Month: March 2018

????????

Oh, I see …

[Update-1]

○ Trump invited Putin to White House during congratulatory call last month

Holding Russia Accountable for Its Destabilizing Behavior Share

… the United States will expel 48 Russian officials serving at Russia’s bilateral mission to the United States. We will also require the Russian government to close its Consulate General in Seattle by April 2, 2018. We take these actions to demonstrate our unbreakable solidarity with the United Kingdom, and to impose serious consequences on Russia for its continued violations of international norms. ‎

Separately, we have begun the process of expelling 12 intelligence operatives from the Russian Mission to the United Nations who have abused their privilege of residence in the United States.

More below the fold …

Flash: Russia can replace expelled diplomats | France24 – AFP |

Russia is free to apply to accredit more diplomats to replace the alleged spies that have been expelled from the United States, a State Department official said.

…
In all, 48 alleged Russian operatives working under diplomatic cover for its US mission were on the list — along with 12 attached to the Russian mission to the United Nations in New York.

Russia’s consulate in Seattle will also be closed, but the total size of its diplomatic footprint in the United States might not shrink for long, because the expelled staff could be replaced.

“The United States has expelled 48 Russian intelligence officers, but it is not requiring the Russian bilateral mission to reduce its total number of personnel,” a State Department official told AFP.  

Russia’s proposals regarding cooperation in investigating the Skripal case that remained without response

Russia has repeatedly addressed the British authorities through official channels with a proposal to establish cooperation in investigating the alleged poisoning of Russian citizens, as well as with requests to provide information on their condition and, of course, the circumstances of the incident. The corresponding notes were sent via the Russian Embassy in London on March 6, 13, 14 and 22.

Unfortunately, in response to Russia’s legitimate demands and constructive proposals seeking to establish cooperation, Britain has remained silent or is simply responding incompetently. The issue is not about factual or even spelling mistakes. It is as if children wrote them. It’s about incomprehensibly scribbled notes that are difficult to read or figure out what they are specifically about. The note to Ambassador of Russia to the United Kingdom Alexander Yakovenko, which was supposed to contain a response about the condition of the Skripal family, contains information about the health of the Ambassador himself. To reiterate, this is not about factual error, but either a deliberate desire to introduce a note of absurdity in this situation or the total incompetence of the British authorities.

We have witnessed Russian representatives being denied access to injured Russian citizens. Thus, the United Kingdom, openly and without scruples, is breaking international legal provisions, in particular, the Consular Convention between the Soviet Union and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland of 1968.

UK Court Allows Blood Samples to be Taken from Skripals for OPCW

○ Foreign Office considers Russian consular access to Yulia Skripal

BTW on the situation on democratization of Ukraine after charlatan Saakashvili was evicted from Ukraine, losing citizenship and loss of job as Governor of Odessa … what a farce all-around!

Ukraine’s asset declaration system should hold public officials accountable, not place unnecessary burdens or pressure on #civilsociety. The United States strongly encourages the government of #Ukraine to repeal this legislation. https://t.co/UFoVBpPksI pic.twitter.com/d4E2ZoqDf6

— Heather Nauert (@statedeptspox) March 30, 2018

○ The Guardian view on Brexit and Russia: a fatal flaw | The Guardian – Editorial |
○ Nicola Jennings on one year until Brexit – cartoon

As novichok unites Europe, Brexit seems more absurd

The key point is that no European government has expressed any doubt about Britain’s assessment that Russia was responsible. As such, this was nothing like the 2003 debate over the presence, or not, of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. That involved significant dissent: France and Germany never took the bait.

So how was European unity achieved on novichok and Russia? In London, several politicians and commentators applauded the government for its capacity to rally European support despite the looming Brexit – as if the much decried diminishment of Britain’s influence had suddenly been proved wrong. But sources in Brussels and other European capitals offer a different take on events.

○ Russian stereotypes hurt ordinary people – and play into Putin’s hands | The Guardian – Opinion |

Anyone else think this is worse than Las Vegas?

The following…the reason for the amazing Trump hysteria in a nutshell.

Think about it.

Please.
From Counterpunch:

Big Brother Isn’t Watching You, You’re Watching Him, by Tom Englehardt.

