Any Suggestions?

 

Look, I think a lot of criticisms of Israel invading Gaza are well-taken.

Yes, I agree, ordinary Gaza residents did not take part in the attacks and should not be subject to collective punishment.  And this will be, at best a long, hard slog of brutal urban warfare against an entrenched enemy.  And there is no coherent exit strategy.  And there is a very real risk of all this spreading into a wider war.

But at the same time, shrugging and saying oh well, we deserved this and continuing business as usual is NOT and option.

So I would ask for any criticism of Israel's actions to be combined with some sort of realistic alternative.

Can We Be Realistic?

 Look, I personally believe that the House Republican Clown Show has proven that House Republicans shouldn't be trusted to operate a blender, let alone the US Congress.  But anyone thinking they will pay an electoral price for their antics is deceiving themselves.

By the next election, this whole episode will be long forgotten. It has always happened that way.

Volume V, Parts 8 and 9: Nothing of Any Importance

 

Volume V of the Senate Intelligence Committee continues to wander further and further afield in Parts 8 and 9, as it spends nearly 100 pages (pp. 586-662) to matters peripheral to the 2016 election.

Part 8

Part 8 (pages 568-635) addresses attempts by Alexander Torshin and Maria Butina to exercise influence on behalf of Russia with the NRA.  Torshin appears to have been a person of some importance in Russia -- vice chairman of the Russian Senate for a time, and a deputy governor of its central bank.  Butina (pronounced BOOTina, not BooTEENa), by contrast, does not appear to have had any particular influence in Russia.  She was born in Siberia and learned to hunt from her father.  She does appear to have done some gun advocacy in Russia, where private gun ownership is severely restricted.  

Butina, acting on behalf of Torshin, approached the NRA as a Russian gun rights activist.  The report gives a detailed chronological account of her activities from 2013 to 2016, none of which appear to have had any bearing on the 2016 election.  Butina attended NRA events, had an affair with one of its leaders, and attempted to establish an informal back channel between the NRA and the Russian government.  At least some of the NRA leaders understood what she was doing and accepted it.  Butina also wrote regular reports of her activities and observations on American politics and the influence of the NRA to Torshin.  On a number of occasions, she asked NRA leaders not to publicize their ties, giving as her reason the fear that she would be discredited in Russia for too strong American ties.  As is often the case, it is not always clear who is manipulating who. 

Maria Butina

Probably the most significant revelation in the report is that Russian intelligence targeted the NRA because it considered the NRA the most influential organization in the US and the key to any influence with the Republican Party.  (Not mentioned:  Whether Russian intelligence sought similar influence with the Democrats, and, if so, what organizations they considered important.  Also significant: NRA leaders appeared to understand that Butina was establishing a back channel to the Russian government and had no objections.  They seemed to value the influence this offered.  Butina's only contacts with the Trump campaign appear to have been meeting with Donald Trump, Jr. (an avid big game hunter) at an NRA dinner and various outreach to the campaign that went nowhere.

The obvious question is whether any of this was a crime.  After all, Butina did not seek out any classified information.  Her reports back on US politics do not appear to have been any more than a journalist might have written.  Her main role appears to have been establishing a back channel of communication with Russia.  She was charged as a spy.  Reports referred to her as a sexy siren whose beauty overbore men's judgment.  Looking at her picture, I could never see it.  Closer was someone's comment (don't remember where, can't find link) calling her the kind of sort-of pretty girl that men might think they had a chance with.  Even that seems generous.  I have included her picture.  Decide for yourself.

Part 9

Part 9 (pages 636-662) deals with whether there was any evidence that the Russians had a sex tape on Trump, apart from Christopher Steele's allegations.  Part 3 traces Trump's 2013 visit to Moscow for the Miss Universe contest in excruciating detail and finds only two gaps in which he could have held an orgy with local prostitutes -- one during the night he stayed, at which time his bodyguard turned away such offers, and during the afternoon the next day when he was waiting to see if he could get a visit with Putin.  It seems unlikely that Trump would have engaged in an orgy with Russian prostitutes while waiting by the phone for Putin to call -- what if Putin had actually called after all -- but I suppose with Donald Trump there is no telling.

In any event, even if nothing happened when Trump visited Russia in 2013, he also had visits in 1996 and one other occasion that Volume V does not identify.

