Month: December 2018

We’ve come to that time of year when we reflect on the year that has just passed and look forward to what 2019 might bring. For most, I suspect, 2018 has not been a very positive year, with Trump, Brexit, Syria, Yemen, the Ukraine, the refugee crisis, terrorist attacks and natural disasters putting a damper on feelings.

The global economy has continued to grow, but most of the benefits still go to the already rich. Employment and wages growth has been anemic and the gilet jaune protests have highlighted the difficulties which people in even relatively rich countries like France are having in maintaining a reasonable standard of living.

Brexit has highlighted the effectiveness of divide and conquer political tactics in scapegoating immigrants, refugees, and the already marginalised for the problems which ordinary people are experiencing. Hungary and Poland have managed to compromise a free media and judicial independence and Greece is left to suffer enormous deprivation with little EU solidarity and support.

Great uncertainty leading to market volatility and political instability has been reducing investment, growth, consumer confidence, and political ambition. Most people seem to be expecting things to get worse before they can get better, and some doubt whether they will get better at all, with climate warming worsening and threatening to accelerate out of control.

So I would ask readers here take some time out from the end of year festivities to share their experiences of 2018 and hopes for 2019. Is it as bad as I have painted above, or am I missing some green shoots of a more healthy model of politics and economics taking hold? Will DiEM25 usher in a new era of transnational politics in 2019 or will hard right nationalist parties continue to make gains? Will governments start addressing economic, regional, and inter-generational inequality more effectively or are our children destined to be much worse off than we were?

Your thoughts, please.

Back on December 12, I argued that we should have reevaluated our relationship with Saudi Arabia long before now. It seems that the days of reckoning have finally arrived, yet we appear to be off to an inauspicious start to the process. In Wednesday’s New York Times, Declan Walsh and Eric Schmitt explore some of the absurdities of the situation.

The biggest distortion in our relationship is that we’ve spent decades building up the Saudi’s armed forces but have always done so with the expectation that those forces would never be used.  Now that they are being used, they’re killing civilians in a losing conflict that is devoid of strategic vision.  We don’t like the situation, and yet we can’t easily extricate ourselves from it.

In my earlier piece, I wrote “it’s less that Trump is a true outlier than that he doesn’t know how to sugarcoat things,” and what I meant by that is that we’ve been reliant on selling billions of arms to the Saudis for a while but only now do we have a president who’s willing to say that we don’t want to rein in the House of Saud on any level because we don’t want to risk our contracts or political relationship.  In the past, we’ve struggled with the moral and strategic implications of this situation, but not to the point of changing it.  Now we’re at risk of making our peace with it at a time when that position is least defensible.

Our country is completely implicated in the war in Yemen, including the atrocities, the starvation, and the military failure, and the New York Times is wondering why we can’t even keep track of which aerial bombardment missions are being carried out by which coalition partners or whether or not it is our bombs that are landing on civilian schools and markets and hospitals.

The Saudi Air Force is armed and trained by us, and Boeing has “a  $480 million contract for service repairs to the fleet.”  The new acting Secretary of Defense Patrick M. Shanahan is a 30-year veteran of Boeing who, until now, has been recusing himself for decisions related to the defense contractor.  It won’t be long before Boeing finds itself in a public relations disaster.

They are in the same position as our government. They made a contract with the devil, and now the consequences of that bargain are coming due.

On December 12, the U.S. Senate voted 56-41 to halt cooperation with the air war in Yemen, but the House of Representatives refused to follow suit. These are nothing more than baby steps in any case, as it is the entire relationship and our complete Middle East foreign policy vision that must be reevaluated.

This would be excruciating for our country even with the best leadership, but we don’t have any leadership right now. Before we can move forward, we first have to clean our own house.

Happy Hump Day!  I’m continuing to be the DJ and bartender for this weekly series while Don Durito is returning from his walkabout.  For today’s theme, I’m sharing selections from soundtracks of movies nominated at the Golden Globe Awards.  This continues the theme of movie music and awards shows that I started in Midweek Cafe and Lounge, Vol. 94 and continued in last week’s Midweek Cafe and Lounge, Vol. 95.

I begin with United Nations / End Titles by Ludwig Goransson from “Black Panther.”

This score has also been nominated for a Grammy and a Critics’ Choice Award and, like all the rest of the Golden Globes nominees, is on the shortlist for an Oscar nomination.

Next, “Isle of Dogs” End Titles by Alexandre Desplat.

This is also nominated for a Critics’ Choice Award.

I’m continuing with Marco Beltrami – “A Quiet Life” from “A Quiet Place.”

