McSweeney's has a weird and possibly satirical article explaining Eric Trump's public silence - I AM ERIC TRUMP. MY FAMILY WON’T LET ME TALK BECAUSE I AM AN ANARCHO-FEMINIST COMMITTED TO KURDISH LIBERATION.

Over the past few years, I have been mocked on late-night comedy programs as a silent dolt. It makes sense for Western liberals to mock what they don’t understand, but what they think is silence due to a childish stupidity is actually a decades-long censorship campaign of my political beliefs. My family won’t let me talk because I am an anarcho-feminist committed to Kurdish liberation.

When I was a young boy, I lived with my grandparents in Zlin, Czechoslovakia. One day, when my grandmother was subjugated to patriarchal wage slavery at a shoe factory, and my brother Don was out shooting endangered deer with Kalashnikovs, I found a strange book on her shelf titled, The National Road To Kurdish Revolution by Abdullah Öcalan. I didn’t realize it then, but this author, the imprisoned leader of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), would become the most important person in the world to me, a man that I would soon call Apo, or father.

Michael Klare has an article at TomDispatch looking at the emerging US-Russia-Saudi Arabia axis of "petro-powers" and their confrontation with the greens that make up the rest of the world - The Petro-Powers vs. the Greens.

That Donald Trump is a grand disruptor when it comes to international affairs is now a commonplace observation in the establishment media. By snubbing NATO and withdrawing from the Paris climate agreement, we’ve been told, President Trump is dismantling the liberal world order created by Franklin D. Roosevelt at the end of World War II. “Present at the Destruction” is the way Foreign Affairs magazine, the flagship publication of the Council on Foreign Relations, put it on its latest cover. Similar headlines can be found on the editorial pages of the New York Times and the Washington Post. But these prophecies of impending global disorder miss a crucial point: in his own quixotic way, Donald Trump is not only trying to obliterate the existing world order, but also attempting to lay the foundations for a new one, a world in which fossil-fuel powers will contend for supremacy with post-carbon, green-energy states.

This grand strategic design is evident in virtually everything Trump has done at home and abroad. Domestically, he’s pulled out all the stops in attempting to cripple the rise of alternative energy and ensure the perpetuation of a carbon-dominated economy. Abroad, he is seeking the formation of an alliance of fossil-fuel states led by the United States, Russia, and Saudi Arabia, while attempting to isolate emerging renewable-energy powers like Germany and China. If his project of global realignment proceeds as imagined, the world will soon enough be divided into two camps, each competing for power, wealth, and influence: the carbonites on one side and the post-carbon greens on the other.

If you've got some free time I'd recommend these 2 articles:

The destruction of job security and financial prospects in the western world for workers without in-demand skills had created a generation of recluses living on the internet - Trump is their revenge on reality. "Trump’s younger supporters know he’s an incompetent joke; in fact, that’s why they support him." - 4chan: The Skeleton Key to the Rise of Trump.

Jeremy Grantham has a different look at the same problem in his latest newsletter: "The question now is: what for will the struggle take ?" - Grantham: ‘Twas capitalism that killed capitalism.

The data on rising inequality also led me to check what others had thought and written on this issue and made me realize that a self-destructive streak in capitalism had been well-noted in the past. A particular surprise to me was Schumpeter – he of “creative destruction fame” – who believed capitalism in its current form would eventually fail through overreaching, using its increasing power to dispense with regulations designed to protect the public good (that has a painful echo today doesn’t it?) until pushback FDR style (or Teddy Roosevelt style) results in a more controlled mix, which Schumpeter called socialism. There was also a suggestion in his work and that of Keynes that excessive corporate power would weaken the demand from ordinary workers and hence weaken the economy. This last point is also emphasized more recently by Mancur Olson, who argued that “Parochial cartels and lobbies tend to accumulate over time until they begin to sap a country’s vitality. A war or some other catastrophe sweeps away the choking undergrowth of pressure groups,” as The Economist rather eloquently summarized his thinking in his obituary of March 1998.

To promote a pushback against excessive corporatism (and elements of oligarchy) one needs first of all to recognize the problem. Given the rather apathetic response from what used to be called “the workers” to the last 30 years of relative slide, there appears to have been no such recognition. But then on the eve of the election I realized that the point had finally been made. For an astonishing 75% of those first 9,000 polled agreed that, yes, we did indeed need to be saved from the rich and powerful. From now on, in my opinion, we live in a different world from the one we grew up in. A world in which a degree of economic struggle between the financial elite, perhaps 10% but more likely 1%, and all the rest is finally recognized. The wimpy phase is probably over. The question now is which path will this struggle take? Will it be a broad societal effort through established political means to move things back to the 1950s to 1960s when a CEO’s pay was 40x his average employee’s pay and not today’s over 300x; when corporations never dreamt of leaving the US merely to save money; when investment banks set the standard (and a very high one) of ethical behavior? Or do we try to do it through the other historically well-used method, and a much more dangerous one – that of resorting to a “strong leader?” Strong leaders work out just fine if we end up with a Marcus Aurelius, the mostly benevolent and wisest of Roman Emperors. But when things go wrong, as they often do, we could more easily end up with Caligula. ...

I felt the pain from the “strong leader” bit because, like almost all in my age cohort, I am fanatically well-disposed to democracy. We were born, after all, at a time that overlapped the trio of nightmarish, strong leaders of the 1930s and 1940s, Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin. But I believe this fanaticism has weakened in other age cohorts born less close to these three as they have receded steadily into history. A recent report5 captured this decline: Of those born, as I was, in the 1930s, fully 75% gave a 10 out of 10 for extreme support for democracy. But each younger cohort felt less enthusiastic: 62%, 57%, 50%, and 43% for each younger cohort by decade until by the time we get to those born in the 1970s, the 40-year-olds, extreme support is down to 32%! And this is not the worst of it. The same report listed those who were actually against democracy as a “bad” or “very bad” way to “run this country.” Shockingly, in the period from 1995 to 2011, the percent of each age group agreeing to that proposition doubled. From 5.5% to 12% for those over 65 rising to a frightening 24%, up from 12.5% for the 16- to 24-year-olds. ...

