What President Trump’s Foreign Policy Will Look Like

Can anyone explain this to me.....this is the same incoming President who wants to drain the swamp which will set the tone for a FP......

Trump Rebukes House Republicans Over Bid to Gut Ethics Office

1. this is the same incoming President who refuses to release his own tax information

2. this is the same incoming President who allowed a NYE's party pay for play drill ie 432K for a single ticket to attend

3. this is the same incoming President who refuses to divest himself from this businesses that are in 27 countries with a major conflict of interest for US FP....

So it is bad for Congress but OK for Trump?????

NEW: Jack Abramoff tells me House GOP ethics weakening is "exactly the opposite of what Congress should be doing"
http://www.politico.com/story/2017/01/house-ethics-panel-jack-abramoff-… 

REMEMBER this name should ring a bell for all Trump voters.....

Donald J. Trump ‏@realDonaldTrump 11h
11 hours ago

China has been taking out massive amounts of money & wealth from the U.S. in totally one-sided trade, but won't help with North Korea. Nice!

When one tweets constantly it is hard to keep up with the world around yourself....APPEARS that Trump does not know.....

1. China has voiced a number of times recently their displeasure with NK nuclear activities as it threatens them as well

2. China has a number of times voted with UNSC resolutions after making sure they do not further damage NK and force them into a hasty reaction

3. China has participated in a number of the sanctions BUT seriously does not want to see NK fail due to the massive consequences for the entire area if they go under.....

ASSUME the ever smart Trump the businessman already knew this before he tweeted?????

Trump can say all he wants to about China...but one thing is sure when dealing with China...they thoroughly understand their part of the world and their role in that part of the world and in their global role and they do not make hasty decisions and certainly do not tweet...

Trump tries to sell his superior knowledge but actually he has none...to those voters that voted for him...in 140 Twitter characters.....

The real question is: Why are Trump's top aides acting like Putin's defense lawyers?
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4
081772/Trump-spokesman-says-s-zero-evidence-Russia-influenced-presidential-election-alleged-hacking-spree.html 

Trying to deflect from the Trump tweet about having more information than others and will release it on either Tuesday or Wednesday?????

BUT WAIT:........

Washington (CNN)A top adviser to President-elect Donald Trump said Monday he thinks the Russians were involved in election-related hacking of the US -- a very different view than that held by the incoming administration.
Former CIA director James Woolsey, an adviser to Trump on national security issues, told CNN's Jim Sciutto that determining who was behind the hacks is difficult, but that he believes the Russians -- and possibly others -- were involved.

"I think the Russians were in there, but it doesn't mean other people weren't, too," he said. "It's often not foolproof to say who it is because it is possible and sometimes easy to hide your tracks. There's lots of tricks."

Asked if Trump is playing the media with his comments on who was culpable, Woolsey said it was a "possibility," noting that Trump is an "expert in weaving around" on issues like this.

"Sometimes people may have been talking to somebody in the National Security Agency and have an idea that maybe it was one type of hacking rather than another," he said. "I don't think this is of substantial matter. I think it's basically just dialogue back and forth."

Woolsey's comments come even as Trump and his aides continue to cast doubt on the links between Russia and recent hacks against Democrats, while US intelligence officials say that newly identified "digital fingerprints" indicate Moscow was behind the intrusions.

One official told CNN the administration has traced the hack to the specific keyboards -- which featured Cyrillic characters -- that were used to construct the malware code, adding that the equipment leaves "digital fingerprints" and, in the case of the recent hacks, those prints point to the Russian government.

But, despite an initial public assessment by the US intelligence community in October that Russia was behind the intrusions, Trump and his staff continue to voice doubts.

"The idea that we're jumping to conclusions before we have a final report is, frankly, irresponsible," Trump's incoming press secretary, Sean Spicer, told CNN's Alisyn Camerota Monday.

Trump expressed skepticism on New Year's Eve, saying, "I know a lot about hacking. And hacking is a very hard thing to prove. So it could be somebody else."

He also claimed to have inside information on the matter, which he said he would reveal later this week.

Spicer said Trump was "going to talk about his conclusions and where he thinks things stand," adding the President-elect would "make sure people understand that there's a lot of questions out there."

A second US official told CNN Monday there is increasingly confidence in the intelligence analysis, citing the ability to collect extremely high-quality intel on Russia, compared the difficulty of doing so with more secretive regimes like North Korea.

The FBI and Department of Homeland Security released a report last week that they said "provides technical details regarding the tools and infrastructure used by the Russian civilian and military intelligence Services to compromise and exploit networks and endpoints associated with the US election."

The report added that the Russian culprits also have historically targeted "a range of US Government, political, and private sector entities" using similar tactics.

Spicer said Trump would await the results of the investigation ordered by President Barack Obama as he insisted that the assessments of the intelligence community published so far did not constitute the "final report."

He said Trump was expected to be briefed about that report in coming days.

Trump is facing mounting pressure to undertake a robust response to Russia's activities, with Republican leaders in Congress saying that Obama's recent cyber-related sanctions of Russian intelligence entities and expulsion of some Russians from the US don't go far enough.

"It is clear that Russia has attacked the United States of America. All of our intelligence agencies will affirm that that's been the case. We will work in the Congress to have stronger sanctions in order to prevent further attacks," Republican Sen. John McCain said while in Georgia, a country that fought a war with Russia in 2008.

McCain, who was also visiting NATO's easternmost members in the Baltic region and the Ukraine, also promised to hold hearings into the cyber-attacks when Congress is back in session this month.

Russian AF and Turkish AF flying now joints attacks on al Bab....USAF still flying attacks for Kurdish YPG/PKK....how much more convoluted can this get now...enter Trump on 20 JAN and it will get interesting in a hurry....