This is the only Golden Globe nomination for this movie.

The selection from the fourth nominated score is “The Landing (from First Man)” by Justin Hurwitz.

This is also nominated for a Critics’ Choice Award.

The final selection from a nominated score is Marc Shaiman – Theme from Mary Poppins Returns

This is also nominated for a Critics’ Choice Award.
Once again, I’m concluding the diary proper by quoting Don Durito.

For those of you wondering how I and Neon Vincent are circumventing Sucuri to embed videos, here is an example of the embed code we use, so that you can replicate as wanted:

Just remember that each unique 11-digit video code in YouTube needs to be pasted in two separate locations within the embed code in order for your video to show up properly. So easy that I can do it!

With those instructions, feel free to post your favorite music videos in the comments.

Put the first comments in the December thread together in a diary …

Re: December Open Thread (none / 1)

I have somewhat been following the fall-out of the Integrity Initiative documents.

The short version is that somebody put up their documents – hacked or leaked – and the picture have emerged of a US/UK/NATO funded organisation with ties to intelligence services that under the cloak of a charity has been “countering Russian propaganda” by propaganda of their own.

So far their accomplishments appear to be getting a volunteer into the Sanders campaign, stopping an appointment in Spain, writing all kinds of “Russians are coming” articles and dissing Corbyn on Twitter.

The most comprehensive write-up I have found is this: http://syriapropagandamedia.org/working-papers/briefing-note-on-the-integrity-initiative

Anyone noticed any traditional media coverage of it yet?

by fjallstrom on Tue Dec 25th, 2018 at 03:10:57 PM PDT

Worthwhile to put contents in a diary for some visibility as this is not the end of debate …

Continued below the fold …

New to me, I’ll look into it …

From a website of Anon CyberGuerrilla the name Maria de Goeij popped up:

○ Maria de Goeij  – LinkedIn
○ The Institute for Statecraft, London – fellows

Re: December Open Thread (none / 1)

Your link is already pretty comprehensive, what is your question or goal? Link also refers to Tim Hayward’s blog which supports the investigation into “Statecraft”.

I see that the Henry Jackson Society is also linked as a partner. That’s not new to me. See my earlier reporting in November on the USA Intelligence Initiative to smear Russians and legitimate bloggers in the states.

○ Khodorkovsky – The Interpreter – Henry Jackson Society (UK)
○ Unpacking PropOrNot Misinformation Site (2017)
○ PropOrNot: Identifying & Combatting Russian Online Propaganda | OUR ALLIES |

I’ve been pretty much blacklisted since then @BooMan.

You should also reread diary here @EuroTrib in 2008 by  djhabakkuk …

○ ‘Flex players’, and the ‘forward strategy’ …

Further coverage:

○ Foreign Office denies state funds went to Twitter account criticising Labour | The Guardian – Dec 13, 2018 |
○ Newly Released ‘Integrity Initiative’ Papers Include Proposal For Large Disinformation Campaigns | MoA |

The offer claims that the company can launch hundreds of “news” pieces per day on as many websites. It notably also offers to “edit” Wikipedia articles.

In short: This proposal describes large disinformation operations under the disguise of fighting alleged Russian disinformation. It is at the core what the Integrity Initiative, which obviously requested the proposal, is about.

But as we saw in the information revealed yesterday there is more to it. The Initiative, which has lots of ‘former’ military and intelligence people among its staff, is targeting the political left in Britain as well as in other countries. It is there where it becomes a danger to the democratic societies of Europe.

○ British Security Service Infiltration, the Integrity Initiative and the Institute for Statecraft | Craig Murray |

UK Gov: Just a Scottish Charity

Foreign and Commonwealth Office: Integrity Initiative: Written question – 196177

Q  Asked by Chris Williamson (Derby North) [N]             Asked on: 27 November 2018
Foreign and Commonwealth Office: Integrity Initiative         196177

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, whether his Department has (a) funded, (b) provided contracts to and (c) procured the services of the Integrity Initiative in each financial year since 2015/16.

A  Answered by: Sir Alan Duncan                      Answered on: 03 December 2018

The Institute for Statecraft is an independent, Scottish, charitable body whose work seeks to improve governance and enhance national security. They launched the Integrity Initiative in 2015 to defend democracy against disinformation.

In financial year 2017/18, the FCO funded the Institute for Statecraft’s Integrity Initiative £296,500. This financial year, the FCO is funding a further £1,961,000. Both have been funded through grant agreements.

At the Eastern Partnership Summit in November 2017, the Prime Minister announced that the UK Government has committed £100m over five years to tackling this threat internationally.

