This weekend’s death of 32-year-old protester, Heather Heyer, in Charlottesville, Va. plays into Vladimir Putin’s plan to sow chaos in the U.S. 

“Chaos, isn’t a pit” says Littlefinger in Game of Thrones. “Chaos is a ladder.”

“Many who try to climb it fail and never get to try again. The fall breaks them. And some are given a chance to climb, but they refuse. They cling to the realm or the gods or love. Illusions”.

“Only the ladder is real,” Littlefinger says. “The climb is all there is.”

Game of Thrones is more than just a brilliant masterpiece of modern-day literature and television, it is an allegory for our times. In the same way winter came to the seven kingdoms, so we are facing the winter of our civilization.

For decades, the West has ignored the rise of despots cloaked in shields of traditional values, nationalism, guns and violence. We’ve welcomed their blood money, and allowed them to seep into our institutions. And now that they’ve gained a foothold, they are sowing chaos.

It’s no coincidence then, that our winter approaches from Russia, a country whose geographic fate has sentenced her people to the harshest season and to generations of monstrous leaders. The latest is Vladimir Putin, who views sowing chaos in enemy states as a viable tactic to gain power, to climb the ladder of global power.

This weekend, a white nationalist careened his car into a crowd of counter-protestors in Charlottesville, Va. killing 32-year-old para-legal, Heather Heyer, and injuring 19 others. As the tragedy unfolded on live TV, one man was seeing the fruits of his labor. That man is Vladimir Putin.

For Putin, chaos is a ladder.

The Russian President is not shy about his intentions to sow chaos, he openly declares it.

In the guiding strategic document of Putin’s regime, the Gerasimov Doctrine, Russia’s General Valery Gerasimov outlines a new type of war – a “hybrid war” where information and protests are weaponized to greater effect than tanks, guns and nuclear weapons. “Non-military means of achieving political and strategic goals … have exceeded the power of force of weapons in their effectiveness,” Gerasimov concludes.

Russia’s Chief of the General Staff goes on to outline “the use of special-operations forces and internal opposition to create a permanently operating front through the entire territory of the enemy state, as well as informational actions, devices and means that are constantly being perfected.”  In other words, use propaganda and protests to polarize a population and sow chaos behind enemy lines.

This is how Russia was able to pulverize the Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia, how they helped Turkish dictator Recep Erdogan come to power, how they stoked ISIS and helped Bashar al-Assad and how they support extremists on the right and left in Germany, France and the U.S.  The Kremlin bolsters the fringes to polarize an enemy’s population and weaken the middle. And while the enemy is in chaos, Russia climbs the ladder.

What do these ‘active measures’ look like in the U.S.?

1. Russia openly supported the National Rifle Association (NRA), the first major endorsement for the Donald J. Trump and a major donor to his campaign. The NRA used to be a fighter for second amendment rights but now creates ads inciting anarchy, a war against Muslims and calls on North Korea to bomb California with nuclear weapons.
2. The Kremlin fostered allies in the so-called alt-right and white supremacists like Richard Spencer, David Duke and Jared Taylor. The very same activists who found a home in Stephen Bannon’s Breitbart. 
3. Moscow fueled the flames of discord by gaming Google and Facebook’s algorithms to boost alt-right sites like Breitbart and Infowars and Russian propaganda outlets like Sputnik and RT using Russian bots and private data stolen from hacked voters rolls. Using micro-targeting, they preyed on the fears about gun confiscation, gay marriage and Sharia Law by delivering fake and hyped news to social media news feeds.
4. The Russians actively groomed Donald J. Trump, a candidate with deep ties to Russian money and money-laundering, surrounding him with Russian operatives like Paul Manafort and Michael Flynn.
5. Together with President Trump, the Kremlin is now sowing doubts in the institutions which have made America a shiny beacon on the hill like democracy, an independent judiciary, the FBI and the media.
6. Moscow supports the regime of Kim Jong-Un with trade and nuclear arms to raise fears in the U.S. and could even start a distracting war, conveniently on their border.

The end result is chaos and now the death of a 32-year-old protester in Charlottesville. Would we have an emboldened Nazi movement in the U.S. if it weren’t for Russia’s “active measures” and Donald Trump? It’s unlikely. Is Russia also fomenting the far left? Absolutely. From Jill Stein to California’s odd secessionist movement, the Kremlin’s pernicious puppetry is visible. Russia’s goal is not ideological (although the Kremlin is more successful with right-wing groups aligned to Russia’s own despotic policies). Putin’s goal is chaos.

Why chaos? It’s a ladder. It’s designed to distract the U.S., so Russia can continue its global misadventures and regain a global footing. Don’t take my word for it, take Putin’s Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Federation, General Valery Gerasimov:

“A perfectly thriving state can, in a matter of months and even days, be transformed into an arena of fierce armed conflict, become a victim of foreign intervention, and sink into a web of chaos, humanitarian catastrophe, and civil war.”

