Operation American Greatness
Former CIA acting director Michael Morell called the intelligence agency’s conclusion that Russia meddled in the U.S. presidential election to help President-elect Donald Trump “the political equivalent of 9/11.”
“A foreign government messing around in our elections is, I think, an existential threat to our way of life. To me, and this is to me not an overstatement, this is the political equivalent of 9/11,” Morell said in an interview posted Sunday on The Cipher Brief. “It is huge and the fact that it hasn’t gotten more attention from the Obama Administration, Congress, and the mainstream media, is just shocking to me.”
From: Morell calls Russia's meddling in U.S. elections 'political equivalent of 9/11' - POLITICO
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Comment →“Republicans are already losing their moral compass under Trump. How Americans see Vladimir Putin, by party.”
The Fall of Aleppo and the virtual Fall of Washington are linked not just by the lead sponsors or perpetrators of such unimaginable or until recently unimaginable crimes, but by a long and apparently far from finished history of bipartisan and cooperative failures and omissions that, removed from context, provide illimitable opportunity for internecine partisan assault, and therefore for intensification of the underlying conditions of political paralysis and strategic hypochondria that made them possible, and that made events like them, and new ones, virtually certain.
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Just as the Central Bank was involved in recent mobilisation exercises, predicated (rightly) on the fact that any major conflict with the West would also be fought with economic instruments, I wonder how far Moscow is coming to terms with the fact that the one-way ‘political war‘ currently being waged against the West might become a two-way one, at least to a limited extent. Those who live by the hack risk dying by it, too.
From: Russian banks warned of risk of cyberattack: a crime or security concern? | In Moscow's Shadows
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Obama is famously resistant (some have said he’s “allergic”) to escalating conflicts, especially if the conflict doesn’t threaten vital U.S. interests. But the United States has few interests more vital than assuring that a foreign power doesn’t tilt a presidential election toward a candidate that it favors. Obama and his White House aides are said to have mulled what to do about this Russian hack for “months.” I’d say they waited too long.
From: How will Trump react to reports that Russia was trying to get him elected?
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Perhaps the most amazing revelation in the Post’s report is, “Some of the Republicans in the briefing also seemed opposed to the idea of going public with such explosive allegations in the final stages of an election.” Almost immediately afterward, Republicans in Congress trumpeted explosive (but ultimately empty) allegations from a different agency. Of the many causes of the election outcome, one was simply that Trump’s supporters in government were willing to put the system at risk in order to win, and Clinton’s supporters were not.
From: Trump, McConnell, and the Triumph of the Will to Power
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2: Trump's lack of cross-over appeal to those in opposing party to START his presidency it what differentiates him from recent history: pic.twitter.com/beZUJ4xLGt
— Nick Gourevitch (@nickgourevitch) December 8, 2016
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10: That's it for now. As usual, @pewresearch does amazing work and the entire report is worth a read: https://t.co/c9CEOnqPwp
— Nick Gourevitch (@nickgourevitch) December 8, 2016
From: Philip Gourevitch on Twitter
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President-elect Trump already has shown his inclination to reject intelligence analysis when it does not suit his political needs, with his slapping aside of the intelligence community's judgment about Russian responsibility for hacking of email in the United States. Here the political thrust—similar to, but in the opposite direction of, what it was in Casey’s time—has been to portray the Russians as more innocent, rather than more evil, than what the intelligence analysts were saying. And now Iran and Islam have become principal bêtes noires, taking the place in American political obloquy that the Soviet Union and communism once indisputably held. The president-elect has set a tone making it all the easier for the ideologues surrounding him to bend, twist, and most of all just ignore facts and analysis coming out of the intelligence agencies. His tenuous grasp of world affairs also will make it easier for the same ideologues to go off a deep end in ways that will get him and the nation in trouble.
From: Ideology is Supplanting Intelligence | The National Interest Blog
Comment →Comment →Carle, the retired CIA officer, said Trump’s temperament had played into Russia’s hands and put the president-elect on a collision course with the CIA.
He said: “Look, in my professional assessment as an intelligence officer, Trump has a reflexive, defensive, monumentally narcissistic personality, for whom the facts and national interest are irrelevant, and the only thing that counts is whatever gives personal advantage and directs attention to himself.
“He is about the juiciest intelligence target an intelligence office could imagine. He groans with vulnerabilities. He will only work with individuals or entities that agree with him and build him up, and he is a shockingly easy intelligence ‘target’ to manipulate.”
Were Trump an intelligence officer himself, Carle said, “he would be removed and possibly charged with having accepted the clandestine support of a hostile power to the harm of the United States”.
