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Tag: Trump

  • Ali, Trump and Clinton: The greatest, the baddest and the saddest (part two)

    Ali, Trump and Clinton: The greatest, the baddest and the saddest (part two)

    He who leads by impulse escorts his people from one calamity to the next

    There is something terribly wrong when the two remaining candidates for the American presidency, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, are the moral inadequacies now before the electorate. Neither one of them seeks anything beyond self-aggrandizement. They would rather expend the greatness of an entire nation in order to satiate their appetites.  Searching for noble principle in either of them is as futile as hunting for a snowflake in an active blast furnace. Basic goodness has melted from them long ago.

    That either of them is poised to become president jeopardizes America more than any threat from ISIL or other foreign enemy. Their media hirelings will proclaim the coming election is a battle for America’s soul, its very future. That is a lie. Should these two be the only choice on the menu, then America has no choice. The battle has been waged and it has been lost. If either Trump or Clinton come to reside in the White House, America would be reduced and the world made a more dangerous place because of it. Decay of the national purpose and institutions of governance would be the order of the day. The place they would take America is not the place those who fought and died for America had in mind when they made their sacrifices.

    Trump would send the nation cascading to Hell, boasting all would be fine because he had enough money to make a deal with the devil to sell ice to all the inhabitants below and build a golf course/water resort for the wealthiest among them. Clinton would whisper all would be fine because an old friend was assigned to tending Hell’s backdoor. That friend owed her a favor and would allow her to secret in air conditioners. Distinct styles and different routes leading to the destination: calamity then ruination.

    The most obvious deficiency is Mr. Trump’s although both contenders are equally dangerous but in different ways and means. This flailing man is a walking sarcophagus of prejudices and biases that refuse to die. His campaign thrives on the fears and hatreds that till the souls of the mean and petty. He has said evil things about almost every minority, all faiths but the one he claims, and about women. If the mouth speaks from the abundance of the heart, then hatred perhaps is one thing Trump loves more than money.

    The man has shown himself to be grossly ignorant of the most basic tenets of both foreign and domestic policy. He claims that his expertise as a businessman well suits him to rebuild the economy. This is his most solid claim to office; yet, if it is anything, it is but spittle and mud. Just because a man is expert at fashioning hubcaps does not mean he knows how to design an engine or even drive the car. Trump’s prowess as a real estate dealmaker does not automatically make him adept in macroeconomic policy. Thus far, much of what he has proffered as economic policy has been effluent.

    Trump is an untalented hurdy-gurdy man too much in love with the ramshackle noises he makes. He hears a symphony. Most reasonable ears hear the sound of falling rocks. He is the public affirmation of the caution that vast wealth can be as much a debilitation as an attribute. If America wants to be great again, an essential task must be the construction of an insuperable wall between Trump and the White House.

    Clinton’s situation is more nuanced but also parlous. Superficially, she appears to be the right answer for the moment. Yet, the only real difference between her and Trump is one of veneer.

    While he is brash and abrasive, she has a polished appearance and speaks with a professional restraint. Yet, her deeds reveal an impetuous streak and a heart as disdainful of democratic practice as Trump’s.

    The danger Trump poses is clear and bulbous. He relishes showing us he is an epic collision in the making. Both believe themselves more than us mere mortals. As such, both would undermine American democracy more than perfect it. Both might bring the world to the cliff’s edge, to leave it hanging on a razor-thin balance.

    Clinton’s words profess compassion. Her long resume pretends competence. Her deeds are the problem. Her accomplishments are more hollow than she would rather they be. This relegates her to argue the mere holding of office is sufficient accomplishment regardless of what occurred while there.

    Because she has been around so long and has held many posts, we have been induced to believe her and believe in her. Yet, to believe in her is to believe she is what she is not. Secretary of State was the last major office she held. She turned the State Department into a place of erroneous policy as in Libya, Syrian and Ukraine. She treated the august department as her personal fiefdom. She proved to be a sly manager who mishandled sensitive public resources as if they were her own and treated the public trust as if nonexistent.

    While Trump is a daylight assault with an axe, Clinton is a nocturnal bacillus whose attack comes subtly from within while our defenses are down and slumbering.

    Hillary Clinton’s run for office has now become a moral dilemma for her allies. One cannot back her yet support good governance and the rule of law at the same time. In clinching the Democratic Party nomination, Clinton has achieved two firsts. She is the first woman to clinch the nomination of one of the two major parties. That a woman has done so is long overdue. That it is Clinton will be recorded as one of America’s bittersweet occurrences. It is to bestow a true honor on one of the most counterfeit personalities of this or any era.

    She is also the first presidential candidate of any major party to enter the election race under criminal investigation for serious breaches of national security. As to which ‘’first’’ will history lay her greater remembrance looms as an open question.

    For those unversed in diplomacy and national security matters, the storm about her use of a private email account and server seems unintelligible or petty. For those knowledgeable about American national security matters, what she did is of utmost seriousness; it was criminal in nature and should disqualify her for office. It reveals a frightening disdain for the rule of law and the intelligence of the people, both warning signs that democratic good governance may not be Clinton’s strong suit. I consider myself in this latter group.

    This is important to all. If she can be so callous regarding the nation and the constitution she professes to love, grave dangers lurk for those nations that win her ire. Remember Clinton publicly joked about how Qaddafi was tortured and killed as if sodomizing then illegally executing an opposing leader is the stuff of jokes instead of the crime that it was. Such dark levity is unbefitting a world leader. In Libya, she pushed the Obama Administration to work in concert with regional terrorists to upend a secular leader who had long ago ceased being a threat to any measurable American interests. She championed this avenue more as a function of pique than of sage policy. After witnessing and joking about the destruction she, Clinton turned her back and left that nation to rot and ruin. If indicative of her purported competence, then we are in palpable trouble for the Libyan caper is a picture book example of foreign policy by guttural impulse.

    Clinton has never encountered a war she did not like yet she has proven to be a truant housekeeper after the damage has been wrought. She has thirsted for every American war in the past twenty years. If she had her way, what happened in Libya would have repeated itself in Syria. Judging by her published emails, she pines for an excuse to war against Iran. Russian and American military might would be in nose-to-nose proximity on the steppes of the Ukraine due to her lack of geopolitical prudence and blind arrogance. A Clinton presidency is like to cart the world closer to a major war of untold consequence.

    Because of the leadership and personality flaws the scandal reveals, perhaps a bit of explanation about the national security and legal implications underlying her email scandal may help the reader understand the gravity of Clinton’s derelictions. For this is not an artificial fuzz over the sloppy handling of inconsequential emails such as what friends exchange between themselves. This concerns the wanton and perhaps willful misuse of emails that contained some the nation’s most closely guarded national security considerations.

    As Secretary of State, her official communications belong to the people and to the United States government, not to her. They were meant to be restricted to encrypted official channels for archival purposes and, more importantly, to safeguard information from foreign snooping. The use of a private server trashed both goals.

    Clinton acted as if her want to control access to her official communications was of greater weight than the true ownership rights and national security concerns of the government that employed her. She acted as if the government was her agent and servant instead of the other way around. In treating sensitive government documents and work product as belonging exclusively to her, she behaved imperiously, like spoiled royalty doing the nation a favor rather than a citizen grateful for the privilege to serve her country.  The lack of character which she has exhibited in the matter is revealed in a quick examination of the claims she has made to dance around her culpability.

    Claim 1: The State Department approved the private setup. This claim has proven bogus. In an official report, the Department claimed it never was asked to approve the private server and if so would not have done so. Clinton lied.

    Claim 2: Her private arrangement was consistent with those of her predecessors. The only other Secretary to use a private email account was Colin Powell. However, he never contemplated a private server and did not exclusively use the private email account for official business. He also had the imprimatur of the Department for his limited use of private email. His rather limited official use of that account came during a completely different era regarding the use of emails for government business. At that time, the Department did not have an unclassified email system as during Clinton’s tenure. Again, she lied.

    Claim 3: The private server and account were done merely for convenience purposes.She did not want to have to constantly flip between a government and a private system. This does not wash.  If she did not want to operate two systems, the wisest route would have been to opt for the government device solely.

    For instance, she was prohibited from using her private device in her office because that office was considered highly classified space. Whenever she wanted to deal with emails during office hours, she had to leave her office suite. Thus, we are left with the incongruous sight of the Secretary walking about the building, followed by security and other officers, as she went to another room or floor to treat emails. This might have happened several times a day. This does not seem convenient. It does not even make sense. A government devise usable in the comfort of her office and at home would have been inherently easier and wiser.

    Her staff even refused Department attempts to give her a government-issued secured device because they wanted to maintain Clinton’s privacy. The position is as indefensible as it is corrupt. She has no privacy right to hide official communications from the very government that employed her to handle those communications.

    Even if she opted for the private route, convenience would have pointed to only the creation of a private account. Setting up a private server in her residence is actually significant extra work. There is only one plausible reason to resort to a private server: to control access to the material, in effect obscuring from government what belonged only to it. On this point, either she lied or her judgment is so obtuse that she should not be trusted again with high public office.

    Claim 4: The server was secure because armed Secret Service men guarded the residence. Having an armed guard standing on the porch might prevent a physical assault against the location. Yet, it is beyond explanation how a gun at the front door deters a computer hacker who can accomplish his theft from the other side of the planet. A gun at the porch was no more a defense to hacking the infernal machine than putting an oar in the car helps a person drive cross a bridge over a wide river.

    Sadly, her personal server was extremely vulnerable. Her network lacked encryption. For a brief period, it lacked even the firewall and other lower-level security features employed by medium and small private businesses that do not handle sensitive documents. Establishing her server in order to avoid government retention of her records seemed to be her sole concern. Her obligation to safeguard important information was treated as a damnable nuisance. Again, she has lied or exposed herself as a supreme dunce.

    Claim 5: No wrong was committed because no document was marked classified. This is as disingenuous as an argument can get. When she became Secretary she underwent training about classified information. She signed a formal oath that classified information could be marked or unmarked and that the mishandling of such is a criminal violation. She went into the job with eyes open. She cannot now profess a dumb blindness.

    What makes information classified are not the markings but the content. Documents are not classified just because they are marked so. They are marked so because they are classified. The classification arises from their substance. The markers just acknowledge what already exists.

    Over 1000 emails she returned have been found to be classified. Refuting her claim that the documents were “retroactively classified,” there is no reasonable explanation that can be offered how such documents would be classified now but were not when initially transmitted. Sensitivity of a message generally moves in inverse relationship to the passage of time. The older the message, the less sensitive. For her to argue the emails were not then classified but now are lacks credence. She knows better than to make this argument but she makes it anyway.

    Claim 6: She is innocent because she bore no criminal intent. Neither fact nor law gives her succor. Under the several applicable criminal statutes, she can be held feloniously liable for the wrongful and willful transmission of classified material or for being grossly negligent in the handling and storage of the same. There is ample intent of willful violations.  Roughly 20 emails have a classification of top secret or higher and over 60 as secret. Unless all of these 20 documents fit into a mitigating narrow exception that grave emergency dictated the use of the unclassified system, then at least two people committed a crime, the sender and serial receiver thereof, the latter being Clinton.

