Snow on their boots...thoughts on the Great Russian Hacker Conspiracy

"There is being circulated everywhere a story that an immense force of Russian soldiers – a little short of a million, it is said – have passed, or are still passing, through England on their way to France."

The rumour began on 27th August 1914, because of a 17-hour delay on the London to Liverpool train service. The reason for the hold-up was said to have been caused by the transportation by rail of Russian troops, who had landed in Scotland and, under conditions of the utmost secrecy were being moved by train to the Channel ports. From there they were destined to cross to France and fight alongside the Allies.

As the tale spread, more and more people ‘knew’ someone who had seen Russian troops in transit. For instance, someone knew a railway porter in Edinburgh who had swept snow from the railway carriages there, at several stations there were reports of strange-looking men seen with snow on their boots. In Perthshire, Lady Baden-Powell heard that the Russians were coming and promptly rushed to the station to catch a glimpse of them.

It seems not much has changed. Except the Russians in question today don't have snow on their boots preferring the relative warmth of a swivel chair in front of a computer screen. And this time they're sinister baddies not saving troops.

Hours after Michael Flynn, Mr Trump's national security adviser, resigned after misleading the White House over conversations with the Russian ambassador to the US, reports emerged that key campaign aides had also been communicating with Russian officials.

That scandal began after US officials leaked the fact that Mr Flynn had discussed sanctions with the ambassador. Leaks also prompted the controversy over the "dirty dossier" prepared by a former MI6 operative, and have plagued the first weeks of the Trump administration.

From anonymous briefings, leaks and oblique references comes a line that results in the widespread belief that somehow Russian espionage was responsible for Trump's election (and for more febrile minds Brexit too). The most creative and complex of those conspiracy theories can be read here - it's very good, John Le Carré would love it.

Now I'm absolutely sure that Russian intelligence agents did endeavour to interfere in the US Presidential election. I'm also pretty sure that those agents and their predecessors tried to influence the outcomes of every US election. This is pretty much part of the job description for a spy - get favourable outcomes for your country. And it's why countries have laws preventing foreign funding of election campaigns.

I'm also pretty much sure that the impact of Russian intelligence on the election is somewhere between 'none at all' and 'a little but but insignificant'. It suits a particular agenda to adopt the view that the Democrat's comprehensive defeat last November was down to sinister external forces rather than them simply not being popular enough even to beat a candidate as weak and unpopular as Donald Trump.

Nevertheless, as Tim Newman observes, liberal media such as the BBC persists with the suggestion that "one controversy has clung to the Trump train like glue: Russia". Tim also points out that there's not much truth to this:

Russia only became the albatross of choice with which to hang around Trump’s neck when all others were laughed off: misogyny, racism, fake news, etc.

Speaking from a cynical perspective, such argument - effectively exonerating left of centre political campaigning from failure and blaming a foreign government - continues to give the right, whether conservative or reactionary, a free run at politics. The public love a good spy story but, in the main, consider those stories to be just that - tall tales. Tim Newman's conclusion here is apt:

...if Trump had a tower with his name on in Moscow or a casino in Vladivostok then one could raise legitimate questions over his connections to Putin. But he doesn’t, and nothing I have seen suggests Trump ever had any business or other interests in Russia aside from him having a quick look-see back in the 1990s or early ’00s and deciding, quite sensibly, that it wasn’t worth the hassle. Has Trump actually ever been to Russia in person? Has he met Putin? I’ve not seen any evidence he’s done either, and if it existed surely we’d have seen it by now. This whole obsession with Russia is nothing more than the latest in a line of pathetic attempts to cast doubts on the legitimacy of Trump’s Presidency and shore up the narrative that he is not acting in the interests of America.

Strange conspiracy theories about Jews, communists, banks and big business used to be the stock-in-trade of the loonier parts of the far right. The continuing failure of decent patriots, working people and nationalism wasn't down to its lack of appeal but rather to the efforts of sinister folk meeting in Swiss mountain resorts or nice Caribbean hotels. It seems that, faced with a similar scale of defeat - especially in the USA - the centre-left has fallen hook, line and sinker for a new generation of conspiracies: tall tales with Russian snow on their boots.

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How would Satan vote?

