Month: November 2016

As you might expect, the Miami Herald has an excellent retrospective on the life of Fidel Castro who has passed away at the age of ninety. He was such a consequential man that there many angles one can take. As the Herald notes, “By the time he was 35, two American presidents had devoted a considerable amount of time and effort to killing him.”

Those efforts to assassinate Castro weren’t divulged to the Warren Commission and didn’t come to light until the early 1970’s when Congress began looking carefully at the activities of the CIA. But they explain a lot about why Castro ruled his island nation with an iron fist. That doesn’t excuse Castro, but it’s a perspective was that missing for too long as Americans formed their opinions of him.

His death is anticlimactic in a way, both because he turned the reins over to his brother years ago and because the Obama administration has improved relations with Cuba and lifted the travel restriction. Had he died during a period of greater tensions, it might have signaled a greater change in relations between our two countries.

There was a lot of reckless behavior on all sides during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, but it shouldn’t be forgotten that the world very nearly came to an end as a result of Castro’s decision to invite Soviet warheads into his country, a mere ninety miles off the coast of Florida.

How you ultimately feel about Castro’s legacy probably reflects how you feel about America’s historic role in the world. That he outlived John F. Kennedy by fifty-three years is remarkable. So many things changed in the interim.

One thing that changed is that our country went insane.

Fidel Castro is dead!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 26, 2016

I doubt that was vetted with the State Department.

The larger the mob, the harder the test. In small areas, before small electorates, a first-rate man occasionally fights his way through, carrying even the mob with him by force of his personality. But when the field is nationwide, and the fight must be waged chiefly at second and third hand, and the force of personality cannot so readily make itself felt, then all the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically, the most devious and mediocre — the man who can most easily adeptly disperse the notion that his mind is a virtual vacuum.

The Presidency tends, year by year, to go to such men. As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron. – H.L. Mencken, Baltimore Evening Sun on 26 July 1920.

I believe that H.L. Mencken nailed it.

Hello again painting fans.

This week I will be continuing with the Grand Canyon painting. The photo that I’m using is seen directly below. I’ll be using my usual acrylic paints on a 6×6 inch canvas.

When last seen the painting appeared as it does in the photo seen directly below.

Since that time I have continued to work on the painting.

For this week’s cycle I’ve added to the very front and rear of the image. Out in front, I’ve continued the wispy portions of the buttes down into the shadows. A similar effect is seen in the original photo. In the far rear, I’ve broken up the distant cliffs/buttes into smaller shapes. The painting is now done.

The current and final state of the painting is seen in the photo directly below.

I’ll have another painting to show you next week. See you then.

Earlier paintings in this series can be seen here.

Donald Trump’s national security advisor, Michael Flynn, traveled to Japan in mid-October when things were looking pretty grim for his candidate. He was there “on the invitation of a U.S. company for which he serves as an adviser,” and he met with a wide array of current and former officials from the majority and minority parties.

Of course, Trump had said some really asinine things about Japan and especially about nuclear proliferation during the campaign, so it was natural that folks would want to ask Flynn about them.

But Flynn said not to worry.

In his meetings, Flynn is said to have claimed Trump’s controversial campaign-trail remarks were merely part of the rhetoric needed to secure an election win, according to informed sources. His actual policies after taking office would be different from what he said to galvanize his support base, Flynn predicted.

This isn’t unprecedented. Barack Obama made noises about revisiting NAFTA during his 2008 campaign but Austan Goolsbee went to Canada and reassured them that it was just “rhetoric needed to secure an election win” intended to “galvanize the base.”

“Noting anxiety among many U.S. domestic audiences about the U.S. economic outlook, Goolsbee candidly acknowledged the protectionist sentiment that has emerged, particularly in the Midwest, during the primary campaign. He cautioned that this messaging should not be taken out of context and should be viewed as more about political positioning than a clear articulation of policy plans.”

This isn’t some kind of great excuse, by the way. I don’t remember too many people being impressed or approving of Obama and Goolsbee’s two-faced game when it was divulged. It was also about a trade agreement that, while very important, didn’t rise to the level of encouraging Japan and South Korea (and Saudi Arabia) to become nuclear-armed states.

