Outrage Follows "Jaw-Droppingly Shocking" 1986 Prince Charles Letter Blaming Mid-East Problems On "Foreign Jews"

Prince Charles has sparked media outrage following a report he wrote a letter blaming "the influx of foreign, European Jews" for aggravating the Arab-Israeli conflict and leading to general unrest in the Middle East, while also asking whether an American president would "have the courage" to take on "the Jewish lobby" to put an end to terrorism in the region.

The note, written on November 24, 1986, was found in a public archive and published Saturday by the Daily Mail. The Prince penned the letter after official visits to Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Qatar with Princess Diana.

"I now appreciate that Arabs and Jews were all a Semitic people originally,” the then 38-year-old Prince of Wales wrote in his letter, adding, that “it is the influx of foreign, European Jews (especially from Poland, they say) which has helped to cause great problems” in the Middle East. “I know there are so many complex issues, but how can there ever be an end to terrorism unless the causes are eliminated?” he questioned.

"Surely some US president has to have the courage to stand up and take on the Jewish lobby in the US? I must be naive, I suppose!” he concludes.

The Editor of the Jewish Chronicle, Stephen Pollard, described Charles’ comments “both shocking and entirely predictable.”

Both shocking and entirely predictable https://t.co/Ftm3TqvWL5

— Stephen Pollard (@stephenpollard) November 12, 2017

"To me this is the most astonishing element of the Prince’s letter. The “Jewish lobby” is one of the anti-Semitic themes that have endured for centuries. It is this myth there are these very powerful Jews who control foreign policy or the media or banks or whatever."  Pollard then told the daily mail that the letter was "jaw-droppingly shocking" and added that "[the Prince’s comments] come from the heir to the throne is unsettling, to put it mildly."

While the letter is inflammatory, there is no suggestion Charles holds anti-Semitic views according to The Mail: "He has many prominent Jewish friends and in 2013 became the first Royal to attend a chief rabbi’s inauguration ceremony. In a speech that year, he expressed concern at the apparent rise of anti-Semitism in Britain."

At the same time, he is seen as a defender of Islam, with one historian noting that no other major Western figure has as high a standing in the Muslim world. 

 

It has also been suggested he has pro-Palestinian leanings, a perception the letter appears to support.

Prince Charles is not the first one to fall in the "lobby" spotlight: among those to come under fire for using the term ‘Jewish lobby’ are General George Brown, the highest-ranking military officer in the US as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who was publicly rebuked and disowned by President Gerald Ford in 1974 after claiming that a ‘Jewish lobby’ controlled Congress, according to The Daily Mail. Former Ukip leader Nigel Farage was criticised earlier this month when he referred to ‘a powerful Jewish lobby’ in the US.  In 2006, Chris Davies, former leader of the Lib Dem MEPs, was forced to resign after he used the term. Archbishop Desmond Tutu also came under fire when he used the phrase in a newspaper article in 2002.

The Prince’s reference in the letter to the influx of European Jews also caused dismay.

It is not clear if he is referring to immigration before or after the Second World War, or both. Mr Pollard said: ‘It is the absolute classic Arab explanation of the problems in the Middle East.

 

"And it is what everyone has always said the British aristocracy actually thinks – the idea that Jews were some kind of foreigners who had no real place in Israel until we decided to make it their homeland. Historically it is nonsense and it’s quite stunning when it comes from the heir to the throne.’

 

A senior Israeli diplomatic source said last night: ‘He [Charles] was travelling around the Gulf states [just before he wrote the controversial letter], which in those years were very anti-Israel. It seems he was presented with a narrative in a very convincing way.’

Earlier this month, Britain marked the centenary of the Balfour Declaration, the document that paved the way for the state of Israel, with a gala dinner in London attended by Theresa May and Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

It is also not the first time Prince Charles has gotten in hot water for controversial remarks: In 2007, leaked emails between senior Clarence House staff put Charles at the centre of a row about the Royals’ attitude towards the Jewish state.

* * *

Attempting some damage control, a spokesman for Clarence House said the thoughts revealed in the 1986 letter, were actually “not The Prince’s own views.”

“The letter clearly states these were not the Prince’s own thinking on Arab-Israeli affairs, but represented the opinions of some of those he met during his visit which he was keen to interrogate,” the statement said. It added that Prince Charles "was sharing the arguments in private correspondence with a long standing friend in an attempt to improve his understanding of what he has always recognized is a deeply complex issue to which he was coming early on in his own analysis in 1986," the representative said.

"Over the years, the prince has continued his study of the complex and difficult themes he referenced here. He has built a proven track record of support for both Jewish and Arab communities around the world and has a long history of promoting interfaith dialogue and cultural understanding,"

she added.

Buchanan Fears A GOP Bloodbath - The Lesson For 2018

Authored by Patrick Buchanan via Buchanan.org,

The day after his “Silent Majority” speech on Nov. 3, 1969, calling on Americans to stand with him for peace with honor in Vietnam, Richard Nixon’s GOP captured the governorships of Virginia and New Jersey.

By December, Nixon had reached 68 percent approval in the Gallup Poll, though, a year earlier, he had won but 43 percent of the vote.

Contrast Nixon’s numbers with President Trump’s.

Where Trump won 46 percent of the vote against Hillary Clinton, his approval rating is now nearly 10 points below that. He has less support today than on the day he was elected, or inaugurated.

Tens of millions of Americans are passionately for Trump, and tens of millions are passionately against him.

The GOP problem: The latter cohort is equal in intensity but larger in number, and this is especially true in purple and blue states like the commonwealth of Virginia.

There is no way to spin Tuesday as other than a Little Bighorn, and possible harbinger of what is to come.

In George Washington’s hometown of Alexandria and Arlington County, Democratic candidate Ralph Northam won 4-1. In Fairfax and Loudoun counties, the most populous D.C. suburbs, Northam won 2-1.

In the rural counties, however, Republican Ed Gillespie rolled up the landslides.

As there are two Americas, there are two Virginias.

Consider. Of all the delegate seats in the Virginia assembly allocated to Alexandria, Arlington, Fairfax, Loudoun and Prince William counties, the GOP can today claim only one.

Northern Virginia is taking on the political and socioeconomic profile of San Francisco.

Another and perhaps insoluble problem for the GOP, not only in the Old Dominion, is demography.

Democrats rolled up their largest margins among African-Americans, Hispanics, single women, immigrants and the young. And these voting blocs are growing.

Gillespie ran up his largest margins among white males near and past retirement age and married white women. These Middle Americans are in inexorable demographic decline.

The Greatest Generation is passing on, and baby boomers born between 1946 and 1951 are now on Medicare and Social Security.

Yet reports of the GOP’s demise are grossly exaggerated.

Though Gillespie lost by nine points, Jill Vogel, who ran for lieutenant governor on Trumpian issues, lost by six.

