89 Former Defense Officials Condemn Trump

It has become increasingly clear that Donald Trump views himself as a monarch or similar type of autocrat who is above the law and who views personal loyalty to him as far more important than the U.S. Constitution or defending the constitutional rights of American citizens.  It is only about him and he has threatened to use members of the U.S. military against citizens - much like was done in former Soviet block nations in the past (Trump might be wise to remember what happened to Romanian strongman Nicolae Ceausescu to whom the UK's Boris Johnson has compared Trump).  In response, 89 former Defense Department officials - including a number of former Secretaries of Defense - in an op-ed in the Washington Post have condemned Trump's actions and called for the U.S. military to never be used against American citizens exercising their constitutional rights.  Here are column highlights:

President Trump continues to use inflammatory language as many Americans protest the unlawful death of George Floyd and the unjust treatment of black Americans by our justice system. As the protests have grown, so has the intensity of [Trump’s] the president’s rhetoric. He has gone so far as to make a shocking promise: to send active-duty members of the U.S. military to “dominate” protesters in cities throughout the country — with or without the consent of local mayors or state governors.

On Monday, [Trump] the president previewed his approach on the streets of Washington. . . . . As part of the show of force that Trump demanded, military helicopters made low-level passes over peaceful protesters — a military tactic sometimes used to disperse enemy combatants — scattering debris and broken glass among the crowd. He also had a force, including members of the National Guard and federal officers, that used flash-bang grenades, pepper spray and, according to eyewitness accounts, rubber bullets to drive lawful protesters, as well as members of the media and clergy, away from the historic St. John’s Episcopal Church. All so he could hold a politically motivated photo op there with members of his team, including, inappropriately, Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper and Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Looting and violence are unacceptable acts, and perpetrators should be arrested and duly tried under the law. But as Monday’s actions near the White House demonstrated, those committing such acts are largely on the margins of the vast majority of predominantly peaceful protests.

As former leaders in the Defense Department — civilian and military, Republican, Democrat and independent — we all took an oath upon assuming office “to support and defend the Constitution of the United States,” as did the president and all members of the military, a fact that Gen. Milley pointed out in a recent memorandum to members of the armed forces. We are alarmed at how the president is betraying this oath by threatening to order members of the U.S. military to violate the rights of their fellow Americans.

Beyond being unnecessary, using our military to quell protests across the country would also be unwise. This is not the mission our armed forces signed up for: They signed up to fight our nation’s enemies and to secure — not infringe upon — the rights and freedoms of their fellow Americans. In addition, putting our servicemen and women in the middle of politically charged domestic unrest risks undermining the apolitical nature of the military that is so essential to our democracy. It also risks diminishing Americans’ trust in our military — and thus America’s security — for years to come.

[W]e call on [Trump] the president to immediately end his plans to send active-duty military personnel into cities as agents of law enforcement, or to employ them or any another military or police forces in ways that undermine the constitutional rights of Americans.

The members of our military are always ready to serve in our nation’s defense. But they must never be used to violate the rights of those they are sworn to protect.

Trump's Growing Desire for Authoritarianism

I have always viewed Donald Trump as a narcissistic blowhard who borders on being a sociopath.  He is utterly lacking in empathy towards others and lies so frequently that anything that counters his lies - including objective fact and scientific evidence becomes "fake news" and/or a hoax.  With his national approval level now down to 35%, the Mueller investigation seemingly putting intense heat on Trump's co-conspirators, and the Republican controlled Congress proving incapable of passing meaningful legislation - "meaningful," of course meaning relevant to furthering the toxic Trump/Pence agenda -  Trump is increasingly lashing out and displaying a desire to discard democratic norms and personally rule as an autocrat.  Thankfully, to date even many Trump minions are failing to follow through on Trump's frightening demands.   A piece in Talking Points Memo looks at the situation.  Here are highlights: 

Over the last four days President Trump has made a series of statements demanding his Justice Department ‘investigate’ Hillary Clinton and other Democratic enemies. These demands aren’t entirely new. But by their specificity, repetition and speed they represent a new departure in demands for extra-legal action and rule. We should note that Trump is increasingly acting like a dictator or would be strong man. The only difference is that the machinery of government, seemingly up to at least some of his high level appointees, seems to be largely ignoring him. This is much better than the alternative. But it is still a bad, dangerous development.

My own best guess – supported by a good deal of public reporting – is that what we see on the President’s twitter feed is what Freudians might call his id, his most unvarnished and unrestrained desires and demands. In some sense twitter must be acting as a release valve. These sound like demands he’s making of advisors in private settings, only to see a significant number of them refused, argued against or in many cases ignored. This came through explicitly in that Thursday afternoon talk radio interview where the President said he was “frustrated” that he’s not allowed to command the FBI and DOJ to attack his political enemies.

A related moment came when the President reacted to the Manhattan truck attack by telling Laura Ingraham he had “instructed” the Congress that it “must” end the green card lottery program. The day before he said he was “today starting the process Of terminating the diversity lottery program.”

One might be tempted to see this merely as Trump-speak, the kind of nonsensical braggadocio his advisors routinely tell reporters is to be interpreted loosely or disregarded altogether. There’s also a clear dissonance in seeing a President who can’t seem to pass any legislation acting as though his word acts as legislative fiat. Not only can he not command Congress his very presence seems to paralyze it.

The more Trump fails as President, the more he is convinced he requires extra-constitutional powers. More directly, the more he fails he seems to be convinced that his advisors are mistaken when they tell him the ad hoc command regime he used to run his private business won’t work in government. He’s tried their way he says and look what it’s gotten him.

Only days before he went on a tear attacking the whole US legal system as a “laughingstock” and a “joke”.

