A very informative piece…
https://www.themonthly.com.au/blog/robert-manne/2017/24/2017/1485219081/muscovian-candidate
tauto said:
A very informative piece…https://www.themonthly.com.au/blog/robert-manne/2017/24/2017/1485219081/muscovian-candidate
Nooooooo…. tuato……
“The legitamacy wolf is at our door…” ?
This ain’t information bro. It’s ideology.
esselte said:
tauto said:A very informative piece…https://www.themonthly.com.au/blog/robert-manne/2017/24/2017/1485219081/muscovian-candidate
Nooooooo…. tuato……
“The legitamacy wolf is at our door…” ?
This ain’t information bro. It’s ideology.
What do you mean by that? I only scanned the article quickly, but it seems to be based on factual information, not ideology.
I reckon these boys on on a hiding to nothing.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-02-04/mormons-in-katherine/8217694
(It’s a very, very, very light article. So light on information it might blow away)
Whoops. But I suppose in a way it fits…
http://www.smh.com.au/video/video-news/video-world-news/conway-cites-massacre-that-never-happened-20170203-4q5jp.html
sucked in.
More fake news…
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-02-03/trump-thanks-malcolm-turnbull-for-telling-the-truth/8240608
https://www.bowlinggreenmassacrefund.com/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowling_Green_Massacre
buffy said:
More fake news…
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-02-03/trump-thanks-malcolm-turnbull-for-telling-the-truth/8240608
Yeah. Cause you can’t lookup the tangerine gabshite wanker’s own tweets. Phht
Talking of fake news and analysis thereof, the programme on ABC after The Weekly last night was actually pretty good.
They covered not only:
Was Obamas ban on Iraqis the same as Trumps ban on 7 nations (no, it wasn’t)
but also:
Is the exclusion of Saudi Arabia from the 7 nations because of Trumps business interests? (no, it isn’t)
The Weekly last night was actually pretty good.
——-
It’s often pretty patchy. I watched about 15 mins.. I’ll have to go back to it.
Was that an intentional snippet to change the meaning of what was said to demonstrate fake news?
furious said:
- It’s often pretty patchy. I watched about 15 mins.. I’ll have to go back to it.
Was that an intentional snippet to change the meaning of what was said to demonstrate fake news?
Huh?
Obviously fake, it wasn’t tweeted….
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-02-04/donald-trumps-travel-ban-temporarily-blocked/8241266
What you quoted and what he said were two different things…
furious said:
- Huh?
What you quoted and what he said were two different things…
I commented on the “was actually pretty good” bit.
The snippet you used implied he said the weekly was pretty good but what he said was that the program after the weekly was pretty good…
furious said:
- I commented on the “was actually pretty good” bit.
The snippet you used implied he said the weekly was pretty good but what he said was that the program after the weekly was pretty good…
FWIW:
1. furious is right
2. I agree the Weekly is very patchy. It does have some good serious humour, with a lot of crap in between.
> furious is right
No it’s not
Merely ‘peeved’ would be overreaction.
readed most of that, then the link and article re centrelink
trans…you got rain? I’m deciding if I will need to put the sprinklers on tonight or not…
hasn’t passed me by that a lot of what’s happening are models of privacy invasion, the normalization of.
confusing the public, the private, the personal
and machines make for something to hide behind
while all are numbed by entertainment
The ABC needs to bring back fact check and expand it to cover fake news.
or a website where one can submit a url/story for validity
Tau.Neutrino said:
The ABC needs to bring back fact check and expand it to cover fake news.
It isn’t our ABC anymore.
transition said:
Not all. Some of us try to work around the BS.
hasn’t passed me by that a lot of what’s happening are models of privacy invasion, the normalization of.confusing the public, the private, the personal
and machines make for something to hide behind
while all are numbed by entertainment
Tau.Neutrino said:
The ABC needs to bring back fact check and expand it to cover fake news.
Don’t you mean media watch?
Did anyone here read the entire cited article?
Yes…
tauto said:
Did anyone here read the entire cited article?
yes. but it seems like such a long time ago.
furious said:
- Did anyone here read the entire cited article?
