On Reading the Initial Report (3 May 2024): Public Inquiry into Foreign Interference in Federal Electoral Processes and Democratic Institutions

Reading the Initial Report of the Public Inquiry into Foreign Interference in Federal Electoral Processes and Democratic institutions,  I quickly realized that this report was cross-referenced with the Special Report on Interference in Canada's Democratic Processes and Institutions prepared by the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians, and the CSIS Institutional Report.  However, here is a list of the characters (agencies, institutions, plans) involved in the ongoing investigations, inquiries, regulations and reporting.  (My focus is the preliminary report but the Committee hearings are ongoing [broadcast on CPAC] until October 16, with a new report scheduled for the end of the year.):

• Canadian Security Intelligence Service (“CSIS”)
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• Communications Security Establishment (“CSE”)
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• Royal Canadian Mounted Police (“RCMP”)
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• Global Affairs Canada (“GAC”)
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• Privy Council Office (“PCO”)
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• Office of the Commissioner of Canada Elections (“OCCE”)
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• Elections Canada
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• National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians
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• National Security and Intelligence Advisor to the Prime Minister (“NSIA”) 
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• Prime Minister's Office (PMO)
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• Deputy Ministers Committee on Operational Coordination (DMOC) 
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• Electoral Security Coordination Committees (ESCC) 
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• Deputy Ministers Intelligence Committee (“DMIC” )
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• Assistant Deputy Ministers committee (ADM NS Ops) 
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• The Caretake Convention
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• The Plan to Protect Canadian Democracy ("The Plan")
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• Security and Intelligence Threats to Election Task Force (“SITE TF”)
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• Critical Election Incident Public Protocol (“CEIPP”) 
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• Panel of Five

What Is foreign interference?

Most of these agencies are self-evident and/or already well known to Canadians.  Much of the report describes each of these institutions and committees and details how this network of agencies operates in relation to one another.  The report attempts to address the most obvious questions of the Canadian public and, at the same time, explain what is and isn't "foreign interference."  The Commissioner writes:

It may seem easy to draw the line between (legitimate) foreign influence and (illegitimate) foreign interference. Diplomacy, and even aggressive attempts to influence other countries, are legitimate when they are done in the open and do not involve threats to individuals or groups. Foreign interference is different because it is covert or threatening. But there is often a grey zone: foreign actors may use established, legitimate channels to engage in covert activities to advance their national interests. Also referred to as “malign influence”, this form of foreign interference is difficult to detect because it uses channels that are generally understood as acceptable.

As reported, no crimes were committed and foreign influence did not impact the results of the elections under investigation--2019 and 2021.  What is the substance underlying the outcry of foreign interference in Canadian elections?

The Substance

The "Substantive Chapters" of the Report (4 to 8) cover definitions and reflections on institutionsal responses.  The cases where foreign interference might be suspected are covered in chapters 5 and 6.  Within these chapters, six instances of suspected foreign interference are described:

1.  A suspicion that foreign students (possibly coerced by the Chinese Consulate) were bused to a Liberal nomination meeting in Don Valley in which Han Dong was chosen.

2. In the 2019 election, 11 political candidates and 13 staffers were suspected of having "a connection to" or being "affected by" the activities of Chinese "threat actors."  [The expression "threat actors" is used thirteen times in the report but it is never defined.]

3.  In the 2021 election, "inaccurate reports" about Erin O'Toole, the Conservative Party leader, were circulated on Chinese-language media outlets.  [For some additional context see:  On Reading "The Uyghur Genocide: An Examination of China's Breaches of the 1948 Genocide Convention"]

4.  In the 2021 election, "false narratives" circulated on Chinese-language media about Conservative Party MP Kenny Chiu's "proposal to implement a foreign influence registry." Mr. Chiu also claims he was shunned by Chinese-language media.

5.  In Vancouver East, NDP candidate Jenny Kwan believes she has been the target of foreign influence because she has been critical of China and "since 2019 she has ceased being invited to certain key events organized by Chinese communities’ organizations."

6.  There are indications that India and Russia may have given financial support to "preferred candidates" without the candidates' knowledge.

Solutions in search of a problem

When I consider the massive security and surveillance apparatus being brought to bear in response to so few examples and such slim, insubstantial evidence of wrongdoing, my conclusion is that we are witnessing a pyramid of solutions in search of a problem.  "Covert and threatening" might sound nefarious but isn't it obvious that every country in the world tries to influence other nations when it suits their purposes?  Isn't this what happens everyday in the United Nations?

McCarthyism in Canada?

It is an exaggeration to compare what's happening in Canada to McCarthyism, but the blacklisting of Han Dong certainly bears similarities to that unfortunate period of American history.  Dong won election in the federal Don Valley riding twice--2019, 2021--with over 50% of the vote in both cases.  Dong was forced to resign from the Liberal caucus and claims to have received death threats.  He is currently suing Corus, the parent company of Global News, the source of the accusations against him.  The judge in Dong's civil trial has ruled that "the defendants [Corus/Global] have no tangible and no documentary" evidence.  The judge further commented that "As a consequence of the story, Dong's reputation and life in politics were destroyed."