By 2-1, Virginians do not want their Confederate monuments torn down. Northam, sensing this, moved toward Gillespie’s position as the campaign went on. Also, among the 27 percent of Virginians who regarded taxes and immigration as the top issues, Gillespie won by nearly 4-1.

It was health care concerns, the No. 1 issue, that buried the GOP.

As for mainstream media rage and revulsion at the “racism” of Gillespie ads suggesting Northam supported sanctuary cities and was soft on the MS-13 gang, this reflects an abiding establishment fear of the Trumpian issues of illegal immigration and crime.

Then there was the Republican messenger.

A former chairman of the RNC, Washington lobbyist and White House aide, Gillespie is an establishment Republican unconvincing in the role of a fighting populist conservative. His speeches recalled not Trump’s run, but that of the Republicans Trump trounced.

Ed Gillespie was Virginia’s version of Jeb Bush.

Message from the Old Dominion: A purple state, trending blue, with its economy recession-proof as long as Uncle Sam across the river consumes 20 percent of GDP, is a steepening climb for the GOP. You must have a superior candidate, comfortable with cutting issues, to win it now.

Republicans are being admonished to drop the monuments-and-memorials issue and respect why NFL players might want to “take a knee” during the national anthem.

But if to win in Northern Virginia the GOP must move closer to the Democratic Party, why would the rest of the state want to vote for the Republican Party?

During the campaign, both candidates moved rightward.

Northam rejected sanctuary cities and accepted Lee and Jackson on Richmond’s Monument Avenue, and Gillespie ran Trumpian ads, even if they seemed to clash with the mild-mannered candidate himself.

The lesson for 2018:

While the solid support of Trumpians is indispensable for GOP victory, it is insufficient for GOP victory. Republican candidates will have to decide how close they wish to get to President Trump, or how far away they can risk going and survive.

Facing this choice, Sens. Jeff Flake and Bob Corker decided to pack it in. Other Republicans may follow. But a house divided will not stand.

Republicans should recall that off-year elections are often problematic for incumbent parties. In 1954, President Eisenhower lost both houses of Congress. After pardoning Nixon in 1974, Gerald Ford lost 49 seats. In 1982, Ronald Reagan sustained a 27-seat loss.

In 1994, Bill Clinton lost 53 seats and control of the House. In 2010, Barack Obama lost 63 seats and control of the House.

If the nation chooses to turn Congress over to Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer in 2018, will that be all Trump’s fault? Or should perhaps some credit go to Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell and venerable political tradition?

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).

Top: USS Ronald Reagan (CVN-76), USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN-71), USS John C. Stennis (CVN-74)
Center: USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN-72)
Bottom: USS Carl Vinson (CVN-70), USS Nimitz (CVN-68), USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN-78)

Back in 2016, six carriers were underway and that was considered a “milestone event” by Chief of Naval Operations Adm. John Richardson. The last time 7 carriers were deployed dates back to 2004, according to USNI. The report quotes an unidentified Navy official to sheds more light on the upcoming drills:

The Reagan, Nimitz and Roosevelt strike groups are all operating in the U.S. 7th Fleet area of operations. Reagan is operating in the Sea of Japan near the Korean peninsula while Nimitz is returning to its homeport at Naval Station Kitsap-Bremerton, Wash. after a deployment to the Persian Gulf to conduct air strike against ISIS targets. Roosevelt deployed from San Diego, Calif. on Oct. 7 set to replace Nimitz as part of the continued U.S. operation against ISIS.

More basic details were provided by the report for the remaining aircraft carriers:

• Vinson is conducting a planned sustainment exercise and flight tests with the F-35C Lighting II Joint Strike Fighter, while Stennis left Kitsap-Bremerton last week for training after coming out of a repair period. A sailor on Vinson was injured Friday after being struck with a plane being towed on the flight deck.


• Lincoln is undergoing a series of qualifications following the completion of a mid-life refueling and complex overhaul and return to the fleet in May.


• Ford is continuing years of tests and training before the ship will be fully integrated into the U.S. fleet and leave on its first deployment sometime in the early 2020s.

“Naval aviation is supporting the requirements of combatant commanders forward while building our capabilities for future deployments–and qualifying new pilots–with training near our shores,” Vice Adm. Michael Shoemaker, commander Naval Air Forces said in a Monday statement provided to USNI News.
“The addition of USS Gerald Ford is exciting, as we test the capabilities for the future. This optempo is not ordinary, but the demand for carriers remains as high as ever.”

Also on Monday, VoA"s White House bureau chief Steve Herman, confirmed what had been speculated previously, namely that 3 of the carriers will participate in an extremely rare drill in "the estern Pacific", read off the Korean peninsula. As the report states, this would be the first time the “7th Fleet converged for the “first simultaneous three-strike group training operations in a decade”.

Confirmed: @USNavy to stage exercise in western Pacific in coming days with 3 aircraft carrier strike groups.

— Steve Herman (@W7VOA) November 6, 2017

Last week, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Joseph Dunford tried to diffuse the situation, saying that “these three carriers are not there specifically targeting North Korea. This is a routine demonstration of our commitment to the region.” The exercise is overlapping President Trump’s 12-day excursion across Asia amid high-tensions between Pyongyang and Washington.

Indicatively, as of last week, this was the latest positioning of US Carrier Strike Groups, courtesy of Stratfor.

The timing of the 3-carrier drill in the Western Pacific coincides with President Trump’s trip to South Korea. As Trump’s latest tweet indicates (4:28pm), he is “getting ready to leave for South Korea”.

Getting ready to leave for South Korea and meetings with President Moon, a fine gentleman. We will figure it all out!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 6, 2017

With 7 carriers deployed today of which 3 about to launch drills in Western Pacific, we find it odd this is all occurring around President Trump’s trip to Asia.

On October 28, North Korea accused the US of making “criminal moves for igniting a war of aggression”, after Kim Jong-Un learned three US-Navy carriers will operate in Asian waters. According to Jim Mattis, United States Secretary of Defense, said “our goal is not war, but rather the complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula”, something North Korea has previously said it will never agree to.

Finally, another drill that should be closely watched is Israel’s “largest-ever aerial military drill”, which started yesterday. Sometimes these drills "accidentally" go live. 

The Military Industrial Complex Is Undermining US National Security

Authored by Federico Pieraccini via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

The ongoing problems with the F-35 and other military programs, stemming from virtually unlimited budgets, underline the inefficiency of the American military-industrial complex (MIC). In contrast, Moscow develops armaments capable of counteracting the latest technological advances of the US at minimal cost.

One of a state’s most insidious mechanisms is the inefficiency of the military-industrial sector. When looking at the world"s first superpower, this becomes all the more pronounced. Still, the ongoing problems highlighted by the F-35 program and failed missile interceptions by ABM systems are a good demonstration of how inefficiency in the US military sector has risen to worrying levels.