A record? Come on! Don’t minimize what’s happening. It’s far too unique, too unprecedented even to be classified as “historic.” Call it mega-historic, if you wish. Never from Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar to Soviet despot Joseph Stalin, from the Sun King Louis the XIV to President Ronald Reagan, from George Washington to Barack Obama, has anyone — star, icon, personality, president, autocrat, emperor — been covered in anything like this fashion.

In our American world, the only comparison might be to a few days of media coverage of the assassination of John F. Kennedy or the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan or, in more recent times, a terror attack like the one in San Bernardino. Keep in mind, though, that such coverage has been going on for more than two and a half years now.  So here’s another possible point of comparison, though it only lasted a couple of hours almost a quarter of a century ago. In fact, it may be the most appropriate comparison of all in a landscape in which shrinking media outlets have been scrambling to glue eyeballs to page or screen in an otherwise dazzling landscape of distraction. Think of Donald Trump’s White House sojourn so far as our first white Ford Bronco presidency.

Imagine that, in June 2015, The Donald hadn’t swept down that Trump Tower escalator into the presidential race to the sounds of Neil Young’s “Rockin’ in the Free World,” but had instead slipped behind the wheel of O.J. Simpson’s infamous white Ford Bronco and headed off on the nearest highway, the one leading directly into all our brains. The two hours that Simpson spent armed in that vehicle in 1994, four days after the murder of his wife, with the police trailing him and TV news helicopters hovering overhead, would prove to be our first experience of the reality TV version of the “news” in which we’re now immersed. If you remember, it seemed to unfold in something like slow motion as roadside crowds turned out to cheer the “Juice” on. It would essentially be two hours of nothing whatsoever that nonetheless seemed to supersede everything else on Earth, two hours during which Americans ordered record amounts of home-delivered pizza, while watching traffic flowing on a highway to nowhere. In the process, a vision of mayhem that might otherwise have passed for boredom was etched permanently into the media’s DNA.

Think of Donald Trump as the O.J. Simpson of our moment and those hours on that highway as a preview of what media life (which, with the arrival of the handheld screen, has become more or less all life) turned out to be. Think of Donald Trump’s presidential run and now presidency as a never-ending white Ford Bronco ride, and if you accept that, all that remains to be asked is who was murdered (democracy?) and did he do it?

All Trump All the Time

Here, in my opinion, may be the strangest thing of all. Who doesn’t sense just how unprecedented the media spectacle of our moment is? Every single day is a new Trump dawn, a new firing or appointment at the White House, a new tweet storm, a new outrageous statement or policy, a new insult, a new lie or misstatement, a new bit of news about Stormy Daniels or other women who — your choice — had affairs with, were groped by, defamed by, or silenced by him, and so on down an endlessly repetitive list of what has become “the news” more or less 24/7 or perhaps more accurately 24/365 (with not a holiday in sight).

Who wouldn’t agree with that? And yet have you noticed how little such coverage is itself actually covered?  At least during the election campaign you could get some overview numbers on the blitz of attention the media was giving candidate Trump.  It was regularly said, for instance, that he had gotten $5 billion in free advertising in those endless months in which his face, rants, tweets, nicknames, his… well, you name it… was eternally front and center in our media lives.

Post-election, nothing has really changed and yet when was the last time you saw a mainstream news article on such an unprecedented phenomenon?  When did anyone front page the fact that no human being in history has ever been covered in this fashion, a fashion that gives the very word “cover” a grim new meaning?

I mean I’m just one guy. My resources are slim. I have no studies commissioned on this subject and little to draw on except my own experience of everyday life.  So here’s the closest I can come to catching the nature of that coverage for you. I go to the gym almost every day. There’s a waiting area I pass through on my route in and out of the men’s locker room.  On one wall is a large-screen TV. Sometimes, it’s tuned to sports, but mostly it has the cable news on. Basketball games aside, it really doesn’t matter what time I arrive, or whether it’s MSNBC, CNN, or even on the rarest of occasions (this is New York City, after all!) Fox News, here’s what’s always the same: on screen are those ever-present talking heads yakking away about, well, Donald Trump or something related to him (the Mueller investigation, the steel and aluminum or Chinese tariffs, Stormy Daniels, the president’s Putin bromance… you know the list) and under them there’s that crawl, that news ticker, the one that, day in, day out, is always — and I mean always — scrolling away on subjects about or related to Donald Trump.