Does the right hand know what the left hand has been doing?

Please, dear reader, take a look at this Government of Canada web site:  Consulting Canadians on a possible Canada-China free trade agreement. The Canadian government was considering a free-trade agreement with China and actively soliciting Canadians to join in the process at the same time that anyone consorting with Chinese officials, diplomates or citizens, would become an object of CSIS/CSE/RCMP suspicions (not to mention numerous other agencies in the list above).

The Elephant in the room

According to the Report, a relatively small number of "threat actors" have been investigated:  China, Russia, Iran, India and Pakistan.  Are these the "actors" most likely to influence and have an impact on Canadian elections and democratic institutions?  What about the elephant in the room next door?

Dark Money

In Dark Money:  The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right, Jane Mayer describes in detail the network of billionaires organized by the Koch brothers to infiltrate and manipulate every level of American politics with a goal of promoting a Libertarian agenda including, most particularly, to counter environmentalists and government efforts to limit climate change.  Mayer's focus is the USA but, of course, the Koch brothers, as the owners of Invista and the Pine Bend refinery, are major players in the Canadian economy.  As David Sassoon pointed out in 2012,  "This single Koch refinery [Pine Bend]  is now responsible for an estimated 25 percent of the 1.2 million barrels of oil the U.S. imports each day from Canada's tar sands territories" (p. 90, qtd in Dark Money).  Is anyone investigating the influence of Koch Industries and Americans for Prosperity on Canadian politics, or is the busing of students to a Liberal nomination meeting the only issue that really matters?

Not so long ago we came close to electing an American citizen as Prime Minister of Canada:  see There's Hypocrisy, and Then There's Scheer Hypocrisy

In our eagerness to preserve and defend individual rights and democratic values, we must be cautious not to abandon exactly those rights and values.

Immigration: When Left and Right Agree

Running a Problem versus solving it 

In the recent American presidential debates, Kamala Harris pointed out that Donald Trump had sabotaged a bi-partisan bill to add 1500 border guards on the US-Mexican border, and accused him of choosing to “run a problem rather than solve it.”  This is an interesting turn of phrase, and it struck me as an apt general description of a lot of democratic politics and politicians.  Choose just about any hot topic in the media these days and ask yourself, “Do the politicians you’ve heard/read about really want to solve the problem, or are they ‘running’ the problem in hopes of gaining points with the electorate while defaming their opponents?”  Consider immigration.

When Left and right agree

Recently (Sept .20, 2024) , an article entitled “Keep an Eye on the Canadian Border” in the Wall Street Journal (in what can safely be described as a right-wing perspective) described the problems created by the Canadian government’s liberalization of the Temporary Foreign Workers program.  Two weeks earlier (Sept. 5, 2024) on Tara Henley’s Lean Out podcast, her guest, Mike Moffatt, a self-described lefty, outlined problems with the same Temporary Foreign Workers program. 

No-one Is in favour of illegal immigration

No-one is in favour of illegal immigration:  not Conservatives or Liberals, neither the left nor the right, not the general citizenry, not legal immigrants, not asylum seekers or refugees, no-one.  Even illegal immigrants would wish that their numbers were less numerous, and they could immigrate legally.  The Temporary Foreign Workers conundrum offers an opportunity to reflect on immigration in general without  the distractions of ideology or post-colonial guilt, or messy discussions of walls or jailing children or sending asylum seekers home.

2.8 Million nonpermanent residents and growing

According to the WSJ article, “Canada currently has roughly 2.8 million nonpermanent residents who hold work permits.” These numbers are exacerbating Canada’s “severe housing shortages, rising unemployment rates, and ever-growing wait times for the national healthcare system.”  Moffatt generally concurred though his analysis was more detailed and nuanced. The shared conclusion is that the Canadian government has allowed the Temporary Foreign Workers program to get out of control.  Moffatt points out that “last year we had an increase of around 700,000 non-permanent residents.”  In the end, no-one benefits from the chaos.

Where Right and left diverge

Not to be too Pollyanna about left-right agreements:  the gist of the WSJ article is that the USA should prepare for an influx of potentially illegal immigrants on its northern border; particularly, around New York, Vermont and Maine, as the Canadian government attempts to put a sudden, Draconian cap on temporary foreign works, international students and nonpermanent residents. In contrast, Moffatt makes the salient point that the system creates a situation of near slavery for temporary foreign workers. The way the system works is that

 . . . when they [temporary workers] come over, their employment is tied to that specific employer. So if they lose their job, not only are they losing their job, they're sent home. They're essentially deported. So it creates the conditions where those workers will do whatever the employer asks them because they know if they push back, they're headed back home. It's a very exploitative system.

Immigration Benefits us all

Immigration is a net benefit to the nation.  Once again left and right agree.  It grows the economy, fills gaps in the workforce, and ensures a prosperous future for us all--especially in a country like Canada.  It also behooves us to be compassionate and responsive when the circumstances warrant, but no-one benefits when the system is allowed to run amuck.

