Saturday, December 9, 2017

O Jerusalem, Jerusalem: The world cries for thee

2017-12-08

Wednesday night’s decision by United States President Donald Trump to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, showing only utter contempt for the aspirations of the Palestinian people, has pushed the prospects for peace into a black hole, never to see light again.

Hopes of a peaceful solution to the Palestinian crisis are now virtually dead. Days and hours before Trump made the announcement, Pope Francis and world leaders, including close allies, expressed serious concern, while US State Department officials warned of grave repercussions. But Trump, being Trump, dismissed saner counsel and dropped a nuclear bomb to kill millions of people’s hope for peace. Invoking the 1995 Jerusalem Embassy Act, he did what his predecessors dared not. In what he boasted was a fulfillment of yet another campaign promise, he announced that the US embassy would be shifted to Jerusalem in recognition of the city’s status as the capital of Israel. In his statement, there was nothing for the Palestinians, but it had everything Israel wanted.

What a Christmas gift for the Palestinians, especially the Christians, who on Wednesday night switched off Christmas lights at Jesus’ traditional birthplace in the Palestinian town of Bethlehem, in protest against Trump’s speech. Israel’s hardline Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivered a ‘Big Thank You’ address in Jerusalem, minutes after Trump ended his short speech in Washington DC. Hours later, recovering from the jolt, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said the Palestinian leadership would never acknowledge Trump’s declaration. “This is a reward to Israel,” Abbas said adding that Trump’s move encouraged Israel’s “continuing occupation” of the Palestinian territories.

Trump’s toxic announcement will only lead to further radicalization of the Arabs and Muslims, worsening the mayhem in the conflict-ridden Middle East where peace is not even a museum piece.

Most Palestinians have long renounced violence in the hope that dialogue will help them establish their independent state with East Jerusalem as capital. But now, it will be more difficult to persuade them to keep faith in non-violence.

Perhaps, Trump’s action is part of a plan to provoke the Palestinians to resort to violence, so that Israel could take tougher security measures and seize more Palestinian land. Some see Trump’s action as a move to placate Casino mogul Sheldon Adelson who made a 100 million dollar campaign donation on a guarantee that Trump would recognise Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. Or were Trump’s Jewish son-in-law and Middle East envoy Jared Kushner and pro-Zionist Vice President Mike Pence prodding him?

Trump displayed he had no compunction about further victimising the Palestinian people. Well, this is nothing new to the United States which has over the years protected Israel from international censure for committing ethnic cleansing, killing Palestinian and Lebanese children, using banned weapons such as white phosphorous bombs, demolishing houses, destroying farms, building illegal settlements in occupied land, denying food, medicine, water and electricity to the Palestinians, and imprisoning thousands of activists. If these are not crimes against humanity, what are they?
The Palestinian people have been forced to suffer this injustice since the British colonialists committed the original sin by issuing the infamous 1917 Balfour Declaration that allowed the European Jews to carve out a country for them from the Ottoman Province of Palestine.

For Trump and his supporters, the Palestinian people are non-humans. They probably do not know that the Palestinian people have been living in the area for centuries even before Jerusalem changed hands from Byzantine rule to Muslim rule in 637 AD. With the spread of Islam, most people in the new territories embraced Islam.

The fact that the Palestinians are very much the sons and daughters of the soil just as the Jews are is lost on the besieged American president who is facing a probe on collusion with Russia to win the presidential election. Little does Trump realize that his action goes contrary to international law, especially the Fourth Geneva Convention which prohibits a foreign occupier from annexing or altering the boundaries of an occupying territory.

Now that Trump has crossed the Rubicon, what’s next? Certainly, it is not peace. Trump has made peace impossible in Palestine. A two-state solution with East Jerusalem as the Palestinian capital has been put on stake and set ablaze. Neither Israel nor the US will, even after Trump is gone, agree to return to status quo ante, vis-à-vis Jerusalem, the 5,000-year-old city, holy to Jews, Christians and Muslims. Jerusalem houses the Jewish Temple built by King Solomon, whom the Muslims regard as a prophet of God and call him “Sulaiman Alaihissalam (peace be upon him)”. On the East Jerusalem side, the Temple mount houses the Aqsa mosque, the third holiest place of worship for Muslims after the two mosques in Makkah and Madina. As an article of faith, Muslims believe that the Prophet Muhammad visited the Aqsa mosque in a night journey and experienced a heavenly ascension.

Netanyahu on Wednesday night promised that there would be no change in the status of the Aqsa mosque, which is administered by Jordan, under whose purview was East Jerusalem, before Israel occupied it during the 1967 war.

What are the options for the Palestinians, now that Trump has snatched from them their dearest Jerusalem, al-Quds, the thorniest issue in many peace talks? Can they push for one-state solution and become citizens of Israel? Israel fears the one-state solution because the Arabs will be more in numbers. Besides, such a prospect goes against Israel’s vision for an “exclusive” Jewish state.

