No it’s not the Sex Pistols, just a maundering old grandad lost his way and trying to catch up with himself and the blogs he’s created. Basically trying to recall how this works in order to contribute a bit…only later…

My unpublished letter to The Guardian and our local paper.

Why does it matter to us here what President Trump has been up to in Ukraine?

The $400 million aid that he is alleged to have made conditional on their publicising spurious investigative attention on a political rival was not cash but anti-tank weaponry. The country has its back to the wall due to Russian military invasion taking a third of its territory. When those massive tanks come at you and your loved ones you yell to a supposed friend and ally for help and do not expect sudden arbitrary delay and imposed conditions.

As “The National Interest”[1] website tells it:

“When Russia provided military support to separatists in Ukraine, columns of Russian tanks were instrumental in turning back Ukrainian Army offensives and seizing government strongpoints, notably the Donetsk International Airport in January 2015. For hawks like Senator John McCain pushing for the United States to provide direct military aid to Ukraine, Javelin missiles were cited as a key weapon system that might have reversed the Ukrainian Army’s fortunes on the battlefield—and one far more practical to put into action than a main battle tank or jet fighter.

The U.S.-made FGM-148 Javelin is one of the premier portable anti-tank missile systems in the world. It’s also an expensive piece of kit, with each missile typically costing more than the targets it eliminates.”

At $80,000 a throw it ain’t cheap, but by shooting up in the air to come down vertically on targets it sure works.

Can we really trust this man with trade deals invading our NHS?

Sincerely

Rod Read

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[1] https://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/the-us-militarys-tank-killer-missile-russia-fears-most-22542

It’s The Sanctions, Stupid

That is a deliberate conversion from the old Clinton motto about the economy. Underlying and motivating the Russian side is bitter anger and resentment that Hilary’s pressure on the oligarchs close to Putin really work.

They have real limits on their freedom to travel, for fear of arrest in third countries; they are unable to travel to the billionaire’s party in Davos Switzerland among other demeaning infringements of their grandiose pomposity as masters of the universe.

Putin wanted and wants to remove the personal embarrassment to himself and re-ingratiate himself with his personal and political friends by his underhand dealings with Trump to get sanctions dropped.

 The Magnitsky Act is his prime target, a bipartisan bill passed by the U.S. Congress and signed into law by President Barack Obama in December 2012, intending to punish Russian officials responsible for the death of Russian tax accountant Sergei Magnitsky in a Moscow prison in 2009.

 Since 2016 the bill,which applies globally, authorises government to sanction human rights offenders, freeze their assets, and ban them from entering the U.S. Names are added to the list regularly.

It hurts.

Michael Cohen is attempting to straighten out!

For a wily writhing twisting personal fixer and lawyer to Trump, for over ten years, this is a noteworthy effort and fine entertainment. Of course he is trying to save his arse from some jail time, despite pleading guilty, but turning away from the skills and posture developed over a lifetime shows he knows he has reached the end of the road.

The new revelations this last week (more from Corsi, Stone, Manafort too) show the Russians had ‘kompromat’, compromising material that gave leverage over POTUS, quite astonishing. They knew many times when Trump was lying because they already had knowledge of the truth.

 As it spills out this week it is astonishing, in our time a western democratic leader of the first rank is acting as an agent of an adversarial power. Trying to lift sanctions in their interests is just part of it. Pulling on these strings as Mueller intends to continue doing will doubtless extract further shocking revelations.

 More schadenfreude please.

Schadenfreude

Def= “malicious or smug pleasure taken in somebody else’s misfortune”.

Maybe I am an unpleasant person but I am enjoying the pleasure I feel when watching someone get caught out in their lying/cheating/fraudulent dealings and so on. And the moreso when they have made millionaire lifestyles by defrauding the citizens of Ukraine (Manafort), US voters (Manafort, Stone and Michael Cohen and now it seems Assange) plus about a dozen others recently interviewed/interrogated by Mueller’s expert lawyers.

I wish they used the Brit legal expression many yanks enjoy “they are helping us with our inquiries”.

So I say “raise your glasses” when another one bites the dust, have a glass of schadenfreude, drink deep, it is a fine flavour and god save my dark soul but I enjoy the taste of karmic justice.

Slinging out strings of lies risks them tangling around your own neck or feet and hanging you… eventually.

By lying to the Mueller Investigation, after a plea deal to co-operate, Paul Manafort has committed a Federal crime. Prosecutors like to ask questions they already know the answers to. This is probably how they know Manafort has been lying. He may well be hoping still for a presidential pardon, otherwise it looks quite likely he is staring at the rest of his 69 year old life in jail.

There is a great deal of expectation Mueller is preparing some big reveal and one of the most senior academic lawyers in the USA says the result will be “devastating” for Trump and also his family. Alan Dershowitz is now a professor at Harvard and has been a former major Trump defender.

He bases this prediction partly on the current fulminating by Trump on twitter against the “witch hunt” of a one sided investigation and how the judiciary are biased.  So the “victim” is getting his retaliation in first to soften up the public view or at least his base support.