#Western press was like: Ukraine and Russia are blaming each other | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

nekojitachan · 5 years

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Armies. Neil and Andrew on a mission. But I need to see protective Neil. Like that scene in the elevator when Andrew got shot but they weren't actually a ''thing'' yet, and now they are 😏. Please??? 😘 Let this day end with a smile

Okay, hopefully this meets what you wanted? It’s protective Neil/Abram enough? I’ve actually been thinking about Armies and the boys on a mission, so…

Uhm… warning for swearing and obviously the boys doing not quite nice things (it IS Armies). And I did a little quick research, but I’ve never been to Crimea so…. please forgive.

*******

Andrew shoved a fresh stick of gum in his mouth to fight offthe urge for a cigarette (plum-flavored, they’d have to hit up an Asian grocerystore whenever possible or hope that Lloyd sent them farther east than westernRussia sometime soon); at the moment, he was bored and wasn’t that impressedwith Sevastopol.

It may have something to do with the bastard who was eyeingAbram up like a piece of meat for the last couple of hours.

They were at some fancy benefit held at the Black Sea FleetMuseum, and of course Abram (or Leonid, as Mr. ‘Soon to have his eyes carvedout with a caviar spoon’ was concerned) appeared breathtaking dressed in aconservative black tux with his auburn hair darkened for the mission andeyes masked with green contacts. Andrewhad plans for his husband when they got back to their hotel later, to peel offthe fancy suit and muss up the barely tamed loose curls… but until then, he hadto prevent his husband from being bundled up and sold off to the highest bidderwhile they investigated who was attempting to sabotage the gas pipelinesfeeding out of Ukraine into Europe, casting blame on the country through whichthe pipes traversed.

Things never were simple, when it came to Abram.

Andrew had yet another caviar and crème fraiche coveredcracker as he pretended to wander around aimlessly, attention divided betweenAbram and the various conversations taking place in the room; his Russian wasgood enough to understand everything being said, but he still had enough of anaccent that he couldn’t pass for a native speaker, unlike Abram. Here and therewere pockets of Ukrainian, which he mostly understood, but the language wasn’tfavored at an event with pro-Russia sponsors. Where a good bit of the attendeeswere in the Russia military, even if they weren’t in uniform.

He kept shoving crackers in his mouth or sipping the decentchampagne the servers handed out, doing his best to avoid the very good vodkasince he was on the clock. Whenever he was pressed to speak, he mumbled orslurred so as to seem rather affected by all that champagne and vodka, and wasignored soon afterwards.

Or so he thought.

Perhaps he’d paid a little too much attention to Abram and Mr.Gouged-out Eyes. Perhaps he’d hovered a little too close when he’d heardmention of the Soyuz pipeline. All he knew was that one moment he debated if hehad enough room for another caviar cracker (they were delicious) and the next, twolarge ‘gentlemen’ who screamed FSB agents appeared in front of him as ifsummoned out of thin air – it was the close cropped hair, the barrel chests andbroad shoulders which gave the impression of barroom brawlers, the dourexpressions, the poorly hidden holstered guns (because what did they have tofear?) which always made them stand out.

“Are you enjoying theparty?” one of them asked, his accent clearly marking him from Moscow andnot Crimea, his pronunciation too urbane and northern for the area. “What do you think of it so far?”

The one on the left didn’t even try for pleasantries whileAndrew gazed up at them and grabbed a cracker. “Who invited you? I haven’t seen you around before.”

It was clear they wanted him to speak and were moments awayfrom demanding his identification papers (which he had, and decent ones at that…but not good enough to stand up to FSB scrutiny). “Bad appetizers,” Andrew mumbled as he held up the cracker, thencovered his mouth as if trying to not to vomit. He muttered something about thebathroom before he spun around and walked away hunched over, doing his best toappear sick to his stomach.

It bought him about four seconds, but that was enough to gethim safely out of reach before his Russian counterparts started yelling andgave chase.

He hated to leave Abram behind, but if the two goons wereafter him, then Abram was safe (well, other than dealing with the potentialhuman trafficker on his own… which was no contest, really). Andrew nearly raninto a server with a full tray of appetizers (ooh, some type of blintzes,dammit) which he hit to knock into the air (what a waste); that bought him afew more seconds, which he put to good use shedding the stuffy black jacket ofhis tux as he burst outside the museum.

Why the hell did it have to be so damn cold in Crimea?

It had been a bit too much to smuggle guns into the event,but he had his knives, which he used to take out one of the soldiers stationednear the rear exit. Someone tried to be a clever bastard and shoot him while hedid that, but he didn’t spend a couple of hours each week practicing throwing knivesfor the hell of it, and took out that soldier, too.

Unfortunately, that ate into his lead, which meant he didn’tquite make it to the alley across from the museum when one of the FSB agentsmanaged to get a lucky shot on his left thigh; it was clear that the bastardwanted to take him in alive for questioning, since it was barely more than a fleshwound meant to slow him down. Andrew grit his teeth as he stumbled into thewall as the pain and the shock washed through him, thrown off his pace for aprecious couple of seconds.

Part of his mind focused on the map of the city, of where hecould go to lose the agents, of the nearest safe house, of various allies and…and part of him focused on getting the bastards as far away from Abram aspossible, of making sure his husband was safe. Determined to do his job(protect Abram), Andrew swallowed a grunt of pain as he clenched a knife in eachhand and forced himself onward.

He got about six loping steps before someone shot at hisfeet. “Stop, or the next one will be in the back,” an agent called out in accentedEnglish. “We just need you able to talk, nothing else.”

Dammit, it just wasn’t his night, was it? Wishing he’d hadsome more vodka after all, Andrew tightened his grip on the knives and hopedthat he’d be fast enough to take out the agents (were there just two of themstill?) as he prepared to turn around – only to flinch when there was the soundof a gun being fired again.

Except there wasn’t another bullet ricocheting near his feetor piercing his flesh that time, and someone behind him cried out. He spun around in time to watch one of theagents from the museum fall to the ground while a soldier stumbled back intothe wall with a knife embedded in his throat, followed by a blank-faced Abramshooting another soldier the same time he shoved a knife in the remaining agent’supper right chest.

“Don’t,” Abramsaid in Russian as he knocked the taller man’s own gun aside and held what mustbe a ‘borrowed’ weapon near his left temple. “I’m not in a good mood right now, not after you shot my husband. Do youhave any idea how much he’s going to whinge about the damn thing?” Despite his light tone, that one cruel smileof his which set the Hatfords and their people on high alert had crept onto hisface.

Andrew sheathed one of his knives and limped over to the twomen, having to step over a dead body along the way; it wasn’t often when Abramdid the ‘heavy lifting’ during work like this, but he was still at the top ofhis game whenever necessary.

Dammit, Andrew hated times like these, hated when he’d messedup and Abram could have been hurt.

“Come on, babe, I’m not going to bitch half as much as youdo about the damn grout,” he said as he reached out to wrap his hand around theback of Abram’s neck to give it a gentle squeeze. “Now are you going to gutthis asshole or shall I?”

“You’ll regret this,” the agent insisted as sweat poureddown his flushed face, as predictable as ever, “you’ll be broken into patheticpieces once-“

Abram made a tsk’ing sound before he smashed the gun intothe side of the asshole’s face to knock him out, then let him slide down ontothe ground. “You going to be okay long enough for Artem to get here and helpclean this up?”

Busy removing his bowtie to use as a makeshift bandage,Andrew gave a slight shrug. “I’m heartbroken about the damn blintzes, but otherthan that, I should survive.” He wouldn’t even need any stitches, as far as hecould tell.

His husband gave him one of those looks which usually predated a grab for a bottle of gin andrants about prats (it was an idiot Brit’s sign of affection, Andrew just knewit) then rubbed his face. “I’m about to shoot you myself,” he muttered while hekicked the unconscious FSB agent twice, and hard at that.

Andrew might believe that threat if his husband didn’t thencall Artem, their colleague in Sevastopol, and bitch him out in Ukrainian to getthere as quickly as possible with some help… and to make sure there were somechocolate bars in the med kit.

He may not be fluent in Ukrainian as a certain polyglotbastard, but he knew the important words.

*******

I must admit, that was rather fun. Did it help end the day with a smile?

#nekojitachanfics #armies fic #andreil #neil as abram #andrew minyard #neil josten #abram hatford #the boys as secret agents #prompt fic

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solacekames · 6 years

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Here’s another article for people who think that laughing about “Russian chaos agents” is funny and harmless.

Countering Kremlin disinformation is one area where Kiev has the upper hand.

By VIJAI MAHESHWARI

3/12/17, 10:30 PM CET Updated 3/15/17, 2:21 PM CET

KIEV, Ukraine — When “little green men” invaded Crimea in the spring of 2014, Russian media went into overdrive, smearing Ukraine’s Euro-revolution as a “fascist coup d’état.”

A group of professors and students struck back and unwittingly made history that spring when they launched StopFake.org, the first site to directly tackle and refute Russian propaganda. Now that the rest of the world has woken up to the Kremlin’s disinformation tactics, the journalism school crew behind StopFake have emerged as the “grand wizards” of the fake-news-busting world.

“There was a growing avalanche of propaganda from Russia seeking to reframe the narrative in the Kremlin’s favor, and we urgently needed to counterbalance that,” says Yevhen Fedchenko, the dean of Kiev Mohyla University’s journalism faculty and one of the founders of StopFake.

The site quickly gained a cult following by exposing false facts in anti-Ukraine Russian news reports. An aggrieved mother whose child was reportedly “crucified” by Ukrainian troops was “outed” as a popular Russian television actress in an article that was shared 11,000 times and later referenced in a press conference with Putin.