Should the Palestinians return to the armed struggle? Palestinian group Hamas yesterday called on the Palestinians to launch an Intifada. Palestinians have no true friends in the Arab and Islamic world. To retake East Jerusalem, no Arab leader will declare war against Israel, a nuclear power. Neither will they impose an oil embargo on the US, similar to the one King Faisal of Saudi Arabia spearheaded in 1973. When the then National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger warned King Faisal that if the Arabs went ahead with the oil embargo, the US would use force, the wise and widely respected king replied: “You are the ones who can’t live without oil. We come from the desert and our ancestors live on dates and milk and we can easily go back and live like that again.”

Sadly, there are no leaders like King Faisal today in the divided Arab world. Weeks before the Trump announcement, reports said Saudi Arabia was allegedly working with the US for a Middle East solution that included a proposal to bring Jerusalem under international control.

Saudi Arabia urged Trump not to go ahead with the Jerusalem move, but Trump had only had disdain for Saudi Arabia though the kingdom in May in a bid to curry favour with the new US president signed US$ 380 billion worth deals, including US$ 110 billion arms purchases.

In a statement yesterday, the Saudi royal court described the US action as “unjustified and irresponsible”. That’s it. Period.

Yes, there will be protests and even violent incidents, but there won’t be a reversal of Trump’s move. The Arabs and Muslims have lost Jerusalem.

Trump’s Jerusalem Stroke: Part Of US Exceptionalism!

By Mohamed Harees –December 7 2017

With a sense of arrogance, Trump officially announced that US will recognise Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, referring to the move as an acknowledgement of “historical and current reality”, even as world leaders condemned the relocation and change in Jerusalem’s diplomatic status – an announcement he knows will stir hornet’s nest not just across the ME, but beyond as well. He also instructed his State Department to begin the years-long process of moving the American embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, – a sacred city of importance to all Abrahamic faiths and the most contested city in the world. Adding humour to his announcement, he also quipped that it will be “a step to advance the peace process” with Palestinians and “a long-overdue step to advance the peace process and to work towards a lasting agreement”. This announcement no doubt bears many serious consequences, although many observers may shrug it off as just another insane move by a demagogue and narcissist Trump, whose credibility was shattered to smithereens even before he was elected to office last November.

His recent tweets sharing anti-Muslim videos of an ultra far right groups showed his temperament and unstable mental state of mind, let alone his suitability to act as a future honest broker to the perennial Palestinian conflict. In fact, diagnosing Trump’s alleged mental disorder has become a popular pastime, not just among mental health professionals but also among politicians, journalists, pundits, comedians, and ordinary people gathered at coffee breaks. He is an undisputed poster boy for narcissism. According to Allen Frances, M.D, Psychiatry and Behavioural Sciences Specialist, Trump demonstrates in pure form every single symptom described in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) criteria for narcissistic personality disorder, Humorously, the title of John Gartner and Rachel Montgomery’s book “All I Ever Wanted to Know about Donald Trump I Learned From His Tweets” is self- explanatory. Be it as it may, whatever he utters, however narcissistic they may be, is taken as the US viewpoint. Incidentally, if ‘American Exceptionalism’ in Post- 09/11 period in particular and |Cold-war era in general, has made the world a much worse place to live in, Trump has virtually made ‘America’ much dirtier in the minds of the outside world and a laughing stock in the community of nations.

To be quite honest, US has never ever been a honest broker or taken genuine measures to ensure the Palestinian people are given their historic right to their own homeland usurped by US’ Zionist agent in the ME region. Simply put, the US cannot act as an honest broker while at the same aligning itself with and serving as Israel’s strongest ally. American double standards and hypocrisy on matters related to the Israel-Palestine conflict account for much of the recent decline in international admiration and deference to U.S. leadership in the Middle East and elsewhere. Therefore, expecting Trump with his narcissist frame of mind to do so will be insane. Perceived American double standards and hypocrisy on matters related to the Israel-Palestine conflict thus account for much of the recent decline in international admiration and deference to U.S. leadership in the ME and elsewhere.

In that respect, this ‘Jerusalem stroke ’ cannot be viewed as altogether surprising and thus this move can be dubbed as the latest of their hypocritical moves to support Israeli hegemony and highhandedness. Of course, other US allies in the region led by Saudi Arabia will initially make some noises in this direction; but they are not likely to hold US to account for this dangerous move as much geo- political interests are at stake. All the energies of Saudis ‘led’ by the ambitious Prince Mohamed Bin Salman and its’ allies will continue to be engaged elsewhere in confronting Iran, along with their US masters and of course their ‘ally’ Israel. However, it will be interesting to see what Organization of Islamic Cooperation(OIC) led by Turkey will do to confront US with regard to this move.

