Trump "Not Fully Briefed"

SUBHEAD:  Expresses frustration on executive order elevating Bannon to Security Council.

By Nadia Prupis on 6 February 2107 for Common Dreams -
(http://www.commondreams.org/news/2017/02/06/trump-not-fully-briefed-order-elevating-bannon-security-council)


Image above: Recent Time magazine cover photo of Steve Bannon. From (https://timedotcom.files.wordpress.com/2017/02/steve-bannon-cover-time.jpg).

New York Times reports the lapse was a 'greater source of frustration to the president than the fallout from the travel ban'.

President Donald Trump reportedly did not realize he was promoting chief strategist Steve Bannon to the National Security Council (NSC) Principals Committee when he signed the executive order dropping intelligence and defense officials from the top government panel and elevating the former Breitbart News chair in their place.

The New York Times reported over the weekend that Trump had not been fully briefed on his own executive order, which became "a greater source of frustration to the president" than the protests and legal actions over his travel ban blocking immigrants from seven majority-Muslim countries.

Reporters Glenn Thrush and Maggie Haberman depicted an administration that's just barely keeping a lid on its internal crises, turf wars, and lack of preparation—and a scheming chief strategist that's successfully taken advantage of it all.

They wrote:

[White House chief of staff Reince] Priebus told Mr. Trump and Mr. Bannon that the administration needs to rethink its policy and communications operation in the wake of embarrassing revelations that key details of the orders were withheld from agencies, White House staff, and Republican congressional leaders like Speaker Paul D. Ryan.

Mr. Priebus has also created a 10-point checklist for the release of any new initiatives that includes signoff from the communications department and the White House staff secretary, Robert Porter, according to several aides familiar with the process.

Mr. Priebus bristles at the perception that he occupies a diminished perch in the West Wing pecking order compared with previous chiefs. But for the moment, Mr. Bannon remains the president's dominant adviser, despite Mr. Trump's anger that he was not fully briefed on details of the executive order he signed giving his chief strategist a seat on the National Security Council, a greater source of frustration to the president than the fallout from the travel ban.

Trump seemingly clarified on Twitter that he calls his own shots, "largely based on an accumulation of data, and everyone knows it." He also accused the Times of writing "total fiction" about him.

The executive order promoted Bannon, a white nationalist with no foreign policy or government experience, to a regular seat at some of the most sensitive meetings at the highest levels of government, along with other NSC meetings.

Meanwhile, the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff—who need to be confirmed by the Senate—were directed to only attend meetings when discussions pertain to their "responsibilities and expertise."

The memo led to speculation that the right-wing power grab in the executive branch could be setting the stage for a coup d'état.

.

The Cheeto Cometh

SUBHEAD: Will the Deep State tear the country apart in the attempt to defend all its ill-gotten perquisites and privilege?

By James Kunstler on 16 January 2017 for Kunstler.com -
(http://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/the-cheeto-cometh/)


Image above: Donald Trump looking snacky. From (http://myfox8.com/2015/12/07/trump-ban-all-muslim-travel-to-us/).

I dunno about you, but I rather enjoy watching the praetorian Deep State go batshit crazy as the day of Trump’s apotheosis approaches. I imagine a lot of men and women running down the halls of Langley and the Pentagon and a hundred other secret operational redoubts with their hair on fire, wondering how on earth they can neutralize the fucker in the four days remaining.

What’s left in their trick-bag? Bake a poison cheesecake for the inaugural lunch? CIA Chief John Brennan has been reduced to blowing raspberries at the incoming president.

Maybe some code cowboys in the Utah NSA fortress can find a way to crash all the markets on Friday as an inauguration present.

What does it take? A few strategic high-frequency trading spoofs? There will be lots of police sharpshooters on the DC rooftops that day. What might go wrong?

Civil War Two is underway, with an interesting echo of Civil War One: Trump dissed Civil Rights sacred icon Georgia congressman John Lewis, descendant of slaves, after said icon castigated Trump as “not a legitimate president.” That now prompts a congressional walk-out of the swearing-in ceremony.  

The New York Times is acting like a Manhattan socialite in a divorce proceeding, with fresh hysterics every day, reminding readers in a front-page story on Monday that “[Martin Luther] King’s birthday falls within days of the birthdays of two Confederate generals, Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson.”

Jeez! Who you gonna call? Ghostbusters?