As a journalist covering Ukraine during the post-2014 barrage of Russian propaganda, I remember how the Kremlin’s fake news stories infected our most private moments and reframed the narrative.

But it was only after last year’s presidential election in the U.S. — when Russian fake news and cyberattacks were blamed for swaying the election in Donald Trump’s favor — that the site burst on to the global stage.

Almost overnight, the founders of StopFake went from provincial do-gooders to international media stars. Fedchenko and his colleagues were lauded at conferences and plied with offers of consulting work by nervous European governments. They now organize media workshops across the Continent, offering guidelines on recognizing and debunking Russian propaganda.

[...]

As the West scrambles to get a handle on the Kremlin’s propaganda tactics, Ukraine for once finds itself in a privileged position. Ukrainians lived through the Soviet Union, speak fluent Russian and can sift through Russian-language sites for clues about the inner workings of the Kremlin’s fakes news operations. They know the sites pumping out Kremlin disinformation and might even have met some of their editors in the past.

The site Ukraina.ru, for example — a Russian-language site from Moscow that peddles false anti-Ukraine stories — recently offered one of StopFake’s freelancers a full-time position.

“He turned down the job of course, even though the salary was very high,” says Fedchenko, who knows the editor-in-chief, a man who spent a few years in Kiev before the Maidan revolution. “We traced their offices to a building in Moscow that also houses other Kremlin-friendly sites like Sputnik and RIA Novosti.”

New urgency

As a journalist covering Ukraine during the post-2014 barrage of Russian propaganda, I remember how the Kremlin’s fake news stories infected our most private moments and reframed the narrative.

I recall an incredulous taxi driver telling me that a recent client from Moscow had insisted that the MH17 flight, which was downed over eastern Ukraine in July 2014, had been “stuffed with dead bodies.” He refused to pay the fare until the driver agreed with his version of events.

Fake reports alleged that the Ukrainian air force had targeted Russian President Vladimir Putin’s plane, which flew over the same region as MH17 one hour earlier. A journalist friend who was briefly detained in eastern Ukraine said the separatist soldiers had been incredulous the West could so openly support Kiev’s “fascist junta.”

Meanwhile, the Kremlin’s repeated assertions that there are no Russian troops or weapons involved in the conflict has created a convenient narrative for those who prefer to label it a “civil war” and not an act of Russian aggression.

Ukrainians are also intimately aware of the dangers of Russian propaganda, and the way it can infect the body politic with its dark messages.

Chopping the air feverishly with his hands, Fedchenko emphasizes that contemporary Russian propaganda had no inherent ideology and appealed to people’s basest instincts.

“Their messages are very fluid and seek to divide societies against themselves,” he says. “The Kremlin is against all international organizations like the NATO or the EU, and prefers that each country is forced to fend for itself.”

StopFake’s dire warnings about Russian propaganda and its nefarious designs have taken on new urgency in the context of upcoming presidential elections in both Germany and France, where there has been much talk about Kremlin disinformation campaigns against anti-Russian candidates.

Fedchenko explains that the case of the German-Russian teenager, Lisa — whose supposed rape by Muslim immigrants sparked mass protests by Germany’s millions-strong Russian community last year — was a classic example of Russian propaganda.

“They fabricated a rape to inflame passions among Russian speakers in Germany and discredit Merkel,” he says.

During a recent presidential campaign in Moldova, Russians also spread fake reports labeling the pro-European candidate a lesbian and accusing her of supporting “mass Muslim immigration.”

The pro-Kremlin candidate won the election.

Ukraine can’t turn back time. But for the rest of the Western world, it might not yet be too late. The government in Kiev has many Russian media outlets to counter fake news. And indeed, Fedchenko’s biggest regret is that “Ukraine hadn’t switched off Russian television 20 years ago.”

His eyes briefly become misty as he imagines a country completely free from the taint of Russian propaganda. If that had been the case, he says with renewed conviction, “we’d never have had the war in the Donbass to begin with.”

#ukraine #russia #rape tw #islamophobia #all cops are bustards

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opedguy · 3 years

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G7 Opts to Take on Propaganda

LOS ANGELES (OnlineColumnist.com), May 2, 2021.--Speaking to G7 ministers in London today, 47-year-old British Foreign Secretary Dominique Raab said the G7 will make a concerted effort of combat Russian and Chinese propaganda. Raab showed he knows next to nothing about propaganda, saying he was “getting the G7 to come together with a rapid rebuttal mechanism,” exposing for all to see the ineptitude in dealing with disinformation. Whatever disinformation exists in Russia and China, there’s far more in the Western press, who pretends all news stories are fact-checked, when, it reality, the fact checkers are all biased trying to advance political agendas. When it comes to the Western alliance, Raab’s kidding himself that they don’t put out equal-or-greater amount of propaganda than Russia or China, despite denying it better. When it comes to the Western press, whether newspapers or wire services, they’re always advancing a political agenda.

Former President Donald Trump, 78, found out what happens when the U.S. propaganda machine directs all their ire at you, demonizing you as the second coming to Adolf Hitler. By the time the Nov. 3 presidential election crashed-and-burned for Trump, his communication director 32-year-old Hope Hicks was badly out-matched by the liberal press, demonizing Trump to the point that he was worse that Darth Vader, the personification of all evil. Trump blames the election failure on fraud, when the real fraud in his campaign was installing an imposter as communication director. Hicks never challenged the media propaganda that Trump was a Russian asset, or, as the campaign, wore on engaged in quid pro quos with 43-year-old Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. So much disinformation flowed from U.S. media against Trump it eclipsed anything done by Russia and China.

Raab talks about the great threat to the West from Russia and Chinese propaganda, but what about the threat from the Western press that likes to demonize Russian and China. When it comes to Russia, the U.S. and foreign press have transformed 44-year-old jailed Russian dissident Alexi Navanly into a pro-democracy hero. Navalny was stripped Feb. 24 of his “prisoner of conscience” status by Amnesty International for calling Chechens “cockroaches,” saying they only understood the barrel of a gun. But to the Western press, Navalny’s been the West’s best opportunity of getting rid of 68-year-old President Vladimir Putin. Raab wants to respond to Russian propaganda but what’s Putin supposed to do with all the disinformation from the West. When it came to Putin’s invasion of Crimea, the Western press blamed Putin for breaching international norms.

No one in the Western press discussed the fact that Putin watched a CIA-backed coup topple the Kremlin-backed government of Viktor Yanukovych Feb. 22, 2014, one week before Putin invaded Crimea. What’s more propaganda, that Russia thought its Sevastopol naval base was threatened by the pro-NATO coup or that Putin invaded Crimea for no good reason other than stealing Ukraine’s sovereign territory. Raab need a rapid propaganda force to counter Putin’s argument that a CIA-backed coup toppled a duly elected government. “So when we see these lies and propaganda or fake news being put out there, we can—can not just individually, but come together to provide a rebuttal and frankly to prove the truth, for the people of this country but also in Russia or China or around the world,” Raab said. Talking openly about countering propaganda neutralizes any benefit to getting out an alternative story.

Raab claims he wants to get out the truth but each country, each political agenda, has its own truth, whether it’s factual or not. When it comes to the novel coronavirus, why hasn’t Raab demanded the truth about the origin of the virus from Chinese President Xi Jinping. Xi insists the virus occurred naturally in Wuhan, China. Yet his Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Linjian said the U.S. military planted the virus in Wuhan. Xi himself said Feb. 14, 2020 in an address to the nation that he’s ordered China’s Ministry of Science and Technology to improve biosecurity at China’s microbiology labs. Does that sound like Xi thinks the deadly coronavirus occurred naturally? Yet the World Health Organization [WHO], all supported by the G7, said that there was no human to human transmission in Wuhan, China Jan. 14, 2020. Where’s the propaganda Raab’s talking about, coming from China or from the U.S. and European press?

Propaganda’s a two-way street, advanced by any country with an ax to grind, including the U.S., EU, U.K., Russia or China. Talking about a response to propaganda neutralizes any benefit of an organized way to combating it.Raab plans to meet with at the G7 with 58-year-old U.S. Secretary of State Tony Blinken, a known smoke blower who accused China of “genocide,” when there’s zero evidence that China has tried to exterminate the Muslim Uyghur population in Western China’s Xinjiang province. Blinken insists China engages in genocide, when they’ve herded Uyghurs in re-eductiona camps and used them for forced labor, like many multinational corporations Nike Inc, whose had Uyghurs stitch up their sneakers. Raab should work diligently at the G7 to figure out whether or not China worked on a bioweapon in Wuhan before unleashing plague on the rest of the world

About the Author

John M. Curtis writes politically neutral commentary analyzing spin in national and global news. He’s editor of OnlineColumnist.com and author of Dodging The Bullet and Operation Charisma.

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bountyofbeads · 4 years

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European countries trigger dispute mechanism in Iran nuclear deal

By Loveday Morris | Published January 14 at 2:11 PM EST | Washington Post | Posted January 14, 2020 |

BERLIN — European countries on Tuesday triggered a dispute mechanism in their nuclear deal with Iran, a move that could lead to the return of United Nations sanctions on Tehran.

Britain, France and Germany said that they had been "left with no choice" but to make the move.

Iran announced Jan. 5, after the U.S. killing of Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani, that it would no longer be bound by limitations on its nuclear energy program.

Tehran had been gradually reducing its commitments under the deal since the United States withdrew and reimposed sanctions in 2018. With Washington threatening secondary sanctions against European businesses dealing with Iran, Tehran argued it could no longer reap the financial benefits laid out in the pact in exchange for curbing its nuclear program.

By initiating the dispute mechanism, the Western European signatories begin a process that could eventually result in a "snapback" of U.N. sanctions, although officials made clear that such an outcome is not their current intention.

