The post Is Putin Russia, and Russia Putin? appeared first on Occasional Planet.
]]>As Americans, we are not one in any way, shape or form.
We are diverse, inclusive, at times exclusionary, conflicted, self-righteous and, more often than not these days, divisive. In our fast-evaporating sense of who we are, or once were, we have left our beacon of hope for the world at large adrift in a sea of uncertainty.
It was once easy to tout the United States as the symbol of desirable values, a sort of Rhodes port of entry for democracy. Oh, how we have stumbled as a nation, and precipitously, in recent years.
We continue to be warm, insensitive, confused, confusing, at times at one with ourselves, at times just a human bunch of some 331.9 (as of a 2021 count) million souls trying to make sense of what we have been given, the United States of America, and our place in the world beyond.
We are, and have always been, far from being one, and way far from being perfect. Yet our Constitution and our daily lives once allowed us to be just that, imperfect, with guaranteed freedoms … at least until the next crazed teenager or over-armed adult decided to pick us off with an automatic shotgun one by one in some unsuspecting mall, school or Home Depot.
As Americans, we are easy to hate, difficult to love, and as often as not misunderstood. Where some of us attempt to break down barriers, those of us across the street, or across our national divide, have been happy to build borders, walls and barriers. At times, it would seem that we are completely unknowable, political pundits aside.
There are still many of us alive today who remember the torn country that we were during the Vietnam War. We remember how it felt to be American then. It was confused and confusing all at once, day after day. The rest of the world did not like us at all, to put it kindly.
So, give a thought for Russians now.
Just for a minute, put yourself in the skin of a Russian today.
Russia is right now the Big Bad Wolf in headlines worldwide, and justifiably so. Russians, after all, elected Putin president once again by a vast majority as recently as 2018. Yet, remember that the Vietnam War, our Vietnam War, was prolonged under 5 Presidents until it eventually folded in April 1975.
This is hardly good news for the people of Ukraine. For a World Power to recognize its mistakes can take decades.
Are Russians as conflicted as we were during the Vietnam War? I imagine they are. Are their opinions of their country fraught? They must be. Can Russians protest within Russia? Not at all. Thousands upon thousands have been removed from the streets and silenced in a way that is unthinkable here in the United States.
I was, in more ways than one, reminded of our United States – yes, those same conflicted United States above – on a recent arrival in Madrid.
The EU is still a much newer concept in co-living than our American Union. Within the European Union, things are even now falling into place. The EU as we know it today had its beginnings with the Maastricht Treaty of 1993. The European Union is a work in progress. The United Kingdom was a reluctante partner for awhile, until they decided in 2019 to Brexit. However, their example is far from being the norm. Other countries are lining up to join the Union.
According to Wikipedia:
There are seven recognised candidates for membership of the European Union: Turkey (applied in 1987), North Macedonia (2004), Montenegro (2008), Albania (2009), Serbia (2009), Ukraine (2022), and Moldova (2022). Additionally, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia, and Kosovo (whose independence is not recognised by five EU member states) are considered potential candidates for membership by the EU.[1][2] Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Georgia have formally submitted applications for membership, while Kosovo has a Stabilisation and Association Agreement (SAA) with the EU, which generally precedes the lodging of a membership application.
Ukraine sees things differently than the UK. Ukraine doesn’t have the UK’s options of history and geography. Putin didn’t decide to invade the United Kingdom, after all.
Putin choose a defenseless neighbor, still not a member of a nascent European Union, to try to exert his late-blooming and misbegotten manhood by invading a benign neighbor to prove somehow his macho worldview. As is now evident to anybody paying attention worldwide, Putin misjudged, and exiled his eternal reputation to the gutter.
Back to landing in Madrid. At Barajas, there were Russians dragging and pushing way-overweight bags along their way, any which way, far from Russia. That was understandable. Until it wasn’t.
For Russians with money, Madrid is just one of many escapes from the horror of the motherland to a neighbor that still extends a welcoming embrace.
The sight of Russians at Atocha, Madrid’s train station, toting Louis Vuitton bags filled with recent purchases, was unsettling. Louis Vuitton in times of war? Drinking beer, happy with their day of shopping, joking around, the Russians at Atocha disquieted me.