As #Turkey & #Russia perform intense air & artillery strikes on #ISIS-held al-Bab, more & more pix emerge,similar to what we saw in #Aleppo.

Russian AF and Turkish AF flying now joints attacks on al Bab....USAF still flying attacks for Kurdish YPG/PKK....how much more convoluted can this get now...enter Trump on 20 JAN and it will get interesting in a hurry....

As #Turkey & #Russia perform intense air & artillery strikes on #ISIS-held al-Bab, more & more pix emerge,similar to what we saw in #Aleppo.

We now to seriously and honestly ask..is this incoming President of sound mind....FIRST he blasts CNN for lying on his nuclear tweet comments which actually he did tweet as they are fully and completely achieved....

THEN this

Donald J. Trump
✔
@realDonaldTrump
@CNN just released a book called "Unprecedented" which explores the 2016 race & victory. Hope it does well but used worst cover photo of me!

Someone seriously needs to take away his Twitter account....because I think he never seems to realize what he has previously tweeted....

Some in the medical field might actually call this a "personality disorder" of someone unable to engage directly and verbally with his surroundings....

Sad statement on the current leadership of the US by the outgoing and new incoming Presidents...

WHO would have assumed in 1945 that Germany one day would lead the entire West????

Maybe that is why Trump dislikes Merkel.......

Not many predicted this in the spring of 1945. Or that most of us are now worried that she has too few Leo 2A6 MBTs.
https://www.ft.com/content/95273a42-c078-11e6-9bca-2b93a6856354 

Most Germans actually are now quietly asking for a fast rebuild of the German Army....and a few are actually talking about bringing back the general draft...

BTW...new contracts have been issued for more new Leo models and the older ones are being pulled out of depots and refitted....

NOW that Putin has a very close friend inside the WH he is turning his full info and cyber warfare against Germany and especially against Merkel....

While the new incoming President has actually voiced as has his transition team a US President is not bound by ethnical and or conflict of interest rules and or laws....

Now the House follows his lead.....

So if we assume that this WH is not bound by ethnics nor is the entire Congress...just what do we expect his FP to be...business driven decisions effecting his private wealth and not the strategic interests of the US????

With No Warning, House Republicans Vote to Gut Independent Ethics Office
http://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/02/us/politics/with-no-warning-house-rep… 

AND this supports the Trump motto of "draining the swamp" and "no paying to play".....????

The swamp is now much deeper and the play thing now really expensive 432K for a NYE party with Trump....

WHILE he was earning 432K per pop we the US taxpayer had to pay for his security detail......and that is not the definition of a "swamp"????

You have to love it....FP from the so called democratic street.....

The forthcoming Trump era has revived a phenomenon of the sixties: the conviction that “democracy is in the streets”
http://nyer.cm/gbGmRNJ

Trump on North Korea ICBM: 'It won't happen!'
http://reut.rs/2iYKbaA

So is Trump going to do more than sanctions?

'So What Will He Do?': @andersoncooper Challenges @KellyannePolls to Explain Trump's Plans For N Korea
http://www.mediaite.com/online/so-what-will-he-do-cooper-challenges-con… 

Another nuke tweet. Trump has been obsessed with nukes since 1984 and has professed desire to use them. Background:
http://qz.com/871436/donald-trump-nuclear-weapons-putin-and-trump-relea… 

Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago Made over $420,000 Selling Access to the President-elect on New Year's Eve
http://www.teenvogue.com/story/trump-mar-a-lago-conflict-of-interest 

Trump's own transition team has absolutely no problem is creating "pay for play" opportunities for Trump....

The House of Representatives wants to limit the powers of their own created Office of Ethnics created in 2008 to oversee the House......Last week, House GOP proposed punishing livestreams of protests in the chamber. And now they've gutted the House's independent ethics panel.

So is the future Trump FP to be business interests driven and or driven in the interests of the US......and have we formerly seen the end of ethnics in politics?????

EXAMPLE....and this is the behavior of a future President???

Video Shows Trump Lavishing Praise on Dubai Business Partner During New Year's Eve Party
http://www.mediaite.com/online/tape-shows-trump-lavishing-praise-on-dub… 

The Hill
✔
@thehill
Spicer downplays expectation that Trump will reveal new information about Russian election interference
http://hill.cm/95KBLAe

SEEMS Spicer still has no explanation of why then did Trump state what he stated and via Twitter....

So, today is "Tuesday or Wednesday". Can't wait to hear what the rest of us don't know about hacking.

http://www.
nytimes.com/2016/12/31/us/politics/donald-trump-russia-hacking.html 

Foreign Affairs
✔
@ForeignAffairs
The era of neoliberalism is over. The era of neonationalism is beginning.
http://ow.ly/avOJ307zAQv

Dushanbe Probing Claim Taliban Tanks Being Repaired In Tajikistan by Russian Engineers
http://www.rferl.org/a/russia-taliban-tajikistan-weapons-repair-allegat… 

Originally Posted by OUTLAW 09
Trump aide says U.S. sanctions on Russia may be disproportionate
http://reut.rs/2iAbDz5

Meet the SednitGroup, aka "Russian hackers" THAT Trump evidently knows more about than even the CIA/NSA and FBI....

http://www.welivesecurity.com/wp-con...set-sednit-par...

AND for those that do not want to really believe it...yes we are at war....
One of the best write ups on the core Russian state sponsored hacking group with ties to SVR/GRU...who was and still is behind major power grid attack and the DNC attack...

