divideand conquer 1. To gain or maintain power by generating tension among others, especially those less powerful,
so that they cannot unite in opposition.
Notable quotes:
"... In its most general form, identity politics involves (i) a claim that a particular group is not being treated fairly and (ii) a claim that members of that group should place political priority on the demand for fairer treatment. But "fairer" can mean lots of different things. I'm trying to think about this using contrasts between the set of terms in the post title. A lot of this is unoriginal, but I'm hoping I can say something new. ..."
"... The second problem is that neoliberals on right and left sometimes use identity as a shield to protect neoliberal policies. As one commentator has argued, "Without the bedrock of class politics, identity politics has become an agenda of inclusionary neoliberalism in which individuals can be accommodated but addressing structural inequalities cannot." What this means is that some neoliberals hold high the banner of inclusiveness on gender and race and thus claim to be progressive reformers, but they then turn a blind eye to systemic changes in politics and the economy. ..."
"... Critics argue that this is "neoliberal identity politics," and it gives its proponents the space to perpetuate the policies of deregulation, privatization, liberalization, and austerity. ..."
"... If we assume that identity politics is, first and foremost, a dirty and shrewd political strategy developed by the Clinton wing of the Democratic Party ("soft neoliberals") many things became much more clear. Along with Neo-McCarthyism it represents a mechanism to compensate for the loss of their primary voting block: trade union members, who in 2016 "en mass" defected to Trump. ..."
I've been thinking about the various versions of and critiques of identity politics that are around at the moment.
In its most
general form, identity politics involves (i) a claim that a particular group is not being treated fairly and (ii) a claim that
members of that group should place political priority on the demand for fairer treatment. But "fairer" can mean lots of different
things. I'm trying to think about this using contrasts between the set of terms in the post title. A lot of this is unoriginal,
but I'm hoping I can say something new.
You missed one important line of critique -- identity politics as a dirty political strategy of soft neoliberals.
To be sure, race, gender, culture, and other aspects of social life have always been important to politics. But neoliberalism's
radical individualism has increasingly raised two interlocking problems. First, when taken to an extreme, social fracturing into
identity groups can be used to divide people and prevent the creation of a shared civic identity. Self-government requires uniting
through our commonalities and aspiring to achieve a shared future.
When individuals fall back onto clans, tribes, and us-versus-them identities, the political community gets fragmented. It becomes
harder for people to see each other as part of that same shared future.
Demagogues [more correctly neoliberals -- likbez] rely on this fracturing to inflame racial, nationalist, and religious antagonism,
which only further fuels the divisions within society. Neoliberalism's war on "society," by pushing toward the privatization and
marketization of everything, thus indirectly facilitates a retreat into tribalism that further undermines the preconditions for
a free and democratic society.
The second problem is that neoliberals on right and left sometimes use identity as a shield to protect neoliberal policies.
As one commentator has argued, "Without the bedrock of class politics, identity politics has become an agenda of inclusionary
neoliberalism in which individuals can be accommodated but addressing structural inequalities cannot." What this means is that
some neoliberals hold high the banner of inclusiveness on gender and race and thus claim to be progressive reformers, but they
then turn a blind eye to systemic changes in politics and the economy.
Critics argue that this is "neoliberal identity politics," and it gives its proponents the space to perpetuate the policies
of deregulation, privatization, liberalization, and austerity.
Of course, the result is to leave in place political and economic structures that harm the very groups that inclusionary neoliberals
claim to support. The foreign policy adventures of the neoconservatives and liberal internationalists haven't fared much better
than economic policy or cultural politics. The U.S. and its coalition partners have been bogged down in the war in Afghanistan
for 18 years and counting. Neither Afghanistan nor Iraq is a liberal democracy, nor did the attempt to establish democracy in
Iraq lead to a domino effect that swept the Middle East and reformed its governments for the better. Instead, power in Iraq has
shifted from American occupiers to sectarian militias, to the Iraqi government, to Islamic State terrorists, and back to the Iraqi
government -- and more than 100,000 Iraqis are dead.
Or take the liberal internationalist 2011 intervention in Libya. The result was not a peaceful transition to stable democracy
but instead civil war and instability, with thousands dead as the country splintered and portions were overrun by terrorist groups.
On the grounds of democracy promotion, it is hard to say these interventions were a success. And for those motivated to expand
human rights around the world, it is hard to justify these wars as humanitarian victories -- on the civilian death count alone.
Indeed, the central anchoring assumptions of the American foreign policy establishment have been proven wrong. Foreign policymakers
largely assumed that all good things would go together -- democracy, markets, and human rights -- and so they thought opening
China to trade would inexorably lead to it becoming a liberal democracy. They were wrong. They thought Russia would become liberal
through swift democratization and privatization. They were wrong.
They thought globalization was inevitable and that ever-expanding trade liberalization was desirable even if the political
system never corrected for trade's winners and losers. They were wrong. These aren't minor mistakes. And to be clear, Donald Trump
had nothing to do with them. All of these failures were evident prior to the 2016 election.
If we assume that identity politics is, first and foremost, a dirty and shrewd political strategy developed by the Clinton wing
of the Democratic Party ("soft neoliberals") many things became much more clear. Along with Neo-McCarthyism it represents a mechanism to compensate for the loss of their primary voting block: trade union members,
who in 2016 "en mass" defected to Trump.
Initially Clinton calculation was that trade union voters has nowhere to go anyways, and it was correct for first decade or so
of his betrayal. But gradually trade union members and lower middle class started to leave Dems in droves (Demexit, compare with
Brexit) and that where identity politics was invented to compensate for this loss.
So in addition to issues that you mention we also need to view the role of identity politics as the political strategy of the
"soft neoliberals " directed at discrediting and the suppression of nationalism.
The resurgence of nationalism is the inevitable byproduct of the dominance of neoliberalism, resurgence which I think is capable
to bury neoliberalism as it lost popular support (which now is limited to financial oligarchy and high income professional groups,
such as we can find in corporate and military brass, (shrinking) IT sector, upper strata of academy, upper strata of medical professionals,
etc)
That means that the structure of the current system isn't just flawed which imply that most problems are relatively minor and
can be fixed by making some tweaks. It is unfixable, because the "Identity wars" reflect a deep moral contradictions within neoliberal
ideology. And they can't be solved within this framework.
"... The Democrats are fielding as candidates a roster of middle-school clowns and unflavored tapioca. Are they secretly in Trump's pay? Like Clinton with her "Deplorables" suicide line? ..."
They're going to do it, I tell you: The whole touchy-feely do-gooding ratpack of Microaggression worriers, reparations freaks,
weird sexual curiosities, race hustlers, bat.-Antifa psychos, and egalitarian enstupidators of universities. They are going to elect
Trump. Again.
Washington, where I shortly will be for a bit, is crazy. It has not the slightest, wan, etiolated idea of what is going on in
America. The Democrats are fielding as candidates a roster of middle-school clowns and unflavored tapioca. Are they secretly in Trump's
pay? Like Clinton with her "Deplorables" suicide line?
2016 a Russia-Trump campaign collusion conspiracy was afoot and unfolding right before our eyes, we were told, as during his roll-out
foreign
policy speech at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, D.C., then candidate Trump said [ gasp! ]:
" Common sense says this cycle, this horrible cycle of hostility must end and ideally will end soon. Good for both countries.
Some say the Russians won't be reasonable. I intend to find out."
NPR and others had breathlessly
reported at the time, "Sergey Kislyak, then the Russian ambassador to the U.S., was sitting in the front row" [ more gasps! ].
This 'suspicious'
"coincidence or something more?" event and of course the infamous
Steele 'Dodgy Dossier' were
followed by over two more years of the following connect-the-dots mere tiny sampling of unrestrained theorizing and avalanche of
accusations...
2019, Wired: Trump Must Be
A Russian Agent... (where we were told...ahem: " It would be rather embarrassing ... if Robert Mueller were to declare that
the president isn't an agent of Russian intelligence." )
It's especially worth noting that a
July 2018 New York Times
op-ed argued that President Trump -- dubbed a "treasonous traitor" for meeting with Putin in Helsinki -- should "be directing
all resources at his disposal to punish Russia."
Fast-forward to a July 2019 NY Times Editorial Board piece entitled
"What's America's Winning Hand if Russia
Plays the China Card?" How dizzying fast all of the above has been wiped from America's collective memory! Or at least the Times
is engaged in hastily pushing it all down the memory hole Orwell-style in order to cover its own dastardly tracks which contributed
in no small measure to non-stop national Russiagate hype and hysteria, with this astounding line:
That's right, The Times' pundits have already pivoted to the new bogeyman while stating they agree with Trump
on Russian relations :
"Given its economic, military and technological trajectory, together with its authoritarian model, China, not Russia , represents
by far the greater challenge to American objectives over the long term . That means President Trump is correct to try to establish
a sounder relationship with Russia and peel it away from China ."
It's 2019, and we've now come full circle . This is The New York Times editorial board continuing their call for Trump to establish
"sounder" ties and "cooperation" with
Russia :
"Even during the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union often made progress in one facet of their relationship while
they remained in conflict over other aspects. The United States and Russia could expand their cooperation in space . They could
also continue to work closely in the Arctic And they could revive cooperation on arms control."
Could we imagine if a mere six months ago Trump himself had uttered these same words? Now the mainstream media apparently agrees
that peace is better than war with Russia.
With 'Russiagate' now effectively dead, the NY Times' new criticism appears to be that Trump-Kremlin relations are not close enough
, as Trump's "approach has been ham-handed " - the 'paper of record' now tells us.
Or imagine if Trump had called for peaceful existence with Russia almost four years ago? Oh wait...
" Common sense says this cycle, this horrible cycle of hostility must end and ideally will end soon. Good for both countries."
-- Then candidate Trump on
April 27, 2016
"... If the CIA/MI6/FBI did attempt to create a sting it need not be as dramatic as the Skripal fakery. What would you dream up if you were tasked by the CIA to propose something? KISS. ..."
But underlying your comment is an assumption of *logic* in this world. If it ever existed it
certainly does not
apply any longer. Look how much mileage the MSM and the anti-Democracy Party got out of the
nothingburger Russiagate.
The MSM doesn't even need to smell real blood, they will run with anything to continue the
coup.
Anything negative that involves Edward Gallagher between now and election day could be
magnified 1 million-fold and
repeated 1000 million times by the MSM and dropped in Trump's lap.
If the CIA/MI6/FBI did attempt to create a sting it need not be as dramatic as the Skripal
fakery.
What would you dream up if you were tasked by the CIA to propose something? KISS.
Thanks sleeply,
But underlying your comment is an assumption of *logic* in this world. If it ever existed it
certainly does not
apply any longer. Look how much mileage the MSM and the anti-Democracy Party got out of the
nothingburger Russiagate.
The MSM doesn't even need to smell real blood, they will run with anything to continue the
coup.
Anything negative that involves Edward Gallagher between now and election day could be
magnified 1 million-fold and
repeated 1000 million times by the MSM and dropped in Trump's lap.
If the CIA/MI6/FBI did attempt to create a sting it need not be as dramatic as the Skripal
fakery.
What would you dream up if you were tasked by the CIA to propose something? KISS.
1 day ago Maddow is really a propagandist. She really isn't a journalist. Because her
credibility and ratings have gone south because so many of the big stories she has been obliged
to push have been fake from the get-go. People start to notice that after a while. You can't
fool all of the people all of the time as Abe observed. 1 day ago It has been determined to
have been a fabrication. It is not just controversial. Maddow may be spot on in fooling her
drooling sycophants, but facts seldom ever interfere with her fairy tales and TDS motivated
delusions. 10
hours ago Rational Agent:
The CIA told the FBI that the material in the Steele dossier is merely Internet gossip and bar
room talk. This is in the inspector general's report (issued Dec 9) and public testimony under
oath before Congress (Dec 11).
There were several agents in the FBI who were disturbed about the unverified nature of this
material, and they were overruled by other agents and their supervisors and this material was
then presented to the FISA court four times in the knowledge that it was unverified but the
court was told it was verified. That is also in the inspector general's Report and public
testimony.
The result of this misconduct was that the head judge of the FISA court Rosemary Collyer,
issued on Dec 16 an unprecedented and angry public rebuke of the FBI for repeatedly deceiving
the court about the veracity of the Steele dossier.
Enough for you? 1 day ago With apologies to Bob Dylan:
"A man (or woman) sees what he (she) wants to see and disregards the rest."
If you're tuned into cable 'news' at 9 p.m. eastern time looking for objective journalism,
well, good luck with that. Cuomo is probably the best bet; he offers a little bit. 1 day ago I think the
apology should be to Paul Simon?
Not withstanding that, your point is well made. Not much in the way of great thought on the
telly at that time on any station. 1 day ago Independents
view Rachael Maddow, Chris Cuomo and Sean Hannity as hate peddlers who spin, lie and twist
every single issue to fit their fantasy of how the world exists. I cannot imagine how anyone
with a brain or any semblance of logic could be a regular viewer of these hate mongers. If one
does a cursory analysis of the predictions these people have made over the past couple of
years, you will quickly see how ridiculous and wrong they have been. The bigger problem is that
they represent their news organizations and only add to the distrust and declining reliance
that rational folks have of the Media. 2 days ago [she is]
Just another CIA mouthpiece. 2 days ago Maddow is
being sued by the One America News Network for stating the latter were 'really, literally'
Russian assets.
Maddows is furiously back pedalling, not standing by what she said. This speaks volumes.
Maddows is evil. 2 days ago The Steele
dossier is trash. A joke. Comprehensively discredited. Only the wilfully blind or deluded would
believe otherwise. Proof that [neo]liberalism is a form of mental illness. 1 day ago If it is all
propaganda, then we are truly living in a post-truth world. In this world there are no facts,
only competing narratives. This allows us to sink into fact-free thinking and rely only on our
prejudices (or our "gut") to determine our preferences. 2 days ago " The case against Maddow is
far stronger. When small bits of news arose in favor of the dossier, the franchise MSNBC host
pumped air into them. At least some of her many fans surely came away from her broadcasts
thinking the dossier was a serious piece of investigative research, not the flimflam,
quick-twitch game of telephone outlined in the Horowitz report. She seemed to be rooting for
the document."
1 day ago Maddow is really a propagandist. She really isn't a journalist. Because her
credibility and ratings have gone south because so many of the big stories she has been obliged
to push have been fake from the get-go. People start to notice that after a while. You can't
fool all of the people all of the time as Abe observed. 1 day ago It has been determined to
have been a fabrication. It is not just controversial. Maddow may be spot on in fooling her
drooling sycophants, but facts seldom ever interfere with her fairy tales and TDS motivated
delusions. 10
hours ago Rational Agent:
The CIA told the FBI that the material in the Steele dossier is merely Internet gossip and bar
room talk. This is in the inspector general's report (issued Dec 9) and public testimony under
oath before Congress (Dec 11).
There were several agents in the FBI who were disturbed about the unverified nature of this
material, and they were overruled by other agents and their supervisors and this material was
then presented to the FISA court four times in the knowledge that it was unverified but the
court was told it was verified. That is also in the inspector general's Report and public
testimony.
The result of this misconduct was that the head judge of the FISA court Rosemary Collyer,
issued on Dec 16 an unprecedented and angry public rebuke of the FBI for repeatedly deceiving
the court about the veracity of the Steele dossier.
Enough for you? 1 day ago With apologies to Bob Dylan:
"A man (or woman) sees what he (she) wants to see and disregards the rest."
If you're tuned into cable 'news' at 9 p.m. eastern time looking for objective journalism,
well, good luck with that. Cuomo is probably the best bet; he offers a little bit. 1 day ago I think the
apology should be to Paul Simon?
Not withstanding that, your point is well made. Not much in the way of great thought on the
telly at that time on any station. 1 day ago Independents
view Rachael Maddow, Chris Cuomo and Sean Hannity as hate peddlers who spin, lie and twist
every single issue to fit their fantasy of how the world exists. I cannot imagine how anyone
with a brain or any semblance of logic could be a regular viewer of these hate mongers. If one
does a cursory analysis of the predictions these people have made over the past couple of
years, you will quickly see how ridiculous and wrong they have been. The bigger problem is that
they represent their news organizations and only add to the distrust and declining reliance
that rational folks have of the Media. 2 days ago [she is]
Just another CIA mouthpiece. 2 days ago Maddow is
being sued by the One America News Network for stating the latter were 'really, literally'
Russian assets.
Maddows is furiously back pedalling, not standing by what she said. This speaks volumes.
Maddows is evil. 2 days ago The Steele
dossier is trash. A joke. Comprehensively discredited. Only the wilfully blind or deluded would
believe otherwise. Proof that [neo]liberalism is a form of mental illness. 1 day ago If it is all
propaganda, then we are truly living in a post-truth world. In this world there are no facts,
only competing narratives. This allows us to sink into fact-free thinking and rely only on our
prejudices (or our "gut") to determine our preferences. 2 days ago " The case against Maddow is
far stronger. When small bits of news arose in favor of the dossier, the franchise MSNBC host
pumped air into them. At least some of her many fans surely came away from her broadcasts
thinking the dossier was a serious piece of investigative research, not the flimflam,
quick-twitch game of telephone outlined in the Horowitz report. She seemed to be rooting for
the document."
The Horowitz team didn't attempt an independent fact-check of the dossier, opting instead to
report what the FBI had concluded about the document. Unflattering revelations pop up at every
turn in the 400-page-plus report. It reveals that the CIA considered it a hodgepodge of
"internet rumor"; that the FBI considered one of its central allegations -- that former Trump
attorney Michael Cohen had traveled to Prague for a collusive meeting with Russians -- "not
true"; that Steele's sources weren't quite a crack international spy team. After the 2016
election, for instance, Steele directed his primary source to seek corroboration of the claims.
"According to [an FBI official], during an interview in May 2017, the Primary Sub-source said
the corroboration was 'zero,'" reads the report.
The ubiquity of Horowitz's debunking passages suggests that he wanted the public to come
away with the impression that the dossier was a flabby, hasty, precipitous, conclusory charade
of a document.
... ... ...
The case for Maddow is that her dossier coverage stemmed from public documents,
congressional proceedings and published reports from outlets with solid investigative
histories. She included warnings about the unverified assertions and didn't use the dossier as
a source for wild claims. There is something fishy, furthermore, about that Mueller
footnote regarding the "tapes." In their recent book on the dossier, "
Crime in Progress ," the Fusion GPS co-founders wrote that Steele believes the document is
70-percent accurate.
The case against Maddow is far stronger. When small bits of news arose in favor of the
dossier, the franchise MSNBC host pumped air into them. At least some of her many fans surely
came away from her broadcasts thinking the dossier was a serious piece of investigative
research, not the flimflam, quick-twitch game of telephone outlined in the Horowitz report. She
seemed to be rooting for the document. Rachel Maddow rooted for the Steele dossier to be true.
Then it fell apart. - The Washington Post
And when large bits of news arose against the dossier, Maddow found other topics more
compelling.
She was there for the bunkings, absent for the debunkings -- a pattern of misleading and
dishonest asymmetry.
In an October edition of the podcast "Skullduggery," Michael Isikoff of Yahoo News
pressed
Maddow on her show's approach to Russia. Here's a key exchange:
Isikoff: Do you accept that there are times that you overstated what the evidence was and
you made claims and suggestions that Trump was totally in Vladimir Putin's pocket and they
had something on him and that he was perhaps a Russian asset and we can't really conclude
that?
Maddow: What have I claimed that's been disproven?
Isikoff: Well, you've given a lot of credence to the Steele dossier.
Maddow: I have?
Isikoff: Well, you've talked about it quite a bit, I mean, you've suggested it.
Maddow: I feel like you're arguing about impressions of me, rather than actually basing
this on something you've seen or heard me do.
After some back and forth about particulars of the Mueller report and the dossier with
Isikoff, Maddow ripped: "You're trying to litigate the Steele dossier through me as if I am the
embodiment of the Steele dossier, which I think is creepy, and I think it's unwarranted. And
it's not like I've been making the case for the accuracy of the Steele dossier and that's been
the basis of my Russia reporting. That's just not true."
Asked to comment on how she approached the dossier, Maddow declined to provide an
on-the-record response to the Erik Wemple Blog. Rachel Maddow rooted for the Steele dossier to
be true. Then it fell apart. - The Washington Post
Rachel Maddow: 'I don't necessarily want to hear from the White House on almost anything' 2
hours ago She's the left's version of Hannity or Tucker. This is not a good thing to be.
10 hours ago So
many have been brainwashed by this woman. She is a total disgrace. In fact MSNBC in its
entirety is a disgrace. Scandal after scandal. Lie after lie. Propaganda. Hit pieces on
progressives. AWOL on what is actually happening to the middle and working class. But Maddow is
not alone. She lies and makes things up and freely slanders and smears and so does the weekend
linebacker, Reid, who not only lies and then makes up further lies to cover up the original
lies. 11 hours ago We all know the liberal mainstream media lies a lot. We've come to expect
it. That's why CNN's ratings are perpetually in the toilet. But this Rachel Maddow doesn't seem
to be able to do anything but lie. Well, that's the left. Any lying, cheating behavior is
acceptable if it's directed against Trump. 12 hours ago (Edited) The
plain truth is that Russia did indeed attempt interference with the 2016 election, but its
phishing expeditions and social media placements did not come remotely close to "flipping" the
election to Trump -- indeed, it cannot be documented that a single vote was altered or voter
registration list tampered with. The totality of Russian interference pales in comparison to
what the United States has done and continues to do to foreign elections on a regular basis --
indeed, to what it did to Russia's in the 1990's to ensure Boris Yeltsin's election.
Another plain truth: the Mueller Report was a stunning blow to the Democratic Party
establishment and the media and a victory for Trump, the extent of which is still to be
determined, no matter how you try to spin it. Democrats and their media allies were willing to
take at face value and without further evidence the pronouncements of people like John Brennan
and other national security figures who had lengthy, documented histories of lying to the
American people and the press. Skepticism went out the window because the spooks were telling
the Democrats and the media what they wanted to hear. Rachel Maddow and MSNBC are the Judy
Millers of this story, and the rest of the media just ran with it.
The ramifications of that miscalculation are still playing out. Senate conviction of Trump
on ANY basis is now dead letter for the remainder of this election cycle because the Democrats'
credibility and motives have been blown sky-high -- no small feat given Trump's historic levels
of mendacity! It is why the public isn't getting behind the current effort even though Trump
has literally been caught red-handed. But the Democratic establishment was just SO eager to
blame it all on Russia, so they could exonerate themselves for their horrible strategies and
worse policies that led to the 2016 debacle and fend off challenges from the progressives! What
have they accomplished instead? Handing Trump a second term.
7 hours ago Rachel Maddow has "Hillary Clinton 2016" branded on her ace. She is totally
owned by the corporate liberal establishment.
14 hours ago If this version of events is true then the Steele
dossier was one of the most successful Russian intelligence operations since 1917 or anyway
1991. It up-ended the American government for three full years, and is still having a
deleterious impact even after being proven false. And deliciously, it was all paid for by
Hillary Clinton and the DNC!
reported
that TV network OAN had filed a lawsuit against Rachel Maddow for the time the host said that
OAN "really, literally is paid Russian propaganda."
Now, Maddow finds herself having to come up with a defense for her statement in court.
And she has also apparently hired Lionel Hutz as her legal adviser.
According to
Culttture , her lawyers argued in a recent motion that " the liberal host was clearly
offering up her 'own unique expression' of her views to capture what she saw as the
'ridiculous' nature of the undisputed facts. Her comment, therefore, is a quintessential
statement 'of rhetorical hyperbole, incapable of being proved true or false."
Oh, it's capable of being proved false, alright. Maddow had previously claimed, on
air, about one of OAN's reporters:
"In this case, the most obsequiously pro-Trump right wing news outlet in America is really
literally is paid Russian propaganda," and added, "Their on-air politics reporter ( Kristian
Rouz) is paid by the Russian government to produce propaganda for that government."
The testimony of UC Santa Barbara linguistics professor Stefan Thomas Gries, however, stands
at odds with Maddow's defense. Gries said: "It is very unlikely that an average or
reasonable/ordinary viewer would consider the sentence in question to be a statement of
opinion."
Whiners. They're all whiners. I don't understand why Maddow is worried. Hell, if she goes
to the slammer she'll have her pick of all those incarcerated Honeys with which she will
reside.
You have to assume that Rachel is a Russian mole - how else can you explain her so
effectively working to destroy the credibility of the Western media. She talks to her
audience like she thinks she's on Sesame Street - Rachel: folks can pick up when they're
being patronized - it's getting tired.
"... Imagine millions of government employees paid for by America's tax payer class, involved in covert operations undermining nation states for the benefit of war mongering shadow overlords counting on more never ending chaos feeding their hunger for power. ..."
"... This isn't Orwell's 1984, this Team America on opioids. ..."
"... Senior OPCW official had orders from US/ the Donald. Remember that the Donald bombed Syria based on this fake report , after a false flag done by Al Qaeda's artistic branch, the White Helmets. ..."
"... Pray, do tell where are the consequences for these literal demons that engaged in war crimes? It is quite clear: as long as you are a member of the establishment, you can do whatever the f*ck you want. ..."
"... Third rate script, third rate actors and crooked investigators. TPTB seem to have a plan worked out. Their problem now is that we, the hoi-polloi, have seen it all before, many times, and we can now recognise ******** when it's used to try to influence us. ..."
"... If this is not lamentable enough, the OPCW – whose final report came to more than a hundred pages and which even issued an easy-to-read precis version for journalists – now slams shut its steel doors in the hope of preventing even more information reaching the press. ..."
"... Instead of these pieces concentrating on the whistleblower how about putting a little heat on the 50 lying bastards who initiated the coverup? ..."
"... The destruction of the countries of the Middle East for the sake of a dwarf with giant ambitions is the most stupid thing the United States has done over the past 30 years in its foreign policy. And yes, all the wars in the Middle East were grounded in lies. And the Americans paid for it all from start to finish. When Americans realize that they need to defend their national interests, and not other people's national interests, maybe something in the Middle East will change for the better. True, I am afraid that with the hight level of stupidity and shortsightedness that is common among Americans, the United States is more likely to be destroyed faster. No offense. ..."
"... And I propose to remember the Syrian Christians who were destroyed by the Saudi Wahhabis, hired by the CIA with the money of American taxpayers and at the request of Israel. Until the Americans begin to investigate the activities of the CIA (and this activity causes the United States only harm), the responsibility for this genocide (you heard right) will be on the American nation. It turns out that in the Middle East you are primarily destroying Christians. How interesting, why such zeal. ..."
"... According to whistleblower testimony and leaked documents, OPCW officials raised alarm about the suppression of critical findings that undermine the allegation that the Syrian government committed a chemical weapons attack in the city of Douma in April 2018. Haddad's editors at Newsweek rejected his attempts to cover the story. "If I don't find another position in journalism because of this, I'm perfectly happy to accept that consequence," Haddad says. "It's not desirable. But there is no way I could have continued in that job knowing that I couldn't report something like this." ..."
"... New leaks continue to expose a cover-up by the OPCW – the world's top chemical weapons watchdog – over a critical event in Syria. Documents, emails, and testimony from OPCW officials have raised major doubts about the allegation that the Syrian government committed a chemical weapons attack in the city of Douma in April 2018. The leaked OPCW information has been released in pieces by Wikileaks. The latest documents contain a number of significant revelations – including that that about 20 OPCW officials voiced concerns that their scientific findings and on-the-ground evidence was suppressed and excluded. ..."
Wikileaks has released their fourth set of leaks from the OPCW's Douma investigation,
revealing new details about the alleged deletion of important information regarding the
fact-finding mission.
RELEASE: OPCW-Douma Docs 4. Four leaked documents from the OPCW reveal that toxicologists
ruled out deaths from chlorine exposure and a senior official ordered the deletion of the
dissenting engineering report from OPCW's internal repository of documents. https://t.co/ndK4sRikNk
"One of the documents is an e-mail exchange dated 27 and 28 February between members of the
fact finding mission (FFM) deployed to Douma and the senior officials of the OPCW. It includes
an e-mail from Sebastien Braha, Chief of Cabinet at the OPCW , where he instructs that an
engineering report from Ian Henderson should be removed from the secure registry of the
organisation," WikiLeaks writes. Included in the email is the following directive:
" Please get this document out of DRA [Documents Registry Archive] And please remove all
traces, if any, of its delivery/storage/whatever in DRA.'"
According to Wikileaks, the main finding of Henderson, who inspected the sites in Douma, was
that two of the cylinders were most likely manually placed at the site, rather than
dropped.
"The main finding of Henderson, who inspected the sites in Douma and two cylinders that were
found on the site of the alleged attack, was that they were more likely manually placed there
than dropped from a plane or helicopter from considerable heights. His findings were omitted
from the official final OPCW report on the Douma incident," the Wikileaks report said.
It must be remembered that the U.S. launched an attack on Damascus, Syria on April 14, 2018
over alleged chemical weapons usage by pro-Assad forces at Douma.
Another document released Friday is minutes from a meeting on 6 June 2018 where four staff
members of the OPCW had discussions with "three Toxicologists/Clinical pharmacologists, one
bioanalytical and toxicological chemist" (all specialists in chemical weapons, according to the
minutes).
Minutes from an OPCW meeting with toxicologists specialized in chemical weapons: "the
experts were conclusive in their statements that there was
no correlation between symptoms and chlorine exposure". https://t.co/j5Jgjiz8UY pic.twitter.com/vgPaTtsdQN
The purpose of this meeting was two-fold. The first objective was "to solicit expert advice
on the value of exhuming suspected victims of the alleged chemical attack in Douma on 7 April
2018". According to the minutes, the OPCW team was advised by the experts that there would be
little use in conducting exhumations. The second point was "To elicit expert opinions from the
forensic toxicologists regarding the observed and reported symptoms of the alleged
victims."
More specifically, " whether the symptoms observed in victims were consistent with exposure
to chlorine or other reactive chlorine gas."
According to the minutes leaked Friday: "With respect to the consistency of the observed and
reported symptoms of the alleged victims with possible exposure to chlorine gas or similar, the
experts were conclusive in their statements that there was no correlation between symptoms and
chlorine exposure ."
The OPCW team members wrote that the key "take-away message" from the meeting was "that the
symptoms observed were inconsistent with exposure to chlorine and no other obvious candidate
chemical causing the symptoms could be identified".
The isisrahell have such long hand to pull the plug any stories implicating their crime in
progress otherwise they can put out some bs spins as bombshell reporting about US lies in
Afghanistan war on their wapo for public for those who read it was nothing important revealed
except being a misdirected na
If you want to pay off that student loan you're going to print what they tell you to
print. You're going to inject kids with what they tell you to inject them with. You're going
to think what they tell you to think or you're going to spend your days in a Prole bar
drinking Blatz.
yes, an attack was launched, 50 missiles I believe, after loud warnings that it was
coming, and none of them actually hit anything significant ... this is the way the game is
played .... the good news is that the missiles cost $50 million, and now they will have to be
replaced, by the Pentagon, first borrowing the money through the US Treasury offerings, and
then paying for them from new money printed by the Federal Reserve. capische?
That`s the way it`s always been, it`s the eternal war of good against evil.
And when one evil enemy is defeated, it`s necessary to create a new evil enemy, how else
can the Establishment Elite make money from war, death and destruction.
It's really very awkward & telling how ***** these bunch of western nations are
looking tough on taking out poor defenceless country like Syria on ******** & at the
satried to ease real kickass Russian as you described when they launch the attacks
I kind wish the US & their Zionist clown launch such huge attacks on Iran based on
false flag
I really wanted these evil aggressive powers to taste what it is like to get bombed back
even one they used to throw on multiple weaker nations freely with nothing to fear as
retribution etc
This organisations are all set up in Europe and US run by the filthiest filth on earth who
still think they have God given right to imperial rule over the world.
Your military-industrial-intelligence complex at work, creating justification for more
funding, like always - and who cares if people die as a result? Like Soros said, if they
didn't do it, someone else would. (do I need /sarc?).
They don't like to be shown to be in charge, just to be in charge. And if you think this
is a function of the current admin, you've been slow in the head and deaf and blind for quite
some time.
I've watched since Eisenhower, and "it's always something". Doesn't matter what color the
clown in chief's tie is.
Imagine millions of government employees paid for by America's tax payer class, involved
in covert operations undermining nation states for the benefit of war mongering shadow
overlords counting on more never ending chaos feeding their hunger for power.
This isn't Orwell's 1984, this Team America on opioids.
Senior OPCW official had orders from US/ the Donald. Remember that the Donald bombed Syria based on this fake report , after a false flag done
by Al Qaeda's artistic branch, the White Helmets.
Pray, do tell where are the consequences for these literal demons that engaged in war
crimes? It is quite clear: as long as you are a member of the establishment, you can do
whatever the f*ck you want. Why do we even follow the law, then? Given the precedent that is
being set, we might as well not have any.
Well, they are looking forward to using all those Israeli weapons, er, uh, products, that
local law enforcement has purchased...so watch out for Co-Intel Pro elicitation going
forward....?
Everybody knows the Golem (USA) does Isn'treal's bidding in Syria and elsewhere in the
Near East. Hopefully they keep hammering in the fact that this "gas attack" was an obvious
set-up to use as a pretext (flimsy itself on the face of it) to brutalize Assad and Syria on
behalf of Isn'treal.
The whole thing is built on ******* lies. Worst part about it is, nothing will happen.
Only official news is to believed. You see it and it is a lie. they tell you to believe
it. A lot of people casually believe whatever is spoken on TV. They become teachers and are
taught in college what is right and wrong. We only have a few years before all the brain dead
are in charge and robotically following the message like zombies with no brain
Third rate script, third rate actors and crooked investigators. TPTB seem to have a plan worked out. Their problem now is that we, the hoi-polloi, have
seen it all before, many times, and we can now recognise ******** when it's used to try to
influence us.
It is difficult to underestimate the seriousness of this manipulative act by the OPCW.
In a response to the conservative author Peter Hitchens, who also writes for the Mail on
Sunday – he is of course the brother of the late Christopher Hitchens – the
OPCW admits that its so-called technical secretariat "is conducting an internal
investigation about the unauthorised [sic] release of the document".
Then it adds: "At this time, there is no further public information on this matter and
the OPCW is unable to accommodate [sic] requests for interviews". It's a tactic that until
now seems to have worked: not a single news media which reported the OPCW's official
conclusions has followed up the story of the report which the OPCW suppressed.
And you bet the OPCW is not going to "accommodate" interviews. For here is an
institution investigating a war crime in a conflict which has cost hundreds of thousands of
lives – yet its only response to an enquiry about the engineers' "secret" assessment
is to concentrate on its own witch-hunt for the source of the document it wished to keep
secret from the world.
If this is not lamentable enough, the OPCW – whose final report came to more than
a hundred pages and which even issued an easy-to-read precis version for journalists
– now slams shut its steel doors in the hope of preventing even more information
reaching the press.
The destruction of the countries of the Middle East for the sake of a dwarf with giant
ambitions is the most stupid thing the United States has done over the past 30 years in its
foreign policy. And yes, all the wars in the Middle East were grounded in lies. And the
Americans paid for it all from start to finish. When Americans realize that they need to
defend their national interests, and not other people's national interests, maybe something
in the Middle East will change for the better. True, I am afraid that with the hight level of
stupidity and shortsightedness that is common among Americans, the United States is more
likely to be destroyed faster. No offense.
And I propose to remember the Syrian Christians who were destroyed by the Saudi Wahhabis,
hired by the CIA with the money of American taxpayers and at the request of Israel. Until the
Americans begin to investigate the activities of the CIA (and this activity causes the United
States only harm), the responsibility for this genocide (you heard right) will be on the
American nation. It turns out that in the Middle East you are primarily destroying
Christians. How interesting, why such zeal.
According to whistleblower testimony and leaked documents, OPCW officials raised alarm
about the suppression of critical findings that undermine the allegation that the Syrian
government committed a chemical weapons attack in the city of Douma in April 2018. Haddad's
editors at Newsweek rejected his attempts to cover the story. "If I don't find another
position in journalism because of this, I'm perfectly happy to accept that consequence,"
Haddad says. "It's not desirable. But there is no way I could have continued in that job
knowing that I couldn't report something like this."
New leaks continue to expose a cover-up by the OPCW – the world's top chemical
weapons watchdog – over a critical event in Syria. Documents, emails, and testimony
from OPCW officials have raised major doubts about the allegation that the Syrian government
committed a chemical weapons attack in the city of Douma in April 2018. The leaked OPCW
information has been released in pieces by Wikileaks. The latest documents contain a number
of significant revelations – including that that about 20 OPCW officials
voiced concerns that their scientific findings and on-the-ground evidence was suppressed and
excluded.
This is, without a doubt, a major global scandal: the OPCW, under reported US pressure,
suppressing vital evidence about allegations of chemical weapons. But that very fact exposes
another global scandal: with the exception of small outlets like The Grayzone, the mass media
has widely ignored or whitewashed this story. And this widespread censorship of the OPCW
scandal has just led one journalist to resign. Up until recently, Tareq Haddad was a reporter
at Newsweek. But in early December, Tareq announced that he had quit his position after
Newsweek refused to publish his story about the OPCW cover up over Syria.
As the New Cold War gathers up speed and escalates, we are entering a "fact free world" as
allegations are made that are proved not to be true are promoted; for example, the allegation
that the DNC was hacked by Russia has been officially debunked -- no one could name the
seventeen intelligence agencies, the Coast Guard was one. The notion of the hacking was cooked
up by two agencies: by the DNI's head James Clapper and Brennan at the CIA. Nevertheless,
recently News Anchor Chuck Todd of NBC (the most pro-Russiagate network, the ones who
shamelessly accused presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard of being a Russian asset) took it one
step further: ignoring the facts, Todd again stated that seventeen intelligence agencies agreed
that the Russians not only interfered in the election but that they swung the election to
Trump. While interference is one thing, no one has previously made that allegation.
Consequently, we are now in a fact free discourse in America: no evidence is necessary to prove
anything, falsehoods are taken up by the legacy media, what Professor Cohen would call a world
of tabloid gossip media, except in their favor the tabloids, fearing lawsuits, will do some
fact checking, which is conspicuous in its absence in the legacy media. And Professor Cohen
noted that it's hard to get traction and you can't have a conversation with someone when you
don't agree upon the facts.
In conversation on a cruise with fellow liberals, Professor Cohen noted most take the view
that where there is smoke there is fire and there is something to these allegations of
Russiagate and Putin's control over Trump; they state the media wouldn't continue to promote
these conspiracy theories, these allegations about Trump's nefarious relations with the
Kremlin, without reason and so there must be something to them. Yet while facts have become
absolutely critical Cohen notes you can't get people to focus on the facts; for that reason, he
feels despair and observes that for the first time in his life in his public discussions of
Russia there are no basic premises that people accept any more, for if you say "If there's
smoke, there's fire," that is just not a logical way of thinking: you either have the facts or
you don't.
Batchelor also points out in the impeachment charges there is a great deal of presumption;
there are no facts regarding the president as well, and he cites Trump's letter to Nancy Pelosi
and poses this question: what does the Kremlin think about the impeachment?
Cohen answers that the Russian high policy class in the 1990s -- the America worship period
-- they and not just the youth, strongly believed that Russia's future was with the West and
America in particular, and now what strikes Russians most is the role of Russian intelligence
services in the Western allegations. Pro-America Russians thought that American intelligence
services didn't play the role that the Soviet ones did. In Russian history classes and as a
staple of popular culture, the sinister role of the "secret police" goes back to the Czarist
era but what distinguished America was that it didn't have anything comparable in abuses by its
intelligence services -- or so it was believed. Consequently, for those who looked up to
America, it's a source of disillusion and shock to learn that the American special services
"went off the reservation" for quite a long time, not unlike Russia's, and so they have become
disillusioned while for those who tried to get Russians to be more nationalistic, their
perspective is to say with gratification, "We told you so. Now will you please grow up!"
Russians call the American agencies "the organs" perhaps not being clear on the difference
between the CIA and the FBI and conflating them. For Russians, the role of such agencies is
baked into the culture and this has resulted in rethinking not only about America but about
their own special services. An Op-Ed piece in a Russian liberal newspaper the Russian liberal
author wrote, after watching what's unfolding in America, we used to beat up on our
intelligence services for decades but now maybe we need them. Contrary to a "cult of the
intelligence services," Cohen thinks what must be determined is the role of the American
intelligence services in creating Russiagate from the very beginning.
Yet what is critical is to know how Russiagate began in America, with the Barr-Durham probe
into the origins of Russia and Russiagate will continue to be a major issue in the 2020
election. What struck Cohen about the letter from Trump to Pelosi -- which was so eloquent he
doubts Trump wrote it -- was that he understands it will be an issue in the 2020 elections, and
it was a campaign document. That aside, Trump is aware that Democrats are campaigning still on
Russiagate; nothing has turned up that it factual. Therefore, despite the absence of facts,
this will be a major issue. Ukraine has turned into a stand-in for Russia.
Jennifer Rubin of the Washington Post, once a quintessential conservative, published an
article titled "Time to Call out and Remove Putin's Propagandist in America." While the article
is slightly cagier than that headline, essentially she wants to shutdown and deprive access to
media who aren't espousing and promoting the Russiagate/Russophobic narratives. Cohen condemns
that kind of behavior is that. On opposite side of Rubin, Cohen stated he himself has never
advocated the silencing and removal of those who promote among other falsehoods the provably
false Russiagate narrative. He asks where are things drifting and he answers discourse and
relations are becoming ugly and awful.
Returning to the past, he notes there was an assumption that Russia under Yeltsin would
emerge as a replica and junior partner of America; Cohen believes those who promote the
Russiagate narrative and demonize Trump because their "impossible dream" failed -- Russia is
too old, too vast to ever be a replica of America. What took Professor Cohen aback in the
testimony from Fiona Hill and others was how deep and wide the Russophobia runs in the
Washington think tanks. Until she spoke and testified he had no idea how much she -- and the
other Russia experts -- hate Russia.
Batchelor noted this is the language of civil war in Trump's letter; Trump uses the term
"Star Chamber of partisan persecution" and "coup" which are the language of a country torn in
half and he asked the question whether the weakening of the civil contract to be an advantage
to Putin and Russia. Cohen notes every newspaper and media source in America say Putin is
delighted since it is his goal is to foment disarray in America.
The fact is, however, this chaos and dysfunction and enmity is one of the last things Putin
wants. Putin's purpose is to rebuild Russia from the economic and political catastrophes of the
1990s; Putin's role is to reverse the demographic trend -- men died in their fifties in the
1990s -- and spend funds on modernization; that would be his legacy. Four hundred billion
dollars has been saved to implement the modernization program. That attempt would be taken with
modernizing partnerships with the West. Therefore, the last thing he wants is a new Cold War;
the last thing he wants is political turmoil in America or in any Western nation. Cohen points
out President Macron of France appears to understand that; he called for a rethinking of
relations and said there could be no European security without Russia. Macron has broken with
Washington and there will be a hell of fight because Washington is against it. But the notion
that Putin wants to disrupt American society is wrong; Putin wants stability and partners.
Cohen still thinks that leadership -- the new President of Ukraine, Trump and Putin --
I always listen to the Prof's podcast shows at Batchelor. What bothers me is that so many
Trump supporters and public commentators BELIEVE, or at least parrot the idea that Russia
INVADED both western Ukraine and Crimea.
As the Prof has pointed out and seconded by many others, Crimea has been a part of Russia
since late 18th century. Because Khrushchev "gave' it to Ukraine in 50s when it was all one
country does not obviate the fact that Crimeans consider themselves Russians as proved by all
polling and a plebiscite. They had permanent bases there and the alleged invasion was nothing
more than politely escorting the Ukrainian military off from the peninsula without any
injuries to either side. Some invasion.
Surely some Russians (whether incognito military/intelligence forces or private citizens)
were part of the Donbass forces that rebelled against Kiev. And they had good reasons to
rebel witness the horrors of Odessa when 40 something citizens of Russian ancestry were
burned alive trapped in a building by Ultra-Ukrainian nazi-like forces.
Now Senate Foreign Relations committee, chaired by Senator from my state, has called for
designating Russia as a "terror supporting state." I emailed him and asked if he was insane.
He returned a long letter that is full of obfuscations and lies, and I will compose a
detailed response soon. But the question presents: is the Deep State and their globalists'
master deliberately trying to force Russia into a military alliance with China? Could we
prevail against that combination? Haunting resemblance to conditions that created
Ribbentrop/Molotov pact in late 30s. And what that foretell?
Well, I guess when you have such luminaries as members of the Council on Foreign Relations
spieling the same level of ignorance, blindness, prejudice, propaganda and plain
perverseness, you have to expect it from all levels of "Governance"
For anyone who knows even a small amount about Russia and her leader, go listen to a recent
YouTube convention headed Russia's Resurgence: Prospects for stability in Russia-US
relationship.
One thing is for sure – as long as these supposed "think tank leaders" can deliberately
blind themselves to reality as this trio did, and spout the utterly brain dead stupidity they
used to instigate a Q & A, there is no hope whatsoever of any stability in Russia –
US relationship.
The people of the media lie because they are for sale and are paid to lie. Rather uninspiring
but understandable: they do it for the money and to stay in front of the cameras. But what's
everyone else's excuse? Putin is a Svengali who mind-controls Trump? I thought people like
that wore turbans and robes. How stupid are Americans, anyway? Who'd have thought something
like this would have any traction whatsoever? It's simply incredible.
I was born into the Cold War in 1944. I got my draft notice in 1965. I had been expecting it
all my young life. The Berlin wall did not fall until 1989.
This new Cold War will be over soon. It will turn hot and we will all die or the "West"
will collapse and will repatriate it's legions. The Anglo/Zio Empire is in steep decline
while Russia and her allies are ascendant.
I agree that the truth is no defense against the "left". Their long march is completed and
they occupy the high ground whether it's politics or culture. They have taken over the
country just in time to preside over its demise.
Russians who thought their future was with the West were not completely wrong. If the U.S.
has a future it is probably with Russia.
There is a couple of points I would like to add on a changing European perspective on the
dynamics between the USA and Russia, with Europe caught in-between.
1.) After the Second World War the choice between Bolshevism and US liberal democracy
seemed blatantly obvious; for Germany especially it was a question of national survival,
since Stalin was viewed as a serious threat by the Adenauer government. Germany had actually
enjoyed more internal independence from leading US doctrines in this period. US rule of law,
the character of its elites and the general morality of the society had not completely
degraded yet either. Today institutional erosion of American democracy, the rule of law and a
cynical Neocon approach towards "promoting democracy abroad" turned the USA into a
non-appealing leader of 'the West'. The increasing "Sovietization" of its state apparatus
emphasizes this point: the expansion of the surveillance state, selective access to real
political and economic access to a select few of the privileged; often hereditary dynasties
of oligarchs, a political-media complex of agitation and propaganda. Thus, the accusations
against Russia (or China for that matter) about a lack of transparency, pluralism and the
rule of law sound entirely hollow.
2.) Thus secondly NATO has turned from a credible alliance of defense against the Soviet
Union into a tool of US imperialism; especially after the USA has declared victory in the
Cold War. Wars surrounding Europe and even inside of it – The Federal Republic of
Yugoslavia and in Ukraine – were the result. Nations were destroyed, heads of state
publicly executed or tortured to death like Muammar Gaddafi and millions of people were
killed; many more were made homeless and a refugee crisis was created. And concealing wars of
aggression as "human rights promotion" opened a can of worms for cynical nihilism as the new
norm of US foreign policy – WMD lies, Abu-Ghuraib and NSA scandals included. Just as
the established political-media apparatus is guilty of everything populism is accused of:
post factual parallel realities, fake news and fake realities, systematic disinformation,
social engineering and conditioning into hysteria and the frenzy of the mob. The pathology of
the new US ruling class personified by Hillary Clinton and Madeleine Albright
3.) There is indeed no lasting European stability imaginable without a permanent peaceful
agreement between Western- and Eastern-Europe and Russia. Russia's role as the Eurasian land
bridge to China is also essential this century. Mutual agreement has to be found to settle
old grievances and fears regarding Napoleon and Hitler on the Russian side and Stalinism and
the Soviet Union on the European side. A situation which the USA also currently exploits for
political destabilization – especially in Poland.
4.) Germany, currently the central country in the EU, owes its unification largely to
Russia. Unfortunately it was a mistake on the Russian side when they had unilaterally
withdrawn all their troops from German territory, that they did not demand the same from
US/NATO forces. In that moment the transformation of NATO was sealed and the New Cold War had
begun. Yet while the attitudes of the older generations are shaped by the US-Soviet Union
Cold War, for new generations it's a different story. Increasingly the USA is seen as a more
credible threat and/or bully with its war policy, real political meddling and especially in
my country the fact that Germany was both forced to sanction Russia, which went against its
own vital interests, and then be sanctioned as well.
5.) I am leaving out the value and identity politics debate. Fundamentally the general
public on both sides of the Atlantic agrees on the theory on foundations of functioning
democracy. Although I do think that since the end of the last Cold War the influence of the
USA has been more harmful and corrosive than helpful and stabilizing.
Conclusion: In this new Cold War which was, I think, initiated by the US establishment, we
could see a future in which Germany and Russia begin to view themselves more in the light of
the Prussian-Russian coalition against the new "Napoleon", the United States. Although this
arising conflict could rightly be dubbed: The Unnecessary Cold War.
that the truth is no defense against the "left". Their long march is completed and they
occupy the high ground whether it's politics or culture.'
'
Left ? Do you believe that the establishment crowd of Democrats (Liberals,) and the
managed news (Liberals,) and others Liberals, neoliberals, neocons, or anything else
comprising the Russiagate hoax can be describes as Leftist?
It's been determined that the Democrats intentionally jettisoned the Working Class decades
ago. It shouldn't be news to working people that they don't have a party!
It was a rational decision to unload the workers, and substitute special interest and
identity politics, because of trends of the decline of union membership in age of technology,
automation, and YUPPIES! The Democrats are now slick pretenders of social justice, but not
left.
@RJJCDA " is the Deep State and their globalists' master deliberately trying to force
Russia into a military alliance with China? "
Hard to say what their intentions are. (The old ploy of unity at home by means of an
external enemy ?) Whatever they are -- US foreign policy (FO) re Russia should go down with
Iraq (II) as among the US's greatest FO blunders.
As the Saker has pointed out– Russia & China are in symbiosis, which runs deeper
than an alliance.
Russiagate is a kind of "two birds with one stone" deal: you get to bash Trump & Russia
using each as a club to beat the other. That this whole base concoction of lies seems to
still have legs speaks volumes as to the deep of Trump derangement syndrome & the
universality of msm propaganda.
Mr Cohen is so far ahead of Washington , when it comes to Russia and other foreign matters,
it just boggles the mind of us normies. The Ukraine Gate is all about the Kyivian Jew
Oligarchs, trying to oust the thief Democrats from all the IMF looting , that those Kyivians
, had their eyes/hands on. It's like – thanks for doing the Coup but all the money we
get is – Ours for the looting. And there are hundreds of millions – missing.
Russia Gate will go on, until the American public – " Grows Up " as Mr. Cohen says.
What damns the US media, both anti-Trump and Fox News, is that America has been massively
meddling in elections all over the globe since Day One, including Russia, and this is known
or should be known to anyone with a basic knowledge of international relations, yet it is
almost NEVER mentioned when the subject of Russian meddling comes up.
There is a feeling that it would be unpatriotic (treasonous?) to admit it. This is
something new for America. In the old days American foreign policy was sharply debated and
America's sins were much discussed by the left. But now, the left is on the CIA's side. This
probably has to do with the Jewishness of the left. Jews tend to hate Russia as much as they
tended to like the Soviet Union. They see post-Communist Russia as politically incorrect
(e.g. anti-gay) and Christian, a potentially nationalistic society that could turn
anti-Semitic.
Because of Russia's nuclear capability it is not possible for the US to invade it, so we
are relying on internal subversion and economic tactics to bring down Putin, leading to the
installation of a US lackey with neocon approval. Even as we speak of Russian meddling the
CIA is busy organizing and funding anti-Putin elements in Russia.
"We're just trying to spread democracy. What's wrong with that!?"
@Back1 Stupidity does not produce the invention and promotion of lie after lie,
Nor is stupidity consistent with the selection of the best lies from those total of lies
generated.
Only lies that work on the minds targeted are repeated.
Repeat the lie but hide it, camouflage the lie with some truth, and embedded the lie into
the propaganda that establishes the narrative, and then mass produce the lie embedded
propaganda that establishes the false or misleading narrative is a complicated process.
Repeat and repeat the false narrative is a hat trick that often deceives innocent minds into
adopting, embedding and acting on beliefs established in innocent minds by mind control
technology. These process are not consistent with stupidity, but instead suggest diabolical
genius at work.
When only the lies that work; that is, that control, deceive or influence innocent minds
are repeated you are looking process which took intelligence to make work. Inventing lies
takes imagination, producing them into propaganda takes skill, and promoting the produced
invented lie takes money, power and access.
Selection (of the best or most suitable lie) is an process that requires identification
and sufficient intelligence to sort; while repetition requires the selected object be either
committed to memory, or to be continuously and precisely regenerated for each
promotion(campaign). Promotion is a delicate process; its success so dependant on so many
things, that many people have obtained Phds from the subject matter that surround the
technology of deceit.
The point is that promoting false narratives is an invented developing technology that
takes professionally trained persons to make work. Someone is paying the mind control
professionals (MCPs) that are working to embed false narrative into the memory of the minds
of the governed masses. MCPs are not stupid people. Not only are they highly trained
professionals but also they don't work for free. So who is paying them.
Why is Steven Cohen credited with this article when obviously it is written by another? What
gives, Unz? It is an example of the same facts twisting it rails against.
@Antiwar7 "If there's smoke, there's fire" is not so much stupid as devious. You have to
understand that many political leaders nowadays have realised that they don't need hard facts
and figures or logic to sway opinion.
Increasingly, political divisions are tribal; and the worst condemnation is "you are not
one of us". Disagreeing with the party line shows that a person is "not one of us".
That is especially the case when the party line is obviously untrue. Then sticking to it
is an absolute proof of devoted, unthinking loyalty. It's more like a pledge of allegiance
than a rational statement of fact.
I agree that the truth is no defense against the "left". Their long march is completed
and they occupy the high ground whether it's politics or culture. They have taken over the
country just in time to preside over its demise.
It is the right as well on important issue to the Deep State there is no right and
left.
Does it really matter? America is already a Jewish/Bolshevik occupied nation?
To achieve absolute power, Lenin focused on fomenting a class war, while Hitler set his
sights on a race war. Either way, the divide-and-conquer modus operandi of fascist and
communist demagogues is pretty much the same, no matter what each side might claim about
the other. Their propaganda content may differ, but not so much their divide-and-conquer
methods. Attitudes of supremacy come in a virtual rainbow of flavors and colors.
theamericanconservative.com : "Forget Trump : The
Military-Industrial-Complex is still running the show " By Bruce Fein , July 18, 2018 theintercept.com " Defense
contractors say Russian threat is great for business "
Did Russian believe that any assurances could prevent Nato being drawn right up to the
borders of Russia? Did Ukrainians believe the UK and US's security assurances 'against the
threat or use of force against Ukraine's territory or political independence' could replace
Ukraine's possession of nuclear weapons? Zbigniew Brzezinski did speak of Russia
"increasingly passing into de facto western receivership" .
They say the Russians only heard what that wanted to hear, but the record suggests the
Americans misrepresented their intentions, and gave assurances that the Russians took at face
value. Russia permitted an American campaign to spent vast sums and organise Yeltsin's
reelection, which would not have happened without them. The Russian foreign minister at that
time, Andrei Kozyrev, now lives in Miami.
https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/russia-programs/2018-03-16/nato-expansion-what-yeltsin-heardD.C
., March 16, 2018 – Declassified documents from U.S. and Russian archives show that
U.S. officials led Russian President Boris Yeltsin to believe in 1993 that the Partnership
for Peace was the alternative to NATO expansion, rather than a precursor to it, while
simultaneously planning for expansion after Yeltsin's re-election bid in 1996 and telling
the Russians repeatedly that the future European security system would include, not
exclude, Russia.
The declassified U.S. account of one key conversation on October 22, 1993, (Document 8)
shows Secretary of State Warren Christopher assuring Yeltsin in Moscow that the Partnership
for Peace was about including Russia together with all European countries, not creating a
new membership list of just some European countries for NATO; and Yeltsin responding, "this
is genius!"
Christopher later claimed in his memoir that Yeltsin misunderstood – perhaps from
being drunk – the real message that the Partnership for Peace would in fact "lead to
gradual expansion of NATO";[1] but the actual American-written cable reporting the
conversation supports subsequent Russian complaints about being misled.[2]
After obtaining a succession of huge US-backed IMF loans, being found on Pennsylvania
Avenue, drunk, in his underwear and trying to hail a taxi cab in order to find pizza in 1995,
Yeltsin chose Putin the teetotal former counterintelligence specialist to succeed him. What a
sense of humour Yeltsin must have had.
@jack daniels I agree that the paraphraser should not go anonymous. But more important is
to bring to the reader's attention that a broadcast podcast is available at the article's
end.
@Vaterland The American elutes might be forgiven theirvicious follies by Americans if
they had not impoverished so many Americans and,at best leaving them struggling.
@9/11 Inside job We do not call it "the Military-Industrial-Complex".
We do not call it "the Banks".
We do not call it "the FED"
We do not call it "the Wall Street"
We do not call it "the Media"
@Realist Agreed. Truth is no defense against the Deep State which is neither left nor
right.. Still, it is the ideological left that denies the existence of objective reality. For
them there are no facts. Only subjective experience. Useful idiots and propagandists for the
Deep State, they "know" Trump is a Russian agent because they can feel it. They don't
need no steenking evidence.
The (left) media promote hatred. Orange Man Bad. The ideological left understands and
enjoys hatred. They can feel it. When you hate somebody you are ready and eager to
believe the worst about them.
@EdNels Thank you. Well said, and not nearly enough.
It's my opinion that the relentless use of "left" to describe the neoliberal half of the
Republicrat/Wall Street/war industry party is no accident.
Describing the "Democrats" of the Clinton DNC as "left" is useful to discredit and
marginalize any political stance that, fairly and realistically, could be considered "left."
It produces chaos and confusion, which is the objective of the neocon/neoliberal grifters who
control both halves of the war party.
@Realist I suspect that the paraphraser is our own Ron Unz since he strikes me as a
hands-on operator. Secondary suspect is Phil Giraldi, UR's National Security Editor.
In any event it's important to dissimulate Cohen's views since he's literally A
Geopolitical Voice Crying Out in the Wilderness! For this both Batchelor and Unz are to be
commended!!
@Realist There's a left alright; there's just no right. Since the 1960's the conservative
movement and Republican Party have conserved exactly nothing while the left has completely
transformed America, successfully implementing much of the 1930's communist agenda and
turning the government into the enemy of the society at large.
In his Myth of Religious Violence William T Cavanaugh points out that before the
arrival of Frankfurter on the Supreme Court, religion, meaning chiefly Christianity, was held
by the court to be the fundamental source of social cohesion and peace in America, while
since the late 1940s and post-Frankfurter, religion, now meaning only Christianity,
has been consistently held to be not only divisive, but the fundamental source of violence.
The point is, this upending of society was accomplished by legislating from the bench, while
the Republicans and Conservatism Inc, as we now learn, were funded to neutralize opposition,
blowing smoke in Americans' eyes about legalisms at a time when at least 90% of this country
was conservative.
Sites like The American Conservative and American Thinker, for example, are apparently
funded to publish fawning material about the Jews and Israel that the latter would be too
ashamed to write themselves, which also pretty much sums up the Republican's m.o. in
Congress.
It's about time the American electorate saw candidates for national and state office as
figureheads for their largest donors, who're presently portrayed as almost incidental by the
msm. Instead of saying that Mitch McConnell or Lindsey Graham said this or that, accuracy
requires we say Paul Singer and Sheldon Adelson's spokesman in the Senate, some so-and-so
stooge, said this or that. It's the same on both sides of the aisle, obviously, and it turns
out that the owners of both parties are kin when it comes to destroying the social fabric of
this country for their own hateful reasons.
@Patrikios Stetsonis You forgot , an aspect. "We do not call it Z.O.G."
Which commands and guides the US government in both domestic and foreign policy.
On similar note to your closing statement ,
To quote Treitschke 1879 "The Jews are our misfortune"
The zionists hate Christians and since Russia is becoming more Christian the zionists hate
towards Russia has reached a hysteria that is only matched by their demonic hate of
Christians and one of the ways to strike at Russia is through lies and false flags blamed on
Russia.
The ZUS is winning the war against Christians here in America with abortions and
pedophilia in high places and the worship of satan in Hellywood and elsewhere and the
penetration of the Christian churches by zionist elements.
The zionists will not stop until America is destroyed, zionism is the most dangerous
element in America.
Read the Protocols of Zion, it is all right there.
*All* mainstream media is propaganda from clown world. This defines our era in US. Mass
psychosis is the new reality.
The Russia nonsense tells me that US establishment people are stupid and self deluded,
truly sad sack dummies.
Several commenters around here have claimed the Apollo moon landing hoax "does not
matter".
[MORE]
It is old news, not relevant to today, too controversial, etc.
The problem is that once the elites get away with lying, it encourages them to do more of
it. This hoax _is_ going to be exposed, and fairly soon–and it may unravel the whole
ball of string of intelligence agency and mass media lies.
It is _not_ a left/right issue, so folks of any and all political persuasions will be able
to accept it without crushing their ideological dreams.
@Desert Fox Judaic identity is essentially about hating Christians, as the Talmud makes
clear, and as most anyone who's worked with Jews on Wall Street will attest. Michael Hoffman
proves this in his books on Judaism, pointing out that modern Talmudic Judaism came into
being nearly two centuries after the rise of Christianity and in opposition to it.
" is the Deep State and their globalists' master deliberately trying to force Russia
into a military alliance with China? "
Hard to say what their intentions are. (The old ploy of unity at home by means of an
external enemy ?) Whatever they are -- US foreign policy (FO) re Russia should go down with
Iraq (II) as among the US's greatest FO blunders.
Agreed that it's a mistake, but when they've successfully pulled off the WMD lies, the
9/11 fakery, the destruction of Iraq, Libya etc., control the US media, and can dictate to
Congress, then it's understandable that they get rather arrogant.
They simply want to kick Russia and Putin because he was the one that spoiled their
Yeltsin looting party – and worst of all arrested and imprisoned their top guy
Khodorkovsky. That it drives Germany and the EU towards Russia and strengthens Russian ties
with China is secondary. After all, Hitler (after great military success), likened invading
Russia to kicking down a rotten barn door, and he didn't work out the implications of
declaring war on the US.
@Anonymous I agreed with you, except there is a Deep State and it is not made up of just
Jews. But I do concede that Jews are disproportionately represented, as both sponsors and
minions, for their demographics.
I believe the Deep State consists of the very wealthy who are greedy for more wealth and
power. There are 607 billionaires in the US. There is no reason for the Deep State members to
formally collude they all know what needs to be done and how to do it. They use a relatively
small amount of their money to place their minions in positions of power heads of the movie
industry, the media, the federal government, academia. From then on if the lessers in these
groups want to keep their jobs/lives they will toe the line. It becomes self sustaining from
tax money and the Deep State glories in more wealth and power. Here is an excellent example
of the Deep State in action: The SCOTUS has passed down egregious decisions that abridge the
First Amendment and show contempt for the concept of a representative democracy. Buckley v.
Valeo, 424 U.S. 1976 and exacerbated by continuing stupid SCOTUS decisions First National
Bank of Boston v. Bellotti, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission and McCutcheon v.
Federal Election Commission.
These decisions have codified that money is free speech thereby giving entities of wealth and
power almost total influence in elections. By gaining control of the SCOTUS the Deep State is
able to further their goals.
The Democrats are now slick pretenders of social justice, but not left.
Excellent summary. What goes under "left" moniker (Cultural Marxist, "communists",
socialists etc.) in the West nowadays is not left. Agree. it is just another iteration of
Neo-liberal politics serving as a substitution for dealing with actual problems of Labor.
"Their respective ambitions led the two men[Trump and Putin] – along with Trump's
future son-in-law, Jared Kushner -to build a set of close, over-lapping relationships in a
small world that overlaps on Chabad , an international Hasidic movement most people have
never heard of ."
@gotmituns @ gotmituns <=Why then did you read the article?
At the heart of the impeachment process (Article II, Section 2, paragraph 3 and 4) are two
questions that should interest most folks: @ paragraph 3 lays out a big part of Trump's
defense in my view "Section 3 requires ..that the President shall take Care that the Laws be
faithfully executed, <=execution requires action so which law did the President not
execute faithfully? <= I do not see such a question in the Articles of Impeachment.. @ Sec
II, Art. II, paragraph 4 "The President shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and
Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.. " < the house
found evidence it says, strong enough to indite the president on charges that .. he violated
which of these 4 things?
Some think Trump should have been impeached for failure to deliver his tax Return.. but I
do not see failure to deliver a tax return as failure to execute a law, or as a high crime,
or as treason, or as an act of Bribery, or as a misdemeanor.. so the current impeachment
indictment by the House against Trump reveals that the constitution is inadequate. The
constitution does not express a government that can protect the Americans such a government
governs; from the possibility, or the reality, that a deceitful president will be empowered
to that job?
The best governed Americans can hope for from the USA is that the Congress of the USA
rather than impeaching will decide to amend the constitution, so that the constitution denies
any one that can be shown to be deceitful, to be the President. This one amendment could
eliminate making campaign promises and do just the opposite once in office.
Of course such an amendment would mean few in politics today could be the President.
Most likely no matter the outcome of the impeachment, Trump will probably be reappointed
President by the electoral college.. (recall that persons who animate the functions allowed
to the USA to governed Americans are not elected by those who the USA governs. (Americans c/n
vote for their president or their vice president because President and VP are article II
persons; and article II persons are appointed to office by processes conducted at the state
level, that appoint persons to the electoral college, and it is the electoral college that
elects the President and the Vice President). Who has written a book on the electoral
college? I have requested information from the government on the electoral college activities
since the beginning and to date have received nothing but referrals to others.
@EdNels Left ? Do you believe that the establishment crowd of Democrats (Liberals,) and
the managed news (Liberals,) and others Liberals, neoliberals, neocons, or anything else
comprising the Russiagate hoax can be describes as Leftist?
No. I do not believe that. I agree with you entirely. But common usage has the people you
are talking about as LEFT and I am tired of bitching about it.
@RJJCDA Russia no more "invaded" Ukraine than the United States "invaded" Texas, Ohio or
Florida. Ukraine has been a Russian fiefdom for centuries longer than it has ever been
"independent," and its fate is no more the business of the United States or Western Europe
than the fate of Hong Kong or Syria should be.
Please just let me ask americans some opinions about
if pastor John Hagee and his followers are jews or christians ? , if the thousands of
pastors in the USA like Hagee and their millions of followers are jews or christians ? if the
US puritan founding fathers were jews of christians ? , if the british angloisraelites are
jews or christians ? , if the yankees are jews or christians ? if the wasps are jews or
christians ? if the US " deep state " is jew or chistian ? , if the US masses are jew or
christian ?
. because blaming the jews all the time of every problem and pretending that that the
anglo-yankees are so pure and naive does not seem to be very realistic
@Antiwar7 Americans should have believed into the existence
of thousands Mayan gods when they first saw the smoke billowing out of the sacrificial pit in
front of the menacing idols.
Some things never change. Russiagate is no aberration. Establishment Authority, police state
apparatuses and religious catechisms, are NOT based on reasoning and evidence, but rather
fact-free Narratives handed down from above and grounded by Fear of the Other, the bogeymen
(be it Russians, White Supremacists, Black men, Assad, Trump, the Devil, etc), without which
authority will collapse. As the historian Will Durant noted, Strabo said it best 2000 years
ago:
"For in dealing with a crowd of women a philosopher cannot influence them by reason or
exhort them to reverence, piety or faith; nay, there is need of religious fear also, and this
cannot be aroused without myths and marvels the founders of states gave their sanctions to
these things as bugbears wherewith to scare the simple-minded."
@Anon John Hagee, his followers and other Christian Zionists are morons. Happily, they
are not nearly as common as you imply. Being a Christian Zionist takes a special kind of
stupid
I cannot see Haggee without immediately recalling Christ's warning to beware of obese
wolves in sheep's clothing, who take jiggly church secretaries and XXXL Italian silk suits as
proof of God's blessing.
Cohen is another Jewish voice in the Jewish Mafia War between factions. I don't consider him
that insightful or honest, as he never mentions the glaringly obvious: the attempt to oust
Trump is a Jew Coup.
Start telling the truth about the Hostile Elite destroying America Cohen. Until then you are
just another lying Jew destroying the country that welcomed your ancestors.
When will the Traitors be routed out and hung?
No country can withstand Treason from Within going unpunished for any length of time. We
either destroy these scum or they will destroy America.
I gotta hand it to Larry King, even with one foot in the grave he's still doing these
interviews and with Professor Cohen no less. Kudos to the old coot. (Grin)
Steven Cohen should be a special advisor to the POTUS. It would be a demotion for Cohen but
good for Trump and for America.
The imperial lie machine sure is disgruntled that the 1990s attempt to economically and
biologically crush Russia once and for all was a failure and Russia has since been
reasserting itself. It wasn't "the end of history" after all.
That was the source of the underlying current of Russia Derangement among the US elite
classes (political, economic, media, academia, professional etc.), the many provocations, and
then the total meltdown beginning in late 2016.
Since it really seems to be a collective mental illness (I mean that literally)
afflicting a power group which is already psychotic and violent, and since it coincides with
the accelerating erosion of the US imperial position, it's looking more and more likely that
this must eventually lead to all-out war. I just can't imagine the US stepping back, any more
than I could imagine Hitler doing so.
America's obsessive bashing of Russia (and now China) is suggestive of a deep
psychological disorder.
Though the Americans and their allied apologists will insist that it is sincerely
motivated by a humanitarian concern for Freedom, Democracy, and Human Rights(TM), that is
quite laughable given America's concentration camps for undocumented immigrants; its
incarceration of immigrant children in cages; or the US Prison Industrial Complex in general,
which has been called America's new Jim Crow in that it imprisons millions of African
Americans and other minorities and relegates them to a new racist caste system.
No, cut through the barrage of American Moral Supremacism and other delusions, the United
States is enraged that, despite its attempt to economically rape Russia in the 1990s through
American-promoted Free Market reforms and Neoliberal "shock therapy," Russia is still
standing and indeed resurgent.
THAT is what enrages the Americans and triggers them in rug-chewing fits of frenzy.
In other news, @RANDCorporation report
firmly establishes that Van Gogh was a Russian Agent. May be, the dastardly Kremlin plot
drove him to cut his ear off?.. At any rate, NATO is now on alert. pic.twitter.com/9k9j5K9rx1
"... "I just want to note that this kind of people, people like the ones who were negotiating with Hitler back then, they now deface monuments to the liberator soldiers, Red Army soldiers who liberated the countries of Europe and the European peoples from Nazism. These are their followers. In this sense, unfortunately, little has changed. And we must keep this in mind, also with regard to the development of our Armed Forces . [My Emphasis] ..."
Voltairenet has a very interesting article about this subject (also discussed in the last
open thread) by prof. Michael Jabara Carley of the University of Montreal: "Justin Trudeau
Needs A History Lesson", in which he describes the unsuccessful efforts of Soviet diplomats
to create an alliance of European countries against the nazis.
People may have read that Putin has said a few more things about the documents he reviewed
with his CIS peers; and in doing so, Putin revealed an aspect about himself few have seen
previously. Putin made his statement at the annual year-end Defense Ministry Board Meeting . IMO,
Putin has had more than enough of the extreme Russophobia now in circulation and he sees it
as being very similar to that of prior historical periods where Russia was then subjected to
attack from the West. I won't post Putin's diatribe here; you'll need to read it for
yourself--I've never seen him so angry or speak undiplomatically. What I will post is what he
said after, which IMO is even more important, although removed from the overall context:
"I just want to note that this kind of people, people like the ones who were
negotiating with Hitler back then, they now deface monuments to the liberator soldiers, Red
Army soldiers who liberated the countries of Europe and the European peoples from Nazism.
These are their followers. In this sense, unfortunately, little has changed. And we must
keep this in mind, also with regard to the development of our Armed Forces . [My
Emphasis]
"Here is what I would like to say in this regard, which I think is critically important.
Please note: neither the Soviet Union, nor Russia have ever tried to create a threat to other
countries. We were always catching up in this regard. The United States created the atomic
bomb, and the Soviet Union caught up with it. We did not have nuclear weapon delivery
vehicles or carriers. There was no such thing as strategic aviation, and the Soviet Union was
catching up in this area, as well. The first intercontinental missiles actually were not
built here, and the Soviet Union was trying to catch up.
"Today, we have a unique situation in our new and recent history. They try to catch up
with us."
Also note the word Putin chose to describe the Outlaw US Empire's withdraw from the INF
Treaty. Clearly, Putin desires to impress upon those charged with Russia's defense that the
times are indeed perilous, that the old lies are being spread without any resistance. As with
the other three transcripts I linked, this one also demands to be read in full and also in
close association with the other three. The Poles will scream along with their sycophants,
but Putin is correct about both the past and the present and the danger present within the
future.
"... This character development and ad-libbing/a b testing is then always in use when dealing with the media and when tweeting. Since the President is a caricature his followers aren't bothered by his incorrect statements and when the Democrats/media point out his mis-statements it doesn't register because everyone knows wrestling is fake. A rhetorical analysis of Trump's letter shows that he will be a formidable opponent in 2020, and that he's crazy like a fox. Make America Great Again. Trump trademarked that saying 1 week after the 2012 election. He isn't crazy he's sly like a fox. ..."
"... I hear you, Chuck. I'm of the same generation and vaguely remember Ike. I recall, in particular, the U2 incident. Didn't Eisenhower himself deny to the world that the US did spy flights, even while the Soviets were displaying wreckage and parading Capt. F. G. Powers? It was a major embarrassment. ..."
Lambert describes President Trump's style as schtick but another way is to consider it as
a wrestling character named "President Trump." Remember President Trump was involved with the
WWE and had the owners wife Linda McMahon in his cabinet and she is now running a pro-Trump
super PAC.
Having grown up watching professional wrestling President Trump's campaign rallies are
exactly like a wrestling show. He is playing a character and has to be quick thinking and
able to ad-lib to manipulate the crowd's emotions. The crowd also has to become part of the
show as well and overreact to signal to the performer (in this case who happens to be the
President) they are engaged with the show. The baby face (Trump) is cheered loudly and the
heels (Democrats/media) are booed in an exaggerated manner.
This character development and ad-libbing/a b testing is then always in use when
dealing with the media and when tweeting. Since the President is a caricature his followers
aren't bothered by his incorrect statements and when the Democrats/media point out his
mis-statements it doesn't register because everyone knows wrestling is fake.
A rhetorical analysis of Trump's letter shows that he will be a formidable opponent in
2020, and that he's crazy like a fox.
Make America Great Again. Trump trademarked that saying 1 week after the 2012 election.
He isn't crazy he's sly like a fox.
I've been around for a while and my attitude is that all of these "prexies", with the
exception maybe of Ike, have been lying sacks of shit. Now while they all facilitated mass
thievery by their friends and associates (as the mob would say), they could have at least had
the good form to be funny. But no! They were all so earnest and sanctimonious. Kind of like
my parish priest handing out the wafers.
I probably spent way too many hours warming various bar-stools next to a variety of
knuckleheads, so I'm going to give Trump his due, OK? The guy has given me more chuckles,
laughs, guffaws and all around hilarity than six decades worth of well dressed socio-paths.
And as a bonus, a big bonus, he has greatly discomforted all of the smartest grifters in the
room. Whenever I see the guy, Im in the Catskills.
> all of these "prexies", with the exception maybe of Ike, have been lying sacks of
shit.
I hear you, Chuck. I'm of the same generation and vaguely remember Ike. I recall, in
particular, the U2 incident. Didn't Eisenhower himself deny to the world that the US did spy
flights, even while the Soviets were displaying wreckage and parading Capt. F. G. Powers? It
was a major embarrassment.
In other news, @RANDCorporation report
firmly establishes that Van Gogh was a Russian Agent. May be, the dastardly Kremlin plot
drove him to cut his ear off?.. At any rate, NATO is now on alert. pic.twitter.com/9k9j5K9rx1
The USA desperately need another resource-rich country to loot and can't find suitable
candidate other then Russia. So MIC prostitute Madcow is just a dog of war. The USA
deperately need another resource-rich country to loot and can't find sutable candiadate othe
then Russia
There is no credible analyst not shackled to the MIC trough who ventures such
an analysis beyond of course GE's W-2 harpie, Rachel Maddow.
The Western elites have long decided. WW3 is coming. In recent years, the Russians have
repeatedly tried to get this message through the western Mediadrome, but to little
effect.
The job of the GE spokespeople (Maddow et al) is diversionary/ preparatory spadework i.e.
to drill with numbing repetition into the American consciousness who the enemy is. And you
can bet the enemy is not who signs their paychecks. Their employers though happen to be OUR
enemy.
Thus we find ourselves in the odd position of having Russia's top general attempting to
shout through the Maddow racket that our two nations are on a collision course for war.
Strange messenger. Or maybe not. They want to live too.
Russia is in demographic collapse. It lacks the human capital to exploit even its own vast
resource trove. The western banking system is over-leveraged. The imaginary numbers have
gotten too big. Its 'denominator of the real' badly needs shoring up.
Russian resource wealth, Iran's massive South Pars LNG field are viewed with watering eyes
as prolongations of the doomed Ponzi. Europe is energy-poor, geriatric and overrun with
Islamic jihadists. With all due respect, who would want it at this late stage? At best, it is
a funding source --and a battleground-- for WW3.
Meanwhile the Ponzi is ravenous and never sleeps. No growth - negative interest rates is a
bell-ringer for WW3. The alternative is deflationary collapse. Maddow's been mysteriously
cranked up again: Rushah Rushah!
So we find ourselves in another Goebellian shift: accuse the opposition of your own
ulterior motives. They have no designs on us. Our overlords have designs on them.
Americans are just the People in the middle, hostages in a sense yet seemingly feared
enough that our minds are still worth battling over. Trump's affinities are too populist.
He's a dodgy helmsman for the massive undertaking of a world war where the people are only to
be galvanized, not consulted.
Far from a duteous seat-warmer, he's a leader who squeaked through. The Oval Office is no
place for leaders. It was thought to have been neutered of all that leadership malarkey
post-JFK. Trump's not enough to hold back the MIC. No POTUS is. He either must depart the job
or be compromised into executing the plan. But he's a bad Lieutenant. They'll never be
comfortable with him.
Then some evil, diseased mind had an epiphany. Don't just Get Trump! Get a twofer! Get
Trump and Russah! Weld them together for one kill-shot. Collusion means no daylight and one
bullet. Yes, there's a genius to it, a very sick genius.
B, great article as usual but disappointed that you didn't write about the latest sanctions
on N2.
Another act of WAR by the US. These sanctions now cover the comoany, Allseas, laying the
pipeline to Germany. They ceased operations and will not complete the project and Gazprom
does not have the expertise. Would love to see your
analysis on that.
The NYT propaganda, true to form and loyal to Dem Russophobes just one more attempt to
manufacture consent
This is maddening. These crazies are looking for war on Russia. Are the American people
stupid enough to give that consent?
My NYT site has the title "Russia Is a Mess. Why Is Putin Such a Formidable Enemy?"
Some quotes:
---- 1 ----
Under Mr. Putin, Vladislav Surkov, a longtime Kremlin adviser, wrote in Nezavisimaya Gazeta,
a Moscow newspaper, earlier this year, Russia "is playing with the West's minds."
Also its own.
---- 2 ----
All the same, said Gleb Pavlovsky, a political scientist who worked for more than a decade as
a Kremlin adviser, Russia under Mr. Putin still reminds him of a sci-fi movie exoskeleton:
"Inside is sitting a small, weak and perhaps frightened person, but from the outside it looks
terrifying."
---- 3 ----
Whatever its problems, Mr. Surkov, the Kremlin adviser, said, Russia has created "the
ideology of the future" by dispensing with the "illusion of choice" offered by the West and
rooting itself in the will of a single leader capable of swiftly making the choices without
constraint.
China, too, has advocated autocracy as the way to get results fast, but even Xi Jinping,
the head of the Chinese Communist Party, can't match the lightening speed with which Mr.
Putin ordered and executed the seizure of Crimea. The decision to grab the Black Sea
peninsula from Ukraine was made at a single all-night Kremlin meeting in February 2014 and
then carried out just four days later with the dispatch of a few score Russian special forces
officers to seize a handful of government buildings in Simferopol, the Crimean capital.
==========
If true, the resources committed to "Crimea takeover" were comparable with what Israel
committed to assassinate one person, Mahmoud Al-Mabhouh, dispatching a team of 33 to Dubai in
January 2010. Wasn't the superior productivity the strength of the West?
And this is not a joke. Putin is a maniac for balanced budgets, and compared to the
expansive American style, the resources committed by Syria were minuscule. And by all
accounts, spend well.
REUTERS. Oct 2, 2015 - U.S. President Barack Obama warned Russia on Friday that its
bombing campaign against Syrian rebels will suck Moscow into a "quagmire," after a third
straight day of air raids in support of President Bashar al-Assad. <<-- Obama was well
aware that Russia committed a very small number of troops, and smallish air force that his
military expert were describing as obsolete. Russia could not be many times more effective
than USA, could it?
No sign of Obama's predicted 'quagmire' as Russia's ... https://www.washingtonpost.com
› world › 2016/09/30
Sep 30, 2016 - BEIRUT -- In the year since Russia began conducting airstrikes in support of
the Syrian government, the intervention has worked to secure two ...
That explains the next quote from today NYT
---- 4 ----
"Maybe he's holding small cards, but he seems unafraid to play them," said Michael McFaul, a
former United States ambassador to Moscow and now a scholar at Stanford. "That's what makes
Putin so scary."
=========
Seems that Establishment scours most elite universities, Harvard, Yale, Stanford , Princeton
etc. for the dumbest possible graduates. I know from private sources that not all graduates
are dumb, many are actually brilliant. Does it occur to McFaul that boldness in playing small
cards is even worse than playing large card? Russia (and Assad's partisans in Syria) had to
do something well that USA (in government supporters in Afghanistan) did not do at all or did
badly.
s Putin losing his grip? Why did Russian disinformation operations fail so dramatically in
the UK election? Not only did the "rabid socialist" Corbyn fail to seize power from the
Russophobic cold-war warriors of Whitehall but Russia's man in the White House is already
planning to move in with them!
s Putin losing his grip? Why did Russian disinformation operations fail so dramatically in
the UK election? Not only did the "rabid socialist" Corbyn fail to seize power from the
Russophobic cold-war warriors of Whitehall but Russia's man in the White House is already
planning to move in with them!
"... Trump's performance record as president is comprised of an unbroken string of broken promises, opportunities squandered, principles violated, and intentions abandoned. ..."
"... despite another supposedly positive personal relationship, the Trump administration has applied more sanctions on Moscow, provided more anti-Russian aid to Ukraine, further increased funds and troops to NATO Europe, and sent home more Russian diplomats than the Obama administration. ..."
"... Worse, Washington has made no serious effort to resolve the standoff over Ukraine. No one imagines Moscow returning Crimea to Ukraine or giving in on any other issue without meaningful concessions regarding Kiev. Instead of moderating and minimizing bilateral frictions, the administration has made Russia more likely today than before to cooperate with China against Washington and contest American objectives in the Middle East, Africa, and even Latin America. ..."
"... Although Trump promised to stop America's endless wars, as many - if not more - U.S. military personnel are abroad today as when he took office. He increased the number of troops in Afghanistan and is now seeking to negotiate an exit that would force Washington to remain to enforce the agreement. This war has been burning for more than eighteen years. ..."
"... The administration has maintained Washington's illegal deployment in Syria, shifting one contingent away from the Turkish-Kurdish battle while inserting new forces to confiscate Syrian oil fields-a move that lacks domestic authority and violates international law. A few hundred Americans cannot achieve their many other supposed objectives, such as eliminating Russian, Iranian, and other malign influences and forcing Syria's President Bashar al-Assad to resign or inaugurate democracy. However, their presence will ensure America's continued entanglement in a conflict of great complexity but minimal security interest. ..."
"... This is an extraordinarily bad record after almost three years in office. Something good still might happen between now and November 3, 2020. However, more issues are likely to get worse. Imagine North Korean missile and nuclear tests, renewed Russian attempts to influence Western elections, a bloody Chinese crackdown in Hong Kong, increased U.S.-European trade friction, more U.S. pressure on Iran matched by asymmetric responses, and more. At the moment, there is no reason to believe any of the resulting confrontations would turn out well. ..."
Trump's performance record as president is comprised of an unbroken string of broken promises, opportunities squandered, principles
violated, and intentions abandoned.
North Korea may have been the one issue on which President Donald Trump apparently listened to his predecessor, Barack Obama,
when he warned about the serious challenge facing the incoming occupant of the Oval Office. Nevertheless, Trump initially drove tensions
between the two countries to a fever pitch, raising fears of war in the midst of proclamations of "fire and fury." Then he played
statesman and turned toward diplomacy, meeting North Korea's supreme leader, Kim Jong-un, in Singapore.
Today that effort looks kaput. The North has declared denuclearization to be off the table. Actually, few people other than the
president apparently believed that Kim was prepared to turn over his nuclear weapons to a government predisposed toward intervention
and regime change.
Now that this Trump policy is formally dead, and there is no Plan B in sight, Pyongyang has begun deploying choice terms from
its fabled thesaurus of insults. Democrats are sure to denounce the administration for incompetent naivete. And the bipartisan war
party soon will be beating the drums for more sanctions, more florid rhetoric, additional military deployments, new plans for war.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) already has dismissed the risks since any conflict would be "over there," on the distant Korean Peninsula.
At which point Trump's heroic summitry, which offered a dramatic opportunity to break decades of deadly stalemate, will be judged
a failure.
If the president had racked up several successes-wars ended, peace achieved, disputes settled, relations strengthened-then one
disappointment wouldn't matter much. However, his record is an unbroken string of broken promises, opportunities squandered, principles
violated, and intentions abandoned.
There is no relationship more important than that between the United States and the People's Republic of China. Despite Trump's
supposed friendship with China's Xi Jinping, the trade war rages to the detriment of both countries. Americans have suffered from
both the president's tariffs and China's retaliation, with no end in sight. Despite hopes for a resolution, Beijing is hanging tough
and obviously doubts the president's toughness, given the rapidly approaching election.
Beyond economics, the relationship is deteriorating sharply. Disagreements and confrontations over everything from geopolitics
to human rights have driven the two countries apart, with the administration lacking any effective strategy to positively influence
China's behavior. The president's myopic focus on trade has left him without a coherent strategy elsewhere.
Perhaps the president's most pronounced and controversial promise of the 2016 campaign was to improve relations with Russia. However,
despite another supposedly positive personal relationship, the Trump administration has applied more sanctions on Moscow, provided
more anti-Russian aid to Ukraine, further increased funds and troops to NATO Europe, and sent home more Russian diplomats than the
Obama administration.
Worse, Washington has made no serious effort to resolve the standoff over Ukraine. No one imagines Moscow returning Crimea to
Ukraine or giving in on any other issue without meaningful concessions regarding Kiev. Instead of moderating and minimizing bilateral
frictions, the administration has made Russia more likely today than before to cooperate with China against Washington and contest
American objectives in the Middle East, Africa, and even Latin America.
Although Trump promised to stop America's endless wars, as many - if not more - U.S. military personnel are abroad today as when he
took office. He increased the number of troops in Afghanistan and is now seeking to negotiate an exit that would force Washington
to remain to enforce the agreement. This war has been burning for more than eighteen years.
The administration has maintained Washington's illegal deployment in Syria, shifting one contingent away from the Turkish-Kurdish
battle while inserting new forces to confiscate Syrian oil fields-a move that lacks domestic authority and violates international
law. A few hundred Americans cannot achieve their many other supposed objectives, such as eliminating Russian, Iranian, and other
malign influences and forcing Syria's President Bashar al-Assad to resign or inaugurate democracy. However, their presence will ensure
America's continued entanglement in a conflict of great complexity but minimal security interest.
The Saudi government remains corrupt, incompetent, repressive, reckless and dependent on the United States. Only Washington's
refusal to retaliate against Iran for its presumed attack on Saudi oil facilities caused Riyadh to turn to diplomacy toward Tehran,
yet the president then increased U.S. military deployments, turning American military personnel into bodyguards for the Saudi royals.
The recent terrorist attack by the pilot-in-training-presumably to join his colleagues in slaughtering Yemeni civilians-added to
the already high cost of the bilateral relationship.
The administration's policy of "maximum pressure" has proved to be a complete bust around the world. As noted earlier, North Korea
proved unwilling to disarm despite the increased financial pressure caused by U.S. sanctions. North Koreans are hurting, but their
government, like Washington, places security first.
Russia, too, is no more willing to yield Crimea, which was once part of Russia and is the Black Sea naval base of Sebastopol.
Several European governments also disagree with the United States, having pressed to lighten or eliminate current sanctions. The
West will have to offer more than the status quo to roll back Moscow's military advances.
Before Trump became president, Iran was well contained, despite its malign regional activities. The Islamic regime was hemmed
in by Israel and the Gulf States, backed by nations as diverse as Egypt and America. The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA,
sharply curtailed Iran's nuclear activities and placed the country under an intensive oversight regime. Now Tehran has reactivated
its nuclear program, expanded its regional interventions, interfered with Gulf shipping, and demonstrated its ability to devastate
Saudi oil production. To America's consternation, its Persian Gulf allies now are more willing to deal with Iran than before.
Additionally, the Trump administration has largely destroyed hope for reform in Cuba by reversing the Obama administration's progress
toward normalizing relations and discouraging visits by-and trade with-Americans. The entrepreneurs I spoke to when I visited Cuba
two years ago made large investments in anticipation of a steadily increasing number of U.S. visitors but were devastated when Washington
shut off the flow. What had been a steadily expanding private sector was knocked back and the regime, with Raoul Castro still dominant
behind the scenes, again can blame America for its own failings. There is no evidence that extending the original embargo and additional
sanctions, which began in 1960, will free anyone.
For a time, Venezuela appeared to be an administration priority. As usual, Trump applied economic sanctions, this time on a people
whose economy essentially had collapsed. Washington threatened more sanctions and military invasion but to no avail. Then the president
and his top aides breathed fire and fury, insisting that both China and Russia stay out, again without success. Eventually, the president
appeared to simply lose interest and drop any mention of the once urgent crisis. The corrupt, repressive Maduro regime remains in
power.
So far, the president's criticisms of America's alliances have gone for naught. Until now, his appointees, all well-disposed toward
maintaining generous subsidies for America's international fan club, have implemented his policies. More recently, the administration
demanded substantial increases in "host nation" support, but in almost every negotiation so far the president has given way, accepting
minor, symbolic gains. He is likely to end up like his predecessor, whining a lot but gaining very little from America's security
dependents.
Beyond that, there is little positive to say. Trump and India's Narendra Modi are much alike, which is no compliment to either,
but institutional relations have changed little. Turkey's incipient dictator, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, receives a free pass from the
president for the former's abuses and crimes. But even so Congress is thoroughly arrayed against Ankara for sins both domestic and
foreign.
The president's aversion to genuine free trade and the curious belief that buying inexpensive, quality products from abroad is
a negative has created problems with many close allies, including Canada, Mexico, Japan, South Korea, Australia, and multiple European
states. Perhaps only with Israel are Washington's relations substantially improved, and that reflects the president's abandonment
of any serious attempt to promote a fair and realistic peace between Israelis and Palestinians.
This is an extraordinarily bad record after almost three years in office. Something good still might happen between now and November
3, 2020. However, more issues are likely to get worse. Imagine North Korean missile and nuclear tests, renewed Russian attempts to
influence Western elections, a bloody Chinese crackdown in Hong Kong, increased U.S.-European trade friction, more U.S. pressure
on Iran matched by asymmetric responses, and more. At the moment, there is no reason to believe any of the resulting confrontations
would turn out well.
Most Americans vote on the economy, and the president is currently riding a wave of job creation. If that ends before the November
vote, then international issues might matter more. If so, then the president may regret that he failed to follow through on his criticism
of endless war and irresponsible allies. Despite his very different persona, his results don't look all that different from those
achieved by Barack Obama and other leading Democrats.
Doug Bandow is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute. He is a former special assistant to President Ronald Reagan and the
author of several books, including Foreign Follies: America's New Global Empire.
rshimizu12 • 15 hours ago
Personally I think Trumps foreign policy has had mix results. Part of the problem is that Trump has adopted a ad hoc foreign policy
tactics. The US has had limited success with North Korea. While we have not seen any reductions of nuclear weapons. He probably
has stopped flight testing of ICBM's. The daily back and forth threats of destroying each other countries have stopped. We should
have been making more progress with N Korea, but Trump has not been firm enough. Russia on the other hand is a much tougher country
to deal with. As for China we will have to keep up the pressure in trade negotiations.
The purpose of manufactured hysteria in the US is to obfuscate the issues important to the
Deep State like destroying the first amendment, renewing the 'Patriot' act, extremely
increasing the war/hegemony budget, etc.
The unimportant internecine squabbles of the 'two parties' strengthens the false
perception that there is a choice when voting.
"... Putin has indeed been repeatedly "rebuffed" by the West for proposing anything that makes Russia a leading equal in its sphere. This shows not limited contacts with the West, but rather ongoing and painful ones. ..."
"... In truth, Vladimir Putin is the Russian Ronald Reagan, bidding his citizens to "stand tall" against enemies from without and within working against the homeland. His stance on Ukraine, arming its "contras" in a border war against an enemy "satellite regime", may make him look the intolerant war jingo; but thus did Ronald Reagan appear outside the US. Ironically it's Reagan partisans who don't grasp the working parallels. In general, I can recommend this book as a good introduction on Vladimir Putin, but it's hardly the last word and certainly not the definitive narrative. ..."
Hill and Gaddy are pretty good scholars. They do a good job of providing a psychological
profile of Vladimir Putin and the way he operates in the Kremlin. But they have their
limitations. One of the more annoying aspects of the book is that the authors return again
and again both to Putin's graduate thesis on an American management book and his 1999
manifesto on his millenial goals for Russia. A better set of writers would have covered both
subjects in one section and then moved on. But Hill and Gaddy sprinkle references to these
documents about five times each throughout the book, which leads me to suspect that they are
padding what would otherwise be a much shorter book.
As I was reading, I felt that there was a strong bias against Putin and Russia by the
authors, but I couldn't quite pinpoint their slant until the last sentence, which is a
doozy:
"The onus will now be on the West to shore up its own home defenses, reduce the economic
and political vulnerabilities, and create its own contingency plans if it wants to counter
Vladimir Putin's new twenty-first century warfare."
For anyone who is a Russian scholar, this is proof that the authors get Russia very wrong.
They reveal themselves to be in the neocon camp of hawks who want to reactivate a new Cold
War very badly. And in their analysis, they ignore the fact that Russia as a country is in
fact deeply defensive country far more concerned with its internal boundaries and control
than some aggressive Soviet power after World War II. To be sure, Mr. Putin is no choir boy.
Interestingly enough, the authors do not fully investigate the potentially criminal behavior
that Putin performed with Russia's war on Chechnya. Hill and Gaddy could have strengthened
their case if they had included some deeper analysis of Putin's behavior on this troublesome
part of the Russian Empire. But instead they were intent on plowing their own rut, which
while somewhat interesting -- ultimately becomes a little bit too pedantic.
I am reminded of some books in the 1950s that were secretly backed by the CIA, and this
book certainly feels like it has the same flavor. Hill and Gaddy totally ignore Russian
scholars like Stephen Cohen in his analysis of the Russian situation, which is totally the
opposite of mainstream thinking unfortunately these days. But in ignoring what Cohen has to
say, the predominant attitude of the American and European foreign policy establishment is in
lock step with Hill and Gaddy, which is why the book has been so heavily publicized.
The neocon vision of what's wrong with Russia is so biased that it also ignores the
writings of such foreign policy figures as Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew Briezinski, former US
Secretarys of State, both of whom are much more closer in their visions of Russia to Cohen
than they are to Hill and Gaddy.
Yes, this book is all about sticking to the Rooskies, unfortunately. And the hidden
motivator are all of the defense contracts that NATO can suck up, as well as all the bankers'
books in reaming the Ukrainian economy as badly as they've reamed Greece. But the authors
never tell you that this is their motivation, until the last paragraph.
Ultimately, this is an unsatisfying work.
karenann, 2 years ago (Edited)
Kissinger has had the good sense to state that the best hope for peace in the region is to have Ukraine as a totally
neutral country, similar to Finland before the USSR collapsed. The Budapest Memorandum of NATO calls for the full military
integration of Ukraine and Georgia.
As a thought experiment, what if the Soviets undermined the provincial governments of Alberta and British Columbia, and
then wanted to include these governments in the Warsaw Pact? What do you think the reaction of the US would be?
- look at Vladimir Putin and Mr. Putin's Russia. The book is based on intensive research
and interviews with Putin, but I find it skewed by the Western biases it brings to the table.
Yet it's not a demonization, as is so much of the Western Putin literature. It gives him
credit for standing by the multi-racial and cultural realities of post-Soviet Russia.
Compared to the real hardcore nationalists, Putin in fact has come across as a domestic
liberal. The rising tide of Russian arch-nationalism, however, has taken its toll. Authors
Hill and Gaddy correctly assess Putin's playing the nationalist card as a political manouver
to keep one step ahead of his opponents - most of whom are not pro-Western liberal dissidents
by any means. Courting the Russian Orthodox Church in recent years was one such strategy.
Yet the authors see only politics in Mr. Putin's tactics, and play down the West's own
role in making him an antagonist. They take him to task for painting the Ukrainian
insurrection of 2014 as a "fascist coup," and for denouncing Ukrainian nationalist partisan
Stepan Bandera as a Nazi collaborator. Bandera and Hitler may have never met, but this was
not necessary for the arming and use of Bandera's OUN to commit atrocities and war crimes on
then-Soviet territory. Contrary to the authors' whitewash, Bandera's later persecution by
Nazis consisted of special treatment in German camps, held on ice for postwar use. Of
relevance is that the "regime change" of 2014 was largely the work of west Ukrainians - the
backbone of the OUN movement and the very folks who today make Bandera a national hero. When
he paints west Ukraine as again collaborating with Russia's enemy, Putin stands on solid
historical ground. The West continues destabilizing actions all the while it blames Putin for
the same.
The authors also lecture us on Putin's inability to grasp "Western values" as the root of
his refusal to take the West on its own terms; on "how little Putin understands about us -
our motives, our mentality, and, also, our values" (p.385) I rather think Putin grasps these
"motives, mentality, and values" very well, as they seem inseparable from European economic
hegemony and NATO expansion. His managed democracy comes off looking rather clean cut
compared to US politics following the Citizens United ruling, where American oligarch David
Koch engineered a fundamental change for the worse via the Supreme Court. In foreign policy,
Putin has indeed been repeatedly "rebuffed" by the West for proposing anything that makes
Russia a leading equal in its sphere. This shows not limited contacts with the West, but
rather ongoing and painful ones.
The hypocrisy is breathtaking but tragically familiar. It's rather the West's (and the
authors') failure to grasp regional history, and Putin's actions based on it, that fuel the
"misunderstanding." Ukraine, for instance, had strong nationalist animosity toward the
"Moskali" long before the 1930s holodomor/famine. Crimea was not transferred to Ukraine out
of any degree of recognition of said suffering, as the authors allege on p. 367; but as part
of a geo-political manouver to Russify east Ukraine with more "loyal" ethnic Russians,
exactly as in the Baltic states.
His aggressive handling of terrorists within Chechnya is "decried" by the West, the
authors note. Yet within a decade the US and its NATO partners would be pursuing an
aggressive course in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Yemen that make Russia look the provincial
amateur. Putin in fact is *not* trying to recreate the USSR, as so often charged by Western
pundits with an axe to grind, nor even the old Russian empire. His strategic thinking is
dominated by security rationales. A wider invasive course would only threaten Russian
security. At all times he sees his actions as defensive responses. If this is self-serving,
it only puts him in good company: recall the American angst over the "dissident" Dixie
Chicks; the livid anger over Edward Snowden.
In truth, Vladimir Putin is the Russian Ronald Reagan, bidding his citizens to "stand
tall" against enemies from without and within working against the homeland. His stance on
Ukraine, arming its "contras" in a border war against an enemy "satellite regime", may make
him look the intolerant war jingo; but thus did Ronald Reagan appear outside the US.
Ironically it's Reagan partisans who don't grasp the working parallels. In general, I can
recommend this book as a good introduction on Vladimir Putin, but it's hardly the last word
and certainly not the definitive narrative.
Anon II, 4 years ago (Edited)
It is refreshing to read something on Russia written by a reviewer who knows what he is talking about. This book is full
of data, but the authors lack any intellectual basis on which to organize it. They are trying to publish a book in which
there will be reader interest, but they really have nothing to say. If you are eager to make an enemy of Russia, this book
will be useful to you. If you are simply trying to understand what is happening, it won't be.
D.B.4 years ago
Thank you for an excellent countervailing perspective!
"... Today's Deep State most resembles the colonial administrations during the heyday of European imperialism. These too worked to run their own secret foreign policy, and to bring their power to bear on domestic policy as well. ..."
"... Impeachment, and the pro-bureaucracy anti-democracy campaign related to it, besides its more petty purposes (distraction from real social problems; forestalling Sanders), is the culmination of technocracy's attempted coup against a president who, even though he agrees with this cabal on all policy matters, is considered too unreliable, too undisciplined, too damn honest about the evil of the US empire. If they can take him down, they think they can restore the full business-as-usual status quo including the compliance of the rest of the world. ..."
Historically the ability of unelected, unaccountable, secretive bureaucracies (aka the "Deep
State") to exercise their own policy without regard for the public or elected officials,
often in defiance of these, has always been the hallmark of the destruction of democracy and
incipient tyranny.
Today's Deep State most resembles the colonial administrations during the heyday of
European imperialism. These too worked to run their own secret foreign policy, and to bring
their power to bear on domestic policy as well.
Although both halves of the One-Party really want the effective tyranny of state and
corporate bureaucracies, it's not surprising that it's the Democrats (along with the MSM)
taking the lead in openly defending the tyrannical proposition that the CIA should be
running its own foreign (and implicitly domestic) policy, and that the president should be
just a figurehead which follows orders. That goes with the Democrats' more avowedly
technocratic style, and it goes with the ratchet effect whereby it's usually Democrats which
push the policy envelope toward ever greater inequality, ecocide and tyranny.
Now is a time of rising irredentism and the decline of all the ideas of
globalization and technocracy, though the reality is likely to hang on for awhile. The whole
Deep State-Zionist-Russia-Deranged-Trump-Deranged-MSM-social media censorship campaign is
globalization trying to maintain its monopoly of ideas by force, since it knows it can never
win in a free clash of ideas.
Impeachment, and the pro-bureaucracy anti-democracy campaign related to it, besides
its more petty purposes (distraction from real social problems; forestalling Sanders), is the
culmination of technocracy's attempted coup against a president who, even though he agrees
with this cabal on all policy matters, is considered too unreliable, too undisciplined, too
damn honest about the evil of the US empire. If they can take him down, they think
they can restore the full business-as-usual status quo including the compliance of the rest
of the world.
Since impeachment's going to fail, we can expect the system to try other ways.
hey b... i like your title - "How The Deep State Sunk The Democratic Party" ... could change
it to" How the Deep State Sunk the USA" could work just as well...
Seven of the 11 security state representatives who had joined the Democrats in 2018 gave
the impulse for impeachment.
is this intentional?? it sort of looks like it...
good quote from @ 26 lk - "The contradictions of US empire and global capitalism cannot be
mitigated by either more liberal strategies or realist ones."
@babyl-on 35
yes that is about right. The top power networks are all a tight mix of names from govt, MIC,
and private equity (incl. top 2-3 investment banks). With the latter group naturally paying
the salaries of the whole policy making ecosystem, and holding the positions that select
future generations who will eventually take their place.
They want the security of knowing noone in the world will mess with them. This
necessitates that noone in the world *can* mess with them. Pretty straightforward from
there.
All pretense of our country being a representative democracy@snoopydawg
is gone. Our two party uniparty government has completely turned its back on serving
the needs of the vast majority of the people of this country, and of the wider world. Profit
sits at the head of our government. The monikers "Fascist" and "Totalitarian" are apt
descriptors of the direction of our current trajectory. A dystopian future surely awaits us on
this beautiful, fragile and life sustaining planet that we are trashing with such abandon.
Other than that, things are going quite nicely. Nancy is wearing her power pants and fools
are applauding.
It still amazes me... that people actually think impeachment accomplishes anything other
than diverting attention from the Dems giving Trump everything he wants.
Kayfabe.
Impeachment without conviction means next to nothing.
The Senate will not convict. Trumps chances of being re-elected are continuing to improve as
Democratic Party insiders work overtime to see to it that Bernie Sanders has to fight the
Republican Party, a MSM that either dismisses or ignores his candidacy, AND the Democratic
Party which has, once again, stacked the deck against him.
... Never-Trump conservative Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin released a scorching
assessment ... "Even Trump knows he will be lumped in with the 'losers' in the presidential
history rankings such as Richard Nixon and Andrew Johnson," wrote Rubin. "Impeachment will
define his presidency, dwarfing any other foreign or domestic action. No wonder he rages
against a speaker he is powerless to stop. His worst nightmare is to be humiliated, and if
not now, history certainly will regard him as a pitiful, damaged man utterly unfit for the
role he won through a series of improbable events ... Just as Watergate figures ... were
lionized as defenders of the Constitution, so too will Pelosi and House Democrats ... be
among those admired for their lucidity, intellect and character. ... For every clownish,
contemptible, screeching and dishonest House Republican, there is a sober, admirable,
restrained and honest Democrat.
"No letter, no tweet, no Fox News spin can repair the reputations of Trump enablers," Rubin
wrote. The right-wing media that cheered them on will, like outlets that rooted for Jim Crow
and demonized Freedom Riders, be shunned by decent, freedom-loving people who reaffirm
objective reality. The Republican Party will be known not as the Party of Lincoln but the
Party of Trump, a quisling party that lost its bearings and its soul to defend an unhinged
narcissist.
" Neocons for some strange reason also hate Trump, although it is not clear why --
he
Not going to comment on British politics much since I'm an ignorant American, but I have
wondered about the neocon hatred of Trump myself and I think it boils down to the fact that
he is not trustworthy.
Yes, I would agree that "the fact that he is not trustworthy" can well be an important
factor. But the USA foreign policy establishment was viewed as untrustworthy for some time
now, so nothing changed for foreign countries in this sense. Or only the degree changed.
But there are more important factors in play, I think.
The main factor probably is that the USA foreign policy establishment are hard core
neocons and preach "Full Spectum Dominance" doctrine. Heretics are burned at the stake.
That includes Trump's impeachment, persistent attempts to derail Sanders (using Biden to
push the selection of the candidate from into the state where the support of superdelegates
can be decisive), weaken Warren, and Tulsi Gabbard excommunication.
Trump's limited prevarications on Russia threaten the strategy to expand NATO to Ukraine
which is a part of the plan of a long term strategy of encircling Russia and maintaining US
dominance over Europe.
As Trump pushes great power rivalry as the name of the game, his policies threatens to
weaken the US control of EU, which Trump wants to label as an economic competitor.
Here the strategic difference between Trump and the Deep State approaches become apparent:
Trump is pushing mercantilist strategy against potential competitors,while the Deep State
pursues the strategy of maintaining the global neoliberal empire led by the USA at all
costs.
The latter presuppose imposing neoliberal globalization, forceful opening other countries
economies to multinationals (much like in Trotskyism "Permanent War" doctrine), and the
maintenance of USA primacy by dominating regional alliances like NATO. But it presupposes
sharing of loot. Which Trump rejects.
Impeachment, besides its more petty purposes (distraction from real social problems;
forestalling and derailing Sanders by propelling Biden as No.1 opponent of Thump and his
policies ), is the culmination of the whole series of attempts of neoliberal oligarchy's to
stage a color revolution against the President who, even though he agrees with this cabal on
all policy matters, is considered too unreliable, too undisciplined, and too damn honest
about the real goals of the US-led neoliberal empire. The latter factor is especially
worrisome ;-)
If they can take him down, they think they can restore the business-as-usual status quo
("kick the can down the road" for a decade or more). The latter might well be an illusion.
Trump and Brexit radically changed the situation and you can't step into the same river
twice.
Trump's impeachment in this sense is yet another nail in the coffin of neoliberalism as it
negatively affects the perception of the USA, reveals to the whole world the dirty USA
internal politic kitchen, and complicates the USA foreign policy, especially "democracy
promotion" part of it, China's Global Times was quite measured yet pointed:
"To many Chinese, it seems that US-style democracy has already become a negative
concept, which has brought ceaseless chaos and produced absurd farces.
Trump's letter notes that talk about impeachment started as soon as he stepped into
office:
IMO the Deep State wanted to initiate a new McCarthyism.
Russiagate was the means to do so and that means that Impeachment was always a possibility
(though likely a red-herring, as I explain below).
IMO After the Mueller investigation progressives pressed for Impeachment but establishment
Democratics (led by Pelosi and Hillary) wouldn't allow it. People were (rightfully) asking
why establishment Democrats were protecting Trump.
With this in mind, Ukrainegate is a convenient diversion from Russiagate while providing
the Impeachment satisfaction that progressives had clamored for.
It's difficult NOT to notice that ...
... America First Trump actually furthered Russiagate when he hired Manafort
(who was known to have worked for pro-Russian Parties in Ukraine and had NO recent
experience in US elections) and called upon Russia to publish Hillary's emails (which were
KNOWN to contain top-secret information - making any publication a crime under US law);
... and America First Trump furthered Ukrainegate by the mentioning the
name of an announced political opponent when talking about investigating corruption on a
call with Zelensky.
One might excuse this in many ways: Trump's ego; his unfamiliarity with politics
and statecraft; or just bad luck. But one can also see these actions, in a larger context, as
disturbing part of the effort to initiate the new McCarthyism.
I think if Russians adopt a similar to IHRA definition of thier own and then pursue
trangressors through the courts, the Guardian would be shut down within a month or so.
How would it fly if Trump's EO instead forbade criticism of Russia in schools and colleges in
USA?
Very strange that something like this could ever be written and signed. A fast budding and
explicit "Judeo lese majetse" is unfolding before our eyes. And if it is meant to protect
Jews as a race and nation, then that will naturally induce people to see them as exactly
that: a separate nation. Will this quell concern about loyalty or raise more doubt?
p.s. In 2018, Israeli army expert snipers made a turkey shoot of Palestinians marching on
the 70th anniversary of their people being ethnically cleansed from their ancestral homeland.
A "shoot to cripple" policy only murdered several score but, with high speed dum dum bullets,
they blasted bloody wreckage through the flesh and bones of many thousands of unarmed people.
You may not see them on your porno channels and game shows, but a large number will be
crippled for the rest of their lives.
This is a good example of a very recent state sponsored atrocity on a large scale.
Students in our schools and colleges might want to examine this in a variety of ways. The
history, legality, ethics, demographic dilemmas etc. Sure, it might roll over into some
criticism and activism, e.g. DBS Israel, but is that to be prohibited by our government? What
sort of citizens are our schools and colleges supposed to be cultivating if students are not
permitted to exercise their freedom of speech, freedom of assembly and freedom of
conscience?
Likbez at #5 wrote: 'Paleoconservatives hate Trump.'
I dunno. I look at 'The American Conservative' from time to time, which was created and is
run by Pat Buchanan, who's pretty much the original paleocon.
Part of that is because it's good to understand what the enemy is thinking. But also it
turns out 'The American Conservative', for instance, has guys like Scott Ritter and Andrew
Bacievich writing for them, as well as other critics of the American elite that will never be
allowed in the MSM. And that's because one particular policy axe Buchanan and his writers grind
very strongly is against the forever wars, U.S. military interventionism, and the MIC. They
hate the neocons and types like John Bolton.
Thus, when Trump makes noises or does something that looks like it plays against the MIC,
the State Department and the three-letter agencies aka The Blob, and maybe has a chance of
tamping down on the bloody military interventionism, Buchanan and co. are pro-Trump.
Conversely, Buchanan and co. are big on the evangelical Christian stuff and the hard-working
American white nuclear family who built America, blah blah blah. Whereas Trump is a billionaire
vulgarian. And there Buchanan and his writers don't like him.
So paleocons like Buchanan seem to deal with Trump on a policy-by-policy basis. Though I
radically disagree with some of the policies that Buchanan does favor, that seems reasonable to
me.
Christians had better not let the unachievable perfect be the enemy of the common-sense
good enough.
" Neocons for some strange reason also hate Trump, although it is not clear why -- he
completely folded and conduct their foreign policy."
Not going to comment on British politics much since I'm an ignorant American, but I have
wondered about the neocon hatred of Trump myself and I think it boils down to the fact that
he is not trustworthy. Yes, he has caved in and when you get past the tweets he is trying to
start a new nuclear arms race and actually armed Ukraine and gave Israel almost everything
but still, he isn't stable. He doesn't play the game right. He is supposed to talk about how
we want democracy and freedom and instead he rather openly fawns over dictators. Well, yes,
other Presidents support dictators, but never with so much open enthusiasm. Appearances
matter. And even neocons want someone who is mentally stable conducting their preferred brand
of militaristic warmongering.
In the early 2000s, writer Michael Wolff reported on a privately compiled, limited-edition
booklet called "The Portable Bloomberg: The Wit and Wisdom of Michael Bloomberg." Compiled as a
gag gift from his staff, the 32-page text featured real-life Bloomberg quotations collected by
former executive Elisabeth DeMarse and others who knew the mogul in the 1980s, before his run
for mayor. Among its more prescient gems: "A good salesperson asks for the order. It's like the
guy who goes into a bar, and walks up to every gorgeous girl there, and says 'Do you want to
fuck?' He gets turned down a lot -- but he gets fucked a lot, too!"
"... I'm not sure what neo-progressivism is, but I know a farce when I see it. The Mueller investigation failed to interview two central persons of interest in it's investigation: Craig Murray and Julian Assange. The fact that they did not interview them underscores that this was not a good faith investigation but one working backwards from it's conclusion. Hail Putin (JK, I couldn't care less about the Kleptocrat-in-chief). ..."
"... Funny, I would apply your description of "useful idiots" to centrist Democrats for advancing an agenda that severely hamstring the Democrats' political effectiveness and marries them to historically reactionary forces like neoconservatives and the intelligence community. ..."
"... Considering that our political establishment, including both parties, our media system including both ostensibly informational and entertainment content, and our civil society are deeply committed to US military and intelligence endeavors, I would "first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye," as the saying goes. ..."
"... The propaganda system that shapes public opinion around matters of geopolitics is extensive and pervasive. There is a relatively small community of academics, activists, and concerned citizens who are students of history, and more importantly, the history of propaganda and have watched what it can do. I've no doubt you're well-intentioned but I can't help but disagree with your perception. The pro-RTP humanitarian interventionist canard is a great way to get people who consider themselves on the left to back the same military/intelligence apparatus that has been waging war on the third world in pursuit of American political and economic hegemony since the end of WWII. ..."
"... It has occurred to me that their contentions are false, but that's precisely the point- if you're doing a competent, exhaustive investigation, you interview people that claim to have information of central importance, if only to exclude those possibilities from consideration. Not doing so is the hallmark of incompetence or something worse. ..."
"There is little point trying to convince someone like Johnstone of what every sane person in the world knows to be almost
certainly true, that Russia hacked the DNC and attempted to swing the election in favor of" ~ Donald Trump."
Count me among the insane, but such fact-free assertions are pretty standard examples of what passes for facts in the post-post-modern
era of Trump. While this is certainly a minority position, competent journalists like Aaron Mate, Matt Taibbi, Michael Tracey
and others have been doing good work in pointing out the deep flaws in the Russiagate narrative.
I'm not sure what neo-progressivism is, but I know a farce when I see it. The Mueller investigation failed to interview
two central persons of interest in it's investigation: Craig Murray and Julian Assange. The fact that they did not interview them
underscores that this was not a good faith investigation but one working backwards from it's conclusion. Hail Putin (JK, I couldn't
care less about the Kleptocrat-in-chief).
I call it fake progressivism or the alt-left but neo-progressivism works too. They are easy to identify because they all listen
to (and frequently cite) the same social media pundits and their logic is so painfully flawed.
They are useful idiots for the right because they advance the same talking points as the right, with a few variations that
are designed to appeal to the left. In short, they are lefties who have been neutralized by clever propaganda and "alt-media"
pied pipers.
Funny, I would apply your description of "useful idiots" to centrist Democrats for advancing an agenda that severely hamstring
the Democrats' political effectiveness and marries them to historically reactionary forces like neoconservatives and the intelligence
community.
In the same way that your "neo-progressives" are labeled "Putin puppets" or "Assad apologists" for opposing destructive and
bellicose foreign policy positions, this neo-red-scare language was used to tar principled anti-war voices during the Cold War
(MLK Jr comes to mind).
Instead of debating policy positions, we must now try to cut through the Orwellian neologism game just to get to a discussion
of substance.
The anti-war narrative is a great hook with which to reel in some people on the left.
Yes, the level of propaganda being utilized is Orwellian, and until progressives realize they are being propagandized rather
than informed, they will be used like pawns on a chess board.
Considering that our political establishment, including both parties, our media system including both ostensibly informational
and entertainment content, and our civil society are deeply committed to US military and intelligence endeavors, I would "first
cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye," as the
saying goes.
The propaganda system that shapes public opinion around matters of geopolitics is extensive and pervasive. There is a relatively
small community of academics, activists, and concerned citizens who are students of history, and more importantly, the history
of propaganda and have watched what it can do. I've no doubt you're well-intentioned but I can't help but disagree with your perception.
The pro-RTP humanitarian interventionist canard is a great way to get people who consider themselves on the left to back the same
military/intelligence apparatus that has been waging war on the third world in pursuit of American political and economic hegemony
since the end of WWII.
I'm reminded of the legacy media's reaction after MLK Jr's Beyond Vietnam speech: "Time magazine called the speech "demagogic
slander that sounded like a script for Radio Hanoi." The Washington Post wrote that King had "diminished his usefulness to his
cause, his country, his people."" The pro-war establishment has had 52 years to come up with new false equivalencies and flawed
analyses to disparage the moral and practical clarity of its critics, and they have not.
It has occurred to me that their contentions are false, but that's precisely the point- if you're doing a competent, exhaustive
investigation, you interview people that claim to have information of central importance, if only to exclude those possibilities
from consideration. Not doing so is the hallmark of incompetence or something worse.
Of course, these aren't the only issues with Russiagate, only the most glaring. I'll mention briefly that perhaps the great
sin of Russiagate (even if it turned out to be true) is that is has neatly distracted from election fraud in the US by US actors,
both the DNC's rigging of primaries and the GOP's perennial voter suppression that likely gave Trump the election by securing
him electoral college votes in key states.
Instead of looking at the damning evidence of GOP crimes (a hallowed tradition among Democrats), they did the thing convenient
to DC insiders and national security apparatchiks: blame Russia. Even if Russia had hacked the DNC, their interference pales in
comparison to demonstrable GOP manipulation, yet gets 98% of the coverage (and this will likely be repeated in 2020, thanks to
this circus). Presuming Russiagate is entirely legit (which I don't), it's the hangnail distracting the body politic from stage
4 cancer.
Lastly, why on earth would one trust BCCI Bob and the intelligence community, on Russiagate or anything else considering their
long history of lying to the American people? Maybe they're not in this case but the burden of proof is extremely high when dealing
with serial liars.
"the conspiracy to fabricate the Mueller report would have involved tens of thousands and all would have had to keep quite."
No it wouldn't. It's clear from this statement alone that you haven't studied many conspiracies involving high-profile reports
and political narratives that mislead the public. A small number of people can set the agenda, pick witnesses that will back them
up either due to credulity, confirmation bias, or ambition, and use a compliant media as a megaphone to broadcast their perspective,
then cite that same media (as Dick Cheney was fond of doing). Beyond that, there is a deep dearth of critical thinking in DC,
and incentives not to rock the boat. Why put your career at risk to voice an unpopular opinion? A massive conspiracy isn't required,
nor is it plausible. People that work in large bureaucracies can infer what the consensus is and go with it. From the JFK assassination
to Vietnam, to Iran Contra, to Iraq, to the MANY minor scandals in between that have faded from the public's memory, this is a
sadly common phenomenon.
I'm not dismissing the idea that Russians didn't interfere per se, but rather that this interference had an impact on the election
(bombshell after bombshell failed to detonate). The media circus around Russiagate, an incident that, insofar as it happened,
didn't impact the election, when compared to voter purges that literally handed Trump the White house, has been nearly entirely
absent. Why the overwhelming focus, day after day after day of the former to the scant mention of the latter? I would argue that
it's because one fits neatly into a jingoistic narrative held by the MIC while the other reveals bipartisan corruption and dereliction.
At the moment there is no way for concerned, affected or just plain good humans to either
eradicate the stench or to jail and make liable the producers, inventors, distributors,
publisher or the liars that deny the wrongful facts often found in smelly propaganda..
It is a violation of basic human rights to produce false, deceptive or misleading
propaganda.. Maybe there will someday be a war on wrongful propaganda and those involved will
find themselves labeled Terrorist.
In the early 2000s, writer Michael Wolff reported on a privately compiled, limited-edition
booklet called "The Portable Bloomberg: The Wit and Wisdom of Michael Bloomberg." Compiled as a
gag gift from his staff, the 32-page text featured real-life Bloomberg quotations collected by
former executive Elisabeth DeMarse and others who knew the mogul in the 1980s, before his run
for mayor. Among its more prescient gems: "A good salesperson asks for the order. It's like the
guy who goes into a bar, and walks up to every gorgeous girl there, and says 'Do you want to
fuck?' He gets turned down a lot -- but he gets fucked a lot, too!"
As Tony Kevin reported (watch-v=dJiS3nFzsWg) at one small fundraiser
Bill Clinton made an interesting remark. He said that the USA should always have enemies. That's absolutely true, this this
is a way to unite such a society as we have in the USA. probably the only way. And Russia simply fits the
bill. Very convenient bogeyman.
Notable quotes:
"... The experience of the USSR in that country should have sent up all kinds of red flags to the invading US military but it apparently did not. Both USSR and America lost thousands of military lives -- but nothing has changed in the country. Life in Afghanistan is actually worse now than before the multiple invasions. The only think which has improved is the cultivation of poppies and the export of opium. ..."
One aspect of this report in the NYT is very troubling but not a great surprise to those who
pay attention to Asian affairs.
The reports that US military leaders had no idea of what to
do in Afghanistan and constantly lied to the public should rouse citizens in America to take
a different view of military leaders. That view must be to trust nothing coming from the
Pentagon or from spokespersons for the military. Included must be any and all secretaries of defence, and all branches of the military.
It is totally unacceptable that 1-2 trillion dollars and several thousand lives were spent
by America for some nebulous cause. This does not include many thousands of civilians.
During the Vietnam disaster, it became obvious that American military was lying to the
public and taking many causalities in an unwinnable war. Nothing was learned about Asia or
Asian culture because America entered Afghanistan without a real plan and no understanding of
the country or it's history.
The experience of the USSR in that country should have sent up
all kinds of red flags to the invading US military but it apparently did not. Both USSR and
America lost thousands of military lives -- but nothing has changed in the country. Life in
Afghanistan is actually worse now than before the multiple invasions. The only think which
has improved is the cultivation of poppies and the export of opium.
The Hill reports that a man in Illinois has been charged after allegedly threatening to
shoot Rep. Rodney Davis (R-Ill.) and accusing the congressman of "backing the Russians."
Rodney Lee Davis
64-year-old Randall Tar of Rochester, Ill. was charged with communicating threats to injure
a person and threatening to assault, kidnap or murder a federal official, according to court
documents released this week (full release below).
Contacted at his home Thursday, Tarr said he saw a television ad in which Davis, a
Republican from Taylorville, claimed that Ukraine, not Russia, was responsible for meddling in
the 2016 U.S. elections , and it angered him enough to call.
Prosecutors say Tarr called Davis's district office last month and left a profanity-filled
voicemail, saying:
"I just saw you ... on the TV. You backing the Russians, boy?"
"Stupid son of a bitch, you're gonna go against our military and back the Russians?" he
allegedly added.
"I'm a sharpshooter. ... I'd like to shoot your f---ing head off you stupid
motherf---er."
The bigger story is the number of mentally unstable Americans. When you go driving next,
remember that about 20% of them are gorked on prescribed medications. The behavior you will
observe makes complete sense in that context.
"... While the typical BubisAmericanus will have forgotten all the details by then, me thinks the hard core democrats, I mean nomal'ish people that usually vote blue, simply stay home. ..."
"... Was this whole impeachment thing completely designed for the dems to fall on their sword and put the Donald back in for another 4? Dunno. ..."
They want to do it by Christmas in the vain hope that this circus will all blow over by
November. I think not.
While the typical BubisAmericanus will have forgotten all the details by then, me thinks
the hard core democrats, I mean nomal'ish people that usually vote blue, simply stay
home.
Part of me, however, thinks back to something that Harry Truman said, "in politics there
are no accidents" .
Was this whole impeachment thing completely designed for the dems to fall on their sword
and put the Donald back in for another 4? Dunno.
The Republicans will have both houses when in 2024 the the tax take will barley cover
interest.
designed for the dems to fall on their sword and put the Donald back in for another 4?
Dunno.
Been thinking along the same lines. May be the last thing they want is to be "on line" in
2021. I even wonder if CNN and BSNBC, etc, are there to DRIVE the decent Democrat to the
Republicians.
No reputable legal authority would fear ensuring due process for an accused, unless it had no evidence of an actual crime
to justify prosecution...but DID have ulterior motives and nefarious purposes for doing so.
Let's be clear.
To date, not a single shred of actual evidence has ever been produced to prove Russian involvement or interference in the
2016 presidential election.
***.
Nada.
We have the opinion of domestic intelligence agencies, but we have no physical or direct evidence.
On the contrary, we have as much reason to believe some or all of them interfered in the Trump campaign, to orchestrate
and execute a foreign interference hoax against Trump, before and after his election.
Daily, and throughout this sick prog left congressional abuse of power, we have repeatedly heard claims of an "ongoing
war with Russia" in Ukraine.
Which war is this? Is this a continuation of the non-invasion of the Donbas in 2014? The specious and false claims of Russian troop concentrations, and tanks rolling, that even spy satellites didn't see? Are we still lying about this? If so, where are the media reports of Russian airstrikes, burning Ukrainian villages, or body bags?
In any "on-going" war with Russia, we would've been treated to near-constant news video of Russian armor all over eastern Ukraine. Have we? Perhaps this war they keep telling us about is like the Russian "invasion" of Crimea that didn't happen either.
We clearly remember the two Crimean-initiated referenda which put them back in their ancestral Russian
homelands, but none of that had anything to do with invading Russians, who already had a substantial military
presence in Crimea for decades.
No sir, Professor Turley.
There is no basis whatsoever for Trump's impeachment.
There is mounting evidence of a continued coup against this president, and the substantial number of Americans
who actually elected him.
We too are closely monitoring the actual situation...
As Tony Kevin reported (watch-v=dJiS3nFzsWg) at one small fundraiser
Bill Clinton made an interesting remark. He said that the USA should always have enemies. That's absolutely true, this this
is a way to unite such a society as we have in the USA. probably the only way. And Russia simply fits the
bill. Very convenient bogeyman.
Notable quotes:
"... The experience of the USSR in that country should have sent up all kinds of red flags to the invading US military but it apparently did not. Both USSR and America lost thousands of military lives -- but nothing has changed in the country. Life in Afghanistan is actually worse now than before the multiple invasions. The only think which has improved is the cultivation of poppies and the export of opium. ..."
One aspect of this report in the NYT is very troubling but not a great surprise to those who
pay attention to Asian affairs.
The reports that US military leaders had no idea of what to
do in Afghanistan and constantly lied to the public should rouse citizens in America to take
a different view of military leaders. That view must be to trust nothing coming from the
Pentagon or from spokespersons for the military. Included must be any and all secretaries of defence, and all branches of the military.
It is totally unacceptable that 1-2 trillion dollars and several thousand lives were spent
by America for some nebulous cause. This does not include many thousands of civilians.
During the Vietnam disaster, it became obvious that American military was lying to the
public and taking many causalities in an unwinnable war. Nothing was learned about Asia or
Asian culture because America entered Afghanistan without a real plan and no understanding of
the country or it's history.
The experience of the USSR in that country should have sent up
all kinds of red flags to the invading US military but it apparently did not. Both USSR and
America lost thousands of military lives -- but nothing has changed in the country. Life in
Afghanistan is actually worse now than before the multiple invasions. The only think which
has improved is the cultivation of poppies and the export of opium.
Just as was true when the Mueller investigation closed
without a single American being charged with criminally conspiring with Russia
over the 2016 election, Wednesday's issuance of the long-waited report from the
Department of Justice's Inspector General reveals that years of major claims and narratives
from the U.S. media were utter
frauds .
Before evaluating the media component of this scandal, the FBI's gross abuse of its power
– its serial deceit – is so grave and manifest that it requires little effort to
demonstrate it. In sum, the IG Report documents multiple instances in which the FBI – in
order to convince a FISA court to allow it spy on former Trump campaign operative Carter Page
during the 2016 election – manipulated documents, concealed crucial exonerating evidence,
and touted what it knew were unreliable if not outright false claims.
If you don't consider FBI lying, concealment of evidence, and manipulation of documents in
order to spy on a U.S. citizen in the middle of a presidential campaign to be a major scandal,
what is? But none of this is aberrational: the FBI still has its headquarters in a building
named after J. Edgar Hoover – who constantly blackmailed elected officials with dossiers
and tried to blackmail Martin Luther King into killing himself – because that's what
these security state agencies are. They are out-of-control, virtually unlimited police state
factions that lie, abuse their spying and law enforcement powers, and subvert democracy and
civic and political freedoms as a matter of course.
In this case, no rational person should allow standard partisan bickering to distort or hide
this severe FBI corruption. The IG Report leaves no doubt about it. It's brimming with proof of
FBI subterfuge and deceit, all in service of persuading a FISA court of something that was not
true: that U.S. citizen and former Trump campaign official Carter Page was an agent of the
Russian government and therefore needed to have his communications surveilled.
Unprecedented brazennessDecember 11, 2019
PaulR 6 Comments 'Something is rotten with the state of Denmark', or if not Denmark then
certainly the United States of America. It's the only conclusion one can draw from the way the
absolutely normal is nowadays treated as the most extraordinary drama.
On Monday, US President Donald Trump met Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov. It's about
as normal a diplomatic event as one could possibly imagine, but it caused much of the American
commentariat to go into a collective meltdown.
'Trump welcoming Russia's top diplomat to the Oval Office is one of his most brazen moves
yet,' declared the
Washington Post , which makes you think that Trump really needs to step up his game on the
brazenness front. The Post isn't alone in thinking this way, however. What one might call the
'liberal' TV channels leapt on the story too, dragging in some representatives of the American
security apparatus to ram home the point (there was a time when liberals regarded the FBI and
CIA with suspicion, but such days are apparently long gone).
And so it was that CNN brought on as a guest former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe to
'explain why the photograph tweeted by President Trump of his meeting with Russian foreign
minister Sergei Lavrov is so extraordinary.' As McCabe told CNN
:
There's no doubt there's something deeply odd about the way this president interacts with
Russia. We've never seen anything like this before. Russia is our most significant enemy on
the world stage. I don't think that we've ever seen a photograph out of the Oval Office on
the lines of the one we saw today.
Meanwhile, MSNBC had its own star witness, former Under Secretary of State Richard Stengel.
'Why is a head of state meeting with the Russian foreign minister?' Stengel
asked , 'Vladimir Putin doesn't meet with Mike Pompeo when he comes to Moscow. So it's very
curious and it's very strange.'
Actually Rick, dear boy, Putin does meet with Pompeo, as you can see from this photo here.
But when did one ever let little details like factual accuracy get in the way of a good
line?
Stengel wasn't MSNBC's only witness to Trump's suspicious behaviour. Former US ambassador to
Russia Michael McFaul also put in an appearance. 'He's obsessed with the East, like a certain
world leader in the 1940s was obsessed with the East. Why is this guy obsessed with meeting
with Russians all over the place', the host asked McFaul. The latter let pass the gratuitous
Hitler comparison, and gave his learned response: 'It's truly bizarre. I confess I do not have
a rational explanation for it,'
said McFaul .
Just in case you think it was only the media, FBI, and the State Department, others were on
the ball too. The Trump-Lavrov meeting had Twitter abuzz. Anne Applebaum, for instance, had the
following to say.
It's all simply nuts. Trump is Hitler. A former ambassador can't think of any reason why
representatives of two major powers might wish to meet. A former deputy head of the US foreign
service thinks that heads of state never meet foreign ministers. And all of them believe that a
photograph of the US President and the Russian foreign minister is totally unprecedented and
suggestive of something deeply suspicious, though exactly what they can't quite tell us. Which
makes you wonder what they'd all make of this picture.
I don't know about you, but that looks a lot like Sergei Lavrov and President Obama to me.
So, was Obama a Russian agent? Was he secretly selling out US interests to a foreign power?
Should we be investigating him as well? It's all rather suspicious, don't you think?
I'll leave the last word to the excellent Fred Weir of the Christian Science Monitor:
It's pretty clear by now that no normal dialog is going to be possible between Russia and
the US. Perhaps ever again. It's not my job to advise the Russians what to do, but if it were
I would suggest they just give it up. Spend your time going to Beijing, Delhi, Ankara, even
Berlin and Paris, but give Washington a miss.
It's the most peculiar damned thing I have ever seen. Even at the lowest depths of the Cold
War, the Washington Post would never have run a headline that described a US president
meeting a Soviet leader in the Oval Office as "one of his most brazen moves yet."
Analyzing the official photo of Trump and Lavrov in the Oval Office, the main -- disapproving
-- takeaway the WaPo has to offer here is: "Judging by the expressions on their faces, the
conversation does not seem to have been particularly acrimonious." Geez.
Russian FM Sergey Lavrov and US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo have briefed the media after
talks in Washington, DC, the first such meeting since 2017. Speaking at the press conference on
Tuesday, Pompeo said the US was seeking a "better relationship" with Russia and that the
two countries have been working on improving relations since his visit to Sochi in May. He said
lines of communication between Moscow and Washington were open and relations were candid.
Lavrov echoed that, saying the two met regularly and also spoke frequently by phone. "It
is useful to talk to each other," he said. "Always better than not talking to each
other."
In a nod to the ongoing anti-Russia hysteria in the US, Lavrov said their joint work was,
however, " hindered by the wave of suspicions that have overcome Washington." Calling
allegations of Russian interference in US internal affairs "baseless," Lavrov said
Moscow had "many times" asked the Trump administration to publish all correspondence
between Trump and Putin from October 2016 and 2017, but that it had received "no
response."
Allegations of Russian interference in US internal affairs are 'baseless': 'We have not
seen any evidence, because it does not exist' – Lavrov pic.twitter.com/M1Ezgs22kd
The tread is reproduced as is. And out 100 posts available in NYT "all view mode 90% can be classified as plain vanilla Neo-McCarthyism
If they are representative sample of the country, the country is crazy.
This editorial can also be classified as lunatic. But in reality it is much worse: the paper became completely subservant
to intelligence agencies. Should probably be renamed the Voice of the CIA. .
Monday's congressional hearing and the inspector general's report tell a similar story.
By Jesse Wegman Mr. Wegman is a member of the editorial board.
When it comes to Donald Trump and Russia, everything is connected.
That's the most important lesson from the two big events that played out Monday on Capitol Hill -- the House Judiciary Committee's
hearings on President Trump's impeachment and the
release of the report on the origins of the F.B.I.'s investigation into ties between the Trump campaign and the Russian government.
One of these involved the 2016 election. The other involves the 2020 election. Both tell versions of the same story: Mr. Trump
depends on, and welcomes, Russian interference to help him win the presidency. That was bad enough when he did it in 2016, openly
calling for Russia to hack into his opponent's emails -- which
Russians tried to do that
same day . But he was only a candidate then. Now that Mr. Trump is president, he is wielding the immense powers of his office
to achieve the same end.
That is precisely the type of abuse of power that the founders
were most concerned about when they
created the impeachment power, and it's why Democratic leaders in the House are pressing ahead with such urgency on their inquiry.
They are trying to ensure that the 2020 election, now less than a year away, is not corrupted by the president of the United States,
acting in league with a foreign power. "The integrity of our next election is at stake," said Representative Jerry Nadler, the chairman
of the Judiciary Committee. "Nothing could be more urgent."
On Monday morning, lawyers for the Democrats on the House Judiciary and Intelligence committees presented
the clearest and most comprehensive narrative yet of President Trump's monthslong shakedown of the new Ukrainian president, Volodymyr
Zelensky, for Mr. Trump's personal political benefit. They explained in methodical detail how the president withheld a White House
meeting and hundreds of millions of dollars in crucial, congressionally authorized military aid to Ukraine, all in an effort to get
Mr. Zelensky to announce two investigations -- one into Mr. Trump's political rival, Joe Biden, and his son, Hunter, and another
into Ukraine's supposed interference in the 2016 election.
David Leonhardt helps you make sense of the news -- and offers reading suggestions from around the web -- with commentary every
weekday morning.
Who would benefit from these announcements? Mr. Trump, who believes his re-election prospects are threatened most by Mr. Biden,
and Vladimir Putin, the president of Russia, who has been working for years to make Ukraine the fall guy for his own interference
in the 2016 election. Mr. Putin has not fooled serious people, like those in the American intelligence community who determined that
his government alone was responsible
for meddling on Mr. Trump's behalf . But he has fooled Republicans in Congress, who have degraded themselves and their offices
by faithfully parroting Mr. Putin's propaganda in the mainstream press.
Republicans are in lawyer mode, advocating for Trump as if he were their client. Lawyers make the best case they can for their
clients. It helps if they believe in the case, but it also helps to know the case's weaknesses so they can avoid them. The best
lawyers can do both at the same time. Republicans are called on by the Constitution to exit lawyer mode and enter juror mode (which
is, or should be, similar to why-did-this-aircraft-crash mode). So far, they are not heeding this call. From all appearances,
they are mouthing the words of the Constitution while avoiding or refusing to hear or understand them. They took an oath to support
the Constitution, but they are deaf to its call, or have moved to a place beyond understanding it.
The issue of whether to impeach was made by the President when he engaged in an abuse of his office for personal gain and then
obstructed Congress' oversight function. We all understand the political downside arising from an acquittal in the Senate but
that interest needs to be secondary to doing the right thing. On these facts, the decision representatives must make of whether
to impeach really is no decision at all. Just do the right thing.
When Senator John McCain died, he scripted his own funeral as a full bore defense against Trumpian Nationalism, and as an admonishment
against a GOP too willing to sell the soul of our nation out to a cultist repudiation of objective fact, truth, and Constitutional
order. McCain was a controversial maverick –a person I both admired and disliked in equal proportion. But there is one thing I
will always admire him for: his final letter to the nation. It was a warning! He blew a golden bugle to sound the alarm against
those entities both within and without our nation who wish to do our democratic republic harm. McCain, whether you agreed with
the premise of the Vietnam war or not, was an American hero who served his country and his fellow soldiers with incontrovertible
valor and love. President Donald Trump has no concept of what that dedication and sacrifice entails – and sadly, neither do many
of the GOP members who continue to lie and make excuses for a president who is clearly abusing his office for personal gain. McCain
characterized Trump's actions in Helsinki as an unfathomable 'abasement of the U.S. presidency.' All I can say is the GOP sure
ain't the party of my father who fought in WWII against fascism and autocracy. It aggrieves me to no end to witness what too many
members of Congress have become: tyrants toward the very meaning of American democracy. God save us from our own duplicity.
@Twg Well said, and though I sometimes did not agree with McCain on matters of policy, I wish he were still with us, hopefully
to show his fellow republicans what integrity looks like, and what America is supposed to be about. The Republican party I have
known and respected is alas, like Senator McCain, no longer with us.
Americans have to realize that the whole world is mocking us, and that doesn't necesarily inspire respect. That cold be dangerous.
Many medical professionals have noticed a decay in the mental abilities of the president, and certain abnormalities. It would
be wise to suggest to the family that maybe the best way forward, with minimal losses would be to motivate a retirement. That
would be face saving for them, and save the country from a bitter impeachment spectacle that would not be positive for the USA.
I'm waiting for Trump's financial info to be released. There's something in there he doesn't even want his base to know . I think
the logical conclusion is that whatever financials DJT has hidden do indeed lead to Moscow. Actually, all of this is very, very
alarming. Does Putin have a political asset planted here? Y or N I wish the answer was no and that we had a different President.
Can we as a nation hold things together when our leader wants to tear us apart?
All roads lead to the highest bidder(s). 21st century America in the era of Citizens United. Market pricing and the government
is open for transactional business domestic and international. Alternate realities per GRU/FOX/GOP misinformation. Combine foreign
money carefully grooming an in-need Trump, and a party worshipping money and you have a perfect storm removing any sense of civic
duty. Hundreds of years to build and unwound in a few decades, the breathtaking and tragic fall of greatness and hope in our lifetime.
It's not fiction, and every day I have to check if it's really happening, and shockingly it is.
There was no Russian meddling, only Ukraine who meddled in 2016 and they are still at it. Listening to the Judiciary Committee
hearings, it seems that the Russians have hacked into the Republican Party servers and are sending talking points to Republicans
who are defending the indefensible president.
At some point, Republicans have to ask themselves which is better for their party and the country. Slavish devotion to Trump,
or losing an election and leaving Democrats a mess to clean up, as in 1932 and 2008?
Block witnesses from testifying, then say that the hearing is incomplete. Romney told America at the Republican Convention in
2012 that Russia was our biggest enemy, DJT wanted them to help Republicans win in 2016, said he believed Putin in 2018, and wants
to convince us that it was really the Ukraine in 2019. The House has to impeach, even if politically it may be a bad move, because
it is the right thing to do; indeed, the very actions I've seen in the past several weeks has given me glimmers of hope for the
country.
Trump will be reelected for the reason that the Russian intelligence agencies are still able to hack our election results, because
Trump has blocked fixing the weaknesses. That is what happens when a Manchurian candidate is elected and then allowed to obstruct
justice. It is not clear the US will survive Trump. One key thing he did was arrange to have the teams at DHS that watch for smuggled
nuclear bombs were stood down and disbanded. See the report in the LA Times last July "Trump administration has gutted programs
aimed at detecting weapons of mass destruction".
I don't suppose a constructed transcript of Trump's meeting with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov tomorrow will be offered up as
a token of our leader's transparency.
It's clear now that AG William Barr isn't interested in enforcing the rule of law with fellow republicans, and especially the
president. How can there be no recourse when an attorney general completely sells out to a criminal president? Can the employees
of the Justice Dept hold a vote of no confidence in the AG? Can 10,000 attorneys nationwide express the same? The prospect of
Trump and Barr running roughshod over the rule of law for another year is truly frightening.
65,845,063 voters knew clearly who this man was from the beginning and voted for what would have been a better now and future.
It was never any secret. 62,980,160 voters also knew clearly who this man was and voted for him anyway. If the Democrats can ensure
that we have a fair election in 2020. I'm confident they will win the majority in the house and senate and retake the White House
and the end game for Trump will be jail. The problem is, he might not be the only one who's crimes come to light and I suspect
a good lot of the GOP are threatening and blackmailing each other to hold the line. If there's any good men or women left in the
GOP, your country and history are calling you.
It has easy to predict Trump's next move for the last 3 years. Just ask, "What would both benefit Trump, and benefit Putin?" Trump
supporters = Putin supporters.
Do you know the American people are fed up with the discourse of all politicians. The republicans are fed up with any decency
for the republic. The democrats are fed up with the republicans not facing the common sense of a exec not capable of being the
President of the United states. I as a person am fed up with a political system that is not working for all people, just a select
few. It's time too have term limits for all positions in gov't. That means all people that serve the people whether it be judges,
senators or congressmen/women. It's time to find common sense again in our society as a whole society. We on this earth are all
HUMAN.
Unfortunately their are serious problems with term limits. Just consider yourself in the role of a Congressional Representative
limited to 4 terms. You know that in 8 years, you'll be be back on the job market. You can selflessly work for the public and
damage your ability to get a job or tend to people who can hire you after you leave office. You're rational. Which future would
you pick?
Trump needs to keep Putin happy lest he unleash with all the damaging info he has collected on Trump and his financial crooked
deals with Russians over decades. THe Russian mob reports to Putin as a former KGB agent he knows how to collect compromat on
a politician and how to use it to get Trump to break into a giddy smile when he sees Putin his master it's obvious to most keen
observers.
Folks it is simple. Can we hear what Trump and Putin said to each other a few months ago. It is recored and on a server it should
not be on. I am not sure why nobody is talking about these transcripts.
Finally! We get someone stating the obvious fact of Trump/Putin. Why are the Dems not talking about this all the time? Why are
Congressmen and women not asking the witnesses about this? This is the ONE thing the Republicans are afraid of, so it is the one
thing Democrats should do. I have been disappointed that the Russian asset thing hasn't been brought up....It's as if it is purposely
bold. Trump is a Russian asset, either witting or unwitting. I doubt if there is one upper Intelligence Official that wouldn't
say this. So find the right one and have them sit as a witness for this inquiry. And now the Russian big wig Diplomat and KGb
spy, Lavarov, is visiting tomorrow. Good grief! Everyone is thinking this, so get out and say it Dems! Dr. Fiona Hill tried to
lead into this direction but still the Dem Committee would take it up and aske her what she thought. Say it: All of Trump's Roads
Lead to Russia.
Any American adult who has made an effort to educate himself or herself about Mr. Mueller's investigation or these impeachment
proceedings understands that yes, with Trump all roads lead to Russia. Now if the poll numbers mean anything, Trump's crimes and
Russia's involvement only matter to about 60% of us. As Trump's poll numbers remain steady, some 40% of Americans don't care what
lawbreaking he is involved with or whether other nations now control our elections. Stop and think about this for a minute. Trump
supporters know but literally do not care that Russia is tampering with our elections (2016 and 2020). Their cult-like support
for Trump is why the Republican Senate will not remove him. There is no other reason Trump will remain in office. Trump has mesmerized
his supporters like a modern day Rasputin. They will do literally anything for him, and Senate Republicans know this. Trump voters
do not mind that Putin controls our nation at the highest levels of decision making. Again - think about this - they know he does,
and they do not care. So I ask the rest of us. Is this the America we want to live in? To raise our families in? Where a large,
rabid minority is in thrall to a lunatic puppet whose strings are firmly in Putin's hands? Because this is very much the America
we live in now. The time will come, though, when we, the majority, will no longer tolerate the Trump/Putin regime. But the longer
we wait, the harder it will be oust these tyrants.
In 2008, Donald Trump Jr. said Russia was an important source of funding for the Trump businesses. American banks wouldn't lend
him money. Saudi Arabia likely bailed out Jared's disastrous real estate investment in NYC. Follow. The. Money.
You say that Mr. Putin "has fooled Republicans in Congress, who have degraded themselves and their offices by faithfully parroting
Mr. Putin's propaganda in the mainstream press." You are correct on all counts, except that the Republicans have not been fooled
by Putin. They have gone along, headlong and absolutely willingly, in a complete sellout of personal and national principle and
integrity. They should not be forgiven for this conduct, any more than Mr. Trump should be forgiven for his sellout of America.
For Republicans who believe so fervently in their counterfactual narrative, there is an immediate remedy. Bring facts and evidence
to the Committees and testify under oath. Without witnesses and evidence presented under oath, all of the GOP antics simply look
foolish and very much like they are defending the guilty. It is unfortunate that there is no penalty for elected officials who
share unfounded conspiracy theories, engage in innuendo and obstruct process in official Committee hearings. It is also regretable
that this President is not held accountable for trying to intimidate witnesses in real time during testimony. And it is a sad
reality that one of the most corrupt rulers in the world, who rules a hostile power, has managed to entirely win over one of our
major parties.
The strangest defense advanced today was the idea that the alleged state of the economy was reason not to impeach the President:
the Republicans assert that America, the Constitution, the principle of our government are for sale to be bought by the rising
stock market and a plethora of low-wage jobs. We are Faust, and the smell of sulphur is nauseating.
If the IG's report on the 2016 Russia investigation had found the only problem was that two of the agents involved had horrible
hangnails, Barr and Trump would have condemned it.
Whatever Trump is doing, he always care about his main benefactors, Putin and MBS. This is the first time I have witnessed in
history that an American president became a Russian puppet with all his Republican followers at the Congress and Senate. American
constitutional crisis happening right in front of the world. I heard the cries of James Madison, John Adams and Benjamin Franklin
from their graves.
Sir, do you honestly think that House Republicans have been "fooled" by Mr. Putin? On the contrary, it's pretty obvious they understand
and believe the conclusions from our Intel community. These are instead willful lies for political gain. And while some Americans
may actually be misled by the theater presented as rebuttal to the impeachment, it's hard to imagine for most it's once again,
not conviction but convenience that places such "patriots" solidly in Russia's back pocket.
The pattern of behavior is clear and compelling: Trump is selling out this country, its national security, its integrity and sovereignty,
in order to keep power and avoid his own prosecution, and protect his financial interests. We must get the truth about his relationships
and indebtedness to Putin, the Saudis, and Erdogan. Our country has been hijacked and Trump will continue to corrupt the US and
turn it into an autocracy if he is not stopped and held accountable under the law.
The country voted for this President knowing he is a flawed man in many ways. I don't think anything changes here - the Senate
will speedily acquit him and the voters in the swing states will have to decide if they want to give Mr. Trump a second chance
while the rest of the country impotently watches.
If one looks at all of his actions as "How could this benefit Russia?" most of it makes sense. Why start a trade war with China
and Western allies? Why withdraw from Syria? Why try to polarize the American public? Effectively showing this to the public is
critical.
Excellent piece. We all know Trump, Inc. turned to Russian oligarchs after '08 for condo sales. It just so happened that those
same oligarchs (read as kleptocrats) were laundering money through Deutsche Bank, who was the only bank willing to lend to Trump.
Trump's loan officer amazingly was SC Justice Anthony Kennedy's son. Trump was and is a desperate man in need of cash/ Putin is
a desperate man who knows that the geyser of oil money that funds his national budget, and has done so since the 1920's, is coming
to an end. Russia has no large material economic exports other than oil and gas, but it does still have a large military, hence
the military incursions into Moldova, Ossetia, Georgia, Ukraine and Syria. Desperate men do desperate things, and desperately
try to project power with weak hands.
The Republicans in Congress were not fooled by the Russians. They believe in Trump no matter what the Russians do. The bottom
line is - What does Putin have on Trump
I don't understand why there hasn't been more of a pushback by the military. They went heavily for Trump in 20116, with many bases
in the South and many recruits from economically devastated areas, but in the interim, they have seen his reckless, lurching foreign
policy, worship of Putin, and clear evidence that somehow everything he does benefits Russia. A commander's first obligation is
to their troops, so knowing the man in charge considers their lives subject to both Trump's whims, and Putin's whispers should
provoke some reaction. No?
Unfortunately - to put it mildly - impeachment will have no effect on the conduct of the 2020 election. The wheels are already
turning, everyone knows their part, and only a massive commitment by an honest intelligence apparatus (if there is one) can stop
it. One can only hope that, in 2020, the American people make a statement so overwhelming that there can be no doubt as to their
intent, despite whatever meddling there may have been. It is entirely possible that there will never be a truly credible election
again as long as there are bad actors who are power hungry or bent on destabilizing democratic governments. And make no mistake,
these threats are coming from right wing autocracies, and they are in the ascendancy all over the world. American centrists and
liberals are the only force that can change that. Are those stakes big enough for you?
We may finally have the answer as to why Trump is so accommodating to Putin. Trump has so many investments in Russia dependent
on Putin's support. Trump financial reports will reveal this collusion between Trump and Putin. This should not come as a surprise
to attentive Americans. Think of the worst an American president can do and that will bring you close to understanding Trump.
Nobody's saying how Trump withholding military aid to Ukraine would benefit Putin and Russia in their WAR against Ukraine. It
was, indeed, MILITARY aid he was withholding, was it not? I understand that this is not the impeachable offense of attempting
to enlist a foreign government to win an election, but I believe this aspect of the situation should be brought out.
The Republican Party has been officially reduced to a giant miasma of fraud, fiction, fantasy, conspiracy theory, deflection,
misdirection and prevarication. After tax cuts for rich people and rich corporations...the GOP has no other public policy ideas
(except for bankrupting the government). A civilized country needs little things like infrastructure, education, technology, voting
rights, law and order, regulations, fair taxation and facts to move forward. But none of those things are ever mentioned by the
Republican Party; conspiracy-mongering and tax cuts are now the official governing planks of the Grand Old Propaganda/Grand One
Percent party. This is no way to manage a nation anywhere except into the ground. Americans need to hit the Trump-GOP eject button
before these Lord of the Fly Republicans take us over a very steep right-wing cliff of insanity.
The Republican Party is now Trump's party and the Republicans know it and are acting accordingly. You could call them opportunists
following the way the political winds are blowing. The Constitution is based on members of Congress caring about the Constitution
and searching for the truth. Since this is now not the case when if comes to the Republicans the Constitution has no remedy for
this situation. The only remedy is an election and if Trump can manipulate elections to his advantage using foreign powers then
there is no remedy and the system of government set up by the founders will be no more. The new system replacing it will be controlled
by Trump. Putin figured out how to control Russian elections so he always wins and it is likely that Trump has a goal of imitating
Putin. Ultimately this would mean taking over the press as Putin did. Trump cannot declare total victory as long as the there
is a free press which he has labeled the enemy of the people.
From an acute perspective ..indeed shocking to say the least of the nature of this peculiar relationship. But looking at the big
picture as evidence by all that has occurred in his or during this eye opening period for all the world to see....not so much
so...For me, this dynamic is much expected.
"The witness has used language which impugns the motives of the president and suggests he's disloyal to his country, and those
words should be stricken from the record and taken down," Mr. Johnson said. The Johnson rule effectively reads the impeachment
power out of the constitution. How can you impeach a president if no one can say anything bad about him/her?
We have yet to plow the most fertile road yet. What does Trump care about over all else? Trump. How does Trump gauge his progress?
His money. Where does his money come from? Good question. We all know he has filed for bankruptcy 6 times. We all know that because
of those bankruptcies, American banks will not loan him any money. We all know he has significant financial dealings with Deutsche
Bank. Now, who put the money in Deutsche Bank that ended up financing Trump's business.? That is the two billion dollar question.
We also know that Russian oligarchs deal in billions of dollars. We also know that Trump has close relations with Russian business
interests. We also know that Trump kowtows to Putin like Pence kowtows to him. We also know that Trump is doing everything possible
to conceal his financial dealings from everyone and everything. So, we know that one billion plus one billion equals two billion.
But does it also equal Trump? This money road is one we should take a ride on. Will it also take us to Putin?
The first Democratic candidate who labels Trump a "Russian agent" will own the simplest and most effective tag line going into
the general election, provided of course that that candidate does his best to channel his inner Trump by never backing down but
instead doubling down every chance he or she gets. Is Trump a Russian agent, paid for and accounted for? Not easy to say without
some doubt, but that doesn't really matter because he sure as shoottin' acts like one. And when have the facts ever stopped Trump
from going on the attack? The more Trump denies the label, the more he'll be digging his own grave. The real crime here is not
so much the strong arming of Zelenskyy for a Biden investigation. That's small potatoes compared to Trump's withholding congressionally
designated US military aid from a country engaged in a hot war with Russia, the same cast of characters who starved anywhere from
one to eleven million Ukrainians during the 1930's. The Russian agent must go.
I would not say Trump's lying "is effective", I would say it "has been effective". At some point, the public and his party may
have had it with the thuggery and we do not know when that breaking point is.
For the sake of protecting our 2020 elections from Russian hackers and disinformation, the House is justified in moving forward
fast, over the process howls of Republicans, with the compelling evidence they have surrounding Ukraine. But they need to continue
investigating his business and financial ties to Russia and any other autocratic governments and their oligarchs, e.g. Turkey
and Saudi Arabia. Especially if he is not convicted and removed by the Senate and stands for re-election, Americans need to know
what conflicts of interest he has in making foreign policy and military decisions because American soldiers' lives are at stake.
The Mueller investigation did not go down that road. Any businessman with global interests is automatically compromised, even
more than a vice president whose son sits on a foreign corporation's board of director. Trump's own children continue to do business
in foreign countries and we have no idea what Ivanka and Jared, sitting in the White House with top security clearances, are doing.
In short, Ukraine should not be the only concern of congressional oversight committees. There's a lot more.
Trump must believe that Russian help in 2016 did help him to win. He must feel that fake evidence presented by an "independent"
investigator such as a foreign government appears to carry more weight that the same fake evidence from a partisan investigator.
Otherwise why would he be taking such chances to duplicate via Ukraine what he got from the Russians in 2016. But now that the
Russian connection is outed, he can't go back to that well.
I worry it's all for naught. Dems in the House vote to impeach, GOP in the Senate vote to acquit. Trump remains highly competitive
in 2020 election, Russia and other adversaries interfere, Trump stays put. Then what?
@NA Wilson Think of this situation differently. To have all possible scope to defeat him, we must support everything we can to
undermine him. Lack of impeachment would have been business as usual. At some point his finances will get out and then all bets
are off.
@NA Wilson: It's all Hands on deck to save the country. Don't just vote, donate what money you can, work for candidates, knock
doors, make calls. It's the only way out of this nightmare.
The Impeachment hearings weren't really necessary to prove what most everyone who's been paying attention knows. With Trump, all
roads lead to Moscow. In fact, he's already acting very Putin-esque in his own way by forbidding anyone in the White House to
respond to subpoena, by installing the fear of God in those who do, by punishing anyone who dares to think or act on their own,
and then there's the act of holding a foreign country ransom until they agree to do his bidding -- not to mention inviting outside
interference in our presidential elections. All the signs are not only there but they are ominous. By holding himself above the
U.S. Constitution, Trump has declared war on this country and all the laws that govern it. And while entertainment-starved Americans
laugh and cheer at his rallies, he and the Republicans drain our right to vote, and with it our Democracy. Today wasn't an epiphany.
It was a warning.
There seems to be no discussion of the financial backing trump received after '08-09 from sources inside Russia and how these
actors would have expressed their support (or conditions for their silence) to the trump campaign during '15-16. Did the FBI not
identify and investigate the funders behind trump and their interactions with the campaign during 2016? Would this not have been
reasonable for an investigation to look into when its entire raison d'etre was to detect sources of Russian influence?
I wonder if Mr. Wegman believes that this editorial will change anyone's mind or influence how anyone votes in the upcoming presidential
election. Basically, this is classic preaching to the choir and sadly mostly a wasted effort. I would like to read articles with
proven ideas that worked to change the minds of Republicans and other like them. Such articles might give me some better ideas
to convince my pro-Trump friends and neighbors to Vote for America next November.
"When it comes to Donald Trump and Russia, everything is connected." This! This is the central fact of all the things Trump has
done (so far), and yet, the Democrats have failed to make this the central focus of the case against him. Instead, they've focused
on one incident, and not even the most egregious one, to justify impeachment and removal from office. This was a terrible miscalculation.
No, there is no doubt that Trump attempted to coerce Ukraine into helping with his re-election by announcing a bogus investigation
of the Bidens. Nor any doubt that this constituted "high crimes and misdemeanors". But this was not the highest of crimes he's
committed, nor have the Dems been able to convince any Republicans, or many independents, that this deserves Trump's removal.
Moreover, they failed to produce the "smoking gun" of one witness or document in Trump's own words directing the quid pro quo.
They gave plenty of room for the Republican attack machine to cast enough doubt and confusion that all but ensures Trump's acquittal
in the Senate. Instead of focusing only on this one incident, the Democrats should have built their case around the theme that
"with Trump, all roads lead to Russia". That is a crime that even the most skeptical doubter can grasp, and when linked together,
all of his crimes can be shown to be of a pattern of serving Putin, and not the people of the United States. All roads lead to
Putin, but the Democrats chose to follow a dead end.
@Kingfish52 I completely agree with you and truly don't understand why the Democrats have not been shouting this from the rooftops.
For mercy's sake! The problem is not just that the president solicited help from a foreign power for his own personal gain! That's
bad enough, but isn't the point that he did this because he is beholden to Russia? Russia. is. not. our. friend. Why aren't the
Democrats explaining this clearly to the American people? Trump is Putin's puppet and it could not be more obvious! Don't people
understand that it doesn't just happen to be Ukraine that Trump took a notion to squeeze for his "personal gain"? He doesn't just
want to win because it is so nice to win elections. He has to do what Putin tells him. Obviously, every last Republican in Congress
understands this clearly. Why can't the Democrats explain it to the American people clearly?
Obama did not provide lethal aid to Ukraine, after the Russians invaded Crimea. Obama did not Russia prevent the Iranian nuclear
deal. Trump cancelled the Iranian nuclear deal, then provided lethal aid to Ukraine. Now I get it. Trump is working for Putin.
By March 2015, the US had committed more than $120 million in security assistance for Ukraine and had pledged an additional $75
million worth of equipment including UAVs, counter-mortar radars, night vision devices and medical supplies, according to the
Pentagon's Defense Security Cooperation Agency. That assistance also included some 230 armored Humvee vehicles. Trump appears
to be echoing a critique leveled at the Obama administration by the late Republican Sen. John McCain. "The Ukrainians are being
slaughtered and we're sending blankets and meals," McCain said in 2015. "Blankets don't do well against Russian tanks." While
it never provided lethal aid, many of the items that the Obama administration did provide were seen as critical to Ukraine's military.
Part of the $250 million assistance package that the Trump administration announced (then froze and later unfroze) included many
of the same items that were provided under Obama, including medical equipment, night vision gear and counter-artillery radar.
The Trump administration did approve the provision of arms to Ukraine, including sniper rifles, rocket launchers and Javelin anti-tank
missiles, something long sought by Kiev.
@Mike Trump was not the one providing lethal aid to Ukraine. It was the house and senate that proposed and forced this aid into
an appropriation bill - against the wishes of the Trump administration. After Trump realized he could not block this funding he
did the second best thing - he used it to blackmail the Ukraine government to provide him with dirt on Biden and support for Putin's
favorite narrative (that it was Ukraine not Russia that interfered in the 2016 election).
@Mike It also took two acts of Congress to get the aid to Ukraine. Trump had nothing to do with it. Only the Impound Inclusion
Act for foreign aid allows the President to time the release of the funds, which Trump did not follow. The Act was created because
Nixon, like Trump, was playing fast and loose with our tax dollars. Who was the last President who asked for help from a foreign
intelligence agency? Which President favored foregn intelligence agencies over his own? Answer no one other than Trump. If that
doesn't show he's in someone's pocket, nothing does.
Anti-Semitism in UK serves the same role as Neo-McCartyism in the USA as demonstrated by
RussiaGate.
There is a deep analogy between neo-McCarthyism complain in the USA nad anti-Semitism campaign in the US Parliament.
Notable quotes:
"... Luciana Berger (image on the right), a Jewish MP who has highlighted what she sees as an anti-Semitism problem under Corbyn, led the charge, stating at the Independent Group's launch that she had reached "the sickening conclusion " that Labour was "institutionally racist". ..."
"... She and her allies claim she has been hounded out of the party by "anti-semitic bullying". Berger has suffered online abuse and death threats from a young neo-Nazi who was jailed for two years in 2016. There have been other incidences of abuse and other sentences, including a 27-month jail term for John Nimmo , a right-wing extremist who referred to Berger as "Jewish scum" and signed his messages, "your friend, the Nazi". ..."
"... That is one reason why anti-semitism smears have been so maliciously effective against anti-Zionist Jews in the party and used with barely a murmur of protest – or in most cases, even recognition that Jews are being suspended and expelled for opposing Israel's racist policies towards Palestinians. ..."
"... The Blairites in Labour, joined by the ruling Conservative Party, the mainstream media and pro-Israel lobby groups, have selected anti-semitism as the terrain on which to try to destroy a Corbyn-led Labour Party, because it is a battlefield in which the left stands no hope of getting a fair hearing – or any hearing at all. ..."
Breakaway MPs hope that smearing Corbyn will obscure the fact that they are remnants
of an old political order bankrupt of ideas
The announcement by seven MPs from
the UK Labour Party on Monday that they were breaking away and creating a new parliamentary
faction marked the biggest internal upheaval in a British political party in nearly 40 years,
when the SDP split from Labour.
On Wednesday, they were joined by an eighth Labour MP, Joan Ryan , and three Conservative
MPs. There are predictions more will follow.
With the UK teetering on the brink of crashing out of the European Union with no deal on
Brexit, the founders of the so-called Independent Group made reference to their opposition to
Brexit.
The chief concern cited for the split by the eight Labour MPs, though, was a supposed
"anti-semitism crisis" in the party.
The breakaway faction seemingly agrees that anti-Semitism has become so endemic in the
party since Jeremy Corbyn became leader more than three years ago that they were left with no
choice but to quit.
Corbyn, it should be noted, is the first leader of a major British party to explicitly
prioritize the rights of Palestinians over Israel's continuing belligerent occupation of the
Palestinian territories.
'Sickeningly racist'?
Luciana Berger (image on the right), a Jewish MP who has highlighted what she sees as an
anti-Semitism problem under Corbyn, led the charge, stating at the Independent Group's launch
that she had reached "the sickening
conclusion " that Labour was "institutionally racist".
She and her allies claim she has been hounded out of the party by "anti-semitic bullying".
Berger has suffered online abuse and death threats from a young neo-Nazi who was
jailed for two years in 2016. There have been other incidences of abuse and other
sentences, including a 27-month jail term for
John Nimmo , a right-wing extremist who referred to Berger as "Jewish scum" and signed his
messages, "your friend, the Nazi".
In an interview with the Jewish Chronicle, the former Labour MP said the Independent Group
would provide the Jewish community with a " political home that they,
like much of the rest of the country, are now looking for".
In a plea to keep the party together, deputy leader Tom Watson issued a video in which he
criticised his own party for being too slow to tackle anti-Semitism. The situation "poses a
test" for Labour, he said, adding: "Do we respond with simple condemnation, or do we try and
reach out beyond our comfort zone and prevent others from following?"
Ruth Smeeth , another Jewish Labour MP who may yet join a later wave of departures, was
reported to have broken down
in tears at a parliamentary party meeting following the split, as she called for tougher
action on anti-semitism.
Two days later, as she split from Labour, Ryan accused the party of being "infected with the
scourge of anti-Jewish racism".
Hatred claims undercut
The timing of the defections was strange, occurring shortly after the Labour leadership
revealed the findings
of an investigation into complaints of anti-semitism in the party. These were the very
complaints that MPs such as Berger have been citing as proof of the party's "institutional
racism".
And yet, the report decisively undercut their claims – not only of endemic
anti-semitism in Labour, but of any significant problem at all.
That echoed an earlier report by the Commons home affairs committee, which found there was
"no reliable, empirical
evidence " that Labour had more of an anti-semitism problem than any other British
political party.
Nonetheless, the facts seem to be playing little or no part in influencing the anti-semitism
narrative. This latest report was thus almost entirely ignored by Corbyn's opponents and by the
mainstream media.
It is, therefore, worth briefly examining what the Labour Party's investigation
discovered.
Over the previous 10 months, 673 complaints had been filed against Labour members over
alleged anti-semitic behaviour, many based on online comments. In a third of those cases,
insufficient evidence had been produced.
The 453 other allegations represented 0.08 percent of the 540,000-strong Labour membership.
Hardly "endemic" or "institutional", it seems.
Intemperate language
There is the possibility past outbursts have been part of this investigation. Intemperate
language flared especially in 2014 – before Corbyn became leader – when Israel
launched a military operation on Gaza that killed large numbers of Palestinian civilians,
including many hundreds of children.
Certainly, it is unclear how many of those reportedly anti-semitic comments concern not
prejudice towards Jews, but rather outspoken criticism of the state of Israel, which was
redefined as anti-semitic last year by Labour, under severe pressure from MPs such as Berger
and Ryan and Jewish lobby groups, such as the Board of Deputies and the Jewish Labour
Movement.
Seven of the 11 examples of
anti-semitism associated with the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance's definition
adopted by Labour concern Israel. That includes describing Israel as a "racist endeavour", even
though Israel passed a basic law last year stripping the fifth of its population who are not
Jewish of any right to self-determination, formally creating two
classes of citizen.
Illustrating the problem Labour has created for itself as a result, some of the most
high-profile suspensions and expulsions have actually targeted Jewish members of the party who
identify as anti-Zionist – that is, they consider Israel a racist state. They include T ony
Greenstein, Jackie Walker, Martin Odoni, Glyn Secker and Cyril Chilson .
Another Jewish member,
Moshe Machover , a professor emeritus at the University of London, had to be reinstated
after a huge outcry among members at his treatment by the party.
Unthinking prejudice
Alan Maddison , who has been conducting statistical research on anti-semitism for a
pro-Corbyn Jewish group, Jewish Voice for Labour, put the 0.08 percent figure into its wider
social and political
context this week.
He quoted the findings of a large survey of anti-semitic attitudes
published by the Institute for Jewish Policy Research in 2017. It found that 30 percent of
respondents from various walks of society agreed with one or more of eight anti-semitic views,
ranging from stereotypes such as "Jews think they are better than other people" to Holocaust
denial.
However, lead researcher Daniel Staetsky concluded that in most cases, this was evidence of
unthinking prejudice rather than conscious bigotry. Four-fifths of those who exhibited a degree
of anti-semitism also agreed with at least one positive statement about Jewish people.
This appears to be the main problem among the tiny number of Labour Party members identified
in complaints, and is reflected in the predominance of warnings about conduct rather than
expulsions and suspensions.
Far-right bigotry
Another of the institute's findings poses a particular problem for Corbyn's opponents, who
argue that the Labour leader has imported anti-semitism into the party by attracting the "hard
left". Since he was elected, Labour membership has rocketed.
Even if it were true that Corbyn and his supporters are on the far-left – a highly
questionable assumption, made superficially plausible only because Labour moved to the
centre-right under Tony Blair in the late 1990s – the institute's research pulls the rug
out from under Corbyn's critics.
It discovered that across the political spectrum, conscious hatred of Jews was very low, and
that it was exhibited in equal measure from the "very left-wing" to the "fairly right-wing".
The only exception, as one might expect, was on the "very right-wing", where virulent
anti-semitism was much more prevalent.
That finding was confirmed last week by surveys that showed a significant rise in violent,
anti-semitic attacks across Europe as far-right parties make inroads in many member states. A
Guardian report noted that the "figures show an overwhelming majority of
violence against Jews is perpetrated by far-right supporters".
Supporters of overseas war
So what is the basis for concerns about the Labour Party being mired in supposed
"institutional anti-semitism" since it moved from the centre to the left under Corbyn, when the
figures and political trends demonstrate nothing of the sort?
A clue may be found in the wider political worldview of the eight MPs who have broken from
Labour.
All but two are listed as supporters of the parliamentary "Labour Friends of
Israel" (LFI) faction. Further, Berger is a former director of that staunchly pro-Israel lobby
group, and Ryan is its current chair, a position the group says she will hold onto, despite no
longer being a Labour MP.
So extreme are the LFI's views on Israel that it sought to exonerate Israel of a massacre
last year, in which its snipers shot dead many dozens of unarmed Palestinian demonstrators in
Gaza in a single day. Faced with a social media backlash, it quietly took down the posts
.
The eight MPs' voting records – except for Gavin Shuker, for whom the picture is mixed
– show them holding consistently hawkish foreign policy positions that are deeply
antithetical to Corbyn's approach to international relations.
They either "almost always" or "generally" backed "combat operations overseas"; those who were
MPs at the time supported the 2003 Iraq war; and they all opposed subsequent investigations
into the Iraq war.
Committed Friends of Israel
In one sense, the breakaway group's support for Labour Friends of Israel may not be
surprising, and indicates why Corbyn is facing such widespread trouble from within his own
party. Dozens of Labour MPs are members of the group, including Tom Watson and Ruth
Smeeth.
Smeeth, one of those at the forefront of accusing Corbyn of fostering anti-semitism in
Labour, is also a former public affairs director of BICOM, another stridently pro-Israel
lobby group .
None of these MPs were concerned enough with the LFI's continuing vocal support for Israel
as it has shifted to the far-right under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to have stepped down
from the group.
'Wrong kind of Jews'
Anti-semitism has taken centre stage in the manoeuvring against Corbyn, despite there being
no evidence of significant hatred against Jews in the party. Increasingly, it seems, tangible
abuse of Jews is of little interest unless it can be related to Corbyn.
The markedly selective interest in anti-semitism in the Corbyn context among the breakaway
MPs and supposed anti-semitism watchdogs has been starkly on show for some time.
Notably, none expressed concern at the media mauling of a left-wing, satirical Jewish group
called Jewdas when Corbyn was widely attacked for meeting "the wrong kind of Jews". In fact,
leading Labour figures, including the Jewish Labour Movement, joined in the
abuse .
And increasingly in this febrile atmosphere, there has been an ever-greater indulgence of
the "right kind of anti-semitism" – when it is directed at Corbyn supporters.
A troubling illustration was provided on the TV show Good Morning Britain this week, when
Tom Bower was invited on to discuss his new unauthorised biography of Corbyn, in which he
accuses him of anti-semitism. The hosts looked on demurely as Bower, a Jewish journalist,
defamed fellow Jewish journalist Michael Segalov as a " self-hating Jew " for defending Corbyn on the
show.
Revenge of the Blairites
So what is the significance of the fact that the Labour MPs who have been most outspoken in
criticising Corbyn – those who helped organise a 2016 leadership challenge against him,
and those who are now rumoured to be considering joining the breakaway faction – are
heavily represented on the list of MPs supporting LFI?
For them, it seems, vigorous support for Israel is not only a key foreign policy matter, but
a marker of their political priorities and worldview – one that starkly clashes with the
views of Corbyn and a majority of the Labour membership.
Anti-semitism has turned out to be the most useful – and damaging – weapon to
wield against the Labour leader for a variety of reasons close to the hearts of the holdouts
from the Blair era, who still dominate the parliamentary party and parts of the Labour
bureaucracy.
Perhaps most obviously, the Blairite wing of the party is still primarily loyal to a notion
that Britain should at all costs maintain its transatlantic alliance with the United States in
foreign policy matters. Israel is a key issue for those on both sides of the Atlantic who see
that state as a projection of Western power into the oil-rich Middle East and romanticise
Israel as a guarantor of Western values in a "barbaric" region.
Corbyn's prioritising of Palestinian rights threatens to overturn a core imperial value to
which the Blairites cling.
Tarred and feathered
But it goes further. Anti-semitism has become a useful stand-in for the deep differences in
a domestic political culture between the Blairites, on one hand, and Corbyn and the wider
membership, on the other.
A focus on anti-semitism avoids the right-wing MPs having to admit much wider grievances
with Corbyn's Labour that would probably play far less well not only with Labour members, but
with the broader British electorate.
As well as their enthusiasm for foreign wars, the Blairites support the enrichment of a
narrow neo-liberal elite, are ambivalent about austerity policies, and are reticent at
returning key utilities to public ownership. All of this can be neatly evaded and veiled by
talking up anti-semitism.
But the utility of anti-semitism as a weapon with which to beat Corbyn and his supporters
– however unfairly – runs deeper still.
The Blairites view allegations of anti-Jewish racism as a trump card. Calling someone an
anti-semite rapidly closes down all debate and rational thought. It isolates, then tars and
feathers its targets. No one wants to be seen to be associated with an anti-semite, let alone
defend them.
Weak hand exposed
That is one reason why anti-semitism smears have been so maliciously effective against
anti-Zionist Jews in the party and used with barely a murmur of protest – or in most
cases, even recognition that Jews are being suspended and expelled for opposing Israel's racist
policies towards Palestinians.
This is a revival of the vile "self-hating Jew" trope that Israel and its defenders
concocted decades ago to intimidate Jewish critics.
The Blairites in Labour, joined by the ruling Conservative Party, the mainstream media
and pro-Israel lobby groups, have selected anti-semitism as the terrain on which to try to
destroy a Corbyn-led Labour Party, because it is a battlefield in which the left stands no hope
of getting a fair hearing – or any hearing at all.
But paradoxically, the Labour breakaway group may have inadvertently exposed the weakness of
its hand. The eight MPs have indicated that they will not run in by-elections, and for good
reason: it is highly unlikely they would stand a chance of winning in any of their current
constituencies outside the Labour Party.
Their decision will also spur moves to begin deselecting those Labour MPs who are openly
trying to sabotage the party – and the members' wishes – from within.
That may finally lead to a clearing out of the parliamentary baggage left behind from the
Blair era, and allow Labour to begin rebuilding itself as a party ready to deal with the
political, social, economic and environmental challenges of the 21st century.
*
Note to readers: please click the share buttons below. Forward this article to your email
lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.
Jonathan Cook, a British journalist based in Nazareth since 2001, is the the author of
three books on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He is a past winner of the Martha Gellhorn
Special Prize for Journalism. His website and blog can be found at: www.jonathan-cook.net He is
a frequent contributor to Global Research.
"... there is something to the idea that American political culture is becoming increasingly Sovietized ..."
"... This article below inadvertently illustrates the obsession with malign foreign influences, like that which pervaded Soviet discourse and remains a bad smell in Russia to this day. ..."
"... Another rapidly creeping Soviet trait is the weaponization of politics, turning any disagreement into an existential struggle, opponents into enemies, the way words like "treason" or "Russian asset" have become common coin ..."
"... increasingly they have that "enemy of the people" ring to them. The growing prominence of the intelligence services in political life, and their alumni on cable TV news shows, is another worrisome trend to watch. ..."
There is something to the idea that American political culture is becoming increasingly
Sovietized, writes Weir .
This is becoming quite the meme. Upon reflection, I do think there is something in it. Not
this idiotic suggestion that Repubicans have somehow morphed into borscht-swilling,
shapka-wearing, Putin-loving Russkies. Indeed, there are hardly any actual Russians like that.
But there is something to the idea that American political culture is becoming increasingly Sovietized. Of course it's two separate camps, not a monolith, and the Democrats are at least
as guilty as Republicans.
This article below inadvertently illustrates the obsession with malign foreign influences,
like that which pervaded Soviet discourse and remains a bad smell in Russia to this day.
Russians scoff at the idea that Putin is able to get his own man elected president of the US
when he can't even fix the governor in Irkutsk. But the author of this piece implies that Putin
is somehow pulling the strings, not only of Trump but all Republicans?
Another rapidly creeping
Soviet trait is the weaponization of politics, turning any disagreement into an existential
struggle, opponents into enemies, the way words like "treason" or "Russian asset" have become
common coin. And they are not just deployed as simple insults: increasingly they have that
"enemy of the people" ring to them. The growing prominence of the intelligence services in
political life, and their alumni on cable TV news shows, is another worrisome trend to watch.
Also, it looks like big part of the media have become almost Pravda-like, making ideological
mission their main priority. I spend some of my down-time perusing shows from Fox News and
MSNBC, which an alien from outer space would think were the propaganda organs of two different,
mutually-hostile states -- but both very Soviet-like.
... ... ...
THEATLANTIC.COM
The Russification of the Republican Party
GOP lawmakers used to oppose the president's embrace of Putin and the Kremlin. Not anymore.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2019/12/impeachment-republican-party-russia/603088/?fbclid=IwAR1EC0-CDBEx-3SMS1lJTMT2m0xVjfaguZehK4BIeZ5Bov41Ds1XFi_Cbkg
"... The New Cold War can traced back to a broken promise made to Moscow on Nato expansion eastward. "London and Washington are orchestrating a disinformation" campaign today against Russia, as the New Cold War has heated up over Syria, Ukraine, NATO troops on Russia's borders and Russiagate. ..."
"... Hostility to Russia is the oldest continuous foreign policy tradition in the United States. It is now so much of a part of America's identity that it is unlikely to be ever cured. ..."
"... It is a dangerous miscalculation to think the "New Cold War" will end like the first. Russia (the USSR) had a buffer zone then, it doesn't today. For Moscow the coming war (world war) will be about survival. All that is left is the fall-back position of nuclear deterrence doctrine – annihilation. I don't think western capitals see how perilous the situation is. ..."
"... Then there are snide remarks about the meeting today concerning the Ukrainian Azov (Neo-Nazi) attacks on the Donbass (NOT how either the BBC or NPR speaks of this of course) in France. This struggle, between the Russian-speaking Donbass peoples and the neo-Nazis of western Ukraine, has killed many thousands of people (most likely mostly those of the Donbass). The Donbass fighters are spoken of as "Russian-supported" in an attempt to deny them and the reasons for their struggle *any* legitimacy (meanwhile the support for the neo-Nazis goes unmentioned, leaving the listener with the impression that they are the Ukrainian military, thus legitimately fighting a foreign funded and manned insurgency). ..."
"... Mad Dog Mattis spoke the truth when he said that an opponent wasn't defeated until they agreed they were defeated. The US merely assumed that Russia agreed that they were defeated and are doubling down when they now suddenly realize that Russia never said any such thing. ..."
"... I am really sick of the smearing of Russia done by the US and UK. The Skripal as well as the MH17 case are plain ridiculus. Anybody can see through these silly plants. US and UK obviously don't feel obliged to respect any international rules any more. (The one person who is suffering most at the moment from the decline in respect is Julian Assange, an Australian citizen!) ..."
"... "From 1922 onwards the strategic purpose of the Soviet Union was to defend the Soviet Union not global domination, whereas the purpose of the "West" has always been global domination. " ..."
"... "At an event last week in Sydney, Kevin and Carr discussed how the West, led by the United States, has been on an aggressive campaign to destabilize Russia, without cause." ..."
Retired Australian diplomat Tony Kevin, in conversation with former Australian Foreign
Minister Bob Carr, says the West is unnecessarily determined to undermine Russia. A t an event last week in Sydney, Kevin and Carr discussed how the West, led by the United
States, has been on an aggressive campaign to destabilize Russia, without cause.
When Kevin said he returned to Russia after more than 40 years in 2016 he realized he "had
to take sides" in the U.S.-Russia standoff when all Nato countries boycotted the Moscow
celebrations of the 70th anniversary of the end of the Second World War.
"I had to take a moral position that it is not right for the West to be ganging up on
Russia," Kevin says in his conversation with the former Australian foreign minister.
The New Cold War can traced back to a broken promise made to Moscow on Nato expansion
eastward. "London and Washington are orchestrating a disinformation" campaign today against
Russia, as the New Cold War has heated up over Syria, Ukraine, NATO troops on Russia's borders
and Russiagate.
Watch the hour-long in depth discussion which was filmed and produced by Consortium
News' CN Live! Executive Producer Cathy Vogan.
Tony's (especially!) and Bob's sane and sensible view of this dangerous and destructive
state of affairs deserve the widest possible distribution and attention.
George McGlynn , December 9, 2019 at 13:27
A quarter century has passed since the fall of the Soviet Union, and little has changed.
Cold War patterns of thinking about Russia show no sign of weakening in America. The further
we distance ourselves from the end of the Cold War, the closer we come to its revival.
Hostility to Russia is the oldest continuous foreign policy tradition in the United States.
It is now so much of a part of America's identity that it is unlikely to be ever cured.
It is a dangerous miscalculation to think the "New Cold War" will end like the first.
Russia (the USSR) had a buffer zone then, it doesn't today. For Moscow the coming war (world
war) will be about survival. All that is left is the fall-back position of nuclear deterrence
doctrine – annihilation. I don't think western capitals see how perilous the situation
is.
AnneR , December 9, 2019 at 07:48
The latest efforts at attacking Russia via smear, allegation and Doublespeak have been,
are via that US supported supposed oversight committee, WADA which has done what the US-UK
wanted: banned Russia for four years from international sporting events including the
upcoming Tokyo Olympics and World Cup (Football – soccer to Americans).
Then there were allegations – of those "highly likely" (therefore one knows to be
untrue and unadulterated propaganda to increase Russophobia) sort – about Russian
hackers (always giving the impression that the "Kremlin" is behind itl) being the Labour
Party's source of the Tory party's US-UK trade deal which would/will deliberately and finally
destroy the NHS and replace it with (of course) US "health" insurance company
profiteering.
(Always the Tory intention from the NHS's initiation in May of 1948; only its popularity
among many Tory party supporters among the working and lower middle classes prevented them
from a full-frontal killing off the NHS; the Snatcher's government began the undermining, via
installing a top-heavy bureaucratization, siphoning off a sizable proportion of the funds
that would otherwise have gone to medical care, demanding that hospitals not "lose" money
– a concept completely beyond the remit of the NHS as originally conceived and
constructed and like exactions.)
Then there are snide remarks about the meeting today concerning the Ukrainian Azov
(Neo-Nazi) attacks on the Donbass (NOT how either the BBC or NPR speaks of this of course) in
France. This struggle, between the Russian-speaking Donbass peoples and the neo-Nazis of
western Ukraine, has killed many thousands of people (most likely mostly those of the
Donbass). The Donbass fighters are spoken of as "Russian-supported" in an attempt to deny
them and the reasons for their struggle *any* legitimacy (meanwhile the support for the
neo-Nazis goes unmentioned, leaving the listener with the impression that they are the
Ukrainian military, thus legitimately fighting a foreign funded and manned insurgency).
Someone even suggested that President Putin needed to be diplomatic. Really? From what
I've read the man is the most diplomatic and intelligent politician (not just political
leader) along with Xi Jinping and the Iranian government that exist on the world stage. None
of them are hubristic, solipsistic, eager beaver killers of peoples in other countries.
Unlike their western "world" political counterparts.
Jeff Harrison , December 8, 2019 at 18:30
Mad Dog Mattis spoke the truth when he said that an opponent wasn't defeated until they
agreed they were defeated. The US merely assumed that Russia agreed that they were defeated
and are doubling down when they now suddenly realize that Russia never said any such thing.
St. Ronnie's whole thing back in the 80's was to outspend Russia militarily and it worked
well. We're trying to do it again but Russia isn't playing the same game this time and now it
is the US that has a mountain of debt and Russia that doesn't. SIPIRI tags US military
spending at $650B and Russian military spending at $62B. But we know that the $650B number is
bogus because it doesn't include our in-violation-of-the-NNPT nuclear program which is in the
energy department or our veteran's expenses which are in HHS. I don't know what's missing
from Russia's $62B but I'll bet they can sustain that a whole lot better than we can sustain
our $650B and rising bill.
Antonio Costa , December 9, 2019 at 13:17
Good point regarding Russia's downsizing the Soviet Union. From Gorbachev to Putin there
was NEVER a surrender, intended in any way. The intent has been multilateral partnerships.
For Russia the US/West won nothing at all except the opportunity to live and work in peace.
(By the way this policy has a long Russian history.)
They gave up the Warsaw Pact and America with our worthless "word" expanded NATO.