Instead, they appear to hope that triggering the process could help bring Iran back in line with its commitments under the 2015 agreement, which Tehran negotiated with the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China.

In their statement, the three Western European signatories said they would not be joining the Trump administration's campaign of "maximum pressure" against Iran and reiterated their "regret" at the U.S. decision to withdraw.

"Our goal is clear," said German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas. "We want to maintain the agreement and come to a diplomatic solution within the agreement."

That, however, would depend on the track Tehran chooses to take. In a statement Tuesday, Iran's Foreign Ministry said it would have an "appropriate and serious response" to any "ill-willed or unconstructive actions."

It said that since Iran had begun a dispute process itself a year and a half earlier, after the U.S. withdrawal, it deemed Tuesday's announcement "nothing new."

If European countries continue to follow the United States in a "subordinate way" and "abuse" the agreement, then "they must also prepare to accept the consequences," the Foreign Ministry said.

President Trump has repeatedly called on European allies to withdraw from the Obama-era deal, which he railed against during his 2016 presidential campaign. However, the deal's other signatories have stood by it, arguing that it is the best way to limit Tehran's nuclear program.

Launching the dispute process is unlikely to satisfy the Trump administration, said Ellie Geranmayeh, an Iran expert at the European Council on Foreign Relations. It’s still several steps away from abandoning the deal.

The clock will start on a negotiation period that could last 35 days — or longer if there is a mutually agreed extension. After that, a signatory would have to raise the dispute to the U.N. Security Council. Then, if the Security Council cannot agree on a resolution to the dispute — a stalemate would be likely, given that the permanent members already disagree — sanctions would be reimposed.

The aim is “to try and inject a new political environment around the nuclear deal,” Geranmayeh said.

European diplomats are also hoping the process might buy them time and possibly relieve some pressure from the United States.

“Based on the outcome of the U.S. elections, everyone will have a better calculus of where they go next,” Geranmayeh said.

However, the Europeans will have to carefully manage the dispute process if they want the deal to survive, she said. Iran may not engage, or it may choose to escalate. And the Trump administration could argue that the United States, as an original signatory, has the ability to raise the dispute to the Security Council.

Alternatively, Washington could try to pressure London to raise it. Britain is more closely aligned with the Trump administration than Germany and France are, and it is vulnerable to pressure as it negotiates a post-Brexit trade deal.

Cracks showed in the European position on Tuesday when British Prime Minister Boris Johnson called for replacing the nuclear deal.

In a television interview, he said the White House’s main issue with the deal was that it is “flawed” — but also that it was signed by President Barack Obama.

“If we’re going to get rid of it, let’s replace it, and let’s replace it with the Trump deal,” he told “BBC Breakfast.”

Speaking to Parliament, British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab took a harder line than others in Europe. He outlined Iran’s step-by-step reduction in its commitments since last May, leaving what he described as a “shell” of an agreement.

“Each of these actions were individually serious,” he said. “Together, they now raise acute concerns about Iran’s nuclear ambitions.”

In July, the International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed that Iran had exceeded the nuclear agreement’s limit of 3.67 percent purity in its enriched-uranium production.

Raab said the first step in the process of putting Iran on notice would be a meeting of all the deal’s signatories within 15 days. Iran’s response would be a “crucial test of its intentions and goodwill,” he said.

Russia has remained vocally committed to the deal and has urged Europe to do more to save it. Konstantin Kosachev, head of the foreign affairs committee in the upper house of the Russian parliament, said Europe should also call on the United States to abide by its commitments under the agreement.

“Given Western logic, it turns out that no matter what happens with the JCPOA, Iran should observe it, and if it fails to honor it, it shall be the only party to blame,” he wrote on Facebook. “This is dubious logic, to put it mildly. The U.S. is apparently using and enjoying this impunity in its little unipolar world it has created.”

Josep Borrell Fontelles, coordinator of the dispute process, said he has received a letter from the foreign ministers of Britain, France and Germany referring Iran under the mechanism while calling for constructive diplomatic dialogue.

“In light of the ongoing dangerous escalations in the Middle East, the preservation of the JCPOA is now more important than ever,” he said.

______

Isabelle Khurshudyan in Moscow, Kareem Fahim in Istanbul and Quentin Ariès in Brussels contributed to this report.

*********

The resignations of several Iranian state journalists deal blow to Tehran’s ability to control narrative

By Rick Noack | Published January 14 at 1:30 PM EST | Washington Post | Posted January 14, 2020 |

Reporters for Iran’s state media routinely toe the government line. In the chaotic aftermath of Iran’s admission that it shot down a Ukrainian airliner, that admission appears to have pushed several journalists to resign, shaking Tehran’s grip on the national narrative.

On Wednesday, Iranian state television reported the deaths of 80 U.S. soldiers in Iranian strikes against bases in Iraq in response to the U.S. killing of Iranian Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani. In the following days, the same outlets continued to repeat claims that technical problems had caused the crash of a Ukraine-bound passenger jet shortly after its takeoff from Tehran.

None of it was true.

No U.S. troops died in the strikes, and Tehran shot down the Boeing jet, it admitted Sunday.

“[Iranian viewers] were blatantly lied to,” said Ali Fathollah-Nejad, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Doha Center.

To close observers of Iran, the false claims were not surprising. But the resignation of those representing a media apparatus that propagated them was. Several journalists working for state media quit, announcing the moves in social media posts that have since disappeared. One state TV anchor, Gelare Jabbari, apologized on Sunday for “having lied to you on Iranian TV for 13 years.”

The Tehran Province Association of Journalists released a searing statement through a state-controlled news agency. “What endangers this society right now is not only missiles or military attacks but a lack of free media,” the organization wrote. “Hiding the truth and spreading lies traumatized the public. What happened was a catastrophe for media in Iran.”

The resignations may spell trouble for Tehran’s ability to control the flow of information, analysts said Tuesday. While the resignations highlight “deep-seated popular anger and frustration,” said Sanam Vakil, an Iran researcher, they are also likely to “resonate among the political establishment” of Iran.

“This is not something that they’re going to be easily able to wash their hands from,” said Vakil, who is the deputy director of the Middle East North Africa Programme at Chatham House, a London-based independent policy institute.

Fathollah-Nejad cautioned that the impact was mostly symbolic for now, given that the influence of state TV has long been in decline and that most Iranians “don’t get their information from state media.” But the resignations make it harder for regime officials to pretend otherwise and are “an important symbolic gesture” to the public, he said.

Despite state television’s diminished influence, the signs of protests coming from within Iran’s state media apparatus still appeared stunning for a country that ranked 170th out of 180 countries in terms of press freedom last year, according to Reporters Without Borders, and which has targeted both domestic and international journalists.

Reporters Without Borders called Iran “one of the world’s most repressive countries for journalists for the past 40 years,” with an unrelenting “state control of news and information.” Independent journalists in Iran “are constantly subjected to intimidation, arbitrary arrest and long jail sentences imposed by revolutionary courts at the end of unfair trials,” according to the organization.

The Iranian regime’s ability to control the narrative has never been all-encompassing, though, as the protests following the 2009 presidential elections showed. Some Iranians have long been able to access independent news sources, online and via television channels such as BBC Persian that are broadcasting via satellite inside Iran. Events that challenge the Iranian regime’s control, Vakil said, have been “happening in greater frequency, and I think it’s definitely a reflection of access to the Internet.”

Increasingly, social media networks and foreign news sites are providing young Iranians another window into other countries’ reporting on their country — and an opportunity to share their own thoughts, videos and images. While state media journalist Jabbari’s apology on Sunday for “having lied” would have reached few people in the past, the fact that she said it on Instagram gave her a platform with millions of potential Iranian recipients.

“Young people get most of their information from the Internet,” a Tehran-based critic of the Iranian regime told The Washington Post on Tuesday. He was speaking on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals.

With over 40 million users in a nation of 81 million, instant messenger Telegram quickly became Iran’s most popular source of information in recent years. Alongside other apps including WhatsApp and Instagram, such platforms have allowed independent reporting to “spread in Iranian society,” the regime critic added.

Iranian officials have struggled to gain back control. In 2018, it banned Telegram, but many Iranians continued to access it via a virtual private network (VPN), which helps to create secure Internet connections.

When anti-regime protests erupted across Iran last November, social media channels were initially flooded with a stream of photos and videos showing protesters blocking roads and defying authorities. But the stream of information soon slowed. The government interrupted service on mobile networks, then cut the country’s digital ties almost entirely.

By temporarily shutting down much of the Internet, Tehran chose a response that is increasingly common among embattled regimes, according to an analysis by civil society group site NetBlocks.

But it’s a costly approach. Imposing Internet blackouts for prolonged periods of time would have had severe economic ramifications in a country already reeling under U.S. sanctions.

The Iranian regime, said Vakil, is aware that “people are generally skeptical and cynical about the government narrative and messaging.” In response, Iranian state media outlets have sought to deliberately exploit the prevalent sentiments of distrust and cynicism about the news, Vakil said.

Even though a 2012 U.S.-funded Gallup survey of Iranian news habits found widespread reservations about the trustworthiness of state television, foreign news sources were also treated with caution.

By falsely announcing the deaths of 80 U.S. troops and blaming the passenger jet’s crash on technical problems, said Vakil, state media were “trying to build their own narrative,” even though they were well aware that “Western agencies were going to completely destroy their story.”

Their aim was to “spread confusion, sow doubt in people’s minds, make people doubt the Western narrative,” Vakil said. While that strategy is not new, the resignations that followed last week’s misinformation campaign suggest that it’s an approach that may have reached its limits.