—snip—

An All-American Cult of Personality

Believe me, if this were happening in Russia or China (The cult of Putin! The cult of Xi!), it would be a major news story and treated as such.  After all, thought of a certain way, what we’ve been watching is indeed the creation of an all-American cult of personality (quite literally so when it comes to Trump’s “base,” as any of his rallies suggest).  And yet that and the media’s role in it isn’t news.

Admittedly, Donald Trump is a hell of a story.  And for a media filled with shrinking news staffs and desperate to find ways to hold onto or increase readership or viewership, he’s a godsend (as well as a monster). After all, his greatest skill — the one he’s spent a lifetime perfecting — is undoubtedly his unerring instinct for just how to attract the camera under more or less any circumstances.  The result, however, is a picture of the world that’s deceptive in the extreme.  These days, if you only watched TV and read mainstream papers, you would be excused for thinking that we were in a world of Donald Trump and little else.  By now, he’s all but blotted out the sun itself.  In this sense, for instance, he isn’t so much a climate-change denier in an administration filled with them and dedicated to the promotion of fossil fuels as a climate-change obliterator.  (Hence, p. A20 is the only spot left for that “little” story on the sinking of San Francisco.)

—snip—

Back in 1948, George Orwell imagined a society 36 years in the future in which, no matter where you went, “Big Brother” was watching you. That certainly fit the desires, if not the capabilities, of totalitarian governments in that twentieth century moment. It even fit with certain tendencies Orwell believed he saw in western capitalist society. And he wasn’t wrong: the urge to surveil populations has only grown in our American world in the years since in ways that would have blown the minds of the Communist leaders of that past era.

Seven decades after Orwell’s dystopian classic 1984 was published, we in the United States do indeed find ourselves in a full-scale surveillance society — and that world, as Edward Snowden let us know in such a memorable fashion back in 2013, preceded Donald Trump.  But when it comes to Trump, here’s the curious thing that Orwell himself couldn’t have imagined: Big Brother isn’t watching us, we’re forever watching him.

Donald Trump, the president we meet in the media every hour of every day, blots out much of the rest of the world and much of what’s meaningful in it.  Such largely unexamined, never-ending coverage of his doings represents a triumph of the first order both for him (no matter how he rails against the media) and for an American cult of personality that will take us who knows where (but nowhere good).

And…the little-reported Big Brotherish surveillance development that should have us all quaking in our boots:

US visa seekers will have to disclose social media

According to a State Department plan published Friday, visa seekers — whether visitors or would-be immigrants — will be presented with a list of social media platforms.

Applicants will be required to identify which they use and provide “any identifiers used by applicants for those platforms during the five years preceding the date of application.”

“Other questions seek five years of previously used telephone numbers, email addresses, and international travel,” the notice, published in the Federal Register, revealed.

When these new rules were first suggested last year as part of what US President Donald Trump has called “extreme vetting” of would-be visitors, civil liberties groups sounded the alarm about privacy.

But officials say they could identify potential extremists, such as one of the attackers in the December 2015 San Bernadino shooting — who got a visa despite allegedly advocating “jihad” on social media.

The measures apply both to the DS-260 “Immigrant Visa and Alien Registration Form” and the DS-160 “Application for Nonimmigrant Visa.”

In the last fiscal year, 559,536 people applied for US immigrant visas and 9,681,913 for various forms of visitor visa. Friday’s announced measures will not touch diplomatic or official travelers.

The announcement begins a 60-day period in which interested bodies and members of the public will be allowed to submit comments on the rule changes, which are expected to be approved on May 29.

From tiny acorns, mighty oaks grow.

Think about it.

