Trump fans, along with supporters of Texas Republican Senator Ted Cruz, started waiting in line at Houston’s Toyota Center in Houston as early as Sunday for a Monday evening rally. (Oct. 22) AP
WASHINGTON – One of the political world’s most fractious couples gets together again Monday in Texas.
President Donald Trump heads to Houston to stump for embattled incumbent Sen. Ted Cruz, the latest phase in a political relationship that has gone from warm to bad to tolerable.
“Ted Cruz has become a friend of mine,” Trump said during a political rally over the weekend in Missoula, Montana – never mind that Trump once nicknamed him “Lyin’ Ted,” insulted his wife, and suggested his rival’s father was somehow involved in the John F. Kennedy assassination.
For his part, Cruz has expressed his support for the president, though he recently declined to describe Trump as either friend or foe.
“He’s the president,” Cruz said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week.” “I work with the president in delivering on our promises.”
Perhaps Cruz still remembers describing Trump as a “pathological liar.”
The two men are apt to be all smiles Monday night at the Toyota Center in Houston. They have a common interest in holding the Texas Senate seat for Republicans, as Cruz faces a well-funded challenge from his Democratic opponent, Rep. Beto O’Rourke.
“He’s not Lyin’ Ted anymore,” Trump said as he departed for Texas. “He’s beautiful Ted.”
With Cruz moving up in polls – Real Clear Politics’ average of recent surveys gives him a 7 percentage point lead – many political analysts have suggested Trump is traveling to Texas in order to take credit for Cruz’s expected victory on Nov. 6.
“He wants to look like the guy who got to bail out Cruz,” said Rick Tyler, an aide to the Texas senator during his 2016 presidential bid. “It’s just a transactional relationship.”
Many Republicans criticized Trump during his rise to the presidency in 2016 – Cruz included – but in 2018, many have welcomed him back to the campaign trail as the GOP struggles to keep control of Congress.
Trump, ever the campaigner, is happy to help as he loads up his schedule with rally after rally. He needs all the Republican lawmakers he can get to move his agenda.
And candidates like Cruz need votes from Trump supporters who might be inclined to stay home for the midterms because the president himself is not on the ballot.
“This is a marvelous example of how principles in politics last only until the next election,” said Jeffrey Engel, director of the Center for Presidential History at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.
The pair have periodically made a show of friendship. In March 2017, the Texas senator, his wife Heidi and their two daughters had dinner at the White House.
But there are indications, however, that the two aren’t particularly close, and that memories of the 2016 bloodletting linger.
Early in the race for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, Cruz passed up repeated opportunities to criticize Trump as the New York businessman led all pre-primary polls. Aides at the time noted that Trump was busy attacking all of their other mutual opponents.
Trump, too, declined to attack Cruz – at first. But that changed as Cruz began moving up in polls ahead of the Iowa caucuses, the first contest on the Republican nomination calendar.
At that point, Trump began questioning whether Cruz, born in Canada, was eligible to be president and to note that other senators didn’t like him. “Lyin’ Ted” became part of the campaign lexicon.
Cruz responded by hitting Trump for “New York values” and describing him as a liberal on social issues like abortion.
The Republican race boiled down mainly to a contest between Trump and Cruz, upping their rhetoric and rivalry. While Trump won most of the GOP primaries, Cruz defeated him in Iowa and Wisconsin, and became the challenger with the best chance of denying Trump a majority of delegates headed into the Republican National Convention.
At that point, Trump unleashed some of his most vicious attacks of the campaign on Cruz. At one point, he cited a highly questionable National Enquirer story suggesting that Cruz’s father Rafael was part of a JFK assassination plot.
In March 2016, Trump tweeted out an unflattering photo of Cruz’s wife, Heidi, beside a glamour shot of Melania Trump, a former professional model.
“The images are worth 1,000 words,” the tweet said.
“This man is a pathological liar,” he said at one point. “A narcissist at a level I don’t think this country’s ever seen.”
Just for good measure, Cruz described Trump as “utterly amoral” and “a serial philanderer.”
When Cruz withdrew from the race after a crushing loss to Trump in the Indiana primary in May 2016, he refused to endorse his rival. Even at the July convention in Cleveland, as boos from Trump delegates rained down, Cruz urged Republicans to vote their conscience.
During his ABC interview on Sunday, Cruz said “2016 was an election unlike any other,” but there is no point in taking things personally when it comes to dealing with Trump.
“If I put my own personal hurt feelings ahead of representing Texas,” Cruz said, “that would be abdicating my responsibility.”
Story 2: Mob of 5000 Hondurans Head North Through Middle of Mexico Headed To United States — Videos
Migrant caravan lurches toward U.S.
President Trump Using The Migrant Caravan To Rile Up Base Ahead Of Midterms? | Deadline | MSNBC
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What can US do to stop migrant caravans?
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The U.S. Helped Destabilize Honduras. Now Honduran Migrants Are Fleeing Political & Economic Crisis
Gingrich: Caravan is an attack on US sovereignty
Thousands Of Migrants Stopped At Guatemala-Mexico Border | NBC Nightly News
Trump issues threats over immigrant caravan heading to U.S.
Tucker: Should America help caravan migrants?
Migrant caravan could prompt a wider confrontation between Mexico, US
Kevin Sieff and Joshua Partlow, The Washington Post
Published
Photo: Oliver De Ros, AP
A migrant child sleeps on a piece of cardboard as the group he is traveling with waits to be attended by Mexican immigration authorities on a bridge that stretches over the Suchiate River, connecting Guatemala … more
TAPACHULA, Mexico — As thousands of Central American migrants continue their long walk to the U.S. border, prompting daily condemnations from President Donald Trump, the Mexican government has had to decide: Are Trump’s threats enough to prompt an intervention?
For now, Mexican police have merely stepped aside as the caravan has passed, watching first as migrants took rafts across the river that separates the country from Guatemala, and then as they continued by foot along the main highway, chanting, “Si, se pudo,” or “Yes, we did it.”
That response appears to have been conveyed to the White House, and now, once again, Mexico’s most important bilateral relationship appears to be on shaky ground.
“Sadly, it looks like Mexico’s Police and Military are unable to stop the Caravan heading to the Southern Border of the United States,” Trump tweeted. He later said on Fox News, “I don’t know what’s going on with Mexico. It looks like the people are walking right through the middle of Mexico. So I’m not exactly thrilled there either!”
The caravan has marked another chapter in Mexico’s complicated effort to balance American threats with the country’s own domestic politics. Detaining or deporting the caravan’s members would certainly please Trump, but it would flout the country’s own immigration laws and further the impression that the Mexican government is taking orders from a hostile White House.
So far, the Mexican police appear to be conscious of that tension,and the optics of their presence. Riot police have stopped to pose for pictures in their gear, as if ready to combat the migrants, letting international television crews film them before retreating.
The caravan risks a wider confrontation with Washington if Trump threatens to cut off aid to Mexico, as he has threatened Central America, or attempts to seal the border with the U.S. military. Every day, billions of dollars of trade crosses the U.S.-Mexico border, and any attempt to block those flows could inflict serious economic harm on Mexico. The newly renegotiated North American trade agreement is also hanging in the balance as it has yet to be ratified by legislatures.
The dilemma for the Mexican government is worsened by the fact that the incoming government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador has campaigned on a gentler approach to migration, saying it would not hunt down migrants as if they were criminals.
“You have Trump’s government pressing Mr. Peña Nieto’s government to deter or stop the flows, but on the other hand, you have the pressure of public opinion and the new government saying you should treat the newcomers with dignity,” said Daniel Millan, a former spokesman in President Enrique Peña Nieto’s government who is now a political consultant. “They are walking a tightrope.”
Mexico’s incoming foreign minister, Marcelo Ebrard, said Monday on Mexican radio that it would be a “big mistake” for the Mexican government to use its own armed forces to try to stop the caravan.
“It would be inadmissible in Mexico to use the army against these people,” he said, adding that he didn’t think Peña Nieto’s government was considering that step. “We would not be in agreement with that at all.”
After a meeting with Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland in Ottawa on Monday, he added that his administration would offer more work visas for Central Americans. “We are going to invest in Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador,” he said.
Peña Nieto addressed the caravan on Friday when he said, “Mexico does not allow people to enter our territory illegally and much less so violently.”
That day, on the bridge connecting Mexico and Guatemala, Mexican police fired tear gas at the migrants, closing the official border as film crews and photographers captured their actions. But just next to the bridge, police watched as thousands of migrants crossed the border illegally by raft, settling for the night in the main plaza of the border city of Ciudad Hidalgo.
Still, the images on the bridge, at least for that moment, appeared to impress conservatives in the United States.
“I want to thank the Mexican officials and the Mexican police for putting their lives on the line,” said conservative commentator Laura Ingraham on Fox News on Friday night.
“I think this is the best Mexico has ever been,” said former congressman and Trump supporter Newt Gingrich on Ingraham’s show.
But in Mexico, the images were seen differently.
Mexican political analyst Carlos Bravo Regidor captured the reaction of many here, tweeting sarcastically: “The wall already exists. It’s called Mexico. Congratulations, Mr. Trump.”
On Sunday afternoon, there was yet another test. A convoy of police officers, wearing riot gear and carrying shields, headed for the migrant caravan, ready to form a barricade that would block the more than 5,000 Central Americans headed north.
“We’re here to enforce the laws of Mexico,” one police officer said. “You can’t just pass through our country without permission.”
When the migrants approached the police checkpoint, officers pleaded with them to apply for legal status in Mexico. There were empty buses ready to take them for processing. A police helicopter swooped overhead. The caravan paused briefly as the migrants talked among themselves. Maybe Mexican authorities would give them temporary visas, they thought, or maybe it was a trick, a sneaky way for Mexico to deport the migrants en masse.
“Vamos!” several migrants yelled, and they walked through the police checkpoint. The police did not stop them. Instead, officers threw their riot shields in a bus and drove away. The caravan continued, undeterred.
Mexico is by no means lax on undocumented Central American migrants. Last year, according to its Interior Ministry, it deported 82,000 migrants from the region. It’s possible that, at any moment, the Mexican government could decide to take a harsher stance with the migrant caravan.
“We know they can decide to stop us at any time, and it scares me,” said Alside Caseres, a member of the caravan from Honduras, who is traveling with his wife and son.
It was Monday morning, and Caseres and his family were packing their bags, preparing for another day of walking in the heat. They had slept on ground of the concrete plaza last night, eating noodles and tortillas donated by local residents.
“Viva Mexico!” yelled some of the other migrants who had already started walking.
On Sunday, Trump tweeted, “People have to apply for asylum in Mexico first, and if they fail to do that, the U.S. will turn them away.”
Indeed, Mexican authorities have repeatedly encouraged the Central American migrants to apply for legal status here, but it was unclear what that status would yield: asylum in Mexico, a temporary visa that would allow enough time for migrants to traverse the country, or something else. Several hundred members of the caravan have agreed to be processed legally, and over the weekend they were taken to a shelter in southern Mexico, which is currently closed to journalists.
On Monday morning, organizers of the caravan expressed skepticism toward Mexican immigration authorities and their offer of legal status.
“Humanitarian assistance has been predicated on detention,” said Irineo Mujica, the director of Pueblo Sin Fronteras
WASHINGTON – Democratic candidates for the House are backing a Medicare for all approach to the nation’s health care system in just over half the races in which a Democrat is on the ballot, according to a new survey provided first to USA TODAY.
The tally by National Nurses United, which supports a government-run, single-payer system, shows how the idea has risen in popularity even as Republicans attack the plan as socialized medicine.
“This is historic,” said Ken Zinn, the group’s political director. “The campaign has really picked up steam.”
But polls show the public is still fuzzy on the details of “Medicare for all,” and support drops when they’re given more information. The nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation defines the program as one that would replace virtually all other sources of private health coverage and most public programs.
“When you talk about policy details, that whole discussion is something different,” said Mollyann Brodie, senior vice president of public opinion and survey research at Kaiser Family Foundation. “And we don’t know entirely how things will play out.”
Plus, Democrats will need to win a lot of races where they’re the underdog to substantially increase the number of House members backing the plan. Just under two-thirds of the 193 Democrats in the House are already co-sponsors of a Medicare for all bill.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, who is not a co-sponsor, said in June that Medicare for all will be one of the proposals considered if Democrats take the House. But, noting that she has always been for a “public option,” Pelosi said all proposals would “have to be evaluated in terms of the access that they give, the affordability of it and how we pay for it.”
“Voters have and will continue to reject a complete government takeover of the health care system,” said Jesse Hunt, national press secretary at the National Republican Congressional Committee.
Politifact found that Americans in the aggregate would pay more to the government to fund health care but less overall than they pay now. The fact-checking site also noted the study forecast that total health care spending would drop by about $2 trillion over 10 years.
Two years ago, Bernie Sanders introduced a “Medicare for All” bill that would move the U.S. toward a single-payer healthcare system. He didn’t get a single co-sponsor.Wednesday, the Vermont independent will introduce his latest version of the bill. Time
“This is a president who, by sabotaging the Affordable Care Act, has driven premiums up in many parts of the country,” he said. “So when he talks about my bill – Medicare for all – people, I think, should be highly dubious about what he says.”
Medicare for all is one of the top issues at the heart of a divide between its progressive advocates and centrist Democrats who say the proposal is a political loser and who would rather focus on shoring up the Affordable Care Act.
The division played out in the red state of Indiana last week with two Democratic candidates campaigning on opposite sides of the issue. While 9th district congressional candidate Liz Watson campaigned with Sanders in favor of it, Democratic Sen. Joe Donnelly cut an ad saying “socialists” will turn health care over to the government “over my dead body.”
Tracking polls from the Kaiser Family Foundation show a modest increase in support for the idea of a national health plan since Sanders made it part of his rallying cry during the 2016 presidential campaign.
About 6 in 10 adults favor a national health plan or Medicare for all system. Less than half did a decade ago.
Progressives say they have polling on their side.
“This is a solution that resonates with the American people,” said Zinn, with National Nurses United. “But it is also a reflection of the absolute crisis that so many are facing (with health care).”
But the surveys also show that support erodes when people hear the arguments that the plan could increase taxes or government control. And nearly half of adults surveyed last October falsely assumed they could keep their current insurance under a single-payer plan.
“The notion that it’s popular is premised upon people knowing almost nothing about it,” said Matt Bennett, co-founder of the centrist Democratic think tank Third Way. “That’s a problem for a very complicated thing that would transform one-fifth of our entire economy.”
In the National Nurses United survey, candidates were not counted in support of Medicare for all if they merely said they were open to considering the idea or that they support “universal health care,” which may still include private insurers. They also were not included if they backed a scaled-back version, such as expanding Medicare to those over 49 or allowing it as a “public option” that would still have to compete against private plans.
By that definition, the group found Democratic candidates supporting Medicare for all in 223 of the 431 House contests in which a Democratic candidate is running. But Republicans are likely to win 79 of those races, according to the nonpartisan Cook Political Report. Democrats are expected to win 127. The remaining 17 are highly competitive.
But even caucus members like New Jersey Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman say the process for achieving such a programmay be gradual, such as first allowing Medicare as an option.
“I don’t know who’s actually running on just Medicare for all as the be-all end-all,” Watson Coleman told the USA TODAY Network. “Even if we are pursuing it, it may be a bit of a journey to get there.”
Bennett said a single-payer health care system certainly won’t happen while Trump is president, and it’s unlikely that a Democratic president would attempt such “a radical transformation” of the system.
In the Senate, however, Sanders’ bill has 16 Democratic co-sponsors, including other potential 2020 presidential candidates: Sens. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, Kamala Harris of California and Cory Booker of New Jersey.
“That’s not a coincidence,” Zinn said. “They understand that to be viable in a Democratic primary, they have to be on the right side of this issue.”
Story 1: Maximum Pressure –Trump Administration Increases Tariffs or Taxes on American Consumers and Producers by Imposing Tariffs on $50 Billion of Chinese Goods and Steel And Aluminium Imports From Canada, Mexico Europe and China — Trade Dispute or Trade War — Stop Unfair Chinese Trade Practices Including Non-Tariff Barriers To Trade and Stop Tariffs or Taxing American Consumers and Producers By Protecting Them Against Lower Prices! — Videos —
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Milton Friedman – Free Trade
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Milton Friedman – Free Trade Vs Protectionism
Milton Friedman – Free Trade (Q&A) Part 1
Tariff and Non-Tariff Barriers
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US to impose steel, aluminum tariffs on EU, Canada, Mexico
US Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross has announced the imposition of steel and aluminum tariffs
US Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross has announced the imposition of steel and aluminum tariffs (AFP Photo/SAUL LOEB)
Washington (AFP) – The United States said Thursday it will impose harsh tariffs on steel and aluminum imports from the European Union, Canada, Mexico at midnight (0400 GMT Friday) — another move sure to anger Washington’s trading partners.
The announcement by Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross was sure to cast a long shadow over a meeting of finance ministers from the world’s Group of Seven top economies that opens later in the day in Canada.
Ross said talks with the EU had failed to reach a satisfactory agreement to convince Washington to continue the exemption from the tariffs imposed in March.
Meanwhile, negotiations with Canada and Mexico to revise the North American Free Trade Agreement are “taking longer than we had hoped” and there is no “precise date” for concluding them, so their exemption also will be removed, Ross told reporters.
The announcement was confirmed by presidential proclamation shortly after Ross addressed reporters.
Despite weeks of talks with his EU counterparts, Ross said the US was not willing to meet the European demand that the EU be “exempted permanently and unconditionally from these tariffs.”
“We had discussions with the European Commission and while we made some progress, they also did not get to the point where it was warranted either to continue the temporary exemption or have a permanent exemption,” Ross said.
Ross downplayed the threats of retaliation from those countries, but said talks can continue even amid the dispute to try to find a solution.
And President Donald Trump has the authority to alter the tariffs or impose quotas or “do anything he wishes at any point” — allowing “potential flexibility” to resolve the issue.
Trump imposed the tariffs of 25 percent on steel and 10 percent on aluminum using a national security justification, which Ross said encompasses a broad array of economic issues.
South Korea negotiated a steel quota, while Argentina, Australia and Brazil have arranged for “limitations on the volume they can ship to the US in lieu of tariffs,” Ross said.
“We believe that this combined package achieves the original objectives we set out, which was to constrict imports to a level to allow those industries that operate domestically to do so on a self-sustaining basis going forward.”
– Not a western –
French Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire has warned before the announcement that the EU would take “all necessary measures” if the US imposed the tariffs.
“World trade is not a gunfight at the O.K. Corral,” Le Maire quipped, referring to a 1957 western movie
“It’s not everyone attacking the other and we see who remains standing at the end,” he said, declaring that the stiff taxes would be “unjustified, unjustifiable and dangerous”.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said the EU would respond in a “firm and united” manner to the tariffs.
“We want to be exempt from these tariffs” which were “not compatible” with World Trade Organization (WTO) rules, Merkel told a press conference with Portuguese premier Antonio Costa in Lisbon.
Video: US Moves Forward With Tariffs on Chinese Imports
This article needs attention from an expert in Trade or Economics. The specific problem is: deals with an important and complex subject but lacks a good organizational structure. It also requires more context and examples for persons not familiar with the field of trade/economics.(September 2014)
Non-tariff barriers to trade (NTBs) or sometimes called “Non-Tariff Measures (NTMs)” are trade barriers that restrict imports or exports of goods or services through mechanisms other than the simple imposition of tariffs. The SADC says, “a Non-Tariff Barrier is any obstacle to international trade that is not an import or export duty. They may take the form of import quotas, subsidies, customs delays, technical barriers, or other systems preventing or impeding trade.”[1] According to the World Trade Organisation, non-tariff barriers to trade include import licensing, rules for valuation of goods at customs, pre-shipment inspections, rules of origin (‘made in’), and trade prepared investment measures.[2]
Types of Non-Tariff Barriers
Professor Alan Deardorff characterises[3] NTB policies under three headings: Purposes, Examples, and Consequences
Policy
Purpose
Examples
Potential Consequences
Protectionist policies
To help domestic firms and enterprises at the expense of other countries.
Import quotas; local content requirements; public procurement practices
Challenges levied at WTO and other trade forums
Assistance policies
To help domestic firms and enterprises, but not at the expense of other countries.
Domestic subsidies; antidumping laws; industry bailouts.
Adversely affected countries may respond to protect themselves (i.e.,imposing countervailing duties and subsidies).
Nonprotectionist policies
To protect the health and safety of people, animals, and plants; to protect or improve the environment.
Licensing, packaging, and labeling requirements; sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) rules; food, plant and animal inspections; import bans based on objectionable fishing or harvesting methods.
Limited formal consequences lead to efforts to establish common standards or mutual recognition of different standards.
There are several different variants of division of non-tariff barriers. Some scholars divide between internal taxes, administrative barriers, health and sanitary regulations and government procurement policies. Others divide non-tariff barriers into more categories such as specific limitations on trade, customs and administrative entry procedures, standards, government participation in trade, charges on import, and other categories.
The first category includes methods to directly import restrictions for protection of certain sectors of national industries: licensing and allocation of import quotas, antidumping and countervailing duties, import deposits, so-called voluntary export restraints, countervailing duties, the system of minimum import prices, etc. Under second category follow methods that are not directly aimed at restricting foreign trade and more related to the administrative bureaucracy, whose actions, however, restrict trade, for example: customs procedures, technical standards and norms, sanitary and veterinary standards, requirements for labeling and packaging, bottling, etc. The third category consists of methods that are not directly aimed at restricting the import or promoting the export, but the effects of which often lead to this result.
The non-tariff barriers can include wide variety of restrictions to trade. Here are some example of the popular NTBs.
Licenses
The most common instruments of direct regulation of imports (and sometimes export) are licenses and quotas. Almost all industrialized countries apply these non-tariff methods. The license system requires that a state (through specially authorized office) issues permits for foreign trade transactions of import and export commodities included in the lists of licensed merchandises. Product licensing can take many forms and procedures. The main types of licenses are general license that permits unrestricted importation or exportation of goods included in the lists for a certain period of time; and one-time license for a certain product importer (exporter) to import (or export). One-time license indicates a quantity of goods, its cost, its country of origin (or destination), and in some cases also customs point through which import (or export) of goods should be carried out. The use of licensing systems as an instrument for foreign trade regulation is based on a number of international level standards agreements. In particular, these agreements include some provisions of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) / World Trade Organization (WTO) such as the Agreement on Import Licensing Procedures.
Quotas
Licensing of foreign trade is closely related to quantitative restrictions – quotas – on imports and exports of certain goods. A quota is a limitation in value or in physical terms, imposed on import and export of certain goods for a certain period of time. This category includes global quotas in respect to specific countries, seasonal quotas, and so-called “voluntary” export restraints. Quantitative controls on foreign trade transactions carried out through one-time license.
Quantitative restriction on imports and exports is a direct administrative form of government regulation of foreign trade. Licenses and quotas limit the independence of enterprises with a regard to entering foreign markets, narrowing the range of countries, which may be entered into transaction for certain commodities, regulate the number and range of goods permitted for import and export. However, the system of licensing and quota imports and exports, establishing firm control over foreign trade in certain goods, in many cases turns out to be more flexible and effective than economic instruments of foreign trade regulation. This can be explained by the fact, that licensing and quota systems are an important instrument of trade regulation of the vast majority of the world.
