Look, behind the laurels.

So much analytic attention is paid to the recent appointment of the president elect of the us in an attempt to gauge or develop a rational for the how’s and whys of what he is actually representing too the electorate that gave him such success and also not just those who did not, many still rolling from the result but also the fact of his (for a very few) unsurprising success, as it was, overlaid within the stupefying miscreant afflictions laid out by him to assuage a clamouring demand for change – any change! Thus his winning is offering his supporters a promised promoted variety of transformations soon to be afflicted upon the establishment that was with the result castigated for its lack of recognition of those cast aside by the Democratic Party and the whole corporate financial mafia. Now an unscripted change is also showing up in the strange bed fellows he is placing in the white house to help guide his policies through both the senate and congress which the republicans have lusted over as their gop right, against the current despised (as they see it) charlatan.

Many of the senate people already chosen, simple do not deserve to be where they are having overseen the shambles of the election and incapable over the years to put in place unifying strategy that would have forestalled the election of the chimera now to be soon sitting in the prime position as head of the most powerful nation of modern time (for the moment).

So Trump is drawing in a cadre of people that at first assessment seem to be a strange divers bunch of extremists, neo cons, un-repented self centred, Machiavellian, business orientated, socially and politically inexperienced and wealthy persons whom have little in connection with the dispossessed that appeared to want a wall street change in favour of main street and the fruitful future they desired; yet the administrative selection he is forming has little real experience to match the positions that he is injecting them into that can give confidence they can relate to those ‘left behind’ from the American dream. Given Trumps verbal flexibility with the truth or facts and unreconstructed policies yet to be made clear, is it obvious that a great deal of certainty is any area of domestic or international engagement cannot be taken with a security of commitment. No one can be sure just what he believes in (other than himself) or how his thought process will develop a consistent cogent direction in any sphere relating to governmental / inter-government activities.

What one might be certain of just now is that the us has gained a presidential person that will treat the position of president and all that is attached to it as an extension of business, perhaps as his own; as in, the usa is and can be run just like a business, it does deals to make money, your hired or fired according to the trim of your CV, you support us before we shore up you, we sweat the assets and maximise the profit take etc. It is inconceivable that he can economically deliver on any of the productive capacities he wants to ‘bring back’ to us soil (steel, coal, electronics, higher wages, jobs,) etc. However corporate USA might seem to pander to his desires, providing they get substantial tax breaks, as it has demanding shareholders and stakeholders but they are not overwhelmingly necessarily the mass electorate that put him in the position of power and certainly they do not want to see their profit-take diminished on unprofitable labour cost. 

Although trump will no doubt take on the chairmanship and CEO of the white house thinking it can be run like his other business interest, it is unlikely that he will have the tenacity or concentration required to be on top of the briefs that will fall before him to assess and attempt some insight to enable effective direction. So on current performance and with a measure of guidance and practice, he will have to be able to be engaged with a greater degree of factual scrutiny he has so far been able to avoid on home ground. But will he be able to participate to an extensive non domestic audience that will hear what he says yet may still doubt the veracity of his pronouncements or even derive just what he actually means due to the lack of his articulation ability, hence the real essence, if there is any, may be subsequently misconstrued.

So the us has chosen a inarticulate, coarse, self declared “smart”, wheeler dealer, politically naive, wealthy constricted intellect to lay out a ‘make us great again future’ to help the “have nots” and take on the workings of the game of ‘wall street against main street’. It does seem to some that he will be unlikely to master the balance between what is good for the public realm and what the establishment will demand; for running a country of millions of actors is not the same as running a business in which you have paid sycophants to prop up ones ego against those risking a castigation for countering a unapprised analysis of his own creation masked in dangerous ‘don’t tell don’t know’ scenarios.

With his lack of presentational skill, he will have to rely on his appointees to step to the front of the public relations scrum. They will be the ones pushing their own preferences in policies. Such preferences biases will be difficult to verify or forestall as he will most likely be unaware that the emphasis being placed behind policies may be unsophisticated but they will offer him strap line sound bites to match is ideas of what he is seeking to deliver as president, whatever that is. It is difficult to see but there may just be a glimmer of optimistic circumstance and it relates to the fact that he has no loyalty to any party or has political financial dependency so can act with some impunity against the establishment that has stifled any form of communal progress that has suffered from allowing wall street to hollow out the bed rock of the American dream. Assuming of course that those of the gops are willing to give a pass to whatever vision he aspires too and can stomach his eccentric egotistical personality.