Yes…
—-
That’s good. Thanks to Bubbles for providing the link.
tauto said:
Did anyone here read the entire cited article?
I read it quite some time before it was posted here.
just a hunch, but reckon there’s a multi billion dollar industry out there broadly called entertainment, and an army of warrior savants that take the bait, hook line and sinker.
dv said:
tauto said:
Did anyone here read the entire cited article?
I read it quite some time before it was posted here.
—-
Well thanks a lot for not sharing…
tauto said:
dv said:
tauto said:
Did anyone here read the entire cited article?
I read it quite some time before it was posted here.
—-
Well thanks a lot for not sharing…
There’s no need to thank me. I live but to serve others.
Warrior savants. Interesting phrase.
dv said:
Warrior savants. Interesting phrase.
not really
I don’t do interesting, there’s too much of it.
mundane’s my thing
dv said:
tauto said:
dv said:I read it quite some time before it was posted here.
—-
Well thanks a lot for not sharing…
There’s no need to thank me. I live but to serve others.
—-
Then you should’ve informed us.
dv said:
tauto said:
dv said:I read it quite some time before it was posted here.
—-
Well thanks a lot for not sharing…
There’s no need to thank me. I live but to serve others.
i read it the night before the thread when mr car posted it in the chat thread.
someday whatever resembling the truth will become so uninteresting courtesy peoples upregulated expectations to be entertained, that practical mundane realities will be ignorably boring.
the worst affected will be those inclined to derive their reality overly externally.
their mental state will be built and maintained so. A hungry beast.
Now what’s wrong?
kii said:
Now what’s wrong?
—
dv witholds info
tauto said:
kii said:
Now what’s wrong?
—
dv witholds info
Who?
For those interested, Robert Manne continues in his assessments.
Postscript
Since the original publication of this piece, several articles have appeared that throw additional light on Donald Trump’s election and his relations with the Putin regime. I will summarise each briefly and point to their significance.
On 25 January, Reuters reported that 19.5% of Rosneft had been privatised in December 2016 but that the details of who exactly had been the purchasers was shrouded in mystery because of the use of the Cayman Islands and a number of shelf companies. The sale was arranged almost single-handedly by the head of Igor Sechin and welcomed by Vladimir Putin as a sign of international confidence in the Russian economy. Readers of ‘The Muscovian Candidate?’ will recall that in October 2016 Christopher Steele reported that Sechin had offered one of Trump’s foreign policy advisers, Carter Page, and other members of the Trump team a 19% share in Rosneft (perhaps it should have been a share in the 19% of Rosneft) in return for Trump’s willingness to lift sanctions imposed because of Russia’s annexation of Crimea and aggression in Ukraine. That the figure of 19% or 19.5% should have appeared in the July conversation reported in the Steele dossier and in the actual privatisation six months later seems more than a coincidence. Since his election, Trump has, as we have seen, returned to the possibility of lifting sanctions and is reported to have discussed the possibility of a new Ukraine policy in his hour-long telephone conversation of 30 January with the president of Russia, which if realised might constitute a sharp reversal of previous US policy on Russia.
On 27 January, Nick Fernandez and Rob Savillo published a blog on the outstanding website Media Matters, containing the most detailed study so far of the impact of WikiLeaks on the outcome of the presidential election. Their research showed that in the five weeks between 4 October and 8 November, the day of the election, Fox News aired 173 segments and 64 “teasers” concerning WikiLeaks’ information, CNN 57 segments and 21 “teasers”, the ABC network 10 segments and five mentions, and the CBS network six segments and 12 mentions, while both the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal published 27 articles on the leaked emails, with an additional 36 mentions between them. The authors’ conclusion is compelling. In the five-week period before the election of Donald Trump, “evening cable and broadcast news, major newspapers, and the Sunday morning broadcast network political talk shows combined to flood the media landscape with the coverage of hacked emails released by WikiLeaks …” This study strengthens the earlier work of Think Progress and FiveThirtyEight. It refutes the claim by Trump supporters that the WikiLeaks’ material on Hillary Clinton had little influence on the outcome of the election. And indirectly at least it supports the accuracy of the information contained in the Steele dossier, which reported on 12 October that Putin intended to continue with WikiLeaks’ publication of the Podesta emails until the election, having been “surprised and disappointed” about the lack of impact of the earlier DNC email leaks of July.
