Paul Manafort, Rick Gates Surrender to Special Prosecutor; Hillary’s Uranium Deal Resurfaces
Where there’s smoke, there’s fire: sunrise through a pall of smoke from forest fires
Paul Manafort, who was in charge of Don the Con’s presidential campaign for a critical period in the spring of 2016– when he was trying to consolidate his primary wins to have an uncontested Republican National Convention– has surrendered to Mueller and the Special Prosecutor’s office this morning. Rick Gates, an associate of Manafort’s, has apparently also been indicted.
So who is Paul Manafort? Well, in 2006, he garnered a space in Trump Tower New York for a reported $3.7 million. He did not officially become part of Trump’s election team until April 2016, and was ousted a few months later when his recent work with the pro-Russian Ukrainian government that was overthrown by protesters in 2014 became widely known; they had paid him some $12 million in cash which was recorded in a hand-written ledger left behind by the fleeing Ukrainian government. Manafort has been an important part of Republican presidential campaigns since Reagan’s onslaught in 1976; he played a part in Reagan’s Republican National Convention and subsequent efforts by Republican presidential candidates.
Who is Rick Gates? He was a protege and long-time business associate of Mr. Manafort. He signed documents relating to a bank account in Cyprus that was apparently set up to receive payments from Eastern European clients. The exact charges that Gates and Manafort face may relate to money-laundering or other crimes, possibly even unrelated to the campaign; one charge described in the news is “conspiracy against the US”, which sounds like a campaign-related issue rather than simply giving advice to foreign autocrats. Mr. Manafort has worked for numerous dictators, such as former Philippine president Ferdinand Marcos and Ukrainian leader Victor Yanukovitch.
What relation do these charges have to do with Don the Con? So far, it is not known by the news media. One could speculate (and many have) that the charges are an attempt to pressure Manafort into turning state’s evidence against Don. That may be inaccurate; Manafort may simply be the first egregious lawbreaker that Mueller has chanced upon. The evidence against Manafort has been very strong since before Mueller was even appointed because a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrant was sworn out against Manafort (among others) before last year’s election. That ‘wire-tapping’ may have been the source of Don’s claim that Obama illegally surveilled him and Trump Tower because Don may have been incidentally recorded during that process. In fact, Obama had no role in the FISA work and may not have even seen any of their work product.
Perhaps not coincidentally, Manafort was in charge of Don’s campaign at the infamous meeting with Natalya Veselnitskaya ( a Kremlin-associated Russian lawyer ), Don Jr., and other campaign staff in June 2016, when she presented a memo that had been vetted by Kremlin operatives and was represented as “dirt” on Hillary Clinton directly from the Russian government.
The scale of this indictment can be guessed from Don the Con’s hysterical reaction on Twitter. Don repeatedly demanded to know why Hillary had not been indicted for her “selling out” American uranium mines to a Russian company, Rosatom, when she was secretary of state.
In reality, she was only one of several top Obama administration officials who signed off on the Rosatom deal; whatever strategic damage that has done to American interests is unknown. It does seem odd that the American government would allow a Russian government associated consortium to buy the rights to some 20% of American uranium mining capacity ( although it appears that only 11% of US uranium is being produced by this company ). Since 2010, Rosatom has owned a majority stake in Uranium One, the American uranium mining and production consortium, and in 2013, Rosatom obtained 100% control of the company. Unfortunately, Russia doesn’t have a license to export uranium from the United States, so Russian “control” of one-fifth of US uranium deposits is notional. What is more, a nuclear non-proliferation expert told Politifact that Russia’s buying control of Uranium One “had as much of an impact on national security as it would have if they set the money on fire. . .”
The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) (on which the Secretary of State sits as well as the Attorney General), the Utah state government’s nuclear regulator, the secretaries of the Department of Defense, Commerce, Energy, and Homeland Security, and the heads of the Office of the US Trade Representative and the Office of Science and Technology Policy all had to sign off on this deal, so Hillary’s role as secretary of State in approving it was small.
Perhaps not coincidentally, some nine of the Russian and foreign participants in the deal are said to have given the Clinton Foundation $145 million; as Don claimed in June 2016, “Clinton approved the transfer of 20 percent of America’s uranium holdings to Russia, while nine investors in the deal funneled $145 million to the Clinton Foundation.” However, Clinton claimed that she was not personally involved in approving the deal, and her assistant secretary of state for such affairs backed her up and said she did not intervene. A total of nine government agencies signed off on the deal. In addition, the bulk of the money given to the Clinton Foundation came from the former owner of Uranium One, who had divested himself of the company in the fall of 2007, eighteen months before Clinton became Secretary of State.