Lord Folke Bernadotte, the first UN mediator to the Arab-Israeli conflict, stated: “It would be an offence against the principles of elemental justice if these innocent [Palestinian] victims of the conflict were denied the right to return to their homes, while Jewish immigrants flow into Palestine.” In delivering justice , it is easy to see the hypocrisy of the US as the so-called leader of the free-world. Ambassador Chas W. Freeman, in his The Hisham B. Sharabi Memorial Lecture rightly exposed the continued hypocrisy of the US vis-à-vis the resolution of the Palestinian conflict thus:

‘US determination to protect Israel from the political and legal consequences of any and all of its actions has also taken its toll, earning the wrath of the international community and the UN / international organizations as well as earning a dubious reputation in polluting the integrity of international law. The UN Security Council was conceived as the ultimate arbiter and enforcer of an international order in which law could protect the weak and vulnerable from the depredations of the strong. It was however despicable that the U.S. has routinely exercised its veto to prevent the application of well-established principles of international law to Israel, when the international community has been attempting to allow justice to accrue to the Palestinians, the underdogs. Repeated American vetoes on behalf of Israel have reduced the UN and other international fora to impotence on fundamental questions of justice and human dignity. Confidence in these institutions has largely disappeared. Thus, the Israel-Palestine dispute has shaped a world in which both the rule of law and the means by which it might be realized have been deliberately degraded.. The inability of the US to build on the obvious shared interests of Palestinians and Israelis is, at best, damning testimony to the incompetence of those Americans who have made a career of processing peace without ever delivering it’.

Trying to Find a Great Car Insurance Policy? Consider These 4 Tips For Success

A few minutes will get you the best coverage on the market without having to pay too much for it.

Dec-08-2017

(SALEM, Ore.) - Driving a car is something you probably do on a daily basis. Having a comprehensive insurance policy is something you need to view as a priority.

The right car insurance policy will allow you to stay protected while behind the wheel. Neglecting to focus on the Oregon insurance research you need to do to find the right policy will lead to a variety of problems.

If you are involved in an accident, the last thing you want is to not be covered and have to pay for the damage out of your own pocket. Here are some of the things you need to do to find the right car insurance policy with ease.

1. Know What Your State Requires

The first thing you have to find out when trying to get the right car insurance policy is what your state requires. Every state is different regarding the types of policies they require their residents to have.

The only way to find out this type of information is by consulting with a professional in the industry.

An experience insurance agent will be able to give you this information and answer any other questions you may have. Trying to research and find the right insurance policy on your own will usually result in a variety of problems in the long run.

The last thing you want is to get the wrong insurance policy due to a lack of foresight on your behalf.

2. What is the Price of the Deductible?

The next thing you need to think about when trying to get the right insurance policy chosen is the price of the deductible. The higher your deductible, the lower your monthly payments will be. If you want to save money, then you need ask your agent about getting this higher deductible.

While this may save you money, you need to be mindful of the effects it can have long-term. If you are involved in an accident, you will have to come up with a large sum of money before the insurance actually kicks in. Paying a bit more each month for a deductible that is a bit lower may be your best bet. While it will cost you more money in the short term, it will actually benefit you in the long run.

3. Getting Uninsured and Underinsured Coverage is a Good Idea

When talking with your insurance agent, they will probably let you know about uninsured or underinsured coverage. If you are involved in an accident and the other driver is either not insured of has a bare minimum policy in place, it could lead to you having to pay for a lot out of your own pocket.

Rather than having to deal with this headache, it is best to opt for the additional coverage your agent has informed you about. With this coverage, you will not have to worry about being put in a compromising position due to these types of problems. Paying a bit more each month will give you peace of mind knowing that you are covered for a variety of situations.

4. Ask About Discounts

Most drivers are unaware that there are a number of discounts available on the car insurance market. You can get discounts for things like having multiple cars on one policy and even for a good driving record.

The only way you will be able to find out about the discounts you qualify for is by speaking with a reputable and knowledgeable agent. They will be able to look at things like your driving record and let you know what you qualify for. The time and effort spent finding a reputable agent to work with will be more than worth it.

By working with the right agent, you can get the best coverage on the market without having to pay too much for it.

Source: Salem-News.com Special Features Dept.

I study liars. I’ve never seen one like President Trump.

He tells far more lies, and far more cruel ones, than ordinary people do.

According to The Fact Checker's calculation, the president now averages 5 false or misleading claims per day. (Meg Kelly/The Washington Post)

By Bella DePaulo December 8 at 6:00 AM

Bella DePaulo is a social scientist who has published extensively on the psychology of lying. Her most recent book is "Alone: The Badass Psychology of People Who Like Being Alone."

I spent the first two decades of my career as a social scientist studying liars and their lies. I thought I had developed a sense of what to expect from them. Then along came President Trump. His lies are both more frequent and more malicious than ordinary people’s.

In research beginning in the mid-1990s, when I was a professor at the University of Virginia, my colleagues and I asked 77 college students and 70 people from the nearby community to keep diaries of all the lies they told every day for a week. They handed them in to us with no names attached. We calculated participants’ rates of lying and categorized each lie as either self-serving (told to advantage the liar or protect the liar from embarrassment, blame or other undesired outcomes) or kind (told to advantage, flatter or protect someone else).

At The Washington Post, the Fact Checker feature has been tracking every false and misleading claim and flip-flop made by President Trump this year. The inclusion of misleading statements and flip-flops is consistent with the definition of lying my colleagues and I gave to our participants: “A lie occurs any time you intentionally try to mislead someone.” In the case of Trump’s claims, though, it is possible to ascertain only whether they were false or misleading, and not what the president’s intentions were. (And while the subjects of my research self-reported how often they lied, Trump’s falsehoods were tallied by The Post.)

