Shallows of the Deep State

Tags

attorney general, cia, Donald Trump, jeff sessions, mi6, russian collusion, russian spies, secretary of state, sergei kisliak, United States of America, vladimir putin

 

The Deep State is not a conspiracy of dark forces but rather the branches of government that do not change with each new administration. Their heads may change but the core staff does not. Prominent among these in the US – and the main reason for suspicion – are the security-intelligence agencies, all seventeen of them. It is from some of these agencies that we are now hearing and seeing a marked reaction against the shambles that is Donald Trump’s administration. This reaction has already resulted in the discovery that Trump’s campaign chair, Attorney General, and his Secretary of Defense took and lied about meetings with staffers at the Russian Embassy, both during and subsequent to the election. Jeff Sessions, Attorney General, met with the Russian Ambassador just three days after President Obama announced sanctions to punish Russian cyber malfeasance. We have learned today that present at a meeting denied by Defense Secretary Flynn was Mr. Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and now a kind of roving diplomat without any conspicuous credentials. The net is tightening around the President – who has now been shown unambiguously lying about his own relationship with Russian premier Putin – and I am told investigators are trying to ascertain whether or not the Trump team was colluding with Russian operatives to interfere in the election. Mere contact is not sufficient for charges to be laid. Collusion, however, is treason – a death sentence,  or life in jail at the very least. Some of those in the deep state are convinced collusion has occurred and believe they will be able to prove it.

 

Whenever Trump most complains about “fake news” it is over the stories circulating about this Russian involvement. Why? Because, if proven, it would potentially and probably chop up support in his base. Such people may like the bombast and racist innuendo, but many of them will not be able to tolerate the idea of a covert alliance with America’s traditional enemy. Some perhaps even think of the Soviets still, and the Red Peril. And we know how the President likes to play to his base almost exclusively.

 

Tuesday’s address to the Congress was a striking example of this administration’s proclivity for staging events that can only be compared with the Nazi Nuremberg rallies of the 1930s – crowd-pleasing spectacles designed to glorify and magnify the Fuhrer. The address said nothing, besides a wish-list of prospective actions phrased to sound like accomplishments, yet each hollow statement was greeted with fantastically overdone applause. Bereaved or unusually accomplished ordinary citizens – unusual because of race or class and the concomitant adversity – were shamelessly dragged in for emotional effect. What was supposed to be a serious talk outlining propositions to an assembly of serious people was a mere carnival. The large number of members not supporting Trump – less still the demonstrators outside – were invisible, except for the odd person looking glum and not clapping. This was a spectacle staged to present the American TV audience with an image of the President wholeheartedly supported and adored by a united House. It was in effect fake news. CBC Radio, however, chose largely to ignore the address, and certainly didn’t dissect the speech for its accuracy or vacuity. The CBC has been particularly thin on US news of late, and I hear the Government of Trudeau le Petit has pressured the Corp to lay off Trump to protect our American trade. If true, this is beneath contempt.

 

Major voices on the Right in the US are speaking out fearlessly. One was even interviewed on the CBC, presumably because no one here is allowed to do it. David Frum, senior editor of the Atlantic magazine, ex-speech writer for George W. Bush, ex-Canadian, active supporter of the Iraq catastrophe, is no bleeding-heart liberal. He says the allegations of Russian collusion in election meddling are going to be provably true. Far from overreacting to this story, as we are told is happening by some news agencies, we ought to beware of underreacting. It is probably the most devastating incident in American political history – if true, of course. Richard Nixon spied on the Democratic Party, but at least he used American agents to do it. In Mr. Frum’s opinion, Trump is heading down the road to autocracy. The 21str-century version won’t be like Stalin or Hitler, he says. Violence and coercion will be replaced by “deceit and corruption”. These are very serious issues, yet the CBC glosses over them or ignores them, dredging up the usual trivia and, sports, entertainment and local flim-flam. It’s sad, and it’s irritating when our powerful neighbor is on the verge of what could well be a new civil war.