The main evidence Volume V offers is that a Trump associate, David Geovanis, Trump had an affair with a Russian woman (name redacted).  Geovanis had contacts with the Russian intelligence services and loose lips, so the intelligence services might have found out.*  Geovanis also had ties to Oleg Deripaska, Manafort's sponsor.  Geovanis did not cooperate with the Committee, so information here is limited.

In addition, a former executive of Marriott International reported overhearing two employees with the Moscow Ritz Carlton discussing what to do with a video that showed Trump in an elevator "involved with several women who the discussant implied to be "hostesses.'"  Michael Cohen also said that following the 2013 visit, he got calls from six people claiming to have compromising tapes.  Trump denied that such tapes were real, and Cohen never received any verification.  The Committee also reported the existence of a realistic and well-sourced but fake tape.  

All this is nothing more than rumor, with nothing concrete to support it.

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*Geovanis, by the way, appears to have done the same sort of work as Hunter Biden -- offering contacts in the West and serving as a front man in dealing with the contacts, and getting paid vastly out of proportion to the actual work he did.

Some Unoriginal Thoughts on Israel-Hamas

 

Some unoriginal thoughts on the latest war in the Mideast:

Coward that I am, Hamas's crimes are so horrific that I cannot bear to read about them, much less view videos.  This is much worse than 9-11, not only in the sense that the killings are much larger relative to population, but also in the send that of being much more up close and personal, with the kind of gratuitous sadism impossible in the more impersonal act of crashing a plane into a building.

To anyone who says that Israel should strike back against Hamas, but not target the people of Gaza in general, I can only say, that would be great. Any idea how?  Hamas is sufficiently rooted in Gaza that plucking it up will necessarily cause massive collateral damage.  Any number of people have also commented that Gaza is extremely densely populated and that fighting there, much less an long-term occupation will be extremely difficult.  That is why Israel withdrew in the first place.

The Iranian government has threatened to intervene if Israel invades Gaza. Since Iran is two countries away, it seems a safe assumption that such intervention would not take the form of ground troops.  It could take the form of an attack by Hezbollah, or by proxies in Syria, or even by firing missiles at Israel.  Scary stuff.

Naturally Trump has blamed Biden and at least some people have suggested Trump is to blame.  The obvious answer is that not everything is about us.  But I think that is only partly true. There has been considerable continuity in US policy toward the Middle East.  We have been trying for a long time to normalize relations between Israel and Arab countries.  Jimmy Carter brokered a peace treaty between Israel and Egypt.  Bill Clinton brokered a peace treaty between Israel and Jordan.  And, to give the devil his due, Donald Trump was highly successful at brokering a normalization of relations between Israel and the smaller Gulf states, as well as Israel and Morocco.  The Biden Administration followed up on these successes and was preparing a normalization of relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia.  The Hamas attacks appear to have been planned to thwart such an outcome, and to have been successful.  So, yes, to that extent this is about us, and would probably have happened if the Trump Administration had been on the verge of a similar success.  That Hamas was able to derail the process so easily raises disturbing questions about just how solid it was to begin with.

Israel's general improvement in relations with Arab countries has taken place against the backdrop of a strong rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran, and also serious democratic backsliding by Israel.  These things are probably related.  Clearly, Israel and Saudi Arabia were moving closer largely in response to a shared fear of Iran.  And I am inclined to think that democratic backsliding by Israel facilitated the improvement.  Israel because less of an alien entity, less of a living moral rebuke to Arab countries and more just another country.  Israel and Arab countries could reach a cynical accord -- Arabs would ignore Israel's violation of human rights on the West Bank and Gaza in return for Israel ignoring Saudi Arabia's much worse violations of human rights in Yemen, or Morocco in West Sahara.  

And all of this places undermines the narrative some people are presenting, that this is a confrontation between liberal democracy and an Axis of Autocracy.  Israel, after all, has been backsliding from liberal democracy for the past 20 years. That would also mean including Saudi Arabia and its satellites among liberal democracies, a suggestion I am not willing to credit.  It is really the same criticism that we regularly had during the Cold War -- just because our opponents are evil does not necessarily mean that our allies are good.