I categorized the most recent 400 lies that The Post had documented through mid-November in the same way my colleagues and I had categorized the lies of the participants in our study.

The college students in our research told an average of two lies a day, and the community members told one. A more recent study of the lies 1,000 U. S. adults told in the previous 24 hours found that people told an average of 1.65 lies per day; the authors noted that 60 percent of the participants said they told no lies at all, while the top 5 percent of liars told nearly half of all the falsehoods in the study.

In Trump’s first 298 days in office, however, he made 1,628 false or misleading claims or flip-flops, by The Post’s tally. That’s about six per day, far higher than the average rate in our studies. And of course, reporters have access to only a subset of Trump’s false statements — the ones he makes publicly — so unless he never stretches the truth in private, his actual rate of lying is almost certainly higher.

That rate has been accelerating. Starting in early October, The Post’s tracking showed that Trump told a remarkable nine lies a day, outpacing even the biggest liars in our research.

But the flood of deceit isn’t the most surprising finding about Trump.

Both the college students and the community members in our study served their own interests with their lies more often than other people’s interests. They told lies to try to advantage themselves in the workplace, the marketplace, their personal relationships and just about every other domain of everyday life. For example, a salesperson told a customer that the jeans she was trying on were not too tight, so she could make the sale. The participants also lied to protect themselves psychologically: One college student told a classmate that he wasn’t worried about his grades, so the classmate wouldn’t think him stupid.

Less often, the participants lied in kind ways, to help other people get what they wanted, look or feel better, or to spare them from embarrassment or blame. For example, a son told his mother he didn’t mind taking her shopping, and a woman took sides with a friend who was divorcing, even though she thought her friend was at fault, too.

About half the lies the participants told were self-serving (46 percent for the college students, 57 percent for the community members), compared with about a quarter that were kind (26 percent for the students, 24 percent for the community members). Other lies did not fit either category; they included, for instance, lies told to entertain or to keep conversations running smoothly.

One category of lies was so small that when we reported the results, we just tucked them into a footnote. Those were cruel lies, told to hurt or disparage others. For example, one person told a co-worker that the boss wanted to see him when he really didn’t, “so he’d look like a fool.” Just 0.8 percent of the lies told by the college students and 2.4 percent of the lies told by the community members were mean-spirited.

My colleagues and I found it easy to code each of our participants’ lies into just one category. This was not the case for Trump. Close to a quarter of his false statements (24 percent) served several purposes simultaneously.

Nearly two-thirds of Trump’s lies (65 percent) were self-serving. Examples included: “They’re big tax cuts — the biggest cuts in the history of our country, actually” and, about the people who came to see him on a presidential visit to Vietnam last month: “They were really lined up in the streets by the tens of thousands.”

Slightly less than 10 percent of Trump’s lies were kind ones, told to advantage, flatter or protect someone else. An example was his statement on Twitter that “it is a ‘miracle’ how fast the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police were able to find the demented shooter and stop him from even more killing!” In the broadest sense, it is possible to interpret every lie as ultimately self-serving, but I tried to stick to how statements appeared on the surface.

[Trump always lashes out when he’s cornered. He told me so years ago.]

Trump told 6.6 times as many self-serving lies as kind ones. That’s a much higher ratio than we found for our study participants, who told about double the number of self-centered lies compared with kind ones.

The most stunning way Trump’s lies differed from our participants’, though, was in their cruelty. An astonishing 50 percent of Trump’s lies were hurtful or disparaging. For example, he proclaimed that John Brennan, James Clapper and James Comey, all career intelligence or law enforcement officials, were “political hacks.” He said that “the Sloppy Michael Moore Show on Broadway was a TOTAL BOMB and was forced to close.” Talking about green card applicants, he insisted that other “countries, they don’t put their finest in the lottery system. They put people probably in many cases that they don’t want.” And he claimed that “Ralph Northam, who is running for Governor of Virginia, is fighting for the violent MS-13 killer gangs & sanctuary cities.”

The Trump lies that could not be coded into just one category were typically told both to belittle others and enhance himself. For example: “Senator Bob Corker ‘begged’ me to endorse him for reelection in Tennessee. I said ‘NO’ and he dropped out (said he could not win without my endorsement).”

The sheer frequency of Trump’s lies appears to be having an effect, and it may not be the one he is going for. A Politico/Morning Consult poll from late October showed that only 35 percent of voters believed that Trump was honest, while 51 percent said he was not honest. (The others said they didn’t know or had no opinion.) Results of a Quinnipiac University poll from November were similar: Thirty-seven percent of voters thought Trump was honest, compared with 58 percent who thought he was not.

[President Trump wants to put on a show. Governing matters less.]

For fewer than 40 percent of American voters to see the president as honest is truly remarkable. Most humans, most of the time, believe other people. That’s our default setting. Usually, we need a reason to disbelieve.