It’s those last two words, civil war, which should worry sober-minded Americans of all political persuasions. Now is not the time to feed into the hysteria, it’s time to coalesce and fight the winter invaders. As Cersai Lannister says in another episode of Game of Thrones, “when you play the game of thrones, you win or you die. There is no middle ground.”

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Five of Donald Trump’s key advisers are linked to an attempt to buy Hillary Clinton’s missing State Department e-mails from a hacking broker on the dark web. 

For more than 40 years, Peter W. Smith was a fixture among Chicago’s elite. He was at once a high-flying private equity banker and a trusted Republican operative. “When Peter W. Smith talks, Newt Gingrich listens,” a 1995 article from Crain’s said about him. As Gingrich climbed the ranks of the Republican Party in the 90’s, Smith became his “No. 1 financial backer … and one of the top 20 contributors nationwide.”

Peter Smith’s connected life in business and Republican circles ended on May 14 when he died. Smith was 81 but the circumstances surrounding his death are shrouded in mystery. An obituary posted in the Chicago Tribune, lauded Smith’s work as a tycoon and Republican operative but it did not list a cause of death.

“I should say we do not know how he died,” says the Wall Street Journal’s Shane Harris.  “We made multiple attempts, both with family members and with associates of his, as well as government officials in the town where he lived, to try to determine his cause of death, and we were unsuccessful,” Harris told MSNBC.

The Wall Street Journal reporter had good reason to be inquiring about Peter W. Smith’s death. Just ten days before the 81-year-old private equity banker’s demise, he called up Shane at the Wall Street Journal and confirmed a story the reporter had been chasing.  Smith revealed he had mounted  an “independent” campaign to find the 30,000 missing e-mails from Hillary Clinton’s private server she used while Secretary of State. Smith was convinced the e-mails were out there, theorizing Russian hackers could have them.

Smith’s efforts to find the missing Clinton e-mails date back to last Summer, just a few weeks after the Washington Post revealed the hack of the Democratic Party servers was the act of a Kremlin-linked hacker. The operation launch also coincided with Donald Trump’s public request for Russian help in finding the documents. “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 e-mails that are missing,” Trump said.  “I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.”

Peter W. Smith began assembling a team to work on the e-mail project.

As Matt Tait, a UK-based cyber security expert and former British spy, tells it, Smith contacted him “out of the blue”. He introduced himself as a Republican Party operative. “He mentioned that he had been contacted by someone on the “dark web” who claimed to have a copy of e-mails from Secretary Clinton’s private server, he wanted me to help validate whether or not the emails were genuine,” says Tait.

The U.K. based cyber security expert agreed to help verify the e-mails, theorizing the dark web contact was either a Russian cut-out (espionage speak for an arm’s-length agent of a nation-state), or a fraudster trying to “dupe Smith out of his money.”  Smith denied he intended to pay for the e-mails in his interview with the Wall Street Journal.

Tait stayed in contact with Smith in the following months but never did see the e-mails. He notes Smith regularly boasted of his links to the Trump campaign, particularly Lt-Gen Michael Flynn. Flynn briefly served as Trump’s National Security Adviser before a Justice department investigation found him to be compromised by the Kremlin. Before his death, Smith denied Flynn was involved in the operation but several e-mails obtained by the Wall Street Journal, suggest Smith was acting as a conduit for Flynn.

According to Tait, and others involved in the operation, Smith sent out a document on Labor Day last year, listing four groups involved in the e-mail scheme. Among them was a group labeled “Trump Campaign” which included a who’s who of Trump’s inner circle: Steve Bannon, Kellyanne Conway, Sam Clovis, Lt. Gen. Flynn and Lisa Nelson.

The Trump administration says it wasn’t involved with Smith’s scheme but isn’t denying the operation existed.  “If Mr. Flynn coordinated with him in any way, it would have been in his capacity as a private individual,” a spokesman told the Wall Street Journal. Flynn is widely believed to be co-operating with the FBI investigation so pinning the entire thing on him comes at little cost to the administration. But what about the other four Trump advisers listed in Smith’s document? How deep was their involvement? That may be a secret Smith has taken to his grave.

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Opinion: Democrats could retake the White House in next year’s mid-term elections and Joe Biden could become the next President. 

In the heat of the 2012 Presidential election campaign, senior White House chief political strategist David Axelrod approached his boss, then President Barack Obama, with a sobering message.  Democratic enthusiasm for Obama had begun to wane. Axelrod offered a suggestion to turn the tide. The President needed to call in former President Bill Clinton to reinforce his re-election campaign effort.