The real challenge in promoting less inequality is to increase the share of GDP going to labor. Almost certainly, for any given increase in their share of GDP there must be a decline in the share going to corporate profits. How does the program of the new strong leader stack up on this one? He is surrounded by capitalists and billionaires who, to further advantage corporations and the super rich, are apparently prepared to wage war on the already sadly diminished regulations that defend ordinary people (and, yes, with no regulations corporations would make more money). The war would also include direct tax cuts for the rich and corporations, which would further increase the share of the pie going to corporations. This is a strategy that if successful in the long-run – despite its current market appeal – could not possibly be worse for the workers if he tried. Perhaps they, the workers, will feel betrayed as their share drops in order to further fatten corporations. Perhaps they will be bamboozled enough not to notice the betrayal. For bamboozlement of the working poor has become an art form in the last 30 years, with bamboozlement defined as an ability to persuade people to vote against their own economic interest for one reason or another. For example, 62% of voters do not like the sound of “death tax,” which in the form of estate tax is paid by only 1-2% of American families. An astonishing 35% of those earning less than $10,000 a year do not approve of increasing taxes on the rich. Does it get any richer than that? It has been called the Homer Simpson effect,6 whereby the poor voter reacts negatively to the idea of tax, which like death has little appeal, but does not get the point that a tax decrease for the rich has unpleasant implications for them. But, the gods willing, you probably can’t bamboozle enough of the people enough of the time. And the Reuters/Ipsos poll clearly shows that the worms have turned. The lack of class war or economic war in the US has always been a fiction, but it has been mostly hidden, and deliberately so, by the side so completely winning the undeclared war. Perhaps the 74% vote was indeed a public declaration that the war is now official.

The weird spectacle of the day out of the White House is a crazy list of "under-reported" terrorist attacks in recent years (including the Lindt Cafe siege in Sydney, which had saturation coverage in the media here for months, but not including the now infamous, nonexistent "Bowling Green massacre" made up by Trump PR lady Kellyanne Conway recently, to the mirth of thousands of Tweeters).

The Washington Post noted that the whole thing seemed to have been lifted from Alex Jones' "Infowars" conspiracy theory site, which has transitioned from notionally libertarian to outright fascist in outlook in recent years - InfoWars is behind President Trump’s idea that the media is covering up terrorist attacks.

Trump and Infowars seem to have a symbiotic relationship over recent years, with Jones claiming broadcasting on Infowars is like sending the "bat signal' to Trump.

Author Jon Ronson (of "Men Who Stare At Goats" fame) has had a long relationship with Jones (the two first hooked up for their now infamous visit to "Bohemian Grove" many years ago) and published a great little ebook called "The Elephant in the Room: A Journey into the Trump Campaign and the “Alt-Right”" not long before the US presidential election.

The ABC had an interview with Ronson before the election, which ended (in retrospect) rather ominously - Elephant in the room: Jon Ronson on Alex Jones, the Trump campaign and the alt-right.

MARK COLVIN: You've got a quote in your e-book, where you say, "In previous election campaigns there was a clear delineation between the serious main event and the reckless fringe, but not in this."

Is that the main point, as far as you're concerned?

JON RONSON: I think so, yeah. I think the egalitarian nature of the internet has done some really great things, but it's also created insane chaos. And Trump and the Trump campaign is part of that chaos.

It feels like all of us, with our polarised, divisive ways, have polluted the waters. And Trump emerged from them like a kind of three-eyed fish.

MARK COLVIN: Is it a form of mass hysteria? In other words: do you think that it will come and go and that, a couple of years from now, people will be looking back and saying, "How could we ever have done that?" Or do you think it's the beginning of a trend?

JON RONSON: Well, you know: I mean, Trump is losing - thank God, you know.

Is there some collusion between the mainstream media and Hillary Clinton campaign? You know, probably there is some collusion. You know, when Trump says that, I think it's true.

I think everybody has decided that Trump would be incredibly dangerous. And so I think Trump will lose the election and things will kind of go back to normal a little bit.

However, I think we need to think of these times as, "Oh, my God. If things had taken a slightly different turn, this could have been..." Look, I don't want to get too grandiose here, but this could have been Germany in 1929.

The SMH reports that the inevitable (and correct) comparisons between Trump's suppression of scientific facts and Lysenkoism in the Soviet Union are beginning to be made - Donald Trump reminiscent of Stalin says chief scientist Alan Finkel as science 'literally under attack'.

The Chief Scientist told an audience at the ANU's Crawford School of Public Policy that this political control was comparable to Stalin's promotion of Trofim Lysenko's ideas on genetics and evolution in the USSR from the 1920s. Dr Finkel said: "It is reminiscent of the censorship exerted by political officers in the old Soviet Union. Every military commander there had a political officer second-guessing his decisions.

I quite liked this comment on the article that seems to be getting the most attention on the murky transfer to 19% of Rosneft - The back-channel oil pact with Trump.

Interestingly, since the Trump administration started getting security briefings and Trump began his (unrecorded) phone calls to Putin and dropped sanctions against the Russian FSB security service there seems to be something of a purge going on over in Russia of cyber-security officials and Interior Ministry generals...

If there was a deal, we can assume it was contingent on Trump’s election, followed by getting rid of the sanctions against Russia. That would have led to Trump’s coy references about Russia.

If there was a deal, Page would not get a commission until sanctions are gone, of course, and maybe not even until Exxon starts drilling in the Arctic, a deal the Russians say is worth $500 billion. (Apparently, Exxon has the technology to tap the Arctic reserves and Rosneft doesn’t.) And no rush, with oil prices low.

Question: does Tillerson get part of the cut or just take his profit from Exxon. If Sessions has to rule on this, will he get something too? What about the EPA and regulations about drilling in the Arctic? The State Department surely is crucial in making all this work, thus is might be part of the plan to replace as many old-timers as possible. (Nice move with the immigration ban, to stir things up and encourage people to quit.)