And while you are at it, think about the following as well. From Wikipedia:

The Social Credit System is a proposed Chinese government initiative for developing a national reputation system.[1][2][3] It has been reported to be intended to assign a “social credit” rating to every citizen based on government data regarding their economic and social status.[4][3][5][6][7] It works as a mass surveillance tool and uses big data analysis technology.[8] In addition, it is also meant to rate businesses operating on the Chinese market.[9]

Translation:

If you have been a good little boy or girl…and I say “boy or girl” because you can damned well be sure that the Big Brothers and Big Sisters of our equivalent 1984 world powers are not going to reward “social credits” to outliers of any sex…if you have been a good little boy or girl and followed all of the rules from jaywalking laws right on through to thought crimes like not agreeing with the government, you will be rewarded with “social credits” that will allow you to be a good worker bee, complete with a little cavern in the giant people hive where you can sleep and shit and an obeisant mate who will do the dishes and have the allowed number of babies.

And if you have not been a good little boy or girl?

Heaven help you…provided of course that the idea of “Heaven” itself is not proscribed by the Social Credit rule-makers.

I repeat:

From tiny acorns, mighty oaks grow, and even poisonous, artificial oaks have their nasty little acorns.

Here they are, in plain sight.

The NATO media…”NATO” being the expanded, modern day equivalent of Orwell’s superpower “Oceania”…are only covering the Chinese and Russian developments in this direction, but do any of you really think that the Google/Facebook/Amazon etc. megamind has not already got us all set up for our own “Social credit” system?

Really?

Could the current media Trumpamania just be a screen? A diversion from the real thing?

I’m beginning to think so, myself.

As Tom Englehardt wrote:.

A record? Come on! Don’t minimize what’s happening. It’s far too unique, too unprecedented even to be classified as “historic.” Call it mega-historic, if you wish. Never from Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar to Soviet despot Joseph Stalin, from the Sun King Louis the XIV to President Ronald Reagan, from George Washington to Barack Obama, has anyone — star, icon, personality, president, autocrat, emperor — been covered in anything like this fashion.

While (almost) everyone dithers around about the latest misadventures of our own little Sun King, what is going on in the back rooms/dark minds of the controllers?

Inquiring minds want to know.

Unfortunately, there seem to be very few “inquiring minds” left to do the inquiring. Too many of us…on all possible sides of the issue…have bought into the currently raging Sun King/Bad King cover story.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

The cooks are hard at work, and the plot thickens.

Watch.

AG

P.S. It used to be:

Your papers, please!!!

Soon?

Unless we wake the fuck up and actually do something besides change the name of whichever centrist party’s turn it may be to act as if it is in control?

Your social credits are not in order!!! Step away from the line!!!

So…at least the beginning of a solution?

WAKE THE FUCK UP!!!

Please!!!

Hello again painting fans.

This week I will be continuing with the painting of the Cape May, New Jersey mansion.  The photo that I’m using is seen directly below.  I’ll be using my usual acrylic paints on a 8×10 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.

There are a number of changes for this week’s cycle.  I’ve now revised the shadowed structure on the far right.  It works better than the prior version.  I have also overpainted the sky in a more vivid blue.  It works nicely with the browns and tans of the house.  And with these changes the painting is done.

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

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

Earlier paintings in this series can be seen here.  (Currently under reconstruction.)

Trump seems determined to fool as few people as possible with his get-tough policy toward Russia.

I wrote about the 19.5% sale of Russian energy giant Rosneft during the transition, on January 11th, 2017. It was topical at the time because I wanted the Senate to ask Steve Mnuchin and Rex Tillerson about the transaction during the upcoming hearings to confirm them, respectively, as the secretaries of Treasury and State. It was also of particular interest during that period because, although the sale had been announced on December 7th, 2016, it was a topic of discussion in the Steele Dossier that had been published by BuzzFeed on January 10th.

The first reference was from a dispatch dated July 19th, 2016.

The second reference was from a dispatch dated October 18th, 2016.

Carter Page has always denied that he met with Igor Sechin during his summer visit to Moscow, but during his testimony before the House Intelligence Committee, he was compelled to admit that he met with Sechin’s deputy, Andrey Baranov.

However, in testimony to [Rep. Devin] Nunes’ House Intelligence committee last November Page admitted meeting Andrey Baranov, Rosneft’s head of investor relations. Did sanctions come up? “Not directly,” Page replied. Did Baranov talk about privatization? He “may briefly have mentioned it,” Page admitted. Was Baranov relaying Sechin’s wishes? Almost certainly.