The main cause of these issues is related to the huge military-industrial complex that employs hundreds of thousands Americans directly or indirectly. The unhealthy composition of this power conglomerate often employs a revolving door involving politicians and board members from large arms-producing companies. This situation raises questions about corruption as well as a number of obvious conflicts of interest.

It is no surprise, therefore, that Congress is increasingly willing to grant what almost amount to blank checks to finance military budgets, numbering in the hundreds of billions of dollars. The second factor that impacts negatively on the efficiency of the MIC is the propaganda to which the entire American system is subjected. Looking at the example of think-tanks, they are all practically funded, directly or indirectly, by the military-related industries or foreign governments (especially Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Israel). The role of think-tanks is to influence policymakers, creating a common view between components of the (deep) state.

A problem arises when almost all experts and politicians participating in these Washington based think tanks come from federal agencies or industries tied to the military through contracts worth billions of dollars. Hardly offering any dissent from official or mainstream opinions on issue ranging from Russia to the F-35, politicians, experts and journalists all agree that Russia constitutes the main danger and that the F-35 program does not have any critical issues and is actually a superior weapon, two lies in full swing. Think-tanks and their guests promote an erroneous narrative that seeds, nourishes and sustains the problems and inefficiencies that beset military systems and Washington"s strategic vision. They offer no criticism, no change of policy, only echo chambers of lies and propaganda.

In addition to the think-tanks and the revolving doors involving board members of MIC companies and Congress and Senate members, a major problem concerns the timing of projects and the contemporary technological advancements of geopolitical opponents. The cost of projects such as the F-35, the ABM system, and the new supercarrier, the USS Gerald R. Ford, have reached astronomical figures, following decades of development. The immediate consequences are the obsolescence of these systems once they come into service, especially when compared with weapon systems developed, or being developed, by countries such as China and especially Russia.

Despite the fact that US spending is unmatched in the world, amounting to about half of that of all countries combined, the weapons systems of competitors often cost less and are more efficient.

The survival of the MIC is inextricably tied to the US dollar and its role in the world as a reserve currency. With almost $700 billion a year worth of military spending, it is easy to reach a nationwide debt of over $21 trillion. The only way to sustain this kind of debt is due to the credibility of the dollar itself.

The reason why US treasury bills are considered safe and a great way for a foreign investor to diversify in long-term assets, despite $21 trillion of debt, is because of US credibility and the dollar’s status as reserve currency. The dollar, being the main global reserve currency, continues to be purchased by foreign countries to pay for commodities as well as for trade between each other. Just as the MIC warns breathlessly of all the dangers and threats through propaganda, resulting in enormous investments in unnecessary and obsolete weapon systems, the dollar is also printed by the Fed without any fear of devaluation or inflation risk, providing Washington with virtually unlimited funds for defense budgets and the ability to carry out massive wars. If you combine the two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan alone and add to it the cost of the F-35, it amounts to more than $7 trillion. It is an almost incomprehensible figure that is at the same emblematic of how the global economic system is at the service of American warfare imperialism.

In response to this dysfunctional system, we find a diametrically opposite situation in Russia. With a budget that is about one-tenth that of the US, but with the need to keep pace with the world"s most powerful war machine (at least in terms of quantity; we can discuss quality at another time), Moscow has had to optimize costs to get the greatest possible benefits from its weapon systems. This has led to a much more logical management of the Russian military apparatus.

By carefully observing the most important American technological advances (fifth-generation aircraft like the F-35, new ICBMs and aircraft carriers), it is easy to discern two asymmetric strategies by Moscow, one defensive and other offensive.

With the defensive one, for each American action there is a corresponding Russian response. The F-35 and fifth-generation aircraft become easy targets thanks to complex systems such as the S-400, the future S-500, and cutting-edge radar technology. The Gerald Ford supercarrier becomes a simple target to hit if attacked by a Russian supersonic Zircon missile (ready to be put into production in 2018). The S-500s will also be able to intercept any kind of ICBM directed at Russian territory, thus succeeding in sealing Russian skies, a goal the United States is light years away from achieving.

In terms of offensive strategy, Moscow"s capabilities are even more impressive. Emphasis must be placed on the most effective system possible, the SS-28, better known as the Sarmat, a nuclear missile capable of modifying its own trajectory in descent, accelerating or decelerating, thus becoming impossible to intercept for American ABM systems. It is thought that the overall power of a single Sarmat missile (armed with up to 24 MIRVs) is likely to reduce to ashes an area as large as Texas or France. It is the ultimate deterrent weapon.

Other programs related to the development of fifth-generation aircraft or aircraft bombers (PAK-FA and PAK-DA) have slowed down to facilitate the upgrading of aircraft such as the Su-34 and Tu-160, with the Su-35 already within the category of 4++ generation. Such choices can only be made through an military-industrial system that favors the strategies of the nation and not that enrichment of individuals, corrupt shareholders or politicians.

Finally, an operating mix capable of providing defense or attack performance certainly involves cyberspace and, more generally, electronic warfare (EW). Of these systems we know little to nothing; they are secrets jealousy guarded by the Russian defense ministry. But from what many experts write, Moscow could be far ahead of their American colleagues in this field.

It is no exaggeration to say that the technological gap between Russia and the United States is being overcome by the need for Moscow to efficiently optimize its key weapons systems. The main problem for the United States concerns its maintenance of the status of military superpower. The continued issuance of dollar-denominated bonds, the use of the dollar as the main reserve currency, provokes a dangerous sequence that allows the US to print unlimited amounts of money, therefore being able to invest incredible amounts of money in old and vulnerable weapons systems.

The blatant squandering of hundreds of billions of dollars over the course of two decades, without anyone ever being held to account for it, has produced enormous damage to the reliability and effectiveness of most of the advanced American military systems and those still in the process of being developed. The military-industrial complex continues to spend large amounts of taxpayers" money without fulfilling the need for concrete or tangible results. Dozens of failed projects costing tens of billions of dollars have ended up allowing competitors to close the gap enjoyed by US military superiority.

A new era is opening up, one where the United States will no longer possess military and technical superiority over its geopolitical opponents in all domains. This will certainly bare consequences for Washington’s present and future strategy of power projection, possibly deterring the US from further engaging in failed policies, leaving countries completely destroyed and millions of lives lost.

The American Dystopia Didn't Begin With Trump

Authored by Darrell Delamaide via MarketWatch.com,

Dystopia is here. It’s not just the “imagined place” of the dictionary definition or a future state of dystopian novels. It is very real and right now, at least for those of us trying to follow national politics.

And it’s not just Donald Trump. It’s Barack Obama, it’s Ted Cruz, it’s the New York Times, it’s Breitbart News. It is an alternate universe detached from the world we live in but intruding into it in painful and dangerous ways.

It is a media narrative of political conspirators colluding with a dictatorial archenemy, of an intemperate and delusional leader overturning the institutions of democracy, of a “deep-state” resistance to constitutional authority.

It is a dystopia of rampant hypocrisy, where obstructing legislation, supporting a law-enforcement official who strays beyond the limits of his authority, or boycotting a president’s appointments is evil and undemocratic until it’s your party that wants to do it.