Research on the detection of deception consistently documents this “truth bias.” In the typical study, participants observe people making statements and are asked to indicate, each time, whether they think the person is lying or telling the truth. Measuring whether people believe others should be difficult to do accurately, because simply asking the question disrupts the tendency to assume that other people are telling the truth. It gives participants a reason to wonder. And yet, in our statistical summary of more than 200 studies, Charles F. Bond Jr. and I found that participants still believed other people more often than they should have — 58 percent of the time in studies in which only half of the statements were truthful. People are biased toward believing others, even in studies in which they are told explicitly that only half of the statements they will be judging are truths.

By telling so many lies, and so many that are mean-spirited, Trump is violating some of the most fundamental norms of human social interaction and human decency. Many of the rest of us, in turn, have abandoned a norm of our own — we no longer give Trump the benefit of the doubt that we usually give so readily.

Twitter: @belladepaulo

Donald Trump Is Guilty

U.S. President Donald Trump speaks to members of the media on former national security adviser Michael Flynn's lying to the FBI prior to his Marine One departure from the South Lawn of the White House Dec. 4, in Washington, D.C. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)

By Max Boot- December 5, 2017, 3:58 PM

By now, any sentient being who is capable of rational thought about the U.S. president (a category that admittedly excludes his more fervent fans) must grasp the likelihood that there was a quid pro quo between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin: Russian President Vladimir Putin would help Donald Trump win the U.S. presidential election, and in return Trump would lift sanctions on Russia.
The fact that Trump hasn’t made good on his end of the presumed bargain shouldn’t be any surprise: A long line of business partners and wives have discovered how worthless his commitments are. In fairness, however, Trump’s failure to follow through in this instance wasn’t necessarily because he didn’t want to; it was because the Russian meddling became public and therefore made it politically impossible for Trump to help out his Russian pal even if he had been inclined do so.

Trump’s failure to deliver doesn’t change the probability that this corrupt bargain existed. No other hypothesis can account for the copious links that have emerged between the Trump campaign and the Russians. As CNN notes, “At least 12 Trump associates had contacts with Russians during the campaign or transition. There were at least 19 face-to-face interactions with Russians or Kremlin-linked figures. There were at least 51 communications — meetings, phone calls, email exchanges and more.”

If the Trumpites and the Putinites weren’t communicating about how to subvert Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s campaign, what were they talking about? Their favorite brands of vodka? And if there was an innocent explanation for all of these contacts, why is it that everyone in the Trump campaign, from the president on down, has lied and lied and lied about them? Those are the damning questions that no Trump defender can answer.

Trump personally has issued at least nine blanket denials of any connections to Russia (Trump in February: “I have nothing to do with Russia. To the best of my knowledge no person that I deal with does.”) even as evidence of those connections has accumulated like debt on Trump casino projects. His associates including Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Vice President Mike Pence, crown prince Jared Kushner, and first son Donald Trump Jr. have been equally vociferous — and duplicitous — in their denials.

About the Author

Max Boot is the Jeane J. Kirkpatrick senior fellow for national security studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. His forthcoming book is “The Road Not Taken: Edward Lansdale and the American Tragedy in Vietnam.”

Two Trumpites — former foreign-policy advisor George Papadopoulos and former national security advisor Michael Flynn — have now pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about their Russia ties. After Flynn entered his guilty plea last week, Trump tweeted: “It is a shame because his actions during the transition were lawful. There was nothing to hide!” So if there was nothing to hide, why did Flynn commit a felony? Is he a compulsive liar who can’t stop himself from dissembling even when it would be more advantageous to tell the truth?

The Occam’s razor explanation for why Flynn lied is that the truth was so terrible that it was worth risking jail time to conceal it.

It seems improbable that he was lying merely to hide a violation of the Logan Act, although it is undeniable that the Trump campaign did violate this statute, which prohibits unauthorized persons from negotiating with foreign governments “in relation to any disputes or controversies with the United States.”

Flynn was clearly engaged in negotiations with then-Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak while Barack Obama was still president. He was urging Russia to stop the passage of a United Nations Security Council resolution censuring Israel and, more significantly, not to retaliate for the sanctions that Obama imposed to punish Russia for its interference in the U.S. presidential campaign to benefit Trump. But no one has ever been convicted of a violation of the Logan Act, and Flynn would have to be extraordinarily dense to lie to the FBI to avoid a Logan Act offense. The more likely explanation is that Flynn’s contacts with Kislyak were part of a pattern of covert negotiations between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin. Now there’s an offense that would be worth hiding from the FBI.
The question is no longer whether there was collusion between the Kremlin and the Trump campaign. Clearly there was. That became undeniable this year when we learned that Don Jr.’s reaction to an overture from a Kremlin emissary offering dirt on Clinton was “I love it.” Further evidence has since emerged that both Don Jr. and the head of the campaign’s data analytics firm, Cambridge Analytica, communicated secretly with WikiLeaks, the conduit for emails stolen by Putin’s intelligence services. Trump, for his part, practically advertised the collusion during the campaign by repeatedly praising Putin and defending him from charges of hacking into Democrats’ accounts even while publicly asking him to release Clinton’s emails.

The question is whether Trump’s collusion was limited to the public realm or was there a secret dimension to it? Was he aware of, and did he approve, the Kremlin contacts pursued by his underlings? In other words: What did the president know, and when did he know it?

