The Walking Dead in Washington

SUBHEAD: The Great Disruption is now in full swing. We face the most important choice in human history.

By Paul Gilding on 27 February 2017 for -
(https://paulgilding.com/2017/02/23/the-walking-dead-in-washington/)


Image above: Zombies stumble across the East Plaza of the U.S. Capitol. From (http://www.cnn.com/2014/05/16/politics/pentagon-zombie-apocalypse/).

We’re all focused on the drama and entertainment of Trump’s takeover of the world’s centre of military, security and economic power. For some it’s exciting and entertaining, for others terrifying and apocalyptic. I too have been glued to the news – at various times having each of those responses!

But now I’ve come back to earth, recognising it all for what it is. Important, but a sideshow to a much bigger and more important game. And on reflection, I’m glad he got elected.

How can a Trump Presidency be positive? Surely this is a major setback – to action on climate change, to addressing inequality, to human rights and global security. Doesn’t it make the world a scarier and less stable place?

In isolation, all true, but in context, not so much. The context is the key.

Trump’s election is not a trend. It should not be seen as evidence of a swing to the right, to nationalism and xenophobia etc. It is simply a symptom of the volatility inherent in the accelerating breakdown of our current economic approach and model.

What we are seeing is the last hurrah of a dying approach. A desperate attempt by the incumbents to rescue the now failing economic model that did deliver great progress for humanity but has come to the end of its road – and that road finishes at a cliff.

A cliff is the right analogy for a range of reasons. Perhaps most starkly it’s climate change and resource scarcity but also inequality and the failure of the old model to deliver further progress for most people in Western countries.

There are many other issues we face, but these two – climate change (and with it food supply and geopolitical security risks) and inequality within countries – are the systemic risks.

They define the cliff because neither can continue to worsen without the system responding – either transforming or breaking down. So the old approach is finished, along with the fossil fuel industry, and the walking dead taking over Washington won’t bring it back to life.

This leads to why, on reflection, I’m surprisingly pleased Trump was elected, rather than Hillary Clinton. I know it is hard to imagine how someone as appalling as Trump is better than the alternative, so let me expand.

We are now accelerating towards the cliff and we don’t have much time left to change course. If Clinton had been elected, we would have continued to suffer the delusion that we were addressing the systemic risks we face in an inadequate but still worthwhile way.

There would have been the same debates about fossil fuel companies having too much influence on politics, the conservative wealthy elites (yes there are liberal wealthy elites!) manipulating the system to their benefit etc. But we would have seen some progress.

Meanwhile business people would have argued the need for less regulation and “freeing up” the economy. They would have argued we needed to run the country like business people run companies, that if only we had strong (i.e. autocratic) leadership, we could get things done. And the Tea Party style extremists would have had their favourite enemy – another Clinton – to rail against and blame for it all, as they mobilized their base.

Now there’s no debate – it’s all there to see. The fossil fuel industry dominates the administration, gaining unfettered access to more coal, oil and gas. The iconic symbol and long term funder of climate change denial, Exxon has seen their CEO put in charge of US foreign policy and climate negotiations.

Trump is “the businessman in charge” and can slash regulation, free up the financial markets to unleash more mayhem and wind back those pesky environmental protections.

He will attack the media, mobilise extremists and unleash all the autocratic and nationalistic tendencies that the system has – but normally suppresses. His solution to inequality will be to give tax breaks to the rich (you can’t make this stuff up!) when we know only government intervention – or catastrophe–  prevents inequality being the inevitable result of unfettered markets.

The critical result of all this? No change to the fundamental direction we are on. The rich will get richer, the middle class will stagnate, racism and conflict will worsen and we will be less secure – all while climate change destabilises civilisation.  How is this good?
Because three big things will change.

First, there will no-one left to blame. Extreme capitalism will be unleashed and it will not deliver. The fraud of trickle-down economics will be exposed.

Secondly – US climate policy will no longer matter – fossil fuels will die on the same schedule they were dying on. As I argued in my 2015 article “Fossil fuels are finished, the rest is detail”, these are fundamental trends driven by technology and markets – and no government can stop them.

Thirdly – and most importantly – is “the resistance”. We are seeing a huge mobilisation of activism and social engagement among people who have long been passive – as this humorous post describes. This is like the 60’s – without the drugs but with a political strategy!

Climate change will be our Vietnam, the fossil fuel industry our military industrial complex. It could trigger, as this Atlantic article explored, a Tea Party of the left – maybe even a Green Tea Party.

Chaotic, aggressive and not always rational, but very impactful. And the liberal wealthy elites will get right behind it – because they too have a lot to lose from extreme capitalism and climate chaos.

