We live in a united world; whoever rejects this world will also be rejected by it". We need to continue to expand cooperation with all other countries, take an active part in the global governance system, and realize mutually beneficial cooperation and shared development in more fields and to a higher level, and we must not submit to others and even less so plunder others. In this way, we can work with the people of all other countries to build a community with a shared future for humanity and create a more beautiful world.--Chinese President Xi Jinping, May 4, 2018
All human conflicts from the dawn of time until today are rooted in the struggles between those who labor and those who do not. In the current historical epoch of late capitalism, the background of world international relations finds the world's foremost empire, the United States, attempting to restructure the world to its benefit for another generation. Meanwhile, opposing powers--including Russia, China, Iran, Venezuela, Nicaragua, etc.--are fighting for a bit of daylight, so as to enjoy the benefits of nation-state sovereignty as promised by the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. The lieutenants of the Pentagon, however, are intent on thwarting these nations grasping onto claims of national sovereignty and instead, inspired by a Virilio type of speedometer, seek to sew confusion in order to mesmerize whole populations and through skillful deception rob them of their patrimony and enslave them to a supra-capitalist imperial control.
And while pressing engagements in this saga are being played out currently in the Middle East, North Africa, Eastern Europe, Asia, and South America, much attention is at present focused on the apparent factional dispute in the United States between the Democratic Party and its global capitalist adherents, including those either retired from or within the nation's security agencies (the so-called "Deep State") versus the 45th president Donald J. Trump and his tribal band of white nationalists, industrialists, and fellow billionaire capitalists, who have, in large measure, taken over the Republican Party, and are attempting to construct a fortress America by pushing a policy of isolationism, replacing multilateral treaties with bilateral treaties where possible, and pulling out of the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement, the 2015 Trans-Pacific Partnership, the 2016 Paris Agreement on climate change mitigation, the 2015 Iran Nuclear Deal (i.e. the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action), and the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. A showdown between the two factions will be played out on November 6, 2018 with the US midterm elections which will decide whether DJT will proceed with his America First revanchist tactics or whether the Democrats and their Deep State allies and their cadre of CIA-Democratic candidates [1] will be able to take back control of the House of Representatives in order to check Trump and buy time for a Democratic Party revival.
In December of 2016, the CIA stated that the US Intelligence Community--comprising 17 different agencies--had concluded that Russia had interfered in the 2016 US elections in an effort to deny Hillary Clinton the presidency. Wikileaks, they stated, got its hacked emails from the Russians. Two days later, the newly-elected president stated: "'I don't believe they interfered' in the election, he told Time magazine this week. The hacking, he said, 'could be Russia. And it could be China. And it could be some guy in his home in New Jersey'" (Entous, et al., December 9, 2016). Later, on June 29, 2017, the New York Times, in a note tacked onto a previously-published article, admitted that their initial statement that 17 US intelligence agencies had all concluded that the Russians had interfered in the 2016 presidential election to aid a Trump victory was, in fact, incorrect and, instead, only four US intelligence agencies had come to that conclusion (Haberman, June 25, 2017).
Focus on this factional dispute intensified following the July 16, 2018 summit meeting between US President Donald J. Trump with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki, Finland. As the headline in The Washington Post read: "Trump hands Putin a diplomatic triumph by casting doubt on US intelligence agencies." After President Putin denied any Russian involvement in the 2016 US presidential elections, Trump "refused to support the collective conclusion of US intelligence agencies that Russia had interfered in the 2016 US presidential election" (Rucker, Philip, Troianovski, and Kim, July 16, 2018). Outraged Trump detractors pointed to Special Counsel Robert Mueller's indictment of 12 Russian intelligence officers from Russia's Main Intelligence Directorate (the GRU) only two days prior to the summit as proof of such tampering.
Only one year prior to Helsinki, and for only the second time in US history, [2] a sitting US president fired his FBI Director on May 9, 2017. Director James Comey had been heading up the investigation into the Trump presidential campaign's purported collusion with alleged Russian operatives to undermine the 2016 US presidential campaign, a charge resulting from the hacks into the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign, particularly the hacking of Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta's computer. Democratic partisans charged that the Russian government spearheaded the computer hacks and then turned over the compromising information about the Clinton-led Democratic Party's corruption to Wikileaks founder and editor Julian Assange who then released it to the press. And, more particularly, the Democrats charged, the Trump campaign was in full knowledge of the Russian computer hacking and possibly had colluded with Russia to undertake the hack. The next day, May 10, 2017, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) called the president's firing of Comey "a big mistake" and urged Congress to appoint a special prosecutor "to lead the investigation into Russian election meddling" (Chhor, May 20, 2017). Seven days later on May 17, 2017, the Justice Department appointed as special counsel, former FBI Director Robert Mueller, to take over the investigation of alleged Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential election (Tanfani, et al., May 17, 2017).