There is circumstantial evidence that Trump was well aware of what his aides were up to. Flynn was no lone operator: Kushner, identified in the plea document as a “very senior member of the Presidential Transition Team,” was directing his outreach. Also closely involved was Flynn’s deputy, K.T. McFarland, while she was with Trump himself at Mar-a-Lago. And as soon as Putin accepted Flynn’s entreaty not to retaliate for Obama’s sanctions, Trump took to Twitter to praise Putin’s “very smart” move. It beggars belief that Trump was unaware of the Flynn-Kislyak contacts while they were occurring in December 2016 — just as it beggars belief that he was unaware of the meeting that his entire campaign high command had in June 2016 with Kremlin emissary Natalia Veselnitskaya.
The issue is what special counsel Robert Mueller will be able to prove.

The issue is what special counsel Robert Mueller will be able to prove.

Given that Flynn is now a cooperating witness, who must have given up a lot of valuable information to get such a lenient plea deal, the special counsel is most likely assembling a strong case. Like any other prosecutor unraveling a complex criminal conspiracy, he is working his way up the food chain — and with the former national security advisor in his grasp, there aren’t many targets left who are more senior. You’re talking Pence, Sessions, Trump Jr., Kushner — and of course Trump himself.
It’s possible, even probable, that, unlike Flynn, the other officials won’t flip because they will be confident that Trump will pardon them. That’s especially likely in the case of Trump’s son and son-in-law. But this would be a corrupt use of the pardon power that could itself be an article of impeachment against the president — and likely will be if the Democrats win the House next year.

Already the evidence of Trump’s obstruction of justice — the same offense that brought down Richard Nixon — is compelling, which is why a White House lawyer is advancing the novel argument that the president can’t be guilty of obstruction. The president has publicly admitted that he fired FBI Director James Comey because of “this Russia thing.” Following the Flynn plea deal, Trump tweeted: “I had to fire General Flynn because he lied to the Vice President and the FBI.” If Trump knew at the time that Flynn had lied to the FBI, that strengthens the case that he was obstructing justice when he asked Comey to pledge his personal loyalty and to give Flynn a break (“I hope you can let this go”).

Once White House aides figured out that Trump’s tweet had increased his legal jeopardy, they trotted out one of the president’s lawyers, John Dowd, to take the fall for the offending comment. Even if Dowd put the incriminating words in his client’s mouth, this might well be a Freudian slip that reveals the truth that the White House is so anxious to conceal. The same might be said about a recently reported email that McFarland sent on Dec. 29, 2016: “If there is a tit-for-tat escalation Trump will have difficulty improving relations with Russia, which has just thrown U.S.A. election to him,” she wrote. This may or may not have been an admission of guilt on her part (the context is ambiguous) — but it was at least an admission that this was how his election looked and for good reason. That impression has only grown stronger in the past year.

A recent Washington Post article on the Mueller team ended with a revealing vignette: “People familiar with the Mueller team said they convey a sense of calm that is unsettling. ‘These guys are confident, impressive, pretty friendly — joking a little, even,’ one lawyer said. When prosecutors strike that kind of tone, he said, defense lawyers tend to think: ‘Uh oh, my guy is in a heap of trouble.’” Contrast the special counsel’s calmness with the flop-sweat evident on Trump’s Twitter account: He is desperately trying to distract attention from his own worsening legal situation by impugning “Crooked Hillary” and even the FBI. Naturally, he shows no awareness of how unseemly it is to trash a defeated political opponent or the very law enforcement officers he is sworn to lead.

The contrast is telling, and, for Trump’s dwindling band of defenders, it should be deeply discomfiting: the confident prosecutors, building their case piece by piece against the panicked president lashing out at all directions because he is terrified that he will be found guilty of colluding with a hostile foreign power to undermine American democracy.

CBC INVESTIGATES-Cash for passports: Canadians play key role in lucrative business

Multibillion-dollar trade could threaten national security, Canada, U.S. and EU warn

Idyllic beaches such as this one in Antigua and Barbuda are part of pitches made by countries selling passports for cash. But one of the biggest attractions is the visa-free access the passports offer to more than 100 countries. Canada has imposed a visa requirement on passports from Antigua and Barbuda, because of concerns about the country's citizenship by investment program. (Przemyslaw Skibinski/Shutterstock)

By Elizabeth Thompson, CBC News Posted: Dec 07, 2017

Canadians are playing a key role in the lucrative and rapidly growing worldwide business of cash for passports, an industry that Canada, the United States and the European Union have warned could threaten national security, a CBC News investigation reveals.

Industry insiders paint a picture of a multi-million dollar industry that runs in large part through Canada, connecting wealthy individuals from areas like China, Russia and the Middle East to citizenship by investment programs around the world. In return, millions of dollars in commissions are being paid to middlemen — often Canadians.

Is Canadian citizenship for sale?3:47

Estimates by top industry insiders of just how much the citizenship by investment business is worth each year range from $1 billion to $10 billion.

One of the biggest attractions for potential investors is the visa-free access the passports offer to more than 100 countries, including the European Union. Without that access, citizens of some countries like China or Russia have to go through the paperwork of applying for separate visas for each country they want to visit.

