involving the synthetic drug, fentanyl. Yet, it seemed less of an attention-getter in Washington – and still does – even as the death toll mounts.
The fentanyl mostly comes from the People’s Republic of China – although the media usually downplays or ignores this point – seemingly afraid to mention the ‘C’ word.
The Washington Post did recently publish an article by well-regarded reporter and China expert, John Pomfret, explaining why the Chinese government does not stop the fentanyl flow – despite promising the U.S .Government it would do so.
However, Post editors may have taken a hacksaw to the piece, as it reads like an uncritical listing of PRC (People’s Republic of China) talking points.
Readers might be left thinking Beijing can either do nothing about fentanyl or is justified in turning a blind eye owing to Western mistreatment of China in the 19th century or America’s failure to extradite Chinese citizens sought by the PRC.
A couple sentences noting the Chinese government can stop the fentanyl flow anytime it wants, and that China has no excuses, might have been left on the newsroom floor.
Mr. Pomfret accurately notes that Chinese local governments won’t stop fentanyl production; they want tax revenues and employment – and are also thoroughly corrupt. True enough. But local officials are also frightened of being caught crossing Beijing. Thus, one presumes CCP (Chinese Communist Party) leadership has no objections.
Then it’s noted the PRC government is in a legal bind as fentanyl producers keep jiggering the formula to avoid the ‘illegal list’ – and therefore the producers are always one-step ahead of the government that can’t revise laws fast enough – try as it might.
The article does note the PRC could simply ban all fentanyl related products – regardless of composition. That’s true, but also irrelevant. In China, the law is what Xi Xinping and the Communist Party say it is. If they want to shut down fentanyl producers the ‘law’ is no obstacle – as it would be in the United States. The fact the PRC doesn’t ban fentanyl ‘of any chemical composition’ – much less go after producers the way it goes after Uighurs, Christians, and Falun Gong – once again suggests the CCP is glad America is awash in fentanyl.
Then we are told that Chinese cops have a different approach to policing. That may be true – but it also makes it easier to target illegal drugs – if the CCP desires. In other words, the PRC police can do whatever they want. ‘Disappear’ people, arrest starlets, kidnap billionaires and booksellers….no problem. The only restraints come from Zhongnanhai.
As for arguments that Chinese authorities can’t locate the illegal drug producers: The CCP is creating a surveillance state Orwell couldn’t have imagined. Deface a poster of President Xi and see how long it takes to be arrested and imprisoned or inside a mental hospital.
Indeed, before long, just mutter in your bathroom that Xi resembles Winnie the Pooh and you’ll have Ministry of State Security agents at your front door in minutes.
Next, PRC officials claim it’s the Americans who deserve blame for the country’s drug problem – and need to stop taking drugs in the first place. Pimps and drug pushers have been using this excuse for years – ‘just giving customers what they want.’
Admittedly, human nature is what it is. But that’s why civilized societies punish the providers of dangerous substances and services — and don’t just sanction users for their irresponsible behavior.
The article also mentions that Chinese authorities aren’t cooperating since they are angry (and implicitly excused) over American refusal to return every Chinese fugitive Beijing demands handed over. That’s not much of an excuse. Extradition disputes between countries are nothing new. And China even refuses to return a key figure in the Malaysian 1MDB scandal who is hiding under protection in the PRC.
China taking a few American citizens (and Canadians) hostage is bad enough, but suggesting extradition disputes excuse a drug peddling scheme killing thousands of Americans every year is insane.
Finally, it’s suggested that China’s blind eye to fentanyl exports is simply payback for the Opium Wars. Mr. Pomfret uses the word schadenfraude. However, schadenfraude is chuckling over the distress New York Yankees fans feel when their team loses in the playoff and misses the World Series – again.
China’s behavior is better characterized as homicidal revenge. Instead of schadenfraude it’s more like an arsonist gloating while watching the fire trucks and ambulances heading to his latest fire to pick up the corpses.
And it is causing carnage – throughout all parts of American society – even in ‘good’ neighborhoods. And about half of the deaths attributed to fentanyl are young people of military age. As one former government official notes, this is the equivalent of removing two or three divisions of Army or Marines off the rolls every year. And don’t forget the ‘battlefield casualties’ who survive but can’t function as productive members of society, and the burden and expense of caring for them.
From China’s perspective, what’s not to like? And even better, the PRC makes a lot of money from the drug trade – and convertible currency as well.
Some people claim the victims are just ‘druggies’ and wouldn’t have joined the military anyway. That’s both malicious and wrong. Young people have been misbehaving for centuries, and that includes many who join the U.S. military. But a ‘six pack’ or a ‘joint’ is one thing, a concoction that kills or permanently disables, is quite another.