The Polls, the Press, and All the Ways the Information Loop Goes Wrong

The Polling frenzy 

In the wake of the Democratic Party changing candidates there has been a frenzy of polls and press releases on the polls in anticipation of the November presidential election.  It is a fitting moment to reflect on the symbiotic relationship between the polls and the press, and how this relationship, this information loop, manages to go wrong.  My first observation, based on a decade of writing this blog, is that the typical scenario is for the legacy media to present a particular narrative--China is corrupt, Russia is evil, Trump is a dangerous clown (to begin with the most obvious examples)--and then to report, with a tone of seriousness and/or surprise, that a recent poll shows a majority of the population in agreement with the established narrative.  The question I always ask is "How could the majority of Canadians and/or Americans possibly think otherwise after they have been submitted to a brainwashing level of the established narrative provided by the media that most of us turn to for our news?"

It's So tempting to believe the numbers

I understand the allure of quantifications of people's feelings and attitudes.  How reassuring to know how the majority of Canadians feel about this or that issue.  And fascinating to know--with numeric specificity--how divorced white men feel about this, and what teenage girls think about that, what the attitudes of the majority of married black women are.  But can and should we believe the polls?  I suspect that the media (and not just politicians) view the polls as evidence that their messages are getting across.  In the other direction, I am also suspicious that pollsters will be tempted to produce polling results that the press will be interested in publishing.  Surveys are very easy to manipulate and corrupt, as demonstrated by a brilliant episode of the satiric comedy Yes, Prime Minister:

Sometimes the polls are just wrong

Sometimes the polls are just wrong to begin with.  When Prime Minister Justin Trudeau refused to release the Huawei CFO from house arrest in exchange for the "two Michaels" imprisoned in China, the Angus Reid poll claimed that 72% of Canadians agreed with him.  Given the recent flurry of prisoner exchanges between the USA and Russia, and the fact that we were holding CFO Meng because of an American extradition request, I wonder how many Canadians still agree with the PM's naive claims that prisoner exchanges are always immoral and dangerous. (See Where's the Canadian Outrage?)  

And the survey is the misinformation

Timing aside, the pollsters got the question completely wrong, then invited Canadians to join in their misinformation.  The survey asked if we Canadians should follow the law and let the "independent" judiciary decide the Meng extradition, or should we break the law and have the government intervene.  Of course, 72% of Canadians said that we should follow the law.  Except, of course, the law in this case--the Canadian Extradition Act--specifies the opposite.  Letting the judiciary decide (if this were possible) would be breaking the law.  Government intervention would be following the law.  (See What Have We Learned from the Catastrofarce?) This is how the information loop functions (or rather, mis-functions).  The survey only proves that the misinformation provided by the government and the media, and reinforced by the survey itself, was getting through to the Canadian public.

Who Did the survey matters

Perhaps the most important question to be asked about a survey, as implied in the Yes, Prime Minister satire, is “who did the survey?”  In October 2022, the Globe and Mail reported that

An August poll by the Taiwanese Public Opinion Foundation, an independent and non-partisan organization, found that only 11.8 per cent of respondents favoured "unification" with China.  Fifty per cent of those surveyed said they would opt for independence, and 25.7 backed the status quo.  

Except it turns out that the “independent and non-partisan” Taiwanese Public Opinion Foundation has its head office in Washington, D.C.  The Board and Staff of its parent organization, the Global Taiwan Institute, have significant ties with the US Defence and/or State Departments, and describe themselves as sharing “a passion for greater ties between Taiwan and the USA.”  (See Survey Says . . . .)  

Sometimes journalists can't seem to read

The weirdest way that the information loop goes awry is that some journalists fail to or choose not to accurately quote the survey they are reporting.  In an article entitled “What Putin Really Wants,” published in Quillett, Christopher Miller claimed that "The vast majority of Ukrainians reject them [the Minsk Accords]."  The Minsk Protocol was an agreement between Russia and the Ukraine in 2014 overseen by the OSCE and mediated by France and Germany to end the fighting between East and West Ukraine by granting increased autonomy to the eastern regions.  Miller's source for the claim that the vast majority of Ukrainians reject the agreements is an article in Euromaidan Press:  "Three-fourths of Ukrainians oppose Minsk accords in current form, poll shows."

When Reporting:  Words matter

The key phrase in the headline is “in current form.” What the Euromaidan article and underlying survey reveal is that only 11% of the respondents claimed to be familiar with the content of the accords.  More importantly, the respondents did not “reject” the accords but, as the article highlights in bold, “the majority of Ukrainians (54%) believe that the Minsk accords should be revised.”   If anything, the survey showed that, far from rejecting the accords,  the respondents wanted the accords in some form but differed on the format.  Even the claim  that the poll represented  “the majority of Ukrainians” is disingenuous, since all 2500 respondents to the survey were from western Ukraine and Ukrainians from the east (Donbas and Crimea) were not surveyed. (See On Blaming America for Russian Aggression.)