Canadians aren't only involved in promoting the programs — they're also designing and running some of them.

Antigua and Barbuda's program was designed by Don Myatt, a former Canadian federal public servant who worked with Henley and Partners, which designs and markets citizenship by investment programs.

Myatt went on to become the program's first manager. Chisanga Chekwe, a former Ontario deputy minister, was its second.

"One runs into Canadians all of the time," says Kristin Surak, a professor at the SOAS University of London who has been studying the industry for the past two years.

Nuri Katz, founder of Apex Capital Partners, at Jolly Harbour Marina in Antigua. Katz says Canada pioneered citizenship by investment. 'Then other governments saw the success of the Canadian program and wanted to enjoy some of the success themselves.' (Apex Capital Partners)

"Really, the (citizenship by investment) industry was created by the Canadian government," said Nuri Katz, a top player in the industry and founder of Apex Capital Partners. "Then other governments saw the success of the Canadian program and wanted to enjoy some of the success themselves."

"I would say Canada is the grandfather of the industry."

The roots of the industry lie in Canada's former federal business immigration program.

Under that program, someone with a net worth of at least $1.6 million who agreed to make an $800,000 investment in Canada could qualify for permanent resident status.

Canada ended its program in 2014

When Canada shut down the program in 2014, it left a fully trained industry adept at selling immigration investment and public servants used to administering immigration investment programs, as well as a pipeline with thousands of clients from around the world who had applied to Canada's program and whose applications had not yet been processed.

Former immigration minister Chris Alexander said he shut down the program because of concerns about fraud, and the money being invested just contributed to government spending.

Those involved in selling citizenship by investment programs around the world maintain that they simply help cash-strapped countries connect with wealthy investors seeking greater mobility or a safe haven for their families.

They admit that there are some "fly by night" operators attracted by the big money involved. They make veiled suggestions of possible corruption on the part of politicians they refuse to name.

However, they maintain that most reputable people in the industry are careful about who they accept as clients and they say most government officials are doing their best to screen out those who could pose a security risk.

Warnings of criminals and terrorists

Government insiders, however, paint a picture of citizenship for sale programs open to abuse by criminals and potential terrorists. They say some countries aren't taking enough care or asking enough questions about where the money came from before handing over passports that come with visa-free access to more than 100 countries.

In June, those concerns led Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's government to impose a visa on everyone entering Canada with a passport from Antigua and Barbuda, "to protect the safety and security of Canadians and uphold Canada's commitment to secure the North American perimeter."

In its announcement, the Canadian government said it had been watching the program since it began in 2013. Chisanga Chekwe told Antigua's Daily Observer in August that he got wind of a plan to impose a visa over concerns about candidate vetting when he headed the program in 2016 and was able to convince Canadian authorities not to do it.

Three years earlier, the Canadian government imposed a similar measure on St. Kitts and Nevis, another Caribbean island nation. Alexander, the former immigration minister, said that decision was triggered when an Iranian, whom he described as an "Iranian state representative," showed up at Toronto's Pearson International Airport with a diplomatic passport from St. Kitts and said he had come to meet then prime minister Stephen Harper.

Canada closed its embassy in Iran in 2012 and expelled Iranian diplomats from Canada. Formal diplomatic relations have not yet resumed.

A European Parliament delegation warns that Malta's citizenship by investment program risks 'importing criminals and money laundering into the whole EU.' (leoks/Shutterstock)

On Dec. 1, a European Parliament delegation led by Ana Gomes raised red flags about Malta's citizenship by investment program, saying there was "great concern" about the sale of Maltese passports to foreigners without disclosing who was buying them. The program, popular with Russians, includes European citizenship and visa-free access to Canada and the U.S.

"This system, with all its opacity, bears the risk of importing criminals and money laundering into the whole EU," Gomes wrote.

The U.S. government has also raised serious concerns about programs offering citizenship for a price. In a written presentation before the U.S Senate armed services committee in March 2015, then General John Kelly listed "cash for passports" programs among the security threats faced by the U.S, saying they "could be exploited by criminals, terrorists or other nefarious actors." Kelly now serves as chief of staff to U.S. President Donald Trump.

In its 2017 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report, the U.S. State Department warned Antigua and Barbuda's Citizenship by Investment Program (CIP) could be susceptible to money laundering and other financial crimes.

"The CIP remains among the most lax in the world," officials wrote."The CIU (Citizenship by Investment Unit) does not maintain adequate autonomy from politicians to prevent political interference in its decisions," they later added.

The report also warned about the program in St. Kitts, saying "prior lax vetting created AML (anti-money laundering) and security vulnerabilities domestically and internationally. … The CIP continues to be afflicted by significant deficiencies in vetting candidates and conducting due diligence on passport and citizenship recipients after they receive citizenship."

Armand Arton, president of Arton Capital, estimates 25,000 people buy a second citizenship each year. (Arton Capital)

Antigua and St. Kitts are just two of countries in the growing business of citizenship for sale.

"There has been an explosion of demand based pretty much on political instability around the world in the last 10 years," said Armand Arton, president of Arton Capital, one of the largest firms matching wealthy investors with second citizenships.