And here is where Donald Trump really does matter.  While I believe that Hamas would have acted to derail normalization regardless of who was in the White House, the invasion of Ukraine is another matter.  I suspect it would not have happened, or would have happened differently.  And no, not because, as Trump claims, he told Putin he would nuke Moscow if Russia invaded Ukraine.  Obviously I can't prove or disprove their private conversations, but by all accounts, Trump was generally hostile to Ukraine for very Trumpian reasons -- Ukraine had opposed him as President.  Nonetheless, I do think Putin would have been reluctant to jeopardize his friendship with a US President.  At the very least, he would have waited until the US withdrew from NATO (as Trump wanted to do) before invading, and the invasion would no doubt have been easier.  

I do think that a new Cold War has been brooding for some time -- with the terrifying possibility of turning into a hot war.  Trump postponed it for a time, and hoped to avoid it altogether, essentially by switching sides and backing autocracies over democracies.  To be clear, it is hard to say whether Trump disliked democratic governments because they were democracies or because they were allies. He was decidedly opposed to the whole idea of having allies, which he saw as encumbering our freedom of action.*  So whether he wished to switch sides, or merely to sit it out is not clear.  Be that as it may, there can be no doubt that any leader who does wish to back democracy against autocracy will have to contend with a new Cold War -- or worse.

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*It is my suspicion that what so-called isolationists really oppose is not so much war -- they had no objection in the past to regularly intervening in Central America and the Caribbean, and have no objection to invading Mexico now -- but to having allies because allies force us to take other countries into consideration.

Resisting the Urge to Catastrophize

 

Catastrophizing is a well-known psychological phenomenon whereby people imagine the worse possible outcome and obsession it until it seems inevitable.  

I am much prone to catastrophizing.

When the war in Ukraine broke out, the worst possible outcome was global thermonuclear war.  After all, Russia had nuclear weapons and no one knew when they might use them.  For the first few months of the war, my fear was so all-consuming that it really made it hard for me to function.

The removal of Kevin McCarthy as Speaker of the House and discussion of Donald Trump as an alternate candidate raised another fear.  Suppose Donald Trump threw his hat into the ring.  What Republican would dare gainsay him?  And when the current continuing resolution ran out, how long till Trump realized that he was third in line to the and had the country by the jugular?  Why, he could refuse to bring any funding bill the the floor, shut down the government, and refuse to let it open until Biden and Harris both resigned so he could be President.  Again, what Republican would gainsay him?

Apparently the Republicans told Trump that nomination would be by secret ballot, so Republicans could defy him behind the cloak of anonymity, and seek the safety of numbers.  So Trump withdrew as a candidate and endorsed Jim Jordan.  And much as I hate the prospect of Jim Jordan as Speaker, at least I am not afraid that he will do that.

That allowed me about a day of relief, and then Hammas launched its ghastly slaughter of Israeli citizens, and now there is a whole new thing to catastrophize.

So what is the worst case scenario here?  Not as bad as the war in Ukraine.  Israel's opponents do not have nuclear weapons.  So if the Israelis decide to bomb Lebanon and take out Hezbollah's rockets, or to invade and crush Hezbollah once and for all, they will not have to fear nuclear retaliation.  The worst case scenario appears to be a region-wide war, presumably between Israel and Iran, with other powers swept in.

Maybe I am being wildly optimistic here, but that seems unlikely, given the distance between the two powers.  But no one doubts that things will get a lot uglier in the very near future.

To get through the crisis in Ukraine, I distracted myself by binge watching Gilbert and Sullivan and took solace in, of all things, C.S. Lewis's Screwtape Letters -- a series of letters by a senior devil giving a junior devil advice on how to tempt a Christian soul.  The particular "patient" in the correspondence is a young man in London during WWII -- a highly anxiety-provoking time.  Two of the letters, numbers 6 and 15, address the issue of anxiety and why a Christian should not worry about the future (or place too much hope in it).  The point here is not that God will send you to Hell for worrying too much, but that constant fear and anxiety is deadening to the spiritual life, which seems fair to say.*

Letter 6 deals with the "patient" facing the anxiety of not knowing whether he would be drafted.  

We want him to be in the maximum uncertainty, so that his mind will be filled with contradictory pictures of the future, every one of which arouses hope or fear.  There is nothing like suspense and anxiety for barricading a human's mind against the Enemy [God]. . . . It is your business to see that the patient never thinks of the present fear as his appointed cross, but only the things he is afraid of.  Let him regard them as his crosses: let him forget that, since they are incompatible, they cannot all happen to him, and let him try to practice fortitude and patience to then all in advance.  For real resignation, at the same moment, to a dozen different and hypothetical fates, is almost impossible, and the enemy does not greatly assist those who are trying to attain it.

