2017: Where The Truth Lies

Raúl Ilargi Meijer

https://www.theautomaticearth.com/2016/12/2017-where-the-truth-lies/

I was surprised to see how surprised I was, like I’m sure millions of people were, to see the term ‘fake news’ pop up in what are still called ‘respectable’ (which is by now really just another word for ‘old’) news outlets.

Because a huge part of what they have been feeding their readers and viewers for years is that very thing: fake news. Who needs a bunch of bored highschool kids in small town Montenegro when you have the offices of America’s ‘official’ news sources at your disposal?

That there are still people trying to make a serious point by quoting anything at all published in the Washington Post -and to an only slightly lesser extent the New York Times- is beyond me. And not a little bit beyond. Well, that people still read these sheets is just as incredible, I grant you that.

I haven’t kept count of the number of ‘articles’ the WaPo has published over the past year or so -the election campaign- that referred to unsubstantiated reports emanating from anonymous US intelligence sources about Russian involvement in everything bad under the sun, but I’m dead certain that put together they would add up to a Christmas bestseller of respectable size. A chance missed there, gents. You could have had your own garbage lead your own bestseller lists. Snake, tail.

And it’s not as if it was a new thing for them either, what’s new is the sheer volume and the concerted campaign we’re talking about. We of course had a similar thing in 2003 with the Weapons of Mass Destruction ‘fantasy’. Now that I mention it, how is it possible that Colin Powell is still walking around free, and Cheney and W.?

When did it become de rigueur to lie to the people, let alone Congress and the UN? What have we become? When did that happen? Remember Ukraine, and the stories you were told about that, less than 3 years ago? Crimea? G-d I hope Trump will get rid of Victoria Nuland.

Trump called the UN a sad club for people to “get together, talk and have a good time”. Is he wrong? Really? If so, do tell, how wrong is he? Perhaps wrong in the same way that the IMF is wrong for letting Christine Lagarde keep her plush tax-free seat after being convicted for handing €400 million in French taxpayer money to a crony? That kind of wrong?

I’m thinking there are still awfully few people who understand what’s happening in the world. What’s changing. And I don’t hold out much hope that they will until it hits them smack upside the backs of their heads.

Why there’s Trump and Brexit, and why many more changes are in the offing. Well, it’s precisely because the UN and EU and IMF and Capitol Hill are self-serving ‘clubs’ filled with unaccountable and overpaid people who have turned the world into a godawful mess.

Not for themselves, they’re fine, thank you very much, they all have pensions from here to Rome and back again for the rest of their lives, but for everyone else. G-d I hope Trump will come through on his pre-election promise to limit the terms of American Congressmen and Senators. And that this is subsequently applied to all these ‘clubs’. Because if anything, it’s them who are the bane of this world. Public service…

There may be fine individuals among them, that’s not even -the worst of- the point, it’s the dilapidated, decayed, rotten to the core institutions that they ‘serve’ which are the problem. They serve themselves and they serve the institutions, the one thing they sure don’t serve is the people. You know who’s given (‘voted’) them those lavish pensions and benefits? They themselves did, and their predecessors.

The UN is supposed to keep the peace in the world. Well, works like a charm, doesn’t it? The IMF is tasked with keeping 200 or so nations in reasonably balanced economic conditions. Got it down. The US Congress was set up as a pillar of democracy, but it’s occupied by guys and gals who spend so much more time raising funds for their next campaign than representing those who voted them in, that they need lobbyists to tell them which way to vote.

As for the EU, is it even possible they’re the worst of the bunch? Europe is falling apart before all of our eyes, and they’re all in full tard denial about it. They are turning Greece into a third world country, they’re alienating Britain to the point where the English will, once they wake up to what’s going on, want to set Brussels on fire. And why? There’s no point left to any of it at all.

Italy’s a goner, once enough Italians realize what the ECB wants to do to their banks. France is such a key member nobody wants to even imagine it falling, so its broke banks are ignored. Holland will come very close to voting in Wilders, which means Nexit. Germany is destabilizing rapidly. Spain has been a hornets’ nest for years. Etc.