Conclusion

We may all be familiar with the cliche that “statistics can be made to say anything,” but surely it is an awful exaggeration that the information loop between the polls and the press can go so wrong on some of the most important issues of the day.

What Does Article Five of the North Atlantic Treaty Actually Say?

In The Room Where It Happened, John Bolton points out that "This provision [Article 5] is actually less binding than its reputation [. . .]" (p. 133).  

The full text of article 5 is:

Article 5

The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all and consequently they agree that, if such an armed attack occurs, each of them, in exercise of the right of individual or collective self-defence recognised by Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations, will assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area.

Any such armed attack and all measures taken as a result thereof shall immediately be reported to the Security Council. Such measures shall be terminated when the Security Council has taken the measures necessary to restore and maintain international peace and security.

 As Bolton underlines, each country is only required to take "such action as it deems necessary"--which. of course, is why we hear such variation in the course of action being proposed by various NATO members in reaction to the war in Ukraine.  A country can decide to take no action without contravening Article 5.

In his recent post-NATO press conference, President Biden stated "I believe the obligation of Article 5 is sacred."  Biden also noted that former President Trump "has made it clear he would feel no obligation to honor Article 5."   Both points are moot since Article 5 does not create the obligation being implied.   Contrary to what the general public is encouraged to believe, Article 5 does not commit the USA or any other country to taking military action.

Moreover, Article 5 clearly defers to Article 51 of the UN charter, and more specifically to the Security Council.  It is worth remembering that both Russia and China are permanent members of the Security Council with powers of veto over any Council resolution.

Why Is the Vagina Masculine? And What’s the Alternative?

“Vagina” is masculine

 I first came across this factoid thirty years ago in Daphne Marlatt’s novel Ana Historic.  It came up again more recently in Episode Two of the Netflix's series Emily in Paris.  The word “vagina” is masculine in French.  It’s “le” (not ‘la’) “vagin.”

                    

But Why?

Gender is notoriously arbitrary in French.  Still, “vagin” being masculine seems baffling.  Neither the novel nor the tv show explained why "vagina" is masculine in French.  The answer is that the origin of the word in French and Latin is distinctly masculine, as is the idea that this is the best word to describe female genitalia.  In French and Latin, “vagin” is the sheath or scabbard used to holster a sword.

What about English?

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word “vagina” entered the English language from French and Latin in 1682–which raises the question, what word was used before 1682? Shakespeare and his wife, Anne Hathaway, had two daughters, so chances are he heard some of what women say when talking vulva.  

In Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare has Mercurio mock Romeo by saying:  

If love be blind, love cannot hit the mark.
Now will he sit under a medlar tree,
And wish his mistress were that kind of fruit
As maids call medlars, when they laugh alone. 

The Medlar 

The editors of The Norton Shakespeare gloss “medlar” as “a fruit thought to resemble the female sex organs.” The medlar  is a type of fruit that only becomes edible when it is overripe or bletted; in other words, rotten.  Here’s what a medlar looks like:

“A Rose by any other name . . .”

The red rose, symbol of romantic love, represents the vagina in a sanguine condition of sexual arousal.  Therefore, according to Edith Wharton in The Age of Innocence, yellow roses are the appropriate gift between “friends.”

Reclaiming the Vagina

The paintings of Georgia O’Keeffe are widely interpreted as representations of the vulva.

The Japanese artist, Megumi Igarashi, was arrested, fined and even jailed for displaying 3-D renderings of her own vagina.

How Quaint!

The English word for female genitalia which predates “vagina” by about 400 years is “queynte.”  It derives from the verb “quenchen” which means to quench, and enjoys the ambiguity of being a homonym for nice, charming and clever.   Over time “queynte” has evolved into the English word “quaint.”

Modern readers typically miss the pun/double entendre in Andrew Marvell’s 1650 poem “To His Coy Mistress” as the suitor tells the object of his unrequited lust that if she fails to give herself to him: “then worms shall try / That long-preserved virginity,/ And your quaint honour turn to dust.”

And the Bible Says . . .

Adam's job in paradise was naming things.  The underlying principle is that whoever  owns it gets to name it.  Perhaps it's time we returned the vagina to its rightful owners.

Addendum

“The Forgotten Fruit”  [all about the "medlar"]

Addendum 2

Charlotte names her vagina "Rebecca" on Sex and the City

"Three Days of the Condor" and the Tenth Anniversary of "The Sour Grapevine"

Sharing Intelligence

I'm still obsessing over "sharing intelligence."  May 15th was the tenth anniversary of this blog.  I wrote the first post 15 May 2013.  My original intention was to create a platform for whistleblowers, a space for all those insights and complaints about university education which circulated behind closed doors.  That collective participation never happened, and the project became the one-man band it is today. Rereading my first post I see my concerns about "education" haven't changed.  Over time, the blog has strayed from language, literature and the university per se,  into those questions I have found "curiouser and curiouser" like money and politics.