Such funding furthers our commitment to producing important work to counter disinformation and other malign influence.

ADDED:

○ ii Integrity Initiative – Defending Democracy Against Misinformation [pdf]

To written answer, a follow-up debate in House of Commons on Dec. 12, 2018 …

○ Emily Thornberry: To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs to make a statement on his Department’s funding of the Institute for Statecraft’s integrity initiative.

Quite revealing, attacking Russia for the hack and denying what’s there for anyone to see! UK Gov transparency?

As quite long debate in the Commons pursued, this reaction was also interesting:

Layla Moran Liberal Democrat Spokesperson (Education)

“In the end, this is about trust. In a recent parliamentary question to do with public money to fund social media ads to promote the Brexit deal, I asked the Government whether they would place the contents of these ads in the Library for us all to see. Unfortunately, this request was declined. Does the Minister agree that, to ensure public trust and transparency, the content and audiences of any ads paid for by public money should be published centrally as a matter of course?”

Tim Hayward’s tweet and the follow-up comments …

○ UK Foreign Office confirms funding the Institute for Statecraft’s Integrity Initiative £296,500 in 2017/18, and this financial year a further £1.96 million.

Also NATO is involved in the funding of Statecraft’s initiative just as Bellingcat is funded by USAID and the Atlantic Council.

In The Netherlands there was also a funded group to open windows to Russia and propaganda. An investigation by journalists uncovered a small number of Ukrainian nationals received the money for this bs operation.

As a whole, this is just part of the Cold War 2.0 and hybrid warfare. PM Theresa May shouldn’t lament when Putin reacts.

I will attempt to follow up with the political tweets of this UK and International network attacking Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour party or anyone in opposition to this rightwing, militant organisation. A network of spooks, MI6 officers and former military funding young people to operate as shills on social media.

Private Eye has reported that the #IntegrityInitiative anti-propaganda unit is taking tips from the security masterminds who tried to sell the wisdom of going to war in Iraq!
And this outfit was set up by the Institute for Statecraft that's received £millions from HM Govt!!! (_link)

— Chris Williamson MP #GTTO (@DerbyChrisW) December 23, 2018

○ The Deep State and Lisa Pease’s Contribution

The Israeli assassin who teamed up with Mohammad Dahlan | Ynet News – Oct. 2018 |

Israeli-American Abraham Golan was hired by the UAE and Mohammed Dahlan, former head of Palestinian Preventive Security, to head a team of mercenaries tasked with killing a Yemeni Islamist leader, according to a Buzzfeed report.

The popular American news and entertainment website Buzzfeed published an investigative report of a mercenary operation in Yemen that entailed an unusual collaboration between an Israeli-American assassin, the United Arab Emirates and the former head of the Palestinian preventive security forces Mohammad Dahlan.

Former head of security for the Palestinian Authority Mohammed Dahlan (left) and Spear Operations Group founder Abraham Golan

More below the fold …

According to the report, US forces–including former Navy Seals–were hired by a company in the UAE to carry out a series of assassinations. One of the main targets was Anssaf Ali Mayo, a Yemeni Islamist leader who according to the UAE is a terrorist who leads the Yemeni branch of the Muslim Brotherhood.

The mercenaries’ mission was to plant an explosive charge at the entrance to Mayo’s office, near a football stadium in the center of the city of Aden. The explosion, on December 29, 2015, was supposed to “kill everyone in the office”–but it failed.

The operation against Mayo, which was reported at the time but was not known to have been carried out by American mercenaries, was one of the central factors in the long campaign in Yemen.

[…]
According to him, the model for the assassinations industry is based on Israel’s targeted killing of terrorists. Golan, who maintains good relations with Israel through security deals in which he is involved, said he had lived in Israel for several years. In the past he attended a party with former Mossad chief Danny Yatom, and his expertise “was to provide security for energy clients in Africa.”

A Middle East Monarchy Hired American Ex-Soldiers To Kill Its Political Enemies. This Could Be The Future Of War | Buzzfeed – Oct. 16, 2018 |

Cradling an AK-47 and sucking a lollipop, the former American Green Beret bumped along in the back of an armored SUV as it wound through the darkened streets of Aden. Two other commandos on the mission were former Navy SEALs. As elite US special operations fighters, they had years of specialized training by the US military to protect America. But now they were working for a different master: a private US company that had been hired by the United Arab Emirates, a tiny desert monarchy on the Persian Gulf.

On that night, December 29, 2015, their job was to carry out an assassination.