Malcolm Turnbull really isn't having a good year. While he's been a great disappointment as PM (backsliding from promoting 100% renewable energy in his pre-Prime Minster days to now bowing down to the coal industry and promoting expensive and unscalable clean coal) I did feel some sympathy for him yesterday as he had to put Trump on the spot to honour an earlier deal for the US to take some refugees that had fallen afoul of Australia's harsh seaborne refugee blocking regime and ended up stranded in South Pacific holding camps.

The resulting Trump tantrum seemed to be the talk of the media yesterday (no doubt distracting everyone from the many other outrages being committed by the Trump team) with the local press quickly dubbing Trump a bully who doesn't like people standing up to him.

Trump already looks to be trying to back down and blame everything on Obama for making the original deal, so no doubt this will all have blown over tomorrow and everyone will be wailing about the latest offences Trump has committed (while still ignoring the endless stream of corrupt acts being performed as the Trump inner circle scoops up bribes and other favours - follow this guy on Twitter for a rolling list).

I've been wondering for a while how Putin's rumoured videos of Donald Trump's hobbies would be enough to convince him to run for President hard enough to actually win it.

The carrot to accompany the stick became clearer over the last 24 hours as stories linking the transfer of ownership of 19% of Russian oil company Rosneft to an unknown party - now widely believed to be Trump.

The stories seem to be partially born out by the dossier assembled by ex-MI6 agent Christopher Steele that ended up being put forward by US Intelligence agencies, predicting that 19% of Rosneft would be given to Trump if sanctions were lifted.

This also helps to explain Trump's desire to ally with Russia, his hostility to clean energy and action to reduce global warming, and the likes of oilman Rex Tillerson in his cabinet - rather than just having a yearning for returning the US to the 1950s he now has a large financial interest in maintaining oil as a primary source of energy.

Keeping Iraq unstable in the coming years will no doubt help the oil price, and his personal wealth, increase too.

The spectacle of Donald Trump abruptly transitioning the US political system into open fascism is quite horrifying even from the other side of the Pacific, however by and large ourlocal media aren't bothering to report the details.

Paul McGeough at the SMH gets to do a summary piece each day though (today's piece looking on the blatant blackmail involved in the new anti-muslim immigration laws, with countries that host Trump properties exempt and those without them hit hard - it's more a mafia style shakedown than a real immigration policy).

Long time business writer Michael Pascoe was also moved to voice his shock ("Australia is investing billions in madman Donald Trump") after Trump's bizarre interview with ABC News recently where he once again threatened to steal Iraq's oil.

As I've noted here many times before, Iraq has the world's largest and cheapest to extract oil reserves, and trying to gain control of them was a major reason for the Iraq war.

Bush and the neocons at least tried to maintain a fig leaf of legality around their attempt's to bully the Iraqi government into signing over control of the oil, so Trump's naked imperialism has managed to outrage the entire political spectrum outside of the fascist right.

The Washington Post - Trump’s illegal, impossible, and ‘beyond goofy’ idea of seizing Iraq’s oil.

The United States can’t just walk off with Iraq’s oil when it decides to get out. In 2015, Iraq produced about 4 million barrels a day, enough crude oil to fill more than 700 Trump Towers. Billions of barrels more sit underground in conventional reservoirs. The International Energy Agency has estimated that Iraq could produce twice as much as it does currently — by 2035. That means taking the oil would take decades. That might explain Trump’s suggestion that “a certain group” should be left behind to hold down parts of the country so that the United States could siphon off oil. What he didn’t say is that that group – undoubtedly U.S. soldiers — could be there quite a while. ...

“To ‘take the oil’ would require the United States to occupy Iraq. We tried that after 2003 with something approaching 200,000 troops and it did not work,” said Andrew Bacevich, a retired colonel and professor of history and international relations at Boston University. “What would effective occupation actually require? A minimum of a half-million troops, perhaps more.” Bacevich added, “Presumably, Trump would have them stay until the oil runs out, which would entail an occupation running into decades. The total cost? Probably more than the value of the oil itself. The whole idea is beyond goofy.”

Juan Cole - Trump to CIA: We now have 2nd Chance to take Iraq’s Oil.

The United Nations Charter and other treaty instruments that are part of US law actually abolished the principle of ‘to the victors go the spoils.’ Conquering states in a war are not allowed to annex territory from the vanquished as of 1945. That’s what is wrong with the Israeli creeping annexation of Palestine since 1967.

Given that the US has 6000 troops in Iraq, as Thomas Doherty pointed out, this kind of talk puts them in danger from Iraqi nationalists who may begin seeing them not as allies against ISIL but as stalking horses for a sinister imperialism. Trump just painted a big red target on the backs of our troops. ...

This isn’t speculation: the great Borzou Daragahi reports that the Iraqis are indeed ‘pissed’ and ready to fight for their oil.

Trump is also wrong that Iraqi petroleum fueled Daesh (ISIS, ISIL), or that the US could have “taken” Iraqi petroleum. This is because he does not know Iraqi geography or political geography. Most oil in Iraq is either down in Shiite territory at Basra (the vast majority of what is pumped) or up in Kurdish-held territory at Kirkuk. Daesh in Iraq had relatively little access to petroleum revenues, and the experts on it believe that contributions from Gulf supporters and taxes and plunder from local people (including on agriculture) were much more important. The situation is perhaps a little different in Syria, but we’re talking about Iraq.

The Independent - Iraq says Donald Trump's threat to seize the country's oil makes no sense.

US enemies and friends would oppose the move. While Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi has accepted US help to retake Isis-held territory in his country, he has repeatedly asserted Iraqi sovereignty. He said of Trump's oil vow in November, “I am going to judge him by what he does later.” Reuters reported Mr al-Abadi as saying: “It wasn't clear what he meant. Did he mean in 2003 or to prevent the terrorists from seizing Iraq's oil? Iraq's oil is constitutionally the property of the Iraqis.”

The Atlantic - Why Iraq Needs the Oil.