The US foreign policy has lost even the semblance of sanity. Our naked aggression is clear
as never before, a mad man throwing a global fit armed with megaton nuclear projectiles on
trigger first strike alert. What could go wrong?
nondimenticare , December 8, 2019 at 15:56
If, magically, Consortium News/CN Live! were a mass-distribution network/magazine (hence
universally consulted), allowing the light in for the mass of the viewing and listening
public, it could change the world – both an exalting and despairing thought.
Lily , December 8, 2019 at 09:52
It is a great joy to listen to this conversation!
I am really sick of the smearing of Russia done by the US and UK. The Skripal as well as
the MH17 case are plain ridiculus. Anybody can see through these silly plants. US and UK
obviously don't feel obliged to respect any international rules any more. (The one person who
is suffering most at the moment from the decline in respect is Julian Assange, an Australian
citizen!)
I wish people would have the courage to break away from the group pressure originated by a
nation which has been started by killing more than 90% of the indigenous people in their
country and since then has turned the worl into a very insecure place.
Chapeau, Tony Kevin! Thanks to Bob Carr and Consortiums News.
Lily , December 9, 2019 at 01:18
It seems that some facts are beginning to be realized in the military department.
Words are catalysts of connotations and connotations are functions of
expectations/framing..
Some conflate cause with purpose thereby limiting perception of cause and purpose.
Some understand that causation is interactive and in any lateral system the genesis of
causation is difficult to determine.
Some understand that evaluation is a function of purpose and that purpose can be evaluated
through such portals into wonderlands such as "What is the "United States of America" and how
is it facilitated?"
As thumb-nailed in the comments section of the article Capitalism's suicidal trajectory
– OlyaPola
December 6, 2019 at 07:46
"From 1922 onwards the strategic purpose of the Soviet Union was to defend the Soviet
Union not global domination, whereas the purpose of the "West" has always been global
domination. "
From 1922 onwards various tactics have been attempted by the "West" to facilitate their
purpose, including attempts at "Orange revolution" in many areas which catalysed many lateral
trajectories including the process of transcendence of the "Soviet Union" by the Russian
Federation in the period from 1991 to 2005.
Consequently Mr. Suslov's observation re war of "The United States of America" can be
extended into present times and hence no "New cold war" exists.
""What is the "United States of America"
An initial step through the portal is that "The United States of America" is – a
regime of social relations to facilitate its purpose – the social relations not being
restricted to the "nation state" presently self designated "The United States of America" but
including classes in other "nation states".
Consequently alternative purposes and social relations pose an existential threat to "The
United States of America"; this being perceived of lesser significance in regard to "The
Soviet Union" and greater in regard to the Russian Federation.
"At an event last week in Sydney, Kevin and Carr discussed how the West, led by the United
States, has been on an aggressive campaign to destabilize Russia, without cause."
The American establishment's problem with Russia is simply that Russia is the only country
on earth capable of obliterating the United States. Not even China has yet reached that
capacity.
"Carthago delenda est"
Skip Scott , December 9, 2019 at 06:13
There is "cause." Russia was our latest vassal under Yeltsin. Putin stopped the looting,
and worked to benefit average Russian citizens. Just watch "The Magnitsky Act, behind the
scenes" to know the "cause".
Bruno DP , December 8, 2019 at 02:34
The West is ganging up on Russia? Replace "West" by "United States of America", and I will agree.
Much of the West (i.e. Germany) has been dragged by force into damage control mode. The
Magnitsky Act monster, the election interference hysteria, are just 2 crying examples met
with shock and disbelief across the pond. The Fiona Hill testimony was a very telling moment
for the inner workings of a self perpetuating logic.
Russia is no lightweight by any means, and not always friendly.
But it has regularly done the right thing in international conflicts which the Kremlin
seems to understand better than all of "the Western" intelligence combined.
I'm German, living in the US, and I agree with your comment. I especially love the last
two sentences:
"Russia is no lightweight by any means, and not always friendly.
But it has regularly done the right thing in international conflicts which the Kremlin seems
to understand better than all of "the Western" intelligence combined."
"... Haddad added that he is now seeking legal advice and looking into the possibility of whistleblower protections for himself, and said at the very least he will publish the information he has while omitting anything that could subject him to legal retaliation from his former employer. ..."
"... Newsweek has long been a reliable guard dog and attack dog for the US-centralized empire, with examples of stories that its editors did permit to go to print including an article by an actual, current military intelligence officer explaining why US prosecution of Julian Assange is a good thing, fawning puff pieces on the White Helmets , and despicable smear jobs on Tulsi Gabbard . ..."
"... Newsweek also recently published an article attacking Tucker Carlson for publicizing the OPCW scandal, basing its criticisms on a bogus Bellingcat article I debunked shortly after its publication . ..."
"Yesterday I resigned from Newsweek after my attempts to publish newsworthy revelations
about the leaked OPCW letter were refused for no valid reason," journalist Tareq Haddad
reported today via Twitter .
"I have collected evidence of how they suppressed the story in addition to evidence from
another case where info inconvenient to US government was removed, though it was factually
correct," Haddad said.
"I plan on publishing these details in full shortly. However, after asking my editors for
comment, as is journalistic practice, I received an email reminding me of confidentiality
clauses in my contract. I.e. I was threatened with legal action."
Haddad added that he is now
seeking legal advice and looking into the possibility of whistleblower protections for himself,
and said at the very least he will publish the information he has while omitting anything that
could subject him to legal retaliation from his former employer.
"I could have kept silent and kept my job, but I would not have been able to continue with
a clean conscience," Haddad said .
"I will have some instability now but the truth is more important."
This is the first direct insider report we're getting on the mass media's conspiracy of
silence on the OPCW scandal that I wrote
about just the other day . In how many other newsrooms is this exact same sort of
suppression happening, including threats of legal action, to journalists who don't have the
courage or ability to leave and speak out? There is no logical reason to assume that Haddad is
the only one encountering such roadblocks from mass media editors; he's just the only one going
public about it.
The ubiquitous propagandistic tactic of fake news by omission distorts the public's
worldview just as much as it would if mass media outlets were publishing bogus stories whole
cloth every day, only if they were doing that it would be much easier to pin them down on their
lies, hold them accountable, and discredit them.
A
recent FAIR article by Alan MacLeod documents how the Hong Kong demonstrations are pushed
front and center in mainstream consciousness despite the fact that to this day not one
protester has been killed by security forces, while far more deadly violence is being directed
at huge protests in empire-aligned nations like Haiti, Chile and Ecuador which have been almost
completely ignored by these same outlets.
This deliberate omission causes a distorted worldview
in casual and mainstream news media consumers in which protests are only happening in nations
that are outside the
US-centralized power alliance . We see the same kind of deliberate distortion-by-omission
with the way mass media continually pushes the
narrative
that Donald Trump is "soft on Russia", while remaining completely silent on the overwhelming
mountain of evidence to the contrary .
The time is now for everyone with a platform to start banging the drum about the OPCW
scandal, because we're seeing more and more signs that the deluge of leaks hemorrhaging from
that organisation is only going to increase. Mainstream propagandists aren't going to cover it,
so if larger alternative media outlets want to avoid being lumped in with them and discredited
in the same sweep it would be wise to start talking about this thing today. It's only going to
get more and more awkward for everyone who chose to remain silent, and more and more validating
for those who spoke out.
"... For one the Ukraine is not fighting "the Russians". The Kiev government is fighting against east-Ukrainians who disagree with the Nazi controlled regime which the U.S. installed after it instigated the unconstitutional Maidan coup. Russia supplies the east-Ukrainians and there were a few Russian volunteers fighting on their side but no Russian military units entered the Ukraine. ..."
"... But aside from that how can anyone truly believe that the Ukraine "fights the Russians so we don't have to fight them here"? Is Russia on the verge of invading the United States? Where? How? And most importantly: What for? How would that be in Russia's interest? ..."
"... And how is it in U.S. interest to give the Ukraine U.S. taxpayer money to buy U.S. weapons? The sole motive behind that idea was greed and corruption , not national interest: ..."
"... To claim that it hurt U.S. national interests is nonsense. ..."
"... It is really no wonder that U.S. foreign policy continuously produces chaos when its practitioners get taught by people like Karlan. In the Middle East as well as elsewhere Russian foreign policy runs circles around U.S. attempts to control the outcome. One reason it can do that is the serious lack of knowledge and realism in U.S. foreign policy thinking. It is itself the outcome of an educational crisis. U.S. 'political science' studies implement a mindset that is unable to objectively recognize the facts and fails to respond to them with realistic concepts. ..."
"... In the meantime Trump is eliminating food stamps for some 700,000 recipients and the Democrats are doing nothing about it. Their majority in the House could have used the time it spent on the impeachment circus to prevent that and other obscenities. ..."
"... The same bs argument about "not fighting the Russians here" was used a couple of weeks ago by another witness, Tim Morrison. This shows you that the hysteria is bipartisan... ..."
"... I don't believe that the so called "Professor's View" is normative for the educated class of Americans. It is the normative view of the Ivy League pseudoeducated individuals that have been placed in leadership positions in the US Goverment and Politics but they are not EDUCATED in any way. Karlan is almost certainly a Jew. She is without a doubt a whore who will do anything for her John as directed by her pimp. ..."
"... Being a brain dead feminist helps her with that role in life. I had an ex wife who fought me post divorce for 10 years trying to destroy me in any way she could. She finally stopped with the Breast Cancer she had for 7 of those years finally killed her. I see the same psychotic, sociopathic and off scall narcissitic behavior in every one of these women in politics and academics today. So don't think that something will get better without a terminal solution. ..."
"... Americans are entranced by the kayfabe (mock combat). Just as in wrestling it is designed to look 'real' but just keeps people engrossed in the action, unable to think of what they are NOT being told. ..."
"... Her delusions are a prerequisite for teaching at an academic level. ..."
"... The military industrial complex is in the people of usa's interest.. they think they benefit from the rayatheons, lockheed martins, boeings and etc - as they have relatives working at these places... the usa is one sick puppy, and Pamela Karlan, a Stanford law professor is just further proof of this... sorry if someone else said what i did, as i didn't read the comments yet.. ..."
"... The fact that the "papers of record" have become mouthpieces for the CIA/deep state has played a huge role in the brainwashing of academia and the rise of neoliberalism. The false narratives these "trusted sources" of information have been serving up create a very real Matrix, a false reality that is ingrained into those who rely upon them for their daily "news". Karlan is merely repeating what she accepts as truth, garnered from the NY Times and Wash Post, CNN, NPR, etc. ..."
"... The US is dysfunctional on purpose to keep the masses under control and dumbed down/brainwashed ..."
"... BTW, it is totally lost on the entirety of Western establishment that you cannot make Ukraine strong (wouldn't we all love to see strong Ukraine?) while wrecking its economy by encouraging policies like spending 5% of GDP on the military, switching to more expensive energy sources, cutting itself from traditional markets and supplies, replacing with rather worthless "cooperation" agreement with a trading block that is neither particularly interested in trading with Ukraine (Ukraine strongest exports are in surplus within EU) nor inclined to subsidize it (budgets are tights and plenty of recent EU members are in dire needs already) ..."
"... Unfortunately this is endemic in the western world. 'Democracy' seems to consist of dumbing down the population as much as possible, and telling them what they have to think so the self-anointed leaders of society can have their way (both those in front, and behind the scenes). I'm far from certain this is a recipe for success. ..."
"... Russians and Chinese in particular, and BRICS/SCO in general, are showing the way. The countries involved have very different political systems, but they understand that co-operation is much more beneficial than constant conflict. ..."
"... This is a typical example of the stupidity and often dementia of most of the highly educated. Especially those in academia, who exist in a funhouse hall of propagandist and ideological mirrors. But it's true of the educated in the general. I personally know plenty of highly educated people who make themselves more stupid and mentally ill by the day by uncritically reading the NYT and watching CNN. ..."
"... So it's no wonder that an elite Stanford law professor is in practice the exact same stupid, ignorant, deranged yahoo as you could easily find in a trailer park, just with better manners and diction. ..."
"... After all, Karlan's Russia comment would receive enthusiastic thumbs up from at least Biden, Obama, W. Clinton, H. Clinton, Rubio, Klobuchar, Pelosi, Warren, Graham, Buttigieg, Romney, the late McCain, Pompeo, Bolton, Mattis...the list goes on and on. ..."
"... It's even worse than that. The economy will never recover while oligarchs have a stranglehold on economic activity and government. And USA's capitalist dementia ensures that will never change. (The West as a whole is headed in the direction of unabashed oligarchic rule.) ..."
"... Many of the dumbest people I met were university students or graduates. They are thought to absorb information as given, reproduce once, forget. They are not trained to question anything, they follow a narrative. Some even denounced everything they ever learned and became a follower of some religion, which is just another narrative. ..."
"... I've seen Jonathan Turley on TV a number of times. He always seemed to be a person of integrity. One needs to add courage to the list after testifying against impeachment on the presented "evidence". I will be very surprised to see him on PBS or CBS ever again. Their news readers are nearly giddy with excitement about impeachment. They never consider what could happen if Trump is convicted but refuses to leave the White House. Then what? ..."
"... Karlan type of academics is scattered all over the US universities. They are the Academia´s gatekeepers, watching over & "spotting" of our future leaders. the majority of them are claptraps selling jingoism to our youth in order to fulfill the Judeo-Zionist agenda. ..."
"... You hit the nail on the head. Karlan's loyalty is to her tribe, not this nation. That's the crux of almost every major problem and injustice we're suffering from in this country, from private prisons to Wall Street looting to endless foreign wars to censorship. There is one group of people behind it with a very bad track record in terms of how they treat their host nations. I wonder when we will finally get our act together and become the 110th country to expel them. ..."
"... IF Trump is removed from office then the war on Lebanon and Iran would be accelerated. Israel will likely go for all the marbles and annex the last remaining Palestinian holdings. Some here believe this couldn't happen but we all live in bizarro world now. ..."
"... it was obvious (on the video) that Karlan really thought she was (wait for it! It's on the way) landing a very clever bon mot! ..."
"... It is a small thing, yet it speaks volumes about the spirit of this clearly clueless human being (and others of her ilk), and her handlers, who must have cleared this little gotcha for prime time. Been up on the podium too long, bleating to students who can't/don't bleat back! No common sense. ..."
"... As the great wise man, Frank Zappa proclaimed about the USA: "Politics/government is the entertainment division of the Military-Industrial Government." American politics makes much greater sense (and is a hell of a lot more entertaining) if you understand this truism. ..."
During yesterday's impeachment hearing at the House House Judiciary Committee one of the
Democrats' witnesses made some rather crazy statements. Pamela Karlan, a Stanford law
professor, first proved to have bought into
neo-conservative delusions about the U.S. role in the world:
America is not just 'the last best hope,' as Mr. Jefferies said, but it's also the shining
city on a hill. We can't be the shining city on a hill and promote democracy around the world
if we're not promoting it here at home.
As people in Bolivia and elsewhere can attest the United States does not promote democracy.
It promotes rightwing regimes and rogue capitalism. The U.S. is itself
not a democracy but a functional oligarchy as a major Harvard study found:
Economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial
independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest
groups have little or no independent influence.
But worse than Karlan's pseudo-patriotic propaganda claptrap were her remarks on the Ukraine
and Russia:
This is not just about our national interests to protect elections or make sure Ukraine stays
strong and fights the Russians so we don't have to fight them here , but it's in our national
interest to promote democracy worldwide.
That was not an joke. From the video it certainly seems that
the woman believes that nonsense.
For one the Ukraine is not fighting "the Russians". The Kiev government is fighting against
east-Ukrainians who disagree with the Nazi controlled regime which the U.S. installed after it instigated
the unconstitutional Maidan coup. Russia supplies the east-Ukrainians and there were a few
Russian volunteers fighting on their side but no Russian military units entered the
Ukraine.
But aside from that how can anyone truly believe that the Ukraine "fights the Russians so we
don't have to fight them here"? Is Russia on the verge of invading the United States? Where? How? And most importantly: What
for? How would that be in Russia's interest?
One must be seriously disturbed to believe such nonsense. How can it be that Karlan is
teaching at an academic level when she has such delusions?
And how is it in U.S. interest to give the Ukraine U.S. taxpayer money to buy U.S. weapons?
The sole motive behind that idea was
greed and corruption , not national interest:
[U.S. special envoy to Ukraine] Volker started his job at the State Department in 2017 in an
unusual part-time arrangement that allowed him to continue consulting at BGR, a powerful
lobbying firm that represents Ukraine and the U.S.-based defense firm Raytheon. During his
tenure, Volker advocated for the United States to send Raytheon-manufactured antitank Javelin
missiles to Ukraine -- a decision that made Raytheon millions of dollars.
The missiles are
useless in the conflict . They are
kept near the western border of Ukraine under U.S. control. The U.S. fears that Russia
would hit back elsewhere should the Javelin reach the frontline in the east and get used
against the east-Ukrainians. That Trump shortly held back on some of the money that would have
allowed the Ukrainians to buy more of those missiles thus surely made no difference.
To claim that it hurt U.S. national interests is nonsense.
It is really no wonder that U.S. foreign policy continuously produces chaos when its
practitioners get taught by people like Karlan. In the Middle East as well as elsewhere Russian
foreign policy runs circles around U.S. attempts to control the outcome. One reason it can do
that is the serious lack of knowledge and realism in U.S. foreign policy thinking. It is itself
the outcome of an educational crisis. U.S. 'political science' studies implement a mindset that
is unable to objectively recognize the facts and fails to respond to them with realistic
concepts.
The Democrats are doing themselves no favor by producing delusional and partisan witnesses
who repeat Reaganesque claptrap. They only prove that the whole affair is just an unserious
show trial.
In the meantime Trump is
eliminating food stamps for some 700,000 recipients and the Democrats are doing nothing
about it. Their majority in the House could have used the time it spent on the impeachment
circus to prevent that and other obscenities.
Do the Democrats really believe that their voters will not notice this?
Posted by b on December 5, 2019 at 15:40 UTC |
Permalink
This is the woman that Common Dreams describes as a leading legal scholar.
And maybe she is, it would certainly help explain the current state of the US Judiciary and
the legal system, which reflects internally the utter contempt for law and custom which
characterises US behaviour in international affairs.
The same bs argument about "not fighting the Russians here" was used a couple of weeks ago by
another witness, Tim Morrison. This shows you that the hysteria is bipartisan...
There is a large cohort of Americans who believe every word the professor spoke. Whatever you
and I may think about it the professor's view of the world is normative for the educated
class in America.
Regarding those food stamps, it is actually just a small rule change lowering the
unemployment rate to 6% (from 10%) above which a state can waive the existing work
requirement for single, non-disabled recipients aged 18-49. States can still also waive it if
they deem that job availability is low.
Attributed to Mark Twain. Perhaps the learned professor karlan may affirm: "Never argue with stupid people, they will drag you down to their level and then beat you
with experience."
Budapest has signaled that it will not support Ukraine's bid to join NATO until Kiev
reverses a law that places language restrictions on ethnic Hungarians and other minorities
living in the country.
Legislation that limits the use of Hungarian, Russian, Romanian, and other minority
languages in Ukraine must be repealed before Hungary backs Ukraine's NATO membership,
Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said on Wednesday.
"We ask for no extra rights to Hungarians in Transcarpathia, only those rights they had
before," Szijjarto told Hungarian state media at a NATO summit in London. He alleged that
150,000 ethnic Hungarians living in the region have been "seriously violated" by
Ukraine.[.]
In February, Ukraine's parliament ratified amendments to the constitution which made
NATO membership a key foreign policy objective. However, a number of hurdles still remain
before its membership is likely to be seriously considered. European Commission President
Jean-Claude Juncker predicted in 2016 that it would be 20-25 years before Ukraine would be
able to join NATO and the EU.
I don't believe that the so called "Professor's View" is normative for the educated class of
Americans. It is the normative view of the Ivy League pseudoeducated individuals that have
been placed in leadership positions in the US Goverment and Politics but they are not
EDUCATED in any way. Karlan is almost certainly a Jew. She is without a doubt a whore who
will do anything for her John as directed by her pimp.
Being a brain dead feminist helps her
with that role in life. I had an ex wife who fought me post divorce for 10 years trying to
destroy me in any way she could. She finally stopped with the Breast Cancer she had for 7 of
those years finally killed her. I see the same psychotic, sociopathic and off scall
narcissitic behavior in every one of these women in politics and academics today. So don't
think that something will get better without a terminal solution.
Americans are entranced by the kayfabe (mock combat). Just as in wrestling it is designed to
look 'real' but just keeps people engrossed in the action, unable to think of what they are
NOT being told.
People must free themselves of partisan affiliations that are just levers used to
manipulate them.
The establishment uses Democracy Works! propaganda to give you a false sense of
power and security. But the people are an afterthought in US/Western politics. The
politicians and their Parties work for the money. Much of that money comes from AIPAC, MIC,
and other EMPIRE FIRST organizations that are leading us to WAR.
It's messy and inconvenient but power only responds to power.
The stoopid cult-thinking must stop. This is where it leads: Buffalo
Bishop Resigns Over Sex Abuse Cover-Up . Why do people cling to a corrupt Catholic
Church? It's NOT just a few bad apples!! The pedophilia and cover-ups have been
worldwide and reach into the highest levels of the Church.
This Buffalo Bishop, like dozens of other Bishops in the last decades, lied to cover for
pedophiles and then used the power of his position to remain in his position. His wasn't for
the children or any higher morality but for himself. He will get a nice, peaceful retirement
- paid for by the deluded Catholic flock.
In the meantime Trump is eliminating food stamps for some 700,000 recipients and the
Democrats are doing nothing about it.
The reason for that if very simple: the Democrats agree with Trump on this.It's the same question many ask when studying Roman History for the first time: where were
the legions when the Goths invaded? The answer is that the Goths were the legions, there was
no invasion.
The same logic applies to the Right-Left political spectrum in modern Western Democracies.
"Where are the lefties?" is the modern question the first worlders ask themselves since
2008.
--//--
As for the Pamela Karlan thing, it's an issue I've been commenting on here for some time
now, so I won't repeat everything.
I'll just say again that imbecilization is a completely normal historical phenomenon in
declining empires: the earlier example we have is the Christianization of the Roman Empire
after Marcus Aurelius' death. The rise of Christianity was the messenger of the Crisis of the
Third Century, the historic episode which ended the Roman Empire by giving birth to its
demented form after the Diocletian Reforms.
Empires tend to have a very plastic conception of truth, that is, they believe they can
fabricate reality for the simple reason they are geopolitically dominant.
It's easy to visualize this. The greatest philosopher of the end of the 18th Century and
beginning of the 19th Century was a German, not a British. While Hegel wrote his
proto-revolutionary works which would pave the way to Karl Marx, in UK we had the likes of
Mackinder and Mahan dominating British philosophical thinking. And even then they weren't the
dominant intellectual figures: the UK was the land of accountants and economists, not
philosophers. The reason for this is that neither Hegel nor Marx had any ships to do gunboat
diplomacy in Asia, as the British did.
Empires tend to think and rationalize the world in a much more plastic/practical way than
the periphery. As the old saying goes: the stronger side doesn't need to think before it
acts.
Scroll down the page @ Steven Cheung {VID} on Twitter to watch this exchange where the RATS
are told they are the ones who have abused power.
Professor Jonathan Turley, a lawyer's go-to-Constitutional Expert:
"The Record does not establish corruption in this case - no bribery, no extortion, no
obstruction of justice, no abuse of power."
Trump should include Prof. Turley on his legal team. The RATS have not thought this through to what will unfold in the Senate. A real court
trial; No hearsay and no! no! no! "I was made aware" And the Bidens, Schiff, and Pelosi under cross-examination. And the Whistleblower!!!
I used to think that stupid was a characteristic of the American right. It took Donald Trump
getting elected to see that stupid knows no political borders. Seriously. I thought that
education and progressive thinking also led to a clarity of thought. Boy, was I wrong. The
most pro-war people in the USA seem to be Democrats. Bizarro world.
To "...make sure Ukraine stays strong and fights the Russians so we don't have to fight them
here"
This predates 2003 and stems from the red menace days when it was the communist legions
would behave like a set of dominoes and eventually we (USA) would be fighting them in the
streets of New York etc. Thus it was imperative that they defeat the commies in French
Indo-China despite the fact that they could easily have simply bought the nation by
supporting Uncle Ho who had been working for the OSS during WW2. But no, they had to win
brownie points with the French by bankrolling their effort to retake the nation and when that
didn't work a little "false flag" event employed to keep the ball rolling. I use quotations
because while being false, the Tonkin Gulf event wasn't much of a flag.....
At any rate the fact that both Demublicans AND Republocrats are falling back on such
antiquated rhetoric is bitterly laughable! It can also be seen as an indicator of just how
dumbed down the USAn populace has become. As noted above article, how could anyone think that
the RF would plan much less attempt an attack on the continental US?! A closer look at recent
history has the US and it's poodles surrounding the RF with missile bases, sanctioning and
embargoing the fhaak out it, and generally trying to destroy the nation as a whole with
whatever clandestine methods are available. But hey, take a page from the book of Cheney:
deny everything and make counter accusations.....
thanks b... propaganda is the usa's education... see your breakdown of the nyt articles...
most people don't get this...
The military industrial complex is in the people of usa's interest.. they think they
benefit from the rayatheons, lockheed martins, boeings and etc - as they have relatives
working at these places... the usa is one sick puppy, and Pamela Karlan, a Stanford law
professor is just further proof of this... sorry if someone else said what i did, as i didn't
read the comments yet..
"Throughout her career, Karlan has been an advocate before the U.S. Supreme Court.[10] She
was mentioned as a potential candidate to replace Supreme Court Justice David Souter when he
retired in 2009.[11]
Personal life
Karlan told Politico in 2009, "It's no secret at all that I'm counted among the LGBT
crowd".[12] She has described herself as an example of a "snarky, bisexual, Jewish
women".[13] Her partner is writer Viola Canales.[14]
she is not an American women apparently.. she is a Jewish women.. oh well, lol...
The fact that the "papers of record" have become mouthpieces for the CIA/deep state has
played a huge role in the brainwashing of academia and the rise of neoliberalism. The false
narratives these "trusted sources" of information have been serving up create a very real
Matrix, a false reality that is ingrained into those who rely upon them for their daily
"news". Karlan is merely repeating what she accepts as truth, garnered from the NY Times and
Wash Post, CNN, NPR, etc.
Believe me, even here in the red states, you won't find a hell of a lot of faculty members
at large universities who are Trump supporters.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsL6mKxtOlQ
What I find absent in most discussions about impeachment of Trump is the 800 pound gorilla -
what will happen to the US if against all odds, Trump gets impeached. Could the US survive
that cataclysmic event or would it rip the empire apart?
What contingency plans does everybody make for that unlikely, but not impossible singularity?
"In the meantime Trump is eliminating food stamps for some 700,000 recipients and the
Democrats are doing nothing about it. Their majority in the House could have used the time it
spent on the impeachment circus to prevent that and other obscenities."
That's why it's called bread and circus. The loot and pillage party's two separate funding
arms get their funding and privilege from the same sociopath/psychopaths who operate the mass
murder for profit economy we now live in.
They will continue the slaughter until the enforcers within society finally understand
they work for criminally insane cultists who will never have enough money, power, and
prestige.
I see that distrust to everything that is good and decent is extended to law professors.
Stanford is a short (if sometimes slow) ride from Berkeley that has a more famous professor
in its own law school (Wiki):[you know
John Choon Yoo (born July 10, 1967)[4] is a Korean-American attorney, law professor,
former government official, and author. Yoo is currently the Emanuel S. Heller Professor of
Law at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law.[1] Previously, he served as the
Deputy Assistant U.S. Attorney General in the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) of the Department
of Justice, during the George W. Bush administration.
He is best known for his opinions concerning the Geneva Conventions that attempted to
legitimize the Bush administration's War on Terror. He also authored the so-called Torture
Memos, which provided a legal rationale for so-called [you know what]
=====
First, they torture logic... The ignorants who could not tell tollens from a toilet brush
would not even know what to twist, hence the need for professors.
"The U.S. is itself not a democracy but a functional oligarchy as a major Harvard study
found:"
My only quibble with another great post is the assertion that the US is functional.
Functional would mean it had supportive infrastructure but instead we have homeless
shitting in the street because they are driven out of the parks to do so and they must be bad
people that don't deserve public toilets.
Functional would mean, as Jackrabbit linked to above, and a I i did a few hours ago in the
Weekly Open Thread, that there wouldn't be 117 sexually abusive Catholic priests in the
Buffalo NY area doing the same thing as Epstein was doing to his clients.
Functional would mean we would not have the blatant hypocrisy Chervus quoted from the
posting above
"To "...make sure Ukraine stays strong and fights the Russians so we don't have to fight them
here"
I agree with Chervus that this is same BS that got us the Iron Curtain with Russia after WWII
because they wanted Godless communism instead of global private finance. And also, as I
ranted recently in the Open Thread, this gave us the 1950's change to the US Motto to In God
We Trust which gets back to the control of the obfuscatory/hypocrisy narrative telling us
that the private finance cult are doing God's work and that "competition is good/sharing is
bad"
The US is dysfunctional on purpose to keep the masses under control and dumbed
down/brainwashed
Ha! More connections to Stanford:
"Ancient Logic: Forerunners of Modus Ponens and Modus Tollens". Stanford Encyclopedia of
Philosophy.
BTW, it is totally lost on the entirety of Western establishment that you cannot make
Ukraine strong (wouldn't we all love to see strong Ukraine?) while wrecking its economy by
encouraging policies like spending 5% of GDP on the military, switching to more expensive energy sources, cutting itself from traditional markets and supplies, replacing with rather worthless
"cooperation" agreement with a trading block that is neither particularly interested in
trading with Ukraine (Ukraine strongest exports are in surplus within EU) nor inclined to
subsidize it (budgets are tights and plenty of recent EU members are in dire needs
already)
I think it's tragic that that creatures like Karlan are not simply seen as the blatant bigots
and Nazi's that they are. You have to be wearing a large set of blinkers not to be able to
see that.
Unfortunately this is endemic in the western world. 'Democracy' seems to consist of
dumbing down the population as much as possible, and telling them what they have to think so
the self-anointed leaders of society can have their way (both those in front, and behind the
scenes). I'm far from certain this is a recipe for success.
The biggest tragedy is that Americans seem to think that the only way to succeed is to
tear down any other country that isn't essentially a puppet government, necessarily defining
them as 'enemies', and therefore someone/thing that must be hated and destroyed, by any
means, fair or foul.
Russians and Chinese in particular, and BRICS/SCO in general, are showing the way. The
countries involved have very different political systems, but they understand that
co-operation is much more beneficial than constant conflict. Unless, of course, a quarter of
your government tax income is dedicated to supporting an amazingly corrupt
Military-Industrial-Intelligence Complex.
Trump supporters approve of cutting food stamps. The majority of Democratic Party politicians
approve of cutting food stamps. Both parties agree times are good and the future is rosy. The
only thing they disagree on is foreign policy. The guy who couldn't even win the election
(and merely fluked in on a technicality that undermines all progress since 1788,) refuses to
play by the rules on foreign policy. And he is not justified by success, not in any terms,
not in making peace, not in winning, not in anything. The only people who are upset about
impeaching Trump are Trump lovers and cranks who think being president is like being elected
God and no one but sinners can defy Him.
The Trump supporters were going to turn out for him anyway, barring an economic crisis
even they couldn't ignore. Impeachment has no downside so long as it is from the right, and
doesn't rile up the rich people. Except the rich donors are leaving the Democratic Party
anyway. The strategy for a nicey-nice campaign that leaves enough Trump voters soothed enough
to sit it out has one enormous defect: Trump was not elected by the people anyhow.
But the Democratic Party politicians are anti-Communist, which means pro-Fascist, so yes,
they do see this as (im)moral principles to die for, though they hope to politically kill for
it. Their problem is, Trump is also anti-Communist and pro-Fascist, which everyone knows,
which means Trump was merely his office for campaigning. That may be hypocritical and a
violation of campaign laws. But in the eyes even of the anti-Communist/pro-Fascist population
missiles for Ukrainian fascists with strings or without strings is merely a tactical
disagreement. Even worse, the president breaking laws is perceived as strong leadership,
smashing the machine, getting rid of those awful politicians and their oppressive
government.
This is a typical example of the stupidity and often dementia of most of the highly educated.
Especially those in academia, who exist in a funhouse hall of propagandist and ideological
mirrors. But it's true of the educated in the general. I personally know plenty of highly
educated people who make themselves more stupid and mentally ill by the day by uncritically
reading the NYT and watching CNN.
I don't know why anyone would expect anything different. All system schooling at whatever
level boils down to the same two goals:
Instill the basic literacy necessary for a given cog position within the hierarchy.
Instill obedience to authority, including indoctrination into its ideology.
From kindergarten to grad school these are the same; whether one's being trained to pump
gas or to assume a high position in the corporate world/government/academia these are the
same.
So it's no wonder that an elite Stanford law professor is in practice the exact same
stupid, ignorant, deranged yahoo as you could easily find in a trailer park, just with better
manners and diction.
"One must be seriously disturbed to believe such nonsense. How can it be that Karlan is
teaching at an academic level when she has such delusions?"
I assume this question was meant rhetorically. After all, Karlan's Russia comment would
receive enthusiastic thumbs up from at least Biden, Obama, W. Clinton, H. Clinton, Rubio,
Klobuchar, Pelosi, Warren, Graham, Buttigieg, Romney, the late McCain, Pompeo, Bolton,
Mattis...the list goes on and on.
For a related, institutionalized, revolting example packaging multiple instances of such
delusional thought, see "russias-dead-end-diplomacy-syria"
. Have a pail nearby to catch the spew.
"The guy who couldn't even win the election (and merely fluked in on a technicality that
undermines all progress since 1788,)"
I don't think you ever answered when I asked you last time: Are you saying you think Hillary was so stupid she didn't know about the electoral
college, and that it was electoral votes she had to fight for, not popular ones? Because if you're not saying that, then nothing is changed: Trump beat Hillary in the
electoral fight they were both trying to win. It's pure nonsense to babble about
"technicalities".
And if any significant Democrat faction was saying throughout 2016, and not just after the
election, that the election should NOT be about electoral votes, please direct me to where
and when they were saying that, because I don't recall ever hearing it. And I think the
reason I never heard it was because the Dems were so smugly sure of electoral college
victory. And if Hillary had won, we never would've heard a word from you or anyone else about
the electoral college.
it is totally lost on the entirety of Western establishment that you cannot make Ukraine
strong while wrecking its economy
It's even worse than that. The economy will never recover while oligarchs have a stranglehold
on economic activity and government. And USA's capitalist dementia ensures that will never
change. (The West as a whole is headed in the direction of unabashed oligarchic rule.)
Why would anyone invest in Ukraine? Sometimes I think Putin was happy for the Western coup to succeed and simply planned to
keep the best parts.
But do they really believe what they (the mid-level elites) say or is it all some kind of
theater of the increasingly absurd? I am never clear on who among the narrative managers is
sincere and who is simply acting sincere. Are people like this woman or the Bellingcat
narrative managers or any of their numerous colleagues in their mid-level narrative
management positions occupying their positions simply due to their acting abilities? They
seem to be both delusional and ill-informed. When these people get together at their
conferences and dinner parties, does the mask come off?
casey @31: When these people get together ... does the mask come off?
I doubt it. They have convinced themselves that they are right and/or are following the
wishes of people who are right-thinking. In USA, most people are brainwashed to assume that
people with lots of money are right-thinking (as in: they must be doing something
right!).
Upton Sinclair:
It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not
understanding it.
Upton Sinclair self-published a book in 1922 about education in America entitled Goose
Step . Predating the infamous era of the Nazi/Fascist Goose Stepping thugs then armies, I
read a preview and found an inexpensive copy. The subject as might be assumed was about the
use of school systems to indoctrinate young Americans at all educational levels and
nationwide to conform to the views of the rather few wealthy people who sat on interlocking
boards that controlled curriculum--sort of like the oligarchic control over media today.
And
as we've seen with the study of political-economy, the ability to erase rather recent
developments and personages and inserting false doctrines and their priests was done rather
easily and with little noted protest. And so it's gone on down through the decades until
today--just look at the War Criminals hired by Stanford and other universities for proof of
its being an ongoing problem.
That ideological blinders are omnipresent is easily proven by the various defense planning
documents referenced here over the last several years, all of which relate to the unilateral,
might makes right mindset that's one of the Evil Outlaw US Empire's longstanding traits that
predates the 20th Century. Too many will never learn humility and the reality accompanying it
until it's enforced. But there's a wiser group residing within the Empire, some of us present
at this bar ready to deal with the mess once humpty-dumpty falls from its perch upon which
it's currently tottering.
I just looked up Pamala Karlan. Apparently there is a story that when she was a baby she was
so ugly her parents had to put shutters on her pram.
She claims to have a partner? There's no accounting for taste I suppose but even for a U.S.
citizen there must be a red line. Somewhere? someone!
As to her intellectual prowess, in my limited understanding, intellect depends on the
platform it rests upon. Put a Jaguar engine into a Mobility scooter and see how well that
performs. Plenty of power but no means of utilising it.
Logical mechanisms such as law require as little emotion as possible. People like her just
bring the demise of a great nation into action sooner rather than later.
I suppose we should be grateful such fools consider Russia an adversary, it's makes
predicting what comes next much more clear and succinct action can be instigated.
Professor Pamela Karlan. Oh dear, how sad, never mind.
@29 russ...steven is making himself look like a fool regularly with that crap.. oh well..
@36 really? yes, indeed.. same faulty logic one would expect from a stanford law prof.. as
@22 piotr rightly notes - john yoo, the freak who could make torture in abu graib okay is
another one cut from the very same cloth..
i see one of Pamela Karlans comments got the ire of melania trump.. article
here..
"The Constitution states that there can be no titles of nobility. So while the president
can name his son Barron, he can't MAKE him a baron." Pamela S. Karlan
"A minor child deserves privacy and should be kept out of politics. Pamela Karlan, you
should be ashamed of your very angry and obviously biased public pandering, and using a child
to do it." -- Melania Trump (@FLOTUS) December 4, 2019
Karlan apologized for her remark as the hearing continued late Wednesday. "It was wrong of
me to do that,'' she said, according to the Associated Press. "I do regret it."
Universally accepted fact among the devoted is that "America is fighting Russia in the
Ukraine", though there are exactly zero confirmed reports of Russian troops in the region in
the past five years.
Many of the dumbest people I met were university students or graduates. They are thought to
absorb information as given, reproduce once, forget. They are not trained to question
anything, they follow a narrative. Some even denounced everything they ever learned and
became a follower of some religion, which is just another narrative.
I remember one student dorm in particular. Someone came in and decided it was too warm.
Put the central heating thermostat on "arctic winter", opened all doors and windows while it
was freezing outside. Then someone else came in and decided it was cold, closed all doors and
windows, put the thermostat on "incinerate". Repeat 24/7. The few times I tried to explain
how a thermostat works, I felt like being rubbed out of existence.
Only one guy understood that you set a room thermostat at a comfortable level and it would
regulate to desired temperature. He was an alcoholic, always stoned up to his eyeballs, not a
student except for the 3 or 4 studies he briefly tried and failed, and had given up on life
in general. He was also the only one there who questioned things.
I've seen Jonathan Turley on TV a number of times. He always seemed to be a person of
integrity. One needs to add courage to the list after testifying against impeachment on the
presented "evidence". I will be very surprised to see him on PBS or CBS ever again. Their
news readers are nearly giddy with excitement about impeachment. They never consider what
could happen if Trump is convicted but refuses to leave the White House. Then what?
---------
The food stamp program changes will kill people. As intended. One of the most affected groups
will be people who are too sick or otherwise too impaired to work, and maybe unable to even
leave their home, but still can't get social support. The system says there is no problem
because desperate people can get a free meal on Thanksgiving and Christmas. For the other 363
days a year, go find a dumpster to dive in.
Almost all Social Security Disability applicants are denied on the initial application.
There are no interim payments or support of any kind. Many give up, as intended. The rest
file appeals and wait years for a hearing before an "administrative law judge", who is not a
"real" judge, but just some lawyer with fancy title.
ALJ decisions tend to be rather arbitrary, so a favorable decision depends on which ALJ
hears a case. Sure there are more levels to appeal, and many more years of no social support,
if an applicant can find a way to survive for years on zero income, all the while being sick
with probably no medical care.
Social Security and disability lawyers have colluded to keep lawyers in business. Social
Security requires the use of a standard contract that gives the lawyer a fixed percentage of
the retroactive benefits. "Retroactive benefits" are the regular monthly benefits that accrue
from the officially determined "date of disability". So if it takes three years to get
benefits, the lawyer gets a nice chunk of change for a few hours work writing a brief and
showing up for the hearing.
The lawyer who signed my contract did nothing to help my case, and he even hired someone
else to write the brief and attend the hearing. One wonders if ALJs get some benefit from
lawyers to encourage long wait times, since long wait times increase lawyer profits at zero
cost.
The US system really is that cruel and barbaric. It would be kinder to take us out back
and shoot us, but that's too obvious. Much better to let people die slowly in the shadows so
the rest of society doesn't have to see us.
And I'm one of the fortunates who managed to hang on, despite bankruptcy, a civil suit,
the disability benefits process (only took six years), and state attempts to revoke Medicaid,
all at the same time. I know it sounds melodramatic, made up, or at least exaggerated. That's
understandable, because it seems that way to me, too!
About 1000 people a week kill themselves in the Land of the Free and Home of the Brave.
Does anyone wonder why, or even notice? The reason for many of these deaths is the lack of
social supports. In Uncle Sam Land, social apoptosis is a feature, not a bug.
Russ@29 forgot the comments where I've reviewed exactly how everybody rejected the Electoral
College, holding legitimacy came from winning the real election. Until Gore, every time the
EC violated the expectation that it was a technical way of recording the popular vote, there
was justified outrage. Bush's camp in 2000 had plans to contest an EC loss, until that shoe
turned out to be on the other foot. If Trump had won the popular vote and lost the Electoral
College, he would no more accept the results. Only liars take refuge in the simplistic
legalisms. And only Trump ass-lickers are so contemptible as to pretend Trump was the stable
genius who outplayed Clinton in the real game. Trump had no more idea how to win the EC
without winning the popular vote than anyone else. Further, by the witless pretended
principles of Russ' ilk, a presidential candidate who managed to win faithless electors who
ignored even their own states' pluralities* would still be the legitimate president! Every
single defender of Trump the one legitimate president is witless and worthless.
But very likely the real objection to the response is the insistence that Trump isn't
magically guaranteed re-election because...well, the real reason is slavish devotion to a God
named Trump. Even with the advantage of incumbency this time around, with even more support
from the wealthy (the people who have really turned away from the Democratic Party to favor
political gangsterism,) Trump is likely to lose the election again. If I were in Congress I
would offer a compromise, where the Republicans were assured Trump would not be investigated
any more, much less impeached, for abolition of the Electoral College. But I think Trump
would say no, because he knows deep down he's a loser.
*US politicians rarely win majorities of the electorate. Politicians of all stripes have
agreed that non-voting is always to be deemed as "Satisfied" with either choice instead of
"Alienated, with no choice." Decent people suspect otherwise.
@38 Karloff1 You can still Read the late John Taylor Gatto's The Underground History of
American Education online. He did a great job highlighting the history and purpose of copying
the Prussian style of education to replace the one room school houses and instill the
"martial spirit" in the American public. I have to hand it to the Oligarchs of old too. They
were very effective in their implementation.
Karlan type of academics is scattered all over the US universities. They are the
Academia´s gatekeepers, watching over & "spotting" of our future leaders. the
majority of them are claptraps selling jingoism to our youth in order to fulfill the
Judeo-Zionist agenda.
John Taylor Gatto, former New York City and New York State teacher of the year, stated:
The truth is that schools don't really teach anything except how to obey orders; and
John Holt concluded, School is a place where children learn to be stupid . . . Children
come to school curious; within a few years most of that curiosity is dead, or at least
silent.
I recall when I was a student at the University of Technology, Sydney, way back in the
Mesozoic era (1980s), the economics dept there had a lecturer there with a Harvard University
background so the staff made him head of the department. Just because he had a Harvard
University PhD. He was hardly a great administrator and the subjects he taught (compared with
other lecturers' subjects) were much less structured. Of course this meant the courses he
taught were easier on students' time and energy, though if you made use of the opportunity a
less structured course gave, you could turn in an end-of-term essay with impressive research
equivalent to the level required of a post-grad.
The university also had an exchange program with the University of Oregon, and most of the
Oregon students who came to UTS (usually in their second or third year) found the UTS
coursework very heavy-going and difficult.
In those days, UTS was only supposed to be a second-tier university in Australia.
This hearing is a theatre performance (kabuki -- hey, I learned a new
word, thanks) and PK's lines are an invocation of the official US myth
(the shinning city on the hill, the exceptional, indispensible
nation). No one in the room took that seriously or literally
(especially PK herself) and IMHO these national myths are not really
anything to freak out about - every nation has got its myth, and this is
an arrogant one, but compared to a few others it's almost likeable.
Of course it is at odds with historical records and the reality, but
all of them are, because, frankly, the truth, being descendants of
genocidal, religious nutters and slavers, is apparently very
motivational -- in the KSA...
The RU/UK lines are slightly more worrisome, but that's just a
matching background for her story - the fluff. She doesn't have to
belive it - it's just a performance, an elegant one but meaningless in the end.
A lot of the visitors comment about the deep state, most of the time
mentioning three letter agencies. Here comes a piece about a four
letters one, acting more or less in the plain sight:
OIRA, E.O.
12866
A group of virtually anonymous, unaccountable people wields quite
considerable power over both legislative and executive. A very
interesting construction...
Posted by: nietzsche1510 | Dec 5 2019 21:03 utc | 65
You hit the nail on the head. Karlan's loyalty is to her tribe, not this nation. That's
the crux of almost every major problem and injustice we're suffering from in this country,
from private prisons to Wall Street looting to endless foreign wars to censorship. There is
one group of people behind it with a very bad track record in terms of how they treat their
host nations. I wonder when we will finally get our act together and become the 110th country
to expel them.
And Goldhoarder, while you may not mind how your posts look, you've managed to damage this
comment thread and until b deletes your poorly structured post, we all suffer for it.
@ Posted by: Lochearn | Dec 5 2019 21:51 utc | 72 who seems to disagree with my concept
"dysfunctional on purpose"
and wants to use decadence instead and wrote:
"
Surely there must be some functionality
to be able to keep the masses dumbed down/brainwashed; it implies some sort of thought out
strategy.
How do we get the same narrative trotted out in media in exactly the same format from LA to
Warsaw,
from Lima to Bangalore if it's all so dysfunctional?
"
I posit that strategy of "dysfunctional on purpose" is control of the narrative and
language and it is purposefully used.
Consider the current seeming understanding of the terms, socialism and capitalism by many
of your fellow barflies.
Many of our fellow barflies would have one believe that China is socialist and the West is
capitalist...exclusively.
I and a few others keep trying to point out that both China and the West are, to varying
degrees mixed economies,
including aspects of both socialism and capitalism
Consider the implicit definition of government if you will. Is government, as compared to
dictatorships, not explicitly socialistic?
Are not the provision of water, sewage treatment and in many case electricity explicitly
socialistic by definition?
Is it not dumbing down and brainwashing that many don't understand reality but spout the
words and concepts they are fed
by those in control of the narrative and media pushing it?
And, not to make too fine a point of it, does all of the West not live under the
dictatorship of global private finance at this time?
So how much more would I get ignored if I beat that drum as part of my comments here?
IF Trump is removed from office then the war on Lebanon and Iran would be
accelerated. Israel will likely go for all the marbles and annex the last remaining
Palestinian holdings. Some here believe this couldn't happen but we all live in bizarro world
now.
Also, don't expect the Electoral College to oust Pence after the general election since
he's more pro-war; even the electors from Democrat controlled states would support him. IMHO,
the US would continue on; business as usual.
However, if the Democrats are crazy enough to follow through, the Republican dominated
Senate would reject it. Basically a repeat of what happened to Clinton. In the end, nothing
changed.
""It was wrong of me to do that,'' she said, according to the Associated Press. "I do
regret it.""
Ya but . . .as Tucker Carlson spot-on reacted, that comment sure looked as though it had
been rehearsed in front of the bathroom mirror. It was sooooo lame!!! I mean, it was obvious
(on the video) that Karlan really thought she was (wait for it! It's on the way) landing a
very clever bon mot!
It is a small thing, yet it speaks volumes about the spirit of this clearly clueless human
being (and others of her ilk), and her handlers, who must have cleared this little gotcha for
prime time. Been up on the podium too long, bleating to students who can't/don't bleat back!
No common sense.
Never a connection with a child, I'll bet, or she could never have said such a thing.
Painful to look at the pinched little face, decent hairdo missing in action, with the rant
coming out of the tight little mouth. A pathetic individual.
Ditto Noah Feldman from the Felix Frankfurter Dept of the Harvard Law School: Pure
bloviation with skin like a baby's bottom. Better coiffed, actually, than Karlan. Quels
types!!!
My comment @ 67 was actually just to highlight the (most undeserved) reputations that
places like Harvard and Stanford have among certain faculties in Australian universities. In
those days Stanford, Harvard and MIT were the holiest of holy shrines to do business studies
/ economics degrees. Years later I read a book by someone who actually did do a Stanford MBA
and the scales fell from my eyes then. The work was similar to what I'd done as an
undergraduate (albeit collapsed in the space of 18 months; I had the luxury of doing
part-time and then going full-time as a student).
I should have added that the Harvard PhD guy who taught me comparative economics was a
lousy teacher as well as a lousy administrator. I visited his office once and it looked as if
a tornado had just hit it. To be fair though, he really wasn't cut out to be a lecturer, he
was much better at research and analysis.
Before he became a lecturer, he worked at the CIA as a researcher. He knew next to no
German (he was of Polish background) so he was assigned to the section to read East German
newspapers. A fellow he knew who could speak and read German but no Bulgarian was assigned to
the ... Bulgarian section. That experience must account for my lecturer's sloppy personal
style.
But now that you draw my attention to the link, yes you are right that the study was done
at Princeton University.
Why do you assume a technical illiterate could read those instructions? I can't even begin
to do anything with that. It is never simple enough for those who have not been
initiated.
HTML works by magic. Your instructions do not convince me otherwise.
Better solution is to forgo links altogether if not competent. Or spell out the link and
force the really interested to transcribe. Of course no one is going to go to effort of
spelling out a link as long as that one above. Which would be a good thing.
She's been gone some time now (she died in April 2018) but Karen Dawisha , a so-called expert on
Russian and post-Soviet politics who obtained a higher degree at the London School of
Economics, was another deluded academic twat who wrote the book "Putin's Kleptocracy: Who
Owns Russia?"
The 1-star, 2-star and 3-star reviews on Amazon.com of the book refer to the tabloid
quality of many of the claims in the book, poor sourcing, cherry-picking of facts and the
author's inability to write at a level that would attract a readership outside the academic
community.
The least we can say for her is that she is no longer in a position to, erm, "advise" the
US and UK governments on issues and help formulate policy that would backfire on Washington
and London anyway.
As the great wise man, Frank Zappa proclaimed about the USA: "Politics/government is the entertainment division of the Military-Industrial
Government." American politics makes much greater sense (and is a hell of a lot more entertaining) if
you understand this truism.
US Presidential Debates and impeachment hearings are a swell occasion for drinking
games. Every time a political hack, media shill, or academic invokes some variant of American
Exceptionalism, take a shot of your favorite alcoholic beverage. You will be drunk within half an hour--guaranteed!
I'd say unbelievable but I know that is only wishful thinking on my part. What's scary is
that these people populate the "educational" system which explains why we're as screwed as we
are.
"... When Bush and his allies used this rhetoric, they were trying to spin a war of aggression as an act of self-defense. Now it is part of an even more ludicrous effort to make supplying weapons and other military assistance to Ukraine seem as if it is vitally important to the U.S. Simply put, this is propaganda, and it isn't even very good propaganda at that. ..."
"... Obviously, we aren't going to be fighting the Russians "here" no matter what happens in this conflict. These are the sorts of irrational claims that we get after decades of irresponsible threat inflation and mistakenly assuming that every conflict in the world is somehow our business. ..."
Here is a congealing conventional wisdom around sending military assistance to Ukraine that
is as absurd as can be, and it cropped up again this morning:
"Fight them over there so we don't have to fight them over here" was extremely stupid when
applied to terrorism. It is much more stupid when applied to Russia, and shows how
impoverished the FP thinking of even bright, engaged Americans is. My goodness.
It is discouraging to see that one of the dumbest talking points from the Bush era has
returned. "Fight them there" was always a silly justification for waging unnecessary wars in
other countries, and now it is being repurposed to justify the questionable policy of throwing
weapons at a conflict in Europe. When it was used in the context of Bush-era wars, it was an
attempt to make what were clearly wars of choice seem as though they were unavoidable. When a
government needs to defend a bad policy, it will usually claim that they have no choice but to
do what they are doing.
When Bush and his allies used this rhetoric, they were trying to spin a
war of aggression as an act of self-defense. Now it is part of an even more ludicrous effort to
make supplying weapons and other military assistance to Ukraine seem as if it is vitally
important to the U.S. Simply put, this is propaganda, and it isn't even very good propaganda at
that.
I have written many times why I think it is a mistake to arm Ukraine. It just encourages
escalation at worst and the prolongation of the conflict at best. Until recently, the arguments
in favor of doing this have not been very compelling, but at least they weren't quite so
mindless. Needless to say, Russia's conflict with Ukraine is a local one, and the U.S. doesn't
have much at stake in that conflict. Ukrainians aren't fighting Russia and its proxies on our
behalf or to prevent them from attacking someone else, but for the sake of their own country.
If Russia hawks insist on providing Ukraine with weapons and other assistance, they should at
least be able to acknowledge that this is a peripheral interest of the United States.
Exaggerating the importance of this policy to U.S. security just calls attention to how little
it matters to U.S. security.
Obviously, we aren't going to be fighting the Russians "here" no matter what happens in this
conflict. These are the sorts of irrational claims that we get after decades of irresponsible
threat inflation and mistakenly assuming that every conflict in the world is somehow our
business.
Never in the history of America, probably never in the history of any country, had there
been such open and direct control of governmental activities by the very rich. So long as a
handful of men in Wall Street control the credit and industrial processes of the country, they
will continue to control the press, the government, and, by deception, the people. They will
not only compel the public to work for them in peace, but to fight for them in war. -- John
Turner, 1922
Will UK voters really vote for the Republican party and our own Donald Trump?
There is so much about today's Conservative party that is very similar to the Republican
party in the US. To establish this, there is no better place to start than our future Prime
Minister for the next five years, if polls are to be believed.
Donald Trump and Boris Johnson are both inveterate liars. They lie when they have no need
to, just for effect. To take some recent examples. He told Andrew Marr that the Tories don't
do deals with other parties, when everyone can remember the Coalition government and the
Democratic Unionist Party. (Marr, as so often with interviewers, let that pass.) Johnson has
said that the extra money he has allowed for the health service is the biggest boost for a
generation. In fact it is smaller than the increase in spending from Labour from 2004
onwards. There are many like this. He has lied all his life, and been sacked from jobs twice
for doing so. He lies about lying! No UK politician in living memory has lied like this.
A consequence of that is you cannot trust a word he says. When he and his ministers say
that the NHS will not be part of any trade negotiations with the US, it means nothing. Brexit
puts the UK in a very weak position because the political costs of walking away, while the
costs for the US are zero. So of course the National Health Service and things that affect
the NHS will be part of any trade deal.
When he says that he will get a trade deal with the EU in just a year he is lying. It is
just not possible given the reasons the Conservatives want to leave the EU. So voters will
have to decide which lie he will choose: to break his undertaking not to extend the
transition period or to leave with no deal.
Like Trump, Johnson treats the economy, and the consequent wellbeing of everyone in it, as
a plaything for his own ends. With Trump this involves imposing tariffs because of his 15th
century understanding of economics. With Johnson he chose Brexit on a toss up about what
would advance his own ambitions. He then championed the hardest of Brexits because it
appealed to those who would vote him leader of his party. But there is a difference: Brexit
is far more harmful than anything Trump has managed.
Where Trump wants to increase coal production in the US, Johnson wants to stop any
increases in fuel duty. Johnson didn't attend a leaders debate on climate change.
Johnson, like Trump, is totally lacking in empathy for others, and is only interested in
himself. Johnson thought nothing of helping a friend beat up a journalist. His personal life
matters because it reflects the kind of person he is.
Like Trump, he has no time or respect for people who disagree with him. He shut down
parliament because it was getting in his way. In his manifesto he now threatens to curtail
the ability of the law to stop him doing what he and his party want. Johnson and the
Conservatives, like Trump and the Republicans, are a threat to democracy.
Like Trump, he and his party want a totally compliant media. They have put so much
pressure on the BBC that parts of it now do what they can to flatter Johnson and the
Conservative cause. They have threatened Channel4 because they put a block of ice in his
place when he failed to turn up to that leaders debate on climate change.
Like Trump, Johnson hates scrutiny. They both would much rather talk to an adoring party
faithful than take part in critical questioning. In this election, Johnson has avoided
questions from the press as much as he can, has avoided debates, and is avoiding an interview
with one of the best interviewers around.
One reason they both hate scrutiny is their inability to concentrate on the details, the
kind of details he got wrong such that Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe remains in jail. This is one
reason they sent Gove rather than Johnson to do the climate change debate. Johnson is as
mentally unsuitable to be Prime Minister as Trump is to be President.
Republicans in Congress with few exceptions defend Trump. Conservative MPs do the same for
Johnson without exception, now that the few Conservatives with some attachment to One Nation
Conservatism have been driven out of the party. The Republicans never pretend to govern for
the whole country, but just for what some of them call Real America. The Conservatives with
Brexit have adopted the same policy. A narrow victory for Leave, obtained in the most dubious
referendum ever, has become a mandate for the hardest of Brexits, and with a referendum on
the final deal ruled out.
Both parties adopt divide and rule tactics, yet play the nationalist card for all its
worth. To conceal and distract from far right economic policies designed to help the 1%
wealthiest in the population, by a party financed by the even wealthier, they focus on
attracting votes from the xenophobic and racist. The Conservatives have seen off the threat
from the Brexit party by adopting the Brexit party. It was probably the votes of ex-Brexit
party members that helped secure Johnson his leadership.
The Republicans play the race card and the Tories play the immigration card, something
they have done since the turn of this century. Once you do that, it is inevitable that you
end up with a party leaders who are themselves racist. Whatever you think about Jeremy
Corbyn, it is Johnson who has expressed racial slurs like calling Muslim women letterboxes,
talked about black people as 'piccaninnies' with 'watermelon smiles', Nigerians as money
obsessed. (Not to mention his homophobic and sexist comments, and his description of working
class men as drunk, criminal and feckless, and what he originally wrote about Hillsborough
victims and single mothers.)
In the US Trump gets away with his behaviour among many because of his money and fame, and
in the UK Johnson gets away with it among many because of his class and jokes. Both are where
they are because they were given huge head starts, Trump through inheritance and Johnson
through class, and have subsequently had careers which are dotted with failure. But once you
see beyond the fame and jokes, they are both authoritarians who see nothing wrong in stoking
fears about minorities to get the majority to vote for them, and in abusing the constitution
to get their way. You might say that it is Trump not Johnson who is threatened with
impeachment, but I have lost count of the legal cases about his actions that have been
conveniently postponed for this election.
What too many commentators on this election fail to see is the potential irreversibility
of this decline into right wing authoritarian rule. With most newspapers pushing out
propaganda for the Conservatives and the BBC successfully tamed, the Conservatives now have a
sufficient block to any real scrutiny of their policies or behaviour. In the next five years
their manifesto suggests they hope to tame anyone else who gets in their way.
The Conservatives have ensured that enough people in this country see and read want they
want them to see and read. Soon we will see attempts to introduce nationwide voter ID simply
because it helps the Conservatives. It is wishful thinking to say 'if only we had another
Labour leader they would be miles ahead' - just remember Ed Miliband who lost an election
because the media conveniently decided austerity was good economics. [1]
Next year the people of the United States will have their chance to get rid of the worst
US president in living memory. We have the chance to stop our own Trump, Boris Johnson,
before he gets five years in which he could do irreversible harm to our economy, our
democracy, our union and our civil society. The danger in both countries is that they keep
their Trump/Johnson, and get locked into permanent authoritarian right wing rule similar to
what we see in Hungary and Poland.
Alarmist? Johnson shut down parliament to get his way! When Brexit fails to be the
promised land Johnson has promised and when the UK's potential fails to be unleashed, who
will the Conservatives blame for their own failure? How much will they give away to get a US
trade deal? Johnson, like Trump, is in the words of a BBC interviewer in braver times a
'nasty piece of work', whose only interest is in helping himself. It says a lot about what
the UK has become that he looks like getting elected to be Prime Minister.
[1] Of course there were other reasons Miliband lost. He was unpopular, like every Labour
leader over the past 40 years has been unpopular except the one who did a deal with the Tory
press. And in the final days he was said to be in the pocket of Alex Salmond, even though the
Scottish National Party have said they will never put a Tory PM into power so their
bargaining strength is zero. The broadcast media went with the Tory's SNP story rather than
Labour highlighting the (we now know very real) threat to the NHS.
Calling Trump 'Putin's boy' brings up coup tactics used by Birchers when Truman fired
MacArthur!
Brookings tools (Mr. Vindman (I have silver leaves Vindman does not fit) , Fiona Hill,
Holmes eavesdropping....) pleading to Schiff that Trump ain't their kind of 'Murekan empire
builder.
Making up "charges", hearsay evidence, hiding DNC US #resistance corruption, despise the
constitution, hide behind it and patriotism...... define democracy and who is 'patriotic'.
All the trappings of Mao and Hitler before they took over.
"...Making up 'charges', hearsay evidence, hiding DNC US #resistance corruption, despise the
constitution, hide behind it and patriotism...... define democracy and who is 'patriotic'.
All the trappings of Mao and Hitler before they took over."
[Funny (NOT) that they say the same thing about Trump. Your adversaries and yourself would
all make better lampshades or bars of soap than you do citizens.
Democracy has never been more than an illusion, sometimes just an allusion, particularly
though in modern republican times. Leaders have all too rarely been patriotic aside from
maybe George Washington, who largely despised the representative government that he had made.
TJ did not exactly fall in love with the US Congress either. In these times the political
class and their pet sycophants are more idiotic than patriotic.]
One bone: the coup #resistance despises the "office of the president" more than they (swamp
trolls like Schiff's tool Vindman) disdain deplorables and the US constitution.
It is a constitutional thingie in my view going back to the Henry Luce media and
Birchers/McCarthy (the ragings over "who lost Chiang's fiefdom in China?") going after anyone
who they described wrongfully in most cases as "subversives".
I believe that Washington was like Ike as to taking up the executive office.
"Eric Foner" in an effort to unearth this buried history
Calls Congressional Reconstruction
A second founding of the Republic
Reconstruction like the New Deal
Ended by producing its opposite
[ Please be careful in spelling names, and set down where the specific reference is. This
will be important, if a reference is set down. Also, further explanation when possible would
be helpful. ]
I doubt that it was imagination that characterized Joe McCarthy's behavior, but with friend
kurt then imagination appears to be in full blossom. Joe McCarthy was just an opportunistic
scoundrel crassly impersonating a concerned patriot as a pure political convenience for
attacking the left in general with specific intentions on casting a specter of fear over all
New Deal loyalists. He weaponized socialist sympathizers against FDR's legacy. Remember that
it was socialist sentiments that gave rise to FDR and his New Deal. It seemed only fair to
Joe that those same sentiments be used to cover FDR in his grave.
"... Charges of anti-Semitism against Corbyn are highly suspect. From what I can see, they all stem from Corbyn's remarks supporting Palestinian rights in the face of the Israeli government's institutionalized racism and oppression of Palestinians. ..."
"... Yes. This is clearly one of the most dirty tricks played by UK Israel lobby, if we talk about Corbin. Baseless charge of anti-Semitism became a political smear, the way to destroy political opponent. ..."
Charges of anti-Semitism against Corbyn are highly suspect. From what I can see, they all
stem from Corbyn's remarks supporting Palestinian rights in the face of the Israeli
government's institutionalized racism and oppression of Palestinians.
If Bernie were not Jewish, there would have been an enormous smear campaign against him
for exactly the same reasons.
Charges of anti-Semitism against Corbyn are highly suspect. From what I can see, they
all stem from Corbyn's remarks supporting Palestinian rights in the face of the Israeli
government's institutionalized racism and oppression of Palestinians.
Yes. This is clearly one of the most dirty tricks played by UK Israel lobby, if we talk
about Corbin. Baseless charge of anti-Semitism became a political smear, the way to destroy
political opponent.
Much like charge of "Putin stooge" in the USA. And Russophobia is very similar to
Anti-Semitism, if you think about it. It serves as a kind of politically correct
anti-Semitism.
Stephen Cohen (one of the few pundits who actually knows something about Russia:)
"Almost daily for three years, Democrats and their media have told us very bad things
about Donald Trump's life, character, and presidency. Some of them are true. But in the
process, we have also learned some lamentable, even alarming, things about the Democratic
Party establishment, including self-professed liberals. Consider the following:
The Democratic establishment is deeply and widely imbued with rancid Russophobic
attitudes. Most telling was (and remains) a core "Russiagate" allegation that "Russia
attacked American democracy during the 2016 presidential election" on Trump's behalf -- an
"attack" so nefarious it has often been equated with Pearl Harbor. But there was no "attack"
in 2016, only, as I have previously explained, ritualistic "meddling" of the kind that both
Russia and America have undertaken in the other's elections for decades. Little can be more
phobic than the allegation or belief that one has been "attacked by a hostile" entity. And
yet this myth and its false narrative persist in the Democratic Party's discourse,
campaigning, and fund-raising.
We have also learned that the heads of America's intelligence agencies under President
Obama, especially John Brennan of the CIA and James Clapper, director of National
Intelligence, felt themselves entitled to try to undermine an American presidential candidacy
and subsequent presidency, that of Donald Trump. Early on, I termed this operation
"Intelgate," and it has since been well documented by other writers, including Lee Smith in
his new book. Intel officials did so in tacit alliance with certain leading, and equally
Russophobic, members of the Democratic Party, which had once opposed such transgressions.
This may be the most alarming revelation of the Trump years: Trump will leave power, but
these self-aggrandizing intelligence agencies will remain.
We also learned that, contrary to Democratic dogma, the mainstream "free press" cannot be
fully trusted to readily expose such abuses of power. Indeed, what the mainstream media --
leading national newspapers and two cable news networks, in particular -- chose to cover and
report, and chose not to cover and report, made the abuses and consequences of Russiagate
allegations possible. Even now, exceedingly influential publications such as The New York
Times seem eager to delegitimize the investigation by Attorney General William Barr and his
appointed special investigator John Durham into the origins of Russiagate. Barr's critics
accuse him of fabricating a "conspiracy theory" on behalf of Trump. But the real, or
grandest, conspiracy theory was the Russiagate allegation of "collusion" between Trump and
the Kremlin, an accusation that was -- or should have been -- discredited by the Robert
Mueller report.
And we have learned, or should have learned, that for all the talk by Democrats about
Trump as a danger to US national security, it is their Russiagate allegations that truly
endanger it. Consider two examples. Russia's new "hyper-sonic" missiles, which can elude US
missile-defense systems, make new nuclear arms negotiations with Moscow imperative and
urgent. If only for the sake of his legacy, Trump is likely to want to do so.But even if he
is able to, will Trump be entrusted enough to conduct negotiations as successfully as did his
predecessors in the White House, given the "Putin puppet" and "Kremlin stooge" accusations
still being directed at him?" https://www.thenation.com/article/inconvenient-truths-2/
The Russia thingie/falsehoods are part of corrupt demrats assault on the US constitution.
They are even now predicting their loss in 2020 due to "interference" and people wanting to
know how corrupt the DNC [front running] select has been!
Demrat allies in the shadow revolving door government of neocon humbug factories are
denouncing Trump for his ignoring their war mongering imperial objects.
[Adding assault to injury? The US Constitution was damning enough on its own. What are
they thinking inside the deep state apparatus? Don't they know that power and privilege is
reserved for holders of wealth by the US Constitution? Who do they think that they are really
working for?]
Friend ilsm may be less nuts than it appears, but friend ilsm is not less incomprehensible
than it appears. Would it be out of place to thank you for ilsm's sake?
Our two-party system was largely useless after FDR, but our two-party system has been
largely destructive since 1968. Let me know if anything really changes.
It isn't our two party system - it is one of the two parties contained within. The "both
sides" are bad is both demonstrably not accurate (with some exceptions that prove the rule)
and requires ignoring the shattered norms of the last 10 years that came from only one side.
Mitch McConnell is the most dangerous person in America. Trump and Pence are just useful
idiots. But Trump is also corrupt and dangerous because he doesn't believe he is constrained
by anything. And Mitch keeps proving him right.
The cause goes back as far as Truman with roots all the way back to our nation's founding on
the shoulders of slaves and a trail of tears, but "the shattered norms of the last 10 years
that came from only one side" were the inevitable effect of a failed political system. When
the US government has no obvious external enemies and imminent threats then it must
manufacture them from within to maintain a meaningful commanding presence. Otherwise the
government would be tasked with solving our nation's social and economic problems, which
would be both costly and far too complicated for simple self-absorbed minds.
I disagree. What the problem is now is that non-whites and women have taken some power - and
in fact may be able to displace the white christian patriarchy (actually, I think as long as
we can hang onto a free and fair democracy this is inevitable) and the white christian
patriarchy is trying to rule from the minority via fascism and authoritarianism.
I could almost understand this obsession had you never left Indiana, presumably Indianapolis
or somewhere similar, but unlikely Gary. There is greater diversity in the US than just what
you have seen. Every picture tells a story, and it is a different story for each.
Overall the common ground that moves everyone everywhere is money, which in some cases is
just a proxy for power and in other cases is a means to material satisfaction. If one already
has power, then purchase can be had in reverse, money for power instead of power for money.
This is a great explaination of why we need 1. independent regulatory agencies with power, 2.
white collar crime enforcement 3. rule of law and most of all 4. an independent judiciary
that is not overrun by ideologues and theocrats who ignore the first amendment wholesale.
It would have been nice if Obama has demonstrated his concern for the rule of law by frog
marching banksters to Rikers, closing Guantanamo, and prosecuting CIA torturers.
But kurt is only concerned with the rule of law when his party is not in power typical
partisan hack.
I have been to every state except Alaska and have lived in the North East, Southwest,
Midwest, South and California. My comment was about power structures - and the patriarchy of
white supremacy and christianity. I am well aware of the diversity. Heck - I even lived next
to the Great Checkerboard for 3 summers.
Pelosi interference in elections might cost democrats a victory. She enraged Trump base and
strengthened Trump, who before was floundering. Now election changed into "us vs them" question,
which is very unfavorable to neoliberal Dems. as neolibelism as ideology is dead. She also
brought back Trump some independents who othersie would stay home or vote for Dem candidate. No
action of House of Representatives can changes this. Bringing Vindman and Fiona Hill to testify
were huge blunders as they enhance the narrative that the Deep State, unaccountable Security
Establishment, controls the government, to which Trump represents very weak, but still a
challenge. As such they strengthened Trump
Essentially Dems had driven themselves into a trap. Moreover actions of the Senate can drag
democrats in dirt till the elections, diminishing their chances further and firther. Can you
image the effect if Schiff would be called testify under oath about his contacts with Ciaramella?
Or Biden questioning about his dirty dealing with both Yanukovich administration and Provisional
Government after the 2014 coup d'état (aka EuroMaydan, aka "the Revolution of dignity"
?
Notable quotes:
"... It is true that both Obama and Trump have been falsely accused of presiding over "withdrawal" and "retreat." In Obama's case, Republican hawks made this false claim so that they could attack a fantasy version of Obama's record instead of arguing against the real one. Members of the foreign policy establishment have been warning about Trump's supposed "isolationism" for four years and it still hasn't shown up. Both presidents have been criticized in such similar ways despite conducting significantly different foreign policies because these are the automatic, knee-jerk criticisms that pundits and analysts use to criticize a president. ..."
"... Because there is a strong bias in favor of "action" and "leadership," the only way most of these people know how to attack a president is to say that he is "failing" to "lead" and is guilty of "inaction." It doesn't matter if it makes sense or matches the facts. It is the safe, Blobby way to complain about a president's foreign policy without suggesting that you think there is something wrong with the underlying assumptions about the U.S. role in the world. Instead of challenging the presidents on their real records, it is easier to condemn non-existent "isolationism" and pretend that presidents that maintain or increase U.S. involvement overseas are reducing it. ..."
"... We should debate whether U.S. commitments overseas need to be reduced, but we really have to stop pretending that the U.S. has been reducing those commitments when it has actually been adding to them. ..."
Gideon Rachman tries to find
similarities between the foreign policies of Trump and Obama:
Both men would detest the thought. But, in crucial respects, the foreign policies of
Donald Trump and Barack Obama are looking strikingly similar.
The wildly different styles of the two presidents have disguised the underlying
continuities between their approaches to the world. But look at substance, rather than style,
and the similarities are impressive.
There is usually considerable continuity in U.S. foreign policy from one president to
another, but Rachman is making a stronger and somewhat different claim than that. He is arguing
that their foreign policy agendas are very much alike in ways that put both presidents at odds
with the foreign policy establishment, and he cites "disengagement from the Middle East" and a
"pivot to Asia" as two examples of these similarities. This seems superficially plausible, but
it is misleading. Despite talking a lot about disengagement, Obama and Trump chose to keep the
U.S. involved in several conflicts, and Trump actually escalated the wars he inherited from
Obama. To the extent that there is continuity between Obama and Trump, it has been that both of
them have acceded to the conventional wisdom of "the Blob" and refused to disentangle the U.S.
from Middle Eastern conflicts. Ongoing support for the war on Yemen is the ugliest and most
destructive example of this continuity.
In reality, neither Obama nor Trump "focused" on Asia, and Trump's foray into
pseudo-engagement with North Korea has little in common with Obama's would-be "pivot" or
"rebalance." U.S. participation in the Trans-Pacific Partnership was a major part of Obama's
policy in Asia. Trump pulled out of that agreement and waged destructive trade wars instead.
Once we get past generalizations and look at details, the two presidents are often
diametrically opposed to one another in practice. That is what one would expect when we
remember that Trump has made dismantling Obama's foreign policy achievements one of his main
priorities.
The significant differences between the two become much more apparent when we look at other
issues. On arms control and nonproliferation, the two could not be more different. Obama
negotiated a new arms reduction treaty with New START at the start of his presidency, and he
wrapped up a major nonproliferation agreement with Iran and the other members of the P5+1 in
2015. Trump reneged on the latter and seems determined to kill the former. Obama touted the
benefits of genuine diplomatic engagement, while Trump has made a point of reversing and
undoing most of the results of Obama's engagement with Cuba and Iran. Trump's overall hostility
to genuine diplomacy makes another one of Rachman claims quite baffling:
The result is that, after his warlike "fire and fury" phase, Mr Trump is now pursuing a
diplomacy-first strategy that is strongly reminiscent of Mr Obama.
Calling Trump's clumsy pattern of making threats and ultimatums a "diplomacy-first strategy"
is a mistake. This is akin to saying that he is adhering to foreign policy restraint because
the U.S. hasn't invaded any new countries on Trump's watch. It takes something true (Trump
hasn't started a new war yet) and misrepresents it as proof that the president is serious about
diplomacy and that he wants to reduce U.S. military engagement overseas. Trump enjoys the
spectacle of meeting with foreign leaders, but he isn't interested in doing the work or taking
the risks that successful diplomacy requires. He has shown repeatedly through his own behavior,
his policy preferences, and his proposed budgets that he has no use for diplomacy or diplomats,
and instead he expects to be able to bully or flatter adversaries into submission.
So Rachman is simply wrong he reaches this conclusion:
Mr Trump's reluctance to attack Iran was significant. It underlines the fact that his
tough-guy rhetoric disguises a strong preference for diplomacy over force.
Let's recall that the near-miss of starting a war with Iran came as a result of the downing
of an unmanned drone. The fact that the U.S. was seriously considering an attack on another
country over the loss of a drone is a worrisome sign that this administration is prepared to go
to war at the drop of a hat. Calling off such an insane attack was the right thing to do, but
there should never have been an attack to call off. That episode does not show a "strong
preference for diplomacy over force." If Trump had a strong preference for diplomacy over
force, his policy would not be one of relentless hostility towards Iran. Trump does not believe
in diplomatic compromise, but expects the other side to capitulate under pressure. That
actually makes conflict more likely and reduces the chances of meaningful negotiations.
It is true that both Obama and Trump have been falsely accused of presiding over
"withdrawal" and "retreat." In Obama's case, Republican hawks made this false claim so that
they could attack a fantasy version of Obama's record instead of arguing against the real one.
Members of the foreign policy establishment have been warning about Trump's supposed
"isolationism" for four years and it still hasn't shown up. Both presidents have been
criticized in such similar ways despite conducting significantly different foreign policies
because these are the automatic, knee-jerk criticisms that pundits and analysts use to
criticize a president.
Because there is a strong bias in favor of "action" and "leadership," the only way most
of these people know how to attack a president is to say that he is "failing" to "lead" and is
guilty of "inaction." It doesn't matter if it makes sense or matches the facts. It is the safe,
Blobby way to complain about a president's foreign policy without suggesting that you think
there is something wrong with the underlying assumptions about the U.S. role in the world.
Instead of challenging the presidents on their real records, it is easier to condemn
non-existent "isolationism" and pretend that presidents that maintain or increase U.S.
involvement overseas are reducing it.
Rachman ends his column with this assertion:
In their very different ways, both Mr Obama and Mr Trump have reduced America's global
commitments -- and adjusted the US to a more modest international role.
The problem here is that there has been no meaningful reduction in America's "global
commitments." Which commitments have been reduced or eliminated? It would be helpful if someone
could be specific about this. The U.S. has more security dependents today than it did when
Trump took office. NATO has been expanded to include two new countries in just the last three
years. U.S. troops are engaged in hostilities in just as many countries as they were when Trump
was elected. There are more troops deployed to the Middle East at the end of this year than
there were at the beginning, and that is a direct consequence of Trump's bankrupt Iran
policy.
We should debate whether U.S. commitments overseas need to be reduced, but we really
have to stop pretending that the U.S. has been reducing those commitments when it has actually
been adding to them.
Well, that was "A Warning", for sure! The anonymous author of this tell all, Trump outter,
goes on to proclaim "we must look deeper at the roots of the present disorder, which is why I
have written this book."
Based on his/hers opening salvo, I proceeded with an open mind and hoped a first hand
accounting of events would give me something more, something new, something unbiased...after
reading every single word, I'm not sure what to think any more.
"A Warning", by Anonymous, is a well written political volume that speaks clearly, and
authoritatively concerning the events that take place in the White House and with our
president, Donald J. Trump. They have avoided all the histrionics that fill the tomes offered
by most of the media members. There's plenty of passion and urgency behind what's being said
it's just not crazed which for me, lends it an air of veracity. I'm settled for 60% of the
discourse.
By chapter 5 my opinion of the author's recanting about the details of the POTUS's daily
events has begun to become suspect and I'm starting to get that feeling that something is
"off". I read on trying to keep my open mind, feelings at bay. It's not easy because the
stories being told are starting to take on a schoolyard tenor such as: listing snippets of
twitter tweets (only the "bad"parts), highlighting his inadequacies as a statesman/politician
(DJT never claimed to be more than a businessman). It's not wrong to mention these things,
it's the spirit in how it's done and the vacuum.
This is about the time that anonymous' logic becomes unfounded, for me; a Venn diagraming
dilemma of if-then, WHAT?
Positing that POTUS has such a weakness for strong men that he would make egregious
blunders of national security, as well as waffle on business and finance issues just doesn't
make sense. Sorry. If for no other reason than his sheer business acumen, I'm rejecting this
premise. Yes, he blunders on with lack of finesse in the deportment and statesman columns
but...nope.
"A Warning" continues on pretty much in this manner, more and more juvenile until we end
up firmly in the land of snark with chapter seven and "The Apologists" where the author in
his anonymity proclaims how we can identify the various flavors of apologists, all they think
and feel and all they need to do-to get , be and do better; presumptuous, IMHO. I'm sure
snark wasn't the intended goal but it's how I arrived, for me.
All things considered, the writing and publishing are excellent. For the first half of the
book, I was impressed with the author's ability to detail the story, taking the high road.
The road got lonely along the way and anonymous veered to the access road, never joining
yellow journalism highway to deliver "A Warning" 📚
A lot of reviewers are saying "It's nothing we didn't already know," and at first, that
was my conclusion as well: there's no bombshells here. But upon reflection, there actually is
something that we didn't know. It answered a mystery that has perplexed me for the better
part of 3 years, albeit I don't think the author knows it themselves. The million dollar
question: how could anyone with any morality, dignity, patriotism, or merely a sense of
self-preservation work in the Trump administration? 'A Warning' is not any kind of explosive
insider expose on the workings of the current White House. It's far too vague and
generalized, avoiding specifics on nearly every topic to the point of exasperation. What this
book is, is an attempt by the author to justify their bad, and it must be said, weak choices.
It's both a sub-conscious excuse and apology for what's clear the author has still not fully
come to terms with themselves. Between the lines, you can almost see him/her trying to work
it out, never quite grasping his/her own moral weakness in enabling a man they know to be
dangerously incompetent. Everybody, anybody, who has ever worked for somebody else has faced
this dilemma at some point in their career: when the boss is bad; you either stay for
self-serving reasons (like your finances) or you make a stand before the boss damages the
whole enterprise. The author is trying to make a stand, and failing at it. The alarming
aspect in this instance, is the stakes are so much higher, the highest, in fact. This is a
book written by somebody deep in denial, attempting to work it out but not quite willing,
yet, to look themselves directly in the mirror. Chapter 7, "Apologists," is the most telling.
The author is not just explaining the motivations of his/her co-participants, but is
unwittingly addressing their self as well. Perhaps the most important question here, is WHO
does Anonymous think they are "Warning?" at this point? For the Never-Trumpers this is all
old news. For the Ever-Trumpers, they're never going to read anything unapproved by their
Dear Leader. For those on the fence (if there are any) they're comatose and aren't capable of
comprehension. This wasn't written for anybody but the author's own conscience, and even at
that, it hedges, dances around itself, and avoids mirrors.
The book tells readers what is already known and readily apparent about Donald Trump: his
lack of empathy and curiousity, his volatility and impetuousness, his vengeful nature, the
long-lasting damage he is doing to the country's institutions and norms.
The book does not delve into much, if any, new territory that has not been previously
reported. Mentions of specific administration members and their individual actions are
sparing and go little beyond general notions that many intitially thought Trump would turn
his behavior around, are continually dumbfounded by him, try behind the scenes to keep the
wheels of government on the road and fail due to his ADD, vanity, and pettiness, and that all
know they are expendible to him.
The author devotes quite a bit of time discussing historical Greek democratic philosophy
and examples to compare to the current situation. While interesting, it only serves to put
Trump's personality and failings into yet another historical context which would surprise
nobody who has paid any attention to this administration, government, politics, law, or
history.
One of the largest problems with the author's arguments and solutions is that it
ultimately lack individual courage. The author takes time to discuss the passengers aboard
Flight 93 that fought back against the hijackers on 9/11. He/she even ends the book with the
famous last words of one of the passengers who fought back: " Let's roll." While we do not
know the identity of the author, his or her actions in publishing this book are not the same.
The actions of passengers deciding to fight back against hijackers was not anonymous. They
did not fail to show their faces. They met the danger head-on and with full knowledge of the
consequences of failure. They did not try to leave it to others. The author gives the coda
that the general public needs to wake up and do something, but then does not get in the aisle
with the rest of the passengers to fight back. While the author's explanation of remaining
anonymous is logical (that the message is more important than the messenger), the author
ultimately falls prey to one of the flaws of everyone else who serves Trump: that he/she is
not willing to speak truth directly to power regardless of the horrific consequences of not
doing so. Former Senator Jeff Flake and Representative Justin Amash have made many of the
same philosophical and logical points as the author regarding Trump's damaging actions
publicly, to their own political demise. The reader cannot help but wonder if the author is
still in the administration taking daily part in the passivity of those who know better but
will not say it to Trump's face.
The book offers much in the way of problems but little in the way of solutions. The author
suggests Americans be engaged in civics and politics at local and state levels. The author
suggests that we find the political middle and return to civility. The author does not posit
how the reader should, given such a dire warning, convince the many people to change course,
who: 1) see what Trump really is and actually like it, 2) have been completely fooled about
who Trump really is but will not respond to facts, logic, and/or self-interest, and 3) hold
power to do something about Trump (i.e.: 53 Republican Senators) but remain passive due to a
variety of personal, social, political, or economic factors.
Ultimately, the book puts forth an important analysis of Trump, the sycophants that
surround him, and the damage he continues to do. But it doesn't come with the gravity of
someone who is willing to risk his/her own skin in order to try to save the country that
he/she seems to hold so dear. The message would mean more if the author was willing to risk
all like the passengers of Flight 93.
A Warning by Anonymous who claims to be a senior Trump administration official comes on
the heal of previous tell all books such as Michael Wolff's Fire and Fury and Bob Woodward's
Fear. Unfortunately, if one read those books or has paid attention to the news there is
nothing really new in A Warning, which outlines the argument against the Trump
presidency.
Anonymous' argument is that Trump is unfit for the presidency and most be voted out of
office in the next election. The author's complaints are well known. The president knows
nothing about how the government, the economy or foreign policy works which leads to endless
problems as he makes pronouncements, Tweets, or asks his staff to do things that can't be
done, and sometimes might even be illegal. He contemplated telling the National Guard that
was deployed to the border with Mexico to shoot people trying to enter illegally as a
deterrent. Trump isn't inquisitive, doesn't read, and is an avid consumer of conspiracy
theories. Trump for example is so adverse to reading and has such a short attention span that
his staff has been reduced to briefing him with just one graphic or one slide that represents
one main issue, and to repeat that point over and over in the hopes that it will sink in with
the chief executive. Many times that fails. Instead, Trump's main sources of information are
cable news and a variety of conspiracy theories he hears or makes up himself. The president's
language is divisive. Trump revels in smack talking, and one of his favorite times is to go
to rallies where he can unleash a new line against his opponents. He enjoys being a rabble
rouser and inciting his followers. The president came into office with a diverse cabinet of
generals, politicians, and businessmen, but most of them have left. Not only that, but some
of them were willing to stand up to the president and tell him things he didn't want to hear.
The author considers himself part of this group. Now Trump is surrounded by people that only
tell him what he wants to hear. All together that has led the White House into one crisis
after another. Trump Tweets he wanted out of Syria without telling any of his staff
beforehand. The White House had outlined a $2 trillion infrastructure bill with the
Democrats, but then Trump got mad watching cable TV before a planned meeting and walked away
from the deal. The author has one great characterization at an end of a chapter where he says
the government is like one of Trump's companies. It's badly managed, a sociopath is at its
head, there is infighting, lawsuits, debt, shady deals, and everything is focused upon the
owner rather than the customers.
Anonymous does make one new argument you rarely hear, and that is Trump is not a
conservative. He starts off with the fact that Trump has changed his party affiliation
several times. He also has violated many of the hall marks of conservatism such as free
trade, fiscal responsibility, and cutting the size of the federal government. Trump for
example, has created a huge budget deficit with his tax cuts while continuing to increase
public spending.
Again, the problem with the book isn't the message, it's just that his has all been said
before. I was at least expecting some interesting stories to go along with this laundry list
of faults, but was disappointed by the lack of them. In the end, if this is the first book
you're thinking of reading about Trump you will get the main arguments against his
presidency. If you've been following Trump and his faults, then there's little to see
here.
"A Warning" confirms with additional anecdotes what we already know--useful if you don't
want to go all over the web for "all the news" about the White House's inner workings and the
President's behavior. It's well-written but would have been more compelling if the op-eds,
snark and name-calling had been edited out. Clearly, not written (but possibly edited) by
someone with a journalism background. The chapter on "character" was the most valuable as it
serves as a reminder of what we are looking for in a leader of our country, or any leader, in
fact--someone with integrity, honesty, service-minded, respectful of others, clear-thinking,
etc. It's clear from what's written here that if the President is re-elected, it says more
about our nation than it does about a 73-year-old man who clearly has attention deficit
disorder, possibly a reading disability, and absolutely no experience with statecraft. (Nor
does he care. I don't know what's worse.) I'm sure this book will become a part of our
interesting historical record!
I purchased this book (against my better judgment) because I thought maybe the insights in
this book would be enlightening. But I wish I hadn't spent the money. First, most of what was
related in these pages, other than the opinion parts, were already well known through media,
especially The New York Times and The Washington Post, as well as other other media
outlets.
Second, anyone paying attention would have anticipated Trump's actions. What made me want
to vomit after finishing this book was the realization that the Republican party doesn't care
and will continue to support Trump, regardless of the evidence that he is not fit to serve
and the author despite issuing this "warning", doesn't have the guts or the patriotism to
come out of the shadows.
I also take issue with the author's portrayal of "never Trumpers" as crazed haters. That's
the farthest from the truth. Many of us recognized early on that Trump is agrifter and a liar
and an unscrupulous opportunist. We are not crazed; we are sounding the alarm! We are
sensible patriots who love our country and our Constitution, who do not want to see our
discourse redown into tribal factions and, possibly, into civil war (hopefully, if such does
occur it will be cyber rather than armed conflict).
Every single day we are asked to ignore what our eyes can clearly see and what our ears
can clearly hear and our brains can easily deduce in order to allow Trump's reality to
proceed unquestioned. He doesn't understand he is not a monarch and his children are not
heirs to the throne. The lies are non-stop and getting worse and the people surrounding him,
including the author, are doing NOTHING to reign him in.
Last, we are in the midst of an impeachment inquiry. I've read every deposition that has
been released and watched every minute of direct testimony during the hearings. It is without
contest that Trump attempted to extort and bribe Ukraine in order to have the newly
inaugurated president of Ukraine announce an investigation of Joe and Hunter Biden's
involvement with Burisma. Sondland made it abundantly clear that no such actual investigation
would be necessary, just the announcement of an investigation to tarnish Joe Biden's
reputation and electoral standing. Trump's act was sleazy and wrong and illegal (check the
statute about soliciting foreign involvement in domestic elections).
I'm infuriated by the author's insinuation that we who oppose such actions by any
president are somehow deranged. The writer seems to think that impeachment and removal from
office for such dirty tricks involving a foreign government should be somehow, beyond the
pale for a civilized society. NO! Trump has obviously abused his office and put an ally in
danger by withholding funding HE WAS NOT AUTHORIZED TO WITHHOLD, according to our
Constitution. The author seems to think we should just cover our eyes to these transgressions
and wait until the next election to vote Trump out.
What about all of the damage Trump can perpetrate on our democracy and on our foreign
policy. He has done so much damage alrready, how can we allow him another year and keep our
fingers crossed that it doesn't get worse? Also, since Trump was obviously trying to
influence our upcoming elections with his dirty dealings, how can we allow him to remain in
office knowing that he will do anything to cheat to win?
We anti-Trumpers (not never-Trumpers) are constantly accused of trying to perpetuate a
"coup" by trying to remove Trump from office via either impeachment or through the 25th. That
would only be true if Hilllary Clinton was installed in Trump's place. But If Trump leaves
office before his first term is up, Mike Pence will assume the duties of president, not HRC.
-- certainly not a "coup" to anyone who has half a brain and understands how our system
works. It would still be a Republican administration and there would still be a Republican
Senate. Certainly NOT a coup, just a Constitutional succession of the next in.line.
With regard to restoring a "climate of truth", that is impossible so long as alternative
media (including FOX) exists. We Americans used to share a truth courtesy of the likes of
Walter Cronkite and Huntley and Brinkley and others. Now, there's "left" media and a "right"
media and they both exist in their own realities. We no longer share the same reality. If we
no.longer share the same immutable facts and truths, then how can we work out our differences
and our needs so we can all come to a consensus?
This book left me feeling angry and afraid for the future of my country, especially
because people like the "anomynous" author doesn't take his citizenship and patriotism a step
forward and tell what he knows on the record.
Don't waste your money. The author is a coward and should never profit from his lack of
courage.
This is not a very good book . I say this even though I was so looking forward to it ,
even buying it in pre-publication. On the publication date, I woke up early and started to
read it, only to find it repetitious and general in nature.
Trump is described as amoral, indifferent, inattentive and impulsive – repeatedly. But
with little background. The author is afraid of being identified as such so he deletes
specific information that may later identify him. High ranking officials are identified as
"high ranking officials". Important meetings are identified as "important meetings".
I did not read the original article that led to the book but It feels like the author took
the article and padded it into a book. Disappointing: a waste of time; a waste of money.
First off, I really enjoyed the author's listing of every sleazy thing Trump has ever done
(none of which are new or even greatly detailed), followed by snarky quips about Democrats
taking power with too much zeal to investigate. That's the kind of 'logic' we are looking at
here. The argument is that there is a lawless criminal in the White House but it's better to
whine about him in print than do anything about it.
Secondly, there is no new information in this book. There is nothing here I have not heard
before. There are no damning conversations or dramatic revelations. This book packages up the
reporting of every news agency to date and just vomits it out at us. We've heard this all
before. We had the author's level of indignation three years ago. We came to these
conclusions three years ago. It is insulting that the author presents this material with a
'ta-daaa!' It's a scam.
Thirdly, Trump does what he does because weasels like the author of this 'book' let him.
No matter what justifications this guy has for himself, he is still nothing but an enabler,
and is complicit in the actions of this Administration. The author spends most of the book
whining about the things Trump has done, takes no responsibility for anything, and does a LOT
of "CYA." (cover your butt).
"... The anonymous author of the piece revealed that "many of the senior officials in [Trump's] own administration are working diligently from within to frustrate parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations." The "adults in the room," he claimed, are leading a "two-track presidency." ..."
"... The author, "Anonymous," has been publicly identified as Guy Snodgrass, the US Navy commander who served as the communications secretary for the Department of Defense under Gen. James Mattis. Posting a report of his alleged authorship on Twitter, Snodgrass cryptically mused, "the swirl continues. ..."
"... If the allegation is true, it would have ominous implications. It would mean that the New York Times gave the military an opportunity to denounce a president as "amoral," "impetuous," "petty" and "ineffective," and to all but advocate his removal via unconstitutional means. ..."
"... We do not know whether Snodgrass is the author of A Warning , but the themes of the National Defense Strategy document are consistent with the emphasis of the book. ..."
"... A Warning makes one thing abundantly clear: the "Resistance" to Trump's policies within the state, which is the basis of the Democrats' opposition to him, centers on claims that Trump is insufficiently aggressive in defending and expanding America's imperial interests against Russia and China. ..."
"... A Warning argues that "America's dominant role on the international stage is at risk today," but Trump is "not positioning us to strengthen our empire of liberty." It continues: "Instead, he's left the empire's flank vulnerable to power-hungry competitors" with his "isolationist, what's-in-it-for-me attitude toward the world." ..."
"... Politically, the author appears to be an anti-Trump Republican. He urges his "fellow Republicans" to vote for a centrist Democrat if one is nominated--as long as the candidate is not a "socialist." ..."
"... The struggle to remove Trump and to hold him to account for his real crimes will have nothing to do with people such as "Anonymous," or the Democratic impeachment campaign that is totally aligned with his pro-war agenda. ..."
On September 5, 2018, the New York Times published an op-ed by a "senior official" in
the White House, entitled "I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration."
The anonymous author of the piece revealed that "many of the senior officials in [Trump's]
own administration are working diligently from within to frustrate parts of his agenda and his
worst inclinations." The "adults in the room," he claimed, are leading a "two-track
presidency."
In that op-ed, he revealed that "there were early whispers within the cabinet of invoking
the 25th Amendment, which would start a complex process for removing the president."
In other words, members of the executive branch had discussed a coup to remove a sitting
president, which they pulled back from only because "no one wanted" a "constitutional
crisis."
One year later, the same unnamed official, whose identity is known to the Times , has
published a book elaborating on themes elucidated in the editorial. A Warning is
currently #1 on the New York Times ' nonfiction bestseller list.
The author, "Anonymous," has been publicly identified as Guy Snodgrass, the US Navy
commander who served as the communications secretary for the Department of Defense under Gen.
James Mattis. Posting a report of his alleged authorship on Twitter, Snodgrass cryptically
mused, "the swirl continues."
If the allegation is true, it would have ominous implications. It would mean that the New
York Times gave the military an opportunity to denounce a president as "amoral,"
"impetuous," "petty" and "ineffective," and to all but advocate his removal via
unconstitutional means.
Notably, Snodgrass claims to be the author of perhaps the most important military document
produced under the Trump administration, the unclassified summary of the 2018 National Defense
Strategy, which declared that "Inter-state strategic competition, not terrorism, is now the
primary concern in US national security."
We do not know whether Snodgrass is the author of A Warning , but the themes of the
National Defense Strategy document are consistent with the emphasis of the book.
AWarning makes one thing abundantly clear: the "Resistance" to Trump's
policies within the state, which is the basis of the Democrats' opposition to him, centers on
claims that Trump is insufficiently aggressive in defending and expanding America's imperial
interests against Russia and China.
Cmdr. Guy M. Snodgrass is shown in this Defense
Department photograph in Japan in 2016. MATTHEW C. DUNCKER/U.S. NAVY
A Warning argues that "America's dominant role on the international stage is at risk
today," but Trump is "not positioning us to strengthen our empire of liberty." It continues:
"Instead, he's left the empire's flank vulnerable to power-hungry competitors" with his
"isolationist, what's-in-it-for-me attitude toward the world."
The allegations continue:
The president lacks a cogent agenda for dealing with these rivals because he doesn't
recognize them as long-term threats. He only sees near-term deals. "Russia is a foe in
certain respects. China is a foe economically But that doesn't mean they are bad," the
president said in one interview
What he doesn't see, especially with China, Russia, Iran and North Korea, is that their
governments are programmed to oppose us
The United States is taking its eye off the ball with China, and our national response has
been ad hoc and indecisive under President Trump. We have no serious plan to safeguard our
"empire of liberty" against China's rise. There is only the ever-changing negotiating
positions of a grifter in chief, which will not be enough to win what is fast becoming the
next Cold War. President Trump is myopically focused on trade with China, which is only part
of the picture
In a July 2018 interview, the president was asked to name America's biggest global
adversary. He didn't lead the list with China, which is stealing American innovation at a
scale never before seen in history, or Russia, which is working to tear our country
apart.
And on and on.
In response to such concerns, the writer makes clear that sections of this staff were
contemplating an extra-constitutional coup to replace Trump by declaring the American president
mad and therefore "unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office," in the words of
the 25th Amendment to the US Constitution, which outlines presidential succession in the case
of a presidential disability.
A back-of-the-envelope "whip count" was conducted of officials who were most concerned
about the deteriorating situation. Names of cabinet-level officials were placed on a mental
list. These were folks who, in the worst case scenario, would be amenable to huddling
discreetly in order to assess how bad the situation was getting I froze when I first heard
someone suggest that we might be getting into "Twenty-fifth territory."
Among the figures noted in the press as possibly amenable to such an endeavor were former
Defense Secretary Mattis, former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, former Chief of Staff Gen.
John Kelly and former National Security Adviser Gen. H.R. McMaster.
The writer describes what the removal of the president via the 25th Amendment would look
like:
Removal of the president by his own cabinet would be perceived as a coup. The end result
would be unrest in the United States the likes of which we haven't seen since maybe the Civil
War. Millions would not accept the outcome, perhaps including the president himself, and many
would take to the streets on both sides. Violence would be almost inevitable.
If Trump is "removed from office and he refuses to go He will not exit quietly -- or easily
It is why at many turns he suggests 'coups' are afoot and a 'civil war' is in the offing."
One does not know whether the author has really had a change of heart about overthrowing the
American government in a coup, or, if he is a military person, he fears a court martial for
treason. In any event, he concludes, "In a democracy we don't overthrow our leaders when
they're underperforming. That's for third-rate banana republics and police states."
How reassuring
After only three paragraphs weighing in on the merits of the impeachment proceeding, the
author concludes, "One option -- and one option only -- stands above the rest as the ultimate
way to hold Trump accountable" -- to unseat him in the 2020 election.
Politically, the author appears to be an anti-Trump Republican. He urges his "fellow
Republicans" to vote for a centrist Democrat if one is nominated--as long as the candidate is
not a "socialist."
Two "warnings" are to be drawn from this book:
First is the enormous crisis of democracy in the United States, which has degenerated to the
point where cabinet officials, most of whom are or were military officers, abetted by the
media, discuss a coup as a legitimate means to resolve policy differences. The president,
meanwhile, repeatedly threatens to say in office past the two-term constitutional limit, and
effectively asserts unlimited and dictatorial executive powers.
While the threat posed by Trump to democratic rights is immense, no one who opposes war and
attacks on democratic rights can have anything to do with the aims and intentions of the author
of this book. Behind his pilfered, cobbled-together quotations -- he calls Plato an American
historian -- and his ridiculous attempt at gravitas, he is a bloodthirsty advocate of
imperialist war.
The Democrats, who have upheld this man and people like him as the "adults in the room" and
the antipode to Trump, are infected with the same poison.
The struggle to remove Trump and to hold him to account for his real crimes will have
nothing to do with people such as "Anonymous," or the Democratic impeachment campaign that is
totally aligned with his pro-war agenda.
'A Warning: A manifesto of the pro-war "Resistance" in the American state ' Andre Damon,
4 December
2019 , wsws.org
On September 5, 2018 , the New York Times published an op-ed by a "senior official" in the
White House, entitled "I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration."
The anonymous author of the piece revealed that "many of the senior officials in [Trump's]
own administration are working diligently from within to frustrate parts of his agenda and
his worst inclinations." The "adults in the room," he claimed, are leading a "two-track
presidency."
In that op-ed, he revealed that "there were early whispers within the cabinet of invoking
the 25th Amendment, which would start a complex process for removing the president."
..........................................
One year later , the same unnamed official, whose identity is known to the Times, has
published a book elaborating on themes elucidated in the editorial. A Warning is
currently #1 on the New York Times ' nonfiction bestseller list.
The author, "Anonymous," has been publicly identified as Guy Snodgrass, the US Navy
commander who served as the communications secretary for the Department of Defense under Gen.
James Mattis. Posting a report of his alleged authorship on Twitter, Snodgrass cryptically
mused, "the swirl continues."
If the allegation is true, it would have ominous implications. It would mean that the New
York Times gave the military an opportunity to denounce a president as "amoral," "impetuous,"
"petty" and "ineffective," and to all but advocate his removal via unconstitutional
means.
Notably, Snodgrass claims to be the author of perhaps the most important military document
produced under the Trump administration, the unclassified summary of the 2018 National
Defense Strategy, which declared that "Inter-state strategic competition, not terrorism, is
now the primary concern in US national security."
We do not know whether Snodgrass is the author of A Warning, but the themes of the
National Defense Strategy document are consistent with the emphasis of the book.
A Warning makes one thing abundantly clear: the "Resistance" to Trump's policies within the
state, which is the basis of the Democrats' opposition to him, centers on claims that Trump
is insufficiently aggressive in defending and expanding America's imperial interests against
Russia and China."
.......................................................
The Democrats, who have upheld this man and people like him as the "adults in the room" and
the antipode to Trump, are infected with the same poison.
The struggle to remove Trump and to hold him to account for his real crimes will have nothing
to do with people such as "Anonymous," or the Democratic impeachment campaign that is totally
aligned with his pro-war agenda."
and another 20 inches of text. you'll also remember that the NYT published a whispered rumor
last year that 'military insiders' were saying privately that DT really meant to leave NATO,
which was nonsense. that rumor led to the infamous 'defense of NATO act', which every senator
vote for, and almost all of the house (3 didn't vote, conveniently.)
This is from 2016 election cycle but still relevant. Money quote: "Trump_vs_deep_state will outlive Trump and the people's
faith in economists will only be restored after the next financial collapse if all of the financial sector is liquidated, all
the universities and think tanks go bankrupt and the know-nothing free traders disappear from our public discourse. "
Despicable neoliberal MSM do not like to discuss real issue that facing people in 220 elections. They like to discuss personalities.
Propagandists of Vichy left like Madcow spend hours discussing Ukrainegate instead of real issues facing the nation.
Notable quotes:
"... Donald Trump has promised to make deregulation one of the focal points of his presidency. If Trump is elected, the trend toward rising market concentration and all of the problems that come with it are likely to continue. ..."
"... If Clinton is elected, it's unlikely that her administration would be active enough in antitrust enforcement for my taste. But at least she acknowledges that something needs to be done about this growing problem, and any movement toward more aggressive enforcement of antitrust regulation would be more than welcome. ..."
"... Once again we have a stark 'choice' in this election...one party who won't enforce existing laws and another who will just get rid of them. Like flipping a coin: heads, the predator class wins; tails, we lose. ..."
"... "Vote third party to register your disgust..." and waste the opportunity, at least in a few states, to affect the national outcome (in many states the outcome is not in doubt, so, thanks to our stupid electoral college system, millions of voters could equally well stay home, vote third party, or write in their dog). ..."
"... But then it dawned on me: antitrust enforcement is largely up to the president and his picked advisers. If Democrats really think it is so damned important, why has Clinton's old boss Barack Obama done so very, very little with it? ..."
"... Josh Mason thinks a Clinton administration may push on corporate short-termism if not on anti-trust. We'll see, but seeing as the Obama administration didn't do much I wouldn't be surprised if Hillary doesn't either. ..."
"... They ignored the housing bubble, don't seem to understand the connection between manufacturing and wealth (close your eyes and imagine your life with no manufactured goods, because they are all imported and your economy only produces a few low value-added raw materials such as timber or exotic animals) then you will see that allowing the US to deindustrialize was a really, world-historic mistake. ..."
"... Trump_vs_deep_state will outlive Trump and the people's faith in economists will only be restored after the next financial collapse if all of the financial sector is liquidated, all the universities and think tanks go bankrupt and the know-nothing free traders disappear from our public discourse. ..."
Donald Trump has promised to make deregulation one of the focal points of his presidency. If Trump is elected, the trend
toward rising market concentration and all of the problems that come with it are likely to continue.
We'll hear the usual arguments about ineffective government and the magic of markets to justify ignoring the problem.
If Clinton is elected, it's unlikely that her administration would be active enough in antitrust enforcement for my taste.
But at least she acknowledges that something needs to be done about this growing problem, and any movement toward more aggressive
enforcement of antitrust regulation would be more than welcome.
"We'll hear the usual arguments about ineffective government" which has been amply demonstrated during the last 7 years by negligible
enforcement of anti-trust laws.
Once again we have a stark 'choice' in this election...one party who won't enforce existing laws and another who will just
get rid of them. Like flipping a coin: heads, the predator class wins; tails, we lose.
Vote third party to register your disgust and to open the process to people who don't just represent the predator class.
"Vote third party to register your disgust..." and waste the opportunity, at least in a few states, to affect the national
outcome (in many states the outcome is not in doubt, so, thanks to our stupid electoral college system, millions of voters could
equally well stay home, vote third party, or write in their dog).
Thomas Frank: "I was pleased to learn, for example, that this year's Democratic platform includes strong language on antitrust
enforcement, and that Hillary Clinton has hinted she intends to take the matter up as president. Hooray! Taking on too-powerful
corporations would be healthy, I thought when I first learned that, and also enormously popular. But then it dawned on me:
antitrust enforcement is largely up to the president and his picked advisers. If Democrats really think it is so damned important,
why has Clinton's old boss Barack Obama done so very, very little with it?"
http://www.commondreams.org/views/2016/10/07/some-clintons-pledges-sound-great-until-you-remember-whos-president
One party who won't enforce existing laws and another who will just get rid of them...a distinction without a difference.
Who do you prefer to have guarding the chicken house...a fox or a coyote? Sane people would say, 'neither.'
Yes and Clinton supporters attacked Sanders over this during the primaries.
Josh Mason thinks a Clinton administration may push on corporate short-termism if not on anti-trust. We'll see, but seeing
as the Obama administration didn't do much I wouldn't be surprised if Hillary doesn't either.
"At Vox,* Rachelle Sampson has a piece on corporate short-termism. Supports my sense that this is an area where there may be
space to move left in a Clinton administration."
Economists have said for thirty years that free trade will benefit the US. Increasingly the country looks like a poor non-industrialized
third world country. Why should anyone trust US economists?
They ignored the housing bubble, don't seem to understand the connection between manufacturing and wealth (close your eyes
and imagine your life with no manufactured goods, because they are all imported and your economy only produces a few low value-added
raw materials such as timber or exotic animals) then you will see that allowing the US to deindustrialize was a really, world-historic
mistake.
Trust in experts is what has transformed the US from a world leader in 1969 with the moon landing to a country with no high
speed rail, no modern infrastructure, incapable of producing a computer or ipad or ship.
Trump_vs_deep_state will outlive Trump and the people's faith in economists will only be restored after the next financial
collapse if all of the financial sector is liquidated, all the universities and think tanks go bankrupt and the know-nothing free
traders disappear from our public discourse.
The blogger Eliot Higgins made waves early in the decade by covering the war in Syria from a
laptop in his apartment in Leicester, England, while caring for his infant daughter. In 2014,
he founded Bellingcat, an open-source news outlet that has grown to include roughly a dozen
staff members, with an office in The Hague. Mr. Higgins attributed his skill not to any special
knowledge of international conflicts or digital data, but to the hours he had spent playing
video games , which, he said, gave him the idea that any mystery can be cracked.
...
Bellingcat journalists have spread the word about their techniques in seminars attended by
journalists and law-enforcement officials. Along with grants from groups like the Open Society
Foundations, founded by George Soros, the seminars are a significant source of revenue for
Bellingcat, a nonprofit organization.
Exciting new product intro from Max Blumenthal: Maddow's Tears™, a new formula that
produces soothing, cooling moisture in politically convenient circumstances.
"I am at a loss to see what motive the Kremlin might have to commit murders on foreign
soil during the buildup, let alone the enactment, of a sporting event that is of mammoth
chauvinist significance to Russia."
"The most obvious motive for these attacks would surely be from someone out to embarrass
the Russian president, Vladimir Putin – someone from his enemies, rather than from his
friends or employees. But once again we have no clue."
The blogger Eliot Higgins made waves early in the decade by covering the war in Syria from a
laptop in his apartment in Leicester, England, while caring for his infant daughter. In 2014,
he founded Bellingcat, an open-source news outlet that has grown to include roughly a dozen
staff members, with an office in The Hague. Mr. Higgins attributed his skill not to any special
knowledge of international conflicts or digital data, but to the hours he had spent playing
video games , which, he said, gave him the idea that any mystery can be cracked.
...
Bellingcat journalists have spread the word about their techniques in seminars attended by
journalists and law-enforcement officials. Along with grants from groups like the Open Society
Foundations, founded by George Soros, the seminars are a significant source of revenue for
Bellingcat, a nonprofit organization.
Stephen Cohen (one of the few pundits who actually knows something about Russia:)
"Almost daily for three years, Democrats and their media have told us very bad things
about Donald Trump's life, character, and presidency. Some of them are true. But in the
process, we have also learned some lamentable, even alarming, things about the Democratic
Party establishment, including self-professed liberals. Consider the following:
The Democratic establishment is deeply and widely imbued with rancid Russophobic
attitudes. Most telling was (and remains) a core "Russiagate" allegation that "Russia
attacked American democracy during the 2016 presidential election" on Trump's behalf -- an
"attack" so nefarious it has often been equated with Pearl Harbor. But there was no "attack"
in 2016, only, as I have previously explained, ritualistic "meddling" of the kind that both
Russia and America have undertaken in the other's elections for decades. Little can be more
phobic than the allegation or belief that one has been "attacked by a hostile" entity. And
yet this myth and its false narrative persist in the Democratic Party's discourse,
campaigning, and fund-raising.
We have also learned that the heads of America's intelligence agencies under President
Obama, especially John Brennan of the CIA and James Clapper, director of National
Intelligence, felt themselves entitled to try to undermine an American presidential candidacy
and subsequent presidency, that of Donald Trump. Early on, I termed this operation
"Intelgate," and it has since been well documented by other writers, including Lee Smith in
his new book. Intel officials did so in tacit alliance with certain leading, and equally
Russophobic, members of the Democratic Party, which had once opposed such transgressions.
This may be the most alarming revelation of the Trump years: Trump will leave power, but
these self-aggrandizing intelligence agencies will remain.
We also learned that, contrary to Democratic dogma, the mainstream "free press" cannot be
fully trusted to readily expose such abuses of power. Indeed, what the mainstream media --
leading national newspapers and two cable news networks, in particular -- chose to cover and
report, and chose not to cover and report, made the abuses and consequences of Russiagate
allegations possible. Even now, exceedingly influential publications such as The New York
Times seem eager to delegitimize the investigation by Attorney General William Barr and his
appointed special investigator John Durham into the origins of Russiagate. Barr's critics
accuse him of fabricating a "conspiracy theory" on behalf of Trump. But the real, or
grandest, conspiracy theory was the Russiagate allegation of "collusion" between Trump and
the Kremlin, an accusation that was -- or should have been -- discredited by the Robert
Mueller report.
And we have learned, or should have learned, that for all the talk by Democrats about
Trump as a danger to US national security, it is their Russiagate allegations that truly
endanger it. Consider two examples. Russia's new "hyper-sonic" missiles, which can elude US
missile-defense systems, make new nuclear arms negotiations with Moscow imperative and
urgent. If only for the sake of his legacy, Trump is likely to want to do so. But even if he
is able to, will Trump be entrusted enough to conduct negotiations as successfully as did his
predecessors in the White House, given the "Putin puppet" and "Kremlin stooge" accusations
still being directed at him?"
The Russia thingie/falsehoods are part of corrupt demrats assault on the US constitution.
They are even now predicting their loss in 2020 due to "interference" and people wanting to
know how corrupt the DNC [front running] select has been!
Demrat allies in the shadow revolving door government of neocon humbug factories are
denouncing Trump for his ignoring their war mongering imperial objects.
[Adding assault to injury? The US Constitution was damning enough on its own. What are
they thinking inside the deep state apparatus? Don't they know that power and privilege is
reserved for holders of wealth by the US Constitution? Who do they think that they are really
working for?]
Friend ilsm may be less nuts than it appears, but friend ilsm is not less incomprehensible
than it appears. Would it be out of place to thank you for ilsm's sake?
Our two-party system was largely useless after FDR, but our two-party system has been
largely destructive since 1968. Let me know if anything really changes.
not that I would be ordinarily predisposed to defend her. The problem with delusions is that
they can easily become self-perpetuating, even easier with the right hand on the tiller.
I have just come back from the land beyond the mountain
This is not a story I was told
When all the people are made out of wood
They build their houses of bones
Sail away, Oh sail away
The edge of the world is near
Sail away, Oh sail away from here
I have just come back from the land beyond the mountain
All the cigarettes are hand rolled
Nothing is bought and nobody is sold
And everything's made of gold
I have just come back from the land beyond the mountain
There a man with wounds I did see
Said: I do not want to escape from reality
I want reality to escape from me
Fiona Hill books does not worth even 5% of any book written by Professor Stephen Cohen. In other words they are pathetic junk.
Of the class that in UK(ream MI6) writes Luke Harding. may be they both have the same handlers. She is just a regular MIC
prostitute, like all neocons.
And Putin is a KGB thug is a terrible. simplistic argument. Pure propaganda. This isn't about either Putin (or Trump)
really, its about the long history of US-Russia relations and all that has occurred.
Notable quotes:
"... As I was reading, I felt that there was a strong bias against Putin and Russia by the authors ..."
"... "The onus will now be on the West to shore up its own home defenses, reduce the economic and political vulnerabilities, and create its own contingency plans if it wants to counter Vladimir Putin's new twenty-first century warfare." ..."
"... For anyone who is a Russian scholar, this is proof that the authors get Russia very wrong. They reveal themselves to be in the neocon camp of hawks who want to reactivate a new Cold War very badly. ..."
"... I am reminded of some books in the 1950s that were secretly backed by the CIA, and this book certainly feels like it has the same flavor. Hill and Gaddy totally ignore Russian scholars like Stephen Cohen in his analysis of the Russian situation, which is totally the opposite of mainstream thinking unfortunately these days. ..."
"... The neocon vision of what's wrong with Russia is so biased that it also ignores the writings of such foreign policy figures as Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew Briezinski, former US Secretarys of State, both of whom are much more closer in their visions of Russia to Cohen than they are to Hill and Gaddy. ..."
"... Yet the authors see only politics in Mr. Putin's tactics, and play down the West's own role in making him an antagonist. They take him to task for painting the Ukrainian insurrection of 2014 as a "fascist coup," and for denouncing Ukrainian nationalist partisan Stepan Bandera as a Nazi collaborator. Bandera and Hitler may have never met, but this was not necessary for the arming and use of Bandera's OUN to commit atrocities and war crimes on then-Soviet territory. Contrary to the authors' whitewash, Bandera's later persecution by Nazis consisted of special treatment in German camps, held on ice for postwar use. Of relevance is that the "regime change" of 2014 was largely the work of west Ukrainians - the backbone of the OUN movement and the very folks who today make Bandera a national hero. When he paints west Ukraine as again collaborating with Russia's enemy, Putin stands on solid historical ground. The West continues destabilizing actions all the while it blames Putin for the same. ..."
"... I rather think Putin grasps these "motives, mentality, and values" very well, as they seem inseparable from European economic hegemony and NATO expansion. His managed democracy comes off looking rather clean cut compared to US politics following the Citizens United ruling, where American oligarch David Koch engineered a fundamental change for the worse via the Supreme Court. In foreign policy, Putin has indeed been repeatedly "rebuffed" by the West for proposing anything that makes Russia a leading equal in its sphere. This shows not limited contacts with the West, but rather ongoing and painful ones. ..."
"... A poorly written smear that would make McCarthy blush. Recycled fear for the gullible citizens so desperately uneducated and unread. The Military Industrial Corporatists will pass it around as Bible ..."
Hill and Gaddy are pretty good scholars. They do a good job of providing a psychological
profile of Vladimir Putin and the way he operates in the Kremlin. But they have their
limitations. One of the more annoying aspects of the book is that the authors return again
and again both to Putin's graduate thesis on an American management book and his 1999
manifesto on his millennial goals for Russia. A better set of writers would have covered both
subjects in one section and then moved on. But Hill and Gaddy sprinkle references to these
documents about five times each throughout the book, which leads me to suspect that they are
padding what would otherwise be a much shorter book.
As I was reading, I felt that there was a strong bias against Putin and Russia by the
authors, but I couldn't quite pinpoint their slant until the last sentence, which is a doozy:
"The onus will now be on the West to shore up its own home defenses, reduce the economic
and political vulnerabilities, and create its own contingency plans if it wants to counter
Vladimir Putin's new twenty-first century warfare."
For anyone who is a Russian scholar, this is proof that the authors get Russia very wrong.
They reveal themselves to be in the neocon camp of hawks who want to reactivate a new Cold
War very badly. And in their analysis, they ignore the fact that Russia as a country is in
fact deeply defensive country far more concerned with its internal boundaries and control
than some aggressive Soviet power after World War II.
To be sure, Mr. Putin is no choir boy.
Interestingly enough, the authors do not fully investigate the potentially criminal behavior
that Putin performed with Russia's war on Chechnya. Hill and Gaddy could have strengthened
their case if they had included some deeper analysis of Putin's behavior on this troublesome
part of the Russian Empire. But instead they were intent on plowing their own rut, which
while somewhat interesting -- ultimately becomes a little bit too pedantic.
I am reminded of some books in the 1950s that were secretly backed by the CIA, and this
book certainly feels like it has the same flavor. Hill and Gaddy totally ignore Russian
scholars like Stephen Cohen in his analysis of the Russian situation, which is totally the
opposite of mainstream thinking unfortunately these days.
But in ignoring what Cohen has to
say, the predominant attitude of the American and European foreign policy establishment is in
lock step with Hill and Gaddy, which is why the book has been so heavily publicized.
The neocon vision of what's wrong with Russia is so biased that it also ignores the
writings of such foreign policy figures as Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew Briezinski, former US
Secretarys of State, both of whom are much more closer in their visions of Russia to Cohen
than they are to Hill and Gaddy.
Yes, this book is all about sticking to the Rooskies, unfortunately. And the hidden
motivator are all of the defense contracts that NATO can suck up, as well as all the bankers'
books in reaming the Ukrainian economy as badly as they've reamed Greece. But the authors
never tell you that this is their motivation, until the last paragraph.
Unprofessional writing, a profound disappointment. Reads like a high school essay - one
that repeats a single thought over and over, even re-using the same phrases - than a proper
biography. The content feels like it has been skimmed only from public sources. There is no
sign of insight among the authors, nor even a curiosity as to what makes this important
figure unique. One wonders where the interests lie in those who wrote laudative reviews. I am
sad to say that this book is nothing more than a polemic, and moreover one that is repetitive
and boring.
- look at Vladimir Putin and Mr. Putin's Russia. The book is based on intensive research
and interviews with Putin, but I find it skewed by the Western biases it brings to the table.
Yet it's not a demonization, as is so much of the Western Putin literature. It gives him
credit for standing by the multi-racial and cultural realities of post-Soviet Russia.
Compared to the real hardcore nationalists, Putin in fact has come across as a domestic
liberal. The rising tide of Russian arch-nationalism, however, has taken its toll. Authors
Hill and Gaddy correctly assess Putin's playing the nationalist card as a political manouver
to keep one step ahead of his opponents - most of whom are not pro-Western liberal dissidents
by any means. Courting the Russian Orthodox Church in recent years was one such strategy.
Yet the authors see only politics in Mr. Putin's tactics, and play down the West's own
role in making him an antagonist. They take him to task for painting the Ukrainian
insurrection of 2014 as a "fascist coup," and for denouncing Ukrainian nationalist partisan
Stepan Bandera as a Nazi collaborator. Bandera and Hitler may have never met, but this was
not necessary for the arming and use of Bandera's OUN to commit atrocities and war crimes on
then-Soviet territory. Contrary to the authors' whitewash, Bandera's later persecution by
Nazis consisted of special treatment in German camps, held on ice for postwar use. Of
relevance is that the "regime change" of 2014 was largely the work of west Ukrainians - the
backbone of the OUN movement and the very folks who today make Bandera a national hero. When
he paints west Ukraine as again collaborating with Russia's enemy, Putin stands on solid
historical ground. The West continues destabilizing actions all the while it blames Putin for
the same.
The authors also lecture us on Putin's inability to grasp "Western values" as the root of
his refusal to take the West on its own terms; on "how little Putin understands about us -
our motives, our mentality, and, also, our values" (p.385) I rather think Putin grasps these
"motives, mentality, and values" very well, as they seem inseparable from European economic
hegemony and NATO expansion. His managed democracy comes off looking rather clean cut
compared to US politics following the Citizens United ruling, where American oligarch David
Koch engineered a fundamental change for the worse via the Supreme Court. In foreign policy,
Putin has indeed been repeatedly "rebuffed" by the West for proposing anything that makes
Russia a leading equal in its sphere. This shows not limited contacts with the West, but
rather ongoing and painful ones.
The hypocrisy is breathtaking but tragically familiar. It's rather the West's (and the
authors') failure to grasp regional history, and Putin's actions based on it, that fuel the
"misunderstanding." Ukraine, for instance, had strong nationalist animosity toward the
"Moskali" long before the 1930s holodomor/famine. Crimea was not transferred to Ukraine out
of any degree of recognition of said suffering, as the authors allege on p. 367; but as part
of a geo-political maneuver to Russify east Ukraine with more "loyal" ethnic Russians,
exactly as in the Baltic states.
His aggressive handling of terrorists within Chechnya is "decried" by the West, the
authors note. Yet within a decade the US and its NATO partners would be pursuing an
aggressive course in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Yemen that make Russia look the provincial
amateur. Putin in fact is *not* trying to recreate the USSR, as so often charged by Western
pundits with an axe to grind, nor even the old Russian empire. His strategic thinking is
dominated by security rationales. A wider invasive course would only threaten Russian
security. At all times he sees his actions as defensive responses. If this is self-serving,
it only puts him in good company: recall the American angst over the "dissident" Dixie
Chicks; the livid anger over Edward Snowden.
In truth, Vladimir Putin is the Russian Ronald Reagan, bidding his citizens to "stand
tall" against enemies from without and within working against the homeland. His stance on
Ukraine, arming its "contras" in a border war against an enemy "satellite regime", may make
him look the intolerant war jingo; but thus did Ronald Reagan appear outside the US.
Ironically it's Reagan partisans who don't grasp
A poorly written smear that would make McCarthy blush. Recycled fear for the gullible
citizens so desperately uneducated and unread. The Military Industrial Corporatists will pass
it around as Bible
The book gives advices what the US officials should say about Russia to advocate their
(US's) dishonest and aggressive policy. See examples of such policy in Afghanistan, Iraq,
Syria and Lybia.
"... The worst of these massacres happened in Ghouta in August 2013 when 2000 civilian hostages (rebel claim) were gassed to death by rebels and their pre-White Helmets "civil defence". The OPCW was there to cover up the crime and to fabricate evidence to assign blame to Syria. ..."
Manufacturing a pretext for the U.S.
missile strike on Syria in April 2018 is nowhere near the biggest of OPCW's crimes. The
OPCW is an accessory , both before and after the fact to the crime of
mass murder.
It should now be clear to everyone that Syrian "rebels" gassed thousands of hostages in
cellars, most likely with chlorine gas, and then paraded the victims in White Helmets
snuff videos. OPCW conspired in this crime in both encouraging the terrorists to more murder
and by protecting them afterward by assigning blame to Assad and the Syrian government.
The worst of these massacres happened in Ghouta in August
2013 when 2000 civilian hostages (rebel claim) were gassed to death by rebels and their
pre-White Helmets "civil defence". The OPCW was there to cover up the crime and to fabricate
evidence to assign blame to Syria.
We have been documenting
these crimes and hoaxes at A Closer Look On Syria from December 2012. OPCW was used
from the beginning to manufacture consent for war. See for example:
Of course, the OPCW is already there! I highly suggest Caitlin Johnstone's article b
linked be read, which can be
found here .
We should expand on Petri's number of people involved in this crime to include all the
paid disinformation artists noted in Caitlin's essay at minimum. What becomes very clear in
all this is the total collusion with OPCW upper level management--those whom the
whistleblowers and their allies within OPCW petitioned--in these crimes as Petri contends.
Until they are visibly replaced, nothing issued by OPCW has any credence.
OPCW has shown to be a pure political entity, used at will by few regimes in the UN to
promote their agenda, b has done a tremendous job to humanity to bring the truth to the
public worldwide. Syrians have paid the price for UN leaders support to global terrorism for
too long. It must stop now.
A mainstream media and academic expert this week issued a rare admission : that pretty much
everything the establishment has fed the public on Syria is false or distorted; but it remains
that after tragic eight-year long war is slowly coming to a close, new indisputable facts are
coming to light. " Truth did not matter at all," he admits after years of providing commentary
for mainstream publications.
In a lengthy thread on Twitter, counter-terrorism author and
assistant professor of political science and public policy at Northeastern University Max
Abrahms exposed how he saw the 'narrative managers' at work from the inside of the
establishment think tank world and media. As his own research came to uncover and document the
truth of what was happening in Syria, "the media would excise me and the research from their
stories" he revealed. His work in the early years of the war
appeared in The New York Times and other major outlets, however, he was increasingly
censored and pushed out of a number of platforms for speaking inconvenient truths.
Below is his full commentary , written in the
wake of the new OPCW leaks which the mainstream is still trying hard to ignore.
Every day there are new revelations that the "rebels" were in cahoots not only with Al Qaeda
but also ISIS and official reports of Assad using chemical weapons were doctored according to
the reports' own authors.
Were you ever skeptical that Assad was authorizing chemical weapons attacks when they were
the one thing that put his winning the war at risk?
Authors of the official reports linking him to chemical weapons usage have now supplied
evidence that their own reports were doctored .
When I was interviewed about Syria's military using chemical weapons, I expressed skepticism
as Assad bucked the political science literature by engaging in the one conduct that would
reverse his hard-fought victory.
But the media would excise me and the research from their stories.
The #1 story should be that authors of the official reports linking Assad to WMD usage have
supplied evidence that they were doctored in defiance of the scientific evidence and exploited
to push regime change in Damascus, which risked creating the Islamic State war with Russia.
Until you get how you were duped into supporting regime change in Syria you'll get duped
into supporting other costly ventures to the local population , international stability and our
counterterrorism efforts.
The mainstream narrative of the Syria conflict has imploded.
Every day there are new revelations that the "rebels" were in cahoots not only with Al
Qaeda but also ISIS & official reports of Assad using chemical weapons were doctored
according to the reports' own authors.
The story of doctored WMD reports and Al Qaeda-led rebels must be told.
What happened in
Syria is the American political establishment decided that the ends justify the means. Truth
did not matter at all. We were told Assad must go based on WMD reports their own authors say
were doctored to support "rebels" who were Al-Qaeda-led and helping ISIS.
Watch this interview and determine yourself whether you find trustworthy the official report
linking Assad to the chlorine attack which was sold in the
sold in the media as casus belli
for toppling Assad and has now been exposed by the fact-finders themselves as doctored.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/SMSyLg1E49M
If you think politicians, think tanks and media got a lot wrong in the Iraq war wait until
you hear about the Syria war.
If you cheered for another regime change war then it doesn't matter whether the casus belli
lacks evidence. The media is unmoved that multiple scientists who made up the official
investigation doubt that the Syrian military was behind the attacks or the use of chlorine at
all.
This is how they roll out new deep state Mockingbird Media clones.
The older completely discredited clones are replaced with new ones who pretend to have
been right there with us all along.
Look at Obama. One solitary vote among so many regarding Iraq and he gained the anti-war
vote and a Nobel Prize. Then he went about personally making the kill orders by drone,
allowing the wicked witch to overthrow Syria and sodomize their leader with a bayonet. Then
on to Syria, various African countries, etc.
I'm sure this *** has written lots on returning the Golan Heights to Syria, returning the
West Bank to the Palestinians, renouncing foreign aid to Israel, etc. Right? Not.
The mendacity of 'the system' can be infuriating when you and your work is targeted.
What I see today is not any different in any way from what my elders told me about the
Third Reich and what I heard from East Berlin and the Soviet Union under Stalin and
successors. I grew up in West Berlin and we did meet people, heard things.
Heil Hegemon - and Heil to all its lackeys! Heil!!!
Ron Paul was trying to tell everyone right from the git-go that the Syrian gas attacks
were a false flag, and the evidence and logic supported a false flag operation. Even more
annoying, the 100 or so Tomahawk missiles cost US taxpayers about a $million each. But maybe
the missiles were getting old, and the military needed some practice shots.
Steele is credible. I believe that the OPCW doctored the reports upon instructions. The
narrative management on Syria has totally destroyed the trust in the western governments and
has demonstrated that the US, the UK and the EU are not behaving any better than China or
Russia.
Someone needs to make an argument as to why we should believe any of these guys. I mean,
after you have been proven liars so many times, should we not throw the rotten tomatoes?
America will tell any lie, commit any atrocity, on behalf of its military industrial
complex, bankster, Zionist elite, while manufacturing consent for its evil by its corrupt
complicit Mainstream Media. Is that even news?
It doesn't matter Max, we already knew all this news about Syria was fake. When they were
trying to fulfill an agenda, which was to overthrow Syria for the sake of Israel, since Syria
is part of this fictitious promised land, their lies help support this agenda. Just like the
Zionist attacks on the world trade center and the pentagon with remote controlled airplanes
and pre-planted controlled demolition explosives. They were followed up with a bunch of lies
to the entire world telling us it was a handful of Muslims who have never flown jumbo jets
before. And they performed top gun maneuvers with these jumbo jets and breached perhaps the
greatest air defense system in the world with only primitive box cutters. I totally believe
the US and Israel covertly created ISIS. And the support funds came from the Zionist
controlled printing presses, and from the pentagon budget that was unaccounted for. But
unfortunately, most Americans still drink the Kool-aid. They continue to believe their lies.
And because of this, they will keep doing what they are doing.
Here's Jeffrey Epstein's BFF and Mossad handler Ehud Barak pinning the israeli 9/11 false
flag on the Osama bin Laden donkey within hours of the attack.
A chief architect of 9-11, Ehud Barak, interviewed on BBC an hour after attacks
That was a sloppy *** false flag too. The "agencies" are getting lazy because they own the
press and Americans are incredibly dumbed down on foreign policy. The got away with 2 planes
collapsing 3 WTC buildings so maybe they figure why bother even making it look
convincing.
Since it follows a pattern, it's not even just Syria. The US regime is a state sponsor of
terrorism, by their own definition, and go into countries and create chaos and revolution,
attempting regime change, creating a crisis they then use as "justification" for escalating
into open conflict against the victim. Accuse the victim nation of crimes, blanketing the
world in propaganda to delude the masses. Try to focus their attention on a single bad guy in
their narrative, a "brutal dictator" or whatnot. Attack by proxy and directly, sanction,
bomb, etc until the victim is left unable to produce for their own needs, making them
dependent, and then going in to apply the chains of debt to the victim to pay the empire to
rebuild what they destroyed. Everyone gets rich, increased resources from theft, testing of
weapons systems, dominion over the new vassal nation, etc, while the victim is
subjugated.
The "memo" Wesley Clark refers to came directly from zionist war criminal Paul Wolfowitz
who was whispering in the ear of Donald Rumsfeld the whole way.
Wolfowitz is perhaps better known not for writing the Wolfowitz Doctrine but for
co-authoring Rebuilding America's Defenses, a report released in September 2000 by Zionist
neocon think tank PNAC (The Project for a New American Century). The PNAC membership list is
a "Who's Who" of American Zionist New World Order conspirators – in addition to
Wolfowitz the list includes **** Cheney Donald Rumsfeld, Robert Kagan, I. Lewis (Scooter)
Libby, Richard Perle, Doug Feith and many others.
"The mainstream narrative of the Syria conflict has imploded."
"Every day there are new revelations that the "rebels" were in cahoots not only with Al
Qaeda but also ISIS & official reports of Assad using chemical weapons were doctored
according to the reports' own authors."
Bless you for trying, but you would do less damage by quietly withdrawing. You just look
silly. USA spent 4+ years fighting ISIS, during which time ISIS spread across the middle
East. Russia stepped in with 40 aircraft, funded through their normal air force training
program, and destroyed ISIS in 9 months.
Either Russians are superhuman warriors, or the west was lying when it claimed to be
fighting ISIS. Which is it?
"... A few days after my article was printed, my nephew, who helped me edit the piece and works for corporate America, told me he's afraid to open certain websites on his work computer -- off the clock -- because he could be flagged as "suspicious" and questioned. McCarthy was limited to phone taps and other dirty tricks. ..."
The National Lawyers Guild, born in resistance to political witch-hunts, seems to have
neutered itself in the face of the new wave of manufactured hysteria.
"The Guild has 'a sort of hip neoliberal mindset: anti-Russia, anti-China, anti-Syria
etc.'"
I recently returned from a delegation to Russia, and now smell McCarthyism more clearly.
The delegation was organized by the Center for
Citizen Initiatives , an invaluable 32-year old citizen diplomacy organization, but CCI
said it would not to print the article I wrote about the delegation because it needed to say
something critical of the Soviet period, not just praise. The article is titled Russian Pride
and US Exceptionalism. A political decision was made that, in order to have access to some
highly placed people, CCI needs to be "balanced" about the Soviet period and acknowledge the
gulags. That could be a good strategic decision, but I was surprised. [Two weeks later, after
the article was published widely with a very positive response, CCI did publish it.]
A few days after my article was printed, my nephew, who helped me edit the piece and works
for corporate America, told me he's afraid to open certain websites on his work computer -- off
the clock -- because he could be flagged as "suspicious" and questioned. McCarthy was limited
to phone taps and other dirty tricks.
Edward Snowden is in Russia because he told us the state
has access to everything. My nephew is pragmatic, not paranoid. When I told members of the
delegation about him, several said they weren't surprised about his concern, and one called it
tragic. I told them they were all extremely cougeous to go to Russia at this frenzied point in
history. One elder, seasoned member, said McCarthyism is certainly here and she's very careful.
I am not very careful because I hold on to the belief that since I'm not doing anything
illegal, they can't get me. History proves otherwise.
"Edward Snowden is in Russia because he told us the state has access to
everything."
I have been a proud member of the National Lawyers Guild for 35 years, but since Trump's
election I have repeatedly challenged how it has become a partisan organization for the
Democrats. The Guild's Democratic Party loyalty, exposed in a Black Agenda
Report article , is reflected in its
resistance to support for Julian Assange . A recent article by Craig Murray, former British
ambassador to Uzbekistan, exposes how Assange
is being tortured before our eyes, with no pretense of the rule of law. Assange had support
when he went after Bush's war, but is now publicly brutalized because he went after the
Democrats , so is apparently a Russian asset responsible for Trump, as Tulsi Gabbard and Jill
Stein are also "Russian assets." MSNBC claimed that because Gabbard didn't deny she was a
Russian asset, she clearly is. Does that sound like McCarthy?
After I publicly exposed the partisan liberalism of the Guild in the Black Agenda
Report , I was both chastised for airing dirty laundry and told I raised valid, important
concerns about the political compass of the 82-year old organization. There was talk of the
need for elders to provide political context, to help the current ahistorical political
climate, which believes it's all Trump's fault. However, a third annual convention has occurred
since Trump's election and none have addressed the new McCarthyism, or Assange, who is the
victim of one of the most egregious cases of legal abuse in history and should be of grave
concern to a legal organization such as the Guild.
"Assange had support when he went after Bush's war, but is now publicly brutalized
because he went after the Democrats."
Recently, a former Guild president posted an article to the International Committee from
Forbes with the ominous title:
Russia Attempts To Take Over Venezuelan Oil, Creating A Challenge For The U.S. I responded
to the committee and asked if I was missing something, but why can't Russia and Venezuela
trade? Within minutes, a Guild member since 1974 asked to be taken off the list because of what
he saw as "foolish ultra leftism (an infantile disorder to coin a phrase)" that was a "stupid
discussion." Another said I was "lacking in ethical grounding."
One who thought my question was valid, said "I personally support any sovereign nation's
ability to make alliances. Russia is not my enemy. Russia was invited into Venezuela just as it
was invited into Syria. When I started law school in 2002, at the ripe old age of 52, the only
thing I cared about was joining my school's Guild chapter. I have found a good deal of
disappointment in the Guild ever since." Others added that the Guild has "a sort of hip
neoliberal mindset: anti-Russia, anti-China, anti-Syria etc.," and that "If it's ultra-left to
call out the Democrats, I wear the badge ultra-leftist as a badge of honor." One member
cautioned, "as Riva said recently, being aware of source is very important." But the discussion
has been shut down, with no plans to discuss the implications of the Guild helping to fan the
flames of anti-Russia sentiment, let alone the need to quell them.
"If it's ultra-left to call out the Democrats, I wear the badge ultra-leftist as a
badge of honor."
A long-time Guild comrade who is now all about anybody but Trump, and knows my nephew, said
his story is just anecdotal. "I don't see an across-the-board 'new McCarthyism.' To rise to
that level, what I'd need to see is a major concerted effort by the government to destroy the
lives, careers and reputations of people accused of being insufficiently hostile to Russia."
Are we waiting for the first obvious suicide of this McCarthy period?
An article about the recent
conviction of seven Catholic peace activists for a Plowshares action generated this
comment: "The greatest risk of nuclear war today comes from Trump Derangement Syndrome. The
fact that the leadership of the Democratic Party would use Russia-gate, a pile of absurd lies,
for political advantage, at the risk of initiating a nuclear war with Russia is beyond
despicable."
The fear of exposing the depth of the rot is pervasive, counter-revolutionary and
jeopardizes life itself. That Trump is the only anti-endless war candidate, other than Tulsi
Gabbard, exposes the Democrats as the war party they are. Many hope that Trump is the wrecking
ball that will knock it all down. Hopefully before somebody pushes the button.
Riva Enteen edited the book Follow the Money, interviews by
Flashpoints producer Dennis J. Bernstein. She can be reached at
[email protected] .
Apologies if someone already posted this but on Nov 16 Joe Rogan and Matt Taibbi discussed
the current state of the MSM in a wide-ranging conversation that I think most Barflies will
find very interesting:
“When the government's boot is on your throat, whether it is a left boot or a right
boot is of no consequence.” - Gary Lloyd. We Americans are willingly blind to truth.
It'll be the death of us.
Matt Taibbi: "they’re trying to sound like legitimate news, but they’re also
completely selling out at the same time " perfectly sums up news outlets today, on both
sides.
When I was a kid, i heard, on live radio broadcast, Oswald shot to death in Dallas Police
Station - still think that's a more blatant murder of Witness.
"We don't have any institutional respect anymore".. When even the broadsheets knowingly
sow falsehoods or subtly mislead the public on a regular basis, you'd better be prepared for
the harvest. You never win back respect from someone who's sussed out your con.
"... Sanders went on to argue that "pressure has got to be put on media" to cover policy issues like income inequality and poverty more heavily, instead of devoting attention to sensational campaign moments and the state of political horse races. ..."
"... 'You know what, forget the political gossip. Politics is not a soap opera. Talk about the real damn issues facing this country.'" ..."
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has not been shy about
his disdain for the mainstream media. But the
Democratic presidential hopeful
has rarely, if ever, articulated it as bluntly as he did in an interview that aired on
MSNBC 's "
The Rachel Maddow Show " on Friday night. Sanders
called out the network for its corporate character in a novel exchange with host
Rachel Maddow .
"The American people are sick and tired of establishment politics and economics, and by the way, a little bit tired of corporate
media as well," Sanders told Maddow in an interview taped in Burlington, Vermont.
Maddow pressed Sanders for specifics on how he would change the media if he were president. "What's the solution to corporate
media?" she asked.
"We have got to think of ways the Democratic party, for a start, starts funding the equivalent of Fox television," Sanders
answered. Of course, MSNBC is a corporate media outlet that is widely seen as a Democratic version of Fox News because of the perceived
sympathies of many of its political talk shows.
Sanders went on to argue that "pressure has got to be put on media" to cover policy issues like income inequality and poverty
more heavily, instead of devoting attention to sensational campaign moments and the state of political horse races.
He then claimed that bringing that pressure to bear would be difficult, since corporate ownership makes it harder for news outlets
to cover issues in a way that conflicts with the interests of top executives. "MSNBC is owned by who?" Sanders asked. "Comcast, our
overlords," Maddow responded with a chuckle.
"All right, Comcast is not one of the most popular corporations in America, right?" Sanders said. "And I think the American people
are going to have to say to NBC and ABC and CBS and CNN, 'You know what, forget the political gossip. Politics is not a soap
opera. Talk about the real damn issues facing this country.'"
"... The IRA also bought advertisement to attract more people to its accounts. But the amount it spent was tiny. The final price tag for the 2016 election was $6.5 billion for the presidential and congressional elections combined. The IRA spend a total of $100,000 to promote its own accounts. But only some $45,000 of that was spend before the election. It was 0.000007 cent for every election dollar that was spend during that time. It is statistically impossible that the mostly apolitical IRA spending had any effect on the election. ..."
"... U.S. intelligence services tried to explain that away by claiming that the Russians wanted to "sow discord". There is zero evidence that this was really the case. It is simply an explanation that was made up because they failed to find a better one. ..."
"... FOX News is not pro-Trump because it wants to sow discord. Nor is CNN anti-Trump to serve that purpose. Both are in the business of attracting viewers to - in the end - sell advertisements. People flock to the TV station that fit to the opinion they already have. Both stations promote by and large similar products. ..."
"... The virtual IRA persona worked in a similar ways. They took political positions to attract people who already had a similar one. One persona did that for the left, another one for the right. Neither changed the opinions of their followers. ..."
"... of course it didn't matter, as when you have ignored 9-11 and everything else, you may as well buy into Russia influencing the election with some commercial enterprise like the ira... it's shocking actually, to see how many otherwise intelligent people can be bamboozled so easily via the cia with swamp media ..."
"... Every single mainstream media organization refers to Russian interference in the 2016 election as though it were a proven fact. When the government makes an unfounded assertion, it is reported one time as "government sources say" but every time thereafter it is referenced as fact. If you find an alternative source that contradicts the government lie and try to post it to social media, you will be tagged with a "Warning" that claims your story is "fake news". Orwellian doesn't begin to describe it. ..."
"... Once MSM propagandists broadcast 'Russian meddling' hundreds of thousands of times, their audience becomes impervious to the simplest of logic and barest of facts. ..."
"... The US media is still trying to breathe some life into a case which should have been declared dead on arrival, beltway politics must carry on its partisan shows, with the corporate media trying to whip audiences into a frenzy, over the most ridiculous plots in order to ignore that the body politic is corrupt beyond redemption and is as dead as US democracy. ..."
"... RT may have the insidious effect of injecting bits of reality-oriented counter news to the ubiquitous lame bought propaganda from American mass media. ..."
"... "One hates to be in the position of rooting for the Russians, but the Mueller Switch Project is so distasteful that it is hard not to enjoy the prospect of Mueller having to deal with an actual adversary in court. Meanwhile, this is probably the first time in the history of litigation that a plaintiff (here, prosecutor) has told a court that it may not have obtained good service of process on a defendant that has appeared to defend the case on the merits. Mueller to Court: We didn't really mean it, Judge! We had no idea they might actually show up!" ..."
"... The real sin of Russia, is not, of course, the nonsense election meddling, but its resistance against the US culture of open free markets, its threat of closing its markets to the US, its national doctrine against the Full Spectrum Dominance and US-led neo-liberal order. Its sin is economic nationalism. ..."
New Study: "Russian Trolls" Did Not "Sow Discord" - They Influenced No One
The U.S. has claimed that the Russia government tried to influence the 2016 election through
Facebook and Twitter.
Russia supposedly did this through people who worked the Internet Research Agency
(IRA) in St. Petersburg (Leningrad), Russia. The IRA people ran virtual persona on U.S. social
networks which pretended to have certain political opinions. It also spent on advertising
supposedly to influence the election. U.S. intelligence claimed that the purpose of the alleged
Russian influence campaign was to "sow discord" within the United States.
But the IRA had nothing to do with the Russian government. It had no interests in politics.
And a new study confirms that the idea that it was "sowing discord" is blatant nonsense.
The Mueller investigation indicted 13 Russian persons and three Russian legal entities over
the alleged influence campaign. But, as we wrote at that time, there was
more to it than the media reported:
The published
indictment gives support to our
long held believe that there was no "Russian influence" campaign during the U.S.
election. What is described and denounced as such was instead a commercial marketing scheme
which ran click-bait websites to generate advertisement revenue and created online crowds
around virtual persona to promote whatever its commercial customers wanted to promote. The
size of the operation was tiny when compared to the hundreds of millions in campaign
expenditures. It had no influence on the election outcome.
The IRA hired people in Leningrad for little money and asked them to open accounts on U.S.
social media. The virtual persona they created and ran were to attract as many persons to those
accounts as possible. They did that by posting funny dog pictures or by taking strong political
positions. They were 'influencers' who sold their customers' products to the people they
attracted.
The sole purpose was the same as in any commercial media. Create content to attract
'eyeballs', then sell those eyeballs to advertisers.
Defendants and their co-conspirators also used the [financial] accounts to receive money from
real U.S. persons in exchange for posting promotions and advertisements on the
ORGANIZATION-controlled social media pages . Defendants and their co-conspirators typically
charged certain U.S. merchants and U.S. social media sites between 25 and 50 U.S. dollars per
post for promotional content on their popular false U.S. persona accounts , including Being
Patriotic, Defend the 2nd, and Blacktivist.
The was no Russian government campaign to influence the 2016 election. There was only a
Russian commercial media enterprise that used sock-puppet accounts with quirky content to
attract viewers and sold advertisement space to U.S. companies.
The IRA also bought advertisement to attract more people to its accounts. But the amount it
spent was tiny. The final price tag for the 2016 election
was $6.5 billion for the presidential and congressional elections combined. The IRA spend a
total of $100,000 to promote its own accounts. But only some $45,000 of that was spend before
the election. It was 0.000007 cent for every election dollar that was spend during that time.
It is statistically impossible that the mostly apolitical IRA spending had any effect on the
election.
That the IRA ran a marketing machine and not a political operation was also obvious when one
analyzed the content that those sock puppet accounts posted. Most of it was apolitical. Where
it was political it covered both sides. Some IRA accounts posted pro-Trump content, others
posted anti-Trump stuff. Some were pro-Clinton others against her.
U.S. intelligence services tried to explain that away by claiming that the Russians wanted
to "sow discord". There is zero evidence that this was really the case. It is simply an
explanation that was made up because they failed to find a better one.
The real answer to the question why different IRA accounts posted on different sides of the
political spectrum is that the IRA wanted to maximize its income. One has to cover both sides
if one wants to optimize the number of eyeballs one attracts.
FOX News is not pro-Trump because it wants to sow discord. Nor is CNN anti-Trump to serve
that purpose. Both are in the business of attracting viewers to - in the end - sell
advertisements. People flock to the TV station that fit to the opinion they already have. Both
stations promote by and large similar products.
The virtual IRA persona worked in a similar ways. They took political positions to attract
people who already had a similar one. One persona did that for the left, another one for the
right. Neither changed the opinions of their followers.
A recently published study which looked at Twitter users who followed IRA sock puppet
accounts and their content confirms that. It found that the IRA sock puppets had no influence
on the opinions of their followers.
Using Bayesian regression tree models, we find no evidence that interaction with IRA accounts
substantially impacted distinctive measures of political attitudes and behaviors over a 1-mo
period. We also find that interaction with IRA accounts were most common among respondents
with strong ideological homophily within their Twitter network , high interest in politics,
and high frequency of Twitter usage. Together, these findings suggest that Russian trolls
might have failed to sow discord because they mostly interacted with those who were already
highly polarized.
Most hardcore Republicans watch FOX New, most hardcore Democrats watch CNN. Neither TV
station changes the core opinions of their viewers. They reinforce them.
The "Russian trolls" were virtual persona created to cover -in total- a wide spectrum. Some
persona played hardcore Republican, other played hardcore Democrats. They created and posted
content that fit to the role they played. Each attracted followers with opinions similar to
those the virtual persona pretended to have. No opinion was changed through those contacts. No
discord was sown.
The IRA then sold advertisement space to vendors to monetize all eyeballs its virtual
personas attracted.
The U.S. intelligence agencies pretended that the commercial IRA was a political agency. It
helped them to sell animosity against Russia and to pretend that Trump was somehow colluding
with Putin.
But it all never made any sense.
Posted by b on November 27, 2019 at 18:33 UTC |
Permalink
thanks b... of course it didn't matter, as when you have ignored 9-11 and everything else,
you may as well buy into Russia influencing the election with some commercial enterprise like
the ira... it's shocking actually, to see how many otherwise intelligent people can be
bamboozled so easily via the cia with swamp media in tow... again - emptywheel is a good case
in point.. complete drivel about russia stole my sandwich on a 24-7 basis.. they have their
heads up their asses so far, there is no light able to shine in...
as for twitter and facebook - two other NSA snoop dog outlets - there may be some value in
these two creations, mostly with the intel agencies, but it is slim pickins' for most
everyone else... the sooner they go the way of the dodo bird, the better..
Title --How Russian intelligence officers interfered in the 2016 election, CBS
Alot of people still think 60 Minutes is a credible news source, but their wild and
unsubstantiated claims in this segment really cast doubt on whether they can trusted or
not.
Every single mainstream media organization refers to Russian interference in the 2016
election as though it were a proven fact. When the government makes an unfounded assertion,
it is reported one time as "government sources say" but every time thereafter it is
referenced as fact. If you find an alternative source that contradicts the government lie and
try to post it to social media, you will be tagged with a "Warning" that claims your story is
"fake news". Orwellian doesn't begin to describe it.
Once MSM propagandists broadcast 'Russian meddling' hundreds of thousands of times, their
audience becomes impervious to the simplest of logic and barest of facts.
"Most hardcore Republicans watch FOX New, most hardcore Democrats watch CNN."
No, most hard core Democrats are repulsed by CNN. The Democrats who watch CNN, and believe it, this goes for NPP, the NY Times, the New
Yorker, and MSNBC, are Democratic Party loyalists. There's a big difference.
The first is set of people largely loyal to the party of FDR, and the other is a group of
corporatists--largely loyal to big businesses like JP-Morgan Chase, Amazon, and many military
contractors.
I watched a bit belatedly the 60 Minutes affair on the link provided. As the video was
unusually very slow to appear, I read the text and then started looking around for when it
was posted. Unbelievable. New stuff? I wrongly thought this had to be an old, superannuated
piece. @emptywheel the producer or just the muse? This sort of nails down the coffin lid on a
free media for me. And for you. We're in a very bad place.
Did you refer to Marcy Wheeler who scribbles the emptywheel blog. That gal is all rim and
no spokes. The entire site is obsessive fantasising, Russia hating, Trump loathing to attract
eyeballs and sell patreon donations.
Marcy couldn't fart and chew gum at the same time.
@b: Sorry b, but I don't buy it. Running a commercial scheme by posting *highly* political
memes in a *foreign* country, such as promoting secession of Texas and California or inciting
race tension, simply isn't a wise idea. Even if it weren't meant political, it still was
political. Cat memes would have been a different story.
Cliff @11 clearly falls off by failing to note b's and the study's major point--the
Russian Government in no way meddled in the 2016 election. IRA as the commercial entity
that didn't either has zero links to said government.
It is funny how Cliff @11 apparently believes that commercial exploitation is
innocent, but efforts at political influence are sinister.
This disorder is part and parcel of the disease that is destroying western culture. The
total loss of perspective is also one of the key symptoms of the hysteria that is clearly
still gripping the West.
I wonder if this is something that the West can ever possibly recover from? I figured by
now the hysteria would have burned itself out, but here it still seems to be going
strong.
uh cliff, what "highly political memes". 100k spent on pictures of kermit the frog hand
puppets or "buff bernie" is not highly political, and even if they were, they influenced
nobody. it's all horseshit.
It might not have been wise but it is obviously what happened.The important point is that
there is not the slightest suggestion of there being any evidence that the Russian state was
involved.
To put the matter in context: hundreds of other sets of influencers did what the IRA did but
because none of them could be associated in any way with Russia their, collectively order of
magnitude more important efforts, most of them pushing Clinton who was thought to be a clear
favourite, but their work goes unanalysed.
Not that there is any evidence of the IRA's connection with the Kremlin except that it is
located not in Moscow but Petrograd, where Putin is from. And that the hustler running the
organisation is said to have supplied sandwiches to meetings in the Kremlin -- hence the
media's coinage "Putin's Chef!"
b in this post is hammering yet one more nail into the coffin of Russiagate, there can't be
much more room on the lid for more. And there isn't much room left in the coffin either-it
already contains half of the Democratic Party, several presidential candidates, poor old
Marcy wheeler and the entire Mainstream Media. High time it was six feet under.
You mean the russian click bait add spam farm, that looks and behaves like an add spam
farm, which everyone with a functioning brain in their skulls said is an add spam farm...
might just turn out to behave like an actual add spam farm?
Well, colour me amazed. ..it's like no one remembered geocities pop up storms or something.
The US media is still trying to breathe some life into a case which should have been declared
dead on arrival, beltway politics must carry on its partisan shows, with the corporate media
trying to whip audiences into a frenzy, over the most ridiculous plots in order to ignore
that the body politic is corrupt beyond redemption and is as dead as US democracy.
Is Trump a Putin stooge? Let's 'investigate' or continually mu(e)ll over this possibility
even more! Meanwhile, the stooges in Washington we are instructed to call 'our
representatives' remain bipartisan in pursuing the dictatorial goals of class elites, no
matter which CEO is temporarily managing affairs for the Fortune 500.
Who needs Russian meddling in an electoral process that means next to nothing when it
comes to affecting in the slightest the homegrown depravity of our oligarchy?
We still have plenty of Dem Party hacks telling us in the most convoluted language what to
think about a report vomited out by a professional liar (See: Mueller Iraq War Crimes for but
one example of Mueller's long and sordid career) and we are suppose to believe any of this?
Oh and let's see we are suppose to care that an orange-haired, spray tanned criminal buffoon
won the Kabuki (s)election in Potemkin Empire against the insanely corrupted and proven War
Criminal Donkey Queen Bee? You just have to wonder how much per word these pundits are paid
to pump out their bilge?
The entire "Russiagate" smokescreen is a perfect example of how propaganda works. Accuse
your "enemy" of the very thing you have been doing in plain sight so that when accusations
are levied against you it will be harder to make them stick- keep that external enemy front
and center so that the real enemy within remains hidden.
To believe that the Mueller report ever was anything than a wax show piece in a stale play
one must put aside all the obvious items such as- 1) Zero evidence; 2) US elections are
already rigged by the US elites before a single vote is cast; 3) The US has been tampering in
just about every countries elections for decades overtly and covertly; AND 4) Recent attempts
BY THE US to ACTUALLY tamper in Russian elections through the ever-handy NED.
There is no other country that intervenes in the political affairs of foreign states so
directly, regularly and shamelessly as the United States. American foreign policy is one
massive intervention in the politics of other countries, running the gamut from propaganda,
destabilization, financing of opposition parties, electoral fraud and coups to military
bombardment and occupation.
Professor Dov Levin of Carnegie Mellon University assembled a database documenting as many
as 81 occasions between 1946 and 2000 when Washington interfered in elections in other
countries.
There is zero solid evidence that Russia "meddled" in the US elections. It is all
speculation and innuendo. Even if one were to blindly assume that the stories were accurate,
whatever Russia may or may not have done pales in comparison to the operations of US
intelligence agencies all over the world, including within the United States itself, not to
mention the billions of dollars spent by the corporate and financial elite to manipulate US
elections and determine their outcome.
The claim, moreover, that Russian Twitter and Facebook posts are responsible for social
discontent and "disruptions in the democracy" of the United States -- one of the most unequal
countries in the world -- is beyond ludicrous.
I didn't believe that the Russians interfered with the election anyway, but this exposition
of the raw data used by the intell. services as a basis for promulgating the fiction, is
fascinating and hilarious if the consequencies hadn't been so dire. The basis is so utterly
mundane and so "American" if you forgive my saying so, I mean the IRA was just trying to make
money. I suppose the intell. services knew this, knew they were peddling lies as Pompeo says
they are taught to do. All for what? Not just to hurt Trump. No, to feed a McCarthyite fear
to keep the endless wars going. Evil.
Research by the Royal United Services Institute (Rusi) found that the Army, as well as Nato
allies, has a "critical shortage" of artillery and ammunition.
The research comes ahead of a meeting of Nato leaders in London next week to mark the
70th anniversary of the alliance.
I know we are supposed to believe that US is so wonderful and exceptional that Russia,
China, Iran, etc. all want to conquer it. But why would they want to? What would they do with
a place like Detroit, Camden, and all the rest of the broken down infrastructure?
"British ground forces would be "comprehensively outgunned" in a conflict with Russia in
Eastern Europe"
So fucking what, if that were actually true? UK is a group of islands in NW Europe, it's
not Poland, and UK hasn't any business to have troops in Eastern Europe to begin with;
meanwhile, the European part of Russia is very much a big chunk of Eastern Europe; odds are
that they'd have their military ready to defend and fight there. These useless hacks should
come back only once they can claim that the British forces would be outgunned in a conflict
with Russia in Essex; that would be worrying.
But there is a sense in which Russia may have subtly influenced the election.
For any well informed American - and in my opinion finding such is more likely than say
spotting a Sasquatch - the varied political presentations of say RT may have the insidious
effect of injecting bits of reality-oriented counter news to the ubiquitous lame bought
propaganda from American mass media.
And the Putin-effect over the last two decades too may be quite insidious: after all, in
the realm dominated by political banality, lies, stupidity and bad acting, an articulate, and
in practical terms effective, political leader of a major country is a rather extraordinary
phenomenon. Such things are possible, discover wayward Americans! But what explains its near
complete absence in our exceptional indispensable nation?
Obama's D-Party set up what the following article
describes which I provide as a marker of that party's leadership's immoral mindset.
Imagine what BigLie Media would do if this was done in Russia or China! We'd read/hear/see
all about it 24/7/365.
1) USA interferes in other countries elections all the time. Recent and very stark
examples: Bolivia and Venezuela.
2) USA's broken, money-based electoral system practically invites
"interference"/"meddling" by powerful interests and skews the results toward candidates that
will serve powerful interests that can afford to support the electoral farce that provides an
illusion of democracy.
3) Pro-Israel Zionists and Zionist organizations, like Haim Saban, Sheldon Adelson, and
AIPAC, contribute huge sums to the duopoly that controls US politics. Their contribution is
vastly greater than a few facebook ads.
4) The vast majority of the "Russian oligarchs" that are supposed to have influenced Trump
are Jewish with closer ties to Israel than Russia.
Bevin @ 17
Evgeny Progozhin - supposedly behind IRA - was - and maybe still is - VVP's chef. I think it
is probably him who started that joke about his being a "hot-dog salesman" in St P. But he
was much more than that.
More importantly he was the man who re-introduced fine restaurants to St Petersburg. In
the nineties he opened several very good restaurants in a city which hadn't seen a decent
meal since the Revolution - a bit like England before it joined the Common Market. He was a
great perfectionist with a tremendous eye for detail. His difficulty was in finding staff in
a city which had no history of training staff beyond the very low levels demanded by the
Intourist hotels - and as soon as he trained them they were poached by would-be rivals, so
often he gave the top places to French and English specialists.
The very best of his restaurants was the Old Customs House on the University Embankment. I
haven't been there for a couple of years but in its hey-day it could match any restaurant in
Europe.
He would also fly his staff to other Russian cities to lay on banquets for the President.
He then went into mass catering and by the sounds of it different fields altogether. An
admirable man, one of those who helped Russia into the 21st Century.
Fresh Air has an interview with Glenn Simpson and Peter Fritsch of Fusion GPS posted on their page .
There seems to be a full court press on to solidify the 'consensus' narrative, with stories
on BBC and other main US news outlets, including many on NPR, 'explaining' various aspects of
the Russophobic/Sinophibic view of the world, and attacking as 'conspiracy theories' that are
proven false (mainly by way of reciting innuendo and accusations by anonymous sources and
professional liars) any counter narratives.
In my experience, even if people retain some skepticism, they assume the main points of
the narrative as proven fact to the extent that it is nearly impossible to have a reasoned
discussion about the basic assumptions of the narrative.
I am amazed.......... that one and all haven't noticed the inability of the USG to
deal with any.... and I mean any.... issues affecting the people of the USA.
Lead in Drinking Water.....
Farm Bankruptcies.....
Failed Corn & soybean crops.....
Medical prescription costs going through the roof.
Key medicines no longer available to combat serious infections....
Examining direct state-actor involvement would be one thing. But this 'study' is little more
than a sui generis, slow motion ethnic slur. What about Russian-American US citizens in
Boston who happen to tweet benign and banal messages about nothing in particular? Can we get
cooties from them as well? Does it come thru the WIFI?
The sizable Russian-American population has been absolutely stoic during this whole
protracted episode. I can think of many other groups who'd be screaming bloody murder.
As for the IRA indictments, they were a sham from top to bottom. Here's the Powerline
blog:
"One hates to be in the position of rooting for the Russians, but the Mueller Switch
Project is so distasteful that it is hard not to enjoy the prospect of Mueller having to deal
with an actual adversary in court. Meanwhile, this is probably the first time in the history
of litigation that a plaintiff (here, prosecutor) has told a court that it may not have
obtained good service of process on a defendant that has appeared to defend the case on the
merits. Mueller to Court: We didn't really mean it, Judge! We had no idea they might actually
show up!"
None other than Michael Moore is another IRA victim. So much for Trump-Russia.
"I know we are supposed to believe that US is so wonderful and exceptional that Russia,
China, Iran, etc. all want to conquer it. But why would they want to? What would they do with
a place like Detroit, Camden, and all the rest of the broken down infrastructure?"
Also, the greatest political system ever conceived in mankind according the Americans
somehow can just simply crumble in the face of a tiny bit of alleged foreign money.
Jane Mayer used to write good journalism. Her book "Dark Money" from a couple of years ago
was an eye-opener. What happened to her?
I guess the same question could be asked about Marcy Wheeler. And what happened to Democracy Now and Amy Goodman?
The real sin of Russia, is not, of course, the nonsense election meddling, but its resistance
against the US culture of open free markets, its threat of closing its markets to the US, its
national doctrine against the Full Spectrum Dominance and US-led neo-liberal order. Its sin
is economic nationalism.
Its sin is taking shares of Christopher Steele's in Gazprom by
force, who had them by tax fraud in the first place. Its sin is allowing Government of Russia
holding more than half of the shares of Gazprom. Its sin is becoming self-reliant in oil and
gas (and recently food thanks to sanctions), backed with a substantial military force. A huge
country that can industrialize its resources and that can defend itself and deter any
aggression on her soil. A recipe for nightmare for neo-liberals.
Since the Americans voted for a president who is against the neo-liberal order and
promotes nationalism, they are on fire and afraid they are going to have to take it by four
more years.
House Intelligence Committee Ranking Member Rep. Devin Nunes speaks out on his plan to take
news outlets to federal court amid the Trump impeachment probe. #FoxNews #Hannity
It's about time someone grew a spine and stands their ground against these morally
bankrupt media companies! Thank you, Devin!! Kick them a few times for us!!
"... According to a Nov. 21 report by independent journalist Sara Carter, U.S. Attorney John Durham is questioning personnel in the Pentagon's Office of Net Assessment (ONA). ONA awarded about $1 million in contracts to FBI informant Stefan Halper, who appears to have played a key role in alleged U.S. intelligence agency spying on 2016 Trump campaign advisers Carter Page and George Papadopoulos. ..."
"... In addition, however, a court filing indicates that ONA's director, James H. Baker, "is believed to be the person who illegally leaked the transcript of Mr. Flynn's calls" to The Washington Post. ..."
"... The filing adds that Baker "was Halper's 'handler'" at ONA. Moreover, according to the court filing, the tasks assigned to "known long-time operative for the CIA/FBI" Halper "seem to have included slandering Mr. Flynn with accusations of having an affair with a young professor (a British national of Russian descent)." ..."
"... The filing notes that Flynn's defense team has requested phone records for then-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper , likewise in order to confirm contacts with Ignatius. The filing singles out records for Jan. 10, 2017, when, according to the filing, "Clapper told Ignatius in words to the effect of 'take the kill shot on Flynn.'" ..."
"... The Pentagon's current inspector general has already found that Baker's office "did not maintain documentation of the work performed by Professor Halper or any communication that ONA personnel had with Professor Halper." As a result, according to the inspector general, ONA staff "could not provide sufficient documentation that Professor Halper conducted all of his work in accordance with applicable laws and regulations." ..."
"... Acting Pentagon Inspector General Glenn A. Fine in November 2017 started an investigation into charges that Baker retaliated against a whistleblower who red-flagged "rigged" contracts, including Halper's. Another $11 million in contracts under scrutiny went to the Long Term Strategy Group (LTSG), which is run by a schoolmate of Chelsea Clinton, whom she has referred to as her "best friend." ..."
"... The House Judiciary and Oversight committees -- which interviewed almost two dozen witnesses -- concluded in December 2018 that the Obama Justice Department treated Trump and Clinton unequally, affording Clinton and her associates extraordinary accommodations, while potentially abusing surveillance powers to investigate Trump's associates. ..."
The
Obama holdover heading the Pentagon office
reportedly under investigation by the U.S. attorney who is conducting the criminal probe of
the Trump -- Russia investigation was accused of leaking a classified document, in a recent
court filing for retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn.
The connection hasn't been previously reported.
According to a Nov. 21 report by independent journalist Sara Carter, U.S. Attorney John
Durham is questioning personnel in the Pentagon's Office of Net Assessment (ONA). ONA awarded
about $1 million in contracts to FBI informant Stefan Halper, who appears to have played a key
role in alleged U.S. intelligence agency spying on 2016 Trump campaign advisers Carter Page and
George Papadopoulos.
In addition, however, a
court filing indicates that ONA's director, James H. Baker, "is believed to be the person
who illegally leaked the transcript of Mr. Flynn's calls" to The Washington Post.
Specifically, the filing states, "ONA Director Baker regularly lunched with Washington Post
Reporter David Ignatius."
The filing adds that Baker "was Halper's 'handler'" at ONA. Moreover, according to the
court filing, the tasks assigned to "known long-time operative for the CIA/FBI" Halper "seem to
have included slandering Mr. Flynn with
accusations of having an affair with a young professor (a British national of Russian
descent)."
Baker didn't respond to a request for comment by The Epoch Times as of press time.
The filing notes that Flynn's defense team has requested phone records for
then-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper , likewise in order to confirm
contacts with Ignatius. The filing singles out records for Jan. 10, 2017, when, according to
the filing, "Clapper told Ignatius in words to the effect of 'take the kill shot on
Flynn.'"
Clapper didn't respond to a request for comment by The Epoch Times as of press time.
The Pentagon's current inspector general has already found that Baker's office "did not
maintain documentation of the work performed by Professor Halper or any communication that ONA
personnel had with Professor Halper." As a result, according to the inspector general, ONA
staff "could not provide sufficient documentation that Professor Halper conducted all of his
work in accordance with applicable laws and regulations."
Acting Pentagon Inspector General Glenn A. Fine in November 2017 started an
investigation into charges that Baker retaliated against a whistleblower who red-flagged
"rigged" contracts, including Halper's. Another
$11 million in contracts under scrutiny went to the Long Term Strategy Group (LTSG), which
is run by a schoolmate
of Chelsea Clinton, whom she has referred to as her "best friend."
According to the whistleblower's attorney, "Baker's interest was his awareness of the
LTSG-Clinton connection; his presumptive desire to exploit that to his advantage in the event
of a Clinton election win; and the fact that contractors like LTSG served as a lucrative
landing pad for ONA retirees."
The attorney charged that Baker's claims about the whistleblower were "demonstrably false,"
calling Baker "partisan and highly vindictive."
At the time, Richard Perle, Ronald Reagan's former Assistant Secretary of Defense, called
Baker "a shallow and manipulative character that should have gone with the change in
administration." Perle further charged that the whistleblower "clearly was the target, for
political reasons, of an effort to push him out of government," saying "he's a Trump loyalist,
and it was launched and sustained by an Obama holdover."
That inquiry is being carried out by the inspector general's Investigations of Senior
Officials Directorate.
Raising additional questions, a 2016 report further revealed
that the ONA had failed to produce the top-secret net assessments the office was established to
conduct for more than 10 years, even with a yearly budget approaching $20 million.
Baker was named
as ONA director on May 14, 2015, during the Obama administration. A contemporaneous report
called his appointment "part of a wave of new Pentagon personnel moves in recent days,
senior-level officials who will outlast President Obama's final term in office." Baker
replaced Andrew W. Marshall, nicknamed "Yoda" for his "wizened appearance, fanatical
following in defense circles, and enigmatic nature." Obama Defense Secretary Ash Carter, in
selecting Baker, "passed over several of Marshall's acolytes who were in the running for the
position."
The House Judiciary and Oversight committees -- which interviewed almost two dozen
witnesses --
concluded in December 2018 that the Obama Justice Department treated Trump and Clinton
unequally, affording Clinton and her associates extraordinary accommodations, while potentially
abusing surveillance powers to investigate Trump's associates.
Jacqueline Deal, president of LTSG, wrote in an email to The Epoch Times: "My colleagues and
I began performing work in support of the Office of Net Assessment during the George W. Bush
administration, over a decade before the office's current director was appointed. None of the
awards received by LTSG from the Department of Defense resulted directly or indirectly from the
actions or influence of Secretary [Hillary] Clinton. Any statement or implication otherwise is
false."
Baker
replaced Andrew W. Marshall, nicknamed “Yoda” for his “wizened
appearance, fanatical following in defense circles, and enigmatic nature.” Obama
Defense Secretary Ash Carter, in selecting Baker, “passed over several of
Marshall’s acolytes who were in the running for the position.”
Holy ****...The replacement head of the Highlands Group..he may as well be that white
bearded guy in the matrix.. Hes the director of the MIC CIA NSA. ..the whole ball of
wax..puts it all together...only he is not Yoda like before him..like putting a restaurant
fast food manager in charge of the manhattan project. I know those acolytes must be really
pissed..and probably a potential source of leaks.
Investigations my eye! This has been going on since Moby **** was a minnow.
McCabe has been out there making money while under criminal referral.. That investigation
is DONE and still nothing happens.
The public information available on at least 50 of these double dealers is enough to send
them all up the river as of a few YEARS ago...but we have to have more
investigations...that's so they can figure out how to cover it all up.
Fire these creeps. Hire Sidney Powell.. They'll be swinging inside of six months.
We tend to think of propaganda as something generated by the state. This is a prime example
of it coming from ideologues within universities, and making its way to the public via
sympathizers in the mass media. Eventually, these lies become de facto truths, either because
people really do believe in them, or the cost of questioning them becomes too great, so people
conform. In time, younger people -- those who grew up being socialized into the lie -- don't
know any different. In my interviews for my forthcoming book on lessons we must learn from the
communist experience, a Ukrainian immigrant named Olga Grigorenko, recalling her Soviet
childhood, said "Nobody told me that I was living in a lie. I was just living my life in my
country, the Soviet Union. Nobody said it was a lie."
As she grew older, she came to see that in fact she lived within a system of lies. Her
husband, Vladimir, spoke about how the ideology corrupted all knowledge. From the
transcript:
Vladimir: For example, all history was represented as the fight between capitalism
and the workers. It takes a really creative mind to see the system of classes from
Marxism-Leninism presenting itself in ancient Egypt. But that's what they did. All history
books were filled with that point of view. The Florentine Republic was the equal of the Great
October Revolution – things like that. All our history books were like that. Every
scientific paper was supposed to have a prefatory chapter describing how Marx and Engels were
geniuses in that particular field of science, and how their findings anticipated whatever
this scientific article described. Any and all sciences had to show a connection to the
decision of the party in a previous convention.
Olga: But nobody believed in it.
Vladimir: But everybody knew that you had to say these things in order to be
published.
More:
Olga: In high school and middle school, we had to write essays, like normal school
kids do. But you never could write what you think about the subject. Never, ever. The subject
could be interesting, but you never could put what do you think. You have to find some way to
relate that to the communist view.
Vladimir: The general culture taught you this doublethink.
Olga: I remember when I was eight or nine years old, I came home from school and
told my parents a funny anecdote about a famous Red Army hero, one that made him look bad. I
just started to tell my parents, and my father looked at me and said, 'Never do that again.
Not in our house, not anywhere. Just stop, and forget. You can't tell funny stories about
communist leaders.' And I was afraid.
Vladimir: Sooner or later, society would tell you what you shouldn't say. And if
you said it, you would end up in the camp.
We are reproducing that system here, in an American way. It begins with the ideological
corruption of knowledge in the institutions of higher education, then moves out from there. How
difficult do you imagine it would be within the New York Times newsroom, or any major
American newsroom, to mount a serious challenge to the concepts of "whiteness," "patriarchy,"
and the like? In fact, we have an example of it, from this summer:
the leaked transcript of the Times 's internal town hall meeting , in which an
unnamed staffer told editor-in-chief Dean Baquet that "I just feel like racism is in
everything. It should be considered in our science reporting, in our culture reporting, in our
national reporting."
Baquet declined the opportunity to deliver a Journalistic Standards 101 lecture to this
person, and instead gave a fuzzy non-answer (
read the transcript ; you'll see) praising the paper's then-upcoming "1619 Project," a
massive initiative attempting to "reframe" American history around slavery.
If you'll recall, the 1619 Project was named for the year the first African slave arrived on
American shores; the Times said that year, not 1776, ought to be remembered as the
founding of America.
Agreed. However, an addendum, you seem to have forgotten to mention Russia's aggressive
training whales to spy on Norway, crickets to drive the US embassy in Cuba nuts, weaponizing
Masha and the bear, using Pokemon to sow the seeds of discord, contemplating on freezing up a
few states, any many others the mere thought of gets one wound up.
Agreed. However, an addendum, you seem to have forgotten to mention Russia's aggressive
training whales to spy on Norway, crickets to drive the US embassy in Cuba nuts, weaponizing
Masha and the bear, using Pokemon to sow the seeds of discord, contemplating on freezing up a
few states, any many others the mere thought of gets one wound up.
This is a replay of Vietnam Communist Domino Theory. May all those neocons rest in Eternal
Hell.
Notable quotes:
"... Now is not the time to retreat from our relationship with Ukraine, but rather to double down on it. As we sit here, Ukrainians are fighting a hot war on Ukrainian territory against Russian aggression. ..."
"... I went to the front line approximately 10 times during a hot war sometimes literally as we heard the impact of artillery, and to see how our assistance dollars were being put to use. ..."
"... Ukraine, with an enormous land mass and a large population, has the potential to be a significant force multiplier on the security side And now Ukraine is a battleground for great power competition with a hot war for the control of territory and a hybrid war to control Ukraine's leadership. ..."
"... She explained that the US-funded and fascist-led "Maidan Revolution" of 2014, which she and other State Department officials absurdly called the "Revolution of Dignity," was part of this conflict. "That's why they launched the Revolution of Dignity in 2014, demanding to be a part of Europe," she declared. ..."
"... Diplomat George Kent invoked the same theme in his testimony last Wednesday, saying: ..."
"... Ukraine's popular Revolution of Dignity in 2014 forced a corrupt pro-Russian leadership to flee to Moscow. After that, Russia invaded Ukraine, occupying seven percent of its territory, roughly equivalent to the size of Texas for the United States ..."
"... Since then, more than 13,000 Ukrainians have died on Ukrainian soil defending their territorial integrity and sovereignty from Russian aggression. American support in Ukraine's own de facto war of independence has been critical in this regard. ..."
"... Kent subsequently compared the role of the United States in the Ukrainian civil war to that of Spain and France in the American War of Independence. In that conflict, Spain and France were officially at war with Great Britain, including formal declarations of war in 1778 and 1779. ..."
"... If Kent's analogy is true, then the United States is in an undeclared war with Russia. ..."
"... But when has this war ever been discussed with the American people? Was there ever a congressional vote to authorize it? ..."
"... When we are consumed by partisan rancor, we cannot combat these external forces," she said, threatening the "president, or anyone else, [who] impedes or subverts the national security of the United States. ..."
"... "In an otherwise divided Washington, one of the few issues of bipartisan agreement for the past six years has been countering Russian President Vladimir V. Putin's broad plan of disruption. That effort starts in Ukraine, where there has been a hot war underway in the east for five years " ..."
"... @wendy davis ..."
"... @jim p ..."
"... @lotlizard ..."
"... Mykola Zlochevsky, former employer of Hunter Biden and current partner of the Atlantic Council ..."
' Who decided the US should fight a "hot war" with Russia? ', 23 November 2019 . Andre Damon,
wsws
"There is a saying attributed to the banker J.P. Morgan: " A man always has two reasons
for what he does -- a good one and the real one ."
If the alleged "organized crime shakedown" by Trump was the "good" reason for the
impeachment inquiry, the "real" reason has emerged over two weeks of public congressional
hearings. The hearings have lifted the lid on a massive US conspiracy to spend billions of
dollars to overthrow the democratically elected government of Ukraine in 2014 and foment a
civil war that has led to the deaths of thousands of people.
The impeachment drive is itself the product of efforts by sections of the intelligence
agencies and elements within the State Department to escalate Washington's conflict with
Russia, with potentially world-catastrophic consequences.
On Thursday, Democratic Congressman Eric Swalwell showed a photo of Ukrainian President
Zelensky in body armor on the "front lines" of the civil war in eastern Ukraine. He asked the
State Department witnesses "why it's so important that our hard-earned tax dollars help
President Zelensky and the men standing beside him fight Russia in this hot war?"
David Holmes, political counselor at the US embassy in Kiev, replied:
Now is not the time to retreat from our relationship with Ukraine, but rather to
double down on it. As we sit here, Ukrainians are fighting a hot war on Ukrainian territory
against Russian aggression.
Later in his testimony, Holmes pointed to the massive sums expended by the United States
and its European allies to fight this "hot war," saying the US had provided $5 billion and
its European allies $12 billion since 2014.
In her testimony last week, the former ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovich recalled that
as ambassador:
I went to the front line approximately 10 times during a hot war sometimes literally
as we heard the impact of artillery, and to see how our assistance dollars were being put
to use.
She added:
Ukraine, with an enormous land mass and a large population, has the potential to be
a significant force multiplier on the security side And now Ukraine is a battleground for
great power competition with a hot war for the control of territory and a hybrid war to
control Ukraine's leadership.
She explained that the US-funded and fascist-led "Maidan Revolution" of 2014, which
she and other State Department officials absurdly called the "Revolution of Dignity," was
part of this conflict. "That's why they launched the Revolution of Dignity in 2014, demanding
to be a part of Europe," she declared.
Diplomat George Kent invoked the same theme in his testimony last Wednesday,
saying:
Ukraine's popular Revolution of Dignity in 2014 forced a corrupt pro-Russian
leadership to flee to Moscow. After that, Russia invaded Ukraine, occupying seven percent
of its territory, roughly equivalent to the size of Texas for the United States
Since then, more than 13,000 Ukrainians have died on Ukrainian soil defending their
territorial integrity and sovereignty from Russian aggression. American support in
Ukraine's own de facto war of independence has been critical in this regard.
Kent subsequently compared the role of the United States in the Ukrainian civil war to
that of Spain and France in the American War of Independence. In that conflict, Spain and
France were officially at war with Great Britain, including formal declarations of war in
1778 and 1779.
If Kent's analogy is true, then the United States is in an undeclared war with
Russia.
But when has this war ever been discussed with the American people? Was there ever a
congressional vote to authorize it? Does anyone believe that if the question, "Do you
want to spend billions of dollars to help Ukraine fight a war with Russia," were posed to the
American public, the percentage answering yes would be anything more than minuscule? Of
course, that question was never asked." [snip]
"But in the congressional hearings this week, government officials declared that any
questioning of this aid is virtually treasonous. In her testimony on Thursday, former
National Security Council officer Fiona Hill accused anyone who questions that "Ukraine is a
valued partner" of the United States of advancing "Russian interests. "
" When we are consumed by partisan rancor, we cannot combat these external forces,"
she said, threatening the "president, or anyone else, [who] impedes or subverts the national
security of the United States. "
In 2017, Hill penned a blog post for the Brookings Institution calling Trump a
"Bolshevik," echoing statements made more than 60 years ago by John Birch Society leader
Robert W. Welch, who declared that President Eisenhower was a "communist."
Underlying the mad allegations of the Democrats that Trump is functioning as a "Russian
asset" is a very real content: The extremely dangerous drive by factions within the state for
a military confrontation between the United States and Russia, whose combined nuclear weapons
arsenals are capable of destroying all of humanity many times over.
There is no "peace" faction within the American political establishment. No credence can
be given to either one of the parties of US imperialism, which have, over the course of
decades, presided over the toppling of dozens of governments, the launching of countless wars
and the deaths of millions of people."
Patrick Martin from his Oct. 16, 2019 ' The Trump
impeachment and US policy in Ukraine '
"This utterly reactionary, pro-imperialist role was demonstrated Friday in the tribute
that Yovanovitch paid, in the course of her testimony, to Arsen Avakov, the Ukrainian
interior minister (head of the domestic police) under both the current president, Volodymyr
Zelensky, and his predecessor Petro Poroshenko. Avakov is a principal sponsor of fascist
militias such as the Azov Battalion , which glorify the Ukrainians who collaborated with the
Nazis during World War II against the Soviet Union. In other words, the State Department
officials being celebrated in the media for defending American democracy are actually working
with the fascists in Ukraine .
While Yovanovitch hailed Avakov, Kent cited as his heroes among immigrants who have
rallied to the defense of the United States Zbigniew Brzezinski and Henry Kissinger, two of
the biggest war criminals of the second half of the twentieth century ." [snip]
""The connection between the impeachment drive and differences on foreign policy was spelled
out Friday on the front page of the New York Times, in an analysis by the newspaper's senior
foreign policy specialist, David Sanger, a frequent mouthpiece for the concerns of the CIA,
State Department and Pentagon, under the headline, " For President, Case of Policy vs.
Obsession." [snip]
But Sanger goes on to spell out, in remarkably blunt terms, the real foreign policy issues
at stake in the Trump impeachment. He writes,
"In an otherwise divided Washington, one of the few issues of bipartisan agreement for
the past six years has been countering Russian President Vladimir V. Putin's broad plan of
disruption. That effort starts in Ukraine, where there has been a hot war underway in the
east for five years "
Trump, according to Sanger, has betrayed the anti-Russia policy outlined by his own
administration in a Pentagon strategic assessment which declared that the "war on terror" had
been superseded as the top US priority by "great-power competition," particularly directed at
China and Russia. He sacrificed this policy to his own personal, electoral interests, as
expressed in the comment by the US ambassador to the European Union, Gordon Sondland:
"President Trump cares more about the investigation of Biden" than about the military
conflict between Ukraine and Russia."
They'll bust both your kneecaps and then fit you with cement overshoes and toss you into
the ocean. Trump is finding out the hard way that entrenched interests in the US government
wield vast veto power over anything a president wants to do.
He's his own worst enemy with his self-sabotaging Twitter rants, endless character
assassinations, hastily burnt bridges, and conflicting statements that change based upon
the last person he talked to. Trump doesn't inspire loyalty in those who work for him and
around him. OTOH, that doesn't excuse the Deep State, an unelected cabal secretly running
our government and risking our lives with endless wars and Russia baiting. If impeachment
has shown nothing else, it's that the Deep State is real and usually gets its way.
almost all the casualties are Russian speakers in the East. Back in the early coup days
there were 37 claims that Russian troops invaded Ukraine. Which turned out to be none. I
still remember when Pravda in New York had a blurred photo they claimed to be a Russ
officer (and how do you get blurring in the digital age) which turned out to be a Ukranian
officer facebook photo. They never explained how that happened.
great context. kent's number 13,000, and yes, they were likely all Novoroosians
, if he hadn't pulled that figure out of his ass, anyway. photos of 'little green men' in
ancient soviet uniforms, old tanks left over from the days of yore.
was kent counting the dead inside the trade unions massacre in odessa petrol-bombed by
the neo-nazis?
in depth reads for later, and thank you, miz lizard. funny that the Atlantic council (at
least one version) had chosen Zelenskiy based on promises to end corruption (read: so
ukraine could have the lucre to enter Nato). and yet, he'd kept 9as per the photo caption)
Mykola Zlochevsky, former employer of Hunter Biden and current partner of the Atlantic
Council in hi cabinet, isn't it?
be encouraged to read your stockman links to his 'The Ukrainian Influence Peddling Rings
– A Microcosm of How Imperial Washington Rolls', David Stockman,
November 13, 2019 , i'll offer a few excerpts. i rarely (if ever) call anything a 'must
read', but even you, voice, might want to dig into this one (part I of II, if i get his
drift).
i'm assumming his historical narrative is correct, as all the pieces i do know about are
there are well, but what he writes i hadn't known is key, of course. his language is also
colorful as all giddy-up, which i like, and good on him. he's lost me a bit in some
sections, as he names names, lobbying firms, and so on, but that's on me, not stockman.
"The latest dispatch from the Wall Street Journal on the stench wafting westward from
Kiev reveals more about the rotten foundation of UkraineGate than its authors probably
understood.