US expulsions put spotlight on Russia's GRU intelligence agency
https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...=share_btn_tw#

Why exposing Putin's wealth would be Obama's best revenge, writes @SSestanovich
http://on.wsj.com/2itxiGw

Trump didn't pay a penny in taxes, used his charity as a personal slush fund, and it didn't stick. Do you think the Russian SVR/GRU are idiots?

TO those Trump commenters that supported him because he "is smart and knows hacking"......

Wanna appear REALLY knowledgeable? Drop the R in GRU. These days, it's simply called the GU (Glavnoye Upravleniye)
http://structure.mil.ru/structure/mi...gOrganization#

Quote:
EXAMPLE....real story that Trump and his advisor of his do not know about the GU....

In the late 70s and early 80s....in the International Herald Tribune the leading American English speaking European newspaper had a series of ads published on a reoccurring basis......for over a one year period

The ad was basic....stated they were looking for paid researchers for specific projects and one had to speak English.....

When one replied it was to a Post Box in Lichtenstein.....if one replied then ne would get a nice letter indicating their interest and what could you suggest for research topics...and they wanted more information on yourself...age....any military experience....education level and any other language abilities and where located in Europe...they were looking for individuals in W Berlin and other major German cities....located near US military bases.....

Then at some point you get a nice letter in the mail coupled with a nice used 50 USD bills usually no more than 3000 USDs and asking you will you are interested in working deeper...with a contact telephone number which if one looked it up was in E Berlin......

Some might say this was a GDR Stasi recruitment attempt..but behind the German voice on the phone was the nicest of Soviet GRU officers you will ever met.....

SO exactly how many young Americans in Europe answered that ad....and were studying aboard during that period AND never reported to US authorities when they returned to the US the recruitment attempts????
So the Trump advisor saying that in tossing out 35 Russian GRU/SVR spies is
inappropriate ABSOLUTELY does not know what he is talking about and that includes Trump himself...

President-elect Trump will boldly use Twitter to make major policy announcements, incoming press chief says.

1. oversimplifying complex policy announcements down to what can be conveyed in 140 is absolutely ridiculous

2. circumventing the press and making announcements directly to Twitter followers is "unpresidented."

3. 'Boldly'? Try this instead: 'Recklessly.' 'Foolishly.' 'In a manner endangering American standing around the globe.'

4. There is no dialogue, no accountability this way. Unacceptable. He is supposed to be POTUS for all Americans, not just his followers, and not a king making proclamations.

Freedom of speech means exactly what again these days...????

WSJ editor says calling Trump lie about 1000s of NJ Muslims celebrating 9/11 a lie risks being seen as not objective
http://politi.co/2hGXG0U

Well worth reading this two year old article..still applies in 2017....

Putinism and the Anti-WEIRD Coalition
https://20committee.com/2014/04/07/putinism-and-the-anti-weird-coalitio… 
 

"I am here to argue for a dialogue that merges our futures," said Kissinger in Moscow in February 2016.

MORE evidence Kissinger is trying to sell the US on the Putin proposal for an new Yalta 2.0 giving him complete influence in Europe and the ME...in exchange for really nothing at all back to the US...

Finland President @niinisto is worried that Trump and Putin will try to decide Europe's future without Europeans at the table

Sound similar to the ongoing bromance between Trump and Putin to the disadvantage of the US....????

NOTICE the role of Kissinger then and the Kissinger/Putin role now????

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/31/opinion/sunday/nixons-vietnam-treache…

Nixon’s Vietnam Treachery
By JOHN A. FARRELLDEC. 31, 2016
Richard M. Nixon always denied it: to David Frost, to historians and to Lyndon B. Johnson, who had the strongest suspicions and the most cause for outrage at his successor’s rumored treachery. To them all, Nixon insisted that he had not sabotaged Johnson’s 1968 peace initiative to bring the war in Vietnam to an early conclusion. “My God. I would never do anything to encourage” South Vietnam “not to come to the table,” Nixon told Johnson, in a conversation captured on the White House taping system.
Now we know Nixon lied. A newfound cache of notes left by H. R. Haldeman, his closest aide, shows that Nixon directed his campaign’s efforts to scuttle the peace talks, which he feared could give his opponent, Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey, an edge in the 1968 election. On Oct. 22, 1968, he ordered Haldeman to “monkey wrench” the initiative.
The 37th president has been enjoying a bit of a revival recently, as his achievements in foreign policy and the landmark domestic legislation he signed into law draw favorable comparisons to the presidents (and president-elect) that followed. A new, $15 million face-lift at the Nixon presidential library, while not burying the Watergate scandals, spotlights his considerable record of accomplishments.
Haldeman’s notes return us to the dark side. Amid the reappraisals, we must now weigh apparently criminal behavior that, given the human lives at stake and the decade of carnage that followed in Southeast Asia, may be more reprehensible than anything Nixon did in Watergate.

Nixon had entered the fall campaign with a lead over Humphrey, but the gap was closing that October. Henry A. Kissinger, then an outside Republican adviser, had called, alerting Nixon that a deal was in the works: If Johnson would halt all bombing of North Vietnam, the Soviets pledged to have Hanoi engage in constructive talks to end a war that had already claimed 30,000 American lives.

But Nixon had a pipeline to Saigon, where the South Vietnamese president, Nguyen Van Thieu, feared that Johnson would sell him out. If Thieu would stall the talks, Nixon could portray Johnson’s actions as a cheap political trick. The conduit was Anna Chennault, a Republican doyenne and Nixon fund-raiser, and a member of the pro-nationalist China lobby, with connections across Asia.
“! Keep Anna Chennault working on” South Vietnam, Haldeman scrawled, recording Nixon’s orders. “Any other way to monkey wrench it? Anything RN can do.”
Nixon told Haldeman to have Rose Mary Woods, the candidate’s personal secretary, contact another nationalist Chinese figure — the businessman Louis Kung — and have him press Thieu as well. “Tell him hold firm,” Nixon said.
Document
H.R. Haldeman's Notes from Oct. 22, 1968
During a phone call on the night of Oct. 22, 1968, Richard M. Nixon told his closest aide (and future chief of staff) H.R. Haldeman to "monkey wrench" President Lyndon B. Johnson's efforts to begin peace negotiations over the Vietnam War.