It is into this delicate situation that Trump has pitched himself, without apparent regard to the consequences. That his threat to strip Iraq of its oil survived his transition into the White House demands careful consideration of what the proposal could actually entail. The U.S. military would not, as Trump has suggested, occupy Iraq to oversee the illegal extraction of crude from its oil fields, which are dispersed across the country. ...

Or he could just push the Iraqi government to award favorable contracts to American companies like ExxonMobil, whose former CEO Rex Tillerson has just been confirmed as secretary of state. Tillerson’s previous escapades, of course, present a cautionary tale. Under Tillerson, ExxonMobil purchased oil rights to land blocks controlled by the KRG in 2011—a deal that directly challenged the authority of the Iraqi government and was partially responsible for an armed stand-off between the Iraqi army and the Kurdish peshmerga.

Tillerson’s record of aggressively asserting corporate interests into decidedly thorny diplomatic climates also reflects the lack of common purpose among Trump’s team. James Mattis, Trump’s secretary of defense, has a record of seeking to confront Iran’s growing influence in Baghdad. Destabilizing Iraq’s oil sector would weaken Baghdad’s hold on the country, thereby strengthening Iran’s position.

The Boston Globe - As Trump muses about seizing Iraq oil, energy experts say it makes no sense.

“This is foolish,” Kenneth Pollack, a senior fellow at Brookings Institution, said. “This is a typical Trump remark. It’s moronic. It makes no sense. We couldn’t just suddenly grab Iraq’s oil and walk away with it.” In order to extract the oil, American forces would need to occupy the country, a costly, dangerous, and politically risky process, Pollack said. He added Iraqi resistance to these efforts would be quite strong given oil is a crucial source of income for the country.

In response to Trump’s comments, Massachusetts Representative Seth Moulton, a former Marine, tweeted on Saturday, “No. That’s pillaging, and it’s a war crime.”

The Guardian - Trump's plan to seize Iraq's oil: 'It's not stealing, we're reimbursing ourselves'.

The idea predates Trump’s presidential campaign. As far back as 2011, he was telling the Wall Street Journal that this was his policy for Iraq. “You heard me, I would take the oil,” he said. “I would not leave Iraq and let Iran take the oil.” And he insisted to ABC News that this did not amount to national theft. “You’re not stealing anything,” Trump said. “We’re reimbursing ourselves … at a minimum, and I say more. We’re taking back $1.5tn to reimburse ourselves.”

As a security strategy, this presents huge problems from almost every angle, according to military, strategic, legal and oil experts. First of all, there are issues of principle and legality. Trump’s frequent invocation of the “spoils of war” seems to hark back to a bygone age of conquistadors and plunder-based imperialism, illegal now under the laws of war.

“In international law, you can’t take civilian goods or seize them. That would amount to a war crime,” Anthony Cordesman, the Arleigh Burke chair in strategy at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies. “Oil exports were almost the only Iraqi source of money. So you would have to pay for government salaries, maintain the army, and you have triggered a level of national animosity far worse than we did. It would be the worst kind of neo-colonialism. Not even Britain did that.”

Jay Hakes, the author of A Declaration of Energy Independence, about the relationship between US national security and Middle Eastern oil, was similarly unsparing. “It is hard to overstate the stupidity of this idea,” he wrote on Real Clear Energy. “Even our allies in the Middle East regard oil in their lands as a gift from God and the only major source of income to develop their countries. Seizing Iraq’s oil would make our current allies against Isis our new enemies. We would likely, at the least, have to return to the massive military expenditures and deployment of American troops at the war’s peak.”

I figured The Borowitz Report may have been a little premature claiming that George W Bush was very relieved he would no longer be the worst US president in history once Donald Trump was inaugurated, however after 5 days in the job I think Trump is getting close to taking the honour (unlike Bush he hasn't invaded any other countries yet so it's still line ball, though apparently he is threatening to invade Chicago).

Listing all of Trump's violations of decency and common sense would be tedious but one unpleasant aspect of this American experiment with authoritarianism which stands out already is his continual war on the truth, starting with the bizarre attempts to deny that the attendance at his inauguration ceremony was far lower than that of previous presidents (not to mention the massive anti-Trump protests the following day) and the creation of the phrase "alternative facts" to describe Trump administration lies.

While it is common for dictators to lie about topics which reflect poorly upon them (they also like to declare weird national holidays like Trump's "National Day of Patriotic Devotion, which I initially thought was satire - apparently Trump is following Kim Jong Il's playbook as much as he is Vladimir Putin's) the speed at which the Trump administration is moving to push scientific facts down the memory hole (one of the many apropros concepts from George Orwell's 1984 which will come in handy during the Trump era) is staggering.

After starting with a purge of the White House web site (eliminating all mention of climate change and clean energy, along with other annoyances like civil rights and the Spanish language version of the site), the administration has quickly moved on to removing references to climate change from the EPA web site and telling government employees they cannot release information to the media or the public without having it vetted for political correctness first. The functions of the EPA seem to have been pretty much suspended as well, no doubt as the first step towards dismantling federal environmental protection programs completely (as they are an obstacle to keeping US consumers hooked on fossil fuels for as long as they last).

On the plus side, the fear of Trumpist censorship led to a carnival of climate data archiving over the past month, and the administration's heavy handed censorship of official Twitter accounts has sparked a boom in rogue government Tweeters that are now far more popular than the official accounts (with special mention going to the folks at the Badlands National Park).

The science community is now organising it's own protest marches against Trump, with a march on Washington planned in the coming weeks.

Whether or not Trump is still in office at that point can't be certain, with his recent performance in a TV interview prompting a lot of pundits to wonder if he'll be bounced out of office by his own cabinet under the 25th amendment section covering situations where the president is no longer fit for office. That's if the CIA (allegedly unimpressed with his cheer squad disrespecting their hallowed ground) don't assassinate him first of course...

There's a part of me that think that the new revelations that Putin has videotape of Trump indulging in golden showers with Russian prostitutes are probably made up - but as I can't prove they aren't true and I can't see why the CIA / NSA et al would make it up I'm going to assume they are on the level.