Letter 15 takes place during a lull in the war, with a corresponding lull in the "patient's" anxiety.  It introduces a concept I really cannot wrap my head around -- that spirits live in an eternity that exists outside of linear time, and thus do not have a past, present and future.  "For the Present is the point at which time touches eternity.  of the present moment, and of it only, humans have an experience analogous to the experience which our Enemy has of reality as a whole."  

But the whole premise of the novel presupposes linear time.  The devils seek to tempt the "patient," not knowing what outcome will be, either in the short run as to how he will respond, or in the long run whether he goes to Heaven or Hell.  (Spoiler alert: The "patient" escapes his tempter and makes it to Heaven).  

The author goes not to say that even the past, because it is known and fixed, bears some resemblance to eternity.  The future, being unknown, is the least like eternity.  Thus a lull in anxiety spiritually healthy if it means the "patient" is focusing solely on the present and letting the future take care of itself.  It threatens the "patient's" soul if it means he is convinced that the current lull is permanent "because it is only piling up more disappointment, and therefore more impatience, for him when his false hopes are dashed."  

The ideal spiritual state is to focus on the present, but be aware that disaster may strike again and pray for the strength to face whatever lies ahead. That is an extremely difficult balance to maintain and not tip over into anxiety or complacency.  It is an even harder balance to strike for a non-believer like myself.  The nearest I can come to that is the reminder that:

1. There is nothing you can do about the situation.  Focus on what you can do something about.
2. Anxiety does no good; it only makes you miserable; and
3. Anxiety of that kind really is self-centered.  (I am surprised that Lewis did not raise the point, since he sees self-centered-ness as being the root of all sin).

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*I was myself struck by how self-centered my anxiety was.  A massive catastrophe was unfolding in a faraway country, and I was making it all about myself.

An Afterword: What Was Hunter Doing?

One follow up, which emphasizes the point that the Washington bureaucracy -- or most bureaucracies, really -- is much larger than Republican conspiracists recognize.  Hunter Biden has been much criticized for taking a job with Burisma that paid approximately $50,000 per month for minimal work.  His detractors acknowledge that Hunter is by no means unique.  The powerful and well-connected, offspring of leading politicians in countries across the world see doors open for them because of their family ties.  

An excellent article in the New Yorker pointed out that a weak country being invaded by its more powerful neighbor and heavily dependent on the US for assistance is not realistically going to prosecute any company with a US Vice President's son on the board of directors.  Perhaps Hunter was naive on this score, but his father had no such excuse and should have warned his son to stay away.

Nonetheless, Congress's recent deposition of Hunter's business partner, Devon Archer has shed some light on what Hunter was actually doing for Burisma.  And it appears that Hunter was doing some actual work and rendering services that had some value.  Hunter knew nothing at all about oil and gas, but a great deal about how to navigate Washington.  Hunter's role was access peddling. Archer has been much quoted as saying Hunter was selling "the illusion of access" to his father, but he was also offering plenty of lower level, more mundane sorts of access, such as knowing what public relations firm to hire, or who to approach in Washington to get things done.  Is it any surprise that a man who was only two years old when his father was elected to the Senate knows a great deal about the ins and outs of Washington, DC and how to network.

It seems fair to assume that networking of this kind had real value to Burisma.  It also seems fair to assume that what Burisma paid for it was grossly disproportionate to the actual work Hunter was doing, and that Hunter was engaging in what economists call rent seeking behavior.  And many people would no doubt consider it corrupt.  It is also true, however, that the definition of corruption in such cases can be extremely broad.  Is all networking corrupt?  Is it corrupt for personal relationships to enter into business decisions and not just cold, hard considerations of the bottom line?  People who seek to exclude such things are essentially saying that human nature itself is corrupt, and that we should be ruled by computers.