Burisma Holdings' campaign to clean up its image in the West reached beyond the 2014
hiring of Hunter Biden, son of the then-U.S. vice president, to include other
well-connected operatives in Washington, according to officials in both countries and
government records.
The Ukrainian company, owned by tycoon Mykola Zlochevsky, also hired a lobbyist with
close ties to then-Secretary of State John Kerry, as well as a consulting group founded
by top officials in the Clinton administration that specialized in preparing former
Soviet-bloc countries to join NATO (Blue Star Strategies).
Soon the efforts bore fruit. With the help of a New York-based lawyer, Mr.
Zlochevsky's U.S. consultants argued to Ukrainian prosecutors that criminal cases
against the company should be closed because no laws had been broken.
Burisma later became a sponsor of a Washington think tank, the Atlantic Council,
whose experts are often cited on energy and security policy in the former Soviet
Union.
Simple translation: Zlochevsky was an ally, officeholder (minister of ecology and
natural resources) and inner-circle thief in the ousted government of Viktor Yanukovych.
He therefore needed to powder the pig fast and thoroughly in order to hold onto his
ill-gotten billions.""
[longish snip of a who's who involvement]...................
"Finally, the Clinton wing of the Washington racketeering system had to be covered,
too – hence the above mentioned Blue Star Strategies. And the bolded sentence from
the WSJ story quoted below tells you all you need to know about its business, which was
to " .help former Soviet countries prepare for NATO consideration".
That's right. With the Soviet Union gone, its 50,000 tanks on the central front
melted-down for scrap and the Warsaw Pact disbanded, the rational order of the day was to
declare "mission accomplished" for NATO and effect its own disbandment.
The great parachuter and then US president, George Bush the Elder, could have actually
made a jump right into the giant Ramstein Air Base in Germany to effect its closure. At
that point there was no justification for NATO's continued existence whatsoever.
But the Clinton Administration, under the baleful influence of Washington busybodies
like Strobe Talbot and Madeleine Albright, went in just the opposite direction. In
pursuit of Washington's post-1991 quest for global hegemony as the world's only
superpower and putative keeper of the peace, they prepared the way for the entirety of
the old Warsaw Pact to join NATO.
So doing, however, they also laid the planking for a revival of the cold war with the
Kremlin. As the father of containment and NATO during the late 1940s, Ambassador George
Kennan, observed at the time, the Clinton Administration's policy of expanding NATO to
the very doorstep of Russia was a colossal mistake." [longish snip]
...............................
"So that's how the Imperial City rolls. People make policies which extend the Empire
while in office – as did these Clintonistas with the NATO expansion project –
and then cash-in afterwards by peddling influence in the corridors of the beltway on
behalf of Washington's newly acquired vassals and supplicants.
In this case, all roads lead to the Atlantic Council, which is the semi-official
"think tank" of NATO in Washington and is infested with Russophobes and Clinton/Biden
operatives. The latter, of course, make a handsome living peddling anti-Putin propaganda
– the better to grease the Washington purse strings for unneeded military spending
and foreign aid, security assistance and weapons sales to the "front line" states
allegedly in the path of Kremlin aggression."
thank you, miz lizard. love this title of his on the sidebar: ' Democrats Empower a Pack
of Paranoid Neocon Morons '. ; )
i'll grab part II and read it greedily when i have more time.
putting them in the context of the region's deeper past. The first two parts of a
series.
The Special Operations Detachment "Azov", often known as Azov Battalion, Azov
Regiment, or Azov Detachment, (Ukrainian: Полк
Азов) is a Ukrainian National Guard regiment,[1][2][3][4] based
in Mariupol in the Azov Sea coastal region.
In 2014, it gained notoriety after allegations emerged of torture and war crimes, as
well as neo-Nazi sympathies and usage of associated symbols by the regiment itself, as
seen in their logo featuring the Wolfsangel, one of the original symbols used by the
German Nazi Party. In 2014, around 10-20% of the unit were neo-Nazis.[9] In 2018, a
provision in an appropriations bill passed by the U.S. Congress blocked military aid to
Azov on the grounds of its white supremacist ideology. [10] Members of the regiment come
from 22 countries and are of various backgrounds.[11]
On 13 April 2014 Minister of Internal Affairs Arsen Avakov [nb 1] issued a decree
authorizing creating new paramilitary forces from civilians up to 12,000.[22] The Azov
Battalion (using "Eastern Corps" as its backbone[20]) was formed on 5 May 2014 in
Berdiansk[23] by a white nationalist.[24] Many members of Patriot of Ukraine joined the
battalion.[20] Among the early patrons of the battalion were a member of the Verkhovna
Rada Oleh Lyashko, and an ultra-nationalist Dmytro Korchynsky and businessman Serhiy
Taruta and Avakov.[25][20] The battalion then received training near Kiev by instructors
with experience in the Georgian Armed Forces.[
In September 2014, the Azov battalion was expanded from a battalion to a regiment and
enrolled into the National Guard of Ukraine.[23][33] At about this time it started
receiving increased supplies of heavy arms.[33] The Azov battalion received funding from
the Minister of Internal Affairs of Ukraine and other sources (believed to be Ukrainian
oligarchs).
As of late March 2015, despite a second ceasefire agreement (Minsk II), the Azov
Battalion continued to prepare for war, with the group's leader seeing the ceasefire as
"appeasement".[33] In March 2015 Interior Minister Arsen Avakov announced that the Azov
Regiment would be among the first units to be trained by United States Army troops in
their Operation Fearless Guardian training mission.[44][45] US training however was
withdrawn on 12 June 2015, as US House of Representatives passed an amendment blocking
any aid (including arms and training) to the battalion due to its Neo-Nazi
background.[46] After the vote Congressman John Conyers thanked the House saying "I am
grateful that the House of Representatives unanimously passed my amendments last night to
ensure that our military does not train members of the repulsive neo-Nazi Azov Battalion,
along with my measures to keep the dangerous and easily trafficked MANPADs out of these
unstable regions."[45]
Since 2015 Azov is organising summer camps where children and teenagers receive
practice in civil defense and military tactics mixed with lectures on Ukrainian
nationalism.[48][20]
Since 2015 the Battalion has been upgraded to Regimental status and "Azov" is now
officially called "Special Operations Regiment" , with combat duties focused on
reconnaissance, counter-reconnaissance, EOD disposal, interdiction and special weapons
operations.
Foreign membership [edit]
According to The Daily Telegraph, the Azov Battalion's extremist politics and
professional English social media pages have attracted foreign fighters,[30] including
people from Brazil, Ireland, Italy, United Kingdom, France, America, Greece,
Scandinavia,[2][30] Spain, Slovakia, Czech Republic and Russia. [2][56][57] About 50
Russian nationals are members of the Azov regiment.[58]
According to Minsk Ceasefire Agreements, foreign fighters are not allowed to serve in
Ukraine's military:[66] since "Azov" Regiment was granted full military status, its
foreign volunteers were compelled either to take Ukrainian citizenship, or to leave the
Regiment.
Human rights violations and war crimes[edit]
Reports published by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights
(OHCHR) have connected the Azov Battalion to war crimes such as mass looting, unlawful
detention, and torture.[68][69] An OHCHR report from March 2016 stated that the
organisation had "collected detailed information about the conduct of hostilities by
Ukrainian armed forces and the Azov regiment in and around Shyrokyne (31km east of
Mariupol), from the summer of 2014 to date. Mass looting of civilian homes was
documented, as well as targeting of civilian areas between September 2014 and February
2015".[68] Another OHCHR report documented an instance of rape and torture
Rodnovery, symbolism and neo-Nazism [edit]
Emblem featuring a Wolfsangel and Black Sun
Most soldiers of Azov are followers of a Ukrainian nationalist type of Rodnovery (Slavic
Native Faith), wherefrom they derive some of their symbolism (such as a variation of the
swastika symbol kolovrat). They have also established Rodnover shrines for their
religious rites, including one in Mariupol dedicated to Perun.[70][71][72][unreliable
source] German ZDF television showed images of Azov fighters wearing helmets with
swastika symbols and "the SS runes of Hitler's infamous black-uniformed elite corps".[73]
Due to the use of such symbols, Azov has been considered to have connections with
neo-Nazism, with members wearing neo-Nazi and SS symbols and regalia and expressing
Neo-Nazi views.
The group's insignia features the Wolfsangel[78][79][80] and the Black
Sun,[78][81][82] two Nazi-era symbols adopted by neo-Nazi groups.
In 2018, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a provision blocking any training of
Azov members by American forces, citing its neo-Nazi background. In previous years,
between 2014 and 2017, the U.S. House of Representatives passed amendments banning
support of Azov, but due to pressure from the Pentagon, the amendments were quietly
lifted.[87][88][89] This move has been protested by Simon Wiesenthal Center which stated
that the move highlights danger of Holocaust distortion in Ukraine.[89] On 26 June 2015,
the Canadian defence minister declared as well, that training by Canadian forces or
support would not be provided to Azov. [90]
While Azov Battalion troops have denied that the organization has any neo-Nazi or white
supremacist beliefs, journalists stated that "numerous swastika tattoos of different
members and their tendency to go into battle with swastikas or SS insignias drawn on
their helmets make it very difficult for other members of the group to plausibly deny any
neo-Nazi affiliations" .[85]
no more US training? dunno what to say to that. but i plugged '2018' into a bing search
of azov torchlight parades and found this from 2016 instead (although there were some
later, as well):
Ukrainian ultra-nationalist Azov battalion [as well as Right Sector' stages torch-lit
march in Kharkov (VIDEOS)], 12 Dec, 2016 , RT.com
really according to Eva
Bartlett who'd committed journalism in the donbass independent republics, zelenskiy
hasn't been able to control them (as promised) either.
it's a good time to remember all who'd invested in the ukraine who had interest in the
Maidan putsch, isn't it?
The Special Operations Detachment "Azov", often known as Azov Battalion, Azov
Regiment, or Azov Detachment, (Ukrainian: Полк
Азов) is a Ukrainian National Guard regiment,[1][2][3][4]
based in Mariupol in the Azov Sea coastal region.
In 2014, it gained notoriety after allegations emerged of torture and war crimes,
as well as neo-Nazi sympathies and usage of associated symbols by the regiment
itself, as seen in their logo featuring the Wolfsangel, one of the original symbols
used by the German Nazi Party. In 2014, around 10-20% of the unit were neo-Nazis.[9]
In 2018, a provision in an appropriations bill passed by the U.S. Congress blocked
military aid to Azov on the grounds of its white supremacist ideology. [10] Members
of the regiment come from 22 countries and are of various backgrounds.[11]
On 13 April 2014 Minister of Internal Affairs Arsen Avakov [nb 1] issued a decree
authorizing creating new paramilitary forces from civilians up to 12,000.[22] The
Azov Battalion (using "Eastern Corps" as its backbone[20]) was formed on 5 May 2014
in Berdiansk[23] by a white nationalist.[24] Many members of Patriot of Ukraine
joined the battalion.[20] Among the early patrons of the battalion were a member of
the Verkhovna Rada Oleh Lyashko, and an ultra-nationalist Dmytro Korchynsky and
businessman Serhiy Taruta and Avakov.[25][20] The battalion then received training
near Kiev by instructors with experience in the Georgian Armed Forces.[
In September 2014, the Azov battalion was expanded from a battalion to a regiment
and enrolled into the National Guard of Ukraine.[23][33] At about this time it
started receiving increased supplies of heavy arms.[33] The Azov battalion received
funding from the Minister of Internal Affairs of Ukraine and other sources (believed
to be Ukrainian oligarchs).
As of late March 2015, despite a second ceasefire agreement (Minsk II), the Azov
Battalion continued to prepare for war, with the group's leader seeing the ceasefire
as "appeasement".[33] In March 2015 Interior Minister Arsen Avakov announced that the
Azov Regiment would be among the first units to be trained by United States Army
troops in their Operation Fearless Guardian training mission.[44][45] US training
however was withdrawn on 12 June 2015, as US House of Representatives passed an
amendment blocking any aid (including arms and training) to the battalion due to its
Neo-Nazi background.[46] After the vote Congressman John Conyers thanked the House
saying "I am grateful that the House of Representatives unanimously passed my
amendments last night to ensure that our military does not train members of the
repulsive neo-Nazi Azov Battalion, along with my measures to keep the dangerous and
easily trafficked MANPADs out of these unstable regions."[45]
Since 2015 Azov is organising summer camps where children and teenagers receive
practice in civil defense and military tactics mixed with lectures on Ukrainian
nationalism.[48][20]
Since 2015 the Battalion has been upgraded to Regimental status and "Azov" is now
officially called "Special Operations Regiment" , with combat duties focused on
reconnaissance, counter-reconnaissance, EOD disposal, interdiction and special
weapons operations.
Foreign membership [edit]
According to The Daily Telegraph, the Azov Battalion's extremist politics and
professional English social media pages have attracted foreign fighters,[30]
including people from Brazil, Ireland, Italy, United Kingdom, France, America,
Greece, Scandinavia,[2][30] Spain, Slovakia, Czech Republic and Russia. [2][56][57]
About 50 Russian nationals are members of the Azov regiment.[58]
According to Minsk Ceasefire Agreements, foreign fighters are not allowed to serve
in Ukraine's military:[66] since "Azov" Regiment was granted full military status,
its foreign volunteers were compelled either to take Ukrainian citizenship, or to
leave the Regiment.
Human rights violations and war crimes[edit]
Reports published by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human
Rights (OHCHR) have connected the Azov Battalion to war crimes such as mass looting,
unlawful detention, and torture.[68][69] An OHCHR report from March 2016 stated that
the organisation had "collected detailed information about the conduct of hostilities
by Ukrainian armed forces and the Azov regiment in and around Shyrokyne (31km east of
Mariupol), from the summer of 2014 to date. Mass looting of civilian homes was
documented, as well as targeting of civilian areas between September 2014 and
February 2015".[68] Another OHCHR report documented an instance of rape and
torture
Rodnovery, symbolism and neo-Nazism [edit]
Emblem featuring a Wolfsangel and Black Sun
Most soldiers of Azov are followers of a Ukrainian nationalist type of Rodnovery
(Slavic Native Faith), wherefrom they derive some of their symbolism (such as a
variation of the swastika symbol kolovrat). They have also established Rodnover
shrines for their religious rites, including one in Mariupol dedicated to
Perun.[70][71][72][unreliable source] German ZDF television showed images of Azov
fighters wearing helmets with swastika symbols and "the SS runes of Hitler's infamous
black-uniformed elite corps".[73] Due to the use of such symbols, Azov has been
considered to have connections with neo-Nazism, with members wearing neo-Nazi and SS
symbols and regalia and expressing Neo-Nazi views.
The group's insignia features the Wolfsangel[78][79][80] and the Black
Sun,[78][81][82] two Nazi-era symbols adopted by neo-Nazi groups.
In 2018, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a provision blocking any
training of Azov members by American forces, citing its neo-Nazi background. In
previous years, between 2014 and 2017, the U.S. House of Representatives passed
amendments banning support of Azov, but due to pressure from the Pentagon, the
amendments were quietly lifted.[87][88][89] This move has been protested by Simon
Wiesenthal Center which stated that the move highlights danger of Holocaust
distortion in Ukraine.[89] On 26 June 2015, the Canadian defence minister declared as
well, that training by Canadian forces or support would not be provided to Azov.
[90]
While Azov Battalion troops have denied that the organization has any neo-Nazi or
white supremacist beliefs, journalists stated that "numerous swastika tattoos of
different members and their tendency to go into battle with swastikas or SS insignias
drawn on their helmets make it very difficult for other members of the group to
plausibly deny any neo-Nazi affiliations" .[85]
It's great that Ukraine's revisionist far-right politics are at least getting some
attention in the press. But what you won't read in these reports is that the U.S.
government had recently sponsored a "cultural" exhibit that celebrated the Nazi
collaborator who is now getting his own street in Kiev. You can't make this stuff up!
But we have to help the Nazis because Putin's Russia is invading and we owe it to them
to.... blehh!
yasha levine commits good journalism, there too! i'd never even heard of Nil Khasevych
nor his Kil the Jews wood block prints. zelenskiy is not only jewish, but russian speaking,
ukrainian is his second language as i understand it.
imagine now living on Khasevych; wouldn't you be proud? i'd been on yasha's account
recently looking for his take (if any) on the intercept/NYT collaboration on the Iranaian
leaks. i'd figured his link to the history if U S meddling at the bottom would speak at
length about Pierre Omidyar's investments (centre UA, USAID, etc.) and maybe (then)
monsanto/billy gates.
thank you; a whoosh -worthy exposé. do you get his newsletter,
snoop?
p.s. on edit: i tried to subscribe, but it costs money. oh, well...
It's great that Ukraine's revisionist far-right politics are at least getting some
attention in the press. But what you won't read in these reports is that the U.S.
government had recently sponsored a "cultural" exhibit that celebrated the Nazi
collaborator who is now getting his own street in Kiev. You can't make this stuff
up!
But we have to help the Nazis because Putin's Russia is invading and we owe it to
them to.... blehh!
There is lots of good info on Twitter about the Ukraine system and corruption. Bibi
didn't have any problems dealing with the neo Nazis there either which threw me for a loop.
But then it was people in our country that made Hitler's war chest. Bush Sr., Ford and lots
of others thought Hitler's system should be implemented here. Oh yeah and of course the
banks..
Yasha Levine commits good journalism, there too! i'd never even heard of Nil
Khasevych nor his Kil the Jews wood block prints. zelenskiy is not only jewish, but
russian speaking, ukrainian is his second language as i understand it.
imagine now living on Khasevych; wouldn't you be proud? i'd been on yasha's account
recently looking for his take (if any) on the intercept/NYT collaboration on the
Iranaian leaks. i'd figured his link to the history if U S meddling at the bottom would
speak at length about Pierre Omidyar's investments (centre UA, USAID, etc.) and maybe
(then) monsanto/billy gates.
thank you; a whoosh -worthy exposé. do you get his newsletter,
snoop?
p.s. on edit: i tried to subscribe, but it costs money. oh, well...
especially with the editing. but it' like the game of telephone, isn't it? 'he told me
he overheard...', and someone told me s he heard..., yada, yada,
but just think if Pelosi hadn't limited the inquiry to One Phone call? 'as trump's
puppet, is zelenskiy's claiming 'no quid pro quo worth anything?'
There is lots of good info on Twitter about the Ukraine system and corruption. Bibi
didn't have any problems dealing with the neo Nazis there either which threw me for a
loop. But then it was people in our country that made Hitler's war chest. Bush Sr.,
Ford and lots of others thought Hitler's system should be implemented here. Oh yeah and
of course the banks..
Nah not so much. Numerous websites wrote about it back when it happened just like they
wrote about Hunter Biden and Burisma. But now I'm seeing the main stream media trying to
tell us that it didn't happen that way. Well here's one article that hasn't been scrubbed
yet.
Kiev officials are scrambling to make amends with the president-elect after quietly
working to boost Clinton.
Donald Trump wasn't the only presidential candidate whose campaign was boosted by
officials of a former Soviet bloc country.
Ukrainian government officials tried to help Hillary Clinton and undermine Trump by
publicly questioning his fitness for office. They also disseminated documents implicating
a top Trump aide in corruption and suggested they were investigating the matter, only to
back away after the election. And they helped Clinton's allies research damaging
information on Trump and his advisers, a Politico investigation found.
A Ukrainian-American operative who was consulting for the Democratic National
Committee met with top officials in the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington in an effort to
expose ties between Trump, top campaign aide Paul Manafort and Russia, according to
people with direct knowledge of the situation.
The Ukrainian efforts had an impact in the race, helping to force Manafort's
resignation and advancing the narrative that Trump's campaign was deeply connected to
Ukraine's foe to the east, Russia. But they were far less concerted or centrally
directed than Russia's alleged hacking and dissemination of Democratic emails.
Ahh that good ole but. Yes what people in Ukraine did was bad, but.... and here's the
but.
Russia's effort was personally directed by Russian President Vladimir Putin, involved
the country's military and foreign intelligence services, according to U.S.
intelligence officials. They reportedly briefed Trump last week on the possibility that
Russian operatives might have compromising information on the president-elect. And at a
Senate hearing last week on the hacking, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper
said " I don't think we've ever encountered a more aggressive or direct campaign to
interfere in our election process than we've seen in this case."
There's little evidence of such a top-down effort by Ukraine. Longtime observers
suggest that the rampant corruption, factionalism and economic struggles plaguing the
country -- not to mention its ongoing strife with Russia -- would render it unable to
pull off an ambitious covert interference campaign in another country's election. And
President Petro Poroshenko's administration, along with the Ukrainian Embassy in
Washington, insists that Ukraine stayed neutral in the race.
Yet Politico's investigation found evidence of Ukrainian government involvement in the
race that appears to strain diplomatic protocol dictating that governments refrain from
engaging in one another's elections.
Well there you have it. People in Ukraine were digging up dirt on people in Trump's
campaign whilst Vlad only placed a few ads on FB and most of them were placed after the
election was over. Badder Russia.
That Ukraine was trying to get Hillary elected was well known in the Ukraine government,
but sure let's just say it never happened like that. Then of course there was Hillary
hiring people in another country to dig up dirt too, but that doesn't count. Why? Reasons
of course and because it was Hillary and the DNC doing it. See? Reasons.
Next paragraph starts with this.
Russia's meddling has sparked outrage from the American body politic. Lots of words
about how that outraged people here...and more blah blah blah stuff.
Next paragrap
Ukraine, on the other hand, has traditionally enjoyed strong relations with U.S.
administrations. Its officials worry that could change under Trump, whose team has
privately expressed sentiments ranging from ambivalence to deep skepticism about
Poroshenko's regime, while sounding unusually friendly notes about Putin's regime.
Poroshenko is scrambling to alter that dynamic, recently signing a $50,000-a-month
contract with a well-connected GOP-linked Washington lobbying firm to set up meetings
with U.S. government officials "to strengthen U.S.-Ukrainian relations."
Hmm hint of a quid pro quo there?
BTW. Lindsay Graham wants to investigate Hunter Biden and Joe says that he will regret
doing that for the rest of his life. Stay tuned for the fireworks.
Ahh yes Russia was the one that started that propaganda. Burisma and Biden was always on
the up and up so don't even think that they weren't. I really don't know how people who
believe everything about Russia Gate and now Ukraine Gate can keep their beliefs intact
when there is so much information showing that what they believe is wrong or didn't happen
the way they think it did.
Nah not so much. Numerous websites wrote about it back when it happened just like
they wrote about Hunter Biden and Burisma. But now I'm seeing the main stream media
trying to tell us that it didn't happen that way. Well here's one article that hasn't
been scrubbed yet.
Kiev officials are scrambling to make amends with the president-elect after
quietly working to boost Clinton.
Donald Trump wasn't the only presidential candidate whose campaign was boosted by
officials of a former Soviet bloc country.
Ukrainian government officials tried to help Hillary Clinton and undermine Trump
by publicly questioning his fitness for office. They also disseminated documents
implicating a top Trump aide in corruption and suggested they were investigating the
matter, only to back away after the election. And they helped Clinton's allies
research damaging information on Trump and his advisers, a Politico investigation
found.
A Ukrainian-American operative who was consulting for the Democratic National
Committee met with top officials in the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington in an effort
to expose ties between Trump, top campaign aide Paul Manafort and Russia, according
to people with direct knowledge of the situation.
The Ukrainian efforts had an impact in the race, helping to force Manafort's
resignation and advancing the narrative that Trump's campaign was deeply connected to
Ukraine's foe to the east, Russia. But they were far less concerted or
centrally directed than Russia's alleged hacking and dissemination of Democratic
emails.
Ahh that good ole but. Yes what people in Ukraine did was bad, but.... and here's
the but.
Russia's effort was personally directed by Russian President Vladimir Putin,
involved the country's military and foreign intelligence services, according
to U.S. intelligence officials. They reportedly briefed Trump last week on the
possibility that Russian operatives might have compromising information on the
president-elect. And at a Senate hearing last week on the hacking, Director of
National Intelligence James Clapper said " I don't think we've ever encountered a
more aggressive or direct campaign to interfere in our election process than we've
seen in this case."
There's little evidence of such a top-down effort by Ukraine. Longtime observers
suggest that the rampant corruption, factionalism and economic struggles plaguing the
country -- not to mention its ongoing strife with Russia -- would render it unable to
pull off an ambitious covert interference campaign in another country's election. And
President Petro Poroshenko's administration, along with the Ukrainian Embassy in
Washington, insists that Ukraine stayed neutral in the race.
Yet Politico's investigation found evidence of Ukrainian government involvement in
the race that appears to strain diplomatic protocol dictating that governments
refrain from engaging in one another's elections.
Well there you have it. People in Ukraine were digging up dirt on people in Trump's
campaign whilst Vlad only placed a few ads on FB and most of them were placed after the
election was over. Badder Russia.
That Ukraine was trying to get Hillary elected was well known in the Ukraine
government, but sure let's just say it never happened like that. Then of course there
was Hillary hiring people in another country to dig up dirt too, but that doesn't
count. Why? Reasons of course and because it was Hillary and the DNC doing it. See?
Reasons.
Next paragraph starts with this.
Russia's meddling has sparked outrage from the American body politic. Lots of words
about how that outraged people here...and more blah blah blah stuff.
Next paragrap
Ukraine, on the other hand, has traditionally enjoyed strong relations with U.S.
administrations. Its officials worry that could change under Trump, whose team has
privately expressed sentiments ranging from ambivalence to deep skepticism about
Poroshenko's regime, while sounding unusually friendly notes about Putin's
regime.
Poroshenko is scrambling to alter that dynamic, recently signing a $50,000-a-month
contract with a well-connected GOP-linked Washington lobbying firm to set up meetings
with U.S. government officials "to strengthen U.S.-Ukrainian relations."
Hmm hint of a quid pro quo there?
BTW. Lindsay Graham wants to investigate Hunter Biden and Joe says that he will
regret doing that for the rest of his life. Stay tuned for the fireworks.
this morning intending to grab some of his quotes and links here: ' November
20, 2019 , Impeachment Circus - Today's Bombshell Is Another Dud one chris cilizza link
i'd given to linda wood to see if she or others might parse for me/us.
"The impeachment circus continued today with a refreshingly candid opening statement
from Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the EU. Sondland was involved in diplomatic
efforts in Ukraine. Instead of stonewalling Sondland just let it all out:
'Gordon D. Sondland testified that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo signed off on the
pressure campaign, and that he told Vice President Mike Pence about an apparent link
between military aid for Ukraine and investigations of Democrats. Mr. Sondland
confirmed there was a "clear quid pro quo" for a White House meeting between President
Trump and Ukraine's president.'
The
anti-Trump media see this as another "bombshell" that will hurt him.
But it is more likely that Sondland's testimony will help President Trump and those
involved on his side.
Ahh yes Russia was the one that started that propaganda. Burisma and Biden was
always on the up and up so don't even think that they weren't. I really don't know how
people who believe everything about Russia Gate and now Ukraine Gate can keep their
beliefs intact when there is so much information showing that what they believe is
wrong or didn't happen the way they think it did.
Almost everything Americans have ever been told about US foreign policy is a lie. Almost
everything we think we know is still a lie.
The Democrat's immediate goal is to install Mike Pence as President as soon as
possible.
Everything depends on this. Pence is the continuation of Obama's Neocon policies in
Ukraine and throughout the world. Biden is the premier Neocon on the 2020 ticket. His job
is to lie himself into the nomination and pick-up a Neocon Vice President. If he loses to
Pence, it doesn't matter. The CFR wins either way. And we're off to war with Russia.
This is a must read for those who want to know what is happening to them. And happening
fast.
It will be hard to see the world the same way again.
as with a hella busy 3-day weekend, i hadn't intended to, but what with the smoke
coming out of my ears and all...
i'd long claimed that i'd want to go out in a first strike as well, and here we are
just east of the shit-head capital of bumfuck, CO (h/t ed abbey).
now there are a number of NORAD
sites , but most nations as i understand it still have No First Strike Rules, but
the US no longer does, iirc (meaning: don't count on it). our daughter and her family
live in el paso county, CO home of one or two, one an alt-site under cheyenne
mountain.
i've often been a bit glib as to: 'Who will stop the US Empire? Those who can...and
must.'
but i dunno who that might end up being, nor how including with nukes. but at this
point, i guess it's all philosophical to me, as we're all living on borrowed time, and
Live in the Moment when possible.
i do so wish i could help you ease your fears, my friend.
there's no way i can read anything that long, especially in the zero-hedge format. but i
found it at the duran, and an easier read on my eye-brain configuration at the
saker . strategic culture usually carries his columns, but not this one...yet.
even scanning at the zero hedge version, i hadn't spotted pence's name. in which part
(I-IV) was it? zuesse has always needed a good editor, imo. but yeah, Pentecostal Pence
gives me the shivers.
Almost everything Americans have ever been told about US foreign policy is a lie.
Almost everything we think we know is still a lie.
The Democrat's immediate goal is to install Mike Pence as President as soon as
possible.
Everything depends on this. Pence is the continuation of Obama's Neocon policies in
Ukraine and throughout the world. Biden is the premier Neocon on the 2020 ticket. His
job is to lie himself into the nomination and pick-up a Neocon Vice President. If he
loses to Pence, it doesn't matter. The CFR wins either way. And we're off to war with
Russia.
This is a must read for those who want to know what is happening to them. And
happening fast.
It will be hard to see the world the same way again.
i read the comments on the saker version, what was key was what zuesse hadn't written
(i.e. any mention of the CIA), and part IV at the duran,, withut elaborating, much of which
i disagreed with.
there's no way i can read anything that long, especially in the zero-hedge format.
but i found it at the duran, and an easier read on my eye-brain configuration
at the
saker . strategic culture usually carries his columns, but not this one...yet.
even scanning at the zero hedge version, i hadn't spotted pence's name. in which
part (I-IV) was it? zuesse has always needed a good editor, imo. but yeah, Pentecostal
Pence gives me the shivers.
@Pluto's Republic or New York for sure. There are a lot of other target rich areas
like Langley, the Silicon Valley area and certainly that big base in San Diego in
California, the possible list is long because this Country is littered with military
installations.
But I'd expect that if Russia had only two nukes to fire Washington DC and NY would be
the instant decision. DC is 'evil Central' to most of the world, and NY City's Wall Street
is its oxygen supply and without those two cities it's like chopping off the head of the
snake. (no offense to snakes intended)
It fills the soul with dread. There is no one left to fight the poisonous empire
from the inside. All have succumbed. They will be along soon enough to clean up these
fragments and send them down the memory hole. I'm going to dwell in the large-target
cities from now on. I intend to be vaporized in the first strike.
are brilliant and vital to understanding the Ukraine situation. I think Part 2 is most
important, even though I disagree with him on one point. He establishes how stupid and
moronic the Democrats' impeachment witnesses are to suggest we have to fight Russia in
Ukraine so we don't have to fight them here. He shows how minuscule Russia's conventional
weapons systems are compared to ours, especially with respect to sea and air power, and
then he states,
... Not surprisingly, Russia's pint-sized economy can not support a military
establishment anywhere near to that of Imperial Washington. To wit, its $61 billion of
military outlays in 2018 amounted to less than 32 days of Washington's current $750
billion of expenditures for defense.
Indeed, it might well be asked how Russia could remotely threaten homeland security in
America short of what would be a suicidal nuclear first strike.
That's because the 1,600 deployed nuclear weapons on each side represent a
continuation of mutual deterrence (MAD) – the arrangement by which we we got
through 45-years of cold war when the Kremlin was run by a totalitarian oligarchy
committed to a hostile ideology; and during which time it had been armed to the teeth via
a forced-draft allocation of upwards of 40% of the GDP of the Soviet empire to the
military.
By comparison, the Russian defense budget currently amounts to less than 4% of the
country's anemic present day economy – one shorn of the vast territories and
populations of Belarus, Ukraine, Georgia, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and all the Asian
"stans" among others. Yet given those realities we are supposed to believe that the
self-evidently calculating and cautious kleptomaniac who runs the Kremlin is going to go
mad, defy MAD and trigger a nuclear Armageddon?
Indeed, the idea that Russia presents a national security threat to America is
laughable. Not only would Putin never risk nuclear suicide, but even that fantasy is the
extent of what he's got. That is, Russia's conventional capacity to project force to the
North American continent is nonexistent – or at best, lies somewhere between nichts
and nothing.
I agree with Stockman that in a conventional war with the U.S., we win. But that's just
exactly the problem. Russia can't have a conventional war with us or with NATO. It's
defense from us is ONLY nuclear assured destruction. So the problem is not whether or not
he's nuts. The problem is that we are nuts. Our government is nuts. Our government has a
first strike policy, meaning our government considers it rational to eliminate a portion of
the American people, which in our Nuclear Posture Review would be catastrophic, in order to
win a war with Russia.
... The NPR argues that additional low-yield options are "not intended to enable"
nuclear war-fighting "[n]or will it lower the nuclear threshold" (p. 54). But this
assertion ignores the fact that the stated purpose is to make their use "more credible"
in the eyes of U.S. adversaries , which means that they are meant to be seen as "more
usable."
The belief that a nuclear conflict could be controlled is dangerous thinking. The fog
of war is thick, the fog of nuclear war would be even thicker. Such thinking could also
have the perverse effect of convincing Russia that it could get away with limited nuclear
use without putting its survival at risk.
Many military targets are in or near urban areas. It has been estimated that the use
of even a fraction of U.S. and Russian nuclear forces could lead to the death of tens of
millions of people in each country. An all-out exchange would kill hundreds of millions
and produce catastrophic global consequences with adverse agricultural, economic, health,
and environmental consequences for billions of people.
No country should be preparing to wage a "limited nuclear war" that neither side can
guarantee would remain "limited." Rather, as Presidents Ronald Reagan and Mikhail
Gorbachev declared in 1985, today's Russian and U.S. leaders should recognize that "a
nuclear war can never be won and must never be fought."
and i agree: it's not the defense budget that matters. in this nation, the defense
industries are allowed to do 'cost over-runs', and russia's weapons of war and defensive
war are clearly superior. see how many are wanting russian man-pads missile defense, for
instance.
i'll take part two, but at anti-war.com to the café. commenter juliania loved
part I witless! i was sad to read that justin raimondo has already crossed over, may he
rest in power. one place i'd blogged for a time were outraged i tell you, Outraged, that a
libertarian wrote for antiwar.com. needless to say, i didn't last long at the
accursed dagblog.com.
are brilliant and vital to understanding the Ukraine situation. I think Part 2 is
most important, even though I disagree with him on one point. He establishes how stupid
and moronic the Democrats' impeachment witnesses are to suggest we have to fight Russia
in Ukraine so we don't have to fight them here. He shows how minuscule Russia's
conventional weapons systems are compared to ours, especially with respect to sea and
air power, and then he states,
... Not surprisingly, Russia's pint-sized economy can not support a military
establishment anywhere near to that of Imperial Washington. To wit, its $61 billion
of military outlays in 2018 amounted to less than 32 days of Washington's current
$750 billion of expenditures for defense.
Indeed, it might well be asked how Russia could remotely threaten homeland
security in America short of what would be a suicidal nuclear first strike.
That's because the 1,600 deployed nuclear weapons on each side represent a
continuation of mutual deterrence (MAD) – the arrangement by which we we got
through 45-years of cold war when the Kremlin was run by a totalitarian oligarchy
committed to a hostile ideology; and during which time it had been armed to the teeth
via a forced-draft allocation of upwards of 40% of the GDP of the Soviet empire to
the military.
By comparison, the Russian defense budget currently amounts to less than 4% of the
country's anemic present day economy – one shorn of the vast territories and
populations of Belarus, Ukraine, Georgia, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and all the Asian
"stans" among others. Yet given those realities we are supposed to believe that the
self-evidently calculating and cautious kleptomaniac who runs the Kremlin is going to
go mad, defy MAD and trigger a nuclear Armageddon?
Indeed, the idea that Russia presents a national security threat to America is
laughable. Not only would Putin never risk nuclear suicide, but even that fantasy is
the extent of what he's got. That is, Russia's conventional capacity to project force
to the North American continent is nonexistent – or at best, lies somewhere
between nichts and nothing.
I agree with Stockman that in a conventional war with the U.S., we win. But that's
just exactly the problem. Russia can't have a conventional war with us or with NATO.
It's defense from us is ONLY nuclear assured destruction. So the problem is not whether
or not he's nuts. The problem is that we are nuts. Our government is nuts. Our
government has a first strike policy, meaning our government considers it rational to
eliminate a portion of the American people, which in our Nuclear Posture Review would
be catastrophic, in order to win a war with Russia.
... The NPR argues that additional low-yield options are "not intended to enable"
nuclear war-fighting "[n]or will it lower the nuclear threshold" (p. 54). But this
assertion ignores the fact that the stated purpose is to make their use "more
credible" in the eyes of U.S. adversaries , which means that they are meant to be
seen as "more usable."
The belief that a nuclear conflict could be controlled is dangerous thinking. The
fog of war is thick, the fog of nuclear war would be even thicker. Such thinking
could also have the perverse effect of convincing Russia that it could get away with
limited nuclear use without putting its survival at risk.
Many military targets are in or near urban areas. It has been estimated that the
use of even a fraction of U.S. and Russian nuclear forces could lead to the death of
tens of millions of people in each country. An all-out exchange would kill hundreds
of millions and produce catastrophic global consequences with adverse agricultural,
economic, health, and environmental consequences for billions of people.
No country should be preparing to wage a "limited nuclear war" that neither side
can guarantee would remain "limited." Rather, as Presidents Ronald Reagan and Mikhail
Gorbachev declared in 1985, today's Russian and U.S. leaders should recognize that "a
nuclear war can never be won and must never be fought."
On Wednesday night, a new Democratic foreign-policy
consensus came together on
the debate stage . For Democrats, it has become dogma that Saudi Arabia deserves only to be
shamed and isolated by the United States, not treated like a valuable strategic partner.
Sen. Cory Booker accused the president of committing a "human-rights violation" by
supporting the Saudi war against Iran-backed militias in Yemen without congressional consent.
Former Vice President Joe Biden called the Saudi Kingdom a "pariah" and said its government has
"very little social redeeming value." Sen. Bernie Sanders accused the Saudis of operating a
"brutal dictatorship" and being an unreliable U.S. ally.
These criticisms are not unfounded. The Saudis were implicated in the murder of a
U.S. resident. The Saudis do commit human-rights violations, both in domestic and
foreign policy. The Saudis have encouraged the radicalization of their citizens and
contributed to geopolitical insecurity in the age of Islamist terror. Democrats are not
unjustified in their criticisms of the Kingdom, but it takes a special brazenness to issue
these attacks on the Saudis while simultaneously calling for the banning of the technology that
has made such displays of American geopolitical independence possible: fracking.
To his credit, Joe Biden has not called for the outright ban of hydraulic fracturing
technology, but Sanders and Booker have
. That policy, if realized, would relegate the United States to a strategically disadvantageous
role vis-à-vis the world's largest energy exporters, including Saudi Arabia. It would
also sacrifice one of the most miraculous developments of this decade: the revival of the
American domestic energy industry.
Since 2013, domestic U.S. oil production has increased by 60 percent. In 2018, for the first
time in 40 years, the United States outpaced Saudi Arabia's oil output and is estimated to have
surpassed Russian production. American energy companies have become major exporters of crude
oil and natural gas, and the U.S. is poised to become a net energy
exporter for the first time since 1953 by the year 2022. This new glut of supply in the
fossil-fuel market has substantially reduced the geopolitical clout of OPEC countries,
including outcast nations like Nicolas Maduro's Venezuela and Vladimir Putin's Russia. That has
enabled the U.S. to pursue precisely the kind of values-based foreign policy Democrats
advocate.
It's no exaggeration to stress that this is among Putin's worst nightmares. He's confessed
as much, in fact, according to former National Security Council official and Russia expert,
Fiona Hill. In testimony
before congressional investigators this week, Hill noted that Putin himself warned of the
threat to Russian interests represented by fracking as early as 2011. The Russian president was
among the first petrol-fueled despots who felt the sting of the American energy sector's
technological revolution. In November 2013, just weeks before his ouster in the Maidan
revolution, the Russia-friendly president of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych, signed a
$10 billion deal with the U.S.-based multinational Chevron to explore and exploit the
country's domestic shale gas deposits.
Leveraging Russian gas exports to Europe and the former Soviet Republics is a means by which
Moscow has advanced its interests on the Continent. Breaking its hold on energy exports is in
both America's commercial and geostrategic interests. There is no player on the international
stage that Democrats would like to see marginalized more than Putin, and fracking creates more
opportunities to achieve that objective. But Democrats would rather pander to the party's
environmentalist wing and its irrational
hostility toward this successful innovation.
Democrats can adopt as hawkish a posture toward Russia and Saudi Arabia as they like, but
isolating these illiberal states is possible today only because of the domestic energy
revolution they oppose. Democrats can have fracking and the marginalization of Putin and the
House of Saud, or they can have neither. So far, they're opting for neither.
King Lear 57 "he suffers from extreme naïveté, in that he assumes every new U$
president.."
obviously you have not watched many Putin interviews or speeches. Rather than naive, Putin
hopes for the best and prepares for the worst - the reason Russia now has weapon superiority
over US. Research into new weapons was begun back in 2002 - the moment US pulled out of ABS
treaty. The same distrust carries through to politics, but is more in the line of speak
softly and carry a big stick.
I guess you're another of those who think Russia is nothing more than a gas station and
should mouth bravado to cover their (imaginary) weakness.
"... Fiona Hill, a "respected Russia scholar" and former senior White House official, added a harsh critique during testimony on Thursday. She told some of Mr. Trump's fiercest defenders in Congress that they were repeating "a fictional narrative." She said that it likely came from a disinformation campaign by Russian security services, which also propagated it. ..."
"... In a briefing that closely aligned with Dr. Hill's testimony, American intelligence officials informed senators and their aides in recent weeks that Russia had engaged in a yearslong campaign to essentially frame Ukraine as responsible for Moscow's own hacking of the 2016 election, according to three American officials. The briefing came as Republicans stepped up their defenses of Mr. Trump in the Ukraine affair. ..."
"... The accusations of a Ukrainian influence campaign center on actions by a handful of Ukrainians who openly criticized or sought to damage Mr. Trump's candidacy in 2016. ..."
"... Just keep in mind that those claims are unfounded. The 'handful' of Ukrainians managed, with help from the Democratic National Council, to push Trump's campaign manager to resign. They even bragged about it. Ukrainians were also the biggest foreign donors to Hillary Clinton's foundation. ..."
"... Those are "unfounded claims about Ukrainian interference". Because Putin pointed them out. However, let me assure you that neither the Times nor the CIA would ever make unfounded claims of a Russian operation. It is Russia that is trying 'to sow discord'. It is not an unfounded Democratic impeachment inquiry that does that. ..."
Fiona Hill, a respected Russia scholar and former senior White House official, added a harsh
critique during testimony on Thursday. She told some of Mr. Trump's fiercest defenders in
Congress that they were repeating "a fictional narrative." She said that it likely came from
a disinformation campaign by Russian security services, which also propagated it.
In a briefing that closely aligned with Dr. Hill's testimony, American intelligence
officials informed senators and their aides in recent weeks that Russia had engaged in a
yearslong campaign to essentially frame Ukraine as responsible for Moscow's own hacking of
the 2016 election, according to three American officials. The briefing came as Republicans
stepped up their defenses of Mr. Trump in the Ukraine affair.
...
The revelations demonstrate Russia's persistence in trying to sow discord among its
adversaries -- and show that the Kremlin apparently succeeded, as unfounded claims about
Ukrainian interference seeped into Republican talking points.
So there was no Ukrainian meddling, no Ukrainian interference. Claims thereof are
unfounded! But just a few sentences later the piece curiously says something different:
The accusations of a Ukrainian influence campaign center on actions by a handful of
Ukrainians who openly criticized or sought to damage Mr. Trump's candidacy in 2016.
Just keep in mind that those claims are unfounded. The 'handful' of Ukrainians managed, with help from the Democratic National Council, to push
Trump's campaign manager to resign. They even bragged about it. Ukrainians were also the biggest
foreign donors to Hillary Clinton's foundation.
However, because Putin once pointed that out, those claims must be unfounded. They must be
Russian disinformation:
During a news conference in February 2017, Mr. Putin accused the Ukrainian government of
supporting Hillary Clinton during the previous American election and funding her candidacy
with friendly oligarchs.
It is not clear when American intelligence agencies learned about Moscow's campaign or
when precisely it began.
...
One target was the leak of a secret ledger disclosed by a Ukrainian law enforcement agency
that appeared to show that Paul Manafort, Mr. Trump's onetime campaign chairman, had taken
illicit payments from Ukrainian politicians who were close to Moscow. He was forced to step
down from the Trump campaign after the ledger became public in August 2016, and the Russians
have since been eager to cast doubt on its authenticity, the former official said.
Those are "unfounded claims about Ukrainian interference". Because Putin pointed them
out. However, let me assure you that neither the Times nor the CIA would ever make
unfounded claims of a Russian operation. It is Russia that is trying 'to sow discord'. It is not an unfounded Democratic impeachment
inquiry that does that.
Posted by b on November 23, 2019 at 18:08 UTC | Permalink
Maybe the CIA has decided that they need to make the claims more obtuse so that even the
mentally competent have trouble explaining the 11 dimensional chess involved.
After all, if Trump singlehanded, as he claims, kept Xi from sending the troops into HK
then Putin assuredly can influence American politics.....if Putin only could make it all go
away.....what a waste of time, energy and money that could be spent on improving the lot of
the poor, living on the streets in the US
When and how will the private finance empire circus end?
At least the US has Bernie and Tulsi calling out the coup in Bolivia for what it
is.....maybe there is hope.
Manafort was managing campaigns of pro-Russian political parties/candidates in Ukraine for
7 years or so before being hired by Trump. My understanding is that Manafort was warned that
his work was undermining USA efforts in Ukraine.
Why did America First Trump bring on Flynn?
Flynn was known to be hated by the intelligence community for having told the world that
the Obama Administration made a "wilful decision" to support the rise of ISIS.
Why did America First Trump make pleas for Putin to release Hillary's emails via
Wikileaks?
It was already known that some of the emails contained top secret information. AFAIK, USA
would consider any publication a crime.
These were set-ups.
<> <> <> <> <> <> <> <>
Why was "independent", "socialist true believer", supposed man-of-integrity Sanders
sheepdogging for Hillary ("enough with your damn emails")?
Why did Hillary, a seasoned campaigner with virtually unlimited resources, make so many
grievous mistakes in the 2016 election? She snubbed Sanders and his supporters; took the
black vote for granted; insulted whites as "deplorables"; chose not to campaign in the THREE
STATES that she know would decided the election. Why didn't she pull out all the stops to
win? For her beloved establishment? For her own aspirations as first women President? If she
failed because she was "over confident" as some have suggested, then why did she pay for the
Steele dossier as "insurance"? There was no need for insurance if she knew she would win and
if she were unsure of winning she should have done everything possible to win (as any real
candidate would have).
Why did America First Trump use British company Cambridge Analytica? We later
learned that facebook provided the same info to dozens of other companies (debunking the
initial excuse that Cambridge Analytica had special access to facebook info). Was it because
the Russiagate disinfo and CIA election meddling campaign was located in UK?
Why did Trump initiate Ukrainegate by talking about investigating Biden on a diplomatic
call? He's smart enough to know that such political machinations are handled behind the
scenes.
This Reality Show Presidency is all about kayfabe as the Deep State restructures to meet
the challenge from China and Russia, and seeks to manufacture consent for a war with
Iran.
The take away quote
"
Defend American Democracy has spent six figures on television advertisements pressuring
Republican members of Congress to "hold the president accountable for abusing his office and
risking national security for his own gain." The group, which primarily targets
swing-district Republicans, prominently features military veterans in its ads and presents
itself as a veterans group to local media outlets.
........
The 501(c)(4) group is managed by Eric Kessler, a former Clinton administration official who
runs the philanthropic firm Arabella Advisors. The anonymously funded nonprofit was behind
several groups that ran "issue ads" to benefit Democrats during the 2018 midterms, as well as
Demand Justice, a group that spent millions of dollars on ads attacking Brett Kavanaugh
during his nomination to the Supreme Court. The Sixteen Thirty Fund and its sister 501(c)(3)
nonprofit, New Venture Fund, have fiscally sponsored at least 80 of their own groups,
bankrolling those entities in a way that leaves almost no paper trail.
"
The US has the best government Russian influence has not bought.
div> @b #3
I really think the twitter account is satire, judging from other tweets and the profile
pic.
So Russia hacked and attacked Hillary and DNC as Russia. (I believe that is still the
official left-Dem-media meme, despite investigation producing no evidence.) And they attacked
Trump disguised as Ukraine.
This sowing discord is a busy undertaking.
And rather unnecessary, considering the pre-existing state of discord in the nation and
politics, a duplicitous Dem party lost in the wilderness, as it searches a popular cry that
won't actually empower people, a Republican Party that was overwhelmed by a populist tide and
candidate not sanctioned by the leadership, and a legacy media that can crank up divisions on
command.
Maybe I should've posted my comment @6 on the "Impeachment Circus" thread instead.
It just struck me that neoMcCarthist smearing of Russia (which is ongoing, as proven by
b's post) was made possible via the kayfabe of Russiagate, which had it's origins in the 2016
election.
Fiona Hill...another bare faced liar whose name is not Hillary Clinton....I am no longer
astonished that this crap is actually publishable despite the evidence available to anyone
with at least two brain cells. Having followed on the Net the coup in Ukraine in 2014 from
2013 on via live blogs by Western corespondents who are not beholden to the MSM, I know what
lies that latter "journaille" gets away with.
Fiona Hill is an expert on Russophobic content. Like Condi Rice, a Soviet Scholar, she knows
nothing truthful about Russia. Else, why does she lie about Russia?
The think tanks, academia and State Dept. spew out the lies which the Media multiplies.
99% of Russian experts are Russophobes who possess little expertise, some practicing their
propaganda for decades. Many of them excrete books on regular schedules.
The first test (since 2014) of any expert's credentials is his/her position on Crimea. The
next test is on Russian aggression.
If anyone suggests Crimea does not belong to Russia (most especially the federal district of
Sevastopol), then they are ignorant or lying. You either know that in 1954 Crimea was
unconstitutionally given to Ukraine by the Ukrainian Khruschev. It was illegal by USSR law.
2014 corrected that injustice. The experts who profess otherwise are lying.
And if anyone suggests that the Russians are aggressors, they are lying. If Russia was an
aggressor in Georgia or Ukraine, neither would have governments that are so anti-Russian or
militaries that could form a small parade, much less beg for inclusion in NATO.
Russia reacted to Georgian aggression and mass murder. In Ukraine, the Donbass is a Russian
assisted self-defense operation against an ethnic cleansing war. Russia's participation has
been to save 2.5 million Russian-speaking Ukrainians from slaughter ('filtration' is the Ukie
euphemism for killing the Donbass separatists who refuse Kiev's nazi regime).
Russian 'aggression' is a construct of propaganda. Taken in the context of NATO expansion
and encroachment right to the borders of Russia, there is nothing but lies tied to the
'aggression' canard.
We have had 28 years of demonization of the Russian Federation. Russophobia is centuries
old in some societies. Of late, it focuses on the attempts to separate away from Russia the
brother republics of the CIS region of Eurasia. Fed lies, distortion of history, linguistic
differences, religious issues and economic disadvantages, a mania against Russia has been
cultivated. It all is led by "the experts" like Fiona Hill.
We see the same dynamic used against China with Hong Kong, Taiwan, Tibet, Xinjiang and
Inner Mongolia. Propaganda. Lies. Experts who mouth the Sinophobic fabrications are the
talking heads on Media and on Congressional sideshows.
Russophobia and Sinophobia are industries now. Fame, publishing riches, TV appearances,
YouTube videos abound with the 'expertise' of these haters.
Judge the output of these expert operatives. The content is always flawed. The truth is
always hidden. But lies fly fast and loose.
Some people actually do believe this stuff, dependent on their partisan world view.
The IG report, which will outline abuses of the FISA system which appears to have
authorized surveillance of Trump campaign by the FBI, is scheduled for release on December 9.
The degree to which it will be damaging to the Russian collusion/hacking/sowing discord
anti-Trump crowds was anticipated yesterday by the simultaneous publication by CNN and WaPo
of assurances by unnamed "officials" that the report will not find anything but minor
discrepancies. Getting out ahead of the story so obviously and more than a week in advance
likely means the report will be damaging - although that may be just a Russian talking
point.
But much as I enjoyed this, I still have to point out that if Ukrainian meddling was so
important and their US consorts so treasonous, then Russian meddling was so important and
*their* consorts so treasonous. You can't honestly have it both ways, either the Democrats'
excusing Ukrainians or the Trumpists excusing Russia. Actually, you can't even honestly say
you know either made any difference. No one sensible thinks either party meant to give aid
and comfort to enemies of the US---the constitutional* definition of treason---unless you
believe the US is justly in undeclared war with the rest of humanity. The only big difference
is that it was Trump who openly asked for foreign assistance in a public speech. The only
conclusion to draw from that is Trumpists are whiners who can dish it out but can't take
it.
*The legalistic assholes who want to deny majority rule under shelter of the Electoral
College on the fraudulent grounds that a technicality matters more really are against
majority rule. Of course they also pretend that impeachment reverses elections. The cherry on
top of this turd sundae? They would reject the 26th Amendment, which would have been invoked
against Reagan as well as Trump (and possibly his original, Nixon, as well.) Pence is not
even man enough to do his duty.
Why did the Hildabeast get the Steele Dossier as insurance if she was confident of
victory?
For the same reason that a healthy person in their 20's or 30's, someone not in the least
expecting to die for decades, purchases life insurance covering their family. Just "in case"
the wildly improbable does indeed happen.
I can't see anyone who has a realistic chance of being elected president, let alone with
the historic feat of being the first female president deliberately throwing all this
away.
No matter how often I'm brought to consider this, it still seems striking that 2 years and
$40 million in US law fare waged by the Special Prosecutor is not enough to see Fiona Hill
laughed out of chambers at her RussiaRussia harangue, whereas the NYT is able to establish an
equivalent lack of foundation to the Ukraine meddling thesis in a thrice, notwithstanding
rather substantial counter-evidence long in the public domain. Indeed the Grey Lady does not
even try to debunk these claims, allowing herself instead to refer to them debunked. If you
say so, apparently, or if you and your cohort say so often enough.
For any progressives still gaslighted by this, I invite you to consider a similar
full-court legal, media, IC / Deep State campaign featuring most of the same actors, engaging
next in the hobbling or destruction of a Bernie Sanders presidency.
Or the Steele Dossier was intended so much insurance as a cudgel to beat the fallen
Donald, post-election loser, while he was down. This was the man whose most stirring
electoral refrain was "lock her up." She and her masters would have had every reason to want
to grind him into the dirt after beating him.
Fiona Hill studied Russian history with Richard Pipes, the Evil Empire man. Pipes is and
was a laughingstock in academia. No one would study with him who had an actual interest in
the supposed field of study. Being his protegé was simply a roll of the dice for a
careerist. Hill also studied with a Ukrainian emigré named Szporlak. He was likely
closer to awake during class than Pipes, who really was a very old fool while supervising
Hill.
Condoleeza Rice notoriously wrote her dissertation about the postwar Czech military while
having minimal ability in Russian and less in Czech. More likely it was simply ghostwritten.
Full of egregious errors, placing Czech politicians at heart of action while they were
actually teaching at University of Chicago.
Sorry, oldhippie, Pipes wasn't and is not a laughingstock in academia. He merely should have
been. His son Daniel is doing the same in middle east studies and he's not a laughingstock
either. It is hard to underestimate how little effect adhering to the basic scholarly
standards can have in keeping out motivated reasoning, double standards, agendas, political
servitude, etc. It is quite likely that Pipes has a better reputation than Stephen Cohen, J.
Arch Getty or Sheila FitzPatrick. He certainly has a better reputation than a Mark Tauger.
Pipes' classes at Harvard in 70s were a spectator sport. Come and see the Cold War fossil.
Lectures routinely interrupted by gales of laughter. Yes, he had a comeback. No, no one has
ever taken him or his 'scholarship' seriously. He simply happens to be useful. Daniel is just
as bad.
Paul @ 22, wrote: "She [Harridan Hillary] and her masters would have had every reason to want
to grind him [Tweetie Bird] into the dirt after beating him."
I agree, but there was also the need to demonize Russia and V.V.Putin to lay the ground
for the war against Russia. The campaign against Trump began in January 2016, launched by
Brennan and the CIA, whose strumpet H.H. had been since back in Arkansas.
Already in July 2016, she was openly campaigning against V.V.P. There was ONE ( 1! )
foreign policy plank in her platform, and it was the no-fly zone over Syria. General Joseph
Dunford, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, testified before the United States Congress
in mid-September 2016, on which occasion he was asked about the no-fly zone. He responded,
promptly and unequivocally, that it would mean war with Russia.
If war with Russia had not been the objective, the Great Grey Whore would have used its
position in New York to investigate Tweetie Bird and publish to the world, indeed, hammer to
the world, the long grotesque story of his attempt to make a career in real estate, and the
fraud he engaged in from the start. His string of bankruptcies was the most spectacular in
the history of American business enterprise (this from somebody who has studied United States
economic and financial history) instead of letting him constantly blather on about what a
great businessman he was etc.
His father had him on the payroll when he was two, to the tune of $200,000, in order to
pass wealth on to him without paying the very high gift tax. By the time his father died, he
had made over to Tweetie Bird something in the neighborhood of $420 million. And Tweetie Bird
squandered it all, plus the fabulous real-estate empire that his father had left him -- all
gone...
In 2002, Tweetie Bird was over $3 billion (yes, BILLION) in debt to 72 banks in New York
and no New York bank would give him a credit line, which he desperately needed to keep up his
incessant refrain that money is no object for Donald Trump. So, he turned to the Russian
oligarchs for whom he had been laundering money to generate cash flow. They gave him a credit
line through the Cypriot banks that they controlled, and now they own him. They are his
Russian connection, not V.V.P., who has been fighting the oligarchs since he first took
office -- look at what V.V.P. did to Michail Khodokovski: ten years in the gulag (he's now
living in Switzerland reduced to scraping by on the ten or so billion that he had squirreled
away in Swiss banks).
Tweetie Bird owns NOTHING. Everything is in the name of the Trump Organization, to protect
it from confiscation when the reckoning comes. And, since the T.O. publishes NOTHING about
its affairs, it's reasonable to assume that he is in debt to his Cypriot banks, probably to
the tune of five or six billion at this point, and that they hold liens on every piece of
property he claims as his own.
Tweetie Bird is all about Tweetie Bird, exclusively. His pitch for détente with
Russia was a classic case of doing the right thing for the wrong reason, to wit he intended
to lift the sanctions if V.V.P. would round up the oligarchs who have Tweetie Bird over the
barrel and pack them off to the gulag. However, in August 2017, Congress pulled the rung out
from under him by reinforcing the sanctions and thus removing them from executive order
purview and placing them under Congressional authority.
Hilarious someone said. Really. The Russians would have to be superhuman geniuses to do half
of what US 'Intelligence' says about them. It is transparently true, OTOH, that CIA and etc.
are true clods and dolts. It's tautological really.
My understanding is that Manafort was warned that his work was undermining USA efforts in
Ukraine.
So what? Maybe Trump wanted to undermine the Washington Borg's efforts in Ukraine as they
were counter to his principle foreign policy - cordial relations with Russia. Since Trump was
very clear about this policy all through the election, he has every right to implement that
policy regardless of what anyone opposed to him might think or try to do. It's one of the
basic concepts of a democratic system (yeah, I am aware that the U.S. is a republic not a
democracy, etc.) that the successful candidate should be able to implement any legal policy
that was part of his manifesto.
As for Trump asking the Russians to look for Hillary Clinton's e-mails, it was a joke. Added
to which it was a reference to the 30,000 "personal" e-mails that that idiot, Hillary
Clinton, had managed to mislay and not the DNC and Podesta e-mails that were leaked by some
unknown party to Wikileaks.
These low brow knuckle draggers know how to spin lies. Their useless parade of irrelevant
nincompoops proves an ongoing campaign to demonize Russian people. We all see it here
constantly on other blogs and MSN reports. These people know very well who their match is and
cannot compete socially, on certain new military complexes, political maturity, etc. I offer
Sergey Lavrov as a person not matched by any other nation. All western parasites in
opposition pale in stature, political maturity, and brains. The Russians know what the deal
is with these western crybabies, and know they are dealing with premature juveniles. These
people show how weak they are by their actions and the Russians show patience. Oh, and that
kayfabe word, Trump ..."be fake."... has much experience with it from his wrestling exposure.
This farce has that written all over it, fake bullshit.
I have been watching the Trump impeachment hearings farce on television over the past weeks
and have heard enough BS by the so-called witnesses to fertilize the Sinai Desert. The real
reason behind the hearings is not 'quid pro quo,' but 'cui bono' (who benefits). The parade
of over-the-hill Cold War warriors has reinforced my belief that the impeachment hearings are
essentially an attempt by the old Cold War guard to retain their privileges and positions of
power in Washington. As for Ms. Fiona Hill, she is a prime example of the old dictum that
states, "A Brit with an upper class accent reading the phone book sounds smarter to most
Americans, than Abe Lincoln reading the Gettysburg Address.
Macabre Comedy is the only appropriate descriptive term IMO. Russia is a very busy nation,
every bit as busy as its leader VV Putin. Who within the Evil Outlaw US Empire's national
government is even close to being Putin's equivalent? The vast majority are mere
kindergarteners in comparison, Trump included. In case you've been asleep since 2007 or so,
Putin and all of Russia are working their tails off to improve their nation and their
comrades's wellbeing and in doing so have surpassed The Empire is qualitative military
equipment, nuclear engineering, and a host of other areas, along with building several
geoeconomic blocs of kindred nations to which the Empire can only answer with idiotic
accusations and factless BigLie Media items.
If anything tells us how low the Evil Outlaw US Empire has sunk, it's this attempt to
impeach a POTUS using bullshit for evidence. The would be emperor isn't the only one sans
clothes--the entire imperial edifice is revealed as a scrawny, emaciated, traumatized waif
that the curtain can no longer hide.
Headline: "How True Is the Story on Which the US Sanctions against Russia Are Based?"
Very good question!! Glad someone in the MSM is (finally) asking it . . .
"Mit seinen Aussagen zum Tod eines Whistleblowers brachte Bill Browder die Amerikaner gegen
Putin auf. Doch seine Darstellung ist voller Widersprüche. Von Benjamin Bidder "
With his statements regarding the death of a whistleblower [Magnitsky was no such thing]
Brill Browder [arch scumbag] stirred up the Americans against Putin. But his account is full
of contradictions [you don't say].
And at Bidder's website in addition:
"Washington based its sanctions on Browder's account of Magnitsky's death."
Unfortunately the Spiegel story is behind a paywall. Perhaps someone here has a sub.
People here may recall that a very good documentary about the whole affair, "Behind the
Scenes," made by Andrei Nekrasov, was buried in the USA but was available online. It is a
great explanation of the scurrilous Browder and his role in getting the balling rolling in DC
against Putin. Has great footage of Browder running away from cameras, men trying to serve
subpoenas, and, in front of the camera, squirming-and-sweating-while-lying.
So it seems to me like good news if questions about Browder and his tale are raised in Der
Spiegel---even though I haven't read the article.
I have no argument with constitutional executive powers. I do have many arguments against
Unitary Executive Theory. You can campaign on a policy and implement it once elected, but you
can't use executive power with corrupt intent and claim immunity.
I have been watching closely both the Trump and the Hillary misbehaviors for quite a
while. Your post up above is, I think, the first string of assertions about the pair of them
that I agree with without exception . As far as the activities that you covered in
that post are concerned, you've got each of them nailed to a "T".
I hope we'll see further comments from you, that will exhibit the same degree of
accuracy.
The degree of dishonesty and blatant manipulation by the MSM has reached ridiculous levels.
MSM journalists are not journalists, they are lying, evil peddlers of propaganda shilling for
the military industrial complex; they are as blood-stained as the psychopathic elite that
they so faithfully serve...they should be held responsible for their lies, up to and
including prosecution for war crimes:
There is an article on
telepolis (no paywall, in German) on the Spiegel piece, demasking the author Benjamin
Bidder as someone who belatedly jumps on the bandwagon that others have set in motion, first
and foremost the Russian filmmaker Andrej Nekrasov.
Really @ 33 Thanks for the reference to the Der Spiegel article questioning Magnitsky. Hij is
absolutely ground zero of the whole Russia paranoia and Ukraine obsession. The US has lost
all perspective: an insignificant place like Ukraine dominates its national and foreign
policies while its own people have to pay the price.
Thanks mk @ 37. Sure Nekrasov investigated the Magnitsky story but his film was available to
no one in the US and the EU in the standard outlets (TV, cinema, etc.). Der Spiegel is MSM as
any MSM can be and it is then significant that the publication prints this article, even if
Magnitsky and the anti-Russian mania he set in motion with the help of US politicians is
still enigmatic. How can one man recruit the whole US political system to protect his
personal wealth? Has a contributed to the campaign funds, Clinton Foundation, etc.?
Hillary Clinton: "We better get to the White House if most of us do not want to end up at the
lamp posts". O America, if you knew what these people are doing to the Americans----- after
they got rid of president Kennedy.
It is important to remember that Hillary Clinton as Sec of State transacted her entire
computer communications operation on an unsecured server in a closet at her home. It was
shared with the Clinton Foundation. It was never secured or in any way made available to the
US Government IT security team.
Likewise she used unsecured phones.
That is what the problem was as that server would have been accessed by a number of state
actors who would suspect some benefit might come their way if they peeked. A cinch for any
state actor let alone a clever hacker.
Hillary Clinton is guilty of the single extreme national security breach in US history.
And they are killing Assange to cover for her criminal treachery.
Mina @40: A beggars banquet. A festival of corruption. I wonder when it will dawn on those
needy greedheads that the Sauds are running on empty too ...
A minor point, true enough, but Fiona Hill does most definitely *not* have an ""upper
class English" accent. (As a former Brit of English and working class origin, that is as
apparent as could be.) Her accent is a much softened after many years away from her working
class family origins in North-Eastern England - specifically, County Durham, and as many
years trying to rid herself of those working class origins, taints there remains the local
lilt to her diction.
Regarding her rank, stinking Russophobia - I would suggest that its origins were *not*
from her background (her father was a coal miner) but rather from the fact that she spent her
late teens and early adulthood under the Thatcher the Snatcher government and its deliberate
ending of public ownership of basic services as it installed TINA - pure rapacious,
plundering, mammon and moloch worshipping corporate-capitalism allied to imperialism.
Add to these likely background effects, the desire among some of those of working class
origins who, on achieving a tertiary education have every intention of eschewing and
disparaging their backgrounds and adopting wholeheartedly the worldview of the ruling elites.
Not at all unusual, certainly in the UK.
Definitely totally distorted. Inaccurate (I doubt that she has ever spent much, if any,
time in Russia with ordinary, working class Russians - ho no, too far down the ladder) and
extremely partisan. Another Dem shill?
An aside: my late husband's friends are all highly educated and all (the American ones,
anyway) glued to the impeachment hearings and gung-ho for them.... Education isn't all it's
cracked up to be, clearly. (And For the record - I am very much anti-both parties.)
Really?? @ 33 : thanks for reminding us about Andrei Nekrasov's "Behind the Scenes". The
effort to bury it as well as the reaction (including -- especially? -- from among the
Congresscritters) was an outstanding example of groupthink -- everybody move in lock-step
with the prescribed belief and vilify, demonize those who dare to propose something different
that contradicts the groupthink
Antispin @ 35, thanks for the compliment. I keep trying...
Glad some of you appreciated the parody. We need such cleverness. It is at the opposite
end of the spectrum from groupthink, and it's a good antidote to the mind-numbing drivel of
mendacious mainstream media.
In reply to Karlof1 - absolutely agree about the abilities of V. Putin and his team. If ONLY
we had any government (had any akin to them over the past decades) as able, sensible,
concerned about their country as Putin and his team clearly are, we'd be a peaceful,
non-terroristic, economically more equal place. I would also include with V. Putin and his
team, Xi and his government and the Iranian elected government - and Khamenei. Our lot are
squealing, uneducated (in the true sense of the term) greedy, amoral children by comparison
AnneR @ 46 wrote: "Education isn't all it's cracked up to be, clearly."
Education has both a very positive and a very negative dimension.
On the positive side is the socialization that puts one in touch with many people, most of
whom, ideally, one would mot meet otherwise (not the least of whom are great teachers at all
levels) and teaches one to get along with them. Also, on the positive side is learning: it
saves one from constantly reinventing the wheel, so to speak, and gives a personal touch to
imparted knowledge.
On the negative side is the lock-step conformity it can -- and more and more does --
impose on social mores. Also there is the transmission of the mindset and beliefs that Andrew
Carnegie splendidly called the gospel of wealth (he was gung-ho for it, of course -- God made
him rich because God wanted him to be rich...). Both of these are essential underpinnings to
groupthink (which, by the way, was studied in depth at Yale University in the 1960s, and
where it got it's name).
There's a movie called "Billy Elliot", which takes place in the 1980s UK, that tells this
story: the boy had a miner father and a miner older brother, with high class consciousness --
there's even a scene where they fight over one of the members who violated the strike and
went to work.
But none of that matters of little Billy, as he wants to be a ballet dancer. The riot
police, the strikes, all of that appears just as a background, the landscape, over which he
and his best friend talk about wanting to do ballet.
The figure of Billy Elliot represents the transition in the UK from an industrial economy
to a services one, and the transition of a social-democratic UK to a neoliberal UK.
Many assume that "education" involves learning true things. There is reason for this
assumption in engineering and math, as these actually involve logical proofs. However many
professionals, presumably "educated" are ignorant of the basic science necessary for
understanding and proving...pharmacists who are re-leaved of the obligation to, for example,
ever take a chemistry class, or chemistry test. Thus the assumption is, well, not always
valid. Other examples abound...look for a few. Ask, for example, the X-Ray technician a few
questions about the physics of his job...
However the assumption fails entirely when one enters the bizarre realm of canonical
myth...such as "history" or "political theory" or the Chicago School of Econ.
It is also often assumed that education involves teachers. I have not noticed that such
people are, generally, of any value. Rather, the profession of teaching serves to park people
who might upset matters in a place where they are under control and addicted to their
paychecks, and serve up propaganda according to the rule.
And it is assumed that it involves a forum dedicated to what they call education, when in
reality it is that forum where the process that binds takes place. The Toga, the Bath>
"Hence, too, a liking sprang up for our style of dress, and the "toga" became fashionable.
Step by step they were led to things which dispose to vice, the lounge, the bath, the elegant
banquet. All this in their ignorance, they called civilization, when it was but a part of
their servitude." (Tacitus)
Think jeans and Hollywood, and propaganda.
One particularly egregious difference 'tween education is the exclusion of any formal
study of Rhetoric and logic, with developed skill in these, as a basic prerequisite. Such
matters are now generally ignored, and have been in the canonical syllabus of US "education"
for, more or less, a century.
AnneR @ 46 wrote: "Education isn't all it's cracked up to be, clearly."
Like with food, deprivation is bad, but content, the manner of serving etc. can have a
variety of effects. Here we have an example of a narrower phenomenon, meritocracy. Somewhere
I read that the imperial government of China had European guest and advisors who informed
their host about certain advances in Europe like clock construction and improved cartography,
but who also brought back information about the Chinese method of selecting officials on the
basis of examinations. Initially, the English adopted civil service selected by examinations
to rule India, and that worked so well that the system was extended for the government of
England as well. Like in China, the key was to learn the wisdom of the classics. Of course,
Confucius was replaced with Plato, Horace etc. Back in China, Confucius seems to be replaced
by the study of the History of Chinese Communist Party -- obligatory regardless of the
major.
However, what is outright sinister is the coupling of "narrative building" performed for
intelligence/national security apparatus in USA and UK with academia. "Properly thinking"
luminaries from top institutions of learning were recruited for the purpose, with Fiona Hill
mentor being prime example. From what I understand, Richard Pipes left the position of the
head of Russian and Slavic Studies at Harvard to be CIA consultant where he lead Team B to
assess the intentions and capabilities of USSR. Unlike more realistic team A, Team B strongly
exaggerated both sinister plans of USSR, basically suggesting that without heeding the
constraints of MAD, they will attempt to subjugate the West, and the capabilities. Almost
hiilariously, his team postulated that the symptoms of economic stagnation in USSR were faked
to lull the West into complaisance. Recommendations of Team B were enthusiastically adopted
by Reagan administration to justify acceleration of defense spending. Check "Team B" in
Wikipedia. "I would say that all of it was fantasy. ... if you go through most of Team B's
specific allegations about weapons systems, and you just examine them one by one, they were
all wrong." Needless to say, the theory of faked economic decline was absurd.
Lamentably, Pipes did not abandoned his teaching duties, and while he toiled as the head
of Team B he was mentoring Ph. D. students including Fiona Hill.
*The legalistic assholes who want to deny majority rule under shelter of the Electoral
College on the fraudulent grounds that a technicality matters more really are against
majority rule. Of course they also pretend that impeachment reverses elections. The cherry on
top of this turd sundae? They would reject the 26th Amendment, which would have been invoked
against Reagan as well as Trump (and possibly his original, Nixon, as well.) Pence is not
even man enough to do his duty. by: steven t johnson @ 17 <=you might also be interested
to know that these same types want to take control of all of the resources, all of the
departments, all of the labor, and all of whatever else that exist in America so the USA can
use them to conduct continuous war and manage the grey zone.. read on..
The white paper "Russian Strategic Intentions"[ https://cryptome.org/2019/07/Pentagon-Russia.pdf],
caste its analysis of the future in terms of "competition and conflict" and presents, in its
preface, a long list of those associated to the claim that the USA should use "all of its
instruments of state power" in a comprehensive fashion, to manage grey area warfare, to
promote elite interest in far away places, and to impose aggression (in environment, in
economic activity, with influence campaigns, with paramilitary assault, with cyber intrusion,
and with political warfare) as a defense to Russian grey zone global activities. What bull
shit! no wonder Americans cannot understand Article II Presidents or the USA endangering
Americans and their quality of life because the USA is involved in bombing, destructing and
aggressing activities. The groups that wrote this report have decided they should decide for
the American public, what the USA policy should be? I wonder what Americans would say about
that?
Is it true that "Americans need go no further than think tanks and intelligence services
supporting USA aggression in foreign lands, to find their enemies and to discover the cause
of why their lot has been reduced to forth world peon status? Who in America allowed groups
of the type that wrote this paper to decide, or even to think about deciding, for Americans
what the USA should be doing? Why is not "war for ever, even when there is no war" the
narrative debated by USA politicians competing to govern America? Governed Americans and
governed Russians should build a stadium, outfit the personnel in Russian and USA
governments, their think tanks and their intelligence services with uniforms, lock the two
opposed teams in the stadium, and sell the TV rights to pay off the national debt of all of
the nations of the world as these two teams as they fight it out to the last man, woman and
paper tiger warrior.
Consider this fascinating assumption or projection => "Russia believes..there is no
unacceptable or illegitimate form of deterrence, compellence, or escalation
management(Goure).. [<= I cannot find in real life the continuum of conflict this group
talks about?]. Like Russia's perception of its competition with the USA, its perception of
conflict is dichotomous: one is either at war or not at war." I had no idea Russia could
believe anything? Apparently think tanks supporting the USA; think Russia can think, and
have concluded, as a result of their thoughts, that war exist, even when: there is no war? My
USA cat jumped over the starry moon, while his Russian cow chased earthly rats? The so-called
Russian grand (balance of powers) strategy vs whole of USA government liberal order
management of the international grey zone => compels and escalates the USA, sez the
report, to maintain a continuous state of war?
.. "Countering Russian provocations [<=competition maybe, but not provocation?] requires
all instruments of USA national power, they say?" <=note: as long as not on American soil
who cares?
Piotr seems to agree with Walter. The general principle seems to be "We'll know our
disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false"
(Casey/ Honneger) and of course everyone must recall Clapper complaining about the Russians
finding "fissures in our [US/CIA] tapestry" (one never hears the word "tapestry" in US
English except, generally,in the phrase "tapestry of lies"...unless one is involved with
curtains or one sort, or another...the term "Eiserner Vorhang" popularized by
Churchill...that's a tapestry, ain't it?
If their lips move, they lie, friend. And do not look behind the green tapestry at the
mighty Wurlitzer...
Well, snake, the thalassocratic rule of the Anglosaxon diaspora into forward operating base
(former republic) USA has evidently failed, and "they" now follow not the republic's laws,
but the ukase of Imperial method. They have no other methods.
This was also the reason for England to start WW1. German industry and Ruski resources
would (will/is/has) integrate(d) Heartland and create(d) a tellurocratic reality those Fine
fella's down at the shop cannot abide.
Think of this as a loose connecting rod in a chevy motor...you know what's going to
happen, but it's the only way to go...so you pretend it's ok...
If US intelligence agencies are asserting that Ukraine meddling in the US election was a
Russian operation, when in fact Ukraine did indeed heavily meddle in the elections, isn't
that treason by the US intelligence agency officials concerned?
" deny majority rule under shelter of the Electoral College on the fraudulent grounds that a
technicality matters more really are..."
The US, formerly a Republic and remaining approximately Republican in institutional
appearances and out-side form, has never been a democracy. It was not intended to be, though
it had some democratic forms. ("Democracy" is without semantic value as it is used these
days.)
That's not a trivial technical characteristic. It was intentional and basic. It's the lay
of the Basic Law of the US since 1789 or so, and perhaps less so in the actual Basic Law c
1776...some claim the 1778 Law was not properly ratified...a sound argument once, eclipsed
entirely by long custom, custom being the basis of all Law (and some Ukase).
Of course nowadays it's not even a Republic, more like an animated zombie largely under
the incompetent control of several elite clubs, including foreign and also zionist and also
financial clubs, which are in constant turmoil...because these clubs are running out of
options.
When you are in a conflict set and run out of options, then you almost always lose...since
everybody can see what you must do, and they themselves make plans to counter yours.
In this undertaking the Ruskis and the Chinese have preeminence.
It's already over... Soon they will realize that, and make deals.
............
BM, fair question about the Big T. It depends on who writes the History, curtain-makers
or... At the present time Big T cannot exist, but...one may assume that the Russian
Historians and the Chinese Historians will say "Big-T".
"The legalistic assholes who want to deny majority rule under shelter of the Electoral
College on the fraudulent grounds that a technicality matters more really are against
majority rule."
You seem to advocating the concept of mob rule. Do you understand that a popular opinion
is not necessarily a correct opinion?
Other important aspect of the Ukrainegate, which leads all the way to the Syriagate, of
utmost importance for European security, since we are made aware that matters of security are
directly in the hands of people strange, or in the way to be strange, to European interests
and organzitions, keeping all European institutions hostage of the NATO military
alliance´s interests, and which differs from the main point it is given here, that
related to the meddling in US elections, as if that were what most matter...when it is the
other way around, that the USUK complex meddles in each adn every aspect of Euroepan life,
interests, prospects and security, underminig them all...
I did watch that film when it was linked at an article about the whole affair at the Unz
Review (now I think the Bitchute link is once again neutered). Before seeing this article I
was virtually ignorant of the Magnitisky affair, scumbag Browder, and the putative affair's
influence on American policy. Here is the UNz Review article, by Israel Shamir: http://www.unz.com/ishamir/the-good-fortune-of-mr-browder/?highlight=Browder
(sorry if not doing link properly)
It's a long story, which Shamir tells pretty clearly.
Kurz um, the American public was denied the chance to evaluate Browder's claims themselves by
viewing the film. Truly, censorship at its most naked.
Bidder may be jumping on a bandwagon (and, I don't know what he actually writes!!) but Der
Spiegel is 150% MSM, toeing the American line in most respects. So I do think even this
headline is worth noting.
However, I have read a large portion of the Telepolis article and it should be read by
anyone interested in Browder/Magnitsky. It is really a case study of an incredibly successful
disinformation campaign. Which are only possible with active and passive collusion of many
state and nonstate actors and of course the MSM media.
(Also, it looks as though Telepolis has been following this story in other articles that call
out news organizations and EU entities for their complicity in pushing Browder's narrative
and ignoring many counter-signs. Including canceling and otherwise burying Nekrasov's
excellent film.)
Actually, the larger topic in light of the Russiagate and impeachment circuses being
"clash of the titans' disinformation campaigns."
oldhippie@25 The anecdotes about what the insiders kept secret is instructive. The gales of
laughter did nothing to impair Pipes' academic reputation, nor were they meant to, I imagine.
Being a respected academic means also being respected in government and in the media, which
Pipes was. Team B and all that
Walter's babble about a Republic instead of a democracy is reactionary cant. The
Constitution originally read that the electors would be in fact the electors, interposing
against a majority to elect a responsible candidate, one determined to preserve the ruling
class. In those times, that meant slavers, of course. But, in Washington's elections,
Hamilton, concerned to prevent an inadvertent tie, intrigued to make sure John Adams got
fewer electoral votes than the popular voting of the time required. Adams was irate. In
Adams' own election, Hamilton supposedly tried to get the electors to switch votes so that a
Pinckney of South Carolina was elected. (Adams was honest in pecuniary matters and rather
intelligent, but he was something of a dingbat, which piety about the "Founding Fathers"
refuses to admit.) Adams was even more furious. And Jefferson made political capital,
swearing to all that his party's electors would vote the people's will. They did, and
promptly created a constitutional crisis when Jefferson and Burr tied, throwing the election
into the House. The intrigues aimed at overturning the people's will provoked talk of another
revolution or the break up of the union.
The principle that electors are not agents to actually elect the president but mere cogs
was established. It was affirmed by the incandescent fury of the Jacksonians at J.Q. Adams.
And it was further confirmed when the contested election of 1876 again was loud with talk
about uprisings. It was only the obscene withdrawal of troops from the South, protecting the
Klan etc., that pacified the uproar. It was not until the political degeneration of the later
years which lead the coward Gore to roll over. As mere agents of the popular vote, yes, the
EC is a mere technicality. My guess is that Walter personally would sneer at a criminal
defendant who relied on a technicality about their rights to get an acquittal. But the other
Walters want to use a technicality to take away people's rights. Then they are so shameless
as to pretend to virtue and wisdom.
As for the notion that the Electoral College is the enemy of the people's rights, instead
of the states' right? In this thread there are idiots ranting about treason because of email
server. If you want to see treason, look at the history of the Confederate States of America.
That's treason. We have a national government, it's part of the constitution (14th Amendment
is otherwise gibberish.) Thus, the Electoral College as a treaty compact between "sovereign"
(semi-sovereign is not really a thing!) is also dead. The EC is just a technicality. Walter
would implicitly have us believe that if the electors just picked someone else through
conspiracy among themselves, then the President chosen would be the President because that's
the Constitution, and that's just the way it is. Electors keeping faith with the people
instead of their parties would have voted for the person who won the vote. And Walter
wouldn't accept the result, no matter how much it followed the Constitution (which it would
have!) because reactionary scum like Walter are always liars.
Ant. seems to think the minority of the good people should overrule the common peoples,
aka the mob. It is doubtful Ant. would know the good people if they were in the same room.
The assumption that Ant. is one of the good people is simply slavish adoration. Also, the
only real meaning to "mob" is "collective noun for people rioting." An election is not a
riot. This is slander by some whose rancid contempt for humanity at large should be directed
first at Ant.
V. Putin said that the Earth revolves around the Sun, but... American journalists, of course,
are aware that this statement is unfounded, and, of course, is Russian disinformation.
Because V. Putin said this.
You seem to advocating the concept of mob rule. Do you understand that a popular opinion is
not necessarily a correct opinion?
Gee! And here I was under the impression that THE MAJORITY of the people equals democracy.
But because most Americans are nuts, Amerikkka, would be the exception to that rule.
By the same token, pretending the Electoral College equals democracy is also legitimizing
the fact that a few married cousin crazies and evangelized bible thumpers from sparsely
populated hicktowns and rednecks, and pretend gentry from the Confederacy have equal
representation to the most populated states in the Union.
Let me though make a precise evaluation: Crazytown U.S.A. imposed karma Trump on the
majority, because a big part of that majority betrayed liberal anti-war values to neoliberal
peace equals war Nobel drone Obama and neoliberal hawk Killary cackling like a shrew
at the Al-Qaeda gang slaughter of Gaddafi.
Now, Amerikka has a ZioCon for President that pardons and glorifies war criminals, that
arms a proxy war committing starvation genocide, that steals oil resources from Syria, that
wields economic tyranny against Venezuela and Iran for the purpose of regime change and
control of foreign energy riches, that is meddling in Lebannon, Iraq and Latin American
countries usurping the will of people, and who gives away territory in Syria and Palestine to
Zionists not to mention his fascist takeover of the Judiciary and and total ignorance of the
climate change threat.
So even though you're totally wrong on what democracy is, it doesn't matter, because
Amerikkka's majority is getting exactly what it deserves for having betrayed and surrendered
liberal values to Neocons like GWBush, Neolibs like Killary and all in service to Zionism and
Zionists like Kissinger and billionaires like Saban and Adelson and the corporate sheisters
on Wall Street.
Very few Americans have a mind of their own raised on the Zionist corporate media alphabet
soup that scrambles the brain. So you're right, the majority, deserve the Trump karma imposed
on them by the lowest crazy common denominator in Amerikkkan society promoted by the
Electoral College and who are the most useful idiots of Zionist supremacy.
And then everyone wonders about the growing desperation manifested by mass tent cities,
mass opiod consumption and mass incarceration. Amerikka is occupied and Trump is the enforcer
of the occupier.
Now try and find a more precise observation of the truth.
America is an insane asylum that masquerades as the "world's leading democracy."
This country is truly unhinged and lives in its own Orwellian reality. The
Ukraine/impeachment issue is only symptomatic of this broader pathology.
For the USA, it doesn't make a difference what actual reality is. What matters is that
America defines what counts as reality itself--not matter how ludicrous or fake it is.
As a former high-level Bush Regime openly admitted in an interview with journalist Ron
Suskind:
"We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're
studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new
realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's
actors ... and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."
This American mentality is most evident in the USA's sociocidal wars of aggression around
the world and the lies that America peddles to pimp for its wars--as well as its political
balkanization, regime change, or destabilization campaigns that it dresses up
as"pro-Democracy"(TM) movements:
Mythical Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq
The fake War on Terrorism
The bogus War on Drugs
Humanitarian Intervention, or the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) doctrine
Freedom and Democracy
All-American Lies....
Americans truly are the people of the Big Lie.
There should be a Cordon Sanitaire placed around the United States (and its crime
partners/allies) to prevent this American plague from infecting the rest of the word.
@54 snake "Governed Americans and governed Russians should build a stadium, outfit the
personnel in Russian and USA governments, their think tanks and their intelligence services
with uniforms, lock the two opposed teams in the stadium, and sell the TV rights to pay off
the national debt of all of the nations of the world as these two teams as they fight it out
to the last man, woman and paper tiger warrior."
That's awesome! I was just listening to Devo's 1981 New Traditionalists album the other
day, and while I put it on to listen to "Beautiful World" ("It's a beautiful world, for
you...not me!"), the following song is "Enough Said" and these are the great lyrics:
"Take all the leaders from around the world
Put them together in a great big ring
Televise it as the lowest show on earth
And let them fight like hell to see who's king
Gather up the pieces when the fight is done
Then you'll find out living really can be fun
Enough said!"
You can find in youtube - too apropos to not share.
Jackrabbit 6
"took the black vote for granted"
So very true. Team HRC must have thought they could flip states like Pennsylvania by taking
the cities just like BHO did. Instead the states "deplorables" were dismissed. BHO did the
same but he had the cities in his pocket. But in today's PC hypocrisy, you can't point to
race as being a major factor.
psychohistorian 7
These NGOs and other organizations have an added influence on our politics. For some reason
the MSM doesn't mention them much. It's like the White Helmets. Search for their history at
YouTube and you get the official obfuscation. But toss in Purpose and AVAAZ and you find
more.
@ STJ #63> who wrote, inter alia> "reactionary scum like Walter are always liars." et
sec
Many thanks, Friend. As no doubt all here are well-aware, the resort to ad hominem occurs
when the speaker has no actual argument.
I am obliged. Glad you agree with Walter, and also very glad you do not like that...your
inner-conflict may be part of the dialectic. I hope it works out for you, Steve.
see, if you like, McHenry,"The American Historical Review", vol. 11, 1906 p 618
Here's another bull's eye observation: it's more efficient and cunning to manipulate through
social media tech-savvy means and other localized machinations the really susceptible, dumb,
but important groups in swing states made powerful by the Electoral College than to tackle
the opinion of the urban majority with a few critical articles and the appearance of a
pay-off ledger. Besides, the entirety of Europe was critical of candidate Trump. The
criticism of Trump was not specfic to Ukraine alone. So either the meddling was based on a
vast conspiracy of criticism or it was based on a campaign of targeted populist propaganda
directed at the right and working class together with a perfectly-timed leak that the DNC was
sabotaging Sanders cleverly meant to turn part of the left base against the Dem Party. I say
the latter.
Now don't try to convince me that Ukraine would meddle to turn the left base of the
Democratic side against Hillary when Ukraine preferred her. That logic just don't fly.
The question to ask is. Who had the unlimited financial resources, political connections
and tech savvy to pull the meddling off? I'll give you some clues: it's the usual suspect,
starts with Z and it's mostly based in Israel, the U.S. AND in the Russian oligarchy.
Trump is the Chosen Zionist President and there's nothing more to look at here. The
Ukraine and Russia factors are superfluous and moot to that over-arching FACT.
The most important thing is to learn to read and write.
Rhetoric and logic are important to follow after.
The basis of my comment is that I am currently reading Frederick Law Olmstead's The Cotton
Kingdom.
Fascinating. Unvarnished look at the antebellum South. There was a lot of variation among
states and communities. but the basics remain the same (he covers a very wide territory, both
geog. and intellectually and makes very detailed observations of all that he
encountered).
A huge factor (per FLO) in the mental, psychological, intellectual, economic etc
impoverishment of the South was a lack of any cultural institutions, people lived too far
apart to hire any kind of teachers, of course the slaves were virtually all of them also
uneducated. but in, say, South Caroline 25% of the whites also could not read or write or do
elementary sums.
As adults we all have the responsibility to (continue to) educate ourselves. I get nervous
when I hear people putting a pox on education per se. There are no guarantees when human
beings invent or are given various types of tools. Trying to win the argument by withholding
the provision or preventing the acquisition of tools sounds akin to considering people
"uppity" for using the intellectual tools they possess.
@uncle tungsten | Nov 24 2019 11:58 utc | 44 (the email affair and server)
Assume that the Bruce-Partington Submarine plans (Y'all know yer Holmes?) are under
control of Billary Jones, a senior official in an Imperial State. Billary needs money and has
guilty secrets. He's being blackmailed by Oberstein, a spy.
Jones then accidentally leaves the plans where Oberstein sees and photographs them.
Hi there Stevie...conflict is debilitating, eh? Find the Franklin quote yet? He was there,
and you? But I assume you haven't even realized it wuz Bennie F. Best o' luck.
(apologies to Conan Doyle)
69 Shmoe
Sorry about link not working. Esp since it was so long.
I usually activiate Google translate from a Google hit. But
I think you can also activate Google translate from the original webpage. This link pasted
into a new window (the URL space) did get me to the translation: https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=de&u=https://www.heise.de/tp/features/Browder-und-das-Magnitski-Narrativ-Ende-einer-Desinformationskampagne-4595245.html&prev=search
">https://www.heise.de/tp/features/Browder-und-das-Magnitski-Narrativ-Ende-einer-Desinformationskampagne-4595245.html&prev=search">https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=de&u=https://www.heise.de/tp/features/Browder-und-das-Magnitski-Narrativ-Ende-einer-Desinformationskampagne-4595245.html&prev=search
In case that still does not work, type the title into your browser and then "translate."
If you use Google you should get a hit that shows the German title with "translate this page"
to the right.
Here is the title:
"Browder und das Magnitski-Narrativ: Ende einer Desinformationskampagne?"
Another way is to type "Google Translate German to English" into your browser. You get a
page with a box for German text on the left and English translation on the right.
There are 99 comments so far and a few posters are scratching their heads about what Der
Spiegel is up to with this apparent 180. So it might be interesting to paste a few of them
into Google translate. Here is one:
"What is going on at the mirror (Spiegel)? Since the well-established narrative has been
cultivated about the mean Russians since the founding and has been shown to 100%
transatlantic loyalty, now suddenly something like that. Is this just an accidental slip of
reason or is there more behind it?"
Google translate does make mistakes, beware. A typo can lead to absurdity.
Oh, and one more salient, obvious fact in the form of a question: Why would the biggest and
worst Neocon, Zionist shill in Congress, Lindsey Graham risk his dignity to such an extreme
to rescue Trump's ass if Trump were not the Chosen Zionist President??? ... I'm waiting...10,
9, 8...
Lindsey is the barometer of who and what Zionists want and because they want Trump over
Biden, Lindsey is now at war with his former Dem friend. Lindsey's a loyal subject of Zionism
that butters his bread and that's why he'll do anything to protect Trump.
Amazing really. Back some 3-4 years ago, the wiley Russians looked into the future to
understand that they needed to blame the Ukrainians for interfering in the election. They
predicted that deep state actors would reveal that Trump would in fact strong arm the
Ukrainians into revealing dirt on Joe Biden.
As for the teaching of classical Rhetoric and Logic. Absolutely. Give people the tools to
understand arguments and their validity. One of the best books I had and which I stupidly
lost was a compendium of rhetorical devices as labeled in the original Latin and Greek by
drunk monks of the Medieval Europe. It was just amazing how these rhetoricians drew up a
taxology of the various techniques and tropes--from honest to dishonest. A great toolkit.
"What is going on at the mirror (Spiegel)? Since the well-established narrative has been
cultivated about the mean Russians since the founding and has been shown to 100%
transatlantic loyalty, now suddenly something like that. Is this just an accidental slip of
reason or is there more behind it?"
@ Erelis | Nov 24 2019 19:32 utc | 79 There was once a defrocked Jesuit (with tenure at a
major university) who taught sodomy to the choir and rhetoric to his friends and those whom
he thought might be. He also favored snow... But...as you say, the original Latin and Greek.
A good man, but a pervert, and not a pederast. I liked the guy, and he knew his subject, ah,
the academic subject, to near perfection. He wrote speeches on the side for major political
figures, for cash. Thus in part did my own inability to suspend disbelief become cemented.
For money? Good thing they caught him...oh yeah, his popness also runs a cash an' carry,
don't he? Well, somebody said... (Like Martin Luther?)
Anyway the reason to study rhetoric is that it shall be used against you. Knowing the
Science and Art is your only safe defense, your only warning of true intent by rhetorical
analysis and logical deduction matching real events and actions. Without Rhetoric you are a
chump, a mark, a fool, and like sheep. Ewe! (haha) With it you can form reasoned ideas about
the future intention of any speaker. This may be useful.
The first test (since 2014) of any expert's credentials is his/her position on Crimea. The
next test is on Russian aggression.
If anyone suggests Crimea does not belong to Russia (most especially the federal district of
Sevastopol), then they are ignorant or lying.
Posted by: Red Ryder | Nov 23 2019 19:53 utc
I think that Red Rider is wrong here, starting from assumptions. One assumption is that
rather than status quo 1-5 years before the time we are making a judgment, we should look
back ca. 200 years etc. That could imply that India should belong to United Kingdom,
subsequent treaties notwithstanding.
Even more wrong is the hidden assumption that there should be some general principles that
guide "us" as to who owns what (they actually exist but wait) that hold regardless of
"Washington consensus". Perhaps using lower case in "us" was misleading. History explains the
ethnic and linguistic composition of Crimea etc. but really, everybody agrees the it is not
the only determinant. But let us consider some cases:
Annexation of Tuva and Sikkim. Somehow, nobody cares.
De-facto annexation of North Cyprus which now operates as a quasi-independent state fully
dependent on Turkey. Locals and Turks are satisfied, the rest of NATO and perhaps UN does not
recognize legality, but apart of Greek speaking countries, nobody makes a big deal out of it.
Sanctions? Hehe.
Annexation of Golan Heights and East Jerusalem. Universal mild disapproval, except for USA
-- wholehearted approval there.
Crimea. Total need to apply severe sanction forever to maintain faith in "our"
principles.
Cynthia Chung invaded my brain and wrote the short essay that's been on the tip of my tongue
for some months now, "On
Churchill's 'Sinews of Peace'" . Within its body is linked two extremely important items,
the first being Elliott Roosevelt's book about his father Franklin As He Saw It (available limited
preview at link), and the second being an excerpt from that book of paramount
importance .
The more well known name of Churchill's "Sinews of Peace" speech is "The Iron Curtain
Speech" given at Fulton, Missouri on 5 March 1946, not quite 11 months after FDR's passing.
Here is the opening appetizer from that speech Chung bases the rest of her essay upon:
"This threatening message was not only meant for the Soviets, but was also directed to the
Americans and in between the lines Churchill stated ' Things are going to be very
different from now on. Your dead president cannot protect you any longer .' Some may be
surprised to hear such an aside comment, more likened to the outer ruminations of
Shakespeare's Iago." [My Emphasis]
Things did immediately become different. I consistently point out that the Evil Outlaw US
Empire immediately began violating the UN Charter and thus its own Constitution and Law of
the Land upon its coming into force; however, what I've neglected to point out until now is
that the UK also began violating it just as immediately as did France, although neither has
anything similar to the US Constitution's Supremacy Clause that might be used to curb illegal
behavior. I often point to historical What Ifs? as in this case regarding the coup made
against Henry Wallace, FDR, and the wholesale overturning of the reasons given for waging the
war and winning the peace. Ms. Chung does an excellent job of highlighting what those were,
how they were smashed, and why. I really can't stress the great importance of her essay
enough; its educational importance is second to none! Read it, save it, make sure its read by
your entire family, take it to your kid's teachers, share it with everyone you know and those
you don't. The only people I can conceive of who wouldn't want to know its contents are
racists/imperialists--dare I say fascists--like Churchill. Three generations of people were
subjected to a geopolitical power play that never should have occurred--the deaths,
destruction, and wasted opportunities likely total in the Quadrillions of Dollars. I must
admit some admiration for Chung's an optimist as she clearly shows in her conclusion; my
adding it here in no way diminishes her essay's power and importance:
"The intended policies by Franklin D. Roosevelt for the post war world are still waiting
to be implemented today.
"So what can we the people do about this? We can wake up to the fact that this has
occurred and recognise that the mainstream presentation of world dichotomy today is just
continuing this sickly narrative. That Russia and China are not some monstrous race and that
we should weigh what is currently being offered as an olive branch with great and serious
reflection. That is namely the Eurasian Economic Union and the New Silk Road which also
applies immensely to the US.
"Let us not continue to remain shackled in despair and inaction but rather realise that
there is a great opportunity still for the Century of the Common Man."
Walter confirms being a liar when paragraphs of argument are miscalled "inter alia," then
ignored. The snide insult by the way functions as a fallacious ad hominem, doubly confirms
thatif Walter knows rhetoric, then Walter is doubly a liar. Last and least citing a 1906
volume of American Historical Review to someone who doesn't have university library access is
a snob's rudeness. I'm defeated by the puzzle of what Walter thinks Walter has to be snobby
about. A collection of American Historical Review isn't exactly nothing, but to get snobby
over it? Really?
"... "...it is quite possible that the historically well-informed neocons are merely longing for the good old Bolshevik days in Russia." ..."
"... Neocons resurrect tribal memories to fan the flames ..."
"... Imo Vindman's testimony revealed a 'personal' grudge against Russia. Hill also displayed a 'obsession' with Russia imo..... its interesting her Russian instructor at Harvard was Richard Pipes, the supreme Russian hater. ..."
"... Perhaps you should consider the influence of Ukrainian emigre groups/lobbies. They are essentialy an extension of the Galician movement you refer to. ..."
"... Machiavelli warned repeatedly of the baleful results that listening to exiles gets you into (specifically concerning attempts to reinstate some exiles in the place they came from), George Washingtons farewell adress can be read in a similiar way. Here is the thing with exiles: ..."
"... Lets pretend that Atlantis exists, but 98% of Americans do not particularly care about this country. Now something happens there that genereates exiles. If those exiles are at least somewhat savy, they will passionately argue that the current atlantean government is pure evil. Other then that, they will strive to make themselfs usefull to the host nation. Now, lets pretend that you have 5 such atlantean exiles in a group of 100 politicians. The atlantean exiles would care primarily about condeming the atlantean government, and may be in a position to deliver political points in other areas to anyone who is asking. A normal "I dont care about Atlantis" politican will see a fairly simple cost benefit thing, I condemn Atlantis, something about which I do not care at all, and in return the exiles will back something I care about, like my health policy. ..."
"... This is by no means a rapid development, but give it a couple of decades and the exchange of many such small favors will essentially result in a large group of politicians who will underwrite things like "Atlantis delenda est", mostly because they dont actually care about Atlantis. ..."
"... I don't know why this campaign against Russia was launched but at least part of it was domestic political pressure from Clinton Dems towards Trump Reps. What better way to deflect criticism about the foreign influences on the Clinton Dems (massive bribes from the usual suspects, either direct or via the Clinton Fdn.) but by accusing your opponent of being in the pay of foreign powers? ..."
"... Hillary Clinton shrieking about "Russia Wikileaks" seems to me to be pure projection and also rationalising a cause for her defeat other than the incompetence and corruption of her campaign. ..."
"... Also it seems to me that the Russian defeat of the regime change op in Syria (altho the situation seems rather fluid at the moment...) is another motivation where Israel's interests loom large. ..."
"... A grandfather and great grandfather were in a Union regiment but that hardly is proof that I am a Union man. Unusual family demographics to be sure but even then those Ukrainians served in that SS unit over 70 years ago. I doubt they were even then motivated by National Socialist ideology. Hatred of Russians was likely the primary motivation, as now. The German invasion was an opportunity to settle scores. ..."
"... I understand the hatred but not the application of "Nazi" to any Ukrainian thinking. If "Nazi" merely connotes "thuggish" then perhaps that explains the Azov formations but I suspect much more is at work. Additional inquiry is warranted. ..."
"... Many of those in the Ukrainian SS units ended up in Canada after WW2, resulting in the very pro Ukranian actions of the Canadian Government post 2014. Their FM, Christina Freeland, is a descendant. ..."
"... After the fall of the Former Soviet Union in 1991, saw a resurgence of the OUN. ..."
"... The Ukrainian Nazi formations and political factions openly call themselves Nazis. For that matter, everyone else called them Nazis too, at least before they became useful to the neocons. I'll spare everyone an explanation of Ukrainian diaspora culture, but I will say that, before WWII, the principal Ukrainian nationalist folk devil wasn't Russia. It was Poland and the Jews. ..."
"... Could the anti Russia bias be as simple as the need to protect the empires of people in State and Defence etc that would be no longer needed if Russia was a 'good' guy? ..."
"... Then there is the MIC and the lobbying flows of money into Congress.Russia is far too important to too many insiders to be anything but an enemy. ..."
"... As pointed out earlier - the military industrial complex needs a Big Enemy to justify its exorbitant budgets. The Deep State, the Borg, the Blob, whatever you want to call it, needs a Big Enemy to justify its spying and increasingly blatant interference in domestic US politics. ..."
"... the Russian nation is greatly under populated and owns a staggering per cent of the planets natural resources of every description. envy by those look from the outside towards russia is alone sufficient justification for wanting to grab it for themselves as has been unsuccessfully tried for centuries. ..."
"... The irony, of course, is that in Jewish folk memory, the most pig-headed (pun intended) and virulent anti-Semites were the peasants of Galicia (western Ukraine) and Poland. ..."
"... I also share your bafflement and not just with the political positions of the likes of Victoria Nuland. What do US & UK hope to gain? I can't see any benefits. ..."
Giraldi suggests, "...it is quite possible that the historically well-informed neocons are
merely longing for the good old Bolshevik days in Russia." That aligns more readily with
neocons' (and their oligarch supporters') psychopathic obsession with power and control via
the state. Giraldi also illustrates another more recent period in history when the neocons
were not decidedly anti-Russian:
In fact, the neocons got along quite well with Russia when they and their overwhelmingly
Jewish oligarchs and international commodity thieves cum financier friends were looting the
resources of the old Soviet Union under the hapless Boris Yeltsin during the 1990s. Alarms
about the alleged Russian threat only re-emerged in the neocon dominated media and think
tanks when old fashioned nationalist Vladimir Putin took office and made it a principal
goal of his government to turn off the money tap.
There was no monolithic 'Jewish Oligarch' club cashing in on Yeltsin's Russia. In the
broadest sense, the western neocon-friendly Russian-Jewish oligarch group(s) were booted out
by Putin, while rival group(s) stayed in Russia and submitted to Putin's reforms (whatever
that means). Saker has written in the past about the various Jewish oligarch factions in
Russia. It's complicated and beyond me.
Israel Shamir attempts to untangle the contradictory views on Ukraine from the State of
Israel, Ukrainian-Jewish oligarchs, neocons and Jews from the US, Ukraine and Russia:
Summary: 'Tribal' oversimplifies - no unified opinion. It's complicated. Mr. Shamir's
views seem reasonable and go a long way to explaining the contradictions to me.
Giraldi suggests, "...it is quite possible that the historically well-informed neocons are
merely longing for the good old Bolshevik days in Russia."
I have a great deal of respect for Phil Giraldi but he is wrong here--it has nothing to do
with "Bolshevism", whatever that means in the American context, but with settling accounts
with 1930s purges of largely, not exclusively, Jewish Trotskists from the party and a
consistent anti-Zionist position of USSR till the every end. Now, with Russia effectively
de-fanging Israel, they go apoplectic. Modern neocons have zero relation to Bolshevism and if
they dream about anything--it is mostly have Russia gone as such.
''A question for me is the motivation behind the antipathy of the American neo-liberals and
neocons toward Russia. There are a lot of Jews scattered among these groups. .... Or, do
these people see Russia as a plausible geopolitical rival for the US? Surely it cannot be as
simple, or simpleminded as that.''
Jews have next to zero political control in Russia and I do think that the Zionist see
Russia, as the only other superpower, as a hindrance to their aims for one thing.
Also any state where Jews 'lost out' is subject to vilification and branded as evil.
Imo Vindman's testimony revealed a 'personal' grudge against Russia. Hill also
displayed a 'obsession' with Russia imo..... its interesting her Russian instructor at
Harvard was Richard Pipes, the supreme Russian hater.
As for the non Jewish Neos what would they do without a big scary enemy to fight?...they
might have to actually concentrate on doing things for America.
If anyone is interested here is a nice tool for following congressional bills and etc..
Mostly good for counting all the money they are giving away and the sanctions on countries
they are demanding....they aren't doing much of anything else in congress if you don't count
the kangaroo court circus.
How odd on PBS tonight - 'Secrets of Her Majesty's Secret Service" - an inside look at the
worlds only defense against Russia -a love letter to M16 and it nearly 100 year "special
relationship" with the US and CIA.
What strange timing for such a calculated PR piece for an extremely publicity shy Five
Eyes operation. Were they trying to get ahead of the coming Russiagate investigation reports
with this engaging documentary - we are in fact the James Bonds of the world and we know you
Americans love James Bond.
Anyone else see it or have I gotten aa sinister cabal derangement syndrome behind even PBS
"friendly" documentaries?
"A question for me is the motivation behind the antipathy of the American neo-liberals and
neocons toward Russia" Perhaps you should consider the influence of Ukrainian emigre groups/lobbies. They are
essentialy an extension of the Galician movement you refer to.
" Is it Russia's relentless persecution of homosexuals?" What's the evidence for this
persecution?
Essentially, when both 2 persons as contrary to each other as George Washington and
Niccolo Machiavelli agree on something, it behoves one well to listen.
Machiavelli warned repeatedly of the baleful results that listening to exiles gets you
into (specifically concerning attempts to reinstate some exiles in the place they came from),
George Washingtons farewell adress can be read in a similiar way. Here is the thing with
exiles:
Lets pretend that Atlantis exists, but 98% of Americans do not particularly care
about this country. Now something happens there that genereates exiles. If those exiles are
at least somewhat savy, they will passionately argue that the current atlantean government
is pure evil. Other then that, they will strive to make themselfs usefull to the host
nation. Now, lets pretend that you have 5 such atlantean exiles in a group of 100
politicians. The atlantean exiles would care primarily about condeming the atlantean
government, and may be in a position to deliver political points in other areas to anyone
who is asking. A normal "I dont care about Atlantis" politican will see a fairly simple
cost benefit thing, I condemn Atlantis, something about which I do not care at all, and in
return the exiles will back something I care about, like my health policy.
This is by no means a rapid development, but give it a couple of decades and the
exchange of many such small favors will essentially result in a large group of politicians
who will underwrite things like "Atlantis delenda est", mostly because they dont actually
care about Atlantis.
This is not a specifically US thing at all. My understanding is that Russias WW1 decision
to back Serbia was considerably influenced by a group of ethnically serbian/Montenegrin
advisors (who, one has to say were otherwise loyal to Russia, and had fought with distinction
in the Tsars wars, shedding their blood for Russia).
I don't know why this campaign against Russia was launched but at least part of it was
domestic political pressure from Clinton Dems towards Trump Reps. What better way to deflect
criticism about the foreign influences on the Clinton Dems (massive bribes from the usual
suspects, either direct or via the Clinton Fdn.) but by accusing your opponent of being in
the pay of foreign powers?
Hillary Clinton shrieking about "Russia Wikileaks" seems to me to be pure projection
and also rationalising a cause for her defeat other than the incompetence and corruption of
her campaign.
Also it seems to me that the Russian defeat of the regime change op in Syria (altho the
situation seems rather fluid at the moment...) is another motivation where Israel's interests
loom large.
It also seems to me to be stunningly stupid to have thrown away any potential alliance
with Russia in favor of promoting Wahabist scum. And forcing Russia into the arms of the
Chinese instead of recruiting them into the containment cordon.
Anyway, speaking as a denizen of Plato's cave, without direct knowledge of the reality of
the thing it's mostly educated guesses on my part...
A grandfather and great grandfather were in a Union regiment but that hardly is proof that
I am a Union man. Unusual family demographics to be sure but even then those Ukrainians
served in that SS unit over 70 years ago. I doubt they were even then motivated by National
Socialist ideology. Hatred of Russians was likely the primary motivation, as now. The German
invasion was an opportunity to settle scores.
I understand the hatred but not the application of "Nazi" to any Ukrainian thinking. If
"Nazi" merely connotes "thuggish" then perhaps that explains the Azov formations but I
suspect much more is at work. Additional inquiry is warranted.
Many of those in the Ukrainian SS units ended up in Canada after WW2, resulting in the
very pro Ukranian actions of the Canadian Government post 2014. Their FM, Christina Freeland,
is a descendant.
Folks like Freeland openly credit her SS grandfather for her ideology. When speaking in
public, she does then to conveniently omit his services to the national Socialist state.
Try Stephan Bandera, he was as bad of a figure as what the Russians accused him of being.
Bandera's legacy was that of a Nazi sympathizer and a real nut case too boot. He was one sick
twisted individual.
After the fall of the Former Soviet Union in 1991, saw a resurgence of the OUN.
These Russian hating individuals that composed the far-right Nazi resurgence in the Ukraine
government, started terrifying the Russian enclaves in the Crimea, and those enclaves in turn
called on their fellow Russian brothers in Russia for help, to which Putin and the Russian
military came to their aid and the annexation of the Crimea by Russia took place so as to
protect the Russian enclaves from further persecution by the Banderites. Bandera posters
became more and more prevalent. The Euromaidan protests turned more and more violent, the
wolfsangel that was formerly a symbol of the SS but was now taken up by the Azov Battalion
and other militias, the old OUN war cry of "Glory to Ukraine, glory to the heroes" that was
now ubiquitous among anti-Yanukovych protesters.
Here's some further reading regarding Stephan Bandera:
The Ukrainian Nazi formations and political factions openly call themselves Nazis. For
that matter, everyone else called them Nazis too, at least before they became useful to the
neocons. I'll spare everyone an explanation of Ukrainian diaspora culture, but I will say
that, before WWII, the principal Ukrainian nationalist folk devil wasn't Russia. It was
Poland and the Jews.
That's a very interesting write up at Zerohedge. I believe we discussed the same conduct,
though not the depth of corruption of US politicians, here while that was happening. The borg
are starting to panic with the threat of a real investigation.
Thank you for the posting and thank all for the comments.
Some of us out here in The Middle can't really understand any of the behaviors of those
good and not-so-good Swamp dwellers (any more than we can understand the behaviors of the La
La Land Californian politicians.
I understand more about the issues involving our relationship with Ukraine by reading this
post and comments than I ever would have been able to since I simply don't have time to get
large books and many detailed published papers to read.
Could the anti Russia bias be as simple as the need to protect the empires of people in
State and Defence etc that would be no longer needed if Russia was a 'good' guy?
The US's 'independent' multi-national force NATO would clearly no longer be needed, so
many years after the Warsaw Pact dissolved. Whilst the US 'occupation' forces all over the
place, but especially in Europe, could return home to the US.
Then there is the MIC and the lobbying flows of money into Congress.Russia is far too
important to too many insiders to be anything but an enemy.
Indeed, its boom time as China related structures are expanding in parallel rather than
replacing those directed at Russia.
As pointed out earlier - the military industrial complex needs a Big Enemy to justify its
exorbitant budgets. The Deep State, the Borg, the Blob, whatever you want to call it, needs a
Big Enemy to justify its spying and increasingly blatant interference in domestic US
politics.
There are too many business ties with China, and our supply chains reach too deeply into
that country, for it to serve as a Big Enemy without causing serious disruption.
the reasons for the agreed upon antipathy towards Russia is imo not the actual reason for the
hostilities that have existed for at least the last 100 years and actually much longer.
the Russian nation is greatly under populated and owns a staggering per cent of the
planets natural resources of every description. envy by those look from the outside towards
russia is alone sufficient justification for wanting to grab it for themselves as has been
unsuccessfully tried for centuries.
why complicate matters when simple greed answers so many of the questions asked about WHY
the west hates russia.
The irony, of course, is that in Jewish folk memory, the most pig-headed (pun intended)
and virulent anti-Semites were the peasants of Galicia (western Ukraine) and Poland.
I also share your bafflement and not just with the political positions of the likes of
Victoria Nuland. What do US & UK hope to gain? I can't see any benefits.
"A former top White House Russia expert testified Thursday that the 'fictional narrative'
embraced by President Donald Trump that Ukraine meddled in the US elections was fabricated by
Russia to wreak havoc in US politics."
So reports one of NATO's BigLie Media outlets. FYI, as I wrote in 2016, no outside nation
needs to "wreak havoc in US politics" as there're numerous home grown domestic sources
already doing that in an ongoing manner since the 1850s. Isn't it a felony to lie to
Congress?
"... Copeland @ 33 said; "It seems like the primary role of the investigation, so far, is to advance the national security narrative that portrays Russia as the perpetual enemy of the US." Yes, it "seems" like it, because it is. The corporate empire needs enemies to keep the $ flowing. ..."
Copeland @ 33 said; "It seems like the primary role of the investigation, so far, is
to advance the national security narrative that portrays Russia as the perpetual enemy of the
US." Yes, it "seems" like it, because it is. The corporate empire needs enemies to keep the $
flowing.
Confrontation is much more profitable than peace...
I included the following to make clear what is the above link is about..
@ Circe It would be a fair assumption that nothing on the internet is what it appears. When
it matters, it is controlled. Internet like media is source of information and manipulation.
One cannot rely on any single source. Everyone is lying much of the time. by: jared @ 55
Weapons of mass deception (WMDs)
Wireless weapons of mind control (WWMC_.
You will know when your government has begun to move in response to those that it governs
when it:==>
1. quits spying on you
2. makes infecting UR computer with spyware, malware, and viri not only criminally illegal
with 10 years automatic no early time release jail time but also makes actionable as a tort,
victim recovery from the perpetrator Jury trials to establish damages.
3. amends the constitution to make it a life time in jail offence to conduct the affairs of
government in secret or to classify any document as secret from anyone who is a citizen of
America and is also a citizen of the Untied States of America.
4. has a budget for domestic needs at least 4x the size of the armament budget.
5. transitions power generation from grid to place of use and transitions from fossil fuel,
nuclear fuel to solar and wind energy
6. gives free education and medical services at the highest level to all comers without
regard to prior qualification.
7. recognizes all people of all race and all religion as one in the same person
8. puts news fakers and propagandist under the jail
9. admits pearl harbor, 9/11 and
10. allows the masses to determine not only the candidates for offices in the USA but also
allows the masses to determine which candidate will serve the USA
11. allows any member of the governed masses to indite any sitting member of a government at
any level, in the independent of the civil government, court of human rights, and allows that
court of human rights to immediately remove the accused person from his or her position in
government until a verdict can be rendered, and if that verdict is guilty, allows to and
assist with enforcing the penalty assessed by the the human rights court for the human rights
violation while in office or as a result of the power of the office.
12. makes it illegal to be a member of government at any level if that persons holds any
citizenship but American and USA.
Just watching "the hate Russia circus" on MSM. If DJT wasn't such a greedy MF, this circus
wouldn't be going on.
Let's be clear, Russia, and every other nation on earth, has the absolute right to defend
itself, and it's people,
from being exploited by the U$A's corporate empire. The empire's record over time is
clear, if it wants something you have, they'll take it.
DJT has no problem following the empire's dictates, but when he deviates and pursues his
own personal enrichment at the expense of the empire's overall goals, things like the D.C.
circus ensues.
I'll say this again, Russia, and all countries on earth have the RIGHT to defend
themselves from our latest empires attacks, no matter in what form they appear..
Adding to his useful Russophrenia , Bryan
MacDonald has coined " Putophrenia ": "A condition
where the sufferer believes Vladimir Putin is a crazed Russian nationalist who wants to destroy
the West, and simultaneously, is, together with his cronies, robbing Russia blind & hiding
all the dosh in the same West." These two neatly point up the absurdities of the Western
propaganda line.
Inadvertently today I found myself trapped into listening for a couple of minutes to the
nonsense that Schiff was spouting in the House of Horrors.
It is almost incredible that what he was doing, in essence, was to draw attention to the two
great facts in this case, the first being the gangster Maidan coup, which the US no longer
even pretends not to have brought about for its own purposes, and the second, the way in
which the Vice President and his family set about profiting, personally, from the looting of
every Ukrainian's fortune-every family's healthcare, pension plan, utility bill, home. In
this case by saddling the people, dependent on gas heat to see them through the winter, with
millions to be paid to Hunter Biden, friends of John Kerry and other assorted profiteers.
Like 'b' I find it almost impossible to believe that the Democrats are opening this can of
worms and feeding it to the world.
But then I wonder if, perhaps, these people do not know something that foreigners cannot
know, something about the societal stupidity and institutional ignorance for which the only
country ever known to have supported "No Nothing" candidates is famous.
Perhaps Schiff and Pelosi know what they are doing and what they are doing is based upon HL
Mencken's dictum:
"Nobody ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the American people."
Like 'b' I find it almost impossible to believe that the Democrats are opening this can
of worms and feeding it to the world.
Just don't claim (like I do) that Russiagate and Ukrainegate are kayfabe courtesy of Deep
State 'managed democracy' or you're a nutcase that everyone will ignore.
Nah, just sit back and enjoy while the Democratic Party cuts its own throat for over the
Ukrainegate nothingburger which will see no one held accountable for anything.
A partisan witch-hunt less than a year before the 2020 Election? Double-plus good for
Trump's re-election.
But the possibility of a set-up is INCONCEIVABLE to naval-gazing Kool-Aid
drinkers.
It's gotta be real because Bloomberg wants to join the Democratic race!
Just as he wanted to join the race in 2016? His intention to do so also underscored the
reality of THAT race. Rinse, repeat. LOL. The dumbf*cks won't notice.
@ 11 jackrabbit.. you can claim that too and i am not ignoring you! i agree with bevin and b
how this is insane what the dems are doing, but the whole usa political scenario is insane...
at the same time i get cranky with regard to everything being laid at the deep states feet
when no one can articulate just what the deep state is.. in fact, i think there are a number
of powerful players running at cross purposes to each other, so i don't think it is as easy
as you make out laying it all at the feet of this 'deep state'... sure, the political process
is mostly a charade and i doubt it matters much who wins at this point...
but, i do think the usa continues to slide into a more precarious place that coincides
with a multi polar world that the usa is also very resistant to... as for the people of the
usa - maybe many of them are easily manipulated, but not all of them.. it is the same around
the world... how does one explain how the protesters in bolivia or honk kong are so easily
duped? no.. i think generally people are easily duped, but not all people..
Deep State: the unusual behavior and strange coincides driven by a small number of very
well connected people that make little sense but advance the interests of the
establishment.
Full-Spectrum Dominance (FSD) means controlled opposition everywhere. FSD in practice:
> Political kayfabe
Hillary makes mistakes that help elect Trump. Trump helps to get Pelosi elected as House
Speaker.
> Compromising whistle-blowers
The Intercept turns in whistle-blowers.
IMO, lumping the D-Party into the same boat doesn't reflect reality. A great many D-Party
members were disenfranchised by the DNC during 2016; many know it and know why, and never
swallowed Russiagate. Many of those D-Party folk are again backing Sanders and Gabbard
because they're the genuine social-democratic faction the DNC abandoned as soon as Reagan won
in 1980 since it supposedly was the Reagan Democrats that swung the election--an assumption
never proven correct. And the DNC stated during the lawsuit over 2016 that it would repeat
its actions again in 2016, 2020, and beyond. Thus there're two main factions: DNC-Corporate
D-Party and small d social-democratic D-Party--both of which are clearly incompatible. It's
the former of those two that Gabbard wants to purge; Sanders also seems willing but hasn't
been as explicit as Gabbard. Thus we have the old House divided against itself cannot stand
situation. Either you're with Obama, Clinton, the Banksters, and the further enslavement of
citizens via debt-peonage and expansion of the Outlaw US Empire or you're with the Sanders
and Gabbard social-democrats and liberation of citizens via the nationalization of education,
health care and dignified retirement, and the neutering of the Outlaw US Empire.
Unfortunately, both Gabbard and Sanders are adamant they won't run as 3rd Party POTUS
candidates, which means the Corporate faction will get its candidate on the ballot unless
something remarkable occurs--a coup within the DNC that totally purges the
Obama/Clinton/Corporate faction.
Sorry, but that last phrase I find to be 100% fantastical--about as probable as Kentucky's
#1 ranked basketball team losing at home to Evansville at much greater odds than the 40:1
cited for Evansville. Morrison said it was 5:1 50+ years ago, but I don't think people were
as brainwashed then as now.
I am aware not *every single* Democrat bought into Russiagate.
You seem to suggest that the corruption on full display by the DNC during 2016
inoculated
**some** Democrats to Russiagate if they were Bernie supports. Maybe. But we are faced with
the puzzling contradiction that Bernie himself did not support the lawsuit brought by the
Bernie supporters against the corrupt DNC ... AND ... AND ... Bernie has been a
foaming-at-the-mouth supporter of the Russiagate hysteria!
"How can he not talk about the reality that Russia, through cyberwarfare, interfered in
our election in 2016, is interfering in democratic elections all over the world, and
according to his own CIA director will likely interfere in the 2018 midterm elections that we
will be holding?" "How do you not talk about that unless you have a very special relationship
with Mr. Putin?"
Who said the above? Rachael Maddow? Hillary Clinton? John Brennan? Why none other than
Bernie Sanders!
And did you note that Bernie is being a megaphone for the CIA in this quote?
More and more and more Bernie Russiagate promoting quotes here (and 2018 had only
begun!):
Nemesis@15 -"Trust me when I say" ... never trust anyone who says anything after that phrase!
How exactly did the Dems play the right card with Russiagate? Do you mean they hoodwinked
their supporters into believing Russia to be the enemy, so that is somehow 'the right card'?
I'll stop there. You've completely confused me.
I mean "right" in that allowing Russiagate to seep into the waking consciousness of
America took the pressure off the dems and what was going to be their reckoning. In effect,
they have now doubled-down in the hope that the Trump phenomenon of nationalism will fade
away and their rule will be restored. Whether or not Sanders plays into this I think we are
yet to see, but, so far, Sanders has played ball with a lot of dem garbage.
Again, by the "right" play I mean as if a dark sorcerer had banked his continued favor
with the king he serves on a magic brew that would muddle the King's brain and keep him from
knowing of the Sorcerer's repulsive ambition. Such is the dems plan as well as many if not
all of the republicans who secretly detest DJT but who don't speak up because their base
believes in Trump.
Often I expect these stories in the media to get important technical details wrong...but
here we see that this writer did his homework...
I have said this many times before, but the MCAS system is NOT an anti-stall system...it
is there solely for the purpose of providing the right kind of stick feel to the pilot...
"On most airplanes, as you approach stall you can feel it," a veteran pilot for a U.S.
commercial carrier told me.
Instead of the steadily increasing force on the control column that pilots were used
to feeling -- and that F.A.A. guidelines required -- the new engines caused a loosening
sensation.
This is exactly it...and this is why I have to wonder how exactly is MCAS going to be
cleared to fly again...since the original, much less authoritative version was found
inadequate in providing the stick force required...and the rejigged production version proved
to be a surefire killer if it kicked in at low altitudes such as takeoff...
We recall that Captain Sullenberger called the MAX a 'death trap'...
So clearly the system's authority has to be dialed back...in which case the airplane
handling qualities do not meet established requirements...
The story here tells of the struggle that the family of Ralph Nader's grand-niece, who
perished in the Ethiopian flight, is waging to 'axe the max'...
Hopefully they will succeed, but I doubt it..the MAX can never be a good airplane...full
stop...
Inadvertently today I found myself trapped into listening for a couple of minutes to the
nonsense that Schiff was spouting in the House of Horrors.
It is almost incredible that what he was doing, in essence, was to draw attention to the two
great facts in this case, the first being the gangster Maidan coup, which the US no longer
even pretends not to have brought about for its own purposes, and the second, the way in
which the Vice President and his family set about profiting, personally, from the looting of
every Ukrainian's fortune-every family's healthcare, pension plan, utility bill, home. In
this case by saddling the people, dependent on gas heat to see them through the winter, with
millions to be paid to Hunter Biden, friends of John Kerry and other assorted profiteers.
Like 'b' I find it almost impossible to believe that the Democrats are opening this can of
worms and feeding it to the world.
But then I wonder if, perhaps, these people do not know something that foreigners cannot
know, something about the societal stupidity and institutional ignorance for which the only
country ever known to have supported "No Nothing" candidates is famous.
Perhaps Schiff and Pelosi know what they are doing and what they are doing is based upon HL
Mencken's dictum:
"Nobody ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the American people."
@Please illustrate a situation where the executive branch/office of the USA would be suddenly
discontinued...
Posted by: Chevrus | Nov 13 2019 17:33 utc | 3
Just found your query. Quick and dead-on response is a major EMP event, but that is not
what I had in mind.
Let me see if I can work up another, but necessarily lengthier response.
As I noted on the Bolivia thread, BRICS is having its Summit today & tomorrow in
Brasilia, and will likely be the most important of its brief life. So far, just this report :
"The heads of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa will discuss issues related to
economic, financial and cultural cooperation as well as arms control and joint efforts to
counter terrorism.
"The leaders of the five member-states are to attend the BRICS Business Forum, and meet
with the BRICS Business Council and the heads of the New Development Bank.
"In addition, Vladimir Putin will hold a number of bilateral meetings with the heads of
state and government taking part in the summit."
No! But there will be a new "civil war" in the US around the mid of the next decade. Split
occuring not south to north, but west to east; chaos further increased by immigrants from the
middle & south Americas with their own agenda.
Forces (land & air), militia & DHS people of the eastern party may seek secure
backing near frontier to Canada (area of Great Lakes therefore save). Some of the 'big
capitalists' who feel more international than patriot will flee to outer South America
(Argentinia, Chile).
Eventually a dead president (for that and for the civil war please look into cycles of
US-history). Peace will come with the first female president. Keep watch on Tulsi Gabbard
(but may be also another lady - as I am in Europe I am not familiar with all probable coming
female candidates).
Why no permanent split of the States? There are internal benefits (common traffic, markets
etc.) but more it is the outside pressure: to be able to compete with China it is a necessity
for the States to remain united. Also the coming chaos in Europe and Russia demands
unification of the US.
Now a very strange remark: some elites in the US have already accepted, even promote the
tendency toward "civil war" to enable a 'reset' of the political, economical and social
structure of the country. Furthermore, a seemingly weak US with a split in the military may
lead Russia in temptation to make some mistake (towards Ukraine and Europe). And now a very,
very strange remark: while some forces in the homeland are caught in civil disorder some
other forces in the overseas may be involved in a foreign war. Extremely pointed out: the
coming civil war in a very specific manner is a fake (to deceive and trap Russia - of course
not Putin but his followers).
Today I had a look into George Friedman's book about the next hundred years. For the first
view there is a lot of nonsense (disintegration of China etc.). But I agree that the power of
the US will be restored during the century. And if not the same power as it was in the 1990s,
then in every case the internal stability of the USA is completely guaranteed.
With greetings from Germany and with thanks to Bernhard for his valuable work, Gerhard
Like 'b' I find it almost impossible to believe that the Democrats are opening this can
of worms and feeding it to the world.
Just don't claim (like I do) that Russiagate and Ukrainegate are kayfabe courtesy of Deep
State 'managed democracy' or you're a nutcase that everyone will ignore.
Nah, just sit back and enjoy while the Democratic Party cuts its own throat for over the
Ukrainegate nothingburger which will see no one held accountable for anything.
A partisan witch-hunt less than a year before the 2020 Election? Double-plus good for
Trump's re-election.
But the possibility of a set-up is INCONCEIVABLE to naval-gazing Kool-Aid
drinkers.
It's gotta be real because Bloomberg wants to join the Democratic race!
Just as he wanted to join the race in 2016? His intention to do so also underscored the
reality of THAT race. Rinse, repeat. LOL. The dumbf*cks won't notice.
@ 11 jackrabbit.. you can claim that too and i am not ignoring you! i agree with bevin and b
how this is insane what the dems are doing, but the whole usa political scenario is insane...
at the same time i get cranky with regard to everything being laid at the deep states feet
when no one can articulate just what the deep state is.. in fact, i think there are a number
of powerful players running at cross purposes to each other, so i don't think it is as easy
as you make out laying it all at the feet of this 'deep state'... sure, the political process
is mostly a charade and i doubt it matters much who wins at this point...
but, i do think the usa continues to slide into a more precarious place that coincides
with a multi polar world that the usa is also very resistant to... as for the people of the
usa - maybe many of them are easily manipulated, but not all of them.. it is the same around
the world... how does one explain how the protesters in bolivia or honk kong are so easily
duped? no.. i think generally people are easily duped, but not all people..
Karlof1 @ 9 --
"I expect the atmosphere to be tense..."
I do, as well. Though I imagine certain leaders might feel a temptation to suspend
Brazil's membership, doing so would illustrate a structural weakness to be overcome by any
legitimate multipolar body. That is, if the Empire is able to turn just one member (in this
case Brazil), it may be used to weaken the organization as a whole.
Having just a limited exposure to Putin's approach to multipolarity, my understanding is
that it is to be accepted that sovereign countries evolve along their own trajectories (as
opposed to being subjected to "universal" "liberal" principles). If Brazil or Turkey decide
that this means playing both sides off each other, it will be interesting to see whether
there are any principled (as opposed to realpolitical or pragmatic) objections that Russia
might offer.
Deep State: the unusual behavior and strange coincides driven by a small number of very
well connected people that make little sense but advance the interests of the
establishment.
Full-Spectrum Dominance (FSD) means controlled opposition everywhere. FSD in practice:
> Political kayfabe
Hillary makes mistakes that help elect Trump. Trump helps to get Pelosi elected as House
Speaker.
> Compromising whistle-blowers
The Intercept turns in whistle-blowers.
The reason I ask is because I have heard a load of bull about Russia's plans to Russianize
the world and that Trump is his pawn since day -167 of his inauguration. I have heard this
from coworkers, from friends, from family, seen it on Reddit, read it on neolib outlets like
slate and the like. I'm wondering if you live in Trump country and just don't hear or see the
Russophobia being played out in the beltway and on the elitest coastlines.
Trust me when I say that the dems played the right card, albeit a desperate one, when they
started with the whole Russiagate nonsense. To you and I, b and others, Russiagate is
nonsense. But tell that to the average dem or moron yuppie in their towers along our shining
seas.
Please illustrate a situation where the executive branch/office of the USA would be suddenly
discontinued...
Posted by: Chevrus | Nov 13 2019 17:33 utc | 3
An imminent one-two punch from IG Horowitz and John Durham has powerful players
quaking
in their boots.
9/11 saw Americans willingly surrendering rights;
accepting a pack of lies, a myth, to explain the event;
militarism becoming the refuge for American's safety.
What are the limits of the rights that Americans are next willing to surrender?
**What are those limits?**
The Resistance, Democrats, no longer respects democratic rights -
no thought to the millions of voters that they would disenfranchise if
the nullification of Trump's election were successful via a coup (impeachment).
Five years ago would you have imagined that Democratic voters would be so cavalier
about democratic rights? So willing to accept the vacuous accusation that our
President is a Russian agent. Would resurrect the CIA - the torturing, kidnapping,
assassinating, war promoting, false flag creating, disinformation spewing CIA, - and
ravenously swallow endless streams of McCarthyist propaganda.
How fast,how far, can we spiral downwards? Is the seizure of power too far down the
spiral
to imagine? Five years ago would you have imagined the current decent of Democrats we have
witnessed?
If the pretext, the myth, of the necessity of seizing power, were echoed by the mouthpiece
MSM
would Democrats go along? Americans have surrendered rights in our near lifetime.
Americans
worship militarism and their military heroes more than ever before. Americans have
swallowed
hook-line-and-sinker the new-McCathyism and "Putin is an evil man".
An imminent one-two punch from IG Horowitz and John Durham has powerful players
quaking
in their boots. To answer your question, I cannot imagine what players like John Brennan
are scheming. But as you know 9/11 was not beyond their criminal limit or capability.
Paul Damascene @13: I generally share your view, about Putin's view, but I don't think Putin
minds Erdogan playing both sides, Bolsonaro, yeah, but not Erdogan, he can play games with us
all he wants. Keeps us distracted, and Erdogan doesn't like us "taking the oil", and we can't
get in a shooting war with him, he's NATO. He's the military counter-balance to the Pentagon
in Syria that Russia cannot be. So I think he will be thrashing around in N. Syria with
Putin's consent until we leave (as long as he doesn't pick a fight with Assad.)
Bolsonaro he may see as something to wait for the end of.
It will be interesting and possibly informative to see what comes out of this meeting.
Thanks for your reply! Note that the main event is the Business Forum, which is an arena
where genuine national interests usually reign. As you're likely aware, BRICS was formulated
as an instrument to facilitate development via commerce and mutual investment and that its
first major joint accomplishment was the formulation of the BRICS Development Bank to bypass
the IMF, World Bank and the dollar dominated international trade regime. I found it curious
that Global Times had zero articles on its main page related to the Summit, while
Xinhuanet ran this
short commentary overview which amounts to a short recap and cheerleading. We'll need to
await the presser this evening to get a better feel.
You make an interesting point librul... It reminds me of the whole continuity of government
scheme. 'In case of _____, break glass an impose martial law or whatever the manufactured
disaster calls for. The fact that the north woods 911 bit worked is a testament to just how
far the ptb are willing to go. You know, in regard to the USA perspective I can tell you from
first hand experience that a steady diet of agitation propaganda as well loads of distraction
have rendered a majority of the population easily lead no matter what stripes they might be
wearing. Selling Russia as the bad bad guy was easy. Look if a large group of people buy the
Bin Laden hit then the sky is the limit.
The 5 mile asteroid would pose a serious problem to most mammals, but given the amount of
species self loathing being pedaled about.... My point about the executive branch and the
question of 'is he the last' hinges on the fact that the president does nothing which is not
somewhat scripted. We know what happens when they go "off the Rez"...
Below is a ZH quote about the meeting with Trump and Erdogan today
"
"It's a great honor to be with President Erdogan... the ceasefire is holding very well, we've
been speaking to the Kurds and they seem to be very satisfied, as you know we pulled back our
troops quite a while ago..."
"I want to thank the President for the job they've [Turkey] done in Syria," Trump said of
Erdogan.
And on that note, he already addressed the rationale for continued US troop presence in
Syria, saying with Erdogan sitting next to him: "We are keeping the oil. We have the oil. The
oil is secure. We left troops behind only for the oil."
"
To those Trump supporters, I would appreciate understanding how the keep the oil fits in
with you saying Trump wants to get out of Syria?
'Deep State' is just a convenient way of labeling something we can also call 'the
illuminati', or 'the globalists', or 'the one percent', or 'Big Brother', etc.. We know that
there are hidden powers. Some call them reptilians. Who knows? We can tell that they are
there, though we cannot say exactly who they are and how they constitute their coherence, how
they organize themselves. We can see pieces of the deeper pattern, but we cannot see the
whole thing. So we use these vague and sometimes fanciful labels.
Right now a struggle is going on in Bolivia that is the world's struggle. Humanity is
maybe in its final throes, there and in so many other places. Or maybe its the birth pains of
who we were really meant to be. God help us.
IMO, lumping the D-Party into the same boat doesn't reflect reality. A great many D-Party
members were disenfranchised by the DNC during 2016; many know it and know why, and never
swallowed Russiagate. Many of those D-Party folk are again backing Sanders and Gabbard
because they're the genuine social-democratic faction the DNC abandoned as soon as Reagan won
in 1980 since it supposedly was the Reagan Democrats that swung the election--an assumption
never proven correct. And the DNC stated during the lawsuit over 2016 that it would repeat
its actions again in 2016, 2020, and beyond. Thus there're two main factions: DNC-Corporate
D-Party and small d social-democratic D-Party--both of which are clearly incompatible. It's
the former of those two that Gabbard wants to purge; Sanders also seems willing but hasn't
been as explicit as Gabbard. Thus we have the old House divided against itself cannot stand
situation. Either you're with Obama, Clinton, the Banksters, and the further enslavement of
citizens via debt-peonage and expansion of the Outlaw US Empire or you're with the Sanders
and Gabbard social-democrats and liberation of citizens via the nationalization of education,
health care and dignified retirement, and the neutering of the Outlaw US Empire.
Unfortunately, both Gabbard and Sanders are adamant they won't run as 3rd Party POTUS
candidates, which means the Corporate faction will get its candidate on the ballot unless
something remarkable occurs--a coup within the DNC that totally purges the
Obama/Clinton/Corporate faction.
Sorry, but that last phrase I find to be 100% fantastical--about as probable as Kentucky's
#1 ranked basketball team losing at home to Evansville at much greater odds than the 40:1
cited for Evansville. Morrison said it was 5:1 50+ years ago, but I don't think people were
as brainwashed then as now.
The 'Orwellian Globalists' may have overstepped, hubristically, when they chose an
out-and-out racist, an outspoken racist, to be their puppet to head the new government in
Bolivia. This may be just what was needed to provoke the MAJORITY indigenous people of
Bolivia ...
Librul@16 responds to the statement by start, Chevrus @ 3. "Please
illustrate a situation where the executive branch/office of the USA
would be suddenly discontinued..." Chevrus @ 3, end
An imminent one-two punch from IG Horowitz and John Durham
has powerful players quaking in their boots.
9/11 saw Americans willingly surrendering rights;
accepting a pack of lies, a myth, to explain the event;
militarism becoming the refuge for American's safety.
What are the limits of the rights that Americans are next
willing to surrender? **What are those limits?**
How fast, how far, can we spiral downwards? Is the seizure of power
too far down the spiral to imagine? Five years ago would you have
imagined the current decent of Democrats we have witnessed?
Is media capable to determine who shall have the power? Can
media make Americans surrender their rights?
An imminent one-two punch from IG Horowitz and John Durham
has powerful players quaking in their boots. To answer your
question, I cannot imagine what players like John Brennan
are scheming. But as you know 9/11 was not beyond their
criminal limit or capability. by: librul @ 16
Snake says look at and carefully read the statements by Assad in Syria.. they
are very telling about circumstances here in the states. Assad distinguishes
top down ideology from bottom up cause a very interesting distinguishment.. ..
So to answer your question how far are Americans willing to allow the Oligarchs to
retract human rights in America: are their any limits to the willing surrender?
I think it is as Assad said in the above citation.. outside investors
instigated the unrest in Syria and used it as pretense to get their governments
to invade Syria so that the investors could privatize all of
Syria.. That is exactly what is happening in USA governed America.
karlof1 @4
Your scenario doesn't reach its logical conclusion:
1) Asteroid strike is automatically blamed on "those damn rooskies".
2) Nuclear war ensues.
3) Far West, South, TransMissisippi and New England all secede with each claiming to be the
rightful 'United State of America'.
4) Voila.
IIRC the Clintons rode into the Whitehouse on the Democratic Leadership Committee (DLC).
The DLC has quietly morphed into the DNC (or stolen their ID). Proof might be found on
identifying the faction controlling the Democratic Party's finance committee under the
assumption whoever controls the finance also controls the party. Memory is a perfidious and
ephemeral thing and goes down Alice's rabbit hole in nothing flat.
@14 jackrabbit.. i am sorry, but it is too simplistic for me... your examples are fine, but
as i see it, they random and not some orchestrated plot from up above... that is where we
differ here... in fact, your overview is much too simplistic..you can make it simple for me,
but the whole concept of deep state orchestrating everything here is much too simplistic..
@ 16 librul... good overview that is kind of how i see the democratic party here, although
@ 24 karlof1 disagrees, it looks like that to this outsider / canuck.. here is the line from
karlof1 that gives it away for me - "Unfortunately, both Gabbard and Sanders are adamant they
won't run as 3rd Party POTUS candidates" which begs the question, why? my answer - they are
useful shills for this same agenda..
I am aware not *every single* Democrat bought into Russiagate.
You seem to suggest that the corruption on full display by the DNC during 2016
inoculated
**some** Democrats to Russiagate if they were Bernie supports. Maybe. But we are faced with
the puzzling contradiction that Bernie himself did not support the lawsuit brought by the
Bernie supporters against the corrupt DNC ... AND ... AND ... Bernie has been a
foaming-at-the-mouth supporter of the Russiagate hysteria!
"How can he not talk about the reality that Russia, through cyberwarfare, interfered in
our election in 2016, is interfering in democratic elections all over the world, and
according to his own CIA director will likely interfere in the 2018 midterm elections that we
will be holding?" "How do you not talk about that unless you have a very special relationship
with Mr. Putin?"
Who said the above? Rachael Maddow? Hillary Clinton? John Brennan? Why none other than
Bernie Sanders!
And did you note that Bernie is being a megaphone for the CIA in this quote?
More and more and more Bernie Russiagate promoting quotes here (and 2018 had only
begun!):
I see a civil war in the USA as highly unlikely. The upper class has too much common
interest and purpose. The lower classes are divided and powerless and in the near future only
seem to be becoming more so. When the third-worldization reaches a critical point, a staged
and managed revolution may be in the cards. Before a real revolution has any chance, the
elites will have flooded the USA with immigrants from the south, ensuring further division of
the lower classes and postponing any real challenge.
Overall, the societal foundation of the USA looks to have been crumbling for maybe five
decades already and for the next few decades an acceleration of that process is more likely
than a reversal. Don't be on the lookout for leaders or movements to change any of that. Only
when the american people clean up their act, ie. their addiction to numbing drugs, empty
consumerism and false jingoisms, will anything there ever change for good. Until that
happens, the place will be withering more and more.
Not until the American elites start to fail to safeguard their own priviliges at the cost
of the rest of the population will change happen.
I don't see the Russian aggression that you propose to be realistic or likely to happen.
Russia does not need to reach abroad for energy, resources or food. Their main challenge is
to manage the riches of the huge country with the people they have. Already the resurgence
after the post-1990 crash (and the preceding stagnation) is an accomplishment worthy of
admiration.
The Russian interest clearly is consolidation and defence, which is exactly what their
policies have been showing on the international stage. Suggestions of aggression are pure
projection by Atlanticists theselves. Instead of Washington trying to provoke Russian
mistakes, the real game is about Moscow trying to contain NATO's erratic trashing and
carefully preventing any catastrophic escalation.
To wit, what country did recently "update" its nuclear doctrine, suggesting the
possibility of 'limited' use of nuclear weapons? Was it Russia, or ehhm... perhaps the
USA?
The only uncertain factor between Russia and the USA is Europe. I expect a lot more
American craziness towards Europe, as its effective leverage crumbles. Europe has not yet
devolved as badly as the USA and the American implosion is a major risk factor for the
Europeans.
psychohistoiran @22 asks "To those Trump supporters, I would appreciate understanding how the
keep the oil fits in with you saying Trump wants to get out of Syria?"
As someone who voted for Trump I can tell you I do not agree with this decision nor will I
defend it. I hold the same sentiment pre 2016 that I do now - bring these endless wars to an
end. Period. Am I disappointed in his walking back the decision to leave Syria entirely? You
betcha.
Weeks ago when barflies were discussing Trump's withdrawal, someone corrected my
understanding regarding the Kurds who took control of the oil fields, so to speak, and were
selling the oil to SAA. My understanding of this newest policy is the Kurds will continue to
manage and benefit from the sale of the oil. I could be wrong. Feel free to correct me if I
am. But if my understanding of the arrangement is correct, the Kurds maintaining their role,
then they are likely still selling the oil to the SAA. Then again, maybe not, but I wouldn't
be surprised if they were.
So, management or control of the oil fields has changed, but it looks like everything else
remains as it was before when the oil fields were managed/controlled by the Kurds.
What I do respect in the President's decision to leave NE Syria is removing troops from
theater. The CIA's proxy war appears to have been shutdown. This w/o question I applaud,
LOUDLY.
BTW, all this talk about asteroids and false flags makes me remind the brilliant nineties
movie "Starship Troopers", in which Paul Verhoeven not only sort of presages 911 and the
ensuing war on the bugs, but also smuggled into it the ephemeral phrase "Are you psychic?". I
sometimes wonder how many people got that...
This may be just what was needed to provoke the MAJORITY indigenous people of Bolivia ...
I doubt it, without massive quantities of weapons similar to those received by the Syrian
takfiris, the indigenous people don't stand a chance once the Western Hemisphere Institute
for Security Cooperation (formerly SOA) trained Washington-supported death squads get to
work. It's going to be a massacre that'll be barely reported in MSM, because after the
"election" they'll be anti-democratic. Bolivia is not Syria.
The issue with the Americans is a hyper-partisan mindset has been instilled, akin to duelling
sports teams, so one cheers for their team facts or context be damned. This used to be a Fox
News-Republican phenomenon, but now has infected Dem supporters as well.
Break up of US would mean break up of Canada too. Look to the moves made by province of
Alberta in response to fed election - a sort of firewall is being proposed where Alberta will
take on fed gov responsibilities pension, health care, etc. Alberta is a Koch Bros oil
republic, and any N American melt-down will result in formation of private fiefdoms - i.e.
Alberta-Montana-Wyoming-South Dakota become Kochland.
Then you must be a shut-in or unemployed to not see the dual-benefit of the deep state in
that it stymies trump and resurrects Russia as a boogeyman. Nay! Thrice-benefit in that it
also allows for an excuse to be horrifically status quo and gamble on everything returning to
normal after the trump phenomenon runs its course and the duopoly reassert its grip.
I wonder how in the Earth can anyone have cultural cooperation and join efforts against
terrorism with a goon like Bolsonaro who has posted Twitters celebrating Bolivia´s coup
and is known misses Pinochet ´s "expeditive measures" against communists...How this, so
called group BRICS, can continue following its path, as if nothing had happened, especially
since the coup in Bolivia...
Just today read the statements by Kremlin spokeman, Peshkov, and what to say, seemed to me
quite soft his stance, throwing balons out...Sometimes I feel like to trust John Helmer on
his assesment on the existence of two blocks in the Russian Federation, the stavka ,
and these people of the Kremlin office...
To this you add the Russian ambassador to the US, today visiting Kissinger ( the builder
of the Condor Plan...) a man always like begging for better relations to this bully of a
country, and this is one of the times when I wonder if i would not be supporting all this
time just the people who wants to crush me...( meaning my now almost 6 years long support for
the RF and concretely this adminsitration...)
I found quite different the unambiguous and strong statements by the Russian FM and
Kremlin itself when Venezuela was about to suffer a coup, and now when the legitimate
government of Bolivia has been sent into exile and his indigenous population on the verge of
extermination by nazi thugs...
You can not be against nazis in the Ukraine and then support ( or be way too soft in your
lack of condemnation...) nazis in Brasil or Bolivia (... or the EU...) or you are for
international law and human rights, always, or not, but not only when business opportunities
are in prospect....
Yes, today is one of those days when my consideration of the RF and Putin´s
administration as a referent in keeping international order in the face of a lawless US just
wobbles...
No se puede estar en misa y repicando al mismo tiempo
Waiting for the final statement of the meeting for to possibly take a determination on
this issue...
@ 36 jayc... kenney is a divisive politician.. i always think of alberta like the 'texas
wannabe' of canada... they think highly of themselves and their oil, even when they can't get
it out to the coast due the fact the people on the coast view all this very differently.. and
now they are resorting to a type of quebec referendum option to use as leverage over the rest
of canada.. it didn't work with quebec, and it definitely won't work with alberta.. at least
quebec could legitimately claim itself a different type of culture... as for dividing up
canada and the usa - it makes more sense to go along north south lines - cascadia being a
good example of this.. koch republic would be a good name for that zone!!
You'd probably do well to study the history of China after the downfall of the Manchu Qing
dynasty up to the 1930s at least (when Japan began invading the country and bringing its own
forms of chaos, violence and enslavement) to get an idea of where the US might be heading if
and when the Federal government falls. From the 1910s onwards, China was governed by warlords
looking out for No 1, with their own armies.
Not so very different from the situation prevailing in Afghanistan and Libya. Talk about
the chickens coming home to roost.
The other alternative is if the 50 states decide to be self-governing statelets or form
their own federations among themselves or with neighbouring provinces and states in Canada
and Mexico, or even abroad. Alaska may petition Moscow to be accepted back into the Russian
Federation and Hawaii may seek another large patron to attach itself for security reasons.
Washington and Oregon
states may finally form a federation with British Columbia and call it Cascadia.
Yeah, like Formerly T-Bear intoned about memory. I concede, but still note Gabbard hasn't
faltered in her zeal. I finally finished my series of thoughts on the Bolivian thread
regarding the Big Picture. IMO, Evil's sly enough to get elected even if it campaigned
showing its attributes as in
this image . If I were 20 years younger, I'd emigrate to Russia or China, but I'm not and
doubt I've 20 years remaining on this orb. But I do think I've got the struggle properly
diagnosed, although no cure's readily available.
Right now a struggle is going on in Bolivia that is the world's struggle.
@Posted by: Paul | Nov 13 2019 20:06 utc | 23
Indeed ,the same way I see it, and it seems that, in this one, Russian will not be with
us...After all there is neither oil, nor weapons to sale in Bolivia, nor to the working poor
people.....
Just today I was hearing Trump stating that he would like very much assisting to the next
Vicotry Day parade in Moscow...Well, how to say ( wait for me while I go throwing up a
bit...) Just here again, a bit back in myself...
Thus, this thug, who just has unleashed those rabid nazi death squads over the poor
indigenous people of Bolivia is going to sit along the veterans who really fought the nazis
in WWII, the few who still are alive to remember the 25 millions of their own who died in the
battle fields, moreover taking into account that Trump´s father really was a nazi
himself and supported Nazi Germany as if there was no tomorrow...If you though that of
Netanyahu last year was way too much...to see how yo take this...
Seeing these things, no wonder that fascism advance without obstacles...Voting in the UN
or passing all day energically protestingthe demolition of monuments to Soviet heros of WWII
is not enough...It is neede to eergically protest when today´s nazis are salughterin
currently lving people...
As happened during WWII, I fear, it will be us the people who will have to organize
ourselves to fight this scourge...Putin, simply, will not be there....May be the Red Army
will...
Gerhard @10;
I agree the US will split up. As a poli sci initiate, i was forced to consider the role of
institutions acting in support of the polis. I wasn't impressed at the time. my disdain for
the rot of leadership in most if not all institutions in the west, it was mostly for the
greed....but i realize the cumulative effect is the fraying of those 'supports' of the nation
itself. Consider:
The 16 intelligence agencies each have their own agendas, the regulatory agencies are
revolving doors for industry placements, the FBI was crooked since the days of Hoover, the
governments agencies are rife with oligarchy quislings .....and in the end the greed of those
in power will be not be held back by any moral force. The police are militarized, murdering
and robbing their own citizens.
Meanwhile, the MSM are owned by the oligarch, so there is no national forum where the
corruption can be addressed on a national level. This leaves the blog sites such as MOA to
lead the fight against the PTB. The problem is in the nature of the internet, which has no
'locus' as in a national voice. The internet has no center. As example, i am not a US
citizen. When the polis finally hit the point where the Rentier economy has driven them to
extreme reaction, they will not be thinking of reclaiming the vast American experiment,
rather they will seek to at least control their little part of the world. I believe you will
see blocs of similar states rising up to control whet they think is in their own best
interests: The mid-west, the west coast and mountain states, the deep south, the eastern
states will find common issues to crytalize around.
That's my read.
As a Canadian, my thoughts are how Canada will negotiate with these remainder blocs of former
US states.
James @ 39
I general concur with your brief reading of Jayson Kenney and Alberta talk of separatism. But
on that score the comparison would not so much be to Texas as perhaps to Boris Johnson /
Nigel Farage, in their moves to break away from the EU. I don't know that either of them (or
Kenney) is all that passionate about separation itself, but the divisiveness -- and surfing
various waves of polarization -- are what this new nihilist political wave seems to be about.
I support the Cascadia concept. There's a wonderful work of speculative fiction called
Ecotopia that is set in a Cascadia - although it was written before the digital hi-tech era
and so could not predict that such an entity, short of a true revolution, would be run by
Microsoft - Google - Apple etc.
A high speed rail link from Vancouver to Portland has been proposed, which is a
forward-thinking policy initiative, but they are going to take a few years to think about it,
and then another fifteen to twenty years to build it, and that itself will only happen if the
"no new taxes" retrograde types don't stop it in its "tracks" (which they intend to do).
off topic: I've just realized how vexing the idea of a non-citizen army.
Imagine: The tax payer funds the majority of tax dollars to a bureau that funds its own
production of weapons, recruitment, training personnel, maintenance of 800 or so bases across
the world and, finally, deploying these recruits wherever it deems worthy, based on the
directions of it's head, potus. its just so sweet: hire mercenaries, and do whatever you want
across the planet....there are no draftees ....no one to criticize when the body bags return
stateside. Some otherwise brain-dead fuck in the pentagon is enjoying lieutenant generalship,
just for figuring out the army didn't need a draft...there were plenty of poor people, who
could be had with a few bucks......
I'm in Montana and working on a piece of fiction that anticipates the breakup of the
States in the not-so-distant future. I did a little research on Cascadia and found that
there's elements of white supremacism wanting to co-opt the idea of Cascadia for their own
ethno-state fever
dreams :
The far right is known to appropriate pop culture imagery, particularly for recruitment and
to mitigate their viewpoints. But Alexander Reid Ross, a professor at Portland State
University, explained that Cascadia, "a really important movement in the Pacific
Northwest," is targeted specifically for its link to bioregionalism. "It implies a
territorial imperative but doesn't necessarily involve anti-racism, according to the far
right, so fascists appropriate it," he told me of Cascadia.
The appropriation began at least as far back as 2004, when a flag suspiciously similar
to the Cascadian flag appeared on the cover of Harold Armstead Covington's book, A Distant
Thunder. In 2008, Covington founded the white nationalist group Northwest Front, which
calls for an "independent and sovereign White nation in the Pacific Northwest." The group
later penned a disturbing rhyme on its website about this flag, the Tricolor flag, using
language similar to Baretich's:
The sky is blue, and the land is green. The white is for the people, in
between.
Cascadia appropriation has snowballed since then. In 2016, a man adopting the moniker
Herrenvolk, a German word for "master race" used by the Nazis, helped form Cascadia, the
"foremost" alt-right group in the Pacific Northwest. According to its website, its mission
is to "regain our sovereignty and prevent foreign influence on our people." That goal
correlates with the narrative of Cascadia as quintessential, and it echoes the groaning
around Portland about newcomers spoiling the city.
in the narrative I'm working on, New Cascadia does become a white supremacist
stronghold.
I was somewhat puzzled by your Good and Evil post in the last thread, karlof1. Were you just
being facetious or did I misread you to say that all would depend on the outcome of the 2020
election?.
I followed you on the course of 'the rest of the world' under leadership from Russia and
China into multipolarity rather than one hegemon; I'd tend to agree with you on that concept,
though maybe we'd have disagreements on the course of history up to that point. I have a
literary turn of mind myself, and to me "good" literature (with a small g) always comes out
on top - as with goodness in most other aspects of life learning as well.
All the same, it's hard for me to think the coming US election will really decide
anything. That is, I don't see any of the candidates preparing his or herself to join 'the
rest of the world'. That would be the good outcome for me and I just can't see it
happening.
I'll be literary and say that maybe for nations 'the way up is the way down.' And while
the disparity and struggle between wealthy and not in the US is starkly apparent, we are
nowhere near bottoming out here yet. And I think we have to be; I think we will be - but
when? I'll be literary again and say that for Tigger it was when he got all his bounce taken
out of him. All of it. Not 'make America great' but rather 'help America survive
yadayadayada...'
I'm kinda doubting I'll be around to see it. It's sort of that 'not with a bang but a
wimper' sort of scenario - and we're a long way from wimpering yet.
Still, I feel very positive. I think 'the rest of the world' is going to be kinder than we
deserve when it all boils down to the dregs. What a day that will be!
Nemesiscalling 15
Right you are. The Anti-Russia hype has been going on for a while but had a bit of a hiatus
during King (W) Shrub II. Both parties worked to destroy the Russian economy during the
80s/90s with the Chicago/Harvard boys gutting it completely while enriching themselves. It
accelerated under Obama while they presented us with the "Reset" switch. Apparently the
Russians didn't play along so they became the bogeyman that gets inflated as time goes on.
Trump tried but got dragged down in the process.
As to a US split, I live in the south. So I've wondered if California (for example) tried
to leave if a US President would pull a Lincoln and destroy the state ... in order to save
it.
Nemesis@15 -"Trust me when I say" ... never trust anyone who says anything after that phrase!
How exactly did the Dems play the right card with Russiagate? Do you mean they hoodwinked
their supporters into believing Russia to be the enemy, so that is somehow 'the right card'?
I'll stop there. You've completely confused me.
Occupied Palestine continues killing people as documented in the report below from Reuters
"
GAZA (Reuters) - An Israeli missile strike in the Gaza Strip killed six members of a
Palestinian family on Thursday, all of them civilians, medical officials and residents said,
bringing the death toll in the territory from a 48-hour surge in fighting to 32.
The Israeli military had no immediate comment on the pre-dawn incident in Deir al-Balah,
which came as cross-border shelling exchanges continued despite a ceasefire offer by the
Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad.
Israel killed an Islamic Jihad field commander on Tuesday, sparking cross-border rocket
salvoes by the militant group and further Israeli strikes. Medics said 32 Palestinians have
been killed, at least a third of them civilians.
Those killed in Thursday's attack on a home in Deir al-Balah included a woman and a child,
medical officials said. Another 12 people were wounded, they said.
"
Sad to see this continue to go on and no resolution in sight, only escalation
I mean "right" in that allowing Russiagate to seep into the waking consciousness of
America took the pressure off the dems and what was going to be their reckoning. In effect,
they have now doubled-down in the hope that the Trump phenomenon of nationalism will fade
away and their rule will be restored. Whether or not Sanders plays into this I think we are
yet to see, but, so far, Sanders has played ball with a lot of dem garbage.
Again, by the "right" play I mean as if a dark sorcerer had banked his continued favor
with the king he serves on a magic brew that would muddle the King's brain and keep him from
knowing of the Sorcerer's repulsive ambition. Such is the dems plan as well as many if not
all of the republicans who secretly detest DJT but who don't speak up because their base
believes in Trump.
TASS and Sputnik have both published short reports on events from the BRICS Summit in
Brasilia. As I noted earlier, it revolved around the Business Forum, so most everything
focused on economics, global trade, and the hindrances in the normal conduct of commerce:
"'Undoubtedly, the global economy was affected by the fact that methods of unfair
competition, unilateral sanctions - including politically motivated ones are being used on a
wider scale in the global trade, [and] protectionism is flourishing. Under those
circumstances, BRICS nations have to take serious effort to ensure the development of their
economies, to prevent the deterioration of the social situation and the fall of living
standards, of our citizens' welfare,' Putin said at the closing ceremony of the BRICS
business forum."
Hopefully, there'll be a full transcript of Putin's remarks and further reporting to
digest tomorrow.
Re: trustworthy people, I meant that my eyes have seen first hand the effects of this
whole Russiagate brainwashing. As a result, I don't talk politics with my family, and it is
tenuous with my coworkers. Can you imagine a guy working in a west-coast city and actually
has something positive to say about DJT?
I still say that DJT deserves an ENORMOURS!...ENORMOUS! amount of credit for awakening
such terminology into the public lexicon as "Globalism," "nationalism," "fake news," and the
like. How he was able to do this was very simple but absolutely revolutionary for any
bonafide presidential candidate that I can remember or know. For myself, I view the issue as
globalism as paramount and far more world-shattering than US imperialism.
Here
is an interesting Frontline interview with Ann Coulter a week or so ago. It shines a light on
how a guy like Trump was able to capture the public imagination. Hint: it wasn't because the
Deep State was grooming him.
For any of you who use protonmail. They seem to be touting their links to clearly compromised
media sources such as Bellingcat quite strongly these days, and are pushing the empire's
message on MH17, Ukraine, Scripals, Russiagate etc etc. I was an early adopter but they now
seem compromised or simply deluded. Too bad, another one bites the dust.
Got it, Nemesiscalling, sorry to be obtuse. But I'm afraid I do disagree. This whole phobia
against Russia and anti-Trump scenario turned off huge numbers of their voters - some didn't
vote but some actually held their noses and voted for Trump. To me (and I sure could be
wrong) Dems just dug themselves a deeper hole with all of this. Save some sort of coup, I
can't see them winning a year from now. If anything more US voters have wised up than were
wised up before - you don't go back once eyes are opened.
I agree with your premise about this being kayfabe. From where I sit, there is no other
explanation for any political party to make these endless attacks based on absolutely nothing
over and over again. Attacks which can only maintain the charade from 2016 of Trump the
Victim. Does anyone think that somehow the Dems suddenly stopped being to calculating
psycho/sociopaths that they and the other side of the aisle are? Why would such shrewd
players not verify what people like Vindeman had to say before putting them on the stand?
They keep undermining their own case over and over again.
I find it impossible that they would continue to stick their hands in the fire after being
burned every single time before this, and with easily verifiable information. Especially when
the attacks are ALWAYS over stupid shit and never go after anything he actually could be
attacked for doing. What I keep seeing is like watching kindergarten kids try to kill a grown
man with foam rocks.
We keep seeing this complex, convoluted, evil shit come out of DC and yet we
simultaneously think these same players are morons? No freaking way. These attacks are the
only thing that keeps Trump's base on his side as he keeps betraying them and the opposition
keeps trying to outdo its last performance of stupid. I have seen a LOT of Trump supporters
throw in the towel on him for things he has done in the last 3 years, yet they come back to
his side after the newest stupid thing the left wing of the uni-party comes up with.
Shit, it isn't like Trump is even really shaking things up to cause such a ruckus!
"... The CIA is now openly operating on American soil in clear breach of its charter and U.S. law. There is absolutely no way this can be questioned. We must now contemplate the frightening similarities Russiagate and Ukrainegate share with the agency's classic coup operations abroad: Commandeering the media, stirring discontent with the leadership, pumping up the opposition, waving false flags, incessant disinformation campaigns: Maybe it was fated that what America has been doing abroad the whole of the postwar era would eventually come home. ..."
"... As we watch the latest US lead coup in Bolivia, my thoughts exactly. Using impeachment as a means of running a soft CIA coup is what we're witnessing. With the MSM in toe it's hard to know just how good or bad Trump is. What is the primary reason for going after him? Whatever it is, it has nothing to do with immigration or illegally lobbing bombs into Syria, or selling arms to the Saudis to bomb innocent Yemenis. These are all the right reasons, but hardly something the "deep state" cares about stopping. ..."
"... I think back to the Nixon and Clinton impeachments. None of them seemed to use pressing matters of international illegality (Cambodia/Laos and millions of SE Asians brutally killed, or in the case of Clinton the brutal killing of an estimated 500,000 Iraqi children). Instead the charges were about a 3rd rate burglary and lying about sex with an intern. ..."
To state something I've bemoaned b/f here on CN, in most liberal circles one is mocked and
ridiculed for pointing out that a deep state is indeed orchestrating a coup to unseat Trump.
Even if one tells them that one is not a Trump supporter, but rather a supporter of democracy
who reviles the sadistic and criminal intel agencies and corporate Dems, they still heap
scorn, mockery and ridicule.
There is a segment of the U.S. population that's completely beyond reach when it comes to
this all important issue.
Rob , November 13, 2019 at 13:06
I have felt from the beginning that Ukrainegate was a thin reed upon which to base
impeachment, especially when Trump has committed a large number of other genuinely
impeachable offenses. The menu of his impeachment-worthy acts is almost as large as a menu in
a Chinese restaurant. Yet none of them appear to matter to the Democratic leadership, or as
Nancy Pelosi once put it: Trump's not worth impeaching.
Now it appears that the Deep State has forced the Dems hand, and rabid dog Adam Schiff is
foaming at the mouth in anticipation of tearing off a large piece of Donald Trump's hide. But
as Patrick Lawrence has clearly explained, Trump will not be removed from office, and Joe
Biden's reputation and presidential aspirations are in jeopardy. At least that last part is
something to celebrate.
Guy , November 13, 2019 at 12:56
Thank you for exposing what has happened and is happening to the US system of governance
or lack thereof .It is becoming glaringly obvious that the system is broken and many wonder
if indeed it can be fixed without actually starting over from a clean sweep .It is like a
cancer that has metastasized beyond hope of a cure .It has been very hard to watch as the
destroyers of nations continue to create chaos in the state that was once an example to the
world or so we were told.
Antonio Costa , November 13, 2019 at 12:31
"More urgently, what do the past three years of incessant efforts to unseat a president
tell us about the power of unelected constituencies? The CIA is now openly operating on
American soil in clear breach of its charter and U.S. law. There is absolutely no way this
can be questioned. We must now contemplate the frightening similarities Russiagate and
Ukrainegate share with the agency's classic coup operations abroad: Commandeering the media,
stirring discontent with the leadership, pumping up the opposition, waving false flags,
incessant disinformation campaigns: Maybe it was fated that what America has been doing
abroad the whole of the postwar era would eventually come home.
What, at last, must we conclude about the ability of any president (of any stripe) to effect
authentic change when our administrative state -- "deep," if you like -- opposes it?"
As we watch the latest US lead coup in Bolivia, my thoughts exactly. Using impeachment as
a means of running a soft CIA coup is what we're witnessing. With the MSM in toe it's hard to
know just how good or bad Trump is. What is the primary reason for going after him? Whatever
it is, it has nothing to do with immigration or illegally lobbing bombs into Syria, or
selling arms to the Saudis to bomb innocent Yemenis. These are all the right reasons, but
hardly something the "deep state" cares about stopping.
So far it hasn't worked with Trump, but they may be hoping to bloody him enough to have
the electorate do their dirty work, or will it backfire?
I think back to the Nixon and Clinton impeachments. None of them seemed to use pressing
matters of international illegality (Cambodia/Laos and millions of SE Asians brutally killed,
or in the case of Clinton the brutal killing of an estimated 500,000 Iraqi children). Instead
the charges were about a 3rd rate burglary and lying about sex with an intern.
Amazing how screwed up our priorities .but than again they're NOT OUR priorities are
they.
Trump's biggest weakness is that he appears incapable of friendships with other adult males
because he trusts no one. This is probably partially the result of his dealing in the
absolutely cut throat New York real estate industry along with his own relentless and long
time need for publicity no matter how outrageous this publicity is? (Remember Trump's forays
into professional wrestling?)
Trump decided to hang out with the dogs and, no surprise, ended up getting fleas.
His continual purging of his cabinet members and his bad mouthing of them afterwards has
probably made his White House staff paranoid about challenging anything that comes out of his
mouth no matter how outrageous it is.
Along with all this self promotion has come an increasing inability to accept any sort of
criticism whatsoever. To claim he is slightly "prickly" is a gross understatement.
Where is Trump's James Baker, or better yet, his Sergey Lavrov. to moderate and control
his goofier instincts
@steinbergfeldwitzcohen
If Trump is smart enough and wants History to write his name with Golden Letters, he has to
order a new and true investigation on 9/11 in his second term.
Trump will leave power, but these self-aggrandizing intelligence agencies will
remain.
Something the stupid voters never seem to realize – the permanent government doesn't
give a rats ass about democracy, freedom, human rights, security, your dog, your property,
and most of all – your integrity. "Fuck you stupid voters – now go elect another moron – we've got governments
to overthrow"
" The Democratic establishment is deeply and widely imbued with rancid Russophobic
attitudes."
As are the Republican establishment and even such faux dissidents as Andrew Napolitano and
Patrick Buchanan in columns easily found here on The Unz Review.
Exceptionalia needs enemies to keep the sheep herded when the Red v Blue politics and
increasingly absurd culture skirmishes aren't sufficiently distracting.
Excellent summation of the current predicament involving Trump and his ruthless foes. The
greatest and most ridiculous 'conspiracy theory' of all is Russiagate itself–yet this
politicized hoax is not being allowed to die a natural death; thus the Demorat impeachment
inquiry.
So now we have entered Stage Two of this toxic and unnecessary melodrama. We can thank the
partisan, biased and subversive 'mainstream' media for this downward step.
Ironically, the media's rank dishonesty is turning Trump into a heroic figure. This is
poetic justice.
Haven't our media overlords heard?–the Soviet Union is dead.
In its place is Christian Russia. So why the enmity?
Might these lingering tensions have more than a little to do with Putin's stubborn
alliance with Syria and Iran? It sure looks that way.
It must be noted that Israel remains deeply disturbed over the Russia-Iran-Syria
federation. But that's Israel's problem. America is not burdened by those historic
antagonisms, regional rivalries, or security concerns. Americans should therefore be
relieved. Only we're not allowed to be.
The Zionist state has deviously entwined its security interests with America's. Israel and
Zio-America have been artificially conjoined at the political hip. Didn't you hear?
This political union is good for the Jews. The Americans?–less so. Far less.
Unless we can extricate ourselves, this unnatural 'partnership' may end in a cataclysm
Something the stupid voters never seem to realize – the permanent government
doesn't give a rats ass about democracy, freedom, human rights, security, your dog, your
property, and most of all – your integrity.
The Deep State doesn't care about the unimportant internecine squabbles of the 'two
parties' as long as their important issues are maintained. As a matter of fact it strengthens
the false perception that there is a choice when voting.
Trump and the Deep State do not care what the American people want. They know that most
American people are inane fools and will believe anything. Most Americans would rather watch
America's Got Talent or Dancing With The Stars than be informed about important issues.
I think if President Trump was faced with a Cuban Missile Crisis situation the outcome could
be very different to the first time. On that occasion the two superpowers, despite coming
close to open war, were able to contain and de-escalate. The conditions are very different
today. As Professor Cohen says," The current state of US-Russian relations is unprecedentedly
dangerous, not only due to reasons cited here -- a new Cold War fraught with the possibility
of hot war." In this context it is essential the president is "fully empowered to cope with
the multiple possibilities of a US-Russian military confrontation."
One problem is that the original Cold War was the peace, a post-world war environment: today
we are in pre-world war environment. There is a dangerous misconception that a Cold War
sequel will have the same peaceful ending. The world has experienced periods of peace (or
relative peace) throughout history. The Thirty Years Peace between the two Peloponnesian
Wars, Pax Romana, Europe in the 19th century after the Congress of Vienna, to name a few. The
Congress System finally collapsed in 1914 with the start of World War One. That conflict was
followed by the League of Nations. It did not stop World War Two. That was followed by the
United Nations and other post-war institutions. But all the indications are they will not
prevent a third world war. https://www.ghostsofhistory.wordpress.com/
"The New York Times seem eager to delegitimize the investigation by Attorney General William
Barr and his appointed special investigator John Durham."
Ya know, the investigation would be a lot harder to delegitimize if it the guys doing it
didn't whitewash Iran/Contra, like Barr, or systematic and widespread CIA torture, like
Durham. You put lifelong CIA whores hot on the trail of illegal CIA domestic operations
against political enemies? Come on. Nobody with a 3-digit IQ can keep a straight face.
You want this shit to stop? Then do to Langley what the Germans did to their Stasi. CIA
investigation of CIA crimes do not pass the laff test anymore.
Trump's problem was described in simple terms by John Connelly when talking with Henry
Kissinger. "Henry", he said, "In Washington you are judged by the men you've destroyed".
Trump has not destroyed anyone, not Comey, not Brennan, not Clapper. So he is viewed as weak,
an easy target. So they just keep piling on. Attacking Trump is viewed as a "penalty-free
activity
Russia's new "hyper-sonic" missiles, which can elude US missile-defense systems, make
new nuclear arms negotiations with Moscow imperative and urgent. If only for the sake of
his legacy, Trump is likely to want to do so
This makes little sense. Russia and the U.S. are not enemies, and are potentially allies.
Why would a U.S.-Russia treaty be desirable? The U.S. wants to help Russia defend its South
western border against dangerous nations, such as Turkey & Iran.
A U.S.-China treaty would be helpful, but China is unlikely to accept anything that might
interfere with their colonial ambitions.
____
Also, the author is likely overestimating Russia's technical prowess. Does anyone remember
the recent incident the Russians had with their nuclear powered "Skyfall" cruise missile?
(1)
The mysterious explosion on August 8 at the Russian navy's range in Nyonoksa killed
seven and spurred fears that Russia was testing its nuclear-powered Burevestnik missile,
also known by the NATO codename 'Skyfall.' But U.S. intelligence indicates the fatal
explosion occurred as Russia attempted to salvage a downed Skyfall missile from the ocean
floor,
Russia has reportedly conducted five unsuccessful tests of Skyfall since November 2017,
all resulting in loss of control and crashes. The longest test lasted for two minutes with
the missile flying 22 miles, and the shortest lasted four seconds and five miles.
@Giuseppe I'm a huge fan
of Stephen Cohen's, but, with bi-partisanship dead, his calling for a new Church commission
is pie-in-the-sky. Nothing good can happen until this impeachment farce is over.
In fact, I'd say that Barr and Durham better hurry up and indict someone. There is less
than a year left before the next election, which only leaves a few weeks this year, and the
first few months in 2020. Once there's like 3-4 months to go before the election it will be
too late. And, BTW, where is the long-awaited IG Horowitz's report? Tick Tock guys.
We've been hearing that for a long time, but one thing to remember is: Islam is a
foreign(ers')-identity in Russia. It won't be taking over the political center in Russia
anytime soon, nor getting any European-Russian converts.
@Dan
Hayes Russia hadn't seized anything. The Black Sea Fleet had always been stationed there.
After the Ukrainian government proposed outlawing the Russian language and ethnic Ukrainians
attacked the Crimean parliament, Crimeans, the vast majority of whom are ethnic Russians,
moved to hold a referendum.
As I have also argued repeatedly, a new Church Committee is urgently needed. It's time
for honorable members of the Senate of both parties to do their duty.
The CIA activities restricted by the Church Committee never stopped. They continued "off
the books", financed by drug trafficking, illegal arms sales, and (especially) by kickbacks
from legitimate but overpriced arms contracts with Saudi Arabia. The close relationship with
the Saudi royal family raises awkward questions about who this part of the CIA is really
working for.
A new Church Committee would only be able to investigate the parts of the CIA that it can
see. It is probably impossible for the US government to control the "off-books" parts of the
CIA.
Here too there is an inconvenient truth: To the extent that Democrats any longer
seriously discuss national security in the context of US-Russian relations, it mostly
involves vilifying both Trump and Russian leader Vladimir Putin. (Recall also that previous
presidents were free to negotiate with Russia's Soviet communist leaders, even encouraged
to do so, whereas the demonized Putin is an anti-communist, post-Soviet leader.)
Maybe, the fallacy is to think that Democrats were ever opposed to communism. As one can
learn around here, WWII was the joint venture to destroy european national cultures and force
them under globalist domination. The Roosevelt administration did about everything to
strengthen communism. The current Russian leadership is as sanely nationalist as it gets.
Possibly, that is the problem?
What struck me first, before I woke up, was that the ultimate accusation against Russia
– before the Ukraine affair started – was that they were said to be homophopbic.
While this can be a fault in the eyes of a dedicated liberal, to anyone who has lived through
the Cold War, that accusation was outlandishly irrelevant.
The problem that liberal globalists have with Russia is exactly their sanity. Saying this, I
do not want to insinuate that Republicans are sane, just for the record. They are the other
side of the coin in the big charade.
The Bolsheviks in Russia told everyone that they were a Political Party – just like the
Communists Party etc. The Democrats and Republicans say the same thing , but they are more
Bolshevik than any American wants to admit. The Wars, the Police state, the original
European, African, Native American societies being destroyed is not the best example –
if you are pushing for a NWO. It has failed but they are taking down as many as they can
– along with their evil Order. This should one of the highest priority, of most writers
today. Thanks Unz Rev.
@Dan
Hayes From which entity? The country – existing as a unity upon the foundation of a
constitution, known as Ukraine – stopped being that entity when a bunch of people
toppled a constitutionally mandated government with an unconstitutional coup.
You demand peoples and regions of the former Ukraine remain united? Under what unifying
law? The constitution? But the Maidan people tore it apart to get into power. Why would those
that take the other side of the debate agree to be governed by law they know their opposition
has already, and will again, trod on?
Practically speaking, Ukraine after Maidan is not the same entity as Ukraine before, as
there is no social contract left that everyone is willing to be bound by.
Crimea being autonomous, had more freedom than the rest to jump ship, and so they did. But
any region can now go, because anyone saying 'but the Constitution bans secession', forget
that the people who speak this within Ukraine are those exact same people who tore the
Constitution apart.
But don't think it'a just political entities such as Crimea that migrated to Russia of
their own wills (as the UN Charter demands), millions of labourers have left for Russia from
the remaining entity too, and there was no Putin there at each of their houses, giving
personal pep talks over tea about how Russia is better, and how they should migrate accross
the border. People chose with their own feet.
Here's a question – if tomorrow a bunch of gunmen threw out congress, the judiciary,
and the executive from Washington DC, and replaced them with their own – would you
consider that the individual states were then still bound to the federal government through
the Constitution? Would you demand honour from one side, knowing fullwell that the other side
is dishonourable?
Most telling was (and remains) a core "Russiagate" allegation that "Russia attacked
American democracy during the 2016 presidential election" on Trump's behalf -- an "attack"
so nefarious it has often been equated with Pearl Harbor.
What's seemingly bizarre is that these modern day Dems with their 'Russiagate' obsession
are the very same people who not so many years back would eat up a 1966 movie like 'The
Russians Are Coming, the Russians are Coming', with it's message that the Soviet Union along
with its Communism was perfectly innocuous (just a laugh really), and the Cold War itself was
all a big joke, and pay to see it multiple times.
It's not so bizarre, though, as there is an underlining continuity in all this, then and
now.
They hate the organic Russian people and their culture, then and now. That hasn't
changed.
A USSR of the past with the Russian people safely subjugated/crushed under Soviet
Communism, they like and are okay with.
A Russian Federation where the Russian people appear to have moved away from Communism
they don't like. That's dangerous.
Russians shouldn't necessarily feel too bad though about this as they are not the only
people so hated. These sorts hate most peoples which attempt to express their physical and
cultural identity, often even their own at times.
There's a hatred for most all of humanity there which stems from an underlying self hatred
with these types.
Trump will leave power, but these self-aggrandizing intelligence agencies will
remain.
Something the stupid voters never seem to realize – the permanent government doesn't
give a rats ass about democracy, freedom, human rights, security, your dog, your property,
and most of all – your integrity. "Fuck you stupid voters – now go elect another moron – we've got governments
to overthrow"
" The Democratic establishment is deeply and widely imbued with rancid Russophobic
attitudes."
As are the Republican establishment and even such faux dissidents as Andrew Napolitano and
Patrick Buchanan in columns easily found here on The Unz Review.
Exceptionalia needs enemies to keep the sheep herded when the Red v Blue politics and
increasingly absurd culture skirmishes aren't sufficiently distracting.
Excellent summation of the current predicament involving Trump and his ruthless foes. The
greatest and most ridiculous 'conspiracy theory' of all is Russiagate itself–yet this
politicized hoax is not being allowed to die a natural death; thus the Demorat impeachment
inquiry.
So now we have entered Stage Two of this toxic and unnecessary melodrama. We can thank the
partisan, biased and subversive 'mainstream' media for this downward step.
Ironically, the media's rank dishonesty is turning Trump into a heroic figure. This is
poetic justice.
Haven't our media overlords heard?–the Soviet Union is dead.
In its place is Christian Russia. So why the enmity?
Might these lingering tensions have more than a little to do with Putin's stubborn
alliance with Syria and Iran? It sure looks that way.
It must be noted that Israel remains deeply disturbed over the Russia-Iran-Syria
federation. But that's Israel's problem. America is not burdened by those historic
antagonisms, regional rivalries, or security concerns. Americans should therefore be
relieved. Only we're not allowed to be.
The Zionist state has deviously entwined its security interests with America's. Israel and
Zio-America have been artificially conjoined at the political hip. Didn't you hear?
This political union is good for the Jews. The Americans?–less so. Far less.
Unless we can extricate ourselves, this unnatural 'partnership' may end in a cataclysm
Something the stupid voters never seem to realize – the permanent government
doesn't give a rats ass about democracy, freedom, human rights, security, your dog, your
property, and most of all – your integrity.
The Deep State doesn't care about the unimportant internecine squabbles of the 'two
parties' as long as their important issues are maintained. As a matter of fact it strengthens
the false perception that there is a choice when voting.
Trump and the Deep State do not care what the American people want. They know that most
American people are inane fools and will believe anything. Most Americans would rather watch
America's Got Talent or Dancing With The Stars than be informed about important issues.
I think if President Trump was faced with a Cuban Missile Crisis situation the outcome could
be very different to the first time. On that occasion the two superpowers, despite coming
close to open war, were able to contain and de-escalate. The conditions are very different
today. As Professor Cohen says," The current state of US-Russian relations is unprecedentedly
dangerous, not only due to reasons cited here -- a new Cold War fraught with the possibility
of hot war." In this context it is essential the president is "fully empowered to cope with
the multiple possibilities of a US-Russian military confrontation."
One problem is that the original Cold War was the peace, a post-world war environment: today
we are in pre-world war environment. There is a dangerous misconception that a Cold War
sequel will have the same peaceful ending. The world has experienced periods of peace (or
relative peace) throughout history. The Thirty Years Peace between the two Peloponnesian
Wars, Pax Romana, Europe in the 19th century after the Congress of Vienna, to name a few. The
Congress System finally collapsed in 1914 with the start of World War One. That conflict was
followed by the League of Nations. It did not stop World War Two. That was followed by the
United Nations and other post-war institutions. But all the indications are they will not
prevent a third world war. https://www.ghostsofhistory.wordpress.com/
"The New York Times seem eager to delegitimize the investigation by Attorney General William
Barr and his appointed special investigator John Durham."
Ya know, the investigation would be a lot harder to delegitimize if it the guys doing it
didn't whitewash Iran/Contra, like Barr, or systematic and widespread CIA torture, like
Durham. You put lifelong CIA whores hot on the trail of illegal CIA domestic operations
against political enemies? Come on. Nobody with a 3-digit IQ can keep a straight face.
You want this shit to stop? Then do to Langley what the Germans did to their Stasi. CIA
investigation of CIA crimes do not pass the laff test anymore.
Trump's problem was described in simple terms by John Connelly when talking with Henry
Kissinger. "Henry", he said, "In Washington you are judged by the men you've destroyed".
Trump has not destroyed anyone, not Comey, not Brennan, not Clapper. So he is viewed as weak,
an easy target. So they just keep piling on. Attacking Trump is viewed as a "penalty-free
activity
Russia's new "hyper-sonic" missiles, which can elude US missile-defense systems, make
new nuclear arms negotiations with Moscow imperative and urgent. If only for the sake of
his legacy, Trump is likely to want to do so
This makes little sense. Russia and the U.S. are not enemies, and are potentially allies.
Why would a U.S.-Russia treaty be desirable? The U.S. wants to help Russia defend its South
western border against dangerous nations, such as Turkey & Iran.
A U.S.-China treaty would be helpful, but China is unlikely to accept anything that might
interfere with their colonial ambitions.
____
Also, the author is likely overestimating Russia's technical prowess. Does anyone remember
the recent incident the Russians had with their nuclear powered "Skyfall" cruise missile?
(1)
The mysterious explosion on August 8 at the Russian navy's range in Nyonoksa killed
seven and spurred fears that Russia was testing its nuclear-powered Burevestnik missile,
also known by the NATO codename 'Skyfall.' But U.S. intelligence indicates the fatal
explosion occurred as Russia attempted to salvage a downed Skyfall missile from the ocean
floor,
Russia has reportedly conducted five unsuccessful tests of Skyfall since November 2017,
all resulting in loss of control and crashes. The longest test lasted for two minutes with
the missile flying 22 miles, and the shortest lasted four seconds and five miles.
@Giuseppe I'm a huge fan
of Stephen Cohen's, but, with bi-partisanship dead, his calling for a new Church commission
is pie-in-the-sky. Nothing good can happen until this impeachment farce is over.
In fact, I'd say that Barr and Durham better hurry up and indict someone. There is less
than a year left before the next election, which only leaves a few weeks this year, and the
first few months in 2020. Once there's like 3-4 months to go before the election it will be
too late. And, BTW, where is the long-awaited IG Horowitz's report? Tick Tock guys.
We've been hearing that for a long time, but one thing to remember is: Islam is a
foreign(ers')-identity in Russia. It won't be taking over the political center in Russia
anytime soon, nor getting any European-Russian converts.
@Dan
Hayes Russia hadn't seized anything. The Black Sea Fleet had always been stationed there.
After the Ukrainian government proposed outlawing the Russian language and ethnic Ukrainians
attacked the Crimean parliament, Crimeans, the vast majority of whom are ethnic Russians,
moved to hold a referendum.
As I have also argued repeatedly, a new Church Committee is urgently needed. It's time
for honorable members of the Senate of both parties to do their duty.
The CIA activities restricted by the Church Committee never stopped. They continued "off
the books", financed by drug trafficking, illegal arms sales, and (especially) by kickbacks
from legitimate but overpriced arms contracts with Saudi Arabia. The close relationship with
the Saudi royal family raises awkward questions about who this part of the CIA is really
working for.