Other non-coincidences include a half-million dollar speaking fee for an engagement in Russia was paid to Bill Clinton by a Russian bank involved in the deals, in 2010, just when the Rosatom purchase was being approved. Of course, Bill collected a hundred million dollars in speaking fees altogether, so one speech more or less makes little difference to him.
A point man for Putin in the US, Vadim Mikerin, was under FBI investigation starting in 2009. He apparently was responsible for bribery and other misdeeds related to Russian attempts to gain influence in the atomic energy business.
The Hill reported two weeks ago that since 2009 the FBI was investigating whether Russia had been trying to gain influence or control in the US uranium industry and had “gathered substantial evidence that Russian nuclear industry officials were engaged in bribery, kickbacks, extortion and money laundering designed to grow Vladimir Putin’s atomic energy business inside the United States.” This information was available to the CFIUS at the time the deal was approved but apparently the deal was so insignificant from the point of view of national security that it was approved anyway.
This information was sourced from the Guardian, the New York Times, Politifact, The Hill, CNN, and NBC this morning at 8:30 AM Eastern time.
Al Rodbell
Californai 1 day ago
To evaluate the benefits of increased production requires quantifying the harm, which requires an in depth knowledge of biochemistry but also epidemiology, an arcane and difficult set of skills. Donald Trump has chosen to eliminate those possessing them from doing these evaluations, so his pronouncements are within the world of partisan acrimony.
Trump has found the way to turn the vast complexity of government, the decision of what has to be regulated and what can be in the free market into a casino. His satisfaction is in the only way he has ever known, persona aggrandizement. But turning studies such as this article into “fake liberal news” he has control of the levers of power, and in effect he is both the owner of the casino and the primary player.
Not only will he get political contributions, but the timing of his pronouncements will move markets, that he can skillfully have positions that enhance his wealth. The perfect example was his seeming incoherent back and forth on abandoning or assisting the Puerto Rico debt, with each statement moving the bond market tens of billions of value.
Certainly, he personally could have gained billions, well disguised since he has breached the norm of disclosure of his families wealth. Not only hasn’t he cleaned out the swamp, he is the swamp.
mother of two
IL 21 hours ago
Conservatives tout the virtues of free markets and say that corporations can run projects much more efficiently than a lumbering governmental bureaucracy. While that is sometimes true, I think there are distinct places for both government and market-run structures. What should never be confused is that businesses operate for profit–shareholders and their board first, maybe others. Some things, such as regulations in various industries, should be under the government because unlike corporations, whose bottom line is profit, the government is supposed to be operating for the public good. Especially in this administration, the two are confused and public health is at risk because of it. Let’s not forget that the Flint water crisis came under the direction of a businessman governor, Snyder, who wanted to save money. At the risk to the health of Flint’s residents.
Excited Crowd Outside Mueller’s Office Awaits First Arrest
A crowd estimated in the hundreds of thousands waited outside Special Prosecutor Mueller’s office for news of the first arrest in his investigation– a New Yorker satirical piece notes today. But it’s true, there is going to be an indictment or something happening soon– the story was first broken by CNN Friday night. Don the Con’s henchmen have been noising it about that Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign was colluding with: British former intelligence agent Michael Steele– a private citizen, so not subject to any laws prohibiting foreign government participation in the campaign– and that somehow makes Don’s direct collusion with the Russian government just “fake news” …
From an op-ed article in the NYT by David Brooks on October 23 (yesterday):
And yet the more I think about it, the more I agree with the argument Yale Law professor Stephen L. Carter made in his 1998 book “Civility.” The only way to confront fanaticism is with love, he said. Ask the fanatics genuine questions. Paraphrase what they say so they know they’ve been heard. Show some ultimate care for their destiny and soul even if you detest the words that come out of their mouths.
If, on the other hand, you fight your natural fight instinct, your natural tendency to use the rhetoric of silencing, and instead regard this person as one who is, in his twisted way, bringing you gifts, then you’ll defeat a dark passion and replace it with a better passion. You’ll teach the world something about you by the way you listen. You may even learn something; a person doesn’t have to be right to teach you some of the ways you are wrong.