I seem to remember Hillary Clinton taking on some water after it was revealed that she had told finance industry executives that effective leaders sometimes need “both a public and a private position.” Maybe she was thinking of how Abraham Lincoln navigated the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment, but people didn’t like the sound of it and it badly hurt her campaign.

In the context of everything else that is going on and that raises serious concerns, it doesn’t seem like such a big deal that Trump would say one thing on the stump while privately believing something completely different.

But there’s always the possibility that Trump didn’t say that he thought more countries should have nuclear weapons because he believed that that was exactly what the Republican base wanted to hear. Frankly, that theory doesn’t make any sense. A more likely answer is that Trump just wanted to argue that America shouldn’t pay to protect our lazy allies anymore than his voters should foot the bill on food stamps that go to people who are too lazy to work.

And he’s an idiot.

What he’s not is a straight-shooter who tells the truth and doesn’t engage in political rhetoric.

I’ve been warning for years now … the Dutch right-wing Islamophobes … and what the Republicans and Trump supporters will bring on … one could argue, under the Obama presidency latent racism steadily drifted and floated upward throughout US “new culture” and society. Social media brought it faster and stronger … the blessings of Internet.

Nevertheless, the Bush years and the War on Terror became the accelerator, the catalyst of fear, anxiety and believers in fake news and conspiracies. I have thrown two son-in-laws to be out of my house because the younger generation is quite susceptible. It must be because of a void in historical knowledge, plain wisdom or just stupidity combined with a different focus on life and the meaning of a social being.

Dutch race hate row engulfs presenter Sylvana Simons | BBC News |

The images of a black Dutch TV presenter’s face super-imposed on the hanged bodies of victims of a lynching are too nauseating to look at. And yet a video featuring the mocked-up pictures has been widely circulated online here.

Sylvana Simons has for years been a familiar presence on Dutch TV and radio, and the attack on her has highlighted a debate bubbling inside the Netherlands far removed from its reputation as a liberal tolerant nation.

A former presenter on talent show Dancing with the Stars, she recently joined the political party “Denk” (Think) and is running in the next election.

 « click for more info
Sylvana enters Dutch politics (Credit: VARA)

But it was her criticism of the traditional festive character known as Black Pete that unleashed a backlash of death-threats and misogynistic, racist abuse, which quickly escalated from unpleasant to outright shocking.

The video that circulated online also featured a song entitled “Oh Sylvana” including the lines “why don’t you pack your bags… why don’t you go and emigrate”. But the song-writers insist it was a party anthem about a Russian woman and nothing to do with Sylvana Simons.

The self-proclaimed creator of the video has now handed himself in to police, but the sentiment among a small but significant section of society appears to be – if you question our traditions then you are fair game.

When a football show host suggested that Sylvana was “running around proud as a monkey”, a colleague suggested he had meant to use the phrase “proud as a peacock”. But he was adamant: “No, she doesn’t look like a peacock.” Then a famous radio presenter played gorilla grunts on air and said “be quiet, Sylvana”.

○ Sylvana Simons gets protection due to specific death treats
○ Sylvana Simons should get out of politics, says Wilders

Opinion at another blog about the ugliest form of Dutch racism …

 ○ The day to wave good-bye to Sylvana Simons – Dec. 6th

Lawrence Lessig says that the Electoral College should select Hillary Clinton as our next president, which is not unreasonable on its face. The Electoral College serves two distinct purposes. One is that it creates dozens of distinct elections rather than one nationwide election. There are advantages to this. One advantage is that it’s easier to do a recount in one state than it would be to recount every ballot cast in the nation. Another advantage is that it forces candidates to do more retail politicking than they would do if they were only concerned with jacking up nationwide turnout. But this consideration is secondary.

There are also the actual Electors to consider, and they only really exist to exercise their independent judgment. We could have the votes assigned automatically based on the winner of each state or the winner of each congressional district, but that’s not how it was designed. The Electors exist to overrule the voters. That’s really their only purpose. So, if they think the voters have elected a narcissistic moron, they have the right to say “sorry, no” and cast their votes for someone else.

We may not like them having that discretion and some states have passed laws that attempt to take that discretion away, but those efforts probably wouldn’t stand up in court. If we want to really take away their discretion, we need to amend the Constitution.