A new Church Committee would only be able to investigate the parts of the CIA that it can
see. It is probably impossible for the US government to control the "off-books" parts of the
CIA.
Here too there is an inconvenient truth: To the extent that Democrats any longer
seriously discuss national security in the context of US-Russian relations, it mostly
involves vilifying both Trump and Russian leader Vladimir Putin. (Recall also that previous
presidents were free to negotiate with Russia's Soviet communist leaders, even encouraged
to do so, whereas the demonized Putin is an anti-communist, post-Soviet leader.)
Maybe, the fallacy is to think that Democrats were ever opposed to communism. As one can
learn around here, WWII was the joint venture to destroy european national cultures and force
them under globalist domination. The Roosevelt administration did about everything to
strengthen communism. The current Russian leadership is as sanely nationalist as it gets.
Possibly, that is the problem?
What struck me first, before I woke up, was that the ultimate accusation against Russia
– before the Ukraine affair started – was that they were said to be homophopbic.
While this can be a fault in the eyes of a dedicated liberal, to anyone who has lived through
the Cold War, that accusation was outlandishly irrelevant.
The problem that liberal globalists have with Russia is exactly their sanity. Saying this, I
do not want to insinuate that Republicans are sane, just for the record. They are the other
side of the coin in the big charade.
The Bolsheviks in Russia told everyone that they were a Political Party – just like the
Communists Party etc. The Democrats and Republicans say the same thing , but they are more
Bolshevik than any American wants to admit. The Wars, the Police state, the original
European, African, Native American societies being destroyed is not the best example –
if you are pushing for a NWO. It has failed but they are taking down as many as they can
– along with their evil Order. This should one of the highest priority, of most writers
today. Thanks Unz Rev.
@Dan
Hayes From which entity? The country – existing as a unity upon the foundation of a
constitution, known as Ukraine – stopped being that entity when a bunch of people
toppled a constitutionally mandated government with an unconstitutional coup.
You demand peoples and regions of the former Ukraine remain united? Under what unifying
law? The constitution? But the Maidan people tore it apart to get into power. Why would those
that take the other side of the debate agree to be governed by law they know their opposition
has already, and will again, trod on?
Practically speaking, Ukraine after Maidan is not the same entity as Ukraine before, as
there is no social contract left that everyone is willing to be bound by.
Crimea being autonomous, had more freedom than the rest to jump ship, and so they did. But
any region can now go, because anyone saying 'but the Constitution bans secession', forget
that the people who speak this within Ukraine are those exact same people who tore the
Constitution apart.
But don't think it'a just political entities such as Crimea that migrated to Russia of
their own wills (as the UN Charter demands), millions of labourers have left for Russia from
the remaining entity too, and there was no Putin there at each of their houses, giving
personal pep talks over tea about how Russia is better, and how they should migrate accross
the border. People chose with their own feet.
Here's a question – if tomorrow a bunch of gunmen threw out congress, the judiciary,
and the executive from Washington DC, and replaced them with their own – would you
consider that the individual states were then still bound to the federal government through
the Constitution? Would you demand honour from one side, knowing fullwell that the other side
is dishonourable?
Most telling was (and remains) a core "Russiagate" allegation that "Russia attacked
American democracy during the 2016 presidential election" on Trump's behalf -- an "attack"
so nefarious it has often been equated with Pearl Harbor.
What's seemingly bizarre is that these modern day Dems with their 'Russiagate' obsession
are the very same people who not so many years back would eat up a 1966 movie like 'The
Russians Are Coming, the Russians are Coming', with it's message that the Soviet Union along
with its Communism was perfectly innocuous (just a laugh really), and the Cold War itself was
all a big joke, and pay to see it multiple times.
It's not so bizarre, though, as there is an underlining continuity in all this, then and
now.
They hate the organic Russian people and their culture, then and now. That hasn't
changed.
A USSR of the past with the Russian people safely subjugated/crushed under Soviet
Communism, they like and are okay with.
A Russian Federation where the Russian people appear to have moved away from Communism
they don't like. That's dangerous.
Russians shouldn't necessarily feel too bad though about this as they are not the only
people so hated. These sorts hate most peoples which attempt to express their physical and
cultural identity, often even their own at times.
There's a hatred for most all of humanity there which stems from an underlying self hatred
with these types.
"... Earlier in Stone's legal process his lawyers filed a motion to try to prove that Russia did not hack the DNC and Podesta emails. The motion revealed that CrowdStrike, the cybersecurity firm hired by the DNC and Clinton campaign, never completed its report, and only gave a redacted draft to the FBI blaming Russia. The FBI was never allowed to examine the DNC server itself. ..."
"... Faced now with a criminal investigation into how the Russiagate conspiracy theory originated intelligence officers and their accomplices in the media and in the Democratic Party are mounting a defense by launching an offensive in the form of impeachment proceedings against Trump that is based on an allegation of conducting routine, corrupt U.S. foreign policy. ..."
Earlier in Stone's legal process his lawyers filed a motion to try to prove that Russia
did not hack the DNC and Podesta emails. The motion
revealed that CrowdStrike, the cybersecurity firm hired by the DNC and Clinton campaign,
never completed its report, and only gave a redacted draft to the FBI blaming Russia. The FBI
was never allowed to examine the DNC server itself.
In the end, though, it doesn't matter if it were a hack or a leak by an insider. That's
because the emails WikiLeaks released were accurate. When documents check out it is
irrelevant who the source is. That's why WikiLeaks set up an anonymous drop box, copied
by big media like The Wall Street
Journal and others
. Had the emails been counterfeit and disinformation was inserted into a U.S. election by a
foreign power that would be sabotage. But that is not what happened.
The attempt to stir up the thoroughly discredited charge of collusion appears to be part of
the defense strategy of those whose reputations were thoroughly discredited by maniacally
pushing that false charge for more than two years. This includes legions of journalists. But
principal among them are intelligence agency officials who laundered this "collusion"
disinformation campaign through the mainstream media.
Faced now with a criminal
investigation into how the Russiagate conspiracy theory originated intelligence officers
and their accomplices in the media and in the Democratic Party are mounting a defense by
launching an offensive in the form of impeachment proceedings against Trump that is based on an
allegation of conducting
routine, corrupt U.S. foreign policy.
Stone may be just a footnote to this historic partisan battle that may scar the nation for a
generation. But he has the personality to be the poster boy for the Democrats' lost cause.
Joe Lauria is editor-in-chief of Consortium News and a former correspondent
forThe Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe,Sunday Timesof London and numerous other newspapers. He can be reached at[email protected]and
followed on Twitter @unjoe .
The tendency to scapegoat rather than make the case for one's own merit is very deeply
ingrained in our top-down liberal democratic systems; the Democratic establishment is
unfortunately just getting back to core principles by shifting almost exclusively to this mode
of discourse over the past decade.
This perfect democracy creates for itself its own inconceivable enemy, terrorism. In
effect, it wants to be judged by its enemies moreso than by its results. The history of
terrorism is written by the State; it is therefore instructive.
The spectator populations
certainly cannot know everything about terrorism, but they can always know enough to be
persuaded that compared to terrorism, anything else must seem to be more or less acceptable,
and in any case more rational and democratic.
"... The Democratic establishment is deeply and widely imbued with rancid Russophobic attitudes. Most telling was (and remains) a core "Russiagate" allegation that "Russia attacked American democracy during the 2016 presidential election" on Trump's behalf -- an "attack" so nefarious it has often been equated with Pearl Harbor. ..."
"... We have also learned that the heads of America's intelligence agencies under President Obama, especially John Brennan of the CIA and James Clapper, director of National Intelligence, felt themselves entitled to try to undermine an American presidential candidacy and subsequent presidency, that of Donald Trump. ..."
"... We also learned that, contrary to Democratic dogma, the mainstream "free press" cannot be fully trusted to readily expose such abuses of power. ..."
"... Opponents of Barr's investigation into the origins of Russiagate say it is impermissible or unprecedented to "investigate the investigators." But the bipartisan Church Committee, based in the US Senate, did so in the mid-1970s. It exposed many abuses by US intelligence agencies, particularly by the CIA, and adopted remedies that it believed would be permanent. Clearly, they have not been. ..."
"... However well-intentioned Barr may be, he is Trump's attorney general and therefore not fully credible. As I have also argued repeatedly, a new Church Committee is urgently needed. It's time for honorable members of the Senate of both parties to do their duty. ..."
Almost daily for three years, Democrats and their media have told us very bad things about
Donald Trump's life, character, and presidency. Some of them are true. But in the process, we
have also learned some lamentable, even alarming, things about the Democratic Party
establishment, including self-professed liberals. Consider the following:
The Democratic establishment is deeply and widely imbued with rancid Russophobic
attitudes. Most telling was (and remains) a core "Russiagate" allegation that "Russia
attacked American democracy during the 2016 presidential election" on Trump's behalf -- an
"attack" so nefarious it has often been equated with Pearl Harbor. But there was no
"attack" in 2016, only, as I have
previously explained , ritualistic "meddling" of the kind that both Russia and America
have undertaken in the other's elections for decades. Little can be more phobic than the
allegation or belief that one has been "attacked by a hostile" entity. And yet this myth and
its false narrative persist in the Democratic Party's discourse, campaigning, and
fund-raising. We have also learned that the heads of America's intelligence agencies
under President Obama, especially John Brennan of the CIA and James Clapper, director of
National Intelligence, felt themselves entitled to try to undermine an American presidential
candidacy and subsequent presidency, that of Donald Trump. Early on, I termed this
operation " Intelgate ," and it has
since been well documented by other writers, including
Lee Smith in his new book . Intel officials did so in tacit alliance with certain
leading, and equally Russophobic, members of the Democratic Party, which had once opposed
such transgressions. This may be the most alarming revelation of the Trump years: Trump will
leave power, but these self-aggrandizing intelligence agencies will remain. We also
learned that, contrary to Democratic dogma, the mainstream "free press" cannot be fully
trusted to readily expose such abuses of power. Indeed, what the mainstream media --
leading national newspapers and two cable news networks, in particular -- chose to cover and
report, and chose not to cover and report, made the abuses and consequences of Russiagate
allegations possible. Even now, exceedingly influential publications such as The New York
Times seem
eager to delegitimize the investigation by Attorney General William Barr and
his appointed special investigator John Durham into the origins of Russiagate. Barr's
critics accuse him of fabricating a "conspiracy theory" on behalf of Trump. But the real, or
grandest, conspiracy theory was the Russiagate allegation of "collusion" between Trump and
the Kremlin, an accusation that was -- or should have been -- discredited by the Robert
Mueller report. And we have learned, or should have learned, that for all the talk by
Democrats about Trump as a danger to US national security, it is their Russiagate allegations
that truly endanger it. Consider two examples. Russia's new "hyper-sonic" missiles, which can
elude US missile-defense systems, make new nuclear arms negotiations with Moscow imperative
and urgent. If only for the sake of his legacy, Trump is likely to want to do so. But even if
he is able to, will Trump be entrusted enough to conduct negotiations as successfully as did
his predecessors in the White House, given the "Putin puppet" and "Kremlin stooge"
accusations still being directed at him? Similarly, as I have asked repeatedly, if confronted
with a US-Russian Cuban missile–like crisis -- anywhere Washington and Moscow are
currently eyeball-to-eyeball militarily, from the Baltic region and Ukraine to Syria -- will
Trump be as free politically as was President John F. Kennedy to resolve it without war? Here
too there is an inconvenient truth: To the extent that Democrats any longer seriously discuss
national security in the context of US-Russian relations, it mostly involves vilifying both
Trump and Russian leader Vladimir Putin. (Recall also that previous presidents were free to
negotiate with Russia's Soviet communist leaders, even encouraged to do so, whereas the
demonized Putin is an anti-communist, post-Soviet leader.)
The current state of US-Russian relations is unprecedentedly dangerous, not only due to
reasons cited here -- a new Cold War fraught with the possibility of hot war. Whether President
Trump serves one or two terms, he must be fully empowered to cope with the multiple
possibilities of a US-Russian military confrontation. That requires ridding him and our nation
of Russiagate allegations -- and that in turn requires learning how such allegations
originated.
Opponents of Barr's investigation into the origins of Russiagate say it is impermissible
or unprecedented to "investigate the investigators." But the bipartisan Church Committee, based
in the US Senate, did so in the mid-1970s. It exposed many abuses by US intelligence agencies,
particularly by the CIA, and adopted remedies that it believed would be permanent. Clearly,
they have not been.
However well-intentioned Barr may be, he is Trump's attorney general and therefore not
fully credible. As I have also argued repeatedly, a new Church Committee is urgently needed.
It's time for honorable members of the Senate of both parties to do their duty.
The tendency to scapegoat rather than make the case for one's own merit is very deeply
ingrained in our top-down liberal democratic systems; the Democratic establishment is
unfortunately just getting back to core principles by shifting almost exclusively to this mode
of discourse over the past decade.
This perfect democracy creates for itself its own inconceivable enemy, terrorism. In
effect, it wants to be judged by its enemies moreso than by its results. The history of
terrorism is written by the State; it is therefore instructive.
The spectator populations
certainly cannot know everything about terrorism, but they can always know enough to be
persuaded that compared to terrorism, anything else must seem to be more or less acceptable,
and in any case more rational and democratic.
"... The Clinton camp was hardly absent from social media during the 2016 race. The barely-legal activities of Clintonite David Brock were previously reported by this author to have included $2 million in funding for the creation of an online " troll army " under the name Shareblue. The LA Times described the project as meant to "to appear to be coming organically from people and their social media networks in a groundswell of activism, when in fact it is highly paid and highly tactical." In other words, the effort attempted to create a false sense of consensus in support for the Clinton campaign. ..."
"... In terms of interference in the actual election process, the New York City Board of Elections was shown to have purged over one hundred thousand Democratic voters in Brooklyn from the rolls before the 2016 primary, a move that the Department of Justice found broke federal law . Despite this, no prosecution for the breach was ever attempted. ..."
"... In 2017, the Observer reported that the DNC's defense counsel argued against claims that the party defrauded Sanders' supporters by favoring Clinton, reasoning that Sanders' supporters knew the process was rigged. Again: instead of arguing that the primary was neutral and unbiased in accordance with its charter, the DNC's lawyers argued that it was the party's right to select candidates. ..."
"... The DNC defense counsel's argument throughout the course of the DNC fraud lawsuit doubled down repeatedly in defense of the party's right to favor one candidate over another, at one point actually claiming that such favoritism was protected by the First Amendment . ..."
"... The DNC's shameless defense of its own rigging disemboweled the most fundamental organs of the U.S. body politic. This no indication that the DNC will not resort to the same tactics in the 2020 primary race, ..."
"... f Debbie Wasserman Schultz's role as disgraced chairwoman of the DNC and her forced 2016 resignation wasn't enough, serious interference was also alleged in the wake of two contests between Wasserman Schultz and professor Tim Canova in Florida's 23rd congressional district. Canova and Wasserman Schultz first faced off in a 2016 Democratic primary race, followed by a 2018 general congressional election in which Canova ran as an independent. ..."
"... Debacles followed both contests, including improper vote counts, illegal ballot destruction , improper transportation of ballots, and generally shameless displays of cronyism. After the controversial results of the initial primary race against Wasserman Schultz, Canova sought to have ballots checked for irregularities, as the Sun-Sentinel reported at the time: ..."
"... Ultimately, Canova was granted a summary judgment against Snipes, finding that she had committed what amounted to multiple felonies. Nonetheless, Snipes was not prosecuted and remained elections supervisor through to the 2018 midterms. ..."
"... Hillary Clinton's recent comments to the effect that Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard is being "groomed" by Russia, and that the former Green Party Presidential candidate Dr. Jill Stein is a "Russian asset", were soon echoed by DNC-friendly pundits. These sentiments externalize what Gabbard called the "rot" in the Democratic party outward onto domestic critics and a nation across the planet. ..."
"... Newsweek provided a particularly glaring example of this phenomenon in a recent op-ed penned by columnist Naveed Jamali, a former FBI double agent whose book capitalizes on Russiagate. In an op-ed titled: " Hillary Clinton Is Right. Tulsi Gabbard Is A Perfect Russian Asset – And Would Be A Perfect Republican Agent," ..."
Establishment Democrats and those who amplify them continue to project
blame for the public's doubt in the U.S. election process onto outside influence, despite the clear history of the party's subversion
of election integrity. The total inability of the Democratic Party establishment's willingness to address even one of these critical
failures does not give reason to hope that the nomination process in 2020 will be any less pre-ordained.
The Democratic Party's bias against Sen. Bernie Sanders during the 2016 presidential nomination, followed by the DNC defense counsel
doubling down on its right to rig the race during the
fraud lawsuit brought
against the DNC , as well as the irregularities in the races between former DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Tim Canova,
indicate a fatal breakdown of the U.S. democratic process spearheaded by the Democratic Party establishment. Influences transcending
the DNC add to concerns regarding the integrity of the democratic process that have nothing to do with Russia, but which will also
likely impact outcomes in 2020.
The content of the DNC and
Podesta emails published by WikiLeaks demonstrated that the DNC
acted in favor of Hillary Clinton in the lead up to the 2016 Democratic primary. The emails also revealed corporate media reporters
acting as surrogates of the DNC and its pro-Clinton agenda, going so far as
to promote Donald Trump during the GOP primary process as a preferred " pied-piper
candidate ." One cannot assume that similar evidence will be presented to the public in 2020, making it more important than ever
to take stock of the unique lessons handed down to us by the 2016 race.
Social Media Meddling
Election meddling via social media did take place in 2016, though in a different guise and for a different cause from that which
are best remembered. Twitter would eventually admit to actively suppressing
hashtags referencing the DNC and Podesta emails in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election. Additional
reports indicated that tech giant Google also showed measurable "pro-Hillary
Clinton bias" in search results during 2016, resulting in the alleged swaying of between 2 and 10 millions voters in favor of Clinton.
On the Republican side, a recent episode of CNLive! featured discussion
of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, in which undecided voters were micro-targeted with tailored advertising narrowed with the combined
use of big data and artificial intelligence known collectively as "dark strategy." CNLive! Executive Producer Cathy Vogan noted that
SCL, Cambridge Analytica's parent company, provides data, analytics and strategy to governments and military organizations "worldwide,"
specializing in behavior modification. Though Cambridge Analytica shut down in 2018, related companies remain.
The Clinton camp was hardly absent from social media during the 2016 race. The
barely-legal activities of Clintonite David Brock
were previously reported by this author to have included $2 million in funding
for the creation of an online " troll army " under the name Shareblue. The
LA Times described the project as meant to "to appear
to be coming organically from people and their social media networks in a groundswell of activism, when in fact it is highly paid
and highly tactical." In other words, the effort attempted to create a false sense of consensus in support for the Clinton campaign.
In terms of interference in the actual election process, the New York City Board of Elections was shown to have
purged over one hundred thousand Democratic voters in Brooklyn from the rolls
before the 2016 primary, a move that the Department of Justice found
broke federal law . Despite this, no prosecution
for the breach was ever attempted.
Though the purge was not explicitly found to have benefitted Clinton, the admission falls in line with allegations across the
country that the Democratic primary was interfered with to the benefit of the former secretary of state. These claims were further
bolstered by reports indicating that voting results from the 2016 Democratic
primary showed evidence of fraud.
DNC Fraud Lawsuit
The proceedings of the DNC fraud lawsuit provide the most damning evidence of the failure of the U.S. election process, especially
within the Democratic Party. DNC defense lawyers argued in open court for the party's
right to appoint candidates at its own discretion, while simultaneously denying
any "fiduciary duty" to represent the voters who donated to the Democratic Party under the impression that the DNC would act impartially
towards the candidates involved.
In 2017, the Observer reported that the DNC's defense counsel argued
against claims that the party defrauded Sanders' supporters by favoring Clinton, reasoning that Sanders' supporters knew the process
was rigged. Again: instead of arguing that the primary was neutral and unbiased in accordance with its charter, the DNC's lawyers
argued that it was the party's right to select candidates.
The Observer noted the sentiments of Jared Beck, the attorney representing the plaintiffs of the lawsuit:
"People paid money in reliance on the understanding that the primary elections for the Democratic nominee -- nominating process
in 2016 were fair and impartial, and that's not just a bedrock assumption that we would assume just by virtue of the fact that
we live in a democracy, and we assume that our elections are run in a fair and impartial manner. But that's what the Democratic
National Committee's own charter says. It says it in black and white."
The DNC defense counsel's argument throughout the course of the DNC fraud lawsuit doubled down repeatedly in defense of the party's
right to favor one candidate over another, at one point actually claiming that such favoritism was
protected by the First Amendment . The DNC's lawyers wrote:
"To recognize any of the causes of action that Plaintiffs allege would run directly contrary to long-standing Supreme Court
precedent recognizing the central and critical First Amendment rights enjoyed by political parties, especially when it comes to
selecting the party's nominee for public office ." [Emphasis added]
The DNC's shameless defense of its own rigging disemboweled the most fundamental organs of the U.S. body politic. This no indication
that the DNC will not resort to the same tactics in the 2020 primary race,
Tim Canova's Allegations
If Debbie Wasserman Schultz's role as disgraced chairwoman of the DNC and her forced 2016 resignation wasn't enough, serious interference
was also alleged in the wake of two contests between Wasserman Schultz and professor Tim Canova in Florida's 23rd congressional district.
Canova and Wasserman Schultz first faced off in a 2016 Democratic primary race, followed by a 2018 general congressional election
in which Canova ran as an independent.
Debacles followed both contests, including improper vote counts, illegal
ballot destruction , improper
transportation of ballots, and generally
shameless displays of cronyism. After the controversial
results of the initial primary race against Wasserman Schultz, Canova sought to have ballots checked for irregularities, as the
Sun-Sentinel reported at the time:
"[Canova] sought to look at the paper ballots in March 2017 and took Elections Supervisor Brenda Snipes to court three months
later when her office hadn't fulfilled his request. Snipes approved the destruction of the ballots in September, signing a certification
that said no court cases involving the ballots were pending."
Ultimately, Canova was granted a summary judgment against Snipes, finding that she had committed what amounted to multiple felonies.
Nonetheless, Snipes was not prosecuted and remained elections supervisor through to the 2018 midterms.
Republicans appear no more motivated to protect voting integrity than the Democrats, with
The Nation reporting that the GOP-controlled Senate
blocked a bill this week that would have "mandated paper-ballot backups in case of election machine malfunctions."
Study of Corporate Power
A 2014
study published by Princeton University found that corporate power had usurped the voting rights of the public: "Economic elites
and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average
citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence."
In reviewing this sordid history, we see that the Democratic Party establishment has done everything in its power to disrespect
voters and outright overrule them in the democratic primary process, defending their right to do so in the DNC fraud lawsuit. We've
noted that interests transcending the DNC also represent escalating threats to election integrity as demonstrated in 2016.
Despite this, establishment Democrats and those who echo their views in the legacy press continue to deflect from their own wrongdoing
and real threats to the election process by suggesting that mere discussion of it represents a campaign by Russia to attempt to malign
the perception of the legitimacy of the U.S. democratic process.
Hillary Clinton's recent comments to the effect that Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard is being "groomed" by Russia, and that the former
Green Party Presidential candidate Dr. Jill Stein is a "Russian asset", were soon echoed by DNC-friendly pundits. These sentiments
externalize what Gabbard called the "rot"
in the Democratic party outward onto domestic critics and a nation across the planet.
Newsweek provided a particularly glaring example of this phenomenon in a
recent op-ed penned by columnist Naveed Jamali, a former FBI double agent whose book capitalizes on Russiagate. In an op-ed titled:
" Hillary Clinton Is Right. Tulsi Gabbard Is A Perfect Russian Asset – And Would Be A Perfect Republican Agent," Jamali
argued :
"Moscow will use its skillful propaganda machine to prop up Gabbard and use her as a tool to delegitimize the democratic process.
" [Emphasis added]
Jamali surmises that Russia intends to "attack" our democracy by undermining the domestic perception of its legitimacy. This thesis
is repeated later in the piece when Jamali opines : "They want to see a retreat
of American influence. What better way to accomplish that than to attack our democracy by casting doubt on the legitimacy of our
elections." [Emphasis added]
The only thing worth protecting, according to Jamali and those who amplify his work (including former Clinton aide and establishment
Democrat Neera Tanden), is the perception of the democratic process, not the actual functioning vitality of it. Such deflective tactics
ensure that Russia will continue to be used as a convenient international pretext for
silencing domestic dissent as we move into 2020.
Given all this, how can one expect the outcome of a 2020 Democratic Primary -- or even the general election – to be any fairer
or transparent than 2016?
* * *
Elizabeth Vos is a freelance reporter, co-host of CN Live! and regular contributor to Consortium News. If you value this
original article, please consider
making
a donation to Consortium News so we can bring you more stories like this one.
"... This period is when Clinton IMHO sent NATO in a wrong direction from being strictly defensive/political to getting involved in Yugoslavia which certainly irritated Russia. ..."
"... Then good old Obama and another Clinton deciding to overthrow Gaddafi and his whole Arab Spring foreign policy to include getting involved in Syria. These were disastrous decisions that the current POTUS inherited and is trying to change except the "deep state" is fighting him tooth and nail. ..."
"... Getting out of Ukraine would be a huge trust maker for Russia and it would be followed by sanctions being lifted allowing for a level playing field to begin working on the issues that need fixing. NATO isn't going away however the forward deployed forces in the Baltic's and Poland could over time in an agreed to reciprocal move say removing Iskander missiles from Kaliningrad could be accomplished. ..."
You are 100% correct that trust is the number one point in coming to any agreement and
currently there is very little trust on either side for varying reasons. One important fact
that is overlooked by most people is the leadership of President George H. W. Bush and PM
Margaret Thatcher during the transition from the Soviet Union/Warsaw pact to independent
sovereign nations. The Bush was a WW II pilot and Thatcher earned the name Iron Lady for her
decisive action in the Falklands War, both understood the world as it was in 1990. This
statement highlights the view that prevailed from Bush at the time: "Not once, but three
times, Baker tried out the "not one inch eastward" formula with Gorbachev in the February 9,
1990, meeting. He agreed with Gorbachev's statement in response to the assurances that "NATO
expansion is unacceptable." Baker assured Gorbachev that "neither the President nor I intend
to extract any unilateral advantages from the processes that are taking place," and that the
Americans understood that "not only for the Soviet Union but for other European countries as
well it is important to have guarantees that if the United States keeps its presence in
Germany within the framework of NATO, not an inch of NATO's present military jurisdiction
will spread in an eastern direction." (See Document 6)"
These were complicated issues that involved a multitude of parties being negotiated by
just a few i.e. US, UK, France and West Germany a holdover from the WW II model. The Poles,
Czechs and others were not consulted and IMHO had they been the situation would have become
untenable. It must be remembered that Poland and Czechoslovakia suffered heavily due to
"large important nations" giving them away pre and post WW II. There was no written agreement
nor official treaty between the west and the Soviet Union soon to be Russian Federation and I
believe that was intentional for the reason I give above. George H. W. Bush was not reelected
in 1992 and Bill Clinton became POTUS and he pursued a foreign policy that was entirely
different. Some of his ideas used Thatchers earlier idea of a more political NATO with less
emphasis on the original military mission which brought in the Partnerships for Peace
program. That program was IMHO quite good as it stabilized countries that were wobbly in the
1990's after the breakup occurred. The Clinton White House had Madeline Albright an immigrant
from Czechoslovakia as secretary of State and Zbigniew Brzezinski a former secretary of State
and an academic that influenced his policies which were pro eastern European anti Russian. It
was during this time that NATO expanded. The US is a country of immigrants and there is a
large Polish population as well as other eastern Europeans and political considerations are
always come into play.
This period is when Clinton IMHO sent NATO in a wrong direction from being strictly
defensive/political to getting involved in Yugoslavia which certainly irritated Russia.
G.W. Bush basically continued the trend with regard to NATO but was preoccupied with 9/11
more than anything else. Bush thought that he understood Putin and even invited him to his
ranch in Crawford, Texas which Putin accepted and they did seem to get along.
However 2008
and the Georgia War began the slide in relations between the two countries. Then good old
Obama and another Clinton deciding to overthrow Gaddafi and his whole Arab Spring foreign
policy to include getting involved in Syria. These were disastrous decisions that the current
POTUS inherited and is trying to change except the "deep state" is fighting him tooth and
nail.
Getting out of Ukraine would be a huge trust maker for Russia and it would be followed by
sanctions being lifted allowing for a level playing field to begin working on the issues that
need fixing. NATO isn't going away however the forward deployed forces in the Baltic's and
Poland could over time in an agreed to reciprocal move say removing Iskander missiles from
Kaliningrad could be accomplished.
Many have tried, usually ended up in those infamous endless Russian fields, in long boxes.
See Pushkin, for the exact quote. But historical trivialities aside, there should be a way to
satisfy Imperial hubris without 'salting the grounds'. Hannibal's elephants did not carry
nukes in their trunks. Trying for the sixth time in the last 4 centuries to get Moscow
grounds salted might end badly for the entire planet.
Trust was not breached by Russia, military buildup, hostile threatening military, NATO
expansion and refusal to negotiate on these issues did not originate from Russia. Russia has
tried to negotiate, concede and de-escalate before. The West did not respond to those moves.
Even US sanctions placed on Soviet Union were not removed from Russia, despite there being no
reason for them to remain in place. This and other recent events (libya, iran deal etc) tells
Russia and other global players that de-escalating with the West doesn't work.
Even now, West seems to be interested to trade with Russia at least in some areas. And
Europe is increasingly frustrated with the United States. There is reportedly a number of EU
initiatives aimed at gradually limiting US economic levers created during the Cold War.
Rising economies will gradually offer more opportunities outside of the Western world.
Multipolar wolrd was a slogan in the 00s, in the 2040es it might be a reality.
We know NATO will not maintain ABM and CFE, and it is apparently not interested in INF and
Open Skies, and even START is in question now. NATO will withdraw troops if only Russia does
something? Please, you don't really believe that. With INF gone, Iskander is outdated, it was
a treaty-limited weapon. Moving it a few hundred klicks will not make NATO concede anything
now.
A huge trust maker would be for all NATO members to publically admit on their web page
that pledges to Russia were broken and at least some NATO officials feel responsibility for
that. They've spent 27 years denying any verbal assurances, now that those assurances are
declassified, they build other narratives about how those pledges did not matter. For there
to be trust, there needs to be an admission that trust was there, and was broken, and not by
Russia. No troop movements necessary even.
Biden isn't going to win the next election Trump will be reelected in 2020. The current
strain in relations with Russia has been inherited by Trump and even before he was elected
the DNC and Hillary Clinton cooked up the "Russia colusion" story which after $46 million and
2 1/2 years no Russia collision. Of course now we have the Dems trying to impeach Trump which
will not go anywhere in the Senate more waste of time and money. However there is the Justice
Department I.G. report soon to be released and many of the people who brought you the Russia
colusion hoax will be named. The Justice Department has an ongoing criminal investigation
into the key players and will undoubtedly result in indictments and prosecutions.
The real reason all of this is going on is because the establishment both Dem's & Repub's
along with the deep state look at Trump as an outsider who is tipping over their apple cart
i.e. he is changing the foreign policy direction and they don't like it one bit so they
create fake issues to try and stop him.
After his reelection I predict that more normal relations with Russia will resume.
Nowadays the actual attacks are manifested as 'hybrid warfare'. Of course Russia took the
US intervention and financing of Chechen rebels as an attack back in the 2000 ties. She took
fermenting and financing of the Georgian rose revolution as a hybrid attack, same as promises
made to pres. Saakashvili to support him militarily and politically after his attack on
Tskhinvali were taken as a hybrid attack. Same goes for both of the first color revolution in
Ukraine, and then the Revolution of dignity of 2014 that pushed ultra-right government to
power in Ukraine. In fact the NATO promise to both Georgia and Ukraine to take them in as
members in 2008 right after Putin's warning in 2007 was the first move in the 'hybrid war'.
The West had been warned, yet it decided to bulldoze its way across Eurasia and triggered the
confrontation. The placings of Aegises ashore in Poland and Romania was the cherry on top.
There can be be no meaningful compromise until the West backs off on the NATO enlargement.
That 2008 conference was what had reanimated the image of the collective West as adversary
for Russia.
What both sides should strive for though is at the very least to diminish the degree of
danger to the planet. Russia would not back off because she finds it easy enough to corner
individual EU states into minimal economic cooperation - Germany is already in recession and
there is no way they are going to continue damaging their economy for the sake of US
politics. And then there is China. When the Russians cannot buy goods from Germans they go
for made in China, which in turn gets China secure oil and gas from Russia. Which make the
repeat of pre-WW II situation with blockade on Japan pretty much impossible. Get realistic,
the West is loosing this one and should count her chickens already.
Well, then the sanctions will continue, as will the policy of keeping Russian in check in
the EU gas market.
What's interesting is that NATO never attacked Russia or threatened to attack Russia. Seems
to me that Putin is simply using the expansion as a pretext for military aggression against
the neighboring states. It's what the USSR did in 1939 against Finland. According the Soviet
side, the war started after Finland attacked the Soviet Union...
Russia *needs* the sanctions for at least another 5 years. Her milk and beef production is
still lagging compared to the deceased USSR and the only way her greedy oligarchs will
heavily invest in cow herd rearing is to continue to block the Eastern European milk products
to enter Russia. Chicken, eggs, pork and veggies are already up to speed, wheat production is
exploding, the salmon breeding programme have started so the Norway is not getting her market
back, bu the cow herds take longer to rear.
The Power of Siberia pipeline is being certified and filled right now - China would receive
her first delivery of piped Russian gas in 2020, so it is good that EU is prepping or the
squeeze - they are not going to continue getting unlimited cheap Russian gas, because Power
of Siberia II is in the works.
Every individual NATO member had attacked Russia in the past 4 centuries ( including small
but meaningful US contingent in the 1918), and some non-member allies had stomped those
fields as well. So the Russians are not taking any chances with the buffer zone. All of
Russia expansions to the West have always started with West invading first - then being
rolled back league by league. But seriously - ? Russians can live with Europe staying where
she is - if in turn Europe can learn to respect her civilization borders. The move on Ukraine
and Georgia was not a wise one.
"... There is a collection of Democratic and Republican politicians and think tanks funded by various corporations and governments and bureaucrats in the government agencies mostly all devoted to the Empire, but also willing to stab each other in the back to obtain power. They don't necessarily agree on policy details. ..."
"... They don't oppose Trump because Trump is antiwar. Trump isn't antiwar. Or rather, he is antiwar for three minutes here and there and then he advocates for war crimes. ..."
"... He is a fairly major war criminal based on his policies in Yemen. But they don't oppose him for that either or they would have been upset by Obama. They oppose Trump because he is incompetent, unpredictable and easily manipulated. And worst of all, he doesn't play the game right, where we pretend we intervene out of noble humanitarian motives. This idiot actually say he wants to keep Syrian oil fields and Syria's oil fields aren't significant to anyone outside Syria. ..."
"... Our policies are influenced in rather negative ways by various foreign countries, but would be embarrassed to go to the extremes one regularly sees from liberals talking about Russian influence ..."
" In a sense, the current NeoMcCartyism (Russophobia, Sinophobia) epidemic in the USA can
partially be viewed as a yet another sign of the crisis of neoliberalism: a desperate attempt
to patch the cracks in the neoliberal façade using scapegoating -- creation of an
external enemy to project the problems of the neoliberal society.
I would add another, pretty subjective measure of failure: the degradation of the elite.
When you look at Hillary, Trump, Biden, Warren, Harris, etc, you instantly understand what I
am talking about. They all look like the second-rate, if not the third rate politicians.
Also, the Epstein case was pretty symbolic."
I had decided to stay on the sidelines for the most part after making a few earlier
comments, but I liked this summary, except I would give Warren more credit. She is flawed like
most politicians, but she has made some of the right enemies within the Democratic Party.
On Trump and " the Deep State", there is no unified Deep State. There is a collection of
Democratic and Republican politicians and think tanks funded by various corporations and
governments and bureaucrats in the government agencies mostly all devoted to the Empire, but
also willing to stab each other in the back to obtain power. They don't necessarily agree on
policy details.
They don't oppose Trump because Trump is antiwar. Trump isn't antiwar. Or rather, he is
antiwar for three minutes here and there and then he advocates for war crimes.
He is a fairly major war criminal based on his policies in Yemen. But they don't oppose
him for that either or they would have been upset by Obama. They oppose Trump because he is
incompetent, unpredictable and easily manipulated. And worst of all, he doesn't play the game
right, where we pretend we intervene out of noble humanitarian motives. This idiot actually say
he wants to keep Syrian oil fields and Syria's oil fields aren't significant to anyone outside
Syria.
But yes, scapegoating is a big thing with liberals now. It's pathetic. Our policies are
influenced in rather negative ways by various foreign countries, but would be embarrassed to go
to the extremes one regularly sees from liberals talking about Russian influence .
For the most part, if we have a horrible political culture nearly all the blame for that is
homegrown.
Donald 11.07.19 at 4:40 am (no link)
Sigh. Various typos above. Here is one --
Our policies are influenced in rather negative ways by various foreign countries, but
would be embarrassed to go to the extremes one regularly sees from liberals talking about
Russian influence.
--
I meant to say I would be embarrassed to go to the extremes one regularly sees from
liberals talking about Russian influence.
@13 Joost Your comment is spot on. The demonisation of Russia is all about the long term aim
if destabilising, cracking it open and stealing it's resources. Russia is, in fact, the
woreld's largets and most resource rich nation so its an irresistible target to the insane,
greed-driven psychopath's who rule us.
First and foremost amongst those (and the most insane) is Hillary Clinton who it seems
maybe preparing for another run at the presidency...a Hillary presidency risks a full out
nuclear war.
You see, Hilary and the people who back her (and whom she faithfully serves) genuinely are
psychopaths. They lack empathy, care, and humanity. They see only their own need and greed,
only their own dysfunctional lust for power and wealth; they don't give a damn what it takes
to satisfy their perverse desires and who dies in the process. Psychopaths (blinded by their
own perversity) are also bad judges of risk and, in the minds of Hillary and her cabal of
psychopaths, they actually do believe that the US could fight a 'limited' nuclear war against
Russia, win it and steal all those lovely Russian resources.
The tragic misjudgement here, and why disgusting Hillary and her ilk are so dangerous, is
that there is no such thing as a 'limited' nuclear war. A nuclear war would be global. And
fatal.
I thought I understood this and many other things about the journalism business at a young
age. I even knew everything that "off the record" entails -- really knew, as if it were a
religious tenet -- before I hit junior high. I thought I was an expert.
Then I read Manufacturing Consent .
The book came out in 1988 and I read it a year later, when I was nineteen. It blew my
mind.
Along with the documentary Hearts and Minds (about the atrocities of
the Vietnam War) and books like Soul on Ice, In the Belly of the Beast,
and The Autobiography of Malcolm X, Manufacturing Consent taught me
that some level of deception was baked into almost everything I'd ever been taught about modern
American life.
I knew nothing about either of the authors, academics named Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky.
It seemed odd that a book purporting to say so much about journalism could be written by
non-journalists. Who were these people? And how could they claim to know anything about this
business?
This was the middle of the George H. W. Bush presidency, still the rah-rah Top Gun eighties. Political earnestness was extremely uncool. America was awesome
and hating on America was sad. Noam Chomsky was painted to me as the very definition of uncool,
a leaden, hectoring bore.
But this wasn't what I found on the page. Manufacturing Consent is a
dazzling book. True, like a lot of co-written books, and especially academic books, it's
written in slow, grinding prose. But for its time, it was intellectually flamboyant, wild
even.
The ideas in it radiated defiance. Once the authors in the first chapter laid out their
famed propaganda model, they cut through the deceptions of the American state like a buzz
saw.
The book's central idea was that censorship in the United States was not overt, but covert.
The stage-managing of public opinion was "normally not accomplished by crude intervention" but
by the keeping of "dissent and inconvenient information" outside permitted mental parameters:
"within bounds and at the margins."
The key to this deception is that Americans, every day, see vigorous debate going on in the
press. This deceives them into thinking propaganda is absent. Manufacturing
Consent explains that the debate you're watching is choreographed. The range of argument
has been artificially narrowed long before you get to hear it.
This careful sham is accomplished through the constant, arduous policing of a whole range of
internal pressure points within the media business. It's a subtle, highly idiosyncratic process
that you can stare at for a lifetime and nonetheless not see.
American news companies at the time didn't (and still don't) forbid the writing of
unpatriotic stories. There are no editors who come blundering in, red pen in hand, wiping out
politically dangerous reports, in the clumsy manner of Soviet Commissars.
Instead, in a process that is almost 100 percent unconscious, news companies simply avoid
promoting dissenting voices. People who are questioners by nature, prodders, pains in the ass
-- all good qualities in reporting, incidentally -- get weeded out by bosses, especially in the
bigger companies. Advancement is meanwhile strongly encouraged among the credulous, the
intellectually unadventurous, and the obedient.
As I would later discover in my own career, there are a lot of C-minus brains in the
journalism business. A kind of groupthink is developed that permeates the upper levels of media
organizations, and they send unconscious signals down the ranks.
Young reporters learn early on what is and is not permitted behavior. They learn to
recognize, almost more by smell than reason, what is and is not a "good story."
Chomsky and Herman described this policing mechanism using the term "flak." Flak was defined
as "negative responses to a media statement or program."
They gave examples in which corporate-funded think tanks like The Media Institute or the
anti-communist Freedom House would deluge media organizations that ran the wrong kinds of
stories with "letters, telegrams, phone calls, petitions, lawsuits" and other kinds of
pressure.
What was the wrong kind of story? Here we learned of another part of the propaganda model,
the concept of worthy and unworthy victims . Herman and Chomsky defined
the premise as follows:
A propaganda system will consistently portray people abused in enemy states as worthy
victims, whereas those treated with equal or greater severity by its own government or clients
will be unworthy.
Under this theory, a Polish priest murdered by communists in the Reagan years was a "worthy"
victim, while rightist death squads in U.S.-backed El Salvador killing whole messes of priests
and nuns around the same time was a less "worthy" story.
What Herman and Chomsky described was a system of informal social control, in which the
propaganda aims of the state were constantly reinforced among audiences, using a
quantity-over-quality approach.
Here and there you might see a dissenting voice, but the overwhelming institutional power of
the media (and the infrastructure of think-tanks and politicians behind the private firms)
carried audiences along safely down the middle of a surprisingly narrow political and
intellectual canal.
One of their examples was Vietnam, where the American media was complicit in a broad
self-abnegating effort to blame itself for "losing the war."
An absurd legend that survives today is that CBS anchor Walter Cronkite, after a two-week
trip to Vietnam in 1968, was key in undermining the war effort.
Cronkite's famous "Vietnam editorial" derided "the optimists who have been wrong in the
past," and villainously imparted that the military's rosy predictions of imminent victory were
false. The more noble course, he implied, was to face reality, realize "we did the best we
could" to defend democracy, and go home.
The Cronkite editorial sparked a "debate" that continues to the present.
On the right, it is said that we should have kept fighting in Vietnam, in spite of those
meddling commies in the media.
The progressive take is that Cronkite was right, and we should have realized the war wasn't
"winnable" years earlier. Doing so would have saved countless American lives, this thinking
goes.
These two positions still define the edges of what you might call the "fairway" of American
thought.
The uglier truth, that we committed genocide on a fairly massive scale across Indochina --
ultimately killing at least a million innocent civilians by air in three countries -- is
pre-excluded from the history of that period.
Instead of painful national reconciliation surrounding episodes like Vietnam, Cambodia,
Laos, the CIA-backed anti-communist massacres in places like Indonesia, or even the more recent
horrors in Middle Eastern arenas like Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and Yemen, we mostly ignore
narrative-ruining news about civilian deaths or other outrages.
A media that currently applauds itself for calling out the lies of Donald Trump (and they
are lies) still uses shameful government-concocted euphemisms like "collateral damage." Our new
"Democracy Dies in Darkness" churlishness has yet to reach the Pentagon, and probably never
will.
In the War on Terror period, the press accepted blame for having lost the most recent big
war and agreed to stop showing pictures of the coffins coming home (to say nothing of actual
scenes of war deaths).
We also volunteered to reduce or play down stories about torture ("enhanced interrogation"),
kidnapping ("rendition"), or assassination ("lethal action," or the "distribution matrix").
Even now, if these stories are covered, they're rarely presented in an alarmist tone. In
fact, many "civilian casualties" stories are couched in language that focuses on how the
untimely release of news of "collateral damage" may hinder the effort to win whatever war we're
in at the time.
"After reports of civilian deaths, U.S. military struggles to defend air operations in war
against militants," is a typical American newspaper headline.
Can you guess either the year or the war from that story? It could be 1968, or 2008. Or
2018.
As Manufacturing Consent predicted -- with a nod to Orwell, maybe --
the scripts in societies like ours rarely change. 1
When it came time for me to enter the journalism business myself, I discovered that the
Chomsky/Herman diagnosis was mostly right. Moreover, the academics proved prescient about
future media deceptions like the Iraq War. Their model predicted that hideous episode in
Technicolor.
But neither Herman nor Chomsky could have known, when they published their book in 1988,
that the media business was going through profound change.
As it turned out, Manufacturing Consent was published just ahead of
three massive revolutions. When I met and interviewed Chomsky for this book (see Appendix 2 ), we
discussed these developments. They included:
1. The explosion of conservative talk radio and Fox-style news products. Using point of view
rather than "objectivity" as commercial strategies, these stations presaged an atomization of
the news landscape under which each consumer had an outlet somewhere to match his or her
political beliefs. This was a major departure from the three-network pseudo-monopoly that
dominated the Manufacturing Consent period, under which the country
debated a commonly held set of facts.
2. The introduction of twenty-four-hour cable news stations, which shifted the emphasis of
the news business. Reporters were suddenly trained to value breaking news, immediacy, and
visual potential over import. Network "crashes" -- relentless day-night coverage extravaganzas
of a single hot story like the Kursk disaster or a baby thrown down a
well, a type of journalism one TV producer I knew nicknamed "Shoveling Coal For Satan" --
became the first examples of binge-watching. The relentless now now now
grind of the twenty-four-hour cycle created in consumers a new kind of anxiety and addictive
dependency, a need to know what was happening not just once or twice a day but every minute.
This format would have significant consequences in the 2016 election in particular.
3. The development of the Internet, which was only just getting off the ground in 1988. It
was thought it would significantly democratize the press landscape. But print and broadcast
media soon began to be distributed by just a handful of digital platforms. By the late 2000s
and early 2010s, that distribution system had been massively concentrated. This created the
potential for a direct control mechanism over the press that never existed in the Manufacturing Consent era. Moreover the development of social media would amplify
the "flak" factor a thousandfold, accelerating conformity and groupthink in ways that would
have been unimaginable in 1988.
Maybe the biggest difference involved an obvious historical change: the collapse of the
Soviet Union.
One of the pillars of the "propaganda model" in the original Manufacturing Consent was that the media used anti-communism as an organizing
religion.
The ongoing Cold War narrative helped the press use anti-communism as a club to batter
heretical thinkers, who as luck would have it were often socialists. They even used it as a
club to police people who weren't socialists (I would see this years later, when Howard Dean
was asked a dozen times a day if he was "too left" to be a viable candidate).
But the fall of the Berlin Wall and the dissolution of the Soviet empire took a little wind
out of the anti-communist religion. Chomsky and Herman addressed this in their 2002 update of
Manufacturing Consent, in which they wrote:
The force of anti-communist ideology has possibly weakened with the collapse of the Soviet
Union and the virtual disappearance of socialist movements across the globe, but this is easily
offset by the greater ideological force of the belief in the "miracle of the market "
The collapse of the Soviets, and the weakening of anti-communism as an organizing principle,
led to other changes in the media. Manufacturing Consent was in
significant part a book about how that unseen system of informal controls allowed the press to
organize the entire population behind support of particular objectives, many of them foreign
policy objectives.
But the collapse of the Wall, coupled with those new commercial strategies being deployed by
networks like Fox, created a new dynamic in the press.
Media companies used to seek out the broadest possible audiences. The dull third-person
voice used in traditional major daily newspapers is not there for any moral or ethical reason,
but because it was once believed that it most ably fulfilled the commercial aim of snatching as
many readers/viewers as possible. The press is a business above all, and boring third-person
language was once advanced marketing.
But in the years after Manufacturing Consent was published the new
behemoths like Fox turned the old business model on its head. What Australian tabloid-merchant
Rupert Murdoch did in employing political slant as a commercial strategy had ramifications the
American public to this day poorly understands.
The news business for decades emphasized "objective" presentation, which was really less an
issue of politics than of tone.
The idea was to make the recitation of news rhetorically watered down and unthreatening
enough to rope in the whole spectrum of potential news consumers. The old-school anchorperson
was a monotone mannequin designed to look and sound like a safe date for your daughter:
Good evening, I'm Dan Rather, and my frontal lobes have been removed .
Today in Libya
Murdoch smashed this framework. He gave news consumers broadcasts that were pointed,
opinionated, and nasty. He struck gold with The O'Reilly Factor, hosted
by a yammering, red-faced repository of white suburban rage named Bill O'Reilly (another Boston
TV vet).
The next hit was Hannity & Colmes, a format that played as a
parody of old news. In this show, the "liberal" Colmes was the quivering, asexual, "safe date"
prototype from the old broadcast era, and Sean Hannity was a thuggish Joey Buttafuoco in makeup
whose job was to make Colmes look like the spineless dope he was.
This was theater, not news, and it was not designed to seize the whole audience in the way
that other debate shows like CNN's Crossfire were.
The premise of Crossfire was an honest fight, two prominent pundits
duking it out over issues, and may the best man (they were usually men) win.
The prototypical Crossfire setup involved a bombastic winger like
Pat Buchanan versus an effete liberal like New Republic editor Michael
Kinsley. On some days the conservative would be allowed to win, on some days the liberal would
score a victory. It looked like a real argument.
But Crossfire was really just a formalized version of the artificial
poles of allowable debate that Chomsky and Herman described. As some of its participants (like
Jeff Cohen, a pioneering media critic who briefly played the "liberal" on the show, about whom
we'll hear more later) came to realize, Crossfire became a
propagandistic setup, a stage trick in which the "left" side of the argument was gradually
pushed toward the right over the years. It was propaganda, but in slow motion.
Hannity & Colmes dispensed with the pretense. This was the
intellectual version of Vince McMahon's pro wrestling spectacles, which were booming at the
time. In the Fox debate shows, Sean Hannity was the heel, and Colmes was the good guy, or
babyface. As any good wrestling fan knows, most American audiences want to see babyface
stomped.
The job of Colmes was to get pinned over and over again, and he did it well. Meanwhile
rightist anger merchants like Hannity and O'Reilly (and, on the radio, Rush Limbaugh) were
rapidly hoovering up audiences that were frustrated, white, and often elderly. Fox chief Roger
Ailes once boasted, "I created a network for people 55 to dead." (Ailes is now dead
himself.)
This was a new model for the media. Instead of targeting the broad mean, they were now
narrowly hunting demographics. The explosion of cable television meant there were hundreds of
channels, each of which had its own mission.
Just as Manufacturing Consent came out, all the major cable channels
were setting off on similar whale hunts, sailing into the high demographic seas in search of
audiences to capture. Lifetime was "television for women," while the Discovery Channel did well
with men. BET went after black viewers. Young people were MTV's target audience.
This all seems obvious now, but this "siloing" effect that spread across other channels soon
became a very important new factor in news coverage. Fox for a long time cornered the market on
conservative viewers. Almost automatically, competitors like CNN and MSNBC became home to
people who viewed themselves as liberals, beginning a sifting process that would later
accelerate.
A new dynamic entered the job of reporting. For generations, news directors had only to
remember a few ideological imperatives. One, ably and voluminously described by Chomsky and
Herman, was, "America rules: pay no attention to those napalmed bodies." We covered the worthy
victims, ignored the unworthy ones, and that was most of the job, politically.
The rest of the news? As one TV producer put it to me in the nineties, "The entire effect
we're after is, 'Isn't that weird?'"
Did you hear about that guy in Michigan who refused to mow his lawn even when the town
ordered him to? Weird! And how about that drive-thru condom store that opened in Cranston,
Rhode Island? What a trip! And, hey, what happened in the O.J. trial today? That Kato Kaelin is
really a doof! And I love that lawyer who wears a suede jacket! He looks like a cowboy!
TV execs learned Americans would be happy if you just fed them a nonstop succession of
National Enquirer –style factoids (this is formalized today in
meme culture). The New York Times deciding to cover the O.J. freak show
full-time broke the seal on the open commercialization of dumb news that among other things led
to a future where Donald Trump could be a viable presidential candidate.
In the old days, the news was a mix of this toothless trivia and cheery dispatches from the
front lines of Pax Americana. The whole fam could sit and watch it without getting upset (by
necessity: an important principle in pre-Internet broadcasting is that nothing on the air,
including the news, could be as intense or as creative as the commercials). The news once
designed to be consumed by the whole house, by loving Mom, by your crazy right-wing uncle, by
your earnest college-student cousin who just came home wearing a Che T-shirt.
But once we started to be organized into demographic silos, the networks found another way
to seduce these audiences: they sold intramural conflict.
The Roger Ailes types captured the attention of the crazy right-wing uncle and got him
watching one channel full of news tailored for him, filling the airwaves with stories, for
instance, about immigration or minorities committing crimes. Different networks eventually rose
to market themselves to the kid in the Che T-shirt. If you got them in different rooms watching
different channels, you could get both viewers literally addicted to hating one another.
There was a political element to this, but also not. It was commerce, initially. And
reporters stuck in this world soon began to realize that the nature of their jobs had
changed.
Whereas once the task was to report the facts as honestly as we could -- down the middle of
the "fairway" of acceptable thought, of course -- the new task was mostly about making sure
your viewer came back the next day.
We sold anger, and we did it mainly by feeding audiences what they wanted to hear. Mostly,
this involved cranking out stories about people our viewers loved to hate.
Selling siloed anger was a more sophisticated take on the WWE programming pioneered in
Hannity & Colmes . The modern news consumer tuned into news that
confirmed his or her prejudices about whatever or whoever the villain of the day happened to
be: foreigners, minorities, terrorists, the Clintons, Republicans, even corporations.
The system was ingeniously designed so that the news dropped down the respective silos
didn't interfere with the occasional need to "manufacture" the consent of the whole population.
If we needed to, we could still herd the whole country into the pen again and get them backing
the flag, as was the case with the Iraq War effort.
But mostly, we sold conflict. We began in the early nineties to systematically pry families
apart, set group against group, and more and more make news consumption a bubble-like, "safe
space" stimulation of the vitriolic reflex, a consumer version of "Two Minutes Hate."
How did this serve the needs of the elite interests that were once promoting unity? That
wasn't easy for me to see, in my first decades in the business. For a long time, I thought it
was a flaw in the Chomsky/Herman model. It looked like we were mostly selling pointless
division.
But it now seems there was a reason, even for that.
The news media is in crisis. Polls show that a wide majority of the population no longer has
confidence in the press. Chomsky himself despairs at this, noting in my discussion with him (at
the end of this book) that Manufacturing Consent had the unintended
consequence of convincing readers not to trust the media.
There are many ways of mistrusting something, but people who came away from Manufacturing Consent with the idea that the media peddles lies misread the book.
Papers like the New York Times, for the most part, do not traffic in
outright deceptions.
The overwhelming majority of commercial news reporting is factual (with one conspicuous
exception I'll get into later on), and the individual reporters who work in the business tend
to be quite stubborn in their adherence to fact as a matter of principle. (Sadly, in the time
it's taken to write this book, even this has begun to change some). Still, people should trust
most reporters, especially local reporters, who tend to have real beats (like statehouses or
courts), have few of the insular prejudices of the national media, and don't deserve the
elitist tag. The context in which reporters operate is most often the problem.
Now, more than ever, most journalists work for giant nihilistic corporations whose editorial
decisions are skewed by a toxic mix of political and financial considerations. Without
understanding how those pressures work, it's very difficult for a casual news consumer to gain
an accurate picture of the world.
This book is intended as an insider's guide to those distortions.
The technology underpinning the modern news business is sophisticated and works according to
a two-step process. First, it creates content that reinforces your pre-existing opinions, and,
after analysis of your consumer habits, sends it to you.
Then it matches you to advertisers who have a product they're trying
to sell to your demographic. This is how companies like Facebook and Google make their money:
telling advertisers where their likely customers are on the web.
The news, basically, is bait to lure you into a pen where you can be sold sneakers or bath
soaps or prostatitis cures or whatever else studies say people of your age, gender, race,
class, and political persuasion tend to buy.
Imagine your Internet surfing habit as being like walking down a street. A man shouts: "Did
you hear what those damned liberals did today? Come down this alley."
You hate liberals, so you go down the alley. On your way to the story, there's a storefront
selling mart carts and gold investments (there's a crash coming -- this
billionaire even says so!).
Maybe you buy the gold, maybe you don't. But at the end of the alley, there's a red-faced
screamer telling a story that may even be true, about a college in Massachusetts where
administrators took down a statue of John Adams because it made a Hispanic immigrant
"uncomfortable." Boy, does that make you pissed!
They picked that story just for you to hear. It is like the parable of Kafka's gatekeeper,
guarding a door to the truth that was built just for you.
Across the street, down the MSNBC alley, there's an opposite story, and set of storefronts,
built specifically for someone else to hear.
People need to start understanding the news not as "the news," but as just such an
individualized consumer experience -- anger just for you.
This is not reporting. It's a marketing process designed to create rhetorical addictions and
shut any non-consumerist doors in your mind. This creates more than just pockets of political
rancor. It creates masses of media consumers who've been trained to see in only one direction,
as if they had been pulled through history on a railroad track, with heads fastened in
blinders, looking only one way.
As it turns out, there is a utility in keeping us divided. As people, the more separate we
are, the more politically impotent we become.
This is the second stage of the mass media deception originally described in Manufacturing Consent .
First, we're taught to stay within certain bounds, intellectually. Then, we're all herded
into separate demographic pens, located along different patches of real estate on the spectrum
of permissible thought.
Once safely captured, we're trained to consume the news the way sports fans do. We root for
our team, and hate all the rest.
Hatred is the partner of ignorance, and we in the media have become experts in selling
both.
I looked back at thirty years of deceptive episodes -- from Iraq to the financial crisis of
2008 to the 2016 election of Donald Trump -- and found that we in the press have increasingly
used intramural hatreds to obscure larger, more damning truths. Fake controversies of
increasing absurdity have been deployed over and over to keep our audiences from seeing larger
problems.
We manufactured fake dissent, to prevent real dissent.
"... "Manufacturing Consent," Taibbi writes, "explains that the debate you're watching is choreographed. The range of argument has been artificially narrowed long before you get to hear it" (p. 11). ..."
"... Americans were held captive by the boob tube affords us not only a useful historical image but also suggests the possibility of their having been able to view the television as an antagonist, and therefore of their having been able, at least some of them, to rebel against its dictates. Three decades later, on the other hand, the television has been replaced by iPhones and portable tablets, the workings of which are so precisely intertwined with even the most intimate minute-to-minute aspects of our lives that our relationship to them could hardly ever become antagonistic. ..."
"... The massive political revolution was, going all the way back to 1989, the collapse of the Berlin Wall, and then of the Soviet Union itself -- and thus of the usefulness of anti-communism as a kind of coercive secular religion (pp. 14-15). ..."
"... our corporate media have devised -- at least for the time being -- highly-profitable marketing processes that manufacture fake dissent in order to smother real dissent (p. 21). ..."
"... And the smothering of real dissent is close enough to public consentto get the goddam job done: The Herman/Chomsky model is, after all these years, still valid. ..."
"... For Maddow, he notes, is "a depressingly exact mirror of Hannity . The two characters do exactly the same work. They make their money using exactly the same commercial formula. And though they emphasize different political ideas, the effect they have on audiences is much the same" (pp. 259-260). ..."
Matt Taibbi's Hate Inc . is the most insightful and revelatory book about American
politics to appear since the publication of Thomas Frank's Listen, Liberal almost four
full years ago, near the beginning of the last presidential election cycle.
While Frank's topic was the abysmal failure of the Democratic Party to be democratic and
Taibbi's is the abysmal failure of our mainstream news corporations to report news, the
prominent villains in both books are drawn from the same, or at least overlapping, elite social
circles: from, that is, our virulently anti-populist liberal class, from our
intellectually mediocre creative class, from our bubble-dwelling thinking class.
In fact, I would strongly recommend that the reader spend some time with Frank's What's the
Matter with Kansas? (2004) and Listen, Liberal! (2016) as he or she takes up
Taibbi's book.
And to really do the book the justice it deserves, I would even more vehemently recommend
that the reader immerse him- or herself in Taibbi's favorite book and vade-mecum ,
Manufacturing Consent (which I found to be a grueling experience: a relentless
cataloging of the official lies that hide the brutality of American foreign policy) and, in
order to properly appreciate the brilliance of Taibbi's chapter 7, "How the Media Stole from
Pro Wrestling," visit some locale in Flyover Country and see some pro wrestling in person
(which I found to be unexpectedly uplifting -- more on this soon enough).
Taibbi tells us that he had originally intended for Hate, Inc . to be an updating of
Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent (1988), which he first read
thirty years ago, when he was nineteen. "It blew my mind," Taibbi writes. "[It] taught me that
some level of deception was baked into almost everything I'd ever been taught about modern
American life .
Once the authors in the first chapter laid out their famed propaganda model [italics
mine], they cut through the deceptions of the American state like a buzz saw" (p. 10). For what
seemed to be vigorous democratic debate, Taibbi realized, was instead a soul-crushing
simulation of debate. The choices voters were given were distinctions without valid
differences, and just as hyped, just as trivial, as the choices between a Whopper and a Big
Mac, between Froot Loops and Frosted Mini-Wheats, between Diet Coke and Diet Pepsi, between
Marlboro Lites and Camel Filters. It was all profit-making poisonous junk.
"Manufacturing Consent," Taibbi writes, "explains that the debate you're watching is
choreographed. The range of argument has been artificially narrowed long before you get to hear
it" (p. 11). And there's an indisputable logic at work here, because the reality of
hideous American war crimes is and always has been, from the point of view of the big media
corporations, a "narrative-ruining" buzz-kill. "The uglier truth [brought to light in
Manufacturing Consent ], that we committed genocide of a fairly massive scale across
Indochina -- ultimately killing at least a million innocent civilians by air in three countries
-- is pre-excluded from the history of the period" (p. 13).
So what has changed in the last thirty years? A lot! As a starting point let's consider the
very useful metaphor found in the title of another great media book of 1988: Mark Crispin
Miller's Boxed In: The Culture of TV . To say that Americans were held captive by
the boob tube affords us not only a useful historical image but also suggests the possibility
of their having been able to view the television as an antagonist, and therefore of their
having been able, at least some of them, to rebel against its dictates. Three decades later, on
the other hand, the television has been replaced by iPhones and portable tablets, the workings
of which are so precisely intertwined with even the most intimate minute-to-minute aspects of
our lives that our relationship to them could hardly ever become antagonistic.
Taibbi summarizes the history of these three decades in terms of three "massive revolutions"
in the media plus one actual massive political revolution, all of which, we should note, he
discussed with his hero Chomsky (who is now ninety! -- Edward Herman passed away in 2017) even
as he wrote his book. And so: the media revolutions which Taibbi describes were, first, the
coming of FoxNews along with Rush Limbaugh-style talk radio; second, the coming of CNN, i.e.,
the Cable News Network, along with twenty-four hour infinite-loop news cycles; third, the
coming of the Internet along with the mighty social media giants Facebook and Twitter.
The massive political revolution was, going all the way back to 1989, the collapse of
the Berlin Wall, and then of the Soviet Union itself -- and thus of the usefulness of
anti-communism as a kind of coercive secular religion (pp. 14-15).
For all that, however, the most salient difference between the news media of 1989 and the
news media of 2019 is the disappearance of the single type of calm and decorous and slightly
boring cis-het white anchorman (who somehow successfully appealed to a nationwide audience) and
his replacement by a seemingly wide variety of demographically-engineered news personæ
who all rage and scream combatively in each other's direction. "In the old days," Taibbi
writes, "the news was a mix of this toothless trivia and cheery dispatches from the frontlines
of Pax Americana . The news [was] once designed to be consumed by the whole house . But once we
started to be organized into demographic silos [italics mine], the networks found
another way to seduce these audiences: they sold intramural conflict" (p. 18).
And in this new media environment of constant conflict, how, Taibbi wondered, could public
consent , which would seem to be at the opposite end of the spectrum from conflict,
still be manufactured ?? "That wasn't easy for me to see in my first decades in the
business," Taibbi writes. "For a long time, I thought it was a flaw in the Chomsky/Herman
model" (p. 19).
But what Taibbi was at length able to understand, and what he is now able to describe for us
with both wit and controlled outrage, is that our corporate media have devised -- at least
for the time being -- highly-profitable marketing processes that manufacture fake dissent in
order to smother real dissent (p. 21).
And the smothering of real dissent is close enough to public consentto get the goddam
job done: The Herman/Chomsky model is, after all these years, still valid.
Or pretty much so. Taibbi is more historically precise. Because of the tweaking of the
Herman/Chomsky propaganda model necessitated by the disappearance of the USSR in 1991 ("The
Russians escaped while we weren't watching them, / As Russians do ," Jackson Browne presciently
prophesied on MTV way back in 1983), one might now want to speak of a Propaganda Model 2.0.
For, as Taibbi notes, " the biggest change to Chomsky's model is the discovery of a far
superior 'common enemy' in modern media: each other. So long as we remain a bitterly-divided
two-party state, we'll never want for TV villains" (pp. 207-208).
To rub his great insight right into our uncomprehending faces, Taibbi has almost
sadistically chosen to have dark, shadowy images of a yelling Sean Hannity (in lurid FoxNews
Red!) and a screaming Rachel Maddow (in glaring MSNBC Blue!) juxtaposed on the cover of his
book. For Maddow, he notes, is "a depressingly exact mirror of Hannity . The two characters
do exactly the same work. They make their money using exactly the same commercial formula. And
though they emphasize different political ideas, the effect they have on audiences is much the
same" (pp. 259-260).
And that effect is hate. Impotent hate. For while Rachel's fan demographic is all wrapped up
in hating Far-Right Fascists Like Sean, and while Sean's is all wrapped up in despising Libtard
Lunatics Like Rachel, the bipartisan consensus in Washington for ever-increasing military
budgets, for everlasting wars, for ever-expanding surveillance, for ever-growing bailouts of
and tax breaks for and and handouts to the most powerful corporations goes forever
unchallenged.
Oh my. And it only gets worse and worse, because the media, in order to make sure that their
various siloed demographics stay superglued to their Internet devices, must keep
ratcheting up levels of hate: the Fascists Like Sean and the Libtards Like Rachel must be
continually presented as more and more deranged, and ultimately as demonic. "There is us and
them," Taibbi writes, "and they are Hitler" (p. 64). A vile reductio ad absurdum has
come into play: "If all Trump supporters are Hitler, and all liberals are also Hitler," Taibbi
writes, " [t]he America vs. America show is now Hitler vs. Hitler! Think of the
ratings! " The reader begins to grasp Taibbi's argument that our mainstream corporate media are
as bad as -- are worse than -- pro wrestling. It's an ineluctable downward spiral.
Taibbi continues: "The problem is, there's no natural floor to this behavior. Just as cable
TV will eventually become seven hundred separate twenty-four-hour porn channels, news and
commentary will eventually escalate to boxing-style, expletive-laden, pre-fight tirades, and
the open incitement to violence [italics mine]. If the other side is literally Hitler,
[w]hat began as America vs. America will eventually move to Traitor vs. Traitor ,
and the show does not work if those contestants are not eventually offended to the point of
wanting to kill one another" (pp. 65-69).
As I read this book, I often wondered about how difficult it was emotionally for
Taibbi to write it. I'm just really glad to see that the guy didn't commit suicide along the
way. He does describe the "self-loathing" he experienced as he realized his own complicity in
the marketing processes which he exposes (p. 2). He also apologizes to the reader for his not
being able to follow through on his original aim of writing a continuation of Herman and
Chomsky's classic: "[W]hen I sat down to write what I'd hoped would be something with the
intellectual gravitas of Manufacturing Consent ," Taibbi confesses, "I found decades of
more mundane frustrations pouring out onto the page, obliterating a clinical examination" (p.
2).
I, however, am profoundly grateful to Taibbi for all of his brilliantly observed anecdotes.
The subject matter is nauseating enough even in Taibbi's sparkling and darkly tragicomic prose.
A more academic treatment of the subject would likely be too depressing to read. So let me
conclude with an anecdote of my own -- and an oddly uplifting one at that -- about reading
Taibbi's chapter 7, "How the News Media Stole from Pro Wrestling."
On the same day I read this chapter I saw that, on the bulletin board in my gym, a poster
had appeared, as if by magic, promoting an upcoming Primal Conflict (!) professional
wrestling event. I studied the photos of the wrestlers on the poster carefully, and, as an
astute reader of Taibbi, I prided myself on being able to identify which of them seemed be
playing the roles of heels , and which of them the roles of babyfaces .
For Taibbi explains that one of the fundamental dynamics of wrestling involves the invention
of crowd-pleasing narratives out of the many permutations and combinations of pitting
heels against faces . Donald Trump, a natural heel , brings the goofy
dynamics of pro wrestling to American politics with real-life professional expertise. (Taibbi
points out that in 2007 Trump actually performed before a huge cheering crowd in a
Wrestlemania event billed as the "battle of the billionaires." Watch it on YouTube!
https://youtu.be/5NsrwH9I9vE --
unbelievable!!)
The mainstream corporate media, on the other hand, their eyes fixed on ever bigger and
bigger profits, have drifted into the metaphorical pro wrestling ring in ignorance, and so,
when they face off against Trump, they often end up in the role of inept prudish
pearl-clutching faces .
Taibbi condemns the mainstream media's failure to understand such a massively popular form
of American entertainment as "malpractice" (p. 125), so I felt more than obligated to buy a
ticket and see the advertised event in person. To properly educate myself, that is.
I have stopped watching broadcast "news" other than occasional sessions of NPR in the car.
I get most of my news from sources such as this and from overseas sources (The Guardian,
Reuters, etc.). I used to subscribe to newspapers but have given them up in disgust, even
though I was looking forward to leisurely enjoying a morning paper after I retired.
I was brought up in the positive 1950's and, boy, did this turn out poorly.
Matt Taibbi is an American treasure, and I love his writing very much, but we also need to
ask, Why hasn't another Chomsky (or another Hudson), an analyst with a truly deep and
wide-ranging, synthetic mind, appeared on the left to take apart our contemporary media and
show us its inner workings? Have all the truly great minds gone to work for Wall Street? I
don't have an answer, but to me the pro wrestling metaphor, while intriguing, misses
something about the Fourth Estate in America, if it indeed still exists. And that is, except
for radio, there is a distinct imbalance between the two sides of the MSM lineup. On the
corporate liberal side of the national MSM team you have five wrestlers, but on the
conservative/reactionary side you have only the Fox entry. Because of this imbalance, the
corruption, laziness, self-indulgence, and generally declining interest in journalistic
standards seems greater among the corporate liberal media team, including the NYT and WaPo,
than the Fox team.
I'm not a fan of either Maddow (in her current incarnation) or Hannity, but Hannity,
perhaps because he thinks he's like David, often hustles to refute the discourse of the
corporate liberal Goliath team. Hannity obviously does more research on some topics than
Maddow, and, perhaps because he began in radio, he puts more emphasis on semi-rationally
structured rants than Maddow, who depends more on primal emotion, body language, and
Hollywood-esque fear-inducing atmospherics.
I'd wager that in a single five-minute segment there will often be twice as many rational
distinctions made in a Hannity rant than in a Maddow performance. In addition, for the last
three years Hannity has simply been demonstrably right about the fake Russiagate propaganda
blitz while Maddow has been as demonstrably wrong from the very beginning as propaganda
industry trend-setter Adam Schiff. So for at least these last three years, the Maddow-Hannity
primal match has been a somewhat misleading metaphor. The Blob and the security state have
been decisively supporting (and directing?) the corporate liberal global interventionist
media, at least regarding Russia and the permanent war establishment, and because the
imbalance between the interventionist and the non-interventionist MSM, Russia and Ukraine are
being used as a wedge to steadily break down the firewalls between the Dem party, the intel
community, and the interventionist MSM. If we had real public debates with both sides at
approximately equal strength as we did during the Vietnam War, then even pro wrestling-type
matches would be superior to what we have now, which is truthy truth and thoughtsy thought
coming to us from the military industrial complex and monopolistic holding companies. If
fascism is defined as the fusion of the state and corporations, then the greatest threat of
fascism in America may well be coming from the apparent gradual fusion of the corporate
liberal MSM, the Dem party elite, and the intel community. Instead of an MSM wrestling match,
we may soon be faced with a Japanese-style 'hitori-zumo' match in which a sumo wrestler
wrestles with only himself. Once these sumo wrestlers were believed to be wrestling with
invisible spirits, but those days are gone . http://kikuko-nagoya.com/html/hitori-zumo.htm
Today's Noam Chomksy? Chomsky was part of the machine who broke ranks with it. His MIT
research was generously funded by the Military Industrial Complex. Thankfully, enough of his
latent humanity and Trotskyite upbringing shone through so he exposed what he was part of. So
I guess today that's Chris Hedges, though he's a preacher at heart and not a semiotician.
> In addition, for the last three years Hannity has simply been demonstrably right
about the fake Russiagate propaganda blitz while Maddow has been as demonstrably wrong
Eh. Read whats-his-name's (Frankfurter?) book On Bullshit . You are giving
Hannity credit for something he doesn't really care about.
I don't believe the media environment as a whole leans corporate Dem/neoliberal.
T.V. maybe, but radio is much more right wing than left (yes there is NPR and Pacifica,
the latter with probably only a scattering of listerners but ) and it's still out there and a
big influence, radio hasn't gone away. So doesn't the right wing tilt of radio kind of
balance out television? (not necessarily in a good way but). And then there is the internet
and I have no idea what the overall lean of that is (I mean I prefer left wing sites, but
that's purely my own bubble and actually there are much fewer left analysis out there than
I'd like)
The whole review is good, but this extract should be quoted extensively:
While Frank's topic was the abysmal failure of the Democratic Party to be democratic and
Taibbi's is the abysmal failure of our mainstream news corporations to report news, the
prominent villains in both books are drawn from the same, or at least overlapping, elite
social circles: from, that is, our virulently anti-populist liberal class, from our
intellectually mediocre creative class, from our bubble-dwelling thinking class.
In short, stagnation and self-dealing at the top. What could possibly go wrong?
Are you serious? Maddow called Trump a traitor and accused him of betrayal in Russiagate,
and was caught out when that fell apart. This was pointed out all over the MSM .
Three decades later, on the other hand, the television has been replaced by iPhones and
portable tablets
and then goes on to spend most of the article talking about television. I'd say television
is still the main propaganda instrument even if many webheads like yours truly ignore it
(I've never seen Hannity's show or Maddow's–just hear the rumors). Arguably even
newspapers like the NYT have been dumbed down because the reporters long to be on TV and join
the shouting. And it's surely no coincidence that our president himself is a TV (and WWE)
star. Mass media have always been feeders of hysteria but television gave them faces and
voices. Watching TV is also a far more passive experience than surfing the web. They are
selling us "narratives," bedtime stories, and we like sleepy children merely listen.
This rave review has inspired me to add this to my to-read non-fiction queue. Currently
reading William Dalrymple's The Anarchy, on the rise of the East India Company. Next up: Matt
Stoller's Goliath. And then I'll get to Taibbi. Probably worth digging up my original copy of
Manufacturing Consent as well, which I read many moons ago; time for a re-read.
May I suggest Stephen Cohen's "War with Russia?" if it's not already on your list? In
focusing on the danger emerging from the new cold war, seeded by the Democrats, propagated by
corporate media (which he thinks is more dangerous than the first), Cohen clarifies the
importance of diplomacy especially with one's nuclear rivals.
Us rubes knew decades ago about pro wrestling. There was a regional circuit and the hero
in one town would become the villain in another town. The ones to be surprised were like John
Stossel, who got a perforated eardrum from a slap upside the head for his efforts at
in-your-face journalism with a wrestler who just wouldn't play along with his grandstanding.
Somewhere, kids cheered and life went on.
Ah, Ancient Athens, here we come – running back to repeat your mistakes! Our MSM
media has decided that when we are not at our neighbor's throats, we should be at each
other's throats!
I was watching old clips of the 'Fred Friendly Seminars' on YouTube. IMHO any channel that
produced a format such as this would be a ratings bonanza. Imagine a round table with various
media figures (corporate) left, (corporate) right, and independent being refereed by a
host-moderator discussing topics in 'Hate, Inc.'. In wrestling it's called a Battle Royale.
The Fourth Estate in a cage match!
And the smothering of real dissent is close enough to public consentto get the goddam
job done: The Herman/Chomsky model is, after all these years, still valid.
This is important, if people don't want to be naive about what democracy buys. Democracy
in the end is a ritual system to determine which members of an elite would win a war without
actually having to hold the war. Like how court functions to replace personal revenge by
determining (often) who would win in a fight if there were one, and the feudal system
replaced the genocidal wars of the axial age with the gentler warfare of the middle ages
which were often ritual wars of the elite that avoided the full risk of the earlier wars.
That, I think, is important -- under a democracy, the winner should be normally the winner
of the avoided violent conflict to be sustainable. Thus, it's enough to get most people to
consent to the solution, using the traditional meaning of consent being "won't put up a fight
to avoid it". If the choices on the table are reduced enough, you can get by with most people
simply dropping out of the questions.
Qui tacet consentire videtur, ubi loqui debuit ac potuit
It shouldn't be a surprise that we've moved to "faking dissent" -- it's the natural
evolution of a system where a lot of the effective power is in the hands of tech, and not
just as in the early 20th century, how many workers you have and how many soldiers you can
raise.
If you don't like it, change the technology we use to fight one another. We went from
tribes to lords when we switch from sticks to advanced forged weapons, and we went from
feudalism to democracy when we had factories dropping guns that any 15 year old could use
(oversimplifying a bit). Now that the stuff requires expertise, you'd expect a corresponding
shift in how we ritualize our conflict avoidance, and thus the organization of how we control
communication and how we organize our rituals of power.
Aka, it's the scientists and the engineers who end up determining how everything is
organized, and people never seem to bother with that argument, which is especially surprising
that even hard-core Marxists waste their time on short-term politics rather than the tech
we're building.
I'd be curious whether Taibbi thought about the issue of the nature of the technology and
whether there are technological options on the horizon which drive the conflict in other
directions. If we had only kept the laws on copyright and patent weaker, so that the
implementation of communicative infrastructure would have stayed decentralized
Tabby's "manufacturing fake consent" was really the whole punchline – the joke's on
us. Hunter S. Thompson, another of Taibbi's heroes, is, along with Chomsky, speaking to us
through MT. Our media is distracting us from social coherence. Another thing it is doing
(just my opinion) is it is overwhelming us to the point of disgust. Nobody likes it. And we
protect ourselves by tuning it out. Turning it off. Once the screaming lunatics marginalize
themselves by making the whole narrative hysterical, we just act like it's another family
fight and we're gonna go do something else. When everyone is screaming, no one is
screaming.
I have tried to read Hate Inc. and Taibbi's Griftopia but one of my main issues with
Taibbi's writing is his lack of notes, references, or bibliography, etc. in his books. In
skimming Hate Inc. it seems like a book I would enjoy reading, however my personal value
system is that any book without footnotes, endnotes, citations, or at minimum a bibliography
is just an opinion or a story. At least Thomas Frank's Listen Liberal has a section for End
Notes/References at the end of the book. Again just my personal values.
I am from Greater Boston, far, far from flyover country (which I imagine begins in Yonkers
NY), but I sure grew up with pro wrestling as part of the schoolyard discourse. I certainly
knew it was as much of a family affair as Disney on Ice and have trouble believing he thought
otherwise though I will not impugn his honesty. I am very grateful to the author for taking
the time to write this, but is it possible for a male who grew up in the US to be as deeply
embedded in the MSNBC demo as he claims to be?
Seriously, how is it possible for a male raised in the US to not at least have some
working familiarity with pro wrestling? My family along with my community was very close to
the national median income–do higher income boys really not learn about WWF and
WWE?
Seriously, rich kids, what was childhood like? I know you had music lessons and sports
camps, what else? Was it really that different?
Sorry, my blue collar, lifetime union member brother says your view is horseshit. All the
knows about WWE and WWF is that they are big-budget fakery and that's why they are of no
interest.
aye. in my blue to white collar( and back to blue to no collar) upbringing, wrestling was
never a thing. it was for the morons who couldn't read. seen as patently absurd by just about
everyone i knew. and this in klanridden east texas exurbia
wife's mexican extended familia oth luche libre is a big thing that all and sundry talked
about at thanksgiving. less so these days possibly due to the hyperindiviualisation of media
intake mentioned
(and,btw, in my little world , horseshit is a good thing)
Even allowing for my lefty-liberal bias, I do not see how it is possible to equate Fox
Noise and MSNBC, or Hannity and Maddow, as "both-sides" extremists. Fox violates basic
professional canons of fairness and equity on a daily basis. MSNBC occasionally does, but is
quick to correct errors of fact. Hannity is a thuggish outer-borough New York schmuck without
much education or knowledge of the world. Maddow is an Oxford Ph.D. and Rhodes Scholar. It is
one of the evil successes of the right-wing news cauldron to have successfully equated these
two figures and organizations.
Huh? MSNBC regularly makes errors of omission and commission with respect to Sanders. They
are still pushing the Russiagate narrative. That's a massive, two-year, virtually all the
time error they have refused to recant.
The blind spots of people on the soi-disant left are truly astonishing.
'Hannity is a thuggish outer-borough New York schmuck without much education or knowledge
of the world. Maddow is an Oxford Ph.D. and Rhodes Scholar '
oh, well, then – end of conversation! i mean, god knows, it'd be a cold day in hell
before a rhodes scholar, or even someone married to one, would ever lead us astray down the
rosy neoliberal path to hell, while, at the same time, under the spell of trump derangement
syndrome, actually attempt to revive the mccarthy era, eh?
Actual drugs are being used to hinder debate as well as emotional drugs like hate.
They can't trust agency to be removed by words and images alone – the stakes are too
high.
Now all of you go take a feel good pill and stop complaining!
I've been impressed with Taibbi's work, what I've read of it, but ironically this very
article contains a quote from him which exemplifies the problem: his casual assertion that
the US committed "genocide" in Indochina. Even the most fervent critics of US policy didn't
say this at the time, for the very good reason that there was no evidence that the US tried
to destroy a racial, religious, ethnic or nationalist group (the full definition is a lot
more complex and demanding than that). He clearly means that the US was responsible for lots
of deaths, which is incontestable. But the process of endless escalation of rhetoric, which
this book seems to be partly about, means that everything now has to be described in the most
extreme, absurd or apocalyptic tones, and at the top of your voice, otherwise nobody takes
any notice. So any self-respecting war now has to be qualified as "genocide" or nobody will
take any notice.
"... 'Where a charity is providing education in respect of a controversial issue it must do so in a way that allows the people being educated to make up their own minds.' ..."
"... Institute of Statecraft. ..."
"... Integrity Initiative, ..."
"... Institute of Statecraft, ..."
"... Integrity Initiative ..."
"... Open Information Partnership ..."
"... Institute of Statecraft ..."
"... Media Diversity Institute ..."
"... Institute of Statecraft ..."
"... Moon of Alabama ..."
"... Integrity Initiative ..."
"... Integrity Initiative. ..."
"... Integrity Initiative ..."
"... Institute of Statecraft ..."
"... Institute of Statecraft ..."
"... Institute of Statecraft ..."
"... Integrity Initiative ..."
"... 'Where a charity is providing education in respect of a controversial issue it must do so in a way that allows the people being educated to make up their own minds.' ..."
james @ 4 opined;"
thanks b... i don't understand why so much hate is directed at russia... is this due some
need to find someone to demonize, an outgrowth of christianity or god knows what? or is it
purely to generate more money into the industrial military complex"
I'm with ya' james, this demonization of Russia, and any countries that refuse the
empire's beck and call, is around to stay I'm afraid.
And yes, it's all of the above, but, mostly about the $.
'i don't understand why so much hate is directed at russia... is this due some need to
find someone to demonize, an outgrowth of christianity or god knows what? or is it purely to
generate more money into the industrial military complex? what is the rationale?...'
They're the nuclear rival that don't import many of the u.s.'s consumer products.
otherwise, it'd either be china, or both...
plus, of course, there's all them cold war memes that can be triggered in a sizable
portion of the population's heads...
I suspect the the antipathy to Russia and the extensive disinformation campaign stems from
a 'Five Eyes' project and strategy ... with the malign Uncle as its director.
@james #4 "i don't understand why so much hate is directed at russia..."
Same motivation as all forgotten empires had. Even our cat want some of it, staring down on
his employees from his basket high up on the fridge with that evil look on his face. We call
it his World Domination Command Centre, WDCC for short. Global domination is what they crave.
Kill the competition, loot its resources, more power, more money. America has been looted,
devastated. Time for the locusts to move on to greener pastures. Russia is the promised land,
the next wild west new world to colonize. Problem is, as always, the natives.
I am hopeful that more and more of the population are realising that if an organisation is
promoted by any western government as a source of information, then that organisation will
provide disinformation by default. There are few, if any, journalists anywhere that are not
part of the empirical disinformation program. Those that are not will be independent and,
therefore, by alternate default, extremely wary of western government/government-funded/NGO
sources. All the hegemon and it's vassals can do now is double-down and hope that the
populations will go back to sleep.
As with all things evil, the British oligarchy began in the 1830s targeting Russia as a
threat to its autocratic interests, in this case "defending" the Ottoman Empire against
Russia.
The Brits were further scared out of their wits when the 1917 Russian Revolution was on
the verge of establishing an anti-capitalist system. So they, along with a ragtag bag of
co-conspirators including the United States, launched a military invasion of Russia.
That's right, U.S. troops landed at two places in Russia and fought against Russian
soldiers. The Brits/U.S/et. al. suffered a humiliating defeat, leaving so quickly that U.S.
dead soldiers were left behind buried in Soviet soil, to be repatriated years later.
But it's Russia that is the threat to "us", right?
@ Trisha | Nov 4 2019 21:22 utc | 16
___________________________________________
Thanks for your informative comment. I'd started to reply to James that Russia has been a
default "boogie-man" and Western scapegoat since the 19th Century, but that sounded
unhelpfully circular-- and I didn't have the ambition to refresh my understanding with actual
historical facts. ;)
The fact that a sort of Western "coalition of the willing" invaded Russia after the 1917
revolution is still a well-kept secret! It was never mentioned in my (US) school courses,
from parochial school through the "Honors Survey of Western Civilization" course I took in
college.
At the end of last year some enterprising 'anonymous' person
released papers of the British Integrity Initiative. As we
reported at that time:
The British government financed Integrity Initiative is tasked with spreading
anti-Russian propaganda and thereby with influencing the public, military and governments of
a number of countries. What follows is an contextual analysis of the third batch of the
Initiative's internal papers which were
dumped by an anonymous yesterday.
Christopher Nigel Donnelly (CND) is the co-director of The Institute for Statecraft and founder of its offshoot
Integrity Initiative . The
Initiative claims to "Defend Democracy Against Disinformation".
Both, the Institute as well as the Initiative, claim to be independent Non-Government
Organizations. Both are financed by the British government, NATO and other state donors.
That plans seems to have been the blueprint for the
March 2018 mass expulsion of Russian diplomats during the Skripal affair. Several of the
other measures Donnelly and his ilk planned
have since been implemented.
The Institute of Statecraft was registered as a charity under Scottish law. After
the release of its papers the Scottish charity regulator OSCR investigated the status of the
Institute . Unsurprisingly the OSCR
found (pdf) that its shady behavior and its running of anti-Russian disinformation
campaigns did not justify its status:
In the course of our inquiry we found that the charity was not meeting the charity test
required for continuing registration as a charity in Scotland because:
its purposes were not entirely charitable
one of its most significant activities, a project known as Integrity Initiative, did
not provide public benefit in furtherance of the charity's purposes
private benefit to charity trustees was not incidental to the charity's activities that
advance its charitable purpose
The purpose of the charity was purportedly to educate the public. But the regulator found
that the Integrity Initiative did not educate but only spread its own version of
'reality' i.e. disinformation. The charity lacked neutrality:
In addition, our Meeting the Charity Test guidance states that:
'Where a charity is providing education in respect of a controversial issue it must do
so in a way that allows the people being educated to make up their own minds.'
OSCR's view is that the Integrity Initiative expressed a particular perspective intended
to persuade the public to a specific point of view and, given the nature of the subject
matter, it was not sufficiently neutral to advance education.
The crocks who were running the charity were filling their own pockets with the public money
the 'charity' received:
To pass the charity test any private benefit must be incidental to the organisation's
activities that advance its purposes, that is, it must be a necessary result or by-product of
the organisation's activities and not an end in itself.
We were concerned at the level of private benefit that a number of the charity's trustees
were gaining from the exercise of its functions.
There was no clear explanation as to why the salaries being paid to charity trustees were
considered reasonable and necessary, and we had concerns about the charity trustees'
decision-making process around these payments. We do not consider that this private benefit
was incidental to the organisation's activities that advanced its purposes.
The regulator also noted a lack of record keeping and a lack of documentation of decision
making by the Institute's trustees.
Unfortunately the charity regulator will not close down the Institute of
Statecraft. It accepted that it rectified its behavior by taking a number of measures:
the charity has ceased to undertake any activity related to the Integrity initiative,
and this is now undertaken by a non-charitable entity having no legal connection to the
charity
the charity has ceased to remunerate any of its charity trustees
the charity is taking external guidance on governance
some charity trustees are to stand down as soon as replacement charity trustees can be
identified
The Integrity Initiative, as paid for by the British Foreign Office, Ministry of
Defense, NATO and other such entities, will live on as a non-charitable entity with even less
transparency. Its website, as well as that of Institute of Statecraft, is down. That
it will now have to live in total secrecy will make it more difficult for it to recruit foreign
journalist to spread its propaganda.
On 3rd April, Foreign & Commonwealth Office (FCO) minister Alan Duncan revealed his
department's 'Counter Disinformation and Media Development Programme' - which bankrolls the
Institute for Statecraft and its Integrity Initiative subsidiary - was funding a new
endeavour, Open Information
Partnership (OIP).
The announcement, buried in a response to a written parliamentary question, was supremely
light on detail - Duncan merely said the effort would "respond to manipulated information in
the news, social media and across the public space". Official fanfare was also unforthcoming
- there was no accompanying press release, briefing document, or even mention of the launch
by any government minister or department via social media channels.
The original proposal for
the Open Information Partnership , as
released by 'anonymous' , included the Institute of Statecraft , a Media
Diversity Institute , Bellingcat , DFR Lab (i.e. the Atlantic Council)
and some others in a so called ZINC Network . On the current OIP website the Institute of
Statecraft 'charity' is no longer named.
---
Previous Moon of Alabama reports on the issue:
At the end of last year some enterprising 'anonymous' person
released papers of the British Integrity Initiative. As we reported
at that time:
The British government financed Integrity Initiative is tasked with spreading
anti-Russian propaganda and thereby with influencing the public, military and governments
of a number of countries. What follows is an contextual analysis of the third batch of the
Initiative's internal papers which were
dumped by an anonymous yesterday.
Christopher Nigel Donnelly (CND) is the co-director of The Institute for Statecraft and founder of its
offshoot Integrity
Initiative . The Initiative claims to "Defend Democracy Against Disinformation".
Both, the Institute as well as the Initiative, claim to be independent Non-Government
Organizations. Both are financed by the British government, NATO and other state
donors.
That plans seems to have been the blueprint for the
March 2018 mass expulsion of Russian diplomats during the Skripal affair. Several of the
other measures Donnelly and his ilk planned
have since been implemented.
The Institute of Statecraft was registered as a charity under Scottish law. After
the release of its papers the Scottish charity regulator OSCR investigated the status of the
Institute . Unsurprisingly the OSCR
found (pdf) that its shady behavior and its running of anti-Russian disinformation
campaigns did not justify its status:
In the course of our inquiry we found that the charity was not meeting the charity test
required for continuing registration as a charity in Scotland because:
its purposes were not entirely charitable
one of its most significant activities, a project known as Integrity Initiative, did
not provide public benefit in furtherance of the charity's purposes
private benefit to charity trustees was not incidental to the charity's activities
that advance its charitable purpose
The purpose of the charity was purportedly to educate the public. But the regulator found
that the Integrity Initiative did not educate but only spread its own version of
'reality' i.e. disinformation. The charity lacked neutrality:
In addition, our Meeting the Charity Test guidance states that:
'Where a charity is providing education in respect of a controversial issue it must
do so in a way that allows the people being educated to make up their own minds.'
OSCR's view is that the Integrity Initiative expressed a particular perspective intended
to persuade the public to a specific point of view and, given the nature of the subject
matter, it was not sufficiently neutral to advance education.
The crocks who were running the charity were filling their own pockets with the public
money the 'charity' received:
To pass the charity test any private benefit must be incidental to the organisation's
activities that advance its purposes, that is, it must be a necessary result or by-product
of the organisation's activities and not an end in itself.
We were concerned at the level of private benefit that a number of the charity's
trustees were gaining from the exercise of its functions.
There was no clear explanation as to why the salaries being paid to charity trustees
were considered reasonable and necessary, and we had concerns about the charity trustees'
decision-making process around these payments. We do not consider that this private benefit
was incidental to the organisation's activities that advanced its purposes.
The regulator also noted a lack of record keeping and a lack of documentation of decision
making by the Institute's trustees.
Unfortunately the charity regulator will not close down the Institute of
Statecraft. It accepted that it rectified its behavior by taking a number of
measures:
the charity has ceased to undertake any activity related to the Integrity initiative,
and this is now undertaken by a non-charitable entity having no legal connection to the
charity
the charity has ceased to remunerate any of its charity trustees
the charity is taking external guidance on governance
some charity trustees are to stand down as soon as replacement charity trustees can
be identified
The Integrity Initiative, as paid for by the British Foreign Office, Ministry of
Defense, NATO and other such entities, will live on as a non-charitable entity with even less
transparency. Its website, as well as that of Institute of Statecraft, is down. That
it will now have to live in total secrecy will make it more difficult for it to recruit
foreign journalist to spread its propaganda.
On 3rd April, Foreign & Commonwealth Office (FCO) minister Alan Duncan revealed his
department's 'Counter Disinformation and Media Development Programme' - which bankrolls the
Institute for Statecraft and its Integrity Initiative subsidiary - was funding a new
endeavour, Open
Information Partnership (OIP).
The announcement, buried in a response to a written parliamentary question, was
supremely light on detail - Duncan merely said the effort would "respond to manipulated
information in the news, social media and across the public space". Official fanfare was
also unforthcoming - there was no accompanying press release, briefing document, or even
mention of the launch by any government minister or department via social media
channels.
The original proposal
for the Open Information Partnership , as
released by 'anonymous' , included the Institute of Statecraft , a Media
Diversity Institute , Bellingcat , DFR Lab (i.e. the Atlantic Council)
and some others in a so called ZINC Network . On the current OIP website the Institute of
Statecraft 'charity' is no longer named.
---
Previous Moon of Alabama reports on the issue:
Thanks, B. It's a pity the people of the UK have no foreseeable recourse to stop shadow
government operations like this that exist to disinform the people of the UK.
At Kit Klarenberg's Twitter ,
there's a long tweet thread further detailing what b has written above. I can't help be
wonder how the Monty Python troop would have portrayed the Institute for Statecraft and its
parent the Integrity Initiative. It appears that the governments of the English speaking
nations became addicted to lying to their citizens @1900 and are unable to kick the habit and
instead have actually deepened their addiction. Elsewhere on the planet, it seems that people
are learning it's easier to talk straight and transparently with other people and to pool
resources and combine efforts to form a community of nations and humanity to better one and
all. Seems simple enough to determine which is functional and which isn't.
thanks b... i don't understand why so much hate is directed at russia... is this due some
need to find someone to demonize, an outgrowth of christianity or god knows what? or is it
purely to generate more money into the industrial military complex? what is the rationale? i
agree with @ 1 - noyk - it is unfortunate the uk people are used as guinea pigs on such a
regular basis.. i suspect a similar exercise is in operation in canada and the west, although
it seems the msm fulfills this role here...
"CIA, FBI Informant Was Washington Post Source For Russiagate Smears."
The article details a segment of Russiagate's overall unraveling and outs WaPost's David
Ignatius as part of Operation Mockingbird. And I see no reason to dispute the item's
conclusion:
"These close connections between the Washington Post's Ignatius and individuals connected
to the American and British intelligence communities, and the false reporting that has taken
place over the last three-plus years, raise grave concerns that the warfare of the soft coup
aimed at President Trump includes using the media to push propaganda."
The longer the above conclusion's denied, the wider the polarization becomes between those
guided by facts and those following media fantasies.
james @ 4 opined;"
thanks b... i don't understand why so much hate is directed at russia... is this due some
need to find someone to demonize, an outgrowth of christianity or god knows what? or is it
purely to generate more money into the industrial military complex"
I'm with ya' james, this demonetization of Russia, and any countries that refuse the
empire's beck and call, is around to stay I'm afraid.
And yes, it's all of the above, but, mostly about the $.
'i don't understand why so much hate is directed at russia... is this due some need to
find someone to demonize, an outgrowth of christianity or god knows what? or is it purely to
generate more money into the industrial military complex? what is the rationale?...'
they're the nuclear rival that don't manufacture many of the u.s.'s consumer products.
otherwise, it'd either be china, or both...
plus, of course, there's all them cold war memes that can be triggered in a sizable
portion of the population's heads...
The OSCR report includes the Institute for Statecraft's own description of its purposes, but
nothing about its actual operations, other than the ones now being deemed unsatisfactory
under the charities law.
So now that the Institute has committed not to run the Integrity Initiative, and
not to enrich its trustees, what are its legitimate "charitable" activities that OSCR
is kindly allowing it to continue with?
I suspect the the antipathy to Russia and the extensive disinformation campaign stems from
a 'Five Eyes' project and strategy ... with the malign Uncle as its director.
As an Irish citizen, I think the British deep state - the original deep state -have been very
successful at demonising the enemies of 'freedom' and 'civilisation', the Irish yes, also the
Indians, Africans, Germans, french, Spanish, Muslims and now the Russians. Our enemies are
not each other rather the deep state. Let's recognise who our real enemy is
@james #4 "i don't understand why so much hate is directed at russia..."
Same motivation as all forgotten empires had. Even our cat want some of it, staring down on
his employees from his basket high up on the fridge with that evil look on his face. We call
it his World Domination Command Centre, WDCC for short. Global domination is what they crave.
Kill the competition, loot its resources, more power, more money. America has been looted,
devastated. Time for the locusts to move on to greener pastures. Russia is the promised land,
the next wild west new world to colonize. Problem is, as always, the natives.
I am hopeful that more and more of the population are realising that if an organisation is
promoted by any western government as a source of information, then that organisation will
provide disinformation by default. There are few, if any, journalists anywhere that are not
part of the empirical disinformation program. Those that are not will be independent and,
therefore, by alternate default, extremely wary of western government/government-funded/NGO
sources. All the hegemon and it's vassals can do now is double-down and hope that the
populations will go back to sleep.
@8 ben / @ 9 semiconscious / @ 11 chet380.. yes, there is that too, but is that it? money as
ben says rings true for me mostly... that is mostly how i see this...the agencies seem to be
a front for western oligarchs.. the kleptomaniacs want access to all russian resources and
have yet to be successful in getting it.. they succeeded in ukraine for the most part in
having the kleptos gain control over much of ukraine.. the 2014 coop was meant to solidify
more of that and poke russia in the eye too..
@ 13 joost... i would watch out for your cat! alas, we all seem to agree it is about
wanting to loot russia... we share a similar viewpoint.. it is really sick how so many are
ignorant pawns, or worse in all of this.. no wonder i make next to no money working in the
music industry... i am in the wrong game and don't share a lack of ethics on such display
with all these losers..
As with all things evil, the British oligarchy began in the 1830s targeting Russia as a
threat to its autocratic interests, in this case "defending" the Ottoman Empire against
Russia.
The Brits were further scared out of their wits when the 1917 Russian Revolution was on
the verge of establishing an anti-capitalist system. So they, along with a ragtag bag of
co-conspirators including the United States, launched a military invasion of Russia.
That's right, U.S. troops landed at two places in Russia and fought against Russian
soldiers. The Brits/U.S/et. al. suffered a humiliating defeat, leaving so quickly that U.S.
dead soldiers were left behind buried in Soviet soil, to be repatriated years later.
But it's Russia that is the threat to "us", right?
Reading through the OCSR's document at the PDF link in B's post, I am surprised (should I
be?) that during the entire decade-long period when the Institute of Statecraft was
registered as a charity, the OCSR did not see fit at any time to remind the organisation of
its responsibilities to keep proper records of its activities and decision-making, to provide
a proper formal and transparent structure for its activities that could be shown to
demonstrate a public benefit, and to have proper formal structures generally for its
day-to-day running and governance activities. The Scottish public have every right to hold
the OCSR to much higher standards of being a regulatory organisation making sure that
charities are run properly as charities and not simply accept those charities' word that they
will improve their operations when they have spent 10 long years taking money (some of it
taxpayers' money) and misusing it.
@ Trisha | Nov 4 2019 21:22 utc | 16
___________________________________________
Thanks for your informative comment. I'd started to reply to James that Russia has been a
default "boogie-man" and Western scapegoat since the 19th Century, but that sounded
unhelpfully circular-- and I didn't have the ambition to refresh my understanding with actual
historical facts. ;)
The fact that a sort of Western "coalition of the willing" invaded Russia after the 1917
revolution is still a well-kept secret! It was never mentioned in my (US) school courses,
from parochial school through the "Honors Survey of Western Civilization" course I took in
college.
@ 20..lol.. that is true... can't ver ask too many questions! and, it has been a repeat of
mccarthyism.. it's bizarre to see so many otherwise intelligent people swallow this crap.. i
think of emptywheel and how i used to think she was smart.. she is so busy looking at the
trees, she's incapable of seeing the forest..
@16 trisha... thanks... as i have mentioned here at moa numerous times, the book 'paris 1918'
by Margaret Macmillan is an excellent book that gives an overview and discusses exactly what
you are talking about.. i can't recommend the book enough.. https://www.bookbrowse.com/reviews/index.cfm/book_number/1135/Paris-1919
I ploughed through the Kit Klarenberg piece on Sputnik that b linked to and would have wept
at the Orwellian inversions of truth in the OIP's 'mission statment' if I'd had any tears
left after enduring the recent decades of lies and projection of the Empire's propaganda
machine. The Mighty Wurlitzer at corporate-speak indeed. In fact all I could do was laugh
like Group Captain Mandrake in Dr Strangelove when confronted with the madness of
General Ripper.
Tragically, the opening paragraph of their statement sounded like something Caitlin
Johnstone might pen, urging our side to be wary and vigilant of the propaganda of
them .
"Democracy cannot thrive without honest, accurate and freely available information about
the world around us We need to know where our information is coming from, we need to know
the motives (good, bad or neither) of those providing the information, and be in the habit
of thinking critically about everything we read and hear. Every one of us has the right to
be properly informed – that knowledge gives us strength. Every one of us shares
responsibility for informed engagement and critical thinking, to challenge the powerful and
uncover the truth An engaged population, equipped with clarity and the truth, is the
foundation for a world where we can all enjoy greater equality and greater peace."
"critical thinking"
"challenge the powerful"
"uncover the truth"
They are taking the tools that we need to deal with their perfidy, and
pretending that they need to use them to "challenge the powerful and uncover the
truth". I found this Orwellian inversion of the truth so chilling that I could only
laugh.
In all seriousness, I can only presume that they actually believe their own lies.
The Wolfowitz Doctrine (1992) states that Russia should remain America's main enemy for the
forseeable future because it inherited the USSR's nuclear arsenal. At least this is the
official rationale.
But there may be another reason. Courtesy from Pepe Escobar's facebook page:
@22 James ... thanks for the "Paris 1919" book reference, luckily it's available at my local
library. For a detailed history of (sadly) another in a long list of America's criminal acts
of aggressive war, I highly recommend Russian
Sideshow: America's Undeclared War, 1918-1920 by Robert L. Willett.
they are attacking Russia because they know that only military force can stop the collapse
the fake Dollar & all the Jewish printed wealth which goes with it. "yes, the Dollar is
our money, but, it is your problem" sort of imposed doctrine of the last half-century is
coming to an end & no naval carriers could stop its fall.
"... We drove for hours through the desert, towards the Iraqi border. Approx. 20-30 kilometers from the border, there really was nothing. First of all no war. There were armored vehicles and tanks, burned-out long ago. The journalist left the bus, splashed the contents of the cans on the vehicles. We had Iraqi soldiers with us as an escort, with machine guns, in uniform. You have to imagine: tanks in a desert, burned out long ago, now put on fire. Clouds of smoke. And there the journalists assemble their cameras. ..."
"... So I gathered courage and asked one of the reporters: 'I understand one thing, they are great pictures, but why are they ducking all the time? ' ..."
"... I'll finish, because I am not here to make satire today. I just want to say that this was my first experience with truth in journalism and war reporting. ..."
"... Then a certain type of reporting is expected. Which one? Forget my newspaper, this applies in general. At the start of the trip, the journalist gets a memo – today it is electronic – in his hand. If you are traveling abroad, it is info about the country, or the speeches that will be held. This file contains roughly what will happen during this trip. In addition there are short conversations, briefings with the politician's press manager. He then explains to you how one views this trip. Naturally, you should see it the same way. No one says it in that way. But is is approximately what one would have reported. ..."
"... He explained that a recruitment board from the intelligence services had participated. But I had no idea that the seminar Introduction to Conflict Studies was arranged by the defense forces and run by the foreign intelligence service BND, to have a closer look at potential candidates among the students, not to commit them. They only asked if they, after four such seminars, possibly could contact me later, in my occupation. ..."
"... Two persons from BND came regularly to the paper, to a visiting room. And there were occasions when the report not only was given, but also that BND had written articles, largely ready to go, that were published in the newspaper under my byline. ..."
"... But a couple of journalists were there, they told about it. Therefore I repeat: Merkel invited the chief editors several times, and told them she didn't want the population to be truthfully and openly informed about the problems out there. For example, the background for the financial crisis. If the citizens knew how things were, they would run to the bank and withdraw their money. So beautifying everything; everything is under control; your savings are safe; just smile and hold hands – everything will be fine. ..."
"... From one hour 18 minutes onwards, Ulfkotte details EU-Inter-State Terror Co-operation, with returning IS Operatives on a Free Pass, fully armed and even Viktor Orban had to give in to the commands of letting Terrorists through Hungary into Germany & Austria. ..."
"... Everybody who works in the MSM, without exception, are bought and paid for whores peddling lies on behalf of globalist corporate interests. ..."
"... Udo's voice (in the form of his book) was silenced for a reason – that being that he spoke the truth about our utterly and completely corrupt Western fantasy world in which we in the West proclaim our – "respect international law" and "respect for human rights." His work, such as this interview and others he has done, pulled the curtain back on the big lie and exposed our oligarchs, politicians and the "journalists" they hire as simply a cadre of professional criminals whose carefully crafted lies are used to soak up the blood and to cover the bodies of the dead, all in order to hide all that mayhem from our eyes, to insure justice is an impossibility and to make sure we Western citizens sleep well at night, oblivious to our connection to the actual realities that are this daily regime of pillage and plunder that is our vaunted "neoliberal order." ..."
"... "The philosopher Diogenes (of Sinope) was eating bread and lentils for supper. He was seen by the philosopher Aristippus, who lived comfortably by flattering the king. Said Aristippus, 'If you would learn to be subservient to the king you would not have to live on lentils.' To which Diogenes replied, 'Learn to live on lentils and you will not have to be subservient to the king"." ..."
"... So Roosevelt pushed Hitler to attack Stalin? Hitler didn't want to go East? Revisionism at it most motive free. ..."
"... Pushing' is synonymous for a variety of ways to instigate a desired outcome. Financing is just one way. And Roosevelt was in no way the benevolent knight history twisters like to present him. You are outing yourself again as an easliy duped sheep. ..."
"... Lebensraum was first popularized in 1901 in Germany https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lebensraum Hitler's "Mein Kampf" ( 1925) build on that: he had no need for any American or other push, it was intended from the get go. ..."
"... This excellent article demonstrates how the Controlling Elite manipulates the Media and the Message for purposes of misdirecting attention and perception of their true intentions and objective of securing Global Ownership (aka New World Order). ..."
"... Corporate Journalism is all about corporatism and the continuation of it. If the Intelligence Community needs greater fools for staffing purposes in the corporate hierarchy they look for anyone that can be compromised via inducements of whatever the greater fools want. ..."
"... Bought & paid for corporate Journalists are controlled by the Intelligence Agencies and always have been since at least the Second World War. The CIA typically runs bribery & blackmail at the state & federal level so that when necessary they have instant useless eaters to offer up as political sacrifice when required via state run propaganda, & impression management. ..."
"... Assuming that journalism is an ethical occupation is naďve and a fools' game even in the alternative news domain as all writers write from bias & a lack of real knowledge. Few writers are intellectually honest or even aware of their own limits as writers. The writer is a failure and not a hero borne in myth. Writers struggle to write & publish. Bought and paid for writers don't have a struggle in terms of writing because they are told what to write before they write as automatons for the Intelligence Community knowing that they sold their collective souls to the Prince of Darkness for whatever trinkets, bobbles, or bling they could get their greedy hands on at the time. ..."
"... Once pond scum always pond scum. ..."
"... It is a longer process in which one is gradually introduced to ever more expensive rewards/bribes. Never too big to overwhelm – always just about what one would accept as 'motivation' to omit aspects of any issue. Of course, omission is a lie by any other name, but I can attest to the life style of a journalist that socializes with the leaders of all segments of society. ..."
"... Professional whoring is as old as the hills and twice as dusty. Being ethical is difficult stuff especially when money is involved. Money is always a prime motivator but vanity works wonders too. Corporatists will offer whatever inducements they can to get what they want. ..."
"... All mainstream media voices are selling a media package that is a corporatist lie in and of itself. Truth is less marketable than lies. Embellished news & journalistic hype is the norm ..."
In 2014, the German journalist and writer Udo Ulfkotte published a book that created a big stir, describing how the journalistic
profession is thoroughly corrupt and infiltrated by intelligence services.
Although eagerly anticipated by many, the English translation of the book, Bought Journalists , does not seem to be forthcoming
anytime soon.
So I have made English subtitles and transcribed this still very relevant 2015-lecture for those that are curious about Ulfkotte's
work. It covers many of the subjects described in the book.
Udo Ulfkotte died of a heart attack in January 2017, in all likelihood part of the severe medical complications he got from his
exposure to German-made chemical weapons supplied to Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s.
Transcription
[Only the first 49 minutes are translated; the second half of the lecture deals mostly with more local issues]
Introducer Oliver: I am very proud to have such a brave man amongst us: Udo Ulfkotte
Udo Ulfkotte: Thanks Thanks for the invitation Thanks to Oliver. I heard to my great surprise from Oliver that he didn't
know someone from the intelligence services (VVS) would be present. I wish him a warm welcome. I don't mean that as a joke, I heard
this in advance, and got to know that Oliver didn't know. If he wants – if it is a man – he can wave. If not? no? [laughter from
the audience]
I'm fine with that. You can write down everything, or record it; no problem.
To the lecture. We are talking about media. we are talking about truth. I don't want to sell you books or such things. Each one
of us asks himself: Why do things develop like they do, even though the majority, or a lot of people shake their heads.
The majority of people in Germany don't want nuclear weapons on our territory. But we have nuclear weapons here. The majority
don't want foreign interventions by German soldiers. But we do.
What media narrates and the politicians say, and what the majority of the population believes – seems often obviously to be two
different things.
I can tell you this myself, from many years experience. I will start with very personal judgments, to tell you what my experiences
with 'The Lying Media' were – I mean exactly that with the word 'lying'.
I was born in a fairly poor family. I am a single child. I grew up on the eastern edge of the Ruhr-area. I studied Law, Political
Science and Islamic Studies. Already in my student years, I had contact with the German Foreign Intelligence, BND. We will get back
to that later.
From 1986 to 2003, I worked for a major German newspaper, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), amongst other things as a war
reporter. I spent a lot of time in Eastern and African countries.
Now to the subject of lying media. When I was sent to the Iran-Iraq war for the first time, the first time was from 1980 to July
1986, I was sent to this war to report for FAZ. The Iraqis were then 'the good guys'.
I was bit afraid. I didn't have any experience as a war reporter. Then I arrived in Baghdad. I was fairly quickly sent along in
a bus by the Iraqi army, the bus was full of loud, experienced war reporters, from such prestigious media as the BBC, several foreign
TV-stations and newspapers, and me, poor newbie, who was sent to the front for the first time without any kind of preparation. The
first thing I saw was that they all carried along cans of petrol. And I at once got bad consciousness, because I thought: "oops,
if the bus gets stuck far from a petrol station, then everyone chips in with a bit of diesel'. I decided to in the future also carry
a can before I went anywhere, because it obviously was part of it.
We drove for hours through the desert, towards the Iraqi border. Approx. 20-30 kilometers from the border, there really was nothing.
First of all no war. There were armored vehicles and tanks, burned-out long ago. The journalist left the bus, splashed the contents
of the cans on the vehicles. We had Iraqi soldiers with us as an escort, with machine guns, in uniform. You have to imagine: tanks
in a desert, burned out long ago, now put on fire. Clouds of smoke. And there the journalists assemble their cameras.
It was my first experience with media, truth in reporting.
While I was wondering what the hell I was going to report for my newspaper, they all lined up and started: Behind them were flames
and plumes of smoke, and all the time the Iraqis were running in front of camera with their machine guns, casually, but with war
in their gaze. And the reporters were ducking all the time while talking.
So I gathered courage and asked one of the reporters: 'I understand one thing, they are great pictures, but why are they ducking
all the time? '
'Quite simply because there are machine guns on the audio track, and it looks very good at home.'
That was several decades ago. It was in the beginning of my contact with war. I was thinking, the whole way back:'Young man, you
didn't see a war. You were in a place with a campfire. What are you going to tell?'
I returned to Baghdad. There weren't any mobile phones then. We waited in Hotel Rashid and other hotels where foreigners stayed,
sometimes for hours for an international telephone line. I first contacted my mother, not my newspaper. I was in despair, didn't
know what to do, and wanted to get advice from an elder person.
Then my mother shouted over the phone: 'My boy, you are alive!' I thought: 'How so? Is everything OK?'
'My boy, we thought ' 'What's the matter, mother?' 'We saw on TV what happened around you' TV had already sent lurid stories, and I tried to calm my mother down, it didn't happen like that. She thought I had lost my mind
from all the things that had happened in the war – she saw it with her own eyes!
I'll finish, because I am not here to make satire today. I just want to say that this was my first experience with truth in journalism
and war reporting.
That is, I was very shocked by the first contact, it was entirely different from what I had experienced. But it wasn't an exceptional
case.
In the beginning, I mentioned that I am from a fairly poor family. I had to work hard for everything. I was a single child, my
father died when I was young. It didn't matter further on. But, I had a job, I had a degree, a goal in life.
I now had the choice: Should I declare that the whole thing was nonsense, these reports? I was nothing, a newbie straight out
of uni, in my first job. Or if I wanted to make money, to continue, look further. I chose the second option. I continued, and that
for many years.
Over these years, I gained lots of experience. When one comes from university to a big German newspaper – everything I say doesn't
only apply to FAZ, you can take other German or European media. I had contact with other European journalists, from reputable media
outlets. I later worked in other media. I can tell you: What I am about to tell you, I really discovered everywhere.
What did I experience? If you, as a reporter, work either in state media financed by forced license fees, or in the big private
media companies, then you can't write what you want yourself, what you feel like. There are certain guidelines.
Roughly speaking: everyone knows that you won't, for example in the Springer-newspapers – Bild, die Welt – get published articles
extremely critical of Israel. They stand no chance there, because one has to sign a statement that one is pro-Israel, that one won't
question the existence of the state of Israel or Israeli points of view, etc.
There are some sort of guidelines in all the big media companies. But that isn't all: I learned very fast that if one doesn't
– I don't mean this negatively – want to be stuck in the lower rungs of editors, if one wants to rise; for me this rise was that
I was allowed to travel with the Chancellor, ministers, the president and politicians, in planes owned by the state; then one has
to keep to certain subjects. I learned that fast.
That is, if one gets to follow a politician – and this hasn't changed to this day – I soon realized that when I followed the president
or Chancellor Helmut Kohl etc, one of course isn't invited because your name is Udo Ulfkotte, but because you belong to the newspaper
Frankfurter Allgemeine.
Then a certain type of reporting is expected. Which one? Forget my newspaper, this applies in general. At the start of the trip,
the journalist gets a memo – today it is electronic – in his hand. If you are traveling abroad, it is info about the country, or
the speeches that will be held. This file contains roughly what will happen during this trip. In addition there are short conversations,
briefings with the politician's press manager. He then explains to you how one views this trip. Naturally, you should see it the
same way. No one says it in that way. But is is approximately what one would have reported.
All the time you no one tells you to write it this or that way but you know quite exactly that if you DON'T write it this or that
way,then you won't get invited next time. Your media outlet will be invited, but they say 'we don't want him along'. Then you are
out.
Naturally you want to be invited. Of course it is wonderful to travel abroad and you can behave like a pig, no one cares. You
can buy what you want, because you know that when you return, you won't be checked. You can bring what you want. I had colleagues
who went along on a trip to the US.
They brought with them – it was an air force plane – a Harley Davidson, in parts. They sold it when they were back in Germany,
and of course earned on it. Anyway, just like the carpet-affair with that development minister, this is of course not a single instance.
No one talks about it.
You get invited if you have a certain way of seeing things. Which way to see things? Where and how is this view of the world formed?
I very often get asked: 'Where are these people behind the curtain who pulls the wires, so that everything gets told in a fairly
similar way?'
In the big media in Germany – just look yourself – who sit in the large transatlantic think-tanks and foundations,the foundation
The Atlantic Bridge, all these organizations, and how is one influenced there? I can tell from my own experience.
We mustn't talk only theoretically. I was invited by the think-tank The German Marshall Fund of the United States as a fellow.
I was to visit the United States for six weeks. It was fully paid. During these six weeks I could this think-tank has very close
connections to the CIA to this day, they acquired contacts in the CIA for me and they got me access to American politicians, to everyone
I wanted. Above all, they showered me with gifts.
Already before the journey with German Marshall Fund, I experienced plenty of bought journalism. This hasn't to do with a particular
media outlet. You see, I was invited and didn't particularly reflect over it, by billionaires, for example sultan Quabboos of Oman
on the Arabian peninsula.
When sultan Qabboos invited, and a poor boy like me could travel to a country with few inhabitants but immense wealth, where the
head of state had the largest yachts in the world, his own symphony orchestra which plays for him when he wants – by the way he bought
a pub close to Garmisch-Patenkirchen, because he is a Muslim believer, and someone might see him if he drank in his own country,
so he rather travels there. The place he bought every day fly in fresh lamb from Ireland and Scotland with his private jet. He is
also the head of an environmental foundation.
But this is a digression. If such a person, who is so incredibly rich, invites someone like me, then I arrive first class. I had
never traveled first class before. We arrive, and a driver is waiting for me. He carries your suitcase or backpack. You have a suite
in the hotel. And from the very start, you are showered with gifts. You get a platinum or gold coin. A hand-weaved carpet or whatever.
I interviewed the sultan, several times. He asked me what I wanted. I answered among other things a diving course. I wanted to
learn how to dive. He flew in a PADI-approved instructor from Greece. I was there for two weeks and got my first diving certificate.
On later occasions, the sultan flew me in several times, and the diving instructor. I got a certificate as rescue diver, all paid
for by the sultan. You see, when one is attended to in such a way, then you know that you are bought. For a certain type of journalism.
In the sultan's country, there is no freedom of the press.
There are no human rights. It is illegal to import many writings, because the sultan does not wish so. There are reports about
human rights violations, but my eyes are blind. I reported, like all German media when they report about the Sultanate of Oman, to
this day, only positive things. The great sultan, who is wonderful. The fantastic country of the fairy tale prince, overshadowing
everything else – because I was bought.
Apart from Oman, many others have bought me. They also bought colleagues. I got many invitations through the travel section in
my big newspaper. 5-star. The reportage never mentioned that I was bought, by country A or B or C. Yemenia, the Yemeni state airline,
invited me to such a trip.
I didn't report about the dirt and dilapidation in the country, because I was influenced by this treatment, I only reported positively,
because I wanted to come back. The Yemenis asked me when I had returned to Frankfurt what I wished In jest, I said "your large prawns,
from the Red Sea, from the Indian Ocean, they were spectacular.", from the seaport of Mocha (Mocha-coffee is named after it). Two
days later, Yemenia flew in a buffet for the editorial office, with prawns and more.
Of course we were bought. We were bought in several ways. In your situation: when you buy a car or something else, you trust consumer
tests. Look closer. How well is the car tested? I know of no colleagues, no journalists, who do testing of cars, that aren't bribed
– maybe they do exist.
They get unlimited access to a car from the big car manufacturers, with free petrol and everything else. I had a work car in my
newspaper, if not, I might have exploited this. I had a BMW or Mercedes in the newspaper. But there are, outside the paper, many
colleagues who only have this kind of vehicle all year round. They are invited to South Africa, Malaysia, USA, to the grandest travels,
when a new car is presented.
Why? So that they will write positively about the car. But it doesn't say in these reports "Advertisement from bought journalists".
But that is the reality. You should also know – since we are on the subjects of tests – who owns which test magazines? Who owns
the magazine Eco-test? It is owned by the Social Democrats. More than a hundred magazines belong to the Social Democrats. It isn't
about only one party, but many editorial rooms have political allegiance. Behind them are party political interests.
I mentioned the sultan of Oman and the diving course, and I have mentioned German Marshall Fund. Back to the US and the German
Marshall Fund. There one told me, they knew exactly, 'hello, you were on a diving course in Oman ' The CIA knew very precisely. And
the CIA also gave me something: The diving gear. I received the diving gear in the United States, and I received in the US, during
my 6-week stay there, an invitation from the state of Oklahoma, from the governor. I went there. It was a small ceremony, and I received
an honorary citizenship.
I am now honorary citizen of an American state. And in this certificate, it is written that I will only cover the US positively.
I accepted this honorary citizenship and was quite proud of it. I proudly told about it to a colleague who worked in the US. He said
'ha, I already have 31 of these honorary citizenships!'
I don't tell about this to be witty, today I am ashamed, really.
I was greedy. I accepted many advantages that a regular citizen at my age in my occupation doesn't have, and shouldn't have. But
I perceived it – and that is no excuse – as entirely normal, because my colleagues around me all did the same. But this isn't normal.
When journalists are invited to think-tanks in the US, like German Marshall Fund, Atlantic Bridge, it is to 'bring them in line',
for in a friendly way to make them complicit, naturally to buy them, to grease them with money.
This has quite a few aspects that one normally doesn't talk about. When I for the first time was in Southern Africa, in the 80s,
Apartheid still existed in South Africa, segregated areas for blacks and whites. We didn't have any problems with this in my newspaper,
we received fully paid journeys from the Apartheid regime to do propaganda work.
I was invited by the South-African gold industry, coal industry, tourist board. In the first invitation, this trip was to Namibia
– I arrived tired to the hotel room in Windhoek and a dark woman lay in my bed. I at once left the room, went down to the reception
and said 'excuse me, but the room is already occupied' [laughter from the audience]
Without any fuss I got another room.
Next day at the breakfast table, this was a journalist trip, my colleagues asked me 'how was yours?' Only then I understood what
had happened. Until then, I had believed it was a silly coincidence.
With this I want to describe which methods are used, maybe to film journalists in such situations, buy, make dependent. Quite
simply to win them over to your side with the most brutal methods, so that they are 'brought in line'.
This doesn't happen to every journalist. It would be a conspiracy theory if I said that behind every journalist, someone pulls
the wires.
No. Not everyone has influence over the masses. When you – I don't mean this negatively – write about folk costume societies or
if you work with agriculture or politics, why should anyone from the upper political spheres have an interest in controlling the
reporting? As far as I know, this doesn't happen at all.
But if you work in one of the big media, and want up in this world, if you want to travel with politicians, heads of state, with
CEOs, who also travel on these planes, then it happens. Then you are regularly bought, you are regularly observed.
I said earlier that I already during my study days had contact with the intelligence services.
I will quickly explain this to you, because it is very important for this lecture.
I studied law, Political Science and Islamology, among other places in Freiburg. At the very beginning of my study, just before
end of the term, a professor approached me. Professors were then still authority figures.
He came with a brochure, and asked me: 'Mr. Ulfkotte, what are your plans for this vacation?'
I couldn't very well say that I first planned to work a bit at a building site, for then to grab my backpack and see the ocean
for the first time in my life, to Italy, 'la dolce vita', flirting with girls, lie on the beach and be a young person.
I wondered how I would break it to him. He then came with a brochure [Ulfkotte imitating professor]: 'I have something for
you a seminar, Introduction to Conflict Studies, two weeks in Bonn I am sure you would want to participate!'
I wondered how I would tell this elderly gentleman that I wanted to flirt with girls on the beach. Then he said 'you will get
20 Marks per day as support, paid train journey, money for books 150 Marks You will naturally get board and lodging.' He didn't stop
telling me what I would receive.
It buzzed around in my head that I had to achieve everything myself, work hard. I thought 'You have always wanted to participate
in a seminar on Introduction to Conflict Studies!'
So I went to Bonn from Freiburg, and I saw other students who had this urge to participate in this seminar. There were also girls
one could flirt with, about twenty people. The whole thing was very strange, because we sat in a room like this one, there were desks
and a lectern, and there sat some older men and a woman, they always wrote something down. They asked us about things; What we thought
of East Germany, we had to do role play.
The whole thing was a bit strange, but it was well paid. We didn't reflect any further. It was very strange that in this house,
in Ubierstraße 88 in Bonn, we weren't allowed to go to the second floor. There was a chain over the stairs, it was taboo.
We were allowed to go to the basement, there were constantly replenished supplies of new books that we were allowed to get for
free. Ebay didn't exist then, but we could still sell them used. Anyway, it was curious, but at the end of the fortnight, we were
allowed to go up these stairs, where we got an invitation to a continuation course in Conflict Studies.
After four such seminars, that is, after two years, someone asked me 'you have probably wondered what we are doing here'.
He explained that a recruitment board from the intelligence services had participated. But I had no idea that the seminar Introduction
to Conflict Studies was arranged by the defense forces and run by the foreign intelligence service BND, to have a closer look at
potential candidates among the students, not to commit them. They only asked if they, after four such seminars, possibly could contact
me later, in my occupation.
They gave me a lot of money. My mother has always taught me to be polite. So I said 'please do', and they came to me. I was then
working in the newspaper FAZ from 1986, straight after my studies.
Then the intelligence services came fairly soon to me. Why am I telling you this? The newspaper knew very soon. It is also written in my reference, therefore I can say it loud and clear. I had very close contact with the intelligence service BND.
Two persons from BND came regularly to the paper, to a visiting room. And there were occasions when the report not only was given,
but also that BND had written articles, largely ready to go, that were published in the newspaper under my byline.
I highlight certain things to explain them. But if I had said here: 'There are media that are influenced by BND', you could rightly
say that 'these are conspiracy theories, can you document it?'
I CAN document it. I can say, this and that article, with my byline in the paper, is written by the intelligence services, because
what is written there, I couldn't have known. I couldn't have known what existed in some cave or other in Libya, what secret thing
were there, what was being built there. This was all things that BND wanted published. It wasn't like this only in FAZ.
It was like this also in other media. I told about it. If we had rule of law, there would now be an investigation commission.
Because the political parties would stand up, regardless of if they are on the left, in the center or right, and say: What this Ulfkotte
fella says and claims he can document, this should be investigated. Did this occur in other places? Or is it still ongoing?'
I can tell you: Yes it still exists. I know colleagues who still have this close contact. One can probably show this fairly well
until a few years ago. But I would find it wonderful if this investigation commission existed.
But it will obviously not happen, because no one has an interest in doing so. Because then the public would realize how closely
integrated politics, media, and the secret services are in this country.
That is, one often sees in reporting, whether it is from the local paper, regional papers, TV-channels, national tabloids and
so-called serious papers.
Put them side by side, and you will discover that more than 90% looks almost identical. A lot of subjects and news, that are not
being reported at all, or they are – I claim reported very one-sided. One can only explain this if one knows the structures in the
background, how media is surrounded, bought and 'brought onboard' by politics and the intelligence services; Where politics and intelligence
services form a single unity. There is an intelligence coordinator by the Chancellor.
I can tell you, that under the former coordinator Bernd Schmidbauer, under Kohl, I walked in and out of the Chancellery and received
stacks of secret and confidential documents, which I shouldn't have received.
They were so many that we in the newspaper had own archive cabinets for them. Not only did I receive these documents,but Schmidbauer
should have been in jail if we had rule of law. Or there should have been a parliamentary commission or an investigation, because
he wasn't allowed
For example if I couldn't bring along the documents if the case was too hot, there was another trick. They locked me in a room.
In this room were the documents, which I could look through. I could record it all on tape, photograph them or write them down. When
I was done, I could call on the intercom, so they could lock me out. There were thousands of these tricks. Anonymous documents that
I and my colleagues needed could be placed in my mail box.
These are of course illegal things. BUT, you ONLY get them if you 'toe the line' with politics.
If I had written that Chancellor Helmut Kohl is stupid, a big idiot, or about what Schmidbauer did, I would of course not have
received more. That is, if you today, in newspapers, read about 'soon to be revealed exposures, we will publish a big story based
on material based on intelligence', then none of these media have dug a tunnel under the security services and somehow got hold of
something secret. It is rather that they work so well with intelligence services, with the military counterespionage, the foreign
intelligence, police intelligence etc, that if they have got hold of internal documents, it is because they cooperate so well that
they received them as a reward for well performed service.
You see, in this way one is in the end bought. One is bought to such a degree that at one point one can't exit this system anymore.
If I describe how you are supplied with prostitutes, bribed with cars, money; I tried to write down everything I received in gifts,
everything I was bribed with. I stopped doing so several years ago, more than a decade ago.
It doesn't make it any better, but today I regret everything. But I know that it goes this way with many journalists.
It would make me very happy if journalists stood up and said they won't participate in this any longer, and that they think this
is wrong.
But I see no possibility, because media corporations in any case are doing badly. Where should a journalist find work the next
day? It isn't so that tens of thousands of employers are waiting for you. It is the other way round. Tens of thousands of journalists
are looking for work or commissions.
That is, from pure desperation one is happy to be bribed. If a newsroom stands behind or not an article that in reality is advertising,
doesn't matter, one goes along. I know some, even respected journalists, who want to leave this system.
But imagine if you are working in one of the state channels, that you stand up and tell what you have received. How will that
be received by your colleagues? That you have political ulterior motives etc.
September 30 [2015], a few days ago, Chancellor Merkel invited all the directors in the state channels to her in the Chancellery.
I will claim that she talked with them about how one should report the Chancellors politics. Who of you [in the audience] heard about
this incident? 3-4-5? So a small minority. But this is reality. Merkel started already 6 years ago, at the beginning of the financial
crisis, to invite chief editors ..she invited chief editors in the large media corporations, with the express wish that media should
embellish reality, in a political way. This could have been only claims, one could believe me or not.
But a couple of journalists were there, they told about it. Therefore I repeat: Merkel invited the chief editors several times,
and told them she didn't want the population to be truthfully and openly informed about the problems out there. For example, the background for the financial crisis. If the citizens knew how things were, they would run to the bank and withdraw
their money. So beautifying everything; everything is under control; your savings are safe; just smile and hold hands – everything
will be fine.
In such a way it should be reported. Ladies and gentlemen, what I just said can be documented. These are facts, not a conspiracy
theory.
I formulated it a bit satirically, but I ask myself when I see how things are in this country: Is this the democracy described
in the Constitution? Freedom of speech? Freedom of the press?
Where one has to be afraid if one doesn't agree with the ruling political correctness, if one doesn't want to get in trouble.
Is this the republic our parents and grandparents fought for, that they built?
I claim that we more and more – as citizens – are cowards 'toeing the line', who don't open our mouths.
It is so nice to have plurality and diversity of opinions.
But it is at once clamped down on, today fairly openly.
Of my experiences with journalism, I can in general say that I have quit all media I have to pay for, for the reasons mentioned.
Then the question arises, 'but which pay-media can I trust?'
Naturally there are ones I support. They are definitely political, I'll add. But they are all fairly small. And they won't be
big anytime soon. But I have quit all big media that I used to subscribe to, Der Spiegel, Frankfurter Allgemeine, etc. I would like
to not having to pay the TV-license fee, without being arrested because I won't pay fines. But maybe someone here in the audience
can tell me how to do so without all these problems?
Either way, I don't want to financially support this kind of journalism. I can only give you the advice to get information from
alternative, independent media and all the forums that exist.
I'm not advertising for any of them. Some of you probably know that I write for the publishing house Kopp. But there are so many
portals. Every person is different in political viewpoint, culturally etc. The only thing uniting us, whether we are black or white,
religious or non-religious, right or left, or whatever; we all want to know the truth. We want to know what really happens out there,
and exactly in the burning political questions: asylum seekers, refugees, the financial crisis, bad infrastructure, one doesn't know
how it will continue. Precisely with this background, is it even more important that people get to know the truth.
And it is to my great surprise that I conclude that we in media, as well as in politics, have a guiding line.
To throw more and more dust in the citizens' eyes to calm them down. What is the sense in this? One can have totally different
opinions on the subject of refugees with good reasoning.
But facts are important for you as citizens to decide the future. That is, how many people will arrive? How will it affect my
personal affluence? Or will it affect my affluence at all? Will the pensions shrink? etc. Then you can talk with people about this,
quite openly. But to say that we should open all borders, and that this won't have any negative consequences, is very strange. What
I now say isn't a plug for my books. I know that some of them are on the table in front.
I'm not saying this so that you will buy books. I am saying this for another reason that soon will be clear. I started to write
books on certain subjects 18 years ago. They have sold millions. It is no longer about you buying my books. It is important that
you hear the titles, then you will see a certain line throughout the last ten years. One can have different opinions about this line,
but I have always tried to describe, based on my subjective experiences, formed over many years in the Middle East and Africa.
That there will be migration flows, from people from culture areas that are like; if one could compare a cultural area with an
engine, that one fills petrol in a diesel engine then everyone knows what will happen, the engine is great, diesel is great, but
if there too much petrol, then the engine starts to splutter and stop.
I have tried to make you aware of this, with drastic and less drastic words. What we can expect, and ever faster. The book titles
are SOS Occident; Warning Civil War; No Black,Red, Yellow [the colors in the German flag], Holy War in Europe; Mecca Germany.
I just want to say, when politicians and media today claim no one could have predicted it, everything is a complete surprise;
Ladies and Gentlemen, this is not at all surprising. The migration flows, for years warnings have been coming from international
organizations, politicians, experts, exactly about what happened and it is predictable, if we had a map over North Africa and the
Middle East..
If the West continues to destabilize countries like Libya, Tunisia, Egypt, Syria, country by country, Iraq when we toppled Saddam
Hussein, Afghanistan. We as Europeans and Germans have spent tens of billions on a war where we allegedly defend peace and liberty,
at the mountain range Hindu Kush [in Afghanistan]. And here, in front of our own door, we soon have Hindu Kush.
We have no stabilization in Afghanistan. Dozens of German soldiers have lost their lives for nothing. We have a more unstable
situation than ever.
You can have your own opinions. I am only saying that these refugee flows didn't fall from the sky. It is predicable, that if
I bomb and destabilize a country, that people – it is always so in history – it hasn't anything to do with the Middle East or North
Africa. I have seen enough wars in Africa. Naturally they created refugee flows.
But all of us didn't want to see this. We haven't prepared. And now one is reacting in full panic, and what is most disconcerting
with this, is when media and politicians, allegedly from deepest inner conviction, say: 'this was all a complete surprise!'
Are they drunk? What are they smoking? What sort of pills are they eating? That they behave this way?
End transcription
The transcription has been edited for clarity, and may differ from the spoken word. The subtitles and transcription are for the
first 49 minutes of the lecture only. Subtitled and transcribed by Terje Maloy. This article is Creative Commons 4.0 for non-commercial
purposes.
Terje Maloy (
Website ) is a Norwegian citizen, with roots north of the Arctic Circle. Nowadays, he spends a lot of time in Australia, working
in the family business. He has particular interests in liberty, global justice, imperialism, history, media analysis and what Western
governments really are up to. He runs a blog , mostly in Norwegian,
but occasionally in English. He likes to write about general geopolitical matters, and Northern Europe in particular, presenting
perspectives that otherwise barely are mentioned in the dominant media (i.e. most things that actually matter).
Tim Jenkins
From 1:18 minutes, Ulfkotte reveals without question, that the EU Political 'elite's' combined intelligence services work with
& propagate . . .
Terror, Terrorists & Terrorism / a conscious organised Politics of FEAR ! / Freedom of Movement, of fully armed IS Agents
Provocateurs & with a Secret Services get out of jail free card, 'Hände Weg Nicht anfassen', it's 'Hammertime', "U Can't
Touch this", we're armed state operatives travelling to Germany & Austria, " don't mess with my operation !" & all journalists'
hands tied, too.
The suggestions & offers below to translate fully, what Ulfkotte declares publicly, make much sense. It is important to understand
that even an 'Orban' must bow occasionally, to deep state Security State Dictators and the pressures they can exert in so many
ways. Logic . . . or else one's life is made into hell, alive or an 'accidental' death: – and may I add, it is a curiously depressing
feeling when you have so many court cases on the go, that when a Gemeinde/Municipality Clerk is smiling, celebrating and telling
you, (representing yourself in court, with only independent translator & recorder), "You Won the Case, a superior judge has over-ruled
" and the only reply possible is,
"Which case number ?"
life gets tedious & time consuming, demanding extreme patience. Given his illness, surely Ulfkotte and his wife, deserve/d
extra credit & 'hot chocolate'. Makes a change to see & read some real journalism: congrats.@OffG
Excellent Professional Journalism on "Pseudo-Journalist State Actors & Terrorists". If you see a terrorist, guys, at
best just reason with him or her :- better than calling
INTERPOL or Secret Services @theguardian, because you wouldn't want a member of the public, grassing you up to your boss, would
you now ? ! Just tell the terrorist who he really works for . . . Those he resents ! Rather like Ulfkotte had to conclude,
with final resignation. My condolences to his good wife.
Wilmers31
Very good of you to not forget Ulfkotte. If I did not have sickness in the house, I would translate it. Maybe I can do one chapter
and someone else can do another one? What's the publisher saying?
You wouldn't say that if you could speak German, my friend ! ?
From one hour 18 minutes onwards, Ulfkotte details EU-Inter-State Terror Co-operation, with returning IS Operatives on
a Free Pass, fully armed and even Viktor Orban had to give in to the commands of letting Terrorists through Hungary into Germany
& Austria.
But, don't let that revelation bother you, living under a Deep State 'Politic of Fear' in the West and long unedited speeches
gets kinda' boring now, I know a bit like believing in some kinda' dumbfuk new pearl harbour, war on terror &&& all phoney propaganda
fairy story telling, just like on the 11/9/2001, when the real target was WTC 7, to hide elitist immoral endeavours, corruption
& the missing $$$TRILLIONS$$$ of tax payers money, 'mislaid' by the D.o.D. announced directly the day before by Rumsfeld, forgotten
? Before ramping the Surveillance States abilities in placing & employing "Parallel Platforms" on steroids, so that our secret
services can now employ terror & deploy terrorists at will .., against us, see ?
Plus ca change....
I remember on a similar note a 60 Minutes piece just prior to Clinton's humanitarian bombing of Serbian civilian infrastructure
(and long ago deleted, I'm sure) on a German free-lancer staging Kosovo atrocities in a Munich suburb, and having the German MSM
eating it up and asking for more. (WWII guilt assuagement at work, no doubt).
mark
Everybody who works in the MSM, without exception, are bought and paid for whores peddling lies on behalf of globalist corporate
interests.
That is their job.
That is what they do.
They have long since forfeited all credibility and integrity.
They have lied to us endlessly for decades and generations, from the Bayonetted Belgian Babies and Human Bodies Turned Into Soap
of WW1 to the Iraq Incubator Babies and Syrian Gas Attacks of more recent times.
You can no longer take anything at face value.
The default position has to be that every single word they print and every single word that comes out of their lying mouths is
untrue.
If they say it's snowing at the North Pole, you can't accept that without first going there and checking it out for yourself.
You can't accept anything that has not been independently verified.
This applies across the board.
All of the accepted historical narrative, including things like the holocaust.
And current Global Warming "science."
We know we have been lied to again and again and again.
So what else have we been lied to without us realising it?
mark
Come to think of it, I need to apologise to sex workers.
I have known quite a few of them who have quite high ethical and moral standards, certainly compared to the MSM.
And they certainly do less damage.
Vert few working girls have blood on their hands like the MSM.
Compared to them, working girls are the salt of the earth and pillars of the community.
Seamus Padraig
Compared to them, working girls are the salt of the earth and pillars of the community.
I heartily agree. Even if one disapproves morally of prostitution, how can it possibly be worse to sell your body than to sell
your soul?
Oliver
Quite. Checking things out for yourself is the way to go. Forget 'Peer Reviews', just as bent as the journalism Ulfkotte described.
DIY.
Mortgage
So natural, all it seems
Part II:
Bought Science
Part III:
Bought Health Services
mapquest directions
The video you shared with great info. I really like the information you share.
boxnovel
Gary Weglarz
I knew we were in dangerous new territory regarding government censorship when after waiting several years for Ulfkotte's best
selling book to finally be available in English – it suddenly, magically, disappeared completely – a vanishing act – and I couldn't
get so much as a response from, much less an explanation from, the would be publisher. Udo's book came at a time when it could
have made a difference countering the fact-free complete and total "fabrication of reality" by the U.S. and Western powers as
they have waged a brutal and ongoing neocolonial war on the world's poor under the guise of "fighting terrorism."
Udo's voice (in the form of his book) was silenced for a reason – that being that he spoke the truth about our utterly and
completely corrupt Western fantasy world in which we in the West proclaim our – "respect international law" and "respect for human
rights." His work, such as this interview and others he has done, pulled the curtain back on the big lie and exposed our oligarchs,
politicians and the "journalists" they hire as simply a cadre of professional criminals whose carefully crafted lies are used
to soak up the blood and to cover the bodies of the dead, all in order to hide all that mayhem from our eyes, to insure justice
is an impossibility and to make sure we Western citizens sleep well at night, oblivious to our connection to the actual realities
that are this daily regime of pillage and plunder that is our vaunted "neoliberal order."
Ramdan
After watching the first 20 min I couldn't help but remembering this tale:
"The philosopher Diogenes (of Sinope) was eating bread and lentils for supper. He was seen by the philosopher Aristippus, who
lived comfortably by flattering the king. Said Aristippus, 'If you would learn to be subservient to the king you would not have
to live on lentils.'
To which Diogenes replied, 'Learn to live on lentils and you will not have to be subservient to the king"."
which is also the reason why such a large part of humanity lives in voluntary servitude to power structures, living the dream,
the illusion of being free..
Ramdan
"English Translation of Udo Ulfkotte's "Bought Journalists" Suppressed?" at Global Research 2017!!
Just rechecked Amazon. Journalists for Hire: How the CIA Buys the News
by Udo Ulfkotte PH.D. The tag line reads.
Hard cover – currently unavailable; paperback cover – currently unavailable; Kindle edition – ?
Book burning anyone?
nottheonly1
No translation exists for this interview with Udo Ulfkotte on KenFM, the web site of Ken Jebsen. Ken Jebsen has been in the cross
hairs of the CIA and German agencies for his reporting of the truth. He was smeared and defamed by the same people that Dr. Ulfkotte
had written extensively about in his book 'Gekaufte Journalisten' ('Bought Journalists').
The reason why I add this link to the interview lies in the fact that Udo Ulfkotte speaks about an important part of Middle
Eastern and German history – a history that has been scrubbed from the U.S. and German populations. In the Iraq war against Iran
– that the U.S. regime had pushed for in the same fashion the way they had pushed Nazi Germany to invade the U.S.S.R. – German
chemical weapons were used under the supervision of the U.S. regime. The extend of the chemical weapons campaign was enormous
and to the present day, Iranians are born with birth defects stemming from the used of German weapons of mass destruction.
Dr. Ulfkotte rightfully bemoans, that every year German heads of state are kneeling for the Jewish victims of National socialism
– but not for the victims of German WMD's that were used against Iran. He stresses that the act of visual asking for forgiveness
in the case of the Jewish victims becomes hypocrisy, when 40 years after the Nazis reigned, German WMD's were used against Iran.
The German regime was in on the WMD attack on Iran. It was not something that happened because they had lost a couple of thousand
containers with WMDs. They delivered the WMD's to Iraq under U.S. supervision.
Ponder that. And there has never been an apology towards Iran, or compensations. Nada. Nothing. Instead, the vile rhetoric
and demagogery of every U.S. regime since has continued to paint Iran in the worst possible ways, most notably via incessant psychological
projection – accusing Iran of the war crimes and crimes against humanity the U.S. and its Western vassal regimes are guilty of.
Here is the interview that was recorded shortly before Udo Ulfkotte's death:
If enough people support the effort, I am willing to contact KenFM for the authorization to translate the interview and use
it for subtitles to the video. However, I can't do that on my own.
nottheonly1
Correction: the interview was recorded two years before his passing.
Antonym
the U.S. regime had pushed for in the same fashion the way they had pushed Nazi Germany to invade the U.S.S.R.
So Roosevelt pushed Hitler to attack Stalin? Hitler didn't want to go East? Revisionism at it most motive free.
nottheonly1
It would help if you would use your brain just once. 'Pushing' is synonymous for a variety of ways to instigate a desired
outcome. Financing is just one way. And Roosevelt was in no way the benevolent knight history twisters like to present him. You
are outing yourself again as an easliy duped sheep.
But then, with all the assaults by the unintelligence agencies, it does not come as a surprise when facts are twisted.
Antonym
Lebensraum was first popularized in 1901 in Germany https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lebensraum
Hitler's "Mein Kampf" ( 1925) build on that: he had no need for any American or other push, it was intended from the
get go. The timing of operation Barbarossa was brilliant though: it shocked Stalin into a temporary limbo as he had
his own aggressive plans.
Casandra2
This excellent article demonstrates how the Controlling Elite manipulates the Media and the Message for purposes of misdirecting
attention and perception of their true intentions and objective of securing Global Ownership (aka New World Order).
This approach has been assiduously applied, across the board, over many years, to the point were they now own and run everything
required to subjugate the 'human race' to the horrors of their psychopathic inclinations. They are presently holding the global
economy on hold until their AI population (social credit) control system/grid is in place before bringing the house down.
Needless to say, when this happens a disunited and frightened Global Population will be at their mercy.
If you wish to gain a full insight of what the Controlling Elite is about, and capable of, I recommend David Icke's latest
publication 'Trigger'. I know he's been tagged a 'nutter' over the past thirty years, but I reckon this book represents the 'gold
standard' in terms of generating awareness as a basis for launching a united global population counter-attack (given a great strategy)
against forces that can only be defined as pure 'EVIL'.
MASTER OF UNIVE
Corporate Journalism is all about corporatism and the continuation of it. If the Intelligence Community needs greater fools
for staffing purposes in the corporate hierarchy they look for anyone that can be compromised via inducements of whatever the
greater fools want. Engaging in compromise allows both parties to have complicit & explicit understanding that corruption
and falsehood are the tools of the trade. To all-of-a-sudden develop a conscience after decades of playing the part of a willing
participant is understandable in light of the guilt complex one must develop after screwing everyone in the world out of the critical
assessment we all need to obtain in order to make decisions regarding our futures.
Bought & paid for corporate Journalists are controlled by the Intelligence Agencies and always have been since at least
the Second World War. The CIA typically runs bribery & blackmail at the state & federal level so that when necessary they have
instant useless eaters to offer up as political sacrifice when required via state run propaganda, & impression management.
Assuming that journalism is an ethical occupation is naďve and a fools' game even in the alternative news domain as all
writers write from bias & a lack of real knowledge. Few writers are intellectually honest or even aware of their own limits as
writers. The writer is a failure and not a hero borne in myth. Writers struggle to write & publish. Bought and paid for writers
don't have a struggle in terms of writing because they are told what to write before they write as automatons for the Intelligence
Community knowing that they sold their collective souls to the Prince of Darkness for whatever trinkets, bobbles, or bling they
could get their greedy hands on at the time.
Developing a conscience late in life is too late.
May all that sell their souls to the Intel agencies understand that pond scum never had a conscience to begin with.
Once pond scum always pond scum.
MOU
nottheonly1
What is not addressed in this talk is the addictive nature of this sort of public relation writing. Journalism is something different
altogether. I know that, because I consider myself to be a journalist at heart – one that stopped doing it when the chalice was
offered to me. The problem is that one is not part of the cabal one day to another.
It is a longer process in which one is gradually introduced to ever more expensive rewards/bribes. Never too big to overwhelm
– always just about what one would accept as 'motivation' to omit aspects of any issue. Of course, omission is a lie by any other
name, but I can attest to the life style of a journalist that socializes with the leaders of all segments of society.
And I would also write a critique about a great restaurant – never paying a dime for a fantastic dinner. The point though is
that I would not write a good critique for a nasty place for money. I have never written anything but the truth – for which I
received sometimes as much as a bag full of the best rolls in the country.
Twisting the truth for any form of bribes is disgusting and attests of the lowest of any character.
MASTER OF UNIVE
Professional whoring is as old as the hills and twice as dusty. Being ethical is difficult stuff especially when money is
involved. Money is always a prime motivator but vanity works wonders too. Corporatists will offer whatever inducements they can
to get what they want.
All mainstream media voices are selling a media package that is a corporatist lie in and of itself. Truth is less marketable
than lies. Embellished news & journalistic hype is the norm.
If the devil offers inducements be sure to up the ante to outsmart the drunken sot.
"... Note this key excerpt from the letter of transmittal: ..."
"... " Mutual assistance available under the Treaty includes: taking of testimony or statements of persons; providing documents, records, and articles of evidence; serving documents; locating or identifying persons; transferring persons in custody for testimony or other purposes; executing requests for searches and seizures; assisting in proceedings related to restraint, confiscation, forfeiture of assets, restitution, and collection of fines; and any other form of assistance not prohibited by the laws of the requested state. " ..."
"... The Treaty was reported favourable by the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations on September 27, 2000, consented to ratification by the Senate on October 18, 2000 and ratified by the President of the United States on January 5, 2001. The Treaty was entered into force on February 27, 2001. Here are the title page of the Treaty and the signature page: ..."
"... With this background and while I don't want to appear to be pro- or anti-Trump, it is very, very clear that the current POTUS was within the law under the Treaty on Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters between the United States and Ukraine when it comes to asking Ukraine to investigate a potential criminal matter. ..."
With the Trump impeachment procedures ongoing and the connection to his conversation about the
Biden family with Ukraine President Zelenskyy, there has been very little coverage of an
important aspect of the relationship between Washington and Kiev. While none of us can speak to
the actual intent of Donald Trump's remarks be it for personal gain or for other reasons, there
is background information that may help illuminate the context of the discussion between the
two world leaders.
In case you haven't read the pertinent section of the transcript of the conversation, here it
is:
" President Zelenskyy: Yes it is very important for me and everything that
you just mentioned earlier. For me as a President, it is very important and we are open for any
future cooperation. We are ready to open a new page on cooperation in relations between the
United States and Ukraine. For that purpose, I just recalled our ambassador from United States
and he will be replaced by a very competent and very experienced ambassador who will work hard
on making sure that our two nations are getting closer. I would also like and hope to see him
having your trust and your confidence and have personal relations with you so we can cooperate
even more so. I will personally tell you that one of my assistants spoke with Mr. Giuliani just
recently and we are hoping very much that Mr. Giuliani will be able to travel to Ukraine and we
will meet once he comes to Ukraine. I just wanted to assure you once again that you have nobody
but friends around us. I will make sure that I surround myself with the best and most
experienced people. I also wanted to tell you that we are friends. We are great friends and you
Mr. President have friends in our country so we can continue our strategic partnership. I also
plan to surround myself with great people and in addition to that investigation, I guarantee as
the President of Ukraine that all the investigations will be done openly and candidly.. That I
can assure you.
President Trump: Good because I heard you had a prosecutor who was very good
and he was shut down and that's really unfair. A lot of people are talking about that, the way
they shut your very good prosecutor down and you had some very bad people involved. Mr.
Giuliani is a highly respected man. He was the mayor of New York City, a great mayor, and I
would like him to call you. I will ask him to call you along with the Attorney General. Rudy
very much knows what's happening and he is a very capable guy. If you could speak to him that
would be great. The former ambassador from the United States, the woman, was bad news and the
people she was dealing with in the Ukraine were bad news so I just want to let you know that.
The other thing, There's a lot of talk about Biden's son, that Biden stopped the prosecution
and a lot of people want to find out about that so whatever you can do with the Attorney
General would be great. Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution so if you
can look into it... It sounds horrible to me.
President Zelenskyy: I wanted to tell you about the prosecutor. First of all,
I understand and I'm knowledgeable about the situation. Since we have won the absolute
majority in our Parliament, the next prosecutor general will be 100% my person, my candidate,
who will be approved, by the parliament and will start as a new prosecutor in September. He or
she will look into the situation, specifically to the company that you mentioned in this issue.
The issue of the investigation of the case is actually the issue of making sure to restore the
honesty so we will take care of that and will work on the investigation of the case. On top
of that, I would kindly ask you if you have any additional information that you can provide to
us, it would be very helpful for the investigation to make sure that we administer justice in
our country with regard to the Ambassador to the United States from Ukraine as far as I recall
her name was Ivanovich. It was great that you were the first one who told me that she was a bad
ambassador because I agree with you 100%. Her attitude towards me was far from the best as she
admired the previous President and she was on his side. She would not accept me as a new
President well enough.
President Trump: Well, she's going to go through some things. I will have Mr.
Giuliani give you a call and I am also going to have Attorney General Barr call and we will get
to the bottom of it. I'm sure you will figure it out. I heard the prosecutor was treated very
badly and he was a very fair prosecutor so good luck with everything. Your economy is going to
get better and better I predict. You have a lot of assets. It's a great country. I have many
Ukrainian friends, their incredible people." (my bolds)
Now, let's look back in time to 1998. On July 22, 1998, a treaty was signed between Ukraine and
Washington.
The Treaty on Mutual Legal
Assistance in Criminal Matters was signed in Kiev on the aforementioned date. Here is an
excerpt from the The original letter of submittal from the Department of State to the
President's office dated October 19, 1999 which states the following:
"I have the honor to submit to you the Treaty between the United States of America and
Ukraine on Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters with Annex (``the Treaty''), signed at
Kiev on July 22, 1998. I recommend that the Treaty be transmitted to the Senate for its advice
and consent to ratification. Also enclosed, for the information of the Senate, is an exchange of notes under which the
Treaty is being provisionally applied to the extent possible under our respective domestic
laws, in order to provide a basis for immediate mutual assistance in criminal matters.
Provisional application would cease upon entry into force of the Treaty.
The Treaty covers mutual legal assistance in criminal matters. In recent years, similar
bilateral treaties have entered into force with a number of other countries. The Treaty with
Ukraine contains all essential provisions sought by the United States. It will enhance our
ability to investigate and prosecute a range of offenses.The Treaty is designed to
be self-executing and will not require new legislation." (my bold)
The Treaty was then transmitted by the President of the United States (Bill Clinton) to the
Senate on November 10, 1999 (Treaty Document 106-16 -106th Congress - First Session) as shown
on this letter of
transmittal from Bill Clinton's office:
Note this key excerpt from the letter of transmittal:
" Mutual assistance available under the Treaty includes: taking of testimony or
statements of persons; providing documents, records, and articles of evidence; serving
documents; locating or identifying persons; transferring persons in custody for testimony or
other purposes; executing requests for searches and seizures; assisting in proceedings related
to restraint, confiscation, forfeiture of assets, restitution, and collection of fines; and any
other form of assistance not prohibited by the laws of the requested state. "
The Treaty was reported favourable by the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations on September
27, 2000, consented to ratification by the Senate on October 18, 2000 and ratified by the
President of the United States on January 5, 2001. The Treaty was entered into force on
February 27, 2001. Here are the title page of the Treaty and the signature page:
Here are the first two pages of the Treaty which outline the scope of assistance that is to
be offered by both nations as well as the limitations on assistance:
... ... ...
If you wish to read the Treaty in its entirety, please click
here .
With this background and while I don't want to appear to be pro- or anti-Trump, it is very,
very clear that the current POTUS was within the law under the Treaty on Mutual Legal
Assistance in Criminal Matters between the United States and Ukraine when it comes to asking
Ukraine to investigate a potential criminal matter.
"... And there is the real definition, which is using a minority to render the country ungovernble, waving a simplistic banner against corruption and for undefined democracy, which movement leaves the masses unorganized and eschews even a platform lest they organize, in favor of a secret coterie. ..."
"... No matter how you view Trump, it is undeniable that several signs of a color revolution were present in Russiagate (and Ukrainegate, which is, in essence, Russiagate 2.0 -- a counterattack on the attempt by Trump to investigate the origins of Russiagate). ..."
Faustusnotes@43 continues the meltdown, notably forgetting his own list of non-rigid
class societies (nations, ) retreating to the UK and Australia. Reminding everyone of the
widely accepted definition for color revolution would have been useful. There is the propaganda
notion, a vague image of the outraged people rising en masse to throw out the
Communists/Communist-adjacent corrupt (unlike all others of course,) government. Inasmuch as
likbez specifically denied a mass movement, this is still as much a red herring as it was when
first brandished.
And there is the real definition, which is using a minority to render the country
ungovernble, waving a simplistic banner against corruption and for undefined democracy, which
movement leaves the masses unorganized and eschews even a platform lest they organize, in favor
of a secret coterie. Thus when the Astroturf does drive out the current administration,
mirabile dictu! nothing changes except its receptivity to international capital. The
fundamental color revolution mechanism it seems to me is the hiding of the real program, the
true commitment to capital, behind a facade.
Lastly, the idea that likbez just made stuff up is remarkable. If anything, it seems to me
that likbez has been heavily influenced by the thesis of Quinn Slobodian's The Globalists. But
that book may be touted largely as (unread) proof somebody disreputable isn't acceptable in
polite company, not really useful otherwise.
Surprisingly, nastywoman confirms my general impression is really seeing the EU as the
inspiration for a better society, without radicalism, much less revolution. I agree there's
nothing worse than revolution except not having a revolution, which I guess takes us back to
square one. The EU of course is really the Maastricht treaty, the Lisbon treaty, the
announcement that elections can't change policy, technocrats as PM in Italy, Greece, etc. In
short, nastywoman confesses to incoherence. But nastywoman can take joy in correctly spotting
that I'm a disgusting old person too vile to understand rap and can hope I'll be dead soon, and
blight humanity no more.
likbez 10.31.19 at 11:22 pm
(no link)
Faustusnotes 10.30.19 at 2:38 pm @43
'Color revolution ' has a specific meaning and what happened to Lula and Trump ain't
it
You probably never read Gene Sharp, who passed in Feb 2018. Claims of "corruption" and
"unfair" election results (which includes foreign influence on elections) are classic color
revolution methods described in detail in his books.
Participation of intelligence agencies and controlled by them MSM is a distinctive feature
of any color revolution: is it, in essence, a modern, very sophisticated variant of a false
flag operation. Controlled/influenced (often indirectly) by intelligence agencies MSM
essentially serve the role similar to airforce in modern neocolonial wars (and the level of
control is staggering starting from the operation Mockingbird; see Journalists for Hire How
the CIA Buys the News by Dr. Udo Ulfkotte).
No matter how you view Trump, it is undeniable that several signs of a color revolution
were present in Russiagate (and Ukrainegate, which is, in essence, Russiagate 2.0 -- a
counterattack on the attempt by Trump to investigate the origins of Russiagate).
Here is the list adapted from the writings on the topic by former CIA analyst Larry C
Johnson and Colonel Lang (DIA). The latter led intelligence analysis of the Middle East and
South Asia for the Defense Department and world-wide HUMINT activities in a high-level
equivalent to the rank of a lieutenant general. He runs well respected
Sic Semper Tyrannis blog.
Both think that the CIA pulled the main strings. They noted the following:
-- Obama officials efforts in establishing surveillance on Trump campaign on a false
pretext (FICA memo scandal, etc.) ;
-- CrowdStrike false flag operation with DNC -- converting the internal leak into Russian
break-in;
-- MI6 fabrication of Steele dossier using materials from the USA obtained via Fusion GPS
and Brennan and rehashing them as an original British intelligence.
-- Brennan use of Steele dossier to produce "17 intelligence agencies assessment," which
served as the signal of unleashing of Russiagate hysteria in neoliberal MSM and the official
start of Russiagate.
-- Rosenstein gambit with using firing of Comey as a convenient pretext for appointment
Mueller (appointment of the Special Prosecutor was in the cards anyway and was inescapable
for Trump as it was a preplanned action by the plotters, and they controlled all the
necessary strings; this probably was the meaning of the word "insurance" in Strzok-Page text
messages).
-- McCabe's opening of FBI investigation of Trump links to Russia.
-- Alexandra Chalupa machination with getting dirt on Trump and his associates (Manafort)
from Poroshenko government (which was a client state anyway so it is funny that Schiff now
tries to claim that Ukraine can exercise foreign influence; it is a USA controlled entity;
the country in a debt trap ).
-- Systematic attempts to entrap Trump associates with connection to the Russian
government by CIA, MI6 and Italian intelligence (Misfud entrapment operation, Felix Sater
entrapment operation with idea of building of Trump hotel in Moscow, Halper entrapment
attempt, MI6 entrapment operation with Natalia Veselnitskaya visit to Trump tower, etc.).
I think that under the weight of those facts, the picture is more or less clear -- this
was a color revolution.
The only mistake Merry makes is his erroneous statement that Trump held up aid to Ukraine to
pressure the Ukrainian president to investigate the Ukrainian firm that made $1,750,000
payments to the corrupt Biden and his corrupt son. The transcript of the telephone call between
Trump and the Ukrainian president shows no Quid Pro Quo, and the Ukrainian president says there
was none. The Quid Pro Quo was entirely on Biden's part when he told the president of Ukraine
to fire the prosecutor investigating the firm that was paying him and his son seven figures in
protection money or forfeit $1 billion in US aid. You can watch it here:
https://www.wsj.com/video/opinion-joe-biden-forced-ukraine-to-fire-prosecutor-for-aid-money/C1C51BB8-3988-4070-869F-CAD3CA0E81D8.html
Moreover, even it Trump did threaten to withhold aid from a country that was covering up
corruption by a US vice president and his son, that is the US president's right. There is no
reason whatsoever that a president should permit US taxpayers' money to be given to a
government that covers up corruption by a vice president of the United States.
Biden's son has admitted that he used poor judgment taking money from a firm in order to
protect it from prosecution.
Even if Trump did what the Democrats allege, which he did not, there is nothing illegal or
unethical about it whatsoever. Compared to the tactics US prosecutors use to convict the
innocent, Trump's conversation with the president of Ukraine is far above the highest ethics
known to US prosecutors.
Why aren't the Democrats complaining about the criminally illegal treatment of Julian
Assange and Manning? The reason is that the Democrats, the most utterly corrupt political
organization on the face of the Earth, are bought and paid for by the Deep State. The Democrats
are dog excrement to the core. They are traitors to America and to our Constitutional order.
The entire party should be arrested and put on trial for sedition to overthrow the government
of the United States.
Thank you for this unorthodox view. I've noticed that my thinking has been strongly
contaminated with "The Conventional Wisdom", which includes big falsehoods and misdirections.
While the situation was stable this didn't matter much in the short run -- the politics would
be dominated by people who believed those things. But now that things are starting to fall
apart it's getting important not to believe the old lies.
So ideas which look very different are important because they challenge me to examine my
unconscious assumptions, regardless how true the new ideas may be.
About Trump . It looks to me like he has some background in professional wrestling where
the "kayfabe" concept is important. He doesn't care how awful he looks to the rubes who think
of him as a heel, provided they keep focusing on the outrageous things he says more than on
what he does. The more attention he can get on that, the more he "sucks the air out of the
room" for anything else.
It's possible the Republicans will do a surprise and nominate somebody else. That will
disrupt everybody's thinking. I don't think that's real likely, but it would sure disrupt
things, wouldn't it?
Since Truman the US presidential elections have gone 8 years of Democrats and 8 years of
Republicans, like clockwork. One single exception, Reagan got Carter's second term. Is it a
secret agreement between the parties? I don't know why. But it's plausible that the
Republican will win in 2020 and the Democrats get 8 years starting in 2024. One way to look
at it is that when it isn't their turn, the losing party runs somebody who's too far from
center.
About the "color revolution" thing, of course there hasn't been anything much like that
here. But there was the "pussy hat" march. Somebody put a lot of money into that, and a whole
lot of people turned out for it, and then it just ended. Could it have been the same people,
organizing it as a kind of trial run? They have the methodology. They could do it here, if
conditions were right. Would they? I don't know. I don't know much about them. What would it
take for conditions to be right? I don't know that either. Maybe they don't know. They have
surely analyzed the places it succeeded and the places it failed, so they know more than I
do.
Maybe the most valuable thing here is to recognize how much I don't know. I hear ideas
that sound absurd, and then realize that while there may be no truth to them, the reason I
think they are absurd is that I have accepted bullshit conventional thinking inside my own
head, and I have hardly any more teason to believe it than I do the new absurd ideas.
"... Not that this should surprise anyone who is familiar with Operation Mockingbird and The New York Times' part in co-operating with the CIA to plant CIA-origin reports with reporters who were either willing volunteers or unaware innocents or to practise self-censorship to appease the CIA. ..."
"... The Deep State has little to nothing to do with "rule of law." It is simply the law of the jungle: might makes right, exercised behind the scenes by the true power brokers and their minions. It is not partisan. It does use both parties to put on a show to distract the people while owning and using major parts of both ..."
"... It is they who have us in Syria now to steal Syria's oil. It is they who were enraged that Trump, an outsider, won the election contrary to all expectations and predictions. It is they who control most of the media. They are not the friends of the American people; in fact, they are our mortal enemies. ..."
"... They have hijacked our government and our foreign policy, which they operate largely for their own interests and not in the true interests of the American people. ..."
"... They use the media to sell us on what they are doing, appealing to our pride, our patriotism, the project of spreading peace, prosperity, democracy, and freedom to the world, the project of promoting human rights, the project of prosperity--whatever works to convince us that we should be in Iraq, and Afghanistan, and Syria, and Kosovo, and in hundreds of military bases around the world. They equally exploit left and right; thus dividing us, they conquer. ..."
I'm sure I'm not the only person here who sees the headlines B has linked to and other NYT
headlines (and some of the actual articles themselves, if I have the time and patience to
read them) and realised that The New York Times itself is part of the Deep State it initially
denied and now wholeheartedly supports. Not that this should surprise anyone who is
familiar with Operation Mockingbird and The New York Times' part in co-operating with the CIA
to plant CIA-origin reports with reporters who were either willing volunteers or unaware
innocents or to practise self-censorship to appease the CIA.
The Deep State has little to nothing to do with "rule of law." It is simply the law of the
jungle: might makes right, exercised behind the scenes by the true power brokers and their
minions. It is not partisan. It does use both parties to put on a show to distract the people
while owning and using major parts of both.
It is they who have us in Syria now to steal
Syria's oil. It is they who were enraged that Trump, an outsider, won the election contrary
to all expectations and predictions. It is they who control most of the media. They are not
the friends of the American people; in fact, they are our mortal enemies.
They have hijacked
our government and our foreign policy, which they operate largely for their own interests and
not in the true interests of the American people.
They use the media to sell us on what they
are doing, appealing to our pride, our patriotism, the project of spreading peace,
prosperity, democracy, and freedom to the world, the project of promoting human rights, the
project of prosperity--whatever works to convince us that we should be in Iraq, and
Afghanistan, and Syria, and Kosovo, and in hundreds of military bases around the world. They
equally exploit left and right; thus dividing us, they conquer.
"... Libs and neocons are too stupid to see the Russia situation with any clarity. They think it's still 1951 and they're battling the commies hither and yon. ..."
"... Oh, and Putin is still here. Despite the sanctions and despite the Soros funded color revolution against him. Don't get me wrong, I don't trust him much (neither do I trust any politician in the world) but he is the result of the US policy of the 90s to push Russia further into the ground. ..."
"... That color revolution might get stepped up a bit now since Rosneft decided to trade oil and gas only in Euro. ..."
"... US diplomacy and foreign policy has become amateur hour and who can steal the most the fastest, real fuckups. ..."
"... I just watched CNN's 1-hour prime-time special on "Russian spying" on State Department in 1999 (which was, like, 20 years ago. I guess the Russians also colluded in the 2000 presidential elections with the aim of electing George W. Bush) I kid you not. These guys are about as subtle as a gigantic iron mace. ..."
"... Fortunately this is not 1938 ! Now its easy for people to look behind the curtain using the internet and see this is all BS . It only takes one voiciferous truth teller , to get all the 'believing' sheeple to also have a look behind the curtain . I suspect this hysteria is designed to keep Gov slaves in line : toe the line or get the boot . ..."
"... Is it just coincidental, the Deep State and minion (dupe) based "Resistance" from day one of (actually before) Trumps inauguration - which more recently looks distinctly like a coup attempt? ..."
... Somebody leaked e-mails from the DNC showing that it was rigging the nomination for
Clinton and she lost a
99% certain election. Immediately, her campaign settled on blaming Russia for both.
That strategy had been set within twenty-four hours of her concession speech. [9 November
2016] Mook and Podesta assembled her communications team at the Brooklyn headquarters to
engineer the case that the election wasn't entirely on the up-and-up. For a couple of hours,
with Shake Shack containers littering the room, they went over the script they would pitch to
the press and the public. Already, Russian hacking was the centerpiece of the argument. (From
Shattered
, quoted
here .)
The bogus – bogus because most of the people on his team were part of the conspiracy
and knew there was no collusion – Mueller investigation dragged on until – despite
the endless " bombshells "
– it finally stopped. But the crazies insist not guilty but
not exonerated ! And Trumputin's
principal conspiracist rants on .
Everything I mention below comes from "trusted sources". Therefore we must assume that all
of them – Putin wants Trump to buy Greenland, Russians want to get Americans arguing
about pizza, Russians have no moral sense and all the rest – are not "conspiracy
theories" but honestly "more probable".
" A Kremlin-Linked
Firm Invested Millions in Kentucky. Were They After More Than Money? " To ask the
question is to answer it, isn't it? "[T]hey warn the deal is a stalking horse for a new kind
of Russian meddling in America, one that exploits the U.S. free-market system instead of its
elections". So not only do Putin's super powers threaten our brains but his hands are in our
pockets too.
Tulsi Gabbard questions Washington's addiction to regime-change wars and actually met
Assad. This makes her not only Assad's "
mouthpiece " but (because all enemies are connected) the "
New Darling of 'Russia's Propaganda Machine '".
And don't let the facts confuse you: what Moscow has done is no
guide to what it could do : "Russia has generally followed international law and
procedure in establishing the limits of its extended continental shelf. Russia could choose
to unilaterally establish those limits if the procedures prove unfavourable and could utilize
its military capabilities in an effort to deny access to disputed Arctic waters or
resources". USAID must counter " Malign
Kremlin Influence " (and you thought USAID was about being " the world's premier international development agency "). The
astute reader will, of course, have noticed that all this is projection
. Serious observers have long understood that when Washington and its minions accuse Moscow
of something it's an admission that they are already doing it
Russia, Russia, Russia, unchanged since whenever: "
A Post-Soviet 'War and Peace': What Tolstoy's Masterwork Explains About Putin's Foreign
Policy ". Of course that's a famously long novel, full of impenetrable Russian names and,
because Putin has probably read it, something no self-respecting American would want to read
( gotta watch these
tricky Russian novelists – propagandists every one) so here's the short version:
"In the early decades of the nineteenth century, Napoleon (like Putin after him) wanted to
construct his own international order "
Anti-Russia prejudice can have unhappy consequences. We have just learned that Putin phoned
Bush a couple of days before 911 to warn him that something long-prepared and big was coming
out of Afghanistan. Other Russian warnings had been dismissed by Condoleezza Rice –
supposedly a Russia "expert" – as "Russian bitterness toward Pakistan for supporting the
Afghan mujahideen". One is reminded of Chamberlain's dismissal of Stalin's attempts to form an
anti-Hitler alliance because of his "most profound distrust of Russia" (
see Habakkuk comment ). In some alternate universe they listened to Moscow in the 1930s and
in the 2000s, but, in the one we live in, they didn't. And they don't.
Or maybe (foolish optimism!) this is starting to end: after all, it's been a complete
failure. I especially enjoyed the NYT, that bastion of the
Russian-conspiracy/Putin-superpowers/Trump-treason meme, solemnly opining :
"That means President Trump is correct to try to establish a sounder relationship with Russia
and peel it away from China. But his approach has been ham-handed and at times even counter to
American interests and values." Ham-handed! – here's the NYT's view of the Trump-Putin "
love affair " again
if you missed it the first time. And now it's Trump's fault that relations with Russia aren't
better! French President Macron has recently said that " I believe we should rebuild and revise the
architecture oftrust between Russia and the European
Union ." And Trump rather brutally delivered the
message to Ukraine's new president that he ought to talk to Putin .
Well, we'll see. Russophobia runs deep and the Russians have probably got the message. As
long as we're stuck in a mindset of "
Nine Things Russia Must Do Before Being Allowed to Rejoin the G7 " it's not going to
change. An arrogant invitation is not an invitation.
The ossified club of the imperialist G7 has served its time and the times they are a
changin'.
Without China as the 2nd (and soon) largest economy, nothing goes in this world and ever
since 2014 Russia was forced to look to the East for not bowing down to the imperial US
and
its minions in the G7, ousted from the G8.
Thus only the broader spectrum of the G20
makes
any sense in the context of the world economy.
Paperclips carried the last message from the Wolf's lair: "The western world must unite
against the slavic hordes".
.
They are still peddling the same mantra. Kind of sad, really. The world is going through a
phase change. All the symptoms are there:
Global cooling; Failing crops; African Swine Fever; huge asymmetric response from the
world population over energy price increases... Other signs are more subtle but the dying
culture of the shopping mall must be noted; Amazon; Alexa.
The US is following the lead of the ghosts of WWII to its own detriment. Brzezinsky's
Grand Chessboard is no more, all its objectives have been defeated. The "World order"
nightmare is fading away fast.
One has to be amazed that these desperate MSM & political idiots get so much mileage
out of this dead horse. Worse yet is that anyone - catching the first whiff of a Russiadiddit
narrative - doesn't reflexively just pass on and ignore it.
Libs and neocons are too stupid to see the Russia situation with any clarity. They think
it's still 1951 and they're battling the commies hither and yon.
What those two aforementioned groups of dumb asses represent is mr global in their corner
and, in the other corner, national culture and sovereignty.
Back then, I remember you saying (I remember because I have a brain the size of a planet)
that Putin was finished and that you would be out of here. You indeed disappeared for a while
to come back some time ago. Back then, your postings were more elaborate and eloquent. Now,
not so much. Makes me wonder what happened to you in the meanwhile...
Oh, and Putin is still here. Despite the sanctions and despite the Soros funded color
revolution against him. Don't get me wrong, I don't trust him much (neither do I trust any
politician in the world) but he is the result of the US policy of the 90s to push Russia
further into the ground.
That color revolution might get stepped up a bit now since Rosneft decided to trade oil
and gas only in Euro.
According to Google and Michael R. Gordon of the NYT, there was a bombing of 116 ISIS
tanker trucks on Monday November 16, 2015, three days before the Russian attack. And then
again on Monday November 23, 2015, four days after the Russian bombing, when the US destroyed
295 ISIS tankers.
I remember nothing about "Tidal Wave II", and the US attack 3 days before the renown
Russian attack. But hey, I'm an oldtimer and my memory is dim. Do you? Or is this an example of the Pentagon's 'Memory Hole' and Winston Smith's day
job?
(1) after all Geroge Herbert Walker Bush was a corrupt crook who stole the money
from the AMERICAN people, just to enrich his family and lackeys, and is nothing but a
blatant tyrant, who will not allow any real democratic election, nor any sort of real
democratic political opposition.
(2) after all William Jefferson Clinton is a corrupt crook who stole the money from the
AMERICAN people, just to enrich his family and lackeys, and is nothing but a blatant
tyrant, who will not allow any real democratic election, nor any sort of real democratic
political opposition.
(3) after all George W Bush is a corrupt crook who stole the money from the
AMERICAN people, just to enrich his family and lackeys, and is nothing but a blatant
tyrant, who will not allow any real democratic election, nor any sort of real democratic
political opposition.
(4) after all **** Cheney is a corrupt crook who stole the money from the AMERICAN
people, just to enrich his family and lackeys, and is nothing but a blatant tyrant, who will
not allow any real democratic election, nor any sort of real democratic political
opposition.
(5) after all Barak Hussein Obama is a corrupt crook who stole the money from the
AMERICAN people, just to enrich his family and lackeys, and is nothing but a blatant
tyrant, who will not allow any real democratic election, nor any sort of real democratic
political opposition.
(6) after all Joe Biden is a corrupt crook who stole the money from the AMERICAN
people, just to enrich his family and lackeys, and is nothing but a blatant tyrant, who will
not allow any real democratic election, nor any sort of real democratic political
opposition.
(7) after all Hillary Clinton is a corrupt crook who stole the money from the
AMERICAN people, just to enrich his family and lackeys, and is nothing but a blatant
tyrant, who will not allow any real democratic election, nor any sort of real democratic
political opposition.
(8) after all Victoria Nuland is a corrupt crook who stole the money from the
AMERICAN people, just to enrich his family and lackeys, and is nothing but a blatant
tyrant, who will not allow any real democratic election, nor any sort of real democratic
political opposition.
Read in their own words as the DNC went insane election night -- - Read the new book for sale on amazon the night 'Trump Derangement Syndrome' began the democrats are insane with LOSER hate
the whole russia deal was a con
their deranged hate for our President is why we must remove them all from office
I like Putin as the alien love child reincarnation of Rasputin, see, it is all in the name
;DDD.
The more US and EU media attacked Putin in that PR=B$ way, the more popular Putin
became.
Here's an attack. Putin is doing deals with Saudi Arabia, this after Saudi Arabia funded
terrorism in Chechnya killing thousands of Russians, I mean it is really bad, the optics
would be quite damaging, in fact I challenged them on it via Vesti and was immediately
censored, no bad language just pointing out reality.
The funny thing is, the US B$=PR machine can not use it because it would mean attacking
Saudi Arabia. So there they have a great opportunity to really stick it to Putin, taking
Saudi Arabia money after Saudi Arabia funded the murder of thousands of Russians, really bad
political optics (to be clear my beef is with Saudi Arabia and their murdering Australians
with the terrorist funding the House of Saud did all over the globe and not with the Russian
government, apart from them letting the House of Saud get away with it, just like the slimey
American government).
Passed it onto Voice of America, to stick it to Vesti with a damned if you do and damned
if you don't message and as you can guess, silence from the US government, bwa hah hah. Their
chance to attack and silence because they would also have to attack the House of Saud.
Now the reason Russia media was uptight and hence the government, well, after all the US
**** ups all over the place, they stand to gain diplomatic alliances with Iran, Saudi Arabia
and Venezuela and then add in Russian Oil and well, the US just clumsily and stupidly handed
over control of oil to Russia, if they can tie up the deal with Saudi Arabia and so US sent
more troops to Saudi Arabia during the negotiation process, what a pack of clowns.
Oil is yesterdays tech, nuclear energy is where the focus should be and there are much
better designs available including a low output reactor, quite a smart design, it is all
changing and the US really has to push nuclear, abandon oil and make deals with Australia and
Japan, one for uranium and the other for manufacturing including rebuilding US
manufacturing.
US diplomacy and foreign policy has become amateur hour and who can steal the most the
fastest, real fuckups.
I think the label first became widely used to slander people who questioned the details
surrounding the JFK assassination, and forty years later, there aren't too many thinking
people who still believe the Warren Commission's "lone gunman" explanation. That explanation
is doubted by everyone who has taken the time to look into the details, and believed only by
people who refuse to.
Which is "theory" and which is fact? In the absence of a full confession, this can only be
decided by a preponderance of evidence, and it would be silly to come to a conclusion on any
matter without looking at all the evidence available. This is only common sense, just as it
is safe to assume some degree of guilt or complicity on the part of anyone who lies about an
event, or tries to hide, plant, or destroy any type of evidence.
Conspiracy theories arise from evidence. After the government releases an explanation of a
particular event, a conspiracy theory is only born because evidence exists to disprove their
explanation, or at least call it into question. There's nothing insane about it, unless you
define sanity as believing whatever the government tells you. In light of the fact that our
government lies to us regularly, I would define believing everything they tell you as utter
stupidity.
The orthodox, for their part, dismiss the unorthodox as conspiracy theorists (by which
term they mean: people whose opinions are based in something other than objective reality
– if it were objectively real, the sources which provide the orthodox with their
opinions would have told them about it).
In July of 1996, flight 800 exploded over Long Island. Shortly after their terrorist
explanation failed scrutiny, our government then explained the event by claiming that a
faulty electrical system caused a spark that ignited a fuel tank, and the people who doubted
this explanation were quickly labeled "conspiracy theorists." More than a hundred witnesses
saw a missile travel from the ground up to the plane just prior to its explosion, but rather
than being treated as eyewitnesses to an event, they were labeled "conspiracy theorists,"
which label allowed all subsequent investigation to ignore the strongest evidence in the
matter.
Our "investigative" news agencies decided to accept and disseminate the official story,
and they helped us forget the U.S. naval station nearby, the fact that missiles were
regularly test fired there, and naturally, they paid no heed to more than a hundred
"conspiracy theorists" who saw the plane get blown out of the sky by a missile. I believe
that the U.S. Navy accidentally shot down flight 800, and that's my belief because it's the
most sensible explanation that can be drawn from the available evidence. I'm not theorizing
about conspiracies, but there are conflicting explanations of the event, and if the Navy did
accidentally blow a passenger plane out of the sky, who would have a motive to lie about it?
The U.S. government, or a hundred witnesses?
The one thing that always puzzled me about flight 800 was why a gas tank explosion lead to
no more waiting in your cars outside the terminals and additional gate security?
"Responding to repeated criticisms of the security at Kennedy International Airport after
the crash of Trans World Airlines Flight 800, Port Authority officials announced a series of
changes yesterday intended to make it more difficult for anyone to plant a bomb on a
plane."
But it was the jet fuel fumes from sitting on the hot tarmac and a frayed wire. So how in
the world did someone think about the B word?
I just watched CNN's 1-hour prime-time special on "Russian spying" on State
Department in 1999 (which was, like, 20 years ago. I guess the Russians also colluded in the
2000 presidential elections with the aim of electing George W. Bush) I kid you not. These guys are about as subtle as a gigantic iron mace.
I practically had to be hospitalized for acute lobotomy. An hour later, I still feel like
3/4s of my brain were surgically sucked out by Jeff Zucker. Will have to have me some Russian
sex soon to regain some of my missing IQ.
Within the first few years after the Kennedy Assassination, the American people were
collecting evidence and pointing fingers at the CIA, the Military Industrial Complex, the
Mossad and Israel. The late Michael Collins Piper provides all the evidence necessary in his
book FINAL JUDGEMENT to realize that Israel had Kennedy killed.
1967 is the same year Israel murdered 34 US Servicemen and injured over 200 others during
its cowardly attack on the USS Liberty.
In the mid-sixties, the world was first introduced in full baloney mode to the
Holocaust.
Intersting coincidence.
Maybe the deep state (Central Banks and Israel) desparately needed a BAIT and SWITCH to
hide their tracks.
Today, our kids must bow before the Holocaust g_d and yet few realize that JFK wanted to
eliminate Israel's nuclear weapons and was instead sacrificed for GREATER ISRAEL
For Bibi, being against him, equates to Antisemitism, for Trump being critical of him is
Anti-American, for ZH being opposed to Putin is a Anti-Russian.
Anti-Russia prejudice can have unhappy consequences.
Fortunately this is not 1938 ! Now its easy for people to look behind the curtain using the internet and see this is all
BS . It only takes one voiciferous truth teller , to get all the 'believing' sheeple to also
have a look behind the curtain . I suspect this hysteria is designed to keep Gov slaves in line : toe the line or get the
boot .
So, is the anti-Russia/anti-Putin a head fake? By looking to be oh-so over the top freaked
out about anything Russian, and taking on the mantle of looking freaked out (though in
actuality are not), Democrats are perhaps intentionally making him look less harmful and
dangerous by comparison.
After all, the Russian communist form of government, a dictatorship run by a small
percentage of elites, is exactly the road down which Democrats want to take the U.S. Similar
comparisons of this fashion can be made with the Chinese communist government, too.
The Democratic primary was obviously rigged. Democrats thought, with insider help from the
FBI, CIA, IRS and others, that the actual election was rigged, too.
Is it just coincidental, the Deep State and minion (dupe) based "Resistance" from day one
of (actually before) Trumps inauguration - which more recently looks distinctly like a coup
attempt? With, of course, the vast majority of news outlets (virtually all Left leaning) in
the US pushing and covering the obvious subversion. Hence, the astoundingly intense looks of
deep shock on TV when it was realized an "outsider," Trump, would win?
"... The Democrats are the ones who are twisting the "protocols" regarding private hearings to protect the seditious liars and their lies... To paraphrase the Washington Post : "Democracy Dies In The Darkness"... The Darkness created by the shadowy deep state and those who dwell in it ! ..."
"... Without expressing any opinion on the truth or falsity of Taylor's testimony or any of it, the idea that being a West Point graduate and Vietnam vet is some kind of assurance of probity is a joke. ..."
"... Have you learned nothing from RussiaGate, from the various imperial wars on Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Libya, Serbia, etc.? All these were based on flat out lies promoted by cleancut, well dressed, well spoken, impeccably credentialed monsters. Many of them veterans themselves. All of them lying without shame, and lauded for telling lies. ..."
"... You realize that we are an empire, and our institutions act the way that imperial institutions do? Imperial institutions cannot be hindered by things like honesty and "rule of law", because the empire cannot survive if its freedom of action is restrained. ..."
"... Is your anti Russian phobia a product of Slavic racism or of disliking orthodox countries or what? Why do you pro war liberals obsess over Russia so much? I think it is empire envy. ..."
"... I Keep reading about this "aid to ukraine" improperly tied to an investigation of a rival. But this "aid" to Ukraine is really just weapons isn't it? Weapons meant to stoke conflict with a nuclear power. The deep state and the pro war liberals will never let This country move past militarism ..."