Other points that Archer made:

• He (Archer) ran a company, Burisma Eurasia, with 50 employees that made servicing contracts in Kazakhstan and bought drills in Texas.  This was a real company and not a shell. He also mentioned a company called Rosemont Realty with over 300 employees.  
• Earnings were divided three ways
• Hunter was eager to take credit for his father's actions but made clear that he did not control his father.  He was selling the "Biden brand."
• There was constant "pressure" on Burisma, but he did not attribute it specifically to Shokin. Hunter would call to "Washington" for help, but mostly he was calling lobbyists.  Hunter was an experienced lobbyist.*
• Hunter talked on the phone to his father every day and often had business associated with him and introduced them to his father.  The conversations did not consist more than a vague exchange of pleasantries.  (Republicans have made much of the existence of these conversations and called into question Archer's statement that they had no substance).
• Archer was "spun a narrative" that Shokin was protecting Burisma.  This narrative came mostly from Washington lobbyists and public relations people than from Ukrainian business associates.  Archer seemed skeptical, but did not know either way.  He also recalled Biden meeting associates at charity dinners and talking more than five minute and less than three hours, but without any real substance.
• Hunter and Archer both attended a Burisma Board of Directors meeting in Dubai on December 4, 2015.  Burisma was feeling "pressure" over the $23 million under dispute in London and over being denied visas to visit the US or Mexico.  CEO Mykola Zlochevsky and his associate Vadym asked Hunter to make a call to "Washington," which Hunter did. The call lasted more than 5 minutes and less than an hour.  Archer did not hear the conversation.  He believes it was to lobbyists, but Hunter definitely also called his father.  Naturally the Republicans made much of this call and pointed out that Biden visited Ukraine later in December.  Not mentioned -- the visit was planned before the phone call.
• There was also discussion of Rosemont Realty, a company Hunter Biden did not belong to, nonetheless buying Hunter an expensive car.
• He denied any knowledge of a $5 million bribe paid to Hunter and "another Biden" and said that he believed he would be the "other Biden."  So there is some self-interest here.
• There were a lot of mind-numbing financial details.

In short, Devon Archer was far from a neutral witness and had his own motives to exculpate himself, but he did not testify to anything incriminating, unless one counts the phone call after the Dubai meeting.

____________________________
*One possible charge against Hunter Biden is failing to register as an agent for a foreign entity.

Uranium One and Ukrainian Two

 When Republicans announced that they were yet again investigating scandals involving Hunter Biden's Ukrainian ties, I was at least slightly curious to see what else they had come up with.  The answer turned out to be nothing at all. They were just going back to the discredited and debunked scandal from 2019 alleging that Joe Biden pressed for the firing of Viktor Shokin, the Ukrainian Prosecutor General to protect his son's investment in Burisma.

This scandal has the same flaw as the Uranium One scandal that Republicans deployed against Hillary Clinton -- it ignores how the Washington DC bureaucracy -- the deep state if you will-- works, how large and powerful it is, and how difficult the system makes the sort of individualized corruption Republicans are alleging against both Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden.

We have discussed the Uranium One "scandal" at some length.  Short version: The Obama Administration approved the sale of a US uranium company to a state-owned Russian corporation.  Republicans attempted to blame this on Hillary Clinton, since she was Secretary of State in charge of foreign policy at the time, and to say that she approved the sale because the Russians made donations to the Clinton Foundation.  Problems:  (1) nearly all the donations were by Americans or Canadians and were made before Hillary became Secretary of State, (2) the State Department was one of nine agencies needed to approve the sale and (3) approval by the State Department was a subordinate with no input by Hillary whatever.  In short, a large bureaucracy with many moving parts approved the sale. Hillary's sole role in the Uranium One sale was one of passive acquiescence.  She would not have been able to undertake a policy of this type on her own as a favor to donor because the need for consensus among so many agencies would have stopped her.

Fast forward to Joe Biden pressing for the Prosecutor General to be fired.  Let us concede one important difference here.  Biden's role was not limited to passive acquiescence  He was the Administrations point person on Ukraine. The Administration sent Biden to Ukraine to put pressure on the government, and he did with considerable vigor.  Unlike Clinton, Biden played a major role in setting and implementing policy.  Did he do it for personally corrupt reasons?

And here I do recognize that no Republican will be impressed with the argument that Biden was carrying out the Obama Administration's policy.  They will presumably argue that Biden persuaded Obama to adopt a policy of removing the Prosecutor General in order to benefit Biden's son, and that Obama went along with it.

That argument does not stand up to serious scrutiny.  

