Busting the Big Lie: NO URANIUM WAS SOLD TO THE RUSSIANS!!!

For more than a year, the Republicans -- desperate to divert attention away from the Trump/Russia scandal -- have been pushing an insane story that Hillary Clinton approved a sale of American uranium to Russia in exchange for a massive donation to the Clinton Foundation.

This tale is a huge lie. The best, most measured, most detailed response I've seen so far was by Paul Rosenzweig, formerly of the Department of Homeland Security. Since that piece is long and filled with detail, I shall summarize. I shall also draw from FactCheck.Org and from Crooked.Com.

1. Uranium One was a Canadian firm. As you might have guessed, they were -- and are -- in the business of mining uranium, and they operate in many different countries. Subsidiaries own mines in the U.S. -- specifically, in Wyoming, which produces a very small amount of the world's uranium. 

2. ARMZ, a subsidiary of a Russian firm called Rosatom (an arm of the government), bought 51% of Uranium One in 2010.

3. The deal required approval from all countries in which Uranium One did business. Incidentally, most of that business was done outside the U.S., because this country does not produce a lot of uranium.

4. CFIUS (Committee on Foreign Investments in the United States) is the inter-agency body that had to approve the deal; the purpose of this group is to protect our national security interests. CFUIS includes representatives from the State Department, Treasury, DHS, Justice, the Department of Defense, and the intelligence community. For obvious reasons, this particular deal also went to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for approval.

5. Civil servants from each department study these deals and hash out the details. The "big cheeses" who head up these departments rarely deal with this stuff. Ultimately, the president signs off on their work. The vast majority of these deals go through.

6. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission "took point" on the Uranium One deal. They didn't have a problem with it. The other departments followed the NRC's lead.

7. Why didn't the NRC have a problem with it? Simple: All mining licenses in the United States were held by U.S. subsidiary companies controlled by United States citizens.

Here is the key sentence from the NRC's review:

Neither Uranium One nor ARMZ holds an NRC export license, so no uranium produced at either facility may be exported.

Repeat: NO AMERICAN URANIUM WAS SOLD TO RUSSIA. No uranium scooped out of Wyoming's earth ever left our borders. (Added note: The uranium from Wyoming is NOT weapons grade.)

The Republicans keep saying that American uranium was sold to Russia. The Republicans are filthy liars.

Has Trump changed the situation in Wyoming? No. He has done nothing to force Uranium One to divest, because he is not interested in Uranium One except insofar as it can be used to slam Hillary. Trump knows full well that no uranium ever went to Russia. He knows that this entire tale is a Big Lie.

8. Hillary had no part in this. As per usual, a lower-level functionary in the State Department (his name was Jose Fernandez) signed off on the deal after the NRC gave its blessing. Same goes for the other departments. By the way: Nobody in the intelligence community had a problem with the deal.

9. What about that big donation to the Clinton Foundation? Almost all of that money came from one man who used to be a partial owner of Uranium One. He parted ways from that company years before Rosatom decided to buy in. Need I add that the Clinton Foundation is not a slush fund?  It is a charity -- one of the most transparent, open, hyper-scrutinized, honest, efficient and beneficial charities in the history of the world.

10. Disgraced "reporter" John Solomon brought the story back into the news. Solomon formerly worked for Reverend Moon's propaganda sheet, the Washington Times. He has a history of pushing GOP-friendly tripe, and although his stories may look like real journalism at first, they tend to crash and crumble. Back in 2007, the Columbia Journalism Review compiled a hilarious review of Solomon's humiliating record.

And that's it.

The whole thing is just another Big Lie -- a lie designed to hornswoggle Disgruntled Loser Boys who, unable to take responsibility for their own failures in life, seek solace in spewing hate at the Clintons, America's scapegoats. Did they repossess your car, Loser Boy? Blame Hillary. Evicted from your apartment? Blame Hillary. Wife left you? Definitely blame Hillary!

Wake up, Disgruntled Loser Boys. Aren't you sick of being lied to by Republican propagandists? They've been doing this shit for decades: Travelgate, Whitewater, Vince Foster, the Clinton "death list," Benghazi, the email server, on and on and on. These smears never survive examination from sites like FactCheck. Don't you ever get sick of being played for fools?

Why Trump wants climate change

You can make a killing in an apocalypse. Trump knows this.

Via DU, I learned about this astounding WSJ Report: Trump wants the United States to purchase Greenland.

In meetings, at dinners and in passing conversations, Mr. Trump has asked advisers whether the U.S. can acquire Greenland, listened with interest when they discuss its abundant resources and geopolitical importance, and, according to two of the people, has asked his White House counsel to look into the idea.

A DU reader directs our attention to this Russian article from 2009, which, if you can look past the bias, is verrrrrry interesting:

However, it is too early to speak about Greenland’s independence. Oil is the corner stone of the issue: there are billions of barrels of oil near the island’s coast. Permafrost used to be the major obstacle for the development of the oil industry in Greenland. However, ice continues to melt in the region because of the global warming phenomenon, which opens new horizons for world’s oil giants.

Who says there's no truth in Pravda? In 2009, Trump's Russian pals were quite willing to stipulate the existence of global warming. Putin has changed his tune since then, but only for propaganda purposes.

All of this should be seen in the context of various stories which seem to have gone straight down the memory hole. These stories have one bottom line: Russia and China see big money in climate change. Why China? Because they want to ship goods without going through any canals.