Second, you greet a fanatic with compassionate listening as a way to offer an unearned gift to the fanatic himself. These days, most fanatics are not Nietzschean supermen. They are lonely and sad, their fanaticism emerging from wounded pride, a feeling of not being seen.
gemli
is a trusted commenter Boston 19 hours ago
The problem isn’t the individual obnoxious loudmouth at a ball game. It’s the 63 million of them who got together, conjured up a monster from their collective Id and sent him to the White House. Speaking kindly to people we disagree with is a fine idea, but the consequences of their collective stupidity is beyond our control.
Then there’s the fundamental issue of their grievances. They feel resentment, anxiety and a sense of being left behind. The fact that they weren’t savvy enough to know the president was a lying, crotch-groping fraud might explain their sorry circumstances. Blaming brown people and immigrants for their declining economic security seems silly. But they put their faith in a guy who echoed their prejudices, demeaned education and hurled insults rather than uplifting the country.
I don’t despise these people, and gratuitous, impotent anger isn’t going to get us anywhere. But I’m pretty sure that rational discourse, presenting evidence and appealing to their magnanimous nature isn’t going to advance the conversation very much.
These folks didn’t make a faux pas. They may have brought down Armageddon upon us by giving Dumbzilla access to nuclear weapons. So it’s natural that our response might be proportional to the size of the offense.
I’m betting that Democrats will flock to the polls next year. If we shift the balance of power, I hope our opponents will speak kindly to us, and show us lots of love.
Lisa Murphy
Orcas Island 4 hours ago
Trump is hurting my heart. I see it on the faces of others too( even on the faces of some talking heads on television). A man has died in the service of this country. What do we see? A large overweight mendacious white billionaire calling a tiny, pregnant widow in the throes of crushing loss, a liar. I unfortunately understand the loss of a son. Watching Kelly exploit his own grief in service to the loathsome trump, was another blow and threw me into a bout of renewed pain. I’m tired of being threatened by these people in the White House. I’m tired of watching every honorable thing being trampled into the mud. I’m tired of the regrettable Sarah Huckabee Sanders and her stony expression and one raised eyebrow, telling me who I can or cannot criticize.
Steve Bannon: A Dangerous Man and a “Leninist” Helping the Russians to Subvert Our Democracy
Steve Bannon at Breitbart was an early supporter of Don the Con, and he was rewarded for his effective propaganda work with an “adviser” position to the President. He has publicly stated that he wants to destroy the government, just like Lenin did in the Bolshevik revolution in Russia in 1917. Here’s a quote from a recent Smithsonian magazine article about Russia:
Unlike Marxism-Leninism, Lenin’s tactics enjoy excellent health today. In a capitalist Russia, Putin favors his friends [nepotism], holds power closely [autocracy] and doesn’t compromise with rivals [partisanism]. In America, too, we’ve reached a point in our politics where the strictest partisanship rules. Steve Bannon, the head of the right-wing media organization Breitbart News, who went on to be an adviser to the president [he has left government, but continues to agitate on Don’s behalf], told a reporter in 2013, “I’m a Leninist. . . I want to bring everything crashing down, and destroy today’s establishment.” Of course he didn’t mean he admired Lenin’s ideology– far from it– but Lenin’s methods have powerfully modern appeal. Lenin showed the world how well not compromising can work. A response to that revolutionary innovation of his has yet to be figured out.
Bannon’s technique, extreme partisanship, in which one’s critics become demons and devils, has fractured the American body politic and induced a third of the public to support a completely incompetent and charming, attractive self-declared billionaire to the bitter end despite his admitted sexual predation, adultery, and extreme pettiness to his critics– with negative propaganda against his critics and lies about Don’s “policies” (Don’s main positive technique is to appoint destructive, extreme right-wing and white supremacist figures who are his partisans, like Sessions and Pruitt, to positions of power and allow them free rein to reverse Obama’s policies and bring government under the control of financiers, industrialists, and religious fanatic millionaires.) Millionaires are, of course, better people than those who are not wealthy– simply because they have money. There is no room for people who have no interest in being rich and never made a pile of money nor inherited wealth– Don the Con has explicitly denigrated the non-wealthy as “unsuccessful”, ignoring the fact that some principled people are not interested in accumulating wealth for its own sake.