*********

Iran says arrests made after downing of Ukrainian plane that killed 176 on board

By Kareem Fahim | Published January 14 at 12:27 PM EST | Washington Post | Posted January 14, 2020 |

ISTANBUL — Iran said Tuesday that arrests have been made in connection with the downing of a Ukrainian airliner by mistake, as the president called for a special court to investigate the crash that set off days of anti-government protests.

Gholamhossein Esmaili, a spokesman for Iran’s judiciary, said Tuesday that “some individuals” have been arrested over the past three days after “extensive investigations,” but he did not provide any details about the identities of the suspects or say how many people have been detained.

An Iranian air defense battery shot down the plane last week, killing all 176 people on board during a hair-trigger standoff with the United States after a U.S. drone strike killed Iran’s powerful Quds Force commander, Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani, earlier this month.

Tehran retaliated last Wednesday, firing more than a dozen ballistic missiles at facilities in Iraq hosting U.S. troops.

In the hours after those attacks, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps shot down Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752 with a surface-to-air missile. It later blamed the strike on “human error.” Listed among the dead were 82 Iranians, 57 Canadians and 11 Ukrainians, including the crew. Most, if not all, of the Canadians were reported to be of Iranian origin or dual nationals.

Iranian officials initially denied reports that the plane was brought down, but they admitted Saturday that the Revolutionary Guard, which maintains military bases in the area of the crash, shot it down by mistake.

Over the next few days, protests flared on the streets of Tehran and other cities, led by students criticizing the missile strike and the initial denials. They chanted rare denunciations of Iran’s leadership, putting the government on the defensive.

The protests continued Tuesday. Videos posted on social media showed dozens of students gathered at the University of Tehran.

“Bisharaf! Bisharaf!” they chanted in Farsi, using a term that translates as “dishonorable,” as riot police stood vigil outside the campus. “Our hands are empty. Put away your baton!”

In a speech Tuesday, President Hassan Rouhani addressed the crash at length, calling for a special court “with a high-ranking judge and dozens of experts” to investigate. “This is not a normal case, and the whole world will follow the case in our court,” he said, according to a transcript of his remarks posted on his official website.

“Our people know that this accident was the result of an error and mistake, but who was involved and what circumstances led to the accident?” he said. His remarks appeared to cast blame partly on the United States, which he said had “inflamed the atmosphere and made the situation abnormal, threatened and took our loved ones from us.”

“All of this is true, but it does not mean that we should not address all the root causes of the incident,” he added. “It is not just the one who pressed the button, but rather there are others, and I want this matter to be explained to people honestly.”

Rouhani also appeared to fault military leaders for waiting days to announce that the plane had been shot down, and he urged the authorities “to explain to the public the whole process.”

Rouhani has no control over the judiciary or the military, both of which are under the direct supervision of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

“It is very important for our people that whoever, at any level, was to blame should be introduced and whoever is to be punished, should be punished,” Rouhani said. “The most important thing is that people have to be sure that such incidents will not happen again.”

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Erin Cunningham contributed to this report.

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Iranians are furious at their regime. But Trump still bans them.

By Ishaan Tharoor | Published January 13 at 12:00 AM EST | Washington Post | Posted January 14, 2020 |

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After days of denial and obfuscation, Iran’s authorities admitted that an Iranian surface-to-air missile brought down Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752 last week. The mistaken strike — carried out in the shadow of a retaliatory Iranian missile barrage on U.S. positions in Iraq — led to the death of all 176 passengers aboard, including a large number of Iranian nationals studying overseas.

Anger at the regime’s misinformation lit a spark. “Many Iranians are furious, both with the apparent attempt to hide the truth and the earlier decision by Iranian authorities not to stop civilian flights when the heightened risk of war with the U.S. had put the country’s air defense system on high alert,” wrote Najmeh Bozorgmehr of the Financial Times.

Vigils and protests held on a number of Iranian university campuses saw chants against the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, as well as the influential Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. By Sunday night, there were reports of security forces once more clashing with protesters in Tehran. The national outpouring of grief that followed the United States’ targeted killing of Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani earlier this month has hardly put a lid on the boiling tensions and frustrations within Iran, where mass protests over a faltering economy flared in November only to be quashed by a brutal crackdown that claimed hundreds of lives

The admission of culpability over the passenger jet has intensified the pressures facing Iran’s theocratic regime. Sixty-three Canadian nationals were aboard the doomed flight. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said he was “outraged and furious” and led calls for accountability and possible compensation. Faced with asphyxiating U.S. sanctions, the Iranian regime has looked to other Western governments for support, painting itself as a victim of Trumpian bullying. But international sympathy is running out.

“The Iranian government is at a cross-roads moment,” British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said in a statement. “It can continue its march towards pariah status with all the political and economic isolation that entails, or take steps to deescalate tensions and engage in a diplomatic path forwards.”

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif limply described the accident as the consequence of “human error” at a “time of crisis caused by U.S. adventurism.” Gen. Amir Ali Hajizadeh, head of the Revolutionary Guard Corps’ aerospace division, was a bit less evasive when he said his unit accepted responsibility for the crash. “I wish I was dead,” Hajizadeh said on state television.

According to my colleagues, Ukrainian officials were privately convinced the jet was felled by a missile but walked a delicate diplomatic tightrope to avoid political friction with Iran. Trudeau, too, was cautious in the aftermath of the crash. “He resisted the temptation to lash out,” Roland Paris, a professor of international affairs at the University of Ottawa and a former adviser in Trudeau’s government, told Reuters. “That might have provided space for the Iranian government to face the reality that it had shot down an airliner.”

There’s a lot more that Iranian leadership may be struggling to face. “The regime suffers from a deep crisis of legitimacy,” Nader Hashemi, director of the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Denver, told Canada’s CBC. “So this is going to add to the regime’s illegitimacy because the institutional arrangements, the structure of power, prevent any open and honest accountable system that can get to the bottom of this crisis and this killing. "

U.S. officials understand this tension. Over the weekend, President Trump tweeted emphatic support for Iranian protesters and warnings to the regime not to shoot those on the streets. He even posted a message in Farsi, declaring that the “world is watching.”

But such rhetoric is curious given Trump’s record on other fronts. It is his administration that chose to reimpose crippling economic sanctions on Iran, in violation of the 2015 nuclear deal. Iranian citizens have suffered greatly as a result. Trump and U.S. officials argue that the burden of guilt rests with the regime, but the sanctions have provided an easy excuse for Iran’s leadership to point to “imperialist” perfidy. On Friday, the Trump administration slapped additional sanctions on Iran, a broad-based measure that targeted its metals, mining, construction, textiles and other industrial sectors.

Administration officials seem to revel in the effects of this pressure campaign, even though it has yet to curtail any of Iran’s supposed malign activities abroad.

And while Trump celebrated the “great Iranian people” on social media, he maintains a controversial ban on Iranian travel to the United States, scapegoating an entire nation (along with six others) and causing untold heartbreak for families and communities linked across borders. According to reports last week, Trump is considering “dramatically expanding” the list of countries subjected to these travel bans in coming weeks as part of an election-year gambit. Though such edicts impose a stigma and inflict misery upon Iranians and other nationals barred from visiting the United States, they seem to appeal to a nationalist base that delights in Trump’s apparent toughness.

“Ironically, Donald Trump’s policy, I would argue, is actually bolstering the Islamic Republic and allowing its leaders to externalize its problems,” said Hashemi. He added that Iranians “feel caught between a rock and a hard place — between an authoritarian regime on the one hand that’s deeply repressive, and then a Donald Trump on the outside that’s sanctioning Iran to death.”

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He thought his U.S. passport and letters to Trump would save him from dying in an Egyptian prison. He was wrong.

By Sudarsan Raghavan | Published Jan 14 at 9:15 AM EST | Washington Post | Posted January 14, 2020 |

CAIRO — As an American imprisoned in Egypt, Mustafa Kassem thought his government would rescue him from what he saw as his unjust incarceration. The 54-year-old auto parts dealer viewed his blue U.S. passport as a bulletproof vest that made him untouchable, especially in the hands of a government that receives billions in American aid, his relatives have said.

By the time he died Monday of apparent heart failure, after more than six years in jail with negligent medical care, Kassem’s faith in American power had broken down. Influential U.S. politicians called for his release but never applied any real pressure, such as the threat of sanctions. Egypt’s authoritarian leader, Abdel Fatah al-Sissi, after all is a key U.S. ally.

Finally, Kassem saw no choice but to go on a hunger strike in September 2018. In a letter smuggled out of prison at the time, he begged President Trump to help him, noting they were fellow New Yorkers. “I am putting my life in your hands,” wrote the father of two small children.

His death raises questions about the ability of the Trump administration to help as many as a half-dozen Americans still inside Egyptian jails, the vast majority for flimsy reasons, according to human rights activists — not to mention the thousands of other political detainees experiencing similarly poor conditions. There are more than 300 prisoners currently on hunger strike.

On Tuesday, Egypt’s chief prosecutor ordered an autopsy, saying it had opened an investigation of Kassem’s death.

His death is the latest sign of the extent to which the Sissi government has been emboldened in part by the Trump administration’s policy, at least publicly, of keeping silent on Egypt’s human rights abuses.

Since Trump’s visit to the Middle East in May 2017, when he made clear that human rights would not be a priority for his administration in its relationships with regional allies, abuses have escalated.

“This sad story reflects very poorly on both Egypt and the United States,” tweeted Michael Hanna, a Middle East expert at the Century Foundation. “And the bilateral relationship remains dysfunctional and directionless.”

Sissi has tightened his grip on the country, putting in place the most authoritarian regime in Egypt’s modern history, human rights activists say. In an effort to silence dissent and free speech, the government has arrested tens of thousands of activists, journalists and political opponents. More than 500 websites deemed critical of the government have been shut down. Extrajudicial killings and forced disappearances of activists are ongoing, as is torture, human rights groups say.