Truer than stories about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction were anyway.

If nothing else they are providing a comedy fest on Twitter and after all the ridiculous nonsense Trump supporters made up about Hillary (there are enough true bad things about Hillary they could use if they wanted to have an honest debate rather than making up stories about satanic abuse at pizza parlours) that I can't say I feel any pity for him whatsoever.

Hopefully the impeachment process begins soon.

Michael Klare has a look at "Trump’s Carbon-Obsessed Energy Policy and the Planetary Nightmare to Come" - Donald Trump's Energy Nostalgia and the Path to Hell.

“American energy dominance will be declared a strategic economic and foreign policy goal of the United States,” he declared at the Williston forum in May. “We will become, and stay, totally independent of any need to import energy from the OPEC cartel or any nations hostile to our interests.” He seems firmly convinced that the accelerated extraction of oil and other carbon-based fuels will “make America great again.”

This is delusional, but as president he will undoubtedly be able to make enough of his energy program happen to achieve both short term and long term energy mayhem. He won’t actually be able to reverse the global shift to renewable energy now under way or leverage increased American fossil fuel production to achieve significant foreign policy advantages. What his efforts are, however, likely to ensure is the surrender of American technological leadership in green energy to countries like China and Germany, already racing ahead in the development of renewable systems. And in the process, he will also guarantee that all of us are going to experience yet more extreme climate events. He will never recreate the dreamy America of his memory or return us to the steamy economic cauldron of the post-World War II period, but he may succeed in restoring the smoggy skies and poisoned rivers that so characterized that era and, as an added bonus, bring planetary climate disaster in his wake. His slogan should be: Make America Smoggy Again.

Alex Steffen has a look at the "carbon bubble" and the potential for a lot of stranded assets to be created during the period the big oil / Putin axis has control of the US government - Trump, Putin and the Pipelines to Nowhere.

If we can’t burn oil, it’s not worth very much. If we can’t defend coastal real estate from rising seas (or even insure it, for that matter), it’s not worth very much. If the industrial process a company owns exposes them to future climate litigation, it’s not worth very much. The value of those assets is going to plummet, inevitably… and likely, soon.

Currently, though, these assets are valued very highly. Oil is seen as hugely valuable, coastal real estate is seen as hugely valuable, industrial patents are seen as hugely valuable.

When there’s a large difference between how markets think assets should be valued and what they are (or will) actually be worth, we call it a “bubble.” Experts now call the differences between valuations and worth in fossil fuel corporations, climate-harmful industries and vulnerable physical assets the “Carbon Bubble.” It is still growing.

During the US election campaign I occasionally wondered if a Trump administration might occasionally do some oddball things that had positive outcomes. Even after the election he made time to meet with Al Gore and Leonardo Di Caprio to talk about global warming, which could have been seen as a sign there could be some hope of some forward looking policies on clean energy.

As his cabinet appointments have been announced though, it has become clear that a Trump administration is going to be dominated by fossil fuel interests even more heavily than the Bush / Cheney regime was, with the announcement of Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson as Secretary of State showing that US foreign policy will remain single-mindedly focused on oil for the foreseeable future.

Exxon has been looking to expand its presence in Russia for some time and Vladimir Putin awarded Tillerson the Russian "Order of Friendship" in 2013 after they negotiated a deal trading access to oil fields in the Russian Arctic for Exxon in exchange for Russian access to oilfields in Texas.

Joe Romm thinks that the Trump-Putin petrostate axis is going to focus on destroying international action on global warming, noting "the aligning interests between Russian President Vladimir Putin, Russia’s choice for U.S. president (Donald Trump), and Big Oil represents the gravest threat to humanity (and democracy) since the rise of the Axis powers in the 1930s. That’s because while Trump may not be able to destroy global climate action and the landmark 2015 Paris climate deal all by himself — as he pledged to do during the campaign — he probably could do that with help from Russia and the trillion-dollar oil industry."

The grassroots backing for this new axis of evil is coming from what is being dubbed in some quarters as the "Traditionalist International", a 21st century reversal of the old communist international concept - with Moscow looking to promote extreme nationalism along with a return to feudal social structures and other "traditional" practices like fossil fuel based transportation and power generation.

The Economist has a good summary of this Russian push to retard progress in the West via the "alt right" in the United States and far right wing groups in Europe and elsewhere - Russian propaganda is state-of-the-art again.

From the Mediterranean to the Pacific, Mr Putin is hailed as an example by nationalists, populists and dictators. “My favourite hero is Putin,” said Rodrigo Duterte, the brutal president of the Philippines. Mr Trump called Mr Putin “a leader far more than our president.” In Italy Beppe Grillo’s Five Star Movement took Mr Putin’s side against the West, and the anti-immigrant Northern League, led by Matteo Salvini, has enthused about his Russia. “No clandestine immigrants, no squeegee merchants and no Roma encampments [in Moscow],” tweeted Mr Salvini during a visit in 2014.

In France Marine Le Pen, whose National Front received a loan from a Russian bank, attacks the European Union and America for being too aggressive towards Russia. In the words of Dimitar Bechev, the author of a forthcoming book on Russia in the Balkans, “Putin enjoys a cult status with all holding a grudge against the West.” Nowhere is that status greater than with the nationalists of America’s “alt-right”. Matthew Heimbach, the founder of the Traditionalist Worker Party and a crusader against “anti-Christian degeneracy”, told the New York Times he sees Mr Putin as “the leader of the free world.” He called for the creation of a “Traditionalist International”—a reference to the Communist International founded in 1919.

The last time Russia had such a role in crystallising anti-establishment ideas was in the 1920s and 1930s, after the Bolshevik revolution. When Stalin wrote that the Soviet Union had become an “open centre of the world revolutionary movement”, it was not just propaganda. ...