The consequence of this trade barrier is normally reflected in the consumers’ loss because of higher prices and limited selection of goods as well as in the companies that employ the imported materials in the production process, increasing their costs. An import quota can be unilateral, levied by the country without negotiations with exporting country, and bilateral or multilateral, when it is imposed after negotiations and agreement with exporting country. An export quota is a restricted amount of goods that can leave the country. There are different reasons for imposing of export quota by the country, which can be the guarantee of the supply of the products that are in shortage in the domestic market, manipulation of the prices on the international level, and the control of goods strategically important for the country. In some cases, the importing countries request exporting countries to impose voluntary export restraints.
Agreement on a “voluntary” export restraint
In the past decade,[when?] a widespread practice of concluding agreements on the “voluntary” export restrictions and the establishment of import minimum prices imposed by leading Western nations upon weaker in economical or political sense exporters. The specifics of these types of restrictions is the establishment of unconventional techniques when the trade barriers of importing country, are introduced at the border of the exporting and not importing country. Thus, the agreement on “voluntary” export restraints is imposed on the exporter under the threat of sanctions to limit the export of certain goods in the importing country. Similarly, the establishment of minimum import prices should be strictly observed by the exporting firms in contracts with the importers of the country that has set such prices. In the case of reduction of export prices below the minimum level, the importing country imposes anti-dumping duty, which could lead to withdrawal from the market. “Voluntary” export agreements affect trade in textiles, footwear, dairy products, consumer electronics, cars, machine tools, etc.
Problems arise when the quotas are distributed between countries because it is necessary to ensure that products from one country are not diverted in violation of quotas set out in second country. Import quotas are not necessarily designed to protect domestic producers. For example, Japan, maintains quotas on many agricultural products it does not produce. Quotas on imports is a leverage when negotiating the sales of Japanese exports, as well as avoiding excessive dependence on any other country in respect of necessary food, supplies of which may decrease in case of bad weather or political conditions.
Export quotas can be set in order to provide domestic consumers with sufficient stocks of goods at low prices, to prevent the depletion of natural resources, as well as to increase export prices by restricting supply to foreign markets. Such restrictions (through agreements on various types of goods) allow producing countries to use quotas for such commodities as coffee and oil; as the result, prices for these products increased in importing countries.
A quota can be a tariff rate quota, global quota, discriminating quota, and export quota.
Embargo
Embargo is a specific type of quotas prohibiting the trade. As well as quotas, embargoes may be imposed on imports or exports of particular goods, regardless of destination, in respect of certain goods supplied to specific countries, or in respect of all goods shipped to certain countries. Although the embargo is usually introduced for political purposes, the consequences, in essence, could be economic.
Standards
Standards take a special place among non-tariff barriers. Countries usually impose standards on classification, labeling and testing of products in order to be able to sell domestic products, but also to block sales of products of foreign manufacture. These standards are sometimes entered under the pretext of protecting the safety and health of local populations.
Administrative and bureaucratic delays at the entrance
Among the methods of non-tariff regulation should be mentioned administrative and bureaucratic delays at the entrance, which increase uncertainty and the cost of maintaining inventory. For example, even though Turkey is in the European Customs Union, transport of Turkish goods to the European Union is subject to extensive administrative overheads that Turkey estimates cost it three billion euros a year.[4]
Import deposits
Another example of foreign trade regulations is import deposits. Import deposits is a form of deposit, which the importer must pay the bank for a definite period of time (non-interest bearing deposit) in an amount equal to all or part of the cost of imported goods.
At the national level, administrative regulation of capital movements is carried out mainly within a framework of bilateral agreements, which include a clear definition of the legal regime, the procedure for the admission of investments and investors. It is determined by mode (fair and equitable, national, most-favored-nation), order of nationalization and compensation, transfer profits and capital repatriation and dispute resolution.
Foreign exchange restrictions and foreign exchange controls
Foreign exchange restrictions and foreign exchange controls occupy a special place among the non-tariff regulatory instruments of foreign economic activity. Foreign exchange restrictions constitute the regulation of transactions of residents and nonresidents with currency and other currency values. Also an important part of the mechanism of control of foreign economic activity is the establishment of the national currency against foreign currencies.
History
The transition from tariffs to non-tariff barriers
One of the reasons why industrialized countries have moved from tariffs to NTBs is the fact that developed countries have sources of income other than tariffs. Historically, in the formation of nation-states, governments had to get funding. They received it through the introduction of tariffs. This explains the fact that most developing countries still rely on tariffs as a way to finance their spending. Developed countries can afford not to depend on tariffs, at the same time developing NTBs as a possible way of international trade regulation. The second reason for the transition to NTBs is that these tariffs can be used to support weak industries or compensation of industries, which have been affected negatively by the reduction of tariffs. The third reason for the popularity of NTBs is the ability of interest groups to influence the process in the absence of opportunities to obtain government support for the tariffs.
Non-tariff barriers today
With the exception of export subsidies and quotas, NTBs are most similar to the tariffs. Tariffs for goods production were reduced during the eight rounds of negotiations in the WTO and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). After lowering of tariffs, the principle of protectionism demanded the introduction of new NTBs such as technical barriers to trade (TBT). According to statements made at United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD, 2005), the use of NTBs, based on the amount and control of price levels has decreased significantly from 45% in 1994 to 15% in 2004, while use of other NTBs increased from 55% in 1994 to 85% in 2004.
Increasing consumer demand for safe and environment friendly products also have had their impact on increasing popularity of TBT. Many NTBs are governed by WTO agreements, which originated in the Uruguay Round (the TBT Agreement, SPS Measures Agreement, the Agreement on Textiles and Clothing), as well as GATT articles. NTBs in the field of services have become as important as in the field of usual trade.
Most of the NTB can be defined as protectionist measures, unless they are related to difficulties in the market, such as externalities and information asymmetries between consumers and producers of goods. An example of this is safety standards and labeling requirements.
The need to protect sensitive to import industries, as well as a wide range of trade restrictions, available to the governments of industrialized countries, forcing them to resort to use the NTB, and putting serious obstacles to international trade and world economic growth. Thus, NTBs can be referred as a new form of protection which has replaced tariffs as an old form of protection.
Addressing Non-Tariff Barriers
The scarcity of information on non-tariff barriers is a major problem to the competitiveness of developing countries. As a result, the International Trade Centre conducted national surveys and began publishing a series of technical papers on non-tariff barriers faced in developing countries. By 2015 it launched the NTM Business Surveys website listing non-tariff barriers from company perspectives.
Types of Non-Tariff Barriers to Trade
This section is in a list format that may be better presented using prose.You can help by converting this section to prose, if appropriate. Editing help is available.(September 2014)
This section is in a list format that may be better presented using prose.You can help by converting this section to prose, if appropriate. Editing help is available.(September 2014)
Non-tariff barriers to trade can be the following:
The citations in this section lack sufficient bibliographical information (e.g. author, title, date of publication, publisher, ISBN, OCLC number, pages cited, etc.). (September 2014)
Evans, G., Newnham, J., Dictionary of International Relations; Penguin Books, 1998
Filanlyason, J., Zakher M., The GATT and the regulation of Trade Barriers: Regime Dynamic and Functions; International Organization, Vol. 35, No. 4, 1981
Frieden, J., Lake, D., International political economy: perspectives on global power and wealth, London: Routledge, 1995
Mansfield, E., Busch, M., The political economy of Non-tariff barriers: a cross national analysis; International Organization, Vol. 49, No. 4, 1995
Oatley,T., International political economy: interests and institutions in the global economy; Harlow: Longman, 2007
Roorbach, G., Tariffs and Trade Barriers in Relation to International Trade; Proceedings of the Academy of Political Science, Vol. 15, No 2, 1993
Yu, Zhihao, A model of Substitution of Non-Tariff Barriers for Tariffs; The Canadian Journal of Economics, Vol. 33, No. 4, 2000
MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – Mexico hit back fast on U.S. tariffs on steel and aluminum on Thursday, targeting products from congressional districts that President Donald Trump’s Republican party is fighting to retain in November elections.
Economy Minister Ildefonso Guajardo said the tit-for-tat measures would complicate talks between the United States, Canada and Mexico to revamp the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) that underpins trade between the neighbors.
The spat meant it would be “very difficult” to reach a deal to revamp NAFTA before Mexico’s July 1 presidential election, though he underlined the continent had not entered a trade war.
“A trade war is when there is an escalation of conflict. In this case, it is simply a response to a first action,” Guajardo told Mexican radio.
“We should stick to the clearly defined battlefield, where the response is appropriate and proportional.”
Mexico’s retaliatory tariffs target pork legs, apples, grapes and cheeses as well as steel – products from U.S. heartland states that supported Trump in the 2016 election.
The country reacted right after Washington said in the morning it was moving ahead with tariffs on aluminum and steel imports from Canada, Mexico and the European Union.
“It sends a clear message that this kind of thing does not benefit anybody,” Guajardo said of the Mexican retaliation.
“Because, in the end, the effect will fall on voters and citizens that live in districts where the people have a voice and vote in the (U.S.) Congress.”
Mexico said it was imposing “equivalent” tariffs, ratcheting up tensions during talks to renegotiate NAFTA ahead of the U.S. mid-term elections in November. The measures will be in place until the U.S. government drops its tariffs, Mexico’s government said.
MEXICO WITH THE WORLD
Guajardo said retaliation was aimed at products chosen to hit districts with important lawmakers who had been warning Trump not to mess with Mexico. He estimated the U.S. tariffs would affect $4 billion in trade between the two countries.
“It is a sad day for international trade,” Guajardo said. “But hey, the decision was made, and we always said that we were going to be ready to react.”
In 2011, Mexico successfully used a similar list of mostly agricultural products to push Washington into letting Mexican truckers on U.S. highways.
Trump’s Republicans are fighting to retain control of Congress in mid-term elections. Their majority in the House of Representatives is seen as vulnerable.
Pork exporter Iowa, where incumbent Republican Rod Blum faces a Democratic challenge, is an example of a place Mexico’s reaction could hurt.
Mexico buys more steel and aluminum from the United States than it sells. It is the top buyer of U.S. aluminum and the second-biggest buyer of U.S. steel, Guajardo’s ministry said.
The countermeasures will hit U.S. hot and cold rolled steel, plated steel and tubes, the ministry said.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto spoke by phone after the U.S. announcement. Canada pledged to fight back with its own measures.
Trump threatened to rip up the NAFTA deal during his election campaign but agreed to renegotiate early in his term. Still, since talks began nine months ago, he has repeatedly said he could walk away from NAFTA if it is not redone to his liking.
“The difference between a year and four, five months ago is that it seems the world looked and said ‘poor Mexico,” Guajardo said. “Now, Mexico is facing these threats together with the world.”
(Reporting by Mexico City Newsroom; additional reporting by Jason Lange in Washington; editing by Dave Graham, Jonathan Oatis, David Gregorio and Cynthia Osterman)
Story 2: DOJ/FBI Spied On Trump Campaign and American People To Protect Obama Administration and Clinton Campaign From The Possibility of Russia Disclosing To Trump Campaign Clinton’s Compromising Emails Before Election Day — Russia Did Not Disclose There Leverage or Blackmail Material Because They Thought Clinton Would Win — Videos
FBI Trump campaign spying allegations: How much did Obama know?
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Hannity: Why not un-recuse yourself immediately, Sessions?
Gowdy faces backlash over remarks about FBI, Trump campaign
Tucker: Trump has convinced Dems to destroy themselves
Where in the World Was Barack Obama?
Somehow the former commander-in-chief is largely absent from the political spying drama.
Former President Barack Obama speaks at a community event on the Presidential Center at the South Shore Cultural Center in Chicago in May of 2017. The Obama Presidential Center will not be a part of the presidential library network operated by the National Archives and Records Administration, but instead will be operated by the Obama Foundation.PHOTO: NAM Y. HUH/ASSOCIATED PRESS
President Donald Trump tweets today: “Reports are there was indeed at least one FBI representative implanted, for political purposes, into my campaign for president. It took place very early on, and long before the phony Russia Hoax became a ‘hot’ Fake News story. If true – all time biggest political scandal!” And what does the man who was serving at the time as the FBI’s ultimate boss have to say about all this?
Perhaps it’s a good moment to get the whole story from our 44th President. He should now have time to discuss his administration’s surveillance of affiliates of a presidential campaign because he has just prevailed in a contentious dispute.
The Associated Press reports, “Plan for Obama Presidential Center advances over protests.” According to the AP:
Construction of the Obama Presidential Center in Chicago took a major step forward Thursday with a city commission’s decision to sign off on the project after hours of testimony from both supporters and opponents of the project.
The Chicago Plan Commission unanimously approved a proposal to build former President Barack Obama’s center in Jackson Park on the city’s South Side. The action came over protests from opponents who want an agreement that local residents will benefit from the $500 million project.
“Community residents have no ownership, no say-so, no input,” said Devondrick Jeffers. “We know this is a huge investment in the community, but it’s not truly an investment if residents don’t benefit from this as well.”
However, Obama Presidential Center supporters cheered the plans for the presidential center, saying it would bring job opportunities to the area and foster economic development.
Since his name is on the door, there really was no way for Mr. Obama to avoid being at the center of this story. But in a somewhat larger story he has remained largely—and strangely—absent.
“‘Bigger Than Watergate’? Both Sides Say Yes, but for Different Reasons” is the headline on a New York Times story about our current President and the federal investigation of suspected collusion with Russia. The Times reports that both Mr. Trump and his political adversaries like using the Watergate analogy:
Mr. Trump was referring to what he deems a deep-state conspiracy to get him. His detractors are referring to the various scandals swirling around Mr. Trump.
Watergate has long been the touchstone for modern American scandal, the mountain of misconduct against which all others are judged. In the 44 years since Richard M. Nixon resigned, virtually every political investigation has been likened to the one that brought down a president, the suffix “gate” applied to all sorts of public flaps, no matter how significant or trivial.
But rarely has the comparison been as intense and persistent as during the 16 months since Mr. Trump took office — a comparison deployed by both sides in hopes of shaping the narrative of wrongdoing. What started out as an inquiry into Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election has mushroomed into questions of perjury, obstruction of justice, conspiracy, abuse of power, illicit spying, hush money, tax fraud, money laundering and influence peddling.
Many of those questions remain unanswered but we do know that the “deep state” referenced by the Times did have a boss in 2016. Yet Mr. Obama doesn’t show up in this story until the ninth paragraph. Those inclined toward Watergate analogies will say that it was some time before the break-in was connected to Richard Nixon, and of course we have no idea at this point whether the current controversy will end up being a Trump scandal, an Obama scandal or a permanently murky partisan battleground.
But since this controversy goes to the core of our democratic process, Americans desperately want clarity. How and why exactly did leaders of U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies end up focusing on a domestic political campaign? The latestessential reading from the Journal’s Kimberley A. Strassel gets to the heart of the matter:
Think of the 2016 Trump-Russia narrative as two parallel strands—one politics, one law enforcement. The political side involves the actions of Fusion GPS, the Hillary Clinton campaign and Obama officials—all of whom were focused on destroying Donald Trump. The law-enforcement strand involves the FBI—and what methods and evidence it used in its Trump investigation. At some point these strands intersected—and one crucial question is how early that happened.
By this point it seems clear that Mr. Obama didn’t think much of the theory that Mr. Trump colluded with the Russians. But presumably he learned quite a bit about his government’s efforts to investigate it. It’s not clear what an FBI official meant in 2016 when texting that President Obama “wants to know everything we’re doing.” But we can assume that the President was fairly well-informed about the law enforcement agencies reporting to him. Therefore let’s hear from him in detail the full history of how the government came to investigate the presidential campaign of the party out of power.
If he doesn’t know, then it would seem a public explanation is also in order—about his management, and about just how far the “deep state” went without specific presidential approval.
***
Noteworthy
Save This Endangered Species
“High-impact startups: America’s herd of gazelles seems to be thinning,” AEI.org, May 17
Other Than That, The Stories Were Accurate?
“At the end of 2008 I was a desk editor, a local hire in The Associated Press’s Jerusalem bureau, during the first serious round of violence in Gaza after Hamas took it over the year before. That conflict was grimly similar to the American campaign in Iraq, in which a modern military fought in crowded urban confines against fighters concealed among civilians. Hamas understood early that the civilian death toll was driving international outrage at Israel, and that this, not I.E.D.s or ambushes, was the most important weapon in its arsenal.
“Early in that war, I complied with Hamas censorship in the form of a threat to one of our Gaza reporters and cut a key detail from an article: that Hamas fighters were disguised as civilians and were being counted as civilians in the death toll. The bureau chief later wrote that printing the truth after the threat to the reporter would have meant ‘jeopardizing his life.’ Nonetheless, we used that same casualty toll throughout the conflict and never mentioned the manipulation.”
— Matti Friedman op-ed in the New York Times, May 16
Donald J. Trump
✔@realDonaldTrump
We grieve for the terrible loss of life, and send our support and love to everyone affected by this horrible attack in Texas. To the students, families, teachers and personnel at Santa Fe High School – we are with you in this tragic hour, and we will be with you forever…
FBI Director James Comey at the Department of Justice in Washington, D.C., June 18, 2015. (Yuri Gripas/Reuters)
Trey Gowdy and Marco Rubio evidently paid little attention to testimony before their own committees on how Obama officials made the Trump campaign the subject of a counterintelligence investigation.Well, well, well. The bipartisan Beltway establishment has apparently had its fill of this “Trump colluded with Russia” narrative — the same narrative the same establishment has lustily peddled for nearly two years. The Obama administration recklessly chose to deploy the government’s awesome counterintelligence powers to investigate — and, more to the point, to smear — its political opposition as a Kremlin confederate. Now that this ploy has blown up on the Justice Department and the FBI, these agencies — the ones that went out of their way, and outside their guidelines, to announce to the world that the Trump campaign was under investigation — want you to know the president and his campaign were not investigated at all, no siree.
What could possibly have made you imagine such a thing?
And so, to douse the controversy with cold water, dutifully stepping forward in fine bipartisan fettle are the Obama administration’s top intelligence official and two influential Capitol Hill Republicans who evidently pay little attention to major testimony before their own committees.
Former National Intelligence director James Clapper was first to the scene of the blaze. Clapper concedes that, well, yes, the FBI did run an informant — “spy” is such an icky word — at Trump campaign officials; but you must understand that this was merely to investigate Russia. Cross his heart, it had nothing to do with the Trump campaign. No, no, no. Indeed, they only used an informant because — bet you didn’t know this — doing so is the most benign, least intrusive mode of conducting an investigation.
Me? I’m thinking the tens of thousands of convicts serving lengthy sentences due to the penetration of their schemes by informants would beg to differ. (Mr. Gambino, I assure you, this was just for you own good . . .) In any event, I’ll leave it to the reader to imagine the Democrats’ response if, say, the Bush administration had run a covert intelligence operative against Obama 2008 campaign officials, including the campaign’s co-chairman. I’m sure David Axelrod, Chuck Schumer, the New York Times, and Rachel Maddow would chirp that “all is forgiven” once they heard Republicans punctiliously parse the nuances between investigating campaign officials versus the campaign proper; between “spies,” “informants,” and other government-directed covert operatives.
Sure!
Senator Rubio
Then there are Senator Marco Rubio (R., Fla.) and Representative Trey Gowdy (R., S.C.), General Clapper’s fellow fire extinguishers.
Rubio is a member in good standing of that Washington pillar, the Senate Intelligence Committee, which has had about as much interest in scrutinizing the highly irregular actions of intelligence and law-enforcement officials in the Clinton and Russia probes as Gowdy’s Benghazi committee had in revisiting Republican ardor for Obama’s unprovoked war on Moammar Qaddafi. (That would be: roughly zero interest.)
Rubio told ABC News that he has seen “no evidence” that the FBI was gathering information about the Trump campaign. Rather, agents “were investigating individuals with a history of links to Russia that were concerning.” The senator elaborated that “when individuals like that are in the orbit of a major political campaign in America, the FBI, who is in charge of counterintelligence investigations, should look at people like that.”
Gee, senator, when you were carefully perusing the evidence of what the FBI was doing, did you ever sneak a peek at whatthe FBI said it was doing?
May I suggest, for example, the stunning public testimony by then-director James Comey on March 20, 2017, before the House Intelligence Committee — perhaps Representative Gowdy, who sits on that committee, could lend you the transcript, since he appears not to be using it. Just so we’re clear, this is not an obscure scrap of evidence buried within volumes of testimony. It is the testimony that launched the Mueller probe, and that sets (or, better, fails to set) the parameters of that probe — a flaw the nation has been discussing for a year.
Comey’s House testimony was breathtaking, not just because it confirmed the existence of a classified counterintelligence investigation, but because of what the bureau’s then-director said about the Trump campaign (my italics):
I have been authorized by the Department of Justice to confirm that the FBI, as part of our counterintelligence mission, is investigating the Russian government’s efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election and that includes investigating the nature of any links between individuals associated with the Trump campaign and the Russian government and whether there was any coordination between the campaign and Russia’s efforts. . . .
That is an unambiguous declaration that the FBI was investigating the Trump campaign. That is why, for nearly two years, Washington has been entranced by the specter of “Trump collusion with Russia,” not “Papadopoulos collusion with Russia.” A campaign, of course, is an entity that acts through the individuals associated with it. But Comey went to extraordinary lengths to announce that the FBI was not merely zeroing in on individuals of varying ranks in the campaign; the main question was whether the Trump campaign itself — the entity — had “coordinated” in Russia’s espionage operation.
Representative Gowdy
Gowdy’s fire truck pulled into Fox News Tuesday night for an interview by Martha MacCallum. An able lawyer, the congressman is suddenly on a mission to protect the Justice Department and the FBI from further criticism. So, when Ms. MacCallum posed the question about the FBI spying on the Trump campaign, Gowdy deftly changed the subject: Rather than address the campaign, he repeatedly insisted that Donald Trump personally was never the “target” of the FBI’s investigation. The only “target,” Gowdy maintains, was Russia.
This is a dodge on at least two levels.
First, to repeat, the question raised by the FBI’s use of an informant is whether the bureau was investigating the Trump campaign. We’ll come momentarily to the closely connected question of whether Trump can be airbrushed out of his own campaign — I suspect the impossibility of this feat is why Gowdy is resistant to discussing the Trump campaign at all.
It is a diversion for Gowdy to prattle on about how Trump himself was not a “target” of the Russia investigation. As we’ve repeatedly observed (and as Gowdy acknowledged in the interview), the Trump-Russia probe is a counterintelligence investigation. An accomplished prosecutor, Gowdy well knows that “target” is a term of art in criminal investigations, denoting a suspect who is likely to be indicted. The term is inapposite to counterintelligence investigations, which are not about building criminal cases but about divining and thwarting the provocative schemes of hostile foreign powers. In that sense, and in no other, the foreign power at issue — here, Russia — is always the “target” of a counterintelligence probe; but it is never a “target” in the technical criminal-investigation sense in which Gowdy used the term . . . unless you think we are going to indict a country.
Apart from the fact that Gowdy is dodging the question about whether the Trump campaign was being investigated, his digression about ‘targets’ is gibberish.