Three Days of the Condor

One of my favourite spy flicks, Three Days of the Condor, is approaching its 50th anniversary.  On this the tenth anniversary of The Sour Grapevine, I find myself reflecting on the naive optimism--my naive optimism--in interpreting the ending of Three Days of the Condor.  Here's the ending of the film:

 

 

On "Changing the World"

Condor (played by Robert Redford), a CIA analyst, has discovered a rogue CIA operation to invade the Middle East.  To protect the secrecy of the plan, the CIA hires a contractor to assassinate Condor and his colleagues.  Might sound farfetched but, then again, compared to the invasion of Iraq, it's small potatoes and somewhat more rational.  What catches my attention today is Condor's (and my) only slightly hesitant conviction that the New York Times would publish his story.  In 1975, I thought it was obvious that they would publish.  Today? Not a chance in hell.  Condor's (and my) other assumption was that publication of the story would change the world.  "Change the world" is what we tell kids these days, right around the time they are becoming suspicious about Santa Claus.  The last fifty years of humanity (as opposed to technology and physics) prove that stasis and apathy always prevail.  I find myself submitting to Sabine Hossenfelder's claim that "free will is incompatible with the laws of physics."

On Whistleblowers

Despite our romantic convictions that righteous individuals taking on the system are the heroes of modern times, whistleblowers,  in general, do not fare well.  Joe Darby blew the whistle on the torture and other crimes being committed by the US in Abu Ghraib prison.  Edward Snowden revealed that the USA was systematically spying on American citizens with a program called PRISM.  William Binney, a precursor of Snowden, created  ThinThread, and revealed that the NSA was fraudulently wasting billions on Trailblazer and, at the same time, ignoring the Constitution by collecting massive amounts of data on US citizens.  Katharine Gun revealed that the US was asking British intelligence to help blackmail UN diplomats into voting in favour of the invasion of Iraq. Gary Webb exposed that the CIA was allowing the importation of cocaine into the US in order to provide funding for the Contras in Nicaragua.  None of these whistleblowers have done well from the good they tried to do.

Blogging as a retirement hobby

I have no right to expect this blog to be influential.  I have always declared it "a hobby" and, as such, no more compelling for an audience than toy trains or a stamp collection.  Nonetheless, it is impossible to write a blog for ten years and not wonder what, if any, effect it might be having.  As a professor, I allowed myself the immodest belief that I had a modest effect on my students' thinking.   The blog allowed me to continue at least the illusion of this the most satisfying aspect of academia.

Metadata

Influence online in social media is measured in metadata:  how many views, likes, comments, shares, followers, subscribers, etc.  Starting out I never imagine that this was how I might measure success.  I imagined each of my posts having a long shelf life, potentially being quoted by an avid reader from far afield even after I'm gone.  But that's not how the world rolls these days.  So here's my metadata:  Google tells me that my blog has been viewed 753,405 times.  I have written 204 posts.  I have published 150 posts, the rest are unpublished drafts and stubs.

Most Viewed

My most viewed post is Canadian Politicians Were Caught Like Deer in the Headlights, but Why Are Canadian Journalists Censuring any Discussion of the Merits of Meng's Case? (with 6,490 views).  It's not one of my better-written posts.  It's not even one of my better posts on the Meng extradition case.  However, in this most-viewed post, I criticized the Global journalist David Akin and he had the grace to share the post with his readers.  Additionally, Google sends me a report each month telling me what keywords brought readers to my blog and, apparently, some people end up on this post searching the fairly common name "Richard Donoghue."  Finally, with some reluctance, I must reveal that a substantial number of my readers (47,500 views all total) come from China. 

Least Viewed

My least popular post was If Men Could Get Pregnant . . .  with 39 views, and I did quite a bit of research for that post.  There might be a message in these numbers that I do better when I stick to my lane--education, language and literature.  The message isn't clear, but it doesn't matter.  Only an academic in my field would understand the elating freedom of being allowed to write what you really think.  I have managed to stay within the bounds of "education"; that is, adding something new to what is already known.  I also believe that "learning" frequently requires "unlearning."  The word "narrative" comes from the core of my field. Frequently, the work of the blog has been a resistant reading of dominant narratives.

 Influence and Influencers

In my anniversary reflections, I Googled the term "influencers."  Did you know that Kylie Jenner and Kim Kardashian each have 450 million followers?  Big-name singers, actors and soccer players each have hundreds of millions of followers.  Make-up, fashion and magic typically attract hundreds of millions of followers.  There are no followers on my blog, but I do have 1,221 followers on Quora, where my answers have been viewed over 5 million times.  (To bastardize a Marshall McLuhan quote:  "The platform is the message.")

Surprises 

I have always imagined that I was writing my blog for a Canadian readership.  My core audience is 68 friends, relatives and acquaintances that I shamelessly email posts to without their permission.  To my surprise, Canada (19,900 views) is fourth on the list of countries where my blog has been viewed.  Apparently, the blog is almost as popular in Russia (17,500 views) as it is in Canada--which is slightly disturbing. My dominant audience is in the USA (506,000 views).  (Should I flatter myself that I am being tracked by the CIA, NSA and FBI?)  The unflattering conclusion is that I haven't really been getting through to my imagined audience, my imagined community, Canada.