The one thing that has struck me most forcibly about the Donald Trump campaign is the extent to which it is a coalition of conspiracy theorists. From 2011 "truthers" and Obama "birthers" the entire campaign has been littered with sinister accusations, allegations and suggestions of dark conspiracy on behalf of The Donald's opponents. This evening, reading the torrent of Tweets about the US election there's a steady trickle of "the voting machines are fixed" suggestions from Trump's supporters - the US equivalent of "use a pen".

From among this seething pit of madness it's hard to plump for just one conspiracy about Hillary Clinton, Democrats or the election that sums up the depressing ignorance of Trump's campaign. Until that is, the "Clinton is a Satanist" line arrived. This didn't so much as jump the shark as do a double back somersault over a vast tank of piranha. But here it is at Trump's Conspiracy Theorist-in-Chief's Infowars blog:

Hillary Clinton’s ties to satanic rituals and the occult have been well-documented for decades.

Clinton insider Larry Nichols told Infowars that Hillary Clinton used to attend a “witch’s church” in Los Angeles during Bill’s presidency.

And a source claimed many FBI agents consider Clinton to be “the Antichrist personified.”

And Alex Jones (the conspiracy mane who runs Infowars) goes on to provide link after link, video after video each one madder than the previous and all purporting to 'prove' Hillary is a Satanist (which she isn't - I bet she's never even rolled a 20-sided dice). The source of all this stupidity is a particularly odd artist called Marina Abramović who is the modern performance art equivalent of a 'shock-jock':

Her work explores the relationship between performer and audience, the limits of the body, and the possibilities of the mind. Active for over three decades, Abramović has been described as the "grandmother of performance art." She pioneered a new notion of identity by bringing in the participation of observers, focusing on "confronting pain, blood, and physical limits of the body."

It's an acquired taste (as anyone who has seen her cake would know) but Abramović is a recognised - even acclaimed artist. The hoo-hah here results from an email (it would be an email, wouldn't it) inviting John Podesta to a showing of 'Spirit Cooking':

“Spirit Cooking” is an Abramović piece supposedly inspired by famous Satanist Aleister Crowley’s occultist rituals. It involves the artist painting the walls with menstrual blood, breast milk, and other bodily fluids.

It may not be all that wholesome but it's just art (and John Podesta's bother Tony is a big time art dealer and collector) with as much connection to Satanism and Black Magic as that 20-sided dice I mentioned earlier. Yet Alex Jones and other Donald Trump enthusiasts lap this up - indeed a depressingly large number seem even to believe Hillary Clinton is some sort of Satanist witch literally hell-bent on destroying the city on the hill that is America.

There's only one word for all this - bonkers.

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It's not a conspiracy, Donald Trump really is losing

Speaking as a marketing and market research professional, I could get offended by this sort of stuff:

It is not "wishful thinking" to distrust the polls. Nor is there a "natural tightening up" of the polls as election day approaches. The entire polling industry is an exercise in attempted manipulation of public opinion. That's why there is so much media attention focused on it.

Yes folks this is the "the polls are fixed" line we see from Corbynistas in the UK. Unsurprisingly this is from the World of Trump, a strange place filled with paranoia about the actions, motives and capabilities of anyone who questions - let alone presents evidence contradicting - the weird-haired one's march to supreme power.

The truth - there's no getting away from it - is that Donald Trump is crashing and burning. OK so there are glints and glimmers of hope as the odd poll shows Trump within the margin of error - this is like the Brexit polling but not in the way The Donald's fans want to believe. Polling in the run up to the EU Referendum didn't show a lead, let alone a big lead, to Remain but rather that it was 'too close to call' or a narrow lead for Leave. What Trump enthusiasts are doing is the same as Remain - believing their own propaganda.

So no, the polls ain't fixed. The voting machines ain't fixed. The 'mainstream media' isn't in secret cahoots with the Pentagon. The problem is that Donald Trump - the classic 'Republican in Name Only' - is an absolutely appalling candidate only made remotely credible by the happenstance of Hillary Clinton being an almost equally appalling candidate. What is sad here is that the fall out from Trump's candidacy will be the crippling of America's conservatives - embracing a warmed over, pig-ignorant version of 'know-nothing' nativism and mixing it with the gung-ho stupidity of Teddy Roosevelt's Progressives closes off any chance at all of Republicans ever getting back any support among the urban middle-class let alone the Hispanic Americans so carefully cultivated by Reagan and Bush father and son.