 

Unsurprisingly, Trump never once mentioned the most damaging issue dogging his administration during his autohagiography to Congress. Not a word about Russia – nyet. Not a peep. One might well ask how the Russians are taking all these allegations and accusations. You can’t really discover that, however, since Czar Putin controls all the media. But you can discover what he, Putin, is thinking – or what he wants us to think he’s thinking. A recent newspaper headline bemoaned the state of America since Trump’s election, calling it “a madhouse”. True enough. One headline today read, “Time to End the Honeymoon with Trump?” This is clearly Moscow telling the world it has no special ties to Trump, is dismayed by his first month in office, and will be content to work with whomever replaces him. Other recent press articles complain about Russia being used as a punching-bag in Washington. Putin is creating a distance between himself and the White House. Why? Probably because he’s fairly certain that the shit will soon hit Trump’s fan, and, knowing that shit as intimately as Putin indubitably does, he must be well aware of the consequences that must inevitably follow any exposure of Russian collusion in election tampering or possibly even worse high crimes and misdemeanors. These consequences will of course leave any Russian nationals unscathed, and, wearing his Teflon suit, Putin can deny all knowledge of this crazy Yankee fantasy. But Deep State officials know it is not a fantasy. The CIA has said so, and if the NSA – which has the metadata on every phone call made every minute of every day in the entire world – cannot come up with some irrefutably conclusive evidence against this administration, well, then their trillion-dollar budget should be kicked down to Langley. Some months ago I cited examples of Russian interference in previous US and other elections. There is no doubt that they do it. There’s no doubt that America indulges in some shady cyber activities too. But Russia does have a long relationship with computer crimes. Back in the nineties, Moscow hand-picked the best and brightest techno-geeks, furnished them with state-of-the-art equipment, installed them somewhere deep in the remotest Urals, and instructed them to wait for the most glorious and secret project. This project never arrived, though. It was not a good time for the Kremlin. Putin was just another KGB agent, and the post-Communist nation was floundering under a crew of oligarchic kleptocrats who stripped Russia’s assets and bought the lot themselves for a few kopecs. Meanwhile, back in the Urals, our techno-geeks were amusing themselves playing havoc on the Internet. They hacked anything worth hacking. They went shopping on your credit cards. And they wrote the first really destructive viruses and worms. Objectively, they did brilliant work. Subjectively, I had to buy two new desktops inside a year. When highly gifted or inordinately intelligent people are allowed to play, not only do they learn what no one is teaching, they also come up with ideas and discoveries no one else could have possibly stumbled upon. With this isolated group of brainy nerds the whole concept of Russian cyber warfare was developed far in advance of any Pentagon efforts. If Russians did hack Democratic Party computers, you can be sure it would be a very sophisticated job, hard to detect, and perhaps impossible to trace to any specific server, less still any individual. I think the Deep State already knows this, and has thus shifted its attention towards the physical meetings. As I write this, the Secretary of State has been linked to a Russian bank specializing in money-laundering. That is now the four most important offices in Trump’s administration linked to shadowy dealings with Moscow. No wonder that Putin, the master strategist – and apparently a great chess player – is edging Trump to where he can be easily thrown under the bus. But let’s not rush to judgement. Is there anything to suggest that Russia might be innocent in all of this?

 

