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Joe Biden’s Ukraine Scandal Is His Policy, Not Personal Interests – Bloomberg

Posted by M. C. on May 15, 2019

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-05-08/joe-biden-s-ukraine-scandal-is-his-policy-not-personal-interests

By

…The conflict of interest story isn’t worth much on its merits. But if it plagues Biden, he will deserve it for the ham-handed way he interfered in Ukrainian politics — a snake-pit that isn’t kind to badly informed outsiders. Biden’s cowboy-style interventions didn’t do Ukraine any good, and its wily politicians ran circles around him. Americans shouldn’t pay too much attention to the shaky corruption allegations, but Biden’s record in Ukraine doesn’t speak well for his judgment on foreign policy.

The central allegation spun up by Trump and his allies involves Hunter Biden’s work for the oil and gas company Burisma Holdings, where he served as a board member from 2014 until recently. Burisma is owned by Mykola Zlochevsky, who had been a cabinet minister under President Viktor Yanukovych. Zlochevsky fled Ukraine after the 2014 Revolution of Dignity that deposed Yanukovych, and was put under investigation by the Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s Office. Last year, Biden famously boasted that he had forced Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko to fire the prosecutor general by threatening to withhold a $1 billion U.S. loan if he failed to obey.

Now, that prosecutor general, Viktor Shokin, says he was fired because he was pursuing Zlochevsky and Burisma. “I didn’t get the hints that we should stop the investigation of Burisma wrongdoing,” he said in an interview published this week, in which he also accuses Biden of pursuing “personal interests” in Ukraine and recruiting Ukrainian officials to protect them — charges Biden denies.

Shokin’s claims are highly questionable. The illegal enrichment and money laundering investigation against Zlochevsky was started in August 2014 at the request of Shokin’s deputy, Vitaly Kasko. He had a strained relationship with his boss, and resigned in early 2016, two months before Shokin’s firing. Shokin didn’t actually lead the Zlochevsky investigation, so his removal wasn’t necessary to stop it. Besides, Kasko denies there was any U.S. pressure to end the investigation: He told Bloomberg News that the case had been dormant for a while when Shokin was fired.

It’s likely, however, that Poroshenko was indeed interested in ending the Burisma investigation for reasons that may or may not have had anything to do with the Bidens. Global corruption watchdog Transparency International closely followed the transformation of the criminal investigation into a demand for back taxes. “There are reasonable grounds to believe that close associates of current Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko have significantly assisted Mykola Zlochevsky in dismissing criminal cases against him,” Transparency wrote in a detailed brief on the history of the Zlochevsky investigation…

Trump partisans will try to use the Burisma case to pump up the shaky claims into a scandal against Biden. But Biden opened himself up to the smears by diving into the Ukrainian cesspool — and bragging about it. Shokin’s words would be that much less credible had Biden not boasted that he’d personally gotten the prosecutor fired. Although Ukrainian anti-corruption activists had been clamoring for Shokin’s dismissal and his days in office were probably numbered, Biden decided for some reason to claim credit — a move as nearsighted as it was unnecessary.

Biden’s other boasts about Ukraine reveal a naivete about the country’s political landscape and the forces shaping it. In his 2017 memoir, “Promise Me, Dad,” Biden described making a call to Yanukovych “in late February of 2014, when his snipers were assassinating Ukrainian citizens by the dozens” to tell him to “call off his gunmen and walk away” because “his Russian friends” wouldn’t rescue him from the disaster. “The disgraced president fled Ukraine the next day,” Biden wrote.

If indeed Biden called Yanukovych the day before his flight, that would have been Feb. 21, when Yanukovych signed a European-brokered deal with opposition politicians that would have kept him in office for a transition period with drastically reduced powers. Protesters seized the government quarter in Kiev in the next few hours, and Yanukovych fled to his country residence, fearing for his life. It’s impossible to know now if it was Biden’s alleged call, coupled with the takeover of government buildings, that gave Yanukovych the idea the deal was never meant to be kept. If so, Biden could have inadvertently helped to set off the chain of events that led to the Russian takeover of Crimea as a reaction to what Russian President Vladimir Putin saw as a U.S.-led coup.

In other Ukraine interventions, Biden tried to keep the peace between Poroshenko and his first prime minister, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, whom Biden described as a “young patriot” in his book — long after the Yatsenyuk became deeply unpopular thanks to the corrupt schemes of his associates. Poroshenko listened to Biden’s exhortations about working with Yatsenyuk, then pushed him out anyway once Yatsenyuk had been thoroughly discredited.