There's no winning, however, with this sort of viewpoint:

The Podesta email doesn’t merely prove that the poll-doubters are right to be dubious about their credibility, but demonstrates, once more, that the conspiracy theory of history is the only one that can properly account for historical events.

For the record, I'm a firm and dedicated supporter of the 'Cock-up Theory of History':

Brazilian economist Luiz Carlos Bresser-Pereira suggests that the relevant variable in this case is incompetence. Incompetence is an independent explanatory variable; it cannot be explained in rational or historical terms.

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Scribblings: museums, why Trump, slavery and fussbucketry (plus an odd airport)

First a cheat in that it's not a scribbling but I had to share it somewhere - the story of Denver International Airport's embracing of conspiracy loons as a marketing tool:

After being tortured for years by the ceaseless, incredulous questioning, airport officials have assumed a new stance on the subject. What started as denial and moved onto anger, then despair, has finally landed on acceptance.

"For many years the airport tried to fight against the conspiracies, and we constantly had to explain and disprove them,” says Stacy Stegman, senior vice-president of communications for DIA. “Over time we've kind of learned to love that there's a certain amount of strangeness associated with the airport, and it's kind of fun."

Absolutely wonderful stuff and top marks to the airport management. In the meantime we discover from Julia that some museums are more equal than others:

So all presumptuous would-be museum builders should think they won't get a warm welcome?

Well...

You'll have to read to find out why one museum gets the nod and other doesn't - politics is a good hint. And while we're in America Tim Newman's spotted a great article about how the liberal elite "gleefully bludgeons people with opposing views into silence" and concludes with hitting right on why Trump - despite being a hideous, self-serving, sexist sleazeball - has got down to, effectively, the last two for America's top job:

You don’t need to be a Trump supporter, a Republican, or a Right Winger to see that a self-selected wealthy elite browbeating swathes of the population into ever-more strict silence won’t end well.

That's about the sum of it. Trump's too flawed to win - looking more like he'll be flattened unless something drastic happens (and the Republican Party will suffer for selecting such a disaster) - but the problem remains (or in the UK, Remains).

On this theme A K Haart takes Strindberg as the text in suggesting that 'progressives' are something of a cult - a new religion:

It may be going a little too far to paint socialism as a secular religion but there are interesting parallels once we focus on behavioural control and blur the distinction between politics and religion. Socialism has its priesthood, evangelists, taboos and possibly sacred texts. The Communist Manifesto for example. It may not be a church but it has a collection plate where even the unrighteous have to cough up their compulsory donations, compulsion being essential to progressive ideas.

And with all religions it needs a devil and demons - you can join us here.

So much to the politics of now - what about work? There's lots of talk about the future of work and in parallel with the past of work and especially slavery. Which makes Demetrius's discussion of the subject quite fascinating:

In England into long in the 19th Century the Acts of Settlement applied by which people could be forcibly sent to what the law specified was their home Parish. Once there it could be the Workhouse and in those places and under the Poor Law of 1834 for those at the benches, in the fields or breaking rocks it was a form of servitude hard to escape.

Read the article, it opens up the question of what we actually mean by slavery. And why we need to own the robots rather than be sacked by them.

And finally a couple of updates from the febrile world of fussbucketry courtesy of Longrider and Dick Puddlecote:

I am becoming increasingly angry at this attitude that somehow we owe the NHS anything. We do not. We pay – handsomely – for this service and it owes us, not the other way around. Unfortunately, socialised healthcare leads us to this moronic thinking that other people’s health is any of our concern because the NHS may be needed to care for them in the event of a lifestyle choice. Well, the gentleman Allsopp observed is also likely a taxpayer and has paid for any healthcare he may need, but does he?

And:

Arnott once proudly boasted of the "confidence trick" she employed to con politicians into depriving private businesses of their right to determine their own policies on smoking in their premises. I hear that at the recent Royal Society of Medicine event, which Simon Chapman's fans all avoided, she was equally gushing about how she had conned parliamentarians into going for plain packaging.

Keep up the good work!

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It's a duck - Cologne and an everyday case of equalities top trumps

I'm not really very interested in trying to turn the awful events of new Year's Eve in Cologne into some sort of geopolitical narrative. I do take the view that if, as most reports suggest, most of the men assaulting young women, robbing and generally terrorising the centre of Cologne were recent arrivals - asylum seekers, refugees and other migrants - from North Africa and the Middle East then we need to think seriously about how we have responded to the migrant crisis.