    The sender would have to deliberately transfer information from a secured device to put on Clinton’s unsecured private network. Such a deliberate trespass has almost no defense and is clearly punishable. Clinton would have known this criminal process was being done for her benefit if not at her explicit behest. She condoned the misdeed over the course of her tenure. This is an intentional breach of national security, a felony. The penalty for this is a fine or up to 10 years imprisonment for each violation.

    She also kept these emails on her unsecure private server for several years. By any objective legal measure, this would have to constitute the grossly negligent storage of classified material. To compound this, she placed the material on an unsecure thumb drive which is another violation.  She then gave the server and thumb drive to her attorney who lacked any security clearance. This comprises another set of violations. Worse, it seems that she also used two companies to monitor her server. These companies had no clearance, another set of violations.  One of the companies made back-up copies of the emails and stored them in an unsecured location, two more sets of violations. Keep in mind that every email, ranging from the 20 top secret to the over 1000 classified, is a distinct violation that carries a potential prison term of 10 years. You can figure the potential maximum time behind bars. My calculator does not count that high.

    If America seeks to continue to portray itself before the world as the land of the rule of law, then it must apply the law fairly and equally even against its most favored and privileged citizens. The Clinton national security scandal will test the legal system in an open and blatant way. If she is allowed to walk, penalty free from her misconduct, then you should realize that the American legal system is an object of barter and that justice is considered a rare but not a valuable commodity. Already the major media outlets have been found out. They downplay the scandal because they work for the same big money, vast military establishment that brings us the Clintons. If Clinton is called to answer for what she has done, perhaps just perhaps the United States would have taken an important step in reasserting the destiny its noble documents and republican doctrines claim for the nation. Next week, we explore how all of this may undermine President Obama’s legacy if he fails to exercise judgment.

     

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  • Trump and racist, xenophobic rejection of neoliberal globalization in the West – a hopeful portent? (2)

    Trump and racist, xenophobic rejection of neoliberal globalization in the West – a hopeful portent? (2)

    This was the note on which we ended the column last week: Donald Trump linked his economic nationalism and anti-globalization – America first! – with xenophobia, racism and Islamophobia and this is why his message, his demagoguery has created a mass movement numbered in the tens of millions, especially among the white working class. Is this a portent, a frightening portent for the future? No, I don’t think so, I wrote last week and write again this week. Let me now address this issue in this closing piece in the series.

    First of all, and as a slight qualification of what might appear as an over-confident assertion that Trump and his movement do not represent deeply troubling auguries for the future of our global community, let me admit that there is great cause for alarm in the successes of Trump, first through the Republican Party’s primaries and now in the unfolding see-saw movement of the polls between him and Hillary Clinton. Ordinarily and on any measure of decency, maturity and responsibility, Trump should be in the gutter, in the sinkhole of public and electoral popularity. His vulgarity, his bombastic egomania, his mendacity and his reckless disregard for accountability for his past and present misdeeds are unmatched in American electoral politics in the last hundred years. Indeed, in January this year, Trump went so far as to declare that if he went down the streets of New York City and shot dead the first person he met, the masses would still stick with him! That such an odious person and a politician with the mind and the morality of a teenager with a severe case of arrested emotional and ethical development is riding so high in electoral popularity in the richest and most powerful country in the world should be worrisome for all of us, especially as the fundamental basis of his appeal is a total rejection of neoliberal globalization and its discontents.

    Trump and his mass movement are troubling also because they present us all with an all too familiar reminder of how all human beings typically behave when confronted with severe economic hardship, this being the tendency to displace our anger, resentment and bitterness on the strangers, the collective “other” among us. Remember the “Ghana Must Go” debacle to African unity and solidarity in 1983 when an order was given by the government of Shehu Shagari for the expulsion of about two millions “aliens” from Nigeria within a period of two weeks? After the economic boom of the 197s, oil prices had slumped and the economy had sharply contracted. Moreover, elections were approaching and Shagari and the NPN found it expedient to displace the anger and resentment of the masses on”foreigners”, especially the Ghanaians who numbered a solid one million among the two million ordered expelled. I remember it distinctly now with a rueful anger that has never gone away: Shagari’s expulsion of the Ghanaians and other West African nationals was very popular in our country, especially in Lagos. And this is not in any way mitigated by the fact that about two decades before “Ghana Must Go”, the government of Ghana had in 1969 itself expelled hundreds of thousands of “foreigners”, most of them Nigerians, from Ghana.  And then of course, there is post-apartheid South Africa in which we have seen wave after wave of murderous, xenophobic violence against “foreigners” in the wake of the rising tide of economic and social insecurity attendant on the failure of the government and the ruling party, the ANC, to effect deep and meaningful redistribution of wealth after the end of apartheid. Thus, the millions trooping to the xenophobic trumpet of Trump indeed have justificatory examples and similarities to point to in our continent and other parts of the world.

    All these caveats notwithstanding, I still insist that Trump and his mass movement, though deeply troubling in the ways in which they connect with our human tendency to scapegoat “others” in periods of deep insecurity, do not present us with a portent for both the immediate and long-range future ahead of us. Trump may have won the Republican primaries, but he has not captured the American presidency. And I for one will go out on a limb now to declare that he is unlikely to win in November. In making this seemingly unguarded “prediction”, I hasten to declare that it is not so much the issue of winning or losing in the contest for the American presidency that concerns me as what this would mean for the forces of anti-neoliberalism and anti-globalization in our country, our continent and the world. Let me express what I have in mind here very clearly and unambiguously: even if he were to win in November, Trump will not in any sincere and meaningful way carry out the most important of his anti-globalization campaign promises. This is partly because of his fundamental insincerity and    inconsistency. But there is also the far more important fact that Trump – and for that matter any American president – would need the legislative approval of the U.S. Congress to push through the sort of deep and wide departure from free-trade capitalist globalization that he is promising his supporters. Congress, as it is presently constituted, will not give legislative support to such a project. In other words, and to bring the particular speculations I am making here to their logical conclusion, in office as president, neither Trump nor Clinton would embark on a serious project of doing away with free-trade, neoliberal capitalism. And on this point, we need to briefly consider Bernie Sanders who, as a matter of fact, has given deep thought to how to take on the U.S. Congress in dealing with neoliberal globalization and its discontents in America in particular and more generally, in the world. What do I have in mind in making this observation?

    It is one of the great regrets of the present cycle of American presidential elections that both the electoral platform and the message of Sanders have been grossly underreported at home in the U.S. itself and around the world. Other than the significant fact that he attracted millions of young people and previously unregistered Independents who had never participated in elections, little has been reported or discussed on his absolute insistence on the limits to electoral politics in America and what to do to circumvent and get beyond those limits. Specifically, Sanders has addressed the issue of the certainty of Congressional opposition to his project of dismantling neoliberalism in favor of an economic nationalism that mostly favors working people and the shrinking middle class. With a courage and a frankness that are rare in American electoral politics – indeed in electoral politics all over the world – Sanders again and again told his supporters that many of the things he was promising would not get Congressional approval, and that the only way they could be overcome resistance and blockage from the present political order was through a permanent political revolution in which a permanent siege on Congress in particular and all political appointees would put an end to business as usual. In other words, Sanders has repeatedly told his supporters, “don’t expect that after you elect me into office you can go home and leave everything to me and my cabinet; no, you will not go home, you will remain permanently mobilized to make sure that things will not go back to business as usual”.

    I started this series with the idea of portents in the current American presidential electoral campaigns and return to that topic in my concluding observations and reflections. As we now know, thanks to the hacking of the emails of the Democratic National Committee, Sanders was defeated by Clinton in part because she is the candidate preferred by the Establishment. In fairness though, diehard Sanders partisans must admit that Clinton did win a resounding majority and plurality over Sanders and that, in the words of Chinua Achebe, it is not morning yet on creation day for the sort of left-wing anti-neoliberalism of their hero, Bernie Sanders. If Sanders had defeated Clinton in the primaries, and if he had then gone to trounce Trump in the general elections, that would have been a portent of great significance to all of us across the world for it would have indicated that it is not necessary to link anti-globalization with xenophobia and racismin order to win elections and change the course of global affairs away from a seemingly entrenched and immoveable neoliberalism. As things stand now, Clinton has taken on board some of the items on the Sanders electoral platform. This too has a portent specific to it: depending on how sincere she proves to be if she wins the elections in November, we may see and get some reforms to neoliberalism that we have not seen so far in any Western country, least of all in America itself, the heartland, the center of gravity of neoliberal globalization and its enforcement in our world through both arms and diplomacy, aggression and enticement, the stick and the carrot.

    Our last words, our concluding thoughts must go Trump and the great threat that his coupling of economic nationalism with xenophobia and racism poses to all of us around the globe. In insisting that the future does not belong to Trump and the mass movement that he has inspired and set in motion, I am, I admit, expressing the wish, the hope that he loses and loses mightily in November. These are very chaotic, very perilous times in our world and the last thing we need now is a demagogue, a charlatan, a conman and a rabid misogynist at the helm of affairs in the most powerful nation in the world. But I am also fairly convinced that Trump will not win, that the Western world is not about to descent into a new dark age into to which it will, undoubtedly, pull all of us in our planetary home. If the best we can hope for and get now is Clinton-Sanders, so be it. Let it not be Trump, alone, his supporters fooled and in their disappointment digging deeper into the morass of the worst fears and anxieties that plague us when turn on the “enemies” among and within us.

     

    Biodun Jeyifo                                                                                                                         bjeyifo@fas.harvard.edu

  • Turkey, Trump, Nigeria—And the global jungle of democracy

    The  recent   failed  coup in  Turkey has  shown  vividly  that  the  world’s  democracies  are  not safe  or  immune  from military  coups and take overs which  were the norm in the world in  the sixties  and  seventies. Just  as the emergence  of  Donald  Trump  as the presidential candidate  of  the Republican  candidate has  shown  that  democracy in even  the most  sophisticated  democracies  in  the world can degenerate and  decay in  terms  of the  language of political  participation and  the rhetoric  of the  quest  for  power. This  is brutally and glaringly true in  spite  of  the  fact  that  Hillary Clinton made  history this week as the first woman to  be nominated  to contest for  the presidency of the US on the platform  of the Democratic  Party.

    Both scenarios  in  Turkey  and  the US  provide  the food  for thought today  and  the approach  I have  adopted  to  illustrate  them  is both historical  and  comparative.  I  will  also  look  at  the situation  in  Nigeria   where  past   arms  purchases  have   opened  a canker worms  of  corruption  and  even  the present   army  chief  is  under  the searchlight  in  the   public    domain   for  the purchases  of  houses  in  Dubai   while   still   a serving  public  official.   It   is  my intention  to  show   through  these  issues  that  democracy  is under  stress  globally  and has  become a jungle  of  sorts  given the  challenge of  militant  Islam   or  Daesh as well  as the dwindling  available   resources  of  even  the richest  economies  and democracies  to  provide  the necessities  of  life  that their  citizens  have come to take for granted and  which  immigrants  from  hostile  places  have come largely  uninvited  to share  and consume.