Biden has publicly insisted that the Ukrainian authorities get tougher on corruption. He even made an impassioned speech about it to the Ukrainian parliament in 2015. But at the same time, he likely led Ukrainian leaders to believe that maintaining a good relationship with the U.S. vice president meant more than any substantive anti-graft measures when it came to getting foreign aid. Poroshenko, Biden wrote in his memoirs, “knew I had gone to bat for him to get aid from the International Monetary Fund and loan guarantees from the United States.” The IMF, of course, is supposed to issue loans based on strict criteria, not on political support; if Poroshenko indeed “knew” anything of the sort, it must have contributed to his imitation of reforms for the sake of foreign sponsors such as Biden. It didn’t help him much with Ukrainian voters this year, though.

Generally, open meddling in the politics of a foreign country, even one as troubled as Ukraine, isn’t a great idea for a U.S. politician, even if he was personally handed the Ukraine portfolio by the president. It’s even worse when the politician doesn’t have a clear idea of the consequences. The election of populist political novice Zelenskiy is a direct consequence of Poroshenko’s bungling rule, assisted by a bungling, boastful Biden. Once Zelenskiy takes office this month, the U.S. will have to turn a new leaf with Ukraine…

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LMAO: 'Creepy Joe' Says He's 'The MOST Qualified Person In ...

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Higher Education in America – LewRockwell

Posted by M. C. on May 15, 2019

College administrative staff often exceeds the teaching staff.

Diversity, inclusion, safe rooms, free ( approved) speech…like all government programs they need staff, rules and regulations to justify their existence.

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2019/05/walter-e-williams/higher-education-in-america/

By

Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Economics at Ohio University Richard Vedder’s new book, “Restoring the Promise,” published by the Independent Institute based in Oakland, California, is about the crisis in higher education. He summarizes the three major problems faced by America’s colleges and universities. First, our universities “are vastly too expensive, often costing twice as much per student compared with institutions in other industrialized democracies.” Second, though there are some important exceptions, students “on average are learning relatively little, spend little time in academic preparation and in some disciplines are indoctrinated by highly subjective ideology.” Third, “there is a mismatch between student occupational expectations after graduation and labor market realities.” College graduates often find themselves employed as baristas, retail clerks and taxi drivers.

The extraordinary high college cost not only saddles students with debt, it causes them to defer activities such as getting married and starting a family, buying a home and saving for retirement. Research done by the New York Federal Reserve Banks and the National Bureau of Economic Research shows that each dollar of federal aid to college leads to a tuition increase of 60 cents.

For the high cost of college, what do students learn? A seminal study, “Academically Adrift,” by Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa, after surveying 2,300 students at various colleges, argues that very little improvement in critical reasoning skills occurs in college. Adult literacy is falling among college graduates. Large proportions of college graduates do not know simple facts, such as the half-century in which the Civil War occurred…

Vedder has several important ideas for higher education reform. First, we should put an end to the university monopoly on certifying educational and vocational competency. Non-college organizations could package academic courses and award degrees based upon external examinations.

Regarding financial aid, colleges should be forced to share in covering loan defaults, namely they need to have some skin in the game. More importantly, Vedder says that we should end or revise the federal student aid program.

Vedder ends “Restoring the Promise” with a number of proposals with which I agree:

—College administrative staff often exceeds the teaching staff. Vedder says, “I doubt there is a major campus in America where you couldn’t eliminate very conservatively 10 percent of the administrative payroll (in dollar terms) without materially impacting academic performance.”

—Reevaluate academic tenure. Tenure is an employment benefit that has costs, and faculty members should be forced to make tradeoffs between it and other forms of university compensation.

—Colleges of education, with their overall poor academic quality, are an embarrassment on most campuses and should be eliminated.

—End speech codes on college campuses by using the University of Chicago Principles on free speech.

—Require a core curriculum that incorporates civic and cultural literacy.

—The most important measure of academic reforms is to make university governing boards independent and meaningful. In my opinion, most academic governing boards are little more than yes men for the president and provost.

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Leaked Pentagon Plan Calls For 120,000 Troops To Counter Iran | Zero Hedge

Posted by M. C. on May 15, 2019

Iran is the largest country in the Middle East after SA.

Larger than Iraq and Afghanistan combined.