In February, 2014, a popular uprising overthrew Ukraine's pro-Russian government let by Viktor Yanukovich. All accounts agree that Ukraine under Yanukovich was rife with corruption, including having a natural resources minister -- Mykola Zlochevsky -- who also operated Ukraine's largest independent gas company -- Burisma.  What I have not heard anyone even attempt to address is how large a portion of Ukraine's total corruption Burisma is.  Is Burisma just one part of a massive puzzle, or is it the hub of the whole system?  (Or one of many such hubs).  This article gives at least one suggestion. In 2013 Zlochevsky was estimated to be the 86th richest man in Ukraine.  In April, 2014, Britain froze some $23 million in assets Zlochevesky had stashed in that country.*  The court case was met with vigorous litigation by Zlochevsky's lawyers and obstruction by the Ukrainian Prosecutor General, led by Viktor Shokin.  In January, 2015, the British courts released the funds, finding insufficient evidence.  Also contributing to dropping charges -- a letter from some high-ranking official in the Prosecutor General's office saying that Zlochevsky was not under criminal investigation.   In March, 2015, the Deputy Prosecutor General alleged that charges were dropped due to a bribe.**

It is not clear how large a role any of this had in Shokin's fall from grace.  Shokin appears to have lost the backing of the US embassy in July, 2015 when a raid of two high-ranking prosecutors revealed bags of diamonds, cash, and documents linking them to Shokin. Unsurprisingly, Shokin blocked further investigation.  During his time in office, not one major figure was convicted.  If he made an exception for Burisma, evidence for it is sorely lacking.  In September, 2015, then-ambassador Greg Pyatt*** gave a speech denouncing the Prosecutor General's office for refusing to fight corruption, specifically naming the refusal to reclaim Zlochevsky's assets from Britain (the only specific instance named), but still blaming the problem on subordinates and treating Shokin as a good-faith actor.  If this was meant as a shot across Shokin's bow, he failed to take the warning.  By October 31, 2015 anti-corruption activists staged a protest. Outside of Ukraine, a wide range of individuals and institutions were calling for Shokin's resignation, including members of the US Congress of both parties, the European Union, and the IMF.  Presumably not all these players were motivated by having a son on the board of Burisma.

All of this is essential to make a point.  Biden was in no way a rogue actor. He was pursuing a policy supported by the Ukrainian anti-corruption activists, the US embassy in Ukraine, US politicians from both parties, the EU, and the IMF. I have seen the argument that Shokin was at least holding open the possibility of prosecution, that Biden had him replaced with someone who closed the prosecution altogether, and that the broad consensus is a distraction. But the broad consensus cannot be a distraction. It is significant in the if Biden had declined the role of point man on Ukraine or (better yet) if Hunter Biden had declined the job with Burisma, US policy would still have been to remove Shokin.

Biden does appear to have been responsible for the decision to take a more aggressive approach. In December, 2015, he took a plane to Ukraine, originally planning to sign a billion dollar loan guarantee and call for Shokin's removal. Biden appears to have taken the lead -- and convinced others in the Obama Administration -- to make the billion dollar loan guarantee conditional on removing Shokin.  

Neither action occurred during Biden's December, 2015 visit.  It was not until February, 2016 that Shokin was fired, and not until June of that year that the US signed the loan guarantees.  It is fair to point out that Shokin's successor, Yuri Lutsenko, was no better in fighting corruption (in Burisma or elsewhere) than Shokin was. Biden's critics make much of a 2018 appearance with the Council on Foreign Relations in which he said:

I said, nah, I’m not going to—or, we’re not going to give you the billion dollars. They said, you have no authority. You’re not the president. The president said—I said, call him. (Laughter.) I said, I’m telling you, you’re not getting the billion dollars. I said, you’re not getting the billion. I’m going to be leaving here in, I think it was about six hours. I looked at them and said: I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money. Well, son of a bitch. (Laughter.) He got fired. And they put in place someone who was solid at the time.

Biden is being a bit crude here.  He is also compressing into six hours an event that took several months and exaggerating his influence. But can one make an obvious point here?  If he was acting out of corrupt motives, one would not expect him to exaggerate his role so much, or to brag about it in a public forum.