Moreover, even if we stick to the criminal-investigation sense of “target,” Gowdy knows it is misleading to emphasize that Trump is not one. Just a few short weeks ago, Gowdy was heard pooh-poohing as “meaningless” media reporting that Trump had been advised he was not a “target” of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe (which is the current iteration of the Russia investigation). As the congressman quite correctly pointed out, if Trump is a subject of the investigation — another criminal-law term of art, denoting a person whose conduct is under scrutiny, but who may or may not be indicted — it should be of little comfort that he is not a “target”; depending on how the evidence shakes out, a subject can become a target in the blink of an eye.
So, apart from the fact that Gowdy is dodging the question about whether the Trump campaign was being investigated, his digression about “targets” is gibberish. Since the Obama administration was using its counterintelligence powers (FISA surveillance, national-security letters, unmasking identities in intelligence reporting, all bolstered by the use of at least one covert informant), the political-spying issue boils down to whether the Trump campaign was being monitored. Whether Trump himself was apt to be indicted, and whether threats posed by Russia were the FBI’s focus, are beside the point; in a counterintelligence case, an indictment is never the objective, and a foreign power is always the focus.
Withholding Information from Trump
Second, if Gowdy has been paying attention, he must know that, precisely because the Trump campaign was under investigation, top FBI officials had qualms of conscience over Comey’s plan to give Trump a misleading assurance that he personally was not under investigation. If this has slipped Gowdy mind, perhaps Rubio could lend him the transcript of Comey’s testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee — in particular, a section Rubio seems not to remember, either.
A little background. On January 6, 2017, Comey, Clapper, CIA director John Brennan, and NSA chief Michael Rogers visited President-elect Trump in New York to brief him on the Russia investigation. Just one day earlier, at the White House, Comey and then–acting attorney general Sally Yates had met with the political leadership of the Obama administration — President Obama, Vice President Biden, and national-security adviser Susan Rice — to discuss withholding information about the Russia investigation from the incoming Trump administration.
Ms. Rice put this sleight-of-hand a bit more delicately in her CYA memo-to-file about the Oval Office meeting (written two weeks after the fact, as Rice was leaving her office minutes after Trump’s inauguration):
President Obama said he wants to be sure that, as we engage with the incoming team, we are mindful to ascertain if there is any reason that we cannot share information fully as it relates to Russia. [Emphasis added.]
It is easy to understand why Obama officials needed to discuss withholding information from Trump. They knew that theTrump campaign — not just some individuals tangentially connected to the campaign — was the subject of an ongoing FBI counterintelligence probe. Indeed, we now know that Obama’s Justice Department had already commenced FISA surveillance on Trump campaign figures, and that it was preparing to return to the FISA court to seek renewal of the surveillance warrants. We also know that at least one informant was still deployed. And we know that the FBI withheld information about the investigation from the congressional “Gang of Eight” during quarterly briefings from July 2106 through early March 2017. (See Comey testimony March 20, 2017, questioning by Representative Elise Stefanik (R., N.Y.).) Director Comey said Congress’s most trusted leaders were not apprised of the investigation because “it was a matter of such sensitivity.” Putting aside that the need to alert Congress to sensitive matters is exactly why there is a Gang of Eight, the palpable reason why the matter was deemed too “sensitive” for disclosure was that it involved the incumbent administration’s investigation of the opposition campaign.
Clearly, the Obama officials did not want Trump to know the full scope of their investigation of his campaign. But just as important, they wanted the investigation — an “insurance policy” that promised to hamstring Trump’s presidency — to continue.
Clearly, the Obama officials did not want Trump to know the full scope of their investigation of his campaign.
So, how to accomplish these objectives? Plainly, the plan called for Comey to put the new president at ease by telling him he was not a suspect. This would not have been a credible assurance if Comey had informed Trump that his campaign had been under investigation for months, suspected of coordinating in Russia’s cyber-espionage operation. So, information would be withheld. The intelligence chiefs would tell Trump only about Russia’s espionage, not about the Trump campaign’s suspected “coordination” with the Kremlin. Then, Comey would apprise Trump about only a sliver of the Steele dossier — just the lurid story about peeing prostitutes, not the dossier’s principal allegations of a traitorous Trump-Russia conspiracy.
As I’ve previously recounted, this did not sit well with everyone at the FBI. Shortly before he met with Trump, Comey consulted his top FBI advisers about the plan to tell Trump he was not a suspect. There was an objection from one of Comey’s top advisers — we don’t know which one. Comey recounted this disagreement for the Senate Intelligence Committee (my italics):
One of the members of the leadership team had a view that, although it was technically true [that] we did not have a counterintelligence file case open on then-President-elect Trump[,] . . . because we’re looking at the potential . . . coordination between the campaign and Russia, because it was . . . President-elect Trump’s campaign, this person’s view was, inevitably, [Trump’s] behavior,[Trump’s] conduct will fall within the scope of that work.
Representative Gowdy and Senator Rubio might want to read that testimony over a few times.
They might note that Comey did not talk about “potential coordination between Carter Page or Paul Manafort and Russia.” The director was unambiguous: The FBI was investigating “potential coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia.” With due respect to Gowdy, the FBI did not regard Russia as the “target”; to the contrary, Comey said the focus of the investigation was whether Donald Trump’s campaign had coordinated in Russia’s election interference. And perspicaciously, Comey’s unidentified adviser connected the dots: Because (a) the FBI’s investigation was about the campaign, and (b) the campaign was Trump’s campaign, it was necessarily true that (c) Trump’s own conduct was under FBI scrutiny.
Director Comey’s reliance on the trivial administrative fact that the FBI had not written Trump’s name on the investigative file did not change the reality that Trump, manifestly, was a subject of the “Crossfire Hurricane” investigation. If Trump were not a subject of the investigation, there would be no conceivable justification for Special Counsel Mueller to be pushing to interview the president of the United States. If Trump were not a subject of the investigation, Trump’s political opponents would not have spent the last 18 months accusing him of obstruction and demanding that Mueller be permitted to finish his work.
In the interview with Ms. MacCallum, Representative Gowdy further confused matters by stressing Trump’s observation, in a phone conversation with Comey on March 30, 2017, that it would be good to find out if underlings in his campaign had done anything wrong. This, according to Gowdy, means Trump should be pleased, rather than outraged, by what the FBI did: By steering an informant at three campaign officials, we’re to believe that the bureau was doing exactly what Trump suggested.
Gowdy’s argument assumes something that is simply not true: namely, that the Trump campaign was not under investigation.
Such a specious argument. So disappointing to hear it from someone who clearly knows better.
First, the informant reportedly began approaching campaign officials in July 2016. It was nine months later, well after the election, when President Trump told Comey that if would be good if the FBI uncovered any wrongdoing by his “satellites.” Trump was not endorsing spying during the campaign; the campaign was long over. The president was saying that it would be worth continuing the FBI’s Russia investigation in order to root out any thus-far-undiscovered wrongdoing — but only if the FBI informed the public that Trump was not a suspect (an announcement Comey declined to make).
Second, Gowdy’s argument assumes something that is simply not true: namely, that the Trump campaign was not under investigation. As we’ve seen, Comey testified multiple times that the FBI was investigating the Trump campaign for possible coordination with Russia. The bureau was not, as Gowdy suggests, merely investigating a few campaign officials for suspicious contacts with Russia unrelated to the campaign.
The Steele Dossier and FISA Surveillance
That brings us to a final point. In support of the neon-flashing fact that the Trump campaign was under investigation when the Obama administration ran an informant at it, there is much more than former Director Comey’s testimony.
Probes conducted by both the House Intelligence Committee and the Senate Judiciary Committee have established that the Obama Justice Department and the FBI used the Steele dossier to obtain FISA-court warrants against Carter Page. The dossier, a Clinton-campaign opposition-research project (a fact withheld from the FISA court), was essential to the required probable-cause showing; the FBI’s former deputy director, Andrew McCabe, testified that without the dossier there would have been no warrant.
So . . . what did the dossier say? The lion’s share of it — the part Director Comey omitted from his briefing of Trump — alleged that the Trump campaign was conspiring with the Kremlin to corrupt the election, including by hacking and publicizing Democratic-party emails.
We also know, thanks to more testimony by Director Comey, that dossier information was presented to the FISA court because the Justice Department and the FBI found former British spy Christopher Steele to be reliable (even if they could not corroborate Steele’s unidentified Russian sources). That is, the FBI and Justice Departmentbelieved Steele’s claim that the Trump campaign was willfully complicit in Russia’s treachery.
It is a major investigative step to seek surveillance warrants from the FISA court. Unlike using an informant, for which no court authorization is necessary, applications for FISA surveillance require approvals at the highest levels of the Justice Department and the FBI. After going through that elaborate process, the Obama Justice Department and the FBI presented to the court the dossier’s allegations that the Trump campaign was coordinating with Russia to undermine the 2016 election.
If that was their position under oath before a secret United States court, why would anyone conceivably believe that it was not their position when they ran an informant at members of the campaign they were investigating?
To be sure, no sensible person argues that the FBI should refrain from investigating individuals suspected of acting as clandestine agents of a hostile foreign power. The question is: How should such an investigation proceed in a democratic republic whose norms forbid an incumbent administration, in the absence of strong evidence of egregious misconduct, from directing its counterintelligence and law-enforcement powers against its political opposition?
That norm was flouted by the Justice Department and the FBI, under the direction of the Obama administration’s senior political leadership. Representative Gowdy, Senator Rubio, and General Clapper maintain that the Justice Department and the FBI were just doing what we should expect them to do, and that we should applaud them. But this claim is based on the easily refuted fiction that the Justice Department and FBI were not investigating the Trump campaign. The claim also ignores the stubborn fact that, if all the Obama administration had been trying to do was check out a few bad apples with suspicious Russia ties, this could easily have been done by alerting the Trump campaign and asking for its help.
Instead, Obama officials made the Trump campaign the subject of a counterintelligence investigation.
Story 1: Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Director Nominee Gina Haspel Testifies Before Senate Intelligence Committee — Should Be Confirmed — Videos —
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Sen. Feinstein GRILLS Gina Haspel at CIA Senate confirmation hearing May 9, 2018
Sen. Collins Questions Gina Haspel at CIA Senate confirmation hearing May 9, 2018
Sen. Harris GRILLS Gina Haspel at CIA Senate confirmation hearing May 9, 2018
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Gina Haspel testifies in Senate confirmation hearing
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She became Acting Director following her predecessor Mike Pompeo‘s resignation to become United States Secretary of State. Haspel has been nominated by President Donald Trump to become the permanent CIA Director. If confirmed by the Senate, she will be the first female CIA Director having already been the second female CIA Deputy Director.[5][6][7][8][9]
Haspel attended high school in the United Kingdom.[15] She was a student at the University of Kentucky for three years and transferred for her senior year to the University of Louisville, where she graduated in May 1978[2] with a BA degree in languages and journalism.[15] From 1980-1981, she worked as a civilian library coordinator at Fort Devens in Massachusetts.[2][16][17]
Career
Career timeline published by the CIA for Gina Haspel
Early CIA career
Haspel joined the CIA in January 1985 as a reports officer.[1][18] She held several undercover overseas positions, for many of which she was station chief.[19][20] Her first field assignment was from 1987-1989 in Ethiopia,[18][21] Central Eurasia,[18] Turkey,[1] followed by several assignments in Europe and Central Eurasia from 1990-2001.[18][14]
From 2001-2003, her position was listed as Deputy Group Chief, Counterterrorism Center.[18]
Between October and December 2002, Haspel was assigned to oversee a secret CIA prison in Thailand, code-named Cat’s Eye, that housed persons suspected of involvement in Al-Qaeda. The prison was part of the U.S. government’s extraordinary rendition program after the September 11 attacks, and used enhanced interrogation techniques such as waterboarding that are considered by many to be torture although those methods were deemed legal at the time by agency lawyers. According to a former senior CIA official, Haspel arrived as station chief after the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah but was chief during the waterboarding of Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri.[14]
After the service in Thailand, she served as an operations officer in Counterterrorism Center near Washington, D.C.[18] She later served as the CIA’s station chief in London and, in 2011, New York.[14][22]
National Clandestine Service leadership
Haspel served as the Deputy Director of the National Clandestine Service, Deputy Director of the National Clandestine Service for Foreign Intelligence and Covert Action, and Chief of Staff for the Director of the National Clandestine Service.[20]
In 2005, Haspel was the chief of staff to Jose Rodriguez, Director of the National Clandestine Service. In his memoir, Rodriguez wrote that Haspel had drafted a cable in 2005 ordering the destruction of dozens of videotapesmade at the black site in Thailand in response to mounting public scrutiny of the program.[14][23]
In 2013, John Brennan, then the director of Central Intelligence, named Haspel as acting Director of the National Clandestine Service, which carries out covert operations around the globe.[24] However, she was not appointed to the position permanently due to criticism about her involvement in the Rendition, Detention and Interrogation program.[25] Her permanent appointment was opposed by Dianne Feinstein and others in the Senate.[14][22]
With more than thirty years of service to the CIA and extensive overseas experience, Gina has worked closely with the House Intelligence Committee and has impressed us with her dedication, forthrightness, and her deep commitment to the Intelligence Community. She is undoubtedly the right person for the job, and the Committee looks forward to working with her in the future.
I am especially concerned by reports that this individual was involved in the unauthorized destruction of CIA interrogation videotapes, which documented the CIA’s use of torture against two CIA detainees. My colleagues Senators Wyden and Heinrich have stated that classified information details why the newly appointed Deputy Director is ‘unsuitable’ for the position and have requested that this information be declassified. I join their request.
On February 15, 2017, Spencer Ackerman reported on psychologists Bruce Jessen and James Mitchell, the architects of the enhanced interrogation program that was designed to break Zubaydah and was subsequently used on other detainees at the CIA’s secret prisons around the world. Jessen and Mitchell are being sued by Sulaiman Abdulla Salim, Mohamed Ahmed Ben Soud, and Obaid Ullah over torture designed by the psychologists. Jessen and Mitchell are seeking to compel Haspel, and her colleague James Cotsana, to testify on their behalf.[29][30]
Nomination as Director
On March 13, 2018, President Donald Trump announced he would nominate Haspel to be the CIA director, replacing Mike Pompeo—whom he tapped to become the new Secretary of State.[31] Should Haspel be confirmed by the Senate,[32] she would become the first woman to serve as permanent CIA director (Meroe Park served as Executive Director from 2013-2017 and acting director for three days in January 2017).[33][34]Robert Baer, who supervised Haspel at the Central Intelligence Agency, found her to be “smart, tough and effective. Foreign liaison services who have worked with her uniformly walked away impressed.”[35]
Republican Senator Rand Paul stated that he would oppose the nomination saying “To really appoint the head cheerleader for waterboarding to be head of the CIA? I mean, how could you trust somebody who did that to be in charge of the CIA? To read of her glee during the waterboarding is just absolutely appalling.”[36] Soon after Paul made this statement, the allegation that Haspel mocked those being interrogated was retracted. Doug Stafford, an aide for Rand Paul, said, “According to multiple published, undisputed accounts, she oversaw a black site and she further destroyed evidence of torture. This should preclude her from ever running the CIA.”[37]
Republican Senator and former presidential candidate John McCain called on Haspel to provide a detailed account of her participation in the CIA’s detention program from 2001-2009, including whether she directed the use of so-called “enhanced interrogation techniques” and to clarify her role in the 2005 destruction of interrogation videotapes.[38][39][40] McCain has been a staunch opponent of torture in the Senate, having been tortured as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam. McCain further called upon Haspel to commit to declassifying the 2014 Senate Intelligence Committee report on CIA torture.
Multiple senators have criticized the CIA for what they believe is selectivity in declassifying superficial and positive information about her career to generate positive coverage, while simultaneously refusing to declassify any “meaningful” information about her career.[41][42]
Torture and destruction of evidence controversy
Memo on Gina Haspel’s involvement in the destruction of tapes
Haspel has been criticized for using torture during her career at the CIA, and for involvement in destroying records of such torture.[43]
In late October 2002, Haspel became a chief of base for a “black site” CIA torture prison located in Thailand.[44][45] She worked at a site that was codenamed “Cat’s Eye”, which would later become known as the place where suspected al Qaedaterrorist members Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri and Abu Zubaydah were detained and tortured with waterboarding.[19][23] In early February 2017, The New York Times and ProPublica reported that these waterboardings were both conducted under Haspel.[46][47] In March 2018, U.S. officials said that Haspel was not involved in the torture of Zubaydah, as she only became chief of base after Zubaydah was tortured. ProPublica and The New York Times issued corrections to their stories but noted that Haspel was involved in the torture of al-Nashiri.[45][46] Haspel played a role in the destruction of 92 interrogation videotapes that showed the torture of detainees both at the black site she ran and other secret agency locations.[48][45][49]
On May 1, 2018, Spencer Ackerman, writing in The Daily Beast, reported that former CIA analyst Gail Helt had been told that some of the controversial torture recordings had not been destroyed, after all.[55] On May 9, 2018, the day prior to her confirmation vote, The New York Times reported [56] that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, architect of the 9/11 attacks and victim of various forms of torture, requested to submit six paragraphs of information for the Senate committee to review before its vote. The contents of these paragraphs, and whether they implicate Haspel directly in Mohammed’s torture, are still not publicly known.
Story 2: Pathway to 911 — Bill Clinton’s Smear Campaign To Suppress Outstanding ABC Television Series — “The Path to 9/11” — Disney Caved To Clinton and Democratic Politician Pressure — Videos
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Blocking The Path To 9/11 Trailer
PATH TO 9-11: The scene they didn’t want you to see
The Controversy over “The Path to 9/11” tv show
“Blocking the Path to 9/11”
Blocking “The Path To 9/11” part 1
Blocking “The Path To 9/11” Part 2
Blocking “The Path To 9/11” Part 3
Blocking “The Path To 9/11” Part 4
Blocking “The Path To 9/11” Part 5
ABC’s Path to 9/11, Part 2
Hillary Clinton Exposed, Movie She Banned From Theaters Full Movie
Thomas H. Kean, co-chairman of the 9/11 Commission, delivers remarks during a news conference to issue a final assessment of progress on the commission’s recommendations in Washington, in this Dec. 5, 2005 file photo. The controversial ABC film,\”The Path to 9/11,\” was sold as \”based on the 9/11 Commission Report.\” Kean was on board as an executive producer for the film to certify it’s authenticity.
Over the past few years, perhaps no film controversy has inspired more outrage from conservatives than the Walt Disney Company’s handling of the ambitious 2006 miniseries “The Path to 9/11.” In the wake of Michael Moore’s 2004 anti-Bush documentary “Fahrenheit 9/11” and the 2003 CBS biopic “The Reagans,” the Disney censorship fiasco has been a frequent bone of contention on right-wing blogs, AM talk radio and other media outlets. In addition to making cuts in its ABC-TV telefilm after complaints from political forces, the company also shelved plans for a subsequent DVD release.
The miniseries, a $40 million dramatization of events leading up to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, was set for its network debut when several members of President Bill Clinton’s administration, including former National Ssecurity Adviser Sandy Berger and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, insisted that several scenes were inaccurate or fictitious, and Clinton himself demanded the program be corrected or pulled. Five Democratic senators even sent a letter to Disney CEO Bob Iger that appeared to threaten the company’s broadcast license over the issue. Edits were made, a disclaimer was added and the two-parter ran as originally scheduled, but there has never been a repeat showing and a DVD has never been released.
Now the imbroglio has been revived for a direct-to-video documentary called “Blocking ‘The Path to 9/11’,” produced by right-wing rabble-rouser David Bossie and directed by former radio host John Ziegler. On its surface, the new video is a fascinating piece of behind-the-scenes investigative work. But, like the original telefilm and its quashing by the Clinton camp, it is not without its own political intrigue. Indeed, “Blocking ‘The Path to 9/11′” raises even more questions and adds its own set of disconnected dots to this broadcasting dilemma.
The new documentary, currently available for sale on its website, will soon be offered at other locations, with plans also calling for select theatrical screenings in Southern California to coincide with the seventh anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks next month. Last week, the film’s worldwide premiere at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles drew a sold-out crowd that gave it a lengthy standing ovation.
Ziegler, who first raised questions about “Path’s” forced cuts and its cancelled DVD release on his radio show, is hopeful that his newest work will expose the machinations of Disney, Clinton and the Hollywood left.
“This is a conservative film, and that means there’s automatically two and a half strikes against it,” he said. Still, he believes his examination of the controversy should “hit a nerve” with others, and he’s still astounded Disney “decided to take a dive on their own movie” in order to placate the Clintons. According to Ziegler, Disney’s executives believed their liberal bona fides were so strong that they never suspected they’d be accused of a right-wing hit job and were “totally shocked” when Clinton’s camp complained. (Disney’s Iger has contributed to many Democrats running for office, including Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, and has also donated to a handful of Republican candidates. Iger’s wife, former cable news anchor Willow Bay, is a top editorial executive at the decidedly leftist Huffington Post.)
The miniseries presented a dramatization of the sequence of events leading to the September 11, 2001 attacks by Al Qaeda on the United States, starting from the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and up to the minutes after its collapse in 2001. The movie takes the point of view of two main protagonists: John P. O’Neill, and a composite Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) agent, “Kirk”. O’Neill was the real-life Special Agent in charge of Al Qaeda investigations at the Federal Bureau of Investigation. He died in the collapse of the Twin Towers on September 11 shortly after retiring from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and taking the position of Director of Security for the World Trade Center. The composite CIA agent “Kirk” is shown dealing with various American allies, especially Northern Alliance leader Ahmed Shah Massoud, in Afghanistan. In addition, “Patricia”, a CIA headquarters analyst, represents the views of the rank and file at CIA headquarters. The miniseries features dramatizations of various incidents summarized in the 9/11 Commission Report and represented in high-level discussions held in the Clinton and Bush administrations. The final hour of the movie dramatizes the events of 9/11, including a recreation of the second plane hitting the World Trade Center, Tom Burnett‘s calls to his wife, and John Miller’s reporting near the scene of the attacks. The film concludes with information about the 9/11 Commission’s recommendations, as well as the performance evaluation the Commission gave the government when it reconvened in 2005.
Production history
According to ABC, the movie is based on the “9/11 Commission Report and other sources”,[6] including interviews and news accounts.[7] The first indication that ABC was running a miniseries appeared in a brief article in the New York Post.[8] In it, the producers identified shooting locations and revealed that Harvey Keitel would play John O’Neill. At the time, ABC had a working name of Untitled Commission Report and the producers used the working title Untitled History Project, with the project beginning filming in July 2005 and scheduled to end post production by January 2006. Preview screenings were made in May for foreign broadcasters.[9] The film was first publicly announced at the Television Critics Association summer press tour in July.[citation needed]
According to Advertising Age, the miniseries was a personal project of ABC entertainment president Steve McPherson, who began to look for a producer shortly after reading the 9/11 Commission Report.
The White House asked the major networks for airtime to present a Presidential Address to the nation. The interruption delayed the broadcast of the second half of Path to 9/11 by approximately 20 minutes in the Eastern and Central Time Zones. Otherwise, the movie aired without any interruption.