They have a real army.

Even IF we “win” we will never win because the point is to stay there.

That means a lot of dead Americans not defending America but doing Boeing, Exxon, Goldman Sachs, Saudi Arabia and Israel’s dirty work. You have to break a few eggs to build an empire. We know how empires end up.

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-05-14/leaked-pentagon-plan-calls-120000-troops-counter-iran

by Tyler Durden

As Michael Pompeo travels to Brussels to discuss the Iranian threat amid a flare-up in tensions that has brought the US to the brink of an armed conflict, the New York Times has published details from a confidential military plan presented to top national security officials that envisions sending as many as 120,000 troops to the Middle East should Iran attack American forces or start ramping up work on nuclear weapons (something it has promised to do if its European partners don’t meet their commitments under the Iran deal)…

It’s unclear whether Trump himself has seen, or been briefed on, the plan. Asked about it, Trump said “we’ll see what happens with Iran. If they do anything, it would be a very bad mistake.”

Here are a few key details from the plan according to more than a half-dozen senior administration officials who spoke with the NYT:

  • The 120,000 troops called for in the plan would be close to the size of the force that invaded Iraq in 2003. The reversal of the US troop presence in the region under Obama and Trump has reportedly emboldened leaders in Tehran and the IRGC that there’s no appetite in the US for a war with Iran. Deploying this many troops would take weeks or months.
  • The most likely trigger for a US military response is still an attack by the IRGC The guard’s fleet of small boats has a history of approaching American Navy ships at high speed. Though the plan includes provisions for a US response if Iran once again starts stockpiling nuclear fuel. If Iran does start stockpiling enriched uranium again, the US would have more than a year to formulate a more coherent response, since it would take at least that long for Iran to stockpile anything close to enough to fashion a weapon.
  • Cyberweapons would be used to paralyze the Iranian economy during the opening salvo of the conflict, in the hopes that this would be enough to cripple Iran before any bombs were dropped. Such an operation would call for “implants” or “beacons” inside US networks. Though, given Iran’s increasingly sophisticated cyberweapons, such an attack would still pose “significant risks.”
  • This is not the first time since joining the administration that Bolton has sought updated plans for an invasion of Iran. Though it’s widely believed that the president remains opposed to such an incursion. Bolton requested an update after Iranian-backed militants fired three mortar shells into an empty lot on the grounds of the US embassy in Baghdad.
  • One of the options offered up as a proportional response was a strike on a Iranian military facility that would have been “mostly symbolic.”

While a war with Iran still seems unlikely, if Iran starts stockpiling enriched uranium again as it has threatened to do, it could give Bolton and his fellow neocons exactly the opening they need to successfully push for a military intervention.

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We know what happens to empires.

 

 

 

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A Peck on the Neck – EPautos – Libertarian Car Talk

Posted by M. C. on May 15, 2019

https://www.ericpetersautos.com/2019/05/14/a-peck-on-the-neck/

By

eric

A vampire’s continued existence depends on the continuous flow of the blood of the living. The same principle animates Tesla and other purveyors of electric cars – who are about to receive another $2 billion-plus from FiatChrysler (FCA) over the course of the next three years.

This ought to stave off bankruptcy long enough to bankrupt legitimate car companies like FCA (which choose not to purvey electric cars, because people aren’t buying them).

After which, the vampire will feast on the blood of us – directly, this time.

The cash infusion is performed via what is styled the “purchase” of carbon credits. These are purchases in the manner of our “contributions” to Social Security – i.e., they are extorted payments made under duress for something the victim would never freely pay for if he had the option to say no.

The “credits” being “purchased” are for electric cars not built by FCA. Instead, FCA pays Elon, et al, to build them and gets the “credit” for the supposed reduction in C02 “emissions” (it takes many italics and  air quotes to parse government-speak) achieved thereby.

Supposed “emissions” because the determination is based entirely on what comes out of a car’s exhaust pipe – and of course, electric cars haven’t got one at all and this is why they are regarded as “zero emissions” vehicles (ZEVs) from a regulatory standpoint. But from a factual standpoint – assuming the object of this exercise is a reduction in these C02 “emissions” – the logic is flawed because electric cars produce lots of C02 in the course of their manufacture. Read the rest of this entry »

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Leaked Document Pokes More Holes In Establishment Syria Narrative – Caitlin Johnstone

Posted by M. C. on May 15, 2019

Seymour Hersh vindicated.

https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2019/05/14/leaked-document-pokes-more-holes-in-establishment-syria-narrative/

author: Caitlin Johnstone

“It is hard to overstate the significance of this revelation,” tweets former British MP George Galloway of a new report by the Working Group on Syria, Propaganda and Media (WGSPM). “The war-machine has now been caught red-handed in a staged chemical weapons attack for the purposes of deceiving our democracies into what could have turned into a full-scale war amongst the great-powers.”