It is evident that Steele’s sources knew what they were talking about even if they unsurprisingly were not omniscient about the details. Vladimir Putin was looking for investors to buy up nineteen percent of Rosneft but it was difficult because of Western sanctions. One solution was to convince America to lift the sanctions, and offering the Trump team the brokerage fee on the sale was their enticement. The day after the sale was announced, Carter Page flew back to Moscow, but this time he was subject to a FISA warrant and under constant surveillance. The timing of his second visit is unlikely to be a coincidence.

As for the sale, it was convoluted from the start, involving shady Qatari investors, Swiss commodity trading and mining company Glencore, and a dubious Italian bank, and it seems to have completely fallen apart by last summer. Now something curious has happened.

The Russian business newspaper Vedomosti wrote that two state-controlled Chinese companies have become major shareholders in CEFC, a nominally private Chinese oil company that is acquiring a large stake in Russia’s huge state-owned oil company, Rosneft. Through this maneuver, the Chinese state now owns about 15 percent of Rosneft…

…The new Chinese owners might have passed the privatization test—until two weeks ago, when the takeover of CEFC by two state-controlled Chinese companies was reported. One report suggests that CEFC’s head was looting the company and did not have the cash to buy the Rosneft shares. The Chinese government stepped in.

China’s Ministry of Finance, in combination with a state-controlled insurance company, will become owners of more than one-third of CEFC’s shares, giving the Chinese government effective control over the Rosneft shares, and with that, a major voice in Rosneft decision-making. Rosneft shares traded in the London market moved down sharply in late February, perhaps on rumors of the impending deal.

Back when the original deal was announced in early December 2016, the Obama administration was concerned that the investors were running afoul of the sanctions. White House spokesman Josh Earnest said:

“The thing I can confirm for you is that the experts at the Treasury that are responsible for constructing and enforcing the sanctions regime will carefully look at a transaction like this,” Earnest told reporters. “They’ll look at the terms of the deal and evaluate what impact sanctions would have on it.”

This is why I wanted to see Steve Mnuchin and ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson grilled on the sale during their confirmation hearings. I don’t ultimately know why Glencore and the Qataris backed out of the deal and exactly how their stakes made their way into the Chinese government’s hands. But suffice to say that China doesn’t care about the West’s sanctions on Russia.

Did Carter Page go to Moscow at the time the original deal was announced because he wanted to collect his promised fee? That would presuppose that he had something to do with finding the investors. He had from July to December to line things up, and he had the connections his association with the Trump campaign afforded him with which to operate. If this seems somewhat doubtful considering his innate abilities, we do have plenty of reason to wonder why the brokerage fee would be offered to Page, the deal would be made, and Page would book a flight to Moscow the next day.  A better question might be if he could conceivably pull something like that off without being detected, even after the fact, when he was under FISA surveillance for much of the time.

One thing we’ve learned about Page since he name first emerged in connection with Russia is that he once sold himself as an advisor to the Kremlin.

Former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page bragged that he was an adviser to the Kremlin in a letter obtained by TIME that raises new questions about the extent of Page’s contacts with the Russian government over the years.

The letter, dated Aug. 25, 2013, was sent by Page to an academic press during a dispute over edits to an unpublished manuscript he had submitted for publication, according to an editor who worked with Page.

“Over the past half year, I have had the privilege to serve as an informal advisor to the staff of the Kremlin in preparation for their Presidency of the G-20 Summit next month, where energy issues will be a prominent point on the agenda,” the letter reads.

It was also in 2013 when the FBI visited Carter Page to warn him that he was being cultivated by Russian spies. He responded by telling the FBI that they should focus on tracking down the people behind the Boston Marathon bombings and leave him alone. I assume the FBI is very interested to learn that he was describing himself as an advisor to the Kremlin at the time.

When we try to assess whether the Steele Dossier is “fake news,” as the president insists that it is, we should keep this Rosneft deal in mind. Someone who was just making things up and didn’t have real sources could never have invented something so close to the truth.