Today, 25 years after the Soviet collapse, Russia is again seen as an emblem—this time of a nationalist imperial order. And just as in the 1930s, its isolationism does not prevent it from being involved in the global populist, anti-establishment trend. The Kremlin’s bet on marginal right-wing parties has paid off as they have moved into the mainstream. It has pumped out disinformation and propaganda both through its official media channels, such as the RT and Sputnik news networks, and through thousands of paid internet trolls. Its cyber-attacks against Western countries produced troves of emails and documents which it dumped into the hands of foreign media, disrupting America’s presidential elections to the benefit of Mr Trump. ...

Unlike the Socialists of the 1930s, the Kremlin and its friends today are driven not so much by ideology as by opportunism (and, in Russia’s case, corruption). Mr Putin’s primary goal is not to present an alternative political model but to undermine Western democracies whose models present an existential threat to his rule at home. Having lived through the Soviet collapse, he is well aware that the attraction of the prosperous, value-based West helped defeat communism. The retreat of that liberal democratic idea allows Russian propagandists to claim a victory.

Forbes has an interesting profile of Donald Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner (of 666 Fifth Avenue) and his "moneyball" tactics for targeting Facebook ads at vulnerable voters in swing states helped Trump win the election (along with some help from the Russians and aggressive vote suppression techniques being applies by state Republican governments of course) - How Jared Kushner Won Trump The White House.

“It’s hard to overstate and hard to summarize Jared’s role in the campaign,” says billionaire Peter Thiel, the only significant Silicon Valley figure to publicly back Trump. “If Trump was the CEO, Jared was effectively the chief operating officer.”

“Jared Kushner is the biggest surprise of the 2016 election,” adds Eric Schmidt, the former CEO of Google, who helped design the Clinton campaign’s technology system. “Best I can tell, he actually ran the campaign and did it with essentially no resources.”

No resources at the beginning, perhaps. Underfunded throughout, for sure. But by running the Trump campaign–notably, its secret data operation–like a Silicon Valley startup, Kushner eventually tipped the states that swung the election. And he did so in manner that will change the way future elections will be won and lost. President Obama had unprecedented success in targeting, organizing and motivating voters. But a lot has changed in eight years. Specifically social media. Clinton did borrow from Obama’s playbook but also leaned on traditional media. The Trump campaign, meanwhile, delved into message tailoring, sentiment manipulation and machine learning. The traditional campaign is dead, another victim of the unfiltered democracy of the Web–and Kushner, more than anyone not named Donald Trump, killed it.

This wasn’t a completely raw startup. Kushner’s crew was able to tap into the Republican National Committee’s data machine, and it hired targeting partners like Cambridge Analytica to map voter universes and identify which parts of the Trump platform mattered most: trade, immigration or change. Tools like Deep Root drove the scaled-back TV ad spending by identifying shows popular with specific voter blocks in specific regions–say, NCIS for anti-ObamaCare voters or The Walking Dead for people worried about immigration. Kushner built a custom geo-location tool that plotted the location density of about 20 voter types over a live Google Maps interface.

Soon the data operation dictated every campaign decision: travel, fundraising, advertising, rally locations–even the topics of the speeches. “He put all the different pieces together,” Parscale says. “And what’s funny is the outside world was so obsessed about this little piece or that, they didn’t pick up that it was all being orchestrated so well.”

For fundraising they turned to machine learning, installing digital marketing companies on a trading floor to make them compete for business. Ineffective ads were killed in minutes, while successful ones scaled. The campaign was sending more than 100,000 uniquely tweaked ads to targeted voters each day. In the end, the richest person ever elected president, whose fundraising effort was rightly ridiculed at the beginning of the year, raised more than $250 million in four months–mostly from small donors.

The Observer has a look at the right wing propaganda and analytics machine that enabled Kushner's tactics to be so effective - Google, democracy and the truth about internet search.

The constellation of websites that Albright found – a sort of shadow internet – has another function. More than just spreading rightwing ideology, they are being used to track and monitor and influence anyone who comes across their content. “I scraped the trackers on these sites and I was absolutely dumbfounded. Every time someone likes one of these posts on Facebook or visits one of these websites, the scripts are then following you around the web. And this enables data-mining and influencing companies like Cambridge Analytica to precisely target individuals, to follow them around the web, and to send them highly personalised political messages. This is a propaganda machine. It’s targeting people individually to recruit them to an idea. It’s a level of social engineering that I’ve never seen before. They’re capturing people and then keeping them on an emotional leash and never letting them go.”

Cambridge Analytica, an American-owned company based in London, was employed by both the Vote Leave campaign and the Trump campaign. Dominic Cummings, the campaign director of Vote Leave, has made few public announcements since the Brexit referendum but he did say this: “If you want to make big improvements in communication, my advice is – hire physicists.”

Steve Bannon, founder of Breitbart News and the newly appointed chief strategist to Trump, is on Cambridge Analytica’s board and it has emerged that the company is in talks to undertake political messaging work for the Trump administration. It claims to have built psychological profiles using 5,000 separate pieces of data on 220 million American voters. It knows their quirks and nuances and daily habits and can target them individually.

“They were using 40-50,000 different variants of ad every day that were continuously measuring responses and then adapting and evolving based on that response,” says Martin Moore of Kings College. Because they have so much data on individuals and they use such phenomenally powerful distribution networks, they allow campaigns to bypass a lot of existing laws.

“It’s all done completely opaquely and they can spend as much money as they like on particular locations because you can focus on a five-mile radius or even a single demographic. Fake news is important but it’s only one part of it. These companies have found a way of transgressing 150 years of legislation that we’ve developed to make elections fair and open.” ...

We don’t understand it. It is not bound by terrestrial laws. And it’s in the hands of two massive, all-powerful corporations. It’s their experiment, not ours. The technology that was supposed to set us free may well have helped Trump to power, or covertly helped swing votes for Brexit. It has created a vast network of propaganda that has encroached like a cancer across the entire internet. This is a technology that has enabled the likes of Cambridge Analytica to create political messages uniquely tailored to you. They understand your emotional responses and how to trigger them. They know your likes, dislikes, where you live, what you eat, what makes you laugh, what makes you cry. ...