Two dystopian classics have shot back to the top of best-seller lists because the media suggest the authoritarian surveillance societies they portray have arrived. The 1948 novel “1984” and the 1985 novel “The Handmaid’s Tale” are touted as descriptions of where we are headed under Trump.

While the author of “Handmaid,” Margaret Atwood, and the cast of the Hulu miniseries based on it see a Trump administration as the realization of the misogyny depicted in the novel, it’s obvious the U.S. is not about to become a Puritanical theocracy like that in the book.

Critics on both the left and the right dispute the media meme that “Handmaid” is a depiction of the Trump era.

Irish feminist Angela Nagle writes in the left-wing Jacobin magazine that it is neoliberal market forces that are oppressing women, not an imaginary theocratic state.

“The real-world dystopia for the majority of women in the age of Trump is not that they are being forced to have children by a repressive traditionalist state,” she wrote last week, “but that they’re being compelled not to by far more insidious forces, and those that do are financially and socially punished at every turn.”

We are ruled by myths, she continues, but not those in the miniseries. “The mythologies of our age in the West are not enforced by repressive theocratic regimes,” Nagle says, “but by the market command to be free, to be creative, to be flexible, to love what you do for even the most uninspiring of jobs.”

Right-wing media critic Brent Bozell also takes issue with “adoring” coverage of the series in the liberal mainstream media. “This is why conservatives tend to laugh when liberals rail against the scourge of ‘fake news,’” Bozell wrote last week in Townhall. “There is no faker news than the notion that America is on the precipice of a Puritan patriarchy under President Donald Trump.”

As for Big Brother watching us, a la George Orwell’s “1984,” it has become quite clear that the surveillance state made its greatest strides under Obama, though previous administrations had done their part to implement it.

“Obama’s most enduring legacy may be the establishment of the modern U.S. surveillance state,” Penn State professor and Internet privacy advocate Sascha Meinrath wrote in the Christian Science Monitor as Obama left office. “During his eight years in office, Obama has dramatically expanded the reach of U.S. government surveillance, with scores of new revelations of previously unknown surveillance initiatives continuing to regularly come to light.”

Meinrath criticized Obama’s “schizophrenia” in calling upon his fellow citizens to reform surveillance laws and protect privacy even as he unilaterally expanded surveillance by granting “sweeping surveillance powers” to 17 government agencies through an executive order as he left office.

In fact, the hagiography about Obama that began when he first set his sights on the presidency and continues in full force now is an important component in our dystopia. The mythmaking by and for Obama does not square with the experience many people had during his presidency.

The controversial new biography, “Rising Star: The Making of Barack Obama,” by Pulitzer Prize-winner David Garrow claims that many of the people and anecdotes in Obama’s best-selling memoirs are fictional and serve the purpose of creating the myths around him.

He quotes a psychologist to the effect that “someone’s life story ‘is more like a personal myth than an objective biography, even though the subject believes the story to be true.’”

Garrow concludes in a highly critical epilogue that Obama’s pursuit of his ambition to be president became the dominant characteristic of his life. “While the crucible of self-creation had produced an ironclad will, the vessel was hollow at its core,” Garrow says in a much-quoted judgment.

Of course Obama supporters leapt to his defense. New York Times book reviewer Michiko Kakutani calls Garrow’s biography, which runs nearly 1,500 pages, “a dreary slog” and labels the epilogue “a condescending diatribe unworthy of a serious historian.”

In keeping with Washington’s trench warfare, this comment prompted Bozell, in another column, to snort, “As for Obama’s outright lies and evasions, Kakutani offered the conclusion you might expect from a political party commissar,” Bozell writes. “For reliable history, ‘Go back to Obama’s own eloquent memoir,’ she says. In other words, ‘the myth shall set you free.’”

Ultimately, the dystopia of this media narrative has little to do with the world most of us live in — we can hardly recognize it. We do have real problems, however, and it would be helpful if politicians paid attention to them instead of chasing shadows in Washington.

As he took office in 1974, President Gerald Ford said, “Our long national nightmare is over,” describing the 26 months between the arrest of the Watergate burglars and the resignation of President Richard Nixon.

When and how will we end this current nightmare?

The Divergence Between 'Hard' & 'Soft' Data Explained (And Republican Bulls Won't Like It)

Another dataset, another head-scratching disparity between ostensibly fulsome confidence and evidently sluggish activity.  While markets get whipsawed reacting to divergent hard and soft data points, the question that traders need to ask is whether this gap makes any sense.

Bloomberg"s Macro Strategist Cameron Crise may have the answer... If you"re willing to believe that survey respondents allow their political beliefs to color their answers, then it very well might.

I modeled U.S. economic growth since 1975 using the softest of the soft data releases: consumer confidence and the small business optimism survey. I omitted the ISM because it includes factual questions, i.e. are orders increasing?  The fit is actually pretty good for such a simple model, with an r-squared of 0.51.  As you can see, the model is now pretty upbeat.

I then disaggregated the data and compared the model forecast to actual economic growth for each president since Gerald Ford. The results were fascinating.

• Under Republican presidencies, average annual growth has been 2.7%...but the model has forecast it at 3%.


• Under Democrats, growth has been a little higher, at 2.8%...but the model has forecast growth of just 2.3%.

In fact, the model slightly underestimated growth during the Ford and Reagan years. Since George HW Bush, however, the trend is pretty pronounced: survey respondents have been optimistic relative to underlying growth for GOP presidents and pessimistic relative to growth for their Democratic counterparts.

It seems likely that at least some of the recent boost to confidence is evidence of the same phenomenon manifesting itself.  That being said, the model currently projects growth of nearly 3.5%, so even if we were to knock off the usual half a percent for a post-Reagan GOP presidency that would still imply a marked uptick over the post-crisis run rate.

Of course, achieving that growth will probably be contingent on the government enacting some of its more business-friendly campaign promises such as tax reform or deregulation. If they don"t, then the "optimism gap" may close, and not in a way that the White House might like.

Either way, traders will need to keep an eye on government policy and its implications. The efficacy of the Trump administration may not matter on a day-to-day basis for bond markets, but in the long run it probably will.

A glance at the last 20 years or so of "soft" and "hard" data also helps confirm this over-confidence... it"s the hope that pumps... then dumps... and never the reality that jumps...

The NY Times Asks "How Can We Get Rid Of Trump?"

Trump still has significant political support, so the obstacles are gargantuan. But the cleanest and quickest way to remove a president involves Section 4 of the 25th Amendment and has never been attempted. It provides that the cabinet can, by a simple majority vote, strip the president of his powers and immediately hand power to the vice president. The catch is that the ousted president can object, and in that case Congress must approve the ouster by a two-thirds vote in each chamber, or the president regains office.