    Turkey  provides  a unique  example  after  my  heart  of  a democracy  that  works when  the leadership  is strong  and bold  and the economy is strong and buoyant  and the people have  confidence  in their  government.  Indeed  that was  the  reason the coup  failed  because  the Turks  took  to  the streets, faced tanks and dragged   tank  drivers  and  soldiers  out  of their war  tanks  and stripped  them  of  their  uniforms.  Indeed   the  streets  were  littered  with discarded uniforms  and  boots of  soldiers who fled  nakedly  and in borrowed  robes  to  escape  the anger  and indignation  of  a  democratically  charged  and  alert  electorate. That  to  me is  the face of  modern  democracy.  When  people are  motivated  to secure  their  democracy  with their  lives  in the face of  violence  that seeks  to trample  or  destroy it, right  before  their eyes.

    Yet  Turkey  has  a history  of  success  of  military  coups  that  the Turks  have come  to  expect as a  way  of  life  and political  culture   until  the  present President  Recep  Tayyip  Erdogan  came to  power. Erdogan,   in  our    time has become a case  study  on  how  to  tame  military  intervention  in  politics  and  has my  admiration  in  this  regard in  the way  he  handled  the  last  coup.  Even  though  he  seems  to  me  to   have overreached himself  by  arresting  over  6000 people  on the coup  thereby   virtually  turning his  nation  into  a  huge  garrison  of  sorts,  a situation   which  places enormous strain on  Turkey’s   security   resources  and     apparatus  at   a time when  the ISIS/  Daesh   threat  is ever  present  and  dangerous.

    Erdogan’s  survival  strength  did  not   however  come  out  of a  vacuum. He  and  his party  have  won  three elections back  to  back  in  Turkey  whose secularity  is guaranteed  by  the  army  according  to  the constitution  handed  down  by  Kemal  Ataturk  who established  modern  Turkey  from  the rumps of the collapsed  Ottoman  Empire  which   bestrode  Europe  at  the time  and reached  as  far  Austria   in  Europe   before  its  collapse.  Erdogan  may  not  be a  Sultan  of  the Ottoman  Empire  but  he  has dreams of  their  splendor  which  he has realized  by  building a 1000  room  Presidential  Palace  in  Istanbul, Turkey’s  capital  and  in  the way  he has  successfully  changed the constitution  of  Turkey  recently  to  a presidency  with himself  as the  first  president.  Obviously  Erdogan  is sitting tight  in  Turkey  and has  turned  the tables  on the military  which  did not reckon  with  the populism  and charisma  he has  acquired  in three  election  victories  as well  as his   bravery  and boldness  to stand up  and protect   his well  earned    democratic  political  stature  and popularity. He  has    definitely   taught  the generals in Turkey   a  huge   lesson   that even in  the   rough   and  tumble  of   democracy, might  is not  always  right.

    In Nigeria  the present President  Muhammadu  Buhari  has been  bold  in his anti-corruption  campaign  which  he   has  embarked  on  single  mindedly  in  spite   of  diversionary  tactics of  even  those  with  whom  constitutionally  he  shares  power.  But  he    is  still  admired  for  his anti – corruption  drive    even  though  the  economy  is performing dismally  with  a falling currency  against  the  dollar  and dwindling oil  resources occasioned by  the   blow  up   of  pipelines by  militants in  the oil  rich  delta area.  But  Buhari’s  rise  to  power  is another romantic  political  story   similar  to that of  Erdogan  in Turkey  but  in the opposite  direction in terms  of ascendancy  and  history   Buhari was  military  leader  ousted  from office  by  his  soldiers  in a  military  coup 31  years   ago. He  then  went into  political oblivion only  to  surface as  a politician  who  contested  presidential  elections and lost  serially.  Until  2015  when  his party   the   APC, marshaled  by a former  governor  of  the  nation’s  commercial  capital  won  a landslide  victory  in  the 2015  `presidential  election. Buhari  who  had been  suspicious all along  on  why  the  Boko  Haram was winning  the war  against  a vastly  superior  Nigerian  army,  ordered  a probe  of  arms  purchases   and that  threw  up  a frightening revelation. Past  arms funds  had  been  diverted  to other  purposes   other  than  the Boko Haram War  and  the  presidential  campaign  of  the ruling  PDP  had   been  largely  funded from  funds  meant  for  arms purchase  to  fight  and  defeat  Boko  Haram.

    For  a military  man  turned  politician  like  Buhari, the  die  was  cast  as he said  at  his inaugural  address  even  though  as at  then,   he did not  know  the level  of stench in the  Augean Stable  handed   over   to  him  by  his predecessor. Only  a man  with  Buhari’s  antecedents  can take on  the  military in  Nigeria  given  the  level  of  corruption on  diversion  of arms  purchase  funds  by  past military  chiefs  and the present clamour   for  the  probe of  the  present army  chief  who  has been quite  successful  though,   on  ousting the menace  of  Boko  Haram  from  the battle   fronts  and driving them into  the desperate  survival and lethal  retreat    tactic  of  using small  girls  as  suicide  bombers.

    Like  Erdogan, Buhari  is bold,  has charisma and  Nigerians  trust  him because of  his integrity. But  the  Achilles   heels   of  his administration  are  the weak  economy,  the huge  rise in petrol prices  he brought  on  board as well  as  lop  sidedness  of  government  appointments  in  favour of the North in  a nation in which  the federal  character  is  in  the constitution to prevent  such discrimination. It  is such   lapses  that  his  administration  need  to  focus on urgently, as  these  are  issues  that  those caught  red  handed in looting the treasury   especially  in  the military  can exploit  to  cause  confusion.  Fortunately  the  image of  the  Nigerian  military  is in  tatters as at  now that  revelations on  arms  funds  diversion  are  in  the public domain   and  the situation  of a military coup  is just  unthinkable  for  a military  in  utter disgrace  for using  money  meant   for war   for  personal purposes  not  only  now,  but in the past. That  is  the jungle  our  own  democracy  is in right  now and we depend on commitment  and charisma  of  Buhari  to  get us  out  of  the woods  God  willing.

    With  regard  to the US,  the  call  by  the Republicans through their candidate Donald  Trump  that his  opponent in the race  Hillary  Clinton  should  be  jailed is  both  chilling  and  frightening  and  shows  that  the division  in the  US political system is  deeper  than  envisaged. But   democracy  is a competition  for  power  and it  has its rules,  ethics and  protocols. It  is like sports  in  which  the  loser  must  congratulate  the  winner  and life  goes  on. It  is not  a matter of  life  and death.  Hillary  Clinton  may  have  had  her  faults  and could  even  have  been  extremely careless on  her  handling  of  her  mails as Secretary  of   State   as  the  FBI  boss,  said    but  she  is  certainly  not  a criminal.

    Nevertheless   the   historic  emergence  of  Hillary  Clinton  as the presidential  candidate  of  the  Democratic  Party  this week  is  most  welcome  more  so  as  the language of  her backers  at the Convention has been civil  and  tolerant even though  everything hinges on  Hillary  contesting on the legacy  of the Obama Administration.  This  is  a  legacy    whose  failures  especially on  foreign policy, the economy  and security are  fuelling the  Trump  campaign  and  has sustained  it  so  far to  the chagrin  of those  Americans  yearning  for  some  decent language  and  politics  in  this  unique  2016 presidential  campaign  and  elections.

    Undoubtedly    and  decidedly,    Donald  Trump  has  created  a  vengeful  presidential  campaign   for  the US   presidential  election  of  2016  and the  American  political  system  is  facing  its stiffest  test in terms  of stability, security   and  tolerance  for  decades.  How  it survives in  the face of such do  or  die  rhetoric with  the emergence  of  a man like  Donald  Trump  who could  be its  next  president  if  he wins, will be    most  interesting to  watch,  behold   and     even    analyse,   as it  unfolds   till  the elections in  November.  Why  or  how  the  divided  Americans     of  today,   steeped  in democracy  for  ages as they   are,   have not themselves seen the looming political  chaos   and  danger   awaiting them  in the emergence  of  Donald  Trump in this  presidential  campaign  certainly  beats  my  imagination.  The  fact  that  even Obama  concedes  that  a  Trump  victory can  only  be averted by  the Democrats by fighting  desperately    for their  political  life  in  this campaign   shows  clearly  that  the die  is  cast  for  the  sanity of  American  politics  between  now  and the presidential   elections in  November 2016.

    Once  again  long  live  the  Federal  Republic  of  Nigeria.

  • Trump’s Republican convention: Anomaly or realignment

    Trump’s Republican convention: Anomaly or realignment

    Trump’s Republican convention: Anomaly or realignment

    The Republican Convention is over. As the curtain descended on the event, Donald Trump and his supporters wereflush with pride at what they had accomplished. Even those who oppose the man must concede he had engineered one of the most improbable feats in American political history. A political novice but one with vast media savvy and a keen sense nose of the popular mode, Trump just completed a hostile takeover of one of America’s major political parties.

    That he did so within the space of a year and against the entire power structure of the party as well as against the party’s vociferous conservative wing makes his feat more astounding. That he is more mountebank than majestic, more showman than statesman renders his achievement disappointing. That his mind often sidetracks into an undisciplined procession of bigoted fears and presumptions makes his ascendancy a matter of danger to the nation he seeks to lead and to all that the nation might seek to do and touch under his stewardship.

    Visually, the convention looked much like Republican conventions that came before. Conventioneers were predominantly middle-aged White conservatives. In a feint toward diversity, organizers tried to sprinkle the roster of convention speakers with minorities. It was a Potemkin display. The simple fact was that minorities were rarities on the convention floor.  Signaling Trump’s abysmal support among Blacks and his lack of deep concern about it, this session had fewer Black delegates than the last two Republican gatherings. Showcasing a few Black speakers was token symbolism engineered by the brash salesman himself.

    It was the tenor of the convention that proved different from recent sessions. It was more rough-hewn than even those conventions where the Republicans were unitedin the singular cause of defeating a certain black man from becoming president, then trying tohalt his reelection. The harsher tonality was not because they are more incensed at Hillary Clinton than they were at Barack Obama.

    The animus toward Obama was so visceral that it consumed whatever rationality they had. It came from the depths of disbelief that their racist concept of the world was being undone in such inglorious and open detail. There dislike for Clinton is acute but nowhere near that reserved for Obama. They disdain Clinton like one does a bad neighbor. The hate they directed towardObama is of the special type reserved for a killer of a loved one or a wicked servant who had the nerve to abscond with the family treasures.