And again: why? Well, because the Obama/Merkel model has so dramatically failed. All these places where left and right work together to produce a shapeless blob somewhere in the center that has no identity and doesn’t speak out for anyone.

You just wouldn’t know it from reading the Washington Post. Or any comparable old and respected medium in any of these European countries. It’s not just the politics that have failed, it’s its propaganda machine too.

This is something that manifests itself differently in different places, but it shouldn’t be that hard to see the ties that bind it all together. For one thing, because, not even touched on so far, the amount of fake financial news that has been forced down our throats for decades, and increasingly so: the worse things get, the bigger the lie…

There is no economic recovery. Never was. Not in the US, not in Europe anywhere. It’s a fairy tale. There are plates shifting, sure. You can cherry pick a region stateside that does well if only you select the ‘right’ stats. Like you can say employment is on a roll, if you’re willing to discard the number of ‘newly created’ jobs that are part time.

And yes, if you just completely ignore that 94 million Americans are not counted at all in unemployment numbers, Obama has been a big success. It’s just that those 94 million have a vote, too. We will see that exact same dynamic, and we have already started, play out all across Europe.

It’ll be much messier, for instance because in Holland last time I looked 81 different political parties were vying to take part in the upcoming elections, but the end result will be the same. That is, the existing order will be voted out. Not everywhere, and it won’t be replaced by radically different parties and people in all places, but do please understand that it doesn’t have to.

In Europe, it’s not and/and, it’s if/or. As in, if either Italy or France or Holland vote in a party that wants to leave the EU or the Euro, it’s game over. The endgame will be almighty messed up because of all the laws and regulations the EU has invented, but eventually the walls of Brussels will crumble. Good riddance too.

I’ve said it a hundred times before, all the institutions mentioned before, EU, IMF, UN and yes, even Congress, exist by the grace of growth. People accept them only as long as they can show reasonable proof that they bring economic benefits. As soon as that’s gone (or I should say as soon as people figure it out), so are they.

People are going to vote for someone close to their own lives, their own world, to lead them in times of contraction. That is inevitable. It’s why Trump won, and it’s also why he’s set to fail. Isn’t that a lovely paradox? We’re going to split up into smaller entities, economic contraction guarantees it.

And while everyone tries to talk you into thinking that’s terrible, there’s no reason why it should be. We can work together in many different ways. All these supranational institutions have merely become straight jackets that serve only the people who work inside them and those outside who benefit from keeping up appearances and clinging to power.

That of course gets us back to the Washington Post and its comatose brethren. The US press has been a full accomplice with Washington in reporting fake news about the recovery, and it’s not there. Never has been. The Dow Jones says one thing, the votes for Trump say another. In the end, democracy is that simple. Same goes for Britain, same goes for continental Europe.

And there’s no doubt that Trump is an iceberg-sized gamble, but a change had to come. A change from the monsoon of fake news we have all been fed, but also initially a change that won’t be able to help itself from being replete with more fake news, from all sides.

Put it this way: in 2016, the engine of change got cranked up. In the new year, it will accelerate. That is 2017. That is what the new year will bring.

What President Obama Should Have Said at His Last Press Conference

Mattathias Schwartz

December 18 2016

https://theintercept.com/2016/12/18/what-president-obama-should-have-said-at-his-last-press-conference/

OBAMA: Good afternoon, everybody. What a year, right? Just last night, I tried to sign on to Twitter to wish everyone a happy holiday, but Michelle wouldn’t give me my password. She said it embarrassed her when no one retweets my jokes. I guess I’m just too boring.

[Laughter.]

OBAMA: Normally, I use these end-of-the-year press conferences to run down what we’ve accomplished over the preceding twelve months. Then I take a couple of questions from you guys. Today, the format will be slightly different. Let’s talk about the future.