Well, yes and no. Most of the contentious meetings were with Sergei Kisliak, the Russian Ambassador in Washington. He’s an amiable man, laid-back, and well-liked by all. He knows almost everyone on the Hill, is very sociable, so if you’ve been in town for a while you will probably have met him. Unlike Putin and his cronies, who all come out of the intelligence services, Kisliak was originally a physicist, a background that initially made him useful in Washington as a knowledgeable negotiator in arms-reduction talks. It is of course part of a diplomat’s job in any embassy to identify and meet up-and-coming politicians, people who may well form a future administration, so there is ostensibly nothing dramatically unusual in the meetings with men slated to be Trump’s most senior officials. Nothing that is, except the uniform lying by those officials about the meetings. If it is all so innocent and routine, why lie? The only possible reason is that an official meeting would require someone to take minutes, and then a report on what was discussed in detail to be written up. The meeting would almost certainly be recorded too, whether overtly or covertly. By claiming their meetings were just casual chats – about what precisely no one seems to remember clearly – the three officials obviate the need for these formal requirements. It is of course what was discussed that lies at the heart of this major debacle. If Russian cyber spooks were at work in the US – even if based elsewhere – Sergei Kisliak would almost certainly know about it. It’s his job. As said, he’s companionable, highly social and well-known. He regularly meets sociably with politicians and diplomats of all stripes from all over the globe. If you’re seen slurping a cappuccino with him in the mall or some club, no one will think twice about it. But the meetings in question were not casual socializing. They were formal and held in private, at the embassy itself or in an office nearby. Thus they are unquestionably official unofficial affairs and ought to have been documented for future reference and posterity. They were not. The Attorney General claims he talked with Kisliak about terrorism, religion, war, and things he can’t remember. You do not schedule an official meeting to have such a fantastically general and risibly rambling yack. You do that over drinks or coffee somewhere, or on the phone – where calls are recorded or can be retrieved by NSA tech wizardry. It seems that whatever was discussed had to be discussed face to face, in private, at a secure location (secure for the Russians at least), and ideally in secret.  Since the accused officials have already been caught lying, there is no reason to expect a word of truth from them regarding the nature of these meetings, one of which, as I pointed out above, came 72 hours after the Obama sanctions against Moscow. Naturally, Putin and his countrymen would like the punitive sanctions lifted, and no one would blame them for pursuing any promising route to do this. If Trump intended to lift the sanctions, though, what was there to discuss? Obviously, a quid pro quo was involved – we will lift the sanctions if you… The question is what, if you what? Since most meetings occurred after the election, the what cannot have been more Dem-hacking. Hail-fellow-well-met Mr. Kisliak most certainly is, but what else is he, besides a former physicist and career diplomat, that is? The answer is interesting. He is known in intelligence circles – most notably MI6 – to be a skilled spymaster, able to recruit and run highly sophisticated networks engaged in various forms of advanced espionage and black ops. One of these forms is the undetectable international transfer of enormous amounts of money, to be used, one assumes, for nefarious purposes – or possibly just moved offshore to render the loot invisible. Another related form is plain old money-laundering. These networks span the underworld, from gangland, through narco-lords, to the major crime syndicates, and, as is the norm in espionage, many of those involved have no idea for whom they are really working. You are recruited to work for, say, the Mossad, so you believe you’re with the Israelis. You can’t go anywhere to inquire, to check out your control’s legitimacy. It’s spying – it’s all a secret. You drop off whatever you’re supposed to ferret out or spy into. You pick up your cash payments from a left-luggage locker, or somewhere. Chances are you will never find out you were working for the Russians all this time. It’s the stuff of novels, yet it also goes on in reality – although these days the computer has mostly replaced lock-picks, firearms and hidden micro-transmitters. This is the sort of work Sergei Kisliak probably thinks of as his day job.. If you’re the Russian Embassy, of course, for a start you have diplomatic immunity, but you’re also at liberty to perform financial transactions that, for a US citizen, would have red flags waving and alarm bells ringing. We now know the Secretary of State has had ties to a Russian bank notorious for money-laundering. So is it stretching the imagination to suggest that the other three officials, as well as Mr. Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, were meeting Kisliak in connection with his expertise in fiduciary legerdemain? Why would Kushner even attend such a meeting if it were not on his father-in-law’s account? He has no brief or mandate of any kind to be dealing with the Russians over anything at all – lest it be on behalf of the Trump empire, or on matters too secret for anyone to discover. Since we know that some kind of quid pro quo is being haggled over regarding the lifting of sanctions – not yet lifted, you will note – the only question left would seem to be one of money. Is it coming in as payment, or going out as a tax dodge? These are extremely rich men with sticky fingers in many pies, including the vast pastry known as organized crime. They will have hundreds of millions to hide. But they may also have tens of millions to use for illicit political machinations, including the construction of a media conglomerate to overshadow and then oust the old fashioned networks which peddle outmoded virtues like integrity, accuracy and reliability. Steve Bannon as William Randolph Hearst and Ted Turner combined. The news operation will be cheap too, since you don’t need reporters in the field when all you broadcast are opinions and fiction. More money for the execs. It will be a winner. Fear not for the grave new future, however, for, as we have said, Czar Putin knows something, and he’s the great dark spider at the centre of this web. What he seems to know is that Trump’s star is not just waning – it’s shooting down through the sky into the deep dark ocean. I predict that the Oval Office will have a new occupant by summer, but we have five rocky months ahead still. This would make a great video or board game. And it is surely comforting to know that Trump is very expendable in Moscow. Ra-Ra-Vlad-Putin, lover of succession scenes.…  