My guru has advised me that with so many people using VPN and proxies, I shouldn't take these geographical numbers too seriously.  No matter.  I remain undeterred. The world may not change while I am still in it, but I believe in chaos theory and the analogy of "a message in a bottle."  So stay tuned.

 

On Sharing Intelligence

 By now we have all heard about how a young National Guard airman, Jack Teixeira, leaked classified Pentagon documents to a Discord chat group of a dozen people.  Eventually, some of the materials were promulgated by the Donbass Devushka (aka Sarah Bils) to 65,000 followers of her podcast.  What caught my attention in this story is how long it took for anyone to notice that these "top secret" files were available on social media.  The New York Times is now reporting that some of the documents have been available online for more than a year.

Uhhh, I write a blog see.  So I find myself asking, if you think you have valuable content to share and you make it available online, what do you have to do to get people to notice and read it?  It appears the answer is to get yourself arrested, like Teixeira, and have every major newspaper publish a picture on their front pages of you being taken away in handcuffs.  If you have seen the movie Snowden, you know that the major breakthrough was to get The Guardian to publish the fact that the USA was breaking its own laws and spying on American citizens.

From the Snowden story, we know the NSA used a program called PRISM to collect surveillance on US citizens and American allies.  From the Teixeira story, we know the US secret services are still collecting intel on American allies and have undisclosed info on the war in Ukraine.  From Snowden to Teixeira, the real story seems to be that nothing has changed, not even how the intelligence community protects its secrets from public disclosure.  In this era of massive social media, it feels like everybody is talking  . . . at once .  . . and nobody is really listening.

In fact, the much bigger story is the one that is widely available in the media and, I bet, you are less likely to have noticed:  William Binney.  Binney, an NSA intelligence officer, developed a surveillance program called ThinThread which allowed the government to collect metadata on foreign operatives without spying on American citizens.   In 2000, the NSA closed down Binney's in-house, inexpensive program; opting for a program call Trailblazer, developed by Boeing, Computer Sciences Corporation, and Booz Allen Hamilton. Trailblazer directly contravened the US constitution by collecting massive amounts of data on American citizens and cost billions of dollars by the time it was closed down in 2006.  Binney claims that ThinThread would have prevented 9/11 if it had been allowed to keep running. When Binney and a number of patriotic American whistleblowers--Diane Roark, Thomas Andrews Drake, J. Kirk Wiebe, and Ed Loomis--tried to inform their superiors and the US government about the abuse, mismanagement, fraud and other crimes of the NSA, they were arrested by the FBI.

If you have watch the recent Netflix release of Official Secrets, the Katharine Gun story, you are aware that nothing has changed because, above all, the secret services are designed to protect themselves and the government of the day.

Does anyone remember the ending of Three Days of the Condor?

The Corruption of Art and the Art of Corruption

What Is Art?  

"Can You Tell The Difference Between Modern Art and a Child's Painting?"  [It's a quiz.] How have we reached the point where we struggle to distinguish the crayon scribbling of a toddler from fine art?

The History of art

Nic Thurman offers a brilliantly succinct answer to the question. To summarize the already succinct:  the concept of "art" as used today is relatively new--less than three centuries old.  (The same can be said about "literature" by the way.)  While we, the guileless, might imagine that art has something to do with skill and craft and beauty, that is not the case as the concept is used today.  In the 18th century the German Romantic philosophers Immanuel Kant and Friedrich Hegel respectively claimed that "art" was the product of "genius" and a reflection of the "spirit" of the age.  Consequently, anything that someone in authority deemed to show "spirit" and "genius" was art.  Skill, craft and beauty became passé.

 

Art Is like money

Money, as we've learned, is whatever people think is money.  And art is whatever people think is art.  In both cases we accept the judgment of the people who are supposed to know.  If it ends up on a museum wall, it's art.  If it ends up in a bank, it's money.  Eventually art became not just like money but, for all intents and purposes, art became money; that is, a way to store and exchange monetary value.  As art went from being objects of beauty to objects of fashionable genius, as determined by curators and auctioneers, it also soared as an investment instrument, a source of liquidity.

Blurred Lines

The documentary film, Blurred Lines: Inside the Art World, elaborates how the "art world" became a network of insiders, a bubble of artists, agents, curators, gallerists, collectors, museums, warehouses and auction houses--all focused on the wealthy .1% ready to spend multiple millions on the works of whoever was deemed genius.  A recent article in the Wall Street Journal entitled  The Art Market Is All About the 0.1%  reiterates the point.  

Art buyers are either the super rich .1% or wannabes trying to claim a place in that rarefied clique, or they may be of that most decried tribe, the speculators who buy a work of art for multiple millions one day and sell it for multiple millions more the next.  Owners of art, collectors of Andy Warhol, for example, have a vested interest in ensuring that the price of art works never drop and a Warhol, for example, is never allowed to sell for less than a million dollars.  The artists interviewed in Blurred Lines declare an absolute lack of interest in money.  (Methinks they protesteth too much.)  The exception is Damien Hirst, of shark-in-a-tank-of-formaldehyde fame, who argues that the money game, of which he is ultimate player, makes art more exciting.