On the same day, 27 January, the New York Times reported that three senior Russians working in the area of cybersecurity, including Sergei Mikhailov, the deputy director of the FSB’s Center for Information Security, had been arrested and charged with treason. Mikhailov was dragged from his place of work with a bag over his head. US intelligence is widely believed to have relied in part on information supplied by human informants in arriving at their “high confidence” collective conclusion that the Russians were responsible for hacking the DNC emails. It is possible but not entirely certain that the three men arrested were suspected of providing the Americans with information about Russian intelligence’s anti-Clinton, pro-Trump hacking campaign.
Also on 27 January, the Telegraph of London reported that the ex-KGB chief Oleg Erovinkin was found dead in Moscow on 26 December 2016 in the back seat of his car. Erovinkin worked as a “key aide” to the head of Rosneft, Igor Sechin, and was thought to be the link man between Sechin and Vladimir Putin. It is widely believed that he was the source for the information in the Steele dossier concerning the 7 or 8 July conversation that, according to the Steele dossier, took place between Sechin and Carter Page about a stake in Rosneft in return for the lifting of sanctions. It is therefore quite possible that he was murdered as a reprisal, most likely, like the former KGB/FSB defector Alexander Litvinenko before him, on the orders of another ex-KGB man, the president of Russia. As they say, the plot thickens.
On February 9, no fewer than nine separate current or former members of US intelligence agencies revealed to reporters of the Washington Post that Donald Trump’s National Security adviser, Mike Flynn, had indeed discussed the future of Ukrainian-inspired sanctions with the Russian Ambassador, Sergey Kislyak, in their several telephone communications and texts at the time the Obama administration had expelled 35 Russian officials because of Russian hacking to influence the outcome of the presidential election. This article was significant for a number of reasons. It proved that several US intelligence officials were by now leaking freely against the Trump administration. It also showed that Flynn was both a fool and a liar. As a former Director of National Intelligence he should have been aware that the communications of the Russian Ambassador in Washington were routinely intercepted by US signals intelligence. By denying that he and Kislyak had discussed sanctions Flynn appears to have misled Trump’s Vice-President, Mike Pence, who flatly denied to journalists that in the phone communications between Flynn and Kislyak that sanctions had been discussed. There was however an amusing aspect to all this. In denying that sanctions had been discussed, the new regime’s media spokesman, Sean Spicer – the Comical Ali of the Trump administration – claimed that Flynn had merely conveyed Christmas greetings to Kislyak, apparently unaware that Russians celebrate Christmas not on December 25 but on January 7. On February 13, undefendable even according to the standards of the Trump administration, Flynn finally resigned.
On February 10, Jim Sciutto and Evan Perez of CNN reported a matter of great significance. US intelligence agencies had intercepted communications between Russians mentioned in the Steele dossier that confirmed that “some of the conversations described in the dossier took place between the same individuals on the same days and from the same locations as detailed in the dossier”. Two things follow from this. Unless several US intelligence officials are lying to CNN, the Steele dossier is not, as Trump, Putin and Assange have all claimed, a fake. Even more importantly, the report confirms what the Washington Post at the same time revealed, namely that members of US intelligence, most likely from the National Security Agency, are presently sufficiently alarmed about what the substance of the Steele dossier reveals about the relations between the Trump campaign team and the Putin regime that they are openly, under conditions of anonymity, beginning to leak details of their overseas communications interceptions to the US media.