 

Paul William Roberts

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The Tower of Babble

Tags

Donald Trump, politics, state of media, United States of America, vladimir putin

 

I want to be open-minded about Donald Trump, and see positive signs emerging from his gilded Tower, but he is making this task onerous indeed with his unending barrage of tweeted falsehoods and willful ignorance. I wonder how long the mainstream media will be prepared to tolerate his customary response to any well-founded accusation – “It’s a lie” – and what they will end up doing about it. It is hard, and rather saddening to picture the New York Times running headlines like PRESIDENT LIES YET AGAIN, but, however an incident like that is recorded, the national paper of record must record it one way or another, and in the most objective, non-partisan tone possible. Similarly, the screen networks, stations and web-sites should attempt to shed the auras of bias that have, until now, both typified them and defined their audiences. This gimmick will no longer work in the Trump Era. It worked when the Donald and his supporters felt themselves to be a beleaguered minority – as most Republicans laughably believed they were too during the Obama years – but when the Underdog becomes the Overdog righteous indignation doesn’t play so well. Fox News can only thrive as Fox Opinions as long as the tautological assumption that the real news is too distasteful to report exists. With their hero in the White House, the hacks at Fox will have to report on what he actually does and says, rather than their opinions of what is done and said. This is going to involve some hard decisions, and a major overhaul of the modus operandi there, because it will surely be deeply embarrassing to report favorably but ignorantly on an event that is rightly and factually excoriated by other news outlets. The people who only watch Fox, or only read the more scurrilous tabloids, are not completely unaware of what is on the Internet and in the more respectable media, and they also probably know that their information-of-choice has always come from a somewhat tainted and biased source. Again, this is fine for the Underdog, when all there is to do is express hostility and complain, but it leaves the Overdogs and their Emperor rather naked. Opinions are fine and necessary, but they belong in editorials, columns and places like this. To be credible, any news organization must devote most of its time and space to the objective and unselective reporting of events, leaving perhaps five percent to the opinionated bias of interviewees and columnists – and even this portion should reflect a balance of glower. This is undeniably not easy, and hardly anyone pulls it off. Journalists and writers are only human – maybe — and humans have their specific opinions and beliefs, none of which are wrong unless they clash with truth.

 

It is too simplistic to say that the flagrantly outrageous bias of right-wing media has goaded the left-wing into reacting in kind – it’s the chicken-or-egg scenario – but I think it is safe to say that they have both encouraged excesses in each other. The response from the right to Trump’s pathological tweeting will perhaps settle the issue once and for all, because, as we have just seen, this is going to become a very serious problem, and one that cannot be overlooked, since the Internet provides everyone with access to all global media, at least one outfit of which will not overlook a presidential catastrophe even if every source in America does.