    The reason for the change in tone is that Trump succeeded in uprooting the more sophisticated party establishment, replacing them with the working-class Whites who rallied to his support from the beginning of his unlikely trek to the nomination. Demonstrating this break with the establishment, four of the last five Republican presidential candidates, including the two Presidents Bush, refused to attend Trump’s coronation.

    They remain insulted he has stolen their beloved party from under their noses. Chased from the palace, these patricians now languish in the unaccustomed position of hiding in the underbrush, having to engage in heretofore ineffective sniping and guerilla warfare against the usurper.  They have pledged not to support him. As much as they dislike Clinton, they dislike losing their party to this insulting pretender even more. They will not help him in any manner. Many of them will privately support Clinton, for she is closer to traditional Republican positions on trade policy and foreign policy than is Trump.

    The party is fractured into three parts. Trump is the champion of a divided rump of a party. The extreme conservativeelement bears an antagonism equal to that of the establishment. Abrasive Texas Senator Ted Cruz was booed when attendants realized his long speech at the convention would fail to include even a short, perfunctory endorsement of Trump. Cruz thought he had been cheated of a nomination he was destined to hold. His father and other right- wing extremist preachers had specially anointed him, prophesizing he would be the next American president.

    Cruz stood at the podium casting himself as the conscience of the party and as the leader of the conservative wing. His passive revolt and implicit rebuke of Trump did not take. Even the Texas delegation erupted against him. The clumsy attempt sparked a raucous denunciation of Cruz; it actually strengthened Trump’s hand by making him appear magnanimous in allowing Cruz to speak at the convention. Cruz, on the other hand, seemed petulant and small-minded. Trump may have lured the self-absorbed Cruz into a self-ambush of the Texan’s own making. Trump knew Cruz would not endorse him. In all likelihood, he slyly turned that against Cruz by instructing loyal delegates to shout down Cruz at the operative moment.  As Cruz as discovered once again, Trump’s foes underestimate at their own peril his cunning and ability in tactical political infighting.

    Trump further undermined both rival camps by selecting Indiana Governor Mike Pence as his running mate. Pence is as conservative as Cruz on most issues but does not carry the same negative personal baggage as Cruz, the Texas diva. Thus, Pence is well respected by the establishment as well. While speaking little to the general electorate, this pick will blunt some of the intramural animus against Trump.

    In his speech, Trump painted a picture of America in crisis at home and abroad due to weak leadership. His speech came against the backdrop of tragic racially-influenced shootings between police and Black men as well as an accelerating pace of lethal terrorist mayhem abroad. Reminiscent of Republican nominees going back forty years to Richard Nixon, he labelled himself the “law and order” candidate who backed the police be they right or wrong. That phrase — law and order — has been the racist substitute since shouting epithets such as “nigger” were no longer deemed acceptable politics. The phrase flashes the same crude message as it did four decades ago. Trump cared little for the historic racial connotations of what he said. He was speaking to White America and the few token minorities too confused to know better or too mercenary to care that they were endorsing a worldview inimical to those most like them. They had already purchased a ticket on the Trump ship; they intend to ride it for all it is worth and as long as the journey lasts.

    At first, Trump’s strategy would seem counterproductive. Alienating minorities seems to limit his potential support base. However, it may have expanded that base. Trump perhaps correctly believes trying to get minorities to his side on large numbers is a lost cause. Appealing to them will give him no more appreciable returns with that voting segment than had he alienated them. However, in alienating them, he just might succeed in getting racist, conservative working class Whites whose economic status has been declining for years and who had checked out of political participation. His calculation has proven adept regarding the numerical dynamics of the Republican Party. We will soon discover if his strategy holds true with the general electorate as well.

    Yet, much of this is vintage Republicanism. Where Trump sealed the compact with this working class aspect of the electorate is his break with Republican traditionalism on economic and foreign policy. The party has always championed free trade. Not Trump. His railing against the trade agreements such as NAFTA and the proposed TTP echoed the sentiments of the American working class. They have seen manufacturing and other well-paying jobs disappear partially because of these agreements. Trump has pledged to abrogate such treaties and bring manufacturing and industrial jobs back to America in the process. In this, Trump has positioned himself as more pro-labor and a better advocate for the economic welfare of the blue-collar worker than his Democratic Party counterpart. Clinton is saddled with her husband’s authorship of NAFTA and her ambivalent waffling on TTP. Trump hopes to chisel at what has usually been a part of the Democrats’ support based by bringing more White, mostly male, workers to his side. Thus far, he is making headway. Among White male voters, he leads Clinton by 31 percent.

    Trump also has abandoned Republican foreign policy tenets. Although his positionsare vague and constantly shifting, he is not sold on the utility of NATO and seeks a more conciliatory policy toward Russia. Unlike Clinton, he wants to work with Russia to resolve the Syrian imbroglio. Trump has managed to appear move dovish on key foreign policy points and on the use of force in the projection of American interests than have Clinton and the traditional Republican establishment. Clinton is more in harmony with Republican national security traditionalism than is Trump. Trump hits hardest in his absolute loyalty to the war on terror as opposed to the neocon primacy of focusing on rival governments and states, the latter view shared by Clinton and the Republican establishment.

    Overall, Trump’s foreign policy is an inconsistent hash of tough-guy bluster mixed with an unexpected restraint in the use of force redolent of balance of power thinking that used to animate American foreign policy thinking. However, on foreign policy, he understands average Americans are more afraid of an ISIS attack in their hometown than of a Russian invasion of New York, let alone distant Estonia.

    Americans by and large are perplexed that for all the expenditure on wars abroad, they have been made to feel under siege by terrorism. More and more Americans are disenchanted with establishment foreign policy that seems to be itching to fighting Russia when that nation appears no threat. Meanwhile, the establishment seems not to act as seriously as they should against the terrorist threat.  Not having been part of the foreign policy establishment, Trump has not been blinded by its presumptions because he did not help write them nor even had to ingest them as articles of faith.  He was free to notice the public is war weary and terror afraid.

    Regarding trade policy and national security, traditional political alignments appear to be faltering.  The views of Trump and the most leftward progressive wing of the Democratic Party, represented by Bernie Sanders, ironically converge on these issues.

    What has taken place is a realization on both ends of the political spectrum that the establishment elite, compromised of elements of both parties, has constructed a policy structure that visibly disadvantages the average person in favor of the Financialized elite. Money Power and allied nonfinancial mega-corporations have come to control too much.  From the left and right, people are rebelling against the fear that a new financialized aristocracy is being formed on their very backs. They fear democracy is slowly eroding in substance; burdened by their stagnant wages and diminishing lifestyle, soon they will fall on the wrong end of a system of debt peonage rendering most of them no better off than the modern equivalent of sharecroppers.

    Trump succeeded in leading this rebelling within his party because its establishment had been weakened by the Tea Party and by being out of power for 8 years. Sanders failed because the Democratic establishment remained strong. Sanders’ movement is fact is the Democratic version of the Tea Party insurgency. He will likely suffer the same fate; his movement will gradually be consumed and diffused by the party hierarchy.

    The nation’s establishment has to be sweating a bit. If we count those on the left who follow Sanders and those on the right who adhere to Trump on economic issues, the majority of Americans favor sweeping change in economic policy that would undermine the financialization of the economy the establishment has nurtured.  Differences over social policy and cultural issues such a racism, abortion, gay marriage and gun control are what prevent the populist left and right from joining league to fight for economic justice and equality.

    With Clinton as its champion, the establishment will try to focus this election on these and other social issues. They will also go to any length to depict Trump as a mad buffoon. Whenever he embarks on one of his frequent tirades or protracted asides he shall fed this narrative about him.

    At the moment, Trump is at rough parity with Clinton for the election. If the vote were held today, it would be close. He would have roughly 45 percent chance of winning. That is disturbing. Some of this is due to his appeal to the White population. Some of this is due to Clinton’s flaws. Trump and Clinton are the most disliked candidates their respective parties have even fielded. This indicates that may people may not vote out of disgust at both candidates on offer. The lower the overall turnout, the better become Trump’s chances.

    Because of the dislike for Trump and Clinton, the Libertarian and Green candidates are attracting voters in possibly decisive numbers. The Libertarian logs a following above 10 percent, most of whom would normally vote Republican. The Green candidate commands 5 percent at the moment. Most of these people would vote Democratic if they vote at all.The race might hinge on whether voters who now back one of these minor candidates in protect will return to their traditional folds and in how what numbers.

    While Clinton should win this election, it may not be as easy as many think. There are sizeable variables.Along the path home, there also exist many a stoneon which she might trip.

    What we can safely say at this moment is that Trump has succeeded in turning the party into a vehicle for right-wing populist expression, at least for this election cycle. Such outbursts have occurred periodically in American history dating back to Andrew Jackson and the ascendance of the Democratic Party in 1828. These eruptions are usually short-lived; the erstwhile rebels quickly assimilate into the mainstream.

    If Trump loses the election, this experiment will surely end. If somehow he wins, it may begin to crack the national establishment in an unprecedented, fatal way. If that was to the only thing he cracked, it would do a service to American and humanity. The trouble with Trump is that he personifies uncertainty and ignorance. (He has forever destroyed the myth that wealthy people are endowed with greater wisdom than the more modest segments of the population.)

    Too many of his views seem to emanate from an outhouse than from a vibrant intellect. Many of his domestic policies border on the outrageous. His ability to check his combative nature seems too weak to place at his disposal such a quanta of destructive power that the president commands. He will break far too much and repair far too little if allowed to occupy the White house. To keep America and the rest of the world safe from his mercurial antics it would be condign to build a wall around Trump.

    But that would leave us to the equally steep danger of Clinton who seems to be itching for an imprudent showdown with Russia. If she remains true to her foreign policy constructs, the world angles closer to awful conflagration.We have entered a somber period where greater conflict appears to be descending as if a dark cloud signaling a coming typhoon.

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  • Turkey, Trump, Nigeria—And the global jungle of democracy

    The  recent   failed  coup in  Turkey has  shown  vividly  that  the  world’s  democracies  are  not safe  or  immune from military  coups and take overs which  were the norm in the world in  the sixties  and  seventies. Just  as the emergence  of  Donald Trump  as the presidential candidate  of  the Republican  candidate has  shown  that  democracy in even  the most  sophisticated  democracies  in  the world can degenerate and  decay in  terms  of the language of political  participation and  the rhetoric  of the  quest  for  power.

     Both    scenarios  in  Turkey  and  the US  provide  the food  for thought today  and  the approach  I have  adopted  to  illustrate  them  is both historical  and  comparative.  I  will  also  look  at  the situation  in  Nigeria   where  past   arms  purchases  have opened  a canker worms  of  corruption  and  even  the present   army chief  is  under  the searchlight   for  the purchases  of  houses  in  Dubai in  the public  domain. It   is  my intention  to  show  through  them  that  democracy  is under  stress  globally  and has  become a jungle  of  sorts . Given the  challenge of  militant  Islam as well  as the dwindling  resources  of  even  the richest  economies  and democracies  to  provide  the necessities  of  life  that their  citizens  have come to take for granted.