“An important #Douma #Syria ‘Assad chemical weapon attack’ development and yet more evidence to suggest the ‘attack’ was staged, as it’s now revealed that @OPCW suppressed expert engineers report that found the cylinders were likely not dropped from the air,” tweets former Scotland Yard detective and counterterrorism intelligence officer Charles Shoebridge.

“The engineering assessment confirms our earlier conclusion,” the excellent Moon of Alabama blog writes. “The whole scene as depicted by ‘rebels’ and propaganda organs was staged. The more than 34 dead on the scene were murdered elsewhere under unknown circumstances.”

The report has grabbed the attention of those who’ve expressed skepticism of establishment Syria narratives because it casts serious doubts on the official story we’ve been told to believe about an alleged chemical attack in Douma, Syria in April of last year. A document titled “Engineering Assessment of two cylinders observed at the Douma incident” has been leaked to the WGSPM which reveals that an engineering sub-team of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) fact-finding mission in Douma came to conclusions which differ wildly from the OPCW’s official findings on the Douma incident, yet we the public were never permitted to see this assessment.

The assessment’s findings, which you can locate on pages five through eight of the document, put forward multiple hypothetical scenarios in which two gas cylinders could have wound up in the locations(Location 2 and Location 4) that they were photographed and video recorded as having been found after the alleged attack. The assessment concludes that “The dimensions, characteristics and appearance of the cylinders, and the surrounding scene of the incidents, were inconsistent with what would have been expected in the case of either cylinder being delivered from an aircraft. In each case the alternative hypothesis produced the only plausible explanation for observations at the scene.”

The assessment says more thoroughly and technically what I argued in an article last year, that the physics of the air-dropped cylinder narrative make no sense whatsoever. This is a problem, because the reason we were given for the US, UK and France launching airstrikes on Syrian government targets in April of 2018 was that two cylinders full of poison gas had been dropped from aircraft by the Syrian air force and killed dozens of civilians.

The assessment is signed by Ian Henderson, who the WGSPM were able to verify as a longtime OPCW-trained inspection team leader. The OPCW reportedly denied that Henderson was involved in its Douma fact-finding mission, but the WGSPM counters that “This statement is false. The engineering sub-team could not have been carrying out studies in Douma at Locations 2 and 4 unless they had been notified by OPCW to the Syrian National Authority (the body that oversees compliance with the Chemical Weapons Convention) as FFM inspectors: it is unlikely that Henderson arrived on a tourist visa.”

Just as interesting as this new report has been the response of the usual establishment Syria narrative managers to it, or rather the lack thereof. NATO narrative management firm Bellingcat, which normally jumps all over these kinds of revelations in an attempt to discredit them, has been maintaining radio silence as of this writing. Its founder, Eliot Higgins, has had nothing to say on the matter other than to retweet a pathetic rebuttal by his mini-me Scott Lucas and take a few childish jabs at me for highlighting this fact.

Scott Lucas’ Facebook post on the WGSPM report remains as of this writing the only attempt from the Syria narrative management machine to address it, and it boils down to nothing more than assertions that the report contradicts the official OPCW narrative (duh) and that the WGSPM are conspiracy theorists. Lucas may have thought it a good idea to author this post believing that he had a more substantial argument than he actually had, but it was pointed out shortly after publication that his claim about Henderson refusing to consider other possible scenarios in his assessment is directly contradicted by the words that are in the assessment, and Lucas was forced to make a hasty revision.

There will be other counter-narratives released by the Syria narrative management machine, to be sure, but the fact that this report has been out for the better part of the day with nary a peep from that lot reveals a great deal about the difficulties they’re having with this one.

We are being lied to about Syria. Anyone who believes unproven assertions about governments targeted for toppling by the US-centralized empire has failed to learn the lessons of history. The Syrian government had literally nothing to gain strategically from using chemical weapons in Douma, a battle it had already won, and knew full well that doing so would provoke an attack from the empire. Douma was occupied by the Al Qaeda-linked Jaysh Al-Islam, who had at that point nothing to lose and everything to gain by staging a false flag attack in a last-ditch attempt to get NATO powers to function as its air force.