 

 

As I said, I want to give Trump a chance and believe that his more unacceptable outbursts were just campaign tactics, but this recent tirade against Meryl Streep’s remarks at the Golden Globes endorses the views of those who have long claimed that the President-Elect cannot tolerate any criticism and reacts to it with blind rage. Back in the old money-grubbing days of bricks-‘n-mortar scams, he could probably say anything at all to that handful of people trapped in some business venture with him and get away with it. Prior to The Apprentice, and certainly prior to his most recent show, The Candidate, Twitter, and indeed most of Big Social Media did not of course exist – but if they had, how many followers and FB-Friends would the Donald have had? Ten? Endlessly amusing as the stereotypical Bad Capitalist for as long as I can remember, he is infinitely unamusing as Leader of the Free World. Does he not realize the nature of that medium he uses with such a frothing frenzy of childish intemperance and glee? Admittedly, it is questionable whether or not Streep should have used the podium and massive audience of an awards show to express her heartfelt dismay over Trump’s vile mimicking of a disabled person – but she did, and she too has a right to her opinion. Except it wasn’t an opinion. Maybe Trump watches too much Fox, but he obviously cannot easily tell the difference between stark fact and self-serving fiction. Immediately – he must always be glued to a TV screen – he tweeted that Streep was lying, that he had never done such a foul thing; and then, predictably, he threw in some puerile slights about the actress. These might have resonated with some and would have probably stung the recipient badly had she been some bimbo starlet. But to call one of the finest screen actors in America “overrated” is just pathetic and hi-lights his churlishness and the helplessly infantile nature of his reactions to adverse criticism. It also indicates that he is mindlessly dumb at times. For the media response was to run a clip of him mimicking the unfortunate disabled person a hundred times an hour. We should also not forget Trump’s Hollywood addiction, which no doubt explains why he was wasting time on an awards show he dearly wishes he could be a winner on instead of defining his foreign policy or ways to make America meek again. Some time ago, he was outraged not to receive a Grammy for his fine TV series, and griped that the awards were “rigged”, just as the election was going to be until he won it. It has long been observed that some German art gallery should have given Hitler a successful one-man show in the 1920s, to spare the world a decade of misery; so, similarly, the Academy in LA ought to give the Donald an Oscar to keep his dopamine flowing and the rest of us alive. Best impression of Homer Simpson as a financial Titan, perhaps?

 

 

At this point, I am not sure how he has responded to such an extremely adverse critique, or rather the irrefutable revelation that he was lying – which in fact has always been his reaction when confronted with an inconvenient truth. He may not have noticed, but opinions cannot be refuted – and they are cheap for a network to put on air – but now it is increasingly easy to confirm or deny facts. No one has any right to an opinion based on lies or distorted facts – for free speech must have some limits (there are concrete ones too: you cannot falsely yell “fire” in a crowded public space, for instance, and you cannot publically deny the Shoah or Nazi Holocaust. Both of these prohibitions concern the tranquility of society, which is disturbed by panic or hate. We might ask ourselves how far anyone should be allowed to go in actions clearly disturbing the peace. At what point does freedom of speech become an enslavement?).

 

I was keen for a fresh wind to blow into fetid Washington, but I am decidedly less enthusiastic about a hurricane with a disgusting miasma in its wake to escalate the existing stench. It might have been simple to bamboozle a few eager businessmen with cooked books and skewed statistics, but the dealmaker as politician faces a very different prospect – one videoed on an immensely large and exposed stage – a performance in which there is no opportunity for, or possibility of retakes.

 

The episode I envisioned – Apprentice Meets the Czar – is already in preproduction, it seems, and thus needs some preparatory program notes to clarify its storyline. Faced with the disagreeable news from his sixteen security services that the Russians had undoubtedly hacked into US computer networks in order to influence the recent election, and, moreover, that this venture was authorized by Vladimir Putin, Trump’s response was, “I don’t believe it – you can’t prove that!” Again, this reveals his confused attitude towards truth – because they could and did prove it. Of course, Putin’s objective in the scheme was to discredit Democrats and assist Trump’s campaign, so it is understandable that he, the Donald, wouldn’t want to believe it publically – and he cannot possibly be angry about it – but, as President, he is going to be obliged to feel slightly concerned about the Kremlin Hackers and what they might be tampering with next.