From the NYT, in 2012:

With Arctic ice melting at record pace, the world’s superpowers are increasingly jockeying for political influence and economic position in outposts like this one, previously regarded as barren wastelands.

At stake are the Arctic’s abundant supplies of oil, gas and minerals that are, thanks to climate change, becoming newly accessible along with increasingly navigable polar shipping shortcuts. This year, China has become a far more aggressive player in this frigid field, experts say, provoking alarm among Western powers.

While the United States, Russia and several nations of the European Union have Arctic territory, China has none, and as a result, has been deploying its wealth and diplomatic clout to secure toeholds in the region.

Foreign Policy, last year:

Put simply, “the damn thing melted,” Navy Secretary Richard Spencer explained in recent testimony, referring to Arctic ice melt as the trigger for the new U.S. Navy Arctic Strategy that is to be released this summer. What the Navy planned as a 16-year road map is in need of updates after only four years, in part due to receding polar ice caps, which are “opening new trade routes, exposing new resources, and redrawing continental maps,” but also in part due to the rise of China as an “Arctic stakeholder” and increasing important player in the region.

Now go here:

Whereas US President Donald Trump questions the reality of climate change, Russia takes a more pragmatic approach. Because of rising temperatures, the Russian half of the Arctic Circle is becoming accessible to ships much more quickly than the US-Canadian side.

By betting on the diminishing ice sheet, Russia has taken several steps to get ahead of the game in terms of infrastructure and partners. It has commissioned a new generation of icebreakers capable of cutting through 7-foot-thick ice sheets, upgraded its Siberian ports, built a new $27-million facility on the Yamal Peninsula, invested in the biggest Arctic liquefied natural gas (LNG) project and built a railway from the LNG plant to Sabetta Port, which expands Arctic trade to Europe, China and South Korea.

The Arctic is a promising economic region for Russia, and the melting ice has many implications. First, it increases Russia’s access to international trade, which was limited previously by the lack of seaports. Remember, the Great Game was all about Russia’s quest for warm waters, which led to conflict with the British Empire. Second, Russia ensures its national stability by maintaining oil and gas production. With more accessible Arctic seaports, Russia might emerge as a more prosperous and cohesive state.

Now check out this article, headlined "Moscow’s response to climate change: Bring it on."

Recent reports in the Russian media, as well as public studies and documents published by government ministries and science services suggest Moscow – rather than embracing alternative energies or working to slash carbon emissions – is looking at ways to take global warming in stride, if not profit from it.

Nowhere is this strategy more apparent than in the Russian Arctic, where Moscow sees an economic boom on the horizon, ushered in by rising temperatures and melting ice

But Russia is embracing the warmth. President Vladimir Putin has long been on record both questioning that humans are responsible for climate change, and asserting that global warming is part of a natural cycle that would benefit the Russian economy.

He also once famously declared that climate change would mean Russians would save money on fur coat and boost the wheat harvest in Siberia. That statement, in 2016, sparked an investment boom in Russian farmland as Moscow’s financial class placed bets on thawing permafrost yielding arable land.

Russian industry is following the lead. Just before Christmas, the Yamal LNG project – a $27 billion natural gas effort above the Arctic Circle – reached full capacity, thanks in large part to speculation that warming temperatures will ease polar hydrocarbon shipments from the icy roof of the world.

Rosatom, Russia’s nuclear energy corporation, now has oversight of the Northern Sea Route – the 6,000 kilometer East-West Arctic sea corridor – which heralds a build-out of far northern ports and other key infrastructure on the backs of an expanding nuclear icebreaker fleet.

Incidentally, there are still some ninnies out there who hold Hillary Clinton personally responsible for Rosatom's ownership of an American uranium mine. (She didn't do it.) Newsflash: Rosatom still owns that mine -- even though the law allows Trump to force a divestment. Trump is the best friend Rosatom has in the west.

And last year Putin not so much hoped as ordered that cargo traffic being shipped through the Arctic increase to 80 million tons a year – a fourfold hike over currently levels – in a bid to turn the Northern Sea Route into a polar rival to the Suez Canal. International shippers have begun to test the waters. Last summer, Danish shipper Maersk, sent a container ship from Busan, Korea to St. Petersburg by way of the arctic.

Take a look at the map at the top of this post, which illustrates how global warming has already impacted the economies of various nations. The map comes from here. India, Africa and the Americas are being hit hard. Russia benefits. The map comes from here.

One recent study showed that even in the United States, economic disparities are projected to grow between warmer, relatively low-income regions in the south and cooler, relatively wealthy regions in the north. The specific drivers of the disparities identified in the study were agriculture, crime, coastal storms, energy use, human mortality and labor.

Bottom line: China wants to ship its products to Europe without going through the Suez canal. That's why Putin wants to open up an alternative Arctic route. That's one reason why climate change will aid both China and Russia.

The other reason, of course, is the fact that receding permafrost will expose vast energy resources.

And now you know why Trump doesn't want this country to look into solar, wind power, fuel cells, or even nuclear alternatives.

So why does Trump covet Greenland? I think he understands the new coming economic reality, and he wants his own piece of the prize -- a small piece, not enough to bother Putin. My mind immediately flashed on a scene from Superman II, in which Luthor offers to help Zod conquer Earth. What does Luthor hope to get out of it? "Australia!"

It's an almost-perfect metaphor: Putin is Zod, Trump is Luthor (including the permanent bad hair day), and Greenland is Australia. Unfortunately, we have no Superman.

I STILL say: "Lock him up!"