The disquiet continued.
On the Metro in Rome, I sat next to a bunch of loud Russians wisecracking among themselves, laughing and seemingly happy on their way to view the ruins of the Coliseum. They were oblivious to any discomfort they might have been communicating to their fellow passengers concerned about their country’s invasion of a helpless neighbor, Ukraine.
These Russians didn’t seem to care about the nuances of co-existence. Nuances be damned was what I, unfortunately, understood.
These joyous Russians were, for me, somehow complicit in Putin’s imperious view of the world.
We can do what we want, they seemed to be saying as they joshed around, just as their elected leader, Putin did, toasting a glass of champagne high in celebration of his invasion of Ukraine not even a month later.
I was disturbed by the attitude of the Russians that I saw in Italy and Spain.
Could it be that Russians, at large, really support Putin? I found myself wondering.
Could it be that Putin’s invasion of Ukraine might represent the true mindset of the majority in Russia?
I know, I know, that Russians are as diverse as we are. See above.
I know that many have been swept off the streets, disappeared forever.
Yet, could it be that Putin really represents Russia? I found myself thinking in Rome.
Could it be that Russians in general could care less about Ukraine?
Just maybe, I found myself thinking.
Is Putin the true champion of a Russia anathema to our Western view of civilization? That’s what I really wondered.
Could that be true?
Just maybe, I found myself thinking again.
The post Is Putin Russia, and Russia Putin? appeared first on Occasional Planet.
]]>The post I read the Russia election-tampering report. Here are some highlights. appeared first on Occasional Planet.
]]>It’s not a hoax. The recently released (July 25, 2019) Senate Intelligence Committee report on Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election makes that very clear. All you have to do is read it. It’s only 67 pages, and about a third of it is blocked out. But, of course, Donald Trump didn’t do that, nor did he listen to briefings that would have left no doubt that Russians not only tried, but succeeded in breaking into election databases in all 50 states—that they continued their efforts during the 2018 mid-terms, and that they’re on track to do it again in 2020, perhaps on a much larger and more damaging scale.
He doesn’t want to know. But I do, and I imagine so do many others. So, I read the report and copy/pasted some highlights, so you don’t have to. Here they are. Sub-headings in bold are my interpretations, not from the report. The excerpts are in the order in which they appear in the report.
“While the Committee does not know with confidence what Moscow’s intentions were, Russia may have been probing vulnerabilities in voting systems to exploit later. Alternatively, Moscow may have sought to undermine confidence in the 2016 U.S. elections simply through the discovery of their activity.”
“In 2016, officials at all levels of government debated whether publicly acknowledging this foreign activity was the right course. Some were deeply concerned that public warnings might promote the very impression they were trying to dispel—that the voting systems were insecure.”
“One security expert characterized the activity as simple scanning for vulnerabilities, analogous to somebody walking down the street and looking to see if you are home. A small number of systems were unsuccessfully exploited, as though somebody had rattled the doorknob but was unable to get in…[however]a small number of the networks were successfully exploited. They made it through the door.”
“What it mostly looked like to us was reconnaissance…I would have characterized it at the time as sort of conducting the reconnaissance to do the network mapping, to do the topology mapping so that you could actually understand the network, establish a presence so you could come back later and actually execute an operation.
“By late August 2016…the Russians had attempted to intrude in all 50 states, based on the extent of the activity and the apparent randomness of the attempts. “My professional judgment was we have to work under the assumption that they’ve tried to go everywhere, because they’re thorough, they’re competent, they’re good.”
“Several weeks prior to the 2018 mid-term election, DHS assessed that “numerous actors are regularly targeting election infrastructure, likely for different purposes, including to cause disruptive effects, steal sensitive data, and undermine confidence in the election.”
“Russian intelligence obtained and maintained access to elements of multiple U.S. state or local electoral boards. DHS assesses that the types of systems Russian actors targeted or compromised were not involved in vote tallying.”