 

Revealed by the Panama Papers as someone with billions stashed offshore, Putin has handled his personal hacking scandal adroitly – what scandal? – but the temporary embarrassment must have given him food for thought. No doubt he views with derision the relative freedom of western media. The reason few Russians are aware of his large-scale and undeniable corruption is because he has a foolproof method for guaranteeing media reliability: he orders journalists and publishers threatened with ruin or simply murdered. Pravda, long the Russian newspaper of record, has enjoyed nearly a century of reporting the Truth, as its name suggests, but this truth has generally been officially sanctioned, or, you might say, cooked up near Red Square. Russian media function much like the medieval Church, with the Pope in his Kremlin determining dogma, any objective free-thinkers excommunicated, and all heretics burned at the stake, or else left to rot in the bleak dungeons of Lubianka Prison. Even those intrepid souls who escape the secret police end up poisoned or otherwise terminated, even in the apparent safety of Reformist European Media capitals. It’s a grim situation, and one that ought to give us pause – for Russian media are not a bow-shot from where the likes of Trump, and the plutocrats behind Fox et al, would like to drag US media. To assist the pushback against this nefarious trend, let us clarify the classic Russian position on interfering with western elections with a few hard facts – whether or not Mr. Trump believes them.

 

In 1968, Soviet Russian agents offered then presidential candidate Hubert Humphrey a considerable sum of money in return for several kinds of favorable treatment during his term of office. Humphrey refused the offer and reported the incident to authorities – which probably had nothing to do with him losing the election.

 

In 1976, Senator Henry Jackson, a rabid anti-communist, was for some time a hot Republican candidate for the presidency, and Moscow feared for its safety if he was elected. Again, Soviet Russian agents went to work with a campaign of lies about Jackson – allegations of homosexuality etc. – that seem to have found it ridiculously easy to gain an eager audience in the US media. They may well have scuttled the Senator’s hopes of a win, since, after a fiery start, he dropped out before the ballot.

 

In 2007, the new Russia was revealed to be interfering in Estonia’s electoral process, using the old tried and trusted methods. By then, of course, Putin was at the helm, and satellites of the old Empire seemed most to interest him. And ‘interest’ is the key word in these forays. If Moscow’s interests are in some way involved, it would seem, then any kind of underhand adventure is sanctioned, as the two best-documented US cases show. Just as Kremlin interests in, say, the Ukraine, the Baltic States and Crimea are easy to understand, so should the advent of Trump be. I doubt if Mr. Putin ever imagined an American presidential candidate would one day sing his praises, but one did, and he was clearly not slow to jump at the opportunity, lavishly rewarding that noble American friend with all the considerable resources at his disposal. It remains to be seen how grateful and loyal Trump will prove to be, but the Czar has played a deft hand of late. His cards may never be particularly good, but he always plays them with consummate skill.

 