The 25th Amendment route is to be used when a president is “unable” to carry out his duties. I asked Laurence Tribe, the Harvard professor of constitutional law, whether that could mean not just physical incapacity, but also mental instability. Or, say, the taint of having secretly colluded with Russia to steal an election?

Tribe said that he believed Section 4 could be used in such a situation.

“In the unlikely event that Pence and a majority of Trump’s bizarre cabinet were to grow the spine needed to do the right thing with the process set up by that provision, we would surely be in a situation where a very large majority of the public, including a very substantial percentage of Trump’s supporters, would back if not insist upon such a move,” Tribe said.

 

“In that circumstance, I can’t imagine Trump and his lawyers succeeding in getting the federal courts to interfere.”The better known route is impeachment. But for now it’s hard to imagine a majority of the House voting to impeach, and even less conceivable that two-thirds of the Senate would vote to convict so that Trump would be removed. Moreover, impeachment and trial in the Senate would drag on for months, paralyzing America and leaving Trump in office with his finger on the nuclear trigger.

My take is that unless things get much worse, removal may be a liberal fantasy. Progressives thought that Trump would never win the nomination or the election. He survived the “Access Hollywood” tape and countless crises that pundits thought would doom him, so it’s not clear why Republicans would desert him now that he’s president.

Some people believe that the 2018 midterm elections will be so catastrophic for the G.O.P. that everyone will be ready to get rid of him. I’m skeptical. In the Senate, the map is disastrous for Democrats in 2018: The Republicans will be defending only eight Senate seats, while Democrats will in effect be defending 25.

So while Democrats can gnash their teeth, it’ll be up to Republicans to decide whether to force Trump out. And that won’t happen unless they see him as ruining their party as well as the nation.

“The only incentive for Republicans to act — with or without the cabinet — is the same incentive Republicans had in 1974 to insist on Nixon’s resignation,” Larry Sabato of the University of Virginia told me. “The incentive is survival.”

Trump does have one weakness, and it’s parallel to Nixon’s. Republicans in Congress were willing to oust Nixon partly because they vastly preferred his vice president, Gerald Ford — just as congressional Republicans prefer Mike Pence today.

If I were betting, I’d say we’re stuck with Trump for four years. But as Sabato says: “Lots of things about Donald Trump’s election and early presidency have been shocking. Why should it stop now?”

And what does it say about a presidency that, just one month into it, we’re already discussing whether it can be ended early?

Gold Trumps Stocks In Presidential Transition Years

Bullion bulls betting that this rally has more room to run have history on their side with the arrival of a new U.S. president.

As Bloomberg reports, a look at recent presidential transitions supports optimism among traders over the metal’s prospects. Gold has averaged gains of almost 15% in years marking the inauguration of a new president since the 1970s, advancing in five of those seven years. In contrast, the S&P 500 index of equities declined in four of those years for an average loss over the period of 0.9 percent.

2017 is playing out that way, so far.

Gold, which is coming off the worst quarter in more than three years, has in 2017 managed to shrug off gains in equities and prospects for more U.S. rate increases, rising almost 5%, up to over $1200 an ounce. Whether gains last may depend on how smooth the transition is to the new presidency.

“What happens frequently is you have a new president, there’s a lot of euphoria and then reality kicks in,” says Merk, who oversees a gold exchange-traded fund with assets totaling $120 million. “It’s more difficult to implement policies.”

This is the sixth year in a row where gold has started off well, even better than last year...

From Presidents Gerald Ford to Barack Obama, bullion has often served as a haven in times of political flux.

“We have no idea what’s going to happen with some of Trump’s policies -- everybody is a little nervous,” said Axel Merk, San Francisco-based founder of Merk Investments LLC, which manages $300 million in assets.

“Gold is relatively undervalued and will push higher.”

CIA Releases 13 Million Pages Of Declassified Documents: Include Psychic Experiments, UFO Research

The Central Intelligence Agency has published nearly 13 million pages of declassified files online, documents which previously were physically accessible only from four computer terminals at the National Archives in College Park, Maryland.

The record include info on Nazi war crimes, the Cuban Missile Crisis, UFO sightings, human telepathy ("Project Stargate") and much more. The release has been a long time coming: Bill Clinton first ordered all documents at least 25 years old with "historical value" to be declassified in 1995. The agency complied, however anyone who wanted access had to trek all the way to the US National Archives in Washington DC to get a peak.

In 2014, a nonprofit journalism organization called MuckRock filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit pressing the CIA to post all of its documents online, but the agency said it would take up to six years to scan everything according to engadget. At the same time, journalist Mike Best crowd-funded more than $15,000 to visit the archives to print out and then publicly upload the records, one by one, to apply pressure to the CIA. "By printing out and scanning the documents at CIA expense, I was able to begin making them freely available to the public and to give the agency a financial incentive to simply put the database online," Best wrote in a blog post.

"Access to this historically significant collection is no longer limited by geography," said Joseph Lambert, the CIA"s information management director in a press release. The agency was aiming to publish the documents by the end of 2017, but finished the work ahead of schedule.

“We’ve been working on this for a very long time and this is one of the things I wanted to make sure got done before I left. Now you can access it from the comfort of your own home,” said outgoing CIA director of information Lambert. The agency continues to review documents for declassification, so the treasure trove has not been unearthed in full, and there’s definitely more to follow.

* * *

The online records, shed light on the agency"s activities throughout the Vietnam, Korean and Cold War conflicts; they also includes documents relating to UFO sightings and psychic experiments from the Stargate program, which has long been of interest to conspiracy theorists. The archives also cover events from the 1940s the 1990s (each year, a new batch are declassified) and include details about the flight of war criminals from Nazi Germany, the quarter-mile Berlin tunnel built to tap Soviet telephone lines, internal intelligence bulletins and memos from former CIA directors, UFO reports and more. 

The released trove also includes the papers of Henry Kissinger, who served as secretary of state under presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, as well as several hundred thousand pages of intelligence analysis and science research and development.

Among the more unusual records are documents from the Stargate Project, which dealt with psychic powers and extrasensory perception. Those include records of testing on celebrity psychic Uri Geller in 1973, when he was already a well-established performer.

Memos detail how Mr Geller was able to partly replicate pictures drawn in another room with varying - but sometimes precise - accuracy, leading the researchers to write that he "demonstrated his paranormal perceptual ability in a convincing and unambiguous manner" the BBC reported.

One set of documents details results of psychic tests on Uri Geller, where he attempted
to copy drawings made by researchers from within a sealed room.

One of the tests involved drawings. A word was selected at random from a dictionary. The first word selected was “fuse”. A firecracker was then drawn by someone outside the locked room. The picture was then taped to the wall outside Geller’s cell and he was told via intercom the drawing was finished. The CIA documents say: “His almost immediate response was that he saw a ‘cylinder with noise coming out of it’. “His drawing to correspond with it was a drum, along with a number of cylindrical-looking objects.”