Okay, I admit it: I offered a characteristically pessimistic prophecy, and I was wrong. Yesterday morning, I believed that Flynn has been pissing up Mueller's leg this whole time. Yesterday morning, I believed that Mueller would say "Throw the book at him." Yesterday morning, I believed that Flynn would then receive a pardon which would signal the Trumpocalypse.

But I was wrong. Michael Flynn has cooperated with Mueller, who has rewarded him with a recommendation of zero prison time.

(Why did Mueller choose this moment to reveal that document, I wonder? A poser for another time, perhaps.)

Nevertheless, cynicism remains the wisest course. Forecast the worst and all your surprises will be happy ones. In this case, I'm both happy and troubled. Despite the promising news, something doesn't feel right. Something is wrong.

For months, we have had plenty of reasons to suspect that Flynn had not really flipped. Here are seven of those reasons:

1. Neither "President" Trump nor Trump-friendly media attacked the man (aside from that one early anti-Flynn outburst at the National Enquirer).

2. Sean Hannity -- Trump's tongue -- called for Flynn to be pardoned.

3. There were news stories indicating that Flynn was playing the role of Johnny Tightlips.

4. The Russians had control of Flynn. When he was head of the DIA, they caught him in a classic honeytrap. I don't know if his relationship with that woman was sexual, and I don't really care. The important point is that Flynn was entangled -- intellectually, emotionally, personally -- with someone who, in the opinion of many, has deep links to Russian intelligence.

5. Flynn was a consultant on a project to build nuclear reactors in Russia. In other words, Flynn went into his arrangement with Mueller knowing that the Russian money spigot would one day flow again, if he protected Trump.

(That's right: Nuclear reactors. Yet the right still peddles their big lie about Hillary and those two American uranium mines owned by Rosatom -- mines which sold no uranium to Russia, and which do not produce weapons-grade uranium. By the way, Trump still has done nothing about Russian ownership of those mines, even though he has the power to force divestment.)

6. Flynn faced a single count of lying to the FBI. Maximum sentence: A measly six months. Afterward, Flynn could go back to working for Putin.

7. Here's the most important tell: Michael Flynn Jr.'s Twitter feed has continued to be a toxic waste dump for all things MAGA -- far-right conspiracy theories and Alt Right talking points. It's fair to presume that the son and the father are in constant communication.

I've kept an eye on that feed for months. My reasoning: If Flynn ever did turn -- if he revealed anything to endanger the Trump presidency -- then the feed would reflect that fact. If Papa told Junior that Trump was going down, Junior would stop doing the MAGA dance and admit that the jig is up.

Was that an illogical presumption? No, it was not.

Thus, when news of Mueller's paperwork reached my ears, my first thought was: Check the feed. As it turns out, what Junior had to say was verrrrrry EENteresting. (I doubt that many of you are old enough to recall Arte Johnson, but someone has to keep these ancient pop cultural memes alive.)

Here is what Junior tweeted at 6:06 PM on December 4. The sentencing memo was not yet released to the public at that time, but it seems clear that Junior knew of the contents.

God is good.

To those who have supported us throughout this process.... Thank you from the bottom of my heart. I will never forget you.

He opens with the traditional Islamic salutation? How droll!

Some of the responses came from lefties doing a premature victory dance. Example:

First: if there was no crime to give #Mueller info on, why did your daddy meet 19 times with Special Prosecutors? Second: you should be damn thankful your dad saved your sorry ass

There were also responses from QAnon types who believe that Donnie DummKopf is capable of 11-dimensional chess...

WHY did Mueller have a 30 minute meeting WITH Trump the day before the investigation started? He wasn’t eligible for FBI Dierector. Hmmmm. Trump said, “you’re facing charges for U1, and you better look at both sides.” Trump has trolled once again, magically! Pain is incoming!

And so on.

What troubles me is a Junior tweet from the day before, December 3. At that time, everyone knew that this sentencing memo was about to drop, although we did not know what it would say. Junior offered these ominous words:

“Let your plans be dark and impenetrable as night, and when you move, fall like a thunderbolt.” ― Sun Tzu, The Art of War

The implication is that Flynn Senior has been pulling a fast one all this time. The implication is that Flynn has been playing a deceptive game with Mueller, pretending to cooperate while withholding the real shit. The implication is that Flynn has been coordinating with Team Trump -- which would explain why MAGA media has been so pro-Flynn.

Naturally, the right responded to this tweet with its own tribal war dance. You know the drill: Triumphalist shouts of "WWG1WGA" and all that rot.

However, I did admire this response:

Rule of thumb for most of us w/ real jobs; if you see the art of war on the shelf, walk out.

Dunno about you, but I got sick of this Sun Tzu shit back in the '80s.

On the same date, Junior retweeted Jack Posobiec, Princeling of Conspiracyland:

Daily reminder that General Flynn was illegally unmasked and no one went to jail for it

In other words, the real crime was the exposure of Flynn's crime. Here we see a classic example of the IOIYAF philosophy. (It's Okay If You're A Fascist.)

All in all, I remain unnerved, unsatisfied and very un-optimistic. Yes, I know that Michael Flynn supposedly helped the Mueller probe. We are also told that Flynn aided a separate criminal case, about which we know almost nothing. (Marcy tries her best to parse what little info we have, but even she can't do much when facing a sea of black rectangles.) There also seems to be a third case, although the experts seem unsure as to whether this third case even exists, thanks to the heavy censorship of the document.

Side note: Why bother with the redactions? Whitaker can see this document, and he will blab all to Team Trump. Why hide the info from the American people when the target of the probe can see everything?