“In June 2016, Illinois experienced the first known breach by Russian actors of state election infrastructure during the 2016 election. As of the end of 2018, the Russian cyber actors had successfully penetrated Illinois’s voter registration database, viewed multiple database tables, and accessed up to 200,000 voter registration records. The compromise resulted in the exfiltration of an unknown quantity of voter registration data. Russian cyber actors were in a position to delete or change voter data, but the Committee is not aware of any evidence that they did so.”
“The compromised voter registration database held records relating to 14 million registered voters. Records exfiltrated included information on each voter’s name, address, partial social security number, date of birth, and either a driver’s license number or state identification number.”
“Russia would have had the ability to potentially manipulate some of that data, but we didn’t see that.” …The level of access that they gained, they almost certainly could have done more. Why they didn’t…is sort of an open-ended question. I think it fits under the larger umbrella of undermining confidence in the election by tipping their hand that they had this level of access or showing that they were capable of getting it.”
“The Russian Embassy placed a formal request to observe the elections with the Department of State, but also reached outside diplomatic channels in an attempt to secure permission directly from state and local election officials. For example, in September2016, the Secretary of State denied a request by the Russian Consul General to allow a Russian government official inside a polling station on Election Day to study US. election procedures.”
“Russian diplomats were prepared to publicly call into question the validity of the results…and that pro-Kremlin bloggers had prepared a Twitter campaign on election night in anticipation of Secretary Clinton’s victory.”
“After a county employee opened an infected email attachment, the cyber actor stole credentials, which were later posted online. Those stolen credentials were used in June 2016 to penetrate State4’s voter registration database. The actor used the credentials to access the database and was in a position to modify county, but not statewide, data.”
“Russian intentions regarding U.S. election infrastructure remain unclear. Russia might have intended to exploit vulnerabilities in election infrastructure during the 2016 elections and, for unknown reasons, decided not to execute those options.”
“Alternatively, Russia might have sought to gather information in the conduct of traditional espionage activities.”
“Lastly, Russia might have used its activity in 2016 to catalog options or clandestine actions, holding them for use at a later date…Russia’s activities against U.S. election infrastructure likely sought to further their overarching goal; undermining the integrity of US elections.”
“It is classic Russian espionage….They will scrape up all the information and the experience they possibly can, and “they might not be effective the first time or the fifth time, but they are going to keep at it until they can come back and do it in an effective way.” -Andrew McCabe, former FBI Director.
“While any one voting machine is fairly vulnerable, as has been demonstrated over and over again publicly, the ability to actually do an operation to change the outcome of an election on the scale you would need to, and do it surreptitiously, is incredibly difficult.”
“A much more achievable goal would be to undermine confidence in the results of the electoral process, and that could be done much more effectively and easily….A logical thing would be, if your goal is to undermine confidence in the U.S. electoral system— which the Russians have a long goal of wanting to put themselves on the same moral plane as the United States… one way would be to cause chaos on election day.”
“How could you start to do that? Mess with the voter registration databases.”
“So if you’re a state and local entity and your voter registration database is housed in the secretary of state’s office and it is not encrypted and it’s not backed up, and it says Lisa Monaco lives at Smith Street and I show up at my [polling place] and they say ‘Well we don’t have Ms. Monaco at Smith Street, we have her at Green Street,’ now there’s difficulty in my voting. And if that were to happen on a large scale, I was worried about confusion at polling places, lack of confidence in the voting system, anger at a large scale in some areas, confusion, distrust.” -Lisa Monaco, US Homeland Security Advisor to President Barack Obama.
“The level of effort and scale required to change the outcome of a national election would make it nearly impossible to avoid detection.”
“Nationwide elections are often won or lost in a small number of precincts. A sophisticated actor could target efforts at districts where margins are already small, and disenfranchising only a small percentage of voters could have a disproportionate impact on an election’s outcome.”
“Many state election officials emphasized their concern that press coverage of, and increased attention to, election security could create the very impression the Russians were seeking to foster, namely undermining voters’ confidence in election integrity. Several insisted that when ever any official speaks publicly on this issue, they should state clearly the difference between a “scan” and a “hack,” and a few even went as far as to suggest that U.S. officials stop talking about it at all.