Lessig makes an argument based primarily on the fact that Clinton won the popular vote and that therefore denying her the presidency is destroying the idea of one person, one vote.

This is nonsense for the simple reason that the candidates would have run their campaigns completely differently if they were trying to win the popular vote instead of the Electoral College. They would have spent more time in Chicago and Los Angeles and a lot less time in North Carolina and Nevada. They would have runs ads in different places with different messages. The may have had entirely different messages and even some different policies.

No, we can’t blame Trump for winning according to the rules. Losing the popular vote in an interesting factoid, but it’s not a mark against his victory.

What Lessig should have argued is that the Electors should plainly judge Trump a menacing incompetent and reject him with extreme prejudice.

This is a justifiable argument in our current circumstances.

However, even this is not a slam-dunk case because it would cause immense civil unrest. It takes a certain arrogance and perhaps some unwarranted self-assurance to insist that you know that a Trump presidency will be worse than the problems that denying him the presidency would cause.

At the end of the day though, it’s a judgment call. And the Electors exist for precisely this reason, to make this kind of judgment.

Trump is already demonstrating his unfitness for office in many ways. He’s using unsecured phones, dabbling in nepotism, soliciting bribes, brazenly seeking to profit off his office, taking conflicts of interest to places we’ve never seen before, ignoring his intelligence briefings, settling lawsuits for defrauding people, making an anti-Semitic white nationalist his chief strategist and a raving Islamophobe his national security advisor, and his election was orchestrated in large part by Russian interference.

Under this set of circumstances, it would be reasonable to overrule the verdict of the people.

But, let’s not pretend that it wouldn’t cause serious problems.

We’d be trading one kind of trouble for another.

Lessig could have made his case on the basis of this kind of choice, but he chose to talk nonsense about the popular vote.

The popular vote is a different debate. Maybe we want to do away with the Electoral College altogether. But that’s a matter for the future. Right now, we have Electors. And those Electors still have a choice to make on December 19th when they convene and vote.

I am sure that Trump will be their choice.

I am not at all sure that Trump should be their choice.

The Last Waltz, final concert of The Band (plus incredible lineup of guest musicians), Thanksgiving Day 1976:

Let’s take a look at how the last three presidents handled getting intelligence briefings during the transition period between their early November election and their inauguration on January 20th.

President Bill Clinton got his first post-race briefing on Nov. 13, 1992 — 10 days after the election. He received daily intelligence briefings almost every working day of the rest of the transition time in Little Rock.

President George W. Bush’s first briefing was delayed until Dec. 5 because of the Florida election recount. But Bush, whose father had served as CIA director, asked for daily briefings for the remainder of the transition.

After his election in 2008, President Obama took part not only in regular intelligence briefings but also scheduled “deep dives” on key subjects including Iran’s nuclear program and covert CIA operations, including the accelerating campaign of drone strikes in Pakistan.

“During the transition, President Obama was an avid consumer of intelligence,” said retired Lt. Gen. Michael V. Hayden, who was CIA director when Obama was elected.

This is not how Donald Trump is handling things. He has so far refused to sit own with James Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence. He has received only two briefings.

Trump was given an initial briefing within days of his election victory, and took part in a second session with senior U.S. intelligence analysts Tuesday in New York before he departed to Florida for the Thanksgiving holiday, officials said. Trump turned other briefing opportunities away.

His running-mate Mike Pence, by contrast, has received intelligence briefings “almost every day since the election.”

However, if you think this indicates a lack of interest in national security matters or a general lack of seriousness, you need to get a life.

Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee and a senior member of Trump’s transition team, dismissed the issue, saying that Trump has devoted significant attention to security matters even while meeting with world leaders and assembling his administration.

“National security is Donald Trump’s No. 1 priority and I think he’s taking it very seriously,” Nunes said in an interview. “Look how many leaders he’s met with, how many phone calls he’s done, positions he’s filled. People who are being critical need to get a life.”

So, I’m looking at all the phone calls he’s had on unsecured phones and all the foreign leaders he’s talked to to lobby them on building permits and wind farms and the positions he’s filled with discredited cranks, white nationalists, anti-Semites, and Islamophobes.