(How I long for the old days of monospace fonts, which allowed one to count the spaces and guess at the blacked-out names. Old-school anti-spook activists had a lot of fun playing that game.)

My bottom line: Flynn should not walk. In fact, he should be investigated ruthlessly, and perhaps charged with truly serious crimes. Like espionage. Treason.

I'll say it again: Flynn was the head of the DIA and he was compromised in a classic Russian honeytrap.

That is the real reason why Obama fired him. Obama should have brought charges against him. No, I can't prove cause and effect, but the chronology is damned troubling: After Flynn was compromised, Putin went on a bloody rampage to eradicate moles in his own system -- and Putin has also gone hunting for defectors outside of Russia.

Where did Putin get that information? Does America have any defense secrets left?

No outsider knows what Flynn has said to Mueller, but I strongly doubt that Flynn told him everything. Dunno about you, but that Sun-Tzu quote bugs the shit out of me. It tells me that Michael Flynn has been playing a very deceptive game all along.

The Ukraine scandal deepens: Identifying the whistleblower and more

Both Rudy Giuliani and now Ukrainian official Anton Geraschenko have confirmed that this is a cash-for-trash deal: American taxpayers will give Ukraine cash if Ukraine offers "evidence" intended to trash the Biden family.

“Clearly,” said Geraschenko, “Trump is now looking for kompromat to discredit his opponent Biden, to take revenge for his friend Paul Manafort, who is serving seven years in prison.”

Toward the end of August, the White House reportedly was considering whether to block $250 million of funds to support Ukraine’s military in its war against Russian-backed separatists. On Sept. 12, however, that funding was released, and even increased. Congressional pressure played a role, and it is unclear whether the whistleblower’s reported “promise” allegations, made soon after the Zelensky phone call, did as well.

Oh, it's plenty clear to me. I just hope that the American people understand that the pay-off destroys the credibility of the Ukrainian "evidence." This is why we don't allow murder trials to turn on the testimony of witnesses who get millions if they say what the prosecution wants them to say. 

Trump, in his press conference (if we can call it that), proclaimed that the whistleblower was party to an Evil Dem plot. He also claimed not to know who the whistleblower was. Obviously, both statements cannot be true -- unless someone can come up with a scenario whereby one can learn motive but not identity.

In a tweet, Trump said that his phone conversation was "perfectly fine and respectful." Then why the cover-up?

The most frightening aspect of this entire affair may be the assertion of both the Acting DNI and the Justice Department that they can hide the findings of a (Trump-appointed) Inspector General. The IG is the equivalent of Internal Affairs in a police department. Obviously, if a police chief were allowed to squelch Internal Affairs, corruption would reign supreme.

Hell, why doesn't Trump just allow the IG to present his evidence to Congress? Trump must know that it's all going to come out anyways -- besides, he and Giuliani have already pretty much debagged the cat.

I couldn't stomach much of Rudy's drunken antics on teevee, but his "You're goddamned right I ordered the code red" confession was pretty damned memorable. Actual Rudy quote:

"You want to cover some RIDICULOUS CHARGE that I urged the Ukranian government to investigate corruption. Well, I DID. AND I'M PROUD OF IT."

My god. Even the Trumpiest Trumpers must have cringed at that one.

Rudy's attempts to "prove" that the Bidens got up to perfidy in Ukraine are, of course, provably inane.

Is the whistleblower known? I mean, is the name known to people with better connections than I?

"Highly partisan" whistleblower? You appointed him, genius. https://t.co/uXETpib63L

— Joe Conason (@JoeConason) September 20, 2019

Conason here strongly suggests that he knows the name. At least, he seems to know the right pronoun to use (ruling out Susan Gordon) and he knows that Trump appointed him.

China syndrome. Rudy stated that Hunter Biden got "billions" from China. Where's the evidence that the Biden family has anywhere near that kind of money? The right has been pushing this nonsense for months now -- for example, here's Peter Schwiezer, the man who gave us the "Hillary and Rosatom" Big Lie.

Watch Schweizer. He always signals the modes of attack which will dominate the next election.

Here he is peddling the same crap for the New York Post. This isn't the place for a point-by-point takedown, so let's look at just one paragraph. In the following, BHR refers to Bohia Harvest, a Chinese investment company.

Finally, in 2015, BHR joined forces with a subsidiary of Chinese state-owned military aviation contractor Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC) to buy American precision-parts manufacturer Henniges. Because Henniges manufactured technology with possible military applications, the transaction required approval by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States. CFIUS reviews are required for business transactions that have potential national security implications.

Newsflash: Henninges is an automotive company. Not a defense contractor. They make parts for luxury cars. Sneaky Schweizer didn't tell you that.

But even if Henninges were a defense contractor, one fact would be beyond dispute: Schweizer is pulling the same sneaky trick he pulled when he tried to make the Rosatom deal look like something it wasn't. On both the right and the left, nobody but me bothered to ask the obvious question: If Rosatam's ownership of two American uranium mines is so damned intolerable, then why didn't Trump force divestment? He has that right.

Same shit; different election. If BHR shouldn't own Henninges, why hasn't Trump forced a divestment?

Here's how you can tell whether Peter Schweizer is a real investigator or a partisan hit man: If Schweizer is sincerely concerned about these foreign investments -- if he's concerned about principle rather than party -- why has he not offered one word of complaint concerning Trump's years of inaction? Why hasn't he mentioned divestment, as I have?