The Art of Corruption

In terms of art facilitating corruption, look no further than the suspicious fact that the paintings of Hunter Biden, lawyer, drug addict, "novice painter" and son of the US President, are selling for between $75,000 and $500,000 in a New York gallery. Or, as reported in the Wall Street Journal this week:

An alleged financier of U.S.-designated terrorist group Hezbollah was charged with a scheme to evade American sanctions and illegally import and export hundreds of millions of dollars worth of fine art and diamonds.

The Goldfinch

 The novel, The Goldfinch, provides a coherent, fictional account of how works of art can be used as collateral in drug deals and other international crimes.

 

The novel references the 1654 painting. "The Goldfinch" by Carel Fabritius, now part of the Mauritshuis collection in The Hague, Netherlands.

 

 

 

Bitcoin for Billionaires

According to The Black Box of the Art Business, one of the largest collections of fine art in the world is housed in a warehouse in Switzerland, the Geneva Freeport.

 As elaborated in the documentary, this "black box" of art, jewels and collectables, allows the super-rich to hide their wealth from the tax collector as well as facilitating theft and fraud.  Remember the panic when were were told that bitcoin would facilitate a universe of dark-web crimes?  Art has become bitcoin for billionaires.

 Addendum 

 

Do Facts Matter?

Facts Aren't truth

People confuse facts and the truth.  Truth only applies when there is meaning.  Facts only have meaning when they are connected.  When all the relevant facts are assembled in a logical and coherent fashion, the result is the truth or at least some degree of truth.

"Agreed-upon Facts":  say what?

In the everyday world, facts are hard to come by.  I find myself repeatedly forced to use the expression "the agreed-upon facts."  Is this expression redundant (a pleonasm) or a contradiction in terms (an oxymoron)?  If whatever is "a fact" doesn't that mean that everyone cogent must necessarily agree?  If whatever must be "agreed upon" doesn't that mean it is something different from if not the opposite of "a fact"?

Polarization

The problem gets worse.  We live in an increasingly polarized world.  Beneath this polarization is a world where feelings trump facts.  We accept as fact whatever happens to support and assuage our feelings of the moment, and dismiss those facts which don't fit with our opinions, beliefs and emotions.

How We learn that reason is wrong

The situation isn't accidental and it isn't natural.  Beginning in elementary school we teach children slogans like "follow your heart," "pursue your dreams" and "be true to yourself" without stopping to consider what these instructions might actually mean.  Outside the classroom, we are bombarded with romance, the notion that human desire can overcome reality.  The hero will sacrifice the world--literally--to save the unrequited love of his first sight.  And fiction always proves him right.  The character who displays reason and logic, if not the villain, will be the weaselly egoist we know to despise at first glance.

Does Fiction affect how we view the world?

We can pretend that our perceptions and vision of the world are unaffected by romantic fiction.   But everywhere I look I see pandering to prejudice and naive melodrama--endless "news" stories implying virtuous heroes, innocent victims and evil villains.  The binaries of absolute good and evil only survive when they are scrubbed of facts and challenging details.  Still, the stories survive and propagate because we have all been taught to believe whatever it is that we already happen to believe . . . until a generation later and the story changes.

Is Donald Trump the Lesser Evil?

"This Thing has to stop"

In a Wall Street Journal editorial, Donald Trump is quoted as saying "This thing [the war in Ukraine] has to stop, and it's got to stop now.  [ . . .] The United States should negotiate peace between these two countries, and I don’t think they should be sending very much.”  Trump has pledged "to clean house of all the warmongers and America-Last globalists."  The editorial goes on to mock Trump's "foreign policy" as "mercurial at best" while noting that the "ever-more-populist Mr. Trump" has set himself apart from his political competition--not just Joe Biden but declared candidate Nikki Haley, and potential primary entrants Mike Pence, Tim Scott, Mike Pompeo, and John Bolton who are all on record backing Ukraine.  The question mark is Ron DeSantis who is the focus of the editorial.

Trump's Opposition to arming Ukraine

Trump's opposition to the war has the look of spur-of-the-moment, opportunistic populism.  However, according to John Bolton's White House memoir, Trump has long been reticent about arming Ukraine.  Trump was explicitly concerned that arming Ukraine against Russia could provoke World War III which, despite the guffawing of his critics, is a possibility before us today.  Americans learned of Trump's hesitance to sign off on a 250-million-dollar, military-aid package to Ukraine during the impeachment inquiry in 2019.  At the time, to anti-Trumpists like me, leaked minutes of the telephone conversation between Trump and Zelensky seemed irrefutable evidence that the President of the USA was trying to extort the President of Ukraine to get dirt on his political rival.  However, a close focus on a few sentences of the notes taken of that conversation leaves out much of the context.  Trump might well have wondered why the newly-elected President of Ukraine, a Russian-speaker from the east of Ukraine, a multi-millionaire media celebrity like himself, who had campaigned on a promise of peace with Russia and supported the Minsk Agreements, was now asking for weapons to confront the Russian-backed militias in the eastern provinces.  Trump also rankled at giving un-scrutinized military aid to a notoriously corrupt nation which was supplying military technology to China. 