    Turkey  provides  a unique  example  after  my  heart  of  a democracy  that  works when  the leadership  is strong  and bold  and the economy is strong and buoyant  and the people have  confidence  in their  government.  Indeed  that was  the  reason the coup  failed  because  the Turks  took  to  the streets, faced tanks and dragged   tank  drivers  out  of their war  tanks  and stripped  them  of  their  uniforms.  Indeed the  streets  were  littered  with discarded uniforms  and  boots of  soldiers who fled  nakedly  and in borrowed  robes  to  escape  the anger  and indignation  of  a  democratically  charged  and  alert  electorate. That  to  me is  the face of  modern  democracy,  when  people are  motivated  to secure  their  democracy  with their  lives  in the face of  violence  that seeks  to trample  or  destroy it right  before  their eyes.

    Yet Turkey  has  a history  of success  of  military  coups  that Turks  have come  to  expect as a  way of  life  and political  culture until  the  present President  Yaccip  Erdogan  came to  power. Erdogan  has become a case  study  on  how  to  tame  military  intervention  in  politics  and  has my  admiration  in  this  regard in  the way  he  handled  the  last  coup  this week. Even  though  he  seems  to  me  to   have overreached himself  by  arresting  over  6000 people  on the coup  thereby virtually  turning his  nation  into  a  huge  garrison  of  sorts  and which  places enormous price on  Turkey’s  resources at  a time when  the ISIS  threat  is ever  present.

    Erdogan’s  survival  strength  did  not come  out  of a  vacuum.  He  and  his party  have  won  three elections back  to  back  in  Turkey  whose secularity  is guaranteed  by  the  army  according  to  the constitution  handed  down  by Kemal  Ataturk  who established  modern  Turkey  from  the rumps of the collapsed  Ottoman  Empire  which   bestrode  Europe  at  the time  and reached  as  far Austria  before  its  collapse. Erdogan  may  not  be a  Sultan  of  the Ottoman  Empire  but  he  has dreams of  their  splendor which he has realized by building a 1000  room  Presidential  Palace  in  Istanbul, Turkey’s  capital   and   in  the way  he has  successfully  changed the constitution  of  Turkey  recently  to  a presidency  with himself  as the  first  president.  Obviously  Erdogan  is sitting tight  in  Turkey  and has  turned  the tables  on the military  which  did not reckon  with  the populism  and charisma  he has  acquired  in three  election  victories  as well  as his   bravery  and boldness  to stand up  and protect his well  earned  political  stature  and popularity. He  has    definitely   taught  the generals in Turkey a  huge  lesson   that even in  the   rough   and  tumble      of   democracy, might  is not  always  right .

    In Nigeria  the present President  Muhammadu  Buhari  has been  bold  in his anti  corruption  campaign  which he   has  embarked  on  single  mindedly  in  spite   of  diversionary  tactics of  even  those  with  whom  constitutionally  he  shares  power.   But  he  still  admired  for  his anti  corruption  drive    even  though  the  economy  is performing dismally  with  a falling currency  against  the  dollar  and dwindling oil  resources occasioned by militants in  the oil  rich  delta area.  But  Buhari’s  rise  to  power  is another romantic  political  story   similar  to that of  Erdogan  in Turkey  but  in the opposite  direction in terms  of ascendancy.

    Buhari was  military  leader  ousted  from office  by  his  soldiers  in a  military  coup . He  then  went into  political oblivion only  to  surface as  a politician  who  contested  presidential  elections and lost  serially.  Until  2015  when  his party   the   APC, marshaled  by a former  governor  of  the  nation’s  commercial  capital  won  a landslide  victory  in  the 2015  `presidential  election. Buhari  who  had been  suspicious all along  on  why  the  Boko  Haram was winning  the war  against  a vastly  superior  Nigerian  army ordered  a probe  of  arms  purchases   and that  threw  up  a frightening revelation. Past  arms funds  had  been  diverted  to other  purposes   other  than  the Boko Haram War  and  the  presidential  campaign  of  the ruling  PDP  had   been  largely  funded from  funds  mean,t  for  arms purchase  to  fight  and  defeat  Boko  Haram.

    For  a military  man  turned  politician  like  Buhari  the  die  was  cast  as he said  at  his inaugural  address  even  though  as at  then  he did not  know  the level  of stench in the  Augean Stable  handed   over   to  him  by  his predecessor . Only  a man  with  Buhari’s  antecedents  can take on  the  military in  Nigeria  given  the  level  of  corruption on  diversion  of arms  purchase  funds  by  past military  chiefs  and the present clamour   for  the  probe of  the  present army  chief  who  has been quite  successful  though on  ousting the menace  of  Boko  Haram  from  the battle   fronts  and driving them into  the desperate  survival and lethal  tactic  of  using small  girls  as  suicide  bombers.

    Like  Erdogan, Buhari  is bold,  has charisma and  Nigerians  trust  him because of  his integrity. But  the  Achilles heels of  his administration  are  the weak  economy  and the huge  rise in petrol prices  he brought  on  board as well  as  lop  sidedness  of  government  appointments  in  favour of the North in  a nation in which  the federal  character  is  in  the constitution to prevent  such discrimination. It  is such   lapses  that  his  administration  need  to  focus on urgently, as  these  are  issues  that  those caught  red  handed in looting the treasury especially  in  the military  can exploit  to  cause  confusion.  Fortunately  the  image of  the  Nigerian  military  is in  tatters as at  now that  revelations on  arms  funds  diversion  are  in  the public domain   and  the situation  of a military coup  is just  unthinkable  for  a military  in utter disgrace  for using  money  meant   for war   for  personal purposes  not  only  now,  but in the past. That  is  the jungle  our  own  democracy  is in right  now and we depend on commitment  and charisma  of  Buhari  to  get us  out  of  the woods  God  willing.

    With  regard  to the US,  the  call  by  the Republicans through their candidate Donald  Trump  that his  opponent in the race  Hillary  Clinton  should  be  jailed is  both  chilling  and  frightening  and  shows  that  the division in the US political system is deeper  than  envisaged. Democracy  is a competition  for  power  and it  has its rules  and  protocols. It  is like sports  in  which  the  loser  must  congratulate  the  winner  and life  goes  on. It  is not  a matter of  life  and death.  Hillary  Clinton  may  have  had  her  faults  and could  even  have  been  extremely careless on  her  handling  of  her  mails as Secretary  of  as  the  FBI  boss  said    but  she  is  certainly  not  a criminal.  Donald  Trump  has  created  a  vengeful  presidential campaign for the  presidential  election of 2016  and the  American  political  system  is  facing  its stiffest  test in terms  of stability, security  and  tolerance  for  decades.  How  it survives in  the face of such do  or  die  rhetoric with  the emergence  of  a man like  Donald  Trump  who could  be its  next  president  if  he wins , will be the  real  seventh  wonder  of  the world .  Why  or  how  the  divided  Americans      steeped  in democracy  for  ages as they   are   have not themselves seen the looming political  chaos   and  danger  is what  baffles  my  imagination .

    Once  again  long  live  the  Federal  Republic  of  Nigeria .

  • Trump’s intellectual shoplifting

    Beyond his now legendary adroitness at tweeting and hell-raising on the microphone, it appears Donald Trump is less gifted with the written word. All his campaign, what defined the presidential flag-bearer of the US Republican Party is hubris and certain superiority complex. But an opponent, Mike Rubbio (who he condescendingly put down as “Little Rubbio”), made a huge joke of Trump’s lexical inadequacy early in the day by publicly exposing the syntactic chaos in his tweets. In many instances, the billionaire jumbled his spellings.

    Things dramatically reached a head Monday at the much-awaited Republican Convention at Ohio when Trump’s spouse, Melania, was invited to deliver a much-hyped speech. Daintily clad, she sashayed to the rostrum. Throughout, her speech was punctuated by cheerleaders planted around the convention ground acting on cue. But the applause soon turned howls of disapproval.

    Transcript of her speech would reveal massive, bare-faced theft from the address the incumbent US First Lady, Michele Obama, had delivered under the same circumstances way back in 2008. In cannibalizing Michele’s 2008 speech, Trump’s lazy hirelings probably thought the world had forgotten. So dumb, the Trump people did not seem to realize that the etiquette of a casino is different from that of literary transaction. The way you trick a guy off his wallet at the roll of a dice inside the Trump Casino is not the same way you handle the owner of an intellectual treasure outside in line with the literary theory. The least expected of you is credit the originator of the phrase or idea. Otherwise, that is stealing. And you stand accused of the felony of plagiarism.

    Having committed the literary equivalent of shop-lifting, one had expected the Trump camp to be contrite. Instead, they began by only admitting that Mrs. Trump had worked with a group of paid writers for the speech. That hardly absolves the crime still. Later, they said English language is not the native tongue of the Slovenian-born jewelry-designer and former model. But she owned it. When that would not fly, they finally set up a Fall Guy on Wednesday among the speech-writers who claimed responsibility for padding Melania’s copy with stolen verses from Michele. His resignation offer was cynically rejected by the Trump team on the grounds that people “make innocent mistakes”.

    Ironically, there is no invective or foul word Trump had not used against Michele’s husband in his divisive campaign rhetoric until now.  So, how cool is it to steal from the Obamas they already tried to discredit?

    What is particularly galling is the straight face they initially kept after their hand had literally been caught in the cookie jar. Now the billion dollar puzzle: if it took Trump and his people almost eternity to try to come clean on little things like this, how do they expect to be trusted on bigger matters?

    Revulsion at Trump is not only over stolen phrases and verses. There has been thunders as well over unauthorized melodies. After riding the waves of some discontents at the opening ceremony, the Republican candidate waltzed onto the Ohio stage to the Rock music of ‘We are the Champion”. But the echo had not faded when the copyright owner, Queen, fired an angry statement not only denying authorizing Trump to use the song but also disclaiming his polarizing message to the United States and the world.

    Said Brian May, Queen’s co-founder: “I can confirm that permission to use the track was neither sought nor given. We are taking advice on what steps we can take to ensure this use does not continue. Regardless of our views on Mr Trump’s platform, it has always been against our policy to allow Queen music to be used as a political campaigning tool.”

    Before Queen, Trump had equally been told off by a couple of artistes whose songs were rendered at his rallies without authorization. They include British-born, multiple award-winning Adele, R.E.M. and The Rolling Stones. Neil Young scoffed at the use of “Rockin in the Free World” at another outing, labeling the Republican candidate “misogynist and racist”.

    So much for the all-knowing guy who wants to “make America great again”.

  • Ali, trump and clinton: The greatest, the baddest and the saddest (the finale)

    Ali, trump and clinton: The greatest, the baddest and the saddest (the finale)

    He who thinks himself invincible is his foe’s next conquest

    Last week’s piece summarized why the Republican Trump was unfit for the presidency and why the Democratic Clinton has disqualified herself because of the serious breaches of national security committed as Secretary of State. In trying to explain the matter of her mishandled emails, I failed to disclose is that Clintonis actually the subject of two distinct but interrelated FBI criminal investigations. She is the subject of a public corruption investigation attempting to ascertain whether she used her office to solicit funds for the Clinton Foundation. This investigation is related to the email story because the initial evidence suggesting abuse of office is derived from the trove of emails on the Clinton private server.