The truth is, neither Trump nor Schweizer truly cares about these issues except insofar as they provide fodder for anti-Dem smear jobs.

Almost needless to say, Schweizer's attempt to connect Hunter Biden to BHR is really, really strained. Read it for yourself.

Frankly, it's ridiculous to suggest that the non-Trump media is covering up for Biden. If you watch MSNBC or CNN at all, you'll get the strong sense that there are many on-air personalities who would love to knock Joe Biden out of the race now. If Hunter Biden had done something wrong, Chis Hayes or Rachel Maddow would be the first to tell you. I'm pretty damned sure that they would prefer Warren. And if they refuse to do the job, then the task would be -- eagerly, gratefully -- taken up by one of the many pro-Warren or pro-Sanders writers/reporters out there.

But...no. When it comes Schweizer's allegations, even fucking Salon won't go there. Nobody touches Schweizer's shit because it is, in fact, shit.

Ukraine, Russia and Trump Here's Asha Rangappa:

But what the showdown is really about is the government’s inability to cope with an unprecedented problem: what to do when the president of the United States poses a national security threat.

And this leads us back to the Mueller investigation. Rangappa reminds of something that most people prefer to forget: The Mueller report did not tell us anything about the FBI's counterintelligence investigation. That's the truly important part -- yet it remains a Big Damn Secret. Why?

The final report lays out only the decisions to charge or not charge individuals based on the evidence collected, noting only briefly that counterintelligence information was shared with the FBI for use in its (presumably ongoing) classified investigation. As a result, the public remains in the dark on whether Trump may be wittingly or unwittingly compromised in his dealings with Russia, or if the FBI and the intelligence community have information to explain his oddly submissive behavior with world leaders like Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Very few people seem to know what’s going on with the counterintelligence investigation: Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), the House Intelligence Committee chairman, has said that his panel doesn’t know the status of the probe, or even if it’s still going on, even though the law requires the administration to keep the lawmakers up to date.

But counterintelligence investigations are stymied if they involve the president.

As she correctly notes, if anyone in the intelligence community becomes the subject of such an investigation, that person is simply stripped of his or her security clearance and assigned to a less-sensitive job. You can't do that to a president.

Worse, Trump exercises an almost unlimited power to control the investigators.

And because the procedure for handling whistleblower complaints related to intelligence doesn’t address — or really even contemplate — what might happen if the president is endangering national security, there’s plenty of room for the chief executive to cloak unlawful actions in presidential authority, making them harder to detect. The president, by virtue of his office, can easily “go dark” when it comes to conversations with foreign leaders, even if he makes promises or assurances that run contrary to the interests of the United States or even place the country in danger. Without oversight or accountability, neither Congress nor the public has a way to know, for example, if the president is using his powers as leverage for a country to confer a benefit to him personally or to undermine the integrity of our democratic processes in his favor.

Barr NO! Here's the dirt others won't talk about: Terror, money laundering, drug flights and the CIA

Today is going to be a pig of a news day. Whatever happens, do not ignore the following. Spread the information as far as you can. We can't allow the truth to go down the memory hole.

It's official: Trump has chosen William Barr as his AG. Why did Trump ally himself with someone closely associated with the Bush clan, even though that clan is hated by most Alt Righties? Because Barr has signaled that he wants to pursue the imaginary conspiracy theory involving Hillary Clinton and Rosatom.

This earlier Cannonfire post completely demolishes that theory. I note that Trump still has not forced those two Rosatom-owned uranium mines in the US to divest. He has the legal authority to do so, but he hasn't. And he won't do it until someone makes a big stink about the flagrant hypocrisy. That fact alone tells you that Trump doesn't give a damn about this pseudo-scandal except insofar as he can use it against Hillary. Ginning up a new Clinton pseudoscandal will, Trump hopes, deflect the public's attention from his own very real treason.

Barr also favors incarcerating people found guilty of minor drug offenses -- a ploy designed to keep blacks out of the voting pool. (That was the real purpose of his "weed and seed" program. Anyone else remember that?)

Barr thinks that Trump "made the right call" in firing Comey, and he has criticized the Mueller probe as partisan.

Barr and pardons. There's also the matter of pardons. Barr believes in 'em, big time, especially when it comes to hobbling a special counsel looking into the crimes of a Republican president.

Read this WP piece from 1992 and you'll be reminded of why we all hated Poppy -- and why some of us felt like tossing our cookies while watching MSNBC's days-long outburst of Bush-worship. Remember this...?

But in a single stroke, Mr. Bush swept away one conviction, three guilty pleas and two pending cases, virtually decapitating what was left of Mr. Walsh's effort, which began in 1986. Mr. Bush's decision was announced by the White House in a printed statement after the President left for Camp David, where he will spend the Christmas holiday.

Mr. Walsh bitterly condemned the President's action, charging that "the Iran-contra cover-up, which has continued for more than six years, has now been completed."

Mr. Walsh directed his heaviest fire at Mr. Bush over the pardon of Mr. Weinberger, whose trial would have given the prosecutor a last chance to explore the role in the affair of senior Reagan officials, including Mr. Bush's actions as Vice President.

Charles Pierce recalls the bad old days:

You see, under President Poppy, there was this thing called Iraqgate—which is not to be confused with the Iran-Contra scandal, in which President Poppy also was hip-deep. In this episode, a tangled mess if there ever was one, it was suggested that the Poppy Bush administration was helping to arm Saddam Hussein's Iraq through a complicated scheme involving allegedly misused U.S. agricultural credits and a corrupt bank in Atlanta. This was somewhat embarrassing to Bush, as his administration was being accused of helping build the war machine that he'd sent American troops to destroy in Kuwait. The House Judiciary Committee asked that a special counsel be appointed. William Barr, then the Attorney General, refused to do so.