There will be difficulties, of that there is no doubt, given the errant flexibility of his pronouncements thus far sampled from his election stumps and twittering. It is only indicative of a lack of subject intellectual content and ignorant indecisiveness that may well transform into misplaced finality of deeds and one can see that although he is looking to roll experienced administrative input back (dumb the experts) and cut down Obama care, make America great again, dig coal, dump the environment and be friendly to whomever he has his hands in their pockets of, there is very little global strategic vision that one can have confidence in and in this there are some pointers that are of real anxiety.

His global view of the world is business bound. This will be evident in what can be gained by an overture of amenability for procured dividends to key participants that does not conflict with an existing strategic position but if that position is seen to be underperforming can it be let go? Already he has taken on a more relaxed stance with Putin / Russia, took a snipe at china, favours israel’s continued rapacious acts against any two state peace, nods to an arms race and has no position on the whole middle east fragmentation (Syria etc); link this to his comment on NATO being out of date and on this position alone, his stance ought to be of great concern to NATO counties and western Europe. He may intimate that the us will not continue to support nato, although this is unlikely however the thrust of his intention may be to reduce that burden of the us dollar. In this one can agree that many nato member are not putting in resources to bolster nato and have had a very useful peace dividend since the end of the ‘cold war’. He is no doubt right that the laggards should put their due investment into the organisation or risk a very slow us military reaction to future stress occasions.

For Europe is in a dangerous interlude just now and it is not difficult to see where those stress point are. Some are socially political like Brexit, the euro, excessive migration, high youth unemployment, right extremism, and entering a prolonged period of stagnant growth. These are not directly connected to the USA nor are they of great interest to it but from these pressures may stem a rise in tension to instability and neutralise any chance of influencing existing military stress situation like, most Middle East countries, Syria, Iran, Tunisia or Ukraine/Crimea, and old ex eastern bloc countries now cosseted in the EU.  So far the EU has shown a remarkable incompetence and incapacity to be effective in projecting any unity of strength capable of military force without the umbrella of nato. It is also worth injecting the fiasco and affect of immigration as a result of the lack of controlled direction and one should not forget turkey, a nato member but one that is heading for large scale instability in which it currently thinks it has Europe by the immigration balls to gain political lassitude from the eu, if it pays ($) up. But turkey may soon become more intransigent with actions not compatible with EU democratic fundamentals. This alone is an incontestable unrecognised problem for Europe and this like other ‘European issues’  is one the new president could well decide is no longer of any importance to his prosperity vision for the usa.

  

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Jihad of Security

Amongst an interesting and a much now discarded series of events of the past, such as the (yet still unfolding) credit crisis of the 2008+ period, the Scottish independence ruse and the now compounding chaos of the “brexit means brexit” ideology; is the surreptitious concealment of the ramification relating to the revelation excreted by Bradley Edward Manning, (Chelsea Elizabeth Manning) and Edward J Snowden during 2010/13. The consequences of these revelations are of comparable long term importance yet like the other notable epoch shaping UK events of the early 21st century are seriously underrated. The information leak events now fail to be a prominent consideration in the minds of the electorate, an electorate to whom such authority has been given with the result of the dishonourable referendum vote now taken as a democratic mandate by an unelected prime minister to pursue for an outcome of un-quantified profound repercussion, now to be guided with a similar application of obfuscated scrutiny as is being placed on the enhanced developing ‘security’ measures that stem from those leaks. A similar problematic scale of ramifications exist with the process and result of the recent us election, using specific disingenuous vitriolic language a president elect won according to the system but against a greater numerically popular vote generating uncertainty and discomfort in sections of the populace.  