    The evidence mounts against her by the week. Clinton publicly claimed this was but a routine “security inquiry.” The FBI director retorted his agency does not perform security inquiries. This is a criminal investigation said he.

    Clinton turned over 30,000 emails but thought she destroyed an equal number which she said were personal in nature. To her chagrin, the FBI was able to recoup the mass of the destroyed documentsfrom others sources and is currently vetting those documents. A portion of these have been released in several noncriminal Freedom of Information Act lawsuits. Refuting her claim, over 100 of these emails are clearly work related. Several of them were written by her and regard the vulnerabilities of her controversial private email system.Not only do these emails add to the impression that she was reckless in handling official or classified information, Clintoncould face obstruction of justice charges if deemed to have tried to conceal these messages.

    The case closes around her. Already the man who set up the server has refused to answer questions under oath for fear of incriminating himself. In America, an attorney cannot advise his client to make this plea unless pursuant to a reasonable fear of being held liable for a crime. This move was prompted by more than an abundance of caution. It was sparked by a legitimate apprehension. The man has since been granted immunity in exchange for his testimony.

    Rarely does the Justice Department navigate the complex process of asking a federal court to grant immunity without an indictment appearing on the other end. That the immunity has been granted and subpoenas issued for testimony and documentsalso indicates a grand jury may already have been impaneled.

    Besides pleading the 5th amendment against self- incrimination, the only defense now available to Clinton is to plead imbecility. Her best defense is that she did not understand what all this meant.That the jargon was too complicated for her and that she was intellectually unable to recognize highly classified material for what it was intrinsically; it had to have been marked as such by another person. Here she puts herself in a bind.

    The foundation of her campaign has been her vaunted competency. Apart from Obama risking himself by covering her, Clinton’s best hope is to claim she was too stupid to have intentionally meant any wrongdoing. She wants us to believe she was so daft that she should not be blamed for violating the minimal technical and legal constraints of her mission as secretary of state. She gladly assumed the job as the nation’s top diplomat but now claims she should be held to a level of knowledge equivalent to that of the janitors who sweeps the State Department floors.

    Then she has the temerity to suggest that this deep incompetence should not only be forgiven but it should be rewarded by allowing her to ascend to the presidency. Here, Clinton executes the most sublime flip flop. An ordinary flip flop is when a person says ‘’yes’’ on Monday then ‘’no’’ Tuesday. Here, Clinton adds to it come Wednesday by saying that ‘’all is well’’ because, in her special universe, “yes” can be “no” and “no’’ can be ‘’yes.’’

    That she is now musters such a defense is a jarring insult to the public’s intelligence. The worst of it is not the insult itself but the mindset that concocts such a twist. One must hold a very unhealthy disregard for the general public to stake such a claim. Of such disrespect for public wisdom, democratic good governance cannot be born. Yes, the public may be as dumb as a worn bedspring; but its collective stupidity begets a safer haven for democracy and responsive governance than the brilliance of the  genius who lacks self-restraint and who loves herself a bit too much to beartrue compassion for others.

    Clinton’s acts placed sensitive aspects of American foreign policy in danger. While I do not agree with much of that policy, what she did has rendered our world more uncertain. It jeopardizes the lives of intelligence personnel, their contacts and potentially undermines operations that costs hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars. Someoneas reckless as Secretary is not someone you want promoted into the White House unless you seek America injury. But again if she does injury to her own, she is more than likely to exact pain on other nations by both accident and design.

    Worst, her transgressions may create a legal and constitutional vortex that will suck in the innocent, forcing them to make hard decisions they would rather not face. If the person involved were not Clinton but a senior professional diplomat, the FBI would have already recommended indictment. (The FBI cannot itself indict. It can only investigate and recommend indictments) Because of the political considerations, the certainty of what the FBI will do reduces to around 75 percent.

    The agents working the file reportedly believe they have an air-tight case against her. The day before this article is published, Secretary Clinton would have been questioned by the FBI. This will be the most fateful event in her long political life. Trepidation will accompany her into the interview. She does not know what the FBI may know. A wrong answer under oath may scald her ambitions for good. At this point, she must be wondering if she is fated to come near but never grasping the presidency in her own right. That her FBI meeting falls on the July 4th weekend is symbolic. It shows that she who would consider herself royalty is still subject to the reach and the word of the law. She cannot end this process with an imperial wave of the hand. That no person stands above the law was, in part, what the founding of America was to meant to achieve. It seems that the American experiment in democracy and justice has not yet been totally corrupted by the vast concentration of power and money in a numerically small elite.

    FBI Director Comey will have to decide whether to play politics by shelving the likely indictment recommendation of his subordinates or allow justice to take its course. Comey knows he will face rebellion within his agency if he plays politics. Stonewalling the recommendations would mean the rule of law only applies to lesser beings and the not the rich or powerful.

    Some of this too is political. Like most law enforcement institutions, the FBI is richly peopled with conservatives with no love for Clinton. She may have given them the rope by which to hang her. They will tenaciously hold to it. Comey knows this and will likely recommend indictment. This will pass the headache to Attorney General Loretta Lynch, head of the Justice Department.

    The first Black woman to hold the position, Lynch owes her career in federal government to her appointment byBill Clinton. She would like nothing better than to let this thing fall into oblivion. She does not want to be the one to end the run of the first female nominee of her own party in such an ignoble manner. Yet, she has been sworn to uphold the law.The case against Clinton may not be infallible but similar cases have been successfully prosecuted to conviction with a lesser quantum of evidence.

    Moreover Bill Clinton has put Lynch in the midst of controversy. Last week, he invited himself onto her government airplane where they held a 30 minute talk. News of the private meeting created a firestorm on both left and right. Although both interlocutors claim the email investigation was not discussed, many did not believe the disavowal. Hillary is involved in two investigations and Bill in one; for Lynch to meet either was a breach of ethics for it creates the perception of impropriety. Bill likely thought that meeting Lynch would soften her. However, the public reaction to the meeting has likely hardened Lynch’s resolve to be seen as going where the law and not politics guides her. As such, she publicly stated in a subsequent interview that she would follow the recommendations of the FBI and her Justice Department career prosecutors.

    If Lynch somehow stalls on the FBI recommendation, she will encounter a much bigger storm than the tempest brewed by her meeting with the former president. Comey and other senior FBI officials may resign in protest. Justice officials familiar with the case likely may mutiny against her. FBI agents and Justice lawyers working the file will begin to leak their findings, convincing themselves if Clinton can go free for what she did then no one can prosecute them for leaking what Clinton did.

    Most of the intelligence community would erupt protesting that failure to prosecute Clinton for such egregious violations makes all the laws and rules meaningless. Lynch would be criticized for killing the rule of law in this area just to save one person’s ambitions. The majority Republican congress would call for Lynch’s head (excuse the pun). She would be under fire to resign or face impeachment. Themelodrama would cast a dark pall over the election and may well extinguish Clinton’s run almost as much as an actual indictment.

    If the FBI recommends indictment, President Obama will have to navigate discretely. He dislikes Clinton personally; but as, establishment centrists, they are of the same political family. He owes the Clintons a favor for helping his 2012 reelection when his feet were to the fire. However, if he is seen to be exercising political influence to quash the criminal process, he is liable to obstruction of justice. Moreover, Obama would still face a firestorm from the FBI, Justice and intelligence community. He would appear to cover things up. The case would take on the coloration of Watergate.

    Obama has to weigh all of this against the need to satisfy his political debt to the Clintons. Moreover, he has to be careful because several of his emails are part of the Clinton trove. If he allows the case to go forward, it may embarrass him as he is a potential witness if the case goes all the way to trial. If he is perceived as stifling it, he may risk his legacy by ending his presidency in a red-hot scandal that may subject him to obstruction of justice charges.

    Too many eyes are watching and too many people know the depths of Clinton’s misdeeds. Obama and Lynch need to swallow hard and blind themselves of the temptation to help her. They serve their names and the nation better by allowing justice to walk unfettered. After all, if Clinton were in their position, she would not risk her neck for either of them.

    In all of this, Obama may be playing a most nuanced game. He may loathe a Clinton presidency, believing the Clintons would preclude him from any meaningful role in the party leadership once he leaves the White House. Therefore, he publicly endorses Clinton to redeem his political debt to them. His videoed endorsement of Clinton fulfils the requirement but was a curiously unenthused, less than full-throated statement. However, he will do nothing to forestall what may be coming. He may even encourage it. If so, this would please to no end the two women who are most important to his private and public life. Both Michelle Obama and Senior Adviser Valerie Jarrett detest the Clintons. They would love nothing more than see her escorted from center stage,replaced by Vice President Biden as the party choice.

    If the FBI and Justice Department follow the rule of law, indictments will come against Clinton and her closest aides for the emails. There may be additional charges against the Clintons for corruption. This will toss the presidential race in the air. If these government agencies seek to perform an even more patriotic duty, the indictments shall come prior to the lateJuly Democratic Party convention. This will enable the party to replace the tainted queen with someone who is a truer democrat and a less selfish Democrat. This would also allow Obama to pardon her that she would not have to stand trial which would also obviate him having to serve as a witness during her case.

    While the best route, this one is still tough. Obama and his centrist ilk will then have to decide whether to back the progressive Sanders who would be the only mortal standing or insert a candidate such as Biden from their moderate faction at the 13th hour. In doing so, they would be pulling a Clintonesque gambit by snatching from Sanders what otherwise should properly go to him. The party might well fragment in a manner incurable before the November election. If so, this would hand the election to Trump. That would be a disaster.

    Obama and the centrists could live with indictments coming immediately after the convention. Under this scenario, the party hierarchy and not the convention delegates would select the replacement. Biden and Secretary of State Kerry would figure prominently. Senator Elizabeth Warren who recently endorsed Clinton would be receive some consideration. With her, the Democratic candidate would still be a woman. Warren also appeals to progressive wing of the part that now feels alienated by Clinton’s quasi-Republican economic positions.

    The roadwas cleared for Clinton all the way to the White House. However, the deep pathologies which define her led her to construct obstructions that may prove her political demise. All of this is tragic and so unnecessary. She has engulfed her party, the Obama administration and the nation in cascades of her deceit. She has singlehandedly jeopardized national security in untold ways. Her continued run for the Presidency may bring a legal and constitutional firestorm in its way as hot as Watergate.

    If a recommendation for indictment is forthcoming, it will set in motion a series of hard decisions of both political and legal complexities that will have to be made.If not recommendation comes, then she is free to run. She will likely win the White House and from there inflict more of her specialized damage to American democracy and its place in the world. Even then, she may not be free of this blemish.