This morning I noticed this new story about President Trump telling some Native American tribal chiefs he was meeting with to simply break federal law since energy regulations were holding them back. His aides are always quick to say that these broadsides are just Trumpisms, rhetorical flourishes. He doesn’t actually mean break federal law. . . .  It’s sort of beside the point. In his plain words he is telling people to break the law. Someone will hear him say those things and – not surprisingly – assume he means it and break the law at the President’s bidding. There’s little doubt this has already happened.

My point in pulling together this flurry of statements is that these demands are accelerating. The wild demands for power are increasing with his frustration in his inability to exercise power as a democratic head of state. They are also, clearly, accelerating as he feels Robert Mueller’s investigation get closer to his family, his inner circle and himself.

This will keep accelerating and may reach a breaking point soon. His legal position and his humiliations in the job are not getting any better.

How to Build an Autocracy in America

As each day passes and we seem more autocratic behavior coming from the current occupant of the White House, I continue to be stunned and terrified by the number of people who show no concern or alarm over what is happening.  First the Muslim ban, now a likely license to discriminate law that will give special rights and preferences to Christian extremists - and the Republican Party just shrugs and allows the Frankenstein monster to careen down the road towards a death of American democracy.  I feel as if I am reliving the history of earl 1930's Germany or an episode of the Twilight Zone, except it is really happening.  Conservative David Frum has a very lengthy piece in The Atlantic that paints a picture of where America may find itself under an defacto autocracy, and not a benevolent one.  Here are excerpts, but read the entire piece:

IT’s 2021, and president donald trump will shortly be sworn in for his second term. The 45th president has visibly aged over the past four years. He rests heavily on his daughter Ivanka’s arm during his infrequent public appearances.

Fortunately for him, he did not need to campaign hard for reelection. His has been a popular presidency: Big tax cuts, big spending, and big deficits have worked their familiar expansive magic. Wages have grown strongly in the Trump years, especially for men without a college degree, even if rising inflation is beginning to bite into the gains. The president’s supporters credit his restrictive immigration policies and his TrumpWorks infrastructure program.

The president’s critics, meanwhile, have found little hearing for their protests and complaints. A Senate investigation of Russian hacking during the 2016 presidential campaign sputtered into inconclusive partisan wrangling. Concerns about Trump’s purported conflicts of interest excited debate in Washington but never drew much attention from the wider American public.

Allegations of fraud and self-dealing in the TrumpWorks program, and elsewhere, have likewise been shrugged off. The president regularly tweets out news of factory openings and big hiring announcements. . . 

The business community learned its lesson early. “You work for me, you don’t criticize me,” the president was reported to have told one major federal contractor, after knocking billions off his company’s stock-market valuation with an angry tweet. Wise business leaders take care to credit Trump’s personal leadership for any good news, and to avoid saying anything that might displease the president or his family.

The media have grown noticeably more friendly to Trump as well. The proposed merger of AT&T and Time Warner was delayed for more than a year, during which Time Warner’s CNN unit worked ever harder to meet Trump’s definition of fairness. Under the agreement that settled the Department of Justice’s antitrust complaint against Amazon, the company’s founder, Jeff Bezos, has divested himself of The Washington Post. The paper’s new owner—an investor group based in Slovakia—has closed the printed edition and refocused the paper on municipal politics and lifestyle coverage.

Meanwhile, social media circulate ever-wilder rumors. Some people believe them; others don’t. It’s hard work to ascertain what is true.

Nobody’s repealed the First Amendment, of course, and Americans remain as free to speak their minds as ever—provided they can stomach seeing their timelines fill up with obscene abuse and angry threats from the pro-Trump troll armies that police Facebook and Twitter. Rather than deal with digital thugs, young people increasingly drift to less political media like Snapchat and Instagram.

Trump-critical media do continue to find elite audiences. Their investigations still win Pulitzer Prizes; their reporters accept invitations to anxious conferences about corruption, digital-journalism standards, the end of nato, and the rise of populist authoritarianism.

Yet somehow all of this earnest effort feels less and less relevant to American politics. President Trump communicates with the people directly via his Twitter account, ushering his supporters toward favorable information at Fox News or Breitbart.

People crack jokes about Trump’s National Security Agency listening in on them. They cannot deeply mean it; after all, there’s no less sexting in America today than four years ago. Still, with all the hacks and leaks happening these days—particularly to the politically outspoken—it’s just common sense to be careful what you say in an email or on the phone. When has politics not been a dirty business? When have the rich and powerful not mostly gotten their way? The smart thing to do is tune out the political yammer, mind your own business, enjoy a relatively prosperous time, and leave the questions to the troublemakers.

Everything imagined above—and everything described below—is possible only if many people other than Donald Trump agree to permit it. It can all be stopped, if individual citizens and public officials make the right choices. The story told here, like that told by Charles Dickens’s Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, is a story not of things that will be, but of things that may be. Other paths remain open. It is up to Americans to decide which one the country will follow.

No society, not even one as rich and fortunate as the United States has been, is guaranteed a successful future. When early Americans wrote things like “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty,” they did not do so to provide bromides for future bumper stickers. They lived in a world in which authoritarian rule was the norm, in which rulers habitually claimed the powers and assets of the state as their own personal property.

Larry Diamond, a sociologist at Stanford, has described the past decade as a period of “democratic recession.” Worldwide, the number of democratic states has diminished. Within many of the remaining democracies, the quality of governance has deteriorated.

What has happened in Hungary since 2010 offers an example—and a blueprint for would-be strongmen. Hungary is a member state of the European Union and a signatory of the European Convention on Human Rights. It has elections and uncensored internet. Yet Hungary is ceasing to be a free country.

The transition has been nonviolent, often not even very dramatic. Opponents of the regime are not murdered or imprisoned, although many are harassed with building inspections and tax audits. If they work for the government, or for a company susceptible to government pressure, they risk their jobs by speaking out. Nonetheless, they are free to emigrate anytime they like. Those with money can even take it with them. Day in and day out, the regime works more through inducements than through intimidation. The courts are packed, and forgiving of the regime’s allies. Friends of the government win state contracts at high prices and borrow on easy terms from the central bank. Those on the inside grow rich by favoritism; those on the outside suffer from the general deterioration of the economy.

Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s rule over Hungary does depend on elections. These remain open and more or less free—at least in the sense that ballots are counted accurately. Yet they are not quite fair. Electoral rules favor incumbent power-holders in ways both obvious and subtle. Independent media lose advertising under government pressure; government allies own more and more media outlets each year. The government sustains support even in the face of bad news by artfully generating an endless sequence of controversies that leave culturally conservative Hungarians feeling misunderstood and victimized by liberals, foreigners, and Jews.

You could tell a similar story of the slide away from democracy in South Africa under Nelson Mandela’s successors, in Venezuela under the thug-thief Hugo Chávez, or in the Philippines under the murderous Rodrigo Duterte. A comparable transformation has recently begun in Poland, and could come to France should Marine Le Pen, the National Front’s candidate, win the presidency.

[T]he American system is also perforated by vulnerabilities no less dangerous for being so familiar. Supreme among those vulnerabilities is reliance on the personal qualities of the man or woman who wields the awesome powers of the presidency. A British prime minister can lose power in minutes if he or she forfeits the confidence of the majority in Parliament. The president of the United States, on the other hand, is restrained first and foremost by his own ethics and public spirit. What happens if somebody comes to the high office lacking those qualities?

Donald Trump, however, represents something much more radical. A president who plausibly owes his office at least in part to a clandestine intervention by a hostile foreign intelligence service? Who uses the bully pulpit to target individual critics? Who creates blind trusts that are not blind, invites his children to commingle private and public business, and somehow gets the unhappy members of his own political party either to endorse his choices or shrug them off? If this were happening in Honduras, we’d know what to call it. It’s happening here instead, and so we are baffled.

DONALD TRUMP will not set out to build an authoritarian state. His immediate priority seems likely to be to use the presidency to enrich himself. But as he does so, he will need to protect himself from legal risk. Being Trump, he will also inevitably wish to inflict payback on his critics. Construction of an apparatus of impunity and revenge will begin haphazardly and opportunistically. But it will accelerate. It will have to.

If Congress is quiescent, what can Trump do? A better question, perhaps, is what can’t he do?

Russia Could Spark a U.S. Electoral Disaster

I suspect that the Founding Fathers - except perhaps Thomas Jefferson - could never have imagined the Internet and cyber warfare.  Or that the presidential candidate of one of the nation's main political parties would be praising a ruthless foreign dictator and inviting attacks on American organizations. Yet, that is where we find ourselves with the 2016 presidential election and Russia's (or more to the point, Putin's) apparent desire to rig an American election in favor of a bombastic narcissist whose level of egomania is only exceeded by his ignorance.  Of course, if America had a responsible media and a better educated populace, there would have been far less fertile ground for the rise on a toxic individual like Donald Trump.  A column in the Washington Post outlines what Putin may try and the negative consequences for America.  Here are highlights:

“U.S. investigates potential covert Russian plan to disrupt November elections.” To those unused to this kind of story, I can imagine that headline, from The Post this week, seemed strange. A secret Russian plot to throw a U.S. election through a massive hack of the electoral system? It sounds like a thriller, or a movie starring Harrison Ford.

In fact, the scenario under investigation has already taken place, in whole or in part, in other countries. Quite a bit of the story is already unfolding in public; strictly speaking, it’s not “secret” or “covert” at all. But because most Americans haven’t seen this kind of game played before (most Americans, quite wisely, don’t follow political news from Central Europe or Ukraine), I think the scenario needs to be fully spelled out. And so, based on Russia’s past tactics in other countries, assuming it acts more or less the same way it acts elsewhere, here’s what could happen over the next two months:

1. Trump, who is advised by several people with Russian links, will repeat and strengthen his “the election is rigged” narrative. The “polls are lying,” the “real” people aren’t being counted, the corrupt elites/Clinton clan/mainstream media are colluding to prevent him from taking office.

2. Russia will continue to distribute and publish the material its hackers have already obtained from attacks on the Democratic National Committee, George Soros’s Open Society Foundation, former NATO supreme commander Gen. Philip Breedlove and probably others. The point will be to discredit not just Hillary Clinton but also the U.S. democratic process and, again, the “elite” who supposedly run it. 

3. On or before Election Day, Russian hackers will seek to hack the U.S. voting system. We certainly know that this is possible: Hackers have already targeted voter registration systems in Illinois and Arizona, according to The Post, and the FBI has informed Arizona officials that it suspects Russian hacking teams. Possible breaches are being investigated in several other states, and it’s not hard to imagine that many are vulnerable. The U.S. election system is decentralized and in some places frankly amateurish, as we learned in Florida in 2000.

4. The Russians attempt to throw the election. They might try to get Trump elected. Alternatively — and this would, of course, be even more devastating — they might try to rig the election for Clinton, perhaps leaving a trail of evidence designed to connect the rigging operation to Clinton’s campaign.

5. Once revealed, the result will be media hysteria, hearings, legal challenges, mass rallies, a constitutional crisis — followed by confusion, chaos and an undermining of the office of the presidency. Trump might emerge from the process as president after all. He will then go on, as promised at so many rallies, to “lock her up,” and of course to open a broad relation with Russian President Vladi­mir Putin, the only foreign leader he seems to truly admire. Even if Clinton remains as president, she will be tarnished.

6. More likely, the hack will fail, or never even get off the ground. But what’s the downside in trying, or even in letting it be known that it was tried? Rumors of election fraud can create the same hysteria as real election fraud. Already, Russia’s propaganda wire service, sputniknews.com, has speculated that The Post’s article on Russian electoral manipulation is a clever plot to “to hide the actual efforts at electoral manipulation” and a “good cover for vote-rigging.” That thought will be tweeted and posted and shared by a whole ecosystem of professional trolls and computer bots, over and over again until it finally shows up on authentic pro-Trump websites.