One is ultimately left thinking the PRC government is incompetent or corrupt, or pushing fentanyl on purpose. Maybe it’s some of each.
Regardless, while attention focuses on the U.S. southern border, America is losing almost as many citizens to PRC supplied drugs than died in the worst years of the Vietnam War and far more than were killed in all 18 years of war in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Mr. President:
Maybe hold off on Xi Xinping’s invitation to Mar-a-Lago – and instead do one or more of the following:
- Suspend the People’s Bank of China from the US dollar system;
- Pull the plug on ZTE, the Chinese telecom firm that’s on probation;
- De-list Alibaba from the NYSE (it shouldn’t have been listed in the first place);
- Revoke the ‘green cards’ and place liens on the properties and bank accounts of the top 500 CCP members’ relatives in the United States.
Beijing can stop pushing drugs into America. It just needs a reason to do so.
It’s past time to give it one..
- A Failed ICO Has Ended Up On eBay
The cryptocurrency sector has struggled since the bubble popped in December 2017, battling through a vicious bear cycle that collapsed the initial coin offering (ICO) market.
One failed ICO has recently called it quits; the company listed itself on eBay last week for $60,000.
Sponsy, a decentralized platform that allows sponsors and sponsees to conduct sponsorship deals, was expecting to raise millions of dollars in late 2017, even though it didn’t have a product. The founder told the Financial Times that it was the norm for a company to raise tens of millions of dollars without a real product during the Great Crypto Bubble of 2017-2018. However, the company’s lawyer advised Ivan Komar, the founder of the platform, not to ICO before a real product was built. Komar said that listening to his lawyer was the greatest mistake he made.
Here is the transcript of FT’s conversation with Komar who sums up what went wrong in the Great Crypto Bubble of 2017-2018:
We hired a lawyer and that was a big mistake for us. Because our lawyer basically told us that we should not launch any ICO before we built a real product that might have some users. And I asked him why, because I saw so many ICOs out there who did not have any idea for any product, yet they managed to raise tens of millions of dollars.
Komar acknowledged that the lawyer’s advice was probably the right advice from the customer’s — or token-buyers — point of view, but not from the point of view of raising money. So what would Sponsy have done differently if they had the chance again, we asked?
We would not have tried to build a product first, we would have tried to run a token sale as soon as possible, to jump into this crypto craze bandwagon, and raise as much money as possible before building any product. And that’s exactly what others were doing.
Instead, rather than launching in late 2017 when “this crypto craze bandwagon” was in full swing, Komar waited until summer 2018, by which stage, he says, the “market had vanished and nobody was interested in our offer”.
So even though there is no market for ICOs, or at least not for his ICO, Komar is hoping his eBay auction will attract an “enterprise client” with a big blockchain R&D budget — he suggested Bosch — or an individual who wants to try to launch an ICO into the non-existent market. Or just someone who wants to start a sponsorship platform that has nothing to do with blockchain or crypto. Komar told us:
The core business model would run just as well in the centralised world without any tokens or crypto or blockchain… They can easily eliminate the crypto functionality out of this. The core component is a platform — it doesn’t require any crypto or blockchain component to work. Just a typical, centralised server.
Again Komar — without necessarily realizing it — had managed to rather nicely encapsulate the spaciousness and incoherence of the ICO bubble. All Sponsy requires to function is a “typical, centralized server”, and yet its tagline is: “Decentralised Sponsorship Platform”.
The eBay listing also contained some other potentially attractive promises to prospective buyers, such as:
Full set of investment documents
Designed and approved by investment bankers.
Aside from the fact that it seemed a little odd to be selling any kind of preapproved investment documents, this seemed good! Which investment bank had approved the project, we wanted to know? At that point Komar, who is Belarusian but seemed to speak perfectly decent English, appeared to get in a bit of a twist:
“Approved” might be a huge word for it. It might be some kind of exaggeration. We did have a law firm based in the UK that ran some sort of audit of our project, and it ranked it, and the rank that we got was pretty high and the risk we got was pretty low. This was an audit by a British firm. This couldn’t be called a fully fledged investment banking audit, it’s just some firm that was considering investing in crypto.
* * *
FT said it was best that Komar listened to his lawyer’s advice about not ICO-ing without a product. That is because nine months later, U.S. courts ruled ICO frauds would fall under securities law.
Komar believes $60,000 minimum bid on eBay is a “very low” amount for the platform. He said the amount should be north of $200,000.
Glancing at the listing on Monday morning, there are four days left on the auction with zero bids and no watchers.
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