ABC received a range of criticism from terrorism experts and people portrayed in the film that The Path to 9/11 contained false scenes, distorted events and misrepresented actions of people, with ABC receiving letters from Richard Clarke, Chief Executive Officer Bruce R. Lindsey of the William J. Clinton Foundation, and Douglas J. Band, Counselor to President Clinton, Samuel R. Berger, Madeleine Albright, John Beug, Democratic Representatives John Conyers Jr., John Dingell, Jane Harman and Louise Slaughter and others.[12] Before the miniseries aired, some screeners of The Path to 9/11 asserted that certain scenes misrepresented the real-life events upon which they were said to be based, and that some scenes were complete fabrications.
9/11 Commission members
Members of the 9/11 Commission criticized the accuracy of the film.[13] 9/11 Commission Chairman Thomas Kean, the ranking Republican, served as both a consultant and as a co-executive producer.[14] Shortly before the film’s release, Kean said, “People in both parties didn’t particularly like the commission report, and I think people in both parties aren’t going to love this one”.[14] In response to one particular scene, Kean told an interviewer he “was all right with the made-up scene” where Clinton administration is accused of blocking a chance to kill bin Laden, saying “I don’t think the facts are clear.”[15] Just weeks before the broadcast he “asked for changes that would address complaints raised by the former Clinton aides and that ABC is considering his request.”[16]
Commission member Richard Ben-Veniste said that the miniseries misrepresented facts presented in the 9/11 Commission report.[17]
Advance viewing copies selectively distributed
The extensive pre-broadcast controversy over the film was based on content that was present in viewing copies sent to conservative political groups, talk show hosts and bloggers, including radio personalities such as Rush Limbaugh, and conservative movie critic Michael Medved.[18] The office of former President Clinton repeatedly requested a preview copy, but was denied one,[19] as was former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.[20] However, a version was shown at a Washington DC screening to members and guests of the National Press Club,[21] and to attendees of the Midwest Security and Police Conference in Chicago.[22]
According to Jay Carson, a spokesman for Bill Clinton, Clinton’s office requested a copy of the movie so that they could view it before it aired, but the request was denied.[23] However, Limbaugh has at least partially disputed this, claiming that Ben-Veniste and others saw the film before him.[24] Carson has also stated that Madeleine Albright and Sandy Berger had also requested a copy and had also not received them.[25]
This prompted Albright and Berger to write letters [26][27][28] to ABC asking why they had not received copies and why ABC have chosen to run a movie whose accuracy is highly in question.
In addition to requesting an answer, Albright also stated the following reason for wanting a copy:
For example, one scene apparently portrays me as refusing to support a missile strike against bin Laden without first alerting the Pakistanis; it further asserts that I notified the Pakistanis of the strike over the objections of our military. Neither of these assertions is true. In fact, The 9/11 Commission Report states (page 117), “Since the missiles headed for Afghanistan had had to cross Pakistan, the Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs was sent to meet with Pakistan’s army chief of staff to assure him the missiles were not coming from India. Officials in Washington speculated that one or another Pakistani official might have sent a warning to the Taliban or Bin Ladin.”[26]
Criticisms of historical inaccuracy by FBI consultants
Two FBI agents refused advisory roles on the film, with one criticizing the film for creating a work of fiction and claiming it was inaccurate. Thomas E. Nicoletti had been hired by the filmmakers as a consultant, but quit[29] because “There were so many inaccuracies…I’m well aware of what’s dramatic license and what’s historical inaccuracy,” Nicoletti said. “And this had a lot of historical inaccuracy.'”[30]
Dan Coleman, who retired from the FBI in 2004, said he also was concerned when he read the script in the summer of 2005 after being approached by producers about being a technical advisor. He described, “They sent me the script, and I read it and told them they had to be kidding,” Coleman said. “I wanted my friends at the FBI to still speak to me.” Coleman went on to express a belief in ghosts as a reason for not accepting the advisory role—he did not want to be “haunted” by deceased colleagues who were falsely portrayed.[30]
Alleged assassination opportunities not used by Clinton
Critics claim many inaccuracies in the film, including the depiction of the Clinton administration. For example in one scene, former National Security Advisor Sandy Berger is portrayed as unwilling to approve a plan to take out a surrounded Osama bin Laden. He leaves it to former CIA Director George Tenet to decide if he will take responsibility. In the original version of the film,[31] Berger hangs up the phone on Tenet, and Tenet calls off the operation. No reliable verification of this event has ever been discovered. In fact, even Richard Miniter — a conservative author and critic of the Clinton administration — was quoted as saying
“The idea that someone had bin Laden in his sights in 1998 or any other time and Sandy Berger refused to pull the trigger, there’s zero factual basis for that.”[32]
Nowrasteh has said that the abrupt hang-up portrayed was not in the script and was instead improvised. It was later removed from the version shown in the United States.[33] Moreover, Nowrasteh maintains that a certain amount of dramatic license must be allotted in the process writing a dramatic script with a historical underpinning (see docudrama and biopic). Although the precise conversations depicted in the script may never have taken place, the general tone and content of events depicted in The Path to 9/11 are alleged true. Nowrasteh has said that the film “dramatizes the frequent opportunities the administration had in the 90’s to stop bin Laden in his tracks but lacked the will to do so.” [34] When asked if he thought of the script as a “historical document,” Nowrasteh has responded:
No, but I stand by the original version of the movie, and I stand by the edited version… There has to be conflation of events. The most obvious problem any dramatist faces is that of sheer length. I had to collapse the events of eight and a half years into five hours. I don’t know any other way to do it except collapse, conflate, and condense.[35]
Contrary to the movie, no US military or CIA personnel were on the ground in Afghanistan to have spotted bin Laden. (When asked about this apparent discrepancy, Nowrasteh stated, “I’ve interviewed CIA agents who have told me otherwise. But that is the one concession we made. [In the original,] we had a CIA agent on the ground near bin Laden’s compound—inside the wall even—and we took that out for the final presentation.”[35])
Contrary to the movie, the head of the Northern Alliance, Ahmed Shah Massoud, was nowhere near the alleged bin Laden camp and therefore could not have seen Osama bin Laden.
Contrary to the movie, Tenet actually said that he could not recommend a strike on the camp because the information was single sourced, and there would be no way to independently confirm bin Laden’s presence in the target area by the time an already launched cruise missile would have reached it.
A member of the 9/11 Commission, Richard Ben-Veniste also stated that the scene depicting Berger hanging up the phone on Tenet is fictional.[37]
Michael Scheuer, former head of the CIA Bin Laden Unit during the Clinton administration, a critic of President George W. Bush‘s Iraq policy, says it was not Berger who canceled assaults on bin Laden, but rather Clarke on Clinton’s behalf. Scheuer states, “Mr. Clarke, of course, was at the center of Mr. Clinton’s advisers, who resolutely refused to order the CIA to kill bin Laden. In spring 1998, I briefed Mr. Clarke and senior CIA, Department of Defense, and FBI officers on a plan to kidnap bin Laden. Mr. Clarke’s reaction was that “it was just a thinly disguised attempt to assassinate bin Laden.” I replied that if he wanted bin Laden dead, we could do the job quickly. Mr. Clarke’s response was that the president did not want bin Laden assassinated, and that we had no authority to do so”.[38]
On May 13, 2012, the former Deputy Director of the Counter-Terrorism branch of the CIA, Hank Crumpton, relayed his experiences that verified both Scheumer and Path to 9/11’s account regarding Clinton’s failure to stop Bin Laden when he had the chance in a CBS 60 minutes interview. In it, he specifically cited that they had been led to a small village near Khandahar, saw evidence of Bin Laden’s presence (security detail, a convoy, and Bin Laden himself exiting the vehicle) and immediately alerted the White House upon the optics being beamed towards to the CIA headquarters, but were ordered to stand down and abort the operation due to it taking several hours to arm and launch the TLAMs, and requested that they give his exact location five to six hours from then, and the White House wasn’t willing to allow the Afghan CIA agents to attack the compound directly.[39][40]
Berger scene
Besides criticism of an inaccurate script, other fictional and inaccurate scenes were created by the cast. In the film, CIA agents who have infiltrated bin Laden’s Afghan compound try to put an assassin named Kirk (Donnie Wahlberg) in contact with National Security Advisor Sandy Berger (Kevin Dunn); Berger, who was later convicted of illegally removing and destroying documents regarding the subject from the National Archives,[41] is portrayed as “dithering” before hanging up on the agents.[42] The scene was strongly contradicted by both Berger and the 9/11 Commission, including commission member Richard Ben-Veniste.[42][43][44][45][46]
Former Secretary of State Albright questions her portrayal
Another scene in question supposedly portrays Madeleine Albright refusing to shoot missiles at Osama bin Laden without authority from Pakistan and eventually getting “permission” from them against the military’s wishes. Albright insists that this is completely inaccurate.[47][48] As Secretary of State, Albright had no involvement in military decisions.
According to the 9/11 Commission Report: “While Atta had been selected by CAPPS [a security warning at a U.S. Airway ticket counter] in Portland [Maine] three members of… [Atta’s] hijacking team – Suqami, Wail al Shehri, and Waleed al Shehri – were selected [at an American Airline counter] in Boston. Their selection affected only the handling of their checked bags, not their screening at the checkpoint. All five men cleared the checkpoint and made their way to the gate for American 11.” [50] The incorrect depiction of location and airline may be justified as “time compression and compositing”, as described in the film’s disclaimer, or it may be an example of careless writing and sloppy fact-checking.
As a result of the inaccuracy, American Airlines stated they planned to pull all advertising from the ABC network and were considering legal action.[51]
Clinton responds
Clinton pointedly refutted [sic] several fictionalized scenes that he claims insinuate he was too distracted by the Monica Lewinskysex scandal to care about bin Laden and that a top adviser pulled the plug on CIA operatives who were just moments away from bagging the terror master, according to a letter to ABC boss Bob Iger obtained by The Post.
The former president also disputed the portrayal of then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright as having tipped off Pakistani officials that a strike was coming, giving bin Laden a chance to flee.
“The content of this drama is factually and incontrovertibly inaccurate and ABC has the duty to fully correct all errors or pull the drama entirely,” the four-page letter said.[52]
Presenting such deeply flawed and factually inaccurate misinformation to the American public and to children would be a gross miscarriage of your corporate and civic responsibility to the law, to your shareholders, and to the nation.
“The Communications Act of 1934 provides your network with a free broadcast license predicated on the fundamental understanding of your principle obligation to act as a trustee of the public airwaves in serving the public interest. Nowhere is this public interest obligation more apparent than in the duty of broadcasters to serve the civic needs of a democracy by promoting an open and accurate discussion of political ideas and events.”[53]
Scholastic Press announcement
Scholastic Press, which had a deal with ABC to distribute “educational materials” based on the movie, pulled the materials in question from their website on September 7, substituting them with materials focusing on “critical thinking and media literacy skills”.[54]
Dick Robinson, Chairman, President and CEO of Scholastic Press, had this to say on the matter:
After a thorough review of the original guide that we offered online to about 25,000 high school teachers, we determined that the materials did not meet our high standards for dealing with controversial issues… at the same time, we believe that developing critical thinking and media literacy skills is crucial for students in today’s society in order to participate fully in our democracy and that a program such as ‘The Path to 9/11’ provides a very ‘teachable moment’ for developing these skills at the high school level. We encourage teachers not to shy away from the controversy surrounding the program, but rather to engage their students in meaningful, in-depth discussion.[54]
Responses from cast and crew
Harvey Keitel, who plays John P. O’Neill—the lead role in the film, said he was told that the script was “history” project, but “it turned out not all the facts were correct” and by the time ABC tried to “heal the problem” it was “too late.”[55] In an interview two weeks before the film was to air he said more scenes needed to be corrected because “you cannot cross the line from a conflation of events to a distortion of the event.”[55] Keitel also said there was “discussion” and “argument” on-set during the filming about what was truthful and what was not, and that he disagreed with certain decisions.[55]
Producer Marc Platt has acknowledged that the script was based in part on a book co-written by a Bush administration official. The book, The Cell: Inside the 9/11 Plot, and Why the FBI and CIA Failed to Stop It was co-written by John Miller, who serves as the assistant director of public affairs for the FBI.[56]
Cyrus Nowrasteh, script writer for the film, said it was “an objective telling of the events of 9/11.”[57]
Response from Barbara Bodine
On September 8, former Ambassador to YemenBarbara Bodine complained in a Los Angeles Times Op-Ed about her portrayal in the film: “According to the mythmakers, a battle ensued between a cop obsessed with tracking down Osama bin Laden and a bureaucrat more concerned with the feelings of the host government than the fate of Americans and the realities of terrorism. I know this is false. I was there. I was the ambassador.”[58] The ABC miniseries compressed Bodine’s role to a single extended scene, suggesting she was dismissive, hostile, and vulgar toward FBI investigator John O’Neill from the moment of his October 2000 arrival in Yemen (see USS Cole bombing).
Television actress Patricia Heaton, who played Bodine and who has her own independent ABC development deal, did not comment on the controversy surrounding The Path to 9/11 nor its worldwide broadcast on September 10–11, 2006.[citation needed]
Errors and other criticism
In addition to the fictionalized scenes and misrepresentations, preview copies contained several smaller errors that prompted criticism that the film is sloppy in its fidelity to facts. For example, a caption in the film misspelled Madeleine Albright’s name.[59][not in citation given]Another example is a scene portraying a warning popping up on a computer when Mohamed Atta boarded American Airlines Flight 11 in Boston. The scene was factually inaccurate; Atta actually boarded a connecting U.S. Airways flight in Bangor, Maine.[60]
During production of the movie, there was a controversy in the Toronto media over the use of discarded medical charts and records as document props. The Privacy Commissioner for the province of Ontario launched an investigation and the producers destroyed footage including the garbage and sent all remaining documents to a shredding service for disposal.[61]
Republican William Bennett joined those saying there is “no reason to falsify the record” or “falsify conversations”. During an appearance on CNN he called on ABC to correct the inaccuracies of the show and for fellow conservatives to join him in such a demand.[62]
On December 22, 2006 Media Matters for America named ABC as “Misinformer” of 2006 for, among other things in The Path to 9/11, calling it:
a two-part miniseries that placed the blame for the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the Clinton administration and whitewashed some of the Bush administration’s failures leading up to the attacks.[63][63]
Advertising discrepancies
While in the U.S. the film was marketed as a loose dramatization of events based on the 9/11 Commission Report, television advertising for the film in countries outside the U.S. called the film the “Official True Story”.[64] Further, an Australian TV listing called the film “the story of exactly what happened”, which later changed to “The thrilling dramatised investigation” as the airing time drew near.[65]
Allegation of non-profit involvement
Allegations of religious involvement surfaced in 2006, when journalist Max Blumenthal commented on David Loren Cunningham and his former links to the international mission organization Youth With A Mission. David is the son of Youth With A Mission founder Loren Cunningham. This connection to Youth With A Mission, and past allegations of a political agenda within the organization, were mentioned by Blumenthal. He also noted the previous intentions of David Cunningham to ‘revolutionize’ film and television by founding an auxiliary group within Youth With A Mission called TFI (The Film Institute). Youth With A Mission International Chairman Lynn Green acknowledged the allegations, yet rebutted these concerns, insisting that the organization, “had nothing to do with financing the film, nor did any YWAM personnel have any influence on the content of the film.”[66][67][68]
Support for The Path to 9/11
Responses from the right
Prior to its broadcast, conservative talk radio host Hugh Hewitt described as “a very accurate docudrama” and claimed the controversy by suggesting that what they call “the deep anger of the Clinton political machine” or the “narcissistic whining of the Clinton coterie” amounts to “self-serving complaints,” to “an irrelevant diversion,” to a “repellent” “hissy fit”.[69]Brent Bozell wrote, also before it was broadcast, that both “Clinton and Bush officials come under fire, and if it seems more anti-Clinton, that’s only because they were in office a lot longer than Team Bush before 9-11. Indeed, the film drives home the point that from our enemies’ perspective, it’s irrelevant who is in the White House. They simply want to kill Americans and destroy America. The film doesn’t play favorites, and the Bush administration takes its lumps as well.” [70] Hewitt added that the “program is not primarily about the Clinton stewardship—or lack thereof—of the national security. It is not even secondarily about that. Rather the mini-series is the first attempt — very successful — to convey to American television viewers what we are up against: The fanaticism, the maniacal evil, the energy and the genius for mayhem of the enemy.”[69]
To date, the miniseries has not been released on DVD. Writer and producer Cyrus Nowrasteh said that a stalled release is not due to lack of interest but rather political pressure, telling the Los Angeles Times in 2007 they were protecting Bill Clinton‘s presidential legacy and shielding Hillary Clinton from criticism for her 2008 presidential campaign.[71][72] According to the LA Times, an ABC spokeswoman reached September 4, 2007 said that the company “has no release date at this time,” and she declined to comment further.[71]
Documentary revisits controversy
In August, 2008, talk show host and documentary filmmaker John Ziegler and producer David Bossie of Citizens United premiered a documentary co-produced, written and directed by Ziegler entitled Blocking The Path to 9/11, which revisits the political controversy behind the ABC miniseries The Path to 9/11.[73][74][75] Through interviews with the Path to 9/11 filmmakers and others, news clips regarding the controversy, and footage from the miniseries itself, the documentary argues not only that accusations of the filmmakers’ covert political agenda were unfounded, but that they were generated by Clinton-era politicians concerned that the miniseries tarnished their political legacy, and were reported uncritically by bloggers and a biased news media. The documentary also asserts that Disney/ABC ultimately shelved plans to release a DVD of the miniseries as a result of pressure from the political left, specifically the Clintons themselves. As noted in the documentary, Disney/ABC denies this and claims the decision not to release a DVD was purely a business decision.[76]
Jeffrey Ressner of The Politico, wrote Blocking ‘The Path to 9/11 mirrored The Path to 9/11 because it “raises even more questions and adds its own set of disconnected dots to this broadcasting dilemma”.[77]
Awards
2007 Emmy Award: Outstanding Single Camera Picture Editing for a Miniseries or a Movie
2007 Emmy Award nominations: Outstanding Casting for a Miniseries, Movie or a Special; Outstanding Cinematography for a Miniseries or Movie; Outstanding Main Title Design; Outstanding Music Composition for a Miniseries, Movie or a Special (Original Dramatic Score); Outstanding Sound Editing for a Miniseries, Movie or a Special; Outstanding Special Visual Effects for a Miniseries, Movie or a Special;
2007 American Cinema Editors Eddie Award: Best Edited Miniseries or Motion Picture for Commercial Television
Ratings in the United States
During the first night of the original broadcast in the United States, The Path to 9/11 was beat by NBC‘s Sunday Night Football with 20.7 million watching the game, with Path tying a rerun of the film 9/11 shown on CBS with 13 million viewers.[5][78][79] During its second night, The Path to 9/11 was again beat by an NFL doubleheader, this time the premiere of Monday Night Football on ESPN, with 10.5 million households watching those games, and The Path to 9/11 coming in second.[80]
Part 1: September 10, 2006 at 8:00 pm–10:45 pm (shortened from 11 pm) at EDT on ABC
Part 2: September 11, 2006 at 8:00 pm–9:00 pm at EDT on ABC
Part 2 (continued): September 11, 2006 at 9:20 pm – 10:17 pm at EDT on ABC (After President Bush National Address) (See exception)
ABC’s broadcasts though originally planned to be shown “with limited commercial interruption” were aired with no commercials, since the network was unable to obtain sponsorship.[81] The broadcasts were also watched in Canada, where the network is available on cable and satellite.
Part 2 of the miniseries, also uninterrupted, aired in the San Diego, California market on KGTV nearly a week later, on September 16, 2006, from 8:30pm–10:30 pm.[citation needed]
Australia
Part 1: September 10, 2006 at 8:30 pm on Channel Seven
Part 2: September 11, 2006 at 9:30 pm on Channel Seven
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Story 1: Commander in Chief Trump Orders National Guard To Secure The Mexican/United States Border in 2018 As Bush Did In 2006 and Obama in 2010 — Election Year Politics? — Enforce Immigration Law By Deporting All 30-60 Million Illegal Aliens in U.S. — Videos —
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President Donald Trump To Send National Guard To U.S.-Mexico Border | NBC Nightly News
Analysis: Trump’s plan to send National Guard troops to secure the southern border
President Trump signed a proclamation Wednesday night to send the National Guard to the southern border immediately, a senior White House official told Fox News, in response to what the administration described as an “unacceptable” flow of drugs, criminal activity and illegal immigrants.
Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said at the White House press briefing that the signing would be done in conjunction with governors and that the administration hoped the deployment would begin “immediately.”
“Despite a number of steps this administration has taken…we continue to see unacceptable levels of illegal drugs, dangerous gang activity transnational criminal organizations and illegal immigration flow across our border,” she said.
“The president has directed that the Department of Defense and the Department of Homeland Security work together with our governors to deploy our National Guard to our southwest border to assist the border patrol,” she said. “The president will be signing a proclamation to that effect today.”
Details about what the National Guard would do and how many would be deployed and for how long were not immediately disclosed.
Under the George W. Bush administration, deploying the National Guard to the border cost $415 million dollars.
Donald J. Trump
✔@realDonaldTrump
Our Border Laws are very weak while those of Mexico & Canada are very strong. Congress must change these Obama era, and other, laws NOW! The Democrats stand in our way – they want people to pour into our country unchecked….CRIME! We will be taking strong action today.
Nielsen pointed to what she described as increasing fraud and exploited loopholes among arrivals on the southern border, saying traffickers have been advertising that if migrants have children with them, then they are more likely to be released into the U.S. She also said that almost 50 percent of arriving aliens are from Central America.
“Traffickers and smugglers know that these individuals cannot under U.S. law be easily removed in an expeditious way back to their country of origin and so they exploit the loophole,” she said, adding that the ability to game the system acts as a magnet for more migrants.
She said that the administration has drafted legislation and will ask Congress to provide legal authority and resources to address the problem.
“We will not allow illegal immigration levels to become the norm,” she said. “More than 1,000 people a day, 300,000 a year violating our sovereignty as a nation will never be acceptable to this president.”
Trump had tweeted earlier Wednesday that he would “be taking strong action today” on the Mexico border, a day after he said that he wants to send the military to secure it until a wall is built.
Arguing that the U.S. border laws “are very weak” compared to Mexico and Canada, he accused Democrats of wanting immigrants “to pour into our country unchecked.”
Former Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush had deployed the National Guard to the border in response to security issues.
The Associated Press reported that the White House was considering a model similar to a Bush-era operation, where in 2006 6,000 National Guard troops were sent to assist the border patrol with non-law enforcement duties while additional border agents were hired and trained.
Trump’s recent focus on illegal immigration appeared to have been partly motivated by a caravan of more than 1,000 Central American migrants heading toward the U.S. border.
Trump had threatened to end the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and to cut foreign aid to countries such as Honduras, from where many of the migrants originate, if the caravan was not stopped.
Trump said Tuesday that he believes the caravan is being broken up after he had a conversation with Mexican officials.
Nielsen said on Tuesday that she had been advised by Mexican officials that “the caravan is dissipating” and that several hundred migrants had been repatriated.
“We will not accept the lawlessness of these types of efforts and those who choose to violate our laws, and those who conspire to assist others to violate our laws, will face criminal prosecution,” Attorney General Jeff Sessions said. “The Department of Justice fully supports the efforts of the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security announced today to secure our border. I will soon be announcing additional Department of Justice initiatives to restore legality to the southern border.”