As usual, however, US outrage at Russian malfeasance in tampering with democracy is a Himalayan summit of hypocrisy. It is not as if Washington is itself innocent of trashing democratic governments and movements all around the globe, is it? They may well also do it by computer these days – although the Iraqis will dispute this – but America’s history of violence against democracies has been unremittingly bloody and hands-on for over sixty years. It probably began officially in Iran, where the democratically elected government of Mohammed Mossadegh was overthrown in 1953 and replaced with a brutal military dictatorship run by the US puppet, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, a.k.a the Shah. This may help explain half a century of very strained relationships between Teheran and Washington. Main reason: Oil. After such a glorious early triumph, there seems to have been no holding back the CIA, which conducted dozens of assassinations, staged coups, backed rebels, or just called in the troops to trash democratic governments in South-East Asia, West Asia, the South Pacific, Central and South America, the Caribbean, and God only knows where else. I doubt if anyone has a correct number, but it is well over fifty countries, with a body-count approaching forty million. Reasons: ideology, oil, military bases, and a good ol’ land-grab. Number of US bases worldwide: approaching 1,000. Cost of wars plus bases: over a quadrillion dollars. In every case, the American public was lied to or fed propaganda to justify the expense of wars lacking rhyme, reason and any tangible benefit. Even their ideological benefit was surprisingly meagre, since few US allies – always ingrates – could perceive any real threat to their well-being since Hitler went down in flames. The unnecessary nuking of two Japanese cities – over 200,000 civilians dead in one day [ Reason: to test an atomic weapon and rub Stalin’s nose in it] – appalled some European leaders, because Japan was then trying to surrender, but it set the stage for hideous things to come, as well as revealing a characteristic disregard for international law that has burgeoned over the last twenty years into a frightening psychopathology.  I advise anyone seriously interested in learning why the United States is currently the most barbaric nation on earth, and the greatest threat to world peace there has ever been, to watch Oliver Stone’s 14-hour documentary, The Untold History of the United States, which is currently available on Netflicks. I’d be eager to hear from anyone who can find a factual error in this monumental series, which every America ought to see in order to understand how deeply flawed and dangerous their governmental system really is, as well as how many good men and women have been denied political office, persecuted, or murdered by the very dark forces that gained a stranglehold over the country around a century ago. This is very far from a conspiracy theory, for Stone names names and cites solid sources for every contention. His documentary – clearly a labor of love – is a sad and sobering experience, but a necessary one for all of us entering the greatest era of uncertainty yet in a highly uncertain world. I guarantee that anyone watching it will dismiss Putin’s little hackathon as poor stuff, not even worth a response when compared with the global ravishment of a dozen occupants of the Oval Office. Never say never, but Trump can hardly do worse than his predecessors – except, alas, he can. I really don’t want to hear Armageddon announced by a tweet…

 

Paul William Roberts

To 2017

Tags

Donald Trump, justin trudeau, the future, the new year, the old year, vladimir putin

 

        He was livin’ on a high note

        But everything changed

        And all of his high hopes

        Were washed down the drain…

 

• Mavis Staples

 

To whom will this grim fate apply in the year that now yawns ahead of us? Someone, to be sure. Will it perhaps be Czar Putin? With 2016 such a triumph behind him, he has every reason to expect more munificence ahead – which in itself is never a good sign. Having achieved – so far at least – the first effective cease-fire in six years for the Syrian civil war, he has positioned Russia as a major player in the Middle East for the first time in fifty years – or since the Egyptian government of General Nasser was replaced by an American hegemony under President Sadat. Furthermore, Putin now has the distinct promise of closer ties with a United States run by President Trump, and operated internationally by a Secretary of State with whom he is, by all accounts, on very friendly terms. But, historically, Russia has never proved to be a reliable ally to anyone for very long. Even Napoleon was bamboozled by the apparent friendship of Czar Alexander – and Trump is certainly no Napoleon. I take it for granted that Putin is far more savvy than Trump’s whole cabinet put together. So what will he want from this evidently proffered amity? Well, globally, besides the unlikely demise of America, it will be a weakening of China, and an increase in Russian stature on the world’s shaky stage. This is going to require all of Putin’s considerable ingenuity to pull off, entailing, as it must do, the abandonment of some old Russian client-states, like Iran and North Korea. Since the current Syrian cease-fire permits the US to continue attacking bases of the Unislamic State in Iraq, there would seem to exist already a tacit agreement in which, effectively, America gets to control Iraq, and Russia gets Syria. Necessity may make for strange bedfellows, but such fellows do not sleep easily in their beds. The present hubbub about Russian hacking of US computer networks is not going to die away quickly, and it is hard – though not impossible – to imagine President Trump ignoring the evidence presented by his own numerous security agencies. Of course, America is also hacking into networks worldwide, so it is conceivable that two rational Titans could mutually agree to cut the nonsense out – and let that be an end to it. Conceivable it may be, but it is also unlikely. Perhaps Putin’s greatest test will be in not blowing the first offer of US friendship since the halcyon era of Premier Gorbachev – halcyon, that is, from America’s perspective. In order to resume the old familiar hostility, the Russian Czar would have to find something that put Washington firmly in the wrong – but since he has a stranglehold on Russian media this might not prove that onerous.