FBI Director Comey alleged that President Trump had asked him to "let go" charges against National Security Advisor Michael Flynn and to assure Trump that he was not under investigation. President Trump stated that he was firing Comey due to his bungled handling of the Clinton email inquiry. As per Trump, the FBI's focus, he asserted, should instead be directed at the corruption revealed from the hacked Democratic Party emails. Trump would later allege that, as Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton's private email server, set up against State Department rules in her home, had also been hacked, albeit by China, thus revealing state secrets.
To date, "Russia-gate" has yielded few public revelations though its supporters promise big announcements will be forthcoming. Supporters of the Trump Administration, for their part, are pushing the narrative that the Russia probe story was "so last month's news" and is no longer making headlines or relevant.
Thus, those convinced by the Democratic Party's narrative of Russian meddling into the 2016 US presidential campaign as well as Trump's complicity with this interference viewed the President's actions in Helsinki as an affront to US national security.
Former CIA Director John Brennan, who had been warning Trump of the imminent threat posed by Russia to the world since his 2016 election, took to Twitter to charge that the President's news conference with Putin was "nothing short of treason." In response, President Trump stripped Brennan of his national security clearance for making, in the words of Trump's press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, "a series of unfounded and outrageous allegations--wild outbursts on the internet and television--about this Administration" (Nakamura and Sonmez, August 15, 2018).
A Split in the US Ruling Class?
Observing US media reporting since Trump moved into the White House in January of 2017 would lead one to believe that the American ruling class is engaged in a civil war. Internecine broadsides lobbed by one side against the other are now a daily occurrence, as Democratic Party leaders vocalize their intention to impeach the president should they emerge with a majority in the House of Representatives in the upcoming November 6th midterm elections. To be successful, of course, the Democrats will also need a majority in the US Senate, as that second chamber has the Constitutional mandate (Article I, Section 3, Clause 6) to try impeachment charges brought by the House of Representatives. In the House, currently, the Republicans enjoy a majority of 237 to 193 representatives, with all 435 seats up for their biennial election. In the Senate, 35 seats are up for contention, with the Democrats currently holding 26 (i.e. 24 Democrats plus two Independents who caucus with the Democrats) of these seats. Normally, one-third, or 33 seats, of the 100-member Senate is up for reelection every two years, but this year there are two special elections for the Senate seats in Mississippi and Minnesota due to vacancies. The Democrats will need two additional Senate victories to overcome their current minority 51-49 status vis---vis the Republicans.
Posing as "The Resistance," avowedly to the Trump presidency, the Democrats and their media allies have unleashed a ceaseless attack on President Trump and his Administration for allegedly colluding with the Russian government to undermine the 2016 US presidential election.
Salacious, obscene, and suggestive stories, based upon the former British intelligence operative Christopher Steele's dossier published on January 10, 2017, have been floated widely in the US media insinuating that either President Trump had been compromised by Russian intelligence agencies and, hence, is a pawn in their nefarious attempts to penetrate US ruling circles and manipulate US policies or, alternatively, that Trump is beholden to Russian oligarchs who funneled ill-gotten currency to Trump who laundered the money in various ways.
Such salacious accounts of Trump's sophomoric and depraved sexual behavior had already stirred the public's prurient interests when audio tapes were released on October 8, 2016 of Donald Trump talking with Billy Bush of Hollywood Access fame in 2005 about kissing, groping and trying to have sex with women (Farenthold, October 8, 2016). Such charges were continued with the publication in September of 2018 of pornographic film star Stormy Daniels tell-all book Full Disclosure which asserts her participation in a sexual affair with Trump back in 2006 for which he paid her $130,000 as hush money. However, in May of 2018, Trump admitted to authorizing his lawyer to pay cover-up money to Daniels for the affair (Neely, May 2, 2018).
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