It’s not making me feel better.

Tackling propaganda: “It’s a continuation of methods used during the Cold War” | EU Observer |

Online propaganda by terrorist organisations and countries such as Russia aim to incite fear and divide Europe. MEPs debate this afternoon a report calling for stronger countermeasures and more collaboration between EU states. We talked to report author Anna Fotyga, a Polish member of the ECR group, about the impact of this disinformation and how to counter it. “We have to invest much more in these campaigns to fight radicalisation,” she said.

What impact have these propaganda efforts had? There are many theories about what happened in the US, but do they have the power to affect elections in Europe?

Why has Islamic State been successful in its online efforts to reach out to young Muslims in Europe? How can Europe defend itself?

Anna Fotyga: ‘We have an asymmetric war against western society coming from all directions’ (Sept. 2014 )

As countries all over the world discuss how they can work together to tackle the threat posed by ISIS, MEPs will debate on 17 September what the EU can do to improve the situation in the Middle East. Anna Fotyga, a Polish member of the ECR group and chair of the security and defence subcommittee, shared her views ahead of the debate, adding that she expects a tough hearing for Federica Mogherini, the EU’s incoming foreign affairs chief.

Should Europe focus on a strong common defence approach considering the current conflicts close to the EU’s borders?
The challenges we face are considerable. The key issue is to find consensus on how to reasonably tackle the challenges both in our southern and eastern neighbourhood.

Does the threat of the Islamic State (ISIS) require a different kind of response from Europe?
Yes, absolutely. We have an asymmetric war against western society coming from all directions. We never know what is going to strike us: militants in the Eastern part of Ukraine or the radical Islamism of ISIS.

Talking about a radical poisoning the European discussion contra Russia from her Polish view. Drip, drip, drip …

Anna Fotyga – former Poland’s Minister of Foreign Affairs | Wikipedia |

On 9 May 2006 Anna Fotyga was appointed Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Poland by President Lech Kaczyński , replacing Stefan Meller. The opposition criticised her office for pursuing a policy of isolation in relation to Russia and Germany.

On 7 September 2007, Fotyga was dismissed from her post but re-appointed again on the same day; in this way the prime minister and president avoided her being dismissed by a vote of censure prepared by the Civic Platform three months earlier.

In July 2014 she became chair of the European Parliament Subcommittee on Security and Defence.

Her position on foreign affairs is congruent with the policy stance of PiS, based on the concept of Poland as a strong, independent country, poised to confront Germany or Russia when necessary. She has also pursued a policy of close alignment with the U.S.

Following the fall of the Kaczynski administration in 2007, she was succeeded by Radosław Sikorski as foreign minister of Poland.

○ Radek Sikorski Returns to Ukraine’s Headlines: Putin’s Coup
○ Anne Sikorski-Applebaum the Raving War Lunatic
○ Making An Enemy – Demonizing Putin Endangers America’s Security

Earlier diary by Frank Schnittger …

○ Merkel, Putin & Obama: The changing balance of power – Aug. 2014

News updates in recent days …

○ OSCE Meeting in Vienna – EU Statement on Freedom of the Press in Russian Federation
○ OSCE Representative warns of negative consequences for investigative journalism when Investigative Powers Bill becomes law in the UK

More below the fold: Updates …

• WhoIs living in a fantasy world?
• New Century McCarthyism
• Max Blumenthal Dissects Poorly Researched WaPo Article About PropOrNot
• A closer look at the “allies” and Neo-McCarthyism and the US Media
• Group Behind PropOrNot

[Update-1] :: WhoIs living in a fantasy world?

Off to the Races by Shaun Appleby @MotleyMoose on Sept. 10, 2013 [cached version in webarchive]

The distinction between a Chapter VI and Chapter VII resolution is vitally important and it is disingenuous of Russia to pretend that the lesser would satisfy under the circumstances. Vladimir Putin himself, dabbling in diplomacy, has further entrenched Russia behind this obstacle:

Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that a plan for Syria to turn over its chemical weapons stockpile will only work if the United States agrees not to use force.

Putin told reporters on Tuesday that the plan “can work, only in the event that we hear that the American side and those who support the USA, in this sense, reject the use of force.”