Even as the abuses have multiplied, Trump has continued to embrace Sissi, even declaring him to be his “favorite dictator.” He invited Sissi to the White House, an honor that his predecessor, Barack Obama, never extended, largely because of Egypt’s human rights record. In fact, previous U.S. administrations often used the $1.3 billion in U.S. military aid that Egypt receives annually as leverage to press for democratic changes and freedoms.

“Like 1000s of the country’s political prisoners, he should never have been detained,” tweeted Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.). He urged Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to “remind Egypt that military aid is legally tied to releasing prisoners, including at least 6 U.S. citizens.”

Kassem, of Bethpage, N.Y., was visiting relatives in his native Cairo in the summer of 2013. He was arrested on Aug. 14, 2013, the day Egyptian authorities stormed a sit-in by supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood party in Cairo’s Rabaa al-Adawiya Square, killing as many as 1,000 people, according to human rights groups.

Kassem appears to have been an unintended target: He was arrested at a nearby shopping center, where he had gone to exchange money shortly before his return to the United States, according to the Freedom Initiative, a group that advocates for Egyptian political prisoners.

“After showing his U.S. passport, the soldiers beat and detained him, later transferring him to law enforcement officials who continued this harsh treatment,” Pretrial Rights International, a nonprofit organization that represented Kassem, said Monday. Noting that he was “a diabetic with a heart condition,” the group said that “prison officials limited access to necessary medications and medical care for the entirety of his detention.” It added that Kassem “remained in pretrial detention for over five years.”

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who died in August 2018, had asked Trump to urge Egypt to release Kassem. In January 2018, after a visit to Cairo, Vice President Pence told reporters that he had spoken with Sissi about Kassem’s imprisonment and that Sissi had “assured” him “he would give that very serious attention.”

Nevertheless, Kassem was convicted and sentenced to 15 years in jail in a mass trial later in 2018, accused along with 738 other defendants of trying to overthrow the Sissi government. The proceedings, said human rights activists, violated all standards of due and fair processes. No evidence directly implicating Kassem was ever presented, they said.

On the day of his sentencing, Kassem began a “liquid-only hunger strike,” said Pretrial Rights International. On Thursday, the group said, Kassem “ceased taking liquids and was shortly thereafter transferred to a hospital, where he passed away” late Monday afternoon.

Senior U.S. officials were aware of Kassem’s deteriorating state. In June, the Working Group of Egypt, a bipartisan group of diplomats and foreign affairs experts, sent a letter to Pompeo, highlighting the poor medical care provided by Egyptian authorities to political detainees. The group wrote that Kassem was “in imminent danger of death.”

The death of former president Mohamed Morsi in June was also a wake-up call for those hoping to assist Kassem and other political detainees.

Morsi, Egypt’s first democratically elected head of state, was ousted in a 2013 military coup engineered by Sissi. He was held for six years in prison under exceedingly harsh conditions, human rights activists and his relatives said, including the denial of medical treatment for his diabetes and other illnesses. The Egyptian government denied the allegations.

In July, Pompeo responded to the letter from the Working Group, saying that “the safety and well-being of U.S. citizens overseas, including those detained, has been a top priority for me.”

He noted that two U.S. citizens detained by Egypt had been released during the Trump administration. In 2017, aid worker Aya Hijazi was freed after Trump pressed Sissi. And the following year, Ahmed Etiwy, a university student, was let go after Pence urged his release.

But other Americans remain incarcerated on what activists describe as dubious charges. Khaled Hassan, a limousine driver from New York, has been imprisoned since January 2018 on charges that he joined an Islamic State affiliate. Hassan has denied the allegations, saying he was in Egypt to visit relatives when he was picked up by security agents.

While he was in custody, security forces allegedly beat Hassan, delivered electric shocks and raped him twice, Human Rights Watch said. In July, Hassan attempted suicide inside Cairo’s notorious Tora prison, the group said.

Last year, Pennsylvania teacher Reem Mohamed Desouky was jailed after she landed in Cairo to visit relatives. Egyptian authorities have charged Desouky with administering social media accounts deemed critical of the government.

In Washington, David Schenker, assistant secretary of state for near-Eastern affairs, told reporters Monday that Kassem’s death was “needless, tragic and avoidable.”

“I will continue to raise our serious concerns about human rights and Americans detained in Egypt at every opportunity,” he said.

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Carol Morello in Washington and Kareem Fahim in Istanbul contributed to this report.

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She moved to Texas for safety. Now the state wants to keep out refugees like her.

By Catherine Rampell | Published Jan 13 at 6:43 PM EST | Washington Post | Posted January 14, 2020 |

Marwa Sabah loves everything about Texas — the people, the heat, the vibrant economy.

Everything except the thunderstorms.

Her son, who turns 8 next week, adores them — the flashes outside his window, those gigantic, heart-skipping, only-in-Texas thunderclaps. For his mother, though, those blazes and booms evoke memories she’d rather not think about: the terrifying bombings she fled when she left Iraq six years ago.

Sabah is one of nearly 57,000 refugees who have resettled in Texas over the past decade, of whom about 12,000 are from Iraq. Like most refugees, she didn’t want to leave behind nearly everyone and everything she knew. But facing death threats, she and her husband had no choice. They requested refuge in the United States and specifically asked to be resettled in Fort Worth.

She knew little about the area, she says, but had been told it was warm, friendly, inexpensive and “good for families.” Most important, she’d heard that Texas was a place where she could find what refugees seek most: “safety and self-sufficiency.”

Her intel was good. Texas, whose motto is “Friendship,” has long welcomed families such as hers, resettling more refugees than any other state since 2010. At least it did until recently, when the state abruptly slammed its doors.

On Friday, Texas became the first state to take up President Trump’s likely illegal offer to let governors close their borders to new refugees. This was despite pleas from mayor's, lawmakers, faith leaders and employers, from both parties, who argued that continued refugee resettlement was both a moral and economic imperative.

No matter. Republican Gov. Greg Abbott declared that Texas was full.

In his letter explaining his decision, Abbott conflated unauthorized immigrants with refugees who are, by definition, coming here legally, and only after exhaustive screening. He suggested that Texas lacks the resources to absorb additional refugees, playing into stereotypes of refugees as dangerous, destitute and typically on the dole.

Perhaps if he got to know refugees such as Sabah, he’d think differently.

Sabah and her husband worked as interpreters for Western media organizations covering the Iraq War. Almost immediately, they were threatened for “betraying” their country. When a family member was left disabled by a bomb, they decided it was time to leave. That was in 2008; it took them another six years — and multiple interviews, security checks and medical exams — before they were approved to come to Texas.

They had some extended family in the Fort Worth area, people who had come earlier using visas for translators who had assisted the U.S. military. Their fellow Iraqis welcomed them. So did refugee resettlement workers affiliated with Catholic Charities. They picked up Sabah and her family at the airport, brought them to an apartment stocked with groceries and helped them acclimate. In the weeks that followed, workers and volunteers ferried the family to medical appointments; taught Sabah how to use the bus; and enrolled them in “cultural orientation” classes covering points such as building credit and avoiding phone scams.

As for Sabah’s twin goals — safety and self-sufficiency — her family achieved the first immediately. And self-sufficiency? That took less than a year.

It’s true that when her family arrived, they were enrolled in a slew of public services, including food stamps, rent and utilities assistance, and Medicaid. But that was temporary. By their eighth month, Sabah says, the last of those programs ended, as the family transitioned from Medicaid onto her husband’s employer-sponsored health plan.

Both parents now work full time — he at a warehouse, and she for another refugee services agency, where she helps pay forward the support she received. Sabah tries to give nervous, homesick newcomers more confidence by sharing her own story. She and her husband have been proud taxpayers for years, she tells them. As of this past fall, they are naturalized American citizens.

Soon, they will be homeowners, with space enough for a new baby due in June.

Sabah’s story is typical. Anti-immigrant rhetoric, from the 19th century onward, has long cast newcomers as irretrievably lazy and poor. But multiple studies — including one commissioned by the Trump administration! — have found that after an initial adjustment period, refugees have a net positive economic impact. They are more likely to be employed and to start their own businesses than their native-born counterparts.

Seven other states are still considering whether to close their borders to refugees. They have only until Jan. 21 to decide whether to seize the valuable economic opportunity that Abbott has waived, and to show the world there’s still room at the inn.

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thisdaynews · 5 years

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Relief and trepidation as Trump looks to rebrand the G7

New Post has been published on https://thebiafrastar.com/relief-and-trepidation-as-trump-looks-to-rebrand-the-g7/

Relief and trepidation as Trump looks to rebrand the G7

BIARRITZ, France — Who needs golf when there’s even more money to be made playing global politics?

Before Donald Trump’s first G7 summit in Sicily in 2017, leaders of the world’s other advanced democracies fretted that the combative American would dismantle the international order by snubbing them and even not showing up.

Now, after the conclusion of this year’s gathering on France’s Basque Coast on Monday, is it clear that the G7 will survive Trump’s four-year term, and his fellow leaders face an entirely opposite problem: Trump intends to use his role as host of next year’s summit to make the G7 wholly his own — a fully Trump-branded extravaganza that will likely be held at Trump National Doral Miami, one of his luxury golf properties in Florida.

“Each country can have their own villa, or their own bungalow, and they have a lot of units in them, so I think it just works out well,” Trump crowed at a closing news conference in Biarritz, where he waved off queries from reporters about a potential conflict of interest.

In dismissing the question of any impropriety, Trump repeated his assertion that he is losing billions of dollars in potential income by serving as president. He even told reporters that he would try to come up with a precise estimate of his projected losses.