Manning was assigned in 2009 to a US Army unit in Iraq as an intelligence analyst, s/he had access to classified databases and in 2010 s/he leaked classified information to Wiki Leaks. Reams of the material was published by Wiki Leaks and it is alleged that a Julian Assange, the principle editor of Wiki Leaks was the instigator of making publically available the embarrassing content provided by Manning. Between April and November 2010 manning made available the “classified” correspondence that had been snooped on between individuals and state players. It is assumed that manning made the miss-guided exposure of the snooping tactic in the belief of protecting some democratic accountability or in response to just being under a measure of unrecognised personal stress caused by the unresolved bisexual position / experience of army life; however the immediate flash back of the leak was excruciating for the intelligence agencies. To have to be exposed on hacking-in on private, secret, confidential transmissions of ‘friendly’ or not operators, was for the intelligence gathering agencies, damaging,  leading to a huge political effort to elucidate the exposure with opaque counteractions initially with the traitorous accusation laid on manning that was wrapped in the purported danger  presented from terrorist knowing that such surveillance was common place and the raised inability to advise friendly partners of potential terrorist dangers gained from such ‘intelligence workings’.

This hic-up although torturously inconvenient; with a large measure of gritted teeth, grovelled apologies and weak explanations to smooth over the exposures, friendly players took suitable enhanced precautions and some understood the effort and resources such a scope of ‘intelligence gathering’ work required, plus there were ancillaries benefits to them although the suspicion remained such snooping could encompass commercial espionage. The event may have passed away to a simmer of public indifference with the little tit bits of unwelcome conversations and opinions expressed by those eavesdropped on and being laid open to public ridicule however in June 2013 the extent of what is being done by complicit states became more intense and much more disconcerting.         

Edward J Snowden is an American computer expert that worked for CIA. He took classified information from the NSA. He with the information disclosed, identified a global surveillance program run by the NSA and the Five Eyes group (the UK+) with the secret collaboration of telecom companies and European governments. This leak far surpassed the ‘targeted’ snooping activity of the US exposed by manning but confirmed the wide range all encompassing civilian surveillance being carried out without the knowledge of democratic accountability and many would suggest it to be of a wholly illegally nature; there being virtually no corrective oversight and no limitations placed on the scope, content, rational, systems or specified intentional targets. Every single person using any form of telecom was open to being viewed as a potential threat and any form of historical data transfer would be made available to open-ended scrutiny. Although a few papers ran articles with the exposed program, In the UK extraordinary steps were taken to shut the news rendering down, as it is not protected by any constitution of ‘freedom of the press.’ Snowdon also showed surveillance operations; primarily by the USA and UK of private telecommunications into a variety of associated countries and lifted embarrassing exposé of sensitive emails between ‘friendly’ states that it is assumed had no idea that such high level snooping was taking place into their head of states and nations affairs. To say that both countries were very pissed off at being caught out by the revelations is to put it mildly and if they could have got their hands on Snowdon he would be in jail for a long time without the niceties of a fair impartial trial. Even today some 3 years after the information bomb, great efforts are still made to incarcerate Snowdon for playing out to the world the corruption of power that has taken place. Even greater effort is being directed at mitigating the consequences that would aim to limit the continuance of such intrusiveness, unattested, illegal, un-scrutinised and all encompassing trawl of individual, state and corporate telecommunication under the disguise of ‘only’ gathering Meta data and limited voice capture being done.

There was a whole range of panicked activities to, in the first instance suppress the issues, then to deny and minimise by avoidance, then rage – how disgraceful – how traitors the act was; how it helped the bad guys, then how it wreaked the effort to keep people safe in the face of international terrorism, then a weak apology and finally a ongoing attempt to justified in retrospect the illegal activities and ramp up the need for stronger antiterrorist law and latterly an abysmal review of RIPA to put in place new authority safeguards designed to limit public observance and circumvent any advanced legal oversight. Whereas the US has a constitution and has had to justify and redefine its access to telecommunication traffic with applied constraints that gives its people rights to stop administrative executive abuse, there is no such protection within the UK hence the security systems and political arrangement are unhindered.

What is apparent is the all encompassing effort to gain access into individual’s communication without their knowledge but in doing so it highlights the fundament flaw in such a trawling system that despite the dis-enkryption and algorithm based search for keys and identify suspects, the information was so large that a successful superior unknown catch was unlikely to occur. It was this weakness that the intelligence agencies were particularly concerned to keep quiet about. The trawl was becoming of less and less use. It was known that if this information trawling came out the suspects would adopt other forms of personnel communication that would not surface in the telecommunication sphere yet it would slow them down. There is not the wo/man power to consider, in real time, the relative mass of so called ‘meta information’ being pulled in, it relied on known indicated links of ‘interest’ to focus on and providential intelligence and now there is the need to force telecom operators and isp to store data for year(s?) to be view later as required.