(Earlier, Barr also had refused to appoint a special counsel to look into the monumental money-laundering operation of the Bank of Commerce and Credit International, a massive scandal that only then-Senator John Kerry had the stones to take on.)

Soon, however, the charges morphed into accusations that the CIA and the Justice Department had meddled in the investigation into the aforementioned Atlanta bank. Now enmeshed in the controversy himself, Barr stepped aside and agreed to appoint a special prosecutor to look into that specific aspect of the situation. Nobody was satisfied and nothing ever came of the investigation. Once Bill Clinton became president, his DOJ closed the book on Iraqgate. It is not unfair to say that Barr's record is that of a Republican retainer, and not a disinterested law-enforcement official.

The BCCI scandal. Younger folk won't recall it, but it was huge in the 1990s. BCCI was a CIA-linked bank which handled tons of dope money and terror money. Later, we learned that BCCI played a role in the creation of Al Qaeda. Saudi billionaire Khalid bin Mahfouz owned one-fifth of BCCI and later funded Al Qaeda; the sister of a BCCI executive married Osama Bin Laden. See here:

Investigators have learned that Osama bin Laden was among those with accounts in a bank shut down in 1991 in one of the world's biggest banking scandals, Sen. John Kerry said Wednesday.

The Bank of Credit and Commerce International was closed after bank regulators around the globe linked it to fraud, theft, secret weapons deals, terrorist financing and drug-money laundering.

Congress wanted a special counsel, but Barr barred the way.

Basically, Barr did for BCCI precisely what Alexander Acosts did for Jeffrey Epstein: He reached a "sweetheart" plea deal. The miscreants pled to minor charges and received wrist slaps, while the Justice Department agreed that none of the evidence (much of which was collected by Customs) would be used in any future trial.

The whole thing stank. What Barr did was corrupt as hell -- all the moreso because he should have recused himself from the matter. From Rodney Stich's Defrauding America:

Before William Barr came to the Jutice Department, he was a lawyer with the Washington law firm of Shaw, Pittman, Pots & Trowbridge. This law firm represented BCCI for several years. A partner in the law firm, Kenly Webster, was representing a former BCCI chief executive, Swalch Naqvi, who had been indicted by a Manhattan grand jury on fraud, false accounting, money laundering and other charges.

Actually, Stich only scratches the surface. To learn the true depths of Barr's corruption, you have to start at the beginning.

Barr was a CIA lawyer. In fact, he was the CIA's counsel during Poppy Bush's tenure as Director of Central Intelligence and appeared with Bush during congressional hearings. It was a remarkable position for such a young man; Barr was then in his 20s. One wonders how he got the gig.

As noted above, BCCI -- owned by an Arab conglomerate -- did a lot of covert financial work for the CIA, a fact which neatly explains why they received a "get out of jail free" card from a CIA lawyer elevated into the AG position.

Too many people talk about Poppy Bush's presidency while ignoring his tenure at the CIA. He became DCI during a period of congressional investigations into the Agency's misdeeds; many of you will recall the heroic efforts of Otis Pike and Frank Church. Those investigations stopped under Bush -- and the man who kept Congress at bay was William Barr. Stonewalling was his job.

After Bush left CIA, Barr clerked for Judge Malcolm Wilkey, another jurist long connected the the Bush family. (The Bushes collect lawyers the way some rich people collect art.) Wilkey himself functioned as a special prosecutor in a now-forgotten scandal concerning the House Post Office, which was concocted to chasten a Democratic House.

In 1978, Wilkey was the one who arranged for Barr to join Shaw, Pittman, Potts & Trowbridge (now Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman), a firm with undeniable CIA links. This remarkable 1981 article ties the firm to CIA luminaries like Ted Shackley and Ed Wilson, not to mention EATSCO. (If you're an old-school spookwatcher like me, you must be nodding your head in recognition right now.)

Southern Air Transport. After Reagan won the 1980 election, Barr spent some time on his staff, then drifted back into allegedly private practice. Supposedly, he drew a salary from Shaw Pittman, but he actually worked for Southern Air Transport, perhaps the most notorious of the CIA's airlines. This Agency front company was at the heart of the Iran-Contra scandal; Southern Air flew the arms to Iran.

From Wikipedia:

The shooting down of an SAT flight in Nicaragua in October 1986 helped expose the Iran-Contra affair.[3] Additionally, SAT aircraft were spotted being loaded with cocaine in Colombia in the same time period.

One could write a long article about SAT links to the drug trade. For now, just keep this fact in mind: William Barr was SAT's attorney while all of this was going on.

How BCCI came to America. During his time with Shaw Pitman, one of Barr's clients was a wealthy Marylander named B.F. Saul II. He was the chairman of a bank: Financial General Bankshares. Barr directly represented that man and thus, that bank -- which soon changed its name to First American. It had 43 branches in New York City and 183 branches in DC. It was a big deal bank -- and a bunch of crooks (mostly from Saudi Arabia) took it over.

This takeover -- which most now say was quite illegal -- is arguably the key factor that put BCCI in the public eye. I realize that financial scandals tend to make eyes glaze over, but this section from Wikipedia may give you a flavor of what BCCI got up to.