Syria plan will work if US rejects force: Vladimir Putin AP via NDTV 10 Sep 13

This seems an overreach on Putin’s part; perhaps revealing a weakness of strategy or personality. Whichever is the case it seems vital that Congress and the American public give the Obama administration the support they need to meet this important challenge and help reassert diplomacy as an effective, viable alternative to military conflict.

Comment to article:

I Agree (2.00 / 9)

I see most current events as ‘fresh history’ and from that perspective much of the spin seems even more trivial and shallow. The new twin pillars of congressional authorisation and UN resolution are pretty clearly giving the rest of DC whiplash and the media nose-bleeds. As far as traditional ideological divisions it’s “dogs and cats living together… mass hysteria.”

The neo-cons are off on Fantasy Island. The Left is now aligned with Putin, Rand Paul and the Tea Party; and some of the stuff coming from them has been just precious. Fox News doesn’t know what is coming next or whom to book. I have had a few good chuckles but it seems to me that the Left is just as likely to render itself irrelevant in its frantic opposition to Obama as the dysfunctional GOP already has done. A two-fer.

This business in the UN could drag on for a while if we’re not careful. Russia has a long history of obfuscation. But I honestly don’t think Putin reckoned Obama would call his bluff. We’ll see.

by: Shaun Appleby @ Wed Sep 11, 2013 at 16:10:58 PM CDT

Of course posts @GOS …

○ The Putin Doctrine
○ No, Putin isn’t being smart. Obama is running rings around him

Can’t defeat such predetermined bs by any arguments, insights or even facts!
It’s nice writing in an echo chamber and hearing applause –”4s”-from the crowd.
Is that what has become of a progressive and close-knit community of the pond? So sad.

○ Fake News Alert: CNN Finally Admits “White Helmets” Staged Fake Video by Tony Cartalucci

Even the alt-right neo-nazis are now aligned with Russia in the threat to the Baltic States, Poland and Ukraine. Just shaking my head in disbelief.

○ Putinism and the European Far Right | IMR|

 
[Update-2] :: New Century McCarthyism

Mainstream Reporting Foggy While MoA Smeared As ‘Russian Propaganda’ Site

As the above news dissecting shows it is quite possible to beat the (lazy) New York Times reporting in correctness and thereby quality.

But when one tries to be diligent and not solely on one side, one can be sure to end up as denounced and hated by at least one if not all sides of a conflict. This website, MoonofAlabama.org, is now listed as “Russian propaganda outlet” by some neoconned, NATO aligned, anonymous “Friendly Neighborhood Propaganda Identification Service” prominently promoted by today’s Washington Post. The minions running that censorship list also watch over our “Russian propaganda” Twitter account @MoonofA .

PropOrNot: Identifying & Combatting Russian Online Propaganda | OUR ALLIES | Founded Nov. 6, 2016

EU Disinformation Review
Polygraph Fact-Check
Stopfake
Snopes
Politifact
Bellingcat
InterpreterMag
Russia Lies
CEPA Infowar Project
Digital Forensics Research Lab
To Inform is to Influence
Boycott Russia Today
Active Measures
Real or Satire?
Fort Liberty Hoax Sites
Fake News Watch

○ TARGETS :: We’ve blacklisted the following websites …

What’s next? Call for CENSORSHIP?

 
WhoIs PropOrNot.com

PropOrNot is a Resource

We call on the American public to:

• Be aware that Russia is trying to supplant actual journalism (that has editors and fact checkers who impose accountability for mistakes), with fake-“media” online propaganda that Russia influences or controls.
• Spread the word: Russia is attempting to manipulate the American people through online propaganda.
• Obtain news from actual reporters, who report to an editor and are professionally accountable for mistakes. We suggest NPR, the BBC, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, Buzzfeed, VICE, etc, and especially your local papers and local TV news channels. Support them by subscribing, if you can!

…
We call on Congressional leadership, and the Obama administration, to:

• Immediately begin investigations to determine whether any U.S. government action or inaction has allowed Russia to manipulate the US domestic political process, and interfere in the 2016 election, through online propaganda.
• Immediately begin investigations to determine whether, by action or inaction, the American public has been deprived of related information that they need to vote in an informed manner.
• Work with our European allies to disconnect Russia from the SWIFT financial transaction system [source: Euromaidan Press – LMAO], effective immediately and lasting for at least one year, as an appropriate response to Russian manipulation of the election.