7. And what’s the downside for Trump? If he wins, he wins. If he loses — then there are all kinds of ways to make money from the “election was rigged” narrative.

Whatever happens, the political process is undermined, social trust plummets further and the appeal of American democracy, both at home and around the world, diminishes. And that, of course, is the point.

Be very afraid.

Vladamir Putin's Imperial Adventure

Vladimir Putin is, in my view, a megalomaniac.  He also thinks of himself as the new tsar of Russian in all but formal name with all the delusions of grandeur that fantasy engenders - he's in his own mind perhaps Peter the Great, Catherine the Great and Alexander I all rolled into one.  Given his short stature, he also seems to suffer from a Napoleon complex. And while he has routinely utilized agendas and excuses modeled on Adolph Hitler's tactics, in the final analysis, he still is pushing for international goals akin to what he sees as his imperial predecessors.  As a piece in the New York Times explains, this includes Putin's adventure into Syria.  While Putin remembers the goals and fleeting success of Russia's imperial past, he seems to have forgotten some of the disasters of the past, including Russia's Afghanistan debacle and wars that could have been avoided.  Here are column highlights:

IN June 1772, Russian forces bombarded, stormed and captured Beirut, a fortress on the coast of Ottoman Syria. The Russians were backing their ally, a ruthless Arab despot. When they returned the next year, they occupied Beirut for almost six months. Then as now, they found Syrian politics a boiling cauldron of factional-ethnic strife, which they tried to simplify with cannonades and gunpowder.

Today, President Vladimir V. Putin has many motives in Syria, but we should keep in mind Russia’s vision of its traditional mission in the Middle East, and how it informs the Kremlin’s thinking. And not just the Kremlin: Russia’s Orthodox Church spokesman said that Mr. Putin’s intervention was part of “the special role our country has always played in the Middle East.”

Russia’s ties to the region are rooted in its self-assigned role as the defender of Orthodox Christianity, which it claimed to inherit from the Byzantine Caesars after the fall of Constantinople in 1453 — hence “czars.” The czars presented Moscow not just as a Third Rome, but also as a New Jerusalem, and protector of Christians in the Balkans and the Arab world, which, including the Holy Places of Jerusalem, were ruled by the Ottomans after 1517.

They left in 1774, when Russia dropped its Syrian allies in return for Ottoman concessions over Ukraine and Crimea. Yet a Russian Mediterranean base was now a strategic aim: Catherine and her partner Prince Potemkin annexed Crimea, where they founded a Black Sea fleet, then tried to negotiate a base on Minorca.

Catherine’s successors saw themselves as crusaders, with Russia destined to rule Constantinople and Jerusalem.

[D]uring World War I Russian forces occupied northern Persia and invaded Ottoman Iraq, nearly taking Baghdad. In 1916, Nicholas II’s foreign minister, Sergei Sazonov, negotiated the Sykes-Picot-Sazonov Treaty, which promised Russia Istanbul, sections of Turkey and Kurdistan, and a share of Jerusalem — a Near Eastern empire foiled by the Bolshevik Revolution.

Until the recent intervention, the closest Russia came to fighting was the Israeli-Egyptian War of Attrition from 1967 to 1970, during which Soviet pilots dueled with Israelis. When Nasser’s successor, Anwar Sadat, expelled the Russians, they cultivated a trio of dictators, Muammar el-Qaddafi in Libya, Saddam Hussein in Iraq and Hafez al-Assad in Syria. All three, running merciless, dynastic-Mafia regimes behind the facade of socialistic parties, central planning and Stalinesque cults of personality, took quickly to their new benefactors . . .

After the demise of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russian influence collapsed and Moscow came to bitterly resent the Western interventions that destroyed Mr. Hussein and Colonel Qaddafi. American retreat from the region grants Mr. Putin, who sees himself in an unbroken tradition of Russian personal leadership and imperial-national power from the czars to today, the opportunity to diminish American prestige and project Russia as indispensable world arbiter. The rescue of Mr. Assad’s son Bashir while fighting the opposition and Islamic State dovetails with Russia’s struggle against Chechen jihadis who flock to the black caliphal banners — and success will bring leverage in Iran and Turkey, where Russia once had muscle.

That said, Mr. Putin may end up channeling Catherine and trade Syrian influence to end Western sanctions and secure annexed Crimea — for this military showmanship concerns Mr. Putin’s political survival. In some ways, his defense of Syria’s autocrat is a defense of his own authority against rebellion. 

The power formula in Russia is this: autocracy in the Kremlin in return for security and prosperity at home, glory abroad — and for now at least, there’s glamour in the excitement of this Oriental adventure, a televised “Beau Geste” with Sukhoi bombers.

When Alexander II launched exotic Asian wars, one of his ministers, Count Valuev, wrote, “there’s something erotic about all things on distant frontiers.” Moscow lacks the resources to replace America and will find in Syria a quagmire, but Russians feel that a great imperial Russia has always been a player in the Middle East — and boldness counts for much in this wild world.

Putin is very dangerous, but his latest venture has strong historical precedents.  One needs to understand history and Russia's long inferiority complex versus the west and the longing for real or imagined past glories.   Sadly, the Russian people continue to be betrayed by their failed leaders - something that has plagued Russia for centuries.  

Vladimir Putin Continues Hitler Like Agression

As noted before, Vladimir Putin must be keeping a biography of Adolph Hitler and a history of the Third Reich on his night stand.  Hitler's moves in the 1930's that lead up to World War II continue to be the model for Putin's demands and bellicose claims.   Claims that have ranged from invading the Crimea to threatening neighboring countries to now, threats of renewed nuclear weapons threats.  The man is a maniac who will ultimately harm Russia and perhaps other parts of the world if he remains in office.  Sadly, by playing on Russian nationalism and depicting Russia as a victim - just as Hitler did - Putin has duped far too many Russians into failing to see that he is their biggest enemy of all.  A piece in the New York Times looks at Putin's dangerous moves,  Here are highlights:

President Vladimir Putin of Russia has added new, chilling nuclear threats to his aggression in Ukraine, where 6,000 people have been killed in a war with Russian-backed separatists. Mr. Putin wants to expand his country’s influence and standing, but his alarming behavior has estranged Russia from most other major powers, damaged its economy and narrowed its future options.