On February 19, the New York Times reported that a week before General Michael Flynn resigned as Donald Trump’s National Security Adviser – after lying to Vice President Pence over the subject matter of his December 29 discussions with Russian Ambassador, Kislyak – an intriguing meeting took place in the luxury Loews Regency Hotel in Manhattan. A once jailed Russian-born American businessman and an associate of Trump with a former connection to the Mafia, Felix H Sater, and an aspiring pro-Russian Ukrainian politician, Andrii V Artemenko, an associate of Paul Manafort’s pro-Yanukovytch group, who has spent two and a half years in prison in Kiev on embezzlement charges, handed Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, a sealed Ukrainian peace plan. Cohen agreed to deliver the plan to Michael Flynn. As Cohen put it, “Who doesn’t want to bring about peace?” The plan involved the removal of Russian forces from Eastern Ukraine in return for a referendum in Ukraine to determine whether Crimea should be leased to Russia for fifty or one hundred years. The plan was premised on the removal of the current President of Ukraine, Petro Poroshenko, accused by Sater, Artemenko and Cohen of corruption. The Times reported that the plan had the support of Putin, and that from Artemenko’s point of view, someone regarded by many Ukrainians as “untrustworthy” and “corrupt”, that it might represent a means by which he could replace Poroshenko as the new pro-Russian President of Ukraine.
Not long after, Donald Trump described the free liberal press in America as “the enemy of the people”.
tauto said:
For those interested, Robert Manne continues in his assessments.Postscript
Since the original publication of this piece, several articles have appeared that throw additional light on Donald Trump’s election and his relations with the Putin regime. I will summarise each briefly and point to their significance.
On 25 January, Reuters reported that 19.5% of Rosneft had been privatised in December 2016 but that the details of who exactly had been the purchasers was shrouded in mystery because of the use of the Cayman Islands and a number of shelf companies. The sale was arranged almost single-handedly by the head of Igor Sechin and welcomed by Vladimir Putin as a sign of international confidence in the Russian economy. Readers of ‘The Muscovian Candidate?’ will recall that in October 2016 Christopher Steele reported that Sechin had offered one of Trump’s foreign policy advisers, Carter Page, and other members of the Trump team a 19% share in Rosneft (perhaps it should have been a share in the 19% of Rosneft) in return for Trump’s willingness to lift sanctions imposed because of Russia’s annexation of Crimea and aggression in Ukraine. That the figure of 19% or 19.5% should have appeared in the July conversation reported in the Steele dossier and in the actual privatisation six months later seems more than a coincidence. Since his election, Trump has, as we have seen, returned to the possibility of lifting sanctions and is reported to have discussed the possibility of a new Ukraine policy in his hour-long telephone conversation of 30 January with the president of Russia, which if realised might constitute a sharp reversal of previous US policy on Russia.
On 27 January, Nick Fernandez and Rob Savillo published a blog on the outstanding website Media Matters, containing the most detailed study so far of the impact of WikiLeaks on the outcome of the presidential election. Their research showed that in the five weeks between 4 October and 8 November, the day of the election, Fox News aired 173 segments and 64 “teasers” concerning WikiLeaks’ information, CNN 57 segments and 21 “teasers”, the ABC network 10 segments and five mentions, and the CBS network six segments and 12 mentions, while both the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal published 27 articles on the leaked emails, with an additional 36 mentions between them. The authors’ conclusion is compelling. In the five-week period before the election of Donald Trump, “evening cable and broadcast news, major newspapers, and the Sunday morning broadcast network political talk shows combined to flood the media landscape with the coverage of hacked emails released by WikiLeaks …” This study strengthens the earlier work of Think Progress and FiveThirtyEight. It refutes the claim by Trump supporters that the WikiLeaks’ material on Hillary Clinton had little influence on the outcome of the election. And indirectly at least it supports the accuracy of the information contained in the Steele dossier, which reported on 12 October that Putin intended to continue with WikiLeaks’ publication of the Podesta emails until the election, having been “surprised and disappointed” about the lack of impact of the earlier DNC email leaks of July.
On the same day, 27 January, the New York Times reported that three senior Russians working in the area of cybersecurity, including Sergei Mikhailov, the deputy director of the FSB’s Center for Information Security, had been arrested and charged with treason. Mikhailov was dragged from his place of work with a bag over his head. US intelligence is widely believed to have relied in part on information supplied by human informants in arriving at their “high confidence” collective conclusion that the Russians were responsible for hacking the DNC emails. It is possible but not entirely certain that the three men arrested were suspected of providing the Americans with information about Russian intelligence’s anti-Clinton, pro-Trump hacking campaign.