If you still believe at this point that the Syrian government dropped poison gas on Douma last year, then I’ve got some Iraqi WMDs to sell you.

____________________

Everyone has my unconditional permission to republish or use any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge. My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, liking me on Facebook, following my antics on Twitter, throwing some money into my hat on Patreon or Paypal, purchasing some of my sweet merchandise, buying my new book Rogue Nation: Psychonautical Adventures With Caitlin Johnstone, or my previous book Woke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers. The best way to get around the internet censors and make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for my website, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here.

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How Israeli spyware firm NSO operates in shadowy cyber world

Posted by M. C. on May 14, 2019

In 2016, Apple rushed out a security update after researchers said prominent Emirati rights activist Ahmed Mansoor was targeted by UAE authorities using Pegasus spyware.

Like Superman and his X-Ray vision – NSO uses its spyware that thoroughly invades your privacy without your knowing it only for good.

https://www.wionews.com/photos/how-israel-spyware-firm-nso-operates-in-shadowy-cyber-world-218782#israeli-spyware-company-report-on-whatsapp-security-218747

Israeli spyware company report on WhatsApp security

An Israeli spyware company named in a Financial Times report on a WhatsApp security flaw prides itself on “rigorous, ethical standards” despite previous links to alleged espionage.

Founded in 2010 by Israelis Shalev Hulio and Omri Lavie, NSO is based in the Israeli seaside hi-tech hub of Herzliya, near Tel Aviv.

It produces Pegasus, a highly invasive tool that can reportedly switch on a target’s cell phone camera and microphone, and access data on it, effectively turning the phone into a pocket spy. Read the rest of this entry »

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Russians accessed voter records in 2 Florida counties, FBI confirms

Posted by M. C. on May 14, 2019

President Bill Clinton meddled in Russian affairs in the 1990s and helped Boris Yeltsin get elected to a second term, political analyst Dick Morris told Newsmax TV.

“When I worked for Clinton, Clinton called me and said, ‘I want to get Yeltsin elected as president of Russia against Gennady Zyuganov, who was the communist who was running against him. Putin was Zyuganov’s major backer.

The FBI asked that the names of the counties not be disclosed

The Russians know, but the FIB won’t let Florida voters know!

https://www.politico.com/states/florida/story/2019/05/14/russians-accessed-voter-records-in-two-florida-counties-fbi-confirms-1015760

By

Russian hackers had a successful “intrusion“ into the voting registration files of two Florida counties in 2015, Gov. Ron DeSantis said today.

The FBI asked that the names of the counties not be disclosed, DeSantis said in a press conference.

The hacking did not affect any vote tallying and DeSantis said there is no evidence of “manipulation.”

Florida was singled out in special prosecutor Robert Mueller’s report on Russian interference in the 2016 elections…

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THIRD GULF WAR FEARS US ‘plans to deploy 120,000 troops to Middle East’ if Iran attacks American forces in chilling echos of Iraq War

Posted by M. C. on May 14, 2019

Be sides that time when the CIA overthrew the Iranian government and installed a hated dictator in 1953, when did Iran attack US?

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/9069070/us-deploy-troops-middle-east-iran-iraq-war/

By Neal Baker

THE US is planning to deploy as many as 120,000 troops to the Middle East if Iran attacks American forces, a bombshell report claimed last night.

In chilling echoes of the invasion of Iraq, US defence chiefs have reportedly drawn up fresh military plans that would see a huge response to Iranian aggression…

Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan revealed the audacious strategy to America’s top national security aides last Thursday, according to the New York Times.

The top secret plans are said to spell out how a vast land, air and sea force would be sent to America’s regional allies bordering Iran should its foe attack US forces.

The deployment could also be sparked if Iran accelerates its work on nuclear weapons, according to defense sources – in breach of an international treaty.

President Trump’s hard-line national security adviser John Bolton is said to have ordered the heavily beefed-up military plans in response to growing tensions in the region.

ECHOES OF IRAQ

It is unclear if President Trump – who has tried to scale back US military involvement in the Middle East – would order the deployment.

Such a large force would be able to launch an invasion on the scale of Iraq in 2003 – and would almost certainly be met with a military response from Iran.