There’s not much Trump can do until Friday noon except tweet out his tweets, but one can’t help but wonder what the Deep State can do after that magic moment passes. I’ve maintained for nearly a year that, if elected, Trump would be removed by a coup d’état within sixty days of assuming office, and I still think that’s a pretty good call — though I hope it doesn’t come to that, of course.

My view of this was only confirmed by Trump’s performance at last week’s press conference, which seemed, shall we say, a little light on presidential decorum.

Perhaps it befits this particular Deep State to go down in the manner of an opéra bouffe. History repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce, old Karl Marx observed.

What does the Union stand for this time? The rights of former SEC employees to sell their services to CitiBank? The rights of competing pharma companies to jack the price of insulin up from $20 to $250 a vial? The rights of DIA subcontractors to sell Semtex plastic explosives to the “moderate” jihadis of the Middle East?

So the theme of the moment is that Donald Trump is a bigger crook than the servants and vassals of the Deep State. He ran for president so he could sell more steaks and whiskey under the Trump brand. He’s in violation of the emoluments clause in the constitution.

Well, I’m not aware that George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, or Andrew Jackson put their slaves in a blind trust after they became president.

Anyway, at this point in our history, nobody can beat the Deep State for financial turpitude, certainly not a single real estate and hotel magnate.

I guess the big question is whether the Deep State — and, yes, Virginia, the Deep State does exist, unlike Santa Claus — will tear the country apart in the attempt to defend all its ill-gotten perquisites and privileges.

The public at large is restive, eager to get on with the job of deconstructing the matrix of racketeering that adds up to the immiserating culture we live in, a society where health insurance company presidents make $40 million a year while ordinary people lose their homes because a $5,000-deductible health insurance policy doesn’t cover the cost of treating a routine tonsillectomy.

I didn’t vote for the Cheeto-headed sonofabitch, but it will be interesting to see what he does between noon and six p.m. Friday, if he survives the festivities.

.

Turkey's faked coup

SUBHEAD: Erdogan purges 20,000 as Europe voices concern Turkish coup was staged with "Prepared Arrest Lists".

By Tyler Durden on 18 July 2016 for Zero Hedge -
(http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-07-18/erdogan-purges-8000-cops-europe-voices-concern-coup-was-staged-prepared-arrest-lists)


Image above: President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is now crushing all dissent in Tukey. From (http://www.nimble.news/former-miss-turkey-receives-14-month-prison-sentence-making-fun-president/).

Overnight Turkish president Erdogan's counter-coup witch hunt continued, when thousands of police officers were suspended on Monday, widening a systemic purge of Erdogan's enemies first in the armed forces and then judiciary after a failed military coup, now focusing on the interior police force, and raising concern among European allies that it was abandoning the rule of law.  

Turkey's state-run news agency says the nation has detained or suspended 20,000 personnel across the country, following Friday's foiled coup attempt. 
 
Anadolu Agency says a total of 8,777 employees attached to the ministry were dismissed, including 30 governors, 52 civil service inspectors and 16 legal advisers


Thirty regional governors and more than 50 high-ranking civil servants have also been dismissed, CNN Turk said. Thousands of members of the armed forces, from foot soldiers to commanders, were rounded up on Sunday, some shown in photographs stripped to their underpants and handcuffed on the floors of police buses and a sports hall. Several thousand prosecutors and judges have also been removed.

Bloomberg summarizes as follows: more than than 7,500, including more than 6,000 soldiers from various ranks detained by police, Turkish PM Binali Yildirim says in televised remarks. Those detained include 755 judges and prosecutors, 650 civilians and 100 police officers.

Separately, about 9,000 from the Interior Ministry, 3,00 judges and prosecutors and 1,500 staff members of Finance Ministry have been removed from duty.

In total, approximately 20,000 political opponents "purged" just days after the conclusion of the failed coup.

At the same time speculation that the terribly planned "coup" was anything but came from the European Commission itself. As Reuters adds, the swift rounding up of judges and others after a failed coup in Turkey indicated the government had prepared a list beforehand, according to EU commissioner dealing with Turkey's membership bid, Johannes Hahn, said on Monday.

"It looks at least as if something has been prepared. The lists are available, which indicates it was prepared and to be used at a certain stage," Hahn said. "I'm very concerned. It is exactly what we feared."

It is also exactly what Erdogan has expected and hoped for. And with broad western support for Erdogan over the weekend, his mission to concentrate all Turkish power in his own hands is now assured.