Nixon also sought help from Chiang Kai-shek, the president of Taiwan. And he ordered Haldeman to have his vice-presidential candidate, Spiro T. Agnew, threaten the C.I.A. director, Richard Helms. Helms’s hopes of keeping his job under Nixon depended on his pliancy, Agnew was to say. “Tell him we want the truth — or he hasn’t got the job,” Nixon said.
Throughout his life, Nixon feared disclosure of this skulduggery. “I did nothing to undercut them,” he told Frost in their 1977 interviews. “As far as Madame Chennault or any number of other people,” he added, “I did not authorize them and I had no knowledge of any contact with the South Vietnamese at that point, urging them not to.” Even after Watergate, he made it a point of character. “I couldn’t have done that in conscience.”
Nixon had cause to lie. His actions appear to violate federal law, which prohibits private citizens from trying to “defeat the measures of the United States.” His lawyers fought throughout Nixon’s life to keep the records of the 1968 campaign private. The broad outline of “the Chennault affair” would dribble out over the years. But the lack of evidence of Nixon’s direct involvement gave pause to historians and afforded his loyalists a defense.
Time has yielded Nixon’s secrets. Haldeman’s notes were opened quietly at the presidential library in 2007, where I came upon them in my research for a biography of the former president. They contain other gems, like Haldeman’s notations of a promise, made by Nixon to Southern Republicans, that he would retreat on civil rights and “lay off pro-Negro crap” if elected president. There are notes from Nixon’s 1962 California gubernatorial campaign, in which he and his aides discuss the need to wiretap political foes.
Of course, there’s no guarantee that, absent Nixon, talks would have proceeded, let alone ended the war. But Johnson and his advisers, at least, believed in their mission and its prospects for success.
When Johnson got word of Nixon’s meddling, he ordered the F.B.I. to track Chennault’s movements. She “contacted Vietnam Ambassador Bui Diem,” one report from the surveillance noted, “and advised him that she had received a message from her boss … to give personally to the ambassador. She said the message was … ‘Hold on. We are gonna win. … Please tell your boss to hold on.’ ”
In a conversation with the Republican senator Everett Dirksen, the minority leader, Johnson lashed out at Nixon. “I’m reading their hand, Everett,” Johnson told his old friend. “This is treason.”
“I know,” Dirksen said mournfully.
Johnson’s closest aides urged him to unmask Nixon’s actions. But on a Nov. 4 conference call, they concluded that they could not go public because, among other factors, they lacked the “absolute proof,” as Defense Secretary Clark Clifford put it, of Nixon’s direct involvement.
Nixon was elected president the next day.

KGB/FSB/GRU unfairly treated says man about to lead the free world. @realDonaldTrump watches back of Russian spies

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jan/01/donald-trump-unfair-bla…

Former CIA chief calls Trump ‘Moscow’s useful idiot’
http://www.pri.org/stories/2016-12-16/former-cia-chief-calls-trump-mosc… 

It's an unspoken assumption that the US president is generally one of the smartest people on the planet. Alas, can't even pretend w/ Trump

THIS is being carried on social media from well informed Ukrainian intel sources who have been very good at hacking and intercepting Russian comms lately...

Putin personally informed @realdonaldtrump of ongoing hacking operation. He timed his only presser by the planned Wikileaks revelation.
 

This is beginning to look like a farce with every new day....I own an IT company specialized in hacking prevention and then offensive hacking and follow on forensics....

I would never state publicly I can run the US government because I am smart...because I am not experienced in the field of running a government.

REMEMBER this statement basically comes from a real estate and marketing businessman not an IT specialist.....he is absolutely wrong....the ability to do forensics on hack attacks is not scientific but rather an engineering black art and there are many who are great at this "black art".....

QUOTE:
“I just want them to be sure because it’s a pretty serious charge,” Mr. Trump said of the intelligence agencies. “If you look at the weapons of mass destruction, that was a disaster, and they were wrong,” he added, referring to intelligence cited by the George W. Bush administration to support its march to war in 2003. “So I want them to be sure,” the president-elect said. “I think it’s unfair if they don’t know.”

He added: “And I know a lot about hacking. And hacking is a very hard thing to prove. So it could be somebody else. And I also know things that other people don’t know, and so they cannot be sure of the situation.”
When asked what he knew that others did not, Mr. Trump demurred, saying only, “You’ll find out on Tuesday or Wednesday.”

The more he talks the more he gets deeper into lying....

BUT WAIT...his FP will be utterly great for the next four years because he has stated..."he is smart".....

REMEMBER the new Us President has repeatedly praised Putin and has repeatedly denied Russia has hacked the US and meddled in the US electoral process.....

ALWAYS keep that mind for the next four years....

Putin plays it cool, but Russia is worried about a US cyberattack
http://www.pri.org/stories/2016-12-30/putin-plays-it-cool-russia-worrie…

Donald J. Trump ‏@realDonaldTrump 19h
19 hours ago

Great move on delay (by V. Putin) - I always knew he was very smart!

Donald J. Trump ‏@realDonaldTrump 16h
16 hours ago

Russians are playing @CNN and @NBCNews for such fools - funny to watch, they don't have a clue! @FoxNews totally gets it!