    Should the Republicans return majorities to both Houses of Congress after the election, they will likely move to impeach her. Her presidency will be rocked by scandal from the onset and. With her presidency substantially weakened and under constant existential stress, Clinton would likely prove to be at her most dangerous. Uncertainty clouds how far she may venture in an attempt to hold to power. No sane electorate should want to vote their nation into such a bind.

    This is why character is so important in leadership. We have just reviewed how an individual’s pettiness,fueled by sleepless ambition, may have twisted the world’s most powerful government into a Gordian knot. Supreme discretion and judgment will be required to break it.

    Good fruit is rare but the fruits of the poisonous tree become swiftly manifold.

  • Ali, Trump and Clinton: the greatest, the baddest and the saddest (Part Two)

    Ali, Trump and Clinton: the greatest, the baddest and the saddest (Part Two)

    He who leads by impulse feasts his people on calamity

    There is something terribly wrong when the two remaining candidates for the American presidency, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, are the moral inadequacies now before the electorate. Neither one of them seeks anything beyond self-aggrandizement. They would rather expend the greatness of an entire nation in order to satiate their appetites.  Searching for noble principle in either of them is as futile as hunting for a snowflake in an active blast furnace. Basic goodness has melted from them long ago.

    That either of them is poised to become president jeopardizes America more than any threat from ISIL or other foreign enemy. Their media hirelings will proclaim the coming election is a battle for America’s soul, its very future. That is a lie. Should these two be the only choice on the menu, then America has no choice. The battle has been waged and it has been lost. If either Trump or Clinton come to reside in the White House, America would be reduced and the world made a more dangerous place because of it. Decay of the national purpose and institutions of governance would be the order of the day. The place they would take America is not the place those who fought and died for America had in mind when they made their sacrifices.

    Trump would send the nation cascading to Hell, boasting all would be fine because he had enough money to make a deal with the devil to sell ice to all the inhabitants below and build a golf course/water resort for the wealthiest among them. Clinton would whisper all would be fine because an old friend was assigned to tending Hell’s backdoor. That friend owed her a favor and would allow her to secret in air conditioners. Distinct styles and different routes leading to the destination: calamity then ruination.

    The most obvious deficiency is Mr. Trump’s although both contenders are equally dangerous but in different ways and means. This flailing man is a walking sarcophagus of prejudices and biases that refuse to die. His campaign thrives on the fears and hatreds that till the souls of the mean and petty. He has said evil things about almost every minority, all faiths but the one he claims, and about women. If the mouth speaks from the abundance of the heart, then hatred perhaps is one thing Trump loves more than money.

    The man has shown himself to be grossly ignorant of the most basic tenets of both foreign and domestic policy. He claims that his expertise as a businessman well suits him to rebuild the economy. This is his most solid claim to office; yet, if it is anything, it is but spittle and mud. Just because a man is expert at fashioning hubcaps does not mean he knows how to design an engine or even drive the car. Trump’s prowess as a real estate dealmaker does not automatically make him adept in macroeconomic policy. Thus far, much of what he has proffered as economic policy has been effluent.

    Trump is an untalented hurdy-gurdy man too much in love with the ramshackle noises he makes. He hears a symphony. Most reasonable ears hear the sound of falling rocks. He is the public affirmation of the caution that vast wealth can be as much a debilitation as an attribute. If America wants to be great again, an essential task must be the construction of an insuperable wall between Trump and the White House.

    Clinton’s situation is more nuanced but also parlous. Superficially, she appears to be the right answer for the moment. Yet, the only real difference between her and Trump is one of veneer.

    While he is brash and abrasive, she has a polished appearance and speaks with a professional restraint. Yet, her deeds reveal an impetuous streak and a heart as disdainful of democratic practice as Trump’s.

    The danger Trump poses is clear and bulbous. He relishes showing us he is an epic collision in the making. Both believe themselves more than us mere mortals. As such, both would undermine American democracy more than perfect it. Both might bring the world to the cliff’s edge, to leave it hanging on a razor-thin balance.

    Clinton’s words profess compassion. Her long resume pretends competence. Her deeds are the problem. Her accomplishments are more hollow than she would rather they be. This relegates her to argue the mere holding of office is sufficient accomplishment regardless of what occurred while there.

    Because she has been around so long and has held many posts, we have been induced to believe her and believe in her. Yet, to believe in her is to believe she is what she is not. Secretary of State was the last major office she held. She turned the State Department into a place of erroneous policy as in Libya, Syrian and Ukraine. She treated the august department as her personal fiefdom. She proved to be a sly manager who mishandled sensitive public resources as if they were her own and treated the public trust as if nonexistent.

    While Trump is a daylight assault with an axe, Clinton is a nocturnal bacillus whose attack comes subtly from within while our defenses are down and slumbering.

    Hillary Clinton’s run for office has now become a moral dilemma for her allies. One cannot back her yet support good governance and the rule of law at the same time. In clinching the Democratic Party nomination, Clinton has achieved two firsts. She is the first woman to clinch the nomination of one of the two major parties. That a woman has done so is long overdue. That it is Clinton will be recorded as one of America’s bittersweet occurrences. It is to bestow a true honor on one of the most counterfeit personalities of this or any era.

    She is also the first presidential candidate of any major party to enter the election race under criminal investigation for serious breaches of national security. As to which ‘’first’’ will history lay her greater remembrance looms as an open question.

    For those unversed in diplomacy and national security matters, the storm about her use of a private email account and server seems unintelligible or petty. For those knowledgeable about American national security matters, what she did is of utmost seriousness; it was criminal in nature and should disqualify her for office. It reveals a frightening disdain for the rule of law and the intelligence of the people, both warning signs that democratic good governance may not be Clinton’s strong suit. I consider myself in this latter group.

    This is important to all. If she can be so callous regarding the nation and the constitution she professes to love, grave dangers lurk for those nations that win her ire. Remember Clinton publicly joked about how Qaddafi was tortured and killed as if sodomizing then illegally executing an opposing leader is the stuff of jokes instead of the crime that it was. Such dark levity is unbefitting a world leader. In Libya, she pushed the Obama Administration to work in concert with regional terrorists to upend a secular leader who had long ago ceased being a threat to any measurable American interests. She championed this avenue more as a function of pique than of sage policy. After witnessing and joking about the destruction she, Clinton turned her back and left that nation to rot and ruin. If indicative of her purported competence, then we are in palpable trouble for the Libyan caper is a picture book example of foreign policy by guttural impulse.

    Clinton has never encountered a war she did not like yet she has proven to be a truant housekeeper after the damage has been wrought. She has thirsted for every American war in the past twenty years. If she had her way, what happened in Libya would have repeated itself in Syria. Judging by her published emails, she pines for an excuse to war against Iran. Russian and American military might would be in nose-to-nose proximity on the steppes of the Ukraine due to her lack of geopolitical prudence and blind arrogance. A Clinton presidency is like to cart the world closer to a major war of untold consequence.

    Because of the leadership and personality flaws the scandal reveals, perhaps a bit of explanation about the national security and legal implications underlying her email scandal may help the reader understand the gravity of Clinton’s derelictions. For this is not an artificial fuzz over the sloppy handling of inconsequential emails such as what friends exchange between themselves. This concerns the wanton and perhaps willful misuse of emails that contained some the nation’s most closely guarded national security considerations.

    As Secretary of State, her official communications belong to the people and to the United States government, not to her. They were meant to be restricted to encrypted official channels for archival purposes and, more importantly, to safeguard information from foreign snooping. The use of a private server trashed both goals.

    Clinton acted as if her want to control access to her official communications was of greater weight than the true ownership rights and national security concerns of the government that employed her. She acted as if the government was her agent and servant instead of the other way around. In treating sensitive government documents and work product as belonging exclusively to her, she behaved imperiously, like spoiled royalty doing the nation a favor rather than a citizen grateful for the privilege to serve her country.  The lack of character which she has exhibited in the matter is revealed in a quick examination of the claims she has made to dance around her culpability.

    Claim 1: The State Department approved the private setup. This claim has proven bogus. In an official report, the Department claimed it never was asked to approve the private server and if so would not have done so. Clinton lied.

    Claim 2: Her private arrangement was consistent with those of her predecessors. The only other Secretary to use a private email account was Colin Powell. However, he never contemplated a private server and did not exclusively use the private email account for official business. He also had the imprimatur of the Department for his limited use of private email. His rather limited official use of that account came during a completely different era regarding the use of emails for government business. At that time, the Department did not have an unclassified email system as during Clinton’s tenure. Again, she lied.

    Claim 3: The private server and account were done merely for convenience purposes.She did not want to have to constantly flip between a government and a private system. This does not wash.  If she did not want to operate two systems, the wisest route would have been to opt for the government device solely.

    For instance, she was prohibited from using her private device in her office because that office was considered highly classified space. Whenever she wanted to deal with emails during office hours, she had to leave her office suite. Thus, we are left with the incongruous sight of the Secretary walking about the building, followed by security and other officers, as she went to another room or floor to treat emails. This might have happened several times a day. This does not seem convenient. It does not even make sense. A government devise usable in the comfort of her office and at home would have been inherently easier and wiser.

    Her staff even refused Department attempts to give her a government-issued secured device because they wanted to maintain Clinton’s privacy. The position is as indefensible as it is corrupt. She has no privacy right to hide official communications from the very government that employed her to handle those communications.

    Even if she opted for the private route, convenience would have pointed to only the creation of a private account. Setting up a private server in her residence is actually significant extra work. There is only one plausible reason to resort to a private server: to control access to the material, in effect obscuring from government what belonged only to it. On this point, either she lied or her judgment is so obtuse that she should not be trusted again with high public office.

    Claim 4: The server was secure because armed Secret Service men guarded the residence. Having an armed guard standing on the porch might prevent a physical assault against the location. Yet, it is beyond explanation how a gun at the front door deters a computer hacker who can accomplish his theft from the other side of the planet. A gun at the porch was no more a defense to hacking the infernal machine than putting an oar in the car helps a person drive cross a bridge over a wide river.

    Sadly, her personal server was extremely vulnerable. Her network lacked encryption. For a brief period, it lacked even the firewall and other lower-level security features employed by medium and small private businesses that do not handle sensitive documents. Establishing her server in order to avoid government retention of her records seemed to be her sole concern. Her obligation to safeguard important information was treated as a damnable nuisance. Again, she has lied or exposed herself as a supreme dunce.

    Claim 5: No wrong was committed because no document was marked classified. This is as disingenuous as an argument can get. When she became Secretary she underwent training about classified information. She signed a formal oath that classified information could be marked or unmarked and that the mishandling of such is a criminal violation. She went into the job with eyes open. She cannot now profess a dumb blindness.

    What makes information classified are not the markings but the content. Documents are not classified just because they are marked so. They are marked so because they are classified. The classification arises from their substance. The markers just acknowledge what already exists.