Isn’t this all a bit scary? Don’t we now face a period of extreme upheaval and risk? Yes, but in case you hadn’t noticed, we already are. Ask a Syrian climate refugee trying to get into Europe. Observe the terrifying trends at our melting ice caps.  Talk to a disaffected, scared, unemployed factory worker in middle America who sees no prospects for themselves and their kids.  The system is breaking down.

We’re racing towards the cliff. Despite our desperate denial, we are going to face a global crisis, regardless of what we do. This will not be gentle.

So we need to face reality on how really dramatic change could actually occur.  System change doesn’t happen incrementally and is not triggered by traditional political processes – it takes a crisis. With Clinton, we would have blundered our way closer to the cliff, deluded by small progress. With Trump, we may just wake up in time.

The Great Disruption is now in full swing. We face the most important choice in human history – economic decline and the descent into chaos – possibly collapse – or transformation into a very different economy and society. Having the walking dead in Washington may be just what we need.

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Trump’s angry inaugural speech

SUBHEAD: The cries of protesters added to the sense that a hostile takeover was underway.

By Howard Fineman on 20 January 2017 for Huffington Post -
(http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-inaugural-speech_us_588273b3e4b096b4a231a7ad?gwtwrz5gpwy8ir7ldi)


Image above: A policeman, in militarized unitform, stands in Times Square, as a guard during the televised inauguration of Donald Trump as the 45th president of the United States, Jan. 20, 2017, in New York City. From original article.

Forgive me, but I love presidential inaugurations.

Covering politics and adoring America ― especially our Constitution ― I relish the pageantry of the law-based transition of power, even if I know that we are still not a perfect union.

I have covered many inaugurations, and they’ve shared certain reassuring characteristics. The speech allows each new president to start things off on a peaceable note, however urgent the tasks at hand.

It’s a chance to pay homage to the constitutional process, to acknowledge those who may not have supported the incoming president during the campaign, to offer soothing words about the durability of freedom.

And for the better part of a century, the inaugural speech has allowed new presidents to reaffirm our faith in an active global alliance of free nations for the spread of humanistic values.

Well, President Donald J. Trump’s speech offered almost none of that.

It was a triumphant day for the new president — but you wouldn’t know it from his angry, conspiratorial address.

No one like him has ever been elected, so in one sense, this departure from the norm wasn’t surprising.

At the same time, it was a shocking thing to hear and see and feel from a couple hundred feet below the podium.

First, the urgency and the anger. Ronald Reagan came to town in 1981 with a good bit of the same attitude. But it wasn’t nearly as pure or simplistic as what Trump expressed in his jeremiad Friday.

When Reagan was inaugurated, he made sure to stress that he wasn’t against government per se, or even against Washington, D.C. Rather, he said, he was against wastefulness.

Trump, on the other hand, made it personal, even if he didn’t mention any names. And he made ominous allusions that called to mind old European tropes.

“For too long,” he said, “a small group in our nation’s capital has reaped the rewards of government while the people have borne the cost.”

Who is this “small group?” Does he mean Congress? The wider federal bureaucracy? The K Street lobby corps? The press?

Maybe he was talking about the whole churning machine of Washington itself. But something that vast wouldn’t seem to fit the devil-in-hiding liturgy of Trump’s more conspiratorial, xenophobic supporters, led by White House counselor Steve Bannon.

Trump’s vehement tone was all the more striking given the relatively small turnout for the event on the Mall ― which was nowhere near as crowded as it had been for some past inaugurations ― and the genial, unthreatening mood of many of his supporters in seats beneath the Capitol’s West Front.

Tony Ledbetter, for example, was a Trump elector in Florida, but he’s also a county chair with roots in the Reagan campaign of 1980. A practiced politician, he begged off comparing Trump to his original hero, saying his main hope for the new president is simply that he “create jobs.”

Presidents tend not to talk about themselves very much in their inaugural speeches. But Trump, as usual, departed from tradition, and did so in the dramatic, passionate tones of a revolutionary leader.

“I will fight for you with every breath in my body,” he declared, “and I will never let you down.”

At times, the anti-Washington populism of Trump’s speech ― he indicted much of the very system that had just installed him ― made his predecessors, even Reagan, seem like go-along, get-along types.

“The forgotten men and women of our country will be forgotten no longer,” he said.

There was the pitchman’s urgency to it all, with little stately, secular sermonizing. “The time for empty talk is over,” he said. “Now arrives the hour of action.”

The language throughout was nakedly combative, even bloody. Of drugs and violence, he vowed, “This American carnage stops right here and it stops right now.”

The wealth of the middle class has been “ripped from their homes,” he said. Americans will be able to watch their country “eradicate from the face of the earth” every shred of “radical Islamic terrorism.” All of us, he said, citing an old military slogan, “bleed the same red blood of patriots.”