Even for Mr. Putin, the recent nuclear threats have set a new benchmark for hostility in the conflict he has ignited with the West. Two weeks ago, The Times of London reported on a meeting between Russian generals and American officials in which the Russians threatened a “spectrum of responses from nuclear to non-military” if NATO moved more military forces into the Baltic States.

Last month, the Russian ambassador to Denmark, Mikhail Vanin, warned that Danish warships “will be targets for Russia’s nuclear weapons” if Denmark follows through on its expressed interest in joining NATO’s missile defense system.

Some Russian officials have also hinted at the possibility of reintroducing nuclear weapons to Crimea, which has been free of them for two decades.

American officials say they have seen no evidence that Russia has actually begun to reposition or make ready a nuclear arsenal that still contains thousands of weapons. But even if the Russian threats are loose talk to intimidate adversaries or curry favor with nationalists at home, they reflect a cynical disregard for Russia’s post-Cold War role as a partner with America in arms control treaties designed to discourage the spread of nuclear weapons. These threats inevitably raise tensions and could increase the chances of deadly miscalculations.

The Russian leader’s decision to proceed with the long-delayed sale of an S-300 missile defense system to Iran was another bad choice. Experts say the system does not threaten Israel, which has nuclear weapons and the best military arsenal in the Middle East, but the move could make it harder for the Obama administration to get congressional support for a nuclear agreement with Iran.

Mr. Putin’s aggression is rooted in intense nationalism, which plays very well to his people and fuels the war against Ukraine. Despite a cease-fire agreement signed in Minsk in February, Russia has continued to arm, train and direct separatist rebels. Fighting has surged and there are grave concerns that Mr. Putin is planning an offensive to seize more territory in eastern Ukraine.

The Europeans and the United States have to stay united in maintaining sanctions on Russia and in continuing air patrols and training exercises, as it becomes increasingly difficult to predict Mr. Putin’s next move.

Germans cheered as Hitler annexed Austria and Czechoslovakia just as many Russians cheered Putin's moves into Crimea and Ukraine.  Perhaps Russians need to look at photos of bombed out cities in Germany - especially Berlin - in the spring and summer of 1945 to grasp where Putin could be ultimate leading them..In his megalomania, Putin ultimately cares nothing about the Russian people.

Berlin 1945

Russian Government Intimidating Journalists And Activists Before The Olympics

The parallels between the 1936 Summer Olympic Games and the 2014 Sochi Winter Games continue to grow.  One of the measures employed by Hitler and the Nazis was to shut down domestic media outlets that criticize the brutal Nazi policies and to intimidate foreign press officials into silence or  into publishing puff pieces that ignored the growing list of Nazi horrors.  Now, as Towleroad reports, evidence of similar efforts by Vladimir Putin's dictatorial regime are increasing.  Here are some excerpts:

News sites everywhere have been documenting the issues in Russia surrounding the 2014 Olympics in Sochi, including abuse of migrant workers, the health and environmental impacts of construction, and the rather severe problem Russia has with homosexuality. Russia's response to this dissent has been to try to intimidate and abuse journalists and activists, particularly in the lead up to the Olympic Games.

Human Rights Watch has extensive coverage of these abuses and includes accounts of the Sochi Branch of the Russian Geographic Society having its funding threatened, rejection of the Sochi Pride House, distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks on websites critical of the government and the Olympics, and several individual journalists and activists being threatened by government officials.
Rule 48 of the IOC bye-laws explicitly states: 

The IOC takes all necessary steps in order to ensure the fullest coverage by the different media and the widest possible audience in the world for the Olympic Games.

Russia's treatment of journalists may wind up causing even more complications for the IOC as these abuses run directly counter to the bye-laws the IOC are obligated to uphold.

Here's more highlights from Human Rights Watch:

“Trying to bully activists and journalists into silence is wrong and only further tarnishes the image of the Olympics,” said Jane Buchanan, associate Europe and Central Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “One of the non-negotiable requirements of hosting the Olympics is to allow press freedom, and the authorities’ attempts to silence critics are in clear violation of that principle.”

Press freedom is guaranteed under the Olympic Charter, which has an entire section on “Media Coverage of the Olympic Games.” The IOC is obligated to take “all necessary steps in order to ensure the fullest coverage by the different media.” Other by-laws require that “media coverage of the Olympic Games shall not be impaired in any way….”

Starting in 2008, Human Rights Watch has documented the harassment and intimidation of activists, journalists, and others, regarding their actions and comments related to the Sochi Games.

“Preparations for the Sochi Games have been plagued with serious human rights abuses and other problems, many of which have only been brought to light through the efforts of activists and journalists,” Buchanan said. “If the IOC is committed to these issues, it should ask the Russian authorities to immediately stop harassing activists, organizations, and journalists, and investigate allegations of abuse.”

Some journalists told Human Rights Watch that local authorities sought to control negative or critical information about Sochi by pressuring editors to present Olympic preparations exclusively in a “positive” light. In addition, several independent online news sources and blogs that post critical materials about Olympics preparations faced highly coordinated, disabling denial of service attacks, where hackers rendered the sites inaccessible.

“Press freedom is a central tenet of the Olympic Charter and no successful Games can take place in an atmosphere in which journalists are afraid to report on stories of legitimate public interest,” Buchanan said. “The IOC should insist that the Russian authorities guarantee full media freedom for each and every journalist reporting in or traveling to Sochi.”