I'd like to commend Rep. Gaetz for this very well justified act of 'civil disobedience' to draw attention to this farce of a travesty
of a sham of a mockery of a witchhunt. This so-called "impeachment" is totally consistent with the manufacturing of "evidence"
to justify an "investigation" of Trump's campaign to keep him from being elected as well.
I'm glad we have someone standing up to these corrupt lying leaking Democrat bullies. It would be nice if we could have an
investigation of the actual and documented illegal campaign contributions of Hillary to her attorney to Chris Steele, but that
water has passed under the bridge by now.
But if we're going to go down the rabbit hole of campaign finance law violations, I'd like to propose that the quite obvious
main and only real (non-manufactured) reason for these so-called "impeachment" hearings is to prevent Trump from being re-elected
(as opposed to investigating "corruption").
Thus the Democrats' activities are quite obviously a misappropriation of taxpayer funds and an illegal donation to the political
campaigns of the Democratic party. I demand an investigation. In secret of course.
As you rightfully said, the rule of law is a pain in the butt, after all. The double standard is infuriating.
We are coming to a point in American society where the only meaningful "truth" belongs to whoever wins. If that is true, under
those circumstances, you've got to decide whom you trust more to protect your interests. Is it Adam Schiff or Donald Trump? If
you choose not to decide, you've still made a choice. Or are elections only supposed to have consequences if Democrats win them?
Matt Gaetz is one of those few Republicans in on the fundamental truth of our country: We are an empire in decline and politics
is 100% theatre. And so he puts on one of the best shows on television.
Yeah, he is likely a nihilist, but I can't really call him a grifter any more than you could call Milo or Jacob Wohl grifters.
They are performance artists, dressing up in conservative drag and giving everyone the show of their lifetime, and they are so
dedicated to it they don't break character. In wrestling it is called kayfebe.
If you are in on the joke, these people are amazing, true heroes of late capitalism, exposing the absurdities of our commodified
democracy and news cycle.
The standards for a sitting Congressman representing 800,000 Americans should probably be a bit higher than the standards for
alt-right YouTube dancing bears.
As our country winds down and enters the end of its natural lifespan, and every country has a lifespan, don't fool yourself, because
no human creations last forever, some of the dancing bears we get aren't going to be quite as funny as Matt Gaetz, and there are
only going to be more and more of them coming out of the woodwork.
So I think we should appreciate people like him while we can, who at least elevate the art to something legitimately entertaining,
and are generally pretty harmless. "I love the president so much I may never love another president again." is an amazing line,
for instance, and I'll never understand anyone who doesn't appreciate it. That's something he put care and thought into.
People like entertainment. They elected an entertainer as president for a reason, and he is representing a lot more than 800,000
Americans. But I'm sure those 800,000 Americans are pretty happy with the entertainment they are getting from Gaetz too, even
if they might not appreciate the nuances of his performance and only like that he is "triggering the libs" or somesuch. And maybe
some of them do see how his performance implicates them too and they just don't care because it is such a fun show. I know if
Matt Gaetz were running for president (Against some neo-liberal like Buttigieg, not against someone I like) I'd be tempted to
vote for him just to add fuel to the fire.
The Democrats are the ones who are twisting the "protocols" regarding private hearings to protect the seditious liars and their
lies...
To paraphrase the Washington Post : "Democracy Dies In The Darkness"... The Darkness created by the shadowy deep state and those who dwell in it !
"The seditions liars and their lies"? Bill Taylor is a West Point graduate, decorated Vietnam vet, and was G.W. Bush's appointee
to be Ukraine ambassador. The smears aren't going to stick to him.
Like they didn't stick to Mueller, Comey, Mattis, McCain, Romney, and whoever else is the white knight of the week who will save
liberal decadence from Trump. As if!
He will be down in the mud with the rest of them, loathed by Trump's base and forgotten by the Democrats once the next savior
conservative messiah comes along. Eventually there won't be enough Never Trump zombies in the Bush establishment morgue left to
revive, and what then?
They certainly aren't going to work with the left to concentrate on substance and policy rather than the Trump news cycle,
so I imagine liberals will just all collectively die from despair
Without expressing any opinion on the truth or falsity of Taylor's testimony or any of it, the idea that being a West Point graduate
and Vietnam vet is some kind of assurance of probity is a joke.
Have you learned nothing from RussiaGate, from the various imperial wars on Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Libya, Serbia, etc.? All these
were based on flat out lies promoted by cleancut, well dressed, well spoken, impeccably credentialed monsters. Many of them veterans
themselves. All of them lying without shame, and lauded for telling lies.
Not "misspeaking", as if they were merely overenthusiastic in defense of the Freedom, but lying. And their lies killed innocent
people on a hitlerian scale.
You only don't recognize this, because you are fortunate enough to live in America, where you don't have to see your children
droned and your country destroyed because some monster claims to be bringing you the freedom.
You realize that we are an empire, and our institutions act the way that imperial institutions do? Imperial institutions cannot
be hindered by things like honesty and "rule of law", because the empire cannot survive if its freedom of action is restrained.
Is your anti Russian phobia a product of Slavic racism or of disliking orthodox countries or what? Why do you pro war liberals
obsess over Russia so much? I think it is empire envy.
If the Democrats are so concerned with confidentiality then why are the anti-Trump snippets of testimony the only things getting
leaked?
Bill Taylor's testimony was shredded in 90 seconds of cross-examination by a Republican member of the Committee. Funny, that
didn't make the time breathless coverage of the umpteenth bombshell. (Or is it "The Walls Are Closing In!" this week?
By any standard of fairness, Schiff should have recused himself due to a monumental conflict of interest. He had contact with
the main complainant prior to the filing of the complaint. A Dem Senator visited Taylor in the Ukraine several weeks ago. Nothing
to see here.
As Ben Franklin was noted as saying: "Well, Doctor, what have we got -- a Republic or a Monarchy?"
"A Republic, if you can keep it."
Well, we didn't keep it. This is purely Political Kabuki Theater. Both sides deserve to lose. At this point, with the Dems
tilting so hard left, and the Rockefeller Wing (Re-branded as NeoCons for some silly reason) of the Republicans ever-waiting for
their ascendance it remains for most of the country wish both sides could lose - if for nothing else than to just stop the noise.
"A nation is born a stoic and dies an epicurean" Will Durant
I do not trust our "betters" to hold closed door trials. After 2 years of Russia Russia Russia I don't believe a word they say.
Shiff told us he had ironclad evidence of Russian collusion, I saw him say it at the interview. He lied. When a politician says
"trust me" the last thing we should do is trust him. Open hearings, transparency, due process...we should demand
That's what they're afraid of: a veritable conga line of skeletons, loosed from the Trumpian closet, cha-chaing across the Senate
chamber in front of the whole world.
Actually that did involve intelligence NOT an impeachment. Apples and oranges. But thanks for reminding us of the lies and ineptitude
that got American's killed by Obama and Clinton in Libya. They lied and people died.
If Schiff weren't selectively leaking like a sieve, your argument might have some merit.
As it is, easily the best reason to believe they are doing as they are doing is FOR the purpose of only leaking the parts they
want.
And it goes far beyond simply "closed door" - the controls enacted are extreme, at least for the Republicans, yet somehow,
certain *very convenient* bits find their way to the press, time after time. After time. After TIME.
The whole thing is a farce, designed to allow control of the narrative, facts be hanged.
Brilliant comparison to that Animal House scene - thanks for that! The facts on the ground are so devastating to Trump than even
his most lickspittle toadies can't properly defend them, and so they scheme up weak stunts like this. The mind boggles.
I suppose all the Trump supporters would be on this very page defending Barack Obama if he called the Saudi Crown Prince in 2011
and told him that any military aid is contingent on investigating the Bush family and any business ties they have with Saudi Arabia
because Jeb Bush might run in 2012. Totally legal. No problem and nothing to see.
That is not the point. What you write is simply deflection. If any President other than Trump did this, Republicans would be (correctly)
moving to impeach and remove. So I ask again: would it have been OK if Obama called the Saudis and held up military aid until
they provided him information damaging to the Bush family?
The picture is funny, but you're on the wrong side of this, Dreher. I've finally realized why Schiff and his merry men, but especially
Schiff, give me such agita.
Let's pick a date, or an incident: Bork. Since then, long before then, but let's pick a date, the Democrats have stood for
moral anarchy . The only chance they had to show they retained a shred of principle was the Gulf War (both Gulf Wars, actually,
but let's take the second), and there their response was, at least legislatively, muted to say the least (considering their Senatorial
champion was the Lion of Chappaquiddick...) Since then it's been what? Feminism, abortion, and that more abundantly, all LGBTQ
all the time, micro regulation of speech and behavior, race hustling, and--ha ha--more unjust unnecessary wars and the destruction
of the white middle class. The soft totalitarianism we talk about in these boxes--no need to go on. The usual menu of "liberal"
horror.
And this guy is to be impeached because he cusses in public? It's not adding up for me. Schiff's behavior is outrageous (read
Kim Strassel today) but he's getting the job done. You might want to call it soft Leninism.
Not sure why so many conservatives hang their hat on Bork. This man was the guy who committed the Saturday Night Massacre, this
is who you stake your moral ground on?
Conservatives are so angry Dems stopped the guy who tried to shield Nixon from accountability? It's moral anarchy for Congress
to refuse to confirm a president's nomination for the Supreme Court? Congress is supposed to give a president's nominee a hearing
and a vote, not a rubber stamp. Congress if fully within it's constitutional rights to not confirm a president's nominee, and
it's hard to find a less fit man for the Supreme Court than Bork was.
Meanwhile your guys refused to even grant a hearing to President Obama's nominee. I guess that's OK because you don't acknowledge
the rights of Democrats under the Constitution.
You don't really think the Democrats got together to destroy Bork professionally and personally because he signed off on Nixon's
firings, do you? You can't be that dumb. If you'd like to know why, it was keeping Roe v. Wade alive. And that is moral anarchy,
pal.
You know what's moral anarchy? Supporting an immoral character like Bork because you think he's going to help you get rid of
Roe vs Wade. Kind of reminds of the deal you RWers have struck with Trump. You support a man you know is morally debased because
you think he will help you restore a white Christian conservative America.
It just boggles my mind you RWers are mad Democrats refused to confirm a man who help cover up one of the most egregious acts
an American president has ever committed. A person who would commit such an unethical act was not fit for a seat on the Supreme
Court, I shouldn't even have to say this.
And you offer an unsupported calumny. Bork was "morally debased"? By what standard? By whose standard? John Dean's? Elliot Richardson's?
Remember when they rifled through his borrowing habits at Blockbuster and it turned out he was a Fred Astaire fan? They were expecting
maybe Leni Riefenstahl. Or hoping for it. And a conspiracy is usually thought of as somewhat secret. The Lion of Chappaquiddick
was pretty up front about what he didn't like about Bork.
And I think Lincoln's suspension of habeas corpus was far worse than anything Nixon did. Have fun with that one, pal.
"The Democrats have offered no plausible and persuasive rationale for holding these proceedings in secret and keeping the evidence
and testimony behind closed doors."
Other than that they're simply following the rules established by a previous Republican congress.
Below, someone wrote: "By any standard of fairness, Schiff should have recused himself due to a
monumental conflict of interest. He had contact with the main
complainant prior to the filing of the complaint."
Using that standard, Barr should have recused himself a thousand times over, no?
Coined by a Randian objectivist fantasy author. It is absolute truth, but knowing the source will become the utmost irony because
for some, it will be personal proof of it.
People will believe a lie because they're afraid it might be true, or because they want it to be true.
The Trump candidacy and tenure in office is a non-stop series of examples proving this.
Yet again, I note Rod, that there is more than one explanation over this hysterical impeach Trump nonsense.
This 'aid' is actually 'US military assistance'. Did it ever occur to you 'impeachers' that Trump may have deliberately been
avoiding such a meeting with his top 4 warmongers precisely so as to avoid US 'aid' escalating the military tension betwen Ukraine
and Russia? (and getting the US firmly tied into that fight?)
Trump was elected in part on a platform of no more foreign wars, and he seems genuinely committed to that (at least when he
thinks he can). Maybe the withheld 'aid' was all just leverage for a Biden investigation, but it may also be Trump trying not
to get pressured and bullied into more conflicts (which all prior Presidents were happy to go along with) in the face of a deep
state totally committed to a condition of forever war.
As an anti-war activist who campaigned against the Afghan and Iraq wars, in Trump's shoes I would also have tried to avoid
fueling an existing dangerous conflict that brings no benefit to my nation (other than a few arms sales) but may drag us into
a war with major nations. Same situation repeating right now in Syria - no major benefit to US in staying, and staying may drag
US into conflict between Turks and Kurds and Syria & Russia.
Not saying Trump has acted lawfully always - just that he may have been trying to avoid military escalation (at the same time
as getting dirt on Biden). Lets not jump to obvious conclusions when they may not be so obvious.
Thugs disrupting a Constitutional and legal proceeding doing the people's business in order to protect their Dear Leader -- that's
not frat-boy stuff. There's a much better "f" word to label that.
If these people were testifying in public, I'm sure the Trumpists would find a reason to oppose that as well. But I hope they
are ready for the public phase when they will need to defend Trump on the substance rather than voice procedural complaints. And
calling people like Taylor never-Trumpist "human scum" (what a classy president we have) is not going to cut it.
Democrats say these House Intelligence Committee procedures
aren't official hearings, but rather the equivalent of depositions,
meant to gather facts that will later be examined and argued over in
public hearings.
If that's the case they shouldn't be characterizing themselves as having an "impeachment inquiry." This is not in any legal
sense an impeachment. It's an inquiry without a cause...political games. The abberant activities of Dems trying to remove the
US President where there are no crimes justifies abberant reactions from the opposition. Since they are going to abuse the House
of Representatives and pursue unprincipled and unprecedented antagonism of a co-equal branch of government, why should the GOP
be idealistic and proper under such circumstances? I find Schiff to be a lot more of a problem than Gaetz.
No, it's the first stage of an inquiry. They're gathering evidence -- and Republican reps are there to question too -- that will
be used in open impeachment hearings.
Concerning Republican reps on the committee...apparently they're not getting all the evidence. If they're not it's not bi-partisan,
and it's irregular. Also, Schiff did not notify Republicans on the committee of an intelligence official who came to one of his
aides with concerns about President Trump before filing a whistleblower complaint. If that's true he's withholding evidence. I'm
sure he has a good reason for that...if you know what I mean.
October 18, 2019 By Chrissy Clark
All nine GOP members of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence penned a letter to Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif.,
lambasting him for hiding documents related to Democrats' impeachment inquiry.
"We are concerned that the Majority is knowingly withholding Committee documents related to your so-called 'impeachment
inquiry' from the Minority," the letter reads. " it has come to our attention that the Majority is not uploading (or providing
physical copies of) certain
Committee documents related to your 'impeachment inquiry' to its document repository, thus withholding the existence of such
documents from the Minority."
I think you don't like the Republicans playing by the same rules and tricks Democrats do. Looks different when the shoe is on
the other foot, huh? Think KFC eating and setting all night on the senate floor.
"The Democrats have offered no plausible and persuasive rationale for holding these proceedings in secret and keeping the evidence
and testimony behind closed doors. Given the character of the people in question, it is safe to assume that their reasons for
doing so are corrupt and motivated by narrowly calculated political self-interest. "
That's a heck of a leap in logic there, Kevin. And kind of incredible in light of Kevin McCarthy previously admitting on national
television that the Benghazi Select Committee's purpose was to tank Clinton's poll numbers. Would Kevin agree that committee was
corrupt then, I guess?
These are depositions, not hearings. Public hearings come later, once depositions are complete, and there's no more opportunity
for deposed subjects to coordinate details. Then a Senate trial after that, where Trump gets all the "due process" he has been
disingenuously complaining about.
It's amusing to me how it seems to be lost in all of this, that half of the people sitting in on these depositions are REPUBLICANS.
I Keep reading about this "aid to ukraine" improperly tied to an investigation of a rival. But this "aid" to Ukraine is really
just weapons isn't it? Weapons meant to stoke conflict with a nuclear power. The deep state and the pro war liberals will never
let This country move past militarism
If you supported the Schiff parody-as-truth from the other week but this bothers you, then you are an anti-Trump partisan. Conversely,
if you support this but had a problem with Schiff, you are a pro-Trump partisan. And that is okay because impeachment is a political
act. Just don't dress it up and pretend your side follows the rule of law and the other side doesn't. Both sides are engaging
in politics to convince the public. And we'll be just fine as long as both sides stick with that, and obey the constitutional
rules for impeachment. We'll only get in serious trouble if folks decide to go extra constitutional:
The picture is funny, but you're on the wrong side of this, Dreher. I've finally realized why Schiff and his merry men, but especially
Schiff, give me such agita.
Let's pick a date, or an incident: Bork. Since then, long before then, but let's pick a date, the Democrats have stood for
moral anarchy . The only chance they had to show they retained a shred of principle was the Gulf War (both Gulf Wars, actually,
but let's take the second), and there their response was, at least legislatively, muted to say the least (considering their Senatorial
champion was the Lion of Chappaquiddick...) Since then it's been what? Feminism, abortion, and that more abundantly, all LGBTQ
all the time, micro regulation of speech and behavior, race hustling, and--ha ha--more unjust unnecessary wars and the destruction
of the white middle class. The soft totalitarianism we talk about in these boxes--no need to go on. The usual menu of "liberal"
horror.
And this guy is to be impeached because he cusses in public? It's not adding up for me. Schiff's behavior is outrageous (read
Kim Strassel today) but he's getting the job done. You might want to call it soft Leninism.
Yet again, I note Rod, that there is more than one explanation over this hysterical impeach Trump nonsense.
This 'aid' is actually 'US military assistance'. Did it ever occur to you 'impeachers' that Trump may have deliberately been
avoiding such a meeting with his top 4 warmongers precisely so as to avoid US 'aid' escalating the military tension betwen Ukraine
and Russia? (and getting the US firmly tied into that fight?)
Trump was elected in part on a platform of no more foreign wars, and he seems genuinely committed to that (at least when he
thinks he can). Maybe the withheld 'aid' was all just leverage for a Biden investigation, but it may also be Trump trying not
to get pressured and bullied into more conflicts (which all prior Presidents were happy to go along with) in the face of a deep
state totally committed to a condition of forever war.
As an anti-war activist who campaigned against the Afghan and Iraq wars, in Trump's shoes I would also have tried to avoid
fueling an existing dangerous conflict that brings no benefit to my nation (other than a few arms sales) but may drag us into
a war with major nations. Same situation repeating right now in Syria - no major benefit to US in staying, and staying may drag
US into conflict between Turks and Kurds and Syria & Russia.
Not saying Trump has acted lawfully always - just that he may have been trying to avoid military escalation (at the same time
as getting dirt on Biden). Lets not jump to obvious conclusions when they may not be so obvious.
"The Democrats have offered no plausible and persuasive rationale for holding these proceedings in secret and keeping the evidence
and testimony behind closed doors. Given the character of the people in question, it is safe to assume that their reasons for
doing so are corrupt and motivated by narrowly calculated political self-interest. "
That's a heck of a leap in logic there, Kevin. And kind of incredible in light of Kevin McCarthy previously admitting on national
television that the Benghazi Select Committee's purpose was to tank Clinton's poll numbers. Would Kevin agree that committee was
corrupt then, I guess?
These are depositions, not hearings. Public hearings come later, once depositions are complete, and there's no more opportunity
for deposed subjects to coordinate details. Then a Senate trial after that, where Trump gets all the "due process" he has been
disingenuously complaining about.
It's amusing to me how it seems to be lost in all of this, that half of the people sitting in on these depositions are REPUBLICANS.
I Keep reading about this "aid to ukraine" improperly tied to an investigation of a rival. But this "aid" to Ukraine is really
just weapons isn't it? Weapons meant to stoke conflict with a nuclear power. The deep state and the pro war liberals will never
let This country move past militarism
If you supported the Schiff parody-as-truth from the other week but this bothers you, then you are an anti-Trump partisan. Conversely,
if you support this but had a problem with Schiff, you are a pro-Trump partisan. And that is okay because impeachment is a political
act. Just don't dress it up and pretend your side follows the rule of law and the other side doesn't. Both sides are engaging
in politics to convince the public. And we'll be just fine as long as both sides stick with that, and obey the constitutional
rules for impeachment. We'll only get in serious trouble if folks decide to go extra constitutional:
I am sure that this stupid girl who allowed to make herself a scapegoat due to her
pathological fascination with arms (and a romance with FBI informer -- so she was like a bug
under microscope all the time).
But one of her comments stand out: "'I believe that the Americans are wonderful people, but
they have lost their legal system" i would add the neo-McCarthyism campaign also means that the
US neoliberal elite lost their sanity, trying to please MIC and Wall street oligarchs who via
intelligence agencies, lobbyists and MSM essentially run the place mind.
Notable quotes:
"... I sorta feel like Winston Smith: Am I the only one who sees and understands what's actually happening?! Well, I've shared what I know, so I'm no longer alone. But that's not very satisfying, nor is it satisfactory. ..."
Given the fact that she got a first hand look at the Outlaw US Empire's injustice system and
its tie-in with BigLie Media, the comments by the now back in Russia Maria Butina carry some legitimate weight that're
worth reading: "'I believe that the Americans are wonderful people, but they have lost their
legal system,' Butina said. 'What is more, they are routinely losing their country. They will
lose it unless they do something'.... "'I am very proud of my country, of my origin,' Butina
stressed. 'And I come to realize it more and more.'"
Should I bold the following, maybe make the lettering red, and put it in all caps:
"They are routinely losing their country."
I know this is an international bar, but the general focus has long been on the Outlaw US
Empire. IMO, Maria Butina is 100% correct. The topic of this thread is just further proof of
that fact.
As I tirelessly point out, the federal government has routinely violated its own
fundamental law daily since October 1945. The media goes along with it robotically.
And aside from myself, I know of no other US citizen that's raised the issue--not Chomsky,
not Zinn, not anyone with more credentials and public accessibility than I. I sorta feel
like Winston Smith: Am I the only one who sees and understands what's actually happening?!
Well, I've shared what I know, so I'm no longer alone. But that's not very satisfying, nor is
it satisfactory.
Part and parcel of democracy. Western style democracy at least. Perhaps others can set
theirs up better, though allways, the achilles heel of democracy is information, or media.
Who oversees ensuring voters recieve accurate information.
It took complaints from the public and investigated them. They did not have power to bring
charges, but for a time findings were made public. Once it got onto a money trail it would
keep following and that would lead to other money trails. It was a state agency and had to
stop at state borders but most money trails led to federal politics. It was defanged when
they came too close to federal politics.
Something like this in a countries constitution could work though it could be corrupted
the same as anything else.
Rachel Maddow's trademark pouty-face got a workout as she strained to imagine " what the
thing is that Durham might be looking into." Yes, that's a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside
an enigma, all right with a sputtering fuse sticking out of it.
... ... ...
Over in the locked ward of CNN, Andy Cooper and Jeff Toobin attempted to digest the criminal
investigation news as if someone had ordered in a platter of shit sandwiches for the green room
just before air-time. Toobin pretended to not know exactly who the mysterious Joseph Misfud
was, and struggled to even pronounce his name
... ... ...
As for impeachment, ringmaster Rep. Adam Schiff is surely steaming straight into his own
historic Joe McCarthy moment when somebody of incontestable standing denounces him as a fraud
and a scoundrel and the mysterious workings of nonlinear behavior tips the political mob past a
criticality threshold, shifting the weight of consensus out of darkness and madness. It has
happened before in history.
"... "I've always felt that the media leaned left. That wasn't a surprise to anyone. "But what we've seen over the past three years is something entirely different. This is the media actively engaging on one side of a partisan warfare. It's overt." ..."
"... "We had a media cheerleading the FBI for meddling in American politics. Can you ever imagine a time in American history where the media would have played such a role? ..."
"... "I keep warning my friends on the other side of the aisle: Think about the precedent you are setting here," Strassel said. ..."
The anti- Trump "Resistance" has devastated core American
institutions and broken longstanding political norms in seeking to defeat and now oust from office President Donald Trump, said Kimberley
Strassel, a columnist for the Wall Street Journal and member of the Journal's editorial board.
"And this, to me, is the irony, right? We've been told for three years that Donald Trump is wrecking institutions," Strassel
said in an interview with The Epoch Times for the "American Thought Leaders" program.
" But in terms of real wreckage to institutions, it's not on Donald Trump that public faith in the
FBI and the
Department of Justice has precipitously fallen.
That's because of Jim Comey and Andy McCabe. It's not on Donald Trump that the Senate confirmation process for the Supreme Court
is in ashes after what happened to Brett Kavanaugh. It's not on Donald Trump that we are turning
impeachment into a partisan political tool."
The damage inflicted by the anti-Trump Resistance is the subject of Strassel's new book, "Resistance (At All Costs): How Trump
Haters Are Breaking America."
Strassel uses the term "haters" deliberately, to differentiate this demographic from Trump's "critics."
In Strassel's view, all thoughtful critics of Trump - and she counts herself among them - would look at Trump the same way that
they have examined past presidents - namely, to call him out when he does something wrong, but also laud him when he does something
right.
" The 'haters' can't abide nuance. To the Resistance, any praise - no matter how qualified - of Trump is tantamount to American
betrayal, " Strassel writes in "Resistance (At All Costs)."
She told The Epoch Times: "Up until the point at which Donald Trump was elected, what happened when political parties lost is
that they would retreat, regroup, lick their wounds, talk about what they did wrong.
"That's not what happened this time around. Instead, you had people who essentially said we should have won."
From the moment Trump was elected, this group believed Trump to be an illegitimate president and therefore felt they could use
whatever means necessary to remove him from office , Strassel said.
'Unprecedented Acts'
"One thing I try really hard to do in this book is enunciate what rules and regulations and standards were broken, what political
boundaries were crossed, because I think that that's where we're seeing the damage," Strassel said.
The "unprecedented acts" of the Resistance have caused the public to lose trust in longstanding institutions such as the FBI,
the CIA, and the Department of Justice, and cheapened important political processes like impeachment, she said.
The Resistance fabricated and pushed the theory that it was Trump's collusion with Russia that won him the presidency, not the
support of the American people, and lied about the origins of the so-called evidence -- the Steele dossier -- that was used by the
FBI to justify a counterintelligence investigation into the Trump campaign, Strassel said.
"We have never, in the history of this country, had a counterintelligence investigation into a political campaign," she said.
In an anecdote that Strassel recounts in her book, she asked former House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.)
if there was anything in America's laws that could have prohibited this situation.
Nunes, who had helped write or update many laws concerning the powers of the intelligence community, replied, "I would never have
conceived of the FBI using our counterintelligence capabilities to target a political campaign.
"If it had crossed any of our minds, I can guarantee we'd have specifically written: 'Don't do that.'"
In Strassel's view, the Resistance is partially fueled by deep-seated anger, or what others have termed "Trump derangement syndrome"
-- an inability to look rationally at a man so far outside of Washington norms.
But at the same time, in Strassel's view, much of the Resistance is motivated by a desire to amass political power using whatever
means necessary.
"That involves removing the president who won. That involves some of these other things that you hear them talking about now:
packing the Supreme Court, getting rid of the electoral college, letting 16-year-olds vote," she said.
"These are not reforms. Reforms are things that the country broadly agrees are going to help improve stuff. This is changing
the rules so that you get power, and you stay in power."
The impeachment inquiry into the president, based on his phone call with Ukraine's president, is just another example of how the
Resistance is violating political norms and relying on flimsy evidence to try to remove him from office, she said.
Testimony in the inquiry has taken place behind closed doors, led by three House committees, and Democrats have so far refused
to release transcripts from the depositions of former and current
State Department employees.
"[Impeachment] is one of the most serious and huge powers in the Constitution. It was meant always by the founders to be reserved
for truly unusual circumstances. They debated not even putting it in because they were concerned that this is what would happen,"
Strassel said.
In the impeachment inquiries against Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton, Strassel said, American leaders "understood the great importance
of convincing the American public that their decision to use this tool was just and legitimate.
"So if you look back at Watergate, they had hundreds of hours of testimony broadcast over TV that people tuned into and watched.
It's one of the reasons that Richard Nixon resigned before the House ever held a final impeachment vote on him, because the public
had been convinced. He knew he had to go," she said.
But now, instead of access to the testimonies, the public is receiving only leaked snippets and dueling narratives.
"You have Democrats saying, 'Oh, this is very bad.' And Republicans saying, 'Oh, it's not so bad at all.' What are Americans
supposed to think?" Strassel said.
Bureaucratic Resistance
Within the federal bureaucracy, there is a "vast swath of unelected officials" who have "a great deal of power to slow things
down, mess things up, file the whistleblower complaints, leak information, actively engage against the president's policies," Strassel
said.
"It's their job to implement his agenda. And yet a lot of them are part of the Resistance, too," she said.
Data shows that in the lead-up to the 2016 presidential election, government bureaucrats overwhelmingly contributed toward the
Clinton campaign over the Trump campaign.
Ninety-five percent, or about $1.9 million, of bureaucrats' donations went to Clinton, according to
The Hill's analysis of donations from federal workers up until September 2016. In particular, employees at the Department of
Justice gave 97 percent of their donations to Clinton. For the State Department, it was even higher -- 99 percent.
"Imagine being a CEO and showing up and knowing that 95 percent of your workforce despises you and doesn't want you to be there,"
Strassel said.
Strassel pointed to when former acting Attorney General Sally Yates, a holdover from the Obama administration, publicly questioned
the constitutionality of Trump's immigration ban and directed Justice Department employees to disobey the order.
"It was basically a call to arms," Strassel said. "What she should've done is honorably resigned if she felt that she could
not in any way enforce this duly issued executive order.
"It really kicked off what we have seen ever since then: The nearly daily leaks from the administration, the whistleblower
complaints," as well as "all kind of internal foot-dragging and outright obstruction to the president's agenda."
According to a
report by the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, in Trump's first 126 days in office, his administration
"faced 125 leaked stories -- one leak a day -- containing information that is potentially damaging to national security under the
standards laid out in a 2009 Executive Order signed by President Barack Obama."
Activist Media
Strassel says the media has played a critical role in bolstering the anti-Trump Resistance.
"I've been a reporter for 25 years," Strassel said.
"I've always felt that the media leaned left. That wasn't a surprise to anyone. "But what we've seen over the past three years
is something entirely different. This is the media actively engaging on one side of a partisan warfare. It's overt."
Along the way, the media have largely abandoned journalistic standards, "whether it be the use of anonymous sources, whether it
be putting uncorroborated accusations into the paper, whether it's using biased sources for information and cloaking them as neutral
observers," she said.
Among the many examples of media misinformation cited in Strassel's book is a December 2017 CNN piece that claimed to have evidence
that then-candidate Trump and his son Donald Trump Jr. had been offered early access to hacked emails from the Democratic National
Committee. But it turned out
the date was wrong . Trump
Jr. had received an email about the WikiLeaks release one day after WikiLeaks had made the documents public.
"If it hurts Donald Trump, they're on board," Strassel said. And in many cases, the attacks on Trump have been contradictory.
"He's either the dunce you claim he is every day or he's the most sophisticated Manchurian candidate that the world has ever
seen. You can't have it both ways.
"He's either a dictator and an autocrat who is consolidating power around himself to rule with an iron fist, or he's the evil
conservative who's cutting regulations."
Contrary to claims of authoritarianism, Trump has significantly decreased the size of the federal government. Notably, he reduced
the Federal Register, a collection of all the national government's rules and regulations, to the lowest it's been since Bill Clinton's
first year in office.
"You can't be a libertarian dictator," Strassel said.
In addition to the barrage of attacks on Trump, the media has actively sought to "de-legitimize anybody who has a different viewpoint
than they do, or who is reporting the facts and the story in a way other than they would like them to be presented."
"They would love to make it sound as though none of us are worthy of writing about this story," she said.
"The media is supposed to be our guardrails, right? When a political party transgresses a political boundary, they're supposed
to say 'No, that's beyond the pale.'"
Instead, "they indulged this behavior," Strassel said.
"We had a media cheerleading the FBI for meddling in American politics. Can you ever imagine a time in American history where
the media would have played such a role?
"In a way, I blame that for so much else that has gone wrong."
Long-Term Consequences
Strassel says the actions taken by the Resistance will have long-term consequences for America.
"I keep warning my friends on the other side of the aisle: Think about the precedent you are setting here," Strassel said.
For example, if Joe Biden wins the presidency in 2020
but Republicans take back the House, would the Republican-dominated House immediately launch impeachment proceedings against Biden
for alleged corruption in Ukraine?
"I wouldn't necessarily use the word [corruption], but there's a lot of Republicans who happily would. And if they thought
they'd get another shot at the White House, why not?" Strassel said.
It's short-term thinking, she said, just like Sen. Harry Reid's decision in 2013 to drop the number of votes needed to overcome
a filibuster for lower-court judges.
"Did he really stop to think about the fact that it paved the way for Republicans to get rid of the filibuster for Supreme
Court judges?" Strassel said.
If there's any rule in Washington, "it's that when you set the bar low, it just keeps going lower," Strassel said.
"Donald Trump is going to be president for at most another five years. But the actions and the destruction that's coming with
some of this could be with us for a very long time," she said.
"Should anyone allow their deep disregard for one particular man to so change the structure and the fabric of the country?"
Rachel Maddow's trademark pouty-face got a workout as she strained to imagine " what the
thing is that Durham might be looking into." Yes, that's a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside
an enigma, all right with a sputtering fuse sticking out of it.
... ... ...
Over in the locked ward of CNN, Andy Cooper and Jeff Toobin attempted to digest the criminal
investigation news as if someone had ordered in a platter of shit sandwiches for the green room
just before air-time. Toobin pretended to not know exactly who the mysterious Joseph Misfud
was, and struggled to even pronounce his name
... ... ...
As for impeachment, ringmaster Rep. Adam Schiff is surely steaming straight into his own
historic Joe McCarthy moment when somebody of incontestable standing denounces him as a fraud
and a scoundrel and the mysterious workings of nonlinear behavior tips the political mob past a
criticality threshold, shifting the weight of consensus out of darkness and madness. It has
happened before in history.
"... The difference between the reality that we perceive and the way it is portrayed in the media is so stark that sometimes I am not sure whether it is me who is insane or the world - the MSM and the cool-aid drinking libtards whose animosity against Trump won't let them distinguish black from white. Not that they were ever able to understand the real state of affairs. Discussions with them have always been about them regurgitating the MSM talking points without understanding any of it. ..."
The difference between the reality that we perceive and the way it is portrayed in the
media is so stark that sometimes I am not sure whether it is me who is insane or the world -
the MSM and the cool-aid drinking libtards whose animosity against Trump won't let them
distinguish black from white. Not that they were ever able to understand the real state of
affairs. Discussions with them have always been about them regurgitating the MSM talking
points without understanding any of it.
While it will always be mystifying to me why so many people on the street blindly support
America fighting and dying in the middle east, the support of the MSM and the paid hacks for
eternal war is no surprise. I hope they get to send their children and grandchildren to these
wars. More than that, I hope we get out of these wars. Trump might be able to put an end to
it, and not just in Syria, if he wins a second term, which he will if he is allowed to
contest the next election. There is however a chance that the borg will pull the rug from
under him and bar him from the elections. Hope that doesn't come to pass.
Commentator ben and others
critizised yesterday's post:
b, I've been a participant at this site for 14yrs, and I don't believe I've ever seen your
take on any subject more "off base", than your take on DJT.
This "man" has never been anything else but a grifter and giant con. Virtually everything
he has done, he's done to enrich himself and his family. That is, besides deconstruct the U$
govt. to enrich his class of people, (the malignantly rich) by dialing back regulations that
protect everyday Americans from the greed of the mega-corporations.
He's a sycophant for the corporate monsters who now own the U$A. Anything and everything
he's done, isn't because he is such an egalitarian, it's for his personal enrichment, and the
monsters he works for.
When they're done with him, they'll throw him under the bus, just like all the rest of
us...
I agree with ben's characterization of Trump. I dislike most of his policies. But
that does not change the fact that Donald Trump is the elected president of the United States
and that he is thereby entitled to direct its foreign policies as he sees fit.
Ben's and my opinion about Trump do not invalidate the point I made. Trump policies,
especially in international relations, are getting sabotaged or co-opted by the Borg ,
the unelected establishment in the various departments and think tanks. This is a dangerous
phenomenon that, more or less, hinders every elected president, especially those who want to
make peace. It should be resisted.
The people in leading positions of the executive work "at the pleasure of the president".
Their task is to execute his policies. When they refrain from doing so or implement their own
preferences they create a mess.
Consider two additional examples, both published yesterday, which describe how James
Jeffrey, the Special Representative for Syria Engagement, tried to
sabotage Trump's decision to leave Syria and, while doing that, misled the Kurds:
A State Department official told a senior Syrian Kurdish leader during a meeting in
Washington that the United States would not fully withdraw its forces from northeast Syria
and advised her administration not to engage with Bashar al-Assad's government or with
Russia.
According to two sources familiar with the Monday, October 22 meeting, a senior member of
Washington's diplomatic team is said to have become angry and told Ilham Ahmed, President of
the Executive Committee of the Syrian Democratic Council, that the U.S. will not allow the
SDC to arrange a deal with the Assad regime or Russia for protection against the Turkey-led
attack.
...
SDC officials told The Defense Post that American officials in the past have promised they
would not withdraw U.S. forces until a political settlement was in place to secure their
future in the Syrian political system.
Trump had long announced that the U.S. military will leave Syria. He had made no promises to
the Kurds. The State Department official did not do his job but contradicted Trump's
policies.
The National Interest has learned from multiple sources about tense meetings between
SDC diplomats and State Department officials who oversee the Trump administration's policy on
Syria. The State Department repeatedly pushed for the SDC to work with Turkish-backed
Islamist rebels while berating Syrian Kurdish officials and refusing to listen to their
concerns, according to multiple sources.
One source with firsthand knowledge of the screaming session told the National
Interest that Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Joel Rayburn, who is a special envoy
for Syria, yelled at SDC officials and broke a pencil in a translator's face. Two sources
with secondhand knowledge confirmed this version of events.
"[Rayburn] loves the Syrian Islamist groups," one of the three sources said. "He thinks
they can counter Iran. He is dreaming."
"He is pushing [the SDC] to meet with jihadists," the source added.
To tell the anarcho-marxist YPG/PKK Kurds to unite with Erdogan's Jihadis is an absolutely
crazy idea. Neither the Kurds nor Erdogan would ever agree to a partnership. These were
impossible policies. They made no sense at all.
Jeffrey and his shop clearly worked against Trump's orders and against U.S. interests.
Jeffrey clearly favors Turkey where he once worked as U.S. ambassador and, above all,
Israel:
In addition to the uptick in tense verbal exchanges, the three different sources described to
the National Interest how State Department officials attempted to condemn the brutal
murder of Kurdish-Syrian politician Hevrin Khalaf only to have their efforts waylayed by
Ambassador James Jeffrey, who oversees anti-ISIS efforts. Jeffrey blocked the statement, they
said.
...
Now, even as U.S. troops are stepping aside to allow Turkey to attack U.S.-backed Syrian
Kurdish forces, Jeffrey's team is floating plans to peel off Arab components of the Syrian
Democratic Forces to build a counter-Iran force far from the Turkish border.
It is Jeffrey who is pressing for a continued U.S. occupation of Syria's oilfields. These
are not Trump's policies, but contradictions to them.
When [Trump in December 2018] told his advisers that he wanted to withdraw U.S. forces from
Syria, he meant it. The message should have been clear: devise an orderly withdrawal plan.
But that is not what happened. Instead, efforts and attention were geared towards U.S.
forces remaining indefinitely in Syria.
One can criticize Trump for not selecting advisors and envoys who follow his directions. But
Trump is a New Yorker businessman and not a politician with decades of experience in
Washington. He does not know who he can trust. He has to proceed by trial and error until he
finds people who are willing to go work with him against those permanent powers that usually
drive U.S. foreign policy.
In a congress hearing yesterday James Jeffrey
admitted (vid) that Trump did not consult him before his phone call with Erdogan.
Erdogan could show that he was fighting against the PKK terrorists and prevented their
attempts to become a proto-state. Trump could hold his campaign promise of removing U.S.
troops from useless foreign interventions. Syria regained its northeast and the important
economic resources of that area. Russia gained global prestige and additional influence in
the Middle East.
We will have to wait for Trump's (and Putin's) memoir to learn how much of this has been
coordinated behind the scenes.
I for one count this as a major foreign policy achievement for Trump and I am happy with
this
outcome .
"... Clearly, the US hopes wrench Turkey from the Russian embrace. Moscow's studied indifference toward the US-Turkish cogitations betrays its uneasiness. Conceivably, Erdogan will expect Putin to take a holistic view, considering Russia's flourishing and high lucrative economic and military ties with Turkey and the imperative to preserve the momentum of Russia-Turkey relationship. ..."
"... If the US policy in Syria in recent years promoted the Kurdish identity, it has now swung to the other extreme of stoking the fires of Turkish revanchism. This is potentially catastrophic for regional stability. ..."
"... the main outcome will be that Turkey feels it has western support for its long-term occupation of Syrian territory. ..."
"... Arguably, US expects Turkey's cooperation to strengthen its strategy in Syria (and Iraq) where it seeks to contain Iran's influence. From Ankara, Pompeo travelled to Jerusalem to brief Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu. " ..."
Now, [..] the sense of betrayal among the Kurds [..] is matched only by their outrage at who
will move in: Turkish soldiers supported by Syrian fighters the United States had long
rejected as extremists, criminals and thugs .
...
The deadly battles [..] have also given new leeway to Syrian fighters once considered too
extreme or unruly to receive American military support.
...
Grandly misnamed the Syrian National Army, this coalition of Turkish-backed militias is in
fact largely composed of the dregs of the eight-year-old conflict's failed rebel movement.
Early in the war [..] the military and the C.I.A. sought to train and equip moderate,
trustworthy rebels to fight the government and the Islamic State.
A few of those now fighting in the northeast took part in those failed programs, but most
were rejected as too extreme or too criminal . Some have expressed extremist sensibilities or
allied with jihadist groups.
The reality is the opposite of what the NYT claims. The majority of the groups now
fighting with the Turkish army had earlier received support from the U.S. Even their nominal
leader is the same one who the U.S. earlier paid, armed and promoted.
On August 31, the Syrian National Coalition came together and elected the president and the
cabinet of the Syrian Interim Government in which Abdurrahman Mustafa was elected president
and Salim Idriss was elected defense minister . With the new cabinet, the Syrian Interim
Government became more active on the ground, started visiting each faction of the National
Army, and accelerated the stalled negotiations to unite the National Army and the NLF under
one command.
Among the 41 factions that joined the merger, 15 are from the NLF and 26 from the National
Army. Thirteen of these factions were formed after the United States cut its support to the
armed Syrian opposition. Out of the 28 factions, 21 were previously supported by the United
States , three of them via the Pentagon's program to combat DAESH. Eighteen of these factions
were supplied by the CIA via the MOM Operations Room in Turkey, a joint intelligence
operation room of the 'Friends of Syria' to support the armed opposition. Fourteen factions
of the 28 were also recipients of the U.S.-supplied TOW anti-tank guided missiles.
The SETA study provides a detailed list of the groups involved in the current Turkish
invasion of Syria. Not only is their commander Salim Idriss a former U.S. stooge but the
majority of these groups did receive U.S. support and weapons.
The New York Times claim that only "a few of those" who now fight the YPG Kurds
took part in the U.S. programs is a blatant lie.
The NYT piece quotes three 'experts' who testify that the 'rebels' the U.S. had
armed are really, really bad:
"These are the misfits of the conflict, the worst of the worst," said Hassan Hassan, a
Syrian-born scholar tracking the fighting. "They have been notorious for extortion, theft and
banditry, more like thugs than rebels -- essentially mercenaries."
It was Hassan Hassan who since the start of the conflict lobbied for
arming the rebels from his perch at the UAE's media flagship The National .
Another 'expert' quoted is the Israeli propagandist Elizabeth Tsurkov:
"They are basically gangsters, but they are also racist toward Kurds and other minorities,"
said Elizabeth Tsurkov, a fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. "No human should
be subjected to their rule."
Tsurkov earlier
lauded the Israeli hiring and arming of the very same 'Syrian rebels'.
Another 'expert' quoted by the Times is a co-chair of the 'congressionally
sponsored bipartisan Syrian Study Group':
"We are turning areas that had been controlled by our allies over to the control of criminals
or thugs, or that in some cases groups were associated or fighting alongside Al Qaeda," said
Ms. Stroul, of the Syrian Study Group. "It is a profound and epic strategic blunder."
The 'Syrian Study Group' wants to prolong the war on Syria. Ms.
Stroul and her co-chair Michael Singh reside at the Washington
Institute which is a part of the Zionist lobby and has long
argued for 'arming the Syrian rebels'.
The Times report does not mention that the 'experts' it quotes all once lobbied for
arming the very same groups they are now lamenting about. When these groups ran rampant in the
areas they took from the Syrian government the Times and its 'experts' were lauding
them all the way. No effort to support them was big enough. All crimes they committed were
covered up or excused.
Now, as the very same rebels attack the Kurds, they are suddenly called out for being what
they always have been.
Posted by b on October 20, 2019 at 11:19 UTC |
Permalink
Hah! More lies from the NYT....mainstream media in the west has deteriorated into a
propaganda channel for the Military Industrial Complex and the oligarchy, pumping out a never
ending tide of lying filth aimed at more and more war (more and more weapon sales) and
promoting and preserving predatory capitalism (more money for the Billionaire class, less for
you).
In my own reading of MSM press and my own watching of the MSM Talking Heads I believe I've
indentified 8 techniques that amoral, dangerous, barely competent idiots that have the cheek
to call themselves journalists use to lie to you, the reader/viewer/listener. Here's my
list...
Okay how practical.
Now only is the NYT trying to whitewash themselves by faking, they are also kind enough to do
the same for their Jihadi lovin partners in crime.
How empathic! How sensible! Like a true moral authority.
BTW: It seems my previous claims were right. The Turks made a 180 and allied with the US
again, reviving the NATO allaince. Now that the Kurds are out of the way in Turk-US
relations, US and NATO has much more to offer than Russia, and noe Erdogan has support from
NATO and will not be deterred by Putin.
B, i respect you immensly, but your belief the Turkish invasion was Erdogan doing some secret
Putin plan was unproven at the time, and now, AT LEAST since the US-Turk deal, is
obsolte.
Read M. K. BHADRAKUMARs blog, he thought like you, but after the US-Turk deal, EVERYTHING
HAS CHANGED:
"The extraordinary US overture to Turkey regarding northern Syria resulted in a joint
statement on Thursday, whose ramifications can be rated only in the fulness of time , as
several intersecting tracks are running.
The US objectives range from Trump's compulsions in domestic politics to the future
trajectory of the US policies toward Syria and the impact of any US-Turkish rapprochement on
the geopolitics of the Syrian conflict.
Meanwhile, the US-Turkish joint statement creates new uncertainties. The two countries
have agreed on a set of principles -- Turkey's crucial status as a NATO power ; security of
Christian minorities in Syria; prevention of an ISIS surge; creation of a "safe zone" on
Turkish-Syrian border; a 120-hour ceasefire ("pause") in Turkish military operations leading
to a permanent halt, hopefully.
The devil lies in the details. Principally, there is no transparency regarding the future
US role in Syria . The Kurds and the US military will withdraw from the 30-kilometre broad
buffer zone. What thereafter? In the words of the US Vice-President Mike Pence at the press
conference in Ankara on Thursday,
"Kurdish population in Syria, with which we have a strong relationship, will continue to
endure. The United States will always be grateful for our partnership with SDF in defeating
ISIS, but we recognise the importance and the value of a safe zone to create a buffer between
Syria proper and the Kurdish population and -- and the Turkish border. And we're going to be
working very closely ."
To be sure, everything devolves upon the creation of the safe zone. Turkey envisages a
zone stretching across the entire 440 kilometre border with Syria upto Iraqi border, while
the US special envoy James Jeffrey remains non-committal, saying it is up to the "Russians
and the Syrians in other areas of the northeast and in Manbij to the west of the Euphrates"
to agree to Turkey's maximalist stance.
Herein lies the rub. Jeffrey would know Ankara will never get its way with Moscow and
Damascus. In fact, President Bashar al-Assad told in unequivocal terms to a high-level
Russian delegation visiting Damascus on Friday, "At the current phase it is necessary to
focus on putting an end to aggression and on the pullout of all Turkish, US and other forces
illegally present in Syrian territories."
Is there daylight between Moscow and Damascus on this highly sensitive issue? Turkish
President Recep Erdogan's forthcoming meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Sochi
on October 22 may provide an answer.
Clearly, the US hopes wrench Turkey from the Russian embrace. Moscow's studied
indifference toward the US-Turkish cogitations betrays its uneasiness. Conceivably, Erdogan
will expect Putin to take a holistic view, considering Russia's flourishing and high
lucrative economic and military ties with Turkey and the imperative to preserve the momentum
of Russia-Turkey relationship.
If the US policy in Syria in recent years promoted the Kurdish identity, it has now
swung to the other extreme of stoking the fires of Turkish revanchism. This is potentially
catastrophic for regional stability. The heart of the matter is that while Turkey's
concerns over terrorism and the refugee problem are legitimate, Operation Peace Spring has
deeper moorings: Turkey's ambitions as regional power and its will to correct the perceived
injustice of territorial losses incurred during the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire. The
ultra-nationalistic Turkish commentator (and staunch supporter of Erdogan) wrote this week in
the pro-government daily Yeni Safak:
"Turkey once again revived the millennium-old political history on Anatolian
territory. It took action with a mission that will carry the legacy of the Seljuks, the
Ottomans, the Republic of Turkey to the next stage It is not possible to set an equation in
this region by excluding Turkey – it will not happen. A map cannot be drawn that
excludes Turkey – it will not happen. A power cannot be established without Turkey
– it will not happen. Throughout history, both the rise and fall of this country has
altered the region the mind in Turkey is now a regional mind, a regional conscience, a
regional identity. President Erdoğan is the pioneer, the bearer of that political
legacy from the Seljuks, the Ottomans, and the Turkish Republic to the future."
Trump is unlikely to pay attention to the irredentist instincts in Turkish regional
policies. Trump's immediate concerns are to please the evangelical Christian constituency in
the US and silence his critics who allege that he threw the Kurds under the bus or that a
ISIS resurgence is imminent. But there is no way the US can deliver on the tall promises made
in the joint statement. The Kurds have influential friends in the Pentagon. (See the article
by Gen. Joseph Votel, former chief of the US Central Command, titled The Danger of Abandoning
our Partners.) Nonetheless, the main outcome will be that Turkey feels it has western
support for its long-term occupation of Syrian territory.
All in all, it's a "win-win" for Erdogan insofar as he got what he wanted -- US' political
and diplomatic support for "the kind of long-term buffer zone that will ensure peace and
stability in the region", to borrow the words of Vice President Pence. A Turkish withdrawal
from Syrian territory can now be virtually ruled out. State secretary Mike Pompeo added at
the press conference in Ankara on Thursday that there is "a great deal of work to do in the
region. There's lots of challenges that remain."
Pompeo said Erdogan's "decision to work alongside President Trump will be one that I think
will benefit Turkey a great deal." Arguably, US expects Turkey's cooperation to
strengthen its strategy in Syria (and Iraq) where it seeks to contain Iran's influence. From
Ankara, Pompeo travelled to Jerusalem to brief Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu. "
Add to that, that the Turks now threaten SAA with "full out war".
John Helmers latest post sheds light on the fact, that the Russian military leadership and
the Stavka in general has warned Putin since the Idlib deal again and again to no avail that
the Turks would do this.
Which seems now to have been proven true since the US-Turk deal, which in essence changed
everything overnight.
As the extremity of propaganda in mainstream news becomes more obvious a few American
consumers of news do begin to have doubts. Most continue to be entirely uncritical. The
barflies here are in the habit of being critical, analytic, skeptical when reading any news
from any source. That is not the American way.
The cohort of educated prosperous middle class readers of the NYT has total faith in NYT.
Having the paper edition on the doorstep in the morning is a badge of membership. A totem
that gives them status. Questioning any word or phrase or clause that appears in print is
wrong. Asking questions means something is wrong with you. The Times is never wrong. Those
who doubt the Times have mental health issues. Or they are alt-right. Or they are deplorable.
For the intended audience the propaganda feed is always completely effective. Readers of the
Times will never untie the knot.
As the extremity of propaganda in mainstream news becomes more obvious a few American
consumers of news do begin to have doubts. Most continue to be entirely uncritical. The
barflies here are in the habit of being critical, analytic, skeptical when reading any news
from any source. That is not the American way.
The cohort of educated prosperous middle class readers of the NYT has total faith in NYT.
Having the paper edition on the doorstep in the morning is a badge of membership. A totem
that gives them status. Questioning any word or phrase or clause that appears in print is
wrong. Asking questions means something is wrong with you. The Times is never wrong. Those
who doubt the Times have mental health issues. Or they are alt-right. Or they are deplorable.
For the intended audience the propaganda feed is always completely effective. Readers of the
Times will never untie the knot.
"Why" always seem like a good question, eh? The NYT lies...why?
This quote caught my attention> " The powerful and historical walls to study today are
those of the Kremlin." (Fisk, information clearing house)
As it was for Winston's "Ministry of Truth" (Orwell) the NYT article is necessary. That's
the significance - not the lies but the necessity of lies...
And under what situations are lies required? Think about that when (if) you read Fisk's
analysis. (I am not a fan of Fisk, but his views in this instance align with my own rather
well)
Fisk article title> "Trump's disgrace in the Middle East is the death of an empire.
Vladimir Putin is Caesar now"
Some may recall that the monks on Mt Athos quietly elected VVP as the Byzantine Emperor
(about 2 years ago) - the Eastern branch of Christianity continues whilst nominally
christian(western) branch is fake and perverse ritual and worse...while his Popeness in Rome
has as Luther saw... I think Luther said it was a vast brothel...
Does this need Daniel to read the writing...
which is?
mene mene tekel upharsin (well somebody said..)
By the way my vote for the clown-man was cast because I reasoned the best esthetic feature
in the freak parade at the end of empire would be a clown act. I am indebted to the late
George Carlin for the symbolism.
I am proved right? I think so. Dogs bark and caravan continue...and many expect dollars to
go weimarish. then?
Ahh.. "experts"... Hassan Hassan is not a Syrian-born scholar, but a Syrian "born-scholar"...
Nuance. Or is it "a natural-born-scholar"? ...
As for Israeli propagandist Elizabeth Tsurkov, those very same "bad extremists" she now
repudiates on Twitter she once excused for mutilating children "because they were deeply
traumatised"... A very coherent "expert"!!
From The Grayzone, Ben Norton and Aaron Maté (and Dan Cohen) about Tsurkov: Western
pundits who lobbied for Syrian rebels now admit they are jihadist extremists, Oct. 16 (about
Tsurkov, go about 1:45 and the rest): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tkg4wJFpc_E
Now Tsurkov seems rather busy rooting for some "color revolution" to take place in Lebanon.
Where is Israel?...
As for the picture of Guy Verhofstadt next to Salim Idriss, it seems very aptly to epitomize
the EU "politics" about the Syrian conflict: "How tasty those American boots are!! Wanna lick
more American boots, please!!"
Ahh.. "experts"... Hassan Hassan is not a Syrian-born scholar, but a Syrian
"born-scholar"... Nuance. Or is it "a natural-born-scholar"? ...
If he is writing nothing but lies he is not any kind of scholar at all except a
fake scholar. Nor is he a journalist. He is a propagandist, nothing else. Call a spade
a spade.
-----
Ahhh, I've just posted to the Media and Pundits thread, but it should have come here much
more sensibly. Anyway the post is top a new page over there, on Trump and Syria's oil
fields.
The new narrative seems to me to have everything to do with Turkey and nothing to do with
Russia.
A comment in the last Syria-related thread.
Then again there are so many loose ends concerning Turkey that almost anything could
happen (coup attempt and "cleansing", dead ambassadors, Cyprus, Greece, Armenia, Syria, ISIS
and others, Kurds, weapon deals, shooting down a Russian plane, annoying Europe and the EU as
well as the US and just about everybody, some only politically but many militarily as well
(at least the US, Germany, and France), the list surely goes on).
As I commented I'm not convinced Turkey will survive this, are they able to stop and
reverse if they find they've set themselves up?
Turkey might be playing a double-game, or plan to betray one side - whether it'll be US or
Russia remains to be seen. But that this is all a clever NATO plot conflicts a bit with the
fact that the US is systematically destroying its bases in NE Syria. Sure, that might be
because they don't want the SAA to use them and to plunder them for techs and scraps, but
that would also make things more complicated for a Turkish take-over - it will surely
considerably slow the process if the Turkish army and its lackeys have to do everything back
from scratches.
Besides, odds are that Putin has taken that into consideration and has some contingency
measures ready, just in case - not that they could fully stop Turkish aggression in its
tracks in a couple of hours, but still.
Meanwhile Nicholas Kristof at the NYTimes also is whitewashing Obama's Syrian policy. He
conveniently forgets Timber Sycamore (the CIA's second largest operation, over $1 billion) to
overthrow Assad - 2013-2017, that allowed ISIS to get a firm foothold.
Trump Takes Incoherence and Inhumanity and Calls It Foreign Policy
"It was just five years ago that an American president, faced with a crisis on Syria's
border, acted decisively and honorably."
"Barack Obama responded with airstrikes and a rescue operation in 2014 when the Islamic
State started a genocide against members of the Yazidi sect, slaughtering men and forcing
women and girls into sexual slavery. Obama's action, along with a heroic intervention by
Kurdish fighters, saved tens of thousands of Yazidi lives."
"Contrast Obama's move, successfully working with allies to avert a genocide, with
President Trump's betrayal this month of those same Kurdish partners in a way that handed a
victory to the Islamic State, Turkey, Syria, Iran -- and, of course, Russia, ."
@ Walter 5: "I reasoned the best esthetic feature in the freak parade at the end of empire
would be a clown act"
Just love it!!
On a side note. Last night met with a new friend couple for dinner. Both are highly
educated and work in technical professions. Accordingly they pride themselves in logical
thinking ability. I wanted to check out their political leanings and asked about Trump's
troop pullback in Syria. Not surprisingly, both were outraged. When asked about their
rationale the expected answer was Trump's betrayal of the Kurds. I politely pointed out that
our troops' presence in Syria violates both domestic and international laws. That was news to
them!!! One of them did lamely point out that Assad is a brutal dictator. Being new
"friends", we refrained from further in depth political discussions. That incidence further
convinced me of the impending total collapse of the empire.
There has been some discussion regarding Syrian oilfields, here's some more on that.
The Syrian Democratic Council is the political wing of the Syrian Democratic Forces in the
Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria, including sites of Syrian oilfields. The
SDC's stated mission is working towards the implementation of a "secular, democratic and
decentralized system for all of Syria. The Syrian Democratic Council was established on 10
December 2015 in Al-Malikiyah.
Here is a
letter dated Jan 21, 2019 from the SDC to the CEO of Global Development Corporation (GDC)
Inc. in New Jersey, "a formal acceptance of your company, GDC, to represent the Syrian
Democratic Council (SDC) in all matters related to the sale of oil owned by SDC . .the
estimate off production of crude oil to be 400,000 barrels per day. . .current daily
production is 125,000 barrels. ."
The CEO of New Jersey's GDC (no mention on the web) is Mordechai (Moti) Kahana (Hebrew:
מוטי כהנא; born February 28, 1968,
Jerusalem, Israel) is an Israeli-American businessman and philanthropist. He is most notable
for his work for the civil war refugees in Syria. . .Since 2011 he heads a group of Israeli
businessmen and American Jews who travel to the Syrian refugee camps to provide humanitarian
aid to Syrian Civil War refugees.. . He paid for Senator John McCain's trip to war-torn
Syria. . . here
.
The GDC mailing address is the Roxbury Mall, 275 Route 10 E, Succasunna, NJ.
re: Salim Idriss a former U.S. stooge
WSJ, Jun 12, 2013 Rebels Plead for Weapons in Face of Syrian Onslaught
A top Syrian rebel commander has issued a desperate plea for weapons from Western
governments to prevent the fall of his forces in Aleppo, pushing the Obama administration
to decide quickly whether to agree to arm rebels for the first time or risk the loss of
another rebel stronghold just days after the regime's biggest victory.
Gen. Salim Idris, the top Syrian rebel commander backed by the West, issued a detailed
request in recent days to the U.S., France and Britain for antitank missiles, antiaircraft
weapons and hundreds of thousands of ammunition rounds, according to U.S. and European
officials and Mr. Idris's request to the Americans, a copy of which was reviewed by The
Wall Street Journal.
Gen. Idris's call comes at a pivotal moment in Syria's war, following rapid-fire gains
by Bashar al-Assad forces, including last week's recapture of Qusayr, a strategic town near
the Lebanon border. Fighters from Hezbollah, which were crucial in helping the Assad regime
to take Qusayr, are now massing around Aleppo, say rebels and Western officials. . .
here
This was after H. Clinton (SecState) and D. Petraeus (CIA) wanted to fully arm the
US-supported rebels but President Obama declined. Clinton had resigned Feb 1, 2013.
thanks b... stellar writing and comments throughout... i especially liked your last line
:
"Now, as the very same rebels attack the Kurds, they are suddenly called out for being what
they always have been."
@13 don bacon - the address says it all.. The GDC mailing address is the Roxbury Mall, 275
Route 10 E, Succasunna, NJ.
regarding the nyt, larry johnson has a post up on sst
here.. i quote from it :
"Let us start with a reminder of how damn corrupt the NY Times and its reporters are.
Consider this paragraph penned by Adam Goldman and William Rashbaum:
Closely overseen by Mr. Barr, Mr. Durham and his investigators have sought help from
governments in countries that figure into right-wing attacks and unfounded conspiracy
theories about the Russia investigation, stirring criticism that they are trying to deliver
Mr. Trump a political victory rather than conducting an independent review.
"Unfounded conspiracy theories?" What a damn joke."
Wow! Quite a knee jerk reaction by the NY Times to Max
Blumenthal's 16 Oct article in The Grayzone , "The US has backed 21 of the 28
'crazy' militias leading Turkey's brutal invasion of northern Syria," which I linked to
Friday. It's great to see such a reaction to what for most people's an obscure online
publication.
Notice of MoA website change: I must now type in my name and email every time I want to
comment after years of never needing to do so. My issue might be related to the one ben
encountered in thinking he couldn't comment, which you can't if those two fields aren't
filled.
"Strong, credible allegations of high-level criminal activity can bring down a government.
When the government lacks an effective, fact-based defense, other techniques must be
employed. The success of these techniques depends heavily upon a cooperative, compliant press
and a mere token opposition party..."
Trump should not have sent Pence and Pompeo to Turkey. They will do everything possible to
derail the rollback of the US in Syria. They are both more subtle than Bolton, but they are
both neocons. If you want anything done, you have to do it yourself.
So, it looks like that's it for America, folks. Putin has gone and done it again. He and his
conspiracy of Putin-Nazis have "hacked," or "influenced," or "meddled in" our democracy.
Unless Admiral Bill McRaven and his special ops cronies can ginny up
a last-minute military coup , it's four more years of the Trumpian Reich, Russian soldiers
patrolling the streets, martial law, concentration camps, gigantic banners with the faces of
Trump and Putin hanging in the football stadiums, mandatory Sieg-heiling in the public schools,
National Vodka-for-Breakfast Day, death's heads, babushkas, the whole nine yards.
"... This is when it became clear it wasn't just political operatives pushing fake news about Russian influence, but that "respected" mass media would be leading the charge for them. The rest is pretty much history. MSNBC, CNN, The Washington Post, etc have been spewing outlandish Russiagate nonsense for three years straight, and despite the complete failure of special counsel Robert Mueller to find any evidence of Trump-Russia collusion, these agents of empire refuse to stop. ..."
"... Americans like to sneer at more transparently unfree societies around the world, but when you think about the disturbing implications of former spooks delivering news to the public, one can't help but conclude that mass media in 2019 looks like a gigantic propaganda campaign targeting U.S. citizens. Moreover, as can be seen by the recent attacks by Clinton and her allies in the media on Gabbard, they aren't easing up. ..."
"... Comey was a senior vice president for Lockheed Martin before returning to Washington ..."
"... Excuse me, the voting going on up there for sanctions on Russia for various bogus things has been pretty much unanimous and bipartisan. ..."
The corporate revolution will collapse if we refuse to buy what they are selling – their ideas, their version of history, their
wars, their weapons, their notion of inevitability.
– Arundhati Roy
Last week, Hillary Clinton called Tulsi Gabbard (and Jill Stein) Russian agents on a podcast. More
specifically :
"I'm not making any predictions, but I think they've got their eye on someone who's currently in the Democratic primary and
are grooming her to be the third-party candidate. She's the favorite of the Russians," said Clinton, apparently referring to Rep.
Gabbard, who's been accused of receiving support from Russian bots and the Russian news media. "They have a bunch of sites and
bots and other ways of supporting her so far." She added: "That's assuming Jill Stein will give it up, which she might not because
she's also a Russian asset. Yeah, she's a Russian asset -- I mean, totally. They know they can't win without a third-party candidate.
So I don't know who it's going to be, but I will guarantee you they will have a vigorous third-party challenge in the key states
that they most needed."
Tulsi subsequently responded to this slanderous accusation with a series of devastating blows.
Her tweets set off a firestorm, and even if you're as disillusioned by presidential politics as myself, you couldn't help but
cheer wildly that someone with a major political platform finally stated without any hint of fear or hesitation exactly what so many
Americans across the ideological spectrum feel.
Of course, this has far wider implications than a high profile feud between these two. The "let's blame Russia for Hillary's loss"
epidemic of calculated stupidity driven by Ellen-Democrats and their mouthpieces across corporate mass media began immediately after
the election. I know about it on a personal level because this website was an early target of the neoliberal-led new McCarthyism
courtesy of a ridiculous and libelous smear in the Washington Post over Thanksgiving weekend 2016 (see:
Liberty Blitzkrieg Included on Washington Post Highlighted Hit List of "Russian Propaganda" Websites) .
This is when it became clear it wasn't just political operatives pushing fake news about Russian influence, but that "respected"
mass media would be leading the charge for them. The rest is pretty much history. MSNBC, CNN, The Washington Post, etc have been
spewing outlandish Russiagate nonsense for three years straight, and despite the complete failure of special counsel Robert Mueller
to find any evidence of Trump-Russia collusion, these agents of empire refuse to stop. The whole charade seems more akin to an intelligence
operation than journalism, which shouldn't be surprising given the proliferation of former intelligence agents throughout mass media
in the Trump era.
Former CIA Director
John Brennan
(2013-17) is the latest superspook to be reborn as a TV newsie. He just
cashed in at
NBC News as a "senior national security and intelligence analyst" and served his first expert views on last Sunday's edition of
Meet the Press .
The Brennan acquisition seeks to elevate NBC to spook parity with CNN, which employs former Director of National Intelligence
James Clapper and former CIA Director
Michael Hayden
in a similar capacity.
Other, lesser-known national security veterans thrive under TV's grow lights. Almost too numerous to list, they include
Chuck Rosenberg
, former acting DEA administrator, chief of staff for FBI Director James B. Comey, and
counselor to former FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III;
Frank Figliuzzi , former chief of FBI counterintelligence;
Juan Zarate , deputy national security adviser under Bush, at NBC; and
Fran
Townsend , homeland security adviser under Bush, at CBS News.
CNN's bulging roster also includes former FBI agent Asha Rangappa
; former FBI agent James Gagliano
; Obama's former deputy national security adviser
Tony Blinken ; former House
Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers ; senior
adviser to the National Security Council during the Obama administration
Samantha Vinograd ; retired CIA operations officer
Steven L. Hall; and
Philip Mudd , also retired from the CIA.
Americans like to sneer at more transparently unfree societies around the world, but when you think about the disturbing implications
of former spooks delivering news to the public, one can't help but conclude that mass media in 2019 looks like a gigantic propaganda
campaign targeting U.S. citizens. Moreover, as can be seen by the recent attacks by Clinton and her allies in the media on Gabbard,
they aren't easing up.
Which brings us to the crux of the issue. Why are they doing this? Why is Clinton, with zero evidence whatsoever, falsely calling
a sitting U.S. Congresswoman, a veteran with two tours in Iraq, and someone polling at only 2% in the Democratic primary a "Russian
asset." Why are they so afraid of Tulsi Gabbard?
It's partly personal. Tulsi was one of only a handful of congressional Democrats to set aside fears of the Clintons and their
mafia-like network to endorse Bernie Sanders early in 2016. In fact, she
stepped
down from her position as vice-chairman of the Democratic National Committee to do so. This is the sort of thing a petty narcissist
like Hillary Clinton could never forgive, but it goes further.
Tulsi's mere presence on stage during recent debates has proven devastating for the Ellen Degeneres wing of the Democratic party.
She effectively ended neoliberal darling Kamala Harris' chances by simply telling the truth about her horrible record, something
no one else in the race had the guts to do.
In other words, Tulsi demolished Kamala Harris and put an end to her primary chances by simply telling the truth about her on
national television. This is how powerful the truth can be when somebody's actually willing to stand up and say it. It's why the
agents of empire -- in charge of virtually all major institutions -- go out of their way to ensure the American public is exposed
to as little truth as possible. It's also why they lie and scream "Russia" instead of debating the actual issues.
But this goes well beyond Tulsi Gabbard. Empire requires constant meddling abroad as well as periodic regime change wars to ensure
compliant puppets are firmly in control of any country with any geopolitical significance. The 21st century has been littered with
a series of disastrous U.S. interventions abroad, while the country back home continues to descend deeper into a neo-feudal oligarchy
with a hunger games style economy. As such, an increasing number of Americans have begun to question the entire premise of imperial
foreign policy.
To the agents of empire, dominant throughout mainstream politics, mega corporations, think-tanks and of course mass media, this
sort of thought crime is entirely unacceptable. In case you haven't noticed, empire is a third-rail of U.S. politics. If you dare
touch the issue, you'll be ruthlessly smeared, without any evidence, as a Russian agent or asset. There's nothing logical about this,
but then again there typically isn't much logic when it comes to psychological operations. They depend on manipulation and triggering
specific emotional responses.
There's a reason people like Hillary Clinton and her minions just yell "Russia" whenever an individual with a platform criticizes
empire and endless war. They know they can't win an argument if they debate the actual issues, so a conscious choice was made to
simply avoid debate entirely. As such, they've decided to craft and spread a disingenuous narrative in which anyone critical of establishment
neocon/neoliberal foreign policy is a Russia asset/agent/bot. This is literally all they've got. These people are telling you 2+2=5
and if you don't accept it, you're a traitorous, Putin-loving nazi with a pee pee tape. And these same people call themselves "liberal."
Importantly, it isn't just a few trollish kooks doing this. It's being spread by some of the most powerful people and institutions
in the country, including of course mass media.
This inane verbal vomit is considered "liberal" news in modern America, a word which has now lost all meaning. Above, we witness
a collection of television mannequins questioning the loyalty of a U.S. veteran who continues to serve in both Congress and the national
guard simply because she dared call out America's perpetually failing foreign policy establishment.
To conclude, it's now clear dissent is only permitted so long as it doesn't become too popular. By polling at 2% in the primary,
it appears Gabbard became too popular, but the truth is she's just a vessel. What's really got the agents of empire concerned is
we may be on the verge of a tipping point within the broader U.S. population regarding regime change wars and empire. This is why
debate needs to be shut down and shut down now. A critical mass of citizens openly questioning establishment foreign policy cannot
be permitted. Those on the fence need to be bullied and manipulated into thinking dissent is equivalent to being a traitor. The national
security state doesn't want the public to even think about such topics, let alone debate them.
Ultimately, if you give up your capacity for reason, for free-thought and for the courage to say what you think about issues of
national significance, you've lost everything. This is what these manipulators want you to do. They want you to shut-up, to listen
to the "experts" who destroy everything they touch, and to be a compliant subject as opposed to an active, empowered citizen. The
answer to such a tactic is to be more bold, more informed and more ethical. They fear truth and empowered individuals more than anything
else. Stand up tall and speak your mind. Pandering to bullies never works.
* * *
Liberty Blitzkrieg is now 100% ad free. To make this a successful, sustainable thing consider the following options. You can become
a Patron . You can visit the
Support Page to donate via PayPal, Bitcoin
or send cash/check in the mail.
For those of us who grew up during the Cold War going to Russia is intense. I have never been so scared in my life as when
that plane touched down at Pulkovo 2. And I though Dulles was a shithole.
Russians love art and they have fantastic museums and fantastic architecture. Food is a bit sketchy but you can make do. No
fat women there that I saw. In fact, you will see some of the most beautiful women in the world there. Trust me on that.
Pelosi is smart enough to know that all roads lead to Putin. But is she smart enough to know that're not just American and
its 'allied' Western 'roads', but now its all the roads in the world.
Because the world finally understands that Putin is the only peacemaker on the scene. And that most of the disputes the international
community is saddled with are a direct result of American foreign policy and the excesses of its economy.
The world is tired of being dragged through Hell at the whim of a handful of American neocon devotees of Paul Wolfowitz and
the fallacious Wolfowitz Doctrine which was credited with having won the Cold War for the West and has been in effect ever since.
Except there seems to be some doubt now who actually won the Cold War with America scrambling to get out of Syria, leaving
behind a symbolic force of a couple of thousand troops.
That's the reason for everything that's going on America today. Russia, under Putin, has turned the tables on Congress, the
neocons, the warmongers, and those politicians and elite who want the Middle East and its vast reserves of oil to continue to
be destabilized by intranational, neighborly hatreds, by terrorism and by America's closest ally, Israel to continue to expand
its borders with its policy of settlements. This problematic situation is scrupulously avoided in America and the West's MSM,
and can only be seen in foreign media. Which brings us back to Putin.
Is he following the strategies of Sun Tzu, who advises you to
'appear weak when you are strong and strong when you are weak.'
'all warfare is based on deception'
'victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first then try to win.'
Hillary Clinton is obviously testing the waters for a last-minute, swoop-in candidacy. She sees Biden deflating and realizes
there's nobody to keep the Democratic nomination firmly in corporate hands. She wants them to beg her, though.
Without Russia, ASSAD would be long gone and IRAN would have been bombed to oblivion, and Greater Israhell would have been
fulfilled and ruling over the MidEast.
In other words, Russia bashing by Jewish-controlled politicians and in Jewish-controlled Western media
is simply PAYBACK .
I am a Russian Agent. Well, not formally but act as one. Only in elections though as Russia forbids (after losing 30 million
dead in WW2) any military or violent interference. Agent may be too strong a word as my actions reflect the beauty of Russian
literature, music and philosophy. (qv Kropotkin, Rimsky Korsakoff etc. etc.) Maybe a spokesman?
In this coming election vote for the agent of your choice. Gabbard, Trump, (Cackles, hang on and wait for this one) or Biden
( on whom we await a conversion). This agency stuff is fun. Can't wait.
The quid pro quo for many Deep State bureaucrats comes after they are no longer in office as typified by jobs as "experts"
with the corrupt news networks. Comey was a senior vice president for Lockheed Martin before returning to Washington.
Trump is outing them all and they are out to destroy him.
If the Russians are so bad, why did we give them our Uranium? Hillary and corrupt Washington Swamp dwellers in action. How
many in Congress opposed the deal? We need Trump to be reelected to Make America Great Again.
I remember in the 80's Democrats would mercilessly lampoon and make fun of Conservatives for their (at the time) hard-line
stance against the Soviet Union and how we should just get over it: peace, love and b*llsh*t. My how times have changed.
You need a scorecard to keep track these days. Barry lampooned Mitt for speaking against the Russians, like they were the 'good
guys' (ahem, 'tell Vlad' and Kills power reset button) Make up your ******* minds people.
Thank you for bringing my attention to Russia. Had it not been for your constant denunciations, I probably would never have
investigated that nation to the extent that I have, and that would have been my loss. Allow me to explain.
As a permanent student of human history and culture, I've traveled to, and studied many different nations, from Japan, China
and Thailand, to Europe, Latin America and the Middle East, but somehow I managed to completely miss Russia. Of course I was familiar
with the Western narrative concerning communism and the USSR - I grew up with that - but I never fully understood Russian culture
until, by your actions, you forced me to look into it.
I've since studied their history intently, and have studied their language to the point where I can at least make myself understood.
I've spoken to Russian expats, read numerous books, watched their TV shows, listened to their music, and have kept a close eye
on current events, including the coup in Ukraine and Russia's response to that event. At this point I feel well enough prepared
to travel to Russia and I'm looking forward to my upcoming trip with great anticipation.
I operate on the basic premise that I'm nobody special - that there are thousands of people just like me with a deep interest
in human affairs, who, like myself, have been prompted to investigate a culture that, for various reasons, has been largely overlooked
in the West. So, on my own and their behalf I thank you for providing the impetus to focus our attention in that regard. It's
probably not what you intended, but it is what it is. Thanks to you, many hundreds, if not thousands of people have now undertaken
a study of Russia and her people, and that can only be a good thing, as the more we know about each other, the less we have to
fear, and the less likely we are to come into conflict with one another.
Bravo well written and right on the mark. If Tulsi wasn't a gun grabber and openly supported the 2nd Amendment she would be
a front runner, only a few steps behind Trump. And by the way, don't trust those 2% Polls. We all know the polls are pure ********.
When one Colonel Gary Powers was shot down in his USAF U2 spy plane in 1960 and captured alive he was asked by his then KGB
interrogators what the difference was between the Republican and Democratic parties.......and he admitted to being at a loss to
explain that there was any fundamental difference at all.
Therein lies the root problem with the American political system. All through the process it arrives at the same outcomes and
it doesnt matter who you vote for.
It could be argued that it is in effect a one party system as both are indistinguishable from each other ultimately as they
push the America PLC agenda.
The entire system is held captive by secretive and "invisible" unelected groups who call the shots and if you push too hard
they have you killed one way or another.....all the esoteric secret societies of any significance are represented.
The question therefore is this; Is America any different to China other than the wallpaper coverings?
To paraphrase Mark Twain; If voting really mattered they wouldn't let you do it.
Those on the fence need to be bullied and manipulated into thinking dissent is equivalent to being a traitor
This is true with Trumptards on this comments board. They unquestionably follow lies, manipulative, and hollow Trump doctrine
without thinking.
Just yesterday there was and idiot spewing out that 'Assange was treasonous' before engaging his cerebral matter to realise
you cannot be a traitor against a country that's not yours.
Being a neoconservative should receive at least as much vitriolic societal rejection as being a Ku Klux Klan member or a child
molester, but neocon pundits are routinely invited on mainstream television outlets to share their depraved perspectives.
Notable quotes:
"... Some of the "virtual facts:" ..."
"... The Soviet Union never ended. Russia is still communist and an inevitable and indeed indispensable enemy of the US. Anyone who challenges that certitude is an obvious agent of the Russian government. ..."
"... Iran is the "greatest supporter of terrorism" in the world." ..."
"... The Syrian Arab Government is an abomination on the scale of Nazi Germany and must be destroyed and replaced by God knows what . ..."
"... Saudi Arabia is a deeply friendly state and ally of the US. ..."
"... It is beyond scary to see just how entrenched and powerful Deep State is and how it involves/controls both political parties ..."
"... I doubt there is any magic bullet website or other source of information that would turn people over night. A good start would be encouraging them to read transcripts of various Putin and Lavrov speeches and pressers, also Valdai Club, economic forum ect. ..."
"... The colonel's complaint implicitly assumes that things were not always thus. My adult experience since I saw a war up close has been that the "facts" of our public discourse are always simplified and usually grossly distorted. ..."
"... Not only are the MSM married to a narrative but they feel compelled to attack the few who ever challenge the orthodoxy. For example, 'Tulsi Gabbard met with the war criminal Assad'. ..."
"... It is certainly true that Russia is being demonized in all the MSM I have sampled. A frequent criticism is that Putin, like Assad, and earlier Saddam and Quadaffi, is essentially an illegitimate ruler of his country, ruling through brute force and without the consent of his countrymen. (Thus the WaPo editorials routinely call Putin a "thug", just as they call Assad a "butcher".) ..."
"... Not to defend Trump and his balance sheet mindset with respect to the Saudis, the reality is that both parties and presidents from George H.W to Bill Clinton to W and Obama have treated the Saudi monarchy as our "friend", even when they sponsored the terrorists that attacked us on 9/11. ..."
"... Tony Blair became a wealthy man after his prime ministership on the back of money thrown his way by the Arab sheikhs ..."
Mika B remarked a couple of years ago on the show that she and her sex slave stage in the
early morning that the social media were out of control because it is the job of the MSM to
tell people what to think. The Hillary stated recently that life was better when there were
only three TeeVee news outlets because it was easier to keep things under control. Now? My God!
Any damned fool can propagate unauthorized "facts." What? Who?
Well, pilgrims, the US government (along with our British and Israeli helpmates and masters)
are the preeminent creators and purveyors of the manufactured virtual facts on which we base
our policy. These "facts" are "ginned up" in the well moneyed hidden staff groups of "hidden"
candidates that are devoted to the seizure of power made possible by a deluded electorate.
These "facts" are then propagated and reinforced through relentless IO campaigns run by
executive "bots" in the MSM and in such remarkable and imaginative efforts as the "White
Helmets" film company manned by jihadis and managed by clubby Brits left over from the Days of
The Raj (sob). These "facts" are now so entrenched in the general mind that they can be used to
denounce people like Rep. (major ) Gabbard as traitors because they challenge them.
Some of the "virtual facts:"
The Soviet Union never ended. Russia is still communist and an inevitable and indeed
indispensable enemy of the US. Anyone who challenges that certitude is an obvious agent of
the Russian government.
Iran is the "greatest supporter of terrorism" in the world." Iran is so designated by the
State Department on the annual list of terrorism supporting states which asserts this to be
true on the basis of Iranian support of Lebanese Hizbullah and Palestinian Hamas, calling
them "terrorist" groups rather than anti -Israeli nationalist resistance organizations. This
Zionist inspired propaganda is spread far and wide by neocon "useful idiots" like Maria
Bartiromo and Jesse Watters.
The Syrian Arab Government is an abomination on the scale of Nazi Germany and must be
destroyed and replaced by God knows what ... "They gassed their own people!" Bullshit! There
is no objective evidence for that. There are nothing but propaganda statements by the FUKUS
governments unsupported by any real evidence. The MI-6 funded (with USAID money) Syrian
Observatory for Human Rights (located in a basement in England) as well as the White Helmets
murder/propaganda operation states that the SAG is guilty as charged but independent
investigation says that assertions of SAG guilt are untrue.
Saudi Arabia is a deeply friendly state and ally of the US. How mad an idea is this! This
theocratic, absolute monarchy is a friend of the US? How insane an idea! Trump has a balance
sheet where a soul should be and that is the basis for the belief that MBS and/or his
"country" are our friends. pl
Yes I fully concur. We have gone from fact-based news to faith-based fake news led by the
MSM. I recall at the start of the Iraq War in March 2003, the line was out that British PM
Tony Blair was George W. Bush's "poodle," forgetting entirely that it was the first of the
British "dodgy dossiers" that made the totally discredited claim that Saddam had gotten tons
of yellow cake from Niger. So the British have no military resources but they continue to
maintain the idea that they can manipulate the U.S. and make up for the demise of the old
British empire.
The Steele dossier was the second British "dodgy dossier" that got the ball rolling on
Trump the Russian mole and Putin's "poodle."
So much fraud. But now social media must be patrolled and anyone daring to challenge the
voice of the MSM must be purged by Google, Facebook, Twitter et al.
My question is: When will the machinations of the Big Lie MSM Wurlitzer cross the line and
trigger the backlash that they secretly fear so much? MSM has to destroy Trump by 2020 or
else his "fake news" polemic will stick... because there is no much truth to it. The
messenger may be crude, but he has the bully pulpit to have a real impact.
I await the release, as Larry Johnson pointed out, of the Horowitz IG report on the
origins of the fake Trump-Russia collusion line. Also the pending Barr-Durham larger report
which is zeroing in on John Brennan.
"MSM has to destroy Trump by 2020 or else..."
The MSM are joined by all those folks who were wined, dined, and degraded by Jeffrey Epstein
and Hollywood hero Harvey Weinstein. Nobody seems to care about who Jeffrey abused, or who
enjoyed his island paradise. Harvey, he's about to buy a free ride out of jail. Meanwhile we
jail idiots who "bribe" there kids way into that "elite" institution - UCLA.
an ideal study would no doubt want to look into the Italy-GB-US angle already concerning
the "first dossier", or whatevers. Didn*t that have mediawise an intermediate French
angle?
This is what happens when the deciders believe their own propaganda. The media now says
that a residual force of American troops and contractors will stay behind at the Deir ez-Zor
oil fields and Al-Tanf base near the Jordon border. The media moguls dare not mention that
the real intention is to prevent the Syrian Arab Army from retaking its own territory or that
Turkey is seizing thousands of square miles of Syria. Syrians with Russia, Chinese and
Iranian aid won't quit until Syria is whole again and rebuilt. This means that America
continues its uninvited unwinnable war in the middle of nowhere with no allies for no reason
at all except to do Israel's bidding and to make money for military contractors. The swamp's
regime change campaign failed. The Houthis' Aramco attack shows that the gulf oil supply is
at risk and can be shut down at will. Continuing these endless wars that are clearly against
the best interests of the American people is insane.
It strikes me, as a matter of observable fact, that the Houthi attack had almost no long run
affect on oil production. Everything was back to normal within 10 days. I think that the
attack was allowed to occur for exactly one reason and that was to start a shooting war
between the USA as KSA's great defender and Iran as the horrible nation that has a mild
dislike for Israel.
It failed. So far.
To believe that the 24/7/52 AWACS, Ground radar, Israeli radar, and the overlapping close in
radar coverage of the Saudi oil fields all failed to detect the drones and cruise missiles is
to believe in more miracles than I can handle on a good day. It also means that assets in
other parts of this world covered by these same type of radars are just as vulnerable to
local disaffected groups.
The FUKUS thinks we are all a bunch of brainless sheep to be led by a ring in our noses. The
'Muktar' is clueless regarding our Saudi brethren, he's supposed to administer how the
overlords say he's to administer, nothing more. The CIA administration still has a hard-on
because they blew it regarding Iran and they're still embarrassed about it.
In two days, counting closer to a day and a half will be the sad anniversary (October 23)
where the Israeli government willfully with forethought let our Marines and other service
personnel bunked with them at the barracks in Beirut die needlessly, because Nahum Admoni
wanted U.S. to get our noses bloodied.
Never mind that the Russians lost close to 30 million to the brotherhood of the Operation
Paper Clip, and the Bormann Group that today controls from behind the scenes most of the
World's money thanks to Martin creating over 750 corporations initially to start with, that
has expanded like a Hydra. Any time that truth (Russia is no longer Communist) rears its ugly
head, the Bormann group goes into overdrive to ensure that the big lie perpetuates.
The FUKUS think we're all a bunch of sheep to be led off a cliff, and the propaganda mills
have created the trail right up to the edge of the precipice that the sheep are trotting.
Amen. The landslide of disinformation and bullshit disseminated on a daily basis by a pliant
media is happily lapped up by ignorant, uninformed Americans. I've had quite an exchange with
a liberal friend of mine who was shrieking MSNBC talking points on Syria and the Kurds. Mind
you, this fellow never served a day in the military. Never held a clearance in his life.
Didn't know a thing about JOPES and how Special Ops forces use a series of written orders
signed off on by the CJCS. Yet, he was qualified to criticize Trump. At the same time not one
of his kids or grandkids are signed up to fight on that frontline. I told him politely to
STFU and get educated before trying to comment on something he knows nothing about.
Thanks Colonel.
I am British and did consider the military in my youth but if I were that age now I would
not. Having seen what my political master, and yours, have asked the military to do the
danger of being sent on some counter product regime change mission or to prop-up someone I
would rather fight is just too great. I would only end up refusing to follow orders which I
understand the military takes a rather dim view of.
... regime change mission or to prop-up someone I would rather fight is just too
great.
once upon a time, and strictly I had opted not to believe either side before that, but
yes, at one point I wondered fully aware they may be legitimate complaints, how would the
UCK, or the Kosovo Liberation Army become the "Western" partner in war.
In hindsight I was made aware of this one grandiose British officer ... once upon a
time.
"if I were that age now..." That is the same line used by the American left since the
'60s.
"I would only end up refusing to follow orders..."
Samantha Power at the UN and James Comey at the FBI both had a "higher loyalty" than to the
elected government or the Constitution on which it is based. That's why they are busy trying
to subvert it.
There's a lot of truth there, Colonel. Life would be better with just three TV new outlets,
huh. Which three? Can you imagine being limited to three cable new outlets? Actually most
people probably limit themselves to three news outlets or less. They find an echo chamber and
stick with it. I thank God I don't have cable or satellite TV and I have too many interests
to engage with talk radio.
I couldn't agree more with your characterization of "virtual facts" about Iran, Syria and
Saudi Arabia. I also agree that those who continue to view Russia as an implacable enemy bent
on our destruction and world domination are liars and/or fools. The Soviet Union was just a
phase, a phase now past. Russia never ended. Conversely, those who insist that Russia is a
newly minted nation of glitter farting unicorns incapable of nefarious behavior are also
fools and/or liars. Russia is a formidable competitor, fully capable and willing to take
prudent actions in pursuit of her interests. We should respect her and seek cooperation where
we can and tolerance where we must.
How the never-Trumpers treat Tulsi Gabbard is shameful. What Clinton recently said is mild
compared to what others have been saying for quite some time. Calling Tulsi a Russian asset
is foolishly wrong. That Russia may prefer Tulsi over other potential Presidential candidates
should be seen as a positive thing. A policy of mutual respect, cooperation and tolerance
between our two countries would benefit the entire world.
America needed to restore the Kuwait monarchy for freedom and democracy. Remember defense
Secretary Dick Cheney sending captured Iraq arms to the Taliban.
Same play book was used to run Libyan arms through Bengazi to Wahhabism freedom fighter
"ISIS" and the al Lindsey McCain head choppers.
The nonsense will end since not even the United States can endure these costs. Did you hear
Trump? 8 trillion yankee dollars and nothing to show for it.
What is highly alarming, almost terrifying, is that really well educated people who have
achieved great things in their careers and are pillars of society believe this crap.
I had dinner guests last week; a former Chairman of a bank and his wife who is a highly
acclaimed Professor of public Health and Epidemiology who told me how awful Trump and Putin
are neither of these friends are what you could remotely classify as Social Justice
leftists.
My problem is that I don't know where to start to try and put them right without them
thinking I'm a tinfoil hatted conspiracy nut. I wish there was a website dedicated solely to
purveying basic truthful information that is not perhaps as esoteric as SST. Should I try and
start one or are there already good examples to point to?
I'm thinking this is so far and so deep there is nothing that can or will be done. Trump's
election and presidency has lifted the curtain on the puppet show. This recent Syria troop
removal is Trump's second attempt at openly declaring troops will be pulled out of Syria only
to have the military has said, "Um, no, we will stay and simply relocate."
Trump openly
called for FISA warrants to be declassified only to have the DOJ and FBI either ignore and
defy him. Groups like Judicial Watch and others go into court to get the requested
information through FOIA and DOJ and FBI lawyers and the courts block them.
It is beyond
scary to see just how entrenched and powerful Deep State is and how it involves/controls both
political parties. Trump has faced hurricane winds of opposition from day one and has been
constantly subverted by his own party and his own people. I don't know how he can get up
every day and continue to fight the obvious and concerted Deep State coup against him. I pray
for him. I pray the rosary for him.
There are members within Trump's own party who have agreed that there should be an
investigation into the impeachment of Trump for running a yellow light (at most). Again,
members of his own party. Renowned Constitutional lawyers John Yoo and Alan Dershowitz, from
Cal-Berkeley and Harvard laws schools respectively, have said that not only has Trump done
nothing, even remotely, which could trigger an impeachment inquiry but if Congress were to do
so it would be unconstitutional and illegal. But alas, who would enforce this? Deep State
snakes like John Roberts at the Supreme Court? Robert has already signed off on the coup (
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/10/john-roberts-mitch-mcconnell-trump-impeachment-trial.amp).
The only thing that separates America from falling into the abyss is Trump, a handful of
people in Washington, a few conservative talk show hosts, and about 40% of America. Many
people have talked a good game at points but I think in the end are just double agents of the
dark side/Deep State (Lindsey Graham, Mitch McConnell, ... IG Horowitz, etc.). And some, such
as Chris Wray, are unabashed dark side/Deep State agents in good standing.
As St. Thomas More said, "The times are never so bad that a good man cannot live in them."
I have faith in Barr. I have faith in Durham. Two men whose Catholic faith is integral to
every aspect of their lives and work. But with as pervasive, entrenched, and powerful as the
Deep State is I'm skeptical they have the power to do anything. Btw, here's U.S. Attorney
John Durham's lecture before the Thomistic Institute at Yale (hosted by the Dominican Order):
https://soundcloud.com/thomisticinstitute/perspective-of-a-catholic-prosecutor-honorable-john-durham
One thing that really amuses me is that the marionettes of Deep State in the media and
politics actually believe that once Trump is gone their puppet show theatre can resume like
nothing happened. Sorry, but there is no coming back from this. They will be lucky if the
worst thing that happens is a sizable part of of the American populace protests by throwing
sand in the gears. I'm afraid it will end much worse.
I doubt there is any magic bullet website or other source of information that would turn
people over night. A good start would be encouraging them to read transcripts of various
Putin and Lavrov speeches and pressers, also Valdai Club, economic forum ect.
Most only get to see the odd sentence or paragragh in western MSM with an entirely
fictional story built around it, so perhaps and MSM piece like that and the transcript of the
relevant presser or speech alongside it.
I suspect the fine detail in Putin and Lavrov's replies to press questions
rather than cliches would surprise many people.
Walrus--100% my experience as well. Many dinners with "liberal" even "progressive" friends,
mostly of the retired kind require great psychic energy. Their Overton Window is 1"-square,
making exchanges very difficult to squeeze even minimal bits of political reality.
My daily
blog tour, like MW's above, takes me through: Moon of Alabama, Naked Capitalism, SST, Caitlin
Johnstone, Grayzone and a few others. I'm intel gathering -- but I need to figure out how to
convey broader perspectives even to my 40-45 year-old children and their friends. Inside the
Beltway assumptions are hard to de-program.
While I agree with the essence of the post I disagree with the characterization of SOHR. It
tends to get its stuff right. I have listed several significant events where SOHR disagreed
with the official narrative: On Sources And Information - The Syrian
Observatory For Human Rights . Those are exactly the moments where SOHR is disregarded by
the pressitude.
It is the selective quoting of such sources that paint them as partisan even as they try
to stay somewhat neutral.
---
@Pat - Any comment to the Gen. McRaven op-ed in the NYT? Our Republic
Is Under Attack From the President If President Trump doesn't demonstrate the leadership that America needs, then it is time
for a new person in the Oval Office.
Isn't it a call to mutiny? It seems to me to be far beyond the allowed political comment
from a retired General.
Those that look up the pole, all they see is assholes. Those that look down all they see is
assholes, but those that look straight ahead, they see which path to take.
The colonel's complaint implicitly assumes that things were not always thus. My adult
experience since I saw a war up close has been that the "facts" of our public discourse are
always simplified and usually grossly distorted.
Is the Iranian regime terrible? Well, yes,
but it is also a regime that holds real elections and often loses them. Not in the same
league of awful with Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union.
Similarly with the other examples. The
"facts" have in each case a basis in truth but do not by themselves give a true picture. Is
our discourse more unfair to Russia than it was to Nasser's Egypt? Is our promotion of Saudi
Arabia any worse than our adulation of Chiang Kai-shek?
Not only are the MSM married to a narrative but they feel compelled to attack the few who
ever challenge the orthodoxy. For example, 'Tulsi Gabbard met with the war criminal Assad'.
It would do our vaunted free press wonders if they traveled to Damascus instead of
repeating the same tired talking points about Syria. I'll never forget the look on Gabbard's
face when she talked about the Syrians came up to her and said, 'why are you attacking us,
what did we do to you'. Meeting real people can undo a lifetime of blather and must be
stopped at all cost.
b Perhaps memory fails me but I think SOHR propagated the SAG gas attacks mythology. I have
stated that McRaven should be recalled to active duty and court-martialed. I could find
several punitice articles in UCMJ under which he could be charged.
When McCain returned from the Hanoi Hilton he could have been prosecuted for treason he was
not because "peace with honour" overrode UCMJ and honour. McRaven is being offered up as a
distraction. Call him back to active duty yes, and assign him somewhere dreary, unimportant
and far from CONUS. Ignore the stuff he is blathering while he is retired, if he repeats
blather while on active duty then the navy might be able to recover some honour.
No...your memory does not fail you, Colonel, the SOHR was the main source cited at MSM level
on the alleged protests which gave place to the destruction of Syria and the legitimation and
labelling of alleged "moderate rebels" which then resulted being but terrorist jihadi groups
brought mainly from abroad under financing and mtrainning of non Syrian actors...
The source on the alleged atrocities commited by Assad was SOHR at the first years of the
war on Syria, along with Doctors Without Borders and "special envoys" by British and French
main papers reporting from the former, and first, "Baba Amr" caliphate in Homs....I am
meaning the times of Sunday Times´ Marie Colvin and the other woman from Le
Figaro , who then resulted or KIA or caught amongst the jihadists ranks along with other
foreign "special envoys" who then were released in a truce with Assad through a safe
corridor, especially made for that end, to Lebanon.
I fear SOHR was the source of the super-trolling consisting on inundating the MSM comments
sections, like that of El País , with dozens of vertical doctored photographs
every time any of us aware entered commenting to debunk their fake news.
I remember this since that was the starting point of Elora as net activist...( till then,
just a baby, peacefully growing up...unaware....but had no election, felt it was a duty,
since, as you comment here, so few people aware...Having known Syria few years before she
could not believe what they were telling about Assad, who, eventhough not being perfect, as
it has been long ago proved any other leader in the world is, had managed to show the
visitant a flourishing Syria where misery present at other ME countries was almost
absent...
It is only lately, when the Syrian war was obviously lost for the US coalition, that the
SOHR started contradicting some fake claims by the White Helmets, especially last two alleged
chemical attacks, if Elora´s not wrong.
Why this, why now, why in this form? Probably those powers behind SOHR trying to secure a
part in the cake of reconstruction and future of Syria...since, it got obvious, love for
Syria is not amongst one of their mottos...
Trump approves $4.5 million in aid for Syria's White Helmets
WASHINGTON -- US President Donald Trump has authorized $4.5 million in aid for Syria's
White Helmets group, famed for rescuing wounded civilians from the frontlines in the civil
war, the White House says today...
Thank you for this refuge from the noise. How long before the strangling of information makes
its way here, and to Craig Murray, Naked Capitalism, and others who look on with clear eyes?
Humans are copy/paste artists and generally not very good at creative thinking. When shown a
series of steps to achieve a reward people will repeat all the steps including clearly
unnecessary ones. Monkeys will drop unnecessary steps and frequently show more creativity by
using a different method to achieve the reward instead of copying.
The old story goes how a woman always cut the ends off a roast before putting it in a pan.
When her daughter asks why she doesn't know, asks her mother who doesn't know and asks the
great grandmother who laughs and says her pan was too small.
I suspect it is a functional tradeoff that lets us transfer great amounts of cultural
information and maintain a civilization of sorts. It creates a tough environment for
innovators and allows for easy manipulation of the majority.
Nature of course always has a sprinkling of minority traits in the gene pool to allow for
sudden changes in the environment. Most likely those of us that are more critical thinkers
and like in depth, multi-dimensional viewpoints and historical knowledge are always going to
be standing by watching the crowd do their copy/paste thing.
The rise of the internet giving easy access to more "sources" means more fragmentation in
worldviews than ever before depending on where people copy/paste from.
Re: only three TV channels and they all said the same thing!
Once Upon a Time, not so long ago, publishing news was hard. For one thing, you needed a
printing press, which was big, expensive and required housing and specialized technicians to
operate it. Not only that, but a printing press cost money for every sheet of paper printed,
and you had to spend more money to distribute what he printed.
They say that "freedom of the press belongs to those who own one" but there's more! Unless
you were already rich and planned to publish as an expensive and time-consuming hobby, you
needed an income stream. You would get some money from subscriptions, but subscriptions are
really a means to sell advertising. Dependence on advertising meant that there were some
people the publisher had to keep happy, and others he could not afford to annoy.
Anyone who knows anything about local news knows this. At best, it's a tightrope walk
between giving subscribers the news they want to know, and not infuriating your advertisers.
The result was a sort of natural censorship. Publishers had to think long and hard before
they published anything that would tork the bigwigs off. The fact that a publisher was tied
to a physical location and physical assets also made libel suits much easier.
The same thing applied to broadcast TV, only more so. It took orders of magnitude more
money, and you were restricted to a limited amount of bandwidth.
The internet changed all that. Now, any anonymous toolio with a laptop ($299 cheap at
WallyWorld) and WiFi (free at many businesses) can go into the news publishing business by
nightfall, and with worldwide distribution and an advertising revenue stream, to boot.
Marginal cost of readership is zero.
Needless to say, this development has The People That Matter very concerned, and they are
working hard to stuff that genie back into the bottle.
For what it's worth, I found the late Udo Ulfkotte's personal-experience book "Bought
Jounalism" to be quite interesting on this topic, as it details the kind of nuts-and-bolts of
print-media prostitution. But I would really like to see an org-chart sometime of the
overlapping, possibly competing, mission control centers (if that's the right phrase) that
control the various "Wurlitzer" messaging and who, ultimately, is on charge of these. It has
been intriguing to watch, since Kerry uttered his "the Internet makes it very hard to govern"
line years ago, the blurry outline of a vast operation to shut down any non-approved media
messages, now including all social media. To give credit where credit is due, "they" sure
have done a bang-up job in feeding bullshit across all platforms down the throats of a
Western people, like a goose being fattened up for foie gras.
"...the US government (along with our British and Israeli helpmates and masters) are the
preeminent creators and purveyors of the manufactured virtual facts on which we base our
policy."
Sir
I've been perplexed for some time what the objectives are of these virtual fact creators?
When one digs into who the movers & shakers are in the virtual fact creation apparatus
then it seems very much analogous to the Jeffrey Epstein orbit. Folks bound together through
the carrot of extraordinary personal gain and the stick of personal destruction. Your
Drinking the Koolaid, is a seminal work in exploring how these virtual facts are created and
how those who challenge the creation are marginalized and even destroyed personally.
IMO, policy making on the basis of virtual facts extends beyond foreign policy to economic
and financial policy as well as healthcare policy in the US. The symptoms are seen in growing
wealth inequality and increased market concentration globally and financial policy completely
unmoored from common sense and sophistry an important element in virtual fact creation.
We're seeing signs of the early breakdown in social cohesion with social unrest in France,
Spain, Hong Kong, Chile, Lebanon, Ecuador. Brexit and the election of Trump despite the
intensity and vitriolic nature of how the media was used against them. The impeachment of
Trump another tool in the desperate attempt to retain and consolidate power. Maybe we're in
the Fourth Turning as Howe & Strauss label it.
"The Soviet Union never ended. Russia is still communist ..."
In the interest of specificity and accountability, where/who in the MSM are asserting
that?
You (PL) are making a serious charge.
Just who is guilty of perpetrating such a blatant falsehood?
well it seems to me that the groundwork is being laid for an authoritarian state - and it
already has sophisticated tools that are unprecedented in their scope and depth and ability
to store data. And the whole enterprise is based on three rules:
1) secrecy - data is restricted to "insiders";
2) deception - the "outsiders" (you know, the citizens) are regarded as a herd of cattle to
be managed - with lies and disinformation so we don't get any ideas;
3) ruthless enforcement to dehumanize and destroy dissent. Just consider the torture and
destruction of Journalist Julian Assange: https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/
Not sure what the appropriate response is but I spend a lot of time at my camp working in
the woods. Thanks, Colonel Lang, for maintaining this site.
Keith Harbaugh
This is my opinion. I am uninterested in proving anything to you. If you listen to what is
said on the MSM (including Fox) it is evident that in the "minds" of the media squirrels
Russia is just the USSR in disguise. Try listening to what they are saying as sub-text.
The request was not just for my benefit, but with the thought that it would be useful to
document the occurrences of such clearly false statements in the media.
It is certainly true that Russia is being demonized in all the MSM I have sampled.
A frequent criticism is that Putin, like Assad, and earlier Saddam and Quadaffi,
is essentially an illegitimate ruler of his country,
ruling through brute force and without the consent of his countrymen.
(Thus the WaPo editorials routinely call Putin a "thug",
just as they call Assad a "butcher".)
I am certainly not endorsing that view, just reporting what I hear and read.
When I hear that, I harken back to my graduate school days,
when the same sort of charges were leveled against America, which was usually spelled
"Amerika", or sometimes "AmeriKKKa", and described as a racist, imperialist, fascist country
whose establishment must be "Smashed".
I believe the core group of people who so wanted a revolution in America in 1970
(which they essentially got, as we have seen over the last 50 years)
are much the same as those now demonizing Russia.
Here is some specificity on their complaints against Russia back then:
They were not opposed to the USSR, or communism.
Many of them were in effect communists.
The cry among many was : "Marx, Mao, and Marcuse" (Herbert Marcuse was a former Brandeis professor who extolled cultural Marxism).
What they did have, in spades, was a feeling that their ancestors had been victimized by the
Czarist regime in Russia,
which, among other supposed sins, had not done enough to prevent pogroms against them.
They seemed to have a deep fear of the Russian people,
based on their long experience with them.
My suspicion (actually, belief) is that the opposition to Putin is based on the fact that
he is sometimes viewed as a throwback to the the Czars,
and that is definitely not something looked upon favorably by many Jews.
"Trump has a balance sheet where a soul should be and that is the basis for the belief
that MBS and/or his "country" are our friends."
Not to defend Trump and his balance sheet mindset with respect to the Saudis, the reality
is that both parties and presidents from George H.W to Bill Clinton to W and Obama have
treated the Saudi monarchy as our "friend", even when they sponsored the terrorists that
attacked us on 9/11.
Tony Blair became a wealthy man after his prime ministership on the back of money thrown
his way by the Arab sheikhs.
"... "I'm not making any predictions, but I think they've got their eye on somebody who is currently in the Democratic primary and are grooming her to be the third-party candidate." ..."
"... The Times piece goes on to list an assortment of unsavory, extremist, white supremacist, horrible, neo-Nazi-type persons that Tulsi Gabbard has nothing to do with, but which Hillary Clinton, the Intelligence Community, The Times , and the rest of the corporate media would like you to mentally associate her with. ..."
So, it looks like that's it for America, folks. Putin has gone and done it again. He and his conspiracy of Putin-Nazis have "hacked,"
or "influenced," or "meddled in" our democracy. Unless Admiral Bill McRaven and his special ops cronies can ginny up
a last-minute
military coup , it's four more years of the Trumpian Reich, Russian soldiers patrolling the streets, martial law, concentration
camps, gigantic banners with the faces of Trump and Putin hanging in the football stadiums, mandatory Sieg-heiling in the public
schools, National Vodka-for-Breakfast Day, death's heads, babushkas, the whole nine yards.
We probably should have seen this coming.
That's right, as I'm sure you are aware by now, president-in-exile Hillary Clinton has discovered Putin's diabolical plot to steal
the presidency from Elizabeth Warren, or Biden, or whichever establishment puppet makes it out of the Democratic primaries. Speaking
to former Obama adviser and erstwhile partner at AKPD Message and Media David
Plouffe, Clinton revealed
how the godless Rooskies intend to subvert democracy this time:
"I'm not making any predictions, but I think they've got their eye on somebody who is currently in the Democratic primary
and are grooming her to be the third-party candidate."
She was referring, of course, to Tulsi Gabbard, sitting Democratic Member of Congress, decorated Major in the Army National Guard,
and long shot 2020 presidential candidate. Apparently, Gabbard (who reliable anonymous sources in the Intelligence Community have
confirmed is a member of some kind of treasonous, Samoan-Hindu, Assad-worshipping cult that wants to force everyone to practice yoga)
has been undergoing Russian "grooming" at a compound in an undisclosed location that is probably in the basement of Mar-a-Lago, or
on Sublevel 168 of Trump Tower.
In any event, wherever Gabbard is being surreptitiously "groomed" (presumably by someone resembling
Lotte Lenya in From Russia With Love ),
the plan (i.e., Putin's plan) is to have her lose in the Democratic primaries, then run as a third-party "spoiler" candidate, stealing
votes from Warren or Biden, exactly as Jill Stein (who, according to Clinton, is also "totally a Russian asset") stole them from
Clinton back in 2016, allowing Putin to install Donald Trump (who, according to Clinton, is still being blackmailed by the FSB with
that "kompromat" pee-tape) in the White House, where she so clearly belongs.
Clinton's comments came on the heels of a preparatory smear-piece in The New York Times ,
What, Exactly, Is Tulsi Gabbard Up To?
, which reported at length on how Gabbard has been "injecting chaos" into the Democratic primaries . Professional "disinformation
experts" supplied The Times with convincing evidence (i.e., unfounded hearsay and innuendo) of "suspicious activity" surrounding
Gabbard's campaign. Former Clinton-aide Laura Rosenberger (who also just happens to be the Director of the
Alliance for Securing Democracy , "a bipartisan transatlantic
national security advocacy group" comprised of former Intelligence Community and U.S. State Department officials, and publisher of
the
Hamilton 68 dashboard) "sees Gabbard as a potentially useful vector for Russian efforts to sow division."
The Times piece goes on to list an assortment of unsavory, extremist, white supremacist, horrible, neo-Nazi-type persons that
Tulsi Gabbard has nothing to do with, but which Hillary Clinton, the Intelligence Community, The Times , and the rest of the corporate
media would like you to mentally associate her with.
Richard Spencer, David Duke, Steve Bannon, Mike Cernovich, Tucker Carlson, and so on. Neo-Nazi sites like the Daily Stormer .
4chan, where, according to The New York Times , neo-Nazis like to "call her Mommy."
In keeping with professional journalistic ethics, The Times also reached out to experts on fascism, fascist terrorism, terrorist
fascism, fascist-adjacent Assad-apologism, Hitlerism, horrorism, Russia, and so on, to confirm Gabbard's guilt-by-association with
the people The Times had just associated her with. Brian Levin, Director of the CSU Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism, confirmed
that Gabbard has "the seal of approval" within goose-stepping, Hitler-loving, neo-Nazi circles. The Alliance for Securing Democracy
(yes, the one from the previous paragraph) conducted an "independent analysis" which confirmed that RT ("the Kremlin-backed news
agency") had mentioned Gabbard far more often than the Western corporate media (which isn't backed by anyone, and is totally unbiased
and independent, despite the fact that most of it is owned by a handful of powerful global corporations, and at least one CIA-affiliated
oligarch). Oh, and Hawaii State Senator Kai Kahele, who is challenging Gabbard for her seat in Congress, agreed with The Times that
Gabbard's support from Jew-hating, racist Putin-Nazis might be a potential liability.
"Clearly there's something about her and her policies that attracts and appeals to these type of people who are white nationalists,
anti-Semites, and Holocaust deniers."
But it's not just The New York Times , of course. No sooner had Clinton finished cackling than the corporate media launched into
their familiar Goebbelsian piano routine, banging out story after television segment repeating the words "Gabbard" and "Russian asset."
I've singled out The Times because the smear piece in question was clearly a warm-up for Hillary Clinton's calculated smear job on
Friday night. No, the old gal hasn't lost her mind. She knew exactly what she was doing, as did the editors of The New York Times
, as did every other establishment news source that breathlessly "reported" her neo-McCarthyite smears.
As I noted in my previous essay
, 2020 is for all the marbles, and it's not just about who wins the election. No, it's mostly about crushing the "populist" backlash
against the hegemony of global capitalism and its happy, smiley-faced, conformist ideology. To do that, the neoliberal establishment
has to delegitimize, and lethally stigmatize, not just Trump, but also people like Gabbard, Bernie Sanders, Jeremy Corbyn and any
other popular political figure (left, right, it makes no difference) deviating from that ideology.
In Trump's case, it's his neo-nationalism.
In Sanders and Corbyn's, it's socialism (or at least some semblance of social democracy).
In Gabbard's, it's her opposition to the Corporatocracy's ongoing efforts to restructure and privatize the Middle East (and
the rest of the entire planet), and their using the U.S. military to do it.
Ask yourself, what do Trump, Sanders, Corbyn, and Gabbard have in common? No, it's not their Putin-Nazism it's the challenge they
represent to global capitalism. Each, in his or her own way, is a symbol of the growing populist resistance to the privatization
and globalization of everything. And thus, they must be delegitimized, stigmatized, and relentlessly smeared as "Russian assets,"
"anti-Semites," "traitors," "white supremacists," "fascists," "communists," or some other type of "extremists."
Gabbard, to her credit, understands this, and is
focusing attention on the motives and tactics
of the neoliberal establishment and their smear machine. As I noted in
an
essay last year , "the only way to effectively counter a smear campaign (whether large-scale or small-scale) is to resist the
temptation to profess your innocence, and, instead, focus as much attention on the tactics and the motives of the smearers as possible
." This will not save her, but it is the best she can do, and I applaud her for having the guts to do it. I hope she continues to
give them hell as they finish off her candidacy and drive her out of office.
Oh, and if you're contemplating sending me an email explaining how these smear campaigns don't work (or you spent the weekend
laughing about how Hillary Clinton lost her mind and made an utter jackass of herself), maybe check in with Julian Assange, who is
about to be extradited to America, tried for exposing U.S. war crimes, and then imprisoned for the remainder of his natural life.
And, if Katharine is on holiday in Antigua or somewhere, or having tea with Hillary in the rooftop bar of the
Hay-Adams
Hotel , you could try Luke Harding (who not only writes and publishes propaganda for The Guardian , but who wrote a whole
New York Times
best-seller based on nothing but lies and smears). Or try Marty Baron, Dean Baquet, Paul Krugman, or even Rachel Maddow, or any
of the other editors and journalists who have been covering the Putin-Nazi "
Attack on America ," and keeping us apprised of who is and isn't a Hitler-loving "Russian asset."
Ask them whether their smear machine is working... if you can get them off the phone with their brokers, or whoever is decorating
their summer places in the Hamptons or out on
Martha's Vineyard
.
Or ask the millions of well-off liberals who are still, even after
Russiagate was exposed as an enormous hoax
based on absolutely nothing , parroting this paranoid official narrative and calling people "Russian assets" on Twitter. Or never
mind, just pay attention to what happens over the next twelve months. In terms of
ridiculous official
propaganda , spittle-flecked McCarthyite smears, and full-blown psychotic mass Putin-Nazi hysteria, it's going to make the last
three years look like the Propaganda Special Olympics.
* * *
C. J. Hopkins is an award-winning American playwright, novelist and political satirist based in Berlin. His plays are published
by Bloomsbury Publishing (UK) and Broadway Play Publishing (USA). His debut novel,
ZONE 23 , is published by Snoggsworthy,
Swaine & Cormorant Paperbacks. He can be reached at cjhopkins.com or
consentfactory.org .
So, it looks like that's it for America, folks. Putin has gone and done it again. He and his
conspiracy of Putin-Nazis have "hacked," or "influenced," or "meddled in" our democracy.
Unless Admiral Bill McRaven and his special ops cronies can ginny up
a last-minute military coup , it's four more years of the Trumpian Reich, Russian soldiers
patrolling the streets, martial law, concentration camps, gigantic banners with the faces of
Trump and Putin hanging in the football stadiums, mandatory Sieg-heiling in the public schools,
National Vodka-for-Breakfast Day, death's heads, babushkas, the whole nine yards.
"... Russia hating is the lynchpin of oligarchic deepstate MIC MSM propaganda. Take that away and the fat cats are revealed as the naked face of evil that they are. Hating Russia (and China) supposedly justifies all their crimes. ..."
The transcript of President Trump's July 25 telephone conversation with Ukraine's recently
elected president, Volodymyr Zelensky, has ignited the usual anti-Trump bashing in American
political-media circles, even more calls for impeachment, with little, if any, regard for the
national security issues involved. Leave aside that Trump should not have been compelled to
make the transcript public and ask: Which, if any, foreign leaders will now feel free to
conduct personal telephone diplomacy with an American president directly or indirectly, of the
kind that helped end the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, knowing that his or her comments might
become known to domestic political opponents? Consider instead only the following undiscussed
issues:
§ Even if former vice president Joseph Biden, who figured prominently in the
Trump-Zelensky conversation, is not the Democratic nominee, Ukraine is now likely to be a
contested, and poisonous, issue in the 2020 US presidential election. How did the United States
become so involved in Ukraine's torturous and famously corrupt politics? The short answer is
NATO expansion, as some of us who opposed that folly back in the 1990s warned would be the
case, and not only in Ukraine. The Washington-led attempt to fast-track Ukraine into NATO in
2013 -- 14 resulted in the Maidan crisis, the overthrow of the country's constitutionally
elected president Viktor Yanukovych, and to the still ongoing proxy civil war in Donbass. All
those fateful events infused the Trump-Zelensky talk, if only between the lines.
§ Russia shares centuries of substantial civilizational values, language, culture,
geography, and intimate family relations with Ukraine. America does not. Why, then, is it
routinely asserted in the US political-media establishment that Ukraine is a "vital US national
interest" and not a vital zone of Russian national security, as by all geopolitical reckoning
it would seem to be? The standard American establishment answer is: because of "Russian
aggression against Ukraine." But the "aggression" cited is Moscow's 2014 annexation of Crimea
and support for anti-Kiev fighters in the Donbass civil war, both of which came after, not
before, the Maidan crisis, and indeed were a direct result of it. That is, in Moscow's eyes, it
was reacting, not unreasonably, to US-led "aggression." In any event, as opponents of eastward
expansion also warned in the 1990s, NATO has increased no one's security, only diminished
security throughout the region bordering Russia.
§ Which brings us back to the Trump-Zelensky telephone conversation. President Zelensky
ran and won overwhelmingly as a peace-with-Moscow candidate, which is why the roughly $400
million in US military aid to Ukraine, authorized by Congress, figured anomalously in the
conversation. Trump is being sharply criticized for withholding that aid or threatening to do
so, including by Obama partisans. Forgotten, it seems, is that President Obama, despite
considerable bipartisan pressure, steadfastly refused to authorize such military assistance to
Kiev, presumably because it might escalate the Russian-Ukrainian conflict (and Russia, with its
long border with Ukraine, had every escalatory advantage). Instead of baiting Trump on this
issue, we should hope he encourages the new peace talks that Zelensky has undertaken in recent
days with Moscow, which could end the killing in Donbass. (For this, Zelensky is being
threatened by well-armed extreme Ukrainian nationalists, even quasi-fascists. Strong American
support for his negotiations with Moscow may not deter them, but it might.)
§ Finally, but not surprisingly, the shadow of Russiagate is now morphing into
Ukrainegate. Trump is also being sharply criticized for asking Zelensky to cooperate with
Attorney General William Barr's investigation into the origins of Russiagate, even though
the role of
Ukrainian-Americans and Ukraine itself in Russiagate allegations against Trump on behalf of
Hillary Clinton in 2016 is now well-documented
.
We need to know fully the origins of Russiagate, arguably the worst presidential scandal in
American history, and if Ukrainian authorities can contribute to that understanding, they
should be encouraged to do so. As I've argued repeatedly, fervent anti-Trumpers must decide
whether they loathe him more than they care about American and international security. Imaging,
for example, a Cuban missile -- like crisis somewhere in the world today where Washington and
Moscow are militarily eyeball-to-eyeball, directly or through proxies, from the Baltic and the
Black Seas to Syria and Ukraine. Will Trump's presidential legitimacy be sufficient for him to
resolve such an existential crisis peacefully, as President John F. Kennedy did in 1962?
Stephen F. Cohen is a professor emeritus of Russian studies and politics at New York
University and Princeton University. A Nation contributing editor, his most recent book War
With Russia? From Putin & Ukraine to Trump & Russiagate is available in paperback and
in an ebook edition. His weekly conversations with the host of The John Batchelor Show, now in
their sixth year, are available at www.thenation.com.
Trump is an agent of the Deep State, playing good cop to the bad cop Deep State. I have been
saying this since mid April 2017. His multitude of actions belie his promises. Trump is a
quisling to his supporters.
Here is an excellent article that comports with my view of Trump.
I am puzzled why Cohen is permitted to publish in the Nation. Is it due to his marriage
to its publisher or to the magazine's remnant infatuation with the Soviet state? Just
asking.
The whole situation is a rather ironic
Prof. Cohen is certainly one of America's most eminent Russia scholars, and I think that
for decades he was regarded as one of the most left-leaning ones, regularly denounced for his
leftism by all the Neocons and other rightwingers. I remember I used to see him on the PBS
Newshour, sometimes paired with a conservative critic of the Soviets. I'd guess that past
history plus being married to the publisher of The Nation is what gives him his
residual foothold there.
I'd suspect that if someone had told him a couple of decades ago that by the late 2010s
he'd be blacklisted from the MSM and denounced as a "Russian agent," he probably would have
been greatly saddened at the disheartening turn in American society, but not totally shocked.
He probably would have regarded such a scenario as having a 10% possibility.
But if someone would have told him that the people denouncing and blacklisting him would
have been the *liberal Democrats* and some of their most "excitable" elements would be
accusing him of being a "Neo-Nazi White Supremacist Russian Agent" he would have thought the
entire country had gone on LSD.
It's sad that our entire country has gone on LSD
The whole situation is actually a perfect parallel to the various past American purges
I've often covered in my articles:
Russia is the excuse for US actions in the Ukraine as it was in the ME.
What is America without a big bad boogeyman like Russia?.
Certainly not a “Superpower’ defending the world.
Without enemies like Russia we would be nothing but big rich country.
And all the Neos and Zios and politicians would have to use Viagra instead of war to squirt
out their poison.
A lot of countries like the Ukraine have gotten a lot of US taxpayer money by
‘standing up to a Russian takeover’….and are laughing all the way to
their bank.
How did the United States become so involved in Ukraine’s torturous and famously
corrupt politics?
The short answer is NATO expansion <= maybe something different? I like pocketbook
expansion..
NATO Expansion provides cover and legalizes the private use of Presidential directed USA
resources to enable a few to make massively big profits at the expense of the governed in
the target area.
Behind NATO lies the reason for Bexit, the Yellow Jackets, the unrest in Iraq and Egypt,
Yemen etc.
Hypothesis 1: NATO supporters are more corrupt than Ukraine officials.
Hypothesis 2: NATO expansion is a euphemism for USA/EU/ backed private party plunder to
follow invade and destroy regime change activities designed to dispossess local Oligarchs
of the wealth in NATO targeted nations? Private use of public force for private gain comes
to mind.
I think [private use of public force for private gain] is what Trump meant when Trump
said to impeach Trump for investigating the Ukraine matter amounts to Treason.. but it is
the exactly the activity type that Hallmarks CIA instigated regime change.
A lot of intelligence agency manipulation and private pocketbook expanding corruption
can be hidden behind NATO expansion.. Please prove to me that Biden and the hundreds of
other plunders became so deeply involved in Ukraine because of NATO expansion?
It is more than ironic that the Dems (and their like-minded cronies in Big Media) are up in
arms over Trump’s attempt in find ‘dirt’ about Joe Biden when the
‘dirt’ looks and smells like actual corruption. Have laws been broken? Was
Biden selling influence through his son? Stranger things have happened. At the very least,
it looks as though Joe Biden crossed an ethical line. This will likely cost him the
nomination.
Similarly, the news media should–if it was doing its job–pursue leads that
would help find the source behind the missing server and the Fake News that helped justify
the toxic and duplicitous ‘Russiagate’ investigation. But they’d rather
pursue Trump instead. I have never witnessed a more partisan and bloodthirsty Fourth
Estate.
Why is the media so utterly uninterested in finding out who/how the fake
Putin-Trump ‘conspiracy’ was cooked up in the first place? Doesn’t it
make sense the Trump would want to find out more? Justice demands it. False intelligence
can sow chaos and start wars.
Consider, for instance, the manufactured lies (Saddam’s phantom WMD, links to 911,
etc) that were used to justify Zio-America’s annihilation of Iraq. What intelligence
agency cooked up these falsehoods? Who spoon-fed these fairy tales to G.W. Bush and Colin
Powell?
Not only have these questions never been answered, they are seldom even asked! The Deep
State has gone rogue. And Big Media is covering it up.
This whole ridiculous drama may profit the Dem’s in the longer term — that is,
by removing that corrupt, dementia ridden nit-wit Biden from the presidential
competition.
As president, Biden would be a greater sock puppet than even GWB…of course,
“sock puppet” maybe just what the Dem’s want….
The key question is what is the gain in separating Ukraine from Russia, adding it to NATO,
and turning Russia and Ukraine into enemies. And what are the most likely results, e.g. can
it ever work without risking a catastrophic event?
There are the usual empire-building and weapons business reasons, but those should
function within a rational framework. As it is right now, the most likely outcome of the
Western initiative in Ukraine will be substantially lower living standards than there would
be otherwise for most Ukrainians. And an increase in tensions in the region with inevitable
impact on the business there. So what exactly is the gain and for whom?
@Ron Unz Thanks to Tucker Carlson’s show, some folks on the left like Cohen, Mate
and Greenwald, are more likely to get air time on Fox News than MSNBC and CNN.
The current CIA talking point is that it is illegal for the President to seek foreign
assistance for his campaign. One might also slant it that the President of the United
States has an obligation to the people who elected him to require an allied, friendly
government to reopen the investigation of Biden because there is adequate reason to suspect
that the Democrats are running yet another corrupt criminal for President. Incidentally,
this puts Zelensky in a very awkward position, as one of the backers of his transition from
sitcom star to President of Ukraine was a principal in Burisma
It is not the threat of impeachment that will energize Trump’s base; it is the
grotesque, constant character assassination in the (largely CIA manipulated) media that
will return him to the White House. The American people have a sense of fairness. They have
always been of better character than the reprobates we are allowed to vote for. Whatever
happened to trusting the democratic process, instead of using intelligence assets to
engineer domestic regime change?
History is not made by nice guys. Trump has torn a big hole in the tissue of lies about
what this country is and what it stands for, and that is too much for those who make their
living deceiving us.
Russia hating is the lynchpin of oligarchic deepstate MIC MSM propaganda. Take that
away and the fat cats are revealed as the naked face of evil that they are. Hating Russia
(and China) supposedly justifies all their crimes.
The Washington-led attempt to fast-track Ukraine into NATO in 2013–14 resulted in
the Maidan crisis, the overthrow of the country’s constitutionally elected president
Viktor Yanukovych, and to the still ongoing proxy civil war in Donbass.
Which exemplifies the stupidity and arrogance of the American
military/industrial/political Establishment — none of that had anything to do with US
national security (least of all antagonizing Russia) — how fucking hypocritical is it
to presume the Monroe Doctrine, and then try to get the Ukraine into NATO? — none of
it would have been of any benefit whatsoever to the average American.
1) Tulsi Gabbard is a Russian asset (Clinton).
2) Jill Stein is a Russian asset (Clinton).
3) Donald Trump has been a Russian asset since 1987 ( Intelligencer
).
4) Rand Paul is "working for Vladimir Putin" (
McCain ,
Greg Olear ).
5) Bernie Sanders is "just a tool" to the Russians (
The Washington Post ).
Russia hating is the lynchpin of oligarchic deepstate MIC MSM propaganda. Take that away and
the fat cats are revealed as the naked face of evil that they are. Hating Russia (and China)
supposedly justifies all their crimes.
1) Tulsi Gabbard is a Russian asset (Clinton).
2) Jill Stein is a Russian asset (Clinton).
3) Donald Trump has been a Russian asset since 1987 ( Intelligencer
).
4) Rand Paul is "working for Vladimir Putin" (
McCain ,
Greg Olear ).
5) Bernie Sanders is "just a tool" to the Russians (
The Washington Post ).
"... New Knowledge's victory lap was short-lived. On December 19, a New York Times story revealed that Morgan and his crew had created a fake army of Russian bots, as well as fake Facebook groups, in order to discredit Republican candidate Roy Moore in Alabama's 2017 special election for the US Senate. ..."
"... Working on behalf of the Democrats, Morgan and his crew created an estimated 1,000 fake Twitter accounts with Russian names, and had them follow Moore. They also operated several Facebook pages where they posed as Alabama conservatives who wanted like-minded voters to support a write-in candidate instead. ..."
"... In an internal memo, New Knowledge boasted that it had "orchestrated an elaborate 'false flag' operation that planted the idea that the Moore campaign was amplified on social media by a Russian botnet. ..."
US cyber-security experts have blamed Russia for meddling in American elections since 2016.
Now it has emerged that authors of a Senate report on 'Russian' meddling actually ran a "false
flag" meddling operation themselves. A week before Christmas, the Senate Intelligence Committee
released a report accusing Russia of depressing Democrat voter turnout by targeting
African-Americans on social media. Its authors, New Knowledge, quickly became a household
name.
Described by the New
York Times as a group of "tech specialists who lean Democratic," New Knowledge has
ties to both the US military and intelligence agencies. Its CEO and co-founder Jonathon Morgan
previously worked for DARPA, the US military's advanced research agency. His partner, Ryan Fox,
is a 15-year veteran of the National Security Agency who also worked as a computer analyst for
the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC). Their unique skill sets have managed to attract
the eye of investors, who pumped $11 million into the company in 2018 alone. Morgan and Fox
have struck gold in the "Russiagate" racket, which sprung into being after Hillary
Clinton blamed Moscow for Donald Trump's presidential victory in 2016. Morgan, for example, is
one of the developers of the Hamilton 68 Dashboard, the online tool that purports to monitor
and expose narratives being pushed by the Kremlin on Twitter. The dashboard is bankrolled by
the German Marshall Fund's Alliance for Securing Democracy – a collection of Democrats
and neoconservatives funded in part by NATO and USAID.
It is worth noting that the 600 "Russia-linked" Twitter accounts monitored by the
dashboard are not disclosed to the public, making it impossible to verify its claims. This
inconvenience has not stopped Hamilton 68 from becoming a go-to source for hysteria-hungry
journalists, however.
From the way it was formed to the secrecy of its "methods" to the blatantly false
assumptions on which its claims rest, "Hamilton68" is probably the single most successful
media fraud & US propaganda campaign I've seen since I've been writing about politics.
It's truly shocking.
New Knowledge's victory lap was short-lived. On December 19, a New York Times
story revealed that Morgan and his crew had created a fake army of Russian bots, as well as
fake Facebook groups, in order to discredit Republican candidate Roy Moore in Alabama's 2017
special election for the US Senate.
Working on behalf of the Democrats, Morgan and his crew created an estimated 1,000 fake
Twitter accounts with Russian names, and had them follow Moore. They also operated several
Facebook pages where they posed as Alabama conservatives who wanted like-minded voters to
support a write-in candidate instead.
In an internal memo, New Knowledge boasted that it had "orchestrated an elaborate 'false
flag' operation that planted the idea that the Moore campaign was amplified on social media by
a Russian botnet."
It worked. The botnet claim made a splash on social media and was further amplified by
Mother Jones , which based its story on expert opinion from Morgan's other dubious
creation, Hamilton 68.
Ultimately, Moore ended up losing the race by a miniscule 1.5 percentage points –
making his opponent Doug Jones the first Democrat to represent Alabama in the US Senate in over
25 years.
Money trail and weak apologies
Things got even weirder when it turned out that Scott Shane, the author of the Times piece,
had known about the meddling for months, because he spoke at an event where the organizers
boasted about it!
Shane was one of the speakers at a meeting in September, organized by American Engagement
Technologies, a group run by Mikey Dickerson, President Barack Obama's former tech czar.
Dickerson explained how AET spent $100,000 on New Knowledge's campaign to suppress Republican
votes, " enrage" Democrats to boost turnout, and execute a "false flag" to hurt
Moore. He dubbed it "Project Birmingham."
This gets even weirder: NYT reporter @ScottShaneNYT , who broke the
Alabama disinfo op story, learned of it in early September when he spoke at an off-the-record
event organized by one of the firms that perpetrated the deception https://t.co/gIAytOh2yy
The money for the venture came from a $750,000 contribution to AET by Reid Hoffman, the
billionaire co-founder of LinkedIn and a big Democrat donor. Once that emerged, Hoffman offered
a public apology for his connection to the shady operation, but insisted that he didn't know
what his money was going towards.
" I find the tactics that have been recently reported highly disturbing ," Hoffman
said in a statement.
"For that reason, I am embarrassed by my failure to track AET -- the organization I did
support -- more diligently as it made its own decisions to perhaps fund projects that I would
reject."
As for Shane, he told BuzzFeed that he was "shocked" by the revelations, but had
signed a nondisclosure agreement at the request of AET, so he could not talk about it
further.
Spin and denial
Shane's spin on the tale was that New Knowledge "imitated Russian tactics" as part of
an "experiment" that had a budget of "only" $100,000 and had no effect on the
election. Yet these tactics are only considered "Russian" because New Knowledge and
similar outfits said so! Moreover, New Knowledge's budget in Alabama was greater than the
reported amount spent by "Russians" on the 2016 US presidential election, yet Moscow's
alleged meddling was supposed to be decisive, while New Knowledge's failed?
New Knowledge responded to the Times story by insisting that the "false flag"
operation was actually a benign research project. In a statement posted on Twitter, the
company's CEO claimed that its activities during the Alabama Senate race were conducted in
order to "better understand and report on the tactics and effects of social media
disinformation."
Morgan emphasized that he in no way took part in an influence campaign, and warned people
not to mischaracterize his "research."
While the New York Times seemed satisfied with his explanation, others pointed out that
Morgan had used the Hamilton 68 dashboard to give his "false flag" more credibility
– misleading the public about a "Russian" influence campaign that he knew was
fake.
New Knowledge's protestations apparently didn't convince Facebook, which announced last
week that five accounts linked to New Knowledge – including Morgan's – had been
suspended for engaging in "coordinated inauthentic behavior."
Meddlers
unmasked
The final nail in the coffin of Morgan's story came on Thursday, when the leaked secret
after-action report from "Project Birmingham" was published online, showing that those
behind the Alabama campaign knew perfectly well what they were doing and why.
BREAKING: Here's the after-action report from the AL Senate disinfo campaign.
So, it turns out there really was meddling in American democracy by "Russian bots."
Except they weren't run from Moscow or St. Petersburg, but from the offices of Democrat
operatives chiefly responsible for creating and amplifying the "Russiagate" hysteria
over the past two years in a textbook case of psychological projection.
Think your friends would be interested? Share this story!
"... "much of this Volume's analysis is derived from" ..."
"... "Russian troll farm" ..."
"... "Intelligence Community Assessment," ..."
"... "Strategic Communications Center of Excellence." ..."
"... "a cybersecurity company dedicated to protecting the public sphere from disinformation attacks." ..."
"... "orchestrated an elaborate 'false flag' operation that planted the idea that the Moore campaign was amplified on social media by a Russian botnet." ..."
"... "Russian" ..."
"... "significantly informed the Committee's understanding of Russia's social media-predicated attack against our democracy," ..."
"... Ever since Hillary Clinton blamed "Russian hackers" ..."
There is a
reason for that. By the committee's own admission,
"much of this Volume's analysis is derived
from"
the work of two Technical Advisory Groups (TAG), which produced two public reports back in
December 2018, to the same kind of fawning press coverage the report is receiving now.
NEW: The Russian government's efforts to interfere in the 2016 U.S.
elections involved using social media content to mostly target African-Americans, a new
Senate committee report concludes.
https://t.co/7BRUmiG18T
Not surprisingly, the report's
"findings"
are being cited as conclusive proof that
Democrats were right and President Donald Trump was wrong about 2016, Russia, Ukraine and the US
presidential election.
The Senate Intelligence Committee unveiled a sweeping new bipartisan
report showing Russian efforts to boost Trump's White House bid on social media during the
2016 U.S. election
https://t.co/TUjUhBdMnc
The only trouble with that is that the committee provides no actual evidence for any of its claims
– only assertions. For example, their description of the Internet Research Agency – the
"Russian
troll farm"
– is basically copied over from Special Counsel Robert Mueller's indictment of a
dozen of its alleged members. Yet a federal judge presiding over the case ruled back in May that
allegations cannot be treated as established evidence or conclusion, coming close to finding Mueller's
prosecutors in contempt.
Another document presented as evidence is the January 2017
"Intelligence Community Assessment,"
the disingenuously named work of a small group of people, hand-picked by the Obama administration's
DNI and chiefs of the CIA, FBI and NSA – all of whom, except for the NSA, have since been implicated
in what seems to be a campaign to spy on Trump, delegitimize his presidency, and have him impeached.
The Senate report also quotes testimonies from Obama aides such as Ben Rhodes – helpfully redacted
of course – Gen. Philip Breedlove, the NATO commander who tried to set off a war with Russia;
professional
"Russian bot"
hunters like Clint Watts and Thomas Rid; and NATO's
"Strategic
Communications Center of Excellence."
The best part, however, has to be the reliance on New Knowledge, presented as
"a cybersecurity
company dedicated to protecting the public sphere from disinformation attacks."
In reality, New
Knowledge was exposed by the New York Times as the outfit that actually ran bots and disinformation
operations during the 2017 Alabama special election for the US Senate, targeting Republican candidate
Roy Moore on behalf of Democrats – while blaming Russia!
In an internal memo, New Knowledge executives boasted how they
"orchestrated an elaborate 'false
flag' operation that planted the idea that the Moore campaign was amplified on social media by a
Russian botnet."
The other TAG, led by British academics and researchers, found that the
activity of 'Russian trolls' increased after the election – by 238 percent on Instagram, 59 percent on
Facebook, 52 percent on Twitter, and 84 percent on YouTube. So it was influencing elections
retroactively?
Left unsaid was that the absolute quantity of
"Russian"
posts was minuscule, a proverbial
drop in the bucket compared to the billions of social media posts generated and consumed by the US
electorate during the campaign.
These are the people who
"significantly informed the Committee's understanding of Russia's
social media-predicated attack against our democracy,"
as this week's report puts it.
Ever since Hillary Clinton blamed
"Russian hackers"
for the revelations of corruption
within the DNC in July 2016, the Washington establishment has been eager to blame Moscow for all the
ills of the US political system, real or imagined. The Senate Intelligence Committee's report seems to
be nothing more than an attempt to reheat the long-cold corpse of a conspiracy that should have been
buried with the Mueller Report and allowed to rest in peace.
The [neo]liberal mob was standing around with their torches and pitchforks in a state of
shock. Doctor Mueller, the "monster hunter," had let Trumpenstein slip through his fingers. The
supposedly ironclad case against him had turned out to be a bunch of lies made up by the
Intelligence Community, the Democratic Party, and the corporate media.
Russiagate was officially
dead . The President of the United States was not a Russian secret agent. No one was
blackmailing anyone with a videotape of Romanian prostitutes peeing on a bed where Obama once
slept. All that had happened was, millions of liberals had been subjected to the most elaborate
psyop in the history of elaborate deep state psyops which, ironically, had only further
strengthened Trumpenstein, who was out there on the Portico balcony, shotgunning Diet Cokes
with one hand and shaking his junk at the mob with the other.
Rudy Giuliani, President Donald Trump's personal attorney, defended himself Sunday on "This
Week with George Stephanopoulos" from accusations lodged by the president's former homeland security adviser that he
has trafficked unfounded theories about foreign interference in the 2016 presidential election.
Interested in Donald Trump?
Add Donald Trump as an interest to stay up to date on the latest Donald Trump news,
video, and analysis from ABC News.
Donald Trump
Add Interest
Tom Bossert, the former White House official, took aim at Giuliani earlier on "This Week,"
calling it a mistake for the president to have hired him in the first place. He also called out Giuliani for
repeating a "completely false" theory that Ukraine – not Russia – was responsible for interference in the 2016
election.
"At this point I am deeply frustrated with what [Giuliani] and the legal team is doing and
repeating that debunked theory to the president," Bossert, who is now an ABC contributor, said. "It sticks in his
mind when he hears it over and over again."
Giuliani fired back later in the show, telling Stephanopoulos, "Tom Bossert doesn't know
what he's talking about I'm not peddling anything."
The president's personal attorney also sought to defend his role in pressing Ukrainians to
investigate former Vice President Joe Biden, the fallout from which has led to an impeachment inquiry in Congress.
"Everything I did was to defend my client and I am proud of having uncovered what will turn
out to be a massive pay-for-play scheme," Giuliani told Stephanopoulos.
The "pay-for-play scheme" Giuliani has accused Biden of perpetrating in Ukraine dates back
to 2016 and the dismissal of the country's former prosecutor general, Viktor Shokin. At the time, Biden was leading
U.S. policy toward Ukraine with an emphasis on cracking down on corruption.
He called for Shokin to be fired.
At one point, Giuliani waved what he said were several affidavits, including one by Shokin
defending himself, which he said verified his claims that Shokin was dismissed as a result of his investigation of
Burisma and Hunter Biden.
It was not immediately clear how the documents verified those claims.
Trump and Giuliani have accused Biden of calling for Shokin's dismissal because his office
was investigating Burisma, the Ukrainian energy company where Biden's son, Hunter, had a seat on the board of
directors.
"This is not about getting Joe Biden in trouble," Giuliani said. "This is about proving
that Donald Trump was framed by the Democrats."
Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images
President Donald Trump and Ukrainian
President Volodymyr Zelensky speak during a meeting in New York on September 25, 2019, on the sidelines of the United
Nations General Assembly.
more
+
But the assertion that Biden acted to help his son has been
undercut by widespread criticism of Shokin from several high-profile international leaders, including members of the
European Union and International Monetary Fund, who said Biden's recommendation was well justified.
The IMF threatened to withhold aid to Kiev in early 2016, citing "Ukraine's slow progress
in improving governance and fighting corruption," according to Christine Lagard, the IMF's managing director.
Giuliani also sought to undermine a whistleblower complaint, which was filed in August and
released publicly last week, that describes the nature of the president's phone call with his Ukrainian counterpart,
Volodymyr Zelenskiy, and an apparent effort within the White House to "lock down" records of the conversation.
"The whistleblower says, 'I don't have any direct knowledge, I just heard things,'"
Giuliani said. "I'm not saying [the whistleblower] was false, I'm saying he could have heard it wrong."
Stephanopoulos cited several examples from the complaint in which the whistleblower
accurately described the content of Trump's conversation with Zelenskiy as compared to the transcript.
The whistleblower, who has not been identified, claimed that at least a half dozen
administration officials had raised concerns that Trump had used "the power of his office to solicit interference
from a foreign country in the 2020 U.S. election."
Siavosh Hosseini/NurPhoto via Getty Images
The annual Free Iran Conference for the
first time at Ashraf 3, the headquarters of the Peoples Mojahedin Organization of Iran on July 13, 2019, near Duress
in Albania.
more
+
Democrats have accused the president of using his desire for an
investigation into the Bidens as leverage with Zelenskiy, particularly in light of the fact that the White House had,
at the time, withheld nearly $400 million in aid to Ukraine.
It was later released.
Giuliani's name is invoked more than 30 times in the whistleblower's complaint.
When Stephanopoulos asked Giuliani whether he will cooperate with the House Intelligence
Committee, for which Rep. Adam Schiff is the chair, Giuliani said he wouldn't cooperate with Schiff. But when pressed
said he would "consider it" if his client, the president, signed off.
"I'm a lawyer. It's his privilege, not mine," he responded. "If he decides that he wants me
to testify, of course I'll testify, even though I think Adam Schiff is an illegitimate chairman. He has already
prejudged the case."
In his interview on "This Week," Giuliani sought to clarify the timeline of his
conversations with Ukrainians and insisted he did not instigate communications.
"November of 2016, they first came to me," Giuliani said of the alleged outreach from
Ukrainians through the State Department. "The Ukrainians came to me. I didn't go to them."
The State Department and its chief, Mike Pompeo, have faced scrutiny for their handling of
Giuliani's overtures to the Ukrainians. The former U.S. Special Envoy for Ukraine, Kurt Volker, helped coordinate at
least one interaction Giuliani had with an aide to Zelenskiy in Madrid in May, Volker confirmed.
Giuliani has claimed the State Department directed him to act and has said he briefed
Volker and the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, Gordon Sondland, after his meetings with Ukrainians.
On Friday, ABC News reported that Volker had resigned from his post with the State
Department. House Democrats still plan to interview him next week as part of their impeachment inquiry, according to
a congressional aide.
Giuliani planned to speak at a conference in Armenia next week, according to a schedule.
But he cancelled after news outlets reported that several Kremlin officials and Russian President Vladimir Putin
would also be in attendance.
"... Giuliani planned to speak at a conference in Armenia next week, according to a schedule. But he cancelled after news outlets reported that several Kremlin officials and Russian President Vladimir Putin would also be in attendance. ..."
Giuliani has claimed the State Department directed him to act and has said he briefed Volker
and the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, Gordon Sondland, after his meetings with
Ukrainians.
On Friday, ABC News reported that Volker had resigned from his post with the State
Department. House Democrats still plan to interview him next week as part of their impeachment
inquiry, according to a congressional aide.
Giuliani planned to speak at a conference in Armenia next week, according to a schedule.
But he cancelled after news outlets reported that several Kremlin officials and Russian
President Vladimir Putin would also be in attendance.
@48 piotr.. "Pretending that Russia is some source of evil inventions is the true
intellectual dishonesty." exactly... i'm thinking the amount of ignorance that the western
MSM has happily shed on this has won over a number of otherwise intelligent people... it is
friggin' shocking... many folks like Kool-Aid it seems, including otherwise intelligent
people...
"... "I don't know what the fuck you're talking about," Papadopoulos replied according to his recent book , "Deep State Target." But what if he had instead chuckled or said something stupid in order to puff himself up? Based on previous FBI entrapment cases , the answer seems clear: after threatening him with prosecution, the bureau would have outfitted him with a wire so that he could bring down other campaign officials. It wouldn't have stopped until it snared the ultimate prize –Trump himself. ..."
"... Trump told reporters in May he wanted Australia's role to be investigated by the Justice Department. Comey's Trump Tower meeting was important because it led directly to the publication of the notorious dossier that would generate endless headlines and cripple the incoming Trump administration even though it was full of baloney. ..."
"... Wall Street Journal ..."
"... Instead of electing presidents, Americans would merely submit them to the FBI for review. ..."
"... With the Electoral College and the Supreme Court already overturning the popular vote in two of the last five presidential elections, voters would have a fourth branch to contend with – the intelligence community. ..."
"... As Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer told MSNBC'S Rachel Maddow at the height of the Russiagate madness: "Let me tell you, you take on the intelligence community – they have six ways from Sunday of getting back at you." Had Comey succeeded in bringing down Trump, they may have had a seventh. ..."
Before the Trump Tower visit, Comey sat down with top FBI brass – Chief of Staff James
Rybicki, Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, General Counsel James Baker, and others involved with
the Russiagate investigation – to strategize about the upcoming meeting.
Page 17 of the OIG report tells of what they were up to:
"Baker and McCabe said that they agreed that the briefing needed to be one-on-one, so that
Comey could present the 'salacious' information in the most discreet and least embarrassing
way. At the same time, we were told, they did not want the President-elect to perceive the
one-on-one briefing as an effort to hold information over him like a 'Hoover-esque type of
plot.' Witnesses interviewed by the OIG also said that they discussed Trump's potential
responses to being told about the 'salacious' information, including that Trump might make
statements about, or provide information of value to, the pending Russian interference
investigation."
As the final sentence shows, Comey's job was to confront Trump about the alleged 2013 Moscow
incident and see whether he would give the FBI reason to advance its Russiagate investigation
to a whole new level, that of the presidency itself.
This was the same approach the FBI would employ a couple of weeks later after listening in
on a telephone conversation between Mike Flynn and Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak and not
liking what it heard about plans to bolster U.S.-Russian relations. The solution was to send a
couple of agents to quiz the newly-appointed national security adviser and see how he would
respond. After telling Flynn not to bother bringing along a lawyer because it was just a
friendly chat and "they wanted Flynn to be relaxed, and they were concerned that giving the
warnings might adversely affect the rapport" – as a follow-up memo
noted – the agents caught the ever-voluble Flynn fudging various details. Three weeks
later, he found himself out of office and in disgrace. Ten months after that, he was in federal
court pleading
guilty to making false and misleading statements.
Another Set-Up
Michael Horowitz, the Justice Department's inspector general. (Wikimedia Commons)
Now we know from the OIG report that this was apparently the goal with regard to Trump.
Russiagate began nine months earlier with a smallarmy of intelligence agents buzzing around
a naïve young Trump adviser named George Papadopoulos. [See " Spooks Spooking
Themselves ," May 31, 2018.] An Anglo-Maltese academic named Joseph Mifsud, an individual
with strong Anglo-American intelligence connections, wined and dined him and told him that
Russia had "dirt" on Hillary Clinton in the form of "thousands of emails."
An Australian diplomat, former Foreign Minister Alexander Downer , who was similarly
connected, invited him out for drinks and then passed along the fruits of the conversation to
Canberra, which related them to Washington. A Belorussian-American businessman who worked for
Steele offered Papadopoulos $30,000 a month under the table. A U.S. intelligence asset named
Charles Tawil presented him with $10,000 in cash. A long-time CIA informant named Stefan Halper
flew Papadopoulos to London and barraged him with questions:
"It's great that Russia is helping you and the campaign, right, George? George, you and your
campaign are involved in hacking and working with Russia, right? It seems like you are a
middleman for Trump and Russia, right? I know you know about the emails."
"I don't know what the fuck you're talking about," Papadopoulos replied according to
his recent book , "Deep State Target." But what if he had instead chuckled or said
something stupid in order to puff himself up? Based on previous
FBI entrapment cases , the answer seems clear: after threatening him with prosecution, the
bureau would have outfitted him with a wire so that he could bring down other campaign
officials. It wouldn't have stopped until it snared the ultimate prize –Trump
himself.
Trump
told reporters in May he wanted Australia's role to be investigated by the Justice
Department. Comey's Trump Tower meeting was important because it led directly to the publication of the
notorious dossier that would generate endless headlines and cripple the incoming Trump
administration even though it was full of baloney.
Most of what we know about that meeting in the early days of the Trump administration comes
from a memo that Comeydashed off minutes later and then lightly revised the next morning.
According to his memo, Comey met one-on-one with Trump to tell him about the Steele dossier
because
"the content [was] known at IC [intelligence community] senior level and I didn't want him
caught cold by some of the detail . I said I wasn't saying this was true, only that I wanted
him to know both that it had been reported and that the reports were in many hands. I said
media like CNN had them and were looking for a news hook. I said it was important that we not
give them the excuse to write that the FBI has the material and that we were keeping it very
close-hold."
But Comey's memo was disingenuous, starting with his line about not wanting to give the
media "the excuse to write that the FBI has the material." Leaks are an integral part of
Washington, as an insider and a leaker like Comey knows.
As Comey must have also known, his very decision to brief Trump on the dossier wound up
triggering press attention to it.
Four days later, Buzzfeed
posted the dossier on its website. The source remains anonymous but it's easy to imagine
that either Director of National Intelligence James Clapper or CIA Director John Brennan
spilled the beans. They both accompanied Comey to the meeting and were appalled by Trump's call
for a rapprochement with Russia.
Comey's memo also rings false where it says he "wasn't saying this was true, only that I
wanted him to know both that it had been reported and that the reports were in many hands."
Glenn Simpson, the ex- Wall Street Journal reporter whose private Washington
intelligence firm, Fusion GPS, commissioned the dossier on behalf of the Clinton campaign and
the DNC, told the House intelligence committee that Steele began sharing his findings with the
FBI "in July or late June" of 2016. (See p. 60 of testimony
transcript ).
That means that the bureau had the Moscow Ritz-Carlton report in hand six months prior to
the Trump Tower meeting. Surely, this is enough time to reach some conclusion as to its
veracity.
'Might Make Statements'
Had Trump fallen into Comey's trap, millions of Americans would no doubt have cheered – and given
Trump's dismal record in office, who can blame them? But the implications are chilling, and not
just for rightwing dissidents. Instead of electing presidents, Americans would merely
submit them to the FBI for review.
With the Electoral College and the Supreme Court already overturning the popular vote in
two of the last five presidential elections, voters would have a fourth branch to contend with
– the intelligence community.
As Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer told MSNBC'S Rachel Maddow at the height of
the Russiagate madness: "Let me tell you, you take on the intelligence community – they
have six ways from Sunday of getting back at you." Had Comey succeeded in bringing down Trump,
they may have had a seventh.
Daniel Lazare is the author of "The Frozen Republic: How the Constitution Is Paralyzing
Democracy" (Harcourt Brace, 1996) and other books about American politics. He has written for a
wide variety of publications from The Nation to Le Monde Diplomatique and
blogs about the Constitution and related matters at D aniellazare.com .
Richard A. , September 24, 2019 at 15:13
I think Russiagate is more than just smearing Trump, it's also about smearing Russia. The
war lobby here in the US and the UK are trying to manipulate public opinion in to hating
Russia.
R Zarate , September 24, 2019 at 05:02
And now there are calls to impeach Trump for asking for an investigation into Biden! It
speaks volumes about the MSM that there was no uproar when H.B. took the job at Bursima, I
remember the White House putting out a release at the time saying they could see no conflict
of interest, I guess the lack of conflict was it was par for the course to enrich family
members.
By the bye. So Trump gets impeached, then what? Didn't do Clinton any harm.
CitizenOne , September 23, 2019 at 23:26
It is an interesting history filled with plots within plots to destroy Trump for the
audacity to win the presidential election. True he won the election with a lot of help from
Cambridge Analytica and his election team which included Roger Stone, George Papadopoulos
(the nube) Paul Manafort (the former partner in the Black, Stone, Manafort and Kelly lobby
firm) , Rick Gates and Michael Flynn.
All these people were indicted under the Mueller probe but yet Trump escaped without a
scratch on his record. To pull this off Trump abandoned all of them in turn claiming he
hardly knew them and had no involvement. How Trump escaped from the Mueller investigation has
nothing to do with his innocence and everything to do with the lack of evidence tying him to
the crimes his associates admitted to under intense scrutiny by the Mueller Special Council
Investigation into the alleged Russian Hacks which supposedly threw the election toward
Trump. Michael Cohen, Trump's long time lawyer was also convicted of paying off two women
that alleged Trump arranged for sex with the women and later paid them off handsomely
allegedly by orders from Trump.
It is like Trump won his freedom because there was no evidence to convict him despite the
many people who were closely associated with himwho fell as victims to the special
prosecutors zeal for indictments of Trump's inner guard.
In the end the Mueller report all but exonerated Trump with Mueller claiming Trump had
committed impeachable evidence but that Mueller could do nothing about that leaving his
conclusions up to the court of popular appeal as to whether or not Trump was guilty of
obstruction of justice in the entire Russia Gate story.
Trump accurately called out the testimony of Comey before Congress into what he knew about
the Russian attempt to hack the election as fake news. Trump banked on what the intelligence
community would share about the election result and he won big time when the Mueller
investigation into Russian hacking of the election produced no tangible connection between
Trump and the alleged hackers. The Steel dossier was also l shown to be just more fake news
paid for by the democrats.
The longer Trump remains in charge the less likely that he will be implicated in a scandal
although the new allegations that he attempted to get the Ukrainian government to investigate
Joe Biden has the potential to raise a new round of fake news decrying that the president has
engaged in yet more impeachable offenses.
robert e williamson jr , September 23, 2019 at 21:23
Beware of the Department of Justice, mad dogs and dogs of war.
Appears to be FBI disruption of the domestic governmental tranquility for the unique
purpose of disrupting a duly elected president.
I mean the FBI bill themselves as the domestic counter intelligence apparatus and CIA
apparently agrees. Maybe CIA is actually running another of their counter intelligence covert
mission that involves the undoing of Ole Donny J. .
No I didn't say it, no mention of the dreaded "executive action" my me.
My assumption is that this may be simply collateral damage from the investigation into the
Russia meddling in the 2016 elec . . . . .
. . . and the beat goes on, la da da dee . . . !
That far away look in the eyes of the old democratic leaders is the look of "the fear"
(H.S.T.). They watch as the repugs, their partners in crime get skewered , by the same DOJ
that will skewer them in a New York second given a chance.
DOJ and the USAG leading the shock troops of the National Socialists take over.
Sandra Thompson , September 23, 2019 at 20:58
One of your best lines: "Instead of electing presidents, Americans would merely submit
them to the FBI for review." Liked last couple of paragraphs too. Thank you
Abby , September 23, 2019 at 19:43
So Comey knowingly and blatantly lied to the incoming president and it was that incoming
president that got investigated? How the hell does that make sense to the Russia Gaters? And
then they elevated Comey after he got fired? This makes as much sense as people thinking that
Robert Mueller was going to save the country.
After reading Parry's essay on Joe ByeDone from 2014 after the Obama coup in Ukraine that
showed how corrupt the powerful people in our government are I don't even know why people
bother to vote anymore. The country is run by people behind the scenes who use congress
critters to do their dirty work and give them cover. And with our corrupt military industrial
complex setting the world on fire I think it's time for the empire to burn.
I read somewhere early on that someone was peddling the steele-dossier to many different
outlets weeks or even months before trump's briefing, but they wouldn't bite (too fantastic)
until the feds legitimized it. The people should be informed about these mechanics.
Dan Anderson , September 23, 2019 at 15:09
Here's the warning before being sworn in:
January 3, 2017 – Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer: "Let me tell you, you take on
the intelligence community, they have six ways from Sunday to get back at you. So, even for a
practical, supposedly hard-nosed businessman, he is being really dumb to do this."
Rachel Maddow: "What do you think the intelligence community would do if they were motivated
to?"
Schumer: "I don't know, but from what I am told, they are very upset with how he has treated
them and talked about them," -- The Rachel Maddow Show Jan 3, 2017
This is a apt demonstration of the raw power of the US neoliberal MSM propaganda.
Notable quotes:
"... This is a very interesting process: no matter how absurd is the particular notion and how many contravening facts exist, the power of neoliberal MSM is such that soon enough it is viewed as an established and indisputable fact. As you aptly call it "an article of faith". ..."
"... So we can state that neoliberal MSM are performing part of functions that in Medieval Europe was performed by the Church. Kind of giant televangelism pulpit in the mega church of neoliberalism ..."
Interesting – apparently now that the notion Russia interfered in the US presidential
election to tip the vote to Trump has become an article of faith that much of the world
regards as established fact, it is safe to advance on that a little. Now Donald Trump
actually asked Vladimir Putin to hack the emails of his democratic rival.
Curiously, the Washington Post's recently-adopted new slogan is "Democracy dies in
darkness". So telling the readers any old shit that you made up and can offer no proof
whatsoever is true is infinitely better than darkness. And they wonder why academic standards
are slipping, and why Americans faithfully believe things that few other countries accept as
true. All the while they are cultivating a nation of dunces which believes anything it is
told by its government.
likbez
"apparently now that the notion Russia interfered in the US presidential election to tip
the vote to Trump has become an article of faith that much of the world regards as
established fact,"
Mark, you are a very astute political observer!
This is a very interesting process: no matter how absurd is the particular notion and how
many contravening facts exist, the power of neoliberal MSM is such that soon enough it is
viewed as an established and indisputable fact. As you aptly call it "an article of
faith".
So we can state that neoliberal MSM are performing part of functions that in Medieval
Europe was performed by the Church. Kind of giant televangelism pulpit in the mega church
of neoliberalism
Young people in the west, generally speaking, are know-it-alls convinced of their own
absolute currency of knowledge, and most of what they believe they know comes from reading
newspapers and watching television. I say this from experience as, like all of us, I was
young once and thought I knew it all, and I got almost all my information from newspapers and
television news, although some came from professional journals like the US Naval Institute
Proceedings. I grew up believing Russia was a grey and colourless place where hopeless people
in shabby, ill-fitting clothes trudged dispiritedly from one line-up to another, then home to
their tenth-floor walk-up concrete box shared with from eight to a dozen other family members
and relatives.
Of course, it WAS like that for some people. Just as it likely was for the poor in the
west, although they were all but invisible then save for occasional charity drives to 'help
the less fortunate'. I was a huge fan of the United States, loving pretty much everything
about it, as my first foreign trips with the Navy were to places like New London, Connecticut
(right across the river from Groton, the headquarters of submarine builders Electric Boat)
and Boston. I was a big fan of the U.S. Navy, and in many respects I still am – it was
and is mostly a professional service with capable leaders and sound ethics common to seagoing
services the world over.
It was in the area of the USA's political system that gradual and then total
disillusionment took place. Any respect I might once have had for the media vanished at about
the same time.
The media has become a cesspool of bottom-feeders all looking for the 'gotcha' moment,
while the business and profession of journalism in general has morphed to uncritical relay of
government propaganda.
From that same link, a very interesting dissection of the Salisbury poisonings. We've
become used to mocking or horrified refutations of the UK government's line that it could
only have been Russia, but this source does it with considerable detail; for instance, the
formula originally devised by Vil Marzayanov and his compatriots in the Soviet Union was
later patented by a US Chemical lab.
In 2013, Edward Snowden was an IT systems expert working under contract for the National
Security Agency when he traveled to Hong Kong to provide three journalists with thousands of
top-secret documents about U.S. intelligence agencies' surveillance of American citizens.
To Snowden, the classified information he shared with the journalists exposed privacy abuses
by government intelligence agencies. He saw himself as a whistleblower. But the U.S. government
considered him a traitor in violation of the
Espionage Act .
After meeting with the journalists, Snowden intended to leave Hong Kong and travel -- via
Russia -- to Ecuador, where he would seek asylum. But when his plane landed at Moscow's
Sheremetyevo International Airport, things didn't go according to plan.
"What I wasn't expecting was that the United States government itself ... would cancel my
passport," he says.
Snowden was directed to a room where Russian intelligence agents offered to assist him -- in
return for access to any secrets he harbored. Snowden says he refused.
"I didn't cooperate with the Russian intelligence services -- I haven't and I won't," he
says. "I destroyed my access to the archive. ... I had no material with me before I left Hong
Kong, because I knew I was going to have to go through this complex multi-jurisdictional
route."
Snowden spent 40 days in the Moscow airport, trying to negotiate asylum in various
countries. After being denied asylum by 27 nations, he settled in Russia, where he remains
today.
"People look at me now and they think I'm this crazy guy, I'm this extremist or whatever.
Some people have a misconception that [I] set out to burn down the NSA," he says. "But that's
not what this was about. In many ways, 2013 wasn't about surveillance at all. What it was about
was a violation of the Constitution."
Snowden's 2013 revelations led to changes in the laws and standards governing American
intelligence agencies and the practices of U.S. technology companies, which now encrypt much of
their Web traffic for security. He reflects on his life and his experience in the intelligence
community in the memoir Permanent Record.
On Sept. 17, the U.S. Justice Department filed suit to recover all proceeds from the book,
alleging that Snowden violated nondisclosure agreements by not letting the government review
the manuscript before publication; Snowden's attorney, Ben Wizner, said in a statement that the
book contains no government secrets that have not been previously published by respected news
organizations, and that the government's prepublication review system is under court
challenge.
The USA clearly overextended itself with all those neocon global neoliberal empire games. So
for Canada, to think of it as an independent country is somewhat naive. It is vassal of
Washington at best, a colony at worst.
But RussiaGate is not about Russia and its attitude to the West. Russiagate is about crisis
of neoliberalism and cracks in the facade of the neoliberal society, the cracks that the ruling
elite tried to patch by redirecting anger to the external enemy.
This is the point that the author seems do not understand. all russigate stupidity is just at
attempt to use the image of expernal enemy to rally the nation and produce at this some kind of
artificial unity. Unity that now is severely lacking in the USA.
West.
Boosted by victory in the Cold War, believing that our systems represent the 'end of history',
we in the West have come to see ourselves as 'masters of the universe'. We are all that
matters.
And so it follows that we must be at the top of everybody else's agenda, and that whatever
anybody else in the world does, it must somehow be about us.
Take the paranoid stories I've been covering on this blog about how the Russians are
bound to 'meddle' in Canada's upcoming general election. Why on earth do people here think that
this is so likely, given that the choice is between a governing party whose foreign minister is
banned from entering Russia and an opposition party whose leader is banned from entering
Russia? The answer lies in our strange belief that we're actually really important. Canada
is a G7 country after all. Of course the Russians will target us. We matter! Except that in
reality we don't.
As was mentioned in the report by Sergey Sukhankin which I critiqued a week or so ago,
Russians who study international affairs don't look at Canada as a truly independent country.
To most of them, we're just an appendage of the United States. Our belief that the opposite is
true – that we're a big player, that our elections really matter to foreign countries,
that they're bound to try to undermine us because 'WE'RE IMPORTANT!' – is narcissism pure
and simple.
Canadians aren't the only one guilty of this. Americans have a similar problem. It's why
they had such a huge problem understanding what Saddam Hussein was up to after his defeat in
the 1991 Gulf War. Faced with apparent Iraqi obstruction of US demands, they assumed that this
meant that Saddam was plotting some sort of evil revenge against the United States. In fact, it
turned out that he wasn't thinking of the Americans at all; his real concerns were to do with
Iran. You can find lots of examples like that. Americans are told that they must fight the
Taliban because of the danger that terrorists might again use Afghanistan to strike the United
States. But is the average Talibani really thinking about America? Or is he thinking about his
home, his family, his village – all things local? If the Iranians are helping the Syrian
government, is it because they view the war in Syria as part of a global struggle against the
United States, or is it because Syria is next door to Iran and what happens there is of direct
importance to Iran's own security? The answers, I think, are pretty clear.
To put it another way, states (and non-state actors) have their own interests unconnected to
us. The fact that their pursuit of their interests sometimes makes them clash with Western
states who are pursuing different interests doesn't mean that they're doing what they doing
because of us. Moreover, as the balance of power in the world shifts, it's likely that more and
more often the West will become less and less of a factor in non-Western states' calculations.
As Derek Averre says with reference to Russia in another part of the LSE report:
We are in danger of missing the fact that European norms are becoming less important as a
reference point against which Russia's political elite measures its policy. Indeed, Ted
Hopf's argument – that Russia constructs its identity in relation to the US/Europe as
'significant others' – should be subject to appraisal at this time of far-reaching
change in Russian foreign policy.
In short, it's not all about us, and becoming less and less about us with every passing
day. But arrogance and narcissism prevent us from seeing this. As a result we stumble from
foreign policy blunder to foreign policy blunder . Unless and until we are able to come off
our high horses and recognize that we're not the centre of the universe, we're going to keep
getting things horribly wrong.
"... "Sadly, the country spent over three years and 40 million taxpayer dollars on these investigations," said Lewandowski. "It is now clear the investigation was populated by many Trump haters who had their own agenda -- to try and take down a duly elected president of the United States," Lewandowski said in his opening statement - later adding "We, as a Nation, would be better served if elected officials like you concentrated your efforts to combat the true crises facing our country, as opposed to going down rabbit holes like this hearing." ..."
"... Nadler and Schiff and those in their camp have a single-minded purpose: Never, ever , again allow the unwashed to get away with a successful rebellion. ..."
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi blasted House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler last week
over his 'Moby Dick'-like obsession with impeaching President Trump - days before Trump's 2016
campaign manager Corey Lewandowski
wiped the floor with Congressional Democrats during a contentious five-hour hearing on
Tuesday in front of Nadler's panel.
Pelosi's comments came during a closed-door Capitol Hill meeting of Democrats last week,
where she complained that Judiciary Committee aides have advanced the impeachment push "far
beyond where the House Democratic Caucus stands," according to Politico
.
" And you can feel free to leak this ," Pelosi added, according to several people who were
there.
It was the latest sign of the widening schism between Pelosi and Judiciary Committee
Chairman Jerry Nadler, two longtime allies who are increasingly in conflict over where to
guide the party at one of its most critical moments.
Both Pelosi and Nadler, who have served in the House together for more than 25 years,
insist their relationship remains strong. But their rift over impeachment is getting harder
and harder to paper over amid Democrats' flailing messaging on the topic and a growing divide
in the caucus. - Politico
And while Pelosi aides told Politico that Nadler has coordinated with her office on
investigations, legal strategy and messaging - and Pelosi has signed off on all the Judiciary
Committee's court filings against Trump, the House Speaker has been expressing skepticism for
months that a successful impeachment in the House would only lead to "exonerating" Trump on the
campaign trail after the effort dies in the GOP-led Senate.
Pelosi has privately clashed with Nadler over his aggressive impeachment agenda, arguing
the public does not support it and it does not have the 218 votes to pass on the House floor.
So far, about 137 Democrats say they would vote to open an official impeachment inquiry.
...
The relationship between the two veteran lawmakers has become strained . While Pelosi has
blocked the House from formally voting to open an impeachment inquiry, Nadler declared he is
authorized to begin one even without a House vote. -
Washington Examiner
"Am I concerned? The answer is yes!," Florida Democratic Rep. Donna Shalala told the
Washington Examiner . "In my district, I'm not getting asked about impeachment.
I'm being asked about healthcare, I'm being asked about the environment, and about
infrastructure. It's not like around the country they are thinking about impeachment. It's a
Washington phenomenon as far as I can tell."
... ... ...
During Tuesday's 'impeachment' hearing, Corey Lewandowski beat Congressional
Democrats like a red-headed stepchild - starting with his opening statement:
"Sadly, the country spent over three years and 40 million taxpayer dollars on these
investigations," said Lewandowski. "It is now clear the investigation was populated by many
Trump haters who had their own agenda -- to try and take down a duly elected president of the
United States," Lewandowski said in his opening statement - later adding "We, as a Nation,
would be better served if elected officials like you concentrated your efforts to combat the
true crises facing our country, as opposed to going down rabbit holes like this
hearing."
" As for actual 'collusion,' or 'conspiracy,' there was none. What there has been, however,
is harassment of the president from the day he won the election ."
"Corey Lewandowski was very precise," Rep. Matt Gaetz, a member of the House panel, told
Fox News ' Sean Hannity. "And House Democrats looked like a dog that had chased a car
and then caught it and then did not know what to do about it ."
Nadler and Schiff and those in their camp have a single-minded purpose: Never,
ever , again allow the unwashed to get away with a successful rebellion.
That's the reason a now 90% controlled Trump can't be allowed to escape
unscathed, no matter how otherwise useless the exercise -- even by the standards of their own
(apparent) issue agendas.
Nadler:Corey what time is it? Corey :It's 2pm. Nadler: The clock shows 1:59 . Charge Corey for
lying to Congress! All a gotcha game by a group of angry haters.
Nadler:Corey what time is it? Corey :It's 2pm. Nadler: The clock shows 1:59 . Charge Corey for
lying to Congress! All a gotcha game by a group of angry haters.
"... "If instead of focusing on petty and personal politics, the committee focused on solving the challenges of this generation, imagine how many people we could help." ..."
"... He also took a swipe at Trump's 2016 rival, Hillary Clinton, and her handling of emails, and criticized the "Obama-Biden administration" for its inability to stop Russia election interference -- dropping the name of the former vice president and 2020 presidential candidate. ..."
"... Nadler is an incompetent idiot with a Napoleon complex. Why did this hearing ever happen and televised when it was certain it was going to be a bust. ..."
"... More of our vicious, counterproductive political duopoly. This was just one example of what is happening in general with our current political processes - a lot of stagnation. ..."
He set the tone in his opening statement, mocking Democrats and ridiculing what he called
the "fake Russia collusion narrative."
"We as a nation would be better served if elected officials like you concentrated your
efforts to combat the true crises facing our country as opposed to going down rabbit holes like
this hearing," Lewandowski said. "If instead of focusing on petty and personal politics,
the committee focused on solving the challenges of this generation, imagine how many people we
could help."
... ... ...
He also took a swipe at Trump's 2016 rival, Hillary Clinton, and her handling of emails,
and criticized the "Obama-Biden administration" for its inability to stop Russia election
interference -- dropping the name of the former vice president and 2020 presidential
candidate.
"Donald Trump was a private citizen and had no more responsibility than I did to protect the
2016 election," he said. "That fell to the Obama-Biden administration and they failed. "
... ... ...
At times the hearing was almost comical. When Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) asked
Lewandowski, "Are you the hit man, bag man, the lookout or all of the above?" Lewandowski
replied: "I think I'm the good-looking man, actually."
Lewandowski also scolded Rep. Jamie B. Raskin (D-Md.) for saying the tooth fairy was not
real: "My children are watching, so thank you for that."
Republicans, meanwhile, used their time to praise the president and sympathize with
Lewandowski because Democrats asked him to testify.
"Why do Dems continue this charade?" Trump ally Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) asked. Lewandowski
replied: "I think they hate this president more than they love their country."
=== 5 minutes
ago Lewandowski made everyone including himself look foolish and today’s circus proved
nothing except Nadler is an incompetent idiot with a Napoleon complex. Why did this hearing
ever happen and televised when it was certain it was going to be a bust. 1 minute ago One
of the commentators said this was exactly to be expected … He said the Dems requested
this hearing because their constituents wanted it. I think plenty of us knew what was gonna
happen -- as it often does in these situations, regardless of party. More of our vicious,
counterproductive political duopoly. This was just one example of what is happening in general
with our current political processes - a lot of stagnation.
I think we need to get away from parties, they naturally lead to antagonism, and an "us vs
them" mentality, and fighting. I have some ideas (humble and basic) on doing away with parties
at ourconstitution.info , Outreach,
Other Comments.
We must do something; take back Washington's lead -- he couldn't stand parties. Much scarier
stuff as well -- rise of the Medical-Military Industrial, " a lot of killers" (Trump to
O'Reilly, video on my LInks page), in and out of hospitals. Some are concerned also that the
military and CIA are running the Country -- I see a big problem with these career positions vs
desires of an oncoming president. Apparently, these orgs, if they don't like a president or
policy, just wait them out (or kill them), "contributing" to this current disgrace of a
Constitutional Republic. What to do about that? Something needs to be done... Maybe those
personnel should be changed out, they can be as much or more dangerous than a president for
life...
It is Our Republic, Of, By, and For The People, as long as we can keep it. Protest with me
in Miami, or wherever you are, before it is too late.
Nadler:Corey what time is it? Corey :It's 2pm. Nadler: The clock shows 1:59 . Charge Corey for
lying to Congress! All a gotcha game by a group of angry haters.
Nadler:Corey what time is it? Corey :It's 2pm. Nadler: The clock shows 1:59 . Charge Corey for
lying to Congress! All a gotcha game by a group of angry haters.
A retired Australian diplomat who served in Moscow dissects the emergence of the new Cold
War and its dire consequences.
I n 2014, we saw violent U.S.-supported regime change and civil war in Ukraine. In February,
after months of increasing tension from the anti-Russian protest movement's sitdown strike in
Kiev's Maidan Square, there was a murderous clash between protesters and Ukrainian police,
sparked off by hidden shooters (we now know that were expert Georgian snipers) , aiming at
police. The elected government collapsed and President Yanukevich fled to Russia, pursued by
murder squads.
The new Poroshenko government pledged harsh anti-Russian language laws. Rebels in two
Russophone regions in Eastern Ukraine took local control, and appealed for Russian military
help. In March, a referendum took place in Russian-speaking Crimea on leaving Ukraine, under
Russian military protection. Crimeans voted overwhelmingly to join Russia, a request promptly
granted by the Russian Parliament and President. Crimea's border with Ukraine was secured
against saboteurs. Crimea is prospering under its pro-Russian government, with the economy
kick-started by Russian transport infrastructure investment.
In April, Poroshenko ordered full military attack on the separatist provinces of Donetsk and
Luhansk in Eastern Ukraine. A brutal civil war ensued, with aerial and artillery bombardment
bringing massive civilian death and destruction to the separatist region. There was major
refugee outflow into Russia and other parts of Ukraine. The shootdown of MH17 took place in
July 2014.
Poroshenko: Ordered military attack.
By August 2015, according to UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs
estimates, 13,000 people had been killed and 30,000 wounded. 1.4 million Ukrainians had been
internally displaced, and 925,000 had fled to neighbouring countries, mostly Russia and to a
lesser extent Poland.
There is now a military stalemate, under the stalled Minsk peace process. But random fatal
clashes continue, with the Ukrainian Army mostly blamed by UN observers. The UN reported last
month that the ongoing war has affected 5.2 million people, leaving 3.5 million of them in need
of relief, including 500,000 children. Most Russians blame the West for fomenting Ukrainian
enmity towards Russia. This war brings back for older Russians horrible memories of the Nazi
invasion in 1941. The Russia-Ukraine border is only 550 kilometres from Moscow.
Flashpoint Syria
Russian forces joined the civil war in Syria in September 2015, at the request of the Syrian
Government, faltering under the attacks of Islamist extremist rebel forces reinforced by
foreign fighters and advanced weapons. With Russian air and ground support, the tide of war
turned. Palmyra and Aleppo were recaptured in 2016. An alleged Syrian Government chemical
attack at Khan Shaykhun in April 2017 resulted in a token U.S. missile attack on a Syrian
Government airbase: an early decision by President Trump.
NATO, Strategic Balance, Sanctions
An F-15C Eagle from the 493rd Fighter Squadron takes off from Royal Air Force Lakenheath,
England, March 6, 2014. The 48th Fighter Wing sent an additional six aircraft and more than 50
personnel to support NATO's air policing mission in Lithuania, at the request of U.S. allies in
the Baltics. (U.S. Air Force photo by Staff Sgt. Emerson Nunez/Released)
Tensions have risen in the Baltic as NATO moves ground forces and battlefield missiles up to
the Baltic states' borders with Russia. Both sides' naval and air forces play dangerous
brinksmanship games in the Baltic. U.S. short-range, non-nuclear-armed anti-ballistic missiles
were stationed in Poland and Romania, allegedly against threat of Iranian attack. They are
easily convertible to nuclear-armed missiles aimed at nearby Russia.
Nuclear arms control talks have stalled. The INF intermediate nuclear forces treaty expired
in 2019, after both sides accused the other of cheating. In March 2018, Putin announced that
Russia has developed new types of intercontinental nuclear missiles using technologies that
render U.S. defence systems useless. The West has pretended to ignore this announcement, but we
can be sure Western defence ministries have noted it. Nuclear second-strike deterrence has
returned, though most people in the West have forgotten what this means. Russians know exactly
what it means.
Western economic sanctions against Russia continue to tighten after the 2014 events in
Ukraine. The U.S. is still trying to block the nearly completed Nordstream Baltic Sea
underwater gas pipeline from Russia to Germany. Sanctions are accelerating the division of the
world into two trade and payments systems: the old NATO-led world, and the rest of the world
led by China, with full Russian support and increasing interest from India, Japan, ROK and
ASEAN.
Return to Moscow
In 2013, my children gave me an Ipad. I began to spend several hours a day reading well
beyond traditional mainstream Western sources: British and American dissident sites, writers
like Craig Murray in UK and in the U.S. Stephen Cohen, and some Russian sites – rt.com,
Sputnik, TASS, and the official Foreign Ministry site mid.ru. in English.
In late 2015 I decided to visit Russia independently to write Return to Moscow , a
literary travel memoir. I planned to compare my impressions of the Soviet Union, where I had
lived and worked as an Australian diplomat in 1969-71, with Russia today. I knew there had been
huge changes. I wanted to experience 'Putin's Russia' for myself, to see how it felt to be
there as an anonymous visitor in the quiet winter season. I wanted to break out of the familiar
one-dimensional hostile political view of Russia that Western mainstream media offer: to take
my readers with me on a cultural pilgrimage through the tragedy and grandeur and inspiration of
Russian history. As with my earlier book on Spain 'Walking the Camino' , this was not
intended to be a political book, and yet somehow it became one.
I was still uncommitted on contemporary Russian politics before going to Russia in January
2016. Using the metaphor of a seesaw, I was still sitting somewhere around the middle.
My book was written in late 2015 – early 2016, expertly edited by UWA Publishing. It
was launched in March 2017. By this time my political opinions had moved decisively to the
Russian end of the seesaw, on the basis of what I had seen in Russia, and what I had read and
thought during the year.
I have been back again twice, in winter 2018 and 2019. My 2018 visit included Crimea, and I
happened to see a Navalny-led Sunday demonstration in Moscow. I thoroughly enjoyed all three
independent visits: in my opinion, they give my judgements on Russia some depth and
authenticity.
Russophobia Becomes Entrenched
Russia was a big talking point in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. As the initially
unlikely Republican candidate Donald Trump's chances improved, anti-Putin and anti-Russian
positions hardened in the outgoing Obama administration and in the Democratic Party
establishment which backed candidate Hillary Clinton.
Russia and Putin became caught up in the Democratic Party's increasingly obsessive rage and
hatred against the victorious Trump. Russophobia became entrenched in Washington and London
U.S. and UK political and strategic elites, especially in intelligence circles: think of
Pompeo, Brennan, Comey and Clapper. All sense of international protocol and diplomatic
propriety towards Russia and its President was abandoned, as this appalling Economist
cover from October 2016 shows.
My experience of undeclared political censorship in Australia since four months after
publication of 'Return to Moscow' supports the thesis that:
We are now in the thick of a ruthless but mostly covert Anglo-American alliance
information war against Russia. In this war, individuals who speak up publicly in the cause of
detente with Russia will be discouraged from public discourse.
In the Thick of Information War
When I spoke to you two years ago, I had no idea how far-reaching and ruthless this
information war is becoming. I knew that a false negative image of Russia was taking hold in
the West, even as Russia was becoming a more admirable and self-confident civil society, moving
forward towards greater democracy and higher living standards, while maintaining essential
national security. I did not then know why, or how.
I had just had time to add a few final paragraphs in my book about the possible consequences
for Russia-West relations of Trump's surprise election victory in November 2016. I was right to
be cautious, because since Trump's inauguration we have seen the step-by-step elimination of
any serious pro-detente voices in Washington, and the reassertion of control over this
haphazard president by the bipartisan imperial U.S. deep state, as personified from April 2018
by Secretary of State Pompeo and National Security Adviser Bolton. Bolton has now been thrown
from the sleigh as decoy for the wolves: under the smooth-talking Pompeo, the imperial policies
remain.
Truth, Trust and False Narratives
Let me now turn to some theory about political reality and perception, and how national
communities are persuaded to accept false narratives. Let me acknowledge my debt to the
fearless and brilliant Australian independent online journalist, Caitlin Johnstone.
Behavioural scientists have worked in the field of what used to be called propaganda since
WW1. England has always excelled in this field. Modern wars are won or lost not just on the
battlefield, but in people's minds. Propaganda, or as we now call it information warfare, is as
much about influencing people's beliefs within your own national community as it is
about trying to demoralise and subvert the enemy population.
The IT revolution of the past few years has exponentially magnified the effectiveness of
information warfare. Already in the 1940s, George Orwell understood how easily governments are
able to control and shape public perceptions of reality and to suppress dissent. His brilliant
books 1984 and Animal Farm are still instruction manuals in principles of
information warfare. Their plots tell of the creation by the state of false narratives, with
which to control their gullible populations.
The disillusioned Orwell wrote from his experience of real politics. As a volunteer fighter
in the Spanish Civil War, he saw how both Spanish sides used false news and propaganda
narratives to demonise the enemy. He also saw how the Nazi and Stalinist systems in Germany and
Russia used propaganda to support show trials and purges, the concentration camps and the
Gulag, anti-Semitism and the Holocaust, German master race and Stalinist class enemy
ideologies; and hows dissident thought was suppressed in these controlled societies. Orwell
tried to warn his readers: all this could happen here too, in our familiar old England. But
because the good guys won the war against fascism, his warnings were ignored.
We are now in Britain, U.S. and Australia actually living in an information warfare world
that has disturbing echoes of the world that Orwell wrote about. The essence of information
control is the effective state management of two elements, trust and fear , to
generate and uphold a particular view of truth. Truth, trust and fear : these are the
three key elements, now as 100 years ago in WWI Britain.
People who work or have worked close to government – in departments, politics, the
armed forces, or top universities – mostly accept whatever they understand at the time to
be 'the government view' of truth. Whether for reasons of organisational loyalty, career
prudence or intellectual inertia, it is usually this way around governments. It is why moral
issues like the Vietnam War and the U.S.-led 2003 invasion of Iraq were so distressing for
people of conscience working in or close to government and military jobs in Canberra. They were
expected to engage in 'doublethink' as Orwell had described it:
Even in Winston's nightmare world, there were still choices – to retreat into the
non-political world of the proles, or to think forbidden thoughts and read forbidden books.
These choices involved large risks and punishments. It was easier and safer for most people to
acquiesce in the fake news they were fed by state-controlled media.
'Trust, Truth and False Narratives'
Fairfax journalist Andrew Clark, in the Australian Financial Review , in an essay
optimistically titled "Not fake news: Why truth and trust are still in good shape in
Australia", (AFR Dec. 22, 2018), cited Professor William Davies thus:
"Most of the time, the edifice that we refer to as "truth" is really an investment of
trust in our structures of politics and public life' 'When trust sinks below a certain point,
many people come to view the entire spectacle of politics and public life as a sham."
Here is my main point: Effective information warfare requires the creation of enough
public trust to make the public believe that state-supported lies are true.
The key tools are repetition of messages, and diversification of trusted
voices. Once a critical mass is created of people believing a false narrative, the lie locks
in: its dissemination becomes self-sustaining.
" Power is being able to control what happens. Absolute power is being able
to control what people think about what happens. If you can control what happens,
you can have power until the public gets sick of your BS and tosses you out on your ass. If
you can control what people think about what happens, you can have power forever. As
long as you can control how people are interpreting circumstances and events, there's no
limit to the evils you can get away with."
The Internet has made propaganda campaigns that used to take weeks or months a matter of
hours or even minutes to accomplish. It is about getting in quickly, using large enough
clusters of trusted and diverse sources, in order to cement lies in place, to make the
lies seem true, to magnify them through social messaging: in other words, to create credible
false narratives that will quickly get into the public's bloodstream.
Over the past two years, I have seen this work many times: on issues like framing Russia for
the MH17 tragedy; with false allegations of Assad mounting poison gas attacks in Syria; with
false allegations of Russian agents using lethal Novichok to try to kill the Skripals in
Salisbury; and with the multiple lies of Russiagate.
It is the mind-numbing effect of constant repetition of disinformation by many eminent
people and agencies, in hitherto trusted channels like the BBC or ABC or liberal Anglophone
print media that gives the system its power to persuade the credulous. For if so many diverse
and reputable people repeatedly report such negative news and express such negative judgements
about Russia or China or Iran or Syria, surely they must be right?
We have become used to reading in our quality newspapers and hearing on the BBC and ABC and
SBS gross assaults on truth, calmly presented as accepted facts. There is no real public debate
on important facts in contention any more. There are no venues for dissent outside contrarian
social media sites.
Sometimes, false narratives inter-connect. Often a disinformation narrative in one area is
used to influence perceptions in other areas. For example, the false Skripals poisoning story
was launched by British intelligence in March 2018, just in time to frame Syrian President
Assad as the guilty party in a faked chemical weapons attack in Douma the following month.
The Skripals Gambit
The Skripals gambit was also a failed British attempt to blight the Russia –hosted
Football World Cup in June 2018. In the event, hundreds of thousands of Western sports fans
returned home with the warmest memories of Russian good sportsmanship and hospitality.