On Monday — just three days from now — the 538 Americans who make up the Electoral College are scheduled to gather in statehouses around the country, where they will cast their votes for the next president. This is all part of our political process to ensure the peaceful and democratic transfer of power. Normally, the casting of these votes is a formality. But 2016 is not a normal year.

Donald Trump, as you all know, prevailed at the polls in 30 states. Together, those states have 306 electoral votes. The question that many of us have been struggling with is whether Donald won fair and square. After the election, we read what appears to be a Facebook status update from one of Vladimir Putin’s political allies, Aleksandr Dugin: “Washington is ours.” Think about that for a moment.

Now, we in the White House already knew that the Russians were trying to interfere with the election. We shared some information with the public over the summer. Later, we called Putin’s government on the nuclear hotline and told them to stop. But this gloating from Dugin — that really got to me. As if America were some banana republic where the will of the people can be manipulated through disinformation. Yes, some of my predecessors have done the same to our neighbors in Latin America and elsewhere. But don’t expect me to just lie back and take it if I see evidence that it’s being done to us.

We know that the Russian government hacked into the systems of both major U.S. parties, Republicans and Democrats. But the emails that they chose to publicize were carefully chosen to cause embarrassment to only one party — the Democrats. And you might remember that Donald, in the middle of the campaign, made a direct request of the Russian government to keep doing what they were doing. “Russia, if you’re listening,” he said, “I hope you find the 30,000 emails that are missing.”

Now, do we know that Putin personally authorized these hacks? No. We don’t. But we do know some of the names of the folks who ordered and carried out these hacks. They belong to the Russian military and intelligence apparatus. We know who they are and what they said, because — and this may not come as a complete surprise — we are listening to their phone calls. So if you’re wondering whether something very wrong happened during the weeks leading up to November 8, something that threatens the self-rule we’ve enjoyed for the past 240 years, let me give it to you straight: The answer is yes, and the evidence is strong.

After the election, I reached out to Donald. I tried to explain to him why this hacking stuff is a problem, not just for Democrats, but for our entire system of government. I showed him the evidence collected by our intelligence community that demonstrates the Russian government’s involvement in these hacks. I asked him to promise that as president, he would continue my investigation of what happened, so that we could prevent this from happening again.

I think it’s worth pointing out that Donald is a smart guy. But he is not always the best listener. I am sorry to report that he isn’t interested in carrying this investigation any further. In fact, he is not interested in listening to much of what our intelligence agencies have to tell him. He says he doesn’t need daily intelligence briefings. “Donald,” I said. “You know a lot, but you don’t know everything.” On Russia, and on a number of other issues, it concerns me how hard it is to get him to show the slightest interest in what he doesn’t know, especially if it is something that he doesn’t want to believe. He now says that he thinks our intelligence on Russia is driven by politics. “I don’t believe they interfered.” That is what Donald says now about the same people who he called upon for help during the campaign.

As president, this puts me in a tough position. I don’t want to mess with the will of the people. If the electors want Donald Trump to be the next president of the United States, so be it. But neither do I want to reward a foreign power for tampering with an American election.

So today I am calling upon Congress to pass a law that will delay this year’s meeting of the Electoral College by 14 days. If Congress won’t do it, I think the state legislatures need to step in and do it. And if the states won’t do it, the Department of Justice is going to ask the courts for an injunction to give us those 14 days. It would not be right for the electors to cast their votes now, with so much uncertainty in the air about the facts of what happened during the election. We need to ensure that this next phase of transferring power to the future president is not tainted by bad information.

I am also instructing James Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence, to arrange for briefings to any elector who wants one. Fifty-six electors have signed a letter asking for an intelligence briefing on Russia’s role in this election. They want access to the best possible information before they cast their votes. As president, I see it as my duty to provide it.

Director Clapper has also agreed to immediately declassify and release as much of our intelligence on the election as possible. You should see those files appearing in your email in-boxes by this evening. They’ll be PDFs. I suggest that you run them through a virus scanner before you click on them. Careless clicking, after all, is part of what got us here in the first place.