Harassment and intimidation of civil society in Sochi should be seen against the backdrop of the crackdown on human rights in Russia that has been underway for 15 months since the May 2012 inauguration of President Vladimir Putin.

During that time new laws were adopted restricting public assemblies, re-criminalizing libel, criminalizing religious insult, introducing additional restrictions on internet content, expanding the definition of treason, and banning “propaganda” for “nontraditional sexual relations.” A nationwide, government campaign to force nongovernment groups that accept foreign funding and engage in vaguely-defined “political activity” to register as foreign agents aims to curtail a broad range of work by independent organizations.

 All of these actions are reprehensible.  But they should not be a surprise.  After all, Putin is a former KGB thug.  Now we are seeing that he's changed very little from his KGB days.

Russian Sports Minister: Olympic Athletes Will Be Subject To Anti-Gay Laws

I continue to argue that rather than have people and nations boycott the 2014 Winter Games, the International Olympic Committee needs to find a backbone and simply announce that the venue for the games will be moved in light of anti-gay Russian laws that violate both the Olympic ideal of non-discrimination, but also international conventions to which Russia is a member.  The IOC has tried to dodge facing the reality that it is acting like it did in 1936 by not forcefully telling Russia to repeal the laws or the games will not be held in Russia.  New statements by the Russian Sports Minister (pictured at left) underscore that athletes and tourists will likely be arrested if they attend the games in Sochi.  Here are highlights from AFP:

MOSCOW — Gay athletes are welcome to participate in Russia's 2014 Winter Olympic Games in Sochi but must obey a new law banning "homosexual propaganda", the country's sports minister said Thursday.

Russian President Vladimir Putin in June signed into law legislation that punishes the dissemination of information about homosexuality to minors but which activists say can be used for a broad crackdown against gays.

The comments by Sports Minister Vitaly Mutko appear to contradict assurances from the International Olympic Committee last week that no athlete attending the games would be targeted by the law.

"The law talks not about banning a non-traditional orientation but about other things, about propaganda and implicating minors," Mutko told the R-Sport news agency.

"No one is banning a sportsman with a non-traditional sexual orientation from going to Sochi. But if he goes out onto the street and starts to make propaganda, then of course he will be brought to responsibility.

Foreigners found guilty of violating the law can not only be fined up to 5,000 rubles ($156, 114 euros) but face administrative arrest of up to 15 days and eventual deportation.

Russian officials rarely use words like "gay" and "homosexual" and prefer to use the phrase "non-traditional sexuality" to describe same-sex love.

The law has aroused concerns among activists about whether Russia is fit to host the Games, the biggest sporting event it has held in its post-Soviet history, and even calls for a Cold War-style boycott.

Mutko's comments infuriated activists, coming after the IOC said last week it had received assurances at the "highest level" within the Russian government that the legislation would not affect those attending the games.

"Russian sports minister confirmed gay propaganda law WILL be applied at Olympics in Sochi! As I said Russian guarantees to IOC are b(expletive)!" leading Russian gay rights activist Nikolai Alexeyev fumed on Twitter.

Russia last week banned four Dutch nationals from entering the country for three years after accusing them under the controversial new law of spreading of "gay propaganda" to minors,

The solution again is easy: move the games.  Putin wants a self-congratulatory display via the games.  Give him a major humiliation instead. Moving the games might be complicated, but it could be done by returning to a past venue that has many of the needed facilities already in place.

Virginia's Lysenko - Cuccinelli's Dangerous Suit Against Climate Change

Both Slate and Blue Virginia have pieces that look at the danger that Ken Kookinelli's lawsuit and other actions against science pose for the Commonwealth of Virginia, and not just in terms of wasting money. The Blue Virginia piece calls the "Cooch" Virginia's Lysenko. For those not up on their Soviet history, Lysenko (pictured below) was Josef Stalin's puppet who manipulated alleged science to fit Stalin's insane views on the Soviet system's "New Man" and other areas where Stalin demanded that science be made to fit his megalomaniac agenda. In my personal opinion, Kookinelli is mentally disturbed (not to mention a possible closet case) and will try to force as many people as possible to embrace his untethered views. Nothing upsets the unhinged more than having objective reality and scientific truths challenge their fragile mental construct of an artificial reality. First, some highlights from Slate:

[W]hen Cuccinelli tried to put Virtus [on the Virginia great seal] in a burqa this week, the darling of the Tea Party movement explained without irony: "Just because we've always done something a certain way doesn't mean we always have to continue doing it that way." Seriously?
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The problem with Breastgate was that it distracted from Cuccinelli's other efforts to press the legal machinery of the commonwealth into the service of his own agenda. Between his thwarted attempts to rescind anti-discrimination policies for gays and lesbians at Virginia universities, his one-man lawsuit against Obamacare, his recent approval of a new state policy allowing sectarian prayer by state police chaplains at public events, and his lawsuit suit against the EPA for attempting to regulate greenhouse gases, Ken Cuccinelli has become the Where's Waldo of Fox News stories. But his latest attack—against the University of Virginia's climate science researchers—is more troubling than his assault on bare-breasted Romans.
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As Courtney Stuart first reported last week in Charlottesville's The Hook, Cuccinelli's office quietly filed a civil investigative demand (or CID, which is basically a subpoena) with the University of Virginia on April 23, giving the school 30 days to produce more than 10 years' worth of documents related to the state-funded research of a former faculty member, Michael Mann. . . . And who is this nefarious Michael Mann? A climate scientist who worked at UVA from 1999 to 2005 and now runs Penn State's Earth System Science Center. He became the climate-change deniers' whipping boy because of a 1999 paper he co-authored showing a dramatic uptick in surface temperatures after 1900.
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But it's not just Mann on the hook here. "With a weapon like this in Cuccinelli's hands, any faculty member at a public university in Virginia has got to be thinking twice about doing politically controversial research or communicating with other scholars about it," says Rachel Levinson, senior counsel with the American Association of University Professors. UVA environmental science professor Howard Epstein, a former colleague of Mann's, puts it this way: "Who is going to want to be on our faculty when they realize Virginia is the state where the A.G. investigates climate scientists?" If researchers are really afraid to do cutting-edge research in Virginia, the state's flagship university is in enormous trouble.
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It is the Blue Virginia piece that goes on to draw parallels between what Kookinelli is doing and the sinister "science" promoted by Josef Stalin through Lysenko. Neither Virginia nor the nation can afford to have scientific research curtailed or manipulated to fit the needs of religious extremists and flat earth types. The Bush/Cheney years illustrate all too well the damage that results. Cuccinelli is a menace and needs to be stop. Here are highlights from Blue Virginia:
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Eighty years ago, Josef Stalin found a scientist he liked. This was bad news for the scientists who were not so popular with the Soviet leadership. . . . Lysenko's theories would have been laughed out of the lab had he not found a sponsor willing and able to apply the full coercive power of government to reward those who supported Lysenko and punish those who disagreed. Thousands of scientists suffered under Lysenko, losing their jobs and often being imprisoned.
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It takes enormous courage to "speak truth to power" when you have a tyrannically-minded leader using power to threaten the truth. Which brings me to Ken Cuccinelli.
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The state has an important role in science: to fund research and education, to use and promote science, to ensure it is freely conducted. It is not the role of the state to dictate, for political reasons, which scientific theories may be considered right or wrong.
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When governments do take such a stance, and get away with it, it is a sign of a deep sickness in the body politic. Nothing is more important to democracy than the free and open pursuit of the truth. Politicians who don't respect or protect that pursuit represent the greatest danger a democracy can have. Because when you take away the ability of citizens to appeal to reason, truth and common sense, you open the door to arbitrary rule - which means that those in power can ultimately get away with anything.
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Some may see it as a small thing that Attorney General Cuccinelli is demanding information from the University of Virginia about the work of climate scientist Michael Mann to determine if he was "defrauding" state taxpayers - that is, by publishing peer-reviewed scientific research that Mr. Cuccinelli and his donors in the fossil fuel industry (such as Massey Energy) found inconvenient.
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This is no small thing. It is one of the most shocking acts I have witnessed in over three decades of studying, observing and participating in politics and government. Cuccinelli is crossing a line that democratic governments only cross at their peril. This action cannot stand - it must not stand.
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The key to maintaining democracy is that when governments overreach, the people slap their hand. It's time for us to stand up and do so again - all hands on deck, people! This is serious.

Answering to No One

I had been waiting to run this photo of Vice President "Darth Vader" Cheney with the right commentary. Walter Mondale's column today (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/27/AR2007072702126.html) set the right stage:

The Post's recent series on Dick Cheney's vice presidency certainly got my attention. Having held that office myself over a quarter-century ago, I have more than a passing interest in its evolution from the backwater of American politics to the second most powerful position in our government. Almost all of that evolution, under presidents and vice presidents of both parties, has been positive -- until now. Under George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, it has gone seriously off track.

The Founders created the vice presidency as a constitutional afterthought, solely to provide a president-in-reserve should the need arise. The only duty they specified was that the vice president should preside over the Senate. The office languished in obscurity and irrelevance for more than 150 years until Richard Nixon saw it as a platform from which to seek the Republican presidential nomination in 1960. That worked, and the office has been an effective launching pad for aspiring candidates since.

But it wasn't until Jimmy Carter assumed the presidency that the vice presidency took on a substantive role. Carter saw the office as an underused asset and set out to make the most of it. He gave me an office in the West Wing, unimpeded access to him and to the flow of information, and specific assignments at home and abroad. He asked me, as the only other nationally elected official, to be his adviser and partner on a range of issues.

This all changed in 2001, and especially after Sept. 11, when Cheney set out to create a largely independent power center in the office of the vice president. His was an unprecedented attempt not only to shape administration policy but, alarmingly, to limit the policy options sent to the president. It is essential that a president know all the relevant facts and viable options before making decisions, yet Cheney has discarded the "honest broker" role he played as President Gerald Ford's chief of staff.

Rather than subject his views to an established (and rational) vetting process, his practice has been to trust only his immediate staff before taking ideas directly to the president. Many of the ideas that Bush has subsequently bought into have proved offensive to the values of the Constitution and have been embarrassingly overturned by the courts.

The corollary to Cheney's zealous embrace of secrecy is his near total aversion to the notion of accountability. I've never seen a former member of the House of Representatives demonstrate such contempt for Congress -- even when it was controlled by his own party. His insistence on invoking executive privilege to block virtually every congressional request for information has been stupefying -- it's almost as if he denies the legitimacy of an equal branch of government. Nor does he exhibit much respect for public opinion, which amounts to indifference toward being held accountable by the people who elected him.

Cheney is a menace and his belief that he is no answerable to anyone is dangerous. He and Bush have done more to subvert the Constitution and deprive citizens of legal protection than any administration in history. Even during World War II the President did not to have the power to have citizens arrested on his say so, with no legal protections to those targeted.

Just What the Founders Feared: An Imperial President Goes to War

This is a good editorial (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/23/opinion/23mon4.html?em&ex=1185422400&en=3ea64ca716fdb73b&ei=5087%0A)that focuses on how Bush and his Christo-facsist allies are subverting the Constitution and the division of powers. Here are some highlights:

The nation is heading toward a constitutional showdown over the Iraq war. Congress is moving closer to passing a bill to limit or end the war, but President Bush insists Congress doesn’t have the power to do it. “I don’t think Congress ought to be running the war,” he said at a recent press conference. “I think they ought to be funding the troops.” He added magnanimously: “I’m certainly interested in their opinion.”

The war is hardly the only area where the Bush administration is trying to expand its powers beyond all legal justification. But the danger of an imperial presidency is particularly great when a president takes the nation to war, something the founders understood well. In the looming showdown, the founders and the Constitution are firmly on Congress’s side.