Their target that night: Anssaf Ali Mayo, the local leader of the Islamist political party Al-Islah. The UAE considers Al-Islah to be the Yemeni branch of the worldwide Muslim Brotherhood, which the UAE calls a terrorist organization. Many experts insist that Al-Islah, one of whose members won the Nobel Peace Prize, is no terror group. They say it’s a legitimate political party that threatens the UAE not through violence but by speaking out against its ambitions in Yemen.

○ How Saudi Arabia uses terror to suppress the Muslim Brotherhood
○ The Hague: Mossad Suspect In Death Threats to ICC Employee
○ Dutch Interview with Ronen Bergman and Danny Yatom on Unit 8200

Earlier report on Mossad’s Danny Yatom [h/t DuctapeFatwa] …

Israelis trained Kurds in Iraq | Ynet News – Jan. 2005 |

According to the report, the Kurdish government contracted Israeli security and communications companies to train Kurdish security forces and provide them with advanced equipment.

Motorola Inc. and Magalcom Communications and Computers won contracts with the Kurdish government to the tune of hundreds of millions of U.S. dollars.

The flagship of the contracts is the construction of an international airport in the northern Kurdish city of Ibril, a stepping stone towards the fulfilment of Kurdish national aspirations for independence.

In addition to Motorola and Magalcom, a company owned by Israeli entrepreneur Shlomi Michaels is in full business partnership with the Kurdish government, providing strategic consultation on economic and security issues.

The strategic consultation company was initially established by former Mossad chief Danny Yatom (Labor) and Michaels, yet Yatom sold his shares upon his election to the Knesset.

○ During 2004-5, Interop and Kudo were run by Shlomi Michaels, a former head of Israel’s counter-terrorist unit | BBC Newsnight |  
○ Middle East Forum: Surprising Ties between Israel and the Kurds

Further reading …

○ Salman Offered Candidate Trump Assassination Program on Iran

The Hill characterized it as the president spending Christmas Eve morning busily handing out lumps of coal to his critics and adversaries, plus those whom he blames for problems he’s caused himself. Truthfully, it has been a sickening and depressing display from someone who should be doing his best to spread yuletide cheer and joy.

But I’m still focused on Trump’s soon-to-be jurors in the United States Senate. For example, there’s crusty Pat Roberts from Kansas who is 82 years old and currently contemplating retirement. He’s a Republican from a very pro-Trump state but he’s in the news today quoting a Democratic president.

While the president’s stance has emboldened some conservative allies, other Republicans have grown exasperated with what they believe is a gambit that has little chance of success.

“This is my fifth shutdown,” Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) said on CNN. “I’m beyond frustrated.”

“[Former President Lyndon Johnson] said sometimes you just have to hunker down like a jackass in a hail storm and just take it. That’s about where we are,” he added.

When Senator Roberts says that’s where “we” are, he really means that’s where the Republicans in Congress are, because they seem paralyzed. Stock market trading Monday was the worst for any Christmas Eve on record, and that’s just more stinging hail for the jackasses. After all, Trump basically goaded his Treasury Secretary into causing a panic on Wall Street.

Here’s another potential juror for Trump’s impeachment trial.

Lamenting that President Donald Trump doesn’t share the foreign policy views of many Republicans, Sen. Pat Toomey said Sunday on NBC that [Defense Secretary] James Mattis‘ resignation letter “put his finger on“ those differences.

“I think General Mattis has put his finger on where the president has views that are very, very distinct from the vast majority of Republicans and probably Democrats, elected and unelected,” Toomey (R-Pa.) said of Mattis’ letter resigning from his position in Trump’s Cabinet.

“I strongly disagree with this decision to withdraw, prematurely in my view, from Syria.”

Of course, Trump responded to this kind of criticism not by reassuring people like Pat Toomey but by forcing Mattis out by New Year’s Day, a month and a half before schedule. Senator Toomey represents Pennsylvania and will have a hell of a time getting reelected in the best of scenarios, but he clearly doesn’t need convincing about Trump on the merits.

This isn’t a comprehensive list at all. I plan on throwing these kinds of remarks as I see them, because Trump is spoiling his jury pool as quickly and thoroughly as he can.

They are standing around like jackasses in a hail storm right now, but they won’t just take this forever.  What they need is Mueller to give them the justification that they’ll need to stand up to the base of the GOP.  And that’s coming soon to theater near you.