“We know that the Russians had already touched some of the electoral systems, and we know that they have capable cyber capabilities. So there was a real dilemma, even a conundrum, in terms of what do you do that’s going to try to stave off worse action on the part of the Russians, and what do you do that is going to…[give]the Russians what they were seeking, which was to really raise the specter that the election was not going to be fair and unaffected.” –John Brennan, former director of the CIA
“The number of vendors selling voting machines is shrinking, raising concerns about a vulnerable supply chain. A hostile actor could compromise one or two manufacturers of components and have an outsized effect on the security of the overall system.”
In an August15, 2016, conference call with state election officials, then-Secretary Johnson told states, “we’re in a sort of a heightened state of alertness; it behooves everyone to do everything you can for your own cyber security leading up to the election.”
“But states pushed back. A number of state officials reacted negatively to the call. Secretary Johnson said he was surprised/disappointed that there was a certain level of push back from at least those who spoke up…The push-back was: This is our responsibility and there should not be a federal takeover of the election system.”
“We should think of the electoral infrastructure as critical infrastructure…it’s just as critical for democracy as communications, electricity, water. If that doesn’t function, then your democracy doesn’t function. That is the definition of critical.”
The post I read the Russia election-tampering report. Here are some highlights. appeared first on Occasional Planet.
]]>The post Why aren’t Republicans outraged by Flynn’s pro-Russia activities? appeared first on Occasional Planet.
]]>I have been following several different threads on Facebook and other online places about the Mueller investigation. I am not surprised that there are many people defending Trump and his people, or that they try to undermine Mueller or make light or deny that there was anything illegal.
But what I am stunned at is that I have not read a single comment by any of these folks, presumably conservatives and/or Republicans, who will admit there was anything wrong with the acts that brought this up in the first place.
Even if there was no collusion during the election campaign, it is clear that Trump’s team, before he was president but during the transition period, bargained with Russia to undermine official US policy, one that was strongly supported by both parties, to punish Russia for hacking in the USA.
Apparently, this is all fine with these pro-Americans who up until a year ago thought Putin and Russia were evil.
This post from Lawfare summarizes it:
“The most important revelation here is that contrary to Cobb’s statement Friday morning, Flynn is saying clearly that he was not a rogue actor but was operating at the behest of the presidential transition team. He states that a “very senior member of the Presidential Transition Team,” a “senior official of the Presidential Transition Team” and “senior members of the Presidential Transition Team” were involved in directing his actions. The stipulated facts also make clear that Flynn reported back to the transition on his conversations with Kislyak.
“Second, take a moment to remember the context in which Flynn’s underlying conduct took place: He and apparently the Trump transition team were working to undermine U.S. foreign policy goals endorsed by both parties. In December 2016, President Obama authorized sanctions against Russia in response to cyber-enabled election interference. He did so with broad bipartisan support to deter such activity in the future against the U.S. and its allies. The shared bipartisan—even nonpartisan—goal was to protect foundational elements of democracy and legitimacy. To the extent that there was mainstream criticism of the action, it was for being too weak, not for being too aggressive with respect to Russia.”
The post Why aren’t Republicans outraged by Flynn’s pro-Russia activities? appeared first on Occasional Planet.
]]>The post Russia’s our “biggest foe?” Then why did Romney invest there? appeared first on Occasional Planet.
]]>During these final weeks of the presidential campaign Mitt Romney seems to be doubling down on Russia as his pick for America’s “number one geopolitical foe.”
This is a curious game plan from the investor-in-chief whose company, Bain & Co., had no scruples about profiting handsomely as a player in the Russian market in the early nineties. It was, after all, a division of Bain that partnered with international conglomerate British American Tobacco in the highly lucrative expansion of their tobacco business into Russia. Remember, this was happening in the era when tobacco companies’ profits were drying up in the U.S., and the deadly connection between smoking and cancer was no longer in dispute.
In America we’re used to this kind of cynical investing by private individuals and corporations who ignore the ethical and moral failings of their profit-making ventures. But shouldn’t we expect greater ethical clarity and commitment from the individual we elect as president and commander-in-chief? The answer is most certainly yes.
Recently we’ve learned from Mr. Romney’s 2012 tax returns that his interest in the Russian market has not diminished. In 2011 he purchased and then sold shares (in advance of the election season) in Gazprom. For those of you like me who are not well versed in the details of Russia’s economy, Gazprom is a true behemoth among behemoths. The highly profitable, semi-private company has a near-monopoly on selling natural gas throughout Europe.