But that's for another day. What I'm concerned about is how my fellow pinko pro-immigrant liberals have responded. Not by a genuine concern about how the response to the Syrian (and other) refugee crises and especially Angela Merkel's 'let 'em all in' strategy might be part of the problem but rather by either attempting to deny that the events had anything to do with migrants or else by attacking anyone who suggested that there might be a link as 'racist', 'islamaphobic' or 'bigoted'.

This sense of denial has led to all sorts of lunatic contortions up to and including suggestions that the whole thing might have been orchestrated by sinister anti-immigrant forces looking to get the German government to close the borders. Or even by ISIS. This sort of conspiracy theorising is where the duck comes in:

If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck.

If nearly every report - from those assaulted, from witnesses and onlookers, from the police and from German government sources - says that nearly all those involved in the rape, sexual attacks and robbery were North African or Middle Eastern men, then we should accept that this is the case. This isn't a gross slur on immigrants. Germany registered  964,574 new asylum seekers in the first 11 months of last year - even the worst descriptions of the mayhem in Cologne put the numbers at no more than a thousand. But if a minority of that million are, by these acts of sexual violence and robbery, making it harder for asylum seekers who just want to get on with a quiet decent life then that minority need to be dealt with. Not in the interests of the 'host' community but in the interests of the majority of decent immigrants, asylum seekers and refugees.

This brings us to the second response from my fellow pinko immigration fans. Best typified by this quotation from Gaby Hinsliff in the Guardian:

Young German women thankfully enjoy historically unprecedented economic and sexual freedom, with their expensive smartphones and their right to celebrate New Year’s Eve however they want. The same isn’t always true of young male migrants exchanging life under repressive regimes, where they may at least have enjoyed superiority over women, for scraping by at the bottom of Europe’s social and economic food chain. It is not madness to ask if this has anything to do with attacks that render confident, seemingly lucky young women humiliated and powerless. 

Many of us will remember the reclaim the night campaigns - now rebadged and more in-your-face as slut walks - that told us that what a woman wore, how she spoke and where she went was never under any circumstances an excuse for rape or sexual violence. And this viewpoint is quite rightly reinforced again and again as people remind us that one of the rights women fought for was a right to walk safely everywhere, to be able to go about their business without the need for a man to protect them. So when Ms Hinsliff suggests that somehow those German women with their "expensive smartphones and their right to celebrate New Year's Eve however they want" were partly to blame for their sexual assaults, she denies all of those efforts to liberate women by suggesting that their nice clothes, nice phone and fancy handbag invited an assault.

This is the worst sort of equalities top trumps - the inability to criticise immigration policy or the behaviour of a group of immigrants because that might be racism or islamaphobia trumps the properly shocked response to violent sexual assaults on women in a public square at the heart of a West European city.

“When we came out of the station, we were very surprised by the group we met, which was made up only of foreign men … We walked through the group of men, there was a tunnel through them, we walked through … I was groped everywhere. It was a nightmare. Although we shouted and hit them, the men didn’t stop. I was horrified and I think I was touched around 100 times over the 200 metres.”

We know to our cost - from places like Rotherham as well as from what happened in Cologne - that if we pretend that something isn't the case when it is, for fear of 'equalities', the result is more damaging to society and more damaging to the community from where the problem emanates. Do you really think that young Syrian men in Germany who aren't - and wouldn't consider - raping or sexually assaulting anyone wouldn't want the rapists from their community dealt with? Yet kind, caring and usually thoughtful people tiptoe round the truth as if it can't be touched. And because something has to be said and done, these same kind, caring and usually thoughtful people either come up with ridiculous conspiracy theories or else say things that sound like victim-blaming.

For my part, what we've seen challenges my support for more open immigration policies. I still believe this to be right but what we've seen in Cologne - and it's suggested in other places too - perhaps means people like me need to pause for thought and consider whether our gung ho 'let 'em all in' view is in the interests of both the communities of Europe and the immigrants themselves. If the consequence of such a huge and sudden influx is more events like those in Cologne leading to more division, more mistrust, more racism and more bad government then perhaps we need to listen more to those decent folk who say be careful what you wish for when you invite immigration.

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