QUOTE:
However, Russian officials are reported to be concerned about the possibility of a US cyberattack in retaliation for the election hacking.

President Obama has said the US reserves the right to retaliate in kind — something he says the public will not see and might never know about. But he said Russia would feel it. And that, says Maynes, has the Kremlin worried.

“The Russian president’s internet adviser, a guy named German Klimenko, was talking recently about trying to secure key infrastructure," Maynes says. "They’re concerned about what US hacking might do to Russia’s banking sector [and] central bank, things like that.”

“There was also recently the hacking of Vladislav Surkov’s email," Maynes adds. "This is a key Putin adviser [who] currently has the Ukraine portfolio in Russia. It basically seemed to show the Kremlin was involved in stirring up trouble in east Ukraine, and had that plan in place quite a long time ago. And it was rather embarrassing.”

Russia first responded to the leaks by denying it was Surkov’s email account. Then they blamed US intelligence working through Ukrainian hackers. “Now,” says Maynes, “whether that’s true or not, I have no idea. But it was instructive in another way.”

He says it became clear that a lot of key Kremlin insiders, including the Russian president, do not use email. “They’re very attuned to this idea of kompromata, of compromising material, and I think they’re very attuned to the idea of leaks and hacks in a way that clearly the Democratic Party was not in the US.” That will make it harder for the US to get good dirt on Russia’s leaders. 

“So we’ll have to wait and see what happens,” Maynes says. “If they [US intelligence] can drop a bombshell, maybe anything goes. But at this point, I’m pretty skeptical.”

Does this incoming US President actually believe that he is at "war" with those that did not vote for him.....

He claims that he is this great winner ALL the while utterly forgetting that the largest general election vote in the last say 50 years "VOTED" against him by 3M votes thus denying him the right to claim he has a mandate to rule as he wants...yes he controls both houses but still does not speak for the majority of those that voted....

First he refuses to release all financial and tax data EVEN while stating he will...THEN he basically refuses to place his companies into a blind trust as all Presidents have done before him....THEN is openly and publicly states that he is the greatest friend of Putin ALL the while claiming to never really knowing Putin even in the face of a number of videos stating the exact opposite....

AND all of this is to generate itself into a comprehensive FP???????

Donald J. Trump ‏@realDonaldTrump 1h
1 hour ago

Happy New Year to all, including to my many enemies and those who have fought me and lost so badly they just don't know what to do. Love!

SO now the majority that voted against him in the general election are "enemies"???????

Sanctioning the GRU, a decent step, but hamstrung by the need for symmetry
by Mark Galeotti

The "Lame Duck" president has proven to have a surprisingly sharp and accurate peck, and as the USA strikes back against the Russian hacking and its role in the US elections with a welcome series of sanctions. Two point are worth bringing up: the way the issue instantly and depressingly becomes a partisan one.

It also suggests that the incoming administration is woefully ill-informed about the Russian intelligence community, or willing to leap through rhetorical hoops to protect it; and the needless and limiting philosophy behind the sanctions.

The Sanctions and the GRU

Kellyann Conway, counsellor to President-Elect Trump, told CNN, while disparaging these so-called "symbolic" sanctions, that "the GRU doesn't really travel here, doesn't keep its assets here." OK, let's start with that.

If by "the GRU doesn't really travel here," she means senior officers such as the four figures directly sanctioned don't pop over to Epcot for family holidays, that is perfectly true. If by "the GRU ..., doesn't keep its assets here" she means the agency as a whole doesn't have McMansions in Texas and skiing chalets in Vermont, also technically true.

But.

First of all, the GRU has many assets in the espionage tradecraft terms in the USA: agents, networks, safehouses, dead drops, etc. This is an expansive and aggressive agency that while focusing on military intelligence has broadened out into covering a wide range of other missions, not least because of the competitive dynamic I outline in my recent ECFR report Putin's Hydra.

So if we are talking about the GRU as a whole -- and Conway's phrasing suggests she was -- then of course the GRU has huge (even yuge) assets in the States, including its rezidentura, its base within the embassy in DC.

Secondly, the point about sanctioning the guys at the top of the GRU is not because you're worried about them popping over the take advantage of the New Year sales on Fifth Avenue, but to demonstrate commitment. Yes, this is "symbolic" but much of politics is precisely about symbolism.

Punish the Criminal, Not the Instrument

However, here's my beef with the current philosophy of sanctions, the need artificially to create comparability and demonstrate direct connection. What does it matter if the hacks were done by the GRU (and as I understand it, they got the emails, but it was the FSB that pushed for their leakage and handled the dissemination and exploitation side of the operation)?
These are simply arms of a single, authoritarian state?

Why not hit people in the Presidential Administration, Duma, Senate, Putin's friends, his dogwalker, whoever?

When we convict a thug of punching someone, we don't punish him by breaking his arm, we punish the criminal as an entire person. By the same token, sanctions should target the state, not its individual instruments.

This is a reasonable set of sanctions, and can be welcomed. But for real effectiveness, for deterrent impact, arguably sanctions ought to be unreasonable, and directed at the source of the attack, not the instrument.

So someone explain to me how it is possible to get a TS/SCI and access to the US nuclear codes when one is in fact apparently very close to Putin and his black money and who adamantly denies Russia ever hacked the US...that he is suppose to be leading and defending the US from "ALL ENEMIES near and far" on 20 JAN???????

Donald J. Trump ‏@realDonaldTrump 11h
11 hours ago

Russians are playing @CNN and @NBCNews for such fools - funny to watch, they don't have a clue! @FoxNews totally gets it!

Serious question is does Trump get it?????

Comment from French social media yesterday evening after the praising of Putin by Trump....