The face of purity in capitalism in the 21st century …

Growth At Any Cost: Top Facebook Executive Defended Data Collection In 2016 Memo — And Warned That Facebook Could Get People Killed | Buzzfeed |

Facebook Vice President Andrew “Boz” Bosworth said that “questionable contact importing practices,” “subtle language that helps people stay searchable,” and other growth techniques are justified by the company’s connecting of people.

On June 18, 2016, one of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg‘s most trusted lieutenants circulated an extraordinary memo weighing the costs of the company’s relentless quest for growth.

More below the fold …

“We connect people. Period. That’s why all the work we do in growth is justified. All the questionable contact importing practices. All the subtle language that helps people stay searchable by friends. All of the work we do to bring more communication in. The work we will likely have to do in China some day. All of it,” VP Andrew “Boz” Bosworth wrote.

“So we connect more people,” he wrote in another section of the memo. “That can be bad if they make it negative. Maybe it costs someone a life by exposing someone to bullies.

“Maybe someone dies in a terrorist attack coordinated on our tools.”

The explosive internal memo is titled “The Ugly,” and has not been previously circulated outside the Silicon Valley social media giant.

Oh.. and since you conveniently left out the OP, here it's. "https://t.co/l8zoiTUkP3"

— Sudheesh Nair (@sudheenair) March 30, 2018

The Bosworth memo reveals the extent to which Facebook’s leadership understood the physical and social risks the platform’s products carried — even as the company downplayed those risks in public. It suggests that senior executives had deep qualms about conduct that they are now seeking to defend.

○ Remarks by the President at Global Entrepreneurship Summit and Conversation with Mark Zuckerberg and Entrepreneurs | Stanford U. – June 25, 2016 |

At the same time, working together with Cambridge Analytica to get Donald Trump elected …

○ Election of Trump: Cambridge, Aleksandr Kogan, Facebook

Fans of Zuckerberg in Israel …

○ Never Give Up Israel
○ Randi Zuckerberg to headline event for new AIPAC ‘technology division’

US activists and tax money in order to run a campaign by a organization called V-15 whose goal was to oust Netanyahu from office.

○ Here’s How Mark Zuckerberg Saved Binyamin Netanyahu

“Youtube, Facebook, Twitter and Google+ were screaming with Netanyahu’s messages that were not being aired or discussed on official press channels. If Facebook did not exist and Netanyahu wold not have had a channel to freely fight against the messages that were being published in the papers, on the TV and radio, I doubt if he would be sitting in the Prime Minister’s office this morning. What the liberal left press did in the United States to help Obama take office, simply did not work in Israel.”

○ US funds aided 2015 campaign to oust Netanyahu

Hey! Find any similarities with how Donald Trump “defeated” HRC in the Presidential election?

From my diaries in the past ….

○ Netanyahu’s Revenge: Trump the Winner
○ RRR Republican Racist Rant From Jerusalem

Never mind, find the weak spot in diplomacy by starting a New Cold War 2.0 … give support to the neocons in the Republican Party WTF!!

Soon the US and its allies will be fighting another Middle East war …

Do the Republicans constantly try to use Cesar Chavez’s opposition to illegal immigration to justify their anti-Mexican bigotry because they know it is annoying, or do they think they’ll convince somebody to become an anti-Mexican bigot?

I have a few solutions for this:

Russia’s ambassador to the United States has told NBC News he can’t remember a period of worse relations between Washington and Moscow, after both countries expelled dozens of diplomats following the poisoning of a former Russian spy.

Said Anatoly Antonin: “It seems to me that atmosphere in Washington is poisoned — it’s a toxic atmosphere. It depends upon us to decide whether we are in Cold War or not. But … I don’t remember such a bad shape of our relations.”

If Ambassador Anatoly Antonin doesn’t want poisoned relations with the West, he could try convincing his boss to stop holding fake elections, murdering people left and right, using nerve agent in the United Kingdom, shooting down passenger airplanes, invading and annexing territory from his neighbors, having his mercenaries attack our troops in Syria, and hacking into our infrastructure, voting networks, and political parties’ emails.

I’m sure we could think of something reciprocal to do in return to be a little less annoying to the Kremlin.