The second word chosen was “bunch” and a scientist drew a bunch of grapes. The document states: “Geller’s immediate response was that he saw ‘drops of water coming out of the picture’. “He then talked about ‘purple circles’. “Finally, he said that he was quite sure that he had the picture. His drawing was indeed a bunch of grapes.”

The researchers concluded Uri “demonstrated his paranormal perceptual ability in a convincing and unambiguous manner”.

* * *

Other unusual records include a collection of reports on flying saucers, and the recipes for invisible ink.

"None of this is cherry-picked," said CIA spokesperson Heather Fritz Horniak, cited by CNN. "It"s the full history. It"s good and bads."

Nothing in the archive is newly declassified. Although the documents are declassified, redactions do exist throughout the millions of pages. The redactions, which Horniak describes as light, were done to protect sources and methods that could potentially harm national security, she explained.

The archive is massive, and new developments on the CIA"s activities throughout its storied history are likely to come out as the millions of pages are reviewed.

So is the online database likely to reveal anything particularly juicy? It is not likely, especially since the documents have likely been extensively scrubbed in advance even though CIA Director of Information Management Joseph Lambert said the agency did one last check through the collection before releasing it, and did not reclassify any more documents.

However, the documents will surely provide hours of inquiry for historians, war buffs, UFO enthusiasts and others. The archives cover events from the 1940s the 1990s. It can be accessed as the following link.

Obama’s Twilight Moves Against Israel May Foreshadow His Move to UN Sec’y Gen

President Obama’s UN declaration that Israeli settlements are illegal says this duck isn’t lame. It was not the finale of Obama’s closing months as president but the prologue to years ahead, pushing his legacy to where it can be carried out at the UN. Congressional leaders say Obama is already plotting further action on Israel before he leaves office, according to the Washington Free Beacon.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center put Obama’s refusal to veto the UN resolution at top of its annual list of anti-Semitic acts. One has to acknowledge, regardless of his or her position about Israeli settlements, that Obama is choosing to create an unusual whirlwind of controversy as he leaves office. The resolution (#2334) states that Israel’s settlement activity “has no legal validity and constitutes a flagrant violation under international law,” and calls for an end to all construction beyond the boundaries that existed in 1967 prior to the Six Day War.

Rightly or wrongly, he is certainly kicking the hornets’ nest inside the White House as he heads out the door. It is highly unusual for an outgoing president to initiate a major upheaval in diplomatic relations that runs directly opposed to the direction the incoming president has already said he will take. Trump had insisted that Obama not move the US in this direction. So, the wild ride of the 2016 presidential campaign has become even wilder after the campaign.

Secretary of State John Kerry kicked the controversy with Israel up a notch with his own speech when he said,

If the choice is one state … Israel can either be Jewish or democratic…. It cannot be both, and it won’t ever really be at peace. (The Washington Examiner)

In defending the Obama administration against critics of its UN move, Kerry also said,

Critics “failed to recognize that this friend, the United States of America, has done more to support Israel than any other country. This friend that has blocked countless efforts to delegitimize Israel, cannot be true to our own values, or even the stated democratic values of Israel and we cannot properly protect and defend Israel if we allow a viable two-state solution to be destroyed before our own eyes.”

And then he took the battle even higher when he said,

Washington could not “protect or defend” the country should Tel Aviv continue to balk at two-state peace plans with Palestinians. His comments drew swift and sharp rebuke from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who chided Mr. Kerry by saying Israelis did “not need to be lectured” about peace by the outgoing administration, while President-elect Donald Trump weighed in even before the speech was given with a strong support for Mr. Netanyahu and Israel, and vowing his incoming administration would take a sharply different approach. It was an … extraordinarily public division between two longtime allies, one that could have lasting and incalculable consequences for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and Washington’s traditional role as an honest broker and the main outside power in the Middle East peace process. (The Washington Times)

President Obama divides and conquers

Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) says he fears Obama’s actions have emboldened extremists on both ends. While Netanyahu is digging back by withdrawing diplomatic relations with nations that approved the resolution and by withdrawing UN funding, and Palestinians are pushing forward with moves to force a two-state solution, Obama’s move has initiated a diplomatic international war. The US congress, with some bipartisan support, has indicated it could cut off all UN funding in retaliation against the UN. Trump has indicated the same thing. While UN members that cut off funding lose their voting privileges, the United States is the UN’s biggest supporter, so cutting off UN funding will have serious implications at the UN if it happens.

Congress could also choose to expel diplomats of nations that backed the resolution from the US, as Israel did, which may include stripping Palestinians of diplomatic privileges. Congress may also be more supportive of Trump’s initiative to move the US embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

“The disgraceful anti-Israel resolution passed by the UNSC was apparently only the opening salvo in the Obama administration’s final assault on Israel,” Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas) told the Free Beacon…. “President Obama … should remember that the United States Congress reconvenes on January 3rd, and under the Constitution we control the taxpayer funds they would use for their anti-Israel initiatives…,” Cruz said, expressing his desire to work with the incoming Trump administration to reset the U.S. relationship with Israel.

The Free Beacon, quoted above, also reported that one congressional member has said,

Members on both sides of the aisle are furious, so our response will be swift and forceful…. With a Trump administration in place, any nation that seeks to delegitimize the Jewish state will need to answer to the United States.

So, a powerful conflict between the US and the UN with fighting terms such as we have not seen before is likely on. Trump will find he has a congress that is largely ready to push back, while Trump’s statements of unequivocal support for Israel and pressure on Palestinians have been clear. However, Obama may have greatly widened a split in Democrats, which traditionally have been as pro-Israel as Republicans. Even liberals like Ted Kennedy were solidly on Israel’s side at every juncture.

Our alliance with Israel is an alliance based on common democratic ideals and mutual benefit. We must never barter the freedom and future of Israel for a barrel of oil — or foolishly try to align the Arab world with us, no matter what cost. (Ted Kennedy)

The congressional divide began to materialize when Netanyahu, in the opinion of many (to the delight of Republicans and disdain of Democrats) poked the Democratic president in the eye by sidestepping him in a unique move to take his Iranian petition directly to congress. Until Netanyahu’s highly unusual move, Israel had worked long and hard to stay out of US politics in order to do all it could to maintain bipartisan support for Israel; and this is why. Netanyahu was strongly criticized at home by many who feared the risk would lead to something like this.

As a result of Netanyahu’s agreement to accept Speaker Boehner’s speech invitation, sixty Democrats, including presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, VP candidate Tim Kaine, and likely future presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren boycotted that congressional meeting. Senior senator Sen. Patrick Leahy from Bernie’s home state, called Netanyahu’s speech a “tawdry and high-handed stunt.” Charlie Rangel, who was was a Democratic representative from New York at the time, tweeted, “Bibi: If you have a problem with our POTUS’s foreign policy meet me at AIPAC but not on the House floor.”