Also on 27 January, the Telegraph of London reported that the ex-KGB chief Oleg Erovinkin was found dead in Moscow on 26 December 2016 in the back seat of his car. Erovinkin worked as a “key aide” to the head of Rosneft, Igor Sechin, and was thought to be the link man between Sechin and Vladimir Putin. It is widely believed that he was the source for the information in the Steele dossier concerning the 7 or 8 July conversation that, according to the Steele dossier, took place between Sechin and Carter Page about a stake in Rosneft in return for the lifting of sanctions. It is therefore quite possible that he was murdered as a reprisal, most likely, like the former KGB/FSB defector Alexander Litvinenko before him, on the orders of another ex-KGB man, the president of Russia. As they say, the plot thickens.
On February 9, no fewer than nine separate current or former members of US intelligence agencies revealed to reporters of the Washington Post that Donald Trump’s National Security adviser, Mike Flynn, had indeed discussed the future of Ukrainian-inspired sanctions with the Russian Ambassador, Sergey Kislyak, in their several telephone communications and texts at the time the Obama administration had expelled 35 Russian officials because of Russian hacking to influence the outcome of the presidential election. This article was significant for a number of reasons. It proved that several US intelligence officials were by now leaking freely against the Trump administration. It also showed that Flynn was both a fool and a liar. As a former Director of National Intelligence he should have been aware that the communications of the Russian Ambassador in Washington were routinely intercepted by US signals intelligence. By denying that he and Kislyak had discussed sanctions Flynn appears to have misled Trump’s Vice-President, Mike Pence, who flatly denied to journalists that in the phone communications between Flynn and Kislyak that sanctions had been discussed. There was however an amusing aspect to all this. In denying that sanctions had been discussed, the new regime’s media spokesman, Sean Spicer – the Comical Ali of the Trump administration – claimed that Flynn had merely conveyed Christmas greetings to Kislyak, apparently unaware that Russians celebrate Christmas not on December 25 but on January 7. On February 13, undefendable even according to the standards of the Trump administration, Flynn finally resigned.
On February 10, Jim Sciutto and Evan Perez of CNN reported a matter of great significance. US intelligence agencies had intercepted communications between Russians mentioned in the Steele dossier that confirmed that “some of the conversations described in the dossier took place between the same individuals on the same days and from the same locations as detailed in the dossier”. Two things follow from this. Unless several US intelligence officials are lying to CNN, the Steele dossier is not, as Trump, Putin and Assange have all claimed, a fake. Even more importantly, the report confirms what the Washington Post at the same time revealed, namely that members of US intelligence, most likely from the National Security Agency, are presently sufficiently alarmed about what the substance of the Steele dossier reveals about the relations between the Trump campaign team and the Putin regime that they are openly, under conditions of anonymity, beginning to leak details of their overseas communications interceptions to the US media.
On February 19, the New York Times reported that a week before General Michael Flynn resigned as Donald Trump’s National Security Adviser – after lying to Vice President Pence over the subject matter of his December 29 discussions with Russian Ambassador, Kislyak – an intriguing meeting took place in the luxury Loews Regency Hotel in Manhattan. A once jailed Russian-born American businessman and an associate of Trump with a former connection to the Mafia, Felix H Sater, and an aspiring pro-Russian Ukrainian politician, Andrii V Artemenko, an associate of Paul Manafort’s pro-Yanukovytch group, who has spent two and a half years in prison in Kiev on embezzlement charges, handed Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, a sealed Ukrainian peace plan. Cohen agreed to deliver the plan to Michael Flynn. As Cohen put it, “Who doesn’t want to bring about peace?” The plan involved the removal of Russian forces from Eastern Ukraine in return for a referendum in Ukraine to determine whether Crimea should be leased to Russia for fifty or one hundred years. The plan was premised on the removal of the current President of Ukraine, Petro Poroshenko, accused by Sater, Artemenko and Cohen of corruption. The Times reported that the plan had the support of Putin, and that from Artemenko’s point of view, someone regarded by many Ukrainians as “untrustworthy” and “corrupt”, that it might represent a means by which he could replace Poroshenko as the new pro-Russian President of Ukraine.