It’s admirable to try to explain Gritty but it really comes down to this. If you’ve lived in Philadelphia, he needs no explanation at all and if you haven’t lived in Philadelphia you are never going to get it. In some sense, his attitude is pure Mid-Atlantic, but it comes with the kind of inferiority complex that only South Jersey can feel for North Jersey or Philly can feel for New York. You have to mix cockiness in with self-loathing and defiant pride, and then you have to be a little ugly, a little fat, not that bright but not exactly an idiot either. You also have to look like you’re comfortable walking the streets of Philly which are like a landfill that has been hit by a tornado. As for becoming a left-wing hero, that’s a feature of Philly being the most Democratic city in the country, although that would never describe the Flyers’ fan base, so it’s still an impressive appropriation.

The whining is hard to take. It’s not so much that the president has forgotten that he needs conservatives as well as populists in order to govern as it’s that conservatives made a deal with the devil and the payment is coming due.

This is the most accurate section of the piece:

Coalition politics always requires sail-trimming by all coalition partners. Many Republicans who flocked to former President George W. Bush’s call to “restore honor and dignity to the White House” in the wake of the Bill Clinton-Monica Lewinsky scandal have swallowed hard and accepted Trump for the promise of conservative Supreme Court justices and the defeat of Democrats.

Now they wonder when Trump will trim his own sails for them.

The bargain has always been that he’d cut taxes and surround himself with traditional Republican foreign policy experts. The departure of Gen. Jim Mattis from the administration is not just a vacancy in the Cabinet. Coupled with United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley’s exit, this has Republicans, even those who have steadfastly stuck with the president, worried that there is a vacancy in the coalition bargain.

He provided two Supreme Court justices, a tax cut, and kept his promise to fill out his foreign policy team with adults, and now we have vacancies at Defense and the U.N., a conspiracy theorist at the State Department, a rental hack and fraudster at the Department of Justice, a Fox & Friends host at the U.N., and John Frickin’ Bolton as the National Security Adviser.

This is supposed to be okay, though, because at least the Bitch didn’t win.

Beating Hillary justified every other thing Trump has done or is plausibly accused of having done. And this is primarily because conservatives believed their own bullshit. When she served in the Senate, she got along fine with her colleagues who rightfully saw her as a serious person who came prepared, didn’t throw unnecessary bombs, and kept her promises. That was quite a contrast with the caricature of her that had been built up over the preceding decades.

The election of 2016 was not a choice between a Democrat and a Republican but a choice between sanity and safety or rage and recklessness. Any ideological choice was settled in the primaries of the respective parties.

Trump is conscienceless conman and a transparent fool, and this was overlooked by conservatives. With the midterms over, they have already paid the first installment on the price this will cost them. They will keep paying until they help us remove him from office.

My two comments erased by AG’s resident trolls 😉

AG’s diary – Agnew? Just Another Corrupt Baltimore Pol. Like…Guess Who???

Re: Just Another Corrupt Baltimore Politician (1.50 / 2)

You must be mistaken AG!

Baltimore monument to one of its favorite sons – here.

Perhaps, in those days it were the Russians and investments in the railroad infrastructure – see the purchase by the city of Baltimore of the Crimea Mansion  and Estate in Leakin Park in the 1940s. Troublesome indeed, the mayor was in opposition.

“If you’re digging in Leakin Park to bury your body, you’re going to find somebody else’s.”

Key words: Thomas D’Alesandro Jr. | Little Italy on East side | Dead Run Valley | Thomas DeKay Winans | Crimea |

A big smile to you AG 🙂

○ American Pioneers in Russian Railroad Building
○ The Evolution of the American Locomotive

 

Re: Just Another Corrupt Baltimore Politician (none / 1)

Thank you, Oui!!!

AG

Not until faithfulness turns to betrayal-and betrayal into trust-can any human being become part of the truth. – Rumi

by Arthur Gilroy (arthurgilroy<at>earthlink.net) on Sat Dec 22nd, 2018 at 06:08:57 PM MEST

Hey AG … congratulations!

You’ve still got your resident troll … hilarious. The opinion of these trolls happen to coincide with a 4-star general of the 2007 troops surge in Iraq. A strange world we live in. 😉  

Doing great across the big pond, a trusted user as I was previously here at BooMan’s pond. Still enjoying life and politics. No surprises though, a bit dull once you got the analysis right.

Find me @ET for stories w/o trolls

My comment erased by AG’s resident trolls 😉

AG’s diary – Agnew? Just Another Corrupt Baltimore Pol. Like…Guess Who???

Hey AG … congratulations!

You’ve still got your resident troll … hilarious. The opinion of these trolls happen to coincide with a 4-star general of the 2007 troops surge in Iraq. A strange world we live in. 😉  

Doing great across the big pond, a trusted user as I was previously here at BooMan’s pond. Still enjoying life and politics. No surprises though, a bit dull once you got the analysis right.