EUROMAIDAN PRESS

○ A guide to Russian propaganda. Part 1: Propaganda prepares Russia for war
○ Why Americans fall for Kremlin Propaganda

About the author: Kseniya Kirillova is a Russian journalist that focuses on analyzing Russian society, political processes in modern Russia and the Russian-Ukrainian conflict. She writes for Radio Liberty and other outlets and is an expert of the Center for Army, Conversion, and Disarmament Studies and the Free Russia foundation.

 
[Update-3] :: Max Blumenthal Dissects Poorly Researched WaPo Article About PropOrNot

Washington Post Promotes Shadowy Website That Accuses 200 Publications of Being Russian Propaganda Plants by Max Blumenthal / AlterNet

A shady website that claims “Russia is Manipulating US Opinion Through Online Propaganda” has compiled a list of websites its anonymous authors accuse of pushing fake news and Russian propaganda.

…
Despite the Washington Post’s charitable description of PropOrNot as a group of independent-minded researchers dedicated to protecting the integrity of American democracy, the shadowy group bears many of the qualities of the red enemies it claims to be battling. In addition to its blacklist of Russian dupes, it lists a collection of outlets funded by the U.S. State Department, NATO and assorted tech and weapons companies as “allies.” PropOrNot’s methodology is so shabby it is able to peg widely read outlets like Naked Capitalism, a leading left-wing financial news blog, as Russian propaganda operations.

Though the supposed experts behind PropOrNot remain unknown, the site has been granted a veneer of credibility thanks to the Washington Post, and journalists from the New York Times, including deputy Washington editor Jonathan Weissman to former Obama senior advisor Dan Pfeiffer, are hailing Timberg’s story as Pulitzer-level journalism. “Russia appears to have successfully hacked American democracy,” declared Sahil Kapur, the senior political reporter for Bloomberg. The dead-enders of Hillary Clinton’s campaign for president have also seized on PropOrNot’s claims as proof that the election was rigged, with Clinton confidant and Center For American Progress president Neera Tanden declaring, “Wake up people,” as she blasted out the Washington Post article on Russian black ops.

PropOrNot’s malicious agenda is clearly spelled out on its website. While denying McCarthyite intentions, the group is openly attempting to compel “formal investigations by the U.S. government, because the kind of folks who make propaganda for brutal authoritarian oligarchies are often involved in a wide range of bad business.” The group also seeks to brand major progressive politics sites (and a number of prominent right-wing opinion outlets) as “‘gray’ fake-media propaganda outlets” influenced or directly operated by Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB). It can then compel Facebook and Google to ban them, denying them the ad revenue they rely on to survive.

 
[Update-4] ::

Among the websites listed by PropOrNot as “allies” are a number of groups funded by the U.S. government or NATO. They include InterpreterMag, an anti-Russian media monitoring blog funded through Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, an arm of the U.S. government, which is edited by the hardline neoconservative Michael Weiss [1]. Polygraph Fact Check, another project of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty aimed at Russian misinformation, is listed as an “ally.” So is Bellingcat, the crowdsourced military analysis blog run by Elliot Higgins through the Atlantic Council, which receives funding from the U.S. State Department, various Gulf monarchies and the weapons industry. (Bellingcat is directly funded by Google, according to Higgins)

Google, Facebook, Twitter … the NSA privatized.

h/t jfl @MoA

[1] neoconservative Michael Weiss in 2008, now editor @InterpreterMag

Neo-McCarthyism and the US Media | The Nation – May 2015 |

The crusade to ban Russia policy critics – by James Carden

Large parts of eastern Ukraine lie in ruins, and relations between the United States and Russia have perhaps reached their most dangerous point since the Cuban missile crisis of 1962.

And yet a special report published last fall by the online magazine The Interpreter would have us believe that Russian “disinformation” ranks among the gravest threats to the West. The report, titled “The Menace of Unreality: How the Kremlin Weaponizes Information, Culture and Money,” is a joint project of the Interpreter and the Institute for Modern Russia (IMR), a Manhattan-based think tank funded by the exiled Russian oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky [2].