Netanyahu and Obama both denied that this incident had damaged their relationship and Israel’s bipartisan support in the US, but anyone could plainly see from their body language the icy barrier that had frosted its way between the two from that point forward. Now Obama has tapped the ice wedge a little deeper, knowing full well that Democrats in congress wish to oppose Trump wherever they can anyway.

This may be a divide-and-conquer move that will further imperil the once fully bipartisan congressional support Israel has long enjoyed. Many in Israel who worried that Netanyahu had poisoned relations with the president by that move now say this appears to be payback time … to the extent that the White House has had to formally deny that it is.

As for Trump, he tweeted, “Stay strong Israel. January 20th is fast approaching!”

The Israeli ambassador to the US responded to Trump’s various statements of support by saying that Israel…

was very heartened that President-Elect Trump was against this move at the UN Security Council — that he wants to work closely with Israel moving forward to strengthen this alliance….. I do not think there will be daylight between the US and Israel, and we look forward to having that conversation and seeing what we can do to reverse this resolution. (Fox News)

Once Trump is president, backing Israel 100% is one campaign pledge he is likely to keep. Notes, the Washington Examiner,

White evangelicals, who supply about a third of the Republican vote in presidential elections, are more than twice as likely than Jews to believe God gave Israel to the Jewish people. Only Orthodox Jews are slightly more likely to believe this.

Many liberal Jewish organizations, on the other hand, side with Obama, believing the only way for Israel to move forward at this juncture is to negotiate a two-state solution with the Palestinians. One thing is certain, cracks are deepening all over the American political landscape regarding support for Israel and how it is best shown, but Christian conservatives would like to quickly repair the growing divisions in Israel’s best interest:

“Our hope at Faith and Freedom Coalition is that reasonable Democrats like Sens. Menendez, Schumer, Manchin, Casey and others will reject these feckless flailings of an expired political regime on its way out of office,” said Tim Head, executive director of a pro-Israel Christian conservative group. “These latest antics at the U.N. are little more than the waning afterglow of a setting foreign policy agenda that soon will be corrected and discarded. But it will take a unified effort by Republicans and Democrats alike to rehabilitate the global reputation of the United States.” (The Washington Examiner)

That may prove to be a bit naive or wishful at best because Netanyahu’s approach already badly grated on Democrats, and Netanyahu has only become even more outspoken against the Democratic president in the aftermath of this UN resolution. (As Schumer said, positions are becoming more extreme on both sides.)

Netanyahu’s Obamabattle

Netanyahu claims Israel will present solid proof to the new Trump administration after the inauguration that the Obama administration took a very active role in forming the new UN Security Council resolution. Pushing the issue defiantly, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says,

We have no doubt that the Obama administration initiated it, stood behind it, coordinated its versions and insisted upon its passage.

Israel claims it has “ironclad” information from Arab sources about the Obama administration’s overt efforts to push this agenda in the UN. Reports in a couple of Middle Eastern newspapers seem to corroborate Netanyahu’s claims, according to the Times of Israel:

An Egyptian paper published what it claims are the transcripts of meetings between top US and Palestinian officials that, if true, would corroborate Israeli accusations that the Obama administration was behind last week’s UN Security Council resolution condemning Israeli settlements. At the same time, a report in an Israeli daily Tuesday night pointed to Britain helping draft the resolution and high drama in the hours leading up to the vote, as Jerusalem tried to convince New Zealand to bury the Security Council measure. In a meeting in early December with top Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat, US Secretary of State John Kerry told the Palestinians that the US was prepared to cooperate with the Palestinians at the Security council, Israel’s Channel 1 TV said, quoting the Egyptian Al-Youm Al-Sabea newspaper. Also present at the meeting according to the report were US National Security Adviser Susan Rice, and Majed Faraj, director of the Palestinian Authority’s General Intelligence Service. White House national security council spokesman Ned Price on Wednesday told the Times of Israel that no such meeting took place. “The ‘transcript’ is a total fabrication,” he said…. Israel fears that Kerry, who is slated to give a speech Wednesday on the subject, will then lay out his comprehensive vision for two-state solution at a Paris peace conference planned for January.

An article in the Israeli Daily Ha’aretz, however states that…

Britain Pulled the Strings and Netanyahu Warned New Zealand It Was Declaring War: A call from Netanyahu to Putin triggered a real drama at the UN HQ just one hour before the vote.

And a more recent Times of Israel report states,

UK officials have stepped up in recent days to say the resolution was theirs, not the White House’s. The Jewish Chronicle quoted an unnamed senior British political source Thursday saying that by the time the text reached the 15-member body, it was “in effect a British resolution.” A day earlier, The Guardian reported Britain “played a key behind-the-scenes role” in ensuring the resolution passed. Another British source told the Chronicle that the “yes” vote for the resolution was part of UK Prime Minister Theresa May’s new strategy toward Israel, according to which the Jewish state’s friends have to take a stand against settlements to garner favor with the Palestinians.

In response, Netanyahu has cancelled a meeting he had scheduled with Theresa May — a move which the British called in their usual understated way, “disappointing.”

As Netanyahu waits for the Trump administration to take the reins in the US before he divulges his own information about the Obama administration, he is taking the battle to other nations. One alternative Israeli news site has given an extensive but unconfirmed report that states Vice President Biden called Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko to put diplomatic pressure on Ukraine to vote in the security counsel for the resolution. Biden’s office acknowledges the phone call but denies that anything was said about the UN resolution.

Netanyahu tried to push back ahead of the resolution with his own ineffective calls to Ukraine. The Ukrainian vote has set Ukrainian relations with Israel reeling. Ukraine has a large Jewish population. Even its new prime minister, Volodymyr Groysman, is Jewish, but his first official state visit with Israel next week was just cancelled by Israel in retaliation for Ukraine’s vote.

To retaliate domestically, Netanyahu has ramped up settlement approvals in the territories, threatening thousands of new homes in east Jerusalem.

If Israel is right that Obama intentionally rammed this resolution through the UN in his twilight days as president, Obama has effectively stripped Trump of any ability to reverse this action. Reversing it would require getting China, Russia and others on the Security Council who have long wanted something like this to withhold their own Security Council veto on any measure put forward by the US to rescind the resolution. There is almost zero chance of getting Russia AND China to backpedal on this. Obama has effectively eliminated any possibility for Trump to repair the situation to Israel’s liking.

Is Obama preparing to become Secretary General of the UN?

These sudden moves in the final month of a lame-duck presidency are the most extraordinary all-out rush to get new diplomacy solidly in place before the president-elect gets into office that I’ve ever seen. There would be no point in doing any of this unless Obama believes he can rapidly accomplish something irreversible.

An Israeli spokesman warned that last week’s anti-Israel U.N. resolution may be only the beginning. David Keyes, spokesman for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said his government is concerned that the Obama administration is scrambling to put its stamp on Israeli foreign policy before President-elect Donald Trump takes office…. We actually believe this may be the first of another series of pushes before the Obama administration leaves office…. Mr. Netanyahu fears that Secretary of State John Kerry may seek a Security Council resolution to enshrine the administration’s vision for an Israeli-Palestinian accord before Mr. Trump takes office. (The Washington Times)

On January 15th, seventy nations will converge in Paris to discuss the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Kerry will be there, and there is no question that his seventy-minute speech this week set the table for his plans at that summit.