Never the less, stringent effort is still being made to absorb as much legal or otherwise telecommunication traffic from targets and still there is no effective public oversight and nothing is private, certainly not within the UK with its re-invigoration of the RIPA act to meet the needs of largely (un)necessary unspecified threats linked to the invasive idea of guarding against terrorist from whatever source; known, unknown, alien, home grown or any creatable challenges to the comfort of the state; i.e. anyone. No one is safe with the reassurance phrase ‘there’s nothing to fear if you are doing no wrong’. However the consistently pervaded dogma that is offered in the face of the criticism of the steps being taken to make a prison out of unfettered communication via any source is that it is vital to keep people safe from “terrorist” and everyone assumes they know what / who that means but currently the one up for useful play is extremism from Islamic pressures.     

Islam has suddenly so far as liberal Christian and secular supporters might be concerned, become a toxic belief system, it has hardy progressed in any way to accommodate the development of secular democratic inclusiveness and is captured by the oppressive violent control of narrow minded despotic individual that seek to enslave the majority to the blind acceptance of a belief system that has portrayed little functioning social nor technical innovative benefits. It is inimical to the whole of the modern world values and social structures with far too little rebuttal from those that seek some modernity under the muslim system to counter the stupidity of extremist practitioners. For too long the moderation displayed by the west has allowed violent act to be perpetrated in response to any minor ‘slight’ or reinterpretation of Islamic law that these extremist deem to be a threat to their perverted ideology. The recent uprising in extremism is a betrayal of the old historical teaching and learned scientific progressiveness of 8th to 14th century, progress that was evident in the enlightened scientific discoveries, secular and religious tolerance. It might be said that something has gone wrong with the progress of Islam to reach the stage today were one can look back and with some confidence state that there has been virtual no progressive development in any sphere of activity that has come from any region that espouses the different elements of Islamic following. Indeed it has in the mind of most westerner become a patently obvious noxious religion that has no redeeming features and no chance of adjusting to the modern world. It appears to seek an alternative influential view to want to create a world which seeks to enslave into blind obedience the unchallengeable words of Allah and in this there is no allowance for intelligent scrutiny, humour or sensitive ridicule, it retains its stifling controlling paternalist affect on females and shows no adaptability to any form of progress for a scientific technical world, resulting in cultural and social ossification as is evident in every sectarian muslim country.  

Compounding the complexity of Islam is the clear tribal nature of those countries that have Islam as its core communal majority and superimposed with this is the interference that the west has instigated in the pursuit of its own interest. At one time interference was in the pursuit of territorial influence but for the past seven decades it has been concentrating on energy (oil/gas) to gain continuing access to this essential driver of its own economic power and the marketing of its productive output to the cash rich. It has been a drive for overall mercantile ascendancy and its subsequent globalisation has come at a high furtive price, for at the same time as its continuing search for economic growth and world influence, its secular spiritual strength has been declining, disregarding its underlying hold to legitimise liberalism in a historic Christian way of life. This Christian secularism that it has been casting off, are of what might be thought of as endemic unanimity values to be replaced with sense of fragmenting social harmony in the wind of pressurised economic change and apathy to see more vigorous evangelical and zealous forms of beliefs; which have allowed extremism to gain a valuable uncontested hold. Secular conviction in whatever form has been relegated to a non-consequential power yet its beneficial effect is being usurped by a faction that can pervert the peaceful essence of Islamic faith and as has been proven, be very effective in projecting a controlling influence serving the opinionated desire of deviant charismatic players. From this one can assume that a jihadist is easily formed and set loose with the wrong mind set and in this guise the real meaning of the jihad term is perverted into the adoption of a struggle for opposition conflict. This view is not likely to be publically challenged by the imams holding of mosques so is left to the media interpretation and feeds the perception of Islamic extremism. To western ears now, when one hears the phrase ‘Allah Akbar’ it is now perceived as a war cry taken up by jihadist extremist in consort with their irreverent inanity, destructive acts in the pursuit of war / violence and it does not hold a recognition that the sentiment behind the phase, is the fragility of humans in ‘sight’ of a god and the need to challenge oneself, to struggle against the unsavoury aspects of human condition. This sentiment of the pursuit of self enlightenment is not the sole preserve of islam but is also an aspect within all religions.     