Who Are These Guys?

Weiss and Pomerantsev [3] are an unlikely pair. Weiss, youthful yet professorial in manner, has become a nearly constant presence on cable news because of his supposed expertise on, among other things, Russia, Syria, and ISIS. A longtime neoconservative journalist, he began his rise to cable-news ubiquity as a protégé of the late Christopher Hitchens.

After working with Hitchens, he made his way to the Henry Jackson Society (HJS), a London-based bastion of neoconservatism that, according to a report in The Guardian, has “attracted controversy in recent years—with key staff criticised in the past for allegedly anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant comments.”

[2] See my finding of the connect between The Interpreter, Henry Jackson Society and Khodorkovsky in 2014 at the height of the Maidan protests and the coup d'état in Kiev: Ukraine Partners Chesno (Honestly) - USAID
[3] From the link, CEPA’s Information Warfare Initiative conducted in partnership with the Legatum Institute – which employs
Anne Applebaum

○ Reactionary Censorship in the UK: The Case of SpinProfiles | RightWeb – 2010 |

Bellingcat from USAID funding to the Atlantic Council, meet Higgins, he started the Brown Moses blog in 2012

○ Wroclaw Global Forum [note the presence of CIA asset Radek Sikorski]
○ Bio Eliot Higgins

Nice to read the view of former Defense Minister Chuck Hagel:

Talk to Putin

As it ramps up its troop presence in Europe’s eastern flank, NATO must be careful not to get embroiled in a “Cold War buildup” with Russia, and the next US president must make it a priority to engage directly with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Chuck Hagel, a former US defense secretary who currently serves as a distinguished statesman at the Atlantic Council, said in Washington on May 10.

NATO is planning to deploy four combat battalions—two American, one German, and one British—of roughly 1,000 troops each in Poland and the three Baltic States: Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania; preparing to conduct major military exercises that will include a significant number of US troops in Poland this spring; and on May 11, US military officials will inaugurate a ground-based missile interceptor site in Romania that will be part of a larger missile defense shield. All of this has provoked a sharp response from Russia, which has said it will add three divisions of roughly 10,000 troops each to its western and southern flanks by the end of the year.

Warning that “we can find ourselves very quickly in another Cold War buildup,” Hagel said he was “not sure there is real strategic thinking here. It is a tactical ricocheting from crisis to crisis.”

 
[Update-5] :: Group Behind PropOrNot

From an analysis, one group that is behind the New McCarthyism of the Cold War 2.0 …

War On The Rocks

“In a world in which relative power levels are narrowing and means are diluted, America’s historical black hole, a bifurcation between policy and operations, must be closed. Given that our country expects great sacrifices from those toiling at the tactical level, much more can and should be expected at the summit. It is my expectation that War on the Rocks will help fill in the black hole.”

-The War on the Rocks Mission Statement, as articulated by Contributing Editor Frank Hoffman

War on the Rocks is a platform for analysis, commentary, debate and multimedia content on foreign policy and national security issues through a realist lens. It features articles and podcasts produced by an array of writers with deep experience in these matters: top notch scholars who study war, those who have served or worked in war zones, and more than a few who have done it all.

This is what sets us apart from similar web publications: experience. In fact, we are confident that there is no other web-based publication on war and foreign policy out there that has been blessed with this much experience from its collection of regular contributors.

Among our 70+ regular contributors are people who have worked on every continent in the world (aside from Antarctica, so far). They have commanded ships, bargained with militias, led patrols, managed alliances, called for fires (ten of them are combat veterans), and negotiated treaties. They include former diplomats, officers, NCOs, intelligence professionals, and some of the most established scholars in the world studying war, conflict, and international politics. We have seen the worst battlefields of our times. And we have studied war at some of the world’s greatest institutions of higher learning.

Realism

Realism teaches us how to think about the world, rather than what to think about it. It is a broad term that encompasses people of many opinions with a variety of party affiliations but all of whom believe in the centrality of fear, honor, and interest as drivers of inter-state affairs. Politics is power. À la Morgenthau, we understand power as “anything that establishes and maintains the power of man over man …. from physical violence to the most subtle psychological ties by which one mind controls another.” As such, while we focus on armed force, we do not dismiss ideas and social control as mechanisms for power.