Trump raved repeatedly about what a great time he was having, apparently relishing the chance to refute media assertions that he was increasingly isolated.

Still, Trump’s enthusiasm, for the just-finished G7 in France and for serving as host in Miami, highlighted French President Emmanuel Macron’s success in averting the sort of major conflict or blow-up that has marred other international gatherings in recent years, including the 2018 G7 in Quebec, and a NATO leaders’ summit a month later in Brussels.

Macron emerged triumphant from this weekend’s proceedings, largely by playing to Trump’s interests and ego throughout, essentially adopting an approach of keeping his friends close and Trump closer. Macron was waiting for Trump at his hotel when the American arrived on Saturday, immediately putting him center-stage for a one-on-one lunch.

And he kept Trump close at hand, literally and figuratively, for the next 48 hours, right up until a rare joint news conference late Monday afternoon. In between, Macron took a gamble by inviting Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif to attend meetings on the sidelines of the summit — but not before consulting Trump. And while Trump fired off some of his trademark raging invective against journalists, calling American reporters “disgusting” in one Twitter post, he did not turn any of that venom on his fellow leaders, as he had before and after the Quebec summit.

Instead, Trump raved repeatedly about what a great time he was having, apparently relishing the chance to refute media assertions that he was increasingly isolated on the world stage. Of course, it was mostly an alternate reality of Trump’s own making. From a policy perspective, Trump continues to stand apart — disagreeing with his fellow leaders on trade matters, on climate policy, on the Iran nuclear deal and on Russia.

U.S. Presisdent Donald Trump’s empty chair, during a work session focused on climate in Biarritz | Ludovic Marin/AFP via Getty Images

While most of the G7 leaders said they adamantly oppose readmitting Russian President Vladimir Putin to the club, citing Russia’s military intervention in Ukraine and its illegal annexation of Crimea, Trump happily told reporters that he is seriously considering inviting Putin to next year’s summit.

“It would be better to have Russia inside the tent than outside the tent,” Trump said at the news conference, after Macron had left him alone to spar with the White House press corps, which the president did with his usual gusto.

“Would I invite him? I would certainly invite him,” Trump said, though he acknowledged Putin might likely turn down the offer to come as a guest rather than as a fully readmitted member of the G8.

Trump quickly pivoted from Russia to denigrating his predecessor, repeating his old assertions that Barack Obama is to blame for the annexation of Crimea and had been “outsmarted” by Putin.

But in his appearances with Macron, Trump was all smiles.

He repeatedly congratulated the French president for a successful summit and thanked him for his “leadership.” Indeed, their joint news conference ended with Trump acknowledging his wife Melania’s love of French wine, even as he ducked a question about his previous threats to impose U.S. tariffs on French wine and other EU products.

There is little doubt that some of them will be hoping that the G7 next year in Miami is Trump’s last.

In Sicily, two years ago, leaders were content to end the summit with a communiqué that showcased a rare disagreement among the seven economic powers — the result of Trump’s unwillingness to join the rest of the group in their commitment to the Paris accords on climate change.

“There were fears: Would he attend the G7?” one senior EU official said at the time, noting that Trump’s election had called into question “the entire Western architecture, post Second World War.”

“Now he’s here,” the official said with evident relief. “He engages.”

Of course, over time leaders have learned that engaging with Trump is often painful. And there is little doubt that some of them will be hoping that the G7 next year in Miami is Trump’s last. The U.S. presidential election will take place just a few months later in November.

This year, Macron gave up on the idea of producing a joint G7 communiqué in part to prevent Trump from sabotaging the final statement. Instead, Macron produced a one-page set of conclusions that other leaders, including Trump, endorsed. And he claimed victory, saying action is more important than some wordy policy document.

A work session in the Casino of Biarritz | Ian Langsdon/AFP via Gety Images

In fact, the bare-bones statement left much uncertainty. It declared the leaders’ shared commitment to preventing Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. But it is far from clear that Macron would be able to organize a meeting between Trump and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani aimed at ending the tensions that have worsened since Trump withdrew from the Iran nuclear accord.

Trump used the news conference to repeat some of his threats of force against Iran, and he showed no inclination to back away from the economic sanctions that he has reimposed as a way of drawing the Iranians to the negotiating table.

On climate change, the leaders didn’t even attempt to come up with any new ambitious joint effort, settling instead for a plan to create a €20 million fund to help fight fires in the Amazon. And the leaders appeared to make very little progress in easing trade tensions that Trump has inflamed across the globe, including in his escalating trade war with China.

Macron, speaking at his own news conference after parting from Trump with a big hug, said the secret to working successfully with his American counterpart is to focus on direct, personal, one-on-one interactions. Some of those interactions over the weekend had left Trump administration officials criticizing Macron even as their boss was praising him.

In any event, Trump appeared to leave Biarritz happy, tweeting “THANK YOU FRANCE.”

Trump in Biarritz | Nicholas Kamm/AFP via Getty Images

Before taking off, however, he put in a strong plug for his Doral resort as next year’s summit site. And just as there is no way for other leaders to stop Trump from inviting Putin, there is no way for them to stop Trump from holding the event at his own hotel. Their only recourse would be to boycott — precisely what they feared Trump would do in 2017.

“With Doral, we have a series of magnificent buildings, we call them bungalows, they each hold from 50 to 70 very luxurious rooms with magnificent views. We have incredible conference rooms, incredible restaurants, it’s like such a natural,” Trump said, while noting that a final decision has not been made.

“We wouldn’t have to do the work that they’ve done here — and they’ve really done a beautiful job. And what we have also is Miami and we have many hundreds of acres so that in terms of parking, in terms of all of the things that you need, the ballrooms are among the biggest in Florida and the best, it’s brand new.”