In addition to violations of lending laws, BCCI was also accused of opening accounts or laundering money for figures such as Saddam Hussein, Manuel Noriega, Hussain Mohammad Ershad, and Samuel Doe,[11] and for criminal organizations such as the Medellin Cartel and Abu Nidal.[13] Police and intelligence experts nicknamed BCCI the "Bank of Crooks and Criminals International" for its penchant for catering to customers who dealt in arms, drugs, and hot money.[14]

William von Raab, a former U.S. Commissioner of Customs, also told the Kerry Committee that the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency held "several" accounts at BCCI. According to a 1991 article in Time magazine, the National Security Council also had accounts at BCCI, which were used for a variety of covert operations, including transfers of money and weapons for Iran-Contra.

Let it all sink in. Savor it. William Barr -- a CIA lawyer -- had helped this outrageously crooked enterprise take over a major American bank. BCCI got a free pass because it handled dirty money for the Agency.

Later, under Bush, Barr protected those involved with the BCCI scandal. Again: He should have recused himself, but he didn't.

Now, you'd think that a man with this kind of history would outrage the conspiratorial right. After all, right-wing conspiracy buffs say they hate the Bush family. Many of them also have a bug up their collective ass about Islam, so you'd think they'd be concerned about the fact that William Barr helped a conglomerate of crooked Saudis take over a major American bank. You'd think that people who caterwaul about the Deep State would be concerned about Barr's history as a CIA lawyer.

Nope.

The Trumpers will rationalize the choice of William Barr. After all, they rationalized Trump's hiring of Goldman Sachs alums to run the economy. (Into the ground, it would seem.)

As Barr faces Congress, keep the focus on his history as a spook lawyer. He handled all of the dirtiest assignments that the covert world has to offer.

The Barr choice proves what I've said all along: Trump would not be where he is without help from the American intelligence community, or at least from a faction therof. Most people now forget that Cambridge Analytica (a home-away-from-home for British spooks) did a lot of work for America's spooks.

(Yet people like Malcolm Nance and Louise Mensch still peddle a "spooks against Trump" scenario. It's bullshit.)

Young conspiracy buffs are infuriating. They chase after utter nonsense like Pizzagate and Qanon while ignoring the real shit. William Barr -- CIA lawyer, Trump's soon-to-be AG -- is Mr. Conspiracy; his resume is spookier than the Haunted Mansion. And the right will not care. The right doesn't mind using incredibly strained argumentation to link Hillary Clinton to BCCI (as evidenced by this laughable exercise) but they won't say a word about Barr's actual, provable, undeniable links to BCCI, Southern Air Transport, and Iran-Contra.

The supercilious silly-billies who worship Alex Jones will give Barr a pass because he can't be linked to Soros or the Clintons -- and because he now will devote all of his spooky skills to saving Donald Trump's guilty ass. 

Can Trump rig the stock market? How Russians are gaining financial control

Normally a headline like this would bode ill for both the stock market and the sitting president:

How Much Will the Trade War Cost You by the End of the Year?

Normally a headline like this would bode ill for both the stock market and the sitting president:

Oil Falls as Deepening Trade War Stokes Growth Concerns

Normally a headline like this would bode ill for both the stock market and the sitting president:

US-China trade war escalates as markets take another hit

But what if those headline writers are giving Trump just what he wants?

What if a very volatile stock market puts billions into the pockets of those who engineered Trump's rise to power? Russian oligarchs are the obvious culprits, but others might also be profiting.

Most people know about the eldritch financial phenomenon known as short selling, the mechanism by which an individual can make tons of cash by betting that a stock will go down. It's illegal to short the market based on inside information. Nevertheless, it happens all the time.

What if a market drop -- or a sharp market rise -- is engineered by the president himself? In essence, the president would be the ultimate inside trader. Note that Trump has gutted the SEC: See here.

Trump knows full well that he and he alone is the reason why the market has seen such astounding volatility during his administration. Under Obama, the market saw a slow, steady, boring rise. Through both word and deed, Trump has shaken things up like an eight-point quake.

Everyone knows that this man says things that no other president would say. It's as if he wants panic.

His funders/enablers/handlers can make money from both a sharp downtown and a sharp rise. What generates obscene wealth is financial violence; direction doesn't matter. "Slow and steady" doesn't win this race.

Something of the sort happened quite recently:

It looks like Trump lied about the trade war to boost stock markets — his bluster may soon start falling on 'deaf ears'

On Monday, Trump told reporters that he held "high-level talks" with China about the trade war, adding "this is the first time I've seen them where they really want to make a deal."

Global stocks instantly reversed what looked to be another day of heavy losses, following the Dow's 600 point drop on the previous Friday. His comments soothed anxious investors.

But China said that those talks never actually happened.

And yet, just days before:

Trump dropped one of his biggest bombshells yet on Friday, when he ordered U.S. companies to start seeking “an alternative to China” after Beijing imposed new tariffs on U.S. goods. The escalation of the U.S.-China trade war sent stocks reeling as the Dow Jones fell 623 points, or 2.4%, to 25,628.90, and the S&P 500 slumped 2.6%, to 2847.11.

The Trump family itself could be making insane profits from these drops and rises. Of course, the Trumps would have to hide their interest via cut-outs.

I'm hardly the first to contemplate this idea. On this forum, a contributor named Ross explains what short selling is and what a put option is.  He then adds:

It is pretty simple. Trump (or more likely, his minions) could easily "short" a company that would likely be hurt by his trade policies. This could include manufacturers (who pay more for steel or aluminum) or those likely to be hurt by reciprocal actions (e. g. Harley Davidson). Those companies may never regain their value, but Trump would make a bunch of money. As any investing book will tell you, trying to time the overall market won't get you that much money. But if you can time sectors, or individual stocks, you can make ridiculous sums.