Meanwhile, Erdogan on Sunday told crowds of supporters, called to the streets by the government and by mosques across the country, that parliament must consider their demands to apply the death penalty for the plotters. "We cannot ignore this demand," he told a chanting crowd outside his house in Istanbul late on Sunday. "In democracies, whatever the people say has to happen."

Once again, Europe pushed back however, when Volker Kauder, parliamentary leader of German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s party bloc, said Turkey must obey the rule of law. “If the death penalty were to be decided, the negotiations would certainly be at an end,” Kauder says in ZDF television interview, referring to talks with the EU. “We mustn’t let it go unchallenged if the rule of law isn’t obeyed.”

Austrian Foreign Minister Sebastian Kurz also said it would be unacceptable for Turkey to reintroduce the death penalty, which it abolished in 2004.

Abolishing capital punishment was a prerequisite for talks with Turkey on membership of the European Union, to which it still aspires.

But... this is Turkey: the law is whatever Erdogan says it is.

Others also realized what they have done, but it was too late. EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini warned the Turkish government on Monday against taking steps that would damage the constitutional order.

"We were the first... during that tragic night to say that the legitimate institutions needed to be protected," she told reporters on arrival at an EU foreign ministers meeting, which was also to be attended by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry.

"We are the ones saying today rule of law has to be protected in the country," she said in Brussels. "There is no excuse for any steps that take the country away from that."

Actually the excuse came and went over the weekend, when - with Europe's blessing - Erdogan not only repelled the fake coup, but also got a green light to crackdown on anyone who is even remotely critical of him.

And, oh yes, Erdogan still holds all the leverage: some two million Syrian refugees he can unleash on Europe at any moment he wishes.

---

Coup pilots could have killed Erdogan

SUBHEAD: "Why they didn't fire is s mystery" - Coup pilots had Erdogan's plane in their sights.

By Tyler Durden on 17 July 2016 for Zero Hedge -
(http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-07-17/why-they-didnt-fire-mystery-coup-pilots-had-erdogans-plane-their-sights-and-did-noth)

Looking back at the failed Turkish coup, one question that nobody has been able to answer is why, if the coup was indeed a serious attempt at government overthrow, did the organizers not do the first thing that military coups have done since time immemorial: either capture, or simply eliminate the existing ruler, the vacationing president Erdogan?

The following brief story will only add to the confusion (or maybe not).

As Reuters reports, at the height of the attempt to overthrow Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan, the rebel pilots of two F-16 fighter jets had Erdogan's plane in their sights. And yet he was able to fly on.

The government narrative, completely fabricated as it may be, is the following:

Erdogan said as the coup unfolded that the plotters had tried to attack him in the resort town of Marmaris and had bombed places he had been at shortly after he left. He "evaded death by minutes", the second official said.  

Around 25 soldiers in helicopters descended on a hotel in Marmaris on ropes, shooting, just after Erdogan had left in an apparent attempt to seize him, pro-government broadcaster CNN Turk said. Prime Minister Binali Yildirim had also been directly targeted in Istanbul during the coup bid and had narrowly escaped, the official said, without giving details.

Flight tracker websites showed a Gulfstream IV aircraft, a type of business jet owned by the Turkish government, take off from Dalaman airport, which is about an hour and a quarter's drive from Marmaris, at about 2240 GMT on Friday.  It later circled in what appeared to be a holding pattern just south of Istanbul, around the time when a Reuters witness in the airport was still hearing bursts of gunfire, before finally coming in to land.

It is what happened during Erdogan's trip that is confusing. Again from Reuters:

The Turkish leader was returning to Istanbul from a holiday near the coastal resort of Marmaris after a faction in the military launched the coup attempt on Friday night, sealing off a bridge across the Bosphorus, trying to capture Istanbul's main airport and sending tanks to parliament in Ankara.

A senior Turkish official confirmed to Reuters that Erdogan's business jet had been harassed while flying from the airport that serves Marmaris by two F-16s commandeered by the coup plotters but that he had managed to reach Istanbul safely.

"At least two F-16s harassed Erdogan's plane while it was in the air and en route to Istanbul. They locked their radars on his plane and on two other F-16s protecting him," a former military officer with knowledge of the events told Reuters.

"Why they didn't fire is a mystery," he said.

Actually, now that we have seen the unprecedented crack down on all political opponents including the start of what is set to be a historic witch hunt, it is no mystery at all.

.