Ambassador Antonin added, “Today Russia’s responsible for everything, even for bad weather. It’s high time for us to stop blaming each other. It’s high time for us to start a real conversation about real problems.”

Antonin could improve bilateral relations immediately by not saying risible things like we’re blaming his country for the weather.  That would be a good start. Just not saying things that make Americans want to slap your face would be like a new beginning.

In the meantime, we’re trying to rid ourselves of your leader’s great gift to us, President Donald Trump.  There’s no amount of apologizing that’s going to atone for that trick. You pantsed us in front of the world, congratulations. But don’t think we’ll ever forget.

In all seriousness, though, you can’t assassinate people on the street in our countries with military grade chemical weapons and think we’re going to smile, shake hands and “start a real conversation about real problems.” That was an arrogant miscalculation that has now resulted in the expulsion of more than 150 Russians from twenty-seven Western countries.

Early 2018 had Putin heading towards a staggering, but not surprising, electoral victory against dead and disqualified opposition candidates. This dominance allowed Russia’s president to ride his eventual 76.6 percent final poll tally to a new level of cavalier confidence on the global stage. Political dominance at home and fawning support from President Trump gave him a delusional sense of invincibility. It led him to overreach and miscalculate.

Now, well over 20 Western countries have joined together to give Putin the one-finger salute for a U.K. chemical agent attack he is suspected of either directing or condoning…

…Of course, Western allies will also lose in this tit-for-tat game by giving up their limited eyes and ears in Russia. But the Western economic consequences and political fallout are likely minimal, with Russia needing foreign exchange from energy sales more than the West needs reliable Russian wheat productivity figures.

Trump may not want anyone in his administration to talk about these expulsions, perhaps out of fear that the pee-tape will be released, but he still went along with it. If Putin wanted better relations with our country, he could have made completely different decisions. He got cocky and overplayed his hand, proving he isn’t as smart as he thinks he is.

Theresa May has long been offering to construct an innovative and imaginative solution to the problems raised by Brexit in return for a good Brexit deal with the EU. So far details of what precisely this might entail have been scanty, especially when it comes to defining how the “Irish Border” might continue to be invisible and friction free. However details have started to emerge in the fine print of the draft Brexit deal much to the consternation of Northern Ireland Unionists. Unionists have just discovered that the proposed text promises to expand the 12 areas of joint cooperation between North and South to 18.

Worse still, in terms of the integrity of the Belfast Agreement, two new oversight bodies are created. A Joint Committee of London and Brussels will keep North-South co-operation under “constant review” and set up a Specialised Committee to make recommendations for further areas of co-operation.

With the North-South Ministerial Council suspended due to the lack of Stormont ministers, these committees could be the only show in town.

With the devolved institutions created by the Good Friday Agreement (referred to by Unionists as the Belfast Agreement) effectively moribund following the failure of the DUP and Sinn Fein to overcome their differences, the draft Brexit agreement promises to effectively replace them with a new “Joint Committee of London and Brussels” which will “make recommendations for further areas of co-operation”.

London has also promised to eliminate any other areas of divergence between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic by introducing marriage equality legislation for Northern Ireland on the lines of the legislation already passed in the Republic, and is awaiting the results of the Referendum on abortion in the Republic before introducing similar legislation for the North. Both measures are absolutely opposed by the DUP who are said to be livid at these developments. However they have been assured that any divergence between Northern Ireland and Great Britain on these social issues could be seen as a precedent for divergence on other matters and so have reluctantly gone along with the proposals.

The political difficulty posed for Theresa May’s government by having to make ongoing payments to the EU budget post Brexit will be fudged by the EU effectively underwriting certain costs the UK would otherwise have incurred in Northern Ireland. Chief amongst these will be the Renewable Heat Incentive scandal involving DUP Leader, Arlene Foster, the “cash for ash” scheme which would otherwise have cost the British Exchequer £500 Million and which led to the collapse of the devolved institutions in Stormont (Belfast). DUP opposition has been bought off to date by promises that DUP members and their families can continue to benefit from the scheme.