WOTR Founders Club

Their latest gem as PropOrNot was launched this month …

○ Trolling for Trump: How Russia Is Trying To Destroy Our Democracy by Andrew Weisburd, Ckint Watts and J.M. Berger

From the new York Times:

As much as Mr. Trump won the election in Wisconsin, Hillary Clinton lost it. Her campaign, which prided itself on employing all the data wizards and ground game gurus money can buy, did not do nearly enough to lock down the upper Midwest, particularly Wisconsin and Michigan, and instead treated those states as a given.

Paul Soglin is the mayor of Madison, Wisconsin’s capital city, in cerulean Dane County. He supported Senator Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primary, and said he talked at least once a week with a field organizer from the Sanders campaign during the primary. But once Mrs. Clinton locked up the nomination, it was radio silence from the Clinton campaign.

Not one call.  

I have started to come to a conclusion based on conversations since the election.

I do not think the Clnton people ever believed losing was a possibility.  As a result the campaign was kind of a massive CYA job.  They did things to check off boxes, not because they were necessary to win.

It really shouldn’t come as a surprise WI would be close.

This is the cheat sheet based on Obama’s ’12 margin.  It’s really not a shock the state would be competitive – the margin was close to NV for example which was fought over tooth and nail.

They did other things.  But the choices they made make me think they never really thought they had to defend their path to 270. OK – so they had polls.  But during the summer surely some organization would be built in the state. If for no other reason than as evidence as their support for “downballot” given the Senate race..

But no.  And I think that is because the Clinton people didn’t think they could lose.

The following isn’t necessarily the main point of Michael Tomasky’s piece, but it’s what stuck out to me.

…there are four Democratic senators from deep-red states who are up for reelection in 2018. The pressure on those four—Claire McCaskill, Joe Manchin, Heidi Heitkamp, Jon Tester—to support Trump initiatives will be enormous. Another five represent states that Trump won, albeit more narrowly; they too will face such pressures, so [Democratic Senate Minority Leader, Chuck] Schumer is going to have a tough time holding that caucus together.

So what do the Democrats have? Mainly right now, what they have are a lot of pissed off and freaked out people who want to do something.

Since I knew a friend was in from out of town, I attended the Philadelphia chapter of Drinking Liberally last night for the first time in about five years. I was a staple in that organization from 2005 to 2010, when my son was born and parental responsibilities intervened. At its height it was a bit of a salon for antiwar bloggers. Our unofficial leader was Duncan Black (a.k.a., Atrios) of Eschaton. Susie Madrak was a regular, as was Chris Bowers (then of MyDD.com, now with Daily Kos). A long list of other writers, most now inactive, were also members. Beyond the writers were the organizers. I had come into that world as a veteran of the dreaded ACORN. Before long, I was working as a political consultant for Democracy for America. Others worked at MoveOn, Color of Change, the SEIU or became deeply involved in Obama for America (later Organizing for America). We cross-pollinated with local groups like Philly for Change.

None of us got rich and none of us really got anything more than something like sub-famous. But we toiled and worked hard and I think we made a difference, each in our own way.

Last night I saw mostly new, mostly younger faces. They were the faces of people who are “pissed off and freaked out” and “want to do something.” They were looking for leadership.

One thing the left might learn this time around is to value this new generation of folks more than they valued the last one. This isn’t sour grapes; it’s just good, solid advice.

The right has their wingnut welfare and they cultivate half-talented people who we’re all now familiar with because they have syndicated columns and make regular appearances on television and radio. The left, in my experience, has seen their impassioned organizers and thought leaders more as nuisances and unwelcome gadflies. Maybe the election of Donald Trump will finally convince them that (especially in a more populist environment) outsiders have something of value to offer and that talent should be cultivated rather than shunned as an uninvited challenge.

I would have liked to have been able to tell those folks last night that there might be some future in what they’re looking to do and that they’ll find grateful allies in the Democratic establishment. That wasn’t my experience during the last go-round. They’ll go to work anyway because they’re patriotic and altruistic and they need an outlet for their angst. I hope they have a better experience and more success.

We’re all kind of depending on them.