Fox News’ Brooke Singman, Serafin Gomez, Jennifer Griffin, Jake Gibson and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Congress should make sure our border patrol has the manpower, equipment, funds, and authority to do what is needed.
(AP Photo/Gregory Bull)
About 1,100 Central Americans are marching toward the U.S.-Mexico border. Word from this “caravan,” organized by a group called Pueblo Sin Fronteras, which translates as “peoples without borders,”* is that these migrants plan to turn themselves over to U.S. immigration officers and apply for asylum.
(Note, Pueblos sin Fronteras is not connected to a U.S. nonprofit named “People without Borders.”)
It’s worth noting some interesting math, among other things. If the caravan tried to evade the U.S. Border Patrol but was caught, it would be about equal to the number of illegal entrants caught every day at the southern border.
The border patrol caught 310,531 in fiscal 2017. In the first five months of fiscal 2018, apprehensions are up a bit, to about 900 a day. These are people caught trying to sneak into the U.S. between checkpoints.
It’s a huge problem.
At least 10 million people are in here illegally. Many snuck in. Many others overstayed visas. Nearly 1,000 more are caught every day trying to cross. And another 2,000 a day overstay their visas.
We aren’t a “people without borders,” and we never should be. President Trump has ramped up border enforcement, but there is more work to do, and Congress should make sure our border patrol has the manpower, equipment, funds, and authority to do what is needed.
Border enforcement isn’t any old aspect of law enforcement. Democratic self-determination and the rule of law hinge on it.
A country without borders, Trump says repeatedly, is no country at all. This is true, and it’s important. National democracy is the biggest form that democracy takes in today’s world. In a democratic nation, self-determination includes determining who is part of the nation.
If we really believe in the ideas of the Enlightenment, then we have to believe in self-determining, democratic nations. That means we have to believe in immigration control.
How much immigration to have, and of what sort, is a live debate. We support something more open than Trump’s rhetoric would prescribe. We don’t favor cuts in the level of legal immigration, but we agree with the president’s tilt toward high-skilled newcomers.
If we have laws and don’t enforce them, while so many of our business and political elites cheer the lax enforcement, we are trading democracy for oligarchy.
Illegal immigration corrodes the rule of law more than most lawbreaking. It creates subcultures and neighborhoods where families and communities live in the shadows. This means they’re less likely to call the police or operate above board, leaving their families vulnerable to the worst among them.
Trump’s critics blame this on aggressive deportation efforts. That can be debated, but we should all agree that the best place to enforce immigration law is at the border.
The Pueblo Sin Fronteras people want asylum status. This country has always welcomed genuine refugees, which is to say, people who have a well-founded fear of persecution in their own country. But migrants are not the same thing as asylum seekers. And anyway, why is the U.S. responsible for people from Guatemala tramping across a huge country such as Mexico, simply because this is where they would prefer to live? Asylum seekers, properly defined, are fleeing for their lives. They have the right to safety, not to residence in the land of milk of honey.
Imagine there’s no countries. It may sound nice in a John Lennon song, but it is facile and ill-considered. In reality, a land without a border is inhabited by a people without the rule of law or democracy.
—-
* UPDATE/CLARIFICATION: The original version of this editorial apparently left many readers believing that the caravan group, Pueblos Sin Fronteras was the same as a U.S.-based nonprofit with the name “People Without Borders.” They are not connected in any way.
Can President Trump breathe easy? The Washington Post reported Tuesday night that Trump is a subject of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, but not a target of the investigation.
There’s something there for both sides—Trump supporters can argue that the president isn’t a target, and his critics can point out that the president remains under investigation. Trump is not in the clear, but neither are criminal charges necessarily imminent. Trump might never become a target of the investigation, or he could change from subject to target at any time.
“It’s not comforting to be a ‘subject’ of an investigation. Most white-collar criminal defendants started out as subjects of a grand jury investigation,” said Bruce Green, a former federal prosecutor and a law professor at Fordham. “Calling President Trump a ‘subject’ rather than a mere ‘witness’ generally means that his conduct is still being investigated, he is still suspected of having acted criminally, but no conclusion has yet been reached that he is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.”
The media’s Mueller speculation has reached a new level of lunacy
MatthewWalther
Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
April 5, 2018
Did you hear the news? On Wednesday an obscure Dutch lawyer who is “tied” — one of my favorite journalistic weasel words, along with “linked” and “blasted” — to the deputy chairman of Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign has been sentenced to 30 days in jail for initially failing to forward all of his emails to Bob Mueller. I have heard of stiffer sentences for jaywalking in Manhattan and failing to register a cocker spaniel, but I’m sure it’s a very big deal.
It has to be because the sentencing of Alex van der Zwaan immediately inspired another round of lunatic speculation about the state of the investigation into collusion between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin. The sentence was announced the day after TheWashington Postreported that Trump is currently not a “target” of the investigation.
Cue the takes! “Mueller told Trump he’s not a criminal target in the Russia probe. That may not mean what you think,” one of the approximately 1,700 persons employed full-time by the Post to produce algorithmically generated electronic high-pitched noise sounding not unlike the president’s last name insisted. “Mueller’s assurances that Trump is not a ‘target’ don’t mean much,” Politicoyodeled. “The report that Trump is not a target of the Mueller probe is actually terrible news for the president,” saidSlate, which still maintains its idiotic Trump Impeach-o-Meter, something I wish I had thought of when I was working at a right-wing magazine during Obama’s second term. I spent Wednesday morning reading dozens, possibly as many as a hundred, of these pieces without learning anything.
Here is what it all really means: nothing.
Nothing at all except that among a certain segment of our supposedly educated upper-middle-class there is apparently an endless appetite for therapy-tainment. The Mueller investigation has seemingly nothing to do with collusion between Trump and Moscow, of which there is still as much evidence as there was in January 2017, i.e., none. It’s Bircherism for people who know what “green juice” is, a way to explain how the wealthiest political campaign in history lost to a quasi-literate lowbrow TV star and cope with this ongoing reality. This is why some recent takes don’t even make a pretense of mentioning Russia. Long ago the whole thing morphed from being an investigation of treasonous election meddling to one of supposed obstruction of an investigation into the aforementioned non-event. People are still clicking.
Trump is not safe from Mueller. Not by a long shot.
It is easy to understand why journalists cater to their readers’ appetite for this stuff. When there is news, even news that makes the whole thing seem stupid and pointless, it’s bad news for Trump; when there isn’t news, the absence of news is also bad news for Trump. If a rando volunteer on the campaign admits that he lied about once emailing another rando overseas, it’s the second gunman on the grassy knoll. If Mueller shows no sign of being even remotely interested in a conspiracy theory about Trump, Russia, and the release of emails that showed irrefutable evidence of actual collusion between the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s campaign, it’s actually proof that this is probably what is going to bring down the administration sooner or later. For people who have convinced themselves that all of this is hugely significant anything can be evidence of everything — even nothing.Let’s summarize the things we actually know. Paul Manafort worked for the Ukrainian government from before the release of Star Wars on DVD until roughly the day that Beyoncé won a Grammy for “Single Ladies.” He also lied about it and about some or perhaps nearly all of his earnings. Several other people, including the president’s former national security advisor, have told lies about, among other things, an utterly unremarkable post-election conversation with a Russian ambassador. Thirteen technically real Russian people also LARPed as Tea Party types on Facebook. I mean, really. What bank did Putin use to cash the golf-style novelty oversized check from Trump and how many digital copies of the pee tape are on Mueller’s MacBook Pro?
In the spirit of paschal charity I would like to offer up my very first contribution to the vast literature of Mueller “what’s next” takes. In two or six or eight months, President Trump, as tired as the rest of us of hearing about this non-story, will finally agree to sit down with our very special prosecutor to clear his name. Because Trump is a hyperbolic charlatan, he will proffer some ridiculous falsehoods — “I have never met a Russian, okay? I don’t — does anybody, does anybody even know where Russia is?” — under oath. Bingo, Mueller will say, you lied. You’re done.
And maybe he will be. No one whose habit or job it is to read the news on a daily basis would disagree at this point that it would be worth having President Michael Pence in exchange for the drawing of a curtain over these tedious revels. I would go a great deal further than that: I would rather see Hillary Clinton cackling from the Oval Office than read another spodomantic opinion column about the former star of The Apprentice and the largest sovereign republic in Eurasia.
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‘THE BOMB” NEW PBS Documentary about the history of nuclear weapons!!
Published on Jul 23, 2017
The Bomb is a 2015 American documentary film about the history of nuclear weapons, from theoretical scientific considerations at the very beginning, to their first use on August 6, 1945,to their global political implications in the present-day.The two-hour PBS film was written and directed by Rushmore DeNooyer, who noted the project took a year and a half to complete, since much of the film footage and images was only recently declassified by the United States Department of Defense. According to DeNooyer, “It wouldn’t take very many bombs to really change life on Earth, … The idea that there are thousands of them sitting around is pretty scary. I don’t think people today realize that. They don’t think about it. I don’t think they are scared. But in a way, they should be. Mark Dawidziak, of the Cleveland Plain Dealer, summarized the film as follows: “The Bomb moves swiftly to cover Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Cold War, the arms race, the Red Scare, the witch hunt, the Cuban Missile Crisis, test-ban treaties, the “Star Wars” initiative, the anti-nuke movement, the collapse of the Soviet Union and the rise of new nuclear threats. According to historian Richard Rhodes, “The invention [of ‘The Bomb’] was a millennial change in human history: for the first time, we were now capable of our own destruction, as a species…
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TED – China’s Political System
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It’s a standard assumption in the West: As a society progresses, it eventually becomes a capitalist, multi-party democracy. Right? Eric X. Li, a Chinese investor and political scientist, begs to differ. In this provocative, boundary-pushing talk, he asks his audience to consider that there’s more than one way to run a succesful modern nation. TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world’s leading thinkers and doers give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes (or less). Look for talks on Technology, Entertainment and Design — plus science, business, global issues, the arts and much more. Find closed captions and translated subtitles in many languages at
Xi Jinping: Why are we called Communist Party of China?
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China’s Communist party enshrines Xi Jinping ideology in constitution
Published on Oct 24, 2017
China’s ruling Communist Party has voted to enshrine Xi Jinping’s name and ideology in its constitution, elevating him to the level of founder Mao Zedong. The unanimous vote to incorporate “Xi Jinping Thought” happened at the end of the Communist Party congress, China’s most important political meeting. Mr Xi has steadily increased his grip on power since becoming leader in 2012. This move means that any challenge to Mr Xi will now be seen as a threat to Communist Party rule. More than 2,000 delegates gathered in Beijing’s Great Hall of the People for the final approval process to enshrine “Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for the New Era” into the Communist Party constitution of China. At the end of the process, delegates were asked if they had any objections, to which they responded with loud cries of “none”, reported journalists at the scene.
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China Just Sent a Chilling Warning to North Korea About The United States
North Korea Is SCREWED After China Issues Brutal Threat Of What Will Happen If They Hit U.S.
China Just Sent a Chilling Warning to North Korea About The United States
The threat of a North Korean nuclear attack is Trump’s biggest test of leadership yet – but another country might actually end up calling the shots. And Trump, to be fair, has been warning us about China for years. But I’m willing to bet that even he didn’t see this coming.
Fact is, aside from being deadly, brutal, and destructive, war is also expensive. And if you can’t afford to do it, you probably shouldn’t start it.
Or join it, for that matter. It’s why China has unofficially leaked a government policy for the world to see – that if North Korea attacks the US, China will remain neutral.
But if the US attacks first, China will join the war. Which means, put bluntly, that the only way World War III doesn’t start is for North Korea to hit us first. Which is unacceptable. About as unacceptable as World War III.China really put Trump in a bind.
Breitbart reports:
The Communist Party organization Global Times [published] an editorial declaring that China would remain neutral if North Korea starts a war but intervene on North Korea’s behalf if the U.S. and South Korea attempt a preemptive strike.
The Chinese government may eventually seek some diplomatic wiggle room by insisting the Global Times is but a newspaper printing an editorial, and the piece is written in the style of newspaper editors lecturing officials about what they “should” do, but China’s state-run media is a mouthpiece for its authoritarian government.If it sounds complicated, it’s really not. The Chinese government is run by the Chinese Communist Party. The Chinese Communist Party owns and runs the Global Times. Therefore, whatever the Global Times prints is what the Communist Party wants it to print.
But it’s still a newspaper, of course, which means that, if the world – or, sometimes, the Chinese themselves – really don’t like a policy, the government can pretend that the newspaper just got the story wrong.
It’s an easy way to test a policy before you pass it. Or, in this case, an easy way to tell the world what you’re going to do, without all the trouble of officially telling the world what you’re going to do.
Fact is, China can’t really afford this war – Breitbart lists off several reasons, including tensions with India, Japan, and all the work securing the South China Sea. The Korea thing is just one more brick on an already heavy pile. But their way out of it forces Donald Trump to let the US get hit first.
‘Welcome to China! I love you!’: Beijing schoolchildren thrill Trump with Peking opera performance after private tour of the Forbidden City and tea with China’s Xi and Madame Peng
Trump landed Wednesday in China for meetings with President Xi Jinping
School children waving American flags greeted him at the airport in Beijing
President and first lady took in an extra special performance of Peking opera during a grand tour of the Forbidden City put on for him by Xi
President has touted his close relationship with Xi, calling it ‘outstanding’
But he says that won’t stop him from getting tough with China over trade
North Korea is expected to dominate the agenda as it did when pair met in April
Last year when he visited China, Obama was prevented from using his stairs to deplane Air Force One in a major snub
Trump didn’t have that problem: Chinese authorities had a rolling staircase tall enough to reach the front door of the plane
By Francesca Chambers, White House Correspondent In Beijing, China and David Martosko, Us Political Editor For Dailymail.com In Seoul, South Korea
PUBLISHED: 21:20 EST, 7 November 2017 | UPDATED: 12:59 EST, 8 November 2017
President Donald Trump took in an extra special performance of Peking opera on Wednesday evening in Beijing during a grand tour of the Forbidden City put on for him by China‘s Xi Jinping.
Xi had the production staged in the former imperial palace that is now a museum just for Trump’s visit.
‘Welcome to China! I love you!’ a group of children who were part of the performance told the U.S. president when it was finished.
The president and first lady Melania Trump ended their evening with a dinner in another section of the Forbidden City with the Chinese leader and his wife, Madame Peng Liyuan.
‘Welcome to China! I love you!’ a group of children who were part of a Peking opera performance told the U.S. president this evening in Beijing
Trump took in an extra special performance of Peking opera on Wednesday during a grand tour of the Forbidden City put on by Chinese President Xi Jinping. President Trump and First Lady Melania Trump are seen here in the Forbidden City with Xi and his wife Madame Peng Liyuan
The Trumps are at a private dinner now with Xi and his wife, Madame Peng Liyuan
SPECIAL MOMENT: The president and first lady share a fond moment after their arrival in the Forbidden City
President Trump tours the Conservation Scientific Laboratory of the Forbidden City with his wife, Xi and Peng
Trump viewed a clock on a “musical clock with country scene,” a “gourd-shaped clock with rotating flowers,” and a “clock with lifting tower,” according to a placard bearing an English and Chinese-language descriptions of the items
After the tour, the presidents and the first ladies of the US and China watched a special performance of Peking opera that was staged for Trump’s visit
A military honor guard and flag-waving schoolchildren greeted Trump when he arrived Wednesday afternoon in China, the third country in his 12-day Asia tour.
U.S. ambassador to China Terry Branstad met Trump and his secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, after Air Force One stopped on the tarmac in Beijing.
Trump deplaned from Air Force One without incident, avoiding the embarrassment Barack Obama suffered a year ago as he landed in China during the annual Group of 20 summit.
Obama was humiliated when he had to exit from the belly of the aircraft because authorities didn’t approve a staircase tall enough for him to walk out of the front exit of the plane.
Chinese officials rolled a large set of stairs to the aircraft’s door on Wednesday.
WARM REUNION: Trump and Xi greeted each other like old friends on Wednesday in the Forbidden City
Trump was especially interested in a clock with lifting tour during his tour of an artifacts restoration center in the Forbidden City. ‘Unbelievable,’ he said
Trump and Xi watch the Peking opera from the Hall of Character Cultivation in the Forbidden City
The U.S. president was delighted as children in yellow and red costumes danced on stage with peacock feathers
As Trump left the performance, the told inquiring reporters, ‘We’re having a great time, thank you’
Trump hopped in his motorcade and sped through Beijing to the Forbidden City, where he had tea with his Chinese counterpart, whom he had entertained at his Florida Mar-a-Lago club in April, and the first lady of sprawling Asian country that is home to 1.4 billion people.
After a warm reunion over tea, Chinese president Xi Jinping led the Trumps to the Conservation Scientific Laboratory of the Forbidden City to participate in an artifact restoration.
Trump was intrigued by a ‘musical clock with country scene’ and a ‘gourd-shaped clock with rotating flowers,’ according to English-language placards.
Viewing a ‘clock with lifting tower, Trump said it was ‘unbelievable.’
Once Trump had moved on to another room, Tillerson entered with the rest of the U.S. delegation, including Branstad. The diplomat was eager to know more about the artifacts, asking many questions as White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, senior adviser Jared Kushner and National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster milled about the room.
The two first couples next watched a performance of Peking opera, a distinctively Chinese art form that combines music, mime, dance and acrobatics.
Posing for pictures with the cast when the opera had concluded, Trump told them the extravagant show was ‘beautiful!’
Children waving American flags greet the Trumps as they arrive at the Beijing airport
President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump arrived on Air Force One in Beijing, China on Wednesday
Trump left Osan Air Base in Pyeongtaek, South Korea on his way to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping to talk about global trade and the North Korean nuclear menace
A U.S and Chinese honor guard met the Trumps, along with a cadre of schoolchildren waving the flags of both nations
Chinese officials rolled a large set of stairs to the aircraft’s door on Wednesday, avoiding any appearance of the kind of insult that greeted former president Barack Obama in 2016
Obama was denied use of an airport staircase when he deplaned Air Force One last September as he arrived in China for the annual Group of 20 summit – a move that was seen globally as a major snub
The Forbidden City, now a major tourist attraction, has its roots in the 15th Century and was the Chinese imperial palace from the Ming dynasty through 1912.
On the agenda for Trump during his Beijing visit are requests for a hardline approach to economically paralyzing North Korea, and talks aimed at shrinking America’s massive trade deficit with China.
Last year the Chinese sold $347 billion more in goods to the U.S. than America sold into the world’s largest communist nation.
Trump is on a five-country trip through Asia traveling to Japan, South Korea, China, Vietnam and the Philippines
Trump roared with approval as he waded through a sea of children on the tarmac Wednesday in China
Trump said Monday in Japan that he’s fond of Xi Jinping, the newly-elevated communist party chair of China, and the foreign leader likes him too
Trump left South Korea on Wednesday after delivering a speech to the country’s National Assembly. He said in a tweet Wednesday morning that he was looking forward to again seeing Xi, ‘who is just off his great political victory.’
He said Monday inJapan that he’s fond of Xi, the newly-elevated communist party chair of China, and the foreign leader likes him.
But he won’t allow their mutual affection to cloud his judgement, Trump asserted, as he pledgedto take ‘very, very strong action’ against China and other countries that have been treating the United States ‘unfairly’ in the trade arena.
‘He represents China. I represent the United States,’ Trump said at a news conference in Tokyo.
On the way to Beijing, a senior White House official told reporters that the president plans to keep up his habit of tweeting while he’s in China, even though Chinese citizens can’t do it.
‘The president will tweet whatever he wants,’ the official said. ‘That’s his way of communicating directly with the American people. Why not?’
‘So long as he can access his Twitter account – because Twitter is banned in China along with Facebook and most of the other social media. I’m sure we’ve got the gear aboard this airplane to make it happen. But it is noteworthy that none of the major western platforms for social media are even allowed to operate in China.’
On Tuesday in Seoul, Trump pressured Xi’s government to totally isolate Kim Jong-un, the 33-year-old despot across the border, during remarks in Seoul.
Trump tweeted Wednesday that he was looking forward to renewing his bond with Xi, whom he welcomed to his Florida Mar-a-Lago private resort in April
Trump has touted his relationship with Xi Jinping calling it ‘outstanding’, but says he still intends to get tough with the Chinese leader over trade in Beijing
In this photo taken on October 31, 2017, Chinese paramilitary guards walk in The Forbidden City in Beijing
All responsible nations must cut off North Korea’s cash flow by imposing and enforcing international sanctions on Kim and his government, Trump declared, singling out China and Russia, two permanent members of the United Nations Security Council.
‘It’s time to act with urgency and with great determination,’ the U.S. president said in a joint press conference with South Korean leader Moon Jae-in.
Beijing is the third destination on a five-nation hustle across eastern Asia.
As with every other stop on this trip, North Korea is expected to dominate Xi and Trump’s discussions.
But in Beijing, more than anywhere else during the visit, Trump – a former titan of real estate – is also under pressure to address the regional trade practices that he said as a candidate he would fix.
Trump pounded China for alleged currency manipulation in the presidential election last year that unexpectedly put him in power. He’s said as recently as February that the Chinese were ‘grand champions’ at the economic trick.
By artificially devaluing its currency, the yuan, Beijing has been able to been able to lower the price of its exports, ‘stealing’ American jobs, Trump has said.
Trump will tour a famous imperial palace and take in the opera today today with first lady Melania Trump as he brings his high-wire circuit of Asia to Beijing
His assessment was rejected by the International Monetary Fund last year, and Trump’s own administration has shied away from shackling China with the designation.
Since his April summit with Xi, the U.S. president has also backed off his verbal assault.
‘The relationship developed by President Xi and myself I think is outstanding,’ Trump said after less than a day of talks with the Chinese president and his representatives.
‘We look forward to being together many times in the future. And I believe lots of very potentially bad problems will be going away.’
Days later Trump was still gushing about his weekend in Florida with Xi in what amounted to a total about-face of his previous criticisms.
‘Now what am I going to do? Start a trade war with China while in the middle of him working on a bigger problem, frankly, with North Korea?’ he asked rhetorically in an interview with Fox & Friends.
Trump said later that month that it wouldn’t make sense to label Xi’s country a currency manipulator after the Chinese leader offered to assist the U.S. in its efforts to constrain North Korea.
‘Why would I call China a currency manipulator when they are working with us on the North Korean problem? We will see what happens!’ Trump tweeted.
China’s stepped up efforts to choke off Kim Jong-un’s finances has not kept Trump from complaining about the gross trade deficit between the two countries, nor has it had an immediate effect on the United States’ enforcement of freedom of navigation in the South China Sea.
Trump told Fox News host Maria Bartiromo late last month that the U.S. loses ‘hundreds of billions a year’ a year to China.
Trump singled out China on Tuesday in South Korea as a country that needs to do more to cripple North Korea’s nuclear aggression
Trump is due in Beijing on Wednesday where he will meet Chinese leader Xi Jingping on his home soil for the first time (the two are pictured at the G20 summit in Germany in July)
‘We lose with almost every country, we have massive deficits,’ the billionaire president insisted. ‘We can’t allow the world to look at us as a whipping post. Not gonna happen, anymore.’