The Conspiracy theory:  Bidens in Ukraine

Trump had also come to accept a conspiracy theory spun by John Giuliani that Ukraine was the source of disinformation undermining his presidential campaigns.  We now know that some of the details of the conspiracy were not entirely theoretical.  In April 2014, Vice-president Biden was in Ukraine--one of his three visits to Ukraine that year--to announce that "we, the United States, stand with [. . .] all the Ukrainian people" and encouraging a "real fight against corruption and victory over corruption."  In May 2014, less than a month after Joe's anti-corruption preaching to Ukrainians, Joe's son Hunter Biden was invited onto the board of Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company, and paid $400,000, despite Hunter's being, in his own words, in his "deepest skid into addiction."  Even when George Kent, a Secretary of State official, informed the vice-president's office that Hunter Biden was accepting payment from a Ukrainian company whose chief executive was under investigation for bribery and money-laundering, no action was taken, and the details suppressed.  Hunter's infamous lost-and-found laptop revealed that he had failed to pay the required US taxes on the $400,000-dollar Ukrainian payment and, by 2020, he was two million dollars in arrears on payments to the IRS.  Perhaps most importantly, this information was available prior to the 2020 US presidential election and was published in the New York Post.  However, the FBI labelled the claims as Russian disinformation and executives at Twitter blocked the information from being circulated.

Stormy Daniels versus Navy Joan Roberts Biden

Prosecutors are twisting themselves in knots trying to figure out how to turn Trump's paying Stormy Daniels $130,000 into a crime.  In the meantime, Hunter Biden, having denied paternity and balked at child support, has now gone to court to try and prevent his four-year-old biological daughter from using the name Biden.  

"Avoiding a Long War"

Far beyond conspiracy theories and the melodrama of dysfunctional families, what really matters is the war in Ukraine.  Trump's run for the presidency in 2024 will consequently be a referendum on the war in Ukraine, first within the Republican Party and, if he is the Republican candidate for President, then in the US electorate at large.  No doubt we will hear Trump's plans for a negotiated peace described as farfetched.  However, they do align with a policy paper published by the Rand Corporation entitled  "Avoiding a Long War: U.S. Policy and the Trajectory of the Russia-Ukraine Conflict."  The paper is a clearheaded, pragmatic and comprehensive analysis of the war.

American Interests and priorities

The authors of the paper declare straightforwardly that "This Perspective focuses on U.S. interests, which often align with but are not synonymous with Ukrainian interests." The highest priorities, in terms of US and western interests, are: 1) avoiding a nuclear war (the authors reason that Russia's use of nuclear weapons "to prevent a catastrophic defeat" is "plausible") and 2) avoiding escalation of the war into a Russia-NATO conflict.  Their thesis is that the longer the war goes on the more likely these worse-case scenarios become.  Additionally, the authors argue,  a lengthy war in Ukraine diminishes American preparedness to confront China. 

Negotiated Peace is the likely and perhaps only possible outcome

Perhaps the paper's most important conclusion is that "Since neither side appears to have the intention or capabilities to achieve absolute victory, the war will most likely end with some sort of negotiated outcome."  In fact, the best possible guarantee of peace is a negotiated outcome.  Even if the most optimistic of Ukrainian predictions come to fruition and Russian forces are driven out of all Ukrainian territories, Russia could and likely would repair its military and launch another invasion in four or five years.  To guarantee peace, a Ukrainian victory would have to include not only regime change but the dismantling of the Russian state--a possibility which returns us to the worst of all possible hypotheses:  nuclear war.

Lines on a map

Virtually all wars are about where to draw a line on the map.  Where to draw the line between Ukraine and Russia may be a crucial question for Ukrainian nationalists, but the territorial issue matters little to the USA.  Russia is not a threat to the USA unless of course the situation reaches a level of total madness and a nuclear holocaust.  In 2014, Barack Obama dismissed Russia as a "regional power" and therefore no threat to the USA, which raises the question, why has the USA and, in particular, Joe Biden continued to encourage this conflict?  Biden will need to have a convincing answer for American voters before November 2024.  Will the rhetoric of good against evil, right versus wrong, and democracy versus dictatorship prevail against Trump's pragmatic appeals to American self-interest?  As "Avoiding a Long War" outlines, the world-wide costs of this war far outweigh its potential benefits.   In a Wall Street Journal editorial entitled "Trump's Best Foreign Policy:  Not Starting Any Wars," Republican Senator J.D. Vance, author of Hillbilly Elegies,  announces his support for Donald Trump in 2024 "because he won't recklessly send Americans to fight overseas." Amazingly, American voters may come to decide that Trump, campaigning for a negotiated peace, is on the side of the angels.