In fact, rather than simply nodding to the idea of patriotism and love of country, Trump made it the central feature of his vision.

“At the bedrock of our politics,” he said, “will be a total allegiance to the United States of America, and through our loyalty to our country, we will rediscover our loyalty to each other.”

And to underscore the centrality of patriotism, he said that he was “issuing a new decree” in the name of the “people assembled here today.”

“From this day forward, it’s going to be only America first,” he said. “America first.”

The cries of protests wafting up to the West Front added to the sense that a hostile takeover was underway.

As inherently American as presidential inaugurations are, no modern president has ever made patriotism per se the central feature of his message.

There are two reasons for that. One is that the United States has, since World War II, been part of a global alliance of nations standing for values that are American but that transcend any one nation.

The other reason is that the president, in the oath of office, doesn’t declare allegiance to the United States, its people or its borders. Rather, the oath is a vow to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution.”

The Constitution, not the president, is the boss in America, and it cannot be fired.

But unless I missed something in his abattoir of an address, Trump did not mention on Friday who the real boss is.

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Under New Management?

SUBHEAD: Is Trump just another variant of the Deep State stranglehold on the Untied States?

By Jeff Thomas on  16 January 2017 for The International Man -
(http://www.internationalman.com/articles/under-new-management)


Image above: Obama meeting in White House with Donald Trump after he won the presidential election. From (https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/10/us/politics/transition-briefing-passing-the-presidency-to-donald-trump.html).

In 2008, the majority of Americans voted for “change,” and in some ways, they got it. They received a heavier dose of collectivism in the form of Obamacare, but in addition, they received an even heavier dose of “more of the same.”

Mister Obama did not put an end to Guantanamo as he promised.  And, although he did remove troops from Iraq (only to send them back a few years later), he expanded America’s military adventures overall, invading numerous sovereign nations.

As for his promise to come down hard on the sworn enemies of democrats—the evil usurpers on Wall Street—he instead dug in deeper. His Treasury secretaries were banking insiders, not the “reformers” that had been anticipated.

Many who had voted for Mister Obama were deeply disappointed. Under him, government had grown, warfare had expanded, the economy worsened and Wall Street became even fatter than before.

In 2016, Americans, in large part, sought the selfsame changes—less central government control, less overseas aggression and a reigning-in of Wall Street and banks.
But to achieve these ends, voters switched sides once again and voted for a Republican, one who boldly committed to “drain the swamp.”

So, what are the odds that they’ll receive those changes? Let’s have a look.

When a new leader is elected, the best first assumption to make is that his campaign promises probably had little or no relationship to his actual intentions.

More likely, his intentions will be to continue to pander to the Deep State and those that helped him to get elected. Therefore, it’s always a good idea, in any country, to pay attention to the new leader’s choice as his posse.

The US president-elect has been active in choosing the gunslingers who will ride with him into Washington and the choices may provide an early warning as to who the new president really intends to be.

So, first off would be his closest advisors—his chief of staff and his chief strategist. Mister Trump’s choices, respectively, are Reince Priebus and Stephen Bannon. Mister Bannon is a Goldman alumnus.

In addition, Gary Cohn, Goldman’s president, has been chosen as director of the National Economic Council. By any measure, the cabinet will be somewhat of an extension of Goldman.

Mister Trump railed against Wall Street during his campaign and vilified his opponent on Twitter, stating, “Hillary will never reform Wall Street. She is owned by Wall Street!” His supporters had every reason to expect that he would prove to be the reformer they hoped for, yet his choices above suggest that that’s not the plan.

This likelihood is further enforced by his choice of Steven Mnuchin, who spent 17 years at Goldman, as Treasury secretary. His choice for commerce secretary is Wilbur Ross, a billionaire investor who is also unlikely to emerge as an advocate for reform.

As to whether warfare will be diminished in the coming administration, Mister Trump has stated clearly, in reference to ISIS, that he intends to “bomb the shit out of ’em.” (No uncertainty there.)

His choice for national security advisor is Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, whose primary focus is in ramping up tensions with Iran.

His choice for secretary of defense is Gen. James Mattis, who has declared his desire to invade Iran. In addition, Mike Pompeo, who also favours an invasion of Iran, has been selected as head of the CIA.

These choices are not likely to sit comfortably with Mister Putin, with whom the president-elect suggests he will enjoy a good relationship. Nor will they sit well with the many throughout the world who already feel the US has gone far beyond its limit in seeking to police the world.

Rather than back off from the dreaded Wolfowitz Doctrine, the choices of cabinet members, taken collectively, suggest a continuation of the foreign boondoggles that began in 2001.

The one departure may be in the important position of secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, a lifetime employee of Exxon who has developed good relations with Russia and opposes government regulation of business. He may be the one pick that reflects Mister Trump’s campaign claims.