Arton, who grew up in Montreal but now spends much of his time in Dubai, estimates 25,000 people buy a second citizenship each year. He expects that number to double in the next five years as more countries offer programs and the cost of buying citizenship drops.

In most programs, those seeking a second citizenship make an investment in the country, from contributing to a government-run development program to investing in real estate or a local business. After an application is studied and vetted, the investor and their family can become citizens of the country and are issued passports.

The programs can be a goldmine for cash-strapped developing nations, accounting for a substantial portion of their gross domestic product in some cases.

People in the industry say it has also proven to be a goldmine for Canadian immigration consultants, some of whom used to work for the federal government when Canada had its own immigrant investor program.

Canadian addresses dominate in Antigua

In Antigua, for example, 22 per cent of the 127 representatives authorized to market its citizenship by investment program list Canadian addresses — more than any other country.

A review of the program's reports posted online show that 80 per cent of commissions paid by Antigua's program over a year and a half — $2.2 million — went to Montreal-based ClientReferrals.com, a company that connects agents and other professionals with citizenship by investment programs and other investment options.

Corporate filings show one of the principals in Clientreferrals.com is Guy Pilote, a former federal public servant who worked briefly with Don Myatt on Canada's business immigration program. Patrick Peters is listed as president and Lei Li as a director.

'Canada developed this in the '80s and most of the original professionals, like myself, are from Canada.'— Nuri Katz

Like many involved in the industry, Katz began by working with the Canadian program.

"Canada developed this in the '80s and most of the original professionals, like myself, are from Canada," said Katz, who grew up in Montreal. "We've expanded and created a whole new industry but it's really just an expansion of the Canadian experience."

Arton says Canadians are "proud pioneers" of the industry.

The sales pitches feature idyllic beaches and promises of more mobility. Visa-free travel to more than 100 countries including Europe. Protection for your family from wars or civil unrest. Protection for your wealth — a phrase often synonymous with protection from income taxes.

Many of those snapping up second citizenships come from countries like China or Russia, which have few visa-free travel agreements with other countries, or residents of Middle Eastern and North African countries that are in turmoil.

But some observers are concerned that others could be looking for passports with easy access into North America and Europe for more nefarious reasons.

Peter Vincent, former homeland security adviser to U.S. President Barack Obama, warns of 'international criminals and terrorist organizations that are looking to evade the law.' (Submitted by Peter Vincent)

Peter Vincent, who worked as a Homeland Security adviser to former U.S. president Barack Obama, says the U.S. is concerned about a small but potentially "devastating" group exploiting citizenship by immigration programs.

"That is the international criminals and terrorist organizations that are looking to evade the law, prosecutions in their own country or international prosecutions by global tribunals or actually looking to do something horrible and to use a passport that would ordinarily not raise suspicions to travel to commit those crimes or those acts of terrorism."

Naomi Hirst, a campaigner with Global Witness, which works to expose corruption around the world, describes citizenship by investment programs as "a tool in the corruption toolkit."

'Kleptocrats' can be 'brilliantly corrupt'

"One thing that people need when they are kleptocrats and … have been stealing money is kind of a way to get it out of the country. There's actually no point of being brilliantly corrupt if you can't enjoy it."

People like Katz and Arton dismiss the concerns of the Canadian and U.S. governments, saying it would be easier for a would-be terrorist to get into the U.S. on a tourist visa.

Industry officials insist the due diligence is thorough and say they do their best to check the backgrounds of applicants. However, they say that if someone is not yet the subject of an arrest warrant or convicted of a criminal offence, a threat wouldn't necessarily show up in background checks.

Eyebrow-raising citizenships

Despite the checks, there have been several cases of people whose citizenships have raised eyebrows.

Canadian Alexandre Cazes, alleged to be the mastermind behind the dark web site AlphaBay, became an Antiguan citizen in February.

Three Chinese nationals who bought Antiguan citizenship later generated controversy — one over allegations they had lied on their application and two others because they were wanted by Chinese authorities. One of them, Ai Yang, is mentioned in the dossier that informed the Canadian government's decision to impose the visa on Antigua.

Antigua opposition leader Harold Lovell said his United Progressive Party set up the program when it was in office to bolster Antigua's economy. However, he believes there have been serious problems with the way the program has been run by the current government.

For example, Lovell said Antigua tried to market the program in Iraq and invite 4,000 Iraqi families to live in the island nation.

Canada's decision to impose a visa on Antigua "has set the program back considerably," he said, adding that he thinks the program still has potential.

No comment from Antigua's PM

Prime Minister Gaston Browne's office has not responded to repeated requests from CBC News for an interview.

Arton said the problem with some programs, like those in St. Kitts and Antigua, is that they haven't been doing enough to vet candidates.

The concerns have led to initiatives to clean up the image of the industry such as launching industry associations, and to a variety of recommendations.

Arton, for example, would like to see a common program for Caribbean countries and a database of rejected applicants.

Katz believes those who market citizenship by investment programs should be regulated.

Elizabeth Thompson can be reached at elizabeth.thompson@cbc.ca

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