    Over 1000 emails she returned have been found to be classified. Refuting her claim that the documents were “retroactively classified,” there is no reasonable explanation that can be offered how such documents would be classified now but were not when initially transmitted. Sensitivity of a message generally moves in inverse relationship to the passage of time. The older the message, the less sensitive. For her to argue the emails were not then classified but now are lacks credence. She knows better than to make this argument but she makes it anyway.

    Claim 6: She is innocent because she bore no criminal intent. Neither fact nor law gives her succor. Under the several applicable criminal statutes, she can be held feloniously liable for the wrongful and willful transmission of classified material or for being grossly negligent in the handling and storage of the same. There is ample intent of willful violations.  Roughly 20 emails have a classification of top secret or higher and over 60 as secret. Unless all of these 20 documents fit into a mitigating narrow exception that grave emergency dictated the use of the unclassified system, then at least two people committed a crime, the sender and serial receiver thereof, the latter being Clinton.

    The sender would have to deliberately transfer information from a secured device to put on Clinton’s unsecured private network. Such a deliberate trespass has almost no defense and is clearly punishable. Clinton would have known this criminal process was being done for her benefit if not at her explicit behest. She condoned the misdeed over the course of her tenure. This is an intentional breach of national security, a felony. The penalty for this is a fine or up to 10 years imprisonment for each violation.

    She also kept these emails on her unsecure private server for several years. By any objective legal measure, this would have to constitute the grossly negligent storage of classified material. To compound this, she placed the material on an unsecure thumb drive which is another violation.  She then gave the server and thumb drive to her attorney who lacked any security clearance. This comprises another set of violations. Worse, it seems that she also used two companies to monitor her server. These companies had no clearance, another set of violations.  One of the companies made back-up copies of the emails and stored them in an unsecured location, two more sets of violations. Keep in mind that every email, ranging from the 20 top secret to the over 1000 classified, is a distinct violation that carries a potential prison term of 10 years. You can figure the potential maximum time behind bars. My calculator does not count that high.

    If America seeks to continue to portray itself before the world as the land of the rule of law, then it must apply the law fairly and equally even against its most favored and privileged citizens. The Clinton national security scandal will test the legal system in an open and blatant way. If she is allowed to walk, penalty free from her misconduct, then you should realize that the American legal system is an object of barter and that justice is considered a rare but not a valuable commodity. Already the major media outlets have been found out. They downplay the scandal because they work for the same big money, vast military establishment that brings us the Clintons. If Clinton is called to answer for what she has done, perhaps just perhaps the United States would have taken an important step in reasserting the destiny its noble documents and republican doctrines claim for the nation. Next week, we explore how all of this may undermine President Obama’s legacy if he fails to exercise judgment.

     

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  • Ali, Trump and Clinton: The greatest, the baddest and the saddest (part one)

    Ali, Trump and Clinton: The greatest, the baddest and the saddest (part one)

    Through haughtiness of leadership is a great nation first subdued. Decay is followed by defeat.

    Events celebrating the life of Muhammad Ali are much deserved; but no matter how grand the tributes, they speak only half. When all is said and done, Ali, born poor yet grew to be great, will be revered. Meanwhile, the two presumptive contestants for the American presidency whose names also share the title of this piece will do well just to be remembered.

    I grew up watching Ali. His boxing prowess was singular. He managed to transform the coarse sport into a work of art. But the most important blow he ever struck was done outside the ring. At the height of his athletic prowess and had everything within his grasp, he was drafted into the army during the Vietnam War.

    The war was not going well for it had been going on too long with no victorious end in sight. The country was growing uneasy; incipient grumbling would soon erupt into widespread protest. Already, the national establishment had been shaken by the Civil Rights Movement. For those guardians of the old order, change was approaching too fast and from directions that until then had not even existed. They wanted to stave any more fluidity. They wanted to quell Black radicalism and also build public support for the war.

    Having Muhammad Ali in army uniform and in their corner would serve both purposes. The establishment wanted to exploit Ali just as they did Joe Louis, the excellent Black heavyweight of a prior era. During WW II, Louis was put in uniform; but the only fighting he did was in the ring, performing insipid exhibitions to encourage support for the war effort and bolster troop morale. I dare not be too hard on Louis. It would be unfair.

    His era was one where Black Americans were fighting to overcome every racial barrier imaginable. We were even fighting to be allowed to join the armed forces that we might fight on behalf of the nation that did not want us except as servants. Thus, Louis saw his efforts as assisting America against fascism abroad while also helping Blacks against American fascist racism at home. In hindsight, it appears he was made to play the fool. At that time, playing that particular fool was the only reasonable play he could make.

    In the quarter century between Louis and Ali, much had altered. America, its role in the world, and the role of Blacks in America all had been revised by forces which no one fully understood, much less controlled. Ali would ensure that change would continue.

    When he was drafted, he could have accepted his fate as had Louis. He too would not have seen the frontlines nor held a firearm save as a publicity stunt. The only fighting would have been within the familiar confines of a boxing ring. After that, he would have been allowed to resume his boxing career as the darling pet of the governmental establishment. He would have retained all he had and profited materially even more so had only he obeyed.

    He did not. His conscious would not allow it. Where Louis helped defend America from fascist aggression, Ali could not see where America was defending anything worth defending in the Vietnam War. To Ali, America was aggressing against people who had done neither him nor Black America any harm. The American establishment pressuring him to don the army outfit was the culprit causing Black people more harm than anything the Vietnamese could ever muster. He saw no reason to fight people whose only transgression was that they were fighting for their freedom and dignity. If anything, he should support rather than oppose them. As a Black American, he was fighting for the same thing. He would be in moral dereliction should he fight to keep another man from that which he desired for himself.

    Ali refused to go into the army in 1967. He refused to do what the government demanded of him. We would not bend and take the easy way. He stood by his conscience. The establishment responded harshly. They stripped him of his title. He was suspended from boxing. Sentenced to a 5 year prison term, he managed to stay out of jail through his persistence to appeal his case to the Supreme Court. During this legal trek, he lived with the threat of prison, ever present and ever near.

    In 1971, reversing the lower court decision, the Supreme Court found that Ali’s stance as a conscientious objector to the war and his refusal to join the army were justified. He was exonerated.

    This was the thing I most remember about Ali. He could have taken the easy way by placing his beliefs in the closet that he could continue being champion and making money. He had grown up poor and put upon because of his poverty and color. To gain so much yet to give it all up just for a thought, is a high and noble price to pay. He risked imprisonment, poverty and his popularity because he dared not depart from his convictions. His beliefs defined him more than his possessions. The sum total of the man was much more than what could be seen or touched by physical hand.

    In the end, he was exonerated as he should have been. However, that outcome was far from certain.  That a Supreme Court of eight elderly White men would overturn his conviction says something redemptive about America and the rule of law (Justice Marshall, the lone Black on the court, had recused himself from the decision.) However, that Ali would be willing to forfeit so much because of a simple belief says much more about the character and courage of this Black man.

    As a youth, what I studied from Ali was how to throw a left jab and duck a punch. The skills came in handy growing up.  However, what he and others taught me was that a Black man can and should take a heroic stand when his conscience so dictates. (Around the same time, my father made the hard decision to move his family into a White neighborhood in central Florida. He was not a boxer by any stretch of the imagination, but he too had grown up poor and felt the sting of racism throughout his life. He had joined the fight so that his children could stand as he couldn’t when he was young and that they would not feel the racist sting as bitterly as he had.)

    As Black Americans, we have as much dignity and as much a right to stake a claim to political and religious freedom as any other American. We should not think that we are so inferior that we should be happy with merely getting by or going along with what others dictate. We have the right to be as independent-minded as the constitution of America says we can be. I never meant the man but this lesson was so intimate and close that I felt as if he were a member of my family. In a profound way, he was.

    Ali ceased being a negro. He became one of the first personifications of the post-Civil Right Movement Black man. He risked everything because of his beliefs. He put moral conviction before material fame and public accolade. In doing so, he made the nation better because he forced it to recognize the variance between its egalitarian principles and racist practice and to take steps to narrow the gulf between ideal and reality.

    I raise this observation not to deify the man after his departure. He was imperfect and his mistakes many. But he tried to do what is right even when it would dearly cost him. This made him more than a boxing champion. He remained a man of conviction and human fortitude throughout. He loved his fellow man. This was his greatest victory.

    While Ali was a man of character, the best that can be said about the two others named in the title of this piece are that they are characters.

    One must lament how low America has fallen in the nearly fifty years since Ali stood his courageous stand. That a young athlete less than 30 years old would show more fortitude and leadership courage than these two people over sixty years old who now vie to be America’s next president.

    For a moment imagine either Clinton or Trump in a situation where they must decide between holding to a principle or to their worldly fame and fortunes. We know how they would decide. They would toss conviction to the gutter, quickly taking the expedient route Ali declined. As such, this Black man with the Arabic name has honored the American creed than Clinton and Trump can ever do. He is more a true American than they will ever be. He is more an American leader and hero than they; what he did was the epitome of American heroism and respect for individual freedom of expression and belief. Neither trump nor Clinton would ever attempt such a thing.

    It would be inaccurate to claim that every American president has been a great or outstanding person. Most were mediocrities who benefited from political compromises best left unearthed. However, when America most needed leadership, it seemed that Fate smiled upon the nation. Presidents like Washington, Lincoln and Roosevelt came to the fore. However, excellent leadership is not inbred. It is cultivated. With the rise of Clinton and Trump, Fate seems to have turned its back on America. Neither is anywhere nearly as august or great as the office they seek. They are both like unruly children who have absconded with their father’s shoes in hopes that somehow the boot might fit. Next week we shall see why this description is truer than those who believe that America still has the ability to promote good in this world would want the description to be.

     

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  • Trump willing to meet N. Korea’s leader

    Trump willing to meet N. Korea’s leader

    Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said on Tuesday he is willing to talk to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to try to stop Pyongyang’s nuclear program, proposing a major shift in U.S. policy toward the isolated nation.

    In a wide-ranging interview with Reuters, Trump also said he disapproved of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s actions in eastern Ukraine, called for a renegotiation of the Paris climate accord, and said he would dismantle most of the Dodd-Frank financial regulations if he is elected president.

    The presumptive Republican nominee declined to share details of his plans to deal with North Korea, but said he was open to a face-to-face meeting with its leader.

    “I would speak to him, I would have no problem speaking to him,” Trump said of Kim.

    North Korea’s mission to the United Nations did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Trump’s remarks.

    Trump’s preparedness to meet Kim contrasts with President Barack Obama’s policy of relying on senior U.S. officials to talk to senior North Korean officials. Obama has not engaged personally with Kim.

    The New York billionaire said he is “not a big fan” of the Paris climate accord, which prescribes reductions in carbon emissions by more than 170 countries, and would want to renegotiate it because it gives favorable treatment to countries like China.

    A renegotiation of the pact would be a major setback for what was hailed as the first truly global climate accord, committing both rich and poor nations to reining in the rise in greenhouse gas emissions blamed for warming the planet.