There's already an app for this:

Software exploits presidential tantrums aimed at big biz

US President Donald Trump's tweets about Boeing, General Motors, and Toyota have affected the companies' stock price – and creative agency T3 believes that consequence will be repeated.

So the self-styled think tank created the Trump and Dump Bot to profit from presidential tweet-lashings. The bot shorts stocks based on the algorithmically detected sentiment expressed in the tweet – the assumption being that castigation by Trump will depress the value of the stock.

If the app makers have discovered how to profit from Trump's flapping gums, then we can reasonably presume that Russian oligarchs and other shady players got there first. Obviously, this app can't possibly generate the kind of wealth available to those who receive a "heads up" message days or weeks beforehand.

Could Russians profit from these manipulations? Yes. Indisputably.

A number of large-scale Russian holdings in the U.S. via private investment funds have already made the press, and many more likely remain unreported. The sanctioned Russian businessman Viktor Vekselberg invested in the U.S. through Columbus Nova, a private investment firm. Vekselberg’s company, Renova, was Columbus Nova’s largest client. LetterOne, the international investment group co-founded by the billionaire owners of Russia’s Alfa Group, maintains a U.S. office and over $2 billion of investments in the United States.

More about shady Russian investors. The next paragraph does not directly concern the topic of today's post, but it's definitely worth noting:

Altpoint Capital, the private equity firm of Russian billionaire Vladimir Potanin – who made his fortune in metals and mining– made the news recently because in 2015 it bought a company that has the contract to store Maryland’s statewide list of eligible voters on its servers. Governor Larry Hogan has stated that Maryland was unaware of Potanin’s ownership until informed by the FBI. The contract still appears to be in effect. The same company has also won data center work for the Department of Defense and the Department of Labor. Another data center company in which Altpoint has invested received an Energy Department contract last year.

And yet the red-capped sheeple continue to be upset by the Rosatom uranium deal, which they falsely blame on Hillary. Of course, Trump could have undone that deal with the stroke of a pen -- he has the authority to force a divestment -- but he has not done so. Instead, he is allowing Russians to buy up our elections systems and to gain access to scads of data from DOD and the Depart of Energy.

Classified data? Very likely. Worthy of investigation, I'd say.

Let's continue looking at this under-noticed article from last year:

Under the current framework, there are three main gaps related to private investment funds:[3]

Fund managers are not required to report or maintain records of the identities of the beneficial owners of the funds they manage. Fund managers are only required to report to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) the percentage of investors who are foreign, without disclosing their names or nationalities.

Fund managers are not required to disclose their investments in the United States. SEC rules generally mandate that fund managers disclose only positions in publicly traded stock.[4] Recently passed reforms to the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), which reviews foreign acquisitions for national security risk, will improve the U.S. government’s ability to block high-risk transactions that were previously outside the Committee’s purview, especially transactions in which foreign actors gain influence but not control over a U.S. company. Increased disclosure requirements for private investment funds would be complementary to, rather than duplicative of, the CFIUS process and would help inform the allocation of the Committee’s resources.[5]

Fund managers are not required to maintain an AML compliance program or file suspicious activity reports. By contrast, banks, broker-dealers, and mutual funds must do both. Since private investment firms are among financial institutions’ most important clients, this opacity inhibits the effective functioning of banks’ and broker-dealers’ compliance programs. The Treasury Department issued a proposed rule to close this gap in 2015 (after withdrawing its 2002 rulemaking in 2008) but has yet to complete the process. Congress called for such requirements in Section 352 of the USA PATRIOT Act, passed in 2001. Closing this gap would also bring the United States into compliance with global AML standards.[6]

Strange history. Yes, I'm proposing a conspiracy theory. Remember all of the outrageous financial hugger-mugger we learned about in 2008? If anyone had talked about such things in 2006, that person would have been dismissed as a conspiracy theorist. Not all conspiracy theories turn out to be wrong.

Now, it is absolutely true that zealots, boobs, rubes and neo-fascists have come to dominate America's "conspiracy culture." But that unfortunate fact doesn't mean that people can't use underhanded methods to steal billions.

If you are conversant with the literature of paranoia, you may know that variants of this "Let's rig the stock market" theory have been around for more than half a century. Back in 1967, one of the all-time strangest JFK assassination books appeared: Were We Controlled?, written by a fellow calling himself "Lincoln Lawrence." Even at the time, readers understood the name to be a pseudonym. This short book makes a few big, weird claims -- including the big, weird claim that someone profited from the massive stock market downturn that hit right after the assassination.

Guess what: This particular "big weird claim" may well have some basis in fact. Nobody has mounted a counter-argument.

That book, I later learned, was actually written by a fairly prominent journalist named Arthur Ford, who usually didn't write about politics. His whole world was jazz; musicians loved him, and he loved them. For a while, he hosted a TV program called Art Ford's Jazz Party, a few examples of which can be found online. Here's a segment he did with Billie Holiday. (Sorry for the wretched video quality, but that footage is still precious.)

How did a guy like that come to write a book like Were We Controlled?? The full tale remains untold, although a few years back, I managed to piece together some of the book's "origin story," which is -- of course -- very bizarre and downright Mad. (Note the capitalization.) At another time, I may write down what I learned.