Disappointedly the term jihad has taken on a wholly negative inference. What it is, albeit with some disagreement, is, in its superior terms; the need for achieving inner spiritual strength over the irrational emotiveness of one’s nature that directs and results in harm to oneself and others. This is the peaceful aspect of jihad, to achieve cultured harmony, to be aware and in control of one’s own thoughts and actions, to be a better human as possible, with all that implies. However this is an interpretation of jihad that run very much counter to the un-constructive view held by extremist and is one that is conveniently overlooked as it does not run according to their script and even more so is easily dismissed in the practical reality of the destroyed and collapsed civil ‘normality’ of people that have no tangible stake in any social system that they are or were in. They very much prefer the violent interpretation that intimates struggle against any reprobates, nonbelievers, enemies, to ‘justify’ a generated conflict and war in the hope that it improves their situation; all without the essential spiritual moderation of higher jihad guidance yet they still wish to be wrapped in the coercion of a holy war.

The self development concept of jihad is not the sole preserve of islam, it exist within all major religions although not generally expressed within a single phrase as a jihadist and of course god is called upon by a number of names by all religions, to supports their own actions generally to gain bizarre favour in their actions often in opposition to others views. This is not to say that other religions do not have their own vehement extremist infected with obscure zeal to gain supremacy over any others not of them. In such circumstances there is inevitably a clash of cultural norms and it only takes a small number of extremist to shift a moderate or relaxed liberal secular culture to a position of discomfort or to be slowly suffused with the acceptance of ideas not compatible with secularism by sudden high volume migration leading to indigenous resentment.    

The west is being troubled by factors that it no longer has the ability to comprehensively control, on the one hand of immediate importance is the destruction of its economic productive power which is impacting on its social cohesion shown in the rise of internal right & left faction. As it is unable to neither address the cause of the decline nor take moderating steps to change the outmoded methods of inequitable wealth acquisition and accumulation, the forecast of populace dysfunction is bound to increase. Unfortunately at the same time as the use of the developing world’s cheap disfranchised labour is becoming untenable, the northern hemisphere migration pressures are worsening. There is also a move to an increase in a prevalence of far right doctrines as a reaction against the non-responsive libertarian excesses that has created stress for the ‘working class’.

With the ongoing middle east islamic disintegration, islam is undergoing short term public dominance that is injecting into the west a sense of danger and threats against which the use of hard weapons has no practical effect. It is due to this pressure of wide regional uncertainty that the west has built extensively the monitoring control of all communicators that offers not just the limited means of listening in to budding terrorist intent on exporting violence but more importantly the useful means to have some foresight power over its own simmering civil problems.

The extensive ‘legal’ powers now given to the state has little to do with neutralising external threats or counteracting internal extremist but is providing the states security with an expandable monitoring tool that is built for the future surveillance of any individual or group that wants to challenge the machinery of state stability against the survival of its own self perpetuating interest. Remember this extended intrusive latitude is from a state machinery that, in a democratic system and unbeknown by the public or a political establishment, secretly and illegally monitored the actions of certain politically elected members of parliament, screened organised labour movements and a range of pro-active groups which it viewed as a potential threat; all with no obvious oversight, wholly clandestine, illegitimate and kept secret up to exposure. The recent strengthening of the RIPA act although being portrayed as a move to increase “transparency” around the use of the investigatory powers, it is given to a range of uk state authorities, the powers and ability that no other country in the world has. Neither dictatorship, nor monolith countries like Russia, China or Turkey can do population surveillance to match the UK.  The RIPA act and laws that support it is only of use with traffic within or in /out of the UK, it has no external authority on any other country and is easily bypassed by resistant exterior agents and as is the nature of such extensive secretive executive power, it will eventually be misused. The UK has successfully created the binders of a technological communicating dooms day book, not for the purpose of making people safe but to insure at some future time there is the ability to control its own population when democracy become a nuisance.

UK Saps have allowed themselves to be pushed into an existential security jihad; it is not for self improvement, it is an unholy al-harb against its own people!

© Renot

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