How do I know the British Skripals narrative is false? For a start, it is illogical,
incoherent, and constantly changes. Allegedly, two visiting Russian FSB agents in March 2018
sprayed or smeared Novichok, a deadly toxin instantly lethal in the most microscopic
quantities, on the Skripals' house front doorknob. There is no video footage of the Skripals at
their front door on the day. We are told they were found slumped on a park bench, and that is
maybe where they had been sprayed with nerve gas? Shortly afterwards, Britain's Head of Army
Nursing who happened to be passing by found them, and supervised their hospitalisation and
emergency treatment.
Allegedly, much of Salisbury was contaminated by Novichok, and one unfortunate woman
mysteriously died weeks later, yet the Skripals somehow did not die, as we are told. But where
are they now? We saw a healthy Yulia in a carefully scripted video interview released in May
2018, after an alleged 'one in a million' recovery. We were assured her father had recovered
too, but nobody has seen him at all. The Skripals have simply disappeared from sight since 16
months ago. Are they now alive or dead? Are they in voluntary or involuntary British
custody?
A month after the poisoning, the UK Government sent biological samples from the Skripals to
the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons , for testing. The OPCW sent the
samples to a trusted OPCW laboratory in Spiez, Switzerland.
Lavrov Spiez BZ claims, April 2018
A few days later, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov dramatically announced in Moscow
that the Spiez lab had found in the samples a temporary-effect nerve agent BZ, used by U.S. and
UK but not by Russia, that would have disabled the Skripals for a few days without killing
them. He also revealed the Spiez lab had found that the Skripal samples had been twice tampered
with while still in UK custody: first soon after the poisoning, and again shortly before
passing them to the OPCW. He said the Spiez lab had found a high concentration of Novichok,
which he called A- 234, in its original form. This was extremely suspicious as A-234 has high
volatility and could not have retained its purity over a two weeks period. The dosage the Spiez
lab found in the samples would have surely killed the Skripals. The OPCW under British pressure
rejected Lavrov's claim, and suppressed the Spiez lab report.
Let's look finally at the alleged assassins.
'Boshirov and Petrov'
These two FSB operatives who visited Salisbury under the false identities of 'Boshirov' and
'Petrov' did not look or behave like credible assassins. It is more likely that they were sent
to negotiate with Sergey Skripal about his rumoured interest in returning to Russia. They
needed to apply for UK visas a month in advance of travel: ample time for the British agencies
to identify them as FSB operatives, and to construct a false attempted assassination narrative
around their visit. This false narrative repeatedly trips over its own lies and contradictions.
British social media are full of alternative theories and rebuttals. Russians find the whole
British Government Skripal narrative laughable. They have invented comedy skits and video games
based on it. Yet it had major impact on Russia-West relations.
The Douma False Narrative
I turn now to the claimed Assad chemical weapons attack in Douma in April 2018.This falsely
alleged attack triggered a major NATO air attack on Syrian targets, ordered by Trump. We came
close to WWIII in these dangerous days. Thanks to the restraint of the then Secretary of
Defence James Mattis and his Russian counterparts, the risk was contained.
The allegation that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad had used outlawed chemical weapons
against his own people was based solely on the evidence of faked video images of child victims,
made by the discredited White Helmets, a UK-sponsored rebel-linked 'humanitarian' propaganda
organisation with much blood on its hands. Founded in 2013 by a British private security
specialist of intelligence background, James Le Mesurier, the White Helmets specialised in
making fake videos of alleged Assad regime war crimes against Syrian civilians. It is by now a
thoroughly discredited organisation that was prepared to kill its prisoners and then film their
bodies as alleged victims of government chemical attacks.
White Helmets
As the town of Douma was about to fall to advancing Syrian Government forces, the White
Helmets filled a room with stacked corpses of murdered prisoners, and photographed them as
alleged victims of aerial gas attack. They also made a video alleging child victims of this
attack being hosed down by White Helmets. A video of a child named Hassan Diab went viral all
over the Western world.
Hassan Diab later testified publicly in The Hague that he had been dragged terrified from
his family by force, smeared with some sort of grease, and hosed down with water as part of a
fake video. He went from hero to zero overnight, as Western governments and media rejected his
testimony as Russian and Syrian propaganda.
In a late development, there is proof that the OPCW suppressed its own engineers' report
from Douma that the alleged poison gas cylinders could not have possibly been dropped from the
air through the roof of the house where one was found, resting on a bed under a convenient hole
in the roof.
I could go on discussing the detail of such false narratives all day. No matter how often
they are exposed by critics, our politicians and mainstream media go on referencing them as if
they are true. Once people have come to believe false narratives, it is hard to refute
them.
So it is with the false narrative that Russian internet interference enabled Trump to win
the 2016 U.S. presidential elections: a thesis for which no evidence was found by [Special
Counsel Robert] Mueller, yet continues to be cited by many U.S. liberal Democratic media as if
it were true. So, even, with MH17.
Managing Mass Opinion
This mounting climate of Western Russophobia is not accidental: it is strategically
directed, and it is nourished with regular maintenance doses of fresh lies. Each round of lies
provides a credible platform for the next round somewhere else. The common thread is a claimed
malign Russian origin for whatever goes wrong.
So where is all this disinformation originating? Information technology firms in Washington
and London that are closely networked into government elites, often through attending the same
establishment schools or colleges like Eton and Yale, have closely studied and tested the
science of influencing crowd opinions through mainstream media and online. They know, in a way
that Orwell or Goebbels could hardly have dreamt, how to put out and repeat desired media
messages. They know what sizes of 'internet attraction nodes' need to be established online, in
order to create diverse critical masses of credible Russophobic messaging, which then attracts
enough credulous and loyal followers to become self-propagating.
Firms like the SCL Group (formerly Strategic Communication Laboratories) and the now defunct
Cambridge Analytica pioneered such work in the UK. There are many similar firms in Washington,
all in the business of monitoring, generating and managing mass opinion. It is big business,
and it works closely with the national security state.
Starting in November 2018, an enterprising group of unknown hackers in the UK , who go by
the name 'Anonymous', opened a remarkable window into this secret world. Over a few weeks, they
hacked and dumped online a huge volume of original documents issued by and detailing the
activities of the Institute for Statecraft (IfS) and the Integrity initiative
(II). Here is the first page of one of their dumps, exposing propaganda against Jeremy
Corbyn.
We know from this material that the IfS and II are two secret British disinformation
networks operating at arms' length from but funded by the UK security services and broader UK
government establishment. They bring together high-ranking military and intelligence personnel,
often nominally retired, journalists and academics, to produce and disseminate propaganda that
serves the agendas of the UK and its allies.
Stung by these massive leaks, Chris Donnelly, a key figure in IfS and II and a former
British Army intelligence officer, made a now famous seven-minute YouTube video in December
2018, artfully filmed in a London kitchen, defending their work.
He argued – quite unconvincingly in my opinion – that IfS and II are simply
defending Western societies against disinformation and malign influence, primarily from Russia.
He boasted how they have set up in numerous targeted European countries, claimed to be under
attack from Russian disinformation, what he called 'clusters of influence' , to
'educate' public opinion and decision-makers in pro-NATO and anti-Russian directions.
Donnelly spoke frankly on how the West is already at war with Russia, a 'new kind of
warfare', in which he said 'everything becomes a weapon'. He said that 'disinformation is the
issue which unites all the other weapons in this conflict and gives them a third
dimension'.
He said the West has to fight back, if it is to defend itself and to prevail.
We can confirm from the Anonymous leaked files the names of many people in Europe being
recruited into these clusters of influence. They tend to be significant people in journalism,
publishing, universities and foreign policy think-tanks: opinion-shapers. The leaked documents
suggest how ideologically suitable candidates are identified: approached for initial screening
interviews; and, if invited to join a cluster of influence, sworn to secrecy.
Remarkably, neither the Anonymous disclosures nor the Donnelly response have ever been
reported in Australian media. Even in Britain – where evidence that the Integrity
Initiative was mounting a campaign against [Labour leader] Jeremy Corbyn provoked brief media
interest. The story quickly disappeared from mainstream media and the BBC. A British
under-foreign secretary admitted in Parliamentary Estimates that the UK Foreign Office
subsidises the Institute of Statecraft to the tune of nearly 3 million pounds per year. It also
gives various other kinds of non-monetary assistance, e.g. providing personnel and office
support in Britain's overseas embassies.
This is not about traditional spying or seeking agents of influence close to governments. It
is about generating mass disinformation, in order to create mass climates of belief.
In my opinion, such British and American disinformation efforts, using undeclared clusters
of influence, through Five Eyes intelligence-sharing, and possibly with the help of British and
American diplomatic missions, may have been in operation in Australia for many years.
Such networks may have been used against me since around mid-2017, to limit the commercial
outreach of my book and the impact of its dangerous ideas on the need for East-West detente;
and efficiently to suppress my voice in Australian public discourse about Russia and the West.
Do I have evidence for this? Yes.
It is not coincidence that the Melbourne Writers Festival in August 2017 somehow lost all my
sign-and-sell books from my sold-out scheduled speaking event; that a major debate with
[Australian writer and foreign policy analyst] Bobo Lo at the Wheeler Centre in Melbourne was
cancelled by his Australian sponsor, the Lowy institute, two weeks before the advertised date;
that my last invitation to any writers festival was 15 months ago, in May 2018; that Return
to Moscow was not shortlisted for any Australian book prize, though I entered it in all of
them ; that since my book's early promotion ended around August 2017, I have not been invited
to join any ABC discussion panels, or to give any talks on Russia in any universities or
institutes, apart from the admirable Australian Institute of International Affairs and the
ISAA.
My articles and shorter opinion commentaries on Russia and the West have not been published
in mainstream media or in reputable online journals like Eureka Street, The Conversation,
Inside Story or Australian Book Review . Despite being an ANU Emeritus Fellow, I
have not been invited to give a public talk or join any panel in ANU (Australian National
University) or any Canberra think tank. In early 2018, I was invited to give a private briefing
to a group of senior students travelling on an immersion course to Russia. I was not invited
back in 2019, after high-level private advice within ANU that I was regarded as too
pro-Putin.
In all these ways – none overt or acknowledged – my voice as an open-minded
writer and speaker on Russia-West relations seems to have been quietly but effectively
suppressed in Australia. I would like to be proved wrong on this, but the evidence is
there.
This may be about "velvet-glove deterrence" of my Russia-sympathetic voice and pen, in order
to discourage others, especially those working in or close to government. Nobody is going to
put me in jail, unless I am stupid enough to violate Australia's now strict foreign influence
laws. This deterrence is about generating fear of consequences for people still in their
careers, paying their mortgages, putting kids through school. Nobody wants to miss their next
promotion.
There are other indications that Australian national security elite opinion has been
indoctrinated prudently to fear and avoid any kind of public discussion of positive engagement
with Russia (or indeed, with China).
There are only two kinds of news about Russia now permitted in our mainstream media,
including the ABC and SBS: negative news and comment, or silence. Unless a story can be given
an anti-Russian sting, it will not be carried at all. Important stories are simply spiked, like
last week's Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivistok, chaired by President Putin and attended by
Prime Ministers Abe, Mahathir and Modi, among 8500 participants from 65 countries.
The ABC idea of a balanced panel to discuss any Russian political topic was exemplified
in an ABC Sunday Extra Roundtable panel chaired by Eleanor Hall on July, 22 2018, soon after
the Trump-Putin Summit in Helsinki. The panel – a former ONA Russia analyst, a professor
of Soviet and Russian History at Melbourne University, and a Russian émigré
dissident journalist introduced as the 'Washington correspondent for Echo of Moscow radio'
spent most of their time sneering at Putin and Trump. There were no other views.
A powerful anti-Russian news narrative is now firmly in place in Australia, on every topic
in contention: Ukraine, MH17, Crimea, Syria, the Skripals, Navalny and public protest in
Russia. There is ill-informed criticism of Russia, or silence, on the crucial issues of arms
control and Russia-China strategic and economic relations as they affect Australia's national
security or economy. There is no analysis of the negative impact on Australia of economic
sanctions against Russia. There is almost no discussion of how improved relations with China
and Russia might contribute to Australia's national security and economic welfare, as American
influence in the world and our region declines, and as American reliability as an ally comes
more into question. Silence on inconvenient truths is an important part of the disinformation
tool kit.
I see two overall conflicting narratives – the prevailing Anglo-American false
narrative; and valiant efforts by small groups of dissenters, drawing on sources outside the
Anglo-American official narrative, to present another narrative much closer to truth. And this
is how most Russians now see it too.
The Trump-Putin summit in Helsinki in July 2018 was damaged by the Skripal and Syria
fabrications. Trump left that summit friendless, frightened and humiliated. He soon surrendered
to the power of the U.S. imperial state as then represented by [Mike] Pompeo and [John] Bolton,
who had both been appointed as Secretary of State and National Security Adviser in April 2018
and who really got into their stride after the Helsinki Summit. Pompeo now smoothly dominates
Trump's foreign policy.
Self-Inflicted Wounds
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo (Gage Skidmore)
Finally, let me review the American political casualties over the past two years –
self-inflicted wounds – arising from this secret information war against Russia. Let me
list them without prejudging guilt or innocence. Slide 20 – Self-inflicted wounds:
casualties of anti-Russian information warfare.
Trump's first National Security Adviser, the highly decorated Michael Flynn lost his job
after only three weeks, and soon went to jail. His successor H R McMaster lasted 13 months
until replaced by John Bolton. Trump's first Secretary of State Rex Tillerson lasted just 14
months until his replacement by Trump's appointed CIA chief (in January 2017) Mike Pompeo.
Trump's chief strategist Steve Bannon lasted only seven months. Trump's former campaign
chairman Paul Manafort is now in jail.
Defence Secretary James Mattis lasted nearly two years as Secretary of Defence, and was an
invaluable source of strategic stability. He resigned in December 2018. The highly capable
Ambassador to Russia Jon Huntsman lasted just two years: he is resigning next month. John Kelly
lasted 18 months as White House Chief of Staff. Less senior figures like George Papadopoulos
and Trump's former lawyer Michael Cohen both served jail time. The pattern I see here is that
people who may have been trying responsibly as senior U.S. officials to advance Trump's initial
wish to explore possibilities for detente with Russia – policies that he had advocated as
a candidate – were progressively purged, one after another . The anti-Russian U.S.
bipartisan imperial state is now firmly back in control. Trump is safely contained as far as
Russia is concerned .
Russians do not believe that any serious detente or arms control negotiations can get under
way while cold warriors like Pompeo continue effectively to control Trump. There have been
other casualties over the past two years of tightening American Russophobia. Julian Assange and
Chelsea Manning come to mind. The naive Maria Butina is a pathetic victim of American judicial
rigidity and deep state vindictiveness.
False anti-Russian Government narratives emanating from London and Washington may be laughed
at in Moscow , but they are unquestioningly accepted in Canberra. We are the most gullible of
audiences. There is no critical review. Important contrary factual information and analysis
from and about Russia just does not reach Australian news reporting and commentary, nor –
I fear – Australian intelligence assessment. We are prisoners of the false narratives fed
to us by our senior Five Eyes partners U.S. and UK.
To conclude: Some people may find what I am saying today difficult to accept. I understand
this. I now work off open-source information about Russia with which many people here are
unfamiliar, because they prefer not to read the diverse online information sources that I
choose to read. The seesaw has tilted for me: I have clearly moved a long way from mainstream
Western perceptions on Russia-West relations.
Under Trump and Pompeo, as the Syria and Iran crises show, the present risk of global
nuclear war by accident or incompetent Western decision-making is as high as it ever was in the
Cold War. The West needs to learn again how to dialogue usefully and in mutually respectful
ways with Russia and China. This expert knowledge is dying with our older and wiser former
public servants and ex-military chiefs.
These remarks were delivered by Tony Kevin at the Independent Scholars Association of
Australia in Canberra, Australia on Wednesday.
Watch Tony Kevin interviewed Friday night on CN Live!
Tony Kevin is a retired Australian diplomat who was posted to Moscow from 1969 to 1971,
and was later Australia's ambassador to Poland and Cambodia. His latest book is Return to
Moscow, published by UWA Publishing.
Bruce , September 17, 2019 at 08:58
Excellent article. It's very interesting to see how the state and its media lackey set the
narrative.
Most of this comment relates to the Skripals but also applies to other matters (the
Skripals writing was some of Craig Murray's finest work in my opinion). One of the hallmarks
of a hoax is a constantly evolving storyline. I think governments have learned from past
"mistakes" with their hoaxes/deception where they've given a description of events and then
scientists/engineers/chemists etc have come in and criticised their version of events with
details and scientific arguments. Nowadays, governments are very reluctant to commit to a
version of events, and instead rely on the media (their propaganda assets) to provide a
scattergun set of information to muddy the waters and thoroughly confuse the population. The
government is then insulated from some of the more bizarre allegations (the headlines of
which are absorbed nonetheless), and can blame it on the media (who would use an anonymous
government source naturally). Together with classifying just about everything on national
security grounds, they can stonewall for as long as they want.
The British are masters of propaganda. They maintained a global empire for a very long
time, and the prevailing view (in the west at least) was probably one of tea-drinking cricket
playing colonials/gentlemen. But you don't maintain an empire without being absolutely
ruthless and brutal. They've been doing this for a very long time.
When we hear something from the BBC or ABC, we should think "State Media".
That's probably why its got a nice folksy nickname of "aunty" .build up the trust.
Society is suffering the extreme paradox; there is the potential for everyone to have a
voice, but the last vestiges of free speech have been whittled away. Fake news is universal,
assisted by the fake "left". It is impossible to get published any challenge to even the most
outlandish versions of identity politics. As the experience of Tony Kevin exemplifies, all
avenues for dissent against hegemonic orthodoxies are closed off.
Disinformation is now an essential weapon in waging hot and cold wars. Cold War historians
are well informed on false flags, "black ops", and other organised dirty tactics. I do not
know what happened to the Skripals, and while it is legitimate to bear in mind KGB
assassinations, despite the enormous resources at its disposal, the English security state
has been unable to construct a credible case. Surely scepticism is provoked by the leading
role being played by the notorious Bellingcat outfit.
Zenobia van Dongen , September 17, 2019 at 00:29
Here is part of an eyewitness account:
"After the Orange Revolution which began in Kiev, the country was divided literally into two
parts -- the supporters of integration with Russia and the supporters of an independent
Ukraine. For almost 100 years belonging to the Soviet Union, the propaganda about the
assistance and care from our "big brother" Russia, in Ukraine as a whole and the Donbass in
particular has borne fruit. At the end of February 2014, some cities of the Southeast part
were boiling with mass social and political protest against the new Ukrainian government in
defense of the status of the Russian language, voicing separatist and pro-Russian slogans.
The division took place in our city of Sloviansk too. Some people stood for separation from
Ukraine, while Ukrainian patriots stood for the unity of our country.
On April 12, 2014 our city of Sloviansk in the Donetsk region was seized by Russian
mercenaries and local volunteers. From that moment onward, armed assaults on state
institutions began. The city police department, the Sloviansk City Hall, the building of the
Ukraine Security Service was occupied. Armed militants seized state institutions and
confiscated private property. They threatened and beat people, and those who refused to obey
were taken away to an unknown destination and people started disappearing. The persecution
and abduction of patriotic citizens began."
Michael McNulty , September 16, 2019 at 11:36
Watching Vietnam news coverage as a kid in the '60s I noticed the planes carpet-bombing
South East Asia were American, not Russian. And as I only watched the footage and never
listened to the commentary (I was waiting for the kids programs that followed) the BS they
came out with to explain it all never reached me. I saw with my own eyes what the US really
was and is, and always believed growing up they were the belligerent side not Russia. Once
the USSR fell it was clear there were no longer any constraints on US excesses.
dean 1000 , September 15, 2019 at 18:17
Doublethink, not to mention doublespeak, is so apt to describe what is happening. If
Orwell was writing today it would have to be classified as non-fiction.
Free speech is impossible unless every election district has a radio/TV station where
candidates, constituents, and others can debate, discuss and speak to the issues without
bending a knee to large campaign contributors or the controllers of corporate or government
media. It may start with low-power pirate radio/TV broadcasts. No, the pirate speakers will
not have to climb a cell tower to broadcast an opinion to the neighborhood or precinct.
If genuine free speech is going to exist it will start as something unauthorized and
unlawful. If it sticks to the facts it will quickly prove its value.
Excellent article. The only exhibit missing was reference to Bill Browder's lies.
Browder's rubbish has been exposed by intrepid journalists and documentary makers such as
Andrei Nekrasov, Sasha Krainer and Lucy Komisar but to read or listen to our media, you'd
think BB was some sort of human rights hero. That's because BB's fairy tale fits nicely into
the MSM's hatred of Putin and Russia. Debunk Browder and a major pillar of anti-Russia
prejudice collapses. Therefore, Browder will never face any serious questions by the MSM.
John A , September 16, 2019 at 09:18
judges of the European Court of Human Rights published a judgement a fortnight ago which
utterly exploded the version of events promulgated by Western governments and media in the
case of the late Mr Magnitskiy. Yet I can find no truthful report of the judgement in the
mainstream media at all. https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2019/09/the-magnitskiy-myth-exploded/
MSM propaganda by omission. Anything that doesn't fit the government narrative gets zero
publicity.
I have stopped following australian mainstream media including the darlings of the 'left'
ABC/SBS over a decade ago, completely. My disgust with their 'coverage' of the 2008 GFC was
more than enough. Since 2008-9 things have deteriorated drastically into conspiracy theory
propaganda by omission la-la land *it seems*, given I don't tune in at all.
The author has a well supported view. I find it a little naive in him thinking that the
MSM has that much power over shaping public opinion in australia.
People who want to be informed do so. The half intelligent conformists on hamster wheel of
lifetime mortgage debt have 'careers' to hold onto, so parroting the group think or living in
ignorance is much easier. The massive portion of australian racists, inbred bogans and idiots
that make up the large LNP, One Nation etc. voting block are completely beyond salvation or
ability to process, and critically evaluate any information. The smarter ones drool on about
the 'UN Agenda 21' conspiracy at best. Utterly hopeless.
I don't expect things to change as the australian economy is slowly hollowed out by the
rich, and the education system (that has always been about conforming, wearing school uniform
and regurgitating what the teacher/lecturer says at best) is gutted completely. Welcome to
australistan.
Fran Macadam , September 14, 2019 at 19:21
Note that the prohibition against false propaganda to indoctrinate the domestic population
by the American government was lifted by President Obama at the tail end of his
administration. The Executive Order legalizes all the deceptive behavior Tony itemizes in his
article.
Josep , September 17, 2019 at 04:10
I thought it was Reagan who did that by abolishing the Fairness Doctrine in 1987. At least
in terms of television and radio (?) broadcasts.
Thank you Tony for your thoughtful talk (and interview on CN Live! too).
What's encouraging is this cohort of what might be called 'millennial journalists' coming
through willing to do 'shoe-leather' journalism and stand up to smears and flack for
revealing uncomfortable facts and truth. They're the online 5th estate holding the 4th to
account (to steal Ray McGovern's apt view), and they're congealing against the onslaught.
Some include Max Blumenthal and Rania Kahlek (both now being pilloried by MSM and others
for visiting Syrian government held areas and reporting that life isn't hellish as MSM would
have everyone believe heaven forbid); Vanessa Bealey who's exposed a lot of White Helmet
horrors and false-flag attacks in Syria (and being attacked by all and sundry for exposing
the White Helmets in particular); Abby Martin whose Empire Files are excellent and always
edifying; Dan Cohen who has written the best expose of the actors behind the Hong Kong
rioting and co-authored the best expose of the background of Guaido et al.; Whitney Webb of
Mint Press whose series on Epstein is overwhelming and likely a ticking timebomb; Caitlin
Johnstone of course; and Aaron 'Buzzsaw' Mate who made his first mark with a wonderful
takedown interview of Russiaphobe MI6 shill Luke Harding. Others too of course, with most
appearing or having written pieces on CN. John Pilger, Robert Fisk, Greg Palast, et al. won't
drop off their twigs disappointed.
This, along with the fact that MSM -- that cowed and compromised fourth estate --
increasingly is held in such laughable contempt by most people under about 50 yr, is highly
encouraging indeed. Truth is the new black.
nwwoods , September 15, 2019 at 11:49
The Blogmire is an excellent resource for detailed analysis of the Skripal hoax. The
author happens to be a long-time resident of Salisbury, and is intimately familiar with the
topography, public services, etc., and a very thorough investigator.
John Wright , September 14, 2019 at 18:35
I'm not surprised that Mr. Kevin is being isolated and shunned by the Australian
establishment. Truth and truth tellers are always the first casualties of war. I do hope that
his experience will encourage him to increase his resistance to the corrosiveness of
mendacious propaganda and those who promulgate it.
Truth is the single best weapon when fighting for a peaceful future.
If Australia is to flourish in the 21st century, it really needs to understand Russia and
China, how they relate to each other, and how this key alliance will interface with the rest
of the world. Australia and Australians simply cannot afford to get sucked down further by
facilitating the machinations of the collapsing Anglo-American Empire. They have served the
empire ably and faithfully, but now need to take a cold hard look at reality and realign
their long-term interests with the coming global power shift. If not, they could literally
find themselves in the middle of an unwinnable and devastating war.
* * *
The first Anglo-American Russian cold war began with the Russian revolution and was only
briefly suspended when the West needed the Soviet people to throw themselves in front of the
Nazi blitzkrieg in order to save Western Europe. Following their catastrophically costly
contribution to the victory on the Continent, the Russians were greeted with an American
nuclear salute on their eastern periphery, signalling their return to the diplomatic and
economic deep freeze.
While the Anglo-American Empire solidified and extended its hold on the globe, the
enlarged but war-ravaged and isolated Soviet Union hunkered down and survived on scraps and
sheer will until its collapse in 1989. Declaring the cold war over, and with promises to help
their new Russian friends build a prosperous future, the duplicitous West then ransacked
their neighbors resources and sold them into debt peonage. The Russians cried foul, the West
shrugged and Putin pushed back. Unable to declaw the bear, the west closed the cage door
again and the second cold war commenced.
* * *
The first cold war was essentially an offensive war disguised as a defensive war. It
enabled the Anglo-American Empire to leverage its post-war advantage and establish near total
dominance around the globe through naked violence and monetary hegemony.
Today, with its dominance rapidly slipping away, the Anglo-American Empire is waging a
truly defensive cold war. On the home front, they fight to convince their subjects of their
eternal exceptionalism with ever more absurd and vile propaganda denigrating their
adversaries . Abroad, they disrupt and defraud in a desperate attempt to delay the demise of
the PetroDollar ponzi.
The Russians and the Chinese, having both been brutally burned by the Western elites, will
not be fooled into abandoning their natural geographic partnership. They are no longer
content to sit quietly at the kids' table taking notes. While they may not demand to sit at
the head of the table, it is clear that they will insist on a round table, and one that is
large enough to include their growing list of friends.
If the Americans don't smash the table, it could be the first of many peaceful pot
lucks.
John Read , September 15, 2019 at 02:11
Well said. Great comments. Thanks to Tony Kevin.
Mia , September 14, 2019 at 18:33
Thank you Tony for continuing to shine light on the pathetic propaganda information bubble
Australians have been immersed in .. you demonstrate great courage and you are not alone
??
Peter Loeb , September 14, 2019 at 12:58
WITH THANKS TO TONY KEVIN
An excellent article.
There is a lack of comments from some of the common writers upon whose views I often
rely.
Personally, I often avoid the very individual responses from websites as I have no way
of checking out previous ideas of theirs. Who funds them? With which organizations are
they
affiliated? And so forth and so on.
Peter Loeb, Boston, Massachusetts
Peter Sapo , September 14, 2019 at 10:24
As a fellow Australian, everything Tony Kevin said makes perfect sense. Our mainstream
media landscape is designed to distribute propaganda to folk accross the political spectrum.
Have you noticed that the ABC regurgitates stories from the BBC? The BBC has a long history
(at least since WW2) of supporting government propaganda initiatives. Based on this fact, it
is hard to see how ABC and SBS don't do the same when called upon by their minders.
Francis Lee , September 14, 2019 at 09:48
I just wonder where the Anglo-Zionist empire thinks it is going. It should be obvious that
any NATO war against Russia involving a nuclear exchange is unwinnable. It seems equally
likely the even a conventional war will not necessarily bring the result expected by the
assorted 'experts' – nincompoops living in their own fantasy world. The idea that the
US can fight a war without the US homeland becoming very much involved basically ended when
Putin announced the creation of Russia's set of advanced hypersonic missile system. But this
was apparently ignored by the 'defence' establishment. It was not true, it could not possibly
be true, or so we were told.
Moreover the cost of such wars involving hundreds of thousands of troops and military
hardware are massively expensive and would occasion a massive resistance from the populations
affected. It was the wests wars in Korea, and Indo-China that bankrupted the US and led to
the US$ being removed from the gold standard. The American military is rapidly consuming the
American economy, or at least what is left of it. From a realist foreign policy perspective
this is simply madness. Great powers end wars, they don't start them. Great powers are
creditor nations, not debtor nations. Such is the realist foreign policy view. But foreign
policy realists are few and far between in the Washington Beltway and MIC/NSA Pentagon and
US/UK/AUSTRALIAN MSM.
Thus the neo-hubris of the English speaking world is such that if it is followed to its
logical conclusion then total annihilation would be the logical outcome. A sad example of not
very bright people who face no domestic opposition, believing in their own bullshit:
"American elites proved themselves to be master manipulators of propaganda constructs But
the real danger from such manipulations arises not when those manipulations are done out of
knowledge of reality, which is distorted for propaganda purposes, but when those who
manipulation begin to sincerely believe in their own falsifications and when they buy into
their own narrative. They stop being manipulators and they become believers in a narrative.
They become manipulated themselves." (Losing Military Supremacy – Andrei,
Martyanov)
Or maybe just the whole thing is a bluff. Those policy elites maybe just want to loot the
US Treasury for more cash to be put their way.
John Wright , September 15, 2019 at 19:15
The self-serving Israeli Zionists know that the American cow is running dry and their days
of freely milking it are coming to an end. They have an historic relationship with Russia
and, leveraging their nuclear arsenal, know they can make a deal with the emerging
China-Russia-centric global paradigm to extort enough protection to maintain their armed
enclave for the foreseeable future. Their no so hidden alliance with the equally sociopathic
Saudis will become even more obvious for all to see.
Israel, like China and Russia, knows how to play a long game. Thus, Israel will
consolidate its land grab with the just announced expansion into the Jordan Valley and
quietly continue as much ethnic cleansing as possible while the rest of the world is
preoccupied with the incipient global power shift (True victims of history, the Palestinians
have no real friends). While they will bemoan the loss of their muscular American stooge,
Israel enjoyed a very lucrative 70 year run and will part with a pile of useful and deadly
toys. They're also fully aware that no one else will ever let them take advantage to the
degree they've been able to with the U.S.A. (Unlimited Stupidity of Arrogance?)
Eventually, the social schizophrenia that is the state of Israel will catch up with them
and they will implode. Let's hope that breakdown doesn't involve the use of their nuclear
arsenal.
Yes, the U.S. Treasury will continue to be looted until the last teller turns the lights
out or the electricity is shut off, whichever comes first.
The Western transnational financial elites will accept their losses, regroup and make
deals with the new bosses where they can; but their days of running the game unopposed are
over.
Today is a good day to learn Mandarin (or Russian, if you prefer to live in Europe).
Bill , September 16, 2019 at 03:36
Very well said and I agree with a lot of what you say.
Tiu , September 14, 2019 at 06:01
Won't be too long before writing articles like this will get you busted for "hate-speech"
(e.g. anything that is contrary to the official version prescribed by the "democratically
elected" government) https://www.zerohedge.com/political/uk-tony-blair-think-tank-proposes-end-free-speech
Personally I always encourage people to read George Orwell, especially 1984. We're there, and
have been for a long time.
geeyp , September 14, 2019 at 01:15
Tony Kevin – Nice rundown of what ails society. You have a fine writing style that
gets the point across to the reader. Kudos and cheers.
Michael , September 13, 2019 at 22:34
The 'modernization' of the Smith Mundt Act in 2013 "to authorize the domestic
dissemination of information and material [PROPAGANDA] about the United States intended
primarily for foreign audiences" was a major nail in the Democracy coffin, consolidating the
blatant ruling of the US Police State by our 17 Intelligence Agencies (our betters). The
Telecommunications Act of 1996 lead to ownership of (>80%) of our media (the MSM by a
handful of owners, all disseminating the same narratives from above (CIA, State Department,
FBI etc) and squelching any dissenting views, particularly related to foreign policies.
Tony's article sadly just confirms the depth and breadth of our Global Stasi, with improved,
innovative and (mostly) subtle surveillance, and the controlling constant interference with
alternate viewpoints and discussions, the real basis for free societies. It is bad enough to
be ruled by neoliberal psychopathic hyenas and jackals, soon we won't be able to even bitch
about what they are doing.
Tom Kath , September 13, 2019 at 21:42
The most impressive article I have read in a very long time. I congratulate and thank
Tony.
I have myself recently addressed the issue of whether it is a virtue to have an "open mind".
– The ability to be converted or have your mind changed, or is it the ability to change
your own mind ?
Tony Kevin clearly illustrates the difference.
Litchfield , September 13, 2019 at 16:11
Great article.
Please keep writing.
Do start a website, a la Craig Murray.
There are people who are proactively looking for alternative viewpoints and informed
analysis.
How about starting a website and publishing some excerpts of your book there?
Or, sell chapters separately by download from your website?
You could also have a discussion blog/forum there.
John Zimmermann , September 13, 2019 at 16:02
Excellent essay. Thanks Mr. Kevin.
rosemerry , September 13, 2019 at 15:37
At least Tony Kevin was an Australian ambassador, not like Mike Morrell and the chosen
russop?obes the USA assumes are needed as diplomats!! Now he is treated as Stephen Cohen is-
a true expert called "controversial" as he dares to go by real facts and evidence, not
prejudice.
If instead of enemies, the West could consider getting to understand those they are wary
of, and give them a chance to explain their point of view and actually listen and reflect on
it.
(Dmitri Peskov valiantly explained the Russian official response as soon as the "Skripal
poisoning" story broke, but it was fully ignored by UK/US media, while all of Theresa May's
fanciful imaginings were respectfully relayed to the public).
geeyp , September 14, 2019 at 23:26
As you usually are with your comments, you are spot on again, rosemerry.
Martin - Swedish citizen , September 13, 2019 at 14:46
Excellent article!
I find the mechanics of how the propaganda is spread and the illusion upheld the most
important part of this article, since this knowledge is required to counter it.
When (not if) the fraud becomes more common knowledge, our societies are likely to
tumble.
Pablo Diablo , September 13, 2019 at 14:45
Whoever controls the media, controls the dialogue.
Whoever controls the dialogue, controls the agenda.
' The present risk of global nuclear war is as high as it ever was in the Cold War.' And
possibly higher. The Cold War, though dangerous, was the peace. The world has experienced
periods of peace (or relative peace) throughout history. The Thirty Years Peace between the
two Peloponnesian Wars, Pax Romana, Europe in the 19th century after the Congress of Vienna,
to name a few. The Congress System finally collapsed in 1914 with the start of World War One.
That conflict was followed by the League of Nations. It did not stop World War Two. That was
followed by the United Nations and other post-war institutions. But all the indications are
they will not prevent a third world war. The powers that are leading us towards conflagration
see this as a re-run of the first Cold War. They are dangerously mistaken. https://www.ghostsofhistory.wordpress.com/
Guy , September 13, 2019 at 13:21
With so many believing the lies ,how will this mess ever come to light . I don't reside in
Australia but anywhere in the Western world the shakedown is the same .In my own house ,the
discussion on world politics descends into absolute stupidity . As one can't get past the
constant programming that has settled in the minds of the comfortable with the status quo of
lies by our media. There are intelligent sources of news sources but none get past the
absolutely complete control of MSM.So the bottom line is ,for now ,the lies and liars are
winning the propaganda war.
He speaks the truth. Liars and dissemblers have won over the minds and hearts of so many
lazy shameful citizens who will not accept the truth Tony Kevin wants to share with the
world.
Washington resumes military assistance to Kyiv. According to American lawmakers, Ukraine
is fighting one of the main enemies. "Contain Russia": what the US pays for Ukraine
Anyone or article who spells Kiev as Kyiv can be safely ignored as western anti-Russia
propaganda. It's a true tell.
Robert Edwards , September 13, 2019 at 12:53
The Cold war is totally manufacture to keep the dollars flowing into the MIC – what
a sham . and a disgrace to humanity.
Cavaleiro Marginal , September 13, 2019 at 12:52
"The key tools are repetition of messages, and diversification of trusted voices. Once a
critical mass is created of people believing a false narrative, the lie locks in: its
dissemination becomes self-sustaining."
This had occurred in Brazil since the very first day of Lula's presidency. Eleven years
late, 2013, a color revolution began. Nobody (and I mean REALLY nobody) could realize a color
revolution was happening at that time. In 2016, Dilma Rousseff was kicked from power
throughout a ridiculous and illegal coup perpetrated by the parliament. In 2018 Lula was
imprisoned in an Orwellian process; illegal, unconstitutional, with nothing (REALLY nothing)
proved against him. Then a liar clown was elected to suppress democracy
I knew on the news that in Canada and Australia the police politely (how civilized ) went
to some journalist's homes to have a chat this year. Canadians and Aussies, be aware. The
fascism's dog is a policial state very well informed by the propaganda they call news.
Robert Fearn , September 13, 2019 at 12:48
As a Canadian author who wrote a book about various tragic American government actions,
like Vietnam, I can relate to the difficulties Tony has had with his book. I would mail my
book, Amoral America, from Canada to other countries, like the US, and it would never arrive.
Book stores would not handle it, etc. etc.
Josep , September 17, 2019 at 05:21
Not to disagree, but some years ago I read about anecdotes of anti-Americanism in Canada,
coming from both USians and Canadians, whether it be playful banter or legitimate criticism.
I believe it is more concentrated among the people than among the governmental elites (with
the exception of the Iraq War era when both the people and the government were against it).
And considering what you describe in your book and the difficulty you've faced in
distributing it abroad, maybe the said people are on to something.
Stephen , September 13, 2019 at 11:44
This interview by Abby Martin with Mark Ames is a little dated but is a fairly accurate
history. I post it to try and counter the nonsense.
Outstanding article and analysis. Thank you Sir! Jeremy Kuzmarov
Jeff Harrison , September 13, 2019 at 10:17
Thank you, sir. A far better peroration than I could have produced but what I have
concluded nonetheless.
Skip Scott , September 13, 2019 at 10:10
Fantastic article. Left unmentioned is the origin of the west's anti-Russia narrative.
Russia was being pillaged by the west under Yeltsin, and Russia was to become our newest
vassal. Life expectancy dropped a full decade for the average Russian under Yeltsin. The
average standard of living dropped dramatically as well. Putin reversed all that, and enjoys
massive popular support as a result. The Empire will never tolerate a national leader who
works for the benefit of the average citizen. It must be full-on rape, pillage and plunder-
OR ELSE. Keep that in mind as we watch the latest theatrical performances by our DNC
controlled "Commander in Chief" wannabes.
Realist , September 17, 2019 at 05:48
?The ongoing success of the "Great Lie" (that Washington is protecting the entire world
from
anarchy perpetrated by a few bad actors on the global stage) and all of its false narrative
subtexts
(including but far from limited to the Maidan, Crimea, Donbass, MH-17, the Skripals,
gassing
"one's own people," piracy on the high Mediterranean, etc) just underscores how successful
was
the false flag operation known as 9-11, even as the truth of that travesty is slowly
being
unraveled by relentless truth-seekers applying logic and the scientific method to the
problem.
Most Americans today would gladly concur, if queried, that Osama bin Laden was most
certainly
a perfidious tool of Russia and its diabolical leader, Mr. Putin (be sure to call him "Vlad,"
to
conjure up images of Dracula for effect). The Winston Smith's are rare birds in America or
in
any of its reliable vassal states. Never mind that the spooks from Langley (and the late
"chessmaster") concocted and orchestrated all these tales from the crypt.
Lily , September 13, 2019 at 07:54
Great summary of the developement of a new cold war. The narrative of the Mainstream Media
is dangerous as well as laughable. I am glad to hear the Russian reaction to this bullshit
propaganda. As often the people are so much wiser than their government – at least in
the West.
During the Football WM a famous broadcaster of the German State TV channel ARD, who is a
giftet propagandist, regrettet publicly the difficulty to convince the stubborn Germans to
look at Russia as an enemy because they have started to look at Russia as a friend long
ago.
Contrary to the people and the big firms who are completely against the sanctions against
Russia and 100 % pro Northstream the German government with Chancelor Merkel is one of the
top US vassalles. Even the Green Party which started as an environmental and peace party are
now against North Stream and in favour of the filthy US fracking gas thanks to NATO
propaganda although Russia has never let them down. Most of "Die Grünen" party have been
turned into fervent friends of our American occupants which is very sad.
Thank you Tony Kevin. It has been great to read your article. I cant wait to read your
book 'Return to Moscow' and to watch your interview on CN Live.
Godfree Roberts , September 13, 2019 at 07:37
Good summary of the status quo. From my experience of writing similarly about China,
precisely the same policies and forces are at work.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov announced the end of the war in Syria and the
country's return to a state of peace. "Syria is returning to normal life": Lavrov announced
the end of the war
You hit several nails squarely on the head with your excellent article Tony. Thank you for
the truth of how the media is in Australia. It is indeed chilling where all this is leading.
The blatant lies just spewed out as fact by both ABC and SBS. They, in my opinion are nothing
but stenographers for the Empire, of which Australia is a fully subservient vassal state,
with no independence.
I try to boycott all Australian presstitutes . Oops, I mean 'media' now. Occasionally, I do
slip up and watch SBS or The Drum or News on ABC.
Virtually all my news comes from independent news sites like this one.
I have been accused of being a 'Putin lover', a Russian troll, a conspiracy theorist, while
people I know have claimed that "Putin is a monster whose murdered millions of people".
On and on this crap goes. And the end result? Ask Stephen Cohen. Things are very surreal now.
Sadly, you've been made an Unperson Tony.
Robyn , September 13, 2019 at 04:08
Bravo, Tony, great article. I enjoyed your book and recommend it to CN readers who haven't
yet read it.
The world looks entirely different when one stops reading/watching the MSM and turns to
CN, Caitlin Johnstone and many others who are doing a sterling job.
Cascadian , September 13, 2019 at 03:52
I don't know which is worse, to not know what you are (reliably uninformed) and be happy,
or to become what you've always wanted to be (reliably informed) and feel alone.
Realist , September 14, 2019 at 00:19
Knowing the truth has always seemed paramount to me, even if it means realising that the
entire world and all in it are damned, and deliberately by our own actions. Hope is always
the last part of our essence to die, or so they say: maybe we will somehow be redeemed
through our own self-immolation as a species.
Deb , September 13, 2019 at 02:54
As an Australian I have no difficulty accepting what Tony Kevin has said here. He should
do what Craig Murray has done start a website.
"... This damage to supposed bastions of US journalism cannot be overstated. More than two years of spinning speculation-cum-reporting about Russian collusion with Trump and/or interference in US politics has produced not a crumb of substantive fact. ..."
"... So when they got the chance to seemingly resurrect their buried "Russiagate" yarn with this latest fable about agent Oleg Smolenkov being exfiltrated from Russia to the US, they leapt at it because their equally buried reputations are also at stake. ..."
"... As far as we can tell, an anonymous intelligence source started the ball rolling. The source is likely to be former CIA chief John Brennan or former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. Both are hangouts for the anti-Trump media since they lost their intel jobs at the beginning of 2017, and both are believed to have seeded the "Russiagate" narrative in 2016 from before Trump was elected. ..."
"... Thus, if Smolenkov is peddling fiction to his former handlers in the CIA, that means he has no credibility as a "top mole". ..."
"... Again, opportunism is the key. Somebody came up with a lurid story about "Russian interference" in US democracy and "collusion" with Trump. Maybe it was Smolenkov who saw an opportunity to win a big pay day from his CIA patrons by flogging them a blockbuster. ..."
"... CNN, NY Times, Washington Post, Brennan and Clapper are so much damaged goods from past failure of "Russiagate" fabrications, they find an opportunity to salvage their disgraced names by outing the hapless Smolenkov at this juncture. ..."
"... There is a sinister similarity here to the Sergei Skripal case in England. Is Smolenkov being set up for hit which can then be conveniently blamed on Russia as "revenge" by the Russophobic, anti-Trump, deep state US media? ..."
The saga of daring escape by a supposed Russian CIA agent from the Kremlin's clutches and
then the added twist of a security-risk American president putting the agent's life in danger
does indeed sound like a pulp fiction novel, as Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov put it.
How to explain this sensational story? "Opportunism" is one word that comes to mind.
The news media who pushed the story, CNN, the New York Times and Washington Post, are
vehemently "anti-Trump". Any chance to damage this president and they grab it.
Also, perhaps more importantly, these media are desperate to salvage their shot-through
journalistic credibility since the "Russiagate" narrative they had earnestly propagated died a
death, after the two-year Mueller circus finally left town empty-handed.
This damage to supposed bastions of US journalism cannot be overstated. More than two
years of spinning speculation-cum-reporting about Russian collusion with Trump and/or
interference in US politics has produced not a crumb of substantive fact. That means those
media responsible for the "Russiagate" nonsense have forfeited that precious quality –
credibility. They no longer deserve to be categorized as news services, and are more
appropriately now listed as fiction peddlers.
So when they got the chance to seemingly resurrect their buried "Russiagate" yarn with
this latest fable about agent Oleg Smolenkov being exfiltrated from Russia to the US, they
leapt at it because their equally buried reputations are also at stake.
As far as we can tell, an anonymous intelligence source started the ball rolling. The
source is likely to be former CIA chief John Brennan or former Director of National
Intelligence James Clapper. Both are hangouts for the anti-Trump media since they lost their
intel jobs at the beginning of 2017, and both are believed to have seeded the "Russiagate"
narrative in 2016 from before Trump was elected.
Notably, the current CIA assessment of the latest US media reporting on the exfiltrated spy
is that the reporting is "false" and "misguided". In particular, the CNN spin that the agent
(Smolenkov) had to be extricated from Russia in 2017 because Langley feared that Trump may have
endangered the supposed Kremlin mole when he hosted Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov in
the White House in May 2017.
Also of note is the dismissive response from US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo who rubbished
the reports. He was head of the CIA during 2017. (Admittedly, Pompeo is a self-confessed
liar.)
According to CNN, NY Times and Washington Post, the former spy in the Kremlin, named as Oleg
Smolenkov by subsequent Russian media reporting, was a top mole with direct access to President
Vladimir Putin. It is claimed that Smolenkov confirmed allegations about a Putin-directed plot
to interfere in US presidential elections. The agent is said to have also confirmed that Putin
(allegedly) ordered the hacking of the Democratic party's central database to obtain scandalous
material on Hillary Clinton which was then fed to the Wikileaks whistleblower site for the
purpose of scuttling her bid for the presidency in November 2016, thus favoring Trump.
Smolenkov was allegedly providing this information on a purported Kremlin interference
campaign in 2016.
The US media claim Smolenkov was exfiltrated from Russia by the CIA in June 2017 – out
of concern for his safety, which CNN reported was being jeopardized by President Trump due to
his implied compromised relations with Putin. Smolenkov and his family disappeared while on a
holiday in Montenegro in June 2017.
After the story broke earlier this week about the exfiltrated Kremlin mole, subsequent media
reporting tracked down Oleg Smolenkov and his wife living in a $1-million-dollar mansion in
Stafford, Virginia. Curiously, public records showed the house purchase was in their names,
which seems odds for a supposed top-level spy, who had apparently committed extreme betrayal
against the Kremlin, to be living openly. The family apparently fled the house to unknown
whereabouts on September 9 after the story about his alleged spy role broke this week.
Who is Oleg Smolenkov? The Kremlin said this week that he previously worked in the
presidential administration, but he was sacked "several years ago". He did not have direct
access to President Putin's office, according to the Kremlin. For his part, Russian foreign
minister Sergei Lavrov says he never heard of the man before, never mind ever having met
him.
It is understood that Smolenkov previously worked in the Russian embassy in Washington under
ambassador Yuri Ushakov (1999-2008). Smolenkov reportedly continued working for Ushakov when
the diplomat returned to Moscow after his ambassadorial tenure in the US.
Here is where we may speculate that Smolenkov was recruited by the CIA during his diplomatic
assignment in the US. But we assume that the Kremlin's assessment is correct; he did not have a
senior position or access to Putin's office. By contrast, the US media are claiming Smolenkov
was "one of the CIA's most valuable assets" in the Kremlin and that he was providing
confirmatory information that Putin was (allegedly) running an interference campaign to subvert
the US presidential elections.
The discerning detail as to the truth of the imbroglio is revealed by the US media claims
that Smolenkov corroborated the alleged hacking into the Democratic party database in 2016.
However, that specific allegation has been disproven by several top hacker experts, notably
William Binney who was formerly technical head at the US National Security Agency. There was no
hacking. The damaging information on Hillary Clinton was leaked by a Democratic party insider,
possibly Seth Rich, who soon after was shot dead by an unknown attacker. In short, the entire
narrative about the Kremlin hacking into the Democratic party is a fiction. The premise to
"Russiagate" is baseless.
Thus, if Smolenkov is peddling fiction to his former handlers in the CIA, that means he
has no credibility as a "top mole".
Again, opportunism is the key. Somebody came up with a lurid story about "Russian
interference" in US democracy and "collusion" with Trump. Maybe it was Smolenkov who saw an
opportunity to win a big pay day from his CIA patrons by flogging them a blockbuster. Or
maybe, Brennan and Clapper (known liars in the public record) dreamt up a scheme of Kremlin
malignancy to benefit Trump, and if that could be tied to Trump then his election would be
discredited and nullified. But what they needed was a "Kremlin source" to "corroborate" their
readymade story of "Russian interference". Step forward Oleg Smolenkov – fired and out of
work – to do the needful "corroboration" and in return he gets a new life for himself and
family with a mansion in a leafy Virginian suburb.
CNN, NY Times, Washington Post, Brennan and Clapper are so much damaged goods from past
failure of "Russiagate" fabrications, they find an opportunity to salvage their disgraced names
by outing the hapless Smolenkov at this juncture.
That then raises the grave question of why he was permitted to live openly in his own
name?
There is a sinister similarity here to the Sergei Skripal case in England. Is Smolenkov
being set up for hit which can then be conveniently blamed on Russia as "revenge" by the
Russophobic, anti-Trump, deep state US media?
"... "We vote for one party which is 100% anti-Russian rather than for another party which is 100% anti-Russian? Is that the point? Because here in Canada, that's basically the choice on offer [A]t the end of the day we're still going to end up electing somebody determined to prove that he or she is more anti-Russian that the next guy or girl. " ..."
"... For Heaven's sake, the worst country for meddling in other nations' internal affairs is the US, by far! With respect to the Arctic, both Canada and Russia signed the Treaty of the Sea, under which various challenges to ownership of the seabed are settled by the terms of the treaty. The US, of course didn't sign it. Why would they when they sincerely believe that their impressive military can just grab whatever pieces of the Arctic they want. ..."
You may have missed it in the all the excitement around the world, but Canada
has a general election coming up in October. As you know, elections equal Russian meddling.
They're when our Eastern friends pull out all their computer bots, fire up their trolls, and
start spreading shedloads of disinformation in order to confuse and disorientate us, so that we
lose our faith in democracy and then we we well I'm not sure what we're meant to do then; the
ultimate aim of it all rather defeats me. We vote for one party which is 100% anti-Russian
rather than for another party which is 100% anti-Russian? Is that the point? Because here in
Canada, that's basically the choice on offer. Those pesky Russkies can confuse us all they like
with their dezinformatziia, active measures , and maskirovka , but at the end
of the day we're still going to end up electing somebody determined to prove that he or she is
more anti-Russian that the next guy or girl. Meddling, schmeddling – it's not going to
make a blind bit of difference to the result.
None of this stops the fearmongers, however, and so it was that yesterday the Canadian
press was
happily quoting a new
report from the University of Calgary, saying that, 'Russia could meddle in Canada's
election due to "growing interest" in Arctic'. Now, I've been saying for a while now that these
worries are exaggerated, but for some reason 'Professor at University of Ottawa says it's a
load of nonsense' doesn't generate any headlines, whereas 'part-time lecturer in Calgary says
it's so' is national news. Well, so be it. We all know that the press has its biases. So rather
than rely on the media, I thought I'd better check out what the report in question actually has
to say, and it turns out that it's not quite what you'd imagine, at least not entirely.
The report is written by one Sergey Sukhankin who is said to be 'a Fellow at the Jamestown
Foundation' in Washington DC, and to be currently 'teaching at the University of Alberta and
MacEwan University (Edmonton)'. According to his Linkedin page, he has a 3 month contract to
teach a single course at the former, and a 9 month contract as a lecturer in the latter. He's
also listed as an 'Associate Expert at the International Center for Policy Studies (Kyiv).'
Anyway, he starts off his report encouragingly enough by declaring that he aims 'to give a more
balanced and nuanced picture of the situation, particularly with regard to Canada', and it is a
'tactical error to label as disinformation or propaganda every news item emanating from Russia.
This creates the perception of a Russian disinformation machine that is much more powerful than
it really is.' Personally, I would say that it's not a 'tactical error', it's just plain wrong,
but at least Sukhankin isn't trying to overdo things. But this praiseworthy restraint doesn't
mean that he wants us to let down our guard. No, he says, 'the peril is real', 'the West must
stick to confronting the Kremlin', and (and this is the bit which got the headlines):
The Kremlin has a growing interest in dominating the Arctic, where it sees Russia as in
competition with Canada. This means Canada can anticipate escalations in information warfare
Perceived as one of Russia's chief adversaries in the Arctic region, Canada is a prime target
in the information wars, with Russia potentially even meddling in the October 2019 federal
election.
There's a leap of logic here which I must admit I failed to understand. Why does
'competition' in the Arctic 'mean' that Canada 'can anticipate escalations in information
warfare', let alone 'meddling' in the election? Why does the one necessarily lead to the other?
I don't see it. It would only make sense if the second part (the meddling) helped achieve some
objectives in the first part (competition in the Arctic) but Sukhankin doesn't show how they
would. He just connects two unconnected things. But we'll get back to the Arctic a little
later. For now, let's return to the report.
This essentially has two parts. The first is a fairly standard summary of the general
argument that Russia is engaged in some sort of information war designed to undermine the West
from within. It makes reference to the normal vocabulary of Soviet active measures and
the like, as well as to the conventional list of sources, such as Peter Pomerantseve, Michael
Weiss, and Edward Lucas (not the most reliable types in my opinion). In short, it doesn't add
anything new. By contrast, the second part, which specifically focuses on alleged Russian
information operations against Canada, is much more interesting.
Russian disinformation about Canada, says Sukhankin, is centred on four themes:
'Canada as a safe haven of russophobia and (neo)fascism.
'Canada as part of the colonial forces in the Baltic Sea region'.
'Canada as Washington's useful satellite'.
'Canada as a testing ground for the practical implementation of immoral Western
values.'
The extent to which these could all be called 'disinformation' is debatable ('Canada as
Washington's useful satellite' doesn't seem entirely inaccurate to me). But the key point
Sukhankin makes is that these themes reflect the Russian government's own internal, domestic
political priorities – i.e. its desire to convince its own citizens that its policies are
right, by means of discrediting others. In general, says Sukhankin, Russian propaganda targets
'the following audiences, prioritized from the greatest to the smallest'.
The Russian domestic audience
The post-Soviet area (including the russophones in the three Baltic States)
The Balkans and east-central Europe
Western and southern Europe
The U.S.
The rest of the world
Canada, therefore, falls into the lowest priority of targets. This reflects the fact that,
as Sukhankin says, 'Russians don't see Canada as a fully independent political actor'. To be
frank, we're not high on Russia's information war hitlist. The Russian government doesn't care
that much about us, and it cares even less about our internal politics. Consequently, says
Sukhankin, while the Russian media and social media do publish anti-Canadian stories, the point
of them isn't to 'meddle' in Canadian internal affairs. Rather, he says, in what to me is the
most crucial statement in his report:
Russia's anti-Canadian propaganda, which still plays a marginal part compared to other
theatres, is primarily tailored for domestic Russian consumption – it is not
designed for a Canadian audience. [my underlining]
Here, therefore, we run into a huge problem. We're told to fear the genuine 'peril' of
Russian disinformation, and Russian 'meddling' in Canada's election, but we're also told that
Russia doesn't actually care very much about Canadian internal affairs and that in any case
Russian disinformation isn't targeted at Canadians. It seems to me that you can't have it both
ways. If it's not targeted at Canadians, then it doesn't constitute meddling, interference, or
anything else of the sort. The logical conclusion of Sukhankin's analysis is that we should
calm down a little and stop worrying so much.
That, however, would not fit with the current zeitgeist . Although his logic points
him in one direction, Sukhankin apparently feels a desperate need to nonetheless throw in
something about the dangers of Russian interference in Canadian internal affairs. So all of a
sudden, completely out of the blue, and unconnected with anything else, in his final paragraph
he suddenly throws in a quotation from the head of that most neutral of trustworthy academic
sources, the head of the Ukrainian Canadian Congress Alexandra Chiczij, saying that, 'The
Kramlin's propaganda machine will increasingly target our country with anti-Canadian
fabrications in an attempt to sow discord, conflict, and to undermine our democratic
institutions.' Sukhankin then adds that this might happen 'during the 2019 Canadian federal
election.' No evidence to support this claim – which is entirely at odds which everything
which preceded it – is produced. Why would Russia suddenly become so interested in
Canadian internal affairs? Sukhankin thinks he has an answer, 'from this author's point of
view, Moscow's next theme could be the Arctic', he says. But since this is his last paragraph,
he doesn't have time to develop this thought. As I said, it just comes out of the blue.
It's also rather odd. As I said earlier, it's not at all clear why interfering in Canada's
election (exactly how, Sukhankin never makes clear) would promote Russia's interests in the
Arctic. But more than that it ignores the nature of Russian-Canadian Arctic politics. In my
conversations with both Canadian and Russian officials, the Arctic is always mentioned as a
zone of cooperation rather than competition. In an era when Canadian and Russian diplomats
barely talk to each other, the Arctic is the one subject they both think it's actually possible
to discuss in a constructive manner. Conversations about how to improve Canada-Russia relations
generally take the form of something like, 'Let's not aim too high. Let's just take little
steps, and focus on areas where agreement is possible, especially the Arctic'. To pick on the
Arctic as the subject likely to provoke Russia (for purposes unknown) to 'meddle' in Canada's
oncoming election (by means and to effect unknown) seems to me to completely misread the
situation.
In short, what we have here is a report which tells us that Canada doesn't matter much to
Russians, and that to date Russians have shown little or no interest in targeting Canadian
public opinion, let alone interfering in Canadian politics, and yet which nonetheless concludes
that we face the 'peril' of Moscow 'potentially even meddling in the October 2019 federal
election'. I don't know about you, but that doesn't make any sense to me.
Mitleser says: September
10, 2019 at 3:00 pm "4. Canada as a testing ground for the practical implementation of
immoral Western values.'"
Reminds me of one of the comments to an another article of yours.
" Canada has generally been the test case for new features of this "western
universalism," and, as a peripheral resource-based economy tightly tied into globalized
value-chains, we have often been intellectually colonized by liberal-internationalist views
(for good and ill). Unlike Russia, as we are small in population and sit next to the US, we
have rarely had the capacity (or the will) to resist US-led "universalism," but our
analysis when we have tried has been much the same as Remizov's ."
https://irrussianality.wordpress.com/2017/11/02/interview-with-mikhail-remizov/#comment-6953
Quite literally US diplomats in Cuba, and with them many US policymakers and
journalistic organisations descended into mass hysteria about Cicadas.
Alex Kramer says: September
10, 2019 at 6:35 pm Makes sense to me as both Canadian academia and media are full of
dipshit Russophobes.
Karl Kolchak
says: September
10, 2019 at 8:22 pm If Russia wants the weakest possible Canada, wouldn't it be in their
interests to see a feckless little poodle like Trudeau remain as PM?
Lyttenburgh says: September
11, 2019 at 5:21 am"We vote for one party which is 100% anti-Russian rather than
for another party which is 100% anti-Russian? Is that the point? Because here in Canada,
that's basically the choice on offer [A]t the end of the day we're still going to end up
electing somebody determined to prove that he or she is more anti-Russian that the next guy
or girl. "
Now, on a more serious note – about propacondom Sergey Sukhankin (formerly from
Kaliningrad oblast, RF).
He's one of those "professional victims of the Putinist Regime", that "miraculously"
escaped our Northern Mordor, and now spends ink, bytes and bodily fluids in a ceaseless
struggle with the Dark Overlord. "Russian interference" is both his idea fix and bread and
butter. E.g., check out his
logorrhea on "Russian trace" in Catalonia's referendum (published by his sponsors in
Jamestown foundation AKA CIA). There are many stock accusations, about RT, "pro-Kremline
profiles" in FB and Twitter, and, the horror of horrors, the fact that the Immortal
Regiment now dares to happen on the sacred soil of the country, which dispatched the Blue
Division to the Abode of all Evil. He admits, that to proof the fact that the "Russian
meddling" was the cause of what transpired in Catalonia (uh, you remember what happened
back then, right?) is difficult, but what is without doubt, is that it benefits Kremlin and
the Terrible Russkiy Mir.
Sukhankin is also an active participant in the anti-Russian propaganda efforts of the
European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR), where he regularly rubs shoulders and tries
to imitate another well known "researcher" and expert on Russian maskirovka,
dezinformatsiya and active measures, Russophobic fantasy and sci-fi author Mark
Galeotti.
archie1954 says:
September
17, 2019 at 3:57 pmFor Heaven's sake, the worst country for meddling in other
nations' internal affairs is the US, by far! With respect to the Arctic, both Canada
and Russia signed the Treaty of the Sea, under which various challenges to ownership of
the seabed are settled by the terms of the treaty. The US, of course didn't sign it.
Why would they when they sincerely believe that their impressive military can just grab
whatever pieces of the Arctic they want.
As a matter of fact, the US wants to separate Canada right across the middle by
designating the waterway between the mainland and the Arctic Islands as an
international one. It is the US which is meddling in Canada's internal affairs, not
Russia!
Josh says: September
11, 2019 at 8:45 am It always baffles me how, usually motivated by an American
Russophobe, the Arctic gets used or abused for this polemic. As you correctly point out,
the Arctic council is an example of multipolar peaceful talks. In addition, we forget that
when we look at the Arctic sea routes opening up, that it is primarily the NEP – the
route along Russia and in Russian waters – is the one more navigable. Yet even to
keep that one open for the small amount of time per year, Russia has a lot of maintenance
to do with expensive ice breakers. It follows quite logically that Russia puts a lot of
effort and money into this; and the regimented discipline of the army is the better and
cheaper option for the safety and rescue services.
If Canada wanted to do the same thing in the NWP, not only is this route much more
treacherous, iced up and difficult, the investment would be higher than that which Russia
is making, while global warming will only help this passage marginally.
All this to say that the sea routes are the most talked about issues here; mineral, oil
and other deposits along the continental shelves are dealt with rigourously and with full
support from all sides through the UN. The only small conflict is the disputed island
between Canada and the US.
Another media spin in preparation of the public proof that the Steale dossier and Russia
Gate was a soft coup and media hoax. Articles like this allow the traitors to argue that they
didn't know it was fake or that certain assets were not Russian because the Russians were
several steps ahead manipulating the situation using FBI hacked coms.
Time to start setting fire to every MSM outlet and making s'mores as we watch it all
burn.
What a terrible typographical error. Somehow the word "Russian" was inserted in this text
when the word "Israeli" was supposed to be used. Hey, typographers, pay more attention.
"The technical break-through allowed Russian spies in American cities, key insights
into how FBI surveillance teams were operating. "
The Russians learned how the FBI goes about lying to cover up for it's actions. How "False
Flag" operations are coordinated and how entrapment schemes are run.
We didn't understand that they were at political war with us already in the second
term
Spying is not political war, moron. But fact is the Evil Empire never stopped its war
against Russia - under Yeltsin they just moved it inside the country with their *** oligarch
traitors, getting Russia to dismantle its industry, etc.
According to a report this week, Israel has been spying on the White House. While that
news itself isn't shocking, the Trump administration's response – or lack thereof
– has taken many in DC by surprise.
But, unlike past administrations, the Trump team has not taken any action against
surveillance by one of its closest allies, and spying on US soil has had no real
consequences for Israel, American officials said.
Israeli spying is not new – but the Trump administration's response is
"Shortly before the Obama administration approved a deal granting Russia 20% of America's
uranium," LInk? If Russia mines uranium in the Western Hemisphere, it cannot export it. See
Forbes Magazine, 13Dec2018, the article debunking Hillary-Uranium One.
All roads lead to that neocon infested festering cesspool of anti American shitlips called
the State Department. With friends like that who needs "the Russians"
If the Russians did crack certain communications and the US knew it, they would use that
to really screw the Russians and let them think they had us by the balls.
And they certainly would no be admitting any of it in an article.
And all the while the FBI / DOJ was running cover for the Clintonn Foundation and the
Clintons, Debbie Wasserman-Schultz and the Awan brothers and surveilling American citizens
with help of contractors. NOT ONE FBI whistle blower came forward...
I have been asking "Why?" At first I thought perhaps the threats to self/family may be the
reason, but I'm now convinced THEY WERE ALL IN ON THE CORRUPTION. This agency is totally and
thoroughly corrupt and beyond redemption. This is why Wray continues to carry water for the
corrupt FBI leadership. Time to completely dismantle and re-engineer into the US Marshalls
office.
Looks like very polarized decision: to friends everything, to enemies the law. And treatment by NY of Epstein and Harvey
Weinstein supports this hypothesis.
New York state prosecutors in Manhattan have subpoenaed President Trump's
accounting firm, Mazars USA, demanding eight years of his
personal and corporate tax
returns
according to the
New
York Times
, citing "several people with knowledge on the matter" - the gold standard in
modern sources.
The subpoena was issued by the Manhattan DA's office last month following the launch of a
criminal investigation into hush-money payments made to porn star Stormy Daniels (real name
Stephanie Clifford) by former Trump attorney Michael Cohen - who pleaded guilty last year to eight
charges; seven of which were unrelated to the Trump campaign, and one for breaking federal campaign
finance laws. He is currently serving a three-year prison sentence.
At issue - Democratic Manhattan D.A. Cyrus R. Vance Jr. (whose daddy was Jimmy Carter's
Secretary of State
- and who took money
from Harvey Weinstein while
declining to
prosecute
him for sexual assault -
and
who sought a
reduced sex-offender
status
for Jeffrey Epstein) wants to see if
Trump's reimbursement of Cohen violated any
laws in New York
, and whether Trump's accounting firm falsely accounted for the
reimbursements as a legal expense.
In New York, filing a false business record can be a crime.
But it becomes a felony only if prosecutors can prove that the false filing was made to
commit or conceal another crime, such as tax violations or bank fraud.
The tax returns
and other documents sought from Mazars could shed light on whether any state laws were broken
.
Such subpoenas also routinely request related documents in connection with the returns. -
New
York Times
Congressional Democrats have been hunting down Trump's tax returns for years after the
billionaire refused to do so, citing an ongoing IRS audit as well as the position that Trump
Organization competitors would then have access to industry secrets.
The president has fought back
to keep his finances under wraps, challenging the subpoenas in
federal court. He has also sued to block a New York state law, passed this year, that
authorized state officials to provide his state tax returns in response to certain congressional
inquiries. By tying up the requests in court,
Mr. Trump's team has made it diminishingly
likely that Democrats in Washington will get the chance to review them before the election next
year
. -
New
York Times
And while Trump and the Treasury Department have proven thus far successful in thwarting
Democratic lawmakers' inquiries,
it may not be as easy to fend off a subpoena in Manhattan
.
According to Mazars, they will "will respect the legal process and fully comply with its legal
obligations," adding that the company was legally prohibited from commenting on its work.
If the Manhattan DA
is
able to obtain Trump's tax returns, the
Times
notes
that "the documents would be covered by secrecy rules governing grand juries, meaning they would
not become public unless they were used as evidence in a criminal case."
The
Times
does
not
note, however, that the records would likely be leaked
within 30 minutes to the
Washington Post
or similar.
State prosecutors also subpoenaed the Trump Organization in early August for records of the
payments to Daniels and Cohen's reimbursement -
a request which has been complied with
according
to the report.
"It's just harassment of the president, his family and his business, using subpoenas as
weapons," said Trump Org attorney, Marc L. Mukasey in a statement last month.
As part of its investigation, prosecutors from Mr. Vance's office visited Mr. Cohen in prison
in Otisville, N.Y., to seek assistance with their investigation, according to people briefed on
the meeting, which was first reported by CNN.
Mr. Cohen also helped arrange for American Media Inc., the publisher of The National
Enquirer, to pay Karen McDougal, a Playboy model who also said she had an affair with the
president. Prosecutors in the district attorney's office subpoenaed American Media in early
August, as well as at least one bank. -
New
York Times
Will the Democrats' gambit pay off? Or will the ongoing "witch hunts" into President Trump
backfire and turn him into a martyr?
There is no evidence that any crimes of any type has been
committed.
There is no legal grounds for a subpoena to be issued without
evidence that a crime has been committed.
Cearly, the Manhattan DA is violating the civil right of a
citizen for asking for 8 years of tax records with no indication
of a crime. Trump should sue the DA and the jutice department
should look into the DA violation of due process and legal rights
of a citizen.
Has he subpoenaed Epstein's docs? Is he going to claim tax fraud
is worse than child molestation? Why don't Trump supporters file a
class action lawsuit and RICO against this clown?
wants to see if
Trump's reimbursement of Cohen violated any
laws in New York
, and whether Trump's accounting firm falsely
accounted for the reimbursements as a legal expense. "
Love to see the Bio on the Judge that approved the Subpeona
How many people reading this think that the IRS never reviewed
Trump's tax returns?
How many people reading this think that
Obama's IRS did NOT make a special effort to go over Trump's taxes
in great detail, even as Obama's FBI and DOJ spied on Trump and
his campaign?
How many people reading this think that Obama's IRS would NOT
have charged Trump with tax evasion even if they could have?
How many people reading this think that making Trump's tax
return public is NOT an effort to twist, distort, and misinterpret
complex tax returns in an attempt to make Trump look bad as bad as
possible for taking legitimate, legal, but large tax deductions?
How many people reading this think that it is perfectly fine
for democrat leaders, such as Pelosi, Schumer, and
multimillionaire Maxine Waters NOT to have to release their tax
returns while Trump has to release his?
Why did Weinstein and Epstein get such special treatment?
Both did get the same treatment- in escaping from justice. Oh,
you mean not producing tax returns? No one is demanding them, for
one plus they are not public servants. All government officials
should submit their tax returns to ensure they are not compromised
by those who have access to them.
The collapse of neoliberalism naturally lead to the collapse of the US influence over the globe. and to the treats to the dollar
as the world reserve currency. That's why the US foreign policy became so aggressive and violent. Neocons want to fight for the
world hegemony to the last American.
Notable quotes:
"... US foreign policy is ever more unstable and confrontational ..."
"... Bolton's brutal defenestration has raised hopes that Trump, who worries that voters may view him as a warmonger, may begin to moderate some of his more confrontational international policies. As the 2020 election looms, he is desperate for a big foreign policy peace-making success. And, in Trump world, winning matters more than ideology, principles or personnel. ..."
"... Since taking office in January 2017, Trump has not merely broken with diplomatic and geopolitical convention. He has taken a wrecking ball to venerated alliances, multilateral cooperation and the postwar international rules-based order. ..."
"... The resulting new world disorder – to adapt George HW Bush's famous 1991 phrase – will be hard to put right. Like its creator, Trump world is unstable, unpredictable and threatening. Trump has been called America's first rogue president. Whether or not he wins a second term, this Trumpian era of epic disruption, the very worst form of American exceptionalism, is already deeply entrenched. ..."
"... driven by a chronic desire for re-election, Trump's behaviour could become more, not less, confrontational during his remaining time in office, suggested Eliot Cohen, professor of strategic studies at Johns Hopkins university. ..."
"... "The president has proved himself to be what many critics have long accused him of being: belligerent, bullying, impatient, irresponsible, intellectually lazy, short-tempered and self-obsessed," Cohen wrote in Foreign Affairs journal . "Remarkably, however, those shortcomings have not yet translated into obvious disaster. But [that] should not distract from a building crisis of US foreign policy." ..."
"... This pending crisis stems from Trump's crudely Manichaean division of the world into two camps: adversaries/competitors and supporters/customers. A man with few close confidants, Trump has real trouble distinguishing between allies and enemies, friends and foes, and often confuses the two. In Trump world, old rules don't apply. Alliances are optional. Loyalty is weakness. And trust is fungible. ..."
"... The crunch came last weekend when a bizarre, secret summit with Taliban chiefs at Camp David was cancelled . It was classic Trump. He wanted quick 'n' easy, primetime credit for a dramatic peace deal, pushed ahead blindly, then changed his mind at the last minute. Furious over a debacle of his own making, he turned his wrath on others, notably Bolton – who, ironically, had opposed the summit all along. ..."
"... With Trump's blessing, Israel is enmeshed in escalating, multi-fronted armed confrontation with Iran and its allies in Iraq, Lebanon and Syria. Add to this recent violence in the Gulf, the disastrous Trump-backed, Saudi-led war in Yemen, mayhem in Syria's Idlib province, border friction with Turkey, and Islamic State resurgence in northern Iraq, and a region-wide explosion looks ever more likely. ..."
"... "the bipartisan consensus forged in the 1990s – in which the US towered over the world and, at low cost, sought to remake it in America's image – has failed and cannot be revived", ..."
With John Bolton dismissed, Taliban peace talks a fiasco and
a trade war with China, US foreign policy is ever more unstable and confrontational
It was by all accounts, a furious row.
Donald Trump was talking about relaxing sanctions on
Iran and holding a summit with its president, Hassan Rouhani, at this month's UN general assembly in New York. John Bolton, his hawkish
national security adviser, was dead against it and forcefully rejected Trump's ideas during a tense meeting in the Oval Office on
Monday.
...Bolton's brutal defenestration has raised hopes that Trump, who worries that voters may view him as a warmonger, may begin
to moderate some of his more confrontational international policies. As the 2020 election looms, he is desperate for a big foreign
policy peace-making success. And, in Trump world, winning matters more than ideology, principles or personnel.
The US president is now saying he is also open to a repeat meeting with North Korea's leader, Kim Jong-un, to reboot stalled nuclear
disarmament talks. On another front, he has offered an olive branch to China, delaying a planned tariff increase on $250bn of Chinese
goods pending renewed trade negotiations next month. Meanwhile, he says, new tariffs on European car imports could be dropped, too.
Is a genuine dove-ish shift under way? It seems improbable. Since taking office in January 2017, Trump has not merely broken with
diplomatic and geopolitical convention. He has taken a wrecking ball to venerated alliances, multilateral cooperation and the postwar
international rules-based order. He has cosied up to autocrats, attacked old friends and blundered into sensitive conflicts he does
not fully comprehend.
The resulting new world disorder – to adapt George HW Bush's famous 1991 phrase – will be hard to put right. Like its creator,
Trump world is unstable, unpredictable and threatening. Trump has been called America's first rogue president. Whether or not he
wins a second term, this Trumpian era of epic disruption, the very worst form of American exceptionalism, is already deeply entrenched.
The suggestion that Trump will make nice and back off as election time nears thus elicits considerable scepticism. US analysts
and commentators say the president's erratic, impulsive and egotistic personality means any shift towards conciliation may be short-lived
and could quickly be reversed, Bolton or no Bolton.
Trump wanted quick 'n' easy, primetime credit for a dramatic peace deal in Afghanistan with the Taliban, pushed ahead blindly,
then changed his mind at the last minute
Trump is notorious for blowing hot and cold, performing policy zigzags and suddenly changing his mind. "Regardless of who has
advised Mr Trump on foreign affairs all have proved powerless before [his] zest for chaos," the
New York Times noted last week
.
Lacking experienced diplomatic and military advisers (he has sacked most of the good ones), surrounded by an inner circle of cynical
sycophants such as secretary of state Mike Pompeo, and driven by a chronic desire for re-election, Trump's behaviour could become
more, not less, confrontational during his remaining time in office, suggested Eliot Cohen, professor of strategic studies at Johns
Hopkins university.
"The president has proved himself to be what many critics have long accused him of being: belligerent, bullying, impatient, irresponsible,
intellectually lazy, short-tempered and self-obsessed," Cohen wrote
in Foreign
Affairs journal . "Remarkably, however, those shortcomings have not yet translated into obvious disaster. But [that] should
not distract from a building crisis of US foreign policy."
This pending crisis stems from Trump's crudely Manichaean division of the world into two camps: adversaries/competitors and supporters/customers.
A man with few close confidants, Trump has real trouble distinguishing between allies and enemies, friends and foes, and often confuses
the two. In Trump world, old rules don't apply. Alliances are optional. Loyalty is weakness. And trust is fungible.
As a result, the US today finds itself at odds with much of the world to an unprecedented and dangerous degree. America, the postwar
global saviour, has been widely recast as villain. Nor is this a passing phase. Trump seems to have permanently changed the way the
US views the world and vice versa. Whatever follows, it will never be quite the same again.
Clues as to what he does next may be found in what he has done so far. His is a truly calamitous record, as exemplified by Afghanistan.
Having vowed in 2016 to end America's longest war, he began with a troop surge, lost interest and sued for peace. A withdrawal deal
proved elusive. Meanwhile, US-led forces
inflicted record civilian casualties .
Facebook
Twitter
Pinterest The US and Israeli flags are projected on the walls of Jerusalem's Old City in May, marking the anniversary of
the US embassy transfer from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Photograph: Ahmad Gharabli/Getty
The crunch came last weekend when a bizarre, secret
summit with Taliban chiefs at Camp David was cancelled . It was classic Trump. He wanted quick 'n' easy, primetime credit for
a dramatic peace deal, pushed ahead blindly, then changed his mind at the last minute. Furious over a debacle of his own making,
he turned his wrath on others, notably Bolton – who, ironically, had opposed the summit all along.
All sides are now vowing to step up the violence, with the insurgents aiming to disrupt this month's presidential election in
Afghanistan. In short, Trump's self-glorifying Afghan reality show, of which he was the Nobel-winning star, has made matters worse.
Much the same is true of his North Korea summitry, where expectations were raised, then dashed when he got
cold feet
in Hanoi , provoking a backlash from Pyongyang.
The current crisis over Iran's nuclear programme is almost entirely of Trump's making, sparked by his decision last year to renege
on the 2015 UN-endorsed deal with Tehran. His subsequent "maximum pressure" campaign of punitive sanctions has
failed to cow
Iranians while alienating European allies. And it has led Iran to resume banned nuclear activities – a seriously counterproductive,
entirely predictable outcome.
Trump's unconditional, unthinking support for Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's aggressively rightwing prime minister – including tacit
US backing for his proposed annexation of swathes of the occupied territories – is pushing the Palestinians back to the brink, energising
Hamas and Hezbollah, and
raising tensions across the region .
With Trump's blessing, Israel is enmeshed in escalating, multi-fronted armed confrontation with Iran and its allies in Iraq,
Lebanon and Syria. Add to this recent violence in the Gulf, the disastrous Trump-backed, Saudi-led war in Yemen, mayhem in Syria's
Idlib province, border friction with Turkey, and Islamic State resurgence in northern Iraq, and a region-wide explosion looks ever
more likely.
The bipartisan consensus forged in the 1990s – in which the US towered over the world and, at low cost, sought to remake it
in America's image – has failed and cannot be revived
Stephen Wertheim, historian
Yet Trump, oblivious to the point of recklessness, remains determined to unveil his absurdly unbalanced Israel-Palestine "deal
of the century" after Tuesday's Israeli elections. He and his gormless son-in-law, Jared Kushner, may be the only people who don't
realise their plan has a shorter life expectancy than a snowball on a hot day in Gaza.
... ... ...
...he is consistently out of line, out on his own – and out of control. This, broadly, is Trump world as it has come to exist
since January 2017. And this, in a nutshell, is the intensifying foreign policy crisis of which Professor Cohen warned. The days
when responsible, trustworthy, principled US international leadership could be taken for granted are gone. No vague change of tone
on North Korea or Iran will by itself halt the Trump-led slide into expanding global conflict and division.
Historians such as Stephen Wertheim say change had to come. US politicians of left and right mostly agreed that "the bipartisan
consensus forged in the 1990s – in which the US towered over the world and, at low cost, sought to remake it in America's image –
has failed and cannot be revived",Wertheim wrote earlier this year
. "But agreement ends there " he continued: "One camp holds that the US erred by coddling China and Russia, and urges a new competition
against these great power rivals. The other camp, which says the US has been too belligerent and ambitious around the world, counsels
restraint, not another crusade against grand enemies."
This debate among grownups over America's future place in the world will form part of next year's election contest. But before
any fundamental change of direction can occur, the international community – and the US itself – must first survive another 16 months
of Trump world and the wayward child-president's poll-fixated, ego-driven destructive tendencies.
Survival is not guaranteed. The immediate choice facing US friends and foes alike is stark and urgent: ignore, bypass and marginalise
Trump – or actively, openly, resist him.
Here are some of the key flashpoints around the globe
United Nations
Trump is deeply hostile to the UN. It embodies the multilateralist, globalist policy approaches he most abhors – because they
supposedly infringe America's sovereignty and inhibit its freedom of action. Under him, self-interested US behaviour has undermined
the authority of the UN security council's authority. The US has rejected a series of international treaties and agreements, including
the Paris climate change accord and the Iran nuclear deal. The UN-backed international criminal court is beyond the pale. Trump's
attitude fits with his "America First" isolationism, which questions traditional ideas about America's essential global leadership
role.
Germany
Trump rarely misses a chance to bash Germany, perhaps because it is Europe's most successful economy and represents the EU, which
he detests. He is obsessed by German car imports, on which protectionist US tariffs will be levied this autumn. He accuses Berlin
– and Europe– of piggy-backing on America by failing to pay its fair share of Nato defence costs. Special venom is reserved for Germany's
chancellor, Angela Merkel, most likely because she is
a woman who stands up to him . Trump recently insulted another female European leader, Denmark's
Mette Frederiksen, after she refused to sell him Greenland .
Israel
Trump has made a great show of unconditional friendship towards Israel and its rightwing prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who
has skilfully maximised his White House influence. But by moving the US embassy to Jerusalem, officially condoning Israel's annexation
of the Golan Heights, and withdrawing funding and other support from the Palestinians, the president has abandoned the long-standing
US policy of playing honest broker in the peace process. Trump has also tried to exploit antisemitism for political advantage, accusing
US Democrat Jews who oppose Netanyahu's policies of "disloyalty" to Israel.
"... Like the Cold War, the new cold war was triggered by an American lie. It was a lie so duplicitous, so all encompassing, that it would lead many Russians to see the agreement that ended the cold war as a devastating and humiliating deception that was really intended to clear the way for the US to surround and finally defeat the Soviet Union. It was a lie that tilled the soil for all future "Russian aggression." ..."
"... That key promise made to Gorbachev was shattered, first by President Clinton and then subsequently supported by every American President: NATO engulfed Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic in 1999; Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia in 2004, Albania and Croatia in 2009 and, most recently, Montenegro. ..."
"... When Clinton decided to break Bush's promise and betray Russia, George Kennen, father of the containment policy, warned that NATO expansion would be "the most fateful error of American foreign policy in the entire post-cold-war era." "Such a decision," he prophesied, "may be expected to . . . restore the atmosphere of the cold war in East-West relations . . .." ..."
"... As Matlock explains, the urgent transition allowed "privileged insiders[to] join the criminals who had been running a black market [and to] steal what they could, as fast as they could." The sudden, uncompromising transition imposed on Russia by the United States enabled, according to Cohen, "a small group of Kremlin-connected oligarchs to plunder Russia's richest assets and abet the plunging of some two-thirds of its people into poverty and misery." ..."
"... The rape of Russia was funded, overseen and ordered by the United States and handed over by President George H.W. Bush to the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. Much of their advice, Matlock says generously, "was not only useless, but sometimes actually damaging." ..."
"... The economic policies wrestled onto Russia by the US and the transition experts and international development experts it funded and sent over led to, what Cohen calls, "the near ruination of Russia." Russia's reward for ending the Cold War and joining the Western economic community was, in Cohen's words, "the worst economic depression in peacetime, the disintegration of the highly professionalized Soviet middle class, mass poverty, plunging life expectancy [for men, it had fallen below sixty], the fostering of an oligarchic financial elite, the plundering of Russia's wealth, and more." ..."
"... By the time Putin came to power in 2000, Cohen says, "some 75% of Russians were living in poverty." 75%! Millions and millions of Russian lives were destroyed by the American welcoming of Russia into the global economic community. ..."
"... But before Putin came to power, there was more Boris Yeltsin. Yeltsin was a necessity for Clinton and the United States because Yeltsin was the pliable puppet who would continue to enforce the cruel economic transition. But to continue the interference in, and betrayal of, the Russian people economically, it would now be necessary to interfere in and betray the Russian democracy. ..."
"... Intoxicated with American support, Yeltsin dissolved the parliament that had rescinded his powers and abolished the constitution of which he was in violation. In a 636-2 vote, the Russian parliament impeached Yeltsin. But, President Clinton again sided with Yeltsin against the Russian people and the Russian law, backed him and gave him $2.5 billion in aid. Clinton was blocking the Russian people's choice of leaders. ..."
"... "Funded by the US government," Cohen reports, Americans "gave money to favored Russian politicians, instructed ministers, drafted legislation and presidential decrees, underwrote textbooks, and served at Yeltsin's reelection headquarters in 1996." ..."
"... Asserting its right as the unipolar victor of a Cold War it never won, betraying the central promise of the negotiated end of the cold war by engulfing Russia's neighbors, arming those nations against its written and signed word and stealing all Russian hope in capitalism and democracy by kidnapping and torturing Russian capitalism and democracy, the roots of the new cold war were not planted by Russian lies and aggression, as the doctrinal Western version teaches, but by the American lies and aggression that the fact checked, demythologized version of history reveals. ..."
When Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev received his peace prize in 1990, the Nobel Prize committee
declared that "the two mighty power blocs,
have managed to abandon their life-threatening confrontation" and confidently expressed that "It is our hope that we are now celebrating
the end of the Cold War." Recently, U.N. General Secretary António Guterres funereally closed the celebrations with the
realization that "The Cold War is back."
In a very short span of history, the window that had finally opened for Russia and the United States to build a new international
system in which they work cooperatively to address areas of common interest had slammed back closed. How was that historic opportunity
wasted? Why was the road from the Nobel committee's hope to the UN's eulogy such a short one?
The doctrinal narrative that is told in the U.S. is the narrative of a very short road whose every turn was signposted by Russian
lies, betrayal, deception and aggression. The American telling of history is a tale in which every blow to the new peace was a Russian
blow. The fact checked version offers a demythologized history that is unrecognizably different. The demythologized version is also
a history of lies, betrayal, deception and aggression, but the liar, the aggressor, is not primarily Russia, but America. It is the
history of a promise so historically broken that it laid the foundation of a new cold war.
But it was not the first promise the United States broke: it was not even the first promise they broke in the new cold war.
The Hot War
Most histories of the cold war begin at the dawn of the post World War II period. But the history of U.S-U.S.S.R. animosity starts
long before that: it starts as soon as possible, and it was hot long before it turned cold.
The label "Red Scare" first appeared, not in the 1940s or 50s, but in 1919. Though it is a chapter seldom included in the history
of American-Russian relations, America actively and aggressively intervened in the Russian civil war in an attempt to push the Communists
back down. The United States cooperated with anti-Bolshevik forces: by mid 1918, President Woodrow Wilson had sent 13,000 American
troops to Soviet soil. They would remain there for two years, killing and injuring thousands. Russian Premier Nikita Khrushchev would
later remind America of "the time you sent your troops to quell the revolution." Churchill would record for history the admission
that the West "shot Soviet Russians on sight," that they were "invaders on Russian soil," that "[t]hey armed the enemies of the Soviet
government," that "[t]hey blockaded its ports, and sunk its battleships. They earnestly desired and schemed for its downfall."
When the cause was lost, and the Bolsheviks secured power, most western countries refused to recognize the communist government.
However, realism prevailed, and within a few short years, by the mid 1920s, most countries had recognized the communist government
and restored diplomatic relations. All but the US It was not until several years later that Franklin D. Roosevelt finally recognized
the Soviet government in 1933.
The Cold War
It would be a very short time before the diplomatic relations that followed the hot war would be followed by a cold war. It might
even be possible to pin the beginning of the cold war down to a specific date. On April 22 and 23, President Truman told Soviet foreign
minister Vyacheslav Molotov to "Carry out his agreement" and establish a new, free, independent government in Poland as promised
at Yalta. Molotov was stunned. He was stunned because it was not he that was breaking the agreement because that was not what Roosevelt,
Churchill and Stalin had agreed to at Yalta. The final wording of the Yalta agreement never mentioned replacing Soviet control of
Poland.
The agreement that Roosevelt revealed to congress and shared with the world – the one that still dominates the textbook accounts
and the media stories – is not the one he secretly shook on with Stalin. Roosevelt lied to congress and the American people. Then
he lied to Stalin.
In exchange for Soviet support for the creation of the United Nations, Roosevelt secretly agreed to Soviet predominance in Poland
and Eastern Europe. The cold war story that the Soviet Union marched into Eastern Europe and stole it for itself is a lie: Roosevelt
handed it to them.
So did Churchill. If Roosevelt's motivation was getting the UN, Churchill's was getting Greece. Fearing that the Soviet Union
would invade India and the oil fields of Iran, Churchill saw Greece as the geographical roadblock and determined to hold on to it
at all cost. The cost, it turned out, was Romania. Churchill would give Stalin Romania to protect his borders; Stalin would give
Churchill Greece to protect his empire's borders. The deal was sealed on October 9, 1944.
Churchill says that in their secret meeting, he asked Stalin, "how would it do for you to have ninety percent predominance in
Romania, for us to have ninety percent predominance in Greece? . . ." He then went on to offer a fifty-fifty power split in in Yugoslavia
and Hungary and to offer the Soviets seventy-five percent control of Bulgaria. The exact conversation may never have happened, according
to the political record, but Churchill's account captures the spirit and certainly captures the secret agreement.
Contrary to the official narrative, Stalin never betrayed the west and stole Eastern Europe: Poland, Romania and the rest were
given to him in secret. Then Roosevelt lied to congress and to the world.
That American lie raised the curtain on the cold war.
The New Cold War
Like the Cold War, the new cold war was triggered by an American lie. It was a lie so duplicitous, so all encompassing, that
it would lead many Russians to see the agreement that ended the cold war as a devastating and humiliating deception that was really
intended to clear the way for the US to surround and finally defeat the Soviet Union. It was a lie that tilled the soil for all future
"Russian aggression."
At the close of the cold war, at a meeting held on February 9, 1990, George H.W. Bush's Secretary of State, James Baker, promised
Gorbachev that if NATO got Germany and Russia pulled its troops out of East Germany, NATO would not expand east of Germany and engulf
the former Soviet states. Gorbachev records in his memoirs that he agreed to Baker's terms "with the guarantee that NATO jurisdiction
or troops would not extend east of the current line." In Super-power Illusions , Jack F. Matlock Jr., who was the American
ambassador to Russia at the time and was present at the meeting, confirms Gorbachev's account, saying that it "coincides with my
notes of the conversation except that mine indicate that Baker added "not one inch." Matlock adds that Gorbachev was assured that
NATO would not move into Eastern Europe as the Warsaw Pact moved out, that "the understanding at Malta [was] that the United States
would not 'take advantage' of a Soviet military withdrawal from Eastern Europe." At the February 9 meeting, Baker assured Gorbachev
that "neither the President or I intend to extract any unilateral advantages from the processes that are taking place."
But the promise was not made just once, and it was not made just by the United States. The promise was made on two consecutive
days: first by the Americans and then by West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl. According to West German foreign ministry documents,
on February 10, 1990, the day after James Baker's promise, West German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher told his Soviet counterpart
Eduard Shevardnadze "'For us . . . one thing is certain: NATO will not expand to the east.' And because the conversation revolved
mainly around East Germany, Genscher added explicitly: 'As far as the non-expansion of NATO is concerned, this also applies in general.'"
A few days earlier, on January 31, 1990, Genscher had said in a major speech that there would not be "an expansion of NATO territory
to the east, in other words, closer to the borders of the Soviet Union."
Gorbachev says the promise was made not to expand NATO "as much as a thumb's width further to the east." Putin also says mourns
the broken promise, asking at a conference in Munich in February 2007, "What happened to the assurances our Western partners made
after the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact? Where are those declarations today? No one even remembers them."
Putin went on to remind his audience of the assurances by pointing out that the existence of the NATO promise is not just the
perception of him and Gorbachev. It was also the view of the NATO General Secretary at the time: "But I will allow myself to remind
this audience what was said. I would like to quote the speech of NATO General Secretary Mr. [Manfred] Woerner in Brussels on 17 May
1990. He said at the time that: 'The fact that we are ready not to place a NATO army outside of German territory gives the Soviet
Union a firm security guarantee.' Where are those guarantees?"
Recent scholarship supports the Russian version of the story. Russian expert and Professor of Russian and European Politics at
the University of Kent, Richard Sakwa says that "[r]ecent studies demonstrate that the commitment not to enlarge NATO covered the
whole former Soviet bloc and not just East Germany." And Stephen Cohen, Professor Emeritus of Politics at Princeton University and
of Russian Studies and History at New York University, adds that the National Security Archive has now published the actual
documents detailing what Gorbachev was promised. Published on December 12, 2017, the documents finally, and authoritatively,
reveal that "The truth, and the promises broken, are much more expansive than previously known: all of the Western powers involved
– the US, the UK, France, Germany itself – made the same promise to Gorbachev on multiple occasions and in various emphatic ways."
That key promise made to Gorbachev was shattered, first by President Clinton and then subsequently supported by every American
President: NATO engulfed Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic in 1999; Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia
and Slovenia in 2004, Albania and Croatia in 2009 and, most recently, Montenegro.
It was this shattered promise, this primal betrayal, this NATO expansion to Russia's borders that created the conditions and causes
of future conflicts and aggressions. When, in 2008, NATO promised Georgia and Ukraine eventual membership, Russia saw the threat
of NATO encroaching right to its borders. It is in Georgia and Ukraine that Russia felt it had to draw the line with NATO encroachment
into its core sphere of influence. Sakwa says that the war in Georgia was "the first war to stop NATO enlargement; Ukraine was the
second." What are often cited as acts of Russian aggression that helped maintain the new cold war are properly understood as acts
of Russian defense against US aggression that made a lie out of the promise that ended the Cold War.
When Clinton decided to break Bush's promise and betray Russia, George Kennen, father of the containment policy,
warned that NATO expansion would be
"the most fateful error of American foreign policy in the entire post-cold-war era." "Such a decision," he prophesied, "may be expected
to . . . restore the atmosphere of the cold war in East-West relations . . .."
The broken promise restored the cold war. Though it is the most significant root of the new cold war, it was not the first. There
was a prior broken promise, and this time the man who betrayed Russia was President H.W. Bush.
The end of the Cold War resulted from negotiations and not from any sort of military victory. Stephen Cohen says that "Presidents
Reagan and George H.W. Bush negotiated with the last Soviet Russian leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, what they said was the end of the
Cold War on the shared, expressed premise that it was ending 'with no losers, only winners.'"
The end of the Cold War and the end of the Soviet Union occurred so closely chronologically that it permitted the American mythologizers
to conflate them in the public imagination and create the doctrinal history in which the US defeat of the Soviet Union ended the
cold war. But the US did not defeat the Soviet Union. Gorbachev brought about what Sakwa calls a "self-willed disintegration of the
Soviet bloc." The Soviet Union came to an end, not by external force or pressure, but out of Gorbachev's recognition of the Soviet
Union's own self interest. Matlock flatly states that "pressure from governments outside the Soviet Union, whether from America or
Europe or anywhere else, had nothing to do with [the Soviet collapse]." "Cohen demythologizes the history by reinstating the chronological
order: Gorbachev negotiated the end of the cold war "well before the disintegration of the Soviet Union." The Cold War officially
ended well before the end of the Soviet Union with Gorbachev's December 7, 1988 address to the UN
Matlock says that "Gorbachev is right when he says that we all won the Cold War." He says that President Reagan would write in
his notes, "Let there be no talk of winners and losers." When Gorbachev compelled the countries of the Warsaw Pact to adopt reforms
like his perestroika in the Soviet Union and warmed them that the Soviet army would no longer be there to keep their communist
regimes in power, Matlock points out in Superpower Illusions that "Bush assured Gorbachev that the United States would not
claim victory if the Eastern Europeans were allowed to replace the Communist regimes that had been imposed on them." Both the reality
and the promise were that there was no winner of the Cold War: it was a negotiated peace that was in the interest of both countries.
When in 1992, during his losing re-election campaign, President Bush arrogantly boasted that "We won the Cold War!" he broke his
own promise to Gorbachev and helped plant the roots of the new cold war. "In psychological and political terms," Matlock says, "President
Bush planted a landmine under the future U.S.-Russian relationship" when he broke his promise and made that claim.
Bush's broken promise had two significant effects. Psychologically, it created the appearance in the Russian psyche that Gorbachev
had been tricked by America: it eroded trust in America and in the new peace. Politically, it created in the American psyche the
false idea that Russia was a defeated country whose sphere of interest did not need to be considered. Both these perceptions contributed
to the new cold war.
Not only was the broken promise of NATO expansion not the first broken American promise, it was also not the last. In 1997, when
President Clinton made the decision to expand NATO much more than an inch to the east, he at least signed the
Russia-NATO Founding Act , which explicitly
promised that as NATO expanded east, there would be no "permanent stationing of substantial combat forces." This obliterated American
promise planted the third root of the new cold war.
Since that third promise, NATO has, in the words of Stephen Cohen, built up its "permanent land, sea and air power near Russian
territory, along with missile-defense installations." US and NATO weapons and troops have butted right up against Russia's borders,
while anti-missile installations have surrounded it, leading to the feeling of betrayal in Russia and the fear of aggression. Among
the earliest moves of the Trump administration were the moving of NATO troops into Lithuania, Romania, Bulgaria and nearby Norway.
Mikhail Gorbachev, who offered the West Russia and cooperation in place of the Soviet Union and Cold War, was rewarded with lies,
broken promises and betrayal. That was the sowing of the first seeds of the new cold war. The second planting happened during the
Yeltsin years that followed. During this stage, the Russian people were betrayed because their hopes for democracy and for an economic
system compatible with the West were both destroyed by American intervention.
The goal, Matlock too gently explains, "had to be a shift of the bulk of the economy to private ownership." What transpired was
what Naomi Klein called in The Shock Doctrine "one of the greatest crimes committed against a democracy in modern history."
The States allowed no gradual transition. Matlock says the "Western experts advised a clean break with the past and a transition
to private ownership without delay." But there was no legitimate private capital coming out of the communist system, so there was
no private money with which to privatize. So, there was only one place for the money to come. As Matlock explains, the urgent
transition allowed "privileged insiders[to] join the criminals who had been running a black market [and to] steal what they could,
as fast as they could." The sudden, uncompromising transition imposed on Russia by the United States enabled, according to Cohen,
"a small group of Kremlin-connected oligarchs to plunder Russia's richest assets and abet the plunging of some two-thirds of its
people into poverty and misery."
The rape of Russia was funded, overseen and ordered by the United States and handed over by President George H.W. Bush
to the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. Much of their advice, Matlock says generously, "was not only useless, but
sometimes actually damaging."
Sometimes damaging? In the first year, millions lost their entire life savings. Subsidy cuts meant that many Russians didn't get
paid at all. Klein says that by 1992, Russians were consuming 40% less than they were the year before, and one third of them had
suddenly sunk below the poverty line. The economic policies wrestled onto Russia by the US and the transition experts and international
development experts it funded and sent over led to, what Cohen calls, "the near ruination of Russia." Russia's reward for ending
the Cold War and joining the Western economic community was, in Cohen's words, "the worst economic depression in peacetime, the disintegration
of the highly professionalized Soviet middle class, mass poverty, plunging life expectancy [for men, it had fallen below sixty],
the fostering of an oligarchic financial elite, the plundering of Russia's wealth, and more."
By the time Putin came to power in 2000, Cohen says, "some 75% of Russians were living in poverty." 75%! Millions and millions
of Russian lives were destroyed by the American welcoming of Russia into the global economic community.
But before Putin came to power, there was more Boris Yeltsin. Yeltsin was a necessity for Clinton and the United States because
Yeltsin was the pliable puppet who would continue to enforce the cruel economic transition. But to continue the interference in,
and betrayal of, the Russian people economically, it would now be necessary to interfere in and betray the Russian democracy.
In late 1991, after the fall of the Soviet Union, Boris Yeltsin won a year of special powers from the Russian Parliament: for
one year, he was to be, in effect, the dictator of Russia to facilitate the midwifery of the birth of a democratic Russia. In March
of 1992, under pressure from the, by now, impoverished, devastated and discontented population, parliament repealed the dictatorial
powers it had granted him. Yeltsin responded by declaring a state of emergency, re-bestowing upon himself the repealed dictatorial
powers. Russia's Constitutional Court ruled that Yeltsin was acting outside the constitution. But the US sided – against the Russian
people and against the Russian Constitutional Court – with Yeltsin.
Intoxicated with American support, Yeltsin dissolved the parliament that had rescinded his powers and abolished the constitution
of which he was in violation. In a 636-2 vote, the Russian parliament impeached Yeltsin. But, President Clinton again sided with
Yeltsin against the Russian people and the Russian law, backed him and gave him $2.5 billion in aid. Clinton was blocking the Russian
people's choice of leaders.
Yeltsin took the money and sent police officers and elite paratroopers to surround the parliament building. Clinton "praised the
Russian President has (sic) having done 'quite well' in managing the standoff with the Russian Parliament," as The New York Timesreported at the time.
Clinton added that he thought "the United States and the free world ought to hang in there" with their support of Yeltsin against
his people, their constitution and their courts, and judged Yeltsin to be "on the right side of history."
On the right side of history and armed with machine guns and tanks, in October 1993, Yeltsin's troops opened fire on the crowd
of protesters, killing about 100 people before setting the Russian parliament building on fire. By the time the day was over, Yeltsin's
troops had killed approximately 500 people and wounded nearly 1,000. Still, Clinton stood with Yeltsin. He provided
ludicrous cover for Yeltsin's
massacre , claiming that "I don't see that he had any choice . If such a thing happened in the United States, you would have
expected me to take tough action against it." Clinton's Secretary of State, Warren Christopher, said that the US supported Yeltsin's
suspension of parliament in these "extraordinary times."
In 1996, elections were looming, and America's hegemonic dreams still needed Yeltsin in power. But it wasn't going to happen without
help. Yeltsin's popularity was nonexistent, and his approval rating was at about 6%. According to Cohen, Clinton's interference in
Russian politics, his "crusade" to "reform Russia," had by now become
official policy . And so, America
boldly interfered directly in Russian elections . Three American political consultants, receiving "direct assistance from Bill
Clinton's White House," secretly ran Yeltsin's reelection campaign.
As Time magazine
broke the story , "For four months, a group of American political consultants clandestinely participated in guiding Yeltsin's
campaign."
"Funded by the US government," Cohen reports, Americans "gave money to favored Russian politicians, instructed ministers,
drafted legislation and presidential decrees, underwrote textbooks, and served at Yeltsin's reelection headquarters in 1996."
More incriminating still is that Richard Dresner, one of the three American consultants, maintained a direct line to Clinton's
Chief Strategist, Dick Morris. According to
reporting by Sean Guillory , in his book, Behind the Oval Office , Morris says that, with Clinton's approval, he received
weekly briefings from Dresner that he would give to Clinton. Based on those briefings, Clinton would then provide recommendations
to Dresner through Morris.
The US not only helped run Yeltsin's campaign, they helped pay for it. The US backed a $10.2 billion International Monetary Fund
(IMF) loan for Russia, the second-biggest loan the IMF had ever given. The New York Timesreported
that the loan was "expected to be helpful to President Boris N. Yeltsin in the presidential election in June." The Times explained
that the loan was "a vote of confidence" for Yeltsin who "has been lagging well behind in opinion polls" and added that the US Treasury
Secretary "welcomed the fund's decision."
Yeltsin won the election by 13%, and Time magazine's cover declared: "Yanks to the rescue: The secret story of how American
advisers helped Yeltsin win". Cohen reports that the US ambassador to Russia boasted that "without our leadership we would see a
considerably different Russia today." That's a confession of election interference.
Asserting its right as the unipolar victor of a Cold War it never won, betraying the central promise of the negotiated end
of the cold war by engulfing Russia's neighbors, arming those nations against its written and signed word and stealing all Russian
hope in capitalism and democracy by kidnapping and torturing Russian capitalism and democracy, the roots of the new cold war were
not planted by Russian lies and aggression, as the doctrinal Western version teaches, but by the American lies and aggression that
the fact checked, demythologized version of history reveals.
Ted Snider writes on analyzing patterns in US foreign policy and history.
I'm no fan of Trump, but I would like to see a comparison of the total "US instigated
foreign fatalities" for his last 2 & 1/2 years compared with Obama's last 2 & 1/2
years, and what we guess the number would have been under Hillary. I'm sorry, but I think
Trump's number would be the lowest. In coming up with an explanation, I like to use the
"Reality Show Entertainment Value" theory which many have described. In this case, people
like to watch Trump bullshitting and freaking out the establishment, but they really don't
like watching dead bodies burn up or be carried away in body bags. That reality is not
attractive entertainment, despite the fantasy of it being bankable entertainment when
Tarantino flame throws a teenager at the end of "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood."
Obama and Hillary are not "reality TV fans." They are more immersed in their megalomaniac
view of themselves as world actors, and will willfully kill a few hundred thousand if they
think it advances their misguided objectives.
RussiaGate serves several very useful political purposes. First and foremost it supports
exorbitant financing of MIC at the expense of everybody else, and as such it will not be
abandoned, facts be dammed. In this sense Philip Giraldi is right. BTW intelligence agencies are
apart of MIc and they (and first of all Brennan's faction of CIA and FBI (counterintelligence))
are the main force in RussiaGate. US government also was instrumental for the same reasons: for
them maintaning EU hostility to Russia and preventing alliance of Russia and Germany is the
ancient geopolitical goal, the goal which contributed to flaring two world wars.
But in view of Trump appointment of a war criminal and rabid warmonger Bolton as well as his
track record of incompetence and impulsivity one can feel some sympathy to those who try to
impeach Trump ;-)
There are two persistent bogus narratives about Donald Trump that are, in fact, related. The
first is that his campaign and transition teams collaborated with the Russian government to
defeat Hillary Clinton. Even Robert Mueller, he of the famous fact-finding commission, had to
admit that that was not demonstrable. The only government that succeeded in collaborating with
the incoming Trumpsters was that of Israel, but Mueller forgot to mention that or even look
into it.
Nevertheless, Russia as a major contributing element in the Trump victory continues to be
cited in the mainstream media, seemingly whenever Trump is mentioned, as if it were
demonstrated fact. The fact is that whatever Russia did was miniscule and did not in any way
alter the outcome of the election. Similarly, allegations that the Kremlin will again be at it
in 2020 are essentially baseless fearmongering and are a reflection of the TDS desire to see
the president constantly diminished in any way possible.
The other narrative that will not die is the suggestion that Donald Trump is either a
Russian spy or is in some other, possibly psychological fashion, controlled by Russian
President Vladimir Putin. That spy story was first floated by several former senior CIA
officers who were closely tied to the Hillary Clinton campaign, apparently because they
believed they would benefit materially if she were elected.
Former CIA Acting Director Michael Morell was the most aggressive promoter of Trump as
Russian spy narrative. In August 2016, he wrote a New York Times
op-ed entitled "I Ran the CIA. Now I'm endorsing Hillary Clinton." Morell's story began
with the flat assertion that "Mrs. Clinton is highly qualified to be commander in chief. I
trust she will deliver on the most important duty of a president – keeping our nation
safe Donald J. Trump is not only unqualified for the job, but he may well pose a threat to our
national security."
In his op-ed, Morell ran through the litany of then GOP candidate Trump's observed
personality and character failings while also citing his lack of experience, but he delivered
what he thought to be his most crushing blow when he introduced Vladimir Putin into the
discussion. Putin, it seems, a wily ex-career intelligence officer, is "trained to identify
vulnerabilities in an individual and to exploit them. That is exactly what he did early in the
primaries. Mr. Putin played upon Mr. Trump's vulnerabilities In the intelligence business, we
would say that Mr. Putin had recruited Mr. Trump as an unwitting agent of the Russian
Federation."
How can one be both unwitting and a recruited agent? Some might roll their eyes at that bit
of hyperbole, but Morell, who was a top analyst at the Agency but never acquired or ran an
actual spy in his entire career, goes on to explain how Moscow is some kind of eternal enemy.
For Morell that meant that Trump's often stated willingness to work with Putin and the nuclear
armed state he headed was somehow the act of a Manchurian Candidate, seen by Morell as a
Russian interest, not an American one. So much for the presumed insider knowledge that came
from the man who "ran the CIA."
The most recent "former intelligence agents'" blast against Trump appeared in the
Business Insider last month in an
article entitled "US spies say Trump's G7 performance suggests he's either a 'Russian
asset' or a 'useful idiot' for Putin." The article cites a number of former government
officials, including several from the CIA and FBI, who claimed that Trump's participation at
the recent G7 summit in Biarritz France was marked by pandering to Putin and the Kremlin's
interests, including a push to re-include Russia in the G-7, from which it was expelled after
the annexation of Crimea.
One current anonymous FBI source cited in the article described the Trump performance as a
"new low," while a former senior Justice Department official, labeled Trump's behavior as
"directly out of the Putin playbook. We have a Russian asset sitting in the Oval Office." An
ex-CIA officer speculated that the president's "intent and odd personal fascination with
President Putin is worth serious scrutiny," concluding that the evidence is "overwhelming" that
Trump is a Russian asset, while other CIA and NSA veterans suggested that Trump might be
flattering Putin in exchange for future business concessions in Moscow.
Another recently retired FBI special agent opined that Trump was little more than "useful
idiot" for the Russians, though he added that it would not surprise him if there were also
Russian spies in Trump's inner circle.
The comments in the article are almost incoherent. They come from carefully selected current
and former government employees who suffer from an excess of TDS, or possibly pathological
paranoia, and hate the president for various reasons. What they are suggesting is little more
than speculation and not one of them was able to cite any actual evidence to support their
contentions. And, on the contrary, there is considerable evidence that points the other way.
The US-Russia relationship is at its lowest point ever according to some observers and that has
all been due to policies promoted by the Trump Administration to include the continuing threats
over Crimea, sanctions against numerous Russian officials, abrogation of existing arms
treaties, and the expansion of aggressive NATO activity right up to the borders with
Russia.
Just this past week, the United States
warned Russia against continuing its aerial support for the Syrian Army advance to
eliminate the last major terrorist pocket in Idlib province. Once against, Washington is
operating on the side of terrorists in Syria and against Russia, a conflict that the United
States entered into illegally in the first place. Either Donald Trump acting as "the Russian
agent" actually thinks threatening a Moscow that is pursuing its legitimate interests is a good
idea or the labeling of the president as a "Putin puppet" or "useful idiot" is seriously
misguided.
"We have a president who, unlike any other president in modern history, is willing to use
sensitive, classified intelligence however he sees fit," said Steven L. Hall, a former C.I.A.
official who led the agency's Russia operations. "He does it in front of our adversaries. He
does it by tweet. We are in uncharted waters."
But the government had indicated that the source existed long before Mr. Trump took office,
first in
formally accusing Russia of interference in October 2016 and then when intelligence
officials declassified parts of their assessment about the interference campaign for public
release in January 2017. News agencies,
including NBC , began reporting around that time about Mr. Putin's involvement in the
election sabotage and on the C.I.A.'s possible sources for the assessment.
The news reporting in the spring and summer of 2017 convinced United States government
officials that they had to update and revive their extraction plan, according to people
familiar the matter.
The extraction ensured the informant was in a safer position and rewarded for a long career
in service to the United States. But it came at a great cost: It left the C.I.A. struggling to
understand what was going on inside the highest ranks of the Kremlin.
The agency has long struggled to recruit sources close to Mr. Putin, a former intelligence
officer himself wary of C.I.A. operations. He confides in only a small group of people and has
rigorous operational security, eschewing electronic communications.
James R. Clapper Jr., the former director of national intelligence who left office at the
end of the Obama administration, said he had no knowledge of the decision to conduct an
extraction. But, he said, there was little doubt that revelations about the extraction were
"going to make recruiting assets in Russia even more difficult than it already is." Correction
: Sept. 10, 2019
An earlier version of this article referred incorrectly to the timing of the initial
reporting on the C.I.A.'s 2016 exfiltration offer to a Russian informant. An offer that appears
to be the same one that The New York Times described was reported in 2018 in Bob Woodward's
book "Fear."
OK, lets' assume that neoliberal MSM are not lying. Then why Mueller did not include him in his report? He was already in the USA
since June 2017. It is unclear when he was fired by russians.
Also as Smolenkov for a long time lived in the USA he knew very well what the USA wants and could lie with impunity trying to earn
more money. In a way similar personality as Skripal.
Is the idea to create the second Skripals-style false poisoning hysteria to help to sustain RussiaGate?
Notable quotes:
"... The only way that he's the 'source' of the Steele fiction is if the whole thing was in the style of LeCarre's "The Tailor of Panama" where everyone is lying and inflating what they know and people at the top are paying out good money for this because it suits their little power games. But any Moscow tailor with a couple of important customers would be positioned to run that scam as well as an aide to an aide to a foreign minister. ..."
"... My personal guess, he made his money by the more typical corruption in Russia, which means he was working for an oligarch. He lost his job, possibly during one of Putin's anti-corruption cleanup campaigns. He decided to move to DC with his oligarch money because he'd served 10 years in the embassy there and he liked the area. He is buying property in his own name because he's not part of any sort of witness/spy protection program and nobody in the USG is setting him up with a fake identity. ..."
"... MoA's investigators have fairly well established that Skripal was the most likely contributor to the Steele Dossier given the overall web of established connections--that was most certainly an MI-6 operation in league with DNC/HRC officials, not CIA, although CIA was involved in Russiagate Cover-up. ..."
"... In examining Russia's foreign policy, where were the compromises generated by this alleged spy? Aside from the UNSC vote debacle on Libya ..."
"... A lot of commentators see the incongruence of this title and make jokes about it. Really,when a superpower becomes a source of jokes and ridicule, than the end might be nigh. ..."
"... We don't really know WHY this spy was extracted. Anyone that believes that Russiagate was deliberately planned as part of the new Cold War is not surprised at yet another attempt to strengthen the nonexistent case for Russian meddling. ..."
"... The first report in US Press about Putin personally involved was on Dec 14 2016 ..."
"... I don't think the exfiltration was the real source but someone to sacrifice, to protect the real source, who is working for Estonian intelligence. To me this seems like it is possibly Anton Vaino, Chief of Staff of the Kremlin since August 2016, Deputy Chief of Staff of Kremlin before that. This is not to say his info is accurate, but is in line with the foreign policy of Estonia to alienate everyone with Russia. ..."
"... Just out of curiosity, if what has been reported is true then what reason would Mueller have to exclude this from his report? The dude is proof of the Russia-did-it!! narrative. Check. The dude has already been extracted. Check. The Russians must have already noticed that he has done a runner. Check. ..."
"... What would stop Mueller from producing a one-paragraph report that starts with: "we know the following to be true because for the last decade everything that Putin did was being relayed to us by an aide to the foreign policy advisor to the Kremlin, since extracted and now living in the USA". ..."
"... Well, I just think Putin had more important things to think about than the charade that is now the US electoral process. Probably he felt (I'm guessing of course) that the whole Russiagate scenario was a desperate move to throw a curtain over the demise of American democracy that served his, Putin's, purposes very well because it kept the idiots busy while he shored up the badly leaking ship of his own state. ..."
"... And I go with Smiley@34 - no spy of even mediocre caliber would agree to being placed in such an exposed position under his own name, for crying out loud! ..."
"... It doesn't make sense that he would leave himself exposed if either in Russia or in the US he had undercover connections of this sort. Just doesn't make sense. But that he was the best the US operatives could come up with right now simply speaks to further deterioration of US ability to field persuasive stories. ..."
"... Putin hasn't had to worry about vendettas or showing corruption in American politics. Take a reliable poll. Who in the US thinks our politics ISN'T corrupt? ..."
"... We didn't need Putin, mastermind though he is, to 'create an image' of American unreliability. Was it Putin who reneged on so many treaties? Was it Putin who antagonized the Koreas? Was it Putin who set up the trade war with China? Was it Putin who threatened and sanctioned Russia, Iran, Venezuela? ..."
"... What can the Russians do to get ahead of the narrative on the likely impending demise of Smolenkov by novichok or polonium poisoning? ..."
"... The concern is about the three hundred million other Americans who are at least partially captured by the false narratives pumped out non-stop from their Plato's Cave displays. Is there anything that the Russians can do now to inoculate some Americans against the hard sell they will be facing when the corporate mass media ( Mighty Wurlitzer ) cranks up the multi-channel marketing campaign for the United States' own Skripal farce? ..."
A point that appears to have missed by several is that an aide to an aide to the foreign minister is not likely to have access
to Putin's super-top-secret plans to use a few thousand dollars worth of utube and twit ads to change the course of multi-billion
dollar American election, nor would he have access to information that might be used to blackmail a potential foreign leader.
Both would be closely held secrets and apparently way above his pay grade. Often the FM wouldn't know of either, and both operations
would be compartmentalized into a close team Putin can trust.
The only way that he's the 'source' of the Steele fiction is if the whole thing was in the style of LeCarre's "The Tailor
of Panama" where everyone is lying and inflating what they know and people at the top are paying out good money for this because
it suits their little power games. But any Moscow tailor with a couple of important customers would be positioned to run that
scam as well as an aide to an aide to a foreign minister.
My personal guess, he made his money by the more typical corruption in Russia, which means he was working for an oligarch.
He lost his job, possibly during one of Putin's anti-corruption cleanup campaigns. He decided to move to DC with his oligarch
money because he'd served 10 years in the embassy there and he liked the area. He is buying property in his own name because he's
not part of any sort of witness/spy protection program and nobody in the USG is setting him up with a fake identity.
House likely bought by CIA and annual upkeep--taxes etc.--also paid by them.
MoA's investigators have fairly well established that Skripal was the most likely contributor to the Steele Dossier given
the overall web of established connections--that was most certainly an MI-6 operation in league with DNC/HRC officials, not CIA,
although CIA was involved in Russiagate Cover-up.
In examining Russia's foreign policy, where were the compromises generated by this alleged spy? Aside from the UNSC vote
debacle on Libya, I see nothing but a string of successes, although the Ukraine Coup wasn't debauched. IMO, Outlaw US Empire
policy toward Russia has failed spectacularly, and it is within the US government where I'd expect to find well placed spies.
Here's a tough problem for a counter-intelligence agent. Find the source of info for a fictional report.
Normally, after a link, one avenue of investigation would be to check who had access to the leaked information. But, if the
report is completely fictional, then there is no list of people who had access to information that didn't exist. Everyone or no
one had equal access to the non-existent information.
The Tailor of Moscow had the same access to the non-existent information as did Putin's closest personal aide. Who done it?
Headline in le Figaro: Ingérence russe :la CIA disposait d'une source haut-placée au Kremlin (Russian collusion: CIA had high
placed source at the Kremlin.)
A lot of commentators see the incongruence of this title and make jokes about it. Really,when
a superpower becomes a source of jokes and ridicule, than the end might be nigh.
Evidence-free accusations of Russian meddling. Now with extra sauce.
<> <> <> <> <> <>
We don't really know WHY this spy was extracted. Anyone that believes that Russiagate was deliberately planned as part
of the new Cold War is not surprised at yet another attempt to strengthen the nonexistent case for Russian meddling.
The first report in US Press about Putin personally involved was on Dec 14 2016.
Two senior officials with direct access to the information say new intelligence shows that Putin personally directed how hacked
material from Democrats was leaked and otherwise used. The intelligence came from diplomatic sources and spies working for
U.S. allies, the officials said.
Putin's objectives were multifaceted, a high-level intelligence source told NBC News. What began as a "vendetta" against
Hillary Clinton morphed into an effort to show corruption in American politics and to "split off key American allies by creating
the image that [other countries] couldn't depend on the U.S. to be a credible global leader anymore," the official said.
Notice the source is spies working for US Allies. Remember that the NSA did not sign off on the Russian interference/hacking
because they were concerned that too much critical info rested on intelligence from a single foreign country.
Sergei Skripal was not just an turncoat for UK he also worked for Estonian intelligence. It seems to me the poisoning fits
better as an Estonian job, to keep relations in Europe with Russia in very bad shape. It's easy to say that the Russians wouldn't
be so incompetent, also goes for the UK, which could have come up with something more compelling if they pre planned it as false
flag.
Notice how we have some sources saying concern grew after the Trump Putin meeting, where supposedly Trump gave Isreali intelligence
to Putin on Syria, I think they were concerned Trump would have no problem revealing a spy for another government, much like he
was free with foreign intelligence.
I don't think the exfiltration was the real source but someone to sacrifice, to protect the real source, who is working
for Estonian intelligence. To me this seems like it is possibly Anton Vaino, Chief of Staff of the Kremlin since August 2016,
Deputy Chief of Staff of Kremlin before that. This is not to say his info is accurate, but is in line with the foreign policy
of Estonia to alienate everyone with Russia.
Just out of curiosity, if what has been reported is true then what reason would Mueller have to exclude this from his report?
The dude is proof of the Russia-did-it!! narrative. Check. The dude has already been extracted. Check. The Russians must have
already noticed that he has done a runner. Check.
What would stop Mueller from producing a one-paragraph report that
starts with: "we know the following to be true because for the last decade everything that Putin did was being relayed to us by
an aide to the foreign policy advisor to the Kremlin, since extracted and now living in the USA".
Well, I just think Putin had more important things to think about than the charade that is now the US electoral process.
Probably he felt (I'm guessing of course) that the whole Russiagate scenario was a desperate move to throw a curtain over the
demise of American democracy that served his, Putin's, purposes very well because it kept the idiots busy while he shored up the
badly leaking ship of his own state.
And I go with Smiley@34 - no spy of even mediocre caliber would agree to being placed in such an exposed position under
his own name, for crying out loud!
This was a guy who had big money stashed away, wanted to be in a place where rich guys are held in high esteem, planned his
exit from a no-longer-friendly-to-rich-folk environment (if you had money in Russia these days, you should use it for the good
of the country).
It doesn't make sense that he would leave himself exposed if either in Russia or in the US he had undercover connections of
this sort. Just doesn't make sense. But that he was the best the US operatives could come up with right now simply speaks to further
deterioration of US ability to field persuasive stories.
And this gave me some amusement:
Putin's objectives were multifaceted, a high-level intelligence source told NBC News. What began as a "vendetta" against
Hillary Clinton morphed into an effort to show corruption in American politics and to "split off key American allies by creating
the image that [other countries] couldn't depend on the U.S. to be a credible global leader anymore," the official said. [Quote
from Goldman Kropotkin@43]
Putin hasn't had to worry about vendettas or showing corruption in American politics. Take a reliable poll. Who in the
US thinks our politics ISN'T corrupt?
We didn't need Putin, mastermind though he is, to 'create an image' of American unreliability. Was it Putin who reneged on
so many treaties? Was it Putin who antagonized the Koreas? Was it Putin who set up the trade war with China? Was it Putin who
threatened and sanctioned Russia, Iran, Venezuela?
We, our leaders, masterminded it all. Sorry, Mr. Putin - you lose that enviable title. We own it.
What can the Russians do to get ahead of the narrative on the likely impending demise of Smolenkov by novichok or polonium
poisoning?
I know some here might say "Everyone would know it is a false flag if Smolenkov gets assassinated!" and that is certainly true
if by "everyone" one means the regular readers here and at a few other analysis sites that are not controlled by the empire.
The concern is about the three hundred million other Americans who are at least partially captured by the false narratives
pumped out non-stop from their Plato's Cave displays. Is there anything that the Russians can do now to inoculate some
Americans against the hard sell they will be facing when the corporate mass media ( Mighty Wurlitzer ) cranks up the multi-channel
marketing campaign for the United States' own Skripal farce?
Given that Washington continuously claims that Russians are responsible for the election of Donald Trump, here is an interesting
look at what Vladimir Putin had to say about why Donald Trump was elected:
While drawing links from economic class to voting patterns is difficult given that education impacts voting rates, it is pretty
clear that Vladimir Putin's observations about American society and the growing sense that middle class America is being left
behind is accurate. It is becoming increasingly clear that globalization benefits the few at the top and leaves behind the vast
majority of society who feel that their place in society is under threat.
"... Macron then outdid himself: "We are living the end of Western hegemony," he told the assembled envoys. ..."
"... Macron is an opportunistic main-chancer in European politics, and it is not at all certain how far he can or will attempt to advance his new vision of either the West or Europe in the Continent's councils of state. But as evidence of a new current in Western thinking about Russia, the non–West in general, and Europe's long-nursed desire for greater independence from Washington, the importance of his comments is beyond dispute. ..."
"... Macron may prove a pushover, or a would-be Gaullist who fails to make the grade. Or he may have just announced a long-awaited inflection point in trans–Atlantic ties. Either way, he has put highly significant questions on the table. It will be interesting to see what responses they may elicit, not least from the Trump White House. ..."
"... who in their right mind would trust the U.S. anymore for any reason? ..."
"... Until now, the conflict with Russia has resulted in the conversion of the Ukrainian (and other formerly eastern bloc countries) economy from highly industrial to a supplier of cheap labor, some agricultural products, and raw materials to the EU. ..."
"... The empire's war machine always needs a boogeyman. ..."
"... America has earned the mistrust of most of the world. Although establishing a good relationship with Russia is a good idea, using it to isolate Russia probably will not work. ..."
"... Many of Patrick's observations are astute and well-reasoned. But he is ABSOLUTELY WRONG to put any faith whatsoever in Trump being able to negotiate ANYTHING of importance, whether it be with North Korea or Russia. Wake up! There is "no one home" in Donald Trump!! ..."
"... We are witnessing a severely incapacitated, mentally ill individual pretending to be a leader, who is endangering the entire planet. If this doesn't scare the shit out of you, you need to have your head examined! ..."
"... IMHO, it is a fool's errand for our policy makers to think that Russia can be "peeled away from China", or that Russia and China has not seen through that strategy as another ploy by the West to retain hegemony. ..."
"... The West has been hostile to Russia since its inception as a non-monarchy in 1917. ..."
"... The New York Times has played an effective Orwellian role in recent years, simply by reflecting unannounced policy directives – notably the smooth shifts in designated official enemies from ISIS to Russia/Putin to China/Xi all in the space of six short years. ..."
"... The Times has become nothing but a bunch of stenographers for the Intelligence Community. ..."
"... You nailed it in calling it Orwellian. ISIS as "official" enemy indeed is a classic representation of 'doublespeak.' All of those *accidental* U.S. arms-drops on their positions, helicopters showing up to rescue their leaders, the apparent invisibility of those oil tanker fleets freely and blatantly running the highways into Turkey for several years ..."
"... As much of that oil was shipped to Israel by Erdogan's kid at below market prices, it was another testament to the duplicitous nature of the entire scheme to bring Syria down. Fail. Epic fail. I love it. That egg looks great on Netanyahu's face. ..."
"... Trump and the establishment punish and sanction Russia but get along fine with MBS Mohammad Bone Sawman. I voted for Trump but got Hillary's foreign policy. The Devil runs America. ..."
In desultory fashion over the past month or so, we have had indications that the policy
cliques in Washington are indeed reconsidering the Cold War II they set in motion during the
Obama administration's final years. And President Donald Trump, persistent in his effort to
reconstruct relations with Russia, now finds an unlikely ally in Emmanuel Macron. This suggests
a nascent momentum in a new direction.
"Pushing Russia away from Europe is a profound strategic mistake," the French president
asserted in a stunning series of
remarks to European diplomats immediately after the Group of 7 summit in Biarritz late last
month.
This alone is a bold if implicit attack on the hawkish Russophobes Trump now battles in
Washington. Macron then outdid himself: "We are living the end of Western hegemony," he told
the assembled envoys.
It is difficult to recall when a Western leader last spoke so truthfully and insightfully of
our 21 st century realities, chief among them the inevitable rise of
non–Western nations to positions of parity with the Atlantic world. You have nonetheless
read no word of this occasion in our corporate media: Macron's startling observations run
entirely counter to the frayed triumphalism and nostalgia that grip Washington as its era of
preeminence fades.
President Donald J. Trump and French President Emmanuel Macron in joint press conference in
Biarritz, France, site of the G7 Summit, Aug. 26, 2019. (White House/ Andrea Hanks)
There is much to indicate that the West's aggressively hostile posture toward Russia remains
unchanged. The Russophobic rhetoric emanating from Washington and featured daily in our
corporate television broadcasts continues unabated. Last month Washington formally abandoned
the bilateral treaty limiting deployment of intermediate-range ballistic missiles, signed with
Moscow in 1987. As anyone could have predicted, NATO now suggests it will
upgrade its missile defense systems in Poland and Romania. This amounts to an engraved
invitation to the Russian Federation to begin a new arms race.
But a counter-argument favoring a constructive relationship with Russia is now evident. This
is not unlike the abrupt
volte-face in Washington's thinking on North Korea: It is now broadly accepted that the
Korean crisis can be resolved only at the negotiating table.
The Times Are Changing
The New York Times seems to be on board with this this sharp turn in foreign policy.
It reported the
new consensus on North Korea in a news analysis on July 11. Ten days later it published another
arguing that it's time to put down the spear and make amends with Moscow. Here is the
astonishing pith of the piece: "China, not Russia, represents by far the greater challenge to
American objectives over the long term. That means President Trump is correct to try to
establish a sounder relationship with Russia and peel it away from China."
It is encouraging that the Times has at last discovered the well-elaborated alliance
between Moscow and Beijing. It took the one-time newspaper of record long enough. But there is
another feature of this article that is important to note: It was published as a lead
editorial. This is not insignificant.
It is essential, when reading the Times , to understand the close -- not to say
corrupt -- relations it has maintained with political power in Washington over many
generations. This is well-documented in histories of the paper and of institutions such as the
CIA. An editorial advancing a policy shift of this magnitude almost certainly reflects the
paper's close consultations, at senior levels of management, with policy-setting officials at
the National Security Council, the State Department, or at the Pentagon. The editorial is
wholly in keeping with Washington's pronounced new campaign to designate China as America's
most dangerous threat.
It is impossible to say whether Trump is emboldened by an inchoate shift of opinion on
Russia, but he flew his banner high at the Biarritz G–7. Prior to his departure for the
summit in southwest France he asserted that Russia should be
readmitted to the group when it convenes in the U.S. next year. Russia was excluded in
2014, following its annexation of Crimea in response to the coup in Kiev.
Trump repeated the thought in Biarritz, claiming there was
support among other members for the restoration of the G–8. "I think it's a work in
progress," he said. "We have a number of people that would like to see Russia back."
Macron is plainly one of those people. It was just after Trump sounded his theme amid
Biarritz's faded grandeur -- and what an excellent choice for a convention of the Western
powers -- that the French president made his own plea for repairing ties with Russia and for
Europe to escape its fate as "a theater for strategic struggle between the U.S. and
Russia."
Biarritz from the Pointe Saint-Martin, 1999. (Wikimedia Commons)
"The European continent will never be stable, will never be secure, if we don't pacify and
clarify our relations with Russia," Macron said in his
address to Western diplomats. Then came his flourish on the imminent end of the Atlantic
world's preeminence.
"The world order is being shaken like never before. It's being shaken because of errors
made by the West in certain crises, but also by the choices made by the United States in the
past few years -- and not just by the current administration."
Macron is an opportunistic main-chancer in European politics, and it is not at all certain
how far he can or will attempt to advance his new vision of either the West or Europe in the
Continent's councils of state. But as evidence of a new current in Western thinking about
Russia, the non–West in general, and Europe's long-nursed desire for greater independence
from Washington, the importance of his comments is beyond dispute.
The question now is whether or how soon better ties with Moscow will translate into
practical realities. At present, Trump and Macron share a good idea without much substance to
it.
Better US-Russia Ties May Be in Pipeline
But Trump may have taken a step in the right direction. Within days of his return from
Biarritz, he
put a hold on the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, a military aid program that was
to provide Kiev with $250 million in assistance during the 2019 fiscal year, which begins Oct.
1 and runs to Sept. 30, 2020. The funds are designated for weaponry, training and intelligence
support.
Trump has asked his national security advisers to review the commitment. The delay, coming
hard on his proposal to readmit Russia to a reconstituted G–8, cannot possibly be read as
a coincidence.
There will be other things to watch for in months to come. High among these is Trump's
policy toward the Nord Stream 2 pipeline linking Russian gas fields to terminals in Western
Europe, thereby cutting Ukraine out of the loop. Trump, his desire to improve ties with Moscow
notwithstanding, has vigorously opposed this project.
The Treasury Department has threatened sanctions against European contractors working on
it. If Trump is serious about bringing Russia back into the fold, this policy will have to go.
This may mean going up against the energy lobby in Washington and Ukraine's many advocates on
Capitol Hill.
To date, U.S. threats to retaliate against construction of Nord Stream 2 have done nothing
but irritate Europeans, who have ignored them, while furthering the Continent's desire to
escape Washington's suffocating embrace. This is precisely the kind of contradiction Macron
addressed when he protested that Europeans need to begin acting in their own interests rather
than acquiesce as Washington force-marches them on a never-ending anti–Russia
crusade.
Macron may prove a pushover, or a would-be Gaullist who fails to make the grade. Or he may
have just announced a long-awaited inflection point in trans–Atlantic ties. Either way,
he has put highly significant questions on the table. It will be interesting to see what
responses they may elicit, not least from the Trump White House.
Patrick Lawrence, a correspondent abroad for many years, chiefly for the International
Herald Tribune , is a columnist, essayist, author and lecturer. His most recent book is
"Time No Longer: Americans After the American Century" (Yale). Follow him on Twitter @thefloutist . His web site is Patrick Lawrence . Support his work via
his Patreon site .
Erelis , September 10, 2019 at 18:49
A few European countries may develop warmer relations .but reproachment with Russia will
not happen in our lifetimes. Macron offered nothing but rhetoric. The West continues economic
warfare and a militaristic stance toward Russia. Western institutions and interests are too
tied into Russo-phobia to give it up–it is a financial and emotional heroin to the
West. Break the Russian/Chinese alliance? Ain't gonna happen.
As for the NYTimes. They recently have published unsubstantiated accounts about some spy
close to Putin who swears by gawd that Putin personally ordered Trump's victory. How is it
going to be possible for Trump or even a new democratic president to engage Russia
diplomatically with such widely published and accepted propaganda?. Every leading democratic
party candidate have sworn to the Russiagate hoax and issued highly aggressive rhetoric. They
will be called traitors if they even speak with Putin unless they attempt to punch out
Putin.
Jim Glover , September 10, 2019 at 17:36
Now that the war monger Bolton is gone that is good news for pursuing Peace.
It is also good that Patrick points out what has been hiding in plain site from the divide
and conquer propaganda from the mass media that the Cold War and the old ones have always
been about the West against the East. Maybe the Trump challengers can join the new Pursuit of
Peace for the good of Humanity. It Can't hurt!
Stephen M , September 10, 2019 at 15:14
This is as good a time as any to point to an alternative vision of foreign policy. One
based on the principle of non-interference, respect for sovereignty, territorial integrity,
and, above all, international law. One based on peaceful coexistence and mutual cooperation.
A vision of the world at peace and undivided by arbitrary distinctions. Such a world is
possible and even though there are currently players around the world who are striving in
that direction we need look no further than our own history for inspiration. Ladies and
gentlemen, I give you one Henry A. Wallace, for your consideration.
(The following excerpts from an article by Dr. Dennis Etler. Link to the full article
provided below.) --
The highest profile figure who articulated an alternative vision for American foreign
policy was the politician Henry Wallace, who served as vice president under Franklin D.
Roosevelt from 1940-1944 and ran for president in 1948 as the candidate of the Progressive
Party.
After he became vice president in 1940, as Roosevelt was increasingly ill, Wallace
promoted a new vision for America's role in the world that suggested that rather than playing
catch up with the imperial powers, the United States should work with partners to establish a
new world order that eliminated militarism, colonialism and imperialism.
Wallace gave a speech in 1942 that declared a "Century of the Common Man." He described a
post-war world that offered "freedom from want," a new order in which ordinary citizens,
rather than the rich and powerful, would play a decisive role in politics.
That speech made direct analogy between the Second World War and the Civil War, suggesting
that the Second World War was being fought to end economic slavery and to create a more equal
society. Wallace demanded that the imperialist powers like Britain and France give up their
colonies at the end of the war.
In diplomacy, Wallace imagined a multi-polar world founded on the United Nations Charter with
a focus on peaceful cooperation. In contrast, in 1941 Henry Luce, publisher of Time Magazine,
had called for an 'American century,' suggesting that victory in war would allow the United
States to "exert upon the world the full impact of our influence, for such purposes as we see
fit and by such means as we see fit."
Wallace responded to Luce with a demand to create a world in which "no nation will have the
God-given right to exploit other nations. Older nations will have the privilege to help
younger nations get started on the path to industrialization, but there must be neither
military nor economic imperialism." Wallace took the New Deal global. His foreign policy was
to be based on non-interference in the internal affairs of other countries and mutual respect
for each other's territorial integrity and sovereignty.
--
Sadly, since then, despite occasional efforts to head in a new direction, the core
constituency for US foreign policy has been corporations, rather than the "common man" either
in the United States, or the other nations of the world, and United States foreign relations
have been dominated by interference in the political affairs of other nations. As a result
the military was transformed from an "arsenal for democracy" during the Second World War into
a defender of privilege at home and abroad afterwards.
-- -
Foreign aid for Wallace was not a tool to foster economic dominance as it was to become, but
rather "economic assistance without political conditions to further the independent economic
development of the Latin American and Caribbean countries." He held high "the principle of
self-determination for the peoples of Africa, Asia, the West Indies, and other colonial
areas." He saw the key policy for the United States to be based on "the principles of
non-interference in the internal affairs of other nations and acceptance of the right of
peoples to choose their own form of government and economic system."
--
Wallace's legacy suggests that it is possible to put forth a vision of an honest
internationalism in US foreign policy that is in essence American. His approach was proactive
not reactive. It would go far beyond anything Democrats propose today, who can only suggest
that the United States should not start an unprovoked war with Iran or North Korea, but who
embrace sanctions and propagandist reports that demonize those countries.
Rather than ridiculing Trump's overtures to North Korea, they should go further to reduce
tensions between the North and the South by pushing for the eventual withdrawal of troops
from South Korea and Japan (a position fully in line with Wallace and many other politicians
of that age).
Rather than demonizing and isolating Russia (as a means to score political points against
Trump), progressives should call for a real détente, that recognizes Russia's core
interests, proposes that NATO withdraw troops from Russia's borders, ends sanctions and
reintegrates Russia into the greater European economy. They could even call for an end to
NATO and the perpetuation of the dangerous global rift between East and West that it
perpetuates.
Rather than attempt to thwart China's rise, and attack Trump for not punishing it enough,
progressives should seek to create new synergies between China and the US economically,
politically and socioculturally.
-- -
In contrast to the US policy of perpetual war and "destroying nations in order to save them,"
China's BRI proposes an open plan for development that is not grounded in the models of
French and British imperialism. It has proposed global infrastructure and science projects
that include participants from nations in Africa, Asia, South and Central America previously
ignored by American and European elites -- much as Wallace proposed an equal engagement with
Latin America. When offering developmental aid and investment China does not demand that free
market principles be adopted or that the public sector be privatized and opened up for global
investment banks to ravish.
--
The United States should be emulating China, its Belt and Road Initiative and Community of
Common Destiny, as a means of revitalizing its political culture and kicking its addiction to
a neo-colonial concept of economic development and growth. Rather than relying on
militarization and its attendant wars to spark the economy, progressives should demand that
the US work in conjunction with nations such as China and Russia in building a sustainable
future rather than creating one failed state after another.
Now it is clear why the CIA spilled the phony beans on a spy they had in Putin's inner
circle – to revive the anti-Russian animus that has been dying down.
Rob , September 10, 2019 at 12:00
But if there is a rapprochement between the U.S. and Russia, will that put the brakes on
the new arms race?Surely, the defense industry will fight that with every fiber of their
being. China alone is not so great a potential military adversary as to warrant so a great
expenditure. Or is it? I have little doubt that some interested parties will see it that
way.
David Otness , September 10, 2019 at 11:16
A breath of fresh air ?
Dare we hope?
Good luck peeling away Russia from China, they have some very solid bonds established.
Besides, who in their right mind would trust the U.S. anymore for any reason?
... ... ...
Vera Gottlieb , September 10, 2019 at 11:04
Well, for far too long has Europe allowed itself to be "run" by the US. And sadly, Europe
– up to now- has lacked the backbone to stand up to the Americans. Time to realize
that, even without the US, the sun will still rise in the East America this America the other
why should we have to wait until the US makes up it's mind on anything. We are grown up folks
who can manage very well by ourselves without constantly having to worry as to what the US
might do or say. Enough of this blackmail.
Insightful, Patrick. This new shift will present many new challenges and opportunities for
the US and Russia. I can see that if Trump is permitted (by deep state and NATO) as much
access to Putin as Netanyahu has had, I can see a far more balanced US foreign policy and
certainly a large step toward reducing world conflicts. Iran may be convinced to negotiate
with Trump for removal of sanctions coupled with a new nuclear deal. I have no idea if this
will impact the Iran-China oil/security agreement which is a (very expensive, unpopular but
necessary) lifesaver for Iran and huge investment opportunity for China (backed with up to
5000 Chinese military). Syria needs the removal of US sanctions to stabilize its economy, and
with the US onside, more pressure can be put on Turkey to stop arming the terrorists in
Idlib, enforce their removal/surrender, and accommodate the Kurds within Syria. Finally, with
EU participation, I can see rapid settlement of the civil war in Eastern Ukraine, and
normalization of trade with Russia. Until now, the conflict with Russia has resulted in the
conversion of the Ukrainian (and other formerly eastern bloc countries) economy from highly
industrial to a supplier of cheap labor, some agricultural products, and raw materials to the
EU.
AnneR , September 10, 2019 at 09:51
Mr Lawrence, apparently the tune has not changed re Russiagate, not really. That is if the
news item on the BBC World Service this a.m. is owt to go by.
This was all about some supposed CIA asset in the Kremlin that they got out in 2017
(Smolenkov according to RT and Sputnik) who played a role, so the BBC said in furtherance of
maintaining Russophobia, in providing said "reputable" secret agency (as now so viewed by the
Demrats and DNC) with info about Russian – nay, Putin's personal – interference
in the 2016 US presidential election. All of the (dis/mis) information that the MSM
presstitutes have been selling us on both sides of the pond re the "heinous" activities of
Russia-Putin were rehearsed again from Russiagate to Russian attempted and completed
assassinations of escaped/released ex-spies, Skripal among them.
They, the US-UK-IS deep states, will not let it go. And their stenographers in the MSM
continue to propagate the real dis/misinformation in order to keep the
corporate-capitalist-imperialist western dominance warmongering/war-profiteering status quo
in operation.
Meanwhile, NPR (and PBS doubtless) are to be headed by one John Lansing, who till now was
in charge of that dispenser of "the truth, whole and unadulterated" the Voice of America and
Radio Marti; and the BBC is partnering with DARPA-Mossad via Google, FB, Twit and the rest of
the internet behemoths, as they told us (well, they didn't advert to the underlying
structure, of course). Why is the BBC so doing? In order, they said, to ensure that we, the
plebeians, the mindless bewildered herd, are no longer subjected to, no longer have our
perspectives distorted by "Dis or Misinformation."
Heartening to know, ain't it, that they – the really existing state-funded and
controlled media – have our best interests at heart?
I'm v pleased you picked up on this shard of nonsense, AnneR, and then took the trouble to
write of it. I thought to do the same while reading this morn's New York Times. A flimsier,
more obvious propaganda ploy I have not seen in a while, and this is saying something. This
fellow must be Guccifer 2's in-law or something. My read: Those who recklessly over-invested
in the Russiagate universe thought it would go away the instant HRC was elected. They're now
stuck w/ it three years on, and this is another effort to keep it alive long enough to get it
into the histories. They'll never make it. Transparently horse-droppings. Tks again for
writing. Patrick.
Skip Scott , September 10, 2019 at 09:23
The empire's war machine always needs a boogeyman. Macron is proposing transitioning to a
multi-polar world, and ending its vassal status to empire. Good luck with that. We can only
hope that Putin's countering of our war machine keeps MAD a reality, and that the example
that Russia and China are setting in opposition to empire will encourage other vassals to
rebel. Waging peace in a multi-polar world is the only moral course of action. The war
machine, with its huge waste of manpower and resources, is the main factor in our current
path to extinction. Reining it in is the first step to ensure mankind's survival.
America has earned the mistrust of most of the world. Although establishing a good
relationship with Russia is a good idea, using it to isolate Russia probably will not work.
Meremark's comments puts it very well. Meeremark is on the mark.
Many of Patrick's observations are astute and well-reasoned. But he is ABSOLUTELY WRONG to
put any faith whatsoever in Trump being able to negotiate ANYTHING of importance, whether it
be with North Korea or Russia. Wake up! There is "no one home" in Donald Trump!!
We are
witnessing a severely incapacitated, mentally ill individual pretending to be a leader, who
is endangering the entire planet. If this doesn't scare the shit out of you, you need to have
your head examined!
The US has been fed b.s. for so long and it's hard to see getting the country in any
decent shape, foreign policy or otherwise. The Pentagon and alphabet agencies have been
calling the shots since the days of the Dulles bros. I can't see anything other than a top
heavy collapse since this long con. It's good to hear Macron saying this and good for Orange
Bejesus wanting to get along with Russia, but how far gone have humans gone before Mother
Nature gives us the swiftest kick due to our stupidity?
I agree with Patrick Lawrence's perceptive analyses of 'frayed triumphalism and nostalgia'.
An empire on the rise, for example modern China, is probably less dangerous than one in
decline. There are more of the latter type, making geopolitics dangerously unstable, and
increasingly difficult to prevent world war, where the pattern of history seems to be
pointing us. https://www.ghostsofhistory.wordpress.com/
Moi , September 10, 2019 at 02:54
Zhu, if you are not aware, China has just delivered the biggest F.You to the US in geopolitical history by more or less
buying Iran oil.
China is to invest $US280 billion upgrading Iran's oil and gas sectors, unlocking a
further $500 billion of otherwise unrecoverable oil, upping it's own oil purchases, opening
factories to make "made in China" products, etc.
They also get to deploy 5,000 Chinese "security officers" so if the US attacks Iran they
could kill lots of Chinese military.
IMHO, it is a fool's errand for our policy makers to think that Russia can be "peeled away
from China", or that Russia and China has not seen through that strategy as another ploy by
the West to retain hegemony. As for inviting Russia back into the G-8 and Russia's response,
the following exchange at last week's Eastern Economic Forum in Vliadivostok is instructive
[Yandex/Google translation of the Russian text]:
Sergey Brilev: Mr Abe, I would like to ask you about this. When I just said, "the big
Seven" We all heard the report that President Trump was at the last summit of the "Seven" a
kind of lawyer [advocate] for the Russian Federation and Vladimir Putin. You've seen it from
the inside. Without breaking any obvious rules, after all it is a closed club, maybe you will
tell how it was? (Laughter.)
Shinzo Abe: As for the G–7, there used to be a G-8, there was a discussion that
creative influence on the international community is important. But as President Putin is
well aware, because he took part in the" G-8″, there are such rules: you can only quote
yourself, so other leaders can not be quoted. So I can't say exactly what President Trump
said there, for example. But I personally said that Russian influence, Russian creative
influence, plays an important role in solving international problems. Therefore, I raised the
issue of Russia's possible return to this format. (Applause.)
Sergei Brilev: if they call, will you go, Mr President?
Vladimir Putin: Where?
S. Brilev: The "G-8". In the States, I think it's next. There, however, will be the height
of Trump's campaign.
Vladimir Putin: At the time, the next "G-8" was to be held in Russia.
Sergei Brilev: In Sochi, yes.
Vladimir Putin: We are open. If our partners want to come to us, we will be happy.
(Applause.) But we did not postpone it, our partners postponed it. If they want to restore
the "Eight", please. But I think it's clear to everyone today, and President Macron just
recently said publicly that the West's leadership is coming to an end. I cannot imagine an
effective international organization that works without India and without China.
(Applause.)
Any format is always good, it is always a positive exchange of views, even when it is held
in a raised tone, as far as I understand, and it was this time in the "Seven", it is still
useful. Therefore, we do not refuse any format of cooperation.
Jeff Harrison , September 10, 2019 at 00:32
I have to object on several levels, Patrick.
"Are Western democracies, the U.S. and France in the lead, rethinking the hostility toward
Russia they conjured out of nothing since Moscow responded to the coup Washington cultivated
in Ukraine five years ago?" Good question but it beggars the truth that The West has been
hostile to Russia since its inception as a non-monarchy in 1917. The US refused to recognize
it until 1933. The classic phrase "godless communist hordes" was intended to drive home the
point that the commies were theoretically atheists and they were not capitalists. Russia
helped it along by trying to spread communism just as the US is trying to spread capitalism
now (we like to claim we're spreading democracy but that's bunk.) I'm not sure which is more
distasteful, having some foreign economic structure shoved down your throat (communism) or
some foreign political structure shoved down your throat (totalitarian dictatorship). Both
suck.
"China, not Russia, represents by far the greater challenge to American objectives over
the long term. That means President Trump is correct to try to establish a sounder
relationship with Russia and peel it away from China." I realize you're quoting the Times but
mind if I ask, what, precisely, are American objectives? If our objective was to simply live
peaceably with the other nations of the world and dazzle them with the brilliance of every
little thing we did, nobody, not Russia, not China, nobody could challenge that objective.
But that's not our objective, now is it? It could be best characterized by the weekly
exchange between Pinkie and The Brain. Pinkie: What are we going to do this week, Brain?
Brain: Same thing we do every week, Pinkie. Establish world domination. That's never going to
work. There are too many people in this world and too many countries in this world who will
not put up with diktats from somebody else for the Brain to succeed.
As for the G7 becoming the G8, as I've already said, it's not gonna happen. Putin has
already said that it should include India and China. The West won't accept that. Frankly, if
membership in "the club" can be lifted as easily as it was last time, why should Russia be
interested? As I've said, I think that Russia has turned eastward. If the west has something
on offer, great but they wouldn't be looking for it. Russia has managed to make the sanctions
regime very painful for the EU even though the EU doesn't seem to notice. Offering Russia a
very junior chair at the G7 whilst maintaining the sanctions and other visions of economic
warfare against Russia is not a calculus that Russia will be interested in.
This could turn into the one bridge too far for the Europeans.
Zhu , September 9, 2019 at 21:13
It'll be China, China, china, next. How dare they prosper! How dare they not submit and not
obey!
jaycee , September 9, 2019 at 20:07
The New York Times has played an effective Orwellian role in recent years, simply by
reflecting unannounced policy directives – notably the smooth shifts in designated
official enemies from ISIS to Russia/Putin to China/Xi all in the space of six short years.
Judging by the Times' own comment sections, a fair number of the general public are quick to
internalize a hatred of the "enemy" without reflection on how/why the object of their ire can
be one day one villain, and then a whole new villain the next.
Steve , September 10, 2019 at 07:11
The Times has become nothing but a bunch of stenographers for the Intelligence Community.
The days of them treating their sources with skepticism are LONG gone. I'm no fan of Ben
Rhodes, but that guy was spot-on when he referred to the Washington press corps as a bunch of
20-something know-nothings whose ignorance makes them easily manipulated into becoming an
echo chamber of support for whatever policies their government sources are pushing.
lysias , September 10, 2019 at 08:21
Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.
David Otness , September 10, 2019 at 11:01
" .. notably the smooth shifts in designated official enemies from ISIS to Russia/Putin to
China/Xi all in the space of six short years."
You nailed it in calling it Orwellian. ISIS as "official" enemy indeed is a classic
representation of 'doublespeak.' All of those *accidental* U.S. arms-drops on their
positions, helicopters showing up to rescue their leaders, the apparent invisibility of those
oil tanker fleets freely and blatantly running the highways into Turkey for several years.
(The Russians sure found them in a hurry.) As much of that oil was shipped to Israel by Erdogan's kid at below market prices, it was another testament to the duplicitous nature of
the entire scheme to bring Syria down. Fail. Epic fail. I love it. That egg looks great on
Netanyahu's face.
Brent , September 9, 2019 at 20:00
Trump and the establishment punish and sanction Russia but get along fine with MBS
Mohammad Bone Sawman. I voted for Trump but got Hillary's foreign policy. The Devil runs
America.
Tim , September 9, 2019 at 19:48
Yes Bob, it would be a good change, except, if Britain is co-opted by the US, then it will
be a wholly owned subsidy and block change in Europe.
Tim Jones , September 9, 2019 at 20:50
subsidiary
Tim Jones , September 9, 2019 at 19:40
Just hope Brexit is negotiated and Britain is not fully taken over by Washington as a new
investment opportunity.
Ikallicrates , September 10, 2019 at 10:57
US corporations did indeed anticipate that post Brexit UK would be a new investment
opportunity. The US health insurance industry, for example, was poised to swoop down on the
UK as soon as the Tories finished destroying the NHS. But thanks to BoJo's bungling of
Brexit, the Tories could lose the next general election, so they've reversed direction and
are appeasing angry Brits by promising to save the NHS. By bringing down the Tories, BoJo may
make Britain great again (#MBGA).
Meremark , September 9, 2019 at 19:18
RT said Putin says Russia in G-8 is improvident without China and India economies and
geo-strategies also figured in. A G-10 league?
Putin's chessmanship is operaticly clean. not to be confused with poker as people
generally do confuse. This lacks the bluffing of poker; in this the pieces of global power
projection are standing on the board, chess obvious.
Maybe not so easy to peel Russia apart from China, if that's Plan B kicking around the
Pentagon.
At some point maybe they can consider Plan Delta ? which stands for change.
Steve , September 10, 2019 at 07:03
Let's be honest, the G-7 is pretty outdated. Canada and Italy are pretty much out of their
league. America's hat and a fourth western European power seem unnecessary. Replace them with
China and India, and bring Russia back in to make it the G-8.
Thank you, Meremark. Putin does not take his directives from the NYT.
Daniel Rich , September 9, 2019 at 19:17
Macron, a Rothschild pawn, gives as much abut true Democrat as he does about the Yellow
Vests' protest
No, no, not the Hong Kong, US flags waving goons, but ordinary French citizens who're fed
up with the direction their government moves onward to, the ones you hear nothing about.
Bob Van Noy , September 9, 2019 at 17:25
Thank you Patrick Lawrence, if your analysis is correct it would be a turning point in
international relations and extremely significant. I like to think that the web has put us
about a week or two ahead of the headlines here at CN, so if the NYT is finally calling the
events accurately, it would by a stunning breakthrough
Ok, TTG. What's your proof? How can you believe, religiously, everything claimed without any
proof?
The CNN article provided enough rope to hang itself with it. Literally anyone can try to
verify it in a few easy steps:
1) Make a list of RusGov ranking officials by, say, May 2016.
2) See, who's absent in the current composition of the RusGov
3) Find out, who amongst those absent is no longer in Russia.
4) Of them, find out who had any kind of plausible potential to be the CIA asset, by having
the access to all sorts of data and "insight into Putin's head" as per this CNN article.
re " I don't believe he's a Russian asset, either. His personality makes him unsuitable as
a controlled asset. "
I think the key word here is indeed controlled . I have doubts that anyone can
control him, and that excludes himself.
Should it ever come to the D's going for impeachment (which would IMO be understandable if
unwise and pricely) and succeed - what would the US get instead?
Pence.
The difference that that dude is white & white and not orange & yellow. That's
about it. Pence likely would immediately pardon Trump for whatever he was found to have
done.
He is probably just as far right as Trump, only more discrete and self controlled - and of
course evangelical. The evangelical part can be somewhat problematic as seen in Brazil under
also evangelical Bolsonaro.
One of Bolsonaro's "underling politicos", formerly an evangelical bishop (or something
like that) demanded to confiscate US marvel comics since in these comics some
superheros , ghasp, were gay - and that that is utterly unacceptable since it
undermines Brazil's ... immensely high moral principles.
Also, since Boslonaro took office the destruction of Amazonas, compared to the last year,
has reportedly already doubled - and we're only in early september by now.
Crappily assembled Steele dossier/crossfire hurricane coup d'etat fails. Democrats are
floating only craven extremist nutjobs that most Americans can't handle and whose policies
can't possibly work in the real world. So they will certainly lose in 2020. All manner of
hyper aggressive negative media BS has failed. What's a power crazed global elitist to do?
:-(
On to deep state plan F!!! Trump is a national security risk because he's CRAZY! and
irresponsible! This one will stick. Sure. Bring out the liars! Spin the story! That's the
ticket. And we can still shout "Racist!" all day every day.
C.I.A. officials worried about safety made the arduous decision in late 2016 to offer to
extract the source from Russia. The situation grew more tense when the informant at first
refused, citing family concerns -- prompting consternation at C.I.A. headquarters and sowing
doubts among some American counterintelligence officials about the informant's
trustworthiness. But the C.I.A. pressed again months later after more media inquiries. This
time, the informant agreed."
This has nothing to do with Trump but with leaks from Brennan and Co who outed the spy. He
worked in the Kremlin administration and had good but not top access.
Kommersant reports that the guy's name is Oleg Smolenko.
He and his wife bought a house in Stafford Virginia, LOT 28 HUNTERS POND, under their own
name. https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/4087921
Maybe Pat or someone else in the area can visit them and find out how much of their
information is true and how much is bonkers. I'd bet on 50:50.
Most of trump and the 7 Russians is fake news. The fact is that the USA has sought Russian
assistance in pressuring Israel. The rest is a smoke screen. The whole scenario is being
carefully managed so as to not set off a middle east war. The outcome of this project coming
at the tail end of the Arab spring will become clear after the election.
And then there is the possibility that CIA extracted a minor source to divert attention
from someone or someones who remain(s) in place. The open purchase of a house in the outer
suburbs of Washington by the extracted would seem to support the possibility that this is all
a diversion. The narrative continues that "a former senior intelligence official" told
Sciutto, an Obama man, at CNN of all this. Clapper is "a former senior intelligence official"
and a CNN "contributor" (employee) is he not? He is dumb enough to have had this story
planted on him.
I'm sure Mr. Smolenko has been following the story of Sergei Skripal and wondering if perhaps
he would have been better off going to prison in Russia....
LOL Sorry. Too terse? It strikes me that this CNN assertion is useful -- to provide a
fig-leaf, albeit lacy, for the wretched Steele dossier's 'Kremlin source'.
I'm always amazed how little it takes and how little there is there. I'm probably wrong,
but that's what came to my mind.
It looks as though liberals may never learn that just because they disagree with someone's
opinion, it doesn't automatically make them a tool of the Russian government. And leading the
charge of liberals disseminating Russiagate nothingburgers, of course, continues to be Rachel
Maddow.
Conservative television network One America News (OAN) is suing Rachel Maddow for $10
million after she referred to the network as "paid Russian propaganda" . OAN filed the
defamation suit in federal court in San Diego, according to AP . OAN is a small, family owned
conservative network that is based in San Diego and has received favorable Tweets from the
President. It is seen as a competitor to Fox News.
OAN's lawsuit claims that Maddow's comments were retaliation after OAN President Charles
Herring accused Comcast of censorship. The suit said that Comcast refuses to carry its channel
because "counters the liberal politics of Comcast's own news channel, MSNBC."
It was about a week after Herring e-mailed a Comcast executive when Maddow opened her show
by referring to a Daily Beast report that claimed an OAN employee also worked for Sputnik News,
which has ties to the Russian government. Maddow said: "In this case, the most obsequiously
pro-Trump right-wing news outlet in America really literally is paid Russian propaganda. Their
on-air U.S. politics reporter is paid by the Russian government to produce propaganda for that
government."
Except Maddow, likely still upset from spending 3 years trying to promulgate a Russian hoax
that didn't exist, didn't quite get her facts straight. Big surprise.
OAN said in its lawsuit that while reporter Kristian Rouz was associated with Sputnik News,
he worked solely as a freelancer for them and was not a staff employee of OAN. And the lawsuit
includes a statement from Rouz stating that while he has written some 1,300 articles over the
past 4 and a half years for Sputnik, he has "...never written propaganda, disinformation, or
unverified information." Skip Miller, OAN's attorney stated:
"One America is wholly owned, operated and financed by the Herring family in San Diego.
They are as American as apple pie. They are not paid by Russia and have nothing to do with
the Russian government. This is a false and malicious libel, and they're going to answer for
it in a court of law."
The lawsuit included an August 6th letter from an NBC Universal attorney who stated that
"OAN publishes content collected or created by a journalist who is also paid by the Russian
government for writing over a thousand articles. Ms. Maddow's recounting of this arrangement is
substantially true and therefore not actionable."
As newly appointed US Defense Secretary, Mark Esper, was reported to have claimed about
wanting for Russia to ''behave like a normal country'', Sergey Lavrov urged for him to
clarify what he means by ''normality'' during a press conference in the Russian capital; if
Russia was to behave like the US, it would have had to bomb Iraq, Libya, supporting an armed,
anti-constitutional coup in Kiev, and allocating millions in the interference in the affairs
of other countries, as in the ''promotion of democracy'' in Russia.
Sergey Shoygu did not have much to add, but what he did add could not be clearer: Russia
will probably have to remain being ''not normal''.
The main achievement of neoliberal and imperial (warmongering) propaganda in the USA is that it achieved the complete,
undisputed dominance in MSM
Pot Calling the Kettle Black: "The Kremlin’s propaganda and disinformation machine is being unleashed via new platforms and continues to grow in Russia and
internationally. Russia seeks to destroy the very idea of an objective, verifiable set of facts as it attempts to influence opinions
about the United States and its allies. It is not an understatement to say that this new form of combat on the information battlefield
may be the fight of the 21st century."
Notable quotes:
"... Back in the 1960s, the CIA official Cord Meyer said the agency needed to "court the compatible left." ..."
"... The CIA therefore secretly worked to influence American and world opinion through the literary and intellectual elites. ..."
"... Then in 1977, Carl Bernstein wrote a long piece for Esquire – “The CIA and the Media” – naming names of journalists and media (The New York Times, CBS, etc.) that worked hand-in-glove with the CIA, propagandizing the American people and the rest of the world. ..."
Back in the 1960s, the CIA official Cord Meyer said the agency needed to "court the compatible left."
Right-wing and left-wing collaborators were needed to create a powerful propaganda apparatus that would be capable of hypnotizing
audiences into believing the myth of American exceptionalism and its divine right to rule the world.
The CIA therefore secretly worked to influence American and world opinion through the literary and intellectual elites.
Frances Stonor Saunders comprehensively covers this in her 1999 book, The Cultural Cold War: The CIA And The World Of Arts
And Letters, and Joel Whitney followed this up in 2016 with Finks: How the CIA Tricked the World’s Best Writers,
with particular emphasis on the complicity between the CIA and the famous literary journal, The Paris Review.
By the mid-1970s, as a result of the Church Committee hearings, it seemed as if the CIA, NSA, FBI, etc. had been caught in flagrante
delicto and disgraced, confessed their sins, and resolved to go and sin no more.
Then in 1977, Carl Bernstein wrote a long piece for Esquire – “The CIA and the Media” – naming names of journalists and media
(The New York Times, CBS, etc.) that worked hand-in-glove with the CIA, propagandizing the American people and the rest of the world.
It seemed as if all would be hunky-dory now with the bad boys purged from the American “free” press. Seemed to the most naïve,
that is, by which I mean the vast numbers of people who wanted to re-stick their heads in the sand and believe, as Ronald Reagan’s
team of truthtellers would announce, that it was “Morning in America” again with the free press reigning and the neo-conservatives,
many of whom had been “converted” from their leftist views, running things in Washington.
USAGM provides consistently accurate and compelling journalism that reflects the values of our society: freedom, openness,
democracy, and hope. Our guiding principles—enshrined in law—are to provide a reliable, authoritative, and independent source
of news that adheres to the strictest standards of journalism…
Russian Disinformation. And make no mistake, we are living through a global explosion of disinformation, state propaganda,
and lies generated by multiple authoritarian regimes around the world. The weaponization of information we are seeing today is
real. The Russian government and other authoritarian regimes engage in far-reaching malign influence campaigns across national
boundaries and language barriers.
The Kremlin’s propaganda and disinformation machine is being unleashed via new platforms and continues to grow in Russia and
internationally. Russia seeks to destroy the very idea of an objective, verifiable set of facts as it attempts to influence opinions
about the United States and its allies. It is not an understatement to say that this new form of combat on the information battlefield
may be the fight of the 21st century.
Then research the history of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, the Voice of America, Radio and Television Marti, etc. You will
be reassured that Lansing’s July testimony was his job interview to head National Propaganda Radio.
Edward Curtin writes, and his writing on varied topics has appeared widely over many years. He writes as a public
intellectual for the general public, not as a specialist for a narrow readership. He believes a non-committal sociology is an
impossibility and therefore sees all his work as an effort to enhance human freedom through understanding. His website is
edwardcurtin.com
"... And behind it all, the demonization (demonetization) of Russia (and Putin) still continues. ..."
"... is admittedly so cool (given the advanced technology) to be dropping bombs on women and children for the uncountable time, clearly we now know we are going broke killing the innocent. We are bludgeoning them to the point that we have broken our rifles on their corpses. Time to let off. ..."
Very well written and keeping focus on what's important. Very useful, revealing event with many issues remaining to be fully
considered regarding behaviors of
- the elected officials,
- the "intelligence" "community",
- the media,
- the public.
And behind it all, the demonization (demonetization) of Russia (and Putin) still continues.
There likely are cases where Russia is acting nefariously or in bad faith, but who could tell given all the b/s they are feeding
us.
So it's clear (to anyone interested) that they are misleading us, and (I think) clear why they are misleading us, but that
does stop the the constant stream of crap in the media - "news" and "entertainment".
Is their target audience the most obtuse among us?
While is admittedly so cool (given the advanced technology) to be dropping bombs on women and children for the uncountable
time, clearly we now know we are going broke killing the innocent. We are bludgeoning them to the point that we have broken our
rifles on their corpses. Time to let off.
Leaving aside the need to feed the war machine (particularly in light of slowing economy), many on both sides seemed to fear
that the public had succeeded in electing a populist and that could not be allowed. So they attacked him knowing the technocratic
state would support them. But Trump out-smarted them and went all in deep state, elitest and sooth the worried vested interests
and their owners. So that's all past us now. Still, kind of hard to over-look. Does Shiff take himself seriously?
"... The "report" was his work. Mueller never looked for anything, never found anything and never wrote anything. ..."
"... The entire charade was part of the "resistance" to straight jacket Trump until the mid term elections, a strategy put in motion by Comey and Brennan, which achieved the desired result: Republicans lost the House. ..."
"... Of course there was "little Russia in Russiagate." The narrative was all disinformation set loose by Crowdstrike and Fusion GPS, paid for by Hillary and the DNC with the blessing of President Obama. Welcome to the tin foil hat brigade as contributor. ..."
Officially, at least in the FBI's version, its operation "Crossfire Hurricane," the
counterintelligence investigation of the Trump campaign that began in mid-2016 was due to
suspicious remarks made to visitors by a young and lowly Trump aide, George Papadopoulos. This
too is not believable, as I pointed out previously .
Most of those visitors themselves had ties to Western intelligence agencies. That is, the young
Trump aide was being enticed, possibly entrapped, as part of a larger intelligence operation
against Trump. (Papadopoulos wasn't the only Trump associate targeted, Carter Page being
another.)
But the question remains: Why did Western intelligence agencies, prompted, it seems clear,
by US ones, seek to undermine Trump's presidential campaign? A reflexive answer might be
because candidate Trump promised to "cooperate with Russia," to pursue a pro-détente
foreign policy, but this was hardly a startling, still less subversive, advocacy by a would-be
Republican president. All of the major pro-détente episodes in the 20th century had been
initiated by Republican presidents: Eisenhower, Nixon, and Reagan.
So, again, what was it about Trump that so spooked the spooks so far off their rightful
reservation and so intrusively into American presidential politics? Investigations being
overseen by Attorney General William Barr may provide answers -- or not.
... ... ...
It is true, of course, that Barr and Durham, as Trump appointees, are not the ideal
investigators of Intel misdeeds in the Russiagate saga. Much better would be a truly
bipartisan, independent investigation based in the Senate, as was the Church Committee of the
mid-1970s, which exposed and reformed (it thought at the time) serious abuses by US
intelligence agencies. That would require, however, a sizable core of nonpartisan, honorable,
and courageous senators of both parties, who thus far seem to be lacking.
There are also, however, the ongoing and upcoming Democratic presidential debates. First and
foremost, Russiagate is about the present and future of the American political system, not
about Russia. (Indeed, as I have repeatedly argued, there is very little, if any, Russia in
Russiagate.) At every "debate" or comparable forum, all of the Democratic candidates should be
asked about this grave threat to American democracy -- what they think about what happened and
would do about it if elected president. Consider it health care for our democracy.
"former special counsel Robert Mueller found no evidence of "collusion."
Let me unpack that for you, esteemed professor: RM was "special counsel" in name only. The
real boss was Andrew Weissman. The "report" was his work. Mueller never looked for
anything, never found anything and never wrote anything.
The entire charade was part of the "resistance" to straight jacket Trump until the mid
term elections, a strategy put in motion by Comey and Brennan, which achieved the desired
result: Republicans lost the House.
Of course there was "little Russia in Russiagate." The narrative was all disinformation
set loose by Crowdstrike and Fusion GPS, paid for by Hillary and the DNC with the blessing of
President Obama. Welcome to the tin foil hat brigade as contributor.
Here are just some of the twists and turns in the case, which has gone on for more than
three years.
Flynn's trip to Russia in 2015, where it was claimed Flynn went without the knowledge or
approval of the DIA or anyone in Washington,
was proven not to be true .
Flynn was suspected of being compromised by a supposed Russian agent, Cambridge academic
Svetlana Lokhova, based on allegations from Western intelligence asset Stefan Halper.
This was also proven to be not true.
The very strange post-dated FD-302 form on the FBI's January 2017 interview of Flynn that
wasn't filled out until August 2017, almost seven months afterward, is
revealed in a court filing by Flynn's defense team .
FBI agent Pientka became the
"DOJ's Invisible Man," despite the fact that Congress has repeatedly called for him to
testify. Pientka has remained out of sight and out of mind more than a year and a half since
his name first surfaced in connection with the Flynn case.
Now, it's not that far-fetched of an idea that the Mueller special counsel prosecutors would
hide exculpatory evidence from the Flynn defense team, since they've just admitted to having
done exactly that in another case their
office has been prosecuting .
The defense team for Internet Research Agency/Concord, more popularly known as "the Russian
troll farm case," hasn't been smooth going for the Mueller prosecutors.
Then, in a
filing submitted to the court on Aug. 30, the IRA/Concord defense team alerted Judge
Friedrich that the prosecutors just got around to handing them key evidence the prosecutors had
for the past 18 months. The prosecution gave no explanation whatsoever as to why they hid this
key evidence for more than a year.
It's hard to see at this point how the entire IRA/Concord case isn't tossed out.
What would it mean for Flynn's prosecutors to have been caught hiding exculpatory evidence
from him and his lawyers, even after the presiding judge explicitly ordered them in February to
hand over everything they had?
It would mean that the Flynn case is tossed out, since the prosecution team was caught
engaging in gross misconduct.
Now you can see why Flynn refused to withdraw his guilty plea when Judge Sullivan gave him
the opportunity to do so in late December 2018.
A withdrawal of the guilty plea or a pardon would let the Mueller prosecution team off the
hook.
And they're not getting off the hook.
Flynn hired the best lawyer he possibly could have when it comes to exposing prosecutorial
misconduct. Nobody knows the crafty, corrupt, and dishonest tricks federal prosecutors use
better than Powell, who actually wrote a compelling book about such matters, entitled "
License to Lie: Exposing
Corruption in the Department of Justice ."
Everything this Mueller prosecution team did in withholding exculpatory evidence from
Flynn's defense team -- and continued to withhold even after Judge Sullivan specifically issued
an order about it -- is going to be fully exposed.
Defying a federal judge's Brady order is a one-way ticket to not only getting fired, it's a
serious enough offense to warrant disbarment and prosecution.
If it turns out Mueller special counsel prosecutors withheld exculpatory evidence -- not
only in the IRA/Concord case, but also in the cases against Flynn, Paul Manafort, Michael
Cohen, Rick Gates, Roger Stone, and others -- that will have a huge impact.
If they are willing to withhold exculpatory evidence in one case, why wouldn't they do the
same thing in other cases they were prosecuting? Haven't they have already demonstrated they
are willing to break the rules? Tags
We have become a third-world country. Even throwing Mueller and his entire prosecutors'
team in jail would not be enough to restore confidence in our legal system. But it would be a
start.
On or about December 28, 2016, the Russian Ambassador contacted FLYNN.
c. On or about December 29, 2016, FLYNN called a senior official of the Presidential
Transition Team ("PTT official"), who was with other senior ·members of the
Presidential Transition Team at the Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, to discuss
what, if anything, to communicate to the Russian Ambassador about the U.S. Sanctions. On that
call, FLYNN and 2 Case 1:17-cr-00232-RC Document 4 Filed 12/01/17 Page 2 of 6 the PTT
official discussed the U.S. Sanctions, including the potential impact of those sanctions on
the incoming administration's foreign policy goals. The PIT official and FLYNN also discussed
that the members of the Presidential Transition Team at Mar-a-Lago did not want Russia to
escalate the situation. d. Immediately after his phone call with the PTT official, FLYNN
called the Russian Ambassador and requested that Russia not escalate the situation and only
respond to the U.S. Sanctions in a reciprocal manner. e. Shortly after his phone call with
the Russian Ambassador, FLYNN spoke with the PTT official to report on the substance of his
call with the Russian Ambassador, including their discussion of the U.S. Sanctions. f. On or
about December 30, 2016, Russian President Vladimir Putin released a statement indicating
that Russia would not take retaliatory measures in response to the U.S. Sanctions at that
time. g. On or about December 31, 2016, the Russian Ambassador called FLYNN and informed him
that Russia had chosen not to retaliate in response to FL YNN's request. h. After his phone
call with the Russian Ambassador, FLYNN spoke with senior members of the Presidential
Transition Team about FL YNN's conversations with the Russian Ambassador regarding the U.S.
Sanctions and Russia's decision not to escalate the situation.
The coup plot between the international intelligence community (which includes our
FBI-CIA-etc) and their unregistered foreign agents in the multinational corporate media is
slowly being revealed.
Here’s another possibility... elites in the US Gov set on running a soft coup
against a duly elected president and his team made up a whole pile of **** and passed it off
as truth.
The Manafort thing has me totally riled since HRC's "Password" guy and his brother were
PARTNERS with manafort, did the same damn things, and were NOT investigated.
Donald Trump is many things to many people, but is not his social personna to be patient.
He is being VERY patient to let this unfold, to "give a man enough rope" or political party
and its owner, as it may be....
Donna Brazile's book is under-rated: it holds they keys as to who ran the DNC and why
after Obie bailed.
Our local community rag (Vermont) had an opinion piece last week about "The slide towards
Facism", where the author breathlessly stated that she had learned from a MSNBC expose by
Rachel Maddow that the administration was firing researchers at NASA and EPA as well as
cutting back funding for LGBTQ support groups. Oh the horror. The author conveniently forgot
that the same dyke had lied for 2 years about Russia,Russia,Russia but it's still OK to
believe any **** that drops out of her mouth.
This is the level of insanity happening around here. Of course it is Bernie's turf.
People who are so stupid and gullible deserve everything they are gonna get.
Poor Flynn. Rail-roaded by ZOG and Obama and Hillary and Co. I hope beyond hope that the
truth is revealed and that he can sue the **** out of the seditionists/(((seditionists))) who
put him into this mess such that his great-great-grandchildren will never have to work.
I also blame Trump for throwing Flynn under the bus.
If they are willing to withhold exculpatory evidence in one case, why wouldn’t they
do the same thing in other cases they were prosecuting? Haven’t they have already
demonstrated they are willing to break the rules?
Duh! Because it's easy and the media never covers it and AG Barr and FBI director Wray
will cover it all up. America no longer operates under rule of law, and now we all know it.
Never cooperate with them!
flynn didn't rape children, to buzy trying to fight liberators of iraq and afganistan from
invasion... that's his major crime.
I guess, kelly, mattis, mcmaster neither are on the child rape trend. but what can they
do? when the entire cia and doj and fbi are full on controlled and run by the pedos? it's
like when all the cardinals and the pope are pedos, what a bishop to do...
Why would CIA Rothschild'd up puppet Trump pick only the best William Barr?
Who told Acosta to cut no prosecution deal with Epstein? George Bush? Robert Mukasey? or
Bob Mueller?
Trump, Barr, Bush, Mueller all on the same no rule of law national no government
pys op , for Epstein & 9/11 clean op team Poppa Bush, Clinton, &
Mossad.
Barr: CIA operative
It is a sobering fact that American presidents (many of whom have been corrupt) have gone
out of their way to hire fixers to be their attorney generals.
Consider recent history: Loretta Lynch (2015-2017), Eric Holder (2009-2015), Michael
Mukasey (2007-2009), Alberto Gonzales (2005-2007), John Ashcroft (2001-2005),Janet Reno
(1993-2001), **** Thornburgh (1988-1991), Ed Meese (1985-1988), etc.
Barr was a full-time CIA operative, recruited by Langley out of high school, starting
in 1971. Barr’s youth career goal was to head the CIA.
CIA operative assigned to the China directorate, where he became close to powerful CIA
operative George H.W. Bush, whose accomplishments already included the CIA/Cuba Bay of
Pigs, Asia CIA operations (Vietnam War, Golden Triangle narcotics), Nixon foreign policy
(Henry Kissinger), and the Watergate operation.
When George H.W. Bush became CIA Director in 1976, Barr joined the CIA’s
“legal office” and Bush’s inner circle, and worked alongside Bush’s
longtime CIA enforcers Theodore “Ted” Shackley, Felix Rodriguez, Thomas Clines,
and others, several of whom were likely involved with the Bay of Pigs/John F. Kennedy
assassination, and numerous southeast Asian operations, from the Phoenix Program to Golden
Triangle narco-trafficking.
Barr stonewalled and destroyed the Church Committee investigations into CIA
abuses.
Barr stonewalled and stopped inquiries in the CIA bombing assassination of Chilean
opposition leader Orlando Letelier.
Barr joined George H.W. Bush’s legal/intelligence team during Bush’s vice
presidency (under President Ronald Reagan) Rose from assistant attorney general to Chief
Legal Counsel to attorney general (1991) during the Bush 41 presidency.
Barr was a key player in the Iran-Contra operation, if not the most important member of
the apparatus, simultaneously managing the operation while also “fixing” the
legal end, ensuring that all of the operatives could do their jobs without fear of exposure
or arrest.
In his attorney general confirmation, Barr vowed to “attack criminal
organizations”, drug smugglers and money launderers. It was all hot air: as AG, Barr
would preserve, protect, cover up, and nurture the apparatus that he helped create, and use
Justice Department power to escape punishment.
Barr stonewalled and stopped investigations into all Bush/Clinton and CIA crimes,
including BCCI and BNL CIA drug banking, the theft of Inslaw/PROMIS software, and all
crimes of state committed by Bush
Barr provided legal cover for Bush’s illegal foreign policy and war crimes
Barr left Washington, and went through the “rotating door” to the corporate
world, where he took on numerous directorships and counsel positions for major companies.
In 2007 and again from 2017, Barr was counsel for politically-connected international law
firm Kirkland
& Ellis . Among its other notable attorneys and alumni are Kenneth Starr, John
Bolton, Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, and numerous Trump administration attorneys.
K&E’s clients include sex trafficker/pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, and Mitt
Romney’s Bain Capital.
A strong case can be made that William Barr was as powerful and important a figure in the
Bush apparatus as any other, besides Poppy Bush himself.
there is a war on america, and the DoD and men like flynn are too arrogant, dumb, and
proud to admit they have been fucked and conned deeply by men way smarter than them...
we don't need ******* brains, but killers to wage this revolution against the american
pedostate.
and that, what they master, they don't want to do.
if they want money, they should have learned to trade and not kill...
Trump and the Art of the Flail
Protectionism is worse when it's erratic and unpredictable.
By Paul Krugman
The "very stable genius" in the Oval Office is, in fact, extremely unstable, in word and
deed. That's not a psychological diagnosis, although you can make that case too. It's just a
straightforward description of his behavior. And his instability is starting to have serious
economic consequences.
To see what I mean about Trump's behavior, just consider his moves on China trade over the
past month, which have been so erratic that even those of us who follow this stuff
professionally have been having a hard time keeping track.
First, Trump unexpectedly announced plans to greatly expand the range of Chinese goods
subject to tariffs. Then he had his officials declare China a currency manipulator -- which
happens to be one of the few economic sins of which the Chinese are innocent. Then, perhaps
fearing the political fallout from the higher prices of many consumer goods from China during
the holiday season, which would result from the tariff hikes, he postponed -- but didn't
cancel -- them.
Wait, there's more. China, predictably, responded to the new United States tariffs with
new tariffs on U.S. imports. Trump, apparently enraged, declared that he would raise his
tariffs even higher, and declared that he was ordering U.S. companies to wind down their
business in China (which is not something he has the legal authority to do). But at the Group
of 7 summit in Biarritz he suggested that he was having "second thoughts," only to have the
White House declare that he actually wished he had raised tariffs even more.
And we're not quite done. On Monday Trump said that the Chinese had called to indicate a
desire to resume trade talks. But there was no confirmation from the Chinese, and Trump has
been a notably unreliable narrator of what's going on in international meetings. For example,
he made the highly improbable claim that "World Leaders" (his capitalization) were asking
him, "Why does the American media hate your Country so much?"
To repeat, all of this has happened just this month. Now imagine yourself as a business
leader trying to make decisions amid this Trumpian chaos.
The truth is that protectionism gets something of an excessively bad rap. Tariffs are
taxes on consumers, and they tend to make the economy poorer and less efficient. But even
high tariffs don't necessarily hurt employment, as long they're stable and predictable: the
jobs lost in industries that either rely on imported inputs or depend on access to foreign
markets can be offset by job gains in industries that compete with imports.
History is, in fact, full of examples of economies that combined high tariffs with more or
less full employment: America in the 1920s, Britain in the 1950s and more.
But unstable, unpredictable trade policy is very different. If your business depends on a
smoothly functioning global economy, Trump's tantrums suggest that you should postpone your
investment plans; after all, you may be about to lose access to your export markets, your
supply chain or both. It's also, though, not a good time to invest in import-competing
businesses; for all you know, Trump will eventually back down on his threats. So everything
gets put on hold -- and the economy suffers.
One question you might ask is why Trumpian trade uncertainty is looming so much larger now
than it did during the administration's first two years. Part of the answer, I think, is that
until fairly recently most analysts expected the U.S.-China trade conflict to be resolved
with minimal disruption. You may recall that after denouncing Nafta as the worst trade deal
ever made, Trump essentially surrendered and declared victory, settling for a new deal almost
indistinguishable from the old one. Most economic newsletters I get predicted a similar
outcome for the U.S. and China.
At the same time, the U.S. economy is slowing as the brief sugar high from the 2017 tax
cut wears off. Another leader might engage in some self-reflection. Trump being Trump, he's
blaming others and lashing out. He has declared both Jerome Powell, chairman of the Federal
Reserve Board, and Xi Jinping, China's leader, enemies. As it turns out, however, there's
nothing much he can do to bully the Fed, but the quirks of U.S. trade law do allow him to
slap new tariffs on China.
Of course, Trump's trade belligerence is itself contributing to the economic slowdown. So
there's an obvious possibility for a vicious circle. The economy weakens; a flailing Trump
lashes out at China, and possibly others (Europe may be next); this further weakens the
economy; and so on.
At that point you might expect an intervention from the grown-ups in the room -- but there
aren't any. In any other administration Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, a.k.a. the Lego
Batman guy, would be considered a ridiculous figure; these days, however, he's as close as we
get to a voice of economic rationality. But whenever he tries to talk sense, as he apparently
did over the issue of Chinese currency manipulation, he gets overruled.
Protectionism is bad; erratic protectionism, imposed by an unstable leader with an
insecure ego, is worse. But that's what we'll have as long as Trump remains in office.
"... Anyone read Ronan Farrows "War on Peace: The End of Diplomacy and the Decline of American Influence"? In one passage he describes a meeting at the State Department where they are complaining that nobody is interested in their policy prescriptions and decide that the problem is that they need some graphs. They all turn to Farrrow and look at him as he is the youngest in the meeting and figure he is the only one who would know how to do that. "Ageism" he thought. ..."
"... The problem with the mainstream media calling out Trump is that this is like the pot calling a kettle black. Trump is awful, sure. But so is the corporate media with its pro-war and neoliberal economic agenda. ..."
"... As Ian Welsh notes, the press is Trump's enemy, not the servant of the people: https://www.ianwelsh.net/the-press-is-trumps-enemy-not-the-lefts-friend/ ..."
"... RussiaRussiaRussia has been very profitable, not only personally for the talking heads in the intelligence community but for the press. Removing clearance not only hits the talking heads in the wallet, it disrupts the relation between the press and its network of anonymous sources. ..."
"... Re 2), there seems to be an element of induced demand to support the preponderance of repetitive coverage, somewhat akin to the dopamine manipulation in video games and on social media websites. Bug and feature. ..."
This author is right. I do not know if you would call what the media did a form of virtue-signalling or whatever but the net
effect is a demonstration that the media is into coordinated campaigns. I do not think that people have forgotten the "This Is
Extremely Dangerous to Our Democracy" Sinclair script a few months ago. This is just more of the same.
I don't even know why they act so b***-hurt when Trump attacks their honesty. In the last few months I have seen them call him
a traitor, a gay-bitch, they have called for a military coup to unseat him, they have begged for the deep state to rescue them,
they have elevated people who are responsible for the deaths of thousands of American soldiers to the ranks of noble heroes of
the Republic. As far as I am concerned, they have made their own bed and now they can lay in it, even if they have to share it
with Donald J. Trump.
Yesterday when I looked at the NYT online, the big featured graphic in the center of the page, typically a photo, was a rotating
feed of Trump tweets, in headline-sized text. It struck me as a new low in the pathetic Trump-media feedback loop. It's all a
game of "made you look!"
Yeah, they probably got a summer intern to do that.
Anyone read Ronan Farrows "War on Peace: The End of Diplomacy and the Decline of American Influence"? In one passage he describes a meeting at the State Department where they are complaining that nobody is interested in their
policy prescriptions and decide that the problem is that they need some graphs. They all turn to Farrrow and look at him as he
is the youngest in the meeting and figure he is the only one who would know how to do that. "Ageism" he thought.