Let me say one more thing about the Electoral College. There’s been a lot of back-and-forth about why we have it, whether we should keep it, and what purpose it might still serve today. Some have cited Federalist 68, by Alexander Hamilton. I should note that the Federalist Papers are not actually part of the Constitution. They do, however, offer us a window into the thinking that went into it. In Federalist 68, Hamilton worries about the possibility of a president with “talents for low intrigue, and the little arts of popularity.” He says that our American system of election will ensure, to “a moral certainty, that the office of President will never fall to the lot of any man who is not in an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications.”

Now, does Donald Trump have the requisite qualifications to be president? That’s not my call to make.

And with that, I will take your questions.

US increased weapons sales in 2015 despite slight drop in global arms trade

Developing nations were once again the largest buyers of weapons as total sales dropped to $80bn from $89bn in 2014

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/dec/26/global-weapons-trade-sales-exports-united-states

Edward Helmore in New York

Monday 26 December 2016

The sale of global arms dropped slightly last year to $80bn from 2014’s $89bn, according to a new congressional study, with the US maintaining its position as the world’s dominant supplier.

But at $40bn the US market share of weapons sales amounted to about half of all arms agreements in 2015, and more than double the orders recorded by France, its nearest rival with $15bn in sales. The US and France both grew their market shares, by around $4bn and $9bn respectively.

Russia recorded a slight decline in arms orders, dropping to $11.1bn in sales from its $11.2bn total in 2014, while China reached $6bn, double the previous year’s estimates.

The latest figures were released last week by the Congressional Research Service, a division of the Library of Congress, and are considered one of the most reliable measures of the global arms trade.

US arms exports in 2016 looks set to remain broadly in line with the previous year’s sales.

Last month, the Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA), the Pentagon agency that handles foreign sales, announced weapons sales of $33.6bn for 2016. The figure did not included deals for fighter jets to Kuwait, Qatar and Bahrain valued at $7bn that for accounting purposes will be rolled in 2017 sales.

The 2015 study, titled Conventional Arms Transfers to Developing Nations, 2008-2015, found that developing nations continued to be the largest buyers of arms.

The largest such buyers in 2015 were Qatar, which signed deals for more than $17bn in weapons; Egypt, which agreed to buy almost $12bn; and Saudi Arabia, which spent over $8bn.

Other leading buyers included South Korea, Pakistan, Israel, the United Arab Emirates and Iraq.

Authors of the report said the slight contraction in overall sales reflected “the weakened state of the global economy”.

“Concerns over their domestic budget problems have led many purchasing nations to defer or limit the purchase of new major weapon systems,” wrote Catherine A Theohary, a national security policy specialist and author of the study.

Not only did the US rank first in new arms orders, it also ranked first in the value of all arms deliveries worldwide at $17bn, or nearly 37% of all shipments. This is the eighth year in a row that the US has led in global arms deliveries.

Russia ranked second in worldwide arms deliveries in 2015, making $7.2bn, and ranked second for all of those eight years. France ranked third in 2015, making $7bn in such deliveries. The increase in French orders is in a large part due to deals with Egypt for ships and combat aircraft. Sales of two amphibious assault vessels to Russia were cancelled after the Ukraine crisis and re-sold to Egypt.

The report’s findings conform to a study released in November that found that the Obama administration has approved more than $278bn in foreign arms sales in its eight years, more than double the total of the Bush administration, which approved $128.6bn.

Most of 2015’s deals were made to the Middle East, with Saudi Arabia making orders to US manufacturers totaling more than $115bn.

The weapons include F-15 fighter jets, Apache attack helicopters, Blackhawk utility helicopters, missile interceptors, armored vehicles and bombs and missiles. However, arms experts point out that congressional approval for sales does not necessarily result in contracts.

Still, the dubious honor of record arms sales certainly goes to the Obama administration. Defence One recently estimated that the outgoing administration brokered more arms deals than any administration since the second world war.