Will it be Donald Trump who sees his hopes washed down the drain? History seems to indicate that the American Presidency can greatly compress even the most stalwart ego. Who had the most stalwart ego? In the post-war era, there was Truman, dumb enough to imagine he had the job because of his own brilliance. Then there was Eisenhower, too much a soldier to think he controlled anything. Next came Kennedy, who knew his father had bought him the post. Lyndon Johnson merely succeeded to the Oval Office. Nixon’s self-esteem was never high. Ford got there by default. God put Jimmy Carter in the White House. Reagan was too genially air-headed to think much at all. George Bush the First believed he was there by doit de seigneur. Perhaps Clinton thought he had clambered up there through his own merits and hard work. Bush the Second saw it as the family business. Obama seems to have known who he had to be grateful to, along with a cheerful dash of tokenism. Before this rather sorry crew, of course, there was Franklin D. Roosevelt, the last President who actually had some ideas. Which leaves us with Trump, who undoubtedly ascribes his success to a Himalayan range of personal genius. But will he prove to be a weary self-deluded Truman, or a battered but still ebullient Clinton? To say the least, it is not an easy job, and nothing goes as you planned it should. As far as one can see, the Pentagon generals will be handling most of the more iffy aspects of US foreign policy, along with a free rein to indulge in their real career of prospering the trillion-dollar US arms industry by continually fomenting small but long wars, as well as trumpeting omnipresent threats by various satanic forces. This will leave Trump more or less free to concentrate on domestic issues – and that is the area where most of those who voted for him will be relying on some genuine action. Jobs are what people really care about, not immigration or a wall. Yet it is hard to picture Trump threatening to penalize corporations for outsourcing jobs. For a start, corporate law forbids the making of decisions that will negatively impact shareholders. Hence it is actually illegal to consider implementing expensive ways to handle toxic waste, and so forth. As a businessman not averse himself to employing cheap wetback labour, Trump would have a very hard time explaining to corporations that, in order to make America great again, their profits have to become less great. As we know all too well, he thinks politics is all about making deals, but it is not – politics is all about making compromises. Whatever the old Trump scorned, the new Trump will eventually have to embrace, if his term in office is not to be an embarrassing disaster. I do wish him well, but it will not be an easy year.

Will it be Trudeau le Petit’s hopes that wash away here in Canada? With the Sesquicentennial, it ought to be a banner year – but he has promises to keep, and many miles before he sleeps (even though he took a road much-travelled by his family). My Oxford college recently celebrated its 800^th anniversary (even though a part of it is 1200 years old), so 150 doesn’t seem very old at all. Can Canada possibly only be twice my age? 150 years might not be long, but I’ll wager that 2017 will seem like eternity to le Petit. With a 30 billion debt and scant sign of any serious economic recovery, the Prime Minister will have to concentrate on boring domestic issues, rather than the tinsel and frippery of state visits and international charity. Even his more frivolous and wantonly inessential pre-election vows – like legalizing marijuana (who care?. It’s been easily available and tax-free for my whole life) – are proving inconceivably pricey, and are now probably understandably regretted. The far graver problems of indigenous peoples are also proving to be impermeable to money – really, who ever thought they would be? Even the police are turning into a problem. Then there are the intractable provinces with their uniquely local issues and peculiarly self-interested demands (ah, the perils of federalism!). Add to this mountain of woe the prospect of a US President who, as CEO of our largest trading partner, will not be – how shall I put it? –exactly easy to deal with. No, Trudeau le Petit will be ten years older by this time next year. When the best you can hope for is that things will not get any worse, you are very close to being hopelessly embroiled and helpless to extricate yourself from the mire that time, not you, has created.

As always, my own hopes are for earthlings to wake up, treat one another with human dignity, and put this planet back on the path to Paradise it has always aspired to follow and can easily achieve (if you don’t believe me, read E.O. Wilson’s wise and wonderful books). I do also pity those whose hopes will be washed away, whoever they are. Happy New Year to all.

 

Love from Paul William Roberts