The problem with the mainstream media calling out Trump is that this is like the pot calling a kettle black. Trump is awful, sure. But so is the corporate media with its pro-war and neoliberal economic agenda.
A case could be made that independent media like Naked Capitalism is doing a key public service. Not the corporate media though,
whose main objective is always to maximize advertising revenues and to impose the views of its owners, the very rich, on society.
1) The best justification for giving officials formally out of government clearance on either side of the revolving
door is that you may need to call on them for advice. It seems to me that this incentivizes "intelligence" over wisdom. And for
wisdom, long experience plus open sources should be enough. (For example, if you want to call in an ex-official on North Korean
nukes, they don't really need to know the details of the latest weaponry, or Kim's weight gain, or whatever. That can be explained
to them by the customer , as needed. What's really needed is an outside voice -- the role played by an honest consultant
-- plus wisdom about power relations on the Korean peninsula. No need for clearance there.)
2) RussiaRussiaRussia has been very profitable, not only personally for the talking heads in the intelligence community but
for the press. Removing clearance not only hits the talking heads in the wallet, it disrupts the relation between the press and
its network of anonymous sources.
Enquiring Mind, August 18, 2018 at 9:02 pm
Re 2), there seems to be an element of induced demand to support the preponderance of repetitive coverage, somewhat
akin to the dopamine manipulation in video games and on social media websites. Bug and feature.
AARON MATÉ: When it comes to Russiagate, there have been too many embarrassing media
stories to count. And somehow, after nearly three years of this, the most discredited
journalists are finding new ways to discredit themselves. The latest is Lawrence O'Donnell of
MSNBC. Speaking another prominent conspiracy theorist, Rachel Maddow, O'Donnell shared this
bombshell claim.
LAWRENCE O'DONNELL : This single source close to Deutsche Bank has told me that the Trump
– Donald Trump's loan documents there show that he has co-signers. That's how he was able
to obtain those loans. And that the co-signers are Russian oligarchs.
RACHEL MADDOW : What? Really?
LAWRENCE O'DONNELL : That would explain, it seems to me, every kind word Donald Trump has
ever said about Russia and Vladimir Putin, if true.
AARON MATÉ: Well it turns out, it's not true, or at least, there's no evidence for
it. According to MSNBC, Lawrence O'Donnell's "information came from a single source who has not
seen the bank records." And so, O'Donnell had to retract his story after less than 24
hours.
LAWRENCE O'DONNELL: I should not have said it on air or posted it on Twitter. I was wrong to
do so. This afternoon, attorneys for the president sent us a letter asserting the story is
false. They also demanded a retraction. Tonight, we are retracting the story.
AARON MATÉ: But in the process of walking back his story, O'Donnell also said
this.
LAWRENCE O'DONNELL: Saying 'if true' as I discussed the information was simply not good
enough. I did not go through the rigorous verification and standards process here at MSNBC
before repeating what I heard from my source.
AARON MATÉ: That's about as dubious a claim as Lawrence O'Donnell's retracted one.
When it comes to the Trump-Russia story, the idea of "a rigorous verification and standards
process" at MSNBC is a joke. The bulk of this network's output for more than two years has been
innuendo and conspiracy theories about a non-existent Trump-Russia plot and a massive Russia
interference campaign.
This also was not the first time that MSNBC has used the 'if true' caveat to put something
on air. Take the time Lawrence O'Donnell himself speculated that Vladimir Putin orchestrated a
chemical weapons attack in Syria to distract the media from his ties to Donald Trump.
LAWRENCE O'DONNELL: If Vladimir Putin, if, if, if Vladimir Putin masterminded the last week
in Syria, he has gotten everything he could have asked for . Go ahead. Do a small chemical
attack. Nothing – nothing like the big ones you've done in the past. Just big enough to
attract media attention so that my friend in the White House will see it on TV. And then Donald
Trump can fire some missiles at Syria that will do no real damage, and then the American news
media will change the subject from Russian influence in the Trump campaign and the Trump
transition and the Trump White House. It's perfect.
AARON MATÉ: By the way that was in April 2017 -- more than two years ago. Fast
forward to say, July 2018, when MSNBC's Chris Hayes brought on liberal writer Jonathan Chait to
ponder if Donald Trump has been a Russian military intelligence asset since 1987.
CHRIS HAYES: In a new cover story for New York Magazine, Writer Jonathan Chait argues we
have not allowed ourselves to consider the full range of possibilities. Chait lays out what
could be considered the worst-case scenario for Trump-Russia collusion, that Donald Trump has
been a Russian intelligence asset since 1987.
AARON MATÉ: Then there's Rachel Maddow. I don't know, take your pick. How about,
Putin may use the pee tape & other kompromat to force Trump into withdrawing US troops near
Russia.
RACHEL MADDOW : And here's the question. Is the new president going to take those troops
out? After all the speculation, after all the worry, we are actually about to find out if
Russia maybe has something on the new president? We're about to find out if the new president
of our country is going to do what Russia wants once he's commander-in-chief of the U.S.
military starting noon on Friday. What is he going to do with those deployments?
AARON MATÉ: Trump didn't withdraw those troops. How about also, Vladimir Putin got
Trump to hire Paul Manafort as his campaign manager.
RACHEL MADDOW: I mean, take the view from Moscow. If you know a guy who needs a presidential
campaign manager, how about our friend Paul? Right? From the Russian's point of view, who would
be the better choice to run Donald Trump's presidential campaign? From our perspective in the
United States, Paul Manafort made no sense. Who's he? From the Russian perspective, he'd be the
obvious choice.
AARON MATÉ: Speaking of hiring decisions, there was also Vladimir Putin getting Trump
to hire Rex Tillerson as Secretary of State.
RACHEL MADDOW: Rex Tillerson – who Donald Trump had never met, had never had anything
to do with before, had never laid eyes on before. How did Rex Tillerson get that job? He must
have come very highly recommended – by someone. [MSNBC screen shows Putin with
Tillerson].
AARON MATÉ: By the way, when Trump later fired Rex Tillerson, Maddow blamed that on
Putin as well. So you get the picture. Lawrence O'Donnell's story was not MSNBC's first glaring
error. Before this one, there was just no accountability for them. But the biggest problem here
is not that these stories are embarrassing the cable news hosts and pundits who promote them.
The Trump- Russia conspiracy theory has degraded journalism, and seriously undermining the
actual resistance to Donald Trump.
Think about what a gift it is for Trump that his media critics constantly validate his
claims about fake news. And it's an even bigger gift to Trump that his media and political foes
have spent the bulk of their air time on a moronic conspiracy theory, instead of his actual
policies, and the damage that they do.
So the Russiagate conspiracy theory has done serious damage. And it will continue to do so
unless there is some minimal accountability for the people who promote it and profit from it.
Because when you think about the fact that MSNBC hosts and others are still doing this –
still promoting the Russiagate conspiracy theory, and still calling themselves journalists in
the process – well, this is my response.
"Do you really think they spend $400 on a hammer?"
That line comes straight out
of a movie . Didn't I tell you American get their reality from their Plato's Cave
screens?
I briefly worked in a machine shop that did DoD contract work. We would buy washers by the
pound from the hardware store down the street, heat seal them individually into little
plastic baggies with the part number printed on them, and then sell them to the Navy for $50
each .
Yeah, the military pays $400 each, if not a good deal more, for their hammers.
To focus exclusively on weapons is to focus on the wrong aspect of a nation's strength. I
always find it funny in a very sadistic manner that the Outlaw US Empire is constantly
declared to be the richest nation on the planet when it has at minimum 30 Million people well
below the far too low poverty line, millions more mal-nourished, millions more kept in a
state of ignorance, and with a wealth disparity problem of an enormous magnitude where 3 men
own as much wealth as the bottom 50% of the population, or @165 Million people.
What all that and more not included spells out to me is that the Outlaw US Empire is the
planet's most Dysfunctional nation.
Russia in stark contrast as clearly shown by Putin's speech I linked to above is striving
very hard to overcome the dysfunctions applied to it by outside actors and the previous
system in ways only Bernie Sanders is promoting while Trump and the neoliberals from both
political parties continue to do the exact opposite by striving to escalate the
dysfunctions.
The message being sent to Americans by the Current Neoliberal Oligarchy is Get Out; We
Don't Need You! as they fight tooth & nail to destroy what little remains of the pathetic
to begin with welfare state, while dumbing-down education and promoting carcinogenic
foodstuffs. Putin's contrasting message: Come Here! I Welcome You! Here are the many
inducements to become Russian and fulfill your abilities and destiny! No! It's not a pipe
dream; read his speech! One of the most important factors in a nation's strength is the
opportunities it provides for its citizens and how well that collective cares for itself via
the mediums of government and culture. In that respect, IMO, the USA is in the worst shape
its ever been due to its insane level of moral corruption.
Putin's trolling points directly at that last sentence. It's his way of pounding his shoe
on the podium and saying We'll bury you all while smiling wryly. Moreover, other national
leaders are beginning to abandon the dysfunctional Outlaw US Empire as they find it
irrational and impossible to deal with.
The same goes for the EU with its similar domineering neoliberal nature. Putin was correct
about the demise of Liberalism. What needs to rise up and replace it is a mother-like
humanistic social order that cares for and provides opportunities to fulfill one's abilities
while also paying close attention to the condition of the planet that supports us.
Ok, lets clear this misunderstanding up. The nuclear missile is not hypersonic and Putin
never sold these weapons as "super weapons" ala Trump. That's an ungenerous reading. A while
back, Putin gave a speech before the parliament in which he detailed some new weapons
systems.
The point of it all was to highlight the foolish and dangerous assumptions on which
aggressive Western policy towards Russia rest. One of these assumptions is that the US could
launch a first strike against Russia and be safe from retaliation behind it's ABM screen. In
reality, that system is incapable of stopping any significant number of current ballistic
warheads and that further, Russia was now fielding systems that can circumvent or penetrate
that defense easily.
He listed several of these systems. Two were hypersonic, the kinzhal and avangard. Another
was the new ICBM, RS-28 Sarmat. It is powerful enough to send the warheads into orbit. From
there they no longer follow a strict ballistic path and can circle the earth to any target
they choose, making them impossible to predict and defend against. It is a concept tried in
the early 70's but then withdrawn called fobos.
The last of the strategic weapons were based around the new miniaturized nuclear reactor
that had just been perfected. It is being applied to a cruise missile and a sub-torpedo
concept. The nuclear cruise missile will have practically unlimited range, but it will be
subsonic not hypersonic.
Clue for the clueless: "Secret weapons" are only useful for surprise attacks... sucker
punches. Defensive weapons intended to deter attacks only work as a deterrence if they are
advertised. The very fact that Putin announced the existence of the new weapons is in and of
itself proof that those weapons are intended to deter aggression, not be used aggressively.
The corollary to this fact is that if the United States really does have secret weapons
like attack sharks with frickin` laser beams on their heads, then those are intended as
offensive first strike weaponry.
Why is it that Americans are proud of being seen as the most offensive people on the
planet? Arguing for the existence of super secret weapons is arguing for Americans being the
biggest scumbag villains alive. It is strange that many Americans don't get that.
Super-secret weapons don't deter and defend, their secrecy can only surprise America's
victims.
This is part and parcel of why I am always arguing that Americans are literally mentally
ill.
It is not vey clear for whom Epstein used to work. Mossad connection is just one hypothesis.
What sovereign state would allow compromising politician by a foreign intelligence service. This
just does not compute.
But the whole tone of discussion below clearly point to the crisis of legitimacy of
neoliberal elite. And Russiagate had shown that the elite cares about it and tried to patch the
cracks.
As Eric
Rasmusen writes: "Everybody, it seems, in New York society knew by 2000 that Jeffrey
Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell were corrupting teenage girls, but the press wouldn't cover it."
Likewise, everybody in New York society has long known that Larry Silverstein, who bought the
asbestos-riddled white elephant World Trade Center in July 2001 and immediately doubled the
insurance, is a mobbed-up friend of Netanyahu and a confessed participant in the controlled
demolition of Building 7 , from which he earned over 700 million insurance dollars on the
pretext that al-Qaeda had somehow brought it down. But the press won't cover that either.
The New York Times , America's newspaper of record, has the investigative talent and
resources to expose major corruption in New York. Why did the Times spend almost two
decades ignoring the all-too-obvious antics of Epstein and Silverstein? Why is it letting the
absurd tale of Epstein's alleged suicide stand? Why hasn't it used the work of Architects and
Engineers for 9/11 Truth -- including the brand-new University of Alaska study on the controlled
demolition of WTC-7 -- to expose the biggest scandal of the 21 st century, if
not all of American history?
The only conceivable answer is that The New York Times is somehow complicit in these
monstrous crimes. It must be protecting its friends in high places. So who are those friends,
and where are those high places?
One thing Epstein and Silverstein have in common, besides names ending in "-stein," is
alleged involvement in the illicit sex industry. Epstein's antics, or at least some of them,
are by now well-known. Not so for Silverstein, who apparently began his rags-to-9/11-riches
story as a pimp supplying prostitutes and nude dancers to the shadier venues of NYC, alongside
other illicit activities including "the heroin trade, money laundering
and New York Police corruption." All of this was exposed in a mid-1990s lawsuit. But good
luck finding any investigative reports in The New York Times .
Another Epstein-Silverstein connection is their relationships to major American Jewish
organizations. Even while he was allegedly pimping girls and running heroin, Larry Silverstein
served as president for United Jewish Appeal of New York. As for Epstein, he was the boy toy
and protégé of Les Wexner, co-founder of
the Mega Group of Jewish billionaires associated with the World Jewish Congress, the
Anti-Defamation League, and other pro-Israel groups. Indeed, there is no evidence that
"self-made billionaire" Epstein ever earned significant amounts of money; his only investment
"client" was Les Wexner. Epstein, a professional sexual blackmailer, used his supposed
billionaire status as a cover story. In fact, he was just an employee working for Wexner and
associated criminal/intelligence networks.
Which brings us to the third and most important Epstein-Silverstein similarity: They were
both close to the government of Israel. Jeffrey Epstein's handler was Ghislaine Maxwell,
daughter of Mossad super-spy Robert Maxwell; among his friends was Ehud Barak, who is currently
challenging Netanyahu for leadership of Israel. Larry Silverstein, too, has friends in high
Israeli places. According to Haaretz , Silverstein has "close ties with Netanyahu"
(speaking to him on the phone every weekend) as well as with Ehud Barak, "whom Silverstein in
the past offered a job as his representative in Israel" and who called Silverstein immediately
after 9/11.
We may reasonably surmise that both Jeffrey Epstein and Larry Silverstein have been carrying
on very important work on behalf of the state of Israel. And we may also surmise that this is
the reason The New York Times has been covering up the scandals associated with both
Israeli agents for almost two decades. The Times , though it pretends to be America's
newspaper of record, has always been Jewish-owned-and-operated. Its coverage has always been
grotesquely
distorted in favor of Israel . It has no interest in exposing the way Israel controls the
United States by blackmailing its leaders (Epstein) and staging a fake "Arab-Muslim attack on
America" (Silverstein). The awful truth is that The New York Times is part of the same
Jewish-Zionist "
we control America " network as Jeffrey Epstein and Larry Silverstein.
Epstein "Suicide" Illustrates Zionist Control of USA -- and the Decadence and Depravity
of Western Secularism
Since The New York Times and other mainstream media won't go there, let's reflect on
the facts and lessons of the Jeffrey Epstein suicide scandal -- a national disgrace that ought
to shock Americans into rethinking their worldviews in general, and their views on the official
myth of 9/11 in particular.
On Saturday, August 10, 2019, convicted child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein was allegedly
found dead in his cell at Metropolitan Correctional Center (MCC) in New York City, one of
America's most corrupt prisons. The authorities claim Epstein hanged himself. But nobody, not
even the presstitutes of America's corporate propaganda media, convincingly pretends to believe
the official story.
Jeffrey Epstein was a pedophile pimp to presidents and potentates. His job was recruiting
young girls for sex, then offering them to powerful men -- in settings outfitted with hidden
video cameras. When police raided his New York townhouse on July 6-7 2019 they found locked
safes full of pornographic pictures of underage girls, along with piles of compact discs
labeled "young (name of girl) + (name of VIP)." Epstein had been openly and brazenly carrying
on such activities for more than two decades, as reported throughout most of that period by
alternative media outlets including my own Truth Jihad Radio and False Flag Weekly News . (Even
before the 2016 elections, my audience knew that both Bill Clinton and Donald Trump were
blackmailed clients of Jeffrey Epstein, that Clinton was a frequent flyer on Epstein's "Lolita
Express" private jet, and that Trump had been credibly accused in a lawsuit of joining Epstein
in the brutal rape of a 13-year-old, to whom Trump then allegedly issued death threats.) It was
only in the summer of 2019 that mainstream media and New York City prosecutors started talking
about what used to be consigned to the world of "conspiracy theories."
So who was Epstein working for? His primary employer was undoubtedly the Israeli Mossad and
its worldwide Zionist crime network. Epstein's handler was Ghislaine Maxwell, daughter of
Mossad super-spy Robert Maxwell. According to sworn depositions, Ghislaine Maxwell recruited
underage girls for Epstein and oversaw his sex trafficking operations. As the New Yorker
reported August 16: "In court papers that were unsealed on August 9th, it was alleged that
Maxwell had been Epstein's central accomplice, first as his girlfriend, and, later, as his
trusted friend and procuress, grooming a steady stream of girls, some as young as fourteen,
coercing them to have sex with Epstein at his various residences around the world, and
occasionally participating in the sexual abuse herself." Alongside Maxwell, Epstein's other
Mossad handler was
Les Wexner, co-founder of the notorious Mega Group of billionaire Israeli spies , who
appears to have originally recruited the penniless Epstein and handed him a phony fortune so
Epstein could pose as a billionaire playboy.
Even after Epstein's shady "suicide" mega-Mossadnik Maxwell continued to flaunt her impunity
from American justice. She no doubt conspired to publicize the August 15 New York Post
photograph of herself smiling and looking "chillingly serene" at In-And-Out-Burger in Los
Angeles, reading The Book of Honor: The Secret Lives and Deaths of C.I.A. Operatives .
That nauseating photo inspired the New
Yorker to accuse her of having "gall" -- a euphemism for the Yiddish chutzpah , a quality
that flourishes in the overlapping Zionist and Kosher Nostra communities.
Maxwell and The New York Post , both Kosher Nostra/Mossad assets, were obviously
sending a message to the CIA: Don't mess with us or we will expose your complicity in these
scandalous crimes. That is the Mossad's standard operating procedure: Infiltrate and compromise
Western intelligence services in order to prevent them from interfering with the Zionists'
over-the-top atrocities. According to French historian
Laurent Guyénot's hypothesis, the CIA's false flag fake assassination attempt on
President John F. Kennedy, designed to be blamed on Cuba, was transformed by Mossad into a real
assassination -- and the CIA couldn't expose it due to its own complicity. (The motive: Stop
JFK from ending Israel's nuclear program.) The same scenario, Guyénot argues, explains
the anomalies of the Mohamed Merah affair
, the Charlie Hebdo killings, and the 9/11 false flag operation. It would not be surprising if
Zionist-infiltrated elements of the CIA were made complicit in Jeffrey Epstein's sexual
blackmail activities, in order to protect Israel in the event Epstein had to be "burned" (which
is apparently what has finally occurred).
So what really happened to Epstein? Perhaps the most likely scenario is that the Kosher
Nostra, which owns New York in general and the mobbed-up MCC prison in particular, allowed the
Mossad to exfiltrate Epstein to Occupied Palestine, where he will be given a facelift, a
pension, a luxury suite overlooking the Mediterranean, and a steady stream of young sex slaves
(Israel is the world's capital of human trafficking, an honor it claimed from the Kosher Nostra
enclaves of Odessa after World War II). Once the media heat wave blows over, Epstein will
undoubtedly enjoy visits from his former Mossad handler Ghislaine Maxwell, his good friend Ehud
Barak, and various other Zionist VIPs. He may even offer fresh sex slaves to visiting American
congressmen.
This is not just a paranoid fantasy scenario. According to Eric
Rasmusen : "The Justice Dept. had better not have let Epstein's body be cremated. And
they'd better give us convincing evidence that it's his body. If I had $100 million to get out
of jail with, acquiring a corpse and bribing a few people to switch fingerprints and DNA
wouldn't be hard. I find it worrying that the government has not released proof that Epstein is
dead or a copy of the autopsy."
But didn't the alleged autopsy reportedly find broken neck bones that are more commonly
associated with strangulation murders than suicides? That controversy may have been scripted to
distract the public from
an insider report on 4chan , first published before the news of Epstein's "suicide" broke,
that Epstein had been "switched out" of MCC. If so, the body with the broken neck bones wasn't
Epstein's.
The Epstein affair (like 9/11) illustrates two critically important truths about Western
secularism: there is no truth, and there are no limits. A society that no longer believes in
God no longer believes in truth, since God is al-haqq, THE truth, without Whom the whole
notion of truth has no metaphysical basis. The postmodern philosophers understand this
perfectly well. They taught a whole generation of Western humanities scholars that truth is
merely a function of power: people accept something as "true" to the extent that they are
forced by power to accept it. So when the most powerful people in the world insist that three
enormous steel-frame skyscrapers were blown to smithereens by relatively modest office fires on
9/11, that absurd assertion becomes the official "truth" as constructed by such Western
institutions as governments, courts, media, and academia. Likewise, the assertion that Jeffrey
Epstein committed suicide under circumstances that render that assertion absurd will probably
become the official "truth" as recorded and promulgated by the West's ruling institutions, even
though nobody will ever really believe it.
Epstein's career as a shameless, openly-operating Mossad sexual blackmailer -- like the
in-your-face 9/11 coup -- also illustrates another core truth of Western secularism: If there
is no God, there are no limits (in this case, to human depravity and what it can get away
with). Or as Dostoevsky famously put it: "If God does not exist, everything is permitted."
Since God alone can establish metaphysically-grounded limits between what is permitted and what
is forbidden, a world without God will feature no such limits; in such a world Aleister
Crowley's satanic motto "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law" becomes the one and
only commandment. In today's Godless West, why should men not "do what they wilt" and
indulge their libidos by raping young girls if they can get away with it? After all, all the
other sexual taboos are being broken, one by one. Fornication, adultery, homosexuality,
sadomasochism, gender-bending all of these have been transformed during my lifetime from crimes
and vices to "human rights" enjoyed by the most liberal and fashionable right-thinking Western
secularists. Even bestiality and necrophilia are poised to become normalized "sexual
identities" whose practitioners will soon be proudly marching in "bestiality pride" and
"necrophilia pride" parades. So why not normalize pedophilia and other forms of rape
perpetrated by the strong against the weak? And why not add torture and murder in service to
sexual gratification? After all, the secret bible of the sexual identity movement is the
collected works of the Marquis de Sade, the satanic prophet of sexual liberation, with whom the
liberal progressivist secular West is finally catching up. It will not be surprising if, just a
few years after the Jeffrey Epstein "suicide" is consigned to the memory hole, we will be
witnessing LGBTQBNPR parades, with the BNPR standing for bestiality, necrophilia, pedophilia,
and rape. (It would have been LGBTQBNPRG, with the final G standing for Gropers like President
Trump, except that the G was already taken by the gays.) The P's, pioneers of pedophile pride
parades, will undoubtedly celebrate Jeffrey Epstein as an ahead-of-his-time misunderstood hero
who was unjustly persecuted on the basis of his unusual sexual orientation.
It is getting harder and harder to satirize the decadence and depravity of the secular West,
which insists on parodying itself with ever-increasing outlandishness. When the book on this
once-mighty civilization is written, and the ink is dry, readers will be astounded by the
limitless lies of the drunk-on-chutzpah psychopaths who ran it into the ground.
Correct me if I am wrong but I thought Lucky Larry only leased the WTC buildings rather than
actually purchased them. I think I have read that his investment was in the region of 150
mill for which he has recouped a whopping 4 bill.
Would you please answer a preliminary question before I put finishing this on my busy agenda?
You stake a fair bit of your credit on what you say about Larry Silverstein and insurance. My
present understanding is that the insurance cover for WTC 1 and 2 was increased as a routine
part of the financing deal he had made for a purchase which was only months old. Not true?
Not the full story? Convince us.
As to WTC 7 my understanding is that he had owned the building for some years and had not
recently increased the insurance. Not true? And when did any clause get into his WTC7
insurance contract which might have had some effect on inflating the payout?
“Trump had been credibly accused in a lawsuit of joining Epstein in the brutal rape of
a 13-year-old, to whom Trump then allegedly issued death threats.)”
The “Katie Johnson” case collapsed in 2016 when it was revealed that
“she” was in fact a middle-aged man, a stringer for the Jerry Springer show. Just
another Gloria Allred fraud.
“a society that no longer believes in god no longer believes in the truth, since god is
the truth….blah blah blah”
This is thin gruel indeed…..just silly platitudes from a muzzie convert. There are at
least 100 billion galaxies in the universe with each galaxy containing as many as 100 billion
stars. And there is no telling how many universes there are. Does anyone really believe
Barrett’s preferred deity takes a time out from running this vast empire to service
Barrett’s yearning for “truth”? Just goes to prove that humans will believe
almost any idea as long as it’s sufficiently idiotic.
“The principal conclusion of our study is that fire did not cause the collapse
of WTC 7 on 9/11, contrary to the conclusions of NIST and private engineering firms that
studied the collapse.”
“It is our conclusion based upon these findings that the collapse of WTC 7 was a
global failure involving the near-simultaneous failure of all columns in the building and
not a progressive collapse involving the sequential failure of columns throughout the
building.”
Speaking of the truth v. parody I’d really rather work on the cause of
Epstein’s death –yes I think he’s dead– suicide or
strangulation ?
There are some things the Justice Dept. could do if they wanted to. Why they apparently
didn’t want to expose the corpse in greater detail, let media view the cell, have
correspondent(s) interview the ex- cellmate of Epstein, et.al just leads to suspicions.
This is something they should have to answer for . That includes AG Barr. Trump could make
it happen–like every thing else– if Barr says no. The President won’t.
Dostoyevsky with his “If God does not exist, everything is permitted.”
overlooked the Jewish God who permits much more when it comes to Jewish gentile relations.
The Jewish God is not limited by the Kant’s First Moral Imperative. The Jewish
God’s moral laws are not universal. They are context dependent according to the
Leninist Who, whom rule.
Not so for Silverstein, who apparently began his rags-to-9/11-riches story as a pimp
supplying prostitutes and nude dancers to the shadier venues of NYC, alongside other
illicit activities including “the heroin trade, money laundering and New York
Police corruption.”
I would like to see more about the beginnings of Silverstein’s career.
Good work Kevin, Irrelevant exactly what Silverstein did in way of insurance.The FACT is
that WTC7 DID NOT FALL due to fires. Neither did WTC1 or 2. The 6 million dollar question
is ‘WHO put the ‘bang’ in the building?’ to bring them down, by
what ever means. Im in favour of nukes for 1 and 2.
Answer that! Why isnt Silverstein arrested? I think Kevin provided the answer in the
article..
I just stumbled onto your article from a link on reddit, r/epstein. You make some
convincing arguments. I was thrilled that you brought 9/11 into this – because the
Epstein “suicide” and how it is being covered reminds me so much of how I felt
after 9/11 and the run-up to the war. -But you lost me at the end with the stuff about
Godless secularism. I’ve read the bible and it is not the answer to what’s
wrong with the world.
Why did the Times spend almost two decades ignoring the all-too-obvious antics of
Epstein and Silverstein? Why is it letting the absurd tale of Epstein’s alleged
suicide stand?
One thing cannot be denied : Epstein was arrested, denied bail and jailed awaiting trail
on a Federal indictment for much the same offence he had pleaded guilty to a decade ago,
which did not involve even a single homicide yet made him universally reviled and in as
much trouble with the legal system as a man could be (almost certain never to get out
again). Epstein was in far more trouble that anyone of his financial resources has ever
been, but then that was for paying for sex acts with young teen girls.
What an awesomely impressive testament to the impunity enjoyed by the Jewish
elite Epstein is. It is no wonder that Larry Silverstein was insouciant about the risks of
a Jewish lightning fraud controlled demolition killing thousands of people in a building he
had just bought and increased the insurance coverage of. After all, it wasn’t
anything serious like paying for getting hundreds of handjobs from underage girls. And it
is not like someone like the Pizzagate nut that fired his AR15 into underground child
molestation complex beneath the Dems restaurant/pedophile centre would take all those WTC
deaths seriously enough to shoot at him just because of inevitable internet accusations of
mass murder. Mr Barrett, why don’t you step up and do it, thereby proving you
believe the things you say .
@NoseytheDuke Yes, he leased the World Trade Center buildings one and two from the Port
Authority of New York and New Jersey. He built World Trade Center building seven, having
acquired a ground lease from Port Authority.
I can’t imagine why you ask this question in a public venue. I found the answer in
less than one minute on the internet.
I assume the insurance policies were for the present value of his net profits for the
duration of the leases.
I recall reading about this guy prior to the event. I believe it was USATODAY . He and a
silent partner had bought the complex with a down of 63million and had it insured for
7billion. I thought it odd that the port authority would let go of the property at the
time.
As the building deficiencies became known afterwards,my thoughts were along the line of
insurance fraud.
I came across a copy of the rand Corp “state of the world 2000” which
accurately describes the scenario and resulting culture of terror as “one possible
future “…. funny how it’s taken all these years to discover this
website.
Indeed, there is no evidence that “self-made billionaire” Epstein ever
earned significant amounts of money.
Good thing that Wexner is Jewish so we can discount the possibility that he was telling
the truth the other month when he said that Epstein stole vast amounts of Wexner money
Alongside Maxwell, Epstein’s other Mossad handler was Les Wexner, co-founder of
the notorious Mega Group of billionaire Israeli spies
Wexner and his fellow Mossad spy Maxwell leaving Virginia Roberts alive to repeatedly
sue them, and use the world”s media to accuse them of sexually abusing, trafficking,
pimping her out to VIPs, and fiming the trysts was a brilliant way to keep everything a
secret.
Mossad handler Ghislaine Maxwell, his good friend Ehud Barak, and various other
Zionist VIPs.
Yes, they are the greatest covert operatives ever.
Epstein’s crimes are simple breaches of etiquette when compared to Silverstein. I
believe the term “Silverstein valleys” has been used to describe the melted
granite discovered beneath the former towers, Silverstein grins widely in interviews, while
so many suffered horribly.
One might even consider the 9/11 deaths to be something of a “holocaust”.
Certainly one of the most evil human beings to have walked the Earth.
@Wizard of Oz Silverstein said he gave the okay for wtc 7 to be “pulled”.
The building was on fire at the time. Either someone wired it to be pulled while it was on
fire and already damaged or it was wired for demolition beforehand. The second scenario
seems a lot more likely. In that case all the insurance contract details are largely
irrelevant to the bigger picture.
The idea that the CIA is somehow independent of Mossad and that Mossad would have to warn
the CIA off of the Epstein matter is implausible to me. Guyenot’s hypothesis tends to
give cover to the CIA in the assassination of JFK by claiming that the CIA plot was set in
motion as some sort of attempt to control JFK and that it was hijacked into an actual
assassination by Mossad. That just isn’t credible.
It’s much more accurate to observe that the CIA was erected by the same zionists
who oversaw the creation of Israel and later the forming of Mossad, and that the two
agencies have been joined at the hip ever since.
@WorkingClass Bad cop good cop. NYT is trying to destroy him . Israel says to him
:” send this , do this ,allow us to do this , increase this by this amount , and we
will make sure that in final analysis you don’t get hurt ”
Trump possibly knows that the only people who could hurt him is the Jewish people of power
.
Has NYT ever criticized Trump for relocating embassy , recognizing Golan, for allowing
Israel use Anerican resources to hit Syria or Gaza , for allowing Israel drag US into more
military involvement. for allowing Israel wage war against Gaza ,? Has NYT ever explored
the dynamics behind abrogation of JCPOA and application of more sanctions?
NYT has focused on Russia gate knowing in advance that it has no merit and no public
traction, Is it hurting Trump or itself ?
People with normal IQ would believe that Epstein killed himself, if the following took
place –
Media day and night asking questions about him from 360 degree of inquiries
1 why the surveillance video were not functioning despite the serious nature of the
charges against a man who could rat out a lot in court against powerful people
2 why the coroner initially thought that Epstein was murdered
3 how many guards and how many fell asleep?
4 who and why allowed the spin story around Epstein brilliance and high IQ build up over
the years ?
5 how does Epstein come to get linked to non -Jews people who have absolute loyalty to
Israel
6 how did Epstein get involved with Jewish leaders ?
7 How did Epstein continue to enjoy seat on Harvard and enjoy social celebrity status after
plea deal ?
8 Why did Wexner allow this man so much control over his asset ?
9 Media felt if terrorism were unique Muslim thing , why media is not alluding to the fact
that pedophilia is a unique Jewish thing ?
10 why the angle of Israel being sex slavery capital and Epstein being sex slave pimp not
being connected ?
11 how death in prison in foreign unfriendly countries often become causus celebre by US
media , politicians , NGO and US treasury – why not this death ?
@Fozzy Bear Not true. A respectable civil rights attorney, Lisa Bloom, handled Katie
Johnson’s case. Shortly before the scheduled press conference at which Johnson was to
appear publicly, she received multiple death threats: “Bloom said that her
firm’s website was hacked, that Anonymous had claimed responsibility, and that death
threats and a bomb threat came in afterwards.”
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/11/3/13501364/trump-rape-13-year-old-lawsuit-katie-johnson-allegation
Johnson folded because she was terrified (and perhaps paid off).
@Twodees Partain In “Body of Secrets” by James Bamford, a newspaper article
from the Truman era is referenced where the OSS, predecessor of the CIA, is described as
“a converted vault in Washington used as an office space for 5 or 6 Jews working to
protect our national secrets” (or similar wording).
Going from memory and gave away my copy of the book….. sorry for the vague
reference, but you can look it up.
@nsa An atheist like “nsa” must concede Dosteovsky’s point from his
novel The Possessed that even for the atheist the concept of God represents the collective
consciousness, highest principles, and ontological aspirations of believers. Given this
sense, “nsa’s” real animus is more than likely an atavistic hatred of
Christians and Muslims, probably for just being alive in his paranoid mind. What imbecility
when this clown cites a multiverse of universes that has no proof and less plausibility for
its existence than the tooth fairy. I’d also bet “nsa” speaks algebra,
too, like the recently deceased mathematical genius, Jeffrey Epstein.
What’s Mr. Wexner’s, Mega’s, and Mossad/CIA’s involvement?
That’s the real question trolls like “nsa” and the Dems and Republicans
alike are crapping in their pants we’ll find out. When evidence starts to cascade out
of their ability to spin or suppress it, things will get interesting. Meanwhile, Fox News
is still doing its best from what I can tell to run cover for 911, now extended to the
suspiciously related perps in the Epstein affair.
“The Epstein affair (like 9/11) illustrates two critically important truths about
Western secularism: there is no truth, and there are no limits. A society that no longer
believes in God no longer believes in truth…..”
“While the Zionists try to make the rest of the World believe that the national
consciousness of the Jew finds its satisfaction in the creation of a Palestinian state,
the Jews again slyly dupe the dumb Goyim. It doesn’t even enter their heads to
build up a Jewish state in Palestine for the purpose of living there; all they want is a
central organisation for their international world swindler, endowed with its own
sovereign rights and removed from the intervention of other states: a haven for convicted
scoundrels and a university for budding crooks.
It is a sign of their rising confidence and sense of security that at a time when one
section is still playing the German, French-man, or Englishman, the other with open
effrontery comes out as the Jewish race.”
More prophetic words were ever spoken or written by any of the statesmen of the
Twentieth Century than these, even though they themselves were insufficient to describe the
horrors that the Zionist state would bring upon the world if left unchecked- and its power
and influence have been unchecked since the 1960’s. The last time that the world
stood up to Zionist power in an appreciable way was during the Suez Crisis.
DOT.. Port loses claim for asbestos removal | Business Insurance https://www.businessinsurance.com › article
› ISSUE01 › port-loses-claim-… May 13, 2001 – The suit sought claim of the Port Authority’s huge cost
of removing asbestos from hundreds of properties ranging from the enormous World Trade
Center complex
DOT…Silverstein knew when he leased WTC 7 that he would have to pay out of pocket
for asbestos abatement removal in WTC 7, multiple millions, which is why the Port Authority
leased it so cheaply.
DOT…In May, 2000, a year before, signing the lease, he already had the design
drawn for a new WTC building. Silverstein had no plans to remove the asbestos as he already
had plans to replace it.
DOT… Larry Silverstein signs the lease just six weeks before the WTC’s twin
towers were brought to the ground by terrorists in the September 11, 2001, attacks.
DOT….After leasing the complex, Silverstein negotiated with 24 insurance
companies for a maximum coverage of $3.55 billion per catastrophic occurrence.
However, the agreements had not been finalized before 9/11.
DOT…..Silverstein tries to sue insurers for double the payout claiming 2
catastrophic occurrences because of 2 planes involved.
DOT….Silver loses that lawsuit but sues the air lines and settles for almost
another billion, $ 750,000,000.
Just another Jew insurance fire folks. He planned on tearing down WTC 7 to begin with.
The only missing DOT is who he hired to set the demolition explosives in WTC 7. Were they
imported from our ME ally?
While people do not agree of detail the main theme is common: government stories explaining
both 9/11 and Epstein death are not credible. And that government tried to create an "artificial
reality" to hide real events and real culprits.
Absence of credible information create fertile ground for creation of myths and rumors,
sometimes absurd. But that'a well known sociaological phenomenon studies by late Tamotsu Shibutani in the
context of WWII rumors ( Improvised News: A Sociological Study of Rumor (1966)).
Now we can interpret famous quote of
William Casey "We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American
public believes is false as an admission of the fact that the government can create artificial
reality" much like in film Matrix and due to thick smoke of propaganda people are simply unable
to discern the truth.
A foreign policy of "maximum pressure" and swagger: tawdry bribes, heavy-handed threats,
and complete failure ..now what group does this remind me of?
US State Dept Program Offers $15 Million to Iran Revolutionary Guards September 4,
2019
The US State Department has unveiled a new $15 million "reward program" for anyone who
provides information on the financial inner workings of Iran's Revolutionary Guard, in an
attempt to further disrupt them.
The program comes after the US declared the Revolutionary Guards "terrorists," but remains
very unusual, in as much as it targets an agency of a national government instead of just
some random militant group.
The Financial Times reports on the farce that is our government's Iran policy:
Four days before the US imposed sanctions on an Iranian tanker suspected of shipping oil
to Syria, the vessel's Indian captain received an unusual email from the top Iran official at
the Department of State.
"This is Brian Hook . . . I work for secretary of state Mike
Pompeo and serve as the US Representative for Iran," Mr Hook wrote to Akhilesh Kumar on
August 26, according to several emails seen by the Financial Times. "I am writing with good
news."
The "good news" was that the Trump administration was offering Mr Kumar several million
dollars to pilot the ship -- until recently known as the Grace 1 -- to a country that would
impound the vessel on behalf of the US. To make sure Mr Kumar did not mistake the email for a
scam, it included an official state department phone number.
The administration's Iran obsession has reached a point where they are now trying to bribe
people to act as pirates on their behalf. When the U.S. was blocked by a court in Gibraltar
from taking the ship, they sought to buy the loyalty of the captain in order to steal it.
Failing that, they resorted to their favorite tool of sanctions to punish the captain and his
crew for ignoring their illegitimate demand. The captain didn't respond to the first message,
so Hook persisted with his embarrassing scheme:
"With this money you can have any life you wish and be well-off in old age," Mr Hook wrote in
a second email to Mr Kumar that also included a warning. "If you choose not to take this easy
path, life will be much harder for you."
Many people have already mocked Hook's message for its resemblance to a Nigerian prince
e-mail scam, and I might add that he comes across here sounding like a B-movie gangster.
Hook's contact was not an isolated incident, but part of a series of e-mails and texts that
he has sent to various ships' captains in a vain effort to intimidate them into falling in
line with the administration's economic war. This is what comes of a foreign policy of
"maximum pressure" and swagger: tawdry bribes, heavy-handed threats, and complete
failure.
The Committee of 300 is an evolution of the British East Indies Company Council of 300. The
list personally last seen included many Windsors (Prince Andrew), Rothchilds, other Royals.
Some of the Americans included some now dead and other still living: George HW Bush, Bill
Clinton Tom Steyer, Al Gore, John Kerry, Netanyahu, lots of bankers, Woolsey (ex CIA),
journalists like Michael Bloomberg, Paul Krugman, activists and politians like Tony Blair,
now dead Zbigniew Brzezinski, CEOs Charles and Edgar Bronfman. The list is long and out of
date but these people control much of what goes on whether good or bad. Their hands are
everywhere doing good and maybe some of this bad stuff.
Given the facts a 10 year-old child could see that the official 911 explanation was totally
flawed. Just three of these facts are sufficient, the 'dancing Israelis', Silverstein
admitting to the 'pull (demolish) it' order and the collapse of steel-framed WTC 7 in
freefall despite not being hit. It is not hyperbole to say that America is a failed state
given that the known perpetrators were never even charged. ZOG indeed.
A respectable civil rights attorney, Lisa Bloom, handled Katie Johnson's case.
"Respectable"?
BWAHAHAHAHAHA!
You do realize that Lisa Bloom is the daughter of Glora Allred and defender of Harvey
Weinstein do you not?
You people are so desperate to try to link Trump to Epstein it's pathetic.
I suggest you go back to your gatekeeping nonsense of trying to discredit the 9/11 Truth
Movement by spreading misinformation about nukes in the towers.
This article stakes out much important ground of information and interpretation Kevin
Barrett. The essay resonates as a historic statement of some of our current predicaments.
What about the comparisons that might be made concerning the mysteries attending the
disappearing corpses of Osama bin Laden and Jeffrey Epstein. And according to Christopher
Ketcham, the release of the High Fivin' Urban Movers back to Israel was partially negotiated
by Alan Dershowitz who played a big role in defending Epstein over a long period.
@anon The ultimate "nutjob quackery" of 9/11 is Phillip Zelikow's 9/11 Commission Report,
a document that stands as a testimony and marker signifying the USA's descent into a mad
hatter's imperium of lies. legend and illusion.
It is getting harder and harder to satirize the decadence and depravity of the secular
West, which insists on parodying itself with ever-increasing outlandishness. When the book
on this once-mighty civilization is written, and the ink is dry, readers will be astounded
by the limitless lies of the drunk-on-chutzpah psychopaths who ran it into the ground
@Kevin Barrett Adding to Junior's comment, I quit reading after you wrote of "credible
accusations" of Mr. Trump being involved "in the brutal rape of a 13 year old." And feminist
shakedown artist Lisa Bloom, daughter of the even more infamous feminist shakedown artist G.
Allred, is your "credible source?" Bloom has about as much credibility as the sicko democrat
women who tried to derail Judge Kavanaugh.
Regardless of how much one might hate Trump (and I'm no Trump supporter) levelling such
unfounded accusations is journalistic malfeasance. Did we elect the Devil Incarnate? Mr.
Barrett, I'm done reading you.
The special relationship between the CIA and the Mossad was driven partly by the efforts of
CIA officer James Angleton . Philip Weiss in his article in Mondoweiss entitled "The goy and
the golem: James Angleton and the rise of Israel." states that Angleton's " greatest service
to Israel was his willingness no to say a word about the apparent diversion of highly
enriched plutonium from a plant in Western Pennsylvania to Israel's nascent nuclear program "
The same program which JFK tried to curtail which efforts may have led to his assassination .
a confessed participant in the controlled demolition of Building 7,
For the love of God, this is stupid. Larry Silverstein was talking about the Fire
Commander , for fuck's sake. The Fire Commander made the decision to pull the
firefighters out of the building because they could not put the fire out and were in
unnecessary danger. That's all he meant. There is not one word in this that has anything to
do with a controlled demolition whatsoever.
In order to believe what the 9/11 Douchers would have you believe about this comment, you
would have to believe that 1) Building 7 was wired for demolition beforehand; 2) That the NYC
Fire Commander somehow knew about this; 3) That the NYC Fire Commander was perfectly okay
with allowing his men to spend hours inside a burning building in which he knew that
explosive charges had already been rigged to blow; 4) That the NYC Fire Commander had the
authority to decide when the charges should be blown and had access to the master switch that
would blow them all; 5) That after 7 hours of attempting to fight the fire, the NYC Fire
Commander (who by now can be nothing but a full-fledged member of the conspiracy) decides,
after briefly consulting with Larry Silverstein, "Oh, the hell with this! Let's just blow up
the building now!", to which Larry Silverstein agrees; 6) That after spending 7 hours in a
burning building that had fires burning randomly throughout it and that had been struck by
multiple pieces of debris, all of the explosive charges and their detonators were still in
perfect working order; 7) That none of the firefighters extensively searching the building
for survivors happened to notice any of the pre-placed explosive charges nor thought it
necessary to report about such; 8) That the NYC Fire Commander then proceeds to "pull" the
building after presumably giving some other order for the men to evacuate, which order was
never recorded because the "pull" order must have meant "blow up the building"; 9) And that
Larry Silverstein, after being part of a massive conspiracy involving insurance fraud,
murder, and arson which, if exposed, would send him to a federal death sentence, just decides
to casually mention all of this in a television interview for all and sundry to see, but it
is only the 9/11 Douchers who pick up on the significance of it.
Does any of this sound remotely believable? Did anyone subscribing to this nonsense stop
to think about the context in which this conversation took place? Do any of you 9/11 Douchers
even care that you're being completely ridiculous and grasping at nonexistent straws in your
vain attempt to establish some sort of case for controlled demolition? Do you even care that
everybody can see that what you are saying makes no sense at all? It is perfectly
obvious that Larry Silverstein is NOT talking about controlled demolition here. To
believe otherwise would require you to literally be insane, to not understand the plain
meaning of words and to have no awareness of conversational contexts; yet not only have you
swallowed all of this, you have been beating the drum of this insanity for nearly 20
years.
There is no point in reasoning with an insane person. There is, however, the possibility
that you don't really believe what you are saying and are just flogging a hobbyhorse, in
which case it is you who are engaging in mendacious journalism and trafficking in
lies. In either case, you need to be silenced. Neither lies nor insanity have any "right" to
be uttered in the public square. You 9/11 Douchers are really the ones doing everything you
accuse the mainstream media of doing, and worse. You have become a danger to the public weal
and must be stopped. Your conspiratorial nonsense just isn't cute anymore.
The official stories about the Kennedy assassination, Epstein's death, and 9/11 are
clearly suspect. No one with the capacity for critical thinking can seriously deny this.
Which elements of these stories are true and which are false will never be resolved.
Because:
The mainstream media including Fox News have abdicated their mission as fact finders and
truth tellers. They peddle entertainment and sell ad space. Rachel Maddow foaming at the
mouth about Trump's pee tape and Hannity fulminating about FISA abuse are the same product,
simply aimed at different demographics.
Nothing in the above two paragraphs is even remotely novel. It's all been said before
twenty bazillion times.
Being a feminist or Democrat (or nonfeminist or Republican) is irrelevant to a person's
credibility. It's possible that Lisa Bloom was part of a conspiracy to invent a fictitious
Katy Johnson story, in which case Bloom is guilty of criminal fraud as well as civil libel.
That would be quite a risk for her to take, to say the least. It's also possible that she was
somehow duped by others, in which case they would be running the civil and criminal
liabilities, while she would just get disbarred for negligence.
The same is true of Johnson's attorney Thomas Meagher.
It is also possible that Johnson's story is at least roughly accurate. There is supporting
testimony from another Epstein victim.
If you set aside your prejudices about Democrats-Republicans, feminists-antifeminists,
Trump-Hillary, etc., and just look at what's been reported, you'll agree with me that the
allegations are credible (but of course unproven). If you suffer emotional blocks against
thinking such things about a President, as so many did when similar things were reported
about Bill Clinton, I sympathize but also urge you to get psychiatric treatment so you can
learn to face unpleasant facts and then get to work cleaning up this country.
The release of Prof. J. Leroy Hulsey report on the finite element analysis of the WTC7
collapse should be a big news.
But won't be.
Democracy works this way. The ruling elite, via the media, Hollywood, etc., tell the
people what to think, the people then vote according to the way they think.
So the truth of 9/11 will never be known to the majority unless we have a public statement
from George W. Bush acknowledging that he personally lit the fuse that set off the explosions
that brought WTC 7 down at free-fall
speed .
This is fortunate for the intrepid Dr. Hulsey* who would, presumably, otherwise have had
to be dispatched by a sudden heart attack, traffic accident, weight-lifting accident suicide
with a bullet to the back of the head. As it is, hardly anyone will ever know what he will
say or what it means.
* Fortunate also for those who so rashly advocate for truth here and elsewhere on the yet
to be fully controlled Internets.
Nicely done. Article will not be featured on front page NYT & discussed on TV.
There are many highlights in your article. This is one.
Epstein's career as a shameless, openly-operating Mossad sexual blackmailer -- like the
in-your-face 9/11 coup -- also illustrates another core truth of Western secularism: If
there is no God, there are no limits (in this case, to human depravity and what it can get
away with). Or as Dostoevsky famously put it: "If God does not exist, everything is
permitted."
Please consult the following papers about the CIA/Mossad crimes against humanity and their
pimps who pose as 'politicians' of the fake Western 'democracy' where Epstein was their agent
serving their interest as a PIMP.
{from being the work of a single political party, intelligence agency or country, the
power structure revealed by the network connected to Epstein is nothing less than a criminal
enterprise that is willing to use and abuse children in the pursuit of ever more power,
wealth and control.}
If you want a vision of the future, don't imagine "a boot stamping on a human face -- for
ever," as Orwell suggested in 1984 . Instead, imagine that human face staring mesmerized
into the screen of some kind of nifty futuristic device on which every word, sound, and image
has been algorithmically approved for consumption by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency ("DARPA") and its
"innovation ecosystem" of "academic, corporate, and governmental partners."
The screen of this futuristic device will offer a virtually unlimited range of
"non-divisive" and "hate-free" content, none of which will falsify or distort the "truth," or
in any way deviate from "reality." Western consumers will finally be free to enjoy an
assortment of news, opinion, entertainment, and educational content (like this Guardian
podcast about a man who
gave birth , or MSNBC's latest bombshell about
Donald Trump's secret Russian oligarch backers ) without having their enjoyment totally
ruined by discord-sowing alternative journalists like Aaron Maté or satirists like
myself.
"Fake news" will not appear on this screen. All the news will be "authentic." DARPA and its
partners will see to that. You won't have to worry about being "influenced" by Russians, Nazis,
conspiracy theorists, socialists, populists, extremists, or whomever. Such Persons of Malicious
Intent will still be able to post their content (because of "freedom of speech" and all that
stuff), but they will do so down in the sewers of the Internet where normal consumers won't
have to see it. Anyone who ventures down there looking for it (i.e., such "divisive" and
"polarizing" content) will be immediately placed on an official DARPA watchlist for "potential
extremists," or "potential white supremacists," or "potential Russians."
Once that happens, their lives will be over (i.e., the lives of the potentially extremist
fools who have logged onto whatever dark web platform will still be posting essays like this,
not the lives of the Persons of Malicious Intent, who never had any lives to begin with, and
who by that time will probably be operating out of some heavily armed, off-the-grid compound in
Idaho). Their schools, employers, and landlords will be notified. Their photos and addresses
will be published online. Anyone who ever said two words to them (or, God help them, appears in
a photograph with them) will have 24 hours to publicly denounce them, or be placed on
DARPA’s watchlist themselves.
If you want a vision of the future, don't imagine "a boot stamping on a human face -- for
ever," as Orwell suggested in 1984 . Instead, imagine that human face staring mesmerized
into the screen of some kind of nifty futuristic device on which every word, sound, and image
has been algorithmically approved for consumption by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency ("DARPA") and its
"innovation ecosystem" of "academic, corporate, and governmental partners."
The screen of this futuristic device will offer a virtually unlimited range of
"non-divisive" and "hate-free" content, none of which will falsify or distort the "truth," or
in any way deviate from "reality." Western consumers will finally be free to enjoy an
assortment of news, opinion, entertainment, and educational content (like this Guardian
podcast about a man who
gave birth , or MSNBC's latest bombshell about
Donald Trump's secret Russian oligarch backers ) without having their enjoyment totally
ruined by discord-sowing alternative journalists like Aaron Maté or satirists like
myself.
"Fake news" will not appear on this screen. All the news will be "authentic." DARPA and its
partners will see to that. You won't have to worry about being "influenced" by Russians, Nazis,
conspiracy theorists, socialists, populists, extremists, or whomever. Such Persons of Malicious
Intent will still be able to post their content (because of "freedom of speech" and all that
stuff), but they will do so down in the sewers of the Internet where normal consumers won't
have to see it. Anyone who ventures down there looking for it (i.e., such "divisive" and
"polarizing" content) will be immediately placed on an official DARPA watchlist for "potential
extremists," or "potential white supremacists," or "potential Russians."
Once that happens, their lives will be over (i.e., the lives of the potentially extremist
fools who have logged onto whatever dark web platform will still be posting essays like this,
not the lives of the Persons of Malicious Intent, who never had any lives to begin with, and
who by that time will probably be operating out of some heavily armed, off-the-grid compound in
Idaho). Their schools, employers, and landlords will be notified. Their photos and addresses
will be published online. Anyone who ever said two words to them (or, God help them, appears in
a photograph with them) will have 24 hours to publicly denounce them, or be placed on
DARPA’s watchlist themselves.
"... It must again be emphasized: It is hard, if not impossible, to think of a more toxic allegation in American presidential history than the one leveled against candidate, and then president, Donald Trump that he "colluded" with the Kremlin in order to win the 2016 presidential election -- and, still more, that Vladimir Putin's regime, "America's No. 1 threat," had compromising material on Trump that made him its "puppet." Or a more fraudulent accusation. ..."
"... Was it plausible, for example, that Trump, a longtime owner and operator of international hotels, would commit an indiscreet act in a Moscow hotel that he did not own or control? Or that, as Steele also claimed, high-level Kremlin sources had fed him damning anti-Trump information even though their vigilant boss, Putin, wanted Trump to win the election? ..."
"... Nor was Russian "meddling" in the election anything akin to a "digital Pearl Harbor," as widely asserted, and it was certainly far less and less intrusive than President Bill Clinton's political and financial "interference" undertaken to assure the reelection of Russian President Boris Yeltsin in 1996. ..."
"... Nonetheless, Russiagate's core allegation persists, like a legend, in American political life -- in media commentary, in financial solicitations by some Democratic candidates for Congress, and, as is clear from my own discussions, in the minds of otherwise well-informed people. The only way to dispel, to excoriate, such a legend is to learn and expose how it began -- by whom, when, and why. ..."
"... Why did Western intelligence agencies, prompted, it seems clear, by US ones, seek to undermine Trump's presidential campaign? ..."
"... the repeatedly hapless Comey seems incapable of having initiated such an audacious operation against a presidential candidate, still less a president-elect. As I have long suggested, John Brennan and James Clapper, head of the CIA and Office of National Intelligence under Obama respectively, are the more likely culprits. ..."
"... First and foremost, Russiagate is about the present and future of the American political system, not about Russia. (Indeed, as I have repeatedly argued, there is very little, if any, Russia in Russiagate.) ..."
"... At every "debate" or comparable forum, all of the Democratic candidates should be asked about this grave threat to American democracy -- what they think about what happened and would do about it if elected president. Consider it health care for our democracy. ..."
It must again be emphasized: It is hard, if not impossible, to think of a more toxic
allegation in American presidential history than the one leveled against candidate, and then
president, Donald Trump that he "colluded" with the Kremlin in order to win the 2016
presidential election -- and, still more, that Vladimir Putin's regime, "America's No. 1
threat," had compromising material on Trump that made him its "puppet." Or a more fraudulent
accusation.
Even leaving aside the misperception
that Russia is the primary threat to America in world affairs, no aspect of this allegation has
turned out to be true, as should have been evident from the outset. Major aspects of the now
infamous Steele Dossier, on which much of the allegation was based, were themselves not merely
"unverified" but plainly implausible.
Was it plausible, for example, that Trump, a longtime owner and operator of
international hotels, would commit an indiscreet act in a Moscow hotel that he did not own or
control? Or that, as Steele also claimed, high-level Kremlin sources had fed him damning
anti-Trump information even though their vigilant boss, Putin, wanted Trump to win the
election? Nonetheless, the American mainstream media and other important elements of the
US political establishment relied on Steele's allegations for nearly three years, even
heroizing him -- and some still do, explicitly or implicitly.
Not surprisingly, former special counsel Robert Mueller found no evidence of "collusion"
between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin. No credible evidence has been produced that
Russia's "interference" affected the result of the 2016 presidential election in any
significant way. Nor was Russian "meddling" in the election anything akin to a "digital
Pearl Harbor," as widely asserted, and it was certainly far less and less intrusive than
President Bill Clinton's political and financial "interference" undertaken to assure the
reelection of Russian President Boris Yeltsin in 1996.
Nonetheless, Russiagate's core allegation persists, like a legend, in American political
life -- in media commentary, in financial solicitations by some Democratic candidates for
Congress, and, as is clear from my own discussions, in the minds of otherwise well-informed
people. The only way to dispel, to excoriate, such a legend is to learn and expose how it began
-- by whom, when, and why.
Officially, at least in the FBI's version, its operation "Crossfire Hurricane," the
counterintelligence investigation of the Trump campaign that began in mid-2016 was due to
suspicious remarks made to visitors by a young and lowly Trump aide, George Papadopoulos. This
too is not believable, as I pointed out previously .
Most of those visitors themselves had ties to Western intelligence agencies. That is, the young
Trump aide was being enticed, possibly entrapped, as part of a larger intelligence operation
against Trump. (Papadopoulos wasn't the only Trump associate targeted, Carter Page being
another.)
But the question remains: Why did Western intelligence agencies, prompted, it seems
clear, by US ones, seek to undermine Trump's presidential campaign? A reflexive answer
might be because candidate Trump promised to "cooperate with Russia," to pursue a
pro-détente foreign policy, but this was hardly a startling, still less subversive,
advocacy by a would-be Republican president. All of the major pro-détente episodes in
the 20th century had been initiated by Republican presidents: Eisenhower, Nixon, and
Reagan.
So, again, what was it about Trump that so spooked the spooks so far off their rightful
reservation and so intrusively into American presidential politics? Investigations being
overseen by Attorney General William Barr may provide answers -- or not. Barr has already
leveled procedural charges against James Comey, head of the FBI under President Obama and
briefly under President Trump, but the repeatedly hapless Comey seems incapable of having
initiated such an audacious operation against a presidential candidate, still less a
president-elect. As I have long suggested, John Brennan and James Clapper, head of the CIA and
Office of National Intelligence under Obama respectively, are the more likely
culprits.
The FBI is no longer the fearsome organization it once was and thus not hard to investigate,
as Barr has already shown. The others, particularly the CIA, are a different matter, and Barr
has suggested they are resisting. To investigate them, particularly the CIA, it seems, he has
brought in a veteran prosecutor-investigator, John Durham.
Which raises other questions. Are Barr and Durham, whose own careers include associations
with US intelligence agencies, determined to uncover the truth about the origins of Russiagate?
And can they really do so fully, given the resistance already apparent? Even if so, will Barr
make public their findings, however damning of the intelligence agencies they may be, or will
he classify them? And if the latter, will President Trump use his authority to declassify the
findings as the 2020 presidential election approaches in order to discredit the role of Obama's
presidency and its would-be heirs?
Equally important perhaps, how will mainstream media treat the Barr-Durham investigation and
its findings? Having driven the Russiagate narrative for so long and so misleadingly -- and
with liberals perhaps finding themselves in the incongruous position of defending rogue
intelligence agencies -- will they credit or seek to discredit the findings?
It is true, of course, that Barr and Durham, as Trump appointees, are not the ideal
investigators of Intel misdeeds in the Russiagate saga. Much better would be a truly
bipartisan, independent investigation based in the Senate, as was the Church Committee of the
mid-1970s, which exposed and reformed (it thought at the time) serious abuses by US
intelligence agencies. That would require, however, a sizable core of nonpartisan, honorable,
and courageous senators of both parties, who thus far seem to be lacking.
There are also, however, the ongoing and upcoming Democratic presidential debates. First
and foremost, Russiagate is about the present and future of the American political system, not
about Russia. (Indeed, as I have repeatedly argued, there is very little, if any, Russia in
Russiagate.)
At every "debate" or comparable forum, all of the Democratic candidates should be asked
about this grave threat to American democracy -- what they think about what happened and would
do about it if elected president. Consider it health care for our democracy.
This commentary is based on Stephen F. Cohen's most recent weekly discussion with the
host ofThe John Batchelor Show
. Now in their sixth year, previous installments are atTheNation.com .
Stephen
F. Cohen Stephen F. Cohen is a professor emeritus of Russian studies and politics at New
York University and Princeton University. A Nation contributing editor, his most recent book
War With Russia? From Putin & Ukraine to Trump & Russiagate is available in paperback
and in an ebook edition. His weekly conversations with the host of The John Batchelor Show, now
in their sixth year, are available at www.thenation.com .
s="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 36 36" focusable="false" width="100%" height="100%" version="1.1">
Tap to unmute
s="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 68 48" focusable="false" width="100%" height="100%" version="1.1">
If playback doesn't begin shortly, try restarting your device.
29:01
Next (SHIFT+n)
Glenn Greenwald on the Amazon fires and the fight for Brazil's future
Up Next
Autoplay is paused
l="#fff" focusable="false" d="M 19.41 20.09 L 14.83 15.5 L 19.41 10.91 L 18 9.5 l -6 6 l 6 6 Z" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 32 32" width="100%" height="100%" version="1.1">
l="#fff" focusable="false" d="m 12.59 20.34 l 4.58 -4.59 l -4.58 -4.59 l 1.41 -1.41 l 6 6 l -6 6 Z" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 32 32" width="100%" height="100%" version="1.1">
The Grayzone
Subscribe
47K
You're signed out
Videos you watch may be added to the TV's watch history and influence TV recommendations. To avoid
this, cancel and sign in to YouTube on your computer.
l="#fff" focusable="false" d="M 19 6.41 L 17.59 5 L 12 10.59 L 6.41 5 L 5 6.41 L 10.59 12 L 5 17.59 L 6.41 19 L 12 13.41 L 17.59 19 L 19 17.59 L 13.41 12 Z" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 24 24" width="100%" height="100%">
Share
An error occurred while retrieving sharing information. Please try again later.
l="#fff" focusable="false" d="M 19 6.41 L 17.59 5 L 12 10.59 L 6.41 5 L 5 6.41 L 10.59 12 L 5 17.59 L 6.41 19 L 12 13.41 L 17.59 19 L 19 17.59 L 13.41 12 Z" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 24 24" width="100%" height="100%">
Switch camera
l="#fff" focusable="false" d="M 19 6.41 L 17.59 5 L 12 10.59 L 6.41 5 L 5 6.41 L 10.59 12 L 5 17.59 L 6.41 19 L 12 13.41 L 17.59 19 L 19 17.59 L 13.41 12 Z" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 24 24" width="100%" height="100%">
0:00
12:51
The next video is starting
Watch Queue
Queue
__count__/__total__
Find out why
Russiagate skeptics are vindicated, but conspiracy theorists are rewarded (w/ Glenn Greenwald)
The Grayzone
Loading...
Unsubscribe from The Grayzone?
Working...
47K
Loading...
Loading...
Working...
Want to watch this again later?
Sign in to add this video to a playlist.
Sign in
Need to report the video?
Sign in to report inappropriate content.
Sign in
Add translations
16,584 views
Like this video?
Sign in to make your opinion count.
Sign in
Don't like this video?
Sign in to make your opinion count.
Sign in
Loading...
Loading...
Transcript
The interactive transcript could not be loaded.
Loading...
Rating is available when the video has been rented.
This feature is not available right now. Please try again later.
Glenn Greenwald of The Intercept joins Aaron Maté to discuss the disappearance of
Russiagate after Robert Mueller's testimony; how Andrew McCabe has become the latest
former U.S. intelligence official to join either CNN and MSNBC; and the absence of
accountability for those who continue to promote what he calls the "moronic, irrational,
baseless, conspiracist narrative" of Donald Trump as a Russian asset.
class="comment-renderer-text-content expanded">
Greenwald hits the nail on the head. Hillary's little RUSSIA! RUSSIA!! RUSSIA!!!
crying-boo-boo-hissy-fit has brought the world to the brink of destruction. Anyone
still think that woman would have been a better president? Madame President "If I
can't have it I will destroy the world"? This issue is not about past battles, but
rather about what the DNC does now. Hillary 2.0 in whatever form they try to excrete
upon us is just as dangerous. If the DNC can't offer a real choice for us and only
comes up with another obsequious sniveling doorman for the MIC, we are truly and
irrevocably doomed.
Mueller? Does he live in the United States of Amnesia? "Lying" is institutionalized
in the United States of Hypocrisy? It is a corrupt and broken ethos, has been since
its inception?
Someone like Warren or really any of them, if they win the White House, will have to
be very tough with Russia so Glenn is right. Increases to the military will be
knee-jerk, nuclear clock too close to midnight.
US Political Establishment: "Thank you Robert Mueller for the 3 years of providing
evidence-free conspiracy theories, nonsensical distractions, hysterical red-baiting,
and massive deflection from the corruption that seeps through both parties in
America. You've served your purpose, now it's time for you to go down the memory
hole!"
CNN and MSNBC are status quo outlets... they're just overly excited to have gov
professionals and known republicans willing to come out and talk about how mean
Trump is... nevermind focusing on policy issues that everyday Americans actually
care about and want information and votes on
It is apparent that the caricature of the Soviet Union in both productions is really a stand-in for the present-day Russian government
under Vladimir Putin. As only American exceptionalism could permit, Hollywood did not hold the same disdain for his predecessor,
Boris Yeltsin, whose legacy of high inflation and national debt have since been eliminated. In fact, most have forgotten that the
same filmdom community outraged about Russia's supposed interference in the 2016 U.S. election made a celebratory movie back in 2003,
Spinning Boris , which practically boasted about the instrumental role the West played in Yeltsin's 1996 reelection in Russia.
The highly unpopular alcoholic politician benefited from a near universal media bias as virtually all the federation's news outlets
came under the control of the 'oligarchs' (in America known simply as billionaires) which his economic policies of mass privatization
of state industry enriched overnight.
Yeltsin initially polled at less than 10% and was far behind Communist Party candidate Gennady Zyuganov until he became the recipient
of billions from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) thanks to his corrupt campaign manager, Anatoly Chubais, now one of the most
hated men in all of Russia. After the purging of votes and rampant ballot-box stuffing, Yeltsin successfully closed the gap between
his opponent thanks to the overt U.S. meddling.
Spinning Boris was directed by Roger Spottiswoode, who previously helmed an installment in the James Bond series, Tomorrow
Never Dies . The 1997 entry in the franchise is one of thousands of Hollywood films and network television shows exposed by journalists
Matthew Alford and Tom Secker as having been influenced or directly assisted by the Pentagon and CIA in their must-read book National
Security Cinema: The Shocking New Evidence of Government Control in Hollywood. Based on evidence from documents revealed in Freedom
of Information Act (FOIA) requests, their investigation divulges the previously unknown extent to which the national security complex
has gone in exerting control over content in the film industry. While it has always been known that the military held sway over movies
that required usage of its facilities and equipment to be produced, the level of impact on such films in the pre-production and editing
stages, as well as the control over non-military themed flicks one wouldn't suspect to be under supervision by Washington and Langley,
is exhaustively uncovered.
As expected, Hollywood and the military-industrial complex's intimate relationship during the Cold War is featured prominently
in Alford and Secker's investigative work. It is unclear whether HBO or Netflix sought US military assistance or were directly involved
with the national security state in their respective productions, but these are just two recent examples of many where the correlated
increase in geopolitical tensions with Moscow is reflected. The upcoming sequel to DC's Wonder Woman set to be released next
year , Wonder Woman 1984, featuring the female superhero " coming into conflict with the Soviet Union during the Cold War
in the 1980s ", is yet another. Reprising her role is Israeli actress and IDF veteran is Gal Gadot as the title character, ironically
starring in a blockbuster that will demonize the Eurasian state which saved her ethnicity from extinction. Given the Pentagon's involvement
in the debacle surounding 2014's The Interview which provoked very real tensions with North Korea, it is likely they are at
least closely examining any entertainment with content regarding Russia, if not directly pre-approving it for review.
Ultimately, the Western panic about its imperial decline is not limited to assigning blame to Moscow. Sinophobia has manifested
as well in recent films such as the 2016 sci-fi film Arrival where the extra-terrestrials who reach Earth seem more interested
in communicating with Beijing as the global superpower than the U.S. However, while the West forebodes the return of Russia and China
to greater standing, you can be certain its real fear lies elsewhere. The fact that Chernobyl and Stranger Things are
as preoccupied with portraying socialism in a bad light as they are in rendering Moscow nefarious shows the real underlying trepidation
of the ruling elite that concerns the resurgence of class consciousness. The West must learn its lesson that its state of perpetual
war has caused its own downfall or it could attempt a last line of defense that would inevitably conscript all of humanity to its
death as the ruling class nearly did to the world in 1914 and 1939.
"... "Who will watch the watchers?" Well, if Barr and company are not going to indict these characters, the answer is NOBODY! ..."
"... If you read the long litany of articles on SST by David Habakkuk and Larry Johnson, the pattern of a soft coup conspiracy against the possibility of HC's defeat is quite clear. ..."
"Federal prosecutors have been weighing for well over a year whether to charge McCabe, after the Justice Department's inspector
general alleged that McCabe had misled investigators several times about a media disclosure regarding the investigation into Hillary
Clinton's family foundation.
By the inspector general's telling, McCabe approved the disclosure and later -- when asked about the matter by investigators
with the FBI's inspection division and inspector general's office -- denied having done so. McCabe's attorney has said previously
that his statements "are more properly understood as the result of misunderstanding, miscommunication, and honest failures of
recollection based on the swirl of events around him." Lying to investigators is a federal crime."
Washpost
-------------
This whole thing has the odor of something by Dostoevsky, C&P maybe?
"Who will watch the watchers?" Well, if Barr and company are not going to indict these characters, the answer is NOBODY!
If you read the long litany of articles on SST by David Habakkuk and Larry Johnson, the pattern of a soft coup conspiracy against
the possibility of HC's defeat is quite clear.
And then following her loss, largely brought on IMO, by her unwillingness to cultivate the Deplorables, the semi-Deplorables and
the Irredeemable Deplorables, this disdain on her part for ordinary people was further displayed in her offhand dismissal of coal
miners as future wards of the state.
Once she had lost, the plot rolled on in an effort to make the ultimate Deplorable a failure in office.
It is de rigeur to write that both parties should feel equally wounded by the plot but they do not. pl
PRC90
We have to make it clear that fidelity to the constitution is not a pretense. IMO HRC and Obama are at the heart of this matter,
but better to scourge them and let them go.
The article about how many intelligence officials (retired) now work for the corporate press
is misleading. It does not take into account the "undeclared" operatives such as Anderson
Cooper and Rachael Maddow. Cooper went to work for the CIA and they out him in his job,
Maddow is a Rhodes Scholar, a trained apparatchik for the elites.
This is nothing new, after WWII, when the press was most compliant and the CIA was formed
the press was "taken over" by the newly reforming and consolidating of deep state power.
There was Operation Mockingbird which was exposed long ago but nothing changes if they get
caught they just reorganize and continue.
gjohnsit on Sun, 08/25/2019 - 8:57pm The media has been exaggerating the things that
Trump has been saying for a long time.
In many cases their overreaction was tiresome.
But this past week was something else. Trump really did start talking like an insane
person .
President Donald Trump repeatedly threatened to release ISIS fighters in Europe as a form of
punishment for countries like Germany and France; said he's strongly considering trying to
change the Constitution by executive order (it doesn't work that way); indicated he hasn't
ruled out trying to illegally serve more than two terms; rewrote history during comments
about Russia's expulsion from the G8 that framed the situation in the most pro-Kremlin manner
possible; and, despite five draft deferments, joked about giving himself the Medal of Honor.
That was Wednesday. And that's an incomplete list of all the outlandish stuff Trump said
on that day alone.
Any of the aforementioned statements would've generated major scandals coming from the
mouth of any other president. But given the week Trump has been having, they arguably didn't
even make the cut of the five most WTF things he's said since his New Jersey vacation ended
on Monday.
Did you catch all of that? Because that isn't even the most
bizarre stuff .
Just this morning, the president delivered a proclamation stating that, "Our great American
companies are hereby ordered" to stop dealing with China (!). He also declared the chairman
of the Federal Reserve, whom he himself appointed, was an enemy of the state.
But remember when the president endorsed the idea he is King of Israel and the Second
Coming of God? And then he said Jewish people who vote for Democrats -- that is, the 70-to-80
percent of American Jews who don't support him -- are guilty of "disloyalty" to Israel? And
then he accused Rashida Tlaib of anti-Semitism? And then he started screaming, "WHERE IS THE
FEDERAL RESERVE?" And then he canceled a diplomatic trip to Denmark because the prime
minister was rude in saying she wouldn't sell him Greenland? And then he demanded Russia be
reinstated in the G8, and said they were only thrown out because they "outsmarted" Obama,
when in fact it was because they'd invaded Ukraine? And then he declared he was The Chosen
One, looking to the heavens as he said it, who'd been tapped by the almighty to launch a
trade war against China?
TRUMP: "The fake news, of which many of you are members, is trying to convince the public
to have a recession. 'Let's have a recession!' ... I am the chosen one. Somebody had to do
it. So I'm taking on China." pic.twitter.com/OHmXOzoO7I
....like he's the King of Israel. They love him like he is the second coming of God...But
American Jews don't know him or like him. They don't even know what they're doing or saying
anymore. It makes no sense! But that's OK, if he keeps doing what he's doing, he's good
for.....
Done nothing EVIL bar fire 100 cruise missiles into Syria and attempting to starve
millions in Venezuela & Iran, while sucking on Bibi's ****, emboldening him to continue
on a genocidal path in the ME among other twisted fuckery.
"Putin's most innovative, and dangerous, weapon. The dogs will be handed out to Democrats
on election night, suppressing the vote and guaranteeing a second Trump term. Rachel Maddow,
where are you?"
The more things change the more they stay the same. The level of paranoia of the neoliberal elite toward Russia probably exceeds
the level achieved during the Cold War I, and their intellectual level is considerably lower, so the danger is greater.
Notable quotes:
"... I am coming to believe that it will never be possible to achieve anything resembling a sophisticated understanding of Russia in American governmental and journalistic circles. ..."
"... The lingering tendencies in [the United States] to see Russia as a great and dangerous enemy are simply silly, and should have no place in our thinking. We have never been at war with Russia, should never need to be and must not be. ..."
I find the view of the Soviet Union that prevails today in large portions of our governmental and journalistic establishments
so extreme, so subjective, so far removed from what any sober scrutiny of external reality would reveal, that it is not only ineffective
but dangerous as a guide to political action. This endless series of distortions and oversimplifications; this systematic dehumanization
of the leadership of another great country; this routine exaggeration of Moscow's military capabilities and of the supposed iniquity
of Soviet intentions; this monotonous misrepresentation of the nature and the attitudes of another great people ... this reckless
application of the double standard to the judgment of Soviet conduct and our own; this failure to recognize, finally, the communality
of many of their problems and ours as we both move inexorably into the modern technological age; and this corresponding tendency
to view all aspects of the relationship in terms of a supposed total and irreconcilable conflict of concerns and of aims: these,
believe me, are not the marks of the maturity and discrimination one expects of the diplomacy of a great power; they are the marks
of an intellectual primitivism and naïveté unpardonable in a great government. (
The New York Review of Books , 01.21.82)
Above all, we must learn to see the behavior of the leadership of that country [the Soviet Union] as partly the reflection
of our own treatment of it. If we insist on demonizing these Soviet leaders -- on viewing them as total and incorrigible enemies,
consumed only with their fear or hatred of us and dedicated to nothing other than our destruction -- that, in the end, is the
way we shall assuredly have them -- if for no other reason than that our view of them allows for nothing else -- either for them
or for us. ( The New York Review of Books
, 01.21.82)
On forcing Russia into concessions in a letter to J. Lukacs[1]
: I would like to say that it never pays, in my opinion, for one great power to take advantage of the momentary weakness or distraction
of another great power in order to force upon it concessions it would never have accepted in normal circumstances. (Letter written
in 1990 via " Through the History of the Cold War: The
Correspondence of George F. Kennan and John Lukacs ," 2010)
I fear the consequences of his [U.S. President Jimmy Carter's] moralism -- with respect both to Southern Africa and to the
Soviet Union. The question of pressure on behalf of the Russian "dissidents" is one of those highly complicated political questions
in which one has to work with contrary forces, carefully gauging the best compromise line between them. (Letter written in 1977
via " Through the History of the Cold War: The Correspondence
of George F. Kennan and John Lukacs ," 2010)
One great part of the U.S. government professes to be seeking peace with Moscow; another great part of it -- CIA and the Pentagon
-- appears to live and act on the assumption that we are either at war with Russia or are about to be. Both of these attitudes
have their domestic cliques and constituencies; and our good president, anxious to return the support of both of them, wages peace,
demonstratively, out of one pocket, and war, clandestinely, out of the other. Hence -- his split mind. (Letter written in 1977
via " Through the History of the Cold War: The Correspondence
of George F. Kennan and John Lukacs ," 2010)
I am coming to believe that it will never be possible to achieve anything resembling a sophisticated understanding of
Russia in American governmental and journalistic circles. Recognizing this, to begin to think that it should be best if the
relationship between the two countries were to be, over the long term (and by this conscious choice), a cold and distant one,
directed solely to the maintenance of peace, but avoiding both polemics and the search for intimacy -- a disillusioned relationship
in other words, in which the avoidance of unnecessary misunderstandings in practical questions would be given a higher priority
than the search for any real philosophical understanding or any wide ranging agreement on political values. (Letter written in
1983 via " Through the History of the Cold War: The Correspondence
of George F. Kennan and John Lukacs ," 2010)
The lingering tendencies in [the United States] to see Russia as a great and dangerous enemy are simply silly, and should
have no place in our thinking. We have never been at war with Russia, should never need to be and must not be. ... The greatest
help we can give will be of two kinds: understanding and example. The example will of course depend upon the quality of our own
civilization. It is our responsibility to assure that this quality is such as to be useful in this respect. We must ask ourselves
what sort of example is going to be set for Russia by a country that finds itself unable to solve such problems as drugs, crime,
decay of the inner cities, declining educational levels, a crumbling material substructure and a deteriorating environment. The
understanding, on the other hand, will have to include the recognition that this is in many ways a hard and low moment in the
historical development of the Russian people. They are just in process of recovery from all the heartrending reverses that this
brutal century has brought to them. We , too, may someday have our low moments. (
Foreign Affairs
, 12.01.90)
This is a case of setting up a ludicrous straw man.
Suppose for the sake of argument it was established that the Russian
state actually did try to kill Skripal. Of course they didn't, but assume they did.
It would be entirely legitimate to say "the Russians" did it. This wouldn't be racist, or bigoted, or anything else. It
wouldn't mean that all 150 million Russians were personally involved, or approved of this action, or played an active part in
it, or even that they knew of it or could care less about it.
It wouldn't be some kind of racist trope that bus driver Mr. Ivanovich in Novosibirsk was somehow responsible.
Any more than 300 million Americans and 60 million British were personally responsible for the conspiracy to invade Iraq,
or Bush's and Blair's criminal war of aggression.
In like manner the 9/11 atrocity was carried out by a few hundred individuals. Mostly Israeli and dual national Americans,
and a significant number of Israel First stooge goys serving Zionist interests.
The vast majority of Jews and Israelis in the world played no part at all, and are just passive recipients of the cover
conspiracy theories to explain it away.
This is just a smokecreen that is habitually thrown up whenever anyone connects the dots between Silverstein, a 200 strong
Mossad ring, Chertoff, and so many others.
"Putin's most innovative, and dangerous, weapon. The dogs will be handed out to Democrats
on election night, suppressing the vote and guaranteeing a second Trump term. Rachel Maddow,
where are you?"
Spot-on . Whenever I read this nonsense in the NYT or elsewhere I always ask myself the
same question ' Is this deliberate or are they really ignorant ? ' . I suspect the latter,
but I could be wrong.
Spot-on . Whenever I read this nonsense in the NYT or elsewhere I always ask myself the
same question ' Is this deliberate or are they really ignorant ? ' . I suspect the latter,
but I could be wrong.
The problem with Trump is that everything in him is second rate. Even bulling. and many americans were aware of that and
voted for him just because that thought that Hillary was worse. Much worse.
And Daniel
Larison is correct: when Trump faces strong backlash he just declare the partner in negotiation "terrible" and walks out and try
to justify his defeat ex post facto.
Notable quotes:
"... As we have seen, Trump's bullying, maximalist approach does not work with other governments, and this approach cannot work because the president sees everything as a zero-sum game and winning requires the other side's capitulation. ..."
"... The result is that no government gives Trump anything and instead all of them retaliate in whatever way is available to them. He can't agree to a mutually beneficial compromise because he rejects the idea that the other side might come away with something. Because every existing agreement negotiated in the past has required some compromise on our government's part, he condemns all of them as "terrible" because they did not result in the other party's surrender. ..."
"... he is so clueless about international relations and diplomacy that he still thinks it can get him what he wants. The reality is that all of his foreign policy initiatives are failing or have already failed, and the costs for ordinary people in the targeted countries and here at home keep going up. ..."
"... "Temperamentally, the president is unprepared for diplomacy and negotiations with sovereign states," said D'Antonio. "He doesn't know how to practice the give-and-take that would produce bilateral or multilateral achievements and he takes things so personally that he considers those with a different point of view to be enemies. He is offended when others decline to be bullied and angered by those who counter his proposals with their own ideas." ..."
"... The greatest trick that Trump pulled on Americans was to make many of them believe that he understood how to negotiate when he has never been any good at it. Now the U.S. and many other countries around the world are paying the price. ..."
"... "Trump has always been a lousy negotiator." ..."
"... But, but, but... he is very good in breaking up negotiated treaties, and breaking up negotiation itself. ..."
Michael Hirsh
reminds us
that Trump has always been a lousy negotiator:
Michael D'Antonio, a Trump biographer who interviewed him many times, agrees with Lapidus that there is no discernible difference
in the way Trump negotiates today, as president, compared to his career in business. "His style involves a hostile attitude and
a bullying method designed to wring every possible concession out of the other side while maximizing his own gain," D'Antonio
said. "As he explained to me, he's not interested in 'win-win' deals, only in 'I win' outcomes. When I asked if he ever left anything
on the table as a sign of goodwill so that he might do business with the same party in the future he said no, and pointed out
that there are many people in the world he can work with, one at a time."
As we have seen, Trump's bullying, maximalist approach does not work with other governments, and this approach cannot work
because the president sees everything as a zero-sum game and winning requires the other side's capitulation.
The result is that no government gives Trump anything and instead all of them retaliate in whatever way is available to them.
He can't agree to a mutually beneficial compromise because he rejects the idea that the other side might come away with something.
Because every existing agreement negotiated in the past has required some compromise on our government's part, he condemns all of
them as "terrible" because they did not result in the other party's surrender.
He seems particularly obsessed with the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) because the trade-off inherent in any agreement
made with Iran was that they would regain access to frozen assets, and he ignorantly equates this with "giving" them money. The fact
that the JCPOA heavily favored the U.S. and the rest of the P5+1 doesn't interest Trump. Iran was allowed to come away with something
at the end, and even the little bit they were able to get is far too much for him. This is one reason he has been so closely aligned
with Iran hawks over the last four years, and it helps explain why he endorses absurd, unrealistic demands and "maximum pressure"
of collective punishment. He is doing more or less the same thing he has always done, and he is so clueless about international relations
and diplomacy that he still thinks it can get him what he wants. The reality is that all of his foreign policy initiatives are failing
or have already failed, and the costs for ordinary people in the targeted countries and here at home keep going up.
Here is another relevant point from the article:
"Temperamentally, the president is unprepared for diplomacy and negotiations with sovereign states," said D'Antonio. "He
doesn't know how to practice the give-and-take that would produce bilateral or multilateral achievements and he takes things so
personally that he considers those with a different point of view to be enemies. He is offended when others decline to be bullied
and angered by those who counter his proposals with their own ideas."
The greatest trick that Trump pulled on Americans was to make many of them believe that he understood how to negotiate when
he has never been any good at it. Now the U.S. and many other countries around the world are paying the price.
Pulling off that "greatest trick" was amazing easy, actually: all Trump and his creatures had to do was go on the assumption that
most Americans will readily believe what they see on television. Especially when it jibes with their prejudices.
"The greatest trick that Trump pulled on Americans was to make many of
them believe that he understood how to negotiate when he has never been
any good at it."
While I agree with pretty much all of the article, let us not forget that a majority of Americans was not, in fact, fooled.
Americans are certainly paying a price Benjamin Franklin warned about. But as for other countries, theirs is due strictly to their
own doing, for relying excessively on the goodwill of America and turning a blind-eye to our imperialism. Quite frankly, up to
now, US allies have been enablers.
Add to that, " When someone hits me, I hit them back ten times harder."
This is not what we teach our children. It is a miserable way to live, or to run a country. No wonder the President is longer
referred to as "the leader of the free world." He gave up that title. These are sad days.
Yes, he is utterly incompetent on his main selling point, his supposed skill at negotiating. It is very inconvenient having Trump
as our standard-bearer.
"The greatest trick that Trump pulled on Americans was to make many of them believe that he understood how to negotiate when he
has never been any good at it."
Actually, the people who voted for Trump and who support him now love him for being a bully. That's what they want. They want
a Tony Soprano as their president, a guy who will go out and beat up all the people they hate. They don't want "negotiation".
They want a guy who has a baseball bat and knows how to use it. What's "interesting" is that despite all of Trump's appeals to
violence, and his willingness to support violence (for example, Saudi Arabia), he largely shrinks from it himself. We've seen
far fewer Tomahawks than one might have expected, particularly considering the great press he received the first time around.
Will we continue to be lucky? I hope so, but it's hard to be optimistic.
They are afraid to admin that a color revolution was launched to depose Trump after the
elections of 2016. Essentially a coup d'état by intelligence agencies and Clinton wing of
Democratic Party.
Notable quotes:
"... The 53 House Intel interviews. House Intelligence interviewed many key players in the Russia probe and asked the DNI to declassify those interviews nearly a year ago, after sending the transcripts for review last November. There are several big reveals, I'm told, including the first evidence that a lawyer tied to the Democratic National Committee had Russia-related contacts at the CIA. ..."
"... The Stefan Halper documents. It has been widely reported that European-based American academic Stefan Halper and a young assistant, Azra Turk, worked as FBI sources . ..."
"... Page/Papadopoulos exculpatory statements. Another of Nunes' five buckets, these documents purport to show what the two Trump aides were recorded telling undercover assets or captured in intercepts insisting on their innocence. Papadopoulos told me he told an FBI undercover source in September 2016 that the Trump campaign was not trying to obtain hacked Clinton documents from Russia and considered doing so to be treason. ..."
"... The 'Gang of Eight' briefing materials. These were a series of classified briefings and briefing books the FBI and DOJ provided key leaders in Congress in the summer of 2018 that identify shortcomings in the Russia collusion narrative. ..."
"... The Steele spreadsheet. I wrote recently that the FBI kept a spreadsheet on the accuracy and reliability of every claim in the Steele dossier. According to my sources, it showed as much as 90 percent of the claims could not be corroborated, were debunked or turned out to be open-source internet rumors. ..."
"... The Steele interview. It has been reported, and confirmed, that the DOJ's inspector general (IG) interviewed the former British intelligence operative for as long as 16 hours about his contacts with the FBI while working with Clinton's opposition research firm, Fusion GPS. It is clear from documents already forced into the public view by lawsuits that Steele admitted in the fall of 2016 that he was desperate to defeat Trump ..."
"... The redacted sections of the third FISA renewal application. This was the last of four FISA warrants targeting the Trump campaign; it was renewed in June 2017 after special counsel Robert Mueller 's probe had started, and signed by then-Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein . It is the one FISA application that House Republicans have repeatedly asked to be released, and I'm told the big reveal in the currently redacted sections of the application is that it contained both misleading information and evidence of intrusive tactics used by the U.S. government to infiltrate Trump's orbit. ..."
"... Records of allies' assistance. Multiple sources have said a handful of U.S. allies overseas – possibly Great Britain, Australia and Italy – were asked to assist FBI efforts to check on Trump connections to Russia. ..."
"... Attorney General Bill Barr's recent comments that "the use of foreign intelligence capabilities and counterintelligence capabilities against an American political campaign, to me, is unprecedented and it's a serious red line that's been crossed." ..."
As the Russiagate circus attempts to quietly disappear over the horizon, with Democrats
preferring to shift the anti-Trump narrative back to "racist", "white supremacist",
"xenophobe", and the mainstream media ready to squawk "recession"; the Trump administration may
have a few more cards up its sleeve before anyone claims the higher ground in this farce we
call an election campaign.
As
The Hill's John Solomon details, in September 2018 that President Trump told my Hill.TV
colleague Buck Sexton and me that he would order the release of all classified documents
showing what the FBI, the Department of Justice (DOJ) and other U.S. intelligence agencies may
have done wrong in the Russia probe.
And while it's been almost a year since then, of feet-dragging and cajoling and
deep-state-fighting, we wonder, given Solomon's revelations below, if the president is getting
ready to play his 'Trump' card.
Here are the documents that
Solomon believes have the greatest chance of rocking Washington, if declassified:
1.) Christopher
Steele 's confidential human source reports at the FBI. These documents, known in bureau
parlance as 1023 reports, show exactly what transpired each time Steele and his FBI handlers
met in the summer and fall of 2016 to discuss his anti-Trump dossier. The big reveal, my
sources say, could be the first evidence that the FBI shared sensitive information with
Steele, such as the existence of the classified
Crossfire Hurricane operation targeting the Trump campaign. It would be a huge discovery
if the FBI fed Trump-Russia intel to Steele in the midst of an election, especially when his
ultimate opposition-research client was Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National
Committee (DNC). The FBI has released only one or two of these reports under FOIA lawsuits
and they were 100 percent redacted. The American public deserves better.
2.) The 53 House Intel interviews. House Intelligence interviewed many key players in
the Russia probe and asked the DNI to declassify those interviews nearly a year ago, after
sending the transcripts for review last November. There are several big reveals, I'm told,
including the first evidence that a lawyer tied to the Democratic National Committee had
Russia-related contacts at the CIA.
3.) The Stefan Halper documents. It has been widely reported that European-based
American academic Stefan Halper and a young assistant, Azra Turk,
worked as FBI sources . We know for sure that one or both had contact with targeted
Trump aides like Carter Page and George Papadopoulos at the end of the
election. My sources tell me there may be other documents showing Halper continued working
his way to the top of Trump's transition and administration, eventually reaching senior
advisers like Peter Navarro inside the White House in summer 2017. These documents would show
what intelligence agencies worked with Halper, who directed his activity, how much he was
paid and how long his contacts with Trump officials were directed by the U.S. government's
Russia probe.
4.) The October 2016 FBI email chain. This is a key document identified by Rep. Nunes and
his investigators. My sources say it will show exactly what concerns the FBI knew about and
discussed with DOJ about using Steele's dossier and other evidence to support a Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant targeting the Trump campaign in October 2016. If
those concerns weren't shared with FISA judges who approved the warrant, there could be major
repercussions.
5.) Page/Papadopoulos exculpatory statements. Another of Nunes' five buckets, these
documents purport to show what the two Trump aides were recorded telling undercover assets or
captured in intercepts insisting on their innocence. Papadopoulos told me he told an FBI
undercover source in September 2016 that the Trump campaign was not trying to obtain hacked
Clinton documents from Russia and considered doing so to be treason. If he made that
statement with the FBI monitoring, and it was not disclosed to the FISA court, it could be
another case of FBI or DOJ misconduct.
6.) The 'Gang of Eight' briefing materials. These were a series of classified
briefings and briefing books the FBI and DOJ provided key leaders in Congress in the summer
of 2018 that identify shortcomings in the Russia collusion narrative. Of all the
documents congressional leaders were shown, this is most frequently cited to me in private as
having changed the minds of lawmakers who weren't initially convinced of FISA abuses or FBI
irregularities.
7.) The Steele spreadsheet. I
wrote recently that the FBI kept a spreadsheet on the accuracy and reliability of every
claim in the Steele dossier. According to my sources, it showed as much as 90 percent of the
claims could not be corroborated, were debunked or turned out to be open-source internet
rumors. Given Steele's own effort to leak intel in his dossier to the media before
Election Day, the public deserves to see the FBI's final analysis of his credibility. A
document
I reviewed recently showed the FBI described Steele's information as only "minimally
corroborated" and the bureau's confidence in him as "medium."
9.) The redacted sections of the third FISA renewal application. This was the last of
four FISA warrants targeting the Trump campaign; it was renewed in June 2017 after special
counsel Robert
Mueller 's probe had started, and signed by then-Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein . It is the one
FISA application that House Republicans have repeatedly asked to be released, and I'm told
the big reveal in the currently redacted sections of the application is that it contained
both misleading information and evidence of intrusive tactics used by the U.S. government to
infiltrate Trump's orbit.
10.) Records of allies' assistance. Multiple sources have said a handful of U.S.
allies overseas – possibly Great Britain, Australia and Italy – were asked to
assist FBI efforts to check on Trump connections to Russia. Members of Congress have
searched recently for some key contact documents with British intelligence . My sources
say these documents might help explain Attorney General Bill Barr's
recent comments that "the use of foreign intelligence capabilities and
counterintelligence capabilities against an American political campaign, to me, is
unprecedented and it's a serious red line that's been crossed."
These documents, when declassified, would show more completely how a routine
counterintelligence probe was hijacked to turn the most awesome spy powers in America against a
presidential nominee in what was essentially a political dirty trick orchestrated by
Democrats.
I disagree with Solomon. Nothing will "doom" the swamp unless the righteous few are
willing to indict, prosecute and carry out sentencing for the guilty. Exposing the guilty
accomplishes nothing, because anyone paying attention already knows of their crimes. Those
who want to believe lies will still believe them after the truth comes out.
It's ALL A WASTE OF TIME unless we follow through.
Does anyone see a pattern here after the 2009 Tea Party movement began?
2009 - Republicans: "If we win back the House, we can accomplish our agenda."
2011 - Republicans: "If we win back the Senate, we can accomplish our agenda." (NOTE:
After winning back the House)
2012 - Republicans: "If we win back the Senate, we can accomplish our agenda." (NOTE: 2
YEARS After winning back the House)
2013 - Republicans: "If we win back the Presidency, we can accomplish our agenda." (NOTE:
1 YEAR after winning back the House and the Senate)
2014 - Republicans: "If we win back the Presidency, we can accomplish our agenda." (NOTE:
2 YEARS after winning back the House and the Senate)
2015 - Republicans: "If we win back the Presidency, we can accomplish our agenda." (NOTE:
3 YEARS after winning back the House and the Senate)
2016 - Republicans: "If we win back the Presidency, we can accomplish our agenda." (NOTE:
4 YEARS after winning back the House and the Senate)
2017 - Republicans: "Now that we've won back the Presidency, we can accomplish our
agenda." (NOTE: After winning back the House 6 YEARS AGO and the Senate 4 YEARS AGO)
2018 - Republicans: "Now that we've won back the Presidency, we can accomplish our
agenda." (NOTE: After winning back the House 7 YEARS AGO and the Senate 5 YEARS AGO)
2019 - John Solomon - "If Trump Declassifies These 10 Documents, Democrats Are Doomed"
I hate to say it, but I DON'T BELIEVE YOU, JOHN.
ALL WE HAVE HEARD OVER THE COURSE OF THIS DECADE IS "IF THIS HAPPENS...THEN THEY ARE
DOOMED / WE CAN ACCOMPLISH OUR AGENDA / YADDA YADDA YADDA.
WHEN THE FOLLOWING ARE FOUND GUILTY OF TREASON, THEN AND ONLY THEN WILL I BELIEVE YOU:
CLINTONS
OBAMA
BIDEN
KERRY
BRENNAN
CLAPPER
COMEY
MCCABE
MUELLER
WEISSMAN
STRZOK
RICE
POWERS
LYNCH
YATES
ET AL
WHY ARE THESE TREASONOUS, VILE, CORRUPT CRIMINALS NOT INDICTED FOR TREASON?
As if there's any major philosophical difference between the Librtads and Zionist
Cocksuckvatives.
Both sides use the .gov agencies to subvert and ignore the Constitution whenever possible.
Best example is WikiLeaks and how each party wished Assange would just go away when he
revealed damaging information about both sides on multiple occasions.
"... "The sentiment out in farm country is getting grimmer by the day," said John Heisdorffer, the chairman of the American Soybean Association. "Our patience is waning, our finances are suffering and the stress from months of living with the consequences of these tariffs is mounting. ..."
"... The Republican senator Chuck Grassley, who represents Iowa, a state heavily reliant on agriculture, has called for a quick resolution to the dispute. "Americans understand the need to hold China accountable, but they also need to know that the administration understands the economic pain they would feel in a prolonged trade war," Grassley said in a statement. ..."
American farmers are likely to feel the pain first. Soybean exports to China collapsed last year when the trade war began, and
agricultural exports will be hit harder when, or if, the new tariffs are imposed. Farmers are also suffering from extensive flooding
that has delayed planting.
"The sentiment out in farm country is getting grimmer by the day," said John Heisdorffer, the chairman of the American Soybean
Association. "Our patience is waning, our finances are suffering and the stress from months of living with the consequences of these
tariffs is mounting."
The new round of tariffs will hit other parts of the US food industry, with beans, lentils, honey, flour, corn and oats all on
the list of goods that will be taxed.
... ... ...
The Republican senator Chuck Grassley, who represents Iowa, a state heavily reliant on agriculture, has called for a quick
resolution to the dispute. "Americans understand the need to hold China accountable, but they also need to know that the administration
understands the economic pain they would feel in a prolonged trade war," Grassley said in a statement.
A nice analysis of the rhetorical structure of conspiracy theories in general.
Another important aspect of this: the use of conspiracy theories to generate propaganda
sufficiently toxic to severely damage or even destroy political opponents. For instance,
Russiagate.
The mainstream media, since 2016, while railing against the conspiratorial mindset expressed
in Internet alternative media channels, have been wallowing in it, promoting it with all the
power at their disposal. Talk about twisty and sinister doublethink. One could almost describe
it as diabolical.
They are often portraying false conspiracy theories as truth, and true conspiracy research
as lies -- turning reality upside down and inside out.
"... "The failing New York Times, in one of the most devastating portrayals of bad journalism in history, got caught by a leaker that they are shifting from the Phony Russian Collusion Narrative (the Mueller Report & his testimony were a total disaster), to a Racism Witch Hunt ," Trump wrote on Twitter ..."
"... Systematic deception by the press is a national security issue. In a real crisis, 2/3rds of this country is not going to believe either the government nor the media. That will be a real problem, and it's a massive weakness. ..."
"... Neoliberal MSM propaganda like heroin. Those "news" outlets don't care about actual facts or news, they are more script writers than anything else. ..."
President Trump slammed the "failing New York Times" on Sunday after leaked comments from executive editor Dean Baquet revealed
that the paper is pivoting from the Russia narrative (which he described as being "a little tiny bit flat-footed") to 'Trump is a
racist.'
"The failing New York Times, in one of the most devastating portrayals of bad journalism in history, got caught by a leaker that
they are shifting from the Phony Russian Collusion Narrative (the Mueller Report & his testimony were a total disaster), to a Racism
Witch Hunt ," Trump wrote on Twitter, adding "'Journalism' has reached a new low in the history of our Country. It is nothing more
than an evil propaganda machine for the Democrat Party. The reporting is so false, biased and evil that it has now become a very
sick joke But the public is aware! The reporting is so false, biased and evil that it has now become a very sick joke But the public
is aware!"
Systematic deception by the press is a national security issue. In a real crisis, 2/3rds of this country is not going to believe either the government nor the media. That will be a real problem, and it's a massive weakness.
Neoliberal MSM propaganda like heroin. Those "news" outlets don't care about actual facts or news, they are more script
writers than anything else. These pretend journalists have conjured up a narrative and it is all about repeat repeat repeat,
keeping that constant drip going into the vein of the Dem constituency. It's been going on for decades and the only people that
are too stupid to see it are the Dems themselves.
STEPHEN COHEN: I'm not aware that Russia attacked Georgia. The European Commission, if you're talking about the 2008 war,
the European Commission, investigating what happened, found that Georgia, which was backed by the United States, fighting with an
American-built army under the control of the, shall we say, slightly unpredictable Georgian president then, Saakashvili, that he
began the war by firing on Russian enclaves. And the Kremlin, which by the way was not occupied by Putin, but by Michael McFaul and
Obama's best friend and reset partner then-president Dmitry Medvedev, did what any Kremlin leader, what any leader in any country
would have had to do: it reacted. It sent troops across the border through the tunnel, and drove the Georgian forces out of what
essentially were kind of Russian protectorate areas of Georgia.
So that- Russia didn't begin that war. And it didn't begin the one in Ukraine, either. We did that by [continents], the overthrow
of the Ukrainian president in [20]14 after President Obama told Putin that he would not permit that to happen. And I think it happened
within 36 hours. The Russians, like them or not, feel that they have been lied to and betrayed. They use this word, predatl'stvo,
betrayal, about American policy toward Russia ever since 1991, when it wasn't just President George Bush, all the documents have
been published by the National Security Archive in Washington, all the leaders of the main Western powers promised the Soviet Union
that under Gorbachev, if Gorbachev would allow a reunited Germany to be NATO, NATO would not, in the famous expression, move two
inches to the east.
Now NATO is sitting on Russia's borders from the Baltic to Ukraine. So Russians aren't fools, and they're good-hearted, but they
become resentful. They're worried about being attacked by the United States. In fact, you read and hear in the Russian media daily,
we are under attack by the United States. And this is a lot more real and meaningful than this crap that is being put out that Russia
somehow attacked us in 2016. I must have been sleeping. I didn't see Pearl Harbor or 9/11 and 2016. This is reckless, dangerous,
warmongering talk. It needs to stop. Russia has a better case for saying they've been attacked by us since 1991. We put our military
alliance on the front door. Maybe it's not an attack, but it looks like one, feels like one. Could be one.
Real politik. Don't bring a knife to a gun fight. Don't start fights in the first place. The idea that American leadership
is any better than mid-Victorian imperialism, is laughable.
AARON MATE: We hear, often, talk of Putin possibly being the richest person in the world as a result of his entanglement
with the very corruption of Russia you're speaking about
Few appear to be aware that Bill Browder is single-handedly responsible for starting, and spreading, the rumor that Putin's
net worth is $200 billion (for those who are unfamiliar with Browder, I highly recommend watching Andrei Nekrasov's documentary
titled " The Magnitsky Act – Behind the Scenes "). Browder
appears to have first
started this rumor early in 2015 , and has repeated it ad nauseam since then, including in
his testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2017 . While Browder has always framed the $200 billion figure as his own
estimate, that subtle qualifier has had little effect on the media's willingness to accept it as fact.
Interestingly, during the press conference at the Helsinki Summit, Putin claimed Browder sent $400 million of ill-gotten gains
to the Clinton campaign. Putin
retracted the statement and claimed to have misspoke a week or so later, however by that time the $400 million figure had
been cited by numerous media outlets around the world. I think it is at least possible that Putin purposely exaggerated the amount
of money in question as a kind of tit-for-tat response to Browder having started the rumor about his net worth being $200 billion.
The stories I saw said there was a mistranslation -- but that the figure should have $400 thousand and not $400 million. Maybe
Putin misspoke, but the $400,000 number is still significant, albeit far more reasonable.
Putin never was on the Forbes list of billionaires, btw, and his campaign finance statement comes to far less. It never seems
to occur to rabid capitalists or crooks that not everyone is like them, placing such importance on vast fortunes, or want to be
dishonest, greedy, or power hungry. Putin is only 'well off' and that seems to satisfy him just fine as he gets on with other
interests, values, and goals.
Yes, $400,000 is the revised/correct figure. My having written that "Putin retracted the statement" was not the best choice
of phrase. Also, the figure was corrected the day after it was made, not "a week or so later" as I wrote in my previous comment.
From the Russia Insider link:
Browder's criminal group used many tax evasion methods, including offshore companies. They siphoned shares and funds from
Russia worth over 1.5 billion dollars. By the way, $400,000 was transferred to the US Democratic Party's accounts from these
funds. The Russian president asked us to correct his statement from yesterday. During the briefing, he said it was $400,000,000,
not $400,000. Either way, it's still a significant amount of money.
There's something weird about the anti-Putin hysteria. Somehow, many, many people have come to believe they must demonstrate
their membership in the tribe by accepting completely unsupported assertions that go against common sense.
In a sane world we the people would be furious with the Clinton campaign, especially the D party but the R's as well, our media
(again), and our intel/police State (again). Holding them all accountable while making sure this tsunami of deception and lies
never happens again.
It's amazing even in time of the internetz those of us who really dig can only come up with a few sane voices. It's much worse
now in terms of the numbers of sane voices than it was in the run up to Iraq 2.
Regardless of broad access to far more information in the digital age, never under estimate the self-preservation instinct
of American exceptionalist mythology. There is an inverse relationship between the decline of US global primacy and increasingly
desperate quest for adventurism. Like any case of addiction, looking outward for blame/salvation is imperative in order to prevent
the mirror of self-reflection/realization from turning back onto ourselves.
we're not to believe we're not supposed to believe we're supposed to believe
Believe whatever you want, however your comment gives the impression that you came to this article because you felt the need
to push back against anything that does not conform to the liberal international order's narrative on Putin and Russia, rather
than "with an eagerness to counterbalance the media's portrayal of Putin". WRT to whataboutism, I like
Greenwald's definition of the term :
"Whataboutism": the term used to bar inquiry into whether someone adheres to the moral and behavioral standards they seek
to impose on everyone else. That's its functional definition.
aye. I've never seen it used by anyone aside from the worst Hill Trolls.
Indeed, when it was first thrown at me, I endeavored to look it up, and found that all references to it were from Hillaryites
attempting to diss apostates and heretics.
The degree of consistency and or lack of hypocrisy based on words and actions separates US from Russia to an astonishing level.
That is Russia's largest threat to US, our deceivers. The propaganda tables have turned and we are deceiving ourselves to points
of collective insanity and warmongering with a great nuclear power while we are at it. Warmongering is who we are and what we
do.
Does Russia have a GITMO, torture Chelsea Manning, openly say they want to kill Snowden and Assange? Is Russia building up
arsenals on our borders while maintaining hundreds of foreign bases and conducting several wars at any given moment while constantly
threatening to foment more wars? Is Russia dropping another trillion on nuclear arsenals? Is Russia forcing us to maintain such
an anti democratic system and an even worse, an entirely hackable electronic voting system?
You ready to destroy the world, including your own, rather than look in the mirror?
You're talking about extending Russian military power into Europe when the military spending of NATO Europe alone exceeds Russia's
by almost 5-1 (more like 12-1 when one includes the US and Canada), have about triple the number of soldiers than Russia has,
and when the Russian ground forces are numerically smaller than they have been in at least 200 years?
" to put their self-interests above those of their constituents and employees, why can't we apply this same lens to Putin and
his oligarchs?"
The oligarchs got their start under Yeltsin and his FreeMarketDemocraticReformers, whose policies were so catastrophic that
deaths were exceeding births by almost a million a year by the late '90s, with no end in sight. Central to Yeltsin's governance
was the corrupt privatization, by which means the Seven Bankers came to control the Russian economy and Russian politics.
Central to Putin's popularity are the measures he took to curb oligarchic predation in 2003-2005. Because of this, Russia's
debt:GDP ratio went from 1.0 to about 0.2, and Russia's demographic recovery began while Western analysis were still predicting
the death of Russia.
So Putin is the anti-oligarch in Russian domestic politics.
I know of many people who sacrifice their own interests for those of their children (over whom they have virtually absolute
power), family member and friends. I know of others who dedicate their lives to justice, peace, the well being of their nation,
the world, and other people -- people who find far greater meaning and satisfaction in this than in accumulating power or money.
Other people have their own goals, such as producing art, inventing interesting things, reading and learning, and don't care two
hoots about power or money as long as their immediate needs are met.
I'm cynical enough about humans without thinking the worst of everyone and every group or culture. Not everyone thinks only
of nails and wants to be hammers, or are sociopaths. There are times when people are more or less forced into taking power, or
getting more money, even if they don't want it, because they want to change things for the better or need to defend themselves.
There are people who get guns and learn how to use them only because they feel a need for defending themselves and family but
who don't like guns and don't want to shoot anyone or anything.
There are many people who do not want to be controlled and bossed around, but neither want to boss around anyone else. The
world is full of such people. If they are threatened and attacked, however, expect defensive reactions. Same as for most animals
which are not predators, and even predators will generally not attack other animals if they are not hungry or threatened -- but
that does not mean they are not competent or can be dangerous.
Capitalism is not only inherently predatory, but is inherently expansive without limits, with unlimited ambition for profits
and control. It's intrinsically very competitive and imperialist. Capitalism is also a thing which was exported to Russia, starting
soon after the Russian Revolution, which was immediately attacked and invaded by the West, and especially after the fall of the
Soviet Union. Soviet Russia had it's own problems, which it met with varying degrees of success, but were quite different from
the aggressive capitalism and imperialism of the US and Europe.
The pro-Putin propaganda is pretty interesting to witness, and of course not everything Cohen says is skewed pro-Putin – that's
what provides credibility. But "Putin kills everybody" is something NOBODY says (except Cohen, twice in one interview) – Putin
is actually pretty selective of those he decides to have killed. But of course, he doesn't kill anyone, personally – therefore
he's an innocent lamb, accidentally running Russia as a dictator.
The most recent dictator in Russian history was Boris Yeltsin, who turned tanks on his legislature while it was in the legal
and constitutional process of impeaching him, and whose policies were so catastrophic for Russians (who were dying off at the
rate of 900k/yr) that he had to steal his re-election because he had a 5% approval rating.
But he did as the US gvt told him, so I guess that makes him a Democrat.
Under Putin Russia recovered from being helpless, bankrupt & dying, but Russia has an independent foreign policy, so that makes
Putin a dictator.
"Does any sane person believe that there will ever be a Putin-signed contract provided as evidence? Does any sane person believe
that Putin actually needs to "approve" a contract rather than signaling to his oligarch/mafia hierarchy that he's unhappy about
a newspaper or journalist's reporting?"
Why do you think Putin even needs, or feels a need, to have journalists killed in the first place? I see no evidence to support
this basic assumption.
The idea of Russia poised to attack Europe is interesting, in light of the fact that they've cut their military spending by
20%. And even before that the budgets of France, Germany, and the UK combined well exceeded that of Russia, to say nothing of
the rest of NATO or the US.
Putin's record speaks for itself. This again points to the absurdity of claiming he's had reporters killed: he doesn't need
to. He has a vast amount of genuine public support because he's salvaged the country and pieced it back together after the pillaging
of the Yeltsin years. That he himself is a corrupt oligarch I have no particular doubt of. But if he just wanted to enrich himself,
he's had a very funny way of going about it. Pray tell, what are these 'other interpretations'?
"The US foreign policy has been disastrous for millions of people since world war 2. But Cohen's arguments that Russia isn't
as bad as the US is just a bunch of whattaboutism."
What countries has the Russian Federation destroyed?
Here is a fascinating essay ["Are We Reading Russia Right?"] by Nicolai N. Petro who currently holds the Silvia-Chandley Professorship
of Peace Studies and Nonviolence at the University of Rhode Island. His books include, Ukraine
in Crisis (Routledge, 2017), Crafting Democracy (Cornell, 2004), The Rebirth of Russian Democracy (Harvard, 1995), and Russian
Foreign Policy, co-authored with Alvin Z. Rubinstein (Longman, 1997). A graduate of the University of Virginia, he is the recipient
of Fulbright awards to Russia and to Ukraine, as well as fellowships from the Foreign Policy Research Institute, the National
Council for Eurasian and East European Research, the Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies in Washington,
D.C., and the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. As a Council on Foreign Relations Fellow, he served as special assistant
for policy toward the Soviet Union in the U.S. Department of State from 1989 to 1990. In addition to scholarly publications
on Russia and Ukraine, he has written for Asia Times, American Interest, Boston Globe, Christian Science Monitor, The Guardian
(UK), The Nation, New York Times, and Wilson Quarterly. His writings have appeared frequently on the web sites of the Carnegie
Council for Ethics in International Affairs and The National Interest.
Thanks for so much for this. Great stuff. Cohen says the emperor has no clothes so naturally the empire doesn't want him on
television. I believe he has been on CNN one or two times and I saw him once on the PBS Newshour where the interviewer asked skeptical
questions with a pained and skeptical look. He seems to be the only prominent person willing to stand up and call bs on the Russia
hate. There are plenty of pundits and commentators who do that but not many Princeton professors.
It has been said in recent years that the greatest failure of American foreign policy was the invasion of Iraq. I think that
they are wrong. The greatest failure, in my opinion, is to push both China and Russia together into a semi-official pact against
American ambitions. In the same way that the US was able to split China from the USSR back in the seventies, the best option was
for America to split Russia from China and help incorporate them into the western system. The waters for that idea have been so
fouled by the Russia hysteria, if not dementia, that that is no longer a possibility. I just wish that the US would stop sowing
dragon's teeth – it never ends well.
The best option, but the "American exceptionalists" went nuts. Also, the usual play book of stoking fears of the "yellow menace"
would have been too on the nose. Americans might not buy it, and there was a whole cottage industry of "the rising China threat"
except the potential consumer market place and slave labor factories stopped that from happening.
Bringing Russia into the West effectively means Europe, and I think that creates a similar dynamic to a Russian/Chinese pact.
The basic problem with the EU is its led by a relatively weak but very German power which makes the EU relatively weak or controllable
as long as the German electorate is relatively sedate. I think they still need the international structures run by the U.S. to
maintain their dominance. What Russia and the pre-Erdogan Turkey (which was never going to be admitted to the EU) presented was
significant upsets to the existing EU order with major balances to Germany which I always believed would make the EU potentially
more dynamic. Every decision wouldn't require a pilgrimage to Berlin. The British were always disinterested. The French had made
arrangements with Germany, and Italy is still Italy. Putting Russia or Turkey (pre-Erdogan) would have disrupted this arrangement.
The Crimea voted to be annexed by Russia by a clear majority. The US overran Hawaii with total disregard for the wishes of
the native population. Your comparison is invalid.
"Putin's finger prints are all over the Balkan fiasco".How is that with Putin only becoming president in 2000 and the Nato
bombing started way beforehand. It's ridiculous to think that Putin had any major influence at that time as govenor or director
of the domestic intelligence service on what was going during the bombing of NATO on Belgrad. Even Gerhard Schroeder, then chancellor
of the Federal Republic of Germany, admitted in an interview in 2014 with a major German Newspaper (Die Zeit) that this invasion
of Nato was a fault and against international law!
Can you concrete what you mean by "fingerprints" or is this just another platitudes?
I believe that the full and proper name of the psychiatric disorder in question is Putin-Trump Derangement Syndrome [PTDS].
Symptoms include:
o Eager and uncritical ingestion and social-media regurgitation of even the most patently absurd MSM propaganda. For example,
the meme that releasing factual information about actual election-meddling (as Wikileaks did about the Dem-establishment's rigging
of its own nomination process in 2016) is a grave threat to American Democracy™;
o Recent-onset veneration of the intelligence agencies, whose stock in trade is spying on and lying to the American people,
spreading disinformation, election rigging, torture and assassination and its agents, such as liar and perjurer Clapper and torturer
Brennan;
o Rehabilitation of horrid unindicted GOP war criminals like G.W. Bush as alleged examples of "norms-respecting Republican
patriots";
o Smearing of anyone who dares question the MSM-stoked hysteria as an America-hating Russian stooge.
I believe that the full and proper name of the psychiatric disorder in question is
Putin-Trump Derangement Syndrome [PTDS].
Symptoms include:
Eager and uncritical ingestion and social-media regurgitation of even the most patently
absurd MSM propaganda. For example, the meme that releasing factual information about actual
election-meddling (as Wikileaks did about the Dem-establishment's rigging of its own
nomination process in 2016) is a grave threat to American Democracy™;
Recent-onset veneration of the intelligence agencies, whose stock in trade is spying on
and lying to the American people, spreading disinformation, election rigging, torture and
assassination and its agents, such as liar and perjurer Clapper and torturer Brennan;
Rehabilitation of horrid unindicted GOP war criminals like G.W. Bush as alleged examples
of "norms-respecting Republican patriots";
Smearing of anyone who dares question the MSM-stoked hysteria as an America-hating
Russian stooge.
The title sounds like it was written yesterday, despite the fact the article is two years
ago. That suggest that Russophobia is the official policy of both parties. Why they are trying to
remove Trump, who folded after thee month in power, is less clear. May be the crimes they
committed are such that anybody in power then Clinton gang is very dangerous for them.
Please looks also at selected comments. They are definitely sounds as written yesterday.
Notable quotes:
"... Congressional Democrats and their media allies have renewed their offensive in the past two weeks. Representative Maxine Waters (D-CA) even argues that the evidence already amassed seems to be enough to warrant President Trump's impeachment. It was especially notable that no prominent Democrat denounced such an inflammatory accusation. Indeed, Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee appear to be escalating their concept of what constitutes a thorough investigation, now insisting that any contact by advisers to the Trump campaign with any Russian official be subject to scrutiny. ..."
"... They and their neoconservative allies also insist on a laser-like focus on the alleged misdeeds of the Trump people and nothing else. ..."
"... Such an outrageous accusation might have made even the infamous Senator Joseph McCarthy blush. That it came from a prominent Republican also suggests that the current bout of Russophobia is not purely a partisan phenomenon. The broader implications are extremely worrisome. A campaign appears to be underway to intimidate and silence critics of the current policy toward Russia, and even policy regarding NATO. ..."
"... The track record on previous group think on such decisions as the military interventions in Vietnam, Iraq, and Libya also confirms that it can produce truly tragic results. Creating a similar situation of stifling debate regarding U.S. policy toward a nation armed with thousands of nuclear weapons is the essence of folly. ..."
or a brief period in April, it appeared that the campaign that Democrats and
neo-conservative Republicans were waging for a comprehensive investigation into the Trump
campaign's alleged collusion with the Russian government to influence the 2016 presidential
election had peaked and was beginning to ebb. The Trump administration's decision to launch
missile strikes against a Syrian air base despite Russian President Vladimir Putin vehement
objections to the assault on his ally, quieted accusations that Trump was Putin's puppet.
Indeed, hawks in bothparties praised
Trump for taking action in Syria, and the president's supporters at Fox News and elsewhere
contended that the U.S. attack discredited the notion that he was guilty of appeasing
Russia.
But the hiatus in the allegations of collusion was only temporary. Worse, the resurgent
anti-Russia hysteria has broader, ominous implications for U.S. foreign policy and the health
of political discourse in the United States.
Congressional Democrats and their media allies have renewed their offensive in the past
two weeks. Representative Maxine Waters (D-CA) even argues
that the evidence already amassed seems to be enough to warrant President Trump's impeachment.
It was especially notable that no prominent Democrat denounced such an inflammatory accusation.
Indeed, Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee appear to be escalating their concept of
what constitutes a thorough investigation, now insisting that any contact by advisers to the
Trump campaign with any Russian official be subject to scrutiny.
They and their neoconservative allies also insist on a laser-like focus on the alleged
misdeeds of the Trump people and nothing else. The current scandal erupted full force when
leaked reports from the U.S. intelligence community that newly installed National Security
Adviser Michael Flynn had met with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak during the campaign and
discussed sensitive issues, including the ongoing U.S. economic sanctions against Russia, thus
apparently undermining the Obama administration's policies. Flynn's action showed poor
judgment, and his attempt to conceal the contact from Vice President Mike Pence, was even
worse. A recent Washington Post article
contends that Flynn went ahead with his meeting even though senior Trump campaign officials
cautioned against it and warned him that it was almost certain that U.S. intelligence agencies
were electronically monitoring Kislyak and all of his contacts.
Examining Flynn's behavior is appropriate, but even that investigation should focus not only
on his questionable Russia contacts but on the leak of the intelligence report outing him.
Indeed, an intelligence official's unmasking the identity of an American citizen in that
fashion constitutes a felony. However, except for perfunctory statements from a few Democratic
members of Congress that such an illegal leak also needed to be investigated, little interest
has emerged in actually doing so.
Such an outrageous accusation might have made even the infamous Senator Joseph McCarthy
blush. That it came from a prominent Republican also suggests that the current bout of
Russophobia is not purely a partisan phenomenon. The broader implications are extremely
worrisome. A campaign appears to be underway to intimidate and silence critics of the current
policy toward Russia, and even policy regarding NATO.
Attempting to enshrine Washington's group think on crucial issues is unhealthy for any
democratic system. The track record on previous group think on such decisions as the
military interventions in Vietnam, Iraq, and Libya also confirms that it can produce truly
tragic results. Creating a similar situation of stifling debate regarding U.S. policy toward a
nation armed with thousands of nuclear weapons is the essence of folly.
Ted Galen Carpenter, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and a contributing editor
at the National Interest, is the author of 10 books, the contributing editor of 10 books, and
the author of more than 650 articles on international affairs.
Mr. Carpenter makes the excellent point that political sobriety, rational thought and
action, and responsible dialogue is missing from the cadre of drum beating anti-Trump die
hearts, who are using the made-up Trump collusion story to destroy the Trump
presidency.
Their kamikaze style political tactics will end badly for the democrats, who will be
pulverized during the next election for neglecting the people’s business in favor
of political scandal, turmoil and extremist partisan behavior.
Keep it up Chuck, you are working overtime to insure greater Republican gains.
Actually, I am an agent of all people who disapprove of Washington’s willingness
to use nuclear war in order to establish Washington’s hegemony over the world, but
let us understand what it means to be a “Russian agent.”
It means to respect international law, which Washington does not. It means to respect
life, which Washington does not. It means to respect the national interests of other
countries, which Washington does not. It means to respond to provocations with diplomacy
and requests for cooperation, which Washington does not. But Russia does. Clearly, a
“Russian agent” is a moral person who wants to preserve life and the national
identity and dignity of other peoples.
Aren't people in the US getting tired of the Russia bashing? Really. And don't the
Russia bashers know that the longer this goes on, without evidence, the public is slowly
waking up to the truth. Now to blame Russia for the US failings in Afghanistan is beyond
ridiculous. Keep it up, kiddies.
The success of the web of lies that got 65 to 75 percent of Americans to believe that
Saddam had WMD and was responsible for 9/11 only encourages these regime-change lunatics.
All they have to do now is articulate the equivalent of Bush’s “We cannot
wait for the smoking gun, which might come in the form of a mushroom cloud,”
— i.e., we don’t need evidence, we just need to generate enough fear —
and they’ll have all the public support they could possibly need to commence with
their program of regime change at home, followed by regime change in Russia. That’s
the diabolical beauty of governing a population through the politics of fear —
which has been the practise since the beginning of the first Cold War.
It's interesting that the Democrats and the media didn't seem very interested in
Hillary Clinton's foreign ties (and the money she received), or the potential blackmail
that could have been tied to any of her "missing" emails that the Russians and others
probably have.
I can't share it with you because it's classified and I don't (unlike Trumps
administration) believe in sharing sensitive information with Russian stooges.
Russia [aka Soviet Union] was simply a "red herring" (pun intended) during the Cold
War days when the Left always blamed American first. Now post-Soviet autocratic Russia is
a lethal menace behind every GOP trash can. The irony is so rich.
I am old enough to have a conscious memory of the end days of the McCarthy smears.
This seems a lot like that. Wild charges, no evidence. Senator McCarthy always "had" a
list of 57, 95, or 212 active communists in the State Department, he just never got
around to disclosing names. Evidence? The Democrats don't seem to need it. Just
investigate, investigate, investigate. Anything to distract from the true reasons for
Clinton's loss. The party of FDR wrote off the white working class. They thought they'd
have enough minority and female voters to win. They didn't.
Oh, oh. Mike Rogers, Obama's head of the NSA is testifying that the NSA did NOT have
high confidence that the wusskies interfered to help Trump win. I wonder if Boris
Badanoff and Natasha threatened him and his family?
Look, Democrats just cannot bring themselves to accept the blame for their loss, no
surprise, they truly believe they are on the right side of history, Cuba, North Korea,
and venezuela not withstanding. But the aging cold warriors, like McNasty, pine for the
days when people used to seek their opinion on the USSR.
Thank you for an excellent article. Building a sense of hysteria against the one
country in the world with as many nuclear weapons as us is truly foolish and
dangerous.
And the best part in this fishing expedition of democRATS and politicized government
agencies is that they have found NOTHING, only the daily, weekly and monthly fabrications
cooked backstage by MSM and accomplices agents leaning or part of Obanus regime..
Really good piece. So why does DC go bonkers over Russia but not deeper and more
problematic connections of politicians and public figures such as with Turkey, China, or
Israel? It's all about the emails and Hillary's lame excuses.
I find it ironic because during the Cold War, it was generally Republicans who opposed
the Soviet Union and its foreign policy the most strongly, with both language and action,
while Democrats favored conciliation with American rivals. Nowadays, however,
conservatives seem more pro-Russia while liberals seem much more hostile.
Let's be realistic, given the enormous number of leaks about Trump, if there was
anything to this we would know by now.
That's why I say :. Bring on the investigation!
It will just end in the entire media/Dem establishment looking bad.
Also:. Why would Putin want a US president that has a very aggressive pro drilling
stance and who wants a larger US military?
I would imagine it's the last thing he wants. Putin would probably *VASTLY* prefer
Sanders who is anti-energy, anti-military and honeymooned in Moscow during the cold war
as a political statement.
Buhaha You assume that I am a russian/live in Russia because I dare (oh, by the Gods
what a sacrilege!) to support russian foreign policy..
This alone is a good example of the delusional and zealot-like nature of russophobes such
as you..
Learn my uneducated "friend" that I live in an EU country, born and raised here-and
judging by the median US salary there is a great chance I make more $$ than you..But then
again only a cretin would judge a country based solely on these metrics..(Well, a cretin
and a russophobe in your case..)
Americans don't see it, but this anti-russian craze is creating serious pressures in
Europe, where voters more and more consider EU governments' blind following of U.S.
foreign policy as dangerous to their interests. Contrary to U.S. establishment, we
Europeans are not supremacists who believe that only their opinions and ways are the
right ones and the whole world needs to bow down to them. Remember what is the basis of
democracy? It's pluralism of opinions and civilised discussion. If Washington continues
this ideological war for longer time, it may cause serious problems for NATO.
Racism is the belief in the superiority of one race over another. It may also
include prejudice ,
discrimination , or
antagonism directed against other people because they are of a different race or ethnicity , or the belief that
members of different races or ethnicities should be treated differently. [1][2][3] Modern
variants of racism are often based in social perceptions of biological differences between
peoples. These views can take the form of social actions , practices or beliefs, or
political systems
in which different races are ranked as inherently superior or inferior to each other, based on
presumed shared inheritable traits, abilities, or qualities. [2][1][4]
Notable quotes:
"... Given the Democratic Party's reliance on the Russia narrative, these types of comments are likely to continue and worsen as the highly polarized investigations continue ..."
During an interview with NBC's
Chuck Todd on May 28, Clapper said, "If you put that in context with everything else we
knew the Russians were doing to interfere with the election," he said. "And just the historical practices of the Russians, who
typically, are almost genetically driven to co-opt, penetrate, gain favor, whatever, which is a typical Russian technique. So, we were concerned."
It's unclear what Clapper meant or what evidence he has to suggest that Russians are "almost
genetically driven to co-opt, penetrate, gain favor." His comments are xenophobic towards an
entire ethnicity and are far beyond criticism of Putin and the Russian government.
His comments go far into neo-McCarthyist territory, which many critics and skeptics have
warned the Democratic Party and intelligence community against. Clapper jumped from explaining
the investigation into Russia's role in the election to propagating an unhealthy and unfounded
definition of the Russian people. These comments are the type of sentiments that provoke such
policies as deporting all Russians from the United States, severing all ties with Russians,
banning all multi-national corporations from engaging in business with Russians, dispelling the
Russian Embassy, and setting off a chain of events that exponentially increase the likelihood
of military conflict between two nuclear superpowers.
In the United States alone, nearly three million people claim
direct Russian ancestry and almost one million people speak Russian.
However, Russia's interference in the election and the current political climate have fostered
an environment in which Clapper could say this on national television without anyone batting an
eye. Chuck Todd ignored the comment and proceeded with the interview as though Clapper's
response was normal.
The mainstream media have contributed to this Russiophobic rhetoric by perpetuating,
elevating and sensationalizing the Russia narrative. Several hucksters and conspiracy theorists
have gained massive followings from crying Russia at every opportunity, such as British
Conservative Louise Mensch and
former Bill Clinton volunteer director Claude Taylo r, who continue duping followers into
believing they have exclusive sources or insight into the "smoking gun" on Trump's ties with
Russia. By interviewing them, the mainstream media have irresponsibly elevated these people as
reliable sources on the subject. The New York Times even published an op-ed by Mensch,
who has furthered baseless claims that Russia
was behind Anthony Weiner's sexting crimes and has called
Bernie Sanders a "Russian agent."
Given the Democratic Party's reliance on the Russia narrative, these types of comments
are likely to continue and worsen as the highly polarized investigations continue .
I believe that the full and proper name of the psychiatric disorder in question is
Putin-Trump Derangement Syndrome [PTDS].
Symptoms include:
Eager and uncritical ingestion and social-media regurgitation of even the most patently
absurd MSM propaganda. For example, the meme that releasing factual information about actual
election-meddling (as Wikileaks did about the Dem-establishment's rigging of its own
nomination process in 2016) is a grave threat to American Democracy™;
Recent-onset veneration of the intelligence agencies, whose stock in trade is spying on
and lying to the American people, spreading disinformation, election rigging, torture and
assassination and its agents, such as liar and perjurer Clapper and torturer Brennan;
Rehabilitation of horrid unindicted GOP war criminals like G.W. Bush as alleged examples
of "norms-respecting Republican patriots";
Smearing of anyone who dares question the MSM-stoked hysteria as an America-hating
Russian stooge.
"The Campaign Press: Members of the 10 Percent, Reporting for the One Percent" [Matt
Taibbi,
Rolling Stone ]. "Anyone who's worked in the business (or read Manufacturing Consent)
knows nobody calls editors to red-pencil text.
The pressure comes at the point of hire. If you're the type who thinks Jeff Bezos should
be thrown out of an airplane, or that it's a bad look for a DC newspaper to be owned by a
major intelligence contractor, you won't rise.
Meanwhile, the Post has become terrific at promoting Jennifer Rubins and Max Boots.
Reporters watch as good investigative journalism about serious structural problems dies on
the vine, while mountains of column space are devoted to trivialities like Trump tweets
and/or simplistic partisan storylines.
Nobody needs to pressure anyone. We all know what takes will and will not earn attaboys in
newsrooms. Trump may have accelerated distaste for the press, but he didn't create it. He
sniffed out existing frustrations and used them to rally anger toward 'elites' to his side.
The criticism works because national media are elites, ten-percenters working for
one-percenters.
The longer people in the business try to deny it, the more it will be fodder
for politicians. Sanders wasn't the first, and won't be the last."
• Yep. I'm so glad
Rolling Stone has Matt Taibbi on-board. Until advertisers black-list "the One Percent," I
suppose.
"... Latest is the secretive Andy Pryce squandering millions of public money on the "Open Information Partnership" (OIP) which is the latest name-change for the Integrity Initiative and the Institute of Statecraft, just like al-Qaeda kept changing its name. ..."
"... In true Orwellian style, they splashed out on a conference for "defence of media freedom", when they are in the business of propaganda and closing alternative 'narratives' down. And the 'media' they would defend are, in fact, spies sent to foreign countries to foment trouble to further what they bizarrely perceive as 'British interests'. Just like the disgraceful White Helmets, also funded by the FO. ..."
"... "The Guardian is struggling for money" Surely, they would be enjoying some of the seemingly unlimited US defense and some of the mind control programmes budgets. ..."
OffGuardian already covered the Global Media Freedom Conference, our article
Hypocrisy Taints UK's
Media Freedom Conference , was meant to be all there was to say. A quick note on the obvious hypocrisy of this event. But, in
the writing, I started to see more than that. This event is actually creepy. Let's just look back at one of the four "main themes"
of this conference:
Building trust in media and countering disinformation
"Countering disinformation"? Well, that's just another word for censorship. This is proven by their refusal to allow Sputnik or RT
accreditation. They claim RT "spreads disinformation" and they "countered" that by barring them from attending. "Building trust"?
In the post-Blair world of PR newspeak, "building trust" is just another way of saying "making people believe us" (the word usage
is actually interesting, building trust not earning trust). The whole conference is shot through with this language
that just feels off. Here is CNN's
Christiane Amanpour :
Our job is to be truthful, not neutral we need to take a stand for the truth, and never to create a false moral or factual equivalence."
Being "truthful not neutral" is one of Amanpour's
personal sayings
, she obviously thinks it's clever. Of course, what it is is NewSpeak for "bias". Refusing to cover evidence of The White
Helmets staging rescues, Israel arming ISIS or other inconvenient facts will be defended using this phrase – they will literally
claim to only publish "the truth", to get around impartiality and then set about making up whatever "truth" is convenient. Oh, and
if you don't know what "creating a false moral quivalence is", here I'll demonstrate: MSM: Putin is bad for shutting down critical
media. OffG: But you're supporting RT being banned and Wikileaks being shut down. BBC: No. That's not the same. OffG: It seems the
same. BBC: It's not. You're creating a false moral equivalence . Understand now? You "create a false moral equivalence" by
pointing out mainstream media's double standards. Other ways you could mistakenly create a "false moral equivalence": Bringing up
Gaza when the media talk about racism. Mentioning Saudi Arabia when the media preach about gay rights. Referencing the US coup in
Venezuela when the media work themselves into a froth over Russia's "interference in our democracy" Talking about the invasion of
Iraq. Ever. OR Pointing out that the BBC is state funded, just like RT. These are all no-longer flagrant examples of the media's
double standards, and if you say they are , you're "creating a false moral equivalence" and the media won't have to allow
you (or anyone who agrees with you) air time or column inches to disagree. Because they don't have a duty to be neutral or show both
sides, they only have a duty to tell "the truth" as soon as the government has told them what that is. Prepare to see both those
phrases – or variations there of – littering editorials in the Guardian and the Huffington Post in the coming months. Along
with people bemoaning how "fake news outlets abuse the notion of impartiality" by "being even handed between liars the truth tellers".
(I've been doing this site so long now, I have a Guardian-English dictionary in my head).
Equally dodgy-sounding buzz-phrases litter topics on the agenda. "Eastern Europe and Central Asia: building an integrated support
system for journalists facing hostile environments" , this means pumping money into NGOs to fund media that will criticize our
"enemies" in areas of strategic importance. It means flooding money into the anti-government press in Hungary, or Iran or (of course),
Russia. That is ALL it means. I said in my earlier article I don't know what "media sustainability" even means, but I feel I can
take a guess. It means "save the government mouthpieces". The Guardian is struggling for money, all print media are, TV news
is getting lower viewing figures all the time. "Building media sustainability" is code for "pumping public money into traditional
media that props up the government" or maybe "getting people to like our propaganda". But the worst offender on the list is, without
a doubt "Navigating Disinformation"
"Navigating Disinformation" was a 1 hour panel from the second day of the conference. You can watch it embedded above if you really
feel the need. I already did, so you don't have to. The panel was chaired by Chrystia Freeland, the Canadian Foreign Minister. The
members included the Latvian Foreign Minister, a representative of the US NGO Committee to Protect Journalists, and the Ukrainian
Deputy Minister of Information
Have you guessed what "disinformation" they're going to be talking about? I'll give you a clue: It begins with R. Freeland, chairing
the panel, kicks it off by claiming that "disinformation isn't for any particular aim" . This is a very common thing for establishment
voices to repeat these days, which makes it all the more galling she seems to be pretending its is her original thought. The reason
they have to claim that "disinformation" doesn't have a "specific aim" is very simple: They don't know what they're going to call
"disinformation" yet. They can't afford to take a firm position, they need to keep their options open. They need to give themselves
the ability to describe any single piece of information or political opinion as "disinformation." Left or right. Foreign or domestic.
"Disinformation" is a weaponised term that is only as potent as it is vague. So, we're one minute in, and all "navigating disinformation"
has done is hand the State an excuse to ignore, or even criminalise, practically anything it wants to. Good start. Interestingly,
no one has actually said the word "Russia" at this point. They have talked about "malign actors" and "threats to democracy", but
not specifically Russia. It is SO ingrained in these people that "propaganda"= " Russian propaganda" that they don't need
to say it.
The idea that NATO as an entity, or the individual members thereof, could also use "disinformation" has not just been dismissed
it was literally never even contemplated. Next Freeland turns to Edgars Rinkēvičs, her Latvian colleague, and jokes about always
meeting at NATO functions. The Latvians know "more than most" about disinformation, she says. Rinkēvičs says disinformation is nothing
new, but that the methods of spreading it are changing then immediately calls for regulation of social media. Nobody disagrees. Then
he talks about the "illegal annexation of Crimea", and claims the West should outlaw "paid propaganda" like RT and Sputnik. Nobody
disagrees. Then he says that Latvia "protected" their elections from "interference" by "close cooperation between government agencies
and social media companies". Everyone nods along. If you don't find this terrifying, you're not paying attention. They don't say
it, they probably don't even realise they mean it, but when they talk about "close cooperation with social media networks", they
mean government censorship of social media. When they say "protecting" their elections they're talking about rigging them. It only
gets worse. The next step in the Latvian master plan is to bolster "traditional media".
The problems with traditional media, he says, are that journalists aren't paid enough, and don't keep up to date with all the
"new tricks". His solution is to "promote financing" for traditional media, and to open more schools like the "Baltic Centre of Media
Excellence", which is apparently a totally real thing .
It's a training centre which teaches young journalists about "media literacy" and "critical thinking". You can read their depressingly
predictable list of "donors" here . I truly wish I was joking. Next
up is Courtney Radsch from CPJ – a US-backed NGO, who notionally "protect journalists", but more accurately spread pro-US propaganda.
(Their token effort to "defend"
RT and Sputnik when they were barred from the conference was contemptible).
She talks for a long time without saying much at all. Her revolutionary idea is that disinformation could be countered if everyone
told the truth. Inspiring. Beata Balogova, Journalist and Editor from Slovakia, gets the ship back on course – immediately suggesting
politicians should not endorse "propaganda" platforms. She shares an anecdote about "a prominent Slovakian politician" who gave exclusive
interviews to a site that is "dubiously financed, we assume from Russia". They assume from Russia. Everyone nods.
It's like they don't even hear themselves.
Then she moves on to Hungary. Apparently, Orban has "created a propaganda machine" and produced "antisemitic George Soros posters".
No evidence is produced to back-up either of these claims. She thinks advertisers should be pressured into not giving money to "fake
news sites". She calls for "international pressure", but never explains exactly what that means. The stand-out maniac on this panel
is Emine Dzhaparova, the Ukrainian First Deputy Minister of Information Policy. (She works for the Ministry of Information – nicknamed
the Ministry of Truth, which was formed in 2014 to "counter lies about Ukraine". Even
The Guardian thought that sounded dodgy.)
She talks very fast and, without any sense of irony, spills out a story that shoots straight through "disinformation" and becomes
"incoherent rambling". She claims that Russian citizens are so brainwashed you'll never be able to talk to them, and that Russian
"cognitive influence" is "toxic like radiation." Is this paranoid, quasi-xenophobic nonsense countered? No. Her fellow panelists
nod and chuckle. On top of that, she just lies. She lies over and over and over again. She claims Russia is locking up Crimean Tartars
"just for being muslims", nobody questions her. She says the war in Ukraine has killed 13,000 people, but doesn't mention that her
side is responsible for over 80% of civilian deaths.
She says only 30% of Crimeans voted in the referendum, and that they were "forced". A fact not supported by
any polls done by either side in the last
four years, and any referenda held
on the peninsula any time in the last last 30 year. It's simply a lie. Nobody asks her about the journalists
killed in Ukraine since their
glorious Maidan Revolution . Nobody questions the fact that she works for something called the "Ministry of Information". Nobody
does anything but nod and smile as the "countering disinformation" panel becomes just a platform for spreading total lies.
When everyone on the panel has had their ten minutes on the soapbox, Freeland asks for recommendations for countering this "threat"
– here's the list:
Work to distinguish "free speech" from "propaganda", when you find propaganda there must be a "strong reaction".
Pressure advertisers to abandon platforms who spread misinformation.
Regulate social media.
Educate journalists at special schools.
Start up a "Ministry of Information" and have state run media that isn't controlled, like in Ukraine.
This is the Global Conference on Media Freedom and all these six people want to talk about is how to control what can be said,
and who can say it. They single only four countries out for criticism: Hungary, Nicaragua, Venezuela and Russia .and Russia takes
up easily 90% of that. They mention only two media outlets by name: RT and Sputnik. This wasn't a panel on disinformation, it was
a public attack forum – a month's worth of 2 minutes of hate. These aren't just shills on this stage, they are solid gold idiots,
brainwashed to the point of total delusion.
They are the dangerous glassy eyes of a Deep State that never questions itself, never examines itself, and will do anything it
wants, to anyone it wants whilst happily patting itself on the back for its superior morality. They don't know, they don't care.
They're true believers. Terrifyingly dead inside. Talking about state censorship and re-education camps under a big sign that says
"Freedom". And that's just one talk. Just one panel in a 2 day itinerary filled to the brim with similarly soul-dead servants of
authority. Truly, perfectly Orwellian.
Read and be appalled at what America is up to .keep for further reference. We are in danger.
Tim Jenkins
It would serve Ms. Amanpour well, to relax, rewind & review her own interview with Sergei Lavrov:-
Then she might see why Larry King could stomach the appalling corporate dictatorship, even to the core of False & Fake recording
of 'our' "History of the National Security State" , No More
Amanpour was forced to laugh uncontrollably, when confronted with Lavrov's humorous interpretations of various legal aspects
of decency & his Judgement of others' politicians and 'Pussy Riots' >>> if you haven't seen it, it is to be recommended, the whole
interview, if nothing else but to study the body language and micro-facial expressions, coz' a belly up laugh is not something
anybody can easily control or even feign that first spark of cognition in her mind, as she digests Lavrov's response :- hilarious
Einstein
A GE won't solve matters since we have a Government of Occupation behind a parliament of puppets.
Latest is the secretive Andy Pryce squandering millions of public money on the "Open Information Partnership" (OIP) which
is the latest name-change for the Integrity Initiative and the Institute of Statecraft, just like al-Qaeda kept changing its name.
In true Orwellian style, they splashed out on a conference for "defence of media freedom", when they are in the business
of propaganda and closing alternative 'narratives' down. And the 'media' they would defend are, in fact, spies sent to foreign
countries to foment trouble to further what they bizarrely perceive as 'British interests'. Just like the disgraceful White Helmets,
also funded by the FO.
Pryce's ventriloquist's dummy in parliament, the pompous Alan Duncan, announced another Ł10 million of public money for this
odious brainwashing programme.
Tim Jenkins
That panel should be nailed & plastered over, permanently:-
and as wall paper, 'Abstracts of New Law' should be pasted onto a collage of historic extracts from the Guardian, in
offices that issue journalistic licenses, comprised of 'Untouchables' :-
A professional habitat, to damp any further 'Freeland' amplification & resonance,
of negative energy from professional incompetence.
Francis Lee
Apropos of the redoubtable Ms Freeland, Canada's Foreign Secretary.
The records now being opened by the Polish government in Warsaw reveal that Freeland's maternal grandfather Michael (Mikhailo)
Chomiak was a Nazi collaborator from the beginning to the end of the war. He was given a powerful post, money, home and car by
the German Army in Cracow, then the capital of the German administration of the Galician region. His principal job was editor
in chief and publisher of a newspaper the Nazis created. His printing plant and other assets had been stolen from a Jewish newspaper
publisher, who was then sent to die in the Belzec concentration camp. During the German Army's winning phase of the war, Chomiak
celebrated in print the Wehrmacht's "success" at killing thousands of US Army troops. As the German Army was forced into retreat
by the Soviet counter-offensive, Chomiak was taken by the Germans to Vienna, where he continued to publish his Nazi propaganda,
at the same time informing for the Germans on other Ukrainians. They included fellow Galician Stepan Bandera, whose racism against
Russians Freeland has celebrated in print, and whom the current regime in Kiev has turned into a national hero.
Those Ukrainian 'Refugees' admitted to Canada in 1945 were almost certainly members of the 14th Waffen SS Division Galizia 1.
These Ukie collaboraters – not to be confused with the other Ukie Nazi outfit – Stepan Bandera's Ukrainian Insurgent Army -were
held responsible for the massacre of many Poles in the Lviv area the most infamous being carried out in the Polish village of
Huta Pienacka. In the massacre, the village was destroyed and between 500] and 1,000 of the inhabitants were killed. According
to Polish accounts, civilians were locked in barns that were set on fire while those attempting to flee were killed. That's about
par for the course.
Canada's response was as follows:
The Canadian Deschęnes Commission was set up to investigate alleged war crimes committed by the collaborators
Memorial to SS-Galizien division in Chervone, Lviv Oblast, western Ukraine
The Canadian "Commission of Inquiry on War Crimes" of October 1986, by the Honourable Justice Jules Deschęnesconcluded that in
relation to membership in the Galicia Division:
''The Galicia Division (14. Waffen grenadier division der SS [gal.1]) should not be indicted as a group. The members of Galicia
Division were individually screened for security purposes before admission to Canada. Charges of war crimes of Galicia Division
have never been substantiated, either in 1950 when they were first preferred, or in 1984 when they were renewed, or before this
Commission. Further, in the absence of evidence of participation or knowledge of specific war crimes, mere membership in the Galicia
Division is insufficient to justify prosecution.''
However, the Commission's conclusion failed to acknowledge or heed the International Military Tribunal's verdict at the Nuremberg
Trials, in which the entire Waffen-SSorganisation was declared a "criminal organization" guilty of war crimes. Also, the Deschęnes
Commission in its conclusion only referenced the division as 14. Waffen-Grenadier-Division der SS (Galizische Nr.1), thus in legal
terms, only acknowledging the formation's activity after its name change in August 1944, while the massacre of Poles in Huta Pieniacka,
Pidkamin and Palikrowy occurred when the division was called SS Freiwilligen Division "Galizien". Nevertheless, a subsequent review
by Canada's Minister of Justice again confirmed that members of the Division were not implicated in war crimes.
Yes, the west looks after its Nazis and even makes them and their descendants political figureheads.
mark
Most of these people are so smugly and complacently convinced of their own moral superiority that they just can't see the hypocrisy
and doublethink involved in the event.
Meanwhile Owen Jones has taken to Twitter to rubbish allegations that a reign of terror exists at Guardian Towers – the socialist
firebrand is quoted as saying 'journalists are free to say whatever they like, so long as it doesn't stray too far from Guardian-groupthink'.
Good analysis Kit, of the cognitive dissonant ping pong being played out by Nazi sympathisers such as Hunt and Freeland.
The echo chamber of deceit is amplified again by the selective use of information and the ignoring of relevant facts, such
as the miss reporting yesterday by Reuters of the Italian Neo-Nazi haul of weapons by the police, having not Russian but Ukrainian
links.
Not a word in the WMSM about this devious miss-reporting as the creation of fake news in action. But what would you expect?
Living as I do in Russia I can assure anyone reading this that the media freedom here is on a par with the West and somewhat
better as there is no paranoia about a fictitious enemy – Russians understand that the West is going through an existential crisis
(Brexit in the UK, Trump and the Clinton war of sameness in the US and Macron and Merkel in the EU). A crisis of Liberalism as
the failed life-support of capitalism. But hey, why worry about the politics when there is bigger fish to fry. Such as who will
pay me to dance?
The answer is clear from what Kit has writ. The government will pay the piper. How sweet.
I'd like to thank Kit for sitting through such a turgid masquerade and as I'm rather long in the tooth I do remember the old
BBC schools of journalism in Yelsin's Russia. What I remember is that old devious Auntie Beeb was busy training would be hopefuls
in the art of discretion regarding how the news is formed, or formulated.
In other words your audience. And it ain't the public
The British government's "Online Harms" White Paper has a whole section devoted to "disinformation" (ie, any facts, opinions,
analyses, evaluations, critiques that are critical of the elite's actual disinformation). If these proposals become law, the government
will have effective control over the Internet and we will be allowed access to their disinformation, shop and watch cute cat videos.
Question This
The liberal news media & hypocrisy, who would have ever thought you'd see those words in the same sentence.
But what do you expect from professional liars, politicians & 'their' free press?
Can this shit show get any worse? Yes, The other day I wrote to my MP regards the SNP legislating against the truth, effectively
making it compulsory to lie! Mr Blackford as much as called me a transphobic & seemed to go to great length publishing his neo-liberal
ideological views in some scottish rag, on how right is wrong & fact is turned into fiction & asked only those that agreed with
him contact him.
Tim Jenkins
"The science or logical consistency of true premise, cannot take place or bear fruit, when all communication and information is
'marketised and weaponised' to a mindset of possession and control."
B.Steere
Mikalina
I saw, somewhere (but can't find it now) a law or a prospective law which goes under the guise of harassment of MPs to include
action against constituents who 'pester' them.
I only emailed him once! That's hardly harassment. Anyway I sent it with proton-mail via vpn & used a false postcode using only
my first name so unlikely my civil & sincere correspondence will see me locked up for insisting my inalienable rights of freedom
of speech & beliefs are protected. But there again the state we live in, i may well be incarcerated for life, for such an outrageous
expectation.
Where to?
"The Guardian is struggling for money"
Surely, they would be enjoying some of the seemingly unlimited US defense and some of the mind control programmes budgets.
Harry Stotle
Its the brazen nature of the conference that is especially galling, but what do you expect when crooks and liars no longer feel
they even have to pretend?
Nothing will change so long as politicians (or their shady backers) are never held to account for public assets diverted toward
a rapacious off-shore economic system, or the fact millions of lives have been shattered by the 'war on terror' and its evil twin,
'humanatarian regime change' (while disingenuous Labour MPs wail about the 'horrors' of antisemitism rather than the fact their
former leader is a key architect of the killings).
Kit remains a go-to voice when deconstructing claims made by political figures who clearly regard the MSM as a propaganda vehicle
for promoting western imperialism – the self-satisfied smugness of cunts like Jeremy Cunt stand in stark contrast to a real journalist
being tortured by the British authorities just a few short miles away.
It's a sligtly depressing thought but somebody has the unenviable task of monitoring just how far our politicians have drifted
from the everyday concerns of the 'just about managing' and as I say Mr Knightly does a fine job in informing readers what the
real of agenda of these media love-ins are actually about – it goes without saying a very lengthy barge pole is required when
the Saudis are invited but not Russia.
Where to?
This Media Freedom Conference is surely a creepy theatre of the absurd.
It is a test of what they can get away with.
Mikalina
Yep. Any soviet TV watcher would recognise this immediately. Message? THIS is the reality – and you are powerless.
mark
When are they going to give us the Ministry of Truth we so desperately need?
"... We know our disinformation program is complete when almost everything the American public believes is false.' ..."
"... Using groundbreaking camera and lighting techniques, Riefenstahl produced a documentary that mesmerized Germans; as Pilger noted, her Triumph of the Will 'cast Adolf Hitler's spell'. She told the veteran Aussie journalist the "messages" of her films were dependent not on "orders from above", but on the "submissive void" of the public. ..."
"... All in all, Riefenstahl produced arguably for the rest of the world the most compelling historical footage of mass hysteria, blind obedience, nationalistic fervour, and existential menace, all key ingredients in anyone's totalitarian nightmare. That it also impressed a lot of very powerful, high profile people in the West on both sides of the pond is also axiomatic: These included bankers, financiers, industrialists, and sundry business elites without whose support Hitler might've at best ended up a footnote in the historical record after the ill-fated beer-hall putsch. (See here , and here .) ..."
"... The purpose of this propaganda barrage, as Sharon Bader has noted, has been to convince as many people as possible that it is in their interests to relinquish their own power as workers, consumers, and citizens, and 'forego their democratic right to restrain and regulate business activity. As a result the political agenda is now confined to policies aimed at furthering business interests.' ..."
Here was, of course, another surreal spectacle, this time courtesy of one of the Deep State's most dangerous, reviled, and divisive
figures, a notable protagonist in the Russia-Gate conspiracy, and America's most senior diplomat no less.
Not only is it difficult to accept that the former CIA Director actually believes what he is saying, well might we ask, "Who can
believe Mike Pompeo?"
And here's also someone whose manifest cynicism, hypocrisy, and chutzpah would embarrass the much-derided
scribes and Pharisees of Biblical days.
We have Pompeo on record recently in a rare moment of
honesty admitting – whilst laughing his ample ass off, as if recalling some "Boy's Own Adventure" from his misspent youth with a
bunch of his mates down at the local pub – that under his watch as CIA Director:
We lied, cheated, we stole we had entire training courses.'
It may have been one of the few times in his wretched existence that Pompeo didn't speak with a forked tongue.
At all events, his candour aside, we can assume safely that this reactionary, monomaniacal, Christian Zionist 'end-timer' passed
all the Company's "training courses" with flying colours.
According to Matthew Rosenberg
of the New York Times, all this did not stop Pompeo however from name-checking Wikileaks when it served his own interests. Back
in 2016 at the height of the election campaign, he had ' no compunction about pointing people toward emails stolen* by Russian hackers
from the Democratic National Committee and then posted by WikiLeaks."
[NOTE: Rosenberg's omission of the word "allegedly" -- as in "emails allegedly stolen" -- is a dead giveaway of bias on his part
(a journalistic Freudian slip perhaps?), with his employer
being one of those MSM marques leading the charge with the "Russian Collusion" 'story'. For a more insightful view of the source
of these emails and the skullduggery and thuggery that attended Russia-Gate, readers are encouraged to
check this out.]
And this is of course The Company we're talking about, whose past and present relationship with the media might be summed up in
two words:
Operation Mockingbird (OpMock). Anyone vaguely familiar with the well-documented Grand Deception that was OpMock, arguably the
CIA's most enduring, insidious, and successful
psy-ops gambit, will know what
we're talking about. (See
here ,
here ,
here , and
here .) At its most basic, this operation was all about propaganda and censorship, usually operating in tandem to ensure all
the bases are covered.
After opining that the MSM is 'totally infiltrated' by the CIA and various other agencies, for his part former NSA whistleblower
William Binney recently added , ' When it
comes to national security, the media only talk about what the administration wants you to hear, and basically suppress any other
statements about what's going on that the administration does not want get public. The media is basically the lapdogs for the government.'
We know our disinformation program is complete when almost everything the American public believes is false.'
In order to provide a broader and deeper perspective, we should now consider the views of a few others on the subjects at hand,
along with some history. In a 2013 piece musing on the modern significance of the practice, my compatriot John Pilger
ecalled a time when he met
Leni Riefenstahl
back in 70s and asked her about her films that 'glorified the Nazis'.
Using groundbreaking camera and lighting techniques, Riefenstahl produced a documentary that mesmerized Germans; as Pilger
noted, her Triumph of the Will 'cast Adolf Hitler's
spell'. She told the veteran Aussie journalist the "messages" of her films were dependent not on "orders from above", but on the
"submissive void" of the public.
All in all, Riefenstahl produced arguably for the rest of the world the most compelling historical footage of mass hysteria,
blind obedience, nationalistic fervour, and existential menace, all key ingredients in anyone's totalitarian nightmare. That it also
impressed a lot of very powerful, high profile people in the West on both sides of the pond is also axiomatic: These included
bankers, financiers, industrialists,
and sundry business elites without whose support Hitler might've at best ended up a footnote in the historical record after the
ill-fated
beer-hall
putsch. (See
here , and here .)
" Triumph " apparently still resonates today. To the surprise of few one imagines, such was the impact of the film -- as casually
revealed in the excellent 2018 Alexis Bloom documentary Divide and
Conquer: The Story of Roger Ailes -- it elicited no small amount of admiration from arguably the single most influential propagandist
of recent times.
[Readers might wish to check out Russell Crowe's recent portrayal of Ailes in Stan's mini-series
The Loudest Voice , in my view one the best performances of the man's career.]
In a recent piece unambiguously titled "Propaganda Is The Root Of All Our Problems", my other compatriot Caitlin Johnstone also
had a few things to
say about the subject, echoing Orwell when she observed it was all about "controlling the narrative".
Though I'd suggest the greater "root" problem is our easy propensity to ignore this reality, pretend it doesn't or won't affect
us, or reject it as conspiratorial nonsense, in this, of course, she's correct. As she cogently observes,
I write about this stuff for a living, and even I don't have the time or energy to write about every single narrative control
tool that the US-centralised empire has been implementing into its arsenal. There are too damn many of them emerging too damn
fast, because they're just that damn crucial for maintaining existing power structures.'
Fittingly, in a discussion encompassing amongst other things history, language, power, and dissent, he opined, ' Determining how
individuals communicate is' an objective which represents for the power elites 'the best chance' [they] have to control what people
think. This translates as: The more control 'we' have over what the proles think, the more 'we' can reduce the inherent risk for
elites in democracy.
' Clumsy men', Saul went on to say, 'try to do this through power and fear. Heavy-handed men running heavy-handed systems attempt
the same thing through police-enforced censorship. The more sophisticated the elites, the more they concentrate on creating intellectual
systems which control expression through the communications structures. These systems require only the discreet use of censorship
and uniformed men.'
In other words, along with assuming it is their right to take it in the first place, ' those who take power will always try to
change the established language ', presumably to better facilitate their hold on it and/or legitimise their claim to it.
For Oliver Boyd-Barrett, democratic theory presupposes a public communications infrastructure that facilitates the free and open
exchange of ideas.' Yet for the author of the recently published
RussiaGate and Propaganda: Disinformation in the Age of Social Media , 'No such infrastructure exists.'
The mainstream media he says, is 'owned and controlled by a small number of large, multi-media and multi-industrial conglomerates'
that lie at the very heart of US oligopoly capitalism and much of whose advertising revenue and content is furnished from other conglomerates:
The inability of mainstream media to sustain an information environment that can encompass histories, perspectives and vocabularies
that are free of the shackles of US plutocratic self-regard is also well documented.'
Of course the word "inability" suggests the MSM view themselves as having some responsibility for maintaining such an egalitarian
news and information environment. They don't of course, and in truth, probably never really have! A better word would be "unwilling",
or even "refusal". The corporate media all but epitomise the " plutocratic self-regard" that is characteristic of "oligopoly capitalism".
Indeed, the MSM collectively functions as advertising, public relations/lobbying entities for Big Corp, in addition to acting
as its Praetorian bodyguard , protecting their secrets,
crimes, and lies from exposure. Like all other companies they are beholden to their shareholders (profits before truth and people),
most of whom it can safely be assumed are no strangers to "self-regard", and could care less about " histories, perspectives and
vocabularies" that run counter to their own interests.
It was Aussie social scientist Alex Carey who
pioneered the study of nationalism ,
corporatism , and moreso for our purposes herein, the
management (read: manipulation) of public opinion, though all three have important links (a story for another time). For Carey, the
following conclusion was inescapable: 'It is arguable that the success of business propaganda in persuading us, for so long, that
we are free from propaganda is one of the most significant propaganda achievements of the twentieth century.' This former farmer
from Western Australia became one of the world's acknowledged experts on propaganda and the manipulation of the truth.
Prior to embarking on his academic career, Carey was a successful sheep
grazier . By all accounts, he was a first-class judge of the
animal from which he made his early living, leaving one to ponder if this expertise gave him a unique insight into his main area
of research!
In any event, Carey in time sold the farm and travelled to the U.K. to study psychology, apparently a long-time ambition. From
the late fifties until his death in 1988, he was a senior lecturer in psychology and industrial relations at the Sydney-based University
of New South Wales, with his research being lauded by such luminaries as Noam Chomsky and John Pilger, both of whom have had a thing
or three to say over the years about The Big Shill. In fact such was his admiration, Pilger
described him as "a second Orwell", which in anyone's lingo
is a big call.
In fact, for anyone with an interest in how public opinion is moulded and our perceptions are managed and manipulated, in whose
interests they are done so and to what end, it is as essential reading as any of the work of other more famous names. This tome came
complete with a foreword by Chomsky, so enamoured was the latter of Carey's work.
For Carey, the three "most significant developments" in the political economy of the twentieth century were:
the growth of democracy the growth of corporate power; and the growth of propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power against
democracy.
For Carey, it is an axiom of conventional wisdom that the use of propaganda as a means of social and ideological control is 'distinctive'
of totalitarian regimes. Yet as he stresses: the most minimal exercise of common sense would suggest a different view: that propaganda
is likely to play at least as important a part in democratic societies (where the existing distribution of power and privilege is
vulnerable to quite limited changes in popular opinion) as in authoritarian societies (where it is not).' In this context, 'conventional
wisdom" becomes conventional ignorance; as for "common sense", maybe not so much.
The purpose of this propaganda
barrage, as Sharon Bader has noted, has been to convince as many people as
possible that it is in their interests to relinquish their own power as workers, consumers, and citizens, and 'forego their democratic
right to restrain and regulate business activity. As a result the political agenda is now confined to policies aimed at furthering
business interests.'
An extreme example of this view playing itself right under our noses and over decades was the cruel fiction of the "
trickle down effect " (TDE) -- aka the 'rising tide that would lift all yachts' -- of
Reaganomics . One of several mantras that defined Reagan's
overarching political shtick, the TDE was by any measure, decidedly more a torrent than a trickle, and said "torrent" was going up
not down. This reality as we now know was not in Reagan's glossy economic brochure to be sure, and it may have been because the Gipper
confused his prepositions and verbs.
Yet as the GFC of 2008 amply demonstrated, it culminated in a free-for all, dog eat dog, anything goes, everyman for himself form
of cannibal (or anarcho) capitalism -- an updated, much
improved version of the no-holds-barred mercenary mercantilism much reminiscent of the
Gilded Age and the
Robber Barons who 'infested' it, only one
that doesn't just eat its young, it eats itself!
Making the World Safe for Plutocracy
In the increasingly dysfunctional, one-sided political economy we inhabit then, whether it's widgets or wars or anything in between,
few people realise the degree to which our opinions, perceptions, emotions, and views are shaped and manipulated by propaganda (and
its similarly 'evil twin' censorship ,) its most adept practitioners, and those elite, institutional, political, and corporate entities
that seek out their expertise.
It is now just over a hundred years since the practice of propaganda took a giant leap forward, then in the service of persuading
palpably reluctant Americans that the war raging in Europe at the time was their war as well.
This was at a time when Americans had just voted their then-president
Woodrow Wilson back into office for a second term, a victory
largely achieved on the back of the promise he'd
"keep us out of the War." Americans were
very much in what was one of their most
isolationist
phases , and so Wilson's promise resonated with them.
But over time they were convinced of the need to become involved by a distinctly different appeal to their political sensibilities.
This "appeal" also dampened the isolationist mood, one which it has to be said was not embraced by most of the political, banking,
and business elites of the time, most of whom stood to lose big-time if the Germans won, and/or who were already profiting or benefitting
from the business of war.
For a president who "kept us out of the war", this wasn't going to be an easy 'pitch'. In order to sell the war the president
established the Committee on Public Information
(aka the Creel Committee) for the purposes of publicising the rationale for the war and from there, garnering support for it
from the general public.
Either way, Bernays 'combined their perspectives and synthesised them into an applied science', which he then 'branded' "public
relations".
For its part the Creel committee struggled with its brief from the off; but Bernays worked with them to persuade Americans their
involvement in the war was justified -- indeed necessary -- and to that end he devised the brilliantly inane slogan,
"making the world safe for democracy"
.
Thus was born arguably the first
great propaganda catch-phrases of the modern era, and certainly one of the most portentous. The following sums up Bernays's unabashed
mindset:
The conscious, intelligent manipulation of the organised habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic
society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power
of our country.'
The rest is history (sort of), with Americans becoming more willing to not just support the war effort but encouraged to view
the Germans and their allies as evil brutes threatening democracy and freedom and the 'American way of life', however that might've
been viewed then. From a geopolitical and historical perspective, it was an asinine premise of course, but nonetheless an extraordinary
example of how a few well chosen words tapped into the collective psyche of a country that was decidedly opposed to any U.S involvement
in the war and turned that mindset completely on its head.
' [S]aving the world for democracy' (or some 'cover version' thereof) has since become America's positioning statement, 'patriotic'
rallying cry, and the "Get-out-of-Jail Free" card for its war and its white collar criminal clique.
At all events it was by any measure, a stroke of genius on Bernays's part; by appealing to people's basic fears and desires, he
could engineer consent on a mass scale. It goes without saying it changed the course of history in more ways than one. That the U.S.
is to this day still using a not dissimilar meme to justify its
"foreign entanglements" is testament to both its utility and durability.
The reality as we now know was markedly different of course. They have almost always been about power, empire, control, hegemony,
resources, wealth, opportunity, profit, dispossession, keeping existing capitalist structures intact and well-defended, and crushing
dissent and opposition.
The Bewildered Herd
It is instructive to note that the template for 'manufacturing consent' for war had already been forged by the British. And the
Europeans did not 'sleepwalk'
like some " bewildered herd ' into this conflagration.
For twenty years prior to the outbreak of the war in 1914, the then stewards of the British Empire had been diligently preparing
the ground for what they viewed as a preordained clash with their rivals for empire the Germans.
To begin with, contrary to the opinion of the general populace over one hundred years later, it was not the much touted German
aggression and militarism, nor their undoubted imperial ambitions, which precipitated its outbreak. The stewards of the British Empire
were not about to let the Teutonic upstarts chow down on their imperial lunch as it were, and set about unilaterally and preemptively
crushing Germany and with it any ambitions it had for creating its own imperial domain in competition with the Empire upon which
Ol' Sol never set.
The "Great War" is worth noting here for other reasons. As documented so by Jim Macgregor and Gerry Docherty in their two books
covering the period from 1890-1920, we learn much about propaganda, which attest to its extraordinary power, in particular its
power to distort
reality en masse in enduring and subversive ways.
In reality, the only thing "great" about World War One was the degree to which the masses fighting for Britain were conned via
propaganda and censorship into believing this war was necessary, and the way the official narrative of the war was sustained for
posterity via the very same means. "Great" maybe, but not in a good way!
The horrendous carnage and destruction that resulted from it was of course unprecedented, the global effects of which linger on
now well over one hundred years later.
Such was the
enduring power
of the propaganda that today most folks would have great difficulty in accepting the following; this is a short summary of historical
realities revealed by Macgregor and Docherty that are at complete odds with the official narrative, the political discourse, and
the school textbooks:
It was Great Britain (supported by France and Russia) and not Germany who was the principal aggressor in the events and actions that
let to the outbreak of war; The British had for twenty years prior to 1914 viewed Germany as its most dangerous economic and imperial
rival, and fully anticipated that a war was inevitable; In the U.K. and the U.S., various factions worked feverishly to ensure the
war went on for as long as possible, and scuttled peacemaking efforts from the off; key truths about this most consequential of geopolitical
conflicts have been concealed for well over one hundred years, with no sign the official record will change; very powerful forces
(incl. a future US president) amongst U.S. political, media, and economic elites conspired to eventually convince an otherwise unwilling
populace in America that U.S. entry onto the war was necessary; those same forces and many similar groups in the U.K. and Europe
engaged in everything from war profiteering, destruction/forging of war records, false-flag ops, treason, conspiracy to wage aggressive
war, and direct efforts to prolong the war by any means necessary, many of which will rock folks to their very core.
But peace was not on the agenda. When, by 1916, the military failures were so embarrassing and costly, some key players in the
British government were willing to talk about peace. This could not be tolerated. The potential peacemakers had to be thrown under
the bus. The unelected European leaders had one common bond: They would fight Germany until she was crushed.
Prolonging the Agony details how this secret cabal organised to this end the change of government without a single vote being
cast. David Lloyd George was promoted to prime minister
in Britain and Georges Clemenceau made prime minister
in France. A new government, an inner-elite war cabinet thrust the Secret Elite leader, Lord
Alfred Milner into power at the very inner-core of the
decision-makers in British politics.
Democracy? They had no truck with democracy. The voting public had no say. The men entrusted with the task would keep going till
the end and their place-men were backed by the media and the money-power, in Britain, France and America.
Propaganda Always Wins
But just as the pioneering adherents of propaganda back in the day might never have dreamt how sophisticated and all-encompassing
the practice would become, nor would the citizenry at large have anticipated the extent to which the industry has facilitated an
entrenched, rapacious plutocracy at the expense of our economic opportunity, our financial and material security, our physical, social
and cultural environment, our values and attitudes, and increasingly, our basic democratic rights and freedoms.
We now live in the Age of the Big Shill -- cocooned in a submissive void no less -- an era where nothing can be taken on face
value yet where time and attention constraints (to name just a few) force us to do so; [where] few people in public life can be taken
at their word; where unchallenged perceptions become accepted reality; where 'open-book' history is now incontrovertible not-negotiable,
upon pain of imprisonment fact; where education is about uniformity, function, form and conformity, all in the service of imposed
neo-liberal ideologies embracing then prioritising individual -- albeit dubious -- freedoms.
More broadly, it's the "Roger Ailes" of this world -- acting on behalf of the power elites who after all are their paymasters
-- who create the intellectual systems which control expression through the communications structures, whilst ensuring these systems
require only 'the discreet use of censorship and uniformed men.'
They are the shapers and moulders of the discourse that passes for the accepted lingua franca of the increasingly globalised,
interconnected, corporatised political economy of the planet. Throughout this process they 'will always try to change the established
language.'
And we can no longer rely on our elected representatives to honestly represent us and our interests. Whether this decision making
is taking place inside or outside the legislative process, these processes are well and truly in the grip of the banks and financial
institutions and transnational organisations. In whose interests are they going to be more concerned with?
We saw this all just after the
Global Financial Crisis
(GFC) when the very people who brought the system to the brink, made billions off the dodge for their banks and millions for
themselves, bankrupted hundreds of thousands of American families, were called upon by the U.S. government to fix up the mess, and
to all intents given a blank cheque to so do.
That the U.S. is at even greater risk now of economic
implosion is something few serious pundits would dispute, and a testament to the effectiveness of the snow-job perpetrated upon Americans
regarding the causes, the impact, and the implications of the 2008 meltdown going forward.
In most cases, one accepts almost by definition such disconnects (read: hidden agendas) are the rule rather than the exception,
hence the multi-billion foundation -- and global reach and impact -- of the propaganda business. This in itself is a key indicator
as to why organisations place so much importance on this aspect of managing their affairs.
At the very least, once corporations saw how the psychology of persuasion could be leveraged to manipulate consumers and politicians
saw the same with the citizenry and even its own workers, the growth of the industry was assured.
As Riefenstahl noted during her chinwag with Pilger after he asked if those embracing the "submissive void" included the liberal,
educated bourgeoisie? " Everyone ," she said.
By way of underscoring her point, she added enigmatically: 'Propaganda always wins if you allow it'.
Greg Maybury is a freelance writer based in Perth, Australia. His main areas of interest are American history and politics
in general, with a special focus on economic, national security, military, and geopolitical affairs. For 5 years he has regularly
contributed to a diverse range of news and opinion sites, including OpEd News, The Greanville Post, Consortium News, Dandelion Salad,
Global Research, Dissident Voice, OffGuardian, Contra Corner, International Policy Digest, the Hampton Institute, and others.
nottheonly1
This brilliant essay is proof of the reflective nature of the Universe. The worse the propaganda and oppression becomes, the greater
the likelihood such an essay will be written.
Such is the sophistication and ubiquity of the narrative control techniques used today -- afforded increasingly by 'computational
propaganda' via automated scripts, hacking, botnets, troll farms, and algorithms and the like, along with the barely veiled
censorship and information gatekeeping practised by Google and Facebook and other tech behemoths -- it's become one of the
most troubling aspects of the technological/social media revolution.
Very rarely can one experience such a degree of vindication. My moniker 'nottheonly1' has received more meaning with this precise
depiction of the long history of the manipulation of the masses. Recent events have destroyed but all of my confidence that there
might be a peaceful way out of this massive dilemma. Due to this sophistication in controlling the narrative, it has now become
apparent that we have arrived at a moment in time where total lawlessness reigns. 'Lawlessness' in this case means the loss of
common law and the use of code law to create ever new restrictions for free speech and liberty at large.
Over the last weeks, comments written on other discussion boards have unleashed a degree of character defamation and ridicule
for the most obvious crimes perpetrated on the masses through propaganda. In this unholy union of constant propaganda via main
stream 'media' with the character defamation by so called 'trolls' – which are actually virtual assassins of those who write the
truth – the ability of the population, or parts thereof to connect with, or search for like minded people is utterly destroyed.
This assault on the online community has devastating consequences. Those who have come into the cross hairs of the unintelligence
agencies will but turn away from the internet. Leaving behind an ocean of online propaganda and fake information. Few are now
the web sites on which it is possible to voice one's personal take on the status quo.
There is one word that describes these kind of activities precisely: traitor. Those who engage in the character defamation
of commenters, or authors per se, are traitors to humanity. They betray the collective consciousness with their poisonous attacks
of those who work for a sea change of the status quo. The owner class has all game pieces positioned. The fact that Julian Assange
is not only a free man, but still without a Nobel price for peace, while war criminals are recipients, shows just how much the
march into absolute totalitarianism has progressed. Bernays hated the masses and offered his 'services' to manipulate them often
for free.
Even though there are more solutions than problems, the time has come where meaningful participation in the search for such
solution has been made unbearable. It is therefore that a certain fatalism has developed – from resignation to the acceptance
of the status quo as being inevitable. Ancient wisdom has created a proverb that states 'This too, will pass'. While that is a
given, there are still enough Human Beings around that are determined to make a difference. To this group I count the author of
this marvelous, albeit depressing essay. Thank you more that words can express. And thank you, OffGuardian for being one of the
last remaining places where discourse is possible.
Really great post! Thanks. I'm part of the way through reading Alex Carey's book: "Taking the Risk Out of Democracy: Corporate
Propaganda Versus Freedom and Liberty," referenced in this article. I've learned more about the obviously verifiable history of
U.S. corporate propaganda in the first four chapters than I learned gaining a "minor" in history in 1974 (not surprisingly I can
now clearly see). I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in just how pervasive, entrenched and long-standing are the
propaganda systems shaping public perception, thought and behavior in America and the West.
Norcal
Wow Greg Maybury great essay, congratulations. This quote is brilliant, I've never see it before, "For Carey, the following conclusion
was inescapable: 'It is arguable that the success of business propaganda in persuading us, for so long, that we are free from
propaganda is one of the most significant propaganda achievements of the twentieth century.' "
Too, Rodger Ailes was the man credited with educating Nixon up as how to "use" the TV media, and Ailes never looked back as
he manipulated media at will. Thank you!
nondimenticare
That is also one of the basic theses of Harold Pinter's Nobel Prize speech.
vexarb
I read in 'Guns, Germs and Steel' about Homo Sapiens and his domesticated animals. Apparently we got on best in places where we
could find animals that are very like us: sheep, cattle, horses and other herd animals which instinctively follow their Leader.
I think our cousins the chimpanzee are much the same; both species must have inherited this common trait from some pre-chimpanzee
ancestor who had found great survival value in passing on the sheeple trait to their progeny. As have the sheep themselves.
By the way, has anybody observed sheeple behaviour in ants and bees? For instance, quietly following a Leader ant to their
doom, or noisily ganging up to mob a worker bee that the Queen does not like?
I'd say the elites are both for and against. Competing factions.
It's clear that many are interested in overturning democracy, whilst others want to exploit it.
The average grunt on the street is in the fire, regardless of the pan chosen by the elites.
"... Even more importantly, we should all be troubled by efforts to shut down content and discussions labeled "false and misleading" on major social media platforms . ..."
"... Conspiracies can be found out by many different ways e.g. documents uncovered, discrepancies, evidence that contradicts what has been claimed etc. ..."
"... "A two decade old CT, like 9/11, or worse, one six decades old (the JFK assassination), are false because they would have involved too many people–someone would have blown the whistle, if only on their deathbed." ..."
"... "If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. ..."
"... The old adage 'two men can keep a secret, if one of them is dead' applies here. ..."
"... This co-ordinated and global media attack on the 'Conspiracy Theorist' is co-ordinated and Global for good reason. ..."
"... The determination of international deepstate to make illegal any question or recognition of it under guise of 'Conspiracy theorist=domestic terrorist/anti-semite/anti-Zionist/BDS/trump supporting white supremacist(etc)'- conflating those ULTRA memes with growing awareness of the Anglo/Yankee/zionist PSYOPS underway globally, mean we are entering a choke point in progression of reason, truth and beauty. ..."
"... The danger of the conspiracy theorist to the present world order, is that most of the BIG ones, the nasty ones, are true. And CIA operation Mockingbirds' job (Quote) 'is to Guard against the illicit Transformation of Probability into Certainty," that they are . ..."
"... Ultimately, the average conspiracy theorist has a better grasp of how the world works than the average liberal. ..."
"... The reality is that the ruling class and its public servants really do have a parasitic and predatory relationship to the vast majority of humanity ..."
"... I like Michael Moore's response when asked if he believed the conspiracy theories which were floating about at the time: "Just the ones that are true" ..."
"... A conspiracy theory, like any theory is as strong as the evidence put forward to support it. ..."
"... One of the ways they will do this is to plant "evidence" purporting to support the theory, but easily disproved by easily available information. Unfortunately,it is a sad fact that far too many "conspiracy theorists" readily accept and share along with genuine evidence, this planted "evidence" to the wider internet, thereby undermining the solid evidence of a conspiracy, by associating it with the easily disprovable nonsense. ..."
"... For example, after the attack on the WTC Kissinger was appointed to the head the 9/11 commission (before stepping down). ..."
"... 'Conspiracy theorists' would have thought – why are neocons appointing a mass-murdering neocon to investigate an event that might have involved neocons (raising obvious credibility issues) – whereas those who regard conspiracy theorists as dribbling fruitcakes would have welcomed the appointment of the nobel peace prize winner. ..."
Noam
Chomsky has pointed out , the more educated we are, the more we are a target for state-corporate propaganda. Even journalists
outside the mainstream may internalize establishment values and prejudices. Which brings us to Parramore's embrace of the term "conspiracy
theory." Once a neutral and little-used phrase, "conspiracy theory" was infamously weaponized in
1967 by a memo from the CIA to its station chiefs worldwide.
Troubled by growing mass disbelief in the "lone nut" theory of President Kennedy's assassination, and concerned that "[c]onspiracy
theories have frequently thrown suspicion on our organization," the agency directed its officers to "discuss the publicity problem
with friendly and elite contacts (especially politicians and editors)" and to "employ propaganda assets to answer and refute the
attacks of the critics. Book reviews and feature articles are particularly appropriate for this purpose."
In the 45 years before the CIA memo came out, the phrase 'conspiracy theory' appeared in the Washington Post and New
York Times only 50 times, or about once per year. In the 45 years after the CIA memo, the phrase appeared 2,630 times, or
about once per week."
While it turns out that Parramore knows something about this hugely successful propaganda drive, she chose in her NBC piece to deploy
the phrase as the government has come to define it, i.e., as "something that requires no consideration because it is obviously not
true." This embeds a fallacy in her argument which only spreads as she goes on. Likewise, the authors of the studies she cites, who
attempt to connect belief in "conspiracy theories" to "narcissistic personality traits," are not immune to efforts to manipulate
the wider culture. Studies are only as good as the assumptions from which they proceed; in this case, the assumption was provided
by an interested Federal agency. And what of their suggested diagnosis?
On the contrary, most of the people I know who hold these varied (and not always shared) views are deeply empathic, courageously
humble, and resigned to a life on the margins of official discourse, even as they doggedly seek to publicize what they have learned.
A number of them have arrived at their views through painful, direct experience, like the
loss of a friend or the illness of a child, but far from having a "negative view of humanity," as Parramore writes, most hold
a deep and abiding faith in the power of regular people to see injustice and peacefully oppose it. In that regard, they share a great
deal in common with writers like Parramore: ultimately, we all want what's best for our children, and none of us want a world ruled
by unaccountable political-economic interests. If we want to achieve that world, then we should work together to promote speech that
is free from personal attacks on all sides. Even more importantly, we should all be troubled by efforts to shut down content and
discussions labeled "false and misleading"
on major social media platforms.
Who will decide what is false and what is true? ... ... ...
President Kennedy said:
a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people."
Perhaps we should take a closer look at ideas that so frighten the powers-that-be. Far from inviting our ridicule, the people who
insist that we look in these forbidden places may one day deserve our thanks.
John Kirby is a documentary filmmaker. His latest project, Four Died Trying, examines what John Kennedy, Malcolm X, Martin Luther
King and Robert Kennedy were doing in the last years of their lives which may have led to their deaths.
George
I am responding to an earlier comment you made because, for some reason, I cannot reply to it in the proper place.
"The old adage 'two men can keep a secret, if one of them is dead' applies here."
Wrong: secrets can be uncovered even if both of them are dead.
"The conspiracies we know about are exposed because someone talks, or a computer gets hacked."
Conspiracies can be found out by many different ways e.g. documents uncovered, discrepancies, evidence that contradicts what
has been claimed etc.
"A two decade old CT, like 9/11, or worse, one six decades old (the JFK assassination), are false because they would have involved
too many people–someone would have blown the whistle, if only on their deathbed."
Always a bad sign when you start to repeat "would have". Lots of presumption here.
"No new facts have emerged because the only people who knew anything are long dead, taking the reasons to their graves .."
New facts can emerge all the time even regarding the most ancient of events.
" .or in the case of 9/11, because there was no great conspiracy, beyond the one reported."
So you now have godlike omniscience?
"A propensity for subscribing to conspiracy theories, is, sad to say, indicative of mental inadequacy "
There's no point in going much further here. You now devolve into psychobabble which, as always, is based on the dogmatic assertion
that you are right. (cf. the formerly mentioned godlike omniscience)
Ragnar
"If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only
for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie.
It thus
becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the
lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State." These words are attributed to Joseph Goebbels.
-So, George, it would hardly make a difference whether the State is Marxist or Capitalist. It's either power or
truth. They are inherently different and can not be reconciled. Ultimately, there is no bridge possible.
However, so-called "common" goals are of a lower order and cooperation here is possible, temporarily. These relationships are
unstable and prone to breaking up precisely because they're ultimately not common at all. The principle are different and the
personalities too. Ships Passing In The Night, like. -See?
George
We all have common goals. Basically the goals of life and health. And these are hardly goals "of a lower order". If that was true
then we must be living in a state of "postmodernist relativity" where anyone can decide arbitrarily what matters. And that would
certainly lead to your ships-passing-in-the-night scenario i.e. the ultimate divide-and-rule vision.
As for power, the late Marxist writer Ellen Meiksins Wood noted that, in modern times, we have an unprecedented degree of political
freedom. But the reason for that is that power no longer lies in politics. It lies in economics. What is the point of having formal
rights when your livelihood is gone?
The old adage 'two men can keep a secret, if one of them is dead' applies here.
The conspiracies we know about are exposed because someone talks, or a computer gets hacked. A two decade old CT, like 9/11,
or worse, one six decades old (the JFK assassination), are false because they would have involved too many people – someone would
have blown the whistle, if only on their deathbed. No new facts have emerged because the only people who knew anything are long
dead, taking the reasons to their graves, or in the case of 9/11, because there was no great conspiracy, beyond the one reported.
A propensity for subscribing to conspiracy theories, is, sad to say, indicative of mental inadequacy. Such people are unable
to deal with the complexities of the world as it is, and therefore seek to make it a world of black and white, good and evil,
heroes and villains. The internet, with its blurring of fantasy and fact enables them. This is why discussions like this get so
polarised.
TFS
1. 9/11 and JFK are false because WILLIAM HBonney has declared it so.
Boom, thanks for watching kids.
2. In other news, some Conspiracy Theorists Imagined 747-E4Bs above Washington at the time of 9/11 and 25+second delay introduced
into the Air Traffic Control System but the Official Conspiracy Account of 9/11 didn't discuss it because there was nothing to
see.
6. But it's ok kidz, because HWB wack jobs, like first responders, police, fire personnel architects, physicists, former military
personnel, pilots, Nobel Peace Prixe winners, medical experts, etc etc all collectively asertained that the Official Conspiracy
Theory of 9/11 is about as usefull as the Warren Commission Report.
7. HOWEVER, HWB THINKS YOU'RE A WACK JOB.
r. rebar
unless & until someone goes to jail -- there are no conspiracies & as silence is -- like any commodity -- only as good as the
price paid to maintain it -- those who know have a real vested interest in not talking (it's not a secret if you tell someone)
roger morris
Ms Parramore is doing nothing more than her profession and tenure demands. Witting or un-witting. This co-ordinated and global
media attack on the 'Conspiracy Theorist' is co-ordinated and Global for good reason.
It is the 'Great Wurlitzer' at full throat
coinciding with extraordinary reductions in internet freedoms of information flow. The determination of international deepstate
to make illegal any question or recognition of it under guise of 'Conspiracy theorist=domestic terrorist/anti-semite/anti-Zionist/BDS/trump
supporting white supremacist(etc)'- conflating those ULTRA memes with growing awareness of the Anglo/Yankee/zionist PSYOPS underway
globally, mean we are entering a choke point in progression of reason, truth and beauty.
A read of the Cass Sunstein/Cornelius Adrian Comstock Vermeule Paper describing 'Conspiracy theory' as a 'crippled Epistemology'
and determining 'COINTELPRO' type strategies to counter the danger of their truth becoming certainty, will enlighten those in
the dark of IIO methodology and expose Ms Parramore as a true MOCKINGBIRD.
The danger of the conspiracy theorist to the present world order, is that most of the BIG ones, the nasty ones, are true. And
CIA operation Mockingbirds' job (Quote) 'is to Guard against the illicit Transformation of Probability into Certainty," that they
are .
"Ultimately, the average conspiracy theorist has a better grasp of how the world works than the average liberal. Even the most
outlandish "conspiracy theory" in existence -- that people like George W. Bush and Queen Elizabeth are shape-shifting, extra-dimensional
reptilians -- is closer to the truth than what liberals believe.
The reality is that the ruling class and its public servants really do have a parasitic and predatory relationship to the
vast majority of humanity "
I've often felt there is a lot of (metaphorical!) truth in David Icke's ravings, although the reptile image is unfortunate
in that actual reptiles are amongst the most sedate and peaceful creatures.
Molloy
Eichmann and today's useful idiots; Hannah Arendt
(start Arendt quote)
Despite all the efforts of the prosecution, everybody could see that this man was not a "monster," but it was difficult indeed
not to suspect that he was a clown. And since this suspicion would have been fatal to the whole enterprise, and was also rather
hard to sustain, in view of the sufferings he and his like had caused so many millions of people, his worst clowneries were hardly
noticed. What could you do with a man who first declared, with great emphasis, that the one thing he had learned in an ill-spent
life was that one should never take an oath ("Today no man, no judge could ever persuade me to make a sworn statement. I refuse
it; I refuse it for moral reasons. Since my experience tells me that if one is loyal to his oath, one day he has to take the consequences,
I have made up my mind once and for all that no judge in the world or other authority will ever be capable of making me swear
an oath, to give sworn testimony.