Not long after, Donald Trump described the free liberal press in America as “the enemy of the people”.
that is even more than i thought…
And it doesn’t sound fake at all.
Penalty rates protester at Bill Shorten press conference will not lose a cent from cuts.
A worker who stood alongside Opposition Leader Bill Shorten complaining the penalty cuts would cost him $109 a week is a Labor Party member and will not lose a dollar.
The Fair Work Commission (FWC) decided to reduce penalty rates for some Sunday shifts in retail, hospitality and fast food.
The decision was met with fury by the union movement and the Labor party.
Sydney man Trent Hunter stepped up with Mr Shorten and Opposition employment spokesman Brendan O’Connor to humanise the cost of the commission’s decision.
“I will now lose $109 a week, that is insane. I rely on the penalty rates to make ends meet and to pay for my fuel, my rent and to pay for my food.”
Supermarket giant Coles contacted the ABC this afternoon to say Mr Hunter was one of their employees.
“Store team members at Coles are employed under an enterprise agreement and therefore are unaffected by today’s decision.”
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-02-23/man-with-bill-shorten-decrying-penalty-rate-cuts-alp-member/8298334
Bill Shorten said last year that he would support any decrease to penalty rates because the FWC is an independent tribunal. I heard the interview this morning that was replayed from an interview around April/May last year.
We are also protected by an enterprise agreement. Did you know you’re able to look up any company’s agreement on the Fair Work website?
As for people who will lose money, Australia will have no choice but to follow America and allow tipping as a widespread practice.
Divine Angel said:
We are also protected by an enterprise agreement. Did you know you’re able to look up any company’s agreement on the Fair Work website?As for people who will lose money, Australia will have no choice but to follow America and allow tipping as a widespread practice.
tipping. :(
Divine Angel said:
We are also protected by an enterprise agreement. Did you know you’re able to look up any company’s agreement on the Fair Work website?As for people who will lose money, Australia will have no choice but to follow America and allow tipping as a widespread practice.
Pretty sure it is allowed now, just no one does it apart from good restaurant meals and even then it is usually for above and beyond, not just ordinary.
Divine Angel said:
We are also protected by an enterprise agreement. Did you know you’re able to look up any company’s agreement on the Fair Work website?As for people who will lose money, Australia will have no choice but to follow America and allow tipping as a widespread practice.
Fuck that. I’m not tipping.
people tip in the USA because the service industry wages are shocking. When I worked in a bar, I made more in tips than I did in wages, but it was about the same as what I would have made in wages here.
Arts said:
people tip in the USA because the service industry wages are shocking. When I worked in a bar, I made more in tips than I did in wages, but it was about the same as what I would have made in wages here.
it equates, yes but only if they aren’t deadshits and do tip.
I’d hate to see it get that way here.
I don’t think we should start tipping. It means extra cost for the consumer. Prices won’t go down as a resuklt of this.
roughbarked said:
Arts said:
people tip in the USA because the service industry wages are shocking. When I worked in a bar, I made more in tips than I did in wages, but it was about the same as what I would have made in wages here.
it equates, yes but only if they aren’t deadshits and do tip.
I’d hate to see it get that way here.
I have a good relationship in the places I shop. They love to see me come in to spend money. They treat me like part of the family. I do the same when they come to the shop I work in. We are all here to serve.
party_pants said:
I don’t think we should start tipping. It means extra cost for the consumer. Prices won’t go down as a resuklt of this.