Just so you know, French evening news just referred to Trump as Putin's new spokesperson on the air on national TV

We're all so fxxxxxxxxd

Russian Hackers Began Honing Their Election-Tampering Skills in 2010
https://medium.com/defiant/russian-h...c5#.aa8xht9d5#

"He's not afraid to use this stuff": Michael McFaul explains the persistence of Putin's cyber power
https://www.theatlantic.com/internat...tm_source=twb#

Meet The Russian Hacker Claiming She's A Scapegoat In The U.S. Election Spy Storm
http://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbr...ia-sanctions/#

AND Trump's inherent urge is to what...praise Putin after he is directly called out for hacking the US and meddling in the US election??????

This is exactly why one must seriously question the political "sanity" of Trump and his transition team when he openly and publicly denies the Russians are in fact hacking the US.....

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/russian-operation-hacked-a-vermont-uti…

Russian operation hacked a Vermont utility, showing risk to U.S. electrical grid security, officials say

QUOTE:
A code associated with the Russian hacking operation dubbed Grizzly Steppe by the Obama administration has been detected within the system of a Vermont utility, according to U.S. officials.

While the Russians did not actively use the code to disrupt operations, according to officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a security matter, the discovery underscores the vulnerabilities of the nation’s electrical grid.

And it raises fears in the U.S. government that Russian government hackers are actively trying to penetrate the grid to carry out potential attacks.

Officials in government and the utility industry regularly monitor the grid because it is highly computerized and any disruptions can have disastrous implications for the country’s medical and emergency services.
Burlington Electric said in a statement that the company detected a malware code used in the Grizzly Steppe operation in a laptop that was not connected to the organization’s grid systems.

The firm said it took immediate action to isolate the laptop and alert federal authorities.

Friday night, Vermont Gov. Peter Shumlin (D) called on federal officials “to conduct a full and complete investigation of this incident and undertake remedies to ensure that this never happens again.”

“Vermonters and all Americans should be both alarmed and outraged that one of the world’s leading thugs, Vladimir Putin, has been attempting to hack our electric grid, which we rely upon to support our quality-of-life, economy, health, and safety,” Shumlin said in a statement. “This episode should highlight the urgent need for our federal government to vigorously pursue and put an end to this sort of Russian meddling.”

Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) said he was briefed on the attempts to penetrate the electric grid by Vermont State Police onFriday evening. “This is beyond hackers having electronic joy rides — this is now about trying to access utilities to potentially manipulate the grid and shut it down in the middle of winter,” Leahy said in a statement. “That is a direct threat to Vermont and we do not take it lightly.”

American officials, including one senior administration official, said they are not yet sure what the intentions of the Russians might have been. The incursion may have been designed to disrupt the utility’s operations or as a test to see whether they could penetrate a portion of the grid.
Officials said that it is unclear when the code entered the Vermont utility’s computer, and that an investigation will attempt to determine the timing and nature of the intrusion, as well as whether other utilities were similarly targeted.

“The question remains: Are they in other systems and what was the intent?” a U.S. official said.

This week, officials from the Department of Homeland Security, FBI and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence shared the Grizzly Steppe malware code with executives from 16 sectors nationwide, including the financial, utility and transportation industries, a senior administration official said.
Vermont utility officials identified the code within their operations and reported it to federal officials Friday, the official said.
The DHS and FBI also publicly posted information about the malware Thursday as part of a joint analysis report, saying that the Russian military and civilian services’ activity “is part of an ongoing campaign of cyber-enabled operations directed at the U.S. government and its citizens.”

Another senior administration official, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss security matters, said in an email that “by exposing Russian malware” in the joint analysis report, “the administration sought to alert all network defenders in the United States and abroad to this malicious activity to better secure their networks and defend against Russian malicious cyber activity.”

According to the report by the FBI and DHS, the hackers involved in the Russian operation used fraudulent emails that tricked their recipients into revealing passwords.

Russian hackers, U.S. intelligence agencies say, earlier obtained a raft of internal emails from the Democratic National Committee, which were later released by WikiLeaks during this year’s presidential campaign.
President-elect Donald Trump has repeatedly questioned the veracity of U.S. intelligence pointing to Russia’s responsibility for hacks in the run-up to the Nov. 8 election. He also has spoken highly of Russian President Vladimir Putin, despite President Obama’s suggestion that the approval for hacking came from the highest levels of the Kremlin.

Trump spokesman Sean Spicer said it would be “highly inappropriate to comment” on the incident given the fact that Spicer has not been briefed by federal authorities at this point.

Obama has been criticized by lawmakers from both parties for not retaliating against Russia before the election. But officials said the president was concerned that U.S. countermeasures could prompt a wider effort by Moscow to disrupt the counting of votes on Election Day, potentially leading to a wider conflict.

Officials said Obama also was concerned that taking retaliatory action before the election would be perceived as an effort to help the campaign of Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.

On Thursday, when Obama announced new economic measures against Russia and the expulsion of 35 Russian officials from the United States in retaliation for what he said was a deliberate attempt to interfere with the election, Trump told reporters, “It’s time for our country to move on to bigger and better things.”

Trump has agreed to meet with U.S. intelligence officials next week to discuss allegations surrounding Russia’s online activity.

Russia has been accused in the past of launching a cyberattack on Ukraine’s electrical grid, something it has denied. Cybersecurity experts say a hack in December 2015 destabilized Kiev’s power grid, causing a blackout in part of the Ukrainian capital.

On Thursday, Ukranian President Petro ­Poroshenko accused Russia of waging a hacking war on his country that has entailed 6,500 attacks against Ukranian state institutions over the past two months.