Talk of Russian hacking puts Republicans in one last bind. Many senior figures on Capitol Hill distrust Mr Putin. But they know that grassroots conservatives see much to like in a Russian-style approach to fighting Islamic terrorism, if that means an unsqueamish willingness to back secular autocrats in the Middle East, and attack targets in Syria with ruthless indifference as to who is underneath. Mr Trump is clearly tempted to do a deal with Mr Putin in which America applauds as Russian warplanes carry out the Trumpian campaign promise to “bomb the shit out of ISIS”, with little thought for collateral damage. The bet in Trump Tower is that the other side of any such deal, perhaps involving the lifting of sanctions on Russia or a promise not to back any further enlargement of NATO, will be greeted by the American public with a yawn.
...Some may wonder if this latest squabble matters. There is no evidence of actual collusion between Mr Trump and Russia. Mr Putin’s fierce dislike of Mrs Clinton, who as secretary of state questioned the validity of the 2011 elections in Russia, is more than enough motive to want her defeated. It is unknowable whether the last-minute leaks of Democratic e-mails affected the result. Most straightforwardly, a close election is over and Democratic leaders are not questioning the result.This squabble does matter. When the next president of America takes his oath of office in January, officers of Russian intelligence can savour a historic win. And that astonishing, appalling fact has divided, not united, the two parties that run the world’s great democracy. That should be enough to unsettle anyone.
From: A house divided: The alarming response to Russian meddling in American democracy | The Economist
Comment →Was there coordination?
Was information shared in any way, or did anyone directly or indirectly connected to the Trump campaign offer any advice to any foreign entity about where and how to hack—beyond the president-elect’s own public encouragement? What compromising information might Russia have upon persons connected to the Trump campaign—including of course the president-elect himself?
Are there financial ties?
The Senate inquiry should also subpoena any Trump organization business records that might shed light on any debt or obligation that the Trump family might have in Russia and any significant income flows from Russia. Beyond the obvious political ties Trump has to Putin, do Russian interests have any hold upon him and his family—financial or otherwise?
From: Five Questions About Russia's Election Hacking - The Atlantic
Comment →Trump, being new to Washington, doesn’t know that when you declare war on the spies, the spies always win in the end. The IC cares little if anything for partisan politics, but they will protect their turf and their reputation when they’re impugned by politicians. Our spy agencies fight among each other nonstop, but woe to the pol who gives them common cause by insulting them in public.
True to form, this morning the president-elect was tweeting insults, mocking the CIA assessment of Russian hacking as a “conspiracy theory,” adding, “Unless you catch ‘hackers’ in the act, it is very hard to determine who was doing the hacking. Why wasn’t this brought up before election?”
In reality, Western intelligence has caught Kremlin-linked hackers in the act, many times, while this knotty matter was publicly brought up on numerous occasions over the summer and fall, including in my column. We are now living in the interesting times which ancient Chinese sages warned of.
From: Trump Declares War on the Intelligence Community | Observer
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... that the great victory of the Trumpists would be in the destruction of faith in the American system, now approaching the consensus position.
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The "People," as constituted by 59 million Trump-voters (a bit more than 20 percent of the population of 320 Million), have decided to follow the message disseminated by the Republican publicity machine: The solution can be found only in incompetence. Liberation lies in inexperience. Only the person who has never done it, can do it right. The unqualified is the the best qualified. The state can be led only by the person who does not know what the state is. The basis for such "governments" is in populations who have taken on the cynicism of their masters. The Leader is a liar! Why should we care? He uses racist expressions? So what? We have not yet grasped the fact fully: "We the People" have on the question of cynicism nothing more to learn from the powers that be. We want them to be cynical so that we can feel on the same level with them. Excellence separates. Degradation unites.
What unites Donal Trump with his voters is the fact that the idea of the state has never reached them. We enjoy speaking of "Statesmen," but we forget to ask who the statesman is: the individual who is ready to deal with the fact that the state exists. Populism is at base nothing other than the movement to annex the state to its losers. Losers believe that states are family businesses. Mussolini's state functioned that way. Lenin's state was a dictatorship of the losers, Hitler's state was a Party of Failures.
As one observes how Trump asserts his manhood, one might refrain from troubling the evil spirit of analogy any further. Self-demolitions follow their own logic: We do not know whether they will succeed in a few years or need a half a century. However long it takes, one must remain pro-American in the meantime.
(Blogger's translation) ((Original:
Das "Volk", aus dem die 59 Millionen Trump-Wähler bestehen (etwas mehr als 20 Prozent der Population von 320 Millionen), hat sich dafür entschieden, der Botschaft zu folgen, die durch die republikanische Publizitätsmaschine vervielfältigt wurde: Die Erlösung kommt allein durch Inkompetenz. Die Befreiung liegt in der Unerfahrenheit. Nur wer es noch nie getan hat, kann es richtig machen. Der Ungeeignete ist der am besten Geeignete. Den Staat kann nur führen, wer nicht weiß, was ein Staat ist. Die Basis solcher "Regierungen" liegt in Bevölkerungen, die sich den Zynismus ihrer Herren angeeignet haben. Der Führer ist ein Lügner! Was schert es uns? Er machte rassistische Äußerungen? Wieso nicht? Man hat es nicht ausreichend explizit begriffen: Das viel zitierte Volk hat in puncto Zynismus von den Mächtigen nichts mehr zu lernen. Es will sie zynisch haben, damit es sich mit ihnen auf einer Ebene fühlt. Vornehmheit trennt, Schweinerei verbinden.