In short, both Uranium One and Ukrainian Two (the second go-round of trying to create a scandal around the firing of Shokin) make the same mistake -- they assume decisions are made entirely at the top and ignore just how big the US bureaucracy is and how many moving parts go into such a decision.  Ironically, this point was actually illustrated in the first Trump impeachment. After Congress duly appropriated military aid for Ukraine, Trump put a hold on it.  Numerous agencies called for the release of the aid.  Only the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) supported the hold, for reasons unknown. Clinton and Biden were not rogue actors making decisions out of personally corrupt motives; they were acting in concert with the larger bureaucracy (the deep state if you will).  Trump, by contrast, was acting out of personally corrupt motives, and found himself at odds with numerous federal agencies.  And yes, a US President does have authority to override bureaucratic agencies, but not the authority to withhold funds duly appropriated by Congress.

And just to be clear, this is not intended to say that the federal bureaucracy is infallible, or that no one is ever justified in defying it. Requiring a bureaucratic consensus in policy making is effective in preventing actions motivated by personally corrupt motives.  It can still be corrupt in the sense that institutional interests are not necessarily the same as the national interest. Bureaucratic consensus is notably rigid and tends to stifle innovation.  It leads to a degree of group think that tends to suppress dissent. (Hence Obama officials who referred to it as the "Blob.")  It is no guarantee whatever that the policy decisions will end up being good ones. But it is effective at reigning in rogue actors acting for personal gain.  

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*Again, in terms of the total scale, another Ukrainian oligarch was mentioned as having $217 million in assets frozen abroad in various countries.  The article mentions 220 million British pounds' worth of assets frozen across Europe.
**This article was written in 2017, before any allegations were made that Joe Biden was acting on behalf of his son.  It does, nonetheless, mention Hunter Biden and the extremely damaging impression he created.  Incidentally, Shokin is never named in the article.
***Marie Yovanovitch became ambassador in 2016.

"Network Propaganda": How to Stir Up a Scandal

 

Network Propaganda give three case studies of the Rightwing Noise Machine stirring up scandals that are wholly without substance, but leave an impression of corruption.  One, regarding allegations that Seth Rich stole the DNC e-mails, is well documented elsewhere and was ultimately withdrawn when Fox News' sole source retracted his statement.

I do want to go into more detail about the other two -- one about Bill Clinton's flights on Jeffrey Epstein's flight, and one about Uranium One.  There is no substance to either story; they are of interest solely as propaganda exercises.  But I am particularly interested in Uranium One because it resembles the allegations that Republicans are now making about Joe Biden. Both stories contain some of the same errors about how Washington works.  Although neither ginned-up scandal definitively proves that Biden is innocent, they are significant background and ample proof that we should treat such stories with skepticism.

Bill Clinton, Jeffrey Epstein, and the "Lolita Express"

Both Bill Clinton and Donald Trump had long histories of promiscuity and some association with the disgraced billionaire Jeffrey Epstein, notorious for luring teenage girls to his private island for sexual abuse by powerful men, who Epstein could then blackmail.  Clinton flew on Epstein's plane while traveling on behalf of the Clinton Foundation, while Trump went to Epstein's parties.  There is no evidence that either man engaged in sex with underaged girls procured by Epstein.

During 2016, an unidentified woman filed a lawsuit against Donald Trump, alleging that he raped her at one of Epstein's parties when she was 13 years old. This surfaced briefly in the leftwing media during the 2016 election, but was largely dropped after the decidedly left-of-center outlets the Guardian, Daily Beast and even Jezebel investigated further and raise serious questions about the story's accuracy.  (See Network Propaganda, pp. 91-92).

Matters were altogether different on the right (see pp. 92-97).  Network Propaganda notes that Fox first raised the issue on March 13, 2016, the day before the New York Times ran a story about Trump's crude behavior toward women. It is accepted journalistic practice to call the subject of such a story ahead of time, so Trump knew what was coming and presumably alerted Fox. As with the rape story, several mainstream publications criticized the New York Times piece, and it never went anywhere.  

The underlying basis for these stories were flight logs for the Epstein plane that showed Bill Clinton took 26 flights on the plane -- none of them to Epstein's private island or any of his other residences (he had homes in Manhattan and Palm Beach and a ranch in New Mexico).  So, was sexual activity taking place on Epstein's plane?  It seems a safe assumption that there was no sexual activity on at least 20 of the flights. Clinton's Secret Service guards were present.  We also have the account of one of Epstein's captives who saw Clinton  onboard one of Epstein's flights that no sexual activity took place.  