To be clear, there is no love lost between the two former presidents. “Bill Clinton’s animosity toward Obama is legendary.” The New York Post reported in June 2013. Just a year earlier, Clinton was urging his wife to oppose Obama’s re-election. Hillary deferred, citing loyalty, but her husband was offended by what he perceived was Obama’s slight against him. According to sources quoted in Edward Klein’s book “The Amateur: Barack Obama in the White House”, Clinton fumed:

“I’ve heard more from Bush, asking for my advice, than I’ve heard from Obama. I have no relationship with the president — none whatsoever. Obama doesn’t know how to be president. He doesn’t know how the world works. He’s incompetent. He’s an amateur!”- Bill Clinton, as quoted in “The Amateur”

As the 2012 campaign took its toll on Obama’s approval ratings (mainly due to the IRS scandal and, ironically, Hillary’s Benghazi and e-mail scandal), Obama was left no choice but to reach out to Bill. Clinton proposed a deal.

Clinton agreed to give the nominating address at the Convention. In exchange, he demanded Obama endorse Hillary Clinton as his successor. Bill held up his side of the agreement stumping on Obama’s behalf on the campaign trail and giving a rousing speech at the convention. Obama was re-elected but once back at the White House, he began to have second thoughts, sending signals he preferred to stay neutral in the next election, as is tradition with sitting Presidents.

When word of this reached Bill Clinton, he insisted Obama go on 60 Minutes with Secretary Clinton, to publicly affirm his support for Hillary. The result was a hastily organized and somewhat uncomfortable interview with Hillary and Obama on CBS’s 60 Minutes.

What made Obama’s deal with Bill Clinton personally heartbreaking for the sitting President, was it meant his Vice President and good friend, Joseph Biden, would have to go it alone in the 2016 election, should he run. After all, Vice Presidents Gore, Bush and Mondale all secured their party’s nomination after serving as deputies to successful sitting presidents.

Biden briefly toyed with a 2016 run against Hillary, but the death of his son, Beau, wore heavily on him, emotionally and financially.  At one point, he told President Obama that he and Jill would have to sell their home, to care for Beau’s family. As Biden recalls it, “[Obama] said, ‘I’ll give you the money. Whatever you need, I’ll give you the money. Don’t, Joe — promise me. Promise me.’ I said, ‘I don’t think we’re going to have to anyway.’ He said, ‘promise me'”.

Biden enjoys a close relationship with Hillary and was acutely aware of the historic potential for a first female President. Since Clinton’s loss to Trump in November last year, Biden has been frank in his assessment of her Presidential campaign. “You didn’t hear a word about that husband and wife working, making 100,000 bucks a year, two kids, struggling and scared to death. They used to be our constituency,” Biden told the LA Times. “I don’t think she ever really figured it out, and by the way, I think it was really hard for her to decide to run,” the former VP says.

Instead of launching his own Presidential run, Biden campaigned tirelessly for his friend, Hillary Clinton, appearing at no less than 83 campaign events, all while mourning the loss of Beau.

Last week, Biden announced he’s launching a Political Action Committee as a way to ‘stay involved’ in politics, but many are speculating the move will lead to a Presidential run in 2020. There is a scenario, which could see Biden in the White House two years earlier. The following is my opinion and is based solely on what is publicly known about the investigation of the Trump-Russia affair.

As I’ve previously explained, in my post on the seriousness of the investigation into Donald Trump’s involvement with Russia, impeachment would be the likely course of events in more ordinary times. These, however, are not ordinary times. Far from it.

Even after FBI Director James Comey lays out the case for obstruction of justice against Trump before senate committee on Thursday this week, Republicans are unlikely to launch impeachment proceedings. This is based on political expediency but also because it’s now suspected House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis) and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) both accepted Russian money for the their part’s 2016 election season. (I wrote about it in my post “What America Needs Now”.) They are not only beholden to Trump, but they may be owned by Russian President Vladimir Putin and very possibly complicit in the entire affair.

This could mean voters have to wait until the 2018 mid-term elections to exercise their vote in opposition to Donald J. Trump. In so doing, they will also have a chance to elect the next President of the US. If Democrats win the house (which would mean flipping 22 Republican house seats) and launch impeachment proceedings, they could put a new President in the White House before 2020.

Should Joe Biden run for one of those House seats and win, he could become the House Speaker. The House could then impeach President Donald J. Trump and Vice President Michael Pence, paving the way for Biden to become the 46th President of the United States. Biden will be 74 on mid-term Election Day in November 2018 and 75 when the new Congress takes office in January 2019. The next presidential election will still happen in November 2020.

Obvioulsy, this scenario holds for whomever is House Speaker in the event of a Democratic win. Hillary Clinton and even Barack Obama could run for the House (the U.S. Constitution doesn’t allow for a President to be elected for a third term, but it doesn’t prohibit a third term, through succession) but Clinton and Obama would both receive serious opposition from the Trump base, at a time of considerable division in the country. Biden’s blue collar appeal, hopeful vision, impeccable credentials and no ties to a corruptable money machine will appeal across the board as the man to lead America out of the gloom in which we find ourselves. “Joe always says, ‘If you’re not on your way up, you’re on your way down,” the New York Times quoted someone close to Biden as saying in 2013. Sometimes, you’re down so much, the only way to go is back up.

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