The Brexit transition deal will also include provisions to make the transition to a United Ireland more palatable for both Northern Ireland Unionists and for southern Nationalists who have baulked at the prospect of taking on a contingent liability of the £10 Billion p.a. cost of Northern Ireland to the British exchequer. Effectively Britain will continue to make substantial contributions to the EU budget for “Single market access” but these will be significantly offset by savings on the British Exchequer subvention to Northern Ireland.

Formal transfer of Sovereignty over N. Ireland to the Republic will not be included in the Brexit Agreement at this stage – beyond a somewhat vaguely worded political commitment to “explore all avenues” in the Brexit Agreement to allay immediate Unionist concerns and retain their support for Theresa May’s government for the lifetime of this parliament. However it is envisaged that this will be included in the “future trading relationship” to be negotiated in detail between the EU and UK during the transition period ending no later than 1st. Jan 2021.

Theresa May has already stated that “We are absolutely committed to ensuring there is no hard border’ which is current governmental code for conceding that Northern Ireland will have to be jettisoned as part of the price for getting a good Brexit deal. She visited a Northern Ireland Unionist farm yesterday as part of a day long public relations tour of all five parts of the United Kingdom (N. Ireland, Scotland, England, Wales and London) in order to distract attention from this fundamental shift in government policy and stated that “visiting the border is not a priority” as there won’t be one in the future.

The Irish Government, for its part, has agreed to avoid highlighting the significance of the texts agreed to date in order not to alarm Unionists unnecessarily – mindful of the mistakes made at the end of the first phase of the Brexit negotiations, when the Irish government’s welcome of the draft text (and jubilation in some nationalist quarters) first alerted Unionists to what the agreement actually contained. As a general rule of thumb politics in N. Ireland is a zero sum game: If Nationalists are too obviously happy at some proposal this will automatically trigger Unionist opposition on the assumption that it must be at their expense.

Fortunately, for the most part, Unionists have not actually read any of the draft Brexit agreement being prepared by the Commission so far, as they have been assured by their fellow Brexiteer British Ministers that they need not “worry their heads” about it. David Davis has assured them that he takes more or less the same approach, leaving the technical details to “the little people” who are “very well paid” to look after details just like that. In fact Davis has spent almost no time in Brussels for the negotiations so far, preferring to travel to European Capitals to hear how sad European leaders are to see that Britain is really intent on leaving, and how important Britain is to their thinking about the world’s future.

Meanwhile, the European Commission is busily writing up the fine print of what the Brexit agreement will contain subject to final approval by the British government. The formal Brexit agreement itself will contain only the most general political (and legally non-binding) commitments to a “deep, wide, and close” future trading relationship, and no border within Ireland. The actual agreement, when it comes, in a last minute deal at the end of the transition period, will make these commitment explicit and legally binding: a Canada Plus, plus, plus style Free Trade Agreement where the plus plus plus refers to the handover of N. Ireland, Gibraltar, and military bases on Cyprus to the Irish, Spanish and Cypriot Sovereignty respectively.

By that stage Theresa May’s government will have all but served its full term and DUP support will no longer be required. Arlene Foster will be made a Lord of the Realm and DUP MP’s will be offered knighthoods for “services rendered to her majesty’s Government”. Most spend very little time in N. Ireland in any case and are much more comfortable in the “Westminster Bubble” where they can quaff British Champagne with their fellow Brexiteer club members and make strident speeches about making Britain Great again. Northern Ireland will also be allowed to remain within the Commonwealth with the Queen as titular Head of State. July 12th., celebrating the victory of Protestants over Catholics at the Battle of the Boyne (1690), will become a national holiday on the same basis as St. Patrick’s day as there is some dispute over whether St. Patrick was really a Catholic or a Protestant.

Cambridge Analytica have been retained to ensure that the right result is obtained in the Irish referendums, North and South, which will be required to give the formal seal of approval to Irish re-unification and there will be general relief, in Westminster, that the UK has been able to off-load N. Ireland as part of the Brexit process – and no little Schadenfreude that they have managed to dump Ireland and the EU with the problems that will ensue. We have “taken back control” over the £10 Billion p.a. which our EU overlords have forced us to pump into the black hole that is N. Ireland, newly elected Prime Minister Boris Johnson will say as he leads Britain into a glorious global future free of the petty constraints of the Brussels bureaucracy – and Northern Ireland.