I chatted with a woolies person in charge of the booze section about taxes on alcohol. Said we pay too much tax. Someone could win an election on this.. He said.. Nothing would change once woolies know how much you will pay.
party_pants said:
I don’t think we should start tipping. It means extra cost for the consumer. Prices won’t go down as a resuklt of this.
to be fair, th prices fo things in the US wrt food an beverages are comparatively cheaper… or at least the meals are much much bigger wrt to portion size
Arts said:
party_pants said:
I don’t think we should start tipping. It means extra cost for the consumer. Prices won’t go down as a resuklt of this.to be fair, th prices fo things in the US wrt food an beverages are comparatively cheaper… or at least the meals are much much bigger wrt to portion size
these things are indeed all relative.
dv said:
Maddow: The Russia ConnectionIntriguing, worth watching the first 19 mins at least
tauto said:
dv said:
Maddow: The Russia ConnectionIntriguing, worth watching the first 19 mins at least
For those without the patience to watch the video
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/feb/27/commerce-nominee-wilbur-ross-bank-of-cyprus-putin
an update from Manne 10/3 /17
On February 21, and thereafter, Donald Trump described the free liberal press in America responsible for investigating the question of the relations between his campaign team and Russia during the presidential election campaign, as “the enemy of the people”. No one can be certain whether or not Trump is aware of the sinister connotations of a phrase that was used by the chief prosecutor, Andrey Vyshinsky, at the height of the Stalinist show trials of 1936-1938, as a justification for one of the greatest political acts of mass murder in the history of the twentieth century. Shortly after describing the news outlets reporting the links between his campaign team and the Putin regime as enemies of the people, Trump’s press secretary, Sean Spicer, banned a number of these enemies — the New York Times, CNN, BuzzFeed, Politico and others — from a daily press gaggle, to which conservative outlets like Breitbart, the Washington Times and Fox News were invited, a move that even Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal condemned.
Perhaps as alarmingly, the New York Times reported on February 24 that the White House invited the director of the FBI, James Comey, and other intelligence officers, to publish statements repudiating the reports of the multiple connections between the Trump team and the Putin regime which the FBI, among several other bodies, including the intelligence committees on both houses of the US Congress, are currently investigating. Shortly after, on February 28, the Washington Post reported that the FBI had been so concerned about the information contained in the Christopher Steele dossier that prior to the presidential election it had considered paying Steele a retainer after his contract with Fusion GPS had lapsed, to enable him to continue his research. Christopher Steele is still in hiding, perhaps in fear of his life. E J Dionne in the Washington Post suggested that the US Attorney-General, Jeff Sessions, who was deeply involved in the Trump presidential campaign, should recuse himself from the present investigation.
Having admitted that he had twice met with Ambassador Kislyak despite formal denials under oath Attorney-General Sessions, apparently without referring the matter to the President, recused himself from any future investigation into the relations between the Trump election campaign team and Russia.
On March 4, as an apparent distraction from his Russian troubles, President Trump launched a Breitbart based accusation, without evidence, on Twitter and Fox News, that in the final days of the presidential campaign President Obama had ordered a wire-tap of Trump’s campaign headquarters in clear breach of the law. The claim was hotly denied by the former head of the Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, while the present director of the FBI, James Comey, requested a formal denial of the charge from the Department of Justice, with which it failed to comply. Unnoticed by the mainstream media, the best-informed journalist on the Trump business real estate empire and its links with Russian finance, James Henry, published a very detailed article that revealed that Trump’s newly endorsed Secretary of Commerce, Wilbur Ross, has been since 2013 the Vice-Chairman of and chief investor in the Bank of Cyprus, perhaps the most important repository of the funds of several members of the current Russian kleptocracy closely linked to President Putin.
In the Steele dossier memo of September 14, it was reported that longstanding close financial and political links dating back to the 1990s existed between President Putin and the Russian Alpha (sic) Bank, whose leaders — Fridman, Aven and Khan — were “still giving informal advice to Putin, especially on the US”, via an intermediary, Oleg Govorun, head of one of the current departments of the presidential administration. On March 9, CNN reported that material leaked from the internet showed that from May 4 to September 23 2016, on 2,820 occasions the Russian Alfa Bank looked up the email address of one of the Trump Organization’s servers, which comprised 80% of the total number of such inquiries during that period. The unexplained oddity, for which a variety of theories had been advanced, was presently being investigated by the FBI.
March 10 2017