Here’s the interesting part. Guess who owns 50 percent of Gazprom? Yes, Virginia, that would be the investor-in-chief’s pick for “America’s number one foe”—the government of Russia.
According to Business Week, “the Russian state is heavily dependent on taxes and profits” from Gazprom. It’s been estimated that the taxes paid by Gazprom alone represent a whopping 20% of the Russian government’s overall budget. That percentage of taxes buys a lot of influence. As a New York Times piece in 2009 pointed out, “the line between Gazprom and the Russian state’s foreign policy is sometimes so thin as to be almost nonexistent.”
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/companies/gazprom/index.html
In a more recent article in Business Insider Military & Defense, Walter Hickey reports that increased revenue from the spike in gas and oil prices has encouraged President Putin to promise an increase of $770 billion in Russia’s military budget between 2014 and 2020. That’s Russia, Romney’s designated number one, capitalizing on the profitability of Gazprom and increasing the export of “sophisticated arms packages.”
I’d like to believe Mr. Romney is losing sleep since his number-one-foe comment and the Gazprom connection have come to light. But I’m sure he’s not.
Perhaps we should be the ones losing sleep. Ask yourself, since when is it acceptable for the commander-in-chief of the United States to have once invested in a company owned and largely operated by the government he himself calls our geopolitical foe? What should be deeply troubling to voters is that Romney seems to feel he’s entitled to his investments and, at the same time, entitled to our trust that his business interests will not undermine his ability to represent the interests of the American people.
Let’s review this conundrum again.
Romney invests in Gazprom. Gazprom is 50% owned by the Russian government. Romney labels Russia our “number one geopolitical foe.” Gazprom buys out opposition and dissenting television stations, newspapers, and radio stations, enabling the suppression of opposition opinions. Gazprom’s tax payments to the Russian government make up 20% of all taxes. The Russian government uses some of that tax money to support the manufacture and sale of weapons systems to countries and groups that may pose a risk to the national security of the United States.
And Russia is not the only country investor-and-candidate Romney has a problem with. In another of his foreign-policy statements, Romney has called for a “crackdown” on China. Surprise, surprise. Here he goes again. As reported by President Obama’s Truth Team, (http://www.barackobama.com/truth-team/entry/mitt-romneys-tax-returns-reveal-controversial-foreign-investments/) Romney’s 2011 tax returns reveal that Romney bought and sold investments in China’s state-owned oil company.
So what’s the takeaway? Does Mr. Romney think that we (you know, “you people”) are too dumb to notice the blatant hypocrisy? Maybe he thinks he can convince us that he can pivot from only-the-money-matters investor-in-chief to objective statesman once he’s sitting at the presidential desk. Mitt must be so ethically challenged that he believes there’s nothing wrong with the intellectual disconnect between his blustering statements on Russia and China on the one hand and the implications of his investments to foreign policy on the other.
What message should we send candidate Romney? First, that we’re going to work overtime to make sure he never gets even a glimpse of the oval office. And second, that he hears us loud and clear: “We’re not going to let you have your cake and eat it too, Mr. Romney. Not with our vote.”
The post Russia’s our “biggest foe?” Then why did Romney invest there? appeared first on Occasional Planet.
]]>The post Will Romney and Ryan take America to war? appeared first on Occasional Planet.
]]>Since Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan have so little experience with foreign affairs, it’s difficult to predict the direction of their foreign policy should the Republican ticket win the election. What we do know is that they strongly believe in “American exceptionalism.”
Frida Ghitis of the Miami Herald offers her opinion on CNN’s web site:
Regarding Afghanistan, the war in which Americans are serving and dying, Romney and Obama have, incredibly, largely avoided the topic. Despite vague criticisms, Romney is on record supporting Obama’s plan to remove American forces.
Romney once, a little bafflingly, declared that Russia is America’s main foe. In reality, whoever wins the election will need Russia’s cooperation on the global stage to counter vital and urgent problems.
The post Will Romney and Ryan take America to war? appeared first on Occasional Planet.
]]>