Monday, at a joint press conference with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in Tokyo, Trump told a reporter who asked how his administration plans to enforce its mandate of a ‘free and open’ Indo-Asia Pacific without riling up China, a major power on the continent, that he would not allow the communist country to take advantage of the U.S.
‘You will be seeing things of countries that have been treating the United States and the United States worker and companies…our country, and our workers very unfairly, you will be seeing that the United States will take very, very strong action,’ Trump said.
The legal work is mostly finished, he revealed. ‘And you’re going to see a very big difference, and it’s going to happen very soon. Because the United States, by many countries, has been treated very, very unfairly when it comes to trade.’
Trump has not shied away from attacking China on Twitter, both before and after his first meeting with Xi at Mar-A-Lago back in April
The administration believes that China is behind as much as $600 million in IP theft through forced technology transfers.
China’s Commerce Ministry has called the probe ‘irresponsible’ and ‘not objective.’ Beijing would almost certainly bring additional U.S. action before the World Trade Organization.
But Trump could unilaterally impose tariffs on Beijing through Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 if USTR determines that China is engaging in ‘unfair trade practices’ – a powerful weapon if he decides to use it.
Trump has been hesitant to act against Beijing so long as Xi goes along with his plans to suffocate North Korea’s nuclear ambition.
The resident left Seoul on Wednesday after meeting with Moon Jae-in, the newly elected leader of South Korea
Trump visited Japan earlier this week and after stopping in Beijing he is due to visit Vietnam and the Philippines before heading back to the US
At a briefing with reporters on Sunday evening in Tokyo, a senior White House official insisted that the economic and security concerns of the Trump administration are wholly separate issues when it comes to North Korea and trade with countries in the Indo-Pacific.
This article is about the main ideology of the People’s Republic of China and its ruling party, the Communist Party. For the socialist ideology of the Republican era of China under Kuomintang rule, see Socialist ideology of the Kuomintang.
The concept of a primary stage of socialism was conceived before China introduced economic reforms.[1] When discussing the necessity of commodity relations at the First Zhengzhou Conference (2–10 November 1958) Mao Zedong—the Chairman of the CPC’s Central Committee—said that China was in the “initial stage of socialism” [1] Mao never elaborated on the idea; his successors were left to do this.[1]
After Mao’s death
On 5 May 1978, the article “Putting into Effect the Socialist Principle of Distribution According to Work”, elaborated on the idea that China was still at the first stage of reaching pure communism[2] and that it had not become a truly socialist society.[2] It is said[by whom?] that the article was written on the orders of Deng Xiaoping, so as to “criticize and repudiate” the beliefs of the communist left.[3] The term reappeared at the 6th plenum of the 11th Central Committee on 27 June 1981 in the document, “Resolution on Certain Questions in the History of our Party since the Founding of the PRC”.[4]Hu Yaobang, the CPC’s general secretary, used the term in his report to the 12th CPC National Congress on 1 September 1982.[4] It was not until the “Resolution Concerning the Guiding Principle in Building Socialist Spiritual Civilization” at the 6th plenum of the 12th Central Committee that the term was used in the defense of the economic reforms which were being introduced.[4]
At the 13th CPC National Congress, acting CPC General Secretary Zhao Ziyang, on behalf of the 12th Central Committee, delivered the report “Advance Along the Road of Socialism with Chinese characteristics”.[5] He wrote that China was a socialist society, but that socialism in China was in its primary stage;[5] a Chinese peculiarity which was due to the undeveloped state of the country’s productive forces.[5] During this phase of development, Zhao recommended introducing a planned commodity economy on the basis of public ownership.[5] The main failure of the communist right, according to Zhao, was that they failed to acknowledge that China could reach socialism by bypassing capitalism. The main failure of the communist left was that they held the “utopian position” that China could bypass the primary stage of socialism, in which the productive forces are to be modernized.[6]On 25 October 1987, Zhao further expounded on the concept of the primary stage of socialism, and said that the Party line was to follow “One Center, Two Basic Points”; the central focus of the Chinese state was economic development, but that this should occur simultaneously through centralized political control (i.e., the Four Cardinal Principles) and upholding the policy of reform and opening up.[4]
CPC General Secretary Jiang Zemin further elaborated on the concept ten years later; first during a speech to the Central Party School on 29 May 1997 and again in his report to the 15th CPC National Congress on 12 September 1997.[4] According to Jiang, the 3rd plenum of the 11th Central Committee correctly analyzed and formulated a scientifically correct program for the problems facing China and socialism.[4] In Jiang’s words, the primary stage of socialism was an “undeveloped stage”.[4] The fundamental task of socialism is to develop the productive forces, therefore the main aim during the primary stage should be the further development of the national productive forces.[4] The primary contradiction in Chinese society during the primary stage of socialism is “the growing material and cultural needs of the people and the backwardness of production”.[4] This contradiction will remain until China has completed the process of primary stage of socialism, and because of it, economic development should remain the CPC’s main focus during this stage.[4]
Jiang elaborated on three points to develop the primary stage of socialism.[7] The first—to develop a socialist economy with Chinese characteristics—meant developing the economy by emancipating and modernizing the forces of production while developing a market economy.[7] The second—building socialist politics with Chinese characteristics—meant “managing state affairs according to the law”, developing socialist democracy under the CPC and making the “people the masters of the country”.[7] The third point—building socialist culture with Chinese characteristics—meant turning Marxism into the guide to train the people so as to give them “high ideals, moral integrity, a good education, and a strong sense of discipline, and developing a national scientific, and popular socialist culture geared to the needs of modernization, of the world, and of the future.”[7]
When asked how long the primary stage of socialism would last, Zhao replied, “[i]t will be at least 100 years … [before] socialist modernization will have been in the main accomplished.”[8] The state constitution states that “China will be in the primary stage of socialism for a long time to come”.[9] As with Zhao, Jiang believed that it would take at least 100 years to reach a more advanced stage.[4]
“What is socialism and what is Marxism? We were not quite clear about this in the past. Marxism attaches utmost importance to developing the productive forces. We have said that socialism is the primary stage of communism and that at the advanced stage the principle of from each according to his ability and to each according to his needs will be applied. This calls for highly developed productive forces and an overwhelming abundance of material wealth. Therefore, the fundamental task for the socialist stage is to develop the productive forces. The superiority of the socialist system is demonstrated, in the final analysis, by faster and greater development of those forces than under the capitalist system. As they develop, the people’s material and cultural life will constantly improve. One of our shortcomings after the founding of the People’s Republic was that we didn’t pay enough attention to developing the productive forces. Socialism means eliminating poverty. Pauperism is not socialism, still less communism.”
”
— Deng Xiaoping, on 30 June 1984 at a Central Committee plenum, in a speech discussing Marxist theory[10]
Deng Xiaoping, the architect of the Chinese economic reforms, did not believe that the market economy was synonymous with capitalism or that planning was synonymous with socialism.[11] During his southern tour, he said, “planning and market forces are not the essential difference between socialism and capitalism. A planned economy is not the definition of socialism, because there is planning under capitalism; the market economy happens under socialism, too. Planning and market forces are both ways of controlling economic activity”.[11]
Ideological justification
In the 1980s it became evident to Chinese economists that the Marxist theory of the law of value—understood as the expression of the labor theory of value—could not serve as the basis of China’s pricing system.[12] They concluded that Marx never intended his theory of law of value to work “as an expression of ‘concretized labor time’ “.[12] Marx’s notion of “prices of production” was meaningless to the Soviet-styled planned economies since price formations were according to Marx established by markets.[13] Soviet planners had used the law of value as a basis to rationalize prices in the planned economy.[14] According to Soviet sources, prices were “planned with an eye to the … basic requirements of the law of value.”[14] However, the primary fault with the Soviet interpretation was that they tried to calibrate prices without a competitive market since, according to Marx, competitive markets allowed for an equilibrium of profit rates which led to an increase in the prices of production.[15] The rejection of the Soviet interpretation of the law of value led to the acceptance of the idea that China was still in the “primary stage of socialism”.[14] The basic argument was that conditions envisaged by Marx for reaching the socialist stage of development did not yet exist in China.[14]
Mao said that the imposition of “progressive relations of production” would revolutionize production.[16] His successor’s rejection of this view has, according to A. James Gregor, thwarted the ideological continuity of Maoism—officially “Mao Zedong Thought“.[16] Classical Marxism had argued that a socialist revolution would only take place in advanced capitalist societies, and its success would signal the transition from a capitalist commodity-based economy to a “product economy” in which goods would be distributed for people’s need and not for profit.[16] If because of a lack of a coherent explanation in the chance of failure this revolution did not occur, the revolutionaries would be forced to take over the responsibilities of the bourgeoisie.[16] Thus Chinese communists are looking for a new Marxist theory of development.[16] Party theorist Luo Rongqu recognized that the founders of Marxism had never “formulated any systematic theory on the development of the non-Western world”, and said that the Communist Party should “establish their own synthesized theoretical framework to study the problem of modern development.”[17] According to A. James Gregor, the implication of this stance “is that Chinese Marxism is currently in a state of profound theoretical discontinuity.”[18]
Private ownership
The concept of private ownership is rooted in classical Marxism.[19] Because China adopted socialism when it was a semi-feudal and semi-colonial country, it is in the primary stage of socialism.[19] Because of this, certain policies and system characteristics—such as commodity production for the market, the existence of a private sector and the reliance of the profit motive in enterprise management—were changed.[19] These changes were allowed as long as they improve productivity and modernize the means of production, and thus further develop socialism.[19] According to this perspective, Mao’s leftist belief that China could advance to full socialism immediately by bypassing capitalism is considered false.[19]
The CPC still considers private ownership to be non-socialist.[20] However, according to party theorists, the existence and growth of private ownership does not necessarily undermine socialism and promote capitalism in China.[20] It is argued that Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels—the founders of communism—never proposed the immediate abolishment of private ownership.[20] According to Engel’s book Principles of Communism, the proletariat can only abolish private ownership when the necessary conditions have been met.[20] In the phase before the abolishment of private ownership, Engels proposed progressive taxation, high inheritance taxes and compulsory bond purchases to restrict private property while using the competitive powers of state-owned enterprises to expand the public sector.[20]Marx and Engels proposed similar measures in the Communist Manifesto in regards to advanced countries, but since China was economically undeveloped, party theorists called for flexibility regarding the CPC’s handling of private property.[20] According to party theorist Liu Shuiyuan, the New Economic Policy program initiated by Soviet authorities in the aftermath of the war communism program is a good example of flexibility by socialist authorities.[20]
Party theorist Li Xuai said that private ownership inevitably involves capitalist exploitation.[20] However, Li regards private property and exploitation as necessary in the primary stage of socialism, claiming that capitalism in its primary stage uses remnants of the old society to build itself.[20] Sun Liancheng and Lin Huiyong said that Marx and Engels, in their interpretation of the Communist Manifesto, criticized private ownership when it was owned solely by the bourgeoisie but not individual ownership in which everyone owns the means of production and hence cannot be exploited by others.[21] Individual ownership is consistent with socialism since Marx wrote that post-capitalist society would entail the rebuilding of “associated social individual ownership”.[22]
According to writer and researcher Huang Yasheng and many others, the economic theory in China is not socialism with Chinese characteristics but the opposite—capitalism with Chinese characteristics.[23]
Story 2: President Trump Meets With Japanese Prime Minster Shinzo Abe and President Moon Jai-in As U.S. Navy Flexes Air Power — All Options Are On The Table — Let’s Make A Deal North Korea — Video —
Trump’s South Korea speech, in 3 minutes
Trump’s speech to South Korea’s parliament (full)
Is Trump softening his stance on North Korea?
Trump urges N Korea to ‘come to the table’
Trump Calls On North Korea To “Make A Deal” – Full News Conference In Seoul
President Trump Receives a Military Briefing on North Korea from Top Generals 11/7/17
President Trump Has Lunch with U.S. Troops in South Korea (Camp Humphreys) 11/6/17
Donald Trump in South Korea, Gives hint of Handling North Korea in Some different way.
President Trump meeting with President Moon Jae In of the Republic of Korea. Nov 7, 2017
President Trump participates in a bilateral meeting with President Moon Jae In of the Republic of Korea
Trump arrives in South Korea amid tensions with North
President Trump and first lady Melania Trump is officially welcomed to Seoul, Republic of Korea.
President Trump and First Lady Melania Trump arrives in South Korea. November 7, 2017.
Is Melania Trump’s coat for South Korea fashion hit or miss?
Warning: China Russia Saudi Arabia & Iran To Use Yuan For Trading Oil Next Step Is WW3
High Alert: For The First Time In 13 Years, U.S. Deploys 7 Aircraft Carriers Simultaneously
For The First Time In 13 Years, U.S. Deploys 7 Aircraft Carriers Simultaneously
The US has simultaneously deployed 7 of the 11 U.S. nuclear aircraft carriers for the first time in over a decade according to the US Naval Institute. The three aircraft carriers with full air wings and strike groups positioned in the Western Pacific are the following: USS Ronald Reagan (CVN-76); USS Nimitz (CVN-68); USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN-71). Another four are conducting “short training missions as part of training operations or workups ahead of deployment”. Two out of four are operating in Eastern Pacific – USS Carl Vinson (CVN-70) and USS John C. Stennis (CVN-74) – and the remaining two are operating in the Atlantic, the USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN-72) and USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN-78).
What 3 US Supercarriers in the Asia-Pacific Means for N. Korea
High Alert: 3 US Carrier Strike Groups Enter Asia-Pacific Ahead of Trump Visit
President Trump Joint Press Conference with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. Japan. Tokyo. Nov 6, 2017.
President Trump attends state banquet hosted by Japanese PM. President Trump in Japan.
President Trump Participates in a Working Lunch with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan
Trump and Abe meet at a golf course in Japan
President Trump Plays Golf with Prime Minister Abe in Japan 11/5/17
Trump abruptly talking negotiations, not threats in Korea
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — Softening his aggressive rhetoric, at least for the moment, President Donald Trump stood on South Korean soil Tuesday and urged North Korea to come to the negotiating table. It’s time, he said, for the North to “make a deal” to rein in its nuclear weapons program.
It was a striking shift in tone for the president, who for months has issued increasingly dire threats to answer any hostile North Korean action with “fire and fury.” On Tuesday, his first day on the Korean Peninsula as president, Trump said he’d seen “a lot of progress” in dealing with Pyongyang, though he stopped short of saying whether he wanted direct diplomatic talks.
“It makes sense for North Korea to come to the table and make a deal that is good for the people of North Korea and for the world,” Trump said at a news conference with South Korean president Moon Jae-in. “I do see certain movement.”
Trump was winding down his visit to Seoul on Wednesday with an address to South Korea’s National Assembly, where he was expected to outline his view of dangers posed by North Korea’s nuclear weapons program. The next stop on his five-nation Asian tour: Beijing, where he will press China to constrict the North’s economic lifeblood.
President Donald Trump says he believes he sees a lot of progress on the North Korean issue. Trump also urged North Korea to ‘come to the table and make a deal.’ He spoke during a news conference with South Korean President Moon Jae-in. (Nov. 7)
Ever the showman, Trump teased that he had a surprise in store for Wednesday, saying at a Tuesday evening banquet that he had an “exciting day” planned — “for many reasons that people will find out.” He did not elaborate.
Overall, the president sounded an optimistic note on disagreements with the North, saying confidently, if vaguely: “Ultimately, it’ll all work out.” Whether the shift in rhetoric signaled a change in policy or diplomatic strategy remained uncertain.
Mark Fitzpatrick, executive director in Washington for the International Institute for Strategic Studies, said it could simply be Trump projecting “what he most recently heard” from Moon and Japan’s Shinzo Abe.
“I expect he heard from both Prime Minister Abe and President Moon the need to give diplomacy a chance,” Fitzpatrick said. “Of course, it’s not the first time he has talked about engaging with North Korea. The issue has been one of timing. Now is a good time, during a pause in missile testing.”
North Korea has fired off more than a dozen missiles this year but none in nearly two months. But analysts caution against reading too much into the pause.
There’s no public sign of any diplomatic progress between Washington and Pyongyang. U.S. officials say the back channel between the State Department and the North Korean mission at the United Nations in New York remains intact, but contacts have not been substantive other than achieving the release of American college student Otto Warmbier in June. He died days after his repatriation to the U.S.
Still, Trump’s conciliatory comments would be welcome in South Korea, where both the government and the wider population have been unnerved by the president’s threats against the North.
Trump did note the United States’ military options, mentioning that three aircraft carrier groups and a nuclear submarine had been deployed to the region. But he said “we hope to God we never have to use” the arsenal. And he accused North Korea’s Kim Jong Un of “threatening millions and millions of lives, so needlessly.”
Moon, who has been eager to solidify a friendship with Trump, said he hoped the president’s visit would be a turning point in the standoff with North Korea.
The president began his day with a visit to Camp Humphreys, a joint US-Korean military base where he shook hands with American and Korean service members and ate lunch with troops in a large mess hall. The visit was intended to underscore the countries’ ties and South Korea’s commitment to contributing to its own defense.
When he leaves South Korea, Trump flies to Beijing for what the White House sees as the centerpiece of his five-nation Asia trip.
China is North Korea’s largest trade partner, and Trump is expected to press its leaders to curtail their dealings with Pyongyang and to expel North Korean workers from its borders. Trump has praised China for adopting tough United Nations sanctions against North Korea but has urged it to do more.
“I want to just say that President Xi — where we will be tomorrow, China — has been very helpful. We’ll find out how helpful soon,” Trump said. “But he really has been very, very helpful. So China is out trying very hard to solve the problem with North Korea.”
Trump and first lady Melania Trump on Wednesday will meet and have dinner with Xi Jinping and his wife and receive a private tour of The Forbidden City, Beijing’s ancient imperial palace. White House officials point to the leaders’ successful summit in Florida this spring, an event in part defined by Trump telling his Chinese counterpart about the missile strike he had ordered on Syria while the two men enjoyed chocolate cake. But experts in the region suggest that Xi will have the advantage over Trump.
“Trump keeps portraying his relationship with XI as great pals but that’s wildly naive,” said Mike Chinoy, a non-resident senior fellow at the US-China Institute at the University of Southern California. “The Chinese have figured out how to play Trump: flatter him. And there’s nothing the Chinese do better than wow foreign diplomats.”
___
Associated Press writers Matthew Pennington, Ken Thomas and Catherine Lucey contributed from Washington.
EXCLUSIVE: We are ready for anything – don’t mess with our Hornets. Admiral in charge of supercarrier which will sail for North Korea’s doorstep sends message to Kim Jong-Un as Trump touches down in Seoul
DailyMailTV joined the Rear Admiral and crew of the USS Carl Vinson as the huge warship left its port in San Diego for a series of exercises ahead of its deployment
The Vinson will sail for the Western Pacific to relieve the USS Ronald Reagan and be one of two carrier strike groups in the region amid ongoing tensions with North Korea
Rear Admiral John Fuller, Commander of Carrier Strike Group 1, will lead the vessel and its ferocious armament of planes and escort of Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyers and a guided missile cruiser
Aboard the 95,000 ton vessel are fighter aircraft such as the $70million F/A-18 Super Hornet – capable of reaching Mach 1.8 (1,190mph) with a massive armament of bombs and missiles
In a message to Kim Jong-Un Rear Admiral Fuller said: ‘He needs to think very carefully on how he works with us, he needs to understand that we have capabilities that no other country has.’
The supercarrier has more than 3,500 crew which swells to 5,300 when the air wing is on board – the warship was used to transport Osama bin Laden’s body for its burial at sea in 2011
President Trump embarked on his 12-day trip to Asia, arriving on Sunday in Tokyo, where he met with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe amid heightened tensions over Pyongyang’s nuclear and missile tests
By Ryan Parry West Coast Correspondent For Dailymail.com On Board Uss Carl Vinson In The Pacific Ocean
PUBLISHED: 14:05 EST, 6 November 2017 | UPDATED: 18:50 EST, 6 November 2017
The twin engines of the F/A-18 Super Hornet build into a roar and the $70million supersonic jet is catapulted from the deck of the USS Carl Vinson with an ear-splitting blast.
The aircraft disappears off the bow of the enormous nuclear-powered super carrier in a haze of steam, the bright glow of its engines disappearing into the distance.
This is one of the planes the man in charge of the supercarrier wants Kim Jong-Un to fear – because the Vinson is due to set sail for waters close to North Korea.
President Trump arrives in South Korea Monday night putting him on Kim’s doorstep as tensions mount over the ‘little Rocket Man’s’ escalating nuclear threat.
Now one of the president’s most important commanders tells DailyMailTV that his sailors are ready for anything – and that Kim needs to ‘think carefully’ when Carrier Strike Group One is in his waters.
Rear Admiral John Fuller, Commander of Carrier Strike Group 1, will lead the Vinson, its ferocious armament of planes, and its escort of Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyers and a guided missile cruiser.
Don’t mess with our Hornets: DailyMailTV witnessed the incredible sight of hundreds of sailors and airmen on board the 1,092ft long, 117,000 sq ft USS Carl Vinson as they put its four aircraft catapults through their paces. Its aircraft include the Hornet and Super Hornets and the EA-18 Growler (pictured) electronic attack aircraft, which jams enemy radar systems
Aboard the 95,000 ton vessel, the twin engines of the F/A-18C Hornet were heard roaring off as the $70 million aircraft was catapulted off the deck. The strike fighter aircraft, which can reach Mach 1.8 (1,190mph), disappeared off the bow of the super carrier in a haze of steam
Preparation: Before liftoff, Navy crew work diligently to ensure the aircraft is ready and the flight deck clean and clear of foreign objects. Mini tractors tow the F/A18s into place and the Top Gun pilots ready the jets for take off
Commander Brian ‘Convict’ Felloney gets ready for take-off. The decorated pilot has more than 620 carrier landings on his record, and was a Top Gun instructor on a previous deployment
This is how the Vinson deploys: In May the supercarrier was photographed from the air as it and the whole strike group got an escort from two South Korean destroyers, the Sejong the Great and the Yang Manchun. The Carl Vinson’s U.S. Navy escorts were the USS Lake Champlain, a Ticonderoga-class cruiser, and the Arleigh Burke-class destroyers the USS Michael Murphy and the USS Stethem
In an exclusive interview with DailyMailTV Rear Admiral Fuller says his strike group is ‘ready and in a direct message to Kim says: ‘He knows the capabilities we have.
‘Right now there are three aircraft carriers there, when we go through there – if we go off the coast [of North Korea] depending on our operations – he needs to think very carefully on how he works with us, he needs to understand that we have capabilities that no other country has.’
Standing on the deck of the Vinson, those capabilities are in no doubt.
DailyMailTV joined the Rear Admiral and crew of the Vinson as the huge warship left its port in San Diego for a series of exercises ahead of its deployment.
The ship raised its two 60,000lb anchors and set sail from Naval Air Station North Island, in Coronado.
Capable of reaching more than 30 knots (35mph) the Nimitz-class supercarrier – one of ten nuclear-powered aircraft carriers in the US Fleet – headed out into the Pacific Ocean.
DailyMailTV witnessed the awesome sight of hundreds of sailors and airmen on board the 1,092ft long, 117,000 sq ft warship put its four aircraft catapults through their paces.