Mr Trump yesterday refused to play down the prospect of an all-out war.

When asked if an invasion was on the table, the president said: “We’ll see what happens with Iran.

“If they do anything, it would be a very bad mistake.”

Spokesmen for Mr Shanahan and Gen Joseph F Dunford Jr – the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff – declined to comment to the New York Times…

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Iran: What’s in a Name? Historically known as Persia until ...

 

 

 

 

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The Secret Campaign for 2020: Where the Democratic Candidates Stand on Foreign Policy – Antiwar.com Original

Posted by M. C. on May 14, 2019

https://original.antiwar.com/ted_rall/2019/05/13/the-secret-campaign-for-2020-where-the-democratic-candidates-stand-on-foreign-policy/

by

…

According to the latest Pew Research poll, the five most important issues for Democrats are health care, education, Medicare, poverty and the environment.

So it’s not surprising that the major Democratic presidential contenders’ campaigns are focusing on economic and other America-centric issues. Nor is it shocking that the news media, never more anemic or less willing to question the candidates, is ignoring their stances on foreign policy…

Still, voters deserve to know the would-be presidents’ positions on issues that extend beyond U.S. borders. Here’s what I found:

The Democrats on Our Crazy Defense Spending

The military sucks up 54% of discretionary federal spending. Pentagon bloat has a huge effect on domestic priorities; the nearly $1 trillion a year that goes to exploiting, oppressing, torturing, maiming and murdering foreigners could go to building schools, curing diseases, funding college scholarships, poetry slams, whatever. Anything, even tax cuts for the rich, would be better than bombs. But as then-presidential candidate Mike Huckabee said in 2015: “The military is not a social experiment. The purpose of the military is to kill people and break things.” If you’re like me, you want as little killing and breaking as possible.

Unfortunately, no major Democratic presidential candidate favors substantial cuts to Pentagon appropriations. Read the rest of this entry »

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Trump Nominates ‘Embodiment of the Military-Industrial Complex’ Patrick Shanahan to Lead Pentagon

Posted by M. C. on May 14, 2019

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/05/10/trump-nominates-embodiment-military-industrial-complex-patrick-shanahan-lead

by
Jake Johnson, staff writer

The White House announced Thursday that President Donald Trump will nominate acting Defense Secretary and former Boeing executive as Pentagon chief. (Photo: United States Air Force)

In a move critics warned could further deepen the ties between the sprawling and immensely profitable private weapons industry and the U.S. government, the White House announced Thursday that President Donald Trump will nominate former Boeing executive Patrick Shanahan to head the Pentagon.

“Conflict of interest? Boeing is already the second-largest recipient of private contracts from the U.S. military.”
—National Priorities Project

Shanahan has been serving as acting secretary of defense since the departure of former Pentagon chief Jim Mattis in January.

“When Patrick Shanahan was selected by Trump for a Pentagon post,” The Nation‘s John Nichols tweeted Thursday in response to Shanahan’s nomination, “the Seattle Times wrote: ‘Shanahan, 54, has no military or political experience. He is, however, familiar with defense procurement from the business side.’ Very, very familiar.”

In a column last year, Nichols described Shanahan—who worked at Boeing for 31 years before becoming Trump’s deputy defense secretary—as “the embodiment of the military-industrial complex.”

“His main claim to fame in the deputy post was his ardent advocacy for Trump’s ‘space force’ scheme,” Nichols wrote. “So what experience does Shanahan have? He is, literally and figuratively, the embodiment of the military-industrial complex about which former President Dwight Eisenhower warned Americans at the close of his presidency in 1961.”

As NBC reported, Trump’s decision to nominate Shanahan—who must be confirmed by the Senate—comes “just weeks after the Pentagon’s internal watchdog cleared the longtime former Boeing executive of allegations he provided his old employer… with preferential treatment. Shanahan was accused of pushing Boeing fighter jets on the Air Force and Marines.”

The National Priorities Project (NPP) highlighted Shanahan’s potential conflicts of interest in a series of tweets following news of his nomination.

“Patrick Shanahan, former Boeing executive, is poised to keep running the Pentagon as Defense Secretary with President Trump’s nomination,” NPP wrote. “Conflict of interest? Boeing is already the second-largest recipient of private contracts from the U.S. military.”

“Last year, the average taxpayer paid $102 for contracts with Boeing, ” the group noted, “compared to just $40 for public housing and homeless assistance.”

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