Was Donald Trump und seine Wähler vereint, das ist die Tatsache, dass die Idee des Staats bei ihnen niemals angekommen ist. Man redet ja gern vom Staatsmann, aber man vergisst zu fragen, wo der Staatsmensch ist – das heißt der Mensch, der bereit ist, mit der Tatsache zu rechnen, dass es den Staat gibt. Der Populismus ist im Grunde nichts anderes als eine Regung, den Staat durch seine Verlierer zu annektieren. Verlierer glauben an Staaten als Familienbetriebe. Der Staat Mussolinis funktionierte nur so. Der Staat Lenins war eine Verliererdiktatur, der Staat Hitlers war eine Party der Versager.
Beobachtet man, wie Trump seine Mannschaft aufstellt, muss man den bösen Geist der Analogie nicht weiter bemühen. Selbstzerstörungen folgen einer eigenen Logik – man weiß nur nicht, ob sie binnen weniger Jahre erfolgen oder ob sie zu ihrer Abwicklung ein halbes Jahrhundert brauchen. Wie lange es auch dauert, man muss proamerikanisch bleiben. ))
From: Populismus: Wie "die Zeit danach" gestalten?
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History may instead record that what broke this latest "liberal order" (a typical contradiction in terms), as before and likely again, as inevitably, was the latest liberal order itself. Yet historians may alternatively - or also - someday record that it was liberalism that finally broke Islam or the Islamic Order, and, perhaps, in so doing repaired one or both - though it may always be too early to say so.
Comment →At some point over the summer, it struck me that the greater part of the media wanted Trump to be elected, consciously or unconsciously. He would be more “interesting” than Hillary Clinton; he would “pop.” That suspicion was confirmed the other day, when a CNN executive, boasting of his network’s billion-dollar profit in 2016, spoke of “a general fascination that wouldn’t be the same as under a Clinton Administration.” Of the clouds and shadows that hung over Clinton in the press, the darkest, perhaps, was the prospect of boredom. Among voters, a kind of nihilistic glee may have been as much a factor in Trump’s election as economic dissatisfaction or racial resentment.
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[P]erhaps the German-speaking countries can remind the rest of the world of the darkness of their former path. Still, the far right is creeping forward in Germany, as it is all over Europe. No coming political race will be as tensely watched as Angela Merkel’s run next year for reëlection as Chancellor. The ultimate fear isn’t of the second coming of Hitler: history never repeats itself so obviously, and a sense of shame over the Nazi past remains pervasive in all corners of German life. No, the fear is that the present antidemocratic wave may prove too strong even for Germany—the only country in the history of the world that ever learned from its mistakes.
From: The Frankfurt School Knew Trump Was Coming - The New Yorker
Comment →The new course Trump will chart for the US is already discernible; we just don’t know how quickly the ship will sail. Much will depend on the opposition (Democrats and Republicans alike) that Trump encounters in the US Congress, and on pushback from the majority of Americans who did not vote for him.
But we should not harbor any illusions: Europe is far too weak and divided to stand in for the US strategically; and, without US leadership, the West cannot survive. Thus, the Western world as virtually everyone alive today has known it will almost certainly perish before our eyes.
So what comes next? China, we can be certain, is preparing to fill America’s shoes. And in Europe, the crypts of nationalism have been opened; in time, they will once again release their demons upon the continent – and the world.
From: Goodbye to the West by Joschka Fischer - Project Syndicate
Comment →Trump genuinely does pose threats to the integrity of American institutions and political norms. But he does so largely because his nascent administration is sustained by support from the institutional Republican Party and its standard business and interest group supporters. Alongside the wacky tweets and personal feuds, Trump is pursuing a policy agenda whose implications are overwhelmingly favorable to rich people and business owners. His opponents need to talk about this policy agenda, and they need to develop their own alternative agenda and make the case that it will better serve the needs of average people. And to do that, they need to get out of the habit of being reflexively baited into tweet-based arguments that happen on the terrain of Trump’s choosing and serve to endlessly reinscribe the narrative of a champion of the working class surrounded by media vipers.
From: The case for normalizing Trump - Vox
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We might say that it will likely be many years before we can reasonably pronounce the American project truly over, but the main reason we cannot say so is not that the evidence has still to be accumulated, the 10,000 simultaneous simulations run, and a probability estimate produced.
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