Four giant elevators brought aircraft up from the hangar deep below the 4.5 acre flight deck as Super Hornets lined up on deck to be catapulted into the air – just like in a real war.
The USS Ronald Reagan and the USS Theodore Roosevelt are both in the region amid ongoing tensions with North Korea. The Vinson will relieve the USS Ronald Reagan, keeping two carrier strike groups in the Western Pacific.
The ship is the same vessel that was used to transport Osama bin Laden’s body for its burial at sea in 2011.
Last week it was reported that the USS Nimitz had left the Middle East and is also heading to the Pacific to join the US Navy’s 7th Fleet area of operations.
Rear Admiral John Fuller (pictured above in the flag bridge aboard the ship) Commander of Carrier Strike Group 1, will lead the Vinson. He said his strike group is ‘ready’ and in a direct message to Kim said: ‘He knows the capabilities we have’
All hands on deck: One of the most important men on the flight deck is Lieutenant Commander Erick Stroud (left) who serves as the Aircraft Handling Officer (ACHO) – also called the handler or mangler and manages the movement and positioning of aircraft. Jet blast deflector (JBD) operator ABE3 Jasper Evans’s (right) job is to raise the JBD to protect his shipmates from getting ‘burnt or blown away off the flight deck’
President Trump will visit Asia for the first time when he leaves Washington D.C. on Friday for a 12-day trip which will include China, Japan, the Philippines, South Korea and Vietnam.
The might of the Vinson is part of his message to the region’s leaders – that America has its allies’ backs, and its enemies should be afraid.
The Rear Admiral said: ‘There happens to be three carriers there that are gonna be working together for a while. This is good timing for us.
‘We’re going to go out to provide presence, stability, we’re going to go work with our partners and allies, we’re going to try to foment rules, laws and norms of theater.’
North Korea has not test-launched a missile in over a month, but has continued its threats on Guam and last week even threatened to detonate a nuclear weapon above ground.
Fuller, 52, the son of a retired Army colonel, said the ‘scheduled short cycle’ deployment is the Vinson’s ‘opportunity’.
‘I just know the Carl Vinson strike group is going to do the training to be ready to do what we’re called to do,’ he said.
Petty Officer 3rd class Joseph Newman, a 42-year-old nine-year veteran of the US Navy from Evansville, Indiana, is in charge of communications on the flight deck
‘We’re gonna go prepare our forces and our team to make sure that whatever missions they call us to do, so this provides perspective, Korea is one possible contingency plan that the aircraft carrier strike group is supposed to support.’
The Rear Admiral said the ‘beauty’ of what a carrier strike group brings is to project ‘awesome’ power at sea.
‘We don’t have to ask permission to go to some other land to operate our forces, we have the opportunity to use the seas to maneuver freely and we have the capability to project power from the sea as required.
‘But it is also a very stabilizing thing for our friends and allies that this capability is there as needed, we have the will power to use it and we have the proficiency to use it well.’
The Rear Admiral insists, however that the Navy’s first line of defense is to ‘promote peace’, adding: ‘My job is to make sure if they decide to use the capabilities an aircraft carrier and a strike group has, that we’re prepared to deliver those.
‘The civilian policy maker will do what they feel is in the best interests.
‘But I owe it to the parents of my sailors to make sure we’re ready.’
On deck getting ready is a complex task. Mini tractors tow the F/A18s into place and the Top Gun pilots ready the jets for take off.
Commanding Officer of the Vinson, Captain Doug ‘V8’ Verissimo gives the order and the jets roar into action.
Jet blast deflector (JBD) operator ABE3 Jasper Evans, who is known as a ‘Green Jersey’ describes the ‘intense’ moment a F/A-18 takes off.
His job is to raise the JBD to protect his shipmates from the searing heat of a jet engine.
‘Whenever the aircraft is getting ready to launch they throttle up and I raise the JBD so that no one behind can get burnt or blown away off the flight deck,’ he explained.
‘It gets really hot up here, really intense. But we’re fully protected, we wear float coats, flight deck pants and jersey, and a helmet and goggles.’
Evans, 27, is in his fourth year with the US Navy. Originally from Lawrenceville, Georgia, he has just one year left to complete his service.
Donald Trump kicked off his 12-day Asian trip in Japan on Sunday. The President met with Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe amid heightened tensions over Pyongyang’s nuclear and missile tests
He has been on two long deployments overseas and is used to the strict routine of life at sea.
‘Everything is routine on a ship, you wake up at a certain time, go eat breakfast and get ready for when they call flight operations and we come upstairs on the flight deck, we suit up and get ready to launch the aircraft.
‘A work day ends at 10 or 11 o’clock and it repeats – very long days.’
The flight deck is awash with dedicated crewmen like Evans wearing different colored jerseys.
Green jerseys operate the JBDs, aircraft handlers wear yellow jerseys, blue jerseys work in the hangar bay and purple jerseys refuel the aircraft, while red jerseys handle aviation ordinance and crash and salvage.
The whole manic scene is watched over by white jerseys.
Interior Communications Electrician Petty Officer 3rd Class Joseph Newman from Evansville, Indiana is in charge of communications on the flight deck.
Everyday is routine on the ship as Navy crew are expected to wake up early in the morning, eat breakfast, get ready, arrive on the flight deck, suit up, and prepare to launch the aircraft. A typical work day ends at 10pm or 11pm
The flight deck is awash with dedicated crewmen wearing different colored jerseys. Green jerseys (center) operate the jet blast deflectors, and aircraft handlers wear yellow jerseys (right)
‘I take care of all the maintenance of the cameras, the comms systems and the deck lighting as well as the lights up on the island,’ he explains.
Blue jerseys work in the hangar bay and purple jerseys refuel the aircraft, while red jerseys handle aviation ordinance and crash and salvage. The Hornets, Super Hornets and Growlers are moved up to the flight desk on huge aircraft elevators
Four giant elevators brought aircraft up from the hangar deep below the 4.5 acre flight deck as Super Hornets lined up on deck to be catapulted into the air – just like in a real war
‘I also take care of the ‘meat ball’, [a gray boom that displays lights that pilots use to help during the final seconds of landing].
‘You’ll hear the pilots say they’re on the ball as they come in to land. We also take care of all the sound power headsets that the crew use to communicate, we keep things running.
‘It’s a big job, up here in V2 and air department and we also have ICs downstairs in combat systems.’
Newman is a 42-year-old nine-year veteran of the US Navy and has served on the Vinson for six years.
‘I joined late, I did apartment maintenance before this.’
But perhaps the most important man on the flight deck is Lieutenant Commander Erick Stroud.
Stroud is the Aircraft Handling Officer (ACHO) – also called the handler or mangler and manages the movement and positioning of aircraft.
Stroud, 42, a married father of four from Griffin, Georgia, said the most important part of the preparations is keeping his flight deck clean and free of foreign objects.
‘I don’t want to be associated with damaging a $70million aircraft so we go to the extreme to make sure we’re prepared,’ he said.
The ship operates four squadrons of F/A-18 Hornet and Super Hornets, one squadron of EA-18G Growlers, and Seahawk helicopters for transportation and maritime patrols
Also on board is a squadron of E-2C Hawkeye early warning aircraft – designed to detect jets, ships and other vehicles from long distances
There are more than 3,500 crew on the Vinson which swells to 5,300 when the full air wing is on embarked, as it was in this 2011 photograph. The warship – call sign ‘Gold Eagle’ – can operate for up to 20 years without refueling since it is nuclear-powered
Speaking from his control room – a buzz of phone calls and radio chatter – just off the flight deck, he added: ‘This is the nucleus of aviation and flight operations, I control the entire flight deck as well as movement in the hangar bay and all the people involved, we have about 600 people working in those two areas and we integrate with the squadrons, that’s about 500 people.
‘That’s 1,100 people working together seamlessly to make this all happen.’
DON’T MESS WITH OUR SUPER HORNETS
The twin-engine strike fighter aircraft were first introduced to the US Navy in 1999 to replace the F-14 Tomcat, made famous in the hit movie Top Gun.
The F/A-18 Super Hornet can reach Mach 1.8, which is equivalent to 1,190mph at 40,000 ft.
On the Vinson they operate alongside the older Hornet and the related Growler.
The Super Hornets’ armament includes:
One M61A1/A2 Vulcan 20mm cannon
The strike fighter has 11 hard points on its wings and under the main fuselage which can carry a mixture of:
Missiles: Four AIM 9 Sidewinder air-to-air missiles
Two AIM 7 Sparrow/ (2) AIM-120 AMRAAM
One Standoff Land Attack Missile
One AGM-84 Harpoon anti-ship missile
One HARM (Anti-Radiation Missile) – designed to destroy enemy radar systems
Maverick air to ground missiles: Joint Stand-Off Weapon (JSOW); Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM).
Stroud keeps an eye on two large digital status boards showing the movements of aircraft on the flight deck but he also uses an old school ‘Ouija Board’ – a scaled replica of the flight deck on which templates of aircraft are moved around based on messages radioed in from spotters.
The lieutenant commander, a 25-year veteran, has four catapults to launch aircraft at his disposal as well as four arresting cables to recover the aircraft.
He moves the aircraft up from the hangar bay in the guts of the ship on four giant elevators.
When planes make an arrested landing, pilots aim to hit the No 3 cable of four arrested cables numbered 1-4 from aft to forward.
Their performance goes up on a board so it gets competitive.
But crew safety is of utmost importance.
Stroud explains: ‘There’s a red and white foul line, which is said to be drawn in blood, because you have to judge where the aircraft is coming in and everybody has to stand on the opposite side of the line.
‘If an aircraft is coming in and you get one of the tall guys level with the wing on the wrong side of the line, it’ll take his head off and we’ll have a body to clean up.
‘When we get into that level of complacency, where we get into the same routine every day, launching planes and recovering planes, that one second of being inattentive is dangerous.
‘You have to keep your head on a swivel no matter what.’
Everyone on the Vinson seems on point inside the 3,000 room hull underneath the flight deck.
There are several cafeterias, nine gyms, a Starbucks-style coffee shop and ‘luxury’ state rooms for ‘Distinguished Visitors’.
Since it is nuclear-powered, the Vinson – call sign ‘Gold Eagle’ – can operate for up to 20 years without refueling. It also has anti-submarine capabilities.
The seal of the ship is an eagle with extended wings, carrying a banner in its beak.
The Latin phrase ‘Vis Per Mare’ -‘Strength through the Sea’ – is inscribed on the banner.
The ship operates four squadrons of F/A-18 Hornet and Super Hornets, one squadron of EA-18G Growlers – which disrupt enemy radar – one squadron of E-2C Hawkeye early warning aircraft, as well as a compliment of C2-A Greyhound transport planes and Seahawk helicopters.
There are more than 3,500 crew on the Vinson, which swells to 5,300 when the air wing is on board, which means working seven days a week with shifts often lasting 12 hours or more. But few complain about living on the floating city.
The massive warship has a 3,000-room hull below the flight deck which includes several cafeterias, nine gyms, a Starbucks-style coffee shop and ‘luxury’ state rooms for ‘Distinguished Visitors’
On a daily average, the Navy spends around $60,000 feeding sailors and on Sunday, they serve a special brunch meal which includes Belgian waffles or some shrimp
‘On a daily average we spend around $60,000 to feed the crew, which is roughly about 15-20 pallets worth of food.
‘A special day for us is Sunday, we do a brunch we serve things like Belgian waffles, some shrimp, a special chance to give the sailors a chance to refresh for the next week.’
After filling up a lot of the sailors like to keep fit. Dan Larrell is in charge of putting them through their paces in the ship’s nine gyms.
‘I am a fitness director, if you imagine this warship as a large 24 hour fitness, we have 4,500 sailors and we treat them all as our clients,’ he explains.
Larrell says as well as running and maintaining the gyms he puts together the fitness schedule and offers Zumba and spin classes, weight-lifting and functional fitness classes and even rowing club.
‘Any sailor on any watch on any schedule can come to our classes,’ he added.
‘What’s really incredible is that we not only get the younger sailors at our classes but we get the captain of the ship, the XO [executive officer] of the ship and the admiral of the ship, when I train them… it’s the first time in a very long time someone is telling them what to do. It’s my time to make them work a little bit harder.’
Running the Vinson, let alone a whole Carrier Strike Group, is a huge undertaking and one that Fuller doesn’t take lightly.
He says he’s incredibly ‘honored and humbled’ to be in the position he’s in.
‘I never expected that I would have the opportunity to lead such an awesome fighting force and such an awesome group of sailors. It hasn’t even really sunk in, I’m just amazed I get this chance here. I am exceptionally proud of that.’
And the commander says America should be equally proud of the US Navy’s achievements.
He said: ‘The most awesome thing we have is some of the best people in America who volunteered to help protect and promote prosperity for our American citizens and then with those great people we have fantastic equipment and systems that allow us to project power from the sea for sustained periods of time in ways no other country can.’
Soon the Vinson will be in Kim’s waters – and those people and equipment could be tested as never before.
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A senior Saudi minister has accused Lebanon of declaring war against the kingdom. The minister for Persian Gulf Affairs, Thamer al-Sabhan also accused the Lebanese resistance movement Hezbollah of committing acts of aggression and attacking the Saudi kingdom without further elaborations. He then urged the Lebanese government to realize the risks of Hezbollah actions. Al-Sabhan made the comments in reaction to criticism Riyadh has been facing over the resignation of Lebanese Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri. Hariri made the announcement in a statement broadcast on Saudi-owned al-Arabiya TV. On Sunday, Hezbollah chief Seyyed Hassan Nasrallah and other Lebanese officials accused Riyadh of forcing Hariri to quit in a bid to create tensions in Lebanon.
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From the conflicts in Iraq and Syria to the tension between Iran and Saudi Arabia, the struggle between Sunni and Shi‘a groups for hegemony is tearing apart the region and shows no signs of abating. But for all the religious discourse permeating the conflict, much of its roots are political, not religious. How does sectarianism fit into a larger narrative of the Middle East? How have governments manipulated sectarian differences? And finally, what is the U.S. doing about it? Full episode from the Great Decisions PBS series: http://www.greatdecisionsonpbs.com/ Visit our website for more information: http://www.fpa.org/ Narrated by Academy Award nominated actor David Strathairn and produced by the Foreign Policy Association, each half-hour episode of the Great Decisions documentary series tackles a different challenge facing America today. This episode first aired in January 2015.
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Non-tariff barriers to trade
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Non-tariff barriers to trade (NTBs) or sometimes called “Non-Tariff Measures (NTMs)” are trade barriers that restrict imports or exports of goods or services through mechanisms other than the simple imposition of tariffs. The SADC says, “a Non-Tariff Barrier is any obstacle to international trade that is not an import or export duty. They may take the form of import quotas, subsidies, customs delays, technical barriers, or other systems preventing or impeding trade.”[1] According to the World Trade Organisation, non-tariff barriers to trade include import licensing, rules for valuation of goods at customs, pre-shipment inspections, rules of origin (‘made in’), and trade prepared investment measures.[2]
Types of Non-Tariff Barriers
Professor Alan Deardorff characterises[3] NTB policies under three headings: Purposes, Examples, and Consequences
There are several different variants of division of non-tariff barriers. Some scholars divide between internal taxes, administrative barriers, health and sanitary regulations and government procurement policies. Others divide non-tariff barriers into more categories such as specific limitations on trade, customs and administrative entry procedures, standards, government participation in trade, charges on import, and other categories.
The first category includes methods to directly import restrictions for protection of certain sectors of national industries: licensing and allocation of import quotas, antidumping and countervailing duties, import deposits, so-called voluntary export restraints, countervailing duties, the system of minimum import prices, etc. Under second category follow methods that are not directly aimed at restricting foreign trade and more related to the administrative bureaucracy, whose actions, however, restrict trade, for example: customs procedures, technical standards and norms, sanitary and veterinary standards, requirements for labeling and packaging, bottling, etc. The third category consists of methods that are not directly aimed at restricting the import or promoting the export, but the effects of which often lead to this result.
The non-tariff barriers can include wide variety of restrictions to trade. Here are some example of the popular NTBs.
Licenses
The most common instruments of direct regulation of imports (and sometimes export) are licenses and quotas. Almost all industrialized countries apply these non-tariff methods. The license system requires that a state (through specially authorized office) issues permits for foreign trade transactions of import and export commodities included in the lists of licensed merchandises. Product licensing can take many forms and procedures. The main types of licenses are general license that permits unrestricted importation or exportation of goods included in the lists for a certain period of time; and one-time license for a certain product importer (exporter) to import (or export). One-time license indicates a quantity of goods, its cost, its country of origin (or destination), and in some cases also customs point through which import (or export) of goods should be carried out. The use of licensing systems as an instrument for foreign trade regulation is based on a number of international level standards agreements. In particular, these agreements include some provisions of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) / World Trade Organization (WTO) such as the Agreement on Import Licensing Procedures.
Quotas
Licensing of foreign trade is closely related to quantitative restrictions – quotas – on imports and exports of certain goods. A quota is a limitation in value or in physical terms, imposed on import and export of certain goods for a certain period of time. This category includes global quotas in respect to specific countries, seasonal quotas, and so-called “voluntary” export restraints. Quantitative controls on foreign trade transactions carried out through one-time license.
Quantitative restriction on imports and exports is a direct administrative form of government regulation of foreign trade. Licenses and quotas limit the independence of enterprises with a regard to entering foreign markets, narrowing the range of countries, which may be entered into transaction for certain commodities, regulate the number and range of goods permitted for import and export. However, the system of licensing and quota imports and exports, establishing firm control over foreign trade in certain goods, in many cases turns out to be more flexible and effective than economic instruments of foreign trade regulation. This can be explained by the fact, that licensing and quota systems are an important instrument of trade regulation of the vast majority of the world.
The consequence of this trade barrier is normally reflected in the consumers’ loss because of higher prices and limited selection of goods as well as in the companies that employ the imported materials in the production process, increasing their costs. An import quota can be unilateral, levied by the country without negotiations with exporting country, and bilateral or multilateral, when it is imposed after negotiations and agreement with exporting country. An export quota is a restricted amount of goods that can leave the country. There are different reasons for imposing of export quota by the country, which can be the guarantee of the supply of the products that are in shortage in the domestic market, manipulation of the prices on the international level, and the control of goods strategically important for the country. In some cases, the importing countries request exporting countries to impose voluntary export restraints.
Agreement on a “voluntary” export restraint
In the past decade,[when?] a widespread practice of concluding agreements on the “voluntary” export restrictions and the establishment of import minimum prices imposed by leading Western nations upon weaker in economical or political sense exporters. The specifics of these types of restrictions is the establishment of unconventional techniques when the trade barriers of importing country, are introduced at the border of the exporting and not importing country. Thus, the agreement on “voluntary” export restraints is imposed on the exporter under the threat of sanctions to limit the export of certain goods in the importing country. Similarly, the establishment of minimum import prices should be strictly observed by the exporting firms in contracts with the importers of the country that has set such prices. In the case of reduction of export prices below the minimum level, the importing country imposes anti-dumping duty, which could lead to withdrawal from the market. “Voluntary” export agreements affect trade in textiles, footwear, dairy products, consumer electronics, cars, machine tools, etc.
Problems arise when the quotas are distributed between countries because it is necessary to ensure that products from one country are not diverted in violation of quotas set out in second country. Import quotas are not necessarily designed to protect domestic producers. For example, Japan, maintains quotas on many agricultural products it does not produce. Quotas on imports is a leverage when negotiating the sales of Japanese exports, as well as avoiding excessive dependence on any other country in respect of necessary food, supplies of which may decrease in case of bad weather or political conditions.
Export quotas can be set in order to provide domestic consumers with sufficient stocks of goods at low prices, to prevent the depletion of natural resources, as well as to increase export prices by restricting supply to foreign markets. Such restrictions (through agreements on various types of goods) allow producing countries to use quotas for such commodities as coffee and oil; as the result, prices for these products increased in importing countries.
A quota can be a tariff rate quota, global quota, discriminating quota, and export quota.
Embargo
Embargo is a specific type of quotas prohibiting the trade. As well as quotas, embargoes may be imposed on imports or exports of particular goods, regardless of destination, in respect of certain goods supplied to specific countries, or in respect of all goods shipped to certain countries. Although the embargo is usually introduced for political purposes, the consequences, in essence, could be economic.
Standards
Standards take a special place among non-tariff barriers. Countries usually impose standards on classification, labeling and testing of products in order to be able to sell domestic products, but also to block sales of products of foreign manufacture. These standards are sometimes entered under the pretext of protecting the safety and health of local populations.
Administrative and bureaucratic delays at the entrance
Among the methods of non-tariff regulation should be mentioned administrative and bureaucratic delays at the entrance, which increase uncertainty and the cost of maintaining inventory. For example, even though Turkey is in the European Customs Union, transport of Turkish goods to the European Union is subject to extensive administrative overheads that Turkey estimates cost it three billion euros a year.[4]
Import deposits
Another example of foreign trade regulations is import deposits. Import deposits is a form of deposit, which the importer must pay the bank for a definite period of time (non-interest bearing deposit) in an amount equal to all or part of the cost of imported goods.
At the national level, administrative regulation of capital movements is carried out mainly within a framework of bilateral agreements, which include a clear definition of the legal regime, the procedure for the admission of investments and investors. It is determined by mode (fair and equitable, national, most-favored-nation), order of nationalization and compensation, transfer profits and capital repatriation and dispute resolution.
Foreign exchange restrictions and foreign exchange controls
Foreign exchange restrictions and foreign exchange controls occupy a special place among the non-tariff regulatory instruments of foreign economic activity. Foreign exchange restrictions constitute the regulation of transactions of residents and nonresidents with currency and other currency values. Also an important part of the mechanism of control of foreign economic activity is the establishment of the national currency against foreign currencies.
History
The transition from tariffs to non-tariff barriers
One of the reasons why industrialized countries have moved from tariffs to NTBs is the fact that developed countries have sources of income other than tariffs. Historically, in the formation of nation-states, governments had to get funding. They received it through the introduction of tariffs. This explains the fact that most developing countries still rely on tariffs as a way to finance their spending. Developed countries can afford not to depend on tariffs, at the same time developing NTBs as a possible way of international trade regulation. The second reason for the transition to NTBs is that these tariffs can be used to support weak industries or compensation of industries, which have been affected negatively by the reduction of tariffs. The third reason for the popularity of NTBs is the ability of interest groups to influence the process in the absence of opportunities to obtain government support for the tariffs.
Non-tariff barriers today
With the exception of export subsidies and quotas, NTBs are most similar to the tariffs. Tariffs for goods production were reduced during the eight rounds of negotiations in the WTO and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). After lowering of tariffs, the principle of protectionism demanded the introduction of new NTBs such as technical barriers to trade (TBT). According to statements made at United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD, 2005), the use of NTBs, based on the amount and control of price levels has decreased significantly from 45% in 1994 to 15% in 2004, while use of other NTBs increased from 55% in 1994 to 85% in 2004.
Increasing consumer demand for safe and environment friendly products also have had their impact on increasing popularity of TBT. Many NTBs are governed by WTO agreements, which originated in the Uruguay Round (the TBT Agreement, SPS Measures Agreement, the Agreement on Textiles and Clothing), as well as GATT articles. NTBs in the field of services have become as important as in the field of usual trade.