Since at least 2009, U.S. authorities have tracked efforts by China, Russia and other countries to implant malicious software inside computers used by U.S. utilities. It is unclear if the code used in those earlier attacks was similar to what was found in the Vermont case. In November 2014, for example, federal authorities reported that a Russian malware known as BlackEnergy had been detected in the software controlling electric turbines in the United States.

The Russian Embassy did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Representatives for the Energy Department and DHS declined to comment Friday.

The largest Russian propaganda media outlet Russia Today is suddenly off the air.....

BREAKING: Russia Today just went off the air in Washington DC area, possibly worldwide.

"Technical difficulties".....

Either Trump wants to be part of a Kremlin-Kissinger grand bargain to loot the world, or he is compromised & is owned & operated by Putin.

Analysts: Trump now in v delicate position, must be so careful how he calibrates Russia rhetoric given allegations etc.

Trump: I love Putin!

A culture of norms & behavior is necy to sustain liberal democracy, @FareedZakaria on rise of US illiberal democracy

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/america-is-becoming-a-land-of-l… 
…

Outgoing president punishes America's major adversary. President-elect praises the adversary for being patient with America.

Putin's spox jokes that they partied for 3 days at the Kremlin after Trump's victory, then says srsly, "It was euphoria after so much BS."

The bipartisan Senate believes Russia hacked the US....the entire US IC believes the same thing...BUT Trump and his complete transition team does not....

SO this is the response by the 3000% Russian owned propaganda media outlet Sputnik International is saying....NOTICE JUST HOW many times they refer to Trump and then notice the very last sentence....AND there is not a single dossier on Trump anywhere in Moscow since 1987????

THAT is not how FSB/SVR/GRU works even in the 21st century....THERE is always a dossier on every single US citizen that travels to Russia....nothing has changed in this procedure since the Cold War days....

SO is Russia now telling Trump exactly what to do....and there is not a single dossier on Trump from the KGB and now FSB/SVR/GRU on his many trips to Moscow.....

US imposes new sanctions against #Russia for alleged #hacking in the US:
https://sputniknews.com/us/201612291...ia-sanctions/#

Quote:
Despite a glaring lack of evidence to support allegations that Russia interfered in the US presidential election, the White House has announced that they will be imposing sanctions on the nation.On Thursday, the US sanctioned six Russian individuals, including the head of Russia's main intelligence directorate, as well as five entitities.

The five entities sanctioned are the Autonomous Noncommercial Organization Professional Association of Designers of Data Processing Systems, the Federal Security Service, the Main Intelligence Directorate, the Special Technology Center, and Zorsecurity.

The Federal Security Service is comparable to the US FBI, meaning that this will effective block any counter intelligence operations between the two nations. The allegations about Russian interference and hacking to insure a Donald Trump victory have still not been confirmed by the White House, despite “anonymous sources” feeding claims to various media outlets. The Kremlin has denied any involvement in the hacks on the Democratic National Committee or Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta.

The claims have also been disputed by veterans of both the CIA and the NSA. “If hacking were involved, the NSA would know about it, and so they would also know the sender and the recipient,” former CIA analyst Ray McGovern previously told Loud & Clear on Radio Sputnik. “There’s no reason in God’s world why they wouldn’t reveal that if they had it.”

The Trump transition team has also contested the validity of the claims. "If the CIA Director [John] Brennan and others at the top are serious about turning over evidence … they should do that," Trump aide Kellyanne Conway said on CBS’ Face the Nation earlier in the month. "They should not be leaking to the media. If there's evidence, let's see it." Conway went on to call retaliation against Russia “a political response” at the behest of “Team Hillary.”

"It seems like the president is under pressure from Team Hillary, who can't accept the election results," she said. "It's very clear that President Obama could have 'retaliated' months ago if they were actually concerned about this and concerned about this affecting the election." In November, members of the Senate Intelligence Committee urged the White House to declassify “additional information concerning the Russian Government and the U.S. election,” but they have still not received any response.

President Obama had ordered the intelligence community to prepare a full report on the their findings regarding Russia and the election before he leaves office on January 20. The incoming president-elect has stated that the US needs to “get on with our lives,” in response to the allegations against Moscow.

On Thursday, Russian Foreign Ministry’s special envoy Andrey Krutskikh said that Moscow hopes any sanctions imposed by Obama will be lifted by the incoming administration.
 

General European view currently of both Trump and the US....

Trump doesn't know what settlements are and takes credit for Sprint jobs announced in April.

This is you, America. Ignorant and mendacious.

So Trump's team hears "hatred," "tribalism," "demonize those who are different," at Pearl Harbor and they think, 'that's us!"
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/1...sition-233023#

Putin strategy until Trump inauguration: embarrass/sideline Obama administration and set things in place for rapid solutions w/Trump.

China warns U.S. over Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen's travel, evoking "one China" policy
http://reut.tv/2hsCxEw

Russia now pleading for help from their friend Trump after being beaten up on by Obama......

Poor #Russia is just the victim of the evil Obama administration, Russian FM spox claims.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWG26o3zA-s#…

Somehow the Russian FM spokeswoman forgot along the way...the Russian military annexation of Crimea...eastern Ukraine invasion...war crimes in Syria and their direct hacking into the US...

Wonder why????

Interesting Russian comment in face of the Obama WH notice of pay back for the Russian hacking in the 2016 election and the DNC.....the hacking that Trump still adamantly denies ever happened when his on Senate RP members state it did in fact happen......

Klimenko tells @RT_russian Russia should be ready for the country to be cut off from the worldwide internet
https://russian.rt.com/russia/article/346157-intervyu-klimenko-internet 

Trump beat up on the Chinese for US business and employment woes and continued that drumbeat after the election and who he has named to his staff and cabinet....will be interesting to see IF he does what he stated in the campaign on his first day...REMEMBER he promised he would do it.....