#Foreign #looks #Politics #rebrand

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clubofinfo · 6 years

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Expert: Robert (Bob) Parry was born in 1949 and died suddenly from pancreatic cancer in January 2018. An enthusiastic tribute to him and his work was recently held in Berkeley California. A video of the event is online here. Although Robert Parry never became personally famous, many readers will recall news stories he played a key role in bringing to public consciousness. He uncovered the “Iran-Contra scandal” where the US secretly sold weapons to Iran via Israel with profits supporting mercenary “Contras” attacking the Nicaraguan government. He uncovered Lt. Col. Oliver North secretly working at the Reagan White House to supervise support for the Contras. He exposed CIA collusion with criminals sending weapons to the Contras and receiving tons of cocaine on return flights from Colombia and Central America. In 1988, Parry co-authored an article which documented CIA and State Department activities to misinform the public to promote the desired public policy. Next, Parry worked with the television documentary “Frontline” to uncover the “October Surprise”. That story involved Ronald Reagan’s election team clandestinely negotiating to delay the release of American hostages held in Iran. These stories appeared in mainstream media but were ultimately swept under the carpet. The CIA-Contra-Cocaine Connection The story about CIA complicity with drug-dealers was especially explosive because of the impact of drugs in poor communities across the US. There was an epidemic of cheap crack cocaine flooding poor and especially African American communities. Robert Parry originally reported the CIA-Contra-Cocaine story in the mid 1980’s. Ten years later, in 1996, investigative journalist Gary Webb uncovered what happened after the cocaine arrived in the U.S.: crack cocaine had flooded poor and African American communities, especially in California. The negative consequences were huge. The San Jose Mercury News published Gary Webb’s investigation as an explosive front page 3-day series titled “Dark Alliance“. The story was initially ignored by the foreign policy and media establishment. But after two months of rising attention and outrage, especially in the African American community, a counter-attack was launched in the New York Times, Washington Post and LA Times. The LA Times alone assigned 17 reporters to what one reporter dubbed the “Get Gary Webb team“. They picked apart the story, picked apart Gary Webb’s personal life and distorted what he wrote. The attack succeeded. The Mercury News editors published a partial “correction” which was taken to apply to the whole story. Gary Webb was demoted and then “let go”. His reputation was destroyed and he ultimately committed suicide. An 2014 movie titled “Kill the Messenger” made in consultation with Gary’s family and Bob Parry, depicts the events. When the establishment media was going after Gary Webb, with the quiet encouragement of the CIA, many journalists were silent or joined the pack attack. Later, when an internal CIA investigation confirmed the veracity of Webb’s research and writing, they mostly ignored it. Robert Parry was one of the few national journalists to defend Gary Webb and his reporting from beginning to end. At the Berkeley tribute, journalist Dennis Bernstein recalled being with Bob Parry and Gary Webb: I remember the power that those guys had with audiences. It was easy to understand why people would be afraid of them. They were truth tellers. The Birth of Consortiumnews As other western journalists were being pressured into compliance or driven out of the profession, Robert Parry chose a different path. Together with his oldest son Sam Parry, he launched the first investigative magazine on the internet: Consortiumnews. In his last article Bob Parry explained: The point of Consortiumnews, which I founded in 1995, was to use the new medium of the modern internet to allow the old principles of journalism to have a new home, i.e., a place to pursue important facts and giving everyone a fair shake. For the past 23 years, Consortia has published consistently high quality research and analysis on international issues. To give just a few examples: In March 1999, Bob Parry surveyed the dangers of the Russian economic collapse cheered on by Western neoconservatives while Mark Ames exposed the reality of Russian economic gangsters. In February 2003, Consortia published the First Memorandum to the President by Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) after Colin Powell addressed the UN Security Council. VIPS presciently warned of “catastrophic” consequences if the US attacked Iraq. In 2005, Bob Parry exposed the bias and deception behind the rush to blame the Syrian government after Lebanese leader Rafik Hariri was assassinated. In April 2011, as the US was pushing to overthrow Gadaffi in Libya, Parry drew parallels to the disastrous consequences of overthrowing the socialist leaning Afghan government three decades earlier. Beginning in 2014, Bob Parry exposed the dubious accusations regarding the downing of Malaysian Airlines MH-17 in Ukraine. Over the past two years, Bob Parry wrote and edited dozens of articles exposing the bias and lack of evidence behind “Russiagate”. A few examples can be seen here. Commitment to Facts and Objectivity Sam and several other speakers at the Berkeley Tribute noted that Robert Parry was not ideological. He believed in following the leads and facts wherever they led. The new editor of Consortia, Joe Lauria, said: Bob was not a lefty radical… He was just reporting the facts and where they led. That turned out to be kind of a left wing position in the end because that’s what happens when you follow the facts wherever they go. But he didn’t start out from an ideological position or have a preconceived notion of what the story should be. Bob Parry’s investigations in the 1980’s revealed the U.S. administration plans and propaganda aiming to “glue black hats” on the Nicaraguan government and “white hats” on the Contra opposition. Thus he was well prepared to critically examine the disinformation campaigns accompanying “regime change” campaigns over the past decades: from Yugoslavia to Iraq, Libya, Syria, Ukraine and others. Under Bob Parry’s leadership, Consortia has exposed “fake news” at the highest levels. As journalist Norman Solomon said at the tribute: It’s important to remember that the most dangerous fake news in the last few decades has come from the likes of the front page of the New York Times and Washington Post. There are a million dead Iraqis and many dead Americans to prove it. Bob Parry wrote several books including Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, The Press and Project Truth (1999), Fooling America: How Washington Insiders Twist the Truth and Manufacture the Conventional Wisdom (1992), and America’s Stolen Narrative: From Washington and Madison to Nixon, Reagan and the Bushes to Barack Obama (2012). Challenging the New McCarthyism In his last article, published just two weeks before his death, Parry informed Consortia readers about his health issue. He speculated on possible contributing factors including “the unrelenting ugliness that has become Official Washington and national journalism.” Parry described the decline in journalistic standards and objectivity: This perversion of principles – twisting information to fit a desired conclusion – became the modus vivendi of American politics and journalism. And those of us who insisted on defending journalistic principles of skepticism and even-handedness were increasingly shunned by our colleagues, a hostility that first emerged on the Right and among neoconservatives but eventually sucked in the progressive world as well…. The demonization of Russian President Vladimir Putin and Russia is just the most dangerous feature of this propaganda process – and this is where the neocons and the liberal interventionists most significantly come together. The US media approach to Russia is now virtually 100 percent propaganda. At the Berkeley event, writer Natylie Baldwin addressed this issue. In her presentation she said: Robert Parry referred to the phenomena of careerism and group think. He argued that it was ruining journalism …When our most experienced academic expert on Russia, Stephen Cohen, can hardly get an interview on CNN and cannot get an op-ed published by the New York Times or the Washington Post, but a neo-con ideolog like Michael Weiss, who has no on the ground experience or educational credentials about Russia can be hired as a commentator by CNN on the subject, it’s dangerous. When someone like Rachel Maddow, who from her past investigative reporting knows better, has allowed herself to be used as a cartoonish purveyor of anti Russia propaganda, virtually ignoring coverage of more immediate issues facing average Americans and distracting them away from confronting the Democratic Party’s failures and dishonesty, it’s dangerous. Natylie Baldwin elaborated on the current critical situation and need for honest and objective journalism, stating: Our media, like our political system, is in crisis. Indeed, these two crises reinforce each other as both our media and our political system are corrupted by money and have been largely reduced to a cheap spectacle. According to polls, large majorities of millennials have contempt for these establishment institutions. They’re open to and looking for alternatives to these broken systems. This makes Robert Parry’s legacy and the space for genuine investigative journalism that he fostered at Consortia more important than ever. Reflections on Bob Parry Joe Lauria said: Bob was a skeptic but not a cynic – there’s a big difference. Sam Parry said: Dad was a patriot. I think that he really loved America. He loved our ideals, he loved the people, he loved the idea of holding the institutions that govern us accountable. That was his passion. That was what he was all about and what really drove him and propelled him through his life. Australian journalist John Pilger wrote about Robert Parry: His founding of Consortia was a landmark. He was saying in effect, ‘We must not lie down in the face of media monoliths, the Murdochs, the liberal pretenders, censors and collaborators.’ Bob Parry exposed the double standards and bias of mainstream media but maintained connections there. At the east coast Celebration of the life of Robert Parry, former neighbor, family friend and executive editor of the NY Times, Jill Abramson, made the understated but accurate summary: Bob Parry certainly did his part to challenge the established order. Robert Parry’s website continues; his work and life continue to inspire. http://clubof.info/

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m1ghty-jay · 6 years

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omginstantpaperbouquetblr · 7 years

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By Andrew Levine / Conterpunch

Photo by Carnaval.com Studios | CC BY 2.0

If Vladimir Putin is half as clever as his demonizers make him out to be, he must have figured out a long time ago that, to get inside Donald Trump’s head, clinical psychologists with expertise treating male adolescents would be more useful than the Russian hackers, real or imaginary, that Western media obsess over.

Why even bother with hackers? The little that goes on between Trump’s ears is all there in his tweets.

But, of course, if the idea is to develop capabilities for waging wars in the cyber sphere, good hackers are worth their weight in gold. If Putin isn’t working on that, he is not doing his job.

These days, hackers are everywhere — including Russia, Ukraine and other former Soviet republics. The United States has more than its fair share too, as do the UK and other Western countries. Some work for intelligence services, directly or indirectly; many, probably most, do not.

When governments do the hacking themselves, or sponsor others who do it for them, it is usually because they want to hone their countries’ offensive and defensive cyber capabilities. In short, they are developing weapons and testing them.

Sometimes, though, they do more than that. The best known example occurred some ten years ago when the United States and Israel introduced the Stuxnet virus into Iran’s Natanz nuclear facility, destroying roughly a fifth of that country’s nuclear centrifuges by causing them to spin out of control.

Needless to say, governments are not the only players; far from it. Many, probably most, hackers are not connected, even indirectly, with state intelligence services. Some of them may be “terrorists,” according to one or another understanding of that fraught and contested term. It is safe to assume that most of them are not. They hack for the fun of it or because they can.

There are legally binding, though sometimes ineffective, conventions that prohibit the use of a few especially heinous kinds of weapons — poison gas is a well-known example. Cyber weapons are not similarly proscribed. Hackers can be, and sometimes are, subject to domestic prosecution, but, between state actors, anything goes.

In much the same vein, international law does not prohibit states from interfering in the political affairs, or elections, of other states. Insofar as sovereignty still matters in our globalized neoliberal world, meddling of that kind plainly violates the spirit of the law, but it is not legally proscribed.

For the stewards of the American empire, inconvenient international laws apply to others, not the United States. It is therefore unclear what, if anything would change if cyber weapons too were forbidden.

What is clear, however, is that, for at least the past seven decades, the United States has interfered in one way or another in nearly every election that American government officials wanted to influence – either to prevent outcomes they opposed or to secure results they favored.

No corner of the world has been immune, but since the demise of the Soviet Union made meddling in the political affairs of Russia and other former Soviet republics easier, Washington has been especially intent on throwing its weight around in that part of the world – always in ways that put Russian national interests in jeopardy.

The “digital revolution” has greatly exacerbated the problem, making meddling a lot easier than it used to be.

How proficient America’s cyber warriors are at defending “the homeland,” the post-9/11 term for the former “Land of the Free,” is an open question. There is no doubt, however, that, at the very least, the United States leads the way in developing cyber surveillance capabilities.

It is no slouch either when it comes to hacking into well-protected industrial and government servers around the world – to spy or to meddle or, as with those centrifuges in Iran, to sabotage.

Russia can do those things too – perhaps just as well, more likely not, but certainly well enough.

It may therefore be time, now that the Cold War is back, to revive a version of the old Mutual Assured Destruction doctrine, updated for the digital age.

* * *

Thanks to digitalization and the many ways in which computers nowadays are able to communicate with each other, state and non-state actors can meddle – or worse – more effectively than in the past.

Inasmuch as quality emerges out of quantity, as dialecticians inspired by Hegel would say, meddling has therefore become qualitatively more problematic than it used to be.

Thus, with Cold War insanity coming back into vogue — promoted by the entire political class, no longer just by Clinton retainers, and by the media flacks who serve them — meddling is taking new forms.

Some things don’t change, however. As long as it keeps spending more money on “defense” than the Russians do, the United States will retain the dominant position. Despite the best efforts of Cold Warriors to scare Americans into acquiescence, everyone now concedes that this was how it was with nuclear weapons and missiles and much else during the original Cold War. It is how it is today too, now that cyber weapons are added into the mix.

Nevertheless, as in the past, the War Party’s spokespersons will insist that we are not spending nearly enough. Lying through their teeth, JFK and his people concocted a “missile gap” some six decades ago. No one should be surprised, with the 2018 midterm elections looming, when a “cyber weapons gap” opens up.

The death merchants and mad dog generals must be salivating at the prospect. Silicon Valley plus the military-industrial complex, Eisenhower’s euphemism for death merchants and military brass, now dominate the real economy. Over them all, there is Wall Street; a far greater menace now than in Eisenhower’s time. The too-big-to-fail-or-jail miscreants there must be salivating most of all.

It was public opinion that made the original Cold War possible, and so it is again. This is why the “liberal press” has been pulling out all the stops – vilifying Russia and demonizing its President.

But there are at least two reasons why they will have a harder time getting the result they want now than their counterparts had long ago.