Most of the NTB can be defined as protectionist measures, unless they are related to difficulties in the market, such as externalities and information asymmetries between consumers and producers of goods. An example of this is safety standards and labeling requirements.
The need to protect sensitive to import industries, as well as a wide range of trade restrictions, available to the governments of industrialized countries, forcing them to resort to use the NTB, and putting serious obstacles to international trade and world economic growth. Thus, NTBs can be referred as a new form of protection which has replaced tariffs as an old form of protection.
Addressing Non-Tariff Barriers
The scarcity of information on non-tariff barriers is a major problem to the competitiveness of developing countries. As a result, the International Trade Centre conducted national surveys and began publishing a series of technical papers on non-tariff barriers faced in developing countries. By 2015 it launched the NTM Business Surveys website listing non-tariff barriers from company perspectives.
Types of Non-Tariff Barriers to Trade
Examples of Non-Tariff Barriers to Trade
Non-tariff barriers to trade can be the following:
See also
References
Bibliography
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External links
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-tariff_barriers_to_trade
Mexico aims tariffs at Trump country, sees NAFTA complications
MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – Mexico hit back fast on U.S. tariffs on steel and aluminum on Thursday, targeting products from congressional districts that President Donald Trump’s Republican party is fighting to retain in November elections.
Economy Minister Ildefonso Guajardo said the tit-for-tat measures would complicate talks between the United States, Canada and Mexico to revamp the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) that underpins trade between the neighbors.
The spat meant it would be “very difficult” to reach a deal to revamp NAFTA before Mexico’s July 1 presidential election, though he underlined the continent had not entered a trade war.
“A trade war is when there is an escalation of conflict. In this case, it is simply a response to a first action,” Guajardo told Mexican radio.
“We should stick to the clearly defined battlefield, where the response is appropriate and proportional.”
Mexico’s retaliatory tariffs target pork legs, apples, grapes and cheeses as well as steel – products from U.S. heartland states that supported Trump in the 2016 election.
The country reacted right after Washington said in the morning it was moving ahead with tariffs on aluminum and steel imports from Canada, Mexico and the European Union.
“It sends a clear message that this kind of thing does not benefit anybody,” Guajardo said of the Mexican retaliation.
“Because, in the end, the effect will fall on voters and citizens that live in districts where the people have a voice and vote in the (U.S.) Congress.”
Mexico said it was imposing “equivalent” tariffs, ratcheting up tensions during talks to renegotiate NAFTA ahead of the U.S. mid-term elections in November. The measures will be in place until the U.S. government drops its tariffs, Mexico’s government said.
MEXICO WITH THE WORLD
Guajardo said retaliation was aimed at products chosen to hit districts with important lawmakers who had been warning Trump not to mess with Mexico. He estimated the U.S. tariffs would affect $4 billion in trade between the two countries.
“It is a sad day for international trade,” Guajardo said. “But hey, the decision was made, and we always said that we were going to be ready to react.”
In 2011, Mexico successfully used a similar list of mostly agricultural products to push Washington into letting Mexican truckers on U.S. highways.
Trump’s Republicans are fighting to retain control of Congress in mid-term elections. Their majority in the House of Representatives is seen as vulnerable.
Pork exporter Iowa, where incumbent Republican Rod Blum faces a Democratic challenge, is an example of a place Mexico’s reaction could hurt.
Mexico buys more steel and aluminum from the United States than it sells. It is the top buyer of U.S. aluminum and the second-biggest buyer of U.S. steel, Guajardo’s ministry said.
The countermeasures will hit U.S. hot and cold rolled steel, plated steel and tubes, the ministry said.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto spoke by phone after the U.S. announcement. Canada pledged to fight back with its own measures.
Trump threatened to rip up the NAFTA deal during his election campaign but agreed to renegotiate early in his term. Still, since talks began nine months ago, he has repeatedly said he could walk away from NAFTA if it is not redone to his liking.
“The difference between a year and four, five months ago is that it seems the world looked and said ‘poor Mexico,” Guajardo said. “Now, Mexico is facing these threats together with the world.”
(Reporting by Mexico City Newsroom; additional reporting by Jason Lange in Washington; editing by Dave Graham, Jonathan Oatis, David Gregorio and Cynthia Osterman)
https://ca.news.yahoo.com/mexico-hits-back-u-steel-aluminum-tariffs-equivalent-142649163.html
Story 2: DOJ/FBI Spied On Trump Campaign and American People To Protect Obama Administration and Clinton Campaign From The Possibility of Russia Disclosing To Trump Campaign Clinton’s Compromising Emails Before Election Day — Russia Did Not Disclose There Leverage or Blackmail Material Because They Thought Clinton Would Win — Videos
FBI Trump campaign spying allegations: How much did Obama know?
Dan Bongino slams efforts to debunk Trump’s ‘spygate’ claims
Trey Gowdy on ‘spygate’ controversy, Adam Schiff’s remarks
Hannity: Why not un-recuse yourself immediately, Sessions?
Gowdy faces backlash over remarks about FBI, Trump campaign
Tucker: Trump has convinced Dems to destroy themselves
Where in the World Was Barack Obama?
Somehow the former commander-in-chief is largely absent from the political spying drama.
By
President Donald Trump tweets today: “Reports are there was indeed at least one FBI representative implanted, for political purposes, into my campaign for president. It took place very early on, and long before the phony Russia Hoax became a ‘hot’ Fake News story. If true – all time biggest political scandal!” And what does the man who was serving at the time as the FBI’s ultimate boss have to say about all this?
Perhaps it’s a good moment to get the whole story from our 44th President. He should now have time to discuss his administration’s surveillance of affiliates of a presidential campaign because he has just prevailed in a contentious dispute.
The Associated Press reports, “Plan for Obama Presidential Center advances over protests.” According to the AP:
Since his name is on the door, there really was no way for Mr. Obama to avoid being at the center of this story. But in a somewhat larger story he has remained largely—and strangely—absent.
“‘Bigger Than Watergate’? Both Sides Say Yes, but for Different Reasons” is the headline on a New York Times story about our current President and the federal investigation of suspected collusion with Russia. The Times reports that both Mr. Trump and his political adversaries like using the Watergate analogy:
Many of those questions remain unanswered but we do know that the “deep state” referenced by the Times did have a boss in 2016. Yet Mr. Obama doesn’t show up in this story until the ninth paragraph. Those inclined toward Watergate analogies will say that it was some time before the break-in was connected to Richard Nixon, and of course we have no idea at this point whether the current controversy will end up being a Trump scandal, an Obama scandal or a permanently murky partisan battleground.
But since this controversy goes to the core of our democratic process, Americans desperately want clarity. How and why exactly did leaders of U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies end up focusing on a domestic political campaign? The latestessential reading from the Journal’s Kimberley A. Strassel gets to the heart of the matter:
By this point it seems clear that Mr. Obama didn’t think much of the theory that Mr. Trump colluded with the Russians. But presumably he learned quite a bit about his government’s efforts to investigate it. It’s not clear what an FBI official meant in 2016 when texting that President Obama “wants to know everything we’re doing.” But we can assume that the President was fairly well-informed about the law enforcement agencies reporting to him. Therefore let’s hear from him in detail the full history of how the government came to investigate the presidential campaign of the party out of power.
If he doesn’t know, then it would seem a public explanation is also in order—about his management, and about just how far the “deep state” went without specific presidential approval.
***
Noteworthy
Save This Endangered Species
“High-impact startups: America’s herd of gazelles seems to be thinning,” AEI.org, May 17
Other Than That, The Stories Were Accurate?
“At the end of 2008 I was a desk editor, a local hire in The Associated Press’s Jerusalem bureau, during the first serious round of violence in Gaza after Hamas took it over the year before. That conflict was grimly similar to the American campaign in Iraq, in which a modern military fought in crowded urban confines against fighters concealed among civilians. Hamas understood early that the civilian death toll was driving international outrage at Israel, and that this, not I.E.D.s or ambushes, was the most important weapon in its arsenal.
“Early in that war, I complied with Hamas censorship in the form of a threat to one of our Gaza reporters and cut a key detail from an article: that Hamas fighters were disguised as civilians and were being counted as civilians in the death toll. The bureau chief later wrote that printing the truth after the threat to the reporter would have meant ‘jeopardizing his life.’ Nonetheless, we used that same casualty toll throughout the conflict and never mentioned the manipulation.”
— Matti Friedman op-ed in the New York Times, May 16
https://www.wsj.com/articles/where-in-the-world-was-barack-obama-1526674870
Yes, the FBI Was Investigating the Trump Campaign When It Spied
By ANDREW C. MCCARTHY
Trey Gowdy and Marco Rubio evidently paid little attention to testimony before their own committees on how Obama officials made the Trump campaign the subject of a counterintelligence investigation.Well, well, well. The bipartisan Beltway establishment has apparently had its fill of this “Trump colluded with Russia” narrative — the same narrative the same establishment has lustily peddled for nearly two years. The Obama administration recklessly chose to deploy the government’s awesome counterintelligence powers to investigate — and, more to the point, to smear — its political opposition as a Kremlin confederate. Now that this ploy has blown up on the Justice Department and the FBI, these agencies — the ones that went out of their way, and outside their guidelines, to announce to the world that the Trump campaign was under investigation — want you to know the president and his campaign were not investigated at all, no siree.
What could possibly have made you imagine such a thing?
And so, to douse the controversy with cold water, dutifully stepping forward in fine bipartisan fettle are the Obama administration’s top intelligence official and two influential Capitol Hill Republicans who evidently pay little attention to major testimony before their own committees.
Former National Intelligence director James Clapper was first to the scene of the blaze. Clapper concedes that, well, yes, the FBI did run an informant — “spy” is such an icky word — at Trump campaign officials; but you must understand that this was merely to investigate Russia. Cross his heart, it had nothing to do with the Trump campaign. No, no, no. Indeed, they only used an informant because — bet you didn’t know this — doing so is the most benign, least intrusive mode of conducting an investigation.
Me? I’m thinking the tens of thousands of convicts serving lengthy sentences due to the penetration of their schemes by informants would beg to differ. (Mr. Gambino, I assure you, this was just for you own good . . .) In any event, I’ll leave it to the reader to imagine the Democrats’ response if, say, the Bush administration had run a covert intelligence operative against Obama 2008 campaign officials, including the campaign’s co-chairman. I’m sure David Axelrod, Chuck Schumer, the New York Times, and Rachel Maddow would chirp that “all is forgiven” once they heard Republicans punctiliously parse the nuances between investigating campaign officials versus the campaign proper; between “spies,” “informants,” and other government-directed covert operatives.
Sure!
Senator Rubio
Then there are Senator Marco Rubio (R., Fla.) and Representative Trey Gowdy (R., S.C.), General Clapper’s fellow fire extinguishers.
Rubio is a member in good standing of that Washington pillar, the Senate Intelligence Committee, which has had about as much interest in scrutinizing the highly irregular actions of intelligence and law-enforcement officials in the Clinton and Russia probes as Gowdy’s Benghazi committee had in revisiting Republican ardor for Obama’s unprovoked war on Moammar Qaddafi. (That would be: roughly zero interest.)
Rubio told ABC News that he has seen “no evidence” that the FBI was gathering information about the Trump campaign. Rather, agents “were investigating individuals with a history of links to Russia that were concerning.” The senator elaborated that “when individuals like that are in the orbit of a major political campaign in America, the FBI, who is in charge of counterintelligence investigations, should look at people like that.”
Gee, senator, when you were carefully perusing the evidence of what the FBI was doing, did you ever sneak a peek at what the FBI said it was doing?
May I suggest, for example, the stunning public testimony by then-director James Comey on March 20, 2017, before the House Intelligence Committee — perhaps Representative Gowdy, who sits on that committee, could lend you the transcript, since he appears not to be using it. Just so we’re clear, this is not an obscure scrap of evidence buried within volumes of testimony. It is the testimony that launched the Mueller probe, and that sets (or, better, fails to set) the parameters of that probe — a flaw the nation has been discussing for a year.
Comey’s House testimony was breathtaking, not just because it confirmed the existence of a classified counterintelligence investigation, but because of what the bureau’s then-director said about the Trump campaign (my italics):
That is an unambiguous declaration that the FBI was investigating the Trump campaign. That is why, for nearly two years, Washington has been entranced by the specter of “Trump collusion with Russia,” not “Papadopoulos collusion with Russia.” A campaign, of course, is an entity that acts through the individuals associated with it. But Comey went to extraordinary lengths to announce that the FBI was not merely zeroing in on individuals of varying ranks in the campaign; the main question was whether the Trump campaign itself — the entity — had “coordinated” in Russia’s espionage operation.
Representative Gowdy
Gowdy’s fire truck pulled into Fox News Tuesday night for an interview by Martha MacCallum. An able lawyer, the congressman is suddenly on a mission to protect the Justice Department and the FBI from further criticism. So, when Ms. MacCallum posed the question about the FBI spying on the Trump campaign, Gowdy deftly changed the subject: Rather than address the campaign, he repeatedly insisted that Donald Trump personally was never the “target” of the FBI’s investigation. The only “target,” Gowdy maintains, was Russia.
This is a dodge on at least two levels.
First, to repeat, the question raised by the FBI’s use of an informant is whether the bureau was investigating the Trump campaign. We’ll come momentarily to the closely connected question of whether Trump can be airbrushed out of his own campaign — I suspect the impossibility of this feat is why Gowdy is resistant to discussing the Trump campaign at all.
It is a diversion for Gowdy to prattle on about how Trump himself was not a “target” of the Russia investigation. As we’ve repeatedly observed (and as Gowdy acknowledged in the interview), the Trump-Russia probe is a counterintelligence investigation. An accomplished prosecutor, Gowdy well knows that “target” is a term of art in criminal investigations, denoting a suspect who is likely to be indicted. The term is inapposite to counterintelligence investigations, which are not about building criminal cases but about divining and thwarting the provocative schemes of hostile foreign powers. In that sense, and in no other, the foreign power at issue — here, Russia — is always the “target” of a counterintelligence probe; but it is never a “target” in the technical criminal-investigation sense in which Gowdy used the term . . . unless you think we are going to indict a country.
Moreover, even if we stick to the criminal-investigation sense of “target,” Gowdy knows it is misleading to emphasize that Trump is not one. Just a few short weeks ago, Gowdy was heard pooh-poohing as “meaningless” media reporting that Trump had been advised he was not a “target” of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe (which is the current iteration of the Russia investigation). As the congressman quite correctly pointed out, if Trump is a subject of the investigation — another criminal-law term of art, denoting a person whose conduct is under scrutiny, but who may or may not be indicted — it should be of little comfort that he is not a “target”; depending on how the evidence shakes out, a subject can become a target in the blink of an eye.
So, apart from the fact that Gowdy is dodging the question about whether the Trump campaign was being investigated, his digression about “targets” is gibberish. Since the Obama administration was using its counterintelligence powers (FISA surveillance, national-security letters, unmasking identities in intelligence reporting, all bolstered by the use of at least one covert informant), the political-spying issue boils down to whether the Trump campaign was being monitored. Whether Trump himself was apt to be indicted, and whether threats posed by Russia were the FBI’s focus, are beside the point; in a counterintelligence case, an indictment is never the objective, and a foreign power is always the focus.
Withholding Information from Trump
Second, if Gowdy has been paying attention, he must know that, precisely because the Trump campaign was under investigation, top FBI officials had qualms of conscience over Comey’s plan to give Trump a misleading assurance that he personally was not under investigation. If this has slipped Gowdy mind, perhaps Rubio could lend him the transcript of Comey’s testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee — in particular, a section Rubio seems not to remember, either.
A little background. On January 6, 2017, Comey, Clapper, CIA director John Brennan, and NSA chief Michael Rogers visited President-elect Trump in New York to brief him on the Russia investigation. Just one day earlier, at the White House, Comey and then–acting attorney general Sally Yates had met with the political leadership of the Obama administration — President Obama, Vice President Biden, and national-security adviser Susan Rice — to discuss withholding information about the Russia investigation from the incoming Trump administration.
Ms. Rice put this sleight-of-hand a bit more delicately in her CYA memo-to-file about the Oval Office meeting (written two weeks after the fact, as Rice was leaving her office minutes after Trump’s inauguration):
It is easy to understand why Obama officials needed to discuss withholding information from Trump. They knew that the Trump campaign — not just some individuals tangentially connected to the campaign — was the subject of an ongoing FBI counterintelligence probe. Indeed, we now know that Obama’s Justice Department had already commenced FISA surveillance on Trump campaign figures, and that it was preparing to return to the FISA court to seek renewal of the surveillance warrants. We also know that at least one informant was still deployed. And we know that the FBI withheld information about the investigation from the congressional “Gang of Eight” during quarterly briefings from July 2106 through early March 2017. (See Comey testimony March 20, 2017, questioning by Representative Elise Stefanik (R., N.Y.).) Director Comey said Congress’s most trusted leaders were not apprised of the investigation because “it was a matter of such sensitivity.” Putting aside that the need to alert Congress to sensitive matters is exactly why there is a Gang of Eight, the palpable reason why the matter was deemed too “sensitive” for disclosure was that it involved the incumbent administration’s investigation of the opposition campaign.
Clearly, the Obama officials did not want Trump to know the full scope of their investigation of his campaign. But just as important, they wanted the investigation — an “insurance policy” that promised to hamstring Trump’s presidency — to continue.
So, how to accomplish these objectives? Plainly, the plan called for Comey to put the new president at ease by telling him he was not a suspect. This would not have been a credible assurance if Comey had informed Trump that his campaign had been under investigation for months, suspected of coordinating in Russia’s cyber-espionage operation. So, information would be withheld. The intelligence chiefs would tell Trump only about Russia’s espionage, not about the Trump campaign’s suspected “coordination” with the Kremlin. Then, Comey would apprise Trump about only a sliver of the Steele dossier — just the lurid story about peeing prostitutes, not the dossier’s principal allegations of a traitorous Trump-Russia conspiracy.
As I’ve previously recounted, this did not sit well with everyone at the FBI. Shortly before he met with Trump, Comey consulted his top FBI advisers about the plan to tell Trump he was not a suspect. There was an objection from one of Comey’s top advisers — we don’t know which one. Comey recounted this disagreement for the Senate Intelligence Committee (my italics):
Representative Gowdy and Senator Rubio might want to read that testimony over a few times.
They might note that Comey did not talk about “potential coordination between Carter Page or Paul Manafort and Russia.” The director was unambiguous: The FBI was investigating “potential coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia.” With due respect to Gowdy, the FBI did not regard Russia as the “target”; to the contrary, Comey said the focus of the investigation was whether Donald Trump’s campaign had coordinated in Russia’s election interference. And perspicaciously, Comey’s unidentified adviser connected the dots: Because (a) the FBI’s investigation was about the campaign, and (b) the campaign was Trump’s campaign, it was necessarily true that (c) Trump’s own conduct was under FBI scrutiny.
Director Comey’s reliance on the trivial administrative fact that the FBI had not written Trump’s name on the investigative file did not change the reality that Trump, manifestly, was a subject of the “Crossfire Hurricane” investigation. If Trump were not a subject of the investigation, there would be no conceivable justification for Special Counsel Mueller to be pushing to interview the president of the United States. If Trump were not a subject of the investigation, Trump’s political opponents would not have spent the last 18 months accusing him of obstruction and demanding that Mueller be permitted to finish his work.
In the interview with Ms. MacCallum, Representative Gowdy further confused matters by stressing Trump’s observation, in a phone conversation with Comey on March 30, 2017, that it would be good to find out if underlings in his campaign had done anything wrong. This, according to Gowdy, means Trump should be pleased, rather than outraged, by what the FBI did: By steering an informant at three campaign officials, we’re to believe that the bureau was doing exactly what Trump suggested.
Such a specious argument. So disappointing to hear it from someone who clearly knows better.
First, the informant reportedly began approaching campaign officials in July 2016. It was nine months later, well after the election, when President Trump told Comey that if would be good if the FBI uncovered any wrongdoing by his “satellites.” Trump was not endorsing spying during the campaign; the campaign was long over. The president was saying that it would be worth continuing the FBI’s Russia investigation in order to root out any thus-far-undiscovered wrongdoing — but only if the FBI informed the public that Trump was not a suspect (an announcement Comey declined to make).
Second, Gowdy’s argument assumes something that is simply not true: namely, that the Trump campaign was not under investigation. As we’ve seen, Comey testified multiple times that the FBI was investigating the Trump campaign for possible coordination with Russia. The bureau was not, as Gowdy suggests, merely investigating a few campaign officials for suspicious contacts with Russia unrelated to the campaign.
The Steele Dossier and FISA Surveillance
That brings us to a final point. In support of the neon-flashing fact that the Trump campaign was under investigation when the Obama administration ran an informant at it, there is much more than former Director Comey’s testimony.
Probes conducted by both the House Intelligence Committee and the Senate Judiciary Committee have established that the Obama Justice Department and the FBI used the Steele dossier to obtain FISA-court warrants against Carter Page. The dossier, a Clinton-campaign opposition-research project (a fact withheld from the FISA court), was essential to the required probable-cause showing; the FBI’s former deputy director, Andrew McCabe, testified that without the dossier there would have been no warrant.
So . . . what did the dossier say? The lion’s share of it — the part Director Comey omitted from his briefing of Trump — alleged that the Trump campaign was conspiring with the Kremlin to corrupt the election, including by hacking and publicizing Democratic-party emails.
We also know, thanks to more testimony by Director Comey, that dossier information was presented to the FISA court because the Justice Department and the FBI found former British spy Christopher Steele to be reliable (even if they could not corroborate Steele’s unidentified Russian sources). That is, the FBI and Justice Department believed Steele’s claim that the Trump campaign was willfully complicit in Russia’s treachery.
It is a major investigative step to seek surveillance warrants from the FISA court. Unlike using an informant, for which no court authorization is necessary, applications for FISA surveillance require approvals at the highest levels of the Justice Department and the FBI. After going through that elaborate process, the Obama Justice Department and the FBI presented to the court the dossier’s allegations that the Trump campaign was coordinating with Russia to undermine the 2016 election.
If that was their position under oath before a secret United States court, why would anyone conceivably believe that it was not their position when they ran an informant at members of the campaign they were investigating?
To be sure, no sensible person argues that the FBI should refrain from investigating individuals suspected of acting as clandestine agents of a hostile foreign power. The question is: How should such an investigation proceed in a democratic republic whose norms forbid an incumbent administration, in the absence of strong evidence of egregious misconduct, from directing its counterintelligence and law-enforcement powers against its political opposition?
That norm was flouted by the Justice Department and the FBI, under the direction of the Obama administration’s senior political leadership. Representative Gowdy, Senator Rubio, and General Clapper maintain that the Justice Department and the FBI were just doing what we should expect them to do, and that we should applaud them. But this claim is based on the easily refuted fiction that the Justice Department and FBI were not investigating the Trump campaign. The claim also ignores the stubborn fact that, if all the Obama administration had been trying to do was check out a few bad apples with suspicious Russia ties, this could easily have been done by alerting the Trump campaign and asking for its help.
Instead, Obama officials made the Trump campaign the subject of a counterintelligence investigation.
https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/05/trump-campaign-spying-obama-administration-investigation/