According to France’s i24News,

Kerry would propose the recognition of a Palestinian state based on the 1967 borders, and after land exchanges that would allow about 80% of the Jewish residents of the settlements to remain under Israeli sovereignty. The Palestinians will have to recognize Israel as a Jewish state, and Israel will have to recognize the Palestinian state and its capital, East Jerusalem. Kerry is expected to submit this proposal next month, just before the change of administration.

Certainly sounds like an all-out last-minute press to establish solid facts on the ground before Trump can do anything about them. The Guardian reports,

White House races to save Middle East peace process before Trump takes office:… The parameters outlined by Kerry are expected to draw international endorsement at a meeting of foreign ministers on 15 January, just five days before Trump moves into the White House. The meeting is supposed to reinforce a strategy of isolating Netanyahu…. The Israeli government is reportedly fearful that any guidelines agreed in Paris would be turned into another UN resolution before Trump’s inauguration, and it has ratcheted up its rhetoric, presenting itself as the victim of an international conspiracy…. Meanwhile, Israel’s defence minister, Avigdor Lieberman, portrayed the Paris conference as a new “Dreyfus trial”, referring to an outburst of French antisemitism more than a century ago, and urged French Jews to move to Israel…. Aaron David Miller, a former US negotiator on the Middle East and now a scholar at the Wilson Centre thinktank, said Obama’s 11th-hour attempt at legacy building on the Israeli-Palestinian issue could trigger a backlash. “It risks the incoming administration walking away from whatever has transpired in December and early January, and not just walking away from [but] sending unmistakable signals to the Israelis that it would support and favour acts on the ground that go beyond what we’ve seen,” Miller said. “The odds that Netanyahu will now press and Trump will respond positively to a move to push the embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, I think have gone up.” He said that if the highly emotive issue of Jerusalem’s status became the focal point of Israeli-Palestinian friction once more, “then I think the prospects for a serious, significant confrontation are high….” Amir Oren, a liberal Israeli commentator, argued that the UN resolution could save the government from itself by bringing closer an end to settlement construction. “Santa Obama delivered a wonderful Christmas present to Israel when the United States opted not to veto Friday’s United Nations security council vote condemning settlement policy,” he wrote in Haaretz. “The passage of the resolution won’t result in the immediate dismantling of any West Bank settlements, but the world is beginning to come to the rescue and try to save Israel from itself.”

Indeed, it appears to be a move in the direction of the world helping Israel save itself (whether it turns out to be “helpful” or not), and I don’t think Obama is just going to throw that on the world stage and then walk away, feeling his legacy is complete. I think he’s putting it there now, while he can, so that he can take it up in the global theater when he is out of office.

The Egyptian article alluded to above — denied by the Obama admin. — quotes Kerry as saying he could present his ideas for a final-status solution if the Palestinians pledge they will support the proposed framework.  Obviously he hasn’t got much time to present them officially to other nations for action outside of this one January 15th meeting.

While a move by Obama to gain the Secretary General position at the UN would be a major blow to Angelina Jolie’s aspirations, I think there is evidence Obama is moving in that direction now that he has no hope of any political power as high as he has become used to.

Given how Obama’s trans-Pacific trade pact set to strip the US of sovereignty by handing many trade regulatory powers to the UN, I believe Obama was already using his final months of the presidency to diminish US presidential powers and increase UN powers in order to prepare the way for a move to becoming UN Secretary General. The same can be seen in his negotiations to diminish US control over environmental regulations, putting regulatory power more in the hands of the UN. He needed to diminish US powers while he could in order to create a more powerful international position for himself in the future with less interference from the US.

Obama has made it clear that resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a major legacy item for him. With his days now too short in the presidency to accomplish much, he needs to push power to the UN if he is to continue working on that legacy issue. By getting this resolution passed through the Security Council now, Obama reduced some of Trump’s veto power over what the UN can impose on Israel in the future. The resolution, for example, strengthens the UN General Assembly’s ability to place sanctions on Israel that don’t need to go through the security council and are, therefore, are not something Trump would be able to veto. They also give the UN a firm basis for taking Israel to international court at the Hague if any further settlement activity continues.

Since Trump will try to reverse all of this, Obama must think he will be in a position at the UN to catch the ball he is now passing in order to keep running it forward. If nothing else, this action will ingratiate him at the UN, making his friends there feel he has finally earned that Nobel Peace Prize he received for getting elected in 2008.

Other twilight maneuvers by Obama

The Washington Post has announced,

The Obama administration is close to announcing a series of measures to punish Russia for its interference in the 2016 presidential election, including economic sanctions and diplomatic censure, according to U.S. officials… The administration is finalizing the details, which also are expected to include covert action that will probably involve cyber-operations.

Apparently, Obama intends to start a cyberwar with Russia before Trump gets in office in order to establish more facts on the ground that move Russian relations away from Trump’s stated aims before he even gets started:

Administration officials would also like to make it difficult for President-elect Donald Trump to roll back any action they take.

Does that mean “do enough damage to the Russians that they have to retaliate in a mutual cyberwar before Trump takes office?” Start a war and leave it for the other guy to finish? That is from the fake-news-hating, Obama-loving, liberal Post, not the conservative Washington Times.

Besides his actions with Israel and the UN and the upcoming Paris meeting about Israel, Obama has by executive order locked out major areas of the Arctic for oil drilling in a move that is seen as likely irreversible by Trump because of how congress long ago wrote up the law that allows this executive action. (It would take an act of congress to override the president’s move to designate these lands as perpetually off the table for oil drilling.)

The Obama administration has dismantled the legal framework Trump could have used for vetting Muslim immigrants. (Not sure how easily Trump can reinstate that or put something better in its place.)

Presidents like to save their most controversial pardons for their last day in office. Will Obama offer Hillary Clinton a pardon that exempts her from prosecution for any crimes committed prior to the date of the pardon? The precedent for pardoning someone before they are even formally charged with a crime was established by President Gerald Ford when he pardoned Nixon, as his first act in office, before Nixon was even impeached or taken to trial.

Could that be why Trump is backpedaling now on his pledge to put “crooked Hillary” in jail? Is he hoping that, by appearing he won’t go after Hillary, Obama will not pardon her, an action that implicitly says Hillary did something wrong and that Hillary might have to accept in order for it to be effective. Obama may prefer not to pardon if Trump appears to prefer not to prosecute because a pardon would be regarded by many as tacit admission that there was some kind of wrong-doing to pardon her from.

Trump, of course, is all atwitter about Obama’s end-of-term efforts to cut off his options:

Doing my best to disregard the many inflammatory President O statements an