For one, they don’t have a President on board this time, except occasionally when all the stars are lined up right. Unlike his post-War predecessors, from Truman on, Trump has no geopolitical goals. Instead, he wants to make “deals” that he thinks will make him look good, but that will only make him richer.

Trump is no more anti-imperialist than Cecil Rhodes, and he doesn’t have an internationalist bone in his body. But, during the campaign, he did find it expedient to strike a kind of pre-War isolationist pose.

Since that could in principle lead him sometimes to do the right thing — albeit for bad, even noxious reasons – there were a few observers who were inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt. Inasmuch as the alternative was a continuation of the liberal imperialism of the Obama era, who could blame them?

What they actually did, however, was give Trump way too much credit. The man has no ideological convictions to speak of. For all practical purposes, his mind is a blank slate, susceptible to being swayed by whomever he talked to last or by the last pundit he watched on TV.

However, where Russia is concerned, he did, and still does, seem to have sounder instincts than his rivals. For Trump, instincts are all; and his instincts are dangerously off on almost everything. But not on this.

No doubt, his business involvements have a lot to do with it. So, very likely, does the fact that he could care less what others think. It probably also helps that he has no ties to the foreign policy establishment or to the so-called deep state.

Whatever the reasons, Trump does seem less in thrall to the delusions that shape this latest outbreak of Russophobia in political and media circles than other politicians at the national level. Indeed, even at this late date, he actually does seem to want to diminish, not exacerbate, tensions between the world’s two major nuclear powers.

Bravo to him for that.

The other reason why Cold Warriors today have their work cut out for them, in ways that their counterparts after the Second World War did not, is that the justifications they are obliged to offer for treating Russia as an enemy are preposterous on their face.

Half a century ago, the Soviet Union was, in Churchill’s words, “a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.” Churchill went on to suggest that much of the mystery would dissipate if observers would think more carefully about Russia’s national interests. That insight was among the first casualties of the rush to (cold) war that Churchill himself did so much to promote.

And so, an Iron Curtain descended over the Soviet Union and its “satellites,” just as he said it would — making it possible for the “free world’s” propagandists to spin all kinds of yarns about Communist “subversion” and ill intent.

Cyber curtains are harder to construct. What could previously be kept opaque is therefore now ineluctably clear to anyone who cares to look.

This is why all the brouhaha over Russian meddling in the 2016 election would hardly even merit discussion, but for the fact that the stakes are so high, and because so many gullible people take it seriously.

Never mind that nothing actually came from the alleged meddling, except further confirmation of what everybody already knew: that the DNC, the Democratic National Committee, was working hard to assure that the Sanders insurgency would be defeated, and that Hillary Clinton would be the party’s nominee.

Leave aside too the glaring hypocrisy of the United States, of all countries, objecting to election meddling. Evidently, the consensus view among mainstream politicians and in mainstream media circles too is that, in the United States, “what’s sauce for the goose” is emphatically not also “sauce for the gander.”

Forget genuinely “fake news” reports as well; for example, the claim that the Russians hacked into electoral grids in Vermont and elsewhere. There is no solid evidence for them; and, as one would expect, they disappear down the memory hole just as soon as they serve their purpose.

Reports of Russian hacking that bear on infrastructure security, financial transactions, trade, industrial processes, and other vital economic and military concerns would, if true, be genuinely worrisome were the recently revived Cold War to heat up.

With so many of the leading lights of the American political and media establishments working so diligently to make that happen, this is a cause for concern. But not even the most determined warmongers have been able to come up with a plausible story about how Russian hacking affected the election that put Donald Trump in the White House.

War Party propaganda notwithstanding, the claim that the Russians interfered with the 2016 election is hardly gospel truth. Nevertheless, it merits investigation.

The story used to be that seventeen U.S. intelligence agencies agreed that reports of Russian meddling are correct. The official line now is that only four have weighed in decisively, the four actually in the know.

Meanwhile, Putin says the Russians did not meddle; and Julian Assange has said many times that the source of the DNC documents that Wikileaks published was not the Russian state.

It has become fashionable in mainstream circles to vilify Assange, but the fact remains that his integrity, and Wikileaks’, is well established.

Though portrayed as the devil incarnate, Putin is a skilled and worldly statesman, intent on advancing Russia’s interests, as he understands them. He is therefore a liar by vocation, just as all serious politicians are.

For profound historical reasons, slightly different, slightly less liberal and more authoritarian, norms obtain in Russia’s political sphere than in most Western countries; and, needless to say, like everyone else everywhere, Putin and his constituents are creatures of their time and place.

On the whole, though, the demon of the hour seems no less governed by moral, customary or legal constraints than others in similar positions. Even in responding to events in Ukraine and Syria, he has been more scrupulously observant of international law than Barack Obama or Donald Trump.

His word may not be as good as gold, but it is a lot better than the CIA’s. Indeed, when it comes to lying, the CIA is second to none. It has been known too to politicize intelligence when it suits its purposes or the purposes of the American government, insofar as the two diverge. The Bush-Cheney administration’s “weapons of mass destruction” is only the best-known recent example.

I would therefore venture that of all the relevant parties weighing in, the American intelligence community is the least credible. But we are so bombarded with the party line on Russian meddling that it is hard not to succumb to the belief that there surely must be some there there. That (ultimately irrational) consideration apart, there is every reason to remain skeptical of everybody’s assessments. For the time being and perhaps for some time to come, agnosticism is the only reasonable position to take.

The news that people close to Trump — his son, his son-in-law, his campaign manager — met with a lawyer whom they believed to be acting on behalf of the Russian government, and who probably was, changes nothing.

According to Donald Junior’s emails, they did it to get dirt on Hillary Clinton.

Needless to say, “opposition research” is part of electoral politics nowadays; they all do it.

The problem in this case is the involvement of someone with ties to the Kremlin. Had the story been that Trump or someone close to him hired homegrown detectives to dig up dirt on Clinton, the news probably wouldn’t even have gotten Rachel Maddow’s hackles up.

Or had the famiglia arranged a meeting for the same purpose with persons connected to some other country – Israel is an obvious example, but not the only imaginable one – that would be fine too.

Apparently, it is the Russian connection that is toxic.

For the anti-Trump political class and their mainstream media friends, Junior’s emails are the Holy Grail, the “smoking gun.”

But all they show is that there was contact between the Russian government and the Trump campaign. Except on the dubious theory that the provision of information is an emolument of the kind that the Constitution proscribes, there was nothing even remotely criminal about that meeting in Trump Tower. There was not even anything unusual; campaigns look for dirt where they can find it, and they talk to foreign sources all the time.

Trump’s flacks say that the purported smoking gun is actually no big deal.

It grieves me to say it, but they are right.

What those emails provide is evidence of the stupidity of the Trump family (no surprise there!) and close Trump associates (ditto). To make anything more of it is, to say the least, a stretch.

***

Narratives that center on Russian meddling in the 2016 election are one thing; well-researched investigations of connections between Trump, the Trump family, and the Trump campaign, on the one hand, and Russian oligarchs, mobsters, spies, and assorted sleaze balls, on the other, are something else altogether.

Inasmuch as birds of a feather generally do flock together, there probably are quite a few contacts of that sort to uncover.

Unfortunately, though, in the fog of neoconservative, Russophobic propaganda that has settled in over our shores, these issues have become confounded.

On the meddling in the last election question, the jury is still out on which liars to believe. Does it really matter, though?

It does to proponents and opponents of the War Party. The former are desperate for reasons to find Putin culpable of something, anything; the latter understand the importance of not letting them have their way.

It matters too to feckless Democrats (is there any other kind?) hoping to ride anti-Trump loathing back to power in 2018. It is all they have going for them.

But it hardly matters at all for the integrity of American democracy — notwithstanding the self-righteous blather that currently surrounds the issue.

The danger to democracy – what little of it we have — is not coming from hackers, Russian or otherwise, government sponsored or freelance. At this historical moment, it is coming mainly from the voter suppression efforts of Republican state officials and the Trump White House.

Republican donors are culpable too. They are the ones who bankroll the governors and state legislators who are leading the charge against (small-d) democracy.

How ironic that one of the things the Russians are supposed to have hacked into are state voting rolls. It is fatally unclear why they would care about that, just as it is brutally obvious why Republicans would. But this doesn’t phase the War Party’s propagandists one bit.

The story they are going with for now is that Putin wants Americans to lose faith in the democratic process. Why would he even care?

During the original Cold War, when the Soviet Union was supposedly intent on world domination, there were ways of answering that question. The answers were disingenuous, to say the least, but they could at least be made to seem plausible. Good luck with that now!

In any case, if Putin really did want to undermine faith in American democracy, he would be a little late to the gate; and he would be redundant. Who needs a foreign autocrat to do what Democrats and Republicans are already doing better?

Meanwhile, even with Junior’s emails, Trump is still there; and unless Republicans turn on him, which, for now, seems unlikely – or unless, more unlikely still, he decides he has had enough — there is where he will remain.

Meanwhile too, the Democratic Party, having made itself irrelevant, is still scapegoating Russians. What a dangerous, albeit bipartisan, spectacle – unreconstructed Clintonites working side by side with the likes of John McCain and Lindsey Graham.

All this does, though, is increase the likelihood that, in the process, the world will stumble into a war that, this time around, really will be a war to end all wars.

Is there a silver lining in any of this? If there is, it is well hidden.

ANDREW LEVINE is the author most recently of THE AMERICAN IDEOLOGY (Routledge) and POLITICAL KEY WORDS (Blackwell) as well as of many other books and articles in political philosophy. His most recent book is In Bad Faith: What’s Wrong With the Opium of the People. He was a Professor (philosophy) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a Research Professor (philosophy) at the University of Maryland-College Park. He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion (AK Press).

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