Still, Mister Tillerson falls right in line with the ever-expanding corporatist relationship extant in the US government.

Finally, those who hope that Trump will reverse the trend of the Deep State’s near-total control over the US will be disappointed not only by the choice of Mike Pompeo for the CIA, but of Trump campaigner and establishment insider Jeff Sessions as attorney general.

None of the above guarantees that the voters who chose Mister Trump will soon be experiencing buyer’s remorse, but the indicators that Americans may find themselves out of the pan and into the fire are significant.

There’s an old saying that “the more things change, the more they stay the same,” and the lineup of new players above suggests that that may well be the case in the next administration.

Meanwhile, not only the US, but the entire world will be holding its collective breath over the coming months. The new president is less likely to spend as much time on the golf course as his predecessor. He’s far more likely to hit the road running.

The question will be in what direction he chooses to run. His choices for cabinet suggest that that direction might have less relationship to his campaign rhetoric and more relationship to the ongoing Deep State program.

To be sure, his clear choice of Washington insiders for so many of his primary cabinet positions informs us that the swamp will not, in fact, be drained. Big Business, the military-industrial complex and Big Banks will dominate the Trump cabinet.

Whatever the world will be treated to under the new American presidency, the words of Neil Innes ring true:

“No matter who you vote for, the government always gets in.”

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Podesta Wikileaks from inside USA

SUBHEAD: Former British ambassador claims source of Wikileaks Podesta emails from Washington source.

By Tyler Durden on 2 November 2016 for Zero Hedge -
(http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-11-02/former-british-ambassador-claims-source-podesta-leaks-comes-within-washington)


Image above: Huma Abedin and John Podesta, aides to Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton are seen in the Capitol's Senate Reception Room upon arriving for Clinton's meeting with Senate Democrats, July 14, 2016. Photo by Tom Williams. From (http://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/huma-abedin-and-john-podesta-aides-to-presidential-news-photo/576502484#huma-abedin-and-john-podesta-aides-to-presidential-candidate-hillary-picture-id576502484).

With the media gripped by accusatory speculation regarding the identity of the source behind the Wikileaks leak of hacked Podesta and DNC emails, much of it focused on Russia, a new theory has emerged from Craig Murray, the former British ambassador to Uzbekistan, who tells Sputnik (a Russian media outlet) that the source of the leaks are not Russian hackers but a Washington insider.

"The source of these emails and leaks has nothing to do with Russia at all. I discovered what the source was when I attended the Sam Adam's whistleblower award in Washington. 

The source of these emails comes from within official circles in Washington DC. You should look to Washington not to Moscow."

Asked about whether or not WikiLeaks have ever published information at the behest of Moscow, Murray said that "WikiLeaks has never published any material received from the Russian government or from any proxy of the Russian government. It's simply a completely untrue claim designed to divert attention from the content of the material."

While blasted by Washington, first by Republicans several years ago, and most recently by Democrats, the WikiLeaks revelations have often been hailed as a champion of accountability.

"I think whistleblowers have become extremely important in the West because the propaganda model — as Chomsky puts it — has been reinforced to the extent that people don't get any true information out of the media at all. It's worth saying that Julian Assange and WikiLeaks are publishers; they publish what whistleblowers leak to them," Mr. Murrary told Sputnik.

Yet, whistleblowers in the US continue to be subject to lengthy prison sentences. A key example is Chelsea Manning, who was sentenced on August 21, 2013 to a thirty five year sentence for providing WikiLeaks with sensitive military and diplomatic documents highlighting, among other things, US military conduct in Iraq.

Murray also mentions the case of John Kiriakou, a former investigator of international terrorism with the CIA who turned whistleblower.

"The people who did the torture have suffered no comeback at all," adds Mr. Murray.

Taking a step back and discussing the risk of geopolitical escalation between Russia and the US, Murray told Sputnik that "there is no chance whatsoever that Russia is going to ever attack the United States, that simply isn't going to happen."

"Just as Russia is not going to attack the United Kingdom. There never has been a chance that Russia would ever attack either of these two countries. But of course the narrative is all to do with power and funneling huge amounts of American taxpayer money into the defense industry and the security industry and these people are both from the class that benefits."

It's an extremely dangerous game, says Mr. Murray, and it feeds into a foreign policy that is completely mad.

"In Syria — and I should say I'm no fan of the Assad regime at all — but the idea that backing assorted groups of jihadists to tear the country apart is a better solution is crazy and it's especially crazy when we've already messed up Iraq, Afghanistan and now we're doing exactly the same thing again and you can see it doesn't work, it only works in terms of promoting continued instability and continued spending for the military and the security services."

Finally, Murray also believes that the public can't get clear analysis of these issues from mainstream media, because they are part of the same money/power nexus.

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