WASHINGTON — President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to name China a currency manipulator on his first day in the White House.

There's only one problem - it's not true anymore. China, the world's second-biggest economy behind the United States, hasn't been pushing down its currency to benefit Chinese exporters in years. And even if it were, the law targeting manipulators requires the U.S. spend a year negotiating a solution before it can retaliate.

Trump spent much of the campaign blaming China's for America's economic woes. And it's true that the U.S-China trade relationship is lopsided. China sells a lot more to the United States than it buys. The resulting trade deficit in goods amounted to a staggering $289 billion through the first 10 months of 2016.

WHAT DOES CURRENCY HAVE TO DO WITH THE TRADE GAP?

When China's currency, the yuan, falls against the U.S. dollar, Chinese products become cheaper in the U.S. market and American products become more costly in China.

So the U.S. Treasury Department monitors China for signs it is manipulating the yuan lower. Treasury has guidelines for putting countries on its currency blacklist. They must, for example, have spent the equivalent of 2 percent of their economic output over a year buying foreign currencies in an attempt to drive those currencies up and their own currencies down.

Treasury hasn't declared China a currency manipulator since 1994.

WHAT WOULD HAPPEN IF THE US DECLARED CHINA A CURRENCY MANIPULATOR?

Probably not much, at least initially.

If Treasury designates China a currency manipulator under a 2015 law, it is supposed to spend a year trying to resolve the problem through negotiations.

Should those talks fail, the U.S. can take a number of small steps in retaliation, including stopping the U.S. Overseas Private Investment Corp., a government development agency, from financing any programs in China. Trouble is, the United States already suspended OPIC operations in China years ago — to punish Beijing in the aftermath of the bloody 1989 crackdown in Tiananmen Square.

So naming China a currency manipulator is mostly "just a jaw-boning exercise," said Amanda DeBusk, chair of the international trade department at the law firm of Hughes Hubbard & Reed and a former Commerce Department official. "There's no immediate consequence."

IS CHINA GUILITY OF USING CURRENCY TO HELP ITS EXPORTERS?

Not lately. In fact, for the past couple of years it's been intervening in markets to prop up the yuan, not push it lower.

For years, China pretty clearly manipulated its currency to gain an advantage over global competitors. It bought foreign currencies, the U.S. dollar in particular, to push them higher against the yuan. As it did, it accumulated vast foreign currency reserves — nearly $4 trillion worth by mid-2014.

But now the Chinese economy is slowing, and Chinese companies and individuals have begun to invest more heavily outside the country. As their money leaves China, it puts downward pressure on the yuan.

The yuan has dropped nearly 7 percent against the dollar so far this year. The Chinese government has responded by draining its foreign exchange reserves to buy yuan, hoping to slow the currency's fall. China's reserves have dropped by $279 billion this year to $3.05 trillion.

If Beijing stepped back and let market forces determine the yuan's level, it likely would fall even faster, giving Chinese exporters even more of a competitive edge.

So Beijing is doing the opposite of what Trump says it's doing. Cornell University economist Eswar Prasad earlier this month called Trump's plans to name China a currency manipulator "unmoored from reality."

"The whole discussion is ironic," said David Dollar, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a former official at the World Bank and U.S. Treasury Department. "It's out of date."

COULD TRUMP DO ANYTHING ON HIS OWN?

Gary Hufbauer, an expert on trade law at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, notes that as president, Trump could nonetheless escalate any dispute over the currency on his own. Over the years, Congress has ceded the president broad authority to impose trade sanctions. Trump has threatened to slap a 45 percent tax, or tariff, on Chinese imports to punish it for unfair trade practices, including alleged currency manipulation.

Brookings' Dollar said China likely would bring a case to the World Trade Organization "against any protectionist measures that are a violation of U.S. commitments to the WTO," which oversees the rules of global commerce and rules on trade disputes.

Some trade analysts wonder if Trump is using the tariff threat as a negotiating tool to win concessions from China.

Whatever the U.S. motive, China has a consistent record of retaliating against trade sanctions. When the Obama administration slapped tariffs on Chinese tire imports in 2009, for instance, China lashed back by imposing a tax on U.S. chicken parts.

China's Global Times newspaper, published by the ruling Communist Party's People's Daily, has already speculated that "China will take a tit-for-tat approach" if Trump's tariffs are enacted. The paper suggested that Beijing might limit sales of Apple iPhones and Boeing jetliners in China.

"The Chinese are predictable and reliable," DeBusk said. "If they get punched, they punch back."

"Russia wants not only a 'New Yalta',
but also western endorsement of its right to interpret rules as it sees fit"
http://app.ft.com/content/5d3d406a-c229-11e6-81c2-f57d90f6741a 

AND the Trump response to this will again what?????

From the last great white empire propaganda tv
https://youtu.be/xfKq57aBqac

Pacific Northwest's most prominent white nationalist calls Russia the "last great White empire":

AND what does the US do to counter "fake news"??????/

Germany is prosecuting a first #FakeNews case. The guy is looking at 3 years in prison. EXCELLENT! Although 10 years would be better.

OSCE, which monitors war in Ukraine, victim of cyberattack. Allegedly carried out by Russian group tied to DNC hack.
http://reut.rs/2idNlYX

Here is the great Trump personal friend again hard at work and yet Trump does not believe anything about Russian hacking.....and this time it is OSCE.....

So just how is the Trump FP going to handle his great friend Putin.......he has not answered that even after having to know Russian hacked into the DNC and yes even the RNC.....

More on Russia's support for separatist and white supremacist movements on the extreme right and left in America.

http://www.businessinsider.com/yes-california-moscow-embassy-russia-201…