For the nearly 20 years that Google has been in existence, our view of the company has been inflected by the youth and liberal outlook of its founders. Ditto Facebook, whose mission, Zuckberg said, was not to be “a company. It was built to accomplish a social mission to make the world more open and connected.”

It would be interesting to know how he thinks that’s working out. Donald Trump is connecting through exactly the same technology platforms that supposedly helped fuel the Arab spring; connecting to racists and xenophobes. And Facebook and Google are amplifying and spreading that message. And us too – the mainstream media. Our outrage is just another node on Jonathan Albright’s data map.

The fossil fuel lobby and Vladimir Putin appear to be the big winners from Donald Trump's nominations for positions in his new administration (assuming he makes it past the intelligence agencies conspiring against him and the plotters trying to get the electoral college members to dump him before the inauguration) - Rex Tillerson: an appointment that would confirm Putin's US election win.

If Rex Tillerson is nominated as the next secretary of state, it would confirm Vladimir Putin as one of the strategic victors of the US presidential election. Barack Obama has ordered an inquiry into covert Russian intervention in the campaign, which the CIA says was designed to secure a victory for Donald Trump. But whether or not Russian intervention made a significant difference to the outcome, a Tillerson appointment would represent a significant gain for Moscow.

While the other leading candidates for the job hold largely traditional and adversarial views on Russia, the outgoing chief executive of Exxon Mobil has a history of close business ties to Putin, who bestowed the Order of Friendship on Tillerson in 2013.

The Guardian's Economics Blog is declaring that "globalisation is already dead" and that we are now entering a period of de-globalisation - It's too late for hand-wringing – globalisation is already dead.

Donald Trump and Theresa May are not flagbearers in the distance, they are catapults battering at the walls. Trump’s stated intent to pull the US out of the TPP on his first day in office underlines the new reality we inhabit, as does the European Union’s recent troubles closing a trade agreement with Canada thanks to Wallonia’s obstinance. Today, we have a new meme – deglobalisation – as people turn their backs on an interconnected world economy and societies turn iconoclastic.

It is not for the first time.

Globalisation may be defined as when trade across nations is growing faster than GDP. People interact more, transact more and create more wealth. Deglobalisation is the alternate state where trade grows less than GDP. Countries focus inwards, trade declines as a proportion of GDP and growth shrinks. A clear cycle of the two emerges over history.

Glenn Greenwald at The Intercept is making a number of similar points - Democrats, Trump, and the Ongoing, Dangerous Refusal to Learn the Lesson of Brexit.

The indisputable fact is that prevailing institutions of authority in the West, for decades, have relentlessly and with complete indifference stomped on the economic welfare and social security of hundreds of millions of people. While elite circles gorged themselves on globalism, free trade, Wall Street casino gambling, and endless wars (wars that enriched the perpetrators and sent the poorest and most marginalized to bear all their burdens), they completely ignored the victims of their gluttony, except when those victims piped up a bit too much — when they caused a ruckus — and were then scornfully condemned as troglodytes who were the deserved losers in the glorious, global game of meritocracy.

That message was heard loud and clear. The institutions and elite factions that have spent years mocking, maligning, and pillaging large portions of the population — all while compiling their own long record of failure and corruption and destruction — are now shocked that their dictates and decrees go unheeded. But human beings are not going to follow and obey the exact people they most blame for their suffering. They’re going to do exactly the opposite: purposely defy them and try to impose punishment in retaliation. Their instruments for retaliation are Brexit and Trump. Those are their agents, dispatched on a mission of destruction: aimed at a system and culture they regard — not without reason — as rife with corruption and, above all else, contempt for them and their welfare. ...

That analysis was inspired by a short, incredibly insightful, and now more relevant than ever post-Brexit Facebook note by the Los Angeles Times’s Vincent Bevins, who wrote that “both Brexit and Trumpism are the very, very wrong answers to legitimate questions that urban elites have refused to ask for 30 years.” Bevins went on: “Since the 1980s the elites in rich countries have overplayed their hand, taking all the gains for themselves and just covering their ears when anyone else talks, and now they are watching in horror as voters revolt.”

Vox has a report on a Trump "science" adviser speculating about cutting NASA's earth science research to cut down on all that annoying global warming data being captured (echoing the Australian government's attempts to purge itself of climate scientists) - A Trump adviser wants to scale back NASA’s ability to study climate change. As the UCS says - Bad decision !.

Donald Trump isn’t just vowing to undo US climate policies as president. His transition team is also talking about curtailing NASA’s ability to study climate change. ... In the piece, it becomes clear that what Walker really dislikes is NASA’s research on global warming, which he called “heavily politicized” without any justification. (Walker, who was the Republican chair of the House science committee from 1995 to 1997, claimed that “half” the world’s climatologists doubt the human role in global warming — that’s just not true at all.)

A move like this, if it actually happened, could be a big deal. Not only would it mean serious changes to America’s ability to study global warming, but it could affect a host of other key NASA programs that provide info on everything from weather to wildfires to drought and much more. And while any change to NASA’s budget would require congressional approval, plenty of Republicans in both the House and Senate are on board with removing the agency’s earth science programs.

George Monbiot has a look at the historical forces that enabled the rise of Donald Trump and notes that the biggest danger he poses initially is to action on global warming - The Deep History Behind Trump’s Rise.

It was inevitable that the blazing, insurrectionary confidence of neoliberalism would exert a stronger gravitational pull than the dying star of social democracy. Hayek’s triumph could be witnessed everywhere from Blair’s expansion of the private finance initiative to Clinton’s repeal of the Glass-Steagal Act, that had regulated the financial sector. For all his grace and touch, Barack Obama, who didn’t possess a narrative either (except “hope”), was slowly reeled in by those who owned the means of persuasion. As I warned in April, the result is first disempowerment then disenfranchisement. If their dominant ideology stops governments from changing social outcomes and delivering social justice, they can no longer respond to the needs of the electorate. Politics becomes irrelevant to people’s lives; debate is reduced to the yabber of a remote elite. The disenfranchised turn instead to a virulent anti-politics, in which facts and arguments are replaced by slogans, symbols and sensation. The man who sank Hillary Clinton’s bid for the presidency was not Donald Trump. It was her husband. The paradoxical result is that the backlash against neoliberalism’s crushing of political choice has elevated just the kind of man that Hayek worshipped. Trump, who has no coherent politics, is not a classic neoliberal. But he is the perfect representation of Hayek’s “independent”; the beneficiary of inherited wealth, unconstrained by common morality, whose gross predilections strike a new path that others may follow. The neoliberal think tankers are now swarming round this hollow man, this empty vessel waiting to be filled by those who know what they want. The likely result is the demolition of our remaining decencies, beginning with the agreement to limit global warming.