Extreme partisanship does not stop at criticizing one’s opponent’s policies and tactics, but proceeds to name-calling and demonizing anyone who dares to criticize one’s own policies. It ends in intimidating, silencing, imprisoning or assassinating one’s opponents, even those who are insufficiently enthusiastic about the policies one wishes to institute, especially those who expose one’s secret, illegal tactics.
Extreme partisanship leads to resentment and ignites internecine strife, weakening the structure of society (the “establishment”); the eventual outcome is civil war, which under Lenin consumed Russia for ten years and wiped out what was left of polite society. This would be an undesirable outcome in the United States despite Bannon’s ardent wishes for destruction: civil liberties and human rights would suffer, gross domestic product and our standard of living would decline precipitously, and there would be more poverty, more imbalance of wealth, and more suffering and death.
Speaking of Russia, here’s another quote from the article that should be very disturbing to advocates of free democracy:
But if Russia no longer exports international Socialism, it has not stopped involving itself in other countries’ internal affairs. Which is not to suggest that other countries, including us, don’t sometimes do the same. But by turning the state’s secret and coercive forces actively outward, the Bolsheviks invented something new under the sun for Russia. It has found exporting mischief to be a great relief—and, evidently, a point of strategy, and of pride. On the street in Yekaterinburg, an older woman, recognizing Thomas and me as Americans, cackled with great glee. “Americans!” she called out. “Trump won! We chose him!” In June, James Comey, the former director of the FBI, testifying before Congress, said, “We’re talking about a foreign government that, using technical intrusion, lots of other methods, tried to shape the way we think, we vote, we act. That is a big deal.” The habit of Russian intrusion that Comey is talking about began at the revolution.
Fall sunrise over irrigation canal full of water from Sierra mountains
Two individuals have dominated the shocking daily newscasts: Harvey Weinstein, who has finally been exposed as a sexual predator using his powerful movie company to obtain young women for his personal abuse (and is a supporter of left-wing causes), and Bill O’Reilly, who has been known to be a sexual predator using his position in a “news” media organization to foist himself on fellow-workers ( and who is a right-wing ideologue.) Weinstein is out of his company, which is near collapse, but O’Reilly still has significant mojo and appears on Glenn Beck’s radio show as a regular Friday guest. O’Reilly was ousted from Fox in April, despite a four-year contract signed in February immediately after he reached a $32 million sexual abuse settlement . . . it seems the sudden loss of advertiser support when the situation was widely publicized doomed O’Reilly at Fox but he still has rabid supporters. Weinstein, a noted liberal, has no supporters and nothing but treatment at an asylum to look forward to.
Yet Fox News officially accused liberals of hypocrisy in their treatment of Weinstein. Many, many people have spoken out about Weinstein since the news broke, some of whom were aware of his behavior and now say they feel guilty for not doing enough to stop it. Women who were subjected to and even cooperated with Weinstein’s demands to further their careers or simply out of fear have also spoken out and it was agonizing to read. Virtually none of the women mistreated by O’Reilly have publicly said anything; whether there is a difference in their reactions based on their political leanings is hard to say.
Bottom line: no one ideology, left or right, has a corner on the sexual predator market. It’s time to end this kind of sick behavior once and for all with clear rules and chaperones if necessary. After all, lawyers have learned never to meet alone with Don the Con.
The Concept of Race Has No Scientific Basis
Dawn with sun partially obscured by smoke from forest fires 200 miles north
Here’s the thing: the whole concept of Negroid, Caucasoid, Asiatic, that is the whole idea of “race” is completely without scientific foundation according to a consensus of current-day physical anthropologists. These are the people who would be expected to know what is a race and what races people are. Here is a short summary of the findings of the scientific paper that established the consensus:
Abstract
Controversies over race conceptualizations have been ongoing for centuries and have been shaped, in part, by anthropologists. Objective
To assess anthropologists’ views on race, genetics, and ancestry.
Methods
In 2012 a broad national survey of anthropologists examined prevailing views on race, ancestry, and genetics.
Results
Results demonstrate consensus that there are no human biological races and recognition that race exists as lived social experiences that can have important effects on health.
Discussion
Racial privilege affects anthropologists’ views on race, underscoring the importance that anthropologists be vigilant of biases in the profession and practice. Anthropologists must mitigate racial biases in society wherever they might be lurking and quash any sociopolitical attempts to normalize or promote racist rhetoric, sentiment, and behavior.