When they drafted the Constitution, Madison and his colleagues wrote their skepticism into the text. In Britain, the king had the authority to declare war, and raise and support armies, among other war powers. The framers expressly rejected this model and gave these powers not to the president, but to Congress.

The Constitution does make the president “commander in chief,” a title President Bush often invokes. But it does not have the sweeping meaning he suggests. The framers took it from the British military, which used it to denote the highest-ranking official in a theater of battle. Alexander Hamilton emphasized in Federalist No. 69 that the president would be “nothing more” than “first general and admiral,” responsible for “command and direction” of military forces.

The framers expected Congress to keep the president on an especially short leash on military matters. The Constitution authorizes Congress to appropriate money for an army, but prohibits appropriations for longer than two years. Hamilton explained that the limitation prevented Congress from vesting “in the executive department permanent funds for the support of an army, if they were even incautious enough to be willing to repose in it so improper a confidence.”

Members of Congress should not be intimidated into thinking that they are overstepping their constitutional bounds. If the founders were looking on now, it is not Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi who would strike them as out of line, but George W. Bush, who would seem less like a president than a king.

The current reticence of Congress to call Bush out shows the dangers of a public (and news media) that does not know history and which can be easily duped by demigods like Bush and Cheney.

Some Concervative Christians Are Finally Waking UP

One reader of World Net Daily (a/k/a Wingnut World daily) and Front Page Magazine has finally recognized that the true Christians have been conned by Bush, Bozell, Dobson, et al., who are not true conservatives or true Christians:

" I was very reluctant to write this letter because it is so negative, but I've reached the point in which I can no longer stay silent. With your last column, I've decided to stop reading WorldNetDaily. That fact probably means nothing to you since I've never been able to support you financially. But it means something to me. For over eight years I have faithfully read WND every day. I trusted you. I believed you.

To suggest that the press coverage of Abu Ghraib and the reduction of "interrogation" has caused us to "lose" (support for) the war is nonsense. We are losing in Iraq because we haven't defined the enemy and we aren't there to "win." What would winning look like, anyway? This undeclared "war" was never meant to be "won," but to secure a large American presence in Iraq. And why do you and all of the other so-called "conservative" news media ignore the president of Iraq's statement that they are ready for us to leave?

You and others who claim to stand for conservative Christians have gone down that terrible road of endorsing deception, violence and fiscal irresponsibility to justify the actions of a president (whom I voted for twice) who is not only out of touch with his country, but close to becoming our first dictator.

Now the drumbeats are calling for us to "take care of" Iran next. Hitler had his scapegoat in the Jews and Bush has his in the Muslims. And my fellow Christians are happily following him down a terrible path laced with lies, torture, violence and genocide. After it is all over and the dust has cleared, what will we do when they tell the world that the Christians are now the enemy? Haven't we learned anything from history? When we condemn and entire group of people for the actions of a few, we are no better than those who have turned away from God.

You and the others who support the evolution of our political process into essentially a one-party system are guilty of contributing to the destruction of our beloved republic. I am so sorry that you of all people bought into this madness. I really used to enjoy reading WND, but now I've deleted it from my database because you have become like the rest of the people who claim to follow Jesus: You lust for war, violence, torture and injustice. You will say anything to justify these things, which you know go against the teachings of Jesus. Which Jesus supports these things? Not the Jesus I follow, and I have been a Bible-believing traditional conservative Christian for 24 years. Go ahead and rationalize it all you want. We all have to answer to God for our actions, and I will no longer stand with my fellow Christians and endorse this insanity because after four years, I have come to the conclusion that we were deceived right from the start."http://www.frontpagemag.com/GoPostal/commentdetail.asp?ID=29172&commentID=868451

I fully agree with the writers analysis of Bush trying to become a defacto dictator. He surely believes he is above the law and that the Constitution is irrelevant. If he thinks he's another Augustus Caesar, however, he is truly deluded. Would that more of the so-called GOP base would wake up to reality.

Impeach Cheney

This from Andrew Sullivan with which I am in full agreement http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2007/06/impeach-cheney.htmle:

A conservative makes the case. Conservatives should be more outraged by his assault on the law, the constitution and individual liberty. He's also clearly a war criminal - a knowing enforcer of torture and abuse of military detainees. We once executed Nazis for the same techniques as Cheney has approved and enforced. I don't want to see him impeached. I want to see him prosecuted under American and international law as a criminal. The link to the article Andrew references is http://slate.com/id/2169292, where all of Cheney's activities are described. Here is a partial description:

Let's review the record of his abuses and excesses:

The vice president asserted presidential power to create military commissions, which combine the functions of judge, jury, and prosecutor in the trial of war crimes. The Supreme Court rebuked Cheney in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld. Mr. Cheney claimed authority to detain American citizens as enemy combatants indefinitely at Guantanamo Bay on the president's say-so alone, a frightening power indistinguishable from King Louis XVI's execrated lettres de cachet that occasioned the storming of the Bastille. The Supreme Court repudiated Cheney in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld.

The vice president initiated kidnappings, secret detentions, and torture in Eastern European prisons of suspected international terrorists. This lawlessness has been answered in Germany and Italy with criminal charges against CIA operatives or agents. The legal precedent set by Cheney would justify a decision by Russian President Vladimir Putin to kidnap American tourists in Paris and to dispatch them to dungeons in Belarus if they were suspected of Chechen sympathies.

The vice president has maintained that the entire world is a battlefield. Accordingly, he contends that military power may be unleashed to kill or capture any American citizen on American soil if suspected of association or affiliation with al-Qaida. Thus, Mr. Cheney could have ordered the military to kill Jose Padilla with rockets, artillery, or otherwise when he landed at O'Hare Airport in Chicago, because of Padilla's then-suspected ties to international terrorism.

The man needs to be removed from office. He definitely suffers from a Darth Vader mentality and has made America look like some third world dictatorship in the making.