Grist is also worried about Trump's impact on climate action - There’s no way around it: Donald Trump looks like a disaster for the planet.

So what happens if Trump gets his way? More air pollution, more carbon emissions. Exactly how much more remains to be seen. There are, after all, plenty of other factors pushing down US emissions that Trump has no control over. Natural gas from fracking would continue to kill coal power. Wind and solar would continue to grow. But it’s nearly impossible to imagine emissions under Trump dropping at the sharp pace necessary to slow global warming.

Noam Chomsky also thinks that Trump is a menace to the planet - Trump in the White House: An Interview With Noam Chomsky.

Before turning to this question, I think it is important to spend a few moments pondering just what happened on November 8, a date that might turn out to be one of the most important in human history, depending on how we react.

No exaggeration.

The most important news of November 8 was barely noted, a fact of some significance in itself.

On November 8, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) delivered a report at the international conference on climate change in Morocco (COP22) which was called in order to carry forward the Paris agreement of COP21. The WMO reported that the past five years were the hottest on record. It reported rising sea levels, soon to increase as a result of the unexpectedly rapid melting of polar ice, most ominously the huge Antarctic glaciers. Already, Arctic sea ice over the past five years is 28 percent below the average of the previous 29 years, not only raising sea levels, but also reducing the cooling effect of polar ice reflection of solar rays, thereby accelerating the grim effects of global warming. The WMO reported further that temperatures are approaching dangerously close to the goal established by COP21, along with other dire reports and forecasts.

Another event took place on November 8, which also may turn out to be of unusual historical significance for reasons that, once again, were barely noted.

On November 8, the most powerful country in world history, which will set its stamp on what comes next, had an election. The outcome placed total control of the government -- executive, Congress, the Supreme Court -- in the hands of the Republican Party, which has become the most dangerous organization in world history.

Apart from the last phrase, all of this is uncontroversial. The last phrase may seem outlandish, even outrageous. But is it? The facts suggest otherwise. The Party is dedicated to racing as rapidly as possible to destruction of organized human life. There is no historical precedent for such a stand.

Is this an exaggeration? Consider what we have just been witnessing.

Much to my surprise, Bill OReilly at Fox News also thinks Trump should do something about global warming and keep to the Paris agreement - What? Bill O'Reilly Is Urging Trump to Keep the Paris Climate Agreement.

Conservative TV host Bill O'Reilly is urging Donald Trump to stick to the Paris climate agreement, the global pact to reduce emissions that the president-elect has railed against for months. "It doesn't really amount to much anyway," O'Reilly told his Fox News audience Wednesday evening. "Let it go."

One time Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis isn't focused on global warming when he talks about Trump, but he did have an interesting piece of commentary in the SMH after the US elections - Trump victory comes with a silver lining for the world's progressives.

The election of Donald Trump symbolises the demise of a remarkable era. It was a time when we saw the curious spectacle of a superpower, the US, growing stronger because of – rather than despite – its burgeoning deficits. It was also remarkable because of the sudden influx of two billion workers – from China and Eastern Europe – into capitalism’s international supply chain. This combination gave global capitalism a historic boost, while at the same time suppressing Western labour’s share of income and prospects.

Trump’s success comes as that dynamic fails. His presidency represents a defeat for liberal democrats everywhere, but it holds important lessons – as well as hope – for progressives.

From the mid-1970s to 2008, the US economy had kept global capitalism in an unstable, though finely balanced, equilibrium. It sucked into its territory the net exports of economies such as those of Germany, Japan and later China, providing the world’s most efficient factories with the requisite demand. How was this growing trade deficit paid for? By the return of around 70 per cent of the profits made by foreign corporates to Wall Street, to be invested in America’s financial markets.

To keep this recycling mechanism going, Wall Street had to be unshackled from all constraints; leftovers from President Roosevelt’s New Deal and the post-war Bretton Woods agreement which sought to regulate financial markets. This is why Washington officials were so keen to deregulate finance: Wall Street provided the conduit through which increasing capital inflows from the rest of the world equilibrated the US deficits which were, in turn, providing the rest of the world with the aggregate demand stabilising the globalisation process. And so on.

Counterpunch has a look at the unlikely presence of ex CIA director (and prominent Iraq war era neco, "geo green" and peak oil proponent) James Woolsey in Team Trump - Trump & Woolsey: Was There a Bait-and-Switch?.

The article has an interesting section on the motley collection of characters, including Dick Cheney and Rupert Murdoch, that are behind a company called genie Energy looking to exploit oil fomrations in Syria's Golan Heights region.

For voters hoping to ease global tensions and diminish the threat of World War III, Donald Trump seemed to be saying some sensible things on the campaign trail. He questioned the role of NATO, and the use of “regime change” by the U.S. against other nations. He asked why the U.S. and Russia couldn’t be partners rather than belligerents. He even questioned why the U.S. must always play the role of the world’s policeman and suggested that the U.S. should turn its attention to solving its own domestic problems. Such campaign rhetoric was unusual and likely struck a chord with some war-weary listeners.

But in early September 2016, in a move that should have received far more attention than it did, Trump appointed former CIA director James Woolsey as his senior advisor on national security issues. Woolsey – a key member of the neoconservative Project for a New American Century (PNAC) – had been a strong advocate for invading Iraq in 2003 and for waging war throughout the Middle East.