This may come as a surprise to some people.
Sunrise in the San Joaquin Valley of California with smoke from forest fires obscuring the sun
An opinion article in the NYT Sunday Review called, “Silicon Valley is not your Friend” reinforces the aphorism that states, “If you’re not paying for the ‘product’, then you’re not the customer, YOU are the product.” In other words, those “free” things like Chrome, Facebook, Google, and Twitter are actually using you as much as you use them.
The article mentioned a program that was all in vogue when I was in college in the early 70’s: Eliza. This was a simple text-based program that pretended to be a psychiatrist. It used the technique of repeating back to you part of your statements as a question, or if you had nothing to say, it would suggest something. The following quote illustrates how it could fool the user into thinking that a sympathetic entity was on the other end of the line:
Call it the Eliza problem. In 1966, Joseph Weizenbaum, a professor at M.I.T., unveiled a computer program, Eliza, which imitated a psychotherapist. It would, by rote, inquire about your feelings toward your parents or try to get you talking by rephrasing what you said in the form of a question. The program immediately touched a nerve, becoming a national phenomenon, to the surprise of Mr. Weizenbaum. For example, The New York Times swooned: “Computer Is Being Taught to Understand English.”
Eliza understood nothing, in truth, and could never reach any shared insight with a “patient.” Eliza mechanically responded to whatever appeared on the screen. A typical therapy session quickly devolved into a Monty Python sketch. (Patient: You are not very aggressive, but I think you don’t want me to notice that. Eliza: What makes you think I am not very aggressive? Patient: You don’t argue with me. Eliza: Why do you think I don’t argue with you? Patient: You are afraid of me. Eliza: Does it please you to believe I am afraid of you?)
Imagine Mr. Weizenbaum’s surprise when his secretary looked up from her computer and interrupted her exchanges with Eliza to say to him, “Would you mind leaving the room, please?” She wanted privacy for a conversation with a machine! Mr. Weizenbaum, appalled, suddenly saw the potential for mischief by programmers who could manipulate computers and potentially the rest of us. He soon switched gears and devoted his remaining years to protesting what he considered the amorality of his computer science peers, frequently referring to his experiences as a young refugee from Nazi Germany.
As I mentioned before, I have “stopped using Facebook” although my blog is still copied there. I did so because I was unsettlingly conscious of the “Eliza effect” every time I tuned into Facebook, allowed it to trigger some reaction, and expressed my reaction in a comment. The other “people” who left comments may or may not have been human; I had no way of knowing until I was contacted by Ebrima Jallow, a young African man who wanted to be “friends” with me on Facebook. I “friended” him, but I quickly realized that there was little resemblance to an actual friend in Mr. Jallow (although he is a nice young man, really.) I’m pretty sure he is human, but having a conversation with him really made me feel bad. He is, like 9/10 of the world, living on far less than I am, even though I am impecunious by American standards. So there are several moral lessons here. It’s not all bad, but it can make you feel kind of overprivileged.
Comment of the Day: White Anger
Drspock
New York 1 hour ago
While the notion of white supremacy has ebed and flowed in America for the 150 years, this most recent upsurge also has an economic component.
White men in America were kings in the workplace and at home. Even with little education they could get well paying blue collar jobs and traditional patriarchy insured their place as provider, protector and recipient of female obedience.
But the civil rights movement has integrated some aspects of the workforce and the women’s movement has challenged patriarchy from the bedroom to the boardroom. The final blow for white manhood has been their loss of economic security.
With the decline in blue collar work white male privilege has been collapsing all around them. Economic needs demand that wives and daughters work to scrape together a fading middle class lifestyle. Hollywood heroes look increasingly like Idris Elba, not John Wayne.
The response by white men has on one hand been the rage captured by the far right and on the other despair and depression raising white male suicide rates to an all time high.
This rage takes many forms. The angry displays of white nationalism is one. But there’s also the internalized rage expressed by the American epidemic of mass murders.
Whichever direction this misplaced anger takes, it’s rarely directed at the corporate giants that orchestrated their job loss and depressed their wages. Scapegoats are easier to face than the shattered images of dethroned white masculinity. Dangerous times, indeed.
Conrad Theodore Seitz 