Network Propaganda then goes on to show how the six trips without Secret Service present were then described as six trips to Orgy Island (contradicted by the flight logs).  Later stories claimed over 20 trips to the island, six involving Hillary.  Actual number of trips to the island, as shown by flight logs:  None.  Network Propaganda goes on to say that no rightwing outlet ever questioned any of these stories, even though many were clearly false.

Epstein was found hanging in his jail cell on August 10, 2019.  Immediately, stories began circulating that it was not suicide. And most of these stories automatically assumed that Hillary Clinton was the prime suspect.

Uranium One

Far more relevant to the workings of the federal government (the "deep state") and to current accusations against Joe Biden were accusations against Hillary Clinton in the Uranium One scandal (addressed in Network Propaganda, pp. 166-187).  The original accusation was "Hillary Clinton’s State Department approved the transfer of 20 percent of America’s uranium holdings to Russia, while nine investors in the deal funneled $145 million to the Clinton Foundation."

The accusation originates with Clinton Cash, a book that (correctly) identified donations to the Clinton Foundation, (correctly) identifies decisions by the US government when Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State, and then draws very dubious connections between the two. The largest such accusation involved the sale of Uranium One.  

Prior to 2007, Frank Guistra, a Canadian businessman, was CEO and major shareholder of Uranium One.  In 2007 (at which time George W. Bush was President and Condaleeza Rice was Secretary of State), Guistra sold his stake in Uranium One, stepped down, and donated $131 million of the total $145 million.  This is a very large portion of the Clinton Foundation's total assets.  Nonetheless, the donor had no ties and no interest in Uranium One at the time the deal was made. Eight other donors with ties to Uranium One made donations to the Clinton Foundation ranging from $250,000 to $5 million.  Only one of these donors was a Russian (Sergey Kurzin, donated $1 million). All but one of these donations took place before the Uranium One deal and, indeed, before Hillary Clinton became Secretary of State.  It is true that Bill Clinton took a $500,000 speaking engagement in Russia while the deal was going on, which is not a good look.

In 2009, Hillary Clinton became Secretary of State and followed the Obama Administration's policy of seeking to improve relations with Russia.  Part of that policy included approval of approval of the Russian state-owned company Rosatom increasing its interest in Uranium One from 17% to 51%.  To be clear (1) this would give Rosatom a controlling interest in Uranium One, (2) Rosatom was not licensed to export uranium, only to receive profits, (3) the US is a uranium importer, but finally (4) uranium is nonetheless a strategic material and special approval is required to allow a foreign investor to acquire an interest in US uranium.

The State Department is, in fact, one of nine agencies to approve such a transfer.  All nine such agencies approved the deal.  Nor did Hillary made the decision on behalf of the State Department.  That decision was made by Jose Fernandez, Assistant Secretary of State for Economic, Energy and Business Affairs, who said that Hillary made no attempt to influence him, either in favor or against the deal.  In short, Hillary's sole role in the sale of Uranium One was one of passive acquiesence.  She took no active role, let alone leading role in the sale.  Her alleged fault was not being a lone dissenting voice protesting the sale.

None of which is to say that Hillary Clinton should be exempted from criticism.  There are serious questions any time anyone in high office runs, or has a spouse run, a major enterprise, including a charitable foundation. And one can certainly question the wisdom of the Obama Administration's attempted "reset" of relations with Russia.  A "normal" Republican candidate might say, "The Clinton Foundation creates too many conflicts of interest.  The Clintons should choose -- the office, or the foundation."  Or "Hillary Clinton was part of the Obama Administration's failed policy of appeasement of Russia."  These accusations would be true.  Pre-Trump, that latter accusation would be a Republican staple.

But there is an obvious problem with Donald Trump making either of these accusations.  Does it make sense to say that the Clinton Foundation creates conflicts of interest -- so you should choose Trump, who has more conflicts of interest than any candidate for President ever thought of before?*  Or to denounce Hillary for participating in Obama's failed policies of appeasement of Russia, so you should elect an even more pro-Russia candidate?

A normal candidate can afford to stick to normal lines of attack.  One so defective as Trump can do so only by extraordinary catastrophizing of his opponents.

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*Actually, he has argued exactly that, so maybe.