I won't do it voluntarily and no one will be able to force me"), and then, after being told
explicitly that if he wished to testify in his own defense he might "do so under oath or without an oath," declared without further
ado that he would prefer to testify under oath? Or who, repeatedly and with a great show of feeling, assured the court, as he
had assured the police examiner, that the worst thing he could do would be to try to escape his true responsibilities, to fight
for his neck, to plead for mercy -- and then, upon instruction of his counsel, submitted a handwritten document that contained
a plea for mercy?
As far as Eichmann was concerned, these were questions of changing moods, not of inconsistencies, and as long
as he was capable of finding, either in his memory or on the spur of the moment, an elating stock phrase to go with them, he was
quite content. (end quote)
And why it is essential to understand what Eichmann was facilitating (and the madness that morphed into the same apartheid bigotry
in the 21st century).
I appreciate the article, but the sentence below is offered with no logical or rational support – it is simply an evidence free
assertion:
("But Parramore and many journalists like her are neither assets of an intelligence service nor unthinking tools of big media;
) – really?
It is quite clear that if someone "is" (an asset of an intelligence service) that they will certainly not be broadcasting this
fact to the world or to friends and family. And for someone to assert that "conspiracies" don't exist in the real world requires
a level of credulity that most intelligent and rational people the least bit familiar with the historical record would find rather
difficult to muster up. I dare say it would be much easier in fact to prove the assertion that our Western history is simply the
"history of conspiracies" given the oligarchic control of Western populations for millennia. This is hardly "rocket science" as
they say. We do have a rather well documented historical record to fall back on to show the endless scheming of Western oligarchy
behind the backs of Western populations.
wardropper
I like Michael Moore's response when asked if he believed the conspiracy theories which were floating about at the time:
"Just the ones that are true"
John Thatcher
A conspiracy theory, like any theory is as strong as the evidence put forward to support it. Often people offer as fact conspiracies
that only as yet exist as theories,with greater or lesser amounts of evidence to support.I have no doubt that interested parties
who are the accused in these theories, will mount efforts to discredit any theory mounted against them or those they represent.
One of the ways they will do this is to plant "evidence" purporting to support the theory, but easily disproved by easily
available information. Unfortunately,it is a sad fact that far too many "conspiracy theorists" readily accept and share along
with genuine evidence, this planted "evidence" to the wider internet, thereby undermining the solid evidence of a conspiracy,
by associating it with the easily disprovable nonsense.
Harry Stotle
Isn't it high time we had a term to describe those who always accept the official version of events after controversial political
incidents no matter how implausible this account might be?
For example, after the attack on the WTC Kissinger was appointed to the head the 9/11 commission (before stepping down).
'Conspiracy theorists' would have thought – why are neocons appointing a mass-murdering neocon to investigate an event that
might have involved neocons (raising obvious credibility issues) – whereas those who regard conspiracy theorists as dribbling
fruitcakes would have welcomed the appointment of the nobel peace prize winner.
Anyway, here's a clip of Henry – the believers in everything the government say would never have considered the objections
raised in the film – such questions are tantamount to mental illness according to these 'progressives'.
" (the) factional struggle evident in the rise of Trump "
Thank you.
One of the many purposes of Russiagate was to misdirect people away from the fact that
Trump's election represents (among other things) a huge split in the ruling class, which can
roughly be described as one between extractive industries (energy, agriculture, mining, etc.)
and finance, media and tech. A map of the 2016 election results strongly supports this
analysis. Thus, Comcast was more than happy to give free reign to Rachel Maddow's two+ years
of disinfotainment
This split in the ruling class would provide an immense opportunity if the US had a real
functioning Left, rather than lumpen bourgeois and childish virtue signalling about open
borders and reparations.
Grandpa Putin Loses Another Bet
TrueStory Gazette, Aug. 2019
Several anonymous, unverified, and possibly non-existent sources announced today that they
know, might know, or could possibly have heard from unknown others, who they suspect might
know or could have reasonably speculated that Vladimir Putin lost a bet he made with his
2-year old grandson, Vladimir, Jr.
We caught up with the young Putin as he emerged from his daycare school in central Moscow.
"Yes, he said, it is true. Grandpa lost the bet we made last week. We wagered about how long
Western media could cling to even a microcosm of credibility. Grandpa said it would last
until the end of this year, but I bet him that it would be gone much sooner than that."
Two-year old Putin, who is an avid reader of Moon of Alabama, said that when he woke up
this morning he read the latest article. He said, "I just rubbed Grandpa's face into that
article. He shrieked. He was so embarrassed. He had to admit that western media's credibility
is already totally kaput, not even a shred of credibility left, zero."
"Now Grandpa is the laughing stock of my daycare center. One of my classmates, who is
four, said 'how could your Grandpa be so dumb. Even a two-year old could see that western
media's credibility is in the dumpster. Your Grandpa is such a loser!'"
The young Putin, who stands only up to our reporter's waist, said that he is studying
English but still struggles with difficult words like "history." But he is not shy. When
asked what was the prevailing political view at his childcare center, he looked our reporter
in the eye, raised both fists, and loudly proclaimed, "All of us kids agree that U.S. Empire
is a hysterectomy!"
We asked Vladimir, Jr. about the stakes of his bet, what did he win? He said, "Grandpa
said I could have a place called Camp Pendleton in California to make a playground for kids
but I will have to wait a little while until he acquires it. I'm going to make it a
playground for Russian and American kids and we also will invite all of the kids from Central
America and Mexico."
Asked if he knew that Camp Pendleton was a U.S. military base, he replied, "I don't know
what it is now, but it's going to be a great playground for kids." And he added, "Look Pal,
my Grandpa loses lots of times. He loses his keys and his wallet and every bet he ever made
with me. But one thing about Grandpa, he ALWAYS KEEPS HIS PROMISES!"
Grandpa Putin Loses Another Bet
TrueStory Gazette, Aug. 2019
Several anonymous, unverified, and possibly non-existent sources announced today that they
know, might know, or could possibly have heard from unknown others, who they suspect might
know or could have reasonably speculated that Vladimir Putin lost a bet he made with his
2-year old grandson, Vladimir, Jr.
We caught up with the young Putin as he emerged from his daycare school in central Moscow.
"Yes, he said, it is true. Grandpa lost the bet we made last week. We wagered about how long
Western media could cling to even a microcosm of credibility. Grandpa said it would last
until the end of this year, but I bet him that it would be gone much sooner than that."
Two-year old Putin, who is an avid reader of Moon of Alabama, said that when he woke up
this morning he read the latest article. He said, "I just rubbed Grandpa's face into that
article. He shrieked. He was so embarrassed. He had to admit that western media's credibility
is already totally kaput, not even a shred of credibility left, zero."
"Now Grandpa is the laughing stock of my daycare center. One of my classmates, who is
four, said 'how could your Grandpa be so dumb. Even a two-year old could see that western
media's credibility is in the dumpster. Your Grandpa is such a loser!'"
The young Putin, who stands only up to our reporter's waist, said that he is studying
English but still struggles with difficult words like "history." But he is not shy. When
asked what was the prevailing political view at his childcare center, he looked our reporter
in the eye, raised both fists, and loudly proclaimed, "All of us kids agree that U.S. Empire
is a hysterectomy!"
We asked Vladimir, Jr. about the stakes of his bet, what did he win? He said, "Grandpa
said I could have a place called Camp Pendleton in California to make a playground for kids
but I will have to wait a little while until he acquires it. I'm going to make it a
playground for Russian and American kids and we also will invite all of the kids from Central
America and Mexico."
Asked if he knew that Camp Pendleton was a U.S. military base, he replied, "I don't know
what it is now, but it's going to be a great playground for kids." And he added, "Look Pal,
my Grandpa loses lots of times. He loses his keys and his wallet and every bet he ever made
with me. But one thing about Grandpa, he ALWAYS KEEPS HIS PROMISES!"
"... So, at last, buried deep within the Times story, is the source for its claim that Russia is behind everything. So, what is the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), and who is behind it? ..."
"... If you go to Wikipedia, you find it was founded by George Weidenfeld, a famous London publisher, lifelong Zionist and friend to, among others, Angela Merkel, Kurt Waldheim (yes, that Kurt Waldheim) and too many Israeli politicians and military figures to count. When he died in 2016, he was granted the singular honor by Israel of burial at the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem. Before his death, he founded a chair for Israel Studies at University of Sussex, for the purpose of countering criticism of Israel . ..."
"... Weidenfeld died at the age of 96 in 2016. During the last few years of his life, he emphasized that he regarded Israel studies as explicitly political. ..."
"... ISD partners with and receives funding from a number of private social media multinational corporations, including Google, Facebook, Twitter and Microsoft. It also has ties to numerous governmental agencies around the world, including the US State Department, a plethora of NGOs and several US and UK neoliberal think tanks, like the Brookings Institution, as well as charitable foundations ranging from The Carnegie Corporation to the Open Societies Foundation (founder: George Soros). All in all, ISD is deeply tied to groups promoting the global status quo. Many of them also take a confrontational stance when it comes to Russia , while ignoring any bad actions by Israel, Saudi Arabia, and, of course, the United Sates. ..."
"... Neoliberalism, a policy model that advocates the control of economic factors to the private sector from the public sector, has been a dominant ideology since the 1980s. It rests on two main planks. Firstly, by increased competition that is achieved through deregulation and the opening up of domestic markets and, secondly, through privatization and limits on the ability of government to run fiscal deficits and accumulate debt, the paper – dated June 2016 - explained. [...] ..."
"... The IMF authors also state that the costs in terms of increased inequality are prominent and such costs epitomize the trade-off between the growth and equity effects of some aspects of the neoliberal agenda. They further argue that increased inequality in turn hurts the level and sustainability of growth. ..."
"... I'm just dumbfounded at how many people have thrown out their reasoning skills and bought into the Russian propaganda nonsense. ..."
"... But you don't have a right to say whatever you want about Israeli politics, stooge. ..."
"... Nice. I like to remind people of that time when Putin came before congress and told them to vote against Obama's Iran treaty and got a standing ovation. ..."
"... totally nuts. "Team Putin", "I long for...Putin in the Hague", "...watched Rachael Maddow...", someone dissing Caitlin Johnstone because she's Australian, "Dorsey and Gabbard and Assad and Putin, they're all in the same boat", "Russians actually showed up in Sweden and offered to pay immigrants to act out a riot." ..."
Of course, Trump is blamed as well, because he and Putin are best buds. And what they want, apparently is "far-right wing nationalism"
to spread across the entire globe.
To dig beneath the surface of what is happening in Sweden, though, is to uncover the workings of an international disinformation
machine, devoted to the cultivation, provocation and amplication of far-right, anti-immigrant passions and political forces. Indeed,
that machine, most influentially rooted in Vladimir V. Putin's Russia and the American far right , underscores a fundamental
irony of this political moment: the globalization of nationalism.
The central target of these manipulations from abroad -- and the chief instrument of the Swedish nationalists' success -- is
the country's increasingly popular, and virulently anti-immigrant, digital echo chamber.
A New York Times examination of its content, personnel and traffic patterns illustrates how foreign state and nonstate actors
have helped give viral momentum to a clutch of Swedish far-right web sites.
Russian and Western entities that traffic in disinformation, including an Islamaphobic think tank whose former chairman is
now Mr. Trump's national security adviser, have been crucial linkers to the Swedish sites, helping to spread their message to
susceptible Swedes.
Beyond the fact that these bare-faced allegations in the Times article about Russia's influence in spreading right wing nationalism
are not supported by any, well, facts, is the reality that Sweden, just as in the United States has a long history of nationalist
and nativist movements.
An article in The Harvard Political Review, dated
February 11, 2017 , sums up nicely the factors that have led to the ascendancy of right wing nationalism in Europe.
These right nationalist campaigns, including those of Brexit and Trump, have run on two fundamental ideas currently trending
in many western countries: uplifting the poor working class in a crippling globalized economy, and constricting immigration from
the Middle East. Although the political clashes in culture and economics seems to be the major driving forces of the rise of the
far right, there is another factor at work. The economy and immigration concerns have only been political speaking points disguising
the true catastrophe of modern politics: the loss of the general public's trust in institutions .
Two and a half years later, however, The New York Times is having none of those squishy nuanced arguments. It focuses its narrative
primarily on Putin and Russia as the source of rising right wing nationalism.
At least six Swedish sites have received financial backing through advertising revenue from a Russian- and Ukrainian-owned
auto-parts business based in Berlin, whose online sales network oddly contains buried digital links to a range of far-right and
other socially divisive content.
Writers and editors for the Swedish sites have been befriended by the Kremlin. And in one strange Rube Goldbergian chain of
events, a frequent German contributor to one Swedish site has been implicated in the financing of a bombing in Ukraine, in a suspected
Russian false-flag operation.
The distorted view of Sweden pumped out by this disinformation machine has been used, in turn, by anti-immigrant parties in
Britain, Germany, Italy and elsewhere to stir xenophobia and gin up votes, according to the Institute for Strategic Dialogue
, a London-based nonprofit that tracks the online spread of far-right extremism.
So, at last, buried deep within the Times story, is the source for its claim that Russia is behind everything. So, what is
the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), and who is behind it?
If you go to Wikipedia, you find it was founded by George Weidenfeld, a famous London publisher, lifelong Zionist and friend
to, among others, Angela Merkel, Kurt Waldheim (yes, that Kurt Waldheim) and too many Israeli politicians and military figures to
count. When he died in 2016, he was granted the singular honor by Israel of burial at the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem. Before his
death, he founded a chair for Israel Studies at University of Sussex, for the purpose of
countering criticism of Israel .
Weidenfeld died at the age of 96 in 2016. During the last few years of his life, he emphasized that he regarded Israel
studies as explicitly political.
Teaching the subject, he said, was "very important" in universities "with an anti-Israel or anti-Semitic presence." Weidenfeld's
comments indicate that he conflated criticism of Israel as a state with bigotry against Jews.
ISD partners with and receives funding from
a number of private social media multinational corporations, including Google, Facebook, Twitter and Microsoft. It also has ties
to numerous governmental agencies around the world, including the US State Department, a plethora of NGOs and several US and UK neoliberal
think tanks, like the Brookings Institution, as well as charitable foundations ranging from The Carnegie Corporation to the Open
Societies Foundation (founder: George Soros). All in all, ISD is deeply tied to groups promoting the global status quo. Many of them
also take a
confrontational stance when it comes to
Russia , while ignoring any bad actions by Israel, Saudi Arabia, and, of course, the United Sates.
Obviously, it's become a reflexive response by the corporate and legacy media in the US to blame Russia for all our troubles regarding
race and political polarization, as if none of these problems existed before Trump assumed office. Certainly, I agree Trump's actions
have enabled right wing extremists and exacerbated racial tensions in our country, but neither he nor Russia created the problems
of racism and xenophobia that have been with us since the beginning of American history. To continue to harp on Russia as the sole
bad actor in foreign and domestic affairs around the world is ludicrous, especially as it ignores the underlying factors that are
driving right wing nationalism: increasing poverty, massive wealth and income inequality (which has arguably
surpassed the levels that existed
prior to the Great Depression ) and the increasing efforts in the media to divide people from one another along racial and ethnic
lines.
No one who benefits from these levels of income and wealth inequality wants to point out the real reason why populist/nationalist
movements are attracting more and more followers. As always, it's the economy, stupid. A
2016 study conducted
by the IMF , hardly a bastion of radical leftists, makes this point very clear:
Instead of delivering growth, some neoliberal policies have increased inequality and have not delivered as expected, according
to a 2016 report from the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
Neoliberalism, a policy model that advocates the control of economic factors to the private sector from the public sector,
has been a dominant ideology since the 1980s. It rests on two main planks. Firstly, by increased competition that is achieved
through deregulation and the opening up of domestic markets and, secondly, through privatization and limits on the ability of
government to run fiscal deficits and accumulate debt, the paper – dated June 2016 - explained. [...]
The IMF authors also state that the costs in terms of increased inequality are prominent and such costs epitomize the trade-off
between the growth and equity effects of some aspects of the neoliberal agenda. They further argue that increased inequality in
turn hurts the level and sustainability of growth.
Obviously, that isn't the reality that the powers that be in our country want to promote - not at all. It might give people the
idea that, instead of living in a democracy, we are actually governed by puppets of wealthy and powerful corporations that are squeezing
us dry to benefit their bottom lines. Those in control of our two major parties much prefer disinformation, such as the promotion
of the conspiracy theory that our former Cold War adversary bears most, if not all, of the blame for everything bad happening in
our country, from the election of Trump to gun violence to political polarization. Telling the truth would be harmful to their interests.
These same powerful and wealthy interests would risk the takeover of governments around the world by fascist and right wing authoritarian
regimes, rather than change existing policies that favor unfettered capitalism and globalism, policies that are
literally threatening our future on this planet.
In short, expect more truthiness like this from the Times and other media outlets when it comes to explaining the causes of right
wing nationalism here and abroad:
As the 2018 elections approached, Swedish counterintelligence was on high alert for foreign interference. Russia, the hulking
neighbor to the east, was seen as the main threat. After the Kremlin's meddling in the 2016 American election, Sweden had reason
to fear it could be next.
"Russia's goal is to weaken Western countries by polarizing the debate," said Daniel Stenling, the Swedish Security Service's
counterintelligence chief. "For the last five years, we have seen more and more aggressive intelligence work against our nation."
But as it turned out, there was no hacking and dumping of internal campaign documents, as in the United States. Nor was there
an overt effort to swing the election to the Sweden Democrats , perhaps because the party, in keeping with Swedish popular opinion,
has become more critical of the Kremlin than some of its far-right European counterparts.
Instead, security officials say, the foreign influence campaign took a different, more subtle form: helping nurture Sweden's
rapidly evolving far-right digital ecosystem.
Oh those subtle Russkies! How they manage the time to destroy the democracies of every country on earth is beyond me, but then,
I'm not a reporter for The New York Times.
But blaming the rise of far right nationalism on Russia is definitely a major point as it diverts attention from the many and
varied causes for it which goes to the very heart of the globlist neoliberal capitalist order. Just as a side note, academia is
one of the important stalwarts in the diversion as they are gladly producing phony studies of tweets, etc which confirm these
beliefs.
BTW, the idea that Russia was responsbile for the rise of white nationalism and racism goes back a while now. There were a
few diaries on TOP that got a lot of attention claiming Putin had a major hand in Charotsville when it occurred.
I am surprised by the continued insistence that Russia is making "divisions" over BLM. It is an obvious attempt to minimalize
America racism, and also to marginalize BLM and smear it as Russian lackies (shades of the Civil Rigths movement and MLK). This
originally caused some anger within Black activists so the narrative became that Russians were pushing both pro-BLM and anti-BLM
messages (although wink wink, we know the Russians are really anti-Black).
doing neoliberalism, they've just switched the type of market. It looks like a good fit if you are looking at tanking the labor
market. Import cheap, disempowered labor to create the market that you want.
I was going to say something about how Globalists are really pushing immigration too far. It would be better to rise the standard
of living in your colonies and vassal states, but that would cost money and dilute control, so instead you import them and shift
to domestic colonialism.
Inserting large, non-assimilated populations into democratic states IS a problem to many people. Loss of self governance -
"We didn't get a say in this.", loss of a national or cultural identity - which becomes white vs non-white, it rigs the labor
market and promotes inequality via a two tiered economic system.
But that IMF quote jumped out at me, and they're still doing neoliberalism, but they're doing it to crush labor markets instead
of opening markets or tapping international labor markets. It fits well within neoliberal ideology.
Rubio is saying that Russian bots are spreading the Clintons killed Epstein crap on Twitter. Seriously? But he says nothing
about Trump who retweeted a tweet saying that the Clintons killed Epstein. Or s lil Marco calling Trump a Russian bot?
Then there's this one.
HeyRussians, writing here on an AMERICAN platform, I have a constitutional right to say whatever I want about American or
Russian politics. No one is forcing you to read what I say. Stop with the demands for censorship. Russian "sovereignty" does
not extend to Twitter.
totally nuts. "Team Putin", "I long for...Putin in the Hague", "...watched Rachael Maddow...", someone dissing Caitlin Johnstone
because she's Australian, "Dorsey and Gabbard and Assad and Putin, they're all in the same boat", "Russians actually showed up
in Sweden and offered to pay immigrants to act out a riot."
Rubio is saying that Russian bots are spreading the Clintons killed Epstein crap on Twitter. Seriously? But he says nothing
about Trump who retweeted a tweet saying that the Clintons killed Epstein. Or s lil Marco calling Trump a Russian bot?
Then there's this one.
HeyRussians, writing here on an AMERICAN platform, I have a constitutional right to say whatever I want about American
or Russian politics. No one is forcing you to read what I say. Stop with the demands for censorship. Russian "sovereignty"
does not extend to Twitter.
totally nuts. "Team Putin", "I long for...Putin in the Hague", "...watched Rachael Maddow...", someone dissing Caitlin Johnstone
because she's Australian, "Dorsey and Gabbard and Assad and Putin, they're all in the same boat", "Russians actually showed
up in Sweden and offered to pay immigrants to act out a riot."
But you don't have a right to say whatever you want about Israeli politics, stooge.
Nice. I like to remind people of that time when Putin came before congress and told them to vote against Obama's Iran treaty
and got a standing ovation.
totally nuts. "Team Putin", "I long for...Putin in the Hague", "...watched Rachael Maddow...", someone dissing Caitlin Johnstone
because she's Australian, "Dorsey and Gabbard and Assad and Putin, they're all in the same boat", "Russians actually showed
up in Sweden and offered to pay immigrants to act out a riot."
But you don't have a right to say whatever you want about Israeli politics, stooge.
Nice. I like to remind people of that time when Putin came before congress and told them to vote against Obama's Iran treaty
and got a standing ovation.
@snoopydawg
@snoopydawg The Hillbots, not the Rooskies, are all in for restricting "hate speech", which means anybody who disagrees
with them. Talk about xenophobia. Dems have this in spades, as well as more than a few Repugnants. We are being outmaneuvered
away from peaceful co-existence to Russia ruins everything.
Orange man bad is corollary to RussiaRussiaRussia.
Rubio is saying that Russian bots are spreading the Clintons killed Epstein crap on Twitter. Seriously? But he says nothing
about Trump who retweeted a tweet saying that the Clintons killed Epstein. Or s lil Marco calling Trump a Russian bot?
Then there's this one.
HeyRussians, writing here on an AMERICAN platform, I have a constitutional right to say whatever I want about American
or Russian politics. No one is forcing you to read what I say. Stop with the demands for censorship. Russian "sovereignty"
does not extend to Twitter.
@snoopydawg guaranteeing American constitutional rights? But I thought the current Democratic talking point is that the
big tech monopolies are private companies so they can censor and misinform with impunity. Does McFail also concede that we have
a right to privacy on that wonderful "AMERICAN" platform?
It's hilarious this was Obama's ambassador to Russia. I didn't think you were supposed to hate the people, culture, and government
of the country to whom you had been assigned as a diplomat.
Rubio is saying that Russian bots are spreading the Clintons killed Epstein crap on Twitter. Seriously? But he says nothing
about Trump who retweeted a tweet saying that the Clintons killed Epstein. Or s lil Marco calling Trump a Russian bot?
Then there's this one.
HeyRussians, writing here on an AMERICAN platform, I have a constitutional right to say whatever I want about American
or Russian politics. No one is forcing you to read what I say. Stop with the demands for censorship. Russian "sovereignty"
does not extend to Twitter.
saying about Russia were instead directed at Israel? AIPAC would be in front of congress daily to get people to stop saying
those things.
Misfud is the guy who told Papadapoulus that Russia had Hillary's emails who then 'got drunk and blabbed it to the Dutch ambassador'
who then told someone in the FBI who then decided to open an investigation into the Trump campaign. I just read that this information
about Misfud has come to the intelligence committee's attention. So I'm sure that any day now we will be told to forget everything
we've been told about how Trump colluded with Russia right? Any day...yup...congress is going to tell us that the two year long
propaganda campaign that they have been pushing on us was false. Just like Trump said it was. Any..day..
#7 guaranteeing American constitutional rights? But I thought the current Democratic talking point is that the big tech
monopolies are private companies so they can censor and misinform with impunity. Does McFail also concede that we have a right
to privacy on that wonderful "AMERICAN" platform?
It's hilarious this was Obama's ambassador to Russia. I didn't think you were supposed to hate the people, culture, and
government of the country to whom you had been assigned as a diplomat.
Has been a big promoter of Russiagate for years, since near the beginning. How do I know he's working with the Clintons? Longtime
Clinton ally and co-chair of the Hillary Clinton Transition Team, Neera Tanden, repeatedly cites him as a source of validity for
Russiagate in this video. You can make a drinking game out of how many times she says "Marco Rubio."
is that Chris Cuomo actually behaves like a real journalist. I wonder how many more talking heads up there in corporateworld
actually would like to be journalists?
Wonder what it was about Neera that pushed him over the edge and made him betray his journalistic leanings.
Has been a big promoter of Russiagate for years, since near the beginning. How do I know he's working with the Clintons?
Longtime Clinton ally and co-chair of the Hillary Clinton Transition Team, Neera Tanden, repeatedly cites him as a source of
validity for Russiagate in this video. You can make a drinking game out of how many times she says "Marco Rubio."
The economy and immigration concerns have only been political speaking points disguising the true catastrophe of modern
politics: the loss of the general public's trust in institutions.
Years ago in a sociology class, I learned that 5 components are necessary for a functioning society: family, education, religion,
an economic structure, and a political system. These 5 elements are interrelated, so when one goes awry, other parts are affected.
It is no secret that our political system is broken and our economic system (neoliberalism) is cracking. Many mainstream churches
are losing membership, being replaced by non-affiliated ones. For a couple of decades public education has been the enemy due
to right-wing conservatives, hoping to replace this system with private and home schooling. Public universities are in their crosshairs,
too. Of course, all these malfunctioning components affect the basic structure of a society: the family. I'm afraid we're in for
a bumpy ride, before the air is cleared.
5 components are necessary for a functioning society: family, education, religion, an economic structure, and a political system.
Corporate owns all of them, save the family, but they're working on it...
Education - completely corporate dominated with public acquiescence.
Political - Think tanks create policy for sponsored talent to ratify
Religion - Atheism, Megachurches, televangelists, political activity, NGOs as slush funds
Economic - Private FED, banks, ratings institutions, bailed out by stakholder bail-in
Family - 2 worker families, tv as baby sitter, mobile phones
Seriously, corporate owns or can significantly disrupt all 5 pillars of a functioning society. It's rather terrifying.
The economy and immigration concerns have only been political speaking points disguising the true catastrophe of modern
politics: the loss of the general public's trust in institutions.
Years ago in a sociology class, I learned that 5 components are necessary for a functioning society: family, education,
religion, an economic structure, and a political system. These 5 elements are interrelated, so when one goes awry, other parts
are affected. It is no secret that our political system is broken and our economic system (neoliberalism) is cracking. Many
mainstream churches are losing membership, being replaced by non-affiliated ones. For a couple of decades public education
has been the enemy due to right-wing conservatives, hoping to replace this system with private and home schooling. Public universities
are in their crosshairs, too. Of course, all these malfunctioning components affect the basic structure of a society: the family.
I'm afraid we're in for a bumpy ride, before the air is cleared.
5 components are necessary for a functioning society: family, education, religion, an economic structure, and a political
system.
Corporate owns all of them, save the family, but they're working on it...
Education - completely corporate dominated with public acquiescence.
Political - Think tanks create policy for sponsored talent to ratify
Religion - Atheism, Megachurches, televangelists, political activity, NGOs as slush funds
Economic - Private FED, banks, ratings institutions, bailed out by stakholder bail-in
Family - 2 worker families, tv as baby sitter, mobile phones
Seriously, corporate owns or can significantly disrupt all 5 pillars of a functioning society. It's rather terrifying.
of word, but I think in any society larger than a tribe you have to have some kind of common ground, a common belief system
- cultural mores and values. If you look at secular humanism and atheism as religion or belief system, it completely fits.
Politics and science are near religions for many people at this point in time, IMO, replete with priests, choirs, dogma, and
blasphemy.
Politics and science are also highly material at this point in time. Values are predicated on profits and social control and
ideas are nothing more than mechanistic computations. If you suggest something that costs profits or removes social control, or
you offer ideas that say we're in anything but a mechanistic, dead, dumb universe, you're blaspheming.
I'd say they did a pretty fine job of creating new religions and belief systems, and they are every bit as dogmatic and stupid
as their big boss man in the sky predecessors.
@The Voice In the Wilderness
Kamala seems so much more passionate about displacing blame onto Russia for structural US racism than about fighting the
disenfranchisement of black and brown citizens, including the many she gleefully sent to prison.
https://t.co/hpcTt7QRtF
She said that Russian bots were helping push what Tulsi said about her and they spread the "taking a knee" when it was Kaepernick
who started it. Kamillary for this BS! She hired Hillary's campaign team as well as her lawyers. Hillary got people to go to the
Hamptons for a Harris fundraiser.
Trump is a student of Hitler & a disciple of Putin, with whom he's had several secret conversations with Putin giving him
advice. Putin certainly knows how to make troublesome people disappear while keeping enough distance to claim plausible deniability
& may have given Trump some tips on how to do the same (assuming Trump hadn't already learned that from his ample experience with
mobsters).
A disciple? A student of Hitler? Seriously where do people come up with this sh*t? And why do others agree with that person?
SMDH. I can't understand how anyone can believe this.
@The Voice In the Wilderness
. . . didn't take my tip seriously. The lady on the other end of the line was all ears about the assault rifles stamped "US ARMOURY"
that I reported being hidden in the garage of where I had lived, as well as something I had never seen that might have been a
grenade launcher due to the size of the barrel.
However, when she found out I was the "estranged" wife of the person who possessed them, she actually told me my tip would
not go any further because "estranged" wives can't be believed.
No way in hell I was going to report it while I was still living there. I did it after going into hiding almost a thousand
miles away. Our son and I remained in hiding for 6 years, until the ex also almost killed the next love of his life in front of
a neighbor. We were freed by that neighbor's testimony and a 99 year prison sentence for retaliation (he held her at gunpoint
too after being released on no bond for assaulting her because his dad was buddies with the local judge). But yeah, ex wives lie.
Now I know: If you see something, say not a goddamned thing because you won't be believed anyway.
Further, Trump's ex-wife brought this up - if I remember correctly - 20, or more, years ago. It was from an interview in Vanity
Fair. You can dredge it up online if you want. The Vanity Fair site was where I read it years ago.
I don't think Trump was planning a presidential bid back in the day, so the revelation of Trump's reading material wasn't quite
the bombshell then. Curious? Yes, even then. Hardly surprising if you've followed Trump's antics over the decades.
#13.1 can also tell some inconvenient truths.
This one is backed by the fellow who gave him the book . When a reporter, who had heard about this, asked Trump about it,
he claimed it was a copy of Mein Kampf, and that anyway it's all innocent enough because the friend who gave it to him was
a Jew.
When the friend was contacted, he clarified that it wasn't MK but My New Order, a book of Hitler's speeches. And that, actually,
he isn't Jewish.
@travelerxxx the link to that VF article is at the top of the article I linked above.
We know he had a brief bid for the presidency in the 2000 cycle, iirc.
And practicing his speechmaking with the Hitler speeches: reminds me that Hitler himself spent years before he came to power
practicing in front of a mirror, with a photographer capturing images.
No, Donald is not Hitler. But does have authoritarian/dictatorial tendencies, along with the desire to whip up the crowd on
an ignorant populist basis, including racial division.
Further, Trump's ex-wife brought this up - if I remember correctly - 20, or more, years ago. It was from an interview in
Vanity Fair. You can dredge it up online if you want. The Vanity Fair site was where I read it years ago.
I don't think Trump was planning a presidential bid back in the day, so the revelation of Trump's reading material wasn't
quite the bombshell then. Curious? Yes, even then. Hardly surprising if you've followed Trump's antics over the decades.
...the link to that VF article is at the top of the article I linked above.
And so it is! I missed it! Thanks.
#13.1.2.1 the link to that VF article is at the top of the article I linked above.
We know he had a brief bid for the presidency in the 2000 cycle, iirc.
And practicing his speechmaking with the Hitler speeches: reminds me that Hitler himself spent years before he came to power
practicing in front of a mirror, with a photographer capturing images.
No, Donald is not Hitler. But does have authoritarian/dictatorial tendencies, along with the desire to whip up the crowd
on an ignorant populist basis, including racial division.
Much of that crap appears to be Projection.
Putin's Polices Destroying Russian Farmers will probably be next since as you'll learn
once you click that it's the exact opposite. It looks quite possible that the opening up of
ag lands in Russia's Far East will see China cease its imports of soybeans from the Western
Hemisphere as it's already done so in response to Trump's Trade War. As the article notes:
"Net farm income in America has plunged by nearly half over the last five years from
$123.4 billion in 2013 to $63 billion last year. It plummeted by 16 percent last year
alone."
And with China's market closed, the result this year will be even worse. And it's all
Putin's fault!
And to make matters worse, Putin has weaponized the Outlaw US Empire's budget deficit,
forcing it to spend "more than twice as fast as tax collections" and now stands at $867
Billion through "the first 10 months of the budget year." (No link, from Business section
of today's newspaper.) IMO, that will be headlined as: Putin Loses Control Over Russia's
Budget as Deficit Skyrockets!
It's this one most of us are hopeful of reading soon:
Yes, we're in rich psychological terrain. Aberrant terrain, to the extent such things
can be extrapolated to system behavior.
It's a psychological projection. The Full Spectrum Dominance crowd feels their quest
receding into permanent incompletion. So they wishfully project their sense of loss onto
the opponent. Wanting everything, dominance perceives alternate visions as being nothing
less than obstinate escapees. Who knew they were in a figmentary prison in the first place?
Competing visions, through no real fault of their own, become weapon pointed at this
totalizing vision. Heck, they're not even competing. They're just living.
Dominance's blind spot is that it never stops to ask if others want to be dominated.
This makes it structurally myopic and prone to self-deception.
The same psychology is found in the sanctioning impulse. "In order to preserve our sense
of omnipotence, we hereby subtract you from the game board." But pariah nations, while
perhaps vanishing psychologically to the offended party ('you're dead to me now') don't
vanish in any existential sense. They re-gather under different umbrellas: SCO, OBOR, AIIB,
etc.
Too many subtractions and the subtractees acquire a critical mass all their own.
Subtraction adds up. There is an opportunity here to exploit the Empire's irrational
denialism -via the rational accumulation of estranged and heretofore 'banished'
interests.
One day, the lesser critical mass will achieve parity, then dominance or perhaps simply
multipolarity. Before that day, a ruinous world war could happen first. This latter
decision has already been taken since pre-kinetic versions of WW3 are popping up everywhere
at once as though instigated by some spanning Hidden Hand.
Putin is the Emmanuel Goldstein of the Neoliberal World Order, every bad decision, every
mistake, every failure, especially the ones that were obviously flawed from the start, are
the results of that dastardly Putin. It's amazing how in the Empire of the Lies, a
competent political leader of a sovereign country is becoming a Lex Luthor like
supervillain mastermind.
It's almost romantic that these Western elites spend so much time high up in their ivory
towers surrounded by the wastelands of their own making, clutching their pearls, thinking
about Putin and wondering how he will get to them.
We should note that Obama was the first to announce Putin would fail in Syria when the
Russians came to help out the Assad government against the US backed Takfaris. The results
of Russian support were quite spectacular. Of course, the war is still going on but there
is no question that Russia saved the Syrian state. Can anyone mention a single military
victory that the US has achieved since what? Grenada under Reagan and Bush I against Panama
?? Other than those two "victories" the US has lost every war it has engaged in since the
end of WWII.
It gets confusing, but that is the point of all this.
We should be scared of our hero, tragic anti-hero, uber villain and rolemodel.
Not just Russians under the bed, but THE Russian under the bed.
Or so many a lady (or not, as the case may be) might wish or be fearful of or both...
(In other news: Epstein dead? Highly unlikely, ever so doubtful, I do side with Aangirfan
on this)
I especially like how Putin lost in Crimea. One of his best losses, in my opinion.
Also, Masha and the Bear , Russia's
ultimate weapon in the war for the minds of the Western youth, continues its march across
the globe: the "Маша
плюс каша" episode is at 4.08 billion
views ( 4th most-viewed video on
YouTube ) and growing fast, set to overtake Wiz Khalifa's "See You Again" (4.20
billion) and Ed Sheeran's "Shape of You" (4.35 billion) in the coming weeks.
@Bemildred #10: What a great piece by Patrick Armstrong. Very logical and rational. Perfect
for deprogramming people brainwashed by the Mockingbird Media.
How much more do the lobotomized American Sheeple (generally not represented in this forum)
need to realize that the mainstream "news" media are the propaganda arms of the western
(Anglo-Zionist) power structure?
"Let us be clear here. It is the United States who has broken its word and treaties
consistently. We said we wouldn't move NATO up to Russia's borders and then we did. We
unilaterally walked away from the ABM treaty, we unilaterally walked away from the Iran
nuclear deal, we unilaterally walked away from the INF treaty and we will almost certainly
walk away from the nuclear test ban treaty. We always allege violations from the other side
but never provide any proof of said violations. The United States has invaded Afghanistan,
Iraq, Libya, and Syria - so far without consequences. The United States has fomented coups
in Ukraine (twice), Georgia, probably in Brazil, Venezuela (twice) - again, without
consequences. And people wonder why I gag when I listen to Pompous pontificate that Iran
needs to start acting like a normal nation."
Posted by: Jeff | Aug 13 2019 17:03 utc | 43
Clear, concise, and right on target. Should be on a handbill, and passed out to the
general public. Thanks Jeff!!
Breaking News : Putin has a private army now. How devilish. CNN is definitely a bunch of
clowns, that makes you laugh everytime they talk. Enjoy this one:
The take away quote
"
At a recent political event in his home state of Kentucky, McConnell was heckled and booed by
Democrat supporters chanting "Moscow Mitch, Moscow Mitch!" The protesters were wearing
T-shirts and brandishing placards with images of McConnell donning a Cossack hat with
Soviet-era hammer and sickles.
Understandably, the 77-year-old senator has reacted with aghast over the political
attacks. He called it "modern-day McCarthyism" harking back to the Cold War years of Red
Baiting. He even said it was worse that the past McCarthyism. And he has a point there.
McConnell's exasperation is borne out of the complete irrational vacuousness of the
accusations. The six-time elected lawmaker is the longest-serving Republican senator. He is a
grandee of the traditionally rightwing party, with an "impeccable" record of being hawkish
towards Russia and President Vladimir Putin.
How anyone can construe that good ole boy McConnell is a Russian stooge is too absurd for
words. What the accusations do betray is the total derangement and politically illiterate
condition of mainstream American political and media culture.
"
Sometimes it's appropriate to call out, for the benefit of others, the propaganda memes
and dishonest arguments employed by a pro-establishment commenter.
One such trick is the pretense that a pro-establishment commenter is concerned
about "cynicism" or "conspiracy theories". You see, thinking for yourself may cause a
reluctance to love Big Brother. And sharing that thinking in an open forum is even more
problematical.
A pro-establishment commenter with pro-establishment concerns often attempts to cover
their tracks. They claim to be socialist and/or that they are seeking "common ground" but
such characterizations are merely honey for the distasteful medicine that the
pro-establishment commenter seeks to administer.
Unsuspecting readers often fall prey to the soothing words of a pro-establishment
trickster. Sometimes even supporting the pro-establishment commenter's right to express views
that are already well-covered in MSM. But just as "SALE" sounds sooo appealing yet
often is not what it seems, concerns of a pro-establish commenter are often misleading
and crafted to confuse and misdirect.
So I implore you ... don't be fooled. Think for yourself. And don't take allow yourself to
be swindled by a "SALE" that is really just bait and switch.
"... Like the Wolfowitz explanation of the Iraq War, Russiagate is the idea around which varied interests can be organized. Cold Warriors like to hate on Russia. It justifies arms spending and their own importance. Clintonistas need an excuse to distract from her being a loser. The DNC needs an excuse for manipulating the candidate selection in favor of donor interests. "Moderates" need a distraction from their ongoing refusal to address the interests of voters. ..."
Like the Wolfowitz explanation of the Iraq War, Russiagate is the idea around which
varied interests can be organized. Cold Warriors like to hate on Russia. It justifies arms
spending and their own importance. Clintonistas need an excuse to distract from her being a
loser. The DNC needs an excuse for manipulating the candidate selection in favor of donor
interests. "Moderates" need a distraction from their ongoing refusal to address the interests
of voters.
"Mueller's Inquiry was never a serious search for truth is that at no stage was any independent forensic independence taken from
the DNC's servers, instead the word of the DNC's own security consultants was simply accepted as true. Finally no progress has been
made – or is intended to be made – on the question of who killed Seth Rich, while the pretend police investigation has "lost" his laptop.
"
"... Like the Wolfowitz explanation of the Iraq War, Russiagate is the idea around which varied interests can be organized. Cold Warriors like to hate on Russia. It justifies arms spending and their own importance. Clintonistas need an excuse to distract from her being a loser. The DNC needs an excuse for manipulating the candidate selection in favor of donor interests. "Moderates" need a distraction from their ongoing refusal to address the interests of voters. ..."
So, there we have it. Russiagate as a theory is as completely exploded as the appalling Guardian front page lie published by Kath
Viner and Luke Harding fabricating the "secret meetings" between Paul Manafort and Julian Assange in the Ecuadorean Embassy. But
the political class and the mainstream media, both in the service of billionaires, have moved on to a stage where truth is irrelevant,
and I do not doubt that Russiagate stories will thus persist. They are so useful for the finances of the armaments and security industries,
and in keeping the population in fear and jingoist politicians in power.
Craig Murray is an author, broadcaster and human rights activist. He was British ambassador to Uzbekistan from August 2002 to
October 2004 and rector of the University of Dundee from 2007 to 2010.
michael , August 12, 2019 at 19:53
So far there is as much evidence presented that Martians interfered in the 2016 Election as RUSSIANS!!!
Just a much needed excuse to blow on the dying embers of the Cold War and get the nuclear weapons ready.
I'm still waiting for Robert Mueller to be tried for lying to Congress (when asked who hired him, instead of saying "I have no
idea", he said "Bush!" It is a matter of public record that Reagan hired him, a blatant lie! Is Michael Flynn out of jail yet?)
Drew Hunkins , August 12, 2019 at 14:49
" and I do not doubt that Russiagate stories will thus persist. They are so useful for the finances of the armaments and security
industries, and in keeping the population in fear and jingoist politicians in power "
They are also extremely useful as a scapegoat for the corporate warmongering DNC to camouflage the genuine reasons they lost
to Trump of all people.
Mark Thomason , August 12, 2019 at 10:34
Like the Wolfowitz explanation of the Iraq War, Russiagate is the idea around which varied interests can be organized.
Cold Warriors like to hate on Russia. It justifies arms spending and their own importance. Clintonistas need an excuse to distract
from her being a loser. The DNC needs an excuse for manipulating the candidate selection in favor of donor interests. "Moderates"
need a distraction from their ongoing refusal to address the interests of voters.
"Those whom the gods would destroy they first drive mad".
Larry Mofield , August 12, 2019 at 08:41
If Russia actually wanted to help someone win I think it would be Hilary because Trump is a plain shooter from the hip and
takes nothing off of nobody.
If anything Sanders should had sued the DNC and Hilary for rigging the DNC
Go figure why he has kept his mouth shut.
Bif Webster , August 12, 2019 at 11:13
Putin preferred Obama to his running mates as well. But you won't ever hear that on the corporate "news" media.
Others sued on behalf of Bernie. That case died in south Florida, near Wasserman-Schultz's district yeah, and the excuse was,
"The DNC is a 'private organization" and do what they like, apparently. However, the "judge" did not find it odd that a private
entity can run a public election? And how there's an obvious conflict of interest involved?
Bernie kept his mouth shut because he's inside the Belly of the Beast.
Martin , August 12, 2019 at 11:54
i think there was something of a lawsuit, but the judge decided that the rigging was an inside thing to which no external laws
applied. if you got a non-profit or a company and there's no internal rules that forbid the rigging of votes, rigging is not illegal.
the superdelegates still exist.
Seer , August 12, 2019 at 12:04
He kept his mouth shut because advancing "My Revolution" was more important. And, because he's NOT a Democrat: he's only "allowed"
to run as one: he is therefore a little more constrained. Had he lashed out he'd have NOT been allowed to run again as a Democrat
-- bank on that!
Tulsi Gabbard, on the other hand, is a Democrat, in which case she really couldn't be kicked out: it was she who acted as Bernie's
mouth on this matter.
Trump is a piece of crap. There's nothing straight about him at all. He's a con-man of the highest order. Other than give money
to the rich he's done nothing: and "nothing," is probably the best that could have been hoped for given that he could have started
some wars (he hasn't found one that he feels safe would not undermine his presidency, otherwise he'd be lighting it up). The reason
the guy is so good at firing people is because he's so crappy about firing them.
Oh yeah, I have not cast a single vote for anyone I have mentioned here.
evelync , August 12, 2019 at 13:20
Interesting question, Larry Mofield!
Bernie's not a stupid guy and I believe (as does Cornel West and Noam Chomsky) he's dedicated to policies that serve working people
and sustainability.(as I see it – reversing the NeoLiberal agenda in order to restore a level playing field for working people and also to shift
to a democratic, non imperial foreign policy.)
So why didn't he, let's call him "David", not aim his slingshot at the DNC, let's call it "Goliath"?
Probably because a single stone in a slingshot was hopeless. He was up against a massive corrupt network of hangers on, IMO,
who rabidly shouted down the person who dared to question Clinton's policies.
For an even more recent example of a delusional grandiose, imperial mind set, let's take the 200+ people affiliated with the
JFK School of Government at Harvard. The ones who accepted the School's shameful withdrawal of Chelsea Manning's honorary fellowship
because Pompeo and Morrell attacked it with Cold War rhetoric. Manning's crime? Telling people the truth about horrific wrongdoing
she witnessed in Iraq. When I emailed 200 people at the JFK School a shame-on-you letter I heard back from only one who chastised
(threatened) me for not understanding "National Security" .say what????) Others chimed in to agree with her. (I shared that email
with Robert Parry at the time and he emailed back that he didn't blame me for being outraged. He was such a wonderful person.)
So Bernie had the whole MSNBC related propaganda machine at his throat.
– think Mimi Rocah's recent "he makes my skin crawl" comment, knowing surely, that her words would be applauded over there.
and think all the people who have accepted since 2016 that the Russians cost Hillary Clinton the election in denial over the truth
– a flawed candidate who seemed to consider her constituency the big banks and the polluters and the war machine.
I know lifelong conservative Republicans who liked Bernie in 2016 and like him now because they find him truthful but didn't
trust Clinton and some voted for Trump in order to beat her.
This country is filled with a patronage network of well off established people including Democrats who believe everything's fine
as it is and are willing to shut their eyes to what's not working – the financial crisis of the working class, the racism underlying
the for profit prison system and immigration system, the horrific endless regime change wars and the massive deregulation of banks
on Bill Clinton's watch and much more, including the Climate Crisis.
It's taken almost 3 years to discredit what apparently was a faux "excuse" why Hillary Clinton lost. Too many voters in key
states didn't trust her to serve their interests because she clearly was an apparatchik for the MICIMATT.
Enough of Trump's voters were willing to gamble on this "unknown" character who piggy backed off what Bernie was saying at
the time – too bad he was lying ..
rosemerry , August 12, 2019 at 15:39
The whole suggestion has ignored any words and actions of Pres. Putin, who is careful to keep to the truth. He often stated
that he would accept whoever the US population chose (ie did not even want to lean towards the one claiming to desire better relations,
let alone interfere) because the difference between US administrations was small and policies unlikely to change in 2016. Because
the US constantly causes "régime change" does not mean that Russia does. The quick decision to "blame Russia" immediately after
Trump's win, activated by Obama expelling diplomats and stealing their US property, set the ball rolling and it has not stopped.
T he AP and no doubt other media are setting the stage for claiming that if Trump is reelected in 2020, the Russians again
were responsible. As HItler learned, repeat a lie often enough and it will assume the appearance of truth. It's not surprising
that the Democrats led by Hillary are behind this maneuver. The Dems have been blaming Russia ever since Truman did so in 1945.
Sally Snyder , August 12, 2019 at 08:05
As shown in this article, key Western countries including the United States have put in place a mechanism that is supposed
to protect us from election meddling:
Given the anti-Russia bias that took root and has become pervasive in the West since 2014 and, in particular, since the Hillary
Clinton loss in 2016 which is blamed on Russian-sourced disinformation, it is interesting to see that the G7 has been driven to
take extreme moves to battle what they see as an "evil Russia".
jdd , August 12, 2019 at 07:05
Devastating. A cogent and insightful analysis of Judge Koeltl's decision. Thank you Ambassador Murray.
Michaelevan Hammond , August 12, 2019 at 02:16
What's hilarious is that Binney was able to discern that the download was later split in two and then transmitted state side.
Think of when you download a movie or a file .. it doesn't come in 2 parts, you either download the whole thing or it is an error/fail.
Binney is able to show that the whole thing is one download at 49mbps impossible speed for transatlantic transmission .he absolute
fastest you can achieve over the cable is 29mbps ..plus there are 6-12 NSA monitoring junctions added to the cable to capture
such things and not one had any Russians attempting to "hack"(2001 term). It was all just deflection for Hillary and she may we'll
have selfishly killed the Dems party.
Realist , August 12, 2019 at 00:37
Russiagate is not "dead." It has more lives than a cat bitten by a vampire. It is permanently undead. The antithesis of a dead
parrot.
How many times does Rachel Maddow have to tell you? Anyone who did not vote for Hillary Clinton and refuses to back her never-ending,
constantly metamorphosing coup against Trump has got to be a Putin agent even Mitch McConnell. Check back tomorrow for the latest
Maddowsplaining on this and other bad crazyness.
Seer , August 12, 2019 at 12:07
I agree. The FACT that the US has been sanctioning Russia for the better part of 100 years pretty much tells it all. It's about
the West's ruling elite keeping Their game going: but, nothing lasts forever, and this game is about to run out on them (the perpetual
growth model, which has given them their power, is ending).
Realist , August 12, 2019 at 00:18
Unless he was being sarcastic, MSNBC's Joe Scarborough tweeted that the Russians were probably behind Jeff Epstein's "suiciding"
in the high security NYC federal lockup!
Anyone who truly believes that Epstein actually took his own life probably does still have a severe case of Putin Derangement
Syndrome, aka Russophrenia, Russiagate-itis, -osis or whatever ya wanna call it. Their minds cannot co-exist within both the Deep
State Matrix and objective reality at the same time. Blaming all evil in the world on Russia gives them license to act outside
conventional morality with impunity.
Mark Stanley , August 12, 2019 at 11:32
Yes, they are endeavoring to tip-toe around this one. If Epstein had started squealing, the excrement would really have hit
the fan. After his purported suicide, the smokescreen "conspiracy" word popped up immediately in every mainstream mention of Epstein.
If the populace found out about the deranged sexual practices of too many of the world's elites it would certainly upset the apple
cart–to use an American expression.
Seer , August 12, 2019 at 15:51
This IS VERY DEEP! First three parts of this most excellent four part series is available, starting with this one (Mint Press
also needs supporting).
After reading this I now understand why Trump won't release his tax returns.
Realist , August 12, 2019 at 18:12
Seer,
Probably, because like Romney, he didn't pay any.
Dershowitz's client Leonna Helmsley explained the principle decades ago: "Only the little people pay taxes." Probably as truthful
a description of the American system as you will ever hear. Sadly, it went down the memory hole because the media will never mention
it again. Investigative reporters like David Cay Johnston have to write individually researched books on the subject and hope
that the swamp creatures don't seek retribution against him some dark night.
The most the public is ever going to get in this world is perhaps a brief glimmer of the truth through the hard work and suffering
of individuals like Assange, Manning and a few other brave altruistic souls, but never justice. The system is set up to sacrifice
the lives of millions for the benefit of dozens.
"... "I can report absolutely that the Durham investigators have now obtained an audiotape deposition of Joseph Mifsud, where he describes his work, why he targeted George Papadopoulos , who directed him to do that, what directions he was given, and why he set that entire process of introducing Papadopoulos to Russia in motion in March of 2016, which is really the flashpoint the starting point of this whole Russia collusion narrative," Solomon told Fox News' Sean Hannity. ..."
"... You can't save the Russian collusion narrative, if you can't find any real Russians anywhere in the story. The FBI under James Comey will then be seen as having engaged in an operation to entrap people, and "Russian agents" turn out to be fakes working for the FBI and who were making fake offers of Russian help to the Trump campaign. ..."
"... Mifsud turning out to be a fake Russian agent working for the FBI ..."
"... To have to admit that the story was actually right, while they themselves were still peddling the Trump-Russia collusion hoax, would be a most bitter pill for many of these 'legitimate' news outlets to swallow. ..."
"... And yet when it comes to recent developments about Mifsud, a key player in this Trump-Russia collusion narrative, many mainstream reporters appear indifferent at best, or outrightly hostile at worst to these latest developments. ..."
"... While many of these mainstream media reporters have been desperately trying to find some way to save the Trump/Russian collusion narrative, the last thing they want to have to report is that the supposed key Russian agent that started this whole Spygate thing wasn't really a Russian agent, but was instead an FBI asset pretending to be a Russian agent. ..."
While many mainstream media journalists have been
spinning fantasies for more than two years, based on Russian collusion stories being handed to
them by anonymous sources, crack reporter John Solomon of The Hill has been pursuing real leads
and uncovering actual evidence.
Now, Solomon is reporting that an audiotape
containing professor Joseph Mifsud's deposition has been given to both U.S. Attorney John
Durham's investigators and to the Senate Judiciary Committee.
"I can report absolutely that the Durham investigators have now obtained an audiotape
deposition of Joseph Mifsud, where he describes his work, why he targeted George Papadopoulos , who
directed him to do that, what directions he was given, and why he set that entire process of
introducing Papadopoulos to Russia in motion in March of 2016, which is really the flashpoint
the starting point of this whole Russia collusion narrative," Solomon told
Fox News' Sean Hannity.
"I can also confirm that the Senate Judiciary Committee has also obtained the same
deposition," he said.
So I'm wondering why Solomon appears to be the only mainstream reporter pursuing this Mifsud
story.
I suspect it's because many DNC Media outlets, after having fallen deeply and passionately
in love with the Trump-Russia collusion hoax, are reluctant to call attention to something that
would be the final nail in its coffin.
The last thing the mainstream media wants right now would be for Mifsud to go on the record
with both Durham's investigative team and with Congress to say he was working for the FBI and
was only pretending to be a Russian agent.
If Mifsud was an FBI asset sent to entrap Papadopoulos, then there are no real Russian
agents anywhere in this entire Trump-Russia collusion story.
Foreign policy advisor to US President Donald Trump's election campaign, George
Papadopoulos goes through security at the US District Court for his sentencing in Washington,
DC on Sept. 7, 2018. (Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP/Getty Images)
Ponder what that means for a minute.
You can't save the Russian collusion narrative, if you can't find any real Russians
anywhere in the story. The FBI under James Comey will then be seen as having engaged in an
operation to entrap people, and "Russian agents" turn out to be fakes working for the FBI and
who were making fake offers of Russian help to the Trump campaign.
Some of these news media outlets are still - at this late date - claiming there's some life
left in the Russian collusion narrative. Mifsud is literally the last dying hope for these
people that somewhere in all of this there is a real Russian asset and real collusion. They
literally need Mifsud to be a real asset of the Putin government. And if Mifsud goes on the
record to officially affirm he was working for the FBI, then the media's last dying hope is
gone forever.
To hear the mainstream media tell it, Mifsud turning out to be a fake Russian agent
working for the FBI is a "conspiracy theory" created by "right-wing zealots" such as Reps.
Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) and Jim Jordan (R-Ohio).
To have to admit that the story was actually right, while they themselves were still
peddling the Trump-Russia collusion hoax, would be a most bitter pill for many of these
'legitimate' news outlets to swallow.
Which likely explains why Solomon appears to be just about the only mainstream reporter
pursuing the Mifsud story. If there are any other major news outlet reporters out there avidly
pursuing the facts about Mifsud and his reported contacts and testimony to Justice Department
investigators, they're being pretty quiet about it.
What are the mainstream news reporters who are ignoring the Mifsud story telling themselves,
anyway?
"I can't pursue this new information on Mifsud, because it's taking the story where I
don't want it to go!"?
That's a thought process that happens only to a political activist disguised as a reporter.
No real reporter would ever think that way.
And yet when it comes to recent developments about Mifsud, a key player in this
Trump-Russia collusion narrative, many mainstream reporters appear indifferent at best, or
outrightly hostile at worst to these latest developments.
While many of these mainstream media reporters have been desperately trying to find some
way to save the Trump/Russian collusion narrative, the last thing they want to have to report
is that the supposed key Russian agent that started this whole Spygate thing wasn't really a
Russian agent, but was instead an FBI asset pretending to be a Russian agent.
These selfsame media reporters have spent more than two years mocking the idea that Mifsud
is an FBI asset as something straight out of the right-wing fever swamp of convoluted nonsense
conspiracy theories. This is why so many political activists masquerading as journalists are
desperately hoping that somehow the Mifsud story will just go away and die on its own.
My instinct says they're going to be massively disappointed soon.
The only one's ever colluding with the Russians was Hillary the "******* Rotten" Clinton,
Obongo "the One" and the usual suspects (Comey,Clapper,Brennan,Lynch,) et.al .. FBI/DOJ/CIA Rats, British UN-intelligence,Australian &
Ukraine interference. The DNC server was never hacked by Russians but copied, the
Steele/Fusion GPS dossier was a work of worn out fiction that was originally put together in
2007 and used against McCain.
Russian agent Mifsud working with Papadopoulos to get Hillary emails claimed by
DNC/Crowdstrike/Perkins Coie hacked by Russians before destroyed by Hillary under subpoena,
just a FBI paid actor to keep the narrative going and covering up illegal spying on Trump,
NSA 702 "about" querries by private contractors ang gov. violating FISA which happened much
earlier.
Conservative treehouse does a better job than just about anywhere else I've seen of tying
that all together. But, if they are correct about this, as they've been correct about a lot
of things, it won't change anything or matter at all. None of these people will ever be
indicted, much less spend a single day in jail. Sad, but true. In a year and a half trump
will most likely be gone, and all of this will be memory holed.
Most Democrats still adhere to the Trump - Russia collusion narrative. And they wonder why
some Leftists like Roseanne Barr admit 'Democrats have gone insane.' An opinion shared by
most of the rest of the country. And yet public speeches by Trump are enthusiastically
attended by thousands - a story very much minimized by these same "news" outlets.
Those Democrats exist within a media bubble (95% of press outlets - online, too) working
for the Deep State (99% are Democrats) that misinforms them. Perhaps they are intentionally
self-duped. Though it remains shocking how deeply deluded they are.
They adhere to the hoax because they knew it was a hoax to begin with.
The dems have never been sincere calling people racist, sexist, Hitler, then Russian or
Assad stooges, etc.
Their Saul Alinsky tactic is to shriek incessantly, always accuse, never take the
defensive because your position is indefensible. You can't argue why offering open borders
and free health care to 7 billion people is rational.
That is why the violence is so important to them, and so important to keep concealing the
deep state/democratic crime syndicate.
The main stream media is the mouth piece of the intelligence community.
The main stream media is [ currently ] the mouth piece of the [ criminal Deep
State ] intelligence community.
There; fify. The "Intelligence Community" in its entirety is hardly any monolith of
pure evil. There are cadres and factions within every agency, including Old-School
Patriot.
MUST be said now and then lest others lose perspective. And that is all. 0{:-\o[
The progressives will happily embrace the worst criminal behavior by our government as
JUSTIFIED to depose the devil incarnate Trump.
There is only one principle...winning. The law is THEIR weapon devised to punish their
enemies and control their minions. All means are justifiable to the ends, and the vast
majority of those "serving" in government have no hesitancy in abusing their power to fulfill
the larger agenda.
They will have proof and undeniable facts...to no avail because those charged with the
prosecution of their own, will NOT.
More sensationalism... how many articles are you going to post saying the spygate
situation is about to blow up? I would love for it to happen but unlike the libtards hanging
on Rachel Maddow's every word... when I hear the walls are closing in for over 2 or 3 months
straight... I start to call ********... Give up the sensationalism Tyler... it's straight up
MSM flavor ********.
I figured that since 'gaslighting' is a relatively new term, and although I already had a
general idea what it meant from context, it would be best to look it up. I was surprised to
learn the concept of ' gaslighting ' has been around since 1938.
"a form of psychological manipulation in which a person seeks to sow seeds of doubt in a
targeted individual or in members of a targeted group, making them question their own memory,
perception, and sanity. Using persistent denial, misdirection, contradiction, and lying,
gaslighting involves attempts to destabilize the victim and delegitimize the victim's
belief."
In America's case, gaslighting – like charity – begins at home, and the
full
force of US government efforts to convince the skeptical that America is more powerful and
influential than ever, is still kicking ass and taking names, is felt by Americans.
I repeat the assessment of Veteran Intelligence Professional for Sanity (VIPS), to the effect
that the hack – if you can call it that – could not have been carried out over
the internet, as the data-transfer rate was far too high. In fact, it had all the
fingerprints of a portable device such as a thumb drive, coupled directly to the server at a
convenient USB port. And then Democratic staffer Seth Rich died, with no convincing
explanation for his death. Conservative American techhies tried to explain it away with a
barrage of bullshit about how that level of bandwidth could be realized over the internet and
how various tags and suchlike proved it was the Russians, but the Russians certainly would
know better by now than to leave those kinds of traces, and the US intelligence agencies are
quite proud of their ability to insert identifiers to make a transmission appear to have
originated someplace else. It's kind of like how Israel and the Ukrainian SBU destroyed
people's faith in voice intercepts.
The latter reference, despite its hopeful headline, merely argues the election was not
'hacked'; it was 'meddled with', and since the Russians wanted Trump to win, they probably
did get up to mischief, we're pretty sure.
This one even speculates that Russia wants American voters to know it can hack them
anytime it likes.
The electorate is now so polarized, demoralized and witless with fear and fury that voting
in America is merely a knee-jerk homage to democracy. Nobody will be remotely surprised if
the winner is not who they voted for, even if everyone says "Hey! I voted for him/her too!!"
They will just look at each other, nod significantly, and whisper "The Russians". And when
you think about it, that's just about where the US government wants them, except for the part
about their legitimacy being conferred by Vladimir Putin. That's going to be a hard one for
the winner to spin away.
US intelligence agencies are quite proud of their ability to insert identifiers to make a
transmission appear to have originated someplace else. ..
Yes, the famous 'Vault 7' set of NSA tools that were leaked, including a reversing tool so
that they can check if someone is trying to pass off their sneaky cyber stuff as American
when it's not.
"PART II: Gaslighting
Author's Note: Because "NATO" these days is little more than a box of spare parts out of
which Washington assembles "coalitions of the willing", it's easier for me to write "NATO"
than "Washington plus/minus these or those minions".
Both Devastating .Absolutely spot on devastating: (Above is excerpt from the first
link)
"The majority of Americans accept mass murder under the pretext of the right to protect,
because their ability to form rational and reasoned opinions has been engineered out of them.
This is now the definition of US exceptionalism. It is their ability to manipulate the world
into accepting their lawlessness and global hegemony agenda. In seeking to impose its own
image upon our world the US has drifted so far from its founding principles, one wonders how
they will ever return to them. They have employed a recognised form of torture to ensure
capitulation to their mission of world domination which entails the mental, physical and
spiritual torture of target civilian populations.
In conclusion, the US has indeed achieved exceptionalism. The US has become an exceptional
global executioner and persecutor of Humanity. Imperialism is a euphemism for the depths of
abuse the US is inflicting upon the people of this world."
"... it turned out that the very people who were up in arms about "fake news" were the ones propagating their own version of it. WikiLeaks did much to expose their game by publicizing the key role played by the Legacy Media in acting as an extension of the Clinton campaign. However, the real unmasking came after the November election, when the rage of the liberal elites became so manifest that "reporters" who would normally be loath to reveal their politics came out of the closet, so to speak, and started telling us that the old journalistic standard of objectivity no longer applied. The election of Trump, they averred, meant that the old standards must be abandoned and a new, and openly partisan bias must take its place. In honor of this new credo, the Washington Post has adopted a new slogan: " Democracy dies in darkness "! ..."
"... Rep. Gabbard's "crime" was to challenge the US-funded effort to overthrow the regime of Syrian strongman Bashar al-Assad as contrary to our interests and the prospects for peace in the region. For that she has been demonized in the media – and, not coincidentally, the very same media that is now an instrument in the hands of our "intelligence community." For ..."
"... And of course it's not just the Washington Post : the entire "mainstream" media is now colluding with the "intelligence community" in an effort to discredit and derail any efforts at a rapprochement with Russia. We haven't seen this kind of hysteria since the frigid winter of the cold war. ..."
"... My longtime readers will not be shocked by any of this: during the run up to the Iraq war, the media was chock full of fake news about Saddam Hussein's fabled weapons of mass destruction, which all the "experts" told us were certainly there and ready to rain death and destruction at any minute. Who can forget the series of articles by Judith Miller that adorned the front page of the New York Times – which were merely Bush administration talking points reiterated by Donald Rumsfeld & Co. on the Sunday talk shows? Miller has now become synonymous with the very concept of fake news – and yet how quickly we forget the lesson we should have learned from that shameful episode in the history of American journalism . ..."
"... Blinded by partisan bias, all too willing to be used as an instrument of the Deep State -- and determined to "control exactly what people think," which is, as Mika Brzezinski put it the other day, " our job " – the English-speaking media has become increasingly unreliable. This has become a big problem for us here at Antiwar.com: we now have to check and re-check everything that they report as fact. Not that we didn't do that anyway, but the difference is that, these days, we have to be more careful than ever before linking to it, or citing it as factual. ..."
"... The day of the "alternative media" has passed. We are simply part of the media, period: the increasingly tiny portion of it that doesn't fall for war propaganda, that doesn't have a partisan agenda, and that harkens back to the "old" journalistic standards of yesteryear – objective reporting of facts. That doesn't mean we don't have opinions, or an agenda – far from it! However, we base those opinions on what, to the best of our ability, we can discern as the facts. ..."
"... And we have a pretty good record in this regard. Back when everyone who was anyone was telling us that those "weapons of mass destruction" were lurking in the Iraqi shadows, we said it was nonsense – and we were right. As the "experts" said that war with Iraq would "solve" the problem of terrorism and bring enlightenment to the Middle East, we said the war would usher in the reign of chaos – and we were right. We warned that NATO expansion would trigger an unnecessary conflict with Russia, and we were proved right about that, too. The Kosovo war was hailed as a "humanitarian" act – and we rightly predicted it would come back to haunt us in the form of a gangster state riven by conflict. ..."
"... There's one way in which we are significantly different from the rest of the media – we depend on our readers for the financial support we need to keep going. The Washington Post has Jeff Bezos, one of the wealthiest men in the world – not to mention a multi-million dollar contract with the "intelligence community." The New York Times has Carlos Slim, another billionaire with seemingly bottomless pockets. We, on the other hand, just have you. ..."
We're not the alternative media – we're the best media you've got!
Posted on
August 06, 2019 August 4, 2019The more things change, the more they stay the same: the
sun comes up in the morning; another Hitler arises in the fantasies of the foreign-policy
establishment; and Josh Rogin writes
another column attacking Tusli Gabbard, the most pro-peace candidate in the Democratic
lineup. Justin blasted Rogin the first time he tried this, back in February of 2017, proving
that the whole story was "fake news". We think it's important to revisit Justin's analysis of
the media-enhanced demand for war. As Justin notes, the only real alternative to this, the only
real "alternative media," are sites like Antiwar. com and WikiLeaks.
If we look at the phrase itself, it seems to mean the media that presents itself as the
alternative to what we call the "corporate media," i.e. the New York Times , the
Washington Post , your local rag – in short, the Legacy Media that predominated in
those bygone days before the Internet. And yet this whole arrangement seems outdated, to say
the least. The Internet has long since been colonized by the corporate giants: BuzzFeed, for
example, is regularly fed huge dollops of cash from its corporate owners. And the Legacy Media
has adapted to the primacy of online media, however reluctantly and ineptly. So the alternative
media isn't defined by how they deliver the news, but rather by 1) what they judge to be news,
and 2) how they report it.
And that's the problem.
There's been much talk of "fake news," a concept first defined by the "mainstream" media
types as an insidious scheme by the Russians and/or supporters of Donald Trump to deny Hillary
Clinton her rightful place in the Oval Office. Or it was
Macedonian teenagers out to fool us into giving them clicks. Or something. Facebook and
Google announced a campaign to eliminate this Dire Threat, and the mandarins of the
"mainstream" reared up in righteous anger, lecturing us that journalistic standards were being
traduced.
Yet it turned out that the very people who were up in arms about "fake news" were the ones propagating
their own version of it.
WikiLeaks did much to expose their game by publicizing the
key role played by the Legacy Media in acting as an
extension of the Clinton campaign. However, the real unmasking came after the November
election, when the rage of the liberal elites became so manifest that "reporters" who would
normally be loath to reveal their politics came out of the closet, so to speak, and started
telling us that the old journalistic standard of objectivity no longer applied. The election of
Trump, they averred, meant that the old standards must be abandoned and a new, and openly
partisan bias
must take its place. In honor of this new credo, the Washington Post has adopted a new slogan:
"
Democracy dies in darkness "!
This from the newspaper that ran a front page story citing the anonymous trolls at
PropOrNot.com as credible sources for an account of alleged
"Russian agents of influence" in the media – a story that slimed Matt Drudge and
Antiwar.com, among others.
This from the newspaper that regularly publishes "news" accounts citing anonymous
"intelligence officials" claiming the Trump administration is rife with Russian "agents."
This from the newspaper that published
a piece by foreign affairs columnist Josh Rogin that falsely claimed Rep. Tulsi Gabbard's
trip to Syria was funded by a group that is "nonexistent" and strongly implied she was in the
pay of the Syrian government or some other foreign entity. Well after the smear circulated far
and wide, the paper posted the following correction:
" An earlier version of this op-ed misspelled the name of AACCESS Ohio and incorrectly
stated that the organization no longer exists. AACCESS Ohio is an independent non-profit
organization that is a member of the ACCESS National Network of Arab American Community
organizations but is currently on probation due to inactivity. The op-ed also incorrectly
stated that Bassam Khawam is Syrian American. He is Lebanese American. This version has been
corrected."
Rep. Gabbard's "crime" was to challenge the US-funded effort to overthrow the regime of
Syrian strongman Bashar al-Assad as contrary to our interests and the prospects for peace in
the region. For that she has been demonized in the media – and, not coincidentally, the
very same media that is now an instrument in the hands of our "intelligence community." For it
is these spooks who, for years, have been canoodling with the Saudis in an effort to rid the
region of the last secular obstacle to the Sunni-ization of the Middle East. That they have
Tulsi Gabbard in their sights is no surprise.
And of course it's not just the Washington Post : the entire "mainstream" media is
now colluding with the "intelligence community" in an effort to discredit and derail any
efforts at a rapprochement with Russia. We haven't seen this kind of hysteria since the frigid
winter of the cold war.
My longtime readers will not be shocked by any of this: during the run up to the Iraq war,
the media was chock full of fake news about Saddam Hussein's fabled weapons of mass
destruction, which all the "experts" told us were certainly there and ready to rain death and
destruction at any minute. Who can forget the series of articles by Judith Miller that adorned
the front page of the New York Times – which were merely Bush administration
talking points reiterated by Donald Rumsfeld & Co. on the Sunday talk shows? Miller has now
become synonymous with the very concept of fake news – and yet how quickly we forget the
lesson we should have learned from that shameful episode in the history of American
journalism.
So fake news is nothing new, nor is the concept of the "mainstream" media as a megaphone for
war propaganda. What's different today is that many are waking up to this fact – and
turning to the "alternative." I've been struck by this rising phenomenon over the past year or
so: Matt Drudge gave Antiwar.com a permanent link. Our audience has increased by many
thousands. And I've been getting a steady stream of interview requests. I was quite pleased to
read the following in
a recent piece in The Nation about the media's fit of Russophobia and the key role
played by the journalist I. F. Stone during the 1950s:
"To conclude where I began, think for a moment about I.F. Stone during his haunted 1950s.
While he was well-regarded by a lot of rank-and-file reporters, few would say so openly. He was
PNG [persona non grata] among people such as [ New York Times publisher Arthur]
Sulzberger – an outcast .
"Now think about now.
"A few reporters and commentators advise us that the name of the game these days is to
sink the single most constructive policy the Trump administration has announced. The rest is
subterfuge, rubbish. This isprima faciethe case, though you can read it nowhere
in theTimesor any of the other corporate media. A few have asserted that we may
now be witnessing a coup operation against the Trump White House. This is a possibility, in my
view. We cannot flick it off the table. With the utmost purpose, I post
here one of
these pieces. "A Win for the Deep State" came out just after Flynn was forced from office. It
is by a writer named Justin Raimondo and appeared in a wholly out-of-bounds web publication
called Antiwar.com. I know nothing about either, but it is a thought-provoking piece."
Well, we aren't quite "wholly out of bounds," except in certain circles, but all in all this
is a great compliment – and it's illustrative of author Patrick Lawrence's point, which
is that
"We, readers and viewers, must discriminate among all that is put before us so as to make
the best judgments we can and, not least, protect our minds. The other side of the coin, what
we customarily call 'alternative media,' assumes an important responsibility. They must get
done, as best they can, what better-endowed media now shirk. To put this simply and briefly,
they and we must learn that they are not 'alternative' to anything. In the end there is no such
thing as 'alternative media,' as I often argue. There are only media, and most of ours have
turned irretrievably bad."
We here at Antiwar.com take our responsibility to you, our readers and supporters, very
seriously. We're working day and night, 24/7, to separate fact from fiction, knee-jerk
"analysis" from intelligent critique, partisan bullshit from truth. And we've had to work much
harder lately because the profession of journalism has fallen on hard times.
Blinded by partisan bias, all too willing to be used as an instrument of the Deep State --
and determined to "control exactly what people think," which is, as Mika Brzezinski put it the
other day, " our job " – the
English-speaking media has become increasingly unreliable. This has become a big problem for us
here at Antiwar.com: we now have to check and re-check everything that they report as
fact. Not that we didn't do that anyway, but the difference is that, these days, we have to be
more careful than ever before linking to it, or citing it as factual.
The day of the "alternative media" has passed. We are simply part of the media, period: the
increasingly tiny portion of it that doesn't fall for war propaganda, that doesn't have a
partisan agenda, and that harkens back to the "old" journalistic standards of yesteryear
– objective reporting of facts. That doesn't mean we don't have opinions, or an agenda
– far from it! However, we base those opinions on what, to the best of our ability, we
can discern as the facts.
And we have a pretty good record in this regard. Back when everyone who was anyone was
telling us that those "weapons of mass destruction" were lurking in the Iraqi shadows, we said
it was nonsense – and we were right. As the "experts" said that war with Iraq would
"solve" the problem of terrorism and bring enlightenment to the Middle East, we said the war
would usher in the reign of chaos – and we were right. We warned that NATO expansion
would trigger an unnecessary conflict with Russia, and we were proved right about that, too.
The Kosovo war was hailed as a "humanitarian" act – and we rightly predicted it would
come back to haunt us in the form of a gangster state riven by conflict.
I could spend several paragraphs boasting about how right we were, but you get the idea. Our
record is a good one. And we intend to make it even better. But we can't do it – we
can't do our job – without your help.
There's one way in which we are significantly different from the rest of the media
– we depend on our readers for the financial support we need to keep going. The
Washington Post has Jeff Bezos, one of the wealthiest men in the world – not to
mention a multi-million
dollar contract with the "intelligence community." The New York Times has Carlos
Slim, another billionaire with seemingly bottomless pockets. We, on the other hand, just have
you.
Okay, I'll cut to the chase: we've come to a crucial point in our current fundraising
campaign, and now it's make it or break it time for Antiwar.com.
A group of our most generous supporters has pledged $40,000 in matching funds – but
that pledge is strictly conditional . What this means is that we must match that
amount in the short time left in our campaign in order to get the entire $40,000.
There are some other big institutional failures playing into this. The press has for the
better part of the last 40 years pretended that both parties were both acting in good faith
and just had different ideas about what worked best - which clearly isn't true. They also
engaged in a false "it's both sides" narrative. The Dems took way too long to figure out that
the Rs are insurgent, anti-democratic, and unafraid to destroy the country to gain power. The
big internet companies knew what was going on with Cambridge and the Russians and did nothing
about it. Our voting infrastructure has been taken over by partisans that are actively
ensuring that votes can be meddled with. I mean - it is a huge convergence of events - and
while I think you are acting in good faith, there are a bunch of posters who are acting like
force multipliers for Russia and the Sarandon types. I don't see how anyone can ignore the
threat of foreign interference, the fact that Trump did in fact collude with Russia by any
definition of the word, the fact that the Mueller report all but says "there were crimes, but
we cant get the evidence because of obstruction," and the obvious fact that the R
establishment has gone full on anti-democracy and be pro democracy. We are in a much scary
place than I think most people understand or are willing to admit. Remember, Hitler was a
joke and then he wasn't.
The accusation that Dems have done nothing about voter security is belied by the fact that
TODAY there are 2 simple bills being held up by Moscow Mitch. It is belied by the fact that
Dems in all 50 states tried to enact paper trails. It is impossible to have a discussion
about anything when some people just insist on a set of facts that are not facts. It is
stupid and embarrassing. The interwebs are an fen sewer.
LOL!!! Two bill after 20 years??? And motivated by dubious fears of Russian meddling when
corporations, billionaires, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and others have been meddling for decades
without so much as a whimper from kurt's beloved Democrats!!!
And, of course, Team Pelosi finally gets around to introducing some bills only when it's
obvious to any idiot, even kurt, that they won't get past the Senate!!!
IMO, Team Pelosi is just grandstanding. I mean, who could take them seriously, when they
haven't bothered to try and do anything for decades?
But has Team Pelosi cared enough to do something about it until she got Putin Derangement
Syndrome? No, of course, not asleep at the wheel appeasing or complicit with the monied
interests who have ample resources to subvert elections.
And what did Ds do during the last 40 years to fix the voting infrastructure? Gore and Kerry
just shrugged and let Bush become President. And Ds never mounted any sort of effort to
secure the hackable, inauditable voting machines.
Simply put, Kurt's beloved Ds we're engaged in appeasement or complicity... take your
pick.
"... "Rather than simply pointing out how unqualified Kelly Craft is for the United Nations job, I think it would be wise for us to reconsider the idea of politically appointed ambassadors entirely," Ashford said. "Is there really any ambassadorial appointment so unimportant that it should be handled by a donor, rather than by experienced diplomats? The whole donations-for-ambassadorships system is bad for U.S. diplomacy and national security." ..."
"... "Certainly, having an entirely inexperienced diplomat in the United Nations role will probably empower Pompeo, and is reflective of Bolton's own antipathy towards international organizations," said Ashford. ..."
"... an inexperienced DNI would allow Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to continue heavily influencing the U.S. intelligence community, as he has done for over a year since leaving the CIA, according to current and former U.S. intelligence officials. ..."
"... "Pompeo, who was Donald Trump's first CIA director, is now serving as a key intermediary between Trump and the U.S. intelligence community, the officials say, a very unusual role for the secretary of state, who is supposed to be a customer of the intelligence community, not its master," The Intercept report ed. "Pompeo has emerged as the administration's de facto intelligence czar." ..."
"... "It's not easy to be a Trump ambassador," she added. Due to Trump's "particularly confrontational style," which "makes the job of diplomacy more challenging," it's particularly impressive that Craft was able to "keep the relationship going extraordinarily well on behalf of the U.S. and Canada" throughout the renegotiation of the trade deal and the "daily work of solving border issues." ..."
"... "I have John Bolton who I would definitely say is a hawk. And I have other people that are on the other side of the equation," Trump has said . "Ultimately I make the decisions so it doesn't matter." ..."
President Donald Trump's recent choice of the relatively
unknown Congressman John Ratcliffe for Director of National Intelligence and his elevation
of Kelly Craft as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations -- despite concerns about her
inexperience -- illustrates the power vacuum within Trump's cabinet, and the opportunities this
opens up for interventionists like National Security Advisor John Bolton and Secretary of State
Mike Pompeo.
The rash of remarkably unqualified and inexperienced candidates for top slots points to a
presidency that values personal loyalty to Donald Trump above the ability to govern
effectively. This atmosphere favors those with Washington insider status and the policy goals
to bring it to fruition, say defense analysts who spoke to TAC.
Trump's recent picks "fit the pattern of the eroding of competence which is particularly
happening in the national security apparatus," said Trita Parsi, associate professor at
Georgetown University, in an interview with TAC. These are "clearly people that are just
willing to go along with whatever the political agenda is."
Unfortunately, that agenda may be wielded now by the most experienced, and powerful senior
officials left standing -- Bolton and Pompeo -- whose aggressive foreign policies sometimes
clash with their president's.
"My view on this is that any appointment on Trump's foreign policy staff after the ascent of
Bolton will reflect Bolton's will," said Mark Perry, TAC senior writer and author of The
Pentagon's Wars. "Which is to say: if Kelly Craft meets with Bolton's approval, it's
because he views her as weak."
"My view on this is that any appointment on Trump's foreign
policy staff after the ascent of Bolton will reflect Bolton's will," said Mark Perry, TAC
senior writer and author of The Pentagon's Wars. "Which is to say: if Kelly Craft meets
with Bolton's approval, it's because he views her as weak."
Almost everyone else who originally held a senior national security job has now left the
Trump administration, including
the defense secretary, national security adviser, attorney general, FBI director, secretary of
state, White House chief of staff, secretary of Homeland Security, and director of the Secret
Service.
This week, the Senate confirmed multi-million dollar Republican donor Kelly Craft to replace
Nikki Halley, who left her post as ambassador to the United Nations at the end of 2018. Craft
was mostly absent from her previous position as Trump-appointed ambassador to Canada. Before
that she was appointed delegate to the UN by President George W. Bush, and headed her own
business advisory firm in Kentucky. That is where her resume seems to end. She has no other
government or foreign policy background, academic or professional, to speak of. This makes her
one of the least experienced people to ever hold the post.
"Craft's appointment as UN ambassador is just one more step towards the 'Trumpification' of
government functions, whether it's putting his unqualified family members in key White House
roles or rewarding countries that patronize his businesses with sweetheart deals," Emma
Ashford, a research fellow in defense and foreign policy for the Cato Institute, told
TAC.
"Rather than simply pointing out how unqualified Kelly Craft is for the United Nations
job, I think it would be wise for us to reconsider the idea of politically appointed
ambassadors entirely," Ashford said. "Is there really any ambassadorial appointment so
unimportant that it should be handled by a donor, rather than by experienced diplomats? The
whole donations-for-ambassadorships system is bad for U.S. diplomacy and national
security."
Given that John Bolton once suggested that if the United Nations building "lost 10 stories,
it wouldn't make a bit of difference," it is possible that the choice of Craft reflects the
Trump administration's disregard of the institution. Nothing says that better than putting an
entirely unqualified person in the job.
And it would also play into the hands of Pompeo and Bolton, who have already ensured that
Craft's position will be demoted from the president's cabinet and placed back under the
Secretary of State's purview, the way it was under President George W. Bush.
"Certainly, having an entirely inexperienced diplomat in the United Nations role will
probably empower Pompeo, and is reflective of Bolton's own antipathy towards international
organizations," said Ashford.
Inexperience in so many top national security slots is "going to make it easier to have a
non-fact based foreign policy, a profoundly confrontational foreign policy, that will please
John Bolton but that will not in any shape or form serve U.S. national interest," said Parsi,
who added that Bolton seems to be determined to "neutralize these positions."
Since Bolton joined Trump's cabinet, the Pentagon has begun referring
questions about troop deployments to the National Security Council, which is in his
purview. As TAC
reported previously, Bolton appeared to take a page from former vice president Dick
Cheney's playbook when he took
the highly unusual step of convening a meeting about a possible confrontation with Iran not at
the White House but at CIA headquarters. Bolton is an unapologetic Bush-era war hawk with
four decades of experience inside the Beltway, who has used his long career to advocate for
regime change in Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Cuba, Venezuela, North Korea, and Iran.
Like Craft, the new Pentagon chief and former Raytheon lobbyist Mark Esper is unlikely to
serve as a backstop to empty or wrongheaded proposals, particularly when there's so little
longevity within Trump's cabinet.
"We've seen people that push back being replaced with people without any capacity to push
back," said Parsi.
Trump's choice of Ratcliffe to replace Dan Coats as Director of National Intelligence was so
weak that the president ultimately withdrew his name from consideration on Friday. While the
man he would have replaced was a former Indiana senator, U.S. ambassador to Germany, and one of
Trump's least difficult Cabinet confirmations, Ratcliffe is a former U.S.
attorney who has engaged in some serious
résumé
inflation, and was only recently elevated to a seat on the House Homeland Security and
Judiciary committees.
Coats famously contradicted Trump on the threat posed by Russia and North Korea's
willingness to give up its nuclear arsenal, whereas Ratcliffe appears to have been chosen for
his Trump boosting questions at the Mueller hearing, a performance that thrilled
the president.
Ratcliffe apparently was surprised by the intensity of the reaction after his name was
floated. His credentials were so thin that it led some to question whether Trump can field a
bench and if anyone vets his picks before he announces them.
But an inexperienced DNI would allow Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to continue heavily
influencing the U.S. intelligence community, as he has done for over a year since leaving the
CIA, according
to current and former U.S. intelligence officials.
"Pompeo, who was Donald Trump's first CIA director, is now serving as a key intermediary
between Trump and the U.S. intelligence community, the officials say, a very unusual role for
the secretary of state, who is supposed to be a customer of the intelligence community, not its
master," The Intercept reported. "Pompeo has emerged as the administration's de
facto intelligence czar."
Not everyone shares the concern that a relative lack of experience means that a candidate
will be ineffective. Maryscott Greenwood, former chief of staff to the U.S. ambassador to
Canada during the Clinton administration, told TAC that applying that criticism to Craft
is "a reach."
"I think a better way to judge someone is by the work they do, so whether you're physically
sitting in the embassy in Ottawa or somewhere else, the better question is: are you doing the
job, are you advancing the goals of the country?" said Greenwood. "The narrative that she was
absent or didn't uphold her duties [as ambassador to Canada], that's not what I observed. I saw
her as a workaholic."
"It's not easy to be a Trump ambassador," she added. Due to Trump's "particularly
confrontational style," which "makes the job of diplomacy more challenging," it's particularly
impressive that Craft was able to "keep the relationship going extraordinarily well on behalf
of the U.S. and Canada" throughout the renegotiation of the trade deal and the "daily work of
solving border issues."
"Craft played a key role at a time when" the role of ambassador to Canada was particularly
difficult, said Greenwood.
It is also worth noting that Trump doesn't have much experience. And no matter how
aggressive the positions of his advisors, in the final analysis, as Trump frequently likes to
remind us, the commander in chief is his own man.
"I have John Bolton who I would definitely say is a hawk. And I have other people that
are on the other side of the equation," Trump has
said . "Ultimately I make the decisions so it doesn't matter."
Barbara Boland
is 's foreign policy and national security reporter. Follow her on Twitter @BBatDC.
Recruiting or promoting dupes is a characteristic neocon activity. Find some nice-looking
cipher, surround him or her with whisperers and handlers, acclimatize them to saying and
doing as they're told.
The template is Quayle - Kristol back in the late eighties, but there are many more
recent.
First of all, Trump is a liar and also historically ignorant.
Second, he doesn't make a final decision if it concerns the Middle East:
his son in law, Kushner tells/ 'briefs,' let's say Trump on what is, which of course is
Kushner basically working as a lobbyist for Israel.
Who are we kidding?
That extreme Kushner and Trump's daughter Ivanka tell Trump the 'facts.'
Pompeo and Bolton are fine with that.
Do people who have been around really not know that the neo-cons are the reason the above
two war mongers got appointed?
As I look and read, I see Pompeo smiling too much and I know why:
the power and ego he's got now. Tell him I said he's a clown.
Look at hate filled Bolton. Tell him i'd destroy him in 2 minutes in a debate.
Now, compare all of the above characters to the dignified Russian or, say, the Jordanian
foreign ministers. See a difference? Yeah, the latter two practice diplomacy not crude
threats and misery making all over the world.
Why don't the moderate, realistic peace groups like J Street and Peace Now /Israel and
Peace Now/ USA not have a voice with the critters in the Congresses or in the white
house?
Oh, yeah, Kushner and Ivanka, his wife, daughter of 'our leader'- Trump.
I'm telling you, people all over the world are looking at the USA and calling it for what
it has become- clown city and a joke among diplomatic, civilized behaving nations and is
anti any peaceful solution.
See what i'm saying? Can you relate?
I have several documentaries on our US presidents and I have to say, your comments could
fit several them and the role of insiders and the family patronage systems that permeates
the entire country.
I am not a very bright fellow, but something tells me the country is not a disaster
because the current president is and remains in office.
The only pool of candidates Trump has left are those who are either poison, such as Bolton,
or else so far outside the pool of experienced people that their nomination represents the
only shot they'll ever have at such a position. After the examples of Coates, Kelly, and
Mattis, anyone who is actually qualified doesn't want to go anywhere near this
administration for fear of being permanently stained by their time in the pig-pen.
Appointing loyal amateurs would be an understandable strategy, especially for anyone
seeking policy outside the Washington Consensus. DC is full of people who are advancing
their own agendas and those of their clients, and who don't give a care for Trump or his
agenda.
But Trump doesn't choose appointees based on loyalty. Trump's own appointees think he's
a moron.
If there were a thought bubble over Craft's head, it would say "I really hope Israel
commits some nauseating atrocity against the Palestinians while I'm UN ambassador, because
then I get to go on TV and say that US support for Israel's right to self-defense will
never waver ... just like Nikki Haley got to do!" But for obvious reasons there is no
thought bubble over Craft's head.
Appoint a potted plant to most of these positions. These plants couldn't make things worse,
and only require watering every now and then. That is, they work cheap. I'd vote for a nice
pretty fern as president if I had the chance.
Barr now has goods to jail major conspirators for life. It is unlikely happened but we can hope.
Notable quotes:
"... "Turns out it was Britain that was the foreign country interfering in American affairs," former MP George Galloway told RT, speaking about the new revelations published by the Guardian about early British involvement in the 'Russiagate' investigation. ..."
"... The Guardian reported on texts between former deputy FBI director Andrew McCabe and Jeremy Fleming, his then counterpart at MI5, who now heads GCHQ. The two men met in 2016 to discuss "our strange situation" – an apparent reference to Russia's alleged interference in US domestic politics. ..."
"... British intelligence "appears to have played a key role in the early stages," the report said. ..."
"... Galloway said the revelation was not surprising because people "already knew" that British intelligence had played a part in the Russia-related investigations in the US. He recalled that it was former British spy Christopher Steele who drew up the now-infamous Steele dossier, which made multiple unverifiable and salacious claims about Trump and has since been largely discredited. Britain is "up to its neck in the whole Russiagate affair," he said. ..."
"... Asked what the UK stood to gain by trying to implicate Russia in a US election scandal at a time when then-foreign secretary Boris Johnson was dismissing baseless claims of Russian interference in the Brexit campaign, Galloway noted that Johnson's comments on Russia have appeared to strangely sway between friendly and antagonistic. ..."
"... In June 2016, the FBI opened a covert investigation codenamed 'Crossfire Hurricane' into Trump's now disproven collusion with Moscow, which was later taken over by special counsel Robert Mueller. ..."
While hysteria raged about possible Russian "interference" in the 2016 US election, British
intelligence officials were secretly playing a "key role" in helping instigate investigations
into Donald Trump, secret texts have shown. "Turns out it was Britain that was the foreign
country interfering in American affairs," former MP George Galloway told RT, speaking about
the new revelations published by the Guardian about early British involvement in the
'Russiagate' investigation.
The Guardian reported on texts between former deputy FBI director Andrew McCabe and Jeremy
Fleming, his then counterpart at MI5, who now heads GCHQ. The two men met in 2016 to discuss
"our strange situation" – an apparent reference to Russia's alleged interference
in US domestic politics.
British intelligence "appears to have played a key role in the early stages," the
report said.
Galloway said the revelation was not surprising because people "already knew" that
British intelligence had played a part in the Russia-related investigations in the US. He
recalled that it was former British spy Christopher Steele who drew up the now-infamous Steele
dossier, which made multiple unverifiable and salacious claims about Trump and has since been
largely discredited. Britain is "up to its neck in the whole Russiagate affair," he
said.
The texts also reveal that the Brexit vote was viewed by some in the FBI as something that
had been influenced by Russia.
Asked what the UK stood to gain by trying to implicate Russia in a US election scandal at a
time when then-foreign secretary Boris Johnson was dismissing baseless claims of Russian
interference in the Brexit campaign, Galloway noted that Johnson's comments on Russia have
appeared to strangely sway between friendly and antagonistic.
Johnson is like "a sofa that bears the impression of the last person to sit upon
him," the former MP quipped. What happens next will depend on who is leading the tango,
"the orange man in Washington or the blonde mop-head in London."
In June 2016, the FBI opened a covert investigation codenamed 'Crossfire Hurricane' into
Trump's now disproven collusion with Moscow, which was later taken over by special counsel
Robert Mueller.
Ultimately, the two-year-long probe that followed came up short, producing no evidence to prove a conspiracy or collusion
between Trump campaign officials and Russia
"... The ruling exposes the illegality of the conspiracy by the US government, backed by the governments of Britain, Ecuador, Australia and Sweden and the entire corporate media and political establishment, to extradite Assange to the US, where he faces 175 years in federal prison on charges including espionage. ..."
"... The dismissal of the civil suit exposes massive unreported conflicts of interest and prosecutorial misconduct and criminal abuse of process by those involved. The criminal prosecution of Assange has nothing to do with facts and is instead aimed at punishing him for telling the truth about the war crimes committed by US imperialism and its allies. ..."
"... The judge labeled WikiLeaks an "international news organization" and said Assange is a "publisher," exposing the liars in the corporate press who declare that Assange is not subject to free speech protections. Judge Koeltl continued: "In New York Times Co. v. United States ..."
"... New York Times Co. v. United States ..."
"... The DNC's baseless complaint cited the New York Times ..."
"... New York Times ..."
"... Everyone seems to forget one thing.. Assange knows who gave Assange the DNC data. At some point you have to entertain the idea that eventually he'll play that card. ..."
"... The DNC never allowed a REAL cyber-inspection of it's servers, did they? They also never said the information contained in the supposedly 'stolen' E-Mails was "WRONG" or "INACCURATE", have they? It says volumes.... Occam's Razor points to disgruntled DNC employee Seth Rich using a large capacity flash drive to download the E-Mails, etc which he then passed to someone who got it to Wikileaks. For which he was killed!! ..."
"... No. they never did. Also, if you examine Mueller's BS indictments, the domain they claim was used to phish for Podesta's password (and others) was registered on the same day or perhaps the day before they unsealed the indictment. It's a total fabrication, start to finish! ..."
"... That's just one example of many. The Malware they allegedly 'discovered' (by a Ukranian owned security company Crowdstrike) was not Russian, it was Ukrainian and been floating around the internet for years prior to this alleged non-existent 'hack'.. The whole thing has more holes than proverbial swiss ..."
"... For we are opposed around the world by a monolithic and ruthless conspiracy that relies primarily on covert means for expanding its sphere of influence--on infiltration instead of invasion, on subversion instead of elections, on intimidation instead of free choice, on guerrillas by night instead of armies by day. It is a system which has conscripted vast human and material resources into the building of a tightly knit, highly efficient machine that combines military, diplomatic, intelligence, economic, scientific and political operations ..."
"... Its preparations are concealed, not published. Its mistakes are buried, not headlined. Its dissenters are silenced, not praised. No expenditure is questioned, no rumor is printed, no secret is revealed. It conducts the Cold War, in short, with a war-time discipline no democracy would ever hope or wish to match ..."
"... It is beyond astonishing that Democrats and the media have successfully shifted 99% of the public's attention AWAY FROM the actual content of what information was stolen from top ranking Democrats, especially the Hillary for President Campaign. ..."
"... beaglebailey > michiganderforfreedom ..."
"... ironically surely an equally damning 'leak' came from the DNCs own ex-Chair Donna Brazille in her self-serving 'memoir' Hacks ... in it she revealed Obama left DNC $24m in debt and Hillary Clinton then bailed it out and effectively bought the entire apparatus as her personal plaything. When that is understood all the 'corruption' about rigging the primaries against Sanders wasn't rigging at all, after all he was standing on Clinton's private property at the time. Blair and Brown dutifully followed the same NSA playbook and left Labour broke, presumably so Blair's 'charity' could then step in to buy it... but Corbyn then balanced the books in 6 months of his taking over ..."
"... The corporate media, having already gone to great lengths to convict Assange of such in the court of public opinion, would like to see that "conviction" stand. ..."
"... "The DNC's published internal communications allowed the American electorate to look behind the curtain of one of the two major political parties in the United States during a presidential election." That's precisely the kind of "problem" the bourgeoisie will no longer tolerate. ..."
"... Reporting the truth “undermined and distorted the DNC's ability to communicate the party's values and visions to the American electorate.” ..."
"... They're sick and tired of basic democratic rights almost as much as they're sick and tired of the working class ..."
In a ruling published late Tuesday, Judge John Koeltl of the US District Court for the
Southern District of New York delivered a devastating blow to the US-led conspiracy against
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.
In his ruling, Judge Koeltl, a Bill Clinton nominee and former assistant special prosecutor
for the Watergate Special Prosecution Force, dismissed "with prejudice" a civil lawsuit filed
in April 2018 by the Democratic National Committee (DNC) alleging WikiLeaks was civilly liable
for conspiring with the Russian government to steal DNC emails and data and leak them to the
public.
Jennifer Robinson, a leading lawyer for Assange, and other WikiLeaks attorneys welcomed the
ruling as "an important win for free speech."
The decision exposes the Democratic Party in a conspiracy of its own to attack free speech
and cover up the crimes of US imperialism and the corrupt activities of the two parties of Wall
Street. Judge Koeltl stated:
If WikiLeaks could be held liable for publishing documents concerning the DNC's political
financial and voter-engagement strategies simply because the DNC labels them 'secret' and
trade secrets, then so could any newspaper or other media outlet. But that would
impermissibly elevate a purely private privacy interest to override the First Amendment
interest in the publication of matters of the highest public concern. The DNC's published
internal communications allowed the American electorate to look behind the curtain of one of
the two major political parties in the United States during a presidential election. This
type of information is plainly of the type entitled to the strongest protection that the
First Amendment offers.
The ruling exposes the illegality of the conspiracy by the US government, backed by the
governments of Britain, Ecuador, Australia and Sweden and the entire corporate media and
political establishment, to extradite Assange to the US, where he faces 175 years in federal
prison on charges including espionage.
The plaintiff in the civil case -- the Democratic Party -- has also served as Assange's
chief prosecutor within the state apparatus for over a decade. During the Obama administration,
Democratic Party Justice Department officials, as well as career Democratic holdovers under the
Trump administration, prepared the criminal case against him.
The dismissal of the civil suit exposes massive unreported conflicts of interest and
prosecutorial misconduct and criminal abuse of process by those involved. The criminal
prosecution of Assange has nothing to do with facts and is instead aimed at punishing him for
telling the truth about the war crimes committed by US imperialism and its allies.
The judge labeled WikiLeaks an "international news organization" and said Assange is a
"publisher," exposing the liars in the corporate press who declare that Assange is not subject
to free speech protections. Judge Koeltl continued: "In New York Times Co. v. United
States , the landmark 'Pentagon Papers' case, the Supreme Court upheld the press's right
to publish information of public concern obtained from documents stolen by a third
party."
As a legal matter, by granting WikiLeaks' motion to dismiss, the court ruled that the DNC
had not put forward a "factually plausible" claim. At the motion to dismiss stage, a judge is
required to accept all the facts alleged by the plaintiff as true. Here, the judge ruled that
even if all the facts alleged by the DNC were true, no fact-finder could "draw the reasonable
inference that the defendant is liable for the misconduct alleged."
Going a step further, the judge called the DNC's arguments "threadbare," adding: "At no
point does the DNC allege any facts" showing that Assange or WikiLeaks "participated in the
theft of the DNC's information."
Judge Koeltl said the DNC's argument that Assange and WikiLeaks "conspired with the Russian
Federation to steal and disseminate the DNC's materials" is "entirely divorced from the facts."
The judge further ruled that the court "is not required to accept conclusory allegations
asserted as facts."
The judge further dismantled the DNC's argument that WikiLeaks is guilty-by-association with
Russia, calling the alleged connection between Assange and the Russian government "irrelevant,"
because "a person is entitled to publish stolen documents that the publisher requested from a
source so long as the publisher did not participate in the theft."
Judge Koeltl also rejected the DNC's claim "that WikiLeaks can be held liable for the theft
as an after-the-fact coconspirator of the stolen documents." Calling this argument
"unpersuasive," the judge wrote that it would "eviscerate" constitutional protections: "Such a
rule would render any journalist who publishes an article based on stolen information a
coconspirator in the theft."
In its April 2018 complaint, the DNC put forward a series of claims that have now been
exposed as brazen lies, including that Assange, Trump and Russia "undermined and distorted the
DNC's ability to communicate the party's values and visions to the American electorate."
The complaint also alleged: "Russian intelligence services then disseminated the stolen,
confidential materials through GRU Operative #1, as well as WikiLeaks and Assange, who were
actively supported by the Trump Campaign and Trump Associates as they released and disclosed
the information to the American public at a time and in a manner that served their common
goals."
At the time the DNC filed its complaint, the New York Times wrote that the document
relies on "publicly-known facts" as well as "information that has been disclosed in news
reports and subsequent court proceedings." The lawsuit "comes amid a swirl of intensifying
scrutiny of Mr. Trump, his associates and their interactions with Russia," the Times
wrote.
It is deeply ironic that Judge Koeltl cited the Pentagon Papers case, New York Times Co.
v. United States , in his ruling.
The DNC's baseless complaint cited the New York Times eight times as "proof" of
Assange and WikiLeaks' ties to Russia, including articles by Times reporters Andrew
Kramer, Michael Gordon, Niraj Chokshi, Sharon LaFraniere, K.K. Rebecca Lai, Eric Lichtblau,
Noah Weiland, Alicia Parlapiano and Ashley Parker, as well as a July 26, 2016 article by
Charlie Savage titled "Assange, avowed foe of Clinton, timed email release for Democratic
Convention."
The first of these articles was published just weeks after the New York Times hired
James Bennet as its editorial page editor in March 2016. James Bennet's brother, Michael
Bennet, is a presidential candidate, a senator from Colorado and former chair of the DNC's
Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. In 2018, Bennet signed a letter to Vice President
Mike Pence noting he was "extremely concerned" that Ecuador had not canceled asylum for
Assange, who was then trapped in the Ecuadorian embassy in London.
"It is imperative," the letter read, "that you raise US concerns with [Ecuadorian] President
[Lenin] Moreno about Ecuador's continued support for Mr. Assange at a time when WikiLeaks
continues its efforts to undermine democratic processes globally."
In April 2019, after the Trump administration announced charges against Assange, the New
York Times editorial board, under James Bennet's direction, wrote: "The administration has
begun well by charging Mr. Assange with an indisputable crime." Two weeks later, Michael Bennet
announced his presidential run and has since enjoyed favorable coverage in the Times
editorial page.
Additionally, the father of James and Michael Bennet, Douglas Bennet, headed the CIA-linked
United States Agency for International Development in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
On Wednesday, the Times published a brief, six-paragraph article on page 25 under
the headline, "DNC lawsuit against election is dismissed." In its online edition, the
Times prominently featured a link to its special page for the Mueller Report, which is
based on the same DNC-instigated threadbare lies that Judge Koeltl kicked out of federal court
LC • 9 hours ago
Everyone seems to forget one thing.. Assange knows who gave Assange the DNC data. At some point you have to entertain
the idea that eventually he'll play that card.
Liberalism Has Failed • 2 days ago
The DNC never allowed a REAL cyber-inspection of it's servers, did they? They also never said the information
contained in the supposedly 'stolen' E-Mails was "WRONG" or "INACCURATE", have they? It says volumes.... Occam's Razor points
to disgruntled DNC employee Seth Rich using a large capacity flash drive to download the E-Mails, etc which he then passed to
someone who got it to Wikileaks. For which he was killed!!
LC > Liberalism Has Failed • 9 hours ago
No. they never did. Also, if you examine Mueller's BS indictments, the domain they claim was used to phish for
Podesta's password (and others) was registered on the same day or perhaps the day before they unsealed the indictment. It's a
total fabrication, start to finish!
That's just one example of many. The Malware they allegedly 'discovered' (by a Ukranian owned security company
Crowdstrike) was not Russian, it was Ukrainian and been floating around the internet for years prior to this alleged
non-existent 'hack'.. The whole thing has more holes than proverbial swiss
Tradairn > SFWhite • a day ago
Then why does the US keep interfering in other countries' political processes? You've become the schoolyard bully of the
world.
SFWhite > Tradairn • 18 hours ago
Quoting from JFK's speech archived in the JFK Library:
THE PRESIDENT AND THE PRESS: ADDRESS BEFORE THE AMERICAN NEWSPAPER PUBLISHERS ASSOCIATION, APRIL 27, 1961
https://www.jfklibrary.org/...
If the press is awaiting a declaration of war before it imposes the self-discipline of combat conditions, then I can only say
that no war ever posed a greater threat to our security. If you are awaiting a finding of "clear and present danger," then I
can only say that the danger has never been more clear and its presence has never been more imminent.
It requires a change in outlook, a change in tactics, a change in missions--by the government, by the people, by every
businessman or labor leader, and by every newspaper.
***For we are opposed around the world by a monolithic and ruthless conspiracy that relies primarily on covert means for
expanding its sphere of influence--on infiltration instead of invasion, on subversion instead of elections, on intimidation
instead of free choice, on guerrillas by night instead of armies by day. It is a system which has conscripted vast human and
material resources into the building of a tightly knit, highly efficient machine that combines military, diplomatic,
intelligence, economic, scientific and political operations.
Its preparations are concealed, not published. Its mistakes are buried, not headlined. Its dissenters are silenced, not
praised. No expenditure is questioned, no rumor is printed, no secret is revealed. It conducts the Cold War, in short, with a
war-time discipline no democracy would ever hope or wish to match.***
michiganderforfreedom • 2 days ago
It is beyond astonishing that Democrats and the media have successfully shifted 99% of the public's attention AWAY
FROM the actual content of what information was stolen from top ranking Democrats, especially the Hillary for President
Campaign.
Had the actual Content of what had been stolen was simply meeting schedules, work shift assignments, lawn sign purchase
orders and speech notes, NONE of this scandal would have happened!!
But, the CONTENT of what was stolen revealed the upper echelon of Democrat Party leadership to be nothing but lying,
conniving, cheating, law-breaking dirty politicians who are hell-bent on bringing down the American Federation at any cost.
If the actual Content had been cookie recipes and wedding plans, we would not have been put though this traumatic national
wringer!!
beaglebailey > michiganderforfreedom • 7 hours ago
This was the reason Hillary's campaign came up with the idea to blame it on Russia. This kept people from focusing on
their content and it worked. To this day Hillary's supporters think that her rigging the primary is a conspiracy theory. And
it's why they believe that Russia interfered with the election. How sad to see people who saw through the Saddam had WMDs
have fallen for the new WMDs scam.
Charlotte Ruse • 4 days ago
"The decision exposes the Democratic Party in a conspiracy of its own to attack free speech and cover up the crimes of US
imperialism and the corrupt activities of the two parties of Wall Street."
One should never forget that the corrupt political duopoly is controlled by the military/security/surveillance/corporate
state. Assange, published documents revealing to millions that the US committed war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan, murdered
innocent civilians, and slaughtered two Reuter Reporters.
Revealing atrocities is BAD MARKETING for the military industry which for decades has been robbing the US Treasury blind.
Assange's documents threatens the "official narrative" spread by the state-run mainstream news convincing the public to
passively accept the plundering of the US Treasury to enhance the wealth of a small cabal of war profiteer gangsters.
In other words, Assange is being attacked by the US Government because he revealed that a big CON GAME is being perpetuated
against the American public by the security state.
Dennis Stein > Charlotte Ruse • 3 days ago
“We’ll Know Our Disinformation Program Is Complete When Everything the American Public Believes Is False”
—CIA Director William Casey at an early February 1981 meeting of newly elected President Reagan.
Adrian • 4 days ago
Great news on Assange... but ironically surely an equally damning 'leak' came from the DNCs own ex-Chair Donna
Brazille in her self-serving 'memoir' Hacks ... in it she revealed Obama left DNC $24m in debt and Hillary Clinton then
bailed it out and effectively bought the entire apparatus as her personal plaything. When that is understood all the
'corruption' about rigging the primaries against Sanders wasn't rigging at all, after all he was standing on Clinton's
private property at the time. Blair and Brown dutifully followed the same NSA playbook and left Labour broke, presumably so
Blair's 'charity' could then step in to buy it... but Corbyn then balanced the books in 6 months of his taking over
Ed Bergonzi • 5 days ago
This is good news. But now the advantage is with Trump. What will the Democrats do if Trump presses for extradition
claiming "national security" concerns, i.e., Assange's exposure of US war crimes. I think their present silence regarding
Judge Koeltl's decision speaks volumes.
Greg • 5 days ago • edited
"Going a step further, the judge called the DNC’s arguments “threadbare,” adding: “At no point does the DNC allege any
facts” showing that Assange or WikiLeaks “participated in the theft of the DNC’s information.”
The corporate media, having already gone to great lengths to convict Assange of such in the court of public opinion,
would like to see that "conviction" stand.
"On Wednesday, the Times published a brief, six-paragraph article on page 25..."
Greg • 5 days ago • edited
"The DNC's published internal communications allowed the American electorate to look behind the curtain of one of
the two major political parties in the United States during a presidential election." That's precisely the kind of
"problem" the bourgeoisie will no longer tolerate.
Reporting the truth “undermined and distorted the DNC's ability to communicate the party's values and visions to the
American electorate.”
They're sick and tired of basic democratic rights almost as much as they're sick and tired of the working class.
They practically come out and say it: "There was no attempt by other reporters to pursue the matter, and Conway then began to
rant about Trump's reasons for targeting the four congresswomen, saying, “He's tired, a lot of us are sick and tired of this
country—of America coming last, to people who swore an oath of office.”
Gotta love it! Democrats are beside themselves with outrage at Russian meddling but they
could care less about election meddling that cost them wins in 2000 (Florida), and 2004
(Ohio.) And they won't say a word about blatant meddling going on right now. In fact, they
want to turn the meddlers into censors to determine what information the American people can
use to make decisions about who will govern them:
"On June 28th, 2019 in the immediate hours following the first Democratic Presidential
debate, millions of Americans were searching online for information about Tulsi Gabbard. In
fact, according to multiple news reports, Tulsi was the most searched candidate on Google.
Then, without any explanation, Google suspended Tulsi's Google Ads account.
For hours, Tulsi's campaign advertising account remained offline while Americans
everywhere were searching for information about her. During this time, Google obfuscated and
dissembled with a series of inconsistent and incoherent reasons for its actions. In the end,
Google never explained to us why Tulsi's account was suspended.
Google controls 88 percent of all internet search in the United States – essentially
giving it control over our access to information. That's one reason why Tulsi has been a
vocal proponent of breaking up the tech monopolies. And no matter what the motivation was for
doing so, Google's arbitrary and capricious decision to suspend Tulsi's Google Ads account
during a critical moment in our campaign should be of concern to all political candidates and
in fact all Americans. Because if Google can do this to Tulsi, a combat veteran and four term
Congresswoman who is running for the nation's highest office, Google can do this to any
candidate, from any party, running for any office in the United States."
Vote for Tulsi! End election meddling by Big Tech, banksters, billionaires, and
multi-nationals, meddlers that the Democratic yield shields.
You cannot make up the effects of unaddressed angst (now mass psychosis) over Hillary (put
her in jail) losing to Trump!
Thy delude themselves to think that putting the deep state in the middle of election
campaigns and who they can talk to, might as well ask the Gestapo!
Does the New York Times Have an Editing Program that Automatically Puts "Free" Before
"Trade?"
By Dean Baker
Readers must be wondering because it happens so frequently in contexts where it is clearly
inappropriate. The latest example is in an article * about the state of the race for the
Democratic presidential nomination following the second round of debates.
The piece told readers:
"After a few candidates used the Detroit debate to demand that Mr. Biden account for Mr.
Obama's record on issues such as deportations and free trade, Mr. Biden was joined by some of
the former president's advisers, who chastised the critics for committing political
malpractice."
The word "free" in this context adds nothing and is in fact wrong. The Obama
administration did virtually nothing to promote free trade in highly paid professional
services, like physicians services, which would have reduced inequality. It only wanted to
reduce barriers that protected less educated workers, like barriers to trade in manufactured
goods.
And, it actively worked to increase patent and copyright protections, which are the
complete opposite of free trade. These protections also have the effect of increasing
inequality.
Given the reality of trade policy under President Obama it is difficult to understand why
the New York Times felt the need to modify "trade" with the adjective "free." Maybe it needs
to get this editing program fixed.
Certainly CNN put on a debate that was superior to MSNBC in every way. There weren't any
horrid technical problems like microphone failures, and the moderation was superior, too.
(Jessica's comment to Alia might as well have been made to Maddow, in her silo: " I can think
of nothing more poisonous than to rot in the stink of your own reflections.")
Stages of capitalist development explain more than white papers and
propaganda can conceal. The relevant comparative period is 1990 - present (China/Russia)
versus 1950-1980 (US/West).
Ex-communist countries like Russia and China have experienced the same decline in the share
of public property, but starting from a much higher level of public wealth. The share of
net public wealth was as large as 70–80 percent in both countries in 1980, and fell
to 20 percent (Russia) and 30–35 percent (China) in 2015.
The Chinese share is higher but not incomparable to that observed in Western high-income
countries during the "mixed economy" period (1950–1980).
In other words, China and Russia have ceased to be communist in that public ownership is
no longer the dominant form of property. However, these countries still have much more
significant public wealth than Western high-income economies, due largely to lower public
debts and greater public assets.
All or nothing diplomacy("my way or highway") is a politically correct term for imperial dictate
Notable quotes:
"... For the neocons infesting the Trump administration, that is a feature, not a bug. ..."
"... Agree but I think "my way or the highway" has been a fairly standard feature of American arrogance going back several decades. ..."
"... Bush senior and Clinton's state dept (Madeleine notsobright) were prime examples of "exceptionalism" and all that comes out of ray gun's NED. ..."
"... one realizes that what the Trump administration calls "strategists" are what regular folks call "morons". ..."
"... This is a very good assessment of a normal diplomatic give and take noticeably lacking here. The ironic part is that the greatest deal maker of all time can't make a deal because he considers every person on the other side of the table a mark. Trump actually believes to the core of his being that he can charm the world's pants off. Once they are naked, he can have his way with them. In fact, he considers them a fool for believing him in the first place. This formula has served him well and made him the most powerful man in the world. What worked for him here, won't work for him anymore on the world stage. While that says some terrible things about us, it is nice to know there are limits to this kind of behavior. The stakes are much higher and his opponents are smarter and more ruthless. ..."
"... I don't see him trying another strategy. This one has served him so well for so long, he's never going to change. When called into question, he always says, "We'll see." He thinks it's just a time factor. Eventually, they will come around. No one can long resist his charm offensive or so he thinks. ..."
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un meets with U.S. President Donald Trump during the Singapore summit June 12. NPR
reports on the current state of U.S.-North Korea "talks":
"The president still has faith" that Kim can be an effective negotiating partner, said one person closely familiar with U.S.
deliberations. The person asked not to be identified citing the sensitivity of the matter.
But elsewhere within the U.S. government, there is a widespread "loss of faith." The source said U.S. strategists are baffled
that the North Korean ruler has seemed unable to spur his country to keep what they see as his commitments.
The reported bafflement of "strategists" is a bit worrisome, because it suggests that these "strategists" haven't been paying
attention for the last 18 months. Kim didn't make the commitments they think he made, and so he isn't failing to "spur" anything.
As he and other North Korean government officials keep saying, they are waiting for the U.S. to change its approach from the maximalist
demands that the administration has been insisting on throughout this process. North Korea has been remarkably clear that they aren't
going to wait on the U.S. forever, and they have repeatedly mentioned that the end of this year was how long the administration had
to make the necessary change.
Meanwhile the Trump administration seems to have internalized its own propaganda about the extent of progress made with North
Korea, and that has created dangerous false expectations of what North Korea is supposed to do. North Korea knows it didn't commit
to doing anything yet, but the administration promotes the fiction that they have committed to disarm and need to "fulfill" those
commitments. The only way that there is going to be significant progress in talks with North Korea is if the administration recognizes
that its maximalism is a dead end and they abandon it. Unfortunately, because they have been lying to us and to themselves that they
are already making progress, they can't admit that they need to reduce their demands and offer North Korea something as an incentive
to make concessions. Trump's North Korea policy is stuck because the administration can't acknowledge that the one thing they insist
on getting–North Korean disarmament–is never happening.
One reason they can't acknowledge this is pride. After dragging Obama for his "terrible" deal with Iran, reneging on the JCPOA,
and claiming that any deal with North Korea would be even better than that one, Trump and his officials would have a hard time admitting
that they haven't even made a dent with their all-or-nothing, hard-line approach. Another reason is that hard-liners are hung up
on the belief that "maximum pressure" can force other states to do what they want, and so they assume it is only a matter of time
and sufficient pressure before North Korea caves. Changing their policy at this point would be an admission of failure they don't
want to make, and they refuse to admit failure as long they think that "maximum pressure" is going to deliver the goods. The reality
is that there has been significantly less pressure on North Korea over the last year, and even before that the pressure campaign
was not what made North Korea interested in talking. The Trump administration is waiting on something that will never occur, and
in the meantime they are frittering away their opportunity to reach a more modest arms control agreement. As usual, an all-or-nothing
approach to diplomacy leaves us with nothing.
This is a very good assessment of a normal diplomatic give and take noticeably lacking here. The ironic part is that the greatest
deal maker of all time can't make a deal because he considers every person on the other side of the table a mark. Trump actually
believes to the core of his being that he can charm the world's pants off. Once they are naked, he can have his way with them.
In fact, he considers them a fool for believing him in the first place. This formula has served him well and made him the most
powerful man in the world. What worked for him here, won't work for him anymore on the world stage. While that says some terrible
things about us, it is nice to know there are limits to this kind of behavior. The stakes are much higher and his opponents are
smarter and more ruthless.
I don't see him trying another strategy. This one has served him so well for so long, he's never going to change. When called
into question, he always says, "We'll see." He thinks it's just a time factor. Eventually, they will come around. No one can long
resist his charm offensive or so he thinks.
"... "After watching seven hours of a spectacle that felt much more cruel than enlightening, I cannot avoid pondering a question which honestly gives me no joy to ponder: just how much damage has MSNBC in particular done to the left?" The Hill's Rising star began, before excoriating her former employer's "fevered speculations" about an "Infowars conspiracy theory" and the way it hosted people like Jonathan "maybe Trump has been a Russian asset since the 1980s" Chait and "conspiracy gadfly Louise Mensch" in search of ratings bumps. ..."
"... "This whole setup has done more damage to the Democrats' chances of winning back the White House than anything that Trump could ever have dreamed up," Ball argued. "Think about all the time and the journalistic resources that could have been dedicated to stories that, I don't know, that a broad swath of people might actually care about? Healthcare, wages, the teachers' movement, whether we're going to war with Iran? I'm just spitballing here. ..."
"... Ball argued that the fact that MSNBC is doing so much damage to the Democratic Party in the name of ratings proves that MSNBC isn't "on Team D in the same way that Fox News is on Team R", saying they're really just in it for the money. But this is where Ball gets it wrong. It is of course true that ratings are a factor, and that conspiracy theories can be used to sell advertising space, but MSNBC would have had a much easier time marketing conspiracy theories about Trump's loyalties to Israel and Saudi Arabia , both of which would have had vastly more factual evidence to back them up. The only difference is that the US-centralized empire doesn't have agendas that it wants to advance against those two countries. ..."
"... Ball is correct that MSNBC doesn't serve the Democratic party, but she's incorrect that it serves only money. MSNBC, which is now arguably a more aggressive war propaganda network than Fox News, serves first and foremost the US national security state. And so do all the other western mainstream news networks. ..."
"... From the Pentagon's point of view, US hegemony good, Russia-China alliance very, very bad. ..."
"... I t was determined with the help of influential neoconservative think tankers that the US must maintain this unipolar paradigm at all costs. As soon as that view became the establishment orthodoxy , any threat to US hegemony was now interpreted as a threat to national security. An "attack" on America was no longer limited to physical attacks on US soil, or even on US allies and assets: any attempt to escape unipolarity is now treated as a direct attack on the empire. ..."
"... This is why we've seen nations like Iraq, Libya and Syria spoken about by the propagandists as "enemies" as though they pose some kind of direct threat to the American people. There was never any actual threat to the physical United States, but those nations were not complying with the dictates of US hegemony, and that noncompliance was treated as a direct attack. ..."
"... This "if you're not obeying us you're attacking us" mentality is ridiculous on its face and no right-thinking citizen would ever consent to it, which is why the consent manufacturers need to promote imaginary nonsense like weapons of mass destruction, a Russian "attack" on American democracy, and a conspiracy theory about the Kremlin infiltrating the highest levels of the US government. It's got nothing to do with actual fears of those nations posing any threat to actual Americans. It's about continuing to rule the world. ..."
"After watching seven hours of a spectacle that felt much more cruel than enlightening, I cannot avoid pondering a question which
honestly gives me no joy to ponder: just how much damage has MSNBC in particular done to the left?" The Hill's Rising star began,
before excoriating her former employer's "fevered speculations" about an "Infowars conspiracy theory" and the way it hosted people
like Jonathan "maybe Trump has been a Russian asset since the 1980s" Chait and "conspiracy gadfly Louise Mensch" in search of ratings
bumps.
"This whole setup has done more damage to the Democrats' chances of winning back the White House than anything that Trump could
ever have dreamed up," Ball argued. "Think about all the time and the journalistic resources that could have been dedicated to stories
that, I don't know, that a broad swath of people might actually care about? Healthcare, wages, the teachers' movement, whether we're
going to war with Iran? I'm just spitballing here.
I actually heard some pundit on Chris Hayes last night opine that independent women in middle America were going to be swayed
by what Mueller said yesterday. Are you kidding me? This is almost as bonkers and lacking in factual basis as that time Mimi Rocah
said that Bernie Sanders is not pro-women because that was what her feelings told her. Rocah, by the way, a political prosecutor
with no political background, is only opining at MSNBC because of her role in leading viewers to believe that any day now SDNY is
going to bring down Trump and his entire family."
Ball argued that the fact that MSNBC is doing so much damage to the
Democratic Party in the name of ratings proves that MSNBC isn't "on Team D in the same way that Fox News is on Team R", saying they're
really just in it for the money. But this is where Ball gets it wrong. It is of course true that ratings are a factor, and that conspiracy
theories can be used to sell advertising space, but MSNBC would have had a much easier time marketing conspiracy theories about Trump's
loyalties to
Israel and
Saudi Arabia , both of which would have had
vastly more factual evidence to back them up. The only difference is that the US-centralized empire doesn't have agendas that
it wants to advance against those two countries.
Ball is correct that MSNBC doesn't serve the Democratic party, but she's incorrect that it serves only money. MSNBC, which is
now arguably a more aggressive war propaganda network than Fox News, serves first and foremost the US national security state.
And so do all the other western mainstream news networks.
Consider the way the Syrian province of Idlib is being reported on right now, to pick one of many possible examples.
Al-Qaeda-controlled
Idlib is the final stronghold of the extremist militant groups that
the US and
its allies flooded Syria with in a
premeditated campaign to effect regime change, and Syria and its allies are fighting to recapture the region. They are using
methods that are identical to those commonly used by the US and its allies, yet the bombing campaigns of the US-centralized empire
receive virtually no critical coverage while western mainstream outlets like
CNN and
the BBC
are churning out brazenly propagandistic pieces about the evils of the Assad coalition's airstrikes.
"Civilians are dying in Idlib, just as they died in their thousands in recent US UK air strikes in eg Raqqa and Mosul," political
analyst Charles Shoebridge
observed on Twitter today. "The difference is that when it's (often unverified) claims that Russia or Syria are doing the killing,
US UK media make it front page news."
There are many gaping plot holes in the Russiagate narrative that outlets like MSNBC have been bashing everyone over the head
with, but the most obvious and easily provable of them is the indisputable fact that Donald Trump
has escalated tensions against Russia more than any US president in decades. You never hear anyone talk about this self-evident
fact in all the endless yammering about Russia, though, because it doesn't advance the agendas of either of America's two mainstream
parties, and it doesn't advance the interests of US imperialism. Democrats don't like acknowledging the fact that Trump has been
consistently and aggressively working directly against the interests of Moscow , and Trump supporters don't like acknowledging
that their president is just as much of a neocon-coddling globalist as those they claim to oppose, so the war machine has gone conveniently
unchallenged in manufacturing new cold war escalations against a nation they've had marked for destruction since the fall of the
Soviet Union.
In a very interesting new Grayzone
interview packed full of ideas that you'll never hear voiced on western mass media, Russia's Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov
spoke openly about the various ways that Russia, China, and other nations who've resisted absorption into the blob of the US power
alliance have been working toward the creation of a multipolar world. Ryabkov said other nations have been watching the way the dominance
of the US dollar has been used to economically terrorize noncompliant nations into subservience by way of sanctions and other manipulations,
with Washington expecting that the dollar and the US financial system will remain "the cardiovascular system of the whole organism."
"That will not be the case," Ryabkov said. "People will bypass, in literal terms. And people will find ways how to defend themselves,
how to protect themselves, how to guarantee themselves against any emergencies if someone comes up at the White House or whatever,
at the Treasury, at the State, and says 'Hey guys, now we should stop what is going on in Country X, and let's squeeze them out.'
And this country sits on the dollar. So they will be done the moment those ideas will be pronounced. So China, Russia and others,
we create alternatives that we will most probably continue using not just national currencies, but baskets of currencies, currencies
of third countries, other modern barter schemes."
"We will use ways that will diminish the role of dollar and US banking system with all these risks of assets and transactions
being arrested, being stopped," Ryabkov concluded.
That, right there, is the real reason you're being sold Russia hysteria today.
And it isn't just on the matter of financial systems in which the unabsorbed powers are uniting against the imperial blob. Russia
and China
just carried out their first joint air patrol on Tuesday, drawing a hostile response from imperial vassals Japan and South Korea.
"Russian and Chinese bombers on 'first' joint patrol in the Asia-Pacific region. The China-Russia alliance has become a reality
and will last for long time,"
reads a post by one Russian Twitter commentator in response to the news.
The emergence of this alliance, which the Chinese government
has warned Washington is 'not vulnerable to interference', has been something the west has feared for a long time. A
Pentagon white paper published this past May titled "Russian Strategic Intentions" mentions the word "China" 108 times. Some
noteworthy excerpts:
The world system, and American influence in it, would be completely upended if Moscow and Beijing aligned more closely.
The allies' goal should be deterrence. At the same time, the US should bilaterally engage Russia to peel them away from China's
orbit.
He also encourages the development of the US's 'capability to effectively foster distrust and unease between the Russia Federation
and China.'
Along with Beijing, Moscow seeks a multipolar world in which US hegemony comes to an end. As Alexander Lukin recently pointed
out, the 'common ideal of a multipolar world [has] played a significant role in the rapprochement between Russia and China.'
Russia and China were explicitly mentioned in the 2018 National Defense Strategy as the great powers with which the US is
in competition. Both Russia and China have come a long way since the 1990s, and the 'friendship' that emerged in the immediate
post-Tiananmen period and continued to grow over the years now today appears to be one of the strongest bilateral alliances on
the planet.
Together, Russia's tentacles on its former Soviet neighbors and Moscow's strategic alliance with Beijing in pursuit of a multipolar
world (in which the US is no longer the global hegemon) form the two main pillars upon which Putin's grand strategy rests. All
other aspects of its foreign policy behavior can be traced back to this dual-pronged grand strategy.
I think you get the picture. From the Pentagon's point of view, US hegemony good, Russia-China alliance very, very bad.
Analysts like the white paper's authors, and even
The New York Times editorial board
, have urged the drivers of US foreign policy to attempt to lure Moscow away from Beijing, the latter rightly perceived as the greater
long-term threat to US dominance due to China's surging economic power. But diplomacy has clearly been ruled out toward this end,
with only a steadily escalating campaign to shove Russia off the world stage now deemed acceptable.
It
was determined with the help of
influential
neoconservative
think tankers that the US must maintain this unipolar paradigm at all costs. As soon as that view
became the establishment orthodoxy , any threat to US hegemony was now interpreted as a threat to national security. An "attack"
on America was no longer limited to physical attacks on US soil, or even on US allies and assets: any attempt to escape unipolarity
is now treated as a direct attack on the empire.
This is why we've seen nations like Iraq, Libya and Syria spoken about by the propagandists as "enemies" as though they pose
some kind of direct threat to the American people. There was never any actual threat to the physical United States, but those nations
were not complying with the dictates of US hegemony, and that noncompliance was treated as a direct attack.
This "if you're not obeying us you're attacking us" mentality is ridiculous on its face and no right-thinking citizen would
ever consent to it, which is why the consent manufacturers need to promote imaginary nonsense like weapons of mass destruction, a
Russian "attack" on American democracy, and a conspiracy theory about the Kremlin infiltrating the highest levels of the US government.
It's got nothing to do with actual fears of those nations posing any threat to actual Americans. It's about continuing to rule the
world.
"... Reds under the bed has been replaced with antisemites under the bed; this with the full and open complicity of a mainstream media whose dread over the prospect of transformational political change is entwined in tight embrace with that of an Establishment -- political and security -- in ensuring nothing but nothing will ever change in this country apart from the colour of the curtains on the windows in Downing Street. ..."
"... There is nothing more grotesque than being lectured to about antisemitism, or any other form of racism, by apologists for a racist apartheid state. Yet this grotesquerie is precisely where we have arrived at in response to Corbyn's unlikely elevation to the leadership of the Labour Party. ..."
"... I think one has to appreciate, despite all the 'far-left' labels stuck on him, that Corbyn only appeared to be a 'raving looney leftie' in comparison with the rightwing Blairite majority of MPs who've controlled the Labour Party for so long and capitulated to and followed a Thatcherite political agenda, for decades. ..."
"... Anti-semitism oldest form of gas lighting that was ever created in the western world especially after the second world war. If one were to go to Palestine it is not uncommon to find some ebraic semite wearing a t shirt with on it printed an IDF soldier taking aim at a pregnant arab semite. Israel has to be exposed for what it is. It is an anglo-zionist colonial outpost.. Zionism was born in England it pre dates Herzl. ..."
"... The key to the anti-Semitism problem is the conflation of Judaism with Zionism. This didn't happen by accident, it is a deliberate and relatively modern policy. (An old (Jewish) friend described the indoctrination he got to me growing up. That was quite a long time ago, its probably so ingrained now that nobody notices this process any more.) ..."
"... The comparison to a witch hunt is perfectly accurate. The attack works by mere accusation. The facts, evidence, criteria of evaluation are all irrelevant. ..."
This article was first published on March 1st of this year, however, it is given fresh relevance in the wake of Labour's reinstatement,
and then re-suspension, of Derby MP Chris Williamson
PUTNAM: Now look you, sir. Let you strike out against the Devil, and the village will bless you for it! Come down, speak to
them -- pray with them. They're thirsting for your word, Mister! Surely you'll pray with them.
PARRIS: (swayed) I'll lead them in a psalm, but let you say nothing of witchcraft yet. I will not discuss it. The cause is
yet unknown. I have had enough contention since I came; I want no more.
Arthur Miller – The Crucible
In his magisterial autobiography, Timebends , describing his motivation behind his classic work The Crucible (extracted
above) -- the most compelling and enduring allegorical piece of drama to grace the American theatre -- Arthur Miller reveals the
following:
What I sought was a metaphor, an image that would spring out of the heart, all-inclusive, full of light, a sonorous instrument
whose reverberations would penetrate to the centre of this miasma. For if the current degeneration of discourse continued, as
I had every reason to believe it would, we could no longer be a democracy, a system that requires a certain basic trust in order
to exist."
The 'miasma' referred to by Miller in the above passage was the atmosphere of censorious paranoia whipped up by the anti-Communist
witchhunts of the 1940s and 1950s, starting under the auspices of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), established
in 1938, joined thereafter by Senator Joseph McCarthy's Senate hearings into alleged Communist infiltration from the late 1940s.
The period concerned, commonly referred to as McCarthyism, illuminated the parameters of free speech and expression in a country
and culture which prides itself on both. It drilled home the profound truth that tyranny is less the by-product of totalitarian political
systems and more the product of totalitarian ideas and nostrums that sustain political orthodoxy in a given space and time. And,
too, whenever those ideas and nostrums come under challenge, said democracy is exposed as a cloak behind which mendacity resides,
ruthlessly seeking malcontents to expose and miscreants to punish.
In Britain in 2019 we need no longer turn to US history for an understanding of McCarthyism and its execrable fruits.
For in Britain in 2019 McCarthyism is with us and among us, corroding our public and political discourse, poisoning it with the
untruths, lies and mendacious smears of some of the most malignant political forces that ever existed in these islands.
Reds under the bed has been replaced with antisemites under the bed; this with the full and open complicity of a mainstream
media whose dread over the prospect of transformational political change is entwined in tight embrace with that of an Establishment
-- political and security -- in ensuring nothing but nothing will ever change in this country apart from the colour of the curtains
on the windows in Downing Street.
Jeremy Corbyn's leadership of the Labour Party has to intents been usurped by his deputy Tom Watson, a man for whom Shakespeare's
"Hell is empty, and all the devils are here!" line from The Tempest could have been written with in mind.
Labour Friends of Israel
Watson is the Labour Party's Matthew Hopkins, the infamous witch-hunter whose reign of terror in 17th century Britain finds its
metaphorical equivalent in the 21st century with the objective not of locating and hanging out to dry antisemites but instead anti-Zionists,
which means to say genuine anti-racists.
For what is Zionism if not racism, a species of white supremacy responsible for relegating the humanity of five million men, women
and children of the illegally occupied West Bank and besieged Gaza Strip to that of latter-day Helots?
Adding to the mountain of intellectual and moral ordure erected in service to this miasma of untruth and base hypocrisy, are the
findings of a UN investigation into the Palestinians killed and wounded by Israeli snipers during last year's Great Return March
in Gaza.
According to the UN's Santiago Canton:
Israeli soldiers committed violations of international human rights and humanitarian law. Some of those violations may constitute
war crimes or crimes against humanity."
In diplomatic-speak, Mr Canton is here referencing the manner in which Israeli soldiers shot down dozens of unarmed Palestinians
-- among them children, medics and journalists -- like deer in a forest, with some of those Israeli soldiers caught on tape laughing
and celebrating their 'kills'.
It is to this monstrosity of an apartheid state Tom Watson and his friends are giving succour and sanction; and it this supremacist
juggernaut of oppression we are expected to accept as compatible with left-wing progressive values.
There is nothing more grotesque than being lectured to about antisemitism, or any other form of racism, by apologists for
a racist apartheid state. Yet this grotesquerie is precisely where we have arrived at in response to Corbyn's unlikely elevation
to the leadership of the Labour Party.
His legacy as a staunch supporter of Palestinian human rights and self-determination has been weaponised against him and his supporters
by a pro-Israel lobby within and without the Labour Party, plumbing depths of indecency last witnessed during the era of McCarthyism
across the Atlantic.
For those who doubt how deeply entrenched the pro-Israel lobby now is within the UK body politic, Al Jazeera's blistering documentary
The Lobby is required viewing.
Given the context and the stakes involved in this ongoing witch hunt and smear campaign, the lack of meaningful resistance on
the part of Corbyn is unconscionable; his refusal to mobilise his base in the face of it inexplicable. The result has not been to
see it disappear but for it to prosper and grow in ferocity.
Be under no illusion either of the complicity of key figures in and around the Labour leadership in whipping up and/or acquiescing
in this baseless hysteria -- Lansman, McDonnell et al. -- to the point where Corbyn has been rendered well nigh unelectable as a
prospective prime minister.
That this is a smear campaign and witchhunt conducted, regardless of the fog of obfuscation deployed to the contrary, on behalf
of a foreign power -- and an apartheid power at that -- compounds the offence.
But this issue is now bigger than Corbyn. It is about where we stand on matters of intellectual and moral integrity; and most
of all on the rights we accrue to an oppressed people and those of their oppressor. Future generations are watching and waiting for
the stance that we take.
Arthur Miller understood this, which is why his light will shine forever bright as a beacon of moral courage in an age of deceit.
I'll not supply any facts. None whatsoever,saying only: Corbyn( I believe) is made of better material. Blairites must be expelled,
or otherwise, go away!
MichaelK
I think one has to appreciate, despite all the 'far-left' labels stuck on him, that Corbyn only appeared to be a 'raving looney
leftie' in comparison with the rightwing Blairite majority of MPs who've controlled the Labour Party for so long and capitulated
to and followed a Thatcherite political agenda, for decades.
Corbyn himself isn't really a 'revolutionary' or even a radical. He's what half a century ago would have been described as
a pretty normal, middle-of-the-road, Labour social democrat, barely on the left of the Party at all. But some of this is debatable,
depending on where one stands on the spectrum personally. It's a sign of how far 'left' politics and 'left' discourse has degenerated
in the UK, and political culture's moved so far to the right, that Corbyn, like a relic of a bygone era, is perceived as far more
leftwing than he actually is, in reality.
What he is though, is ineffective as a leader. He lacks authority, I think, because he fundamentally lacks a set of strong
ideas that show what he stands for and where he wants the country to move. There's no real narrative that mobilises support for
him, and this is the curse of Labour; the leadership's fear of mobilising the membership and their supporters and votes in the
country, too much and too far, which could easily lead to them raising their expectations way beyond what's 'realistic' and possible
within the boundaries of bourgeois liberal democracy. Labour fought for political power in parliament; but didn't believe in openly
challenging economic power in society in any meaningful way, because that strategy was simply not allowed because it was 'revolutionary'
and not reformist.
mark
Of course Corbyn is a "raving loony lefty."
He wants to re nationalise the railways (maybe.)
And build a few council houses (maybe.)
How raving loony is that?
Obviously he's a raving loony.
Oh, and he objects to the genocide of the Palestinians.
Obviously a raving anti semite as well.
Just ask the Board of Deputies and Margaret Hodge and the Daily Mail. They'll explain it all to you.
More to the point; he's a (Labour) Party man. The Party comes first, regardless. For almost 130 years the Labour Party has been
an integral part of British capitalism and imperialism and the British state. Thus Corbyn, a run-of-the-mill social democrat is
concerned only with the survival of the Party and he will do whatever is necessary in its defence including defenestrating his
election manifesto (compare his draft with the one finally circulated in 2017)!
Should he by some chance actually end up as PM, what are the odds of him actually reversing austerity when he's already sold
out over every key part of his original manifesto?
There are going to be a lot of very disappointed and once more disconnected Labour voters.
mathias alexand
What is this "leadership" and "authority" thing? As for his ideas he could have any number of them that you will never hear about
in the MSM.
Maggie
True Mathias, but you can see and hear about them on the Jimmy Dore Show whose shows truly are a breath of fresh air:
Bernie Sanders of Britain and why he is widely loved, and sadly rare. July 2016
Anti-semitism oldest form of gas lighting that was ever created in the western world especially after the second world war.
If one were to go to Palestine it is not uncommon to find some ebraic semite wearing a t shirt with on it printed an IDF soldier
taking aim at a pregnant arab semite. Israel has to be exposed for what it is. It is an anglo-zionist colonial outpost.. Zionism
was born in England it pre dates Herzl.
Hence until more exposure of the brutal nature of the Israeli zionist and their parents the anglo-zionist becomes exposed then
the diluted term of anti semite will continue to be used. I find that with the dying western paradigm so will this gaslighting
term become irrelevant .If any intellectual honesty were to be used the real anti semites are the zionist.
Post Scriptum : Israel has a shelf life and it is omploding with in hence so will zionism.
Having experience racism first hand growing up and still being exposed to it today for mhy ethnicity I am not fortunate enough
as the ashkanazi /zionist to deflect and gaslight my oppressors.
harry law
Former South African Minister Ronnie Kasrils himself Jewish on Thursday accused Israel of conducting a policy against the Palestinians
that was "worse" than apartheid.
Speaking on the sidelines of a UN meeting on the situation in the Palestinian territories, Kasrils said South Africa's townships
had never been attacked by helicopter gunships and tanks, in contrast to the military means employed by Israel.
Labour Friends of Israel, Conservative Friends of Israel, Liberal Democrat Friends of Israel – all different organisations?
No, of course they are not, even if the ordinary man in the street may think so.
They are all controlled by the Israeli state, to do the bidding of that state, to demonise any person who shows empathy with
the plight of the Palestinian people, any person who dares criticise the actions of the Israeli state.
On the other hand, you have Jewish Friends of Labour, seen by the Israeli state as "self hating Jews", the "wrong type of Jew".
What we are seeing at the moment is – Zio-McCarthyism.
Capricornia Man
'McCarthyism' is exactly what I have been calling the witch-hunt for some time. It's surprising that the term is taking so long
to come into general use when it is the appropriate term based on historical analogy, as shown by the article. The pile-on against
anyone who dares to support the political and national rights of the Palestinians induces physical illness in anyone remotely
interested in justice and truth.
The rancid 'liberal' media frames its "coverage" by treating accusations of 'antisemitism' not as the thing which has to be
proved, but as the proof itself. A classic McCarthyite process.
The vast majority of Britons must be fed up having their politics held up to ransom in this manner. Stand up for yourselves
and by-pass the fifth column and the coward element in the Labour Party.
vwbeetle
To read the Guardian, one would think that Williamson has no supporters in Labour whatsoever. As far as the Guardian is concerned,
Jewish Voice for Labour and its condemnation of the witch hunt and smear campaign against Corbyn and Williamson and anyone who
supports Palestinian rights, does not exist. Up until a couple of years ago I was a regular contributor on CIF discussion threads,
largely rebutting Zionists and their propaganda and outright lies. I was eventually blocked, probably because large numbers of
Zionists reported me, despite the fact that I largely restricted my posts to historical facts. Over the past two years it is almost
impossible to make comments on CIF about any article about Israel/Palestine, or the anti-semitism smear campaign. What has happened
at the Guardian? Does anyone know why the paper seems to have changed course?
MichaelK
The lurch to the political right at the Guardian is linked to the Snowden and Assange revelations that challenged the cosy ideological
relationship between the media and the state, to a degree that is simply not allowed, if one wants to be seen as loyal and responsible.
There are consequences is one, as an individual, group or institution, is perceived as being illoyal by the Establishment and
the state.
Assange and Snowden pulled the Guardian over an invisible line, into a grey area, at the time, which was perceived as being
tantamount to treason, and now the Guardian has been successfully reined in once more and now co-opperates with the state on matters
relating to 'national security.' The damage, has been undone and a proper and reasonable relationship established.
Haltonbrat
The Guardian has been pro-Zionist since the days of editor CP Scott who introduced the Zionist leader to Looyd George and supported
the Zionists in his writings in the Manchester Guardian.
Shardlake
It all changed, and not for the better, after Alan Rusbridger left. It's as much a mouthpiece now for this appalling government
as the Murdoch press and their like. There's been a continual shift in centre ground politics to the right since the days of Thatcher.
We are seeing what Edward Bernays described in 1928 as the conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organised habits and
opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society.
Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of
our country.
We are governed, our minds are moulded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested largely by men we have never heard of.
In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical
thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons who understand the mental processes and social patterns of
the masses.
It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind.
Stephen Morrell
PS. The Labour Party never fails to disappoint
Stephen Morrell
It's time to stop calling Israel an 'apartheid state'. Snipers today, missiles and bombs tomorrow, with deliberate and active
ruination of amenity, infrastructure and the means to live -- by siege, every day.
Israel's atrocities are not simply 'crimes against humanity'. They're crimes directed against a particular ethnic/national/racial
segment of humanity. That's called genocide. Netanyahu and his gang are genocidal, and consequently the garrison state of Israel
is also a 'genocide state'. Time to start applying the g-word.
Haltonbrat
Yes, The actions of Israel meet the UN definition of genocide.
mark
The Times of Israel, a national newspaper, quite openly advocated genocide. It called for the Palestinian people to be exterminated
at concentration camps in the desert. The "Justice" Minister, a woman called Shaked, called for Palestinian mothers to be exterminated,
so that no Palestinian children could be born. Two rabbis in Israel published a book called "The King's Torah." It called for
all Palestinian children to be murdered.
Killing a goy, any goy, is a Mitzvah, a praiseworthy act.
If the Jews get the war with Iran they have been trying to incite and agitate for for so long, they will use this as cover
to carry out actual genocide on a massive scale.
People need to give up completely on Labour. It is infested wall to wall with 30 shekel whores.
maggie
Hi Mark, Do you have links to the information you have posted please.
If we give up on Labour, then who do we rely on? I think what we should be doing is focussing all our energies on removing
(de selecting) the 90 "friends of Israhell" who have been baying for Chris Williamson and Jeremy Corbyn to be removed permanently
from the Labour Party. Beginning with the evil with Hodge, and her cronies headed by Tom Watson.
mark
The Times of Israel, 1/8/14.
"When Genocide Is Permissible", by Yochanan Gordon.
Openly advocates, endorses and justifies the genocide of the Palestinians.
Ayelet Shaked, 14/7/14.
"Mothers of all Palestinians should be killed. They have to die and their houses should be demolished. They are all our enemies
and their blood should be on our hands."
A day before Palestinian teenager Muhammad Abu Khudair was kidnapped and burned alive by 6 Jew thugs, Shaked published a call
for the genocide of the Palestinians in Facebook.
"The entire Palestinian people is the enemy, including its elderly and its women, its cities and its villages, its property and
its infrastructure."
She called for the slaughter of Palestinian mothers. "to prevent them giving birth to little snakes."
The King's Torah, 230 page book published 2009 by Od Yosef Chai Yeshiva. Authors Rabbis Yitzhak Shapira and Yosef Elitzur.
Endorsed by many leading rabbis.
It openly incites and calls for the extermination of the Palestinians, and explains how this is morally justified.
It is a call for indiscriminate extermination.
The killing of children, en masse, responds to "the existence of an internal need for revenge."
"In the face of revenge, no one is innocent, be they old, young, children, men or women, and regardless of their health."
It rejects any notion of international law and the protection of civilians in time of war, or international humanitarian law on
the prevention of genocide. Israel is above international law, because Jews are superior to Gentiles and the lives of Gentiles
have no value.
Jews are indoctrinated from birth to hate all the goyim.
Israel is an openly genocidal, terrorist, racist state.
There is no doubt that in the event of a major war with Iran, it would use this as cover to commit genocide, which has been long
planned.
Stephen Morrell
I apologise for taking up so much space in replying to your very telling question about what alternative is there to Labour. First,
it should now be clear to everyone that Labour, whether led by Corbyn or any other 'left' social democrat, is no answer to the
dire situation we face. Right now there is no mass party on this planet that can provide the leadership necessary, let alone serve
as the instrument, for the revolutionary change so desperately needed to excise the malignancy of capitalism from the human social
organism. This is a crisis of revolutionary leadership.
The bourgeois Greens are not the answer either, and most of the traditional left and 'far' left are mired in one form or another
of opportunistic kow-towing to Corbyn and Labour or the Greens. This isn't to say that one should never vote Labour, the party
of the working class. It's to say that one should only give support to Labour, as 'a rope supports a hanging man' (Lenin), when
it furthers revolutionary and class consciousness in the working class. The working class, as politically backward as it might
be now in many ways, is the only class with the social power to overthrow the capitalists -- it can stop and start production
at will and, most importantly, if it had the political consciousness and leadership to do so, it could take over production and
overthrow capitalism. Such a consciousness is smothered and suppressed by Labour and the current leaders of the trade unions (such
as the latter currently exist).
Presently Labour deserves no vote because under Corbyn they've refused to support Brexit and are pushing for a second referendum.
Tony Benn, Corbyn's mentor, would have been railing against him over his betrayal of this fundamental class issue in Britain.
Corbyn is Blair lite. On the EU he's Blair quiet.
If in power, Corbyn would either be forced to bow to the diktats of capital and the ruling class or be pushed out, and pronto.
Already forces centred on MI6's The Guardian, the Zionist lobby, the aristocratic feudal relics, the military, 'the City' rentiers,
and of course the Blairites, have been undermining him because of his mild reformist and foreign policy stances. However, the
ruling class would rush to Corbyn and Labour, or another 'left' alternative, if their rule were seriously threatened by an awakened
working class. Before fascism, Corbyn would be their best and last hope.
What then of the left and far left? They're all still propaganda groups. We have the likes of the SP, SWP, Socialist Alternative
and so on, who've advocated a vote for Labour unconditionally at just about every election. And they've also supported the bourgeois
Greens. In doing so, they provide no alternative to Labour. Instead their strategy is to try to pressure Labour to the left. How's
that been working? Corbyn still supports the EU. How many times has he mentioned Julian Assange? Or the basic necessity to do
away with the monarchy and House of Lords and all the other 'traditions of the dead generations [that] weigh like a nightmare
upon the living' (Marx). At least in the US, the ISO (followers of the late Tony Cliff) have decided to sate their opportunistic
appetites and dissolve themselves to join the Democratic Socialists of America (ie, social democrats inside a bourgeois party,
the Democratic Party of Hiroshima and Nagasaki).
Then we have the Socialist Equity Party, ostensibly 'Trotskyist' and followers of David North, that declares trade unions in
principle to be an instrument for the subjugation of the working class. Imagine that: the prime defense organs of the working
class historically are written off in advance because their leaderships betray the rank and file (which they do, but not always,
not inevitably). Outfits like the SEP don't have a perspective to take these trade union leaderships on from within and fight
to replace them with a revolutionary leadership in the heat of struggle to turn the unions into real working class defense organs.
Consequently, a revolutionary consciousness cannot be developed from within the working class in struggle for it to act in
its own historic interests. The SEP have a slew of other programmatic issues that are awry as well, but their outlook boils down
to opportunism afraid of itself.
This isn't to say that the World Socialist Website is completely useless. It isn't, but its articles on workers and trade union
struggles in particular need to be taken with a large grain of salt.
In short, if there are only propaganda groups at the moment that pose an alternative to Labour, then it at least behoves those
looking for an alternative to Labour to not waste time or effort on any group that can't get even the basics of a program right,
let alone before they even dirty their hands in actual struggle.
What's left then? Right now, the first criteria to look out for is if an ostensibly revolutionary group advocates 'No vote
to Labour', and draws a class line for Brexit and against a new referendum; one that works consistently to destroy any illusions
in the bourgeois state and its parliament ever being 'reformed' to act in the interests of the working class -- which means also
exposing those who do. That's pretty fundamental, but it's a start.
Very shrewd assessment. But I'd say a re run of pre war Weimar is the most likely outcome. People are far more likely to turn
to far worse than Trump or Farage as things deteriorate. Expect to see more Zionist controlled opposition like the EDL.
maggie
Mmm.. Stephen, a very interesting reply.. and links, which I will read and try to digest, though I have to confess a lot of the
information contained therein, at 'first glance' I thought had been tried, tested and failed owing to the avarice of the capitalists
and their power to remove the ground from under our feet.
This may be the wrong interpretation? But I will read the links more thoroughly and try to get my head around the concepts.
What I think we could do immediately, is to have the one man one vote system, to elect the 'man/woman' we choose to represent
us and dispense with 'parties' altogether.
Surely, it can't be that difficult with today's technology, which would automatically dispense with the ballot box and the inherent
frauds that continually happen.
Or am I being too simplistic and naďve?
Then again.. isn't this just the Russian system, and was that of Libya?
Stephen Morrell
The organs of power that spring up during revolutions are what work at the time. They're not created a priori, but they go on
to serve the basis for the exercise of mass democracy. The Paris Commune had the The Committee of Public Safety, Russia had soviets
(Russian for workers' council) that first arose in 1905 and again in 1917. The basis for their power rests on a politically conscious
and armed constituency that has risen up which can recall elected representatives at any time (because they're armed).
Soviets elect representatives to higher soviet bodies (collegiate system), but their main purpose is to decide and vote on
what, not whom. On an economic plan for example.
In contrast, bourgeois democracy at most gives you the privilege of voting for which scumbag will oppress you for the next
4 or 5 years. This is not to denigrate democratic rights but it is the way capitalist rule is disguised and legitimated; and we're
made to feel responsible for outcomes because we participated in voting in elections. We help the executioner load his gun. One
should never confuse elections with democracy.
I can recommend the following reading list which might help:
EH Carr, "What is History" (a great, broad-brushed approach to understanding different stages in human history and development).
K Marx, F Engels, "The Communist Manifesto"
F Engels, "Socialism Utopian and Scientific"
VI Lenin, "What Is To Be Done" (On the need for a party of the Bolshevik type)
VI Lenin, "State and Revolution" (On why the existing state must be smashed replaced by a new one, and what happens to it after
a socialist revolution)
LD Trotsky, "Lessons of October" (On why the revolution occurred in backward Russia and not Germany)
LD Trotsky, "Results and Prospects" (On why backward countries in the epoch of imperialism not being able make a bourgeois
revolution whose tasks can only be accomplished by a proletarian revolution -- the theory of 'Permanent Revolution')
LD Trotsky, "The Revolution Betrayed" (Why Stalin arose and soviet democracy was smashed in the USSR)
Some of these are a little heavy going and polemical (eg, Lenin), and Marx is full of historical and literary references, but
patience will be rewarded. Except for EH Carr (available as a Penguin classic), these can all be accessed at:
https://www.marxists.org/
Too much ado about nothing It is very simple Socialism has NOTHING to do with religion Judaism, Christianism, Islamism or whatever.
They invite these kind problems because the bourgeois that control Labour, allowed every kind of minorities to infiltrate the
Party (and all other parties) to, eventually, destroy it through religious, racial and minority wars. What you see is what you
get when leftist minoritymongering has taken over politics. The solution is very simple, all religious groups should be thrown
out of the party, together with all the bourgeois. MP's first !!!
lundiel
I agree. We currently have MPs of all parties acting as agents for their countries of birth, or as agents of third countries (Ms
Smeeth). This worked when they (agents) had no real political power, they were limited to cultural exchange visits etc. The change
came with the growth in size and power of our security services .there's more than one way to skin a cat like Corbyn!
Maggie
Fear not Lundiel, the work is already begun . Jeremy will NEVER be allowed to lead.
Anonymous 'Civil Servants' (Deep State Operatives) have briefed the media regarding the allegedly frail condition of possible
PM-to-be Jeremy Corbyn on the basis of – no evidence whatever.
Understandably, Corbyn is very angry about this demanding an investigation into the leak.
Given the story is without foundation and knowing the threat the establishment sees in Corbyn, a leader whose policies include
the creation of a National Bank (aaaarghh the fiend the fiend) and the renationalisation of public utilities (including transport)
a leader whose knee-jerk reaction to Ashkenazi Jewish assaults against the Semitic population in Israel is to speak out loudly
and boldly in defence of Palestinians' rights
given all this, we know that the idea of Jeremy Corbyn as Prime Minister of Great Britain is absolutely unacceptable to our
ruling 'establishment'.
Let it be said then what Mr Corbyn and his inner circle must be thinking about the appearance of this non-story that the establishment
is 'creating the option to eliminate' Mr. Corbyn (by heart attack dart?) in the event of his winning or threatening to win a UK
general election.
Performing such a national service would be 'business as usual' for our "protectors" at MI5.
For example -Keith Mothersson: After he died in 2009, his obituary appeared in The Guardian.
The following facts are not included in the obituary of this heroic absolute gentleman:
"Keith created an organisation in 2008/9 called "ALL FAITHS FOR 9/11 TRUTH".
He, like most members of '9/11 Truth (UK & Ireland)', saw 9/11 truth as a spiritual (as much as a political) matter.
He went round the country meeting religious leaders and forming connections and bonds between the various groups he had organised.
There were C of E, Catholic, Muslim (the largest group based in a couple of the biggest mosques in the country), Buddhist, and
even a Jewish group.
I was involved with Keith, approaching 'Catholic' leaders (as an aside, the couple I tried to talk to [it was early days] were
hostile to the idea even engaging with the issue maybe, for someone who has taken vows of obedience, this is an issue for the
Pope alone)."
The thing is that Keith was the connection and bond between the groups he had started forming.
He lived in Perth, Scotland. On one evening during September 2009 Keith returned to his house in Perth. He arrived home in
a dishevelled state, exhausted and confused. He told his partner that he been accosted by a group of men on the walk home and
had "a terrible struggle in a van". He had been held down then released. He repeated "Why me?" to himself a few times before his
partner helped him to bed.
She told friends that when Keith woke up he didn't know who he was. He did not recognise her either. He was taken to hospital
where he lay silently in bed for two weeks before dying.
A multi-faith, well-organised, religious collective demanding answers re 9/11 represented a genuine threat to the "Deep State".
Keith had gone too far. He was "eliminated" and his nascent organisation along with him.
And there is no one to whom one can even report this terrible crime. Such is the nature of our society. https://wwwkevboyle.blogspot.com/2019/06/corbyns-health-and-keith-mothersson.html
Jeremy Corbyn is not a fool. He understands very well the 'options' for the Deep State such a story creates and what this leak
could possibly imply.. that is why I believe he may look as if he is indecisive?
Mucho
Very interesting Maggie, thanks
andyoldlabour
That is indeed correct. The various politicians who are involved in this disgraceful hounding of Corbyn and others, have pledged
alliegence to Israel and the interference of Israel in the politics of the UK.
Martin Usher
The key to the anti-Semitism problem is the conflation of Judaism with Zionism. This didn't happen by accident, it is a deliberate
and relatively modern policy. (An old (Jewish) friend described the indoctrination he got to me growing up. That was quite a long
time ago, its probably so ingrained now that nobody notices this process any more.)
I may have a very simplistic view of things but to me Judaism is an Abrahamic religion with deep roots going back thousands
of years. Zionism is a relatively modern European movement that dates from the latter half of the 19th century that has origins
and aims that are not unlike many other 'volk' movements from the same period. Most of these were relatively harmless, 'back to
the land' sorts of things but the racial undertones provided the underpinnings for, among others, the Nazis.
I know I'll probably get flamed for saying this but seriously there's a huge undercurrent of racism in some parts of Jewish
society. I was first made aware of this many years ago when and old (goy) friend made the mistake of marrying an Orthodox girl.
Up to that point I had only known secular/reform Jews so didn't think too much of it but the reaction from her family was quite
extreme, protracted and not at all nice. The culture's there if you look for it -- its actually not unlike radical Islam in mindset
so if it ever gets to a position of power (e.g. in modern Israel) then its going to be trouble for the untermensch!
Ramdan
"Israeli Zionism is the singular cancer that has been forcefully injected into the minds of world leaders across the globe; a
cancer that these similarly affected leaders would wantonly force upon what little remains of the moral, civilized and correct
conscience of man."
Zionism is a malevolent influence upon the body politic of the western world.
Francis Lee
The picture of Tom Watson and the other political 5th Columnists in the Labour party standing in front of a very large blue and
white star of David flag tells us all we need to know. A bit like a political group in the UK sporting a Hammer and Sickle flag
at Tory party conference. Labour Friends of Israel is of course a Zionist front in the LP. It's object is to further Israeli interests,
and therefore it necessarily means against British interests. What else would they be doing? Promoting socialism perhaps? LFI
has already been set in motion to get Corbyn and his co-thinkers to change their ways or else. In this sense also the British
elite are working hand-in-glove with LFI and the Israelis, and it wouldn't at all surprise me if the CIA were not also involved
at some level.
The trouble with Labour is that it doesn't want to be regarded as being 'extreme' or 'unrespectable'; oh dear no. We've even
done away with Clause 4. Now how much higher do you want us to jump? We want to be Her Majesty's loyal opposition. 'Pale pink
humbug' as Orwell called it. He called it right.
mathias alexand
Labour is hampered by a lack of internal democracy which goes back to its origins as an alliance of pre-existing groups like trade
unions, etc.
DunGroanin
The Obsessive Groaniads daily pile of AS mud slinging, Barbara Ellen froths
"maddening, mendacious, slippery, gormless, prevaricating'
she snarls NOT writing about the tory clowns.
"I've long been anti-Corbyn for reasons beyond Brexit (antisemitism, anybody?)"
She raves and slobbers not realising that she is projecting.
Another article there by a 'famous' author – ive never heard of – has his unnamed publicist getting lots of free advertising
for his 'great' writings for free because he thinks he has been subjected to AS!
Complete Utter Nonsensical Crappery by the shameless gormless Groaniad.
Ho hum – wait till the next government tasks the completion and implementation of Leveson 2.
DG . What do you expect from these presstitute stenographers. Full boycott of all mainstream media, including alleged 'progressive'
media. On a tangent, used to read Barbara Ellen many years ago (30?) when she wrote for the NME which was basically my 'bible'
back then. How sad the once great Babs Ellen has become a . Slug.
DunGroanin
Ah the NME – a bible for us back in the day – see how it was taken out and shot after it supported Corbyn in 2017.
A very accidental death it suffered.
Imagine what they would bave done to Russell Brand if he had had the same influence.
Yes i'm afraid most of the neolib con artiste creatures of the Obssezsive Groan are beyond saving. They will sizzle in the
light.
Thanks DG. I only know the NME is now online only, didn't know the reasons for its print demise. I wonder what the late Steven
Wells would have made of all this ludicrous crap? I just can't tolerate the cretinous craven presstitutes in the MSM anymore.
Gets me too fecked off knowing what they're loudly spouting is pro empire, pro imperialist bullshit in the service of the 0.01℅.
Good site for you to check is Neoliberalism Softpanorama. A vast treasure trove of info.
Francis Lee
What is difficult to forgive is the fact in times gone by, and occasionally today, the Jewish intelligentsia have made a huge
input into the development of western civilization. In terms of politics, Marx, Rosa Luxembourg, Greogy Lukacs, Eduard Bernstein,
Leon Trotsky, Leonard Woolf; in terms of social theory, Emile Durkheim, Sigmund Freud, Erich Fromm, Hannah Arendt; in terms of
literaure Franz Kafka, Saul Bellow. Contemporary intellectuals being Noam Chomsky, Norman Finkelstein and possibly a less well-known
and very courageous Jewish oppositionist, Gideon Levy, who writes for Haaretz. These were the guys I cut my teeth on as a student
and whom I still revere to a great extent. It was the Jewish intelligentsia who led the opposition against the forces of reaction,
particularly in Europe.
Times have changed it seems, Israel and Zionism are now the forces of reaction.
John Calvert
Yes. But how many of those great names would have willingly and proudly posed in front of the national flag of the state of Israel?
Philip Toal
Facts would be appreciated in light of the truth that G. levy, Finkelstein, Pappe etc. are indeed alive and well. It's apparently
a case of informed opinions based on pure facts as opposed to ignorance as to who is alive or dead that is issue important.
Chris W
Antinationalism for goyim and nationalism for jews – because goyim have these genocidal tendencies Many, many Jews deep down believe
that Non-Jews want to kill them, so pre-emptive strikes is the way to go. Most of all strikes against the ethnic and religious
identity of non-Jewish people, because those identities make a people strong. So socialist Jews in Europe and zionist ones everywhere
fight the same pro-Jewish/anti-goyim fight
harry law
John McDonnell encapsulates for me the pathetic spinelessness of the Labour Party, in a long interview with the Jewish news the
interviewer asked him why Corbyn shared platforms with Anti-semites "So when we're talking about sharing a platform with anti-Semites,
we're not talking about people who are just supportive of the Palestinian cause, do you think it might be time for an apology"?
JmD: "You have to look at why he was sharing platforms, it was not to endorse them, it was to try and engage with them".
There you have it, his friend Corbyn spent the past 30 years of his life traversing the country addressing Palestinian and antiwar
groups and offering them his support, then in one sentence McDonnell throws his friend under the bus "it was not to endorse them".
With a friend like McDonnell who needs enemies.
My advice to McDonnell is get on your belly and crawl and then ask for forgiveness from the Board of Deputies, it still will not
be enough. They will only be happy when Corbyn is destroyed.
mark
However much you grovel and appease these people, it is never enough. Give $10 billion to Israel and you're anti semitic because
you haven't given it $50 billion. Fight 5 wars for Israel, and you're anti semitic because you haven't fought 10 wars for Israel.
Netanyahu explained it all quite well.
"If we get caught, they will just replace us with persons of the same cloth. So it does not matter what you do. America
is a golden calf, and we will suck it dry, chop it up and sell it off piece by piece till there is nothing left but the world's
biggest welfare state that we will create and control. Why? Because it is the Will of God and America is big enough to take
the hit. So we can do it again and again and again. This is what we do to countries that we hate. We destroy them very slowly
and make them suffer for refusing to be our slaves."
The comparison to a witch hunt is perfectly accurate. The attack works by mere accusation. The facts, evidence, criteria of
evaluation are all irrelevant. Accuse emotively, and construe any dissent or even scepticism as proof of guilt. This is the
modus operandi of the witch hunters, the arbiters of truth and the only acceptable version of reality. This becomes a loyalty
test. Anyone who refuses to support the witch hunters is either already a witch or in imminent danger of becoming one.
https://viewsandstories.blogspot.com/2018/09/on-dog-whistles-and-witch-finders.html
Harry Stotle
'The attack works by mere accusation. The facts, evidence, criteria of evaluation are all irrelevant. Accuse emotively, and construe
any dissent or even scepticism as proof of guilt. This is the modus operandi of the witch hunters' – hammer, welcome to head of
nail.
Maggie
Right out of Goebel's hand book
"This is the secret of propaganda: Those who are to be persuaded by it should be completely immersed in the ideas of the
propaganda, without ever noticing that they are being immersed in it."
"The truth is the greatest enemy of the State."
"If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained
only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie.
It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy
of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State."
Former Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney talks with PressTV about how the Israeli Lobby owns both the Congress and the Senate
and how AIPAC and the ADL took her out. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_VNOk7Wv5A
On one hand Mueller supported and promoted the witch hunt which is the Russiagate. On the other water suddenly became a little bit
hot for him and his henchmen as there is a slight chance that Barr is not joking.
Mueller is the first prosecutor in the history of Justice Department who claimed that he does not exonerate the falsely accused
of Russian connections President. Which is 100% pure McCartuism-style witch hunt. Of course as he supported Iraw WDM and presided over
Anthrax investigation (or cover up to be more correct) this is easy for him to be legal innovator in this area.
Notable quotes:
"... the report was clear that members of Trump's team had been encouraged to lie to investigators, and this had been widely reported throughout the media and in several books. ..."
"... On many important questions, Mueller stated that he could not comment because those matters were under investigation by other departments, or they were not "in my purview." That was his response to questions about the Steele report and the FISA warrant used to spy on the Trump campaign, which are under investigation by the Department of Justice. But he also responded this way to questions on the Russia investigation. How can the special prosecutor charged with investigating whether Russia interfered with our elections decline comment on the topic? ..."
"... Well that proves it, I guess. After all, did Mueller testify to Congress as to the extent of Iraq's much-vaunted WMD program, and lo! there it was(n't)! ..."
"... Or for that matter, Mueller claimed that Concord Management had ties to the Russian government. Turns out that he had no evidence for his claim. ..."
"... Mueller is the god that failed. The Democrats considered him their savior. It was "wait til the Mueller report". "Soon it will be Mueller time". "Just wait on Mueller, you'll see." ..."
"... Then, in the Mueller hearing they quoted scripture from the book of Mueller, asking their savior to provide more divine wisdom on the scripture. But he was no god. He was a human whose mental faculties had declined due to the aging process all of us mortals must endure. And it became abundantly clear that he had been just a figurehead in a witch hunt by radical major Democratic party donor prosecutors. Mueller was shamelessly used by morally bankrupt Democrat apparatchiks. ..."
"... To all the Mueller supporters, he couldn't even answer simple questions like "when did you and your team conclude there was no collusion/conspiracy with Russia?" ..."
"... That question 1) fell under his purview, 2) arose from the four corners of his report, 3) not in anyway prohibited by the DoJ directive and 4) not about something that would be easy to forget. ..."
"... Yet he refused to answer. Some stand up guy he is. ..."
That answer appears to directly contradict page 180 of the report which states, "As defined in legal dictionaries, collusion is
largely synonymous with conspiracy as that crime is set forth in the general federal conspiracy statute, 18 U.S.C. 371," Collins
pointed out.
"Are you sitting here today testifying something different than what your report states?"
Mueller stuttered and appeared confused, flipped to the relevant page of the report, and said that he would defer to the report.
Throughout the hearing, Democratic members would read the definition of corruption or obstruction and then try to get Mueller
to explain how various actions did not qualify or why the report did not reach a finding. Each time, Mueller declined to comment.
To say that watching his testimony was painful is an understatement.
In an exchange with Rep. Guy Reschenthaler (R-Pa.) that exemplifies the entire hearing, the Pennsylvania Republican asked, "You
made a decision not to prosecute, right?"
"No, we made a decision not to decide whether to prosecute or not."
In the afternoon intelligence committee hearing, Rep. John Ratcliffe asked Mueller to clear up confusion regarding his morning
testimony, where he appeared to contradict the report on the question of whether he had whiffed on an indictment because the Office
of Legal Counsel said it was not possible to indict a sitting president.
"What I wanted to say [in the morning] is that we did not make any determination with regard to culpability, in any way. We did
not start that process, down the road," said Mueller.
But in his morning testimony before the House Judiciary committee, he said: "The president was not exculpated for the acts that
he allegedly committed."
See if you can make sense of this exchange:
Democratic Rep. Andre Carson: "Would you agree that these acts demonstrated a betrayal of the democratic values our country rests
on?"
Mueller: "I can't agree with that. Not that it's not true, but I cannot agree with it."
This was typical of Mueller's bizarre testimony throughout the day.
Democrats used the hearing to read huge portions of the report, as well as Donald Trump's tweets and campaign utterances, as if
somehow they were covering new ground. In one such exchange, a member asked: "Trump and his campaign welcomed and encouraged Russian
interference?"
Mueller: "Yes."
Question: "And then Trump and his campaign lied about it to cover it up?"
Mueller: "Yes."
Anyone who has followed news coverage of the Mueller report knows that line of questioning is not breaking new ground, as
the report was clear that members of Trump's team had been encouraged to lie to investigators, and this had been widely reported
throughout the media
and in several books.
Even so, Democrats persisted in reading publicly available Trump statements aloud. During his portion of time, Rep. Mike Quigley
chose to read Trump's
campaign trail
statements about Wikileaks .
"I love Wikileaks."
"This Wikileaks is like a treasure trove."
"Boy, I love reading those Wikileaks."
He then asked Mueller to react to Trump's statements. "Problematic is an understatement, in terms of giving some hope or some
boost to what is and should be illegal activity," Mueller said. Did we really need Mueller's opinion on Trump's statements uttered
on the stump, all of which were made before he was elected president? How is this type of commentary valuable?
On many important questions, Mueller stated that he could not comment because those matters were under investigation by other
departments, or they were not "in my purview." That was his response to questions about the Steele report and the FISA warrant used
to spy on the Trump campaign, which are under investigation by the Department of Justice. But he also responded this way to questions
on the Russia investigation. How can the special prosecutor charged with investigating whether Russia interfered with our elections
decline comment on the topic?
Congressional hearings aren't like a court room. There's no judge that can order an uncooperative witness to answer. That's one
of the many reasons that highly politicized Congressional hearings often quickly descend into kangaroo-court style bludgeoning of
the witness.
Yet today, because the confused witness appeared flummoxed by rapid-fire questions and by the contents of his own report, his
evasions and memory lapses instead undermined the credibility of the report itself, and had people questioning
whether Mueller had really led the investigation or not.
Barbara Boland is 's foreign policy and national security reporter. Follow her on Twitter
@BBatDC.
In reference to Russia meddling in the 2016 election, he specifically said that Russia had meddled in the past, Russia was meddling
as of right now, and Russia would continue to meddle in the future.
I guess that qualifies as having nothing to say about Russia meddling if you want to believe that he had nothing to say about
Russia meddling in our elections.
Well that proves it, I guess. After all, did Mueller testify to Congress as to the extent of Iraq's much-vaunted WMD program,
and lo! there it was(n't)!
Mueller is the god that failed. The Democrats considered him their savior. It was "wait til the Mueller report". "Soon it
will be Mueller time". "Just wait on Mueller, you'll see."
Then, in the Mueller hearing they quoted scripture from the book of Mueller, asking their savior to provide more divine
wisdom on the scripture. But he was no god. He was a human whose mental faculties had declined due to the aging process all of
us mortals must endure. And it became abundantly clear that he had been just a figurehead in a witch hunt by radical major Democratic
party donor prosecutors. Mueller was shamelessly used by morally bankrupt Democrat apparatchiks.
But they will not stop just because their god failed. They will find another god and keep right on investigating.
To all the Mueller supporters, he couldn't even answer simple questions like "when did you and your team conclude there was
no collusion/conspiracy with Russia?"
That question 1) fell under his purview, 2) arose from the four corners of his report, 3) not in anyway prohibited by the
DoJ directive and 4) not about something that would be easy to forget.
Yet he refused to answer. Some stand up guy he is.
"... "You have no evidence for the so-called Russian IO. It is a fabrication." In fact, Putin rejects the claim many times publicly saying that Russia does not meddle in foreign elections as a matter of policy. Maybe I'm gullible, but I find his disclaimer pretty convincing.... ..."
"... Is there an unseen connection between the Democrat leadership and the Intel agencies??? And --if there is-- does that mean we are headed for a one-party system??? ..."
"... The Russians trying to rig the elections meme was a fallback for the failure of the “trump is a russianstooge" meme. ..."
Here are some insights into the minds of many movers and shakers in Russiagate:
Key US officials behind the Russia investigation have made no secret of their animus
towards Russia.
"I do always hate the Russians," Lisa Page, a senior FBI lawyer on the Russia probe,
testified to Congress in July 2018. "It is my opinion that with respect to Western ideals
and who it is and what it is we stand for as Americans, Russia poses the most dangerous
threat to that way of life."
As he opened the FBI's probe of the Trump campaign's ties to Russians in July 2016,
FBI agent Peter Strzok texted Page: "fuck the cheating motherfucking Russians Bastards. I
hate them I think they're probably the worst. Fucking conniving cheating savages."
Speaking to NBC News in May 2017, former director of national intelligence James
Clapper explained why US officials saw interactions between the Trump camp and Russian
nationals as a cause for alarm: "The Russians," Clapper said, "almost genetically driven to
co-opt, penetrate, gain favor, whatever, which is a typical Russian technique. So we were
concerned."
In a May interview with Lawfare, former FBI general counsel Jim Baker, who helped
oversee the Russia probe, explained the origins of the investigation as follows: "It was
about Russia, period, full stop. When the [George] Papadopoulos information comes across
our radar screen, it's coming across in the sense that we were always looking at Russia.
we've been thinking about Russia as a threat actor for decades and decades."
"You have no evidence for the so-called Russian IO. It is a fabrication." In fact, Putin
rejects the claim many times publicly saying that Russia does not meddle in foreign elections
as a matter of policy. Maybe I'm gullible, but I find his disclaimer pretty
convincing....
My question for Larry Johnson requires some speculation on his part: How did the claims of
"Russia meddling" which began with the DNC and Hillary campaign, take root at the FBI, CIA
and NSA???
Is there an unseen connection between the Democrat leadership and the Intel agencies???
And --if there is-- does that mean we are headed for a one-party system???
Mueller came across as an old man.... muddling.... confused.... He was out of his depth. One would have to conclude that he is
not remotely credible based on his inability to answer questions and apparent ignorance of a report he is supposed to have
authored. Embarrassingly inept!
FFS, I live in the UK and even I have heard the link between Fusion GPS and the dodgy
dossier. Has Mueller been working alone in a cave or something? Has he tried Wikipedia?
le"> The had the lesson taught to them, but I seriously doubt that they learned
anything. I also think that Mueller was largely playing dumb. His job is to continue to raise
doubt, not to bring clarity. He is till doing a great job in that regards. I hope it leads to
jail time.
Mueller's playing dum to cover his own hide and the democraps should be ashamed wasting
tax payers money & that bringing the only work they done in 2 years corrupt sorry
individuals
Well worth watching this just for Tucker's superb commentary alone! With this Mueller
fiasco, a stake has been driven deep into the Deep State's heart.
gjohnsit on Sat, 07/27/2019 - 5:21pm The ruling elites have compared Russiagate to
Pearl Harbor , 9/11 , and Kristallnacht.
Yet for some reason, the American public has refused to agree with it's importance .
In a recent Gallup poll on problems facing the country, the "Situation with Russia" was such
a marginal concern that it did not even register.
In fact, Republicans have flat out rejected
the konspiracy theory altogether. A fact that the elites refused to accept.
Fortunately, the MSNBC-watching Democrats were willing to give the investigation the benefit
of the doubt. Until
now .
Since the public release of a redacted version of the Mueller report, Democrats have grown
more skeptical that the Russia investigation was conducted fairly, according to a new
poll.
...Both Democrats and Republicans have tilted toward a belief that the inquiry, which wrapped
up this spring after almost two years, was not conducted fairly. An April survey -- conducted
shortly after the report's release -- found that 46 percent of voters thought the probe had
been fair, compared with 29 percent who felt it had been unfair.
But there was a much bigger swing among Democrats, the most recent poll found. Among
Democratic voters, the number who consider the investigation unfair shot up by 15 percentage
points since then, while the number who thought it had been a fair investigation dropped by 9
points.
It's unclear what accounts for Democrats' plummeting confidence -- it's possible that they
feel the investigation was unfair in that the outcome was too favorable to President Donald
Trump; believe that Mueller was boxed in by Trump's Justice Department; or feel that it's
unfair because the president has not faced any serious consequences as a result of the
investigation.
Right. It was unfair FOR Trump. ROTFL.
It's obvious that the elites in the media have completely lost touch with the vast majority
of the public. They don't even attempt to understand us. Nor do they give us any credit for
being able to come to logical conclusions different from what they are selling.
It's also obvious that the MSM has no Plan B, for what happens after Russiagate flops.
They've even started pointing
fingers at each other.
But the American political press found Mueller insufficiently dazzling.
The New York Times declared, in language Trump could have written himself, "Mueller's
Performance Was a Departure From His Much-Fabled Stamina." The Washington Post announced, "On
Mueller's Final Day on the National Stage, a Halting, Faltering Performance," and, in a
separate piece, dubbed Mueller a "weary old man."
Although other pieces from the same outlets covered the substance of Mueller's testimony,
the conclusion that he had failed to excite his audience framed the totality of coverage.
Maybe it's because Mueller didn't say anything new. Maybe because he refused to answer
nearly 200 questions.
Maybe it's because the whole thing feels like an artificial scandal designed to distract us
from things of importance. And it isn't working.
What a crock of pootie. Just like he lied about WMDs, he's lying to the country again. As
Jim Jordan pointed out Misfud was the person who got the whole thing rolling. Misfud told
Papadapolous that Russia had dirt on Hillary. Did Mueller interview Misfud and ask him how he
knew that? Of course not because Mueller knew that Misfud has ties to the state department. As
do most of the people sent out to try to entrap Trump. Mueller did get away with lying to
congress when he talked about the IRA and their connections to Russian intelligence after the
judge told him not to. But this pretty much sums it up.
@snoopydawg
Facebook ads instead of flying lessons for his followers.
What a crock of pootie. Just like he lied about WMDs, he's lying to the country again.
As Jim Jordan pointed out Misfud was the person who got the whole thing rolling. Misfud
told Papadapolous that Russia had dirt on Hillary. Did Mueller interview Misfud and ask him
how he knew that? Of course not because Mueller knew that Misfud has ties to the state
department. As do most of the people sent out to try to entrap Trump. Mueller did get away
with lying to congress when he talked about the IRA and their connections to Russian
intelligence after the judge told him not to. But this pretty much sums it up.
For their despicable insensitivity and wrongful appropriation of others' suffering, they
were subsequently eaten alive by social-warrior Twitter mobs, beaten into delivering sniveling,
shame-drenched public recantations, and passively accepted losing their jobs no matter how good
they might otherwise have been at them...Right? RIGHT?
Tucker Carlson: The Russia hoax is over and it's time to hold people accountable for years
of lies.
By Tucker Carlson | Fox News - July 26, 2019
The Russia hoax ended on Wednesday -- we can say that. It ended not with a bang, but with
the muddled half-memories of a fading old man slipping in and out of focus.
America sat transfixed by Robert Mueller's halting testimony before Congress. No honest
person could have come away at the end believing that the president of the United States
colluded with the Russian government to steal an election. That was the allegation, you'll
remember.
And then, after the most extensive investigation in modern American history, we found the
truth. And so, we can say conclusively, once again, what we told you the day this all
started, the whole thing is a crock. It never happened. They were lying to you. That's clear
now. The debate is over.
But that doesn't mean the Russia story has quite ended. There are loose ends. For two and
a half years, some of the most powerful people in America -- supposedly serious,
well-educated people, very smart people -- these people made wild and untrue and totally
reckless allegations about issues critical to the life of this country, all on the basis of
no evidence whatsoever. It's hard to believe they did that. But they did do it.
What should happen to these people now? Congressman Adam Schiff, for example. Schiff
claimed he possessed actual evidence of Russian collusion. And he didn't just say that one
time, he said it repeatedly.
... But what about his enablers? And there are a lot of them --the journalists, the
pundits, the fellow lawmakers who helped Adam Schiff tell his lies. These are the people
you'll remember who blithely accused the sitting president of the United States of
treason.
One of them was House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who has said, among other things, the
following: "Trump's eagerness to sell out America proves the Russians must have something
personally politically or financially on President Trump."
It proves that Trump is committing treason. Think about that. Nancy Pelosi is the Speaker
of the House, third in line for the presidency. She is the country's most powerful lawmaker,
supposedly a wise and sober person. And yet, there she was telling you it's been proved that
the president of the United States is working for a hostile foreign power.
Has any Speaker in American history ever said something that irresponsible? Maybe nothing
comes to mind. But if you think that's shocking, consider this: Pelosi is still saying that.
"Tucker Carlson Tonight's" investigative producer, Alex Pfeiffer, ran into Pelosi Thursday
afternoon on Capitol Hill and asked her. Listen to what she told our show.
Alex Pfeiffer, Fox News investigative producer: Speaker Pelosi, Alex Pfeiffer of "Tucker
Carlson Tonight." In January, you wondered what Putin had on Trump. After yesterday, are you
any closer to figuring that out?
Pelosi: We have it up on the courts right now.
Pfeiffer: Are you any closer to figuring out what Putin has on Trump?
Pelosi: That's why we need to have him to answer our subpoena.
Pfeiffer: You still think Putin might have some sort of blackmail on the president?
Pelosi: I wonder what Putin has politically, financially or personally.
Pfeiffer: So our president could be subject to blackmail, you think?
The exchange isn't long, but it really tells you everything you need to know. Pelosi told
our show President Trump is a traitor who is committing treason. And yet, she doesn't want to
impeach him. How does that make sense?
Well, it only makes sense when you understand that Pelosi doesn't mean a single word that
she says. Everything is political, meaning it's only about power.
That's not just annoying. It's also ominous. And here's why.
Fifteen years ago this spring, we invaded Iraq to stop a WMD program that didn't exist.
Thousands of American troops died in the process, trillions of dollars were wasted. It was
the single greatest mistake in this country in generations. And yet -- and here's the key --
nobody in Washington was ever punished for it.
The people who planned it went on to even better jobs. One of them is now our national
security adviser, John Bolton. Five years after the Iraq War, our economy collapsed. Remember
that? The subprime meltdown? The specific causes were complex, but the themes were instantly
recognizable -- greed and stupidity. And yet, once again, no one was ever punished.
Now, fast forward another 11 years to today, right now. America stands on the brink of yet
more foolish foreign entanglements, and on the brink of and potentially another financial
meltdown. Why is that? Because nobody in Washington has learned anything. And why would they
learn anything? When they screw up there are never any consequences. They skate by on the
usual mixture of aggression and BS. "Nothing to see here, keep moving."
Imagine for a second, what would happen if you let your kids act like that? Well, they'd
been in prison by now. So, maybe it's time to stop the cycle in Washington.
How about this? If you get caught lying about the big things, whether it's about weapons
of mass destruction, or subprime mortgages or Russian collusion, you have to admit it and
serve penance, -- not necessarily prison time, though we're open. But punishment of some
kind.
You can't stay in Washington, making six times the average American salary. You can't do
that. No, sorry.
You've got to leave. You've got to relocate to Camden, New Jersey, maybe or Gary, Indiana,
and do something useful. Like clean motel rooms for minimum wage, put the little "sanitized
for your protection" strips on toilets. Not forever, just for a decade or two, until you've
learned your lesson. Call us when you've done that, but not before.
Adapted from Tucker Carlson's monologue from "Tucker Carlson Tonight" on July 25,
2019.
I hate to say it, but corporate Democrats along with those who Maddow has totally
brainwashed are still true believers in the entire lie. You cannot get through to these
people, they will not come to terms with the fact that they've been hoodwinked and bamboozled
for the last three years. They read it in WaPo and the NYTimes and heard it on NPR so it's
gospel.
For the next 40 years these people will be writing essays, books and giving talks about
how the evil Russians interfered in our democracy [sic] to elect their preferred president.
It's maddening and perhaps beyond hope.
Rob , July 25, 2019 at 17:18
To your point, the NYT is warning that Russia will interfere AGAIN in the next election.
They take it as a given that they interfered in the last one, and so do many, if not most, of
their readers, notwithstanding the absence of evidence. This is a full-on, non-stop
propaganda effort. Facts will not get in the way.
anon4d2 , July 25, 2019 at 20:37
So we need evidence that Russia
1. Is interfering on both sides of every controversy;
2. Is representing the majority of the US better than the incumbents; or
3. Is plotting with Holland to take over the universe with UFOs and occult powers;
But perhaps it is better to concentrate on the influence of Israel, which is fact.
Drew Hunkins , July 26, 2019 at 10:24
“This is a full-on, non-stop propaganda effort. Facts will not get in the
way.”
@ "Mueller implied in his testimony that there was a link between the IRA and the Russian
government despite an order from a judge for him to stop making that connection."
There may be some fireworks with that judge because of Mueller's statements. He was
expressly warned by the judge that she would consider a range of sanctions were there any
repetition. On the other hand, as far as I could tell a few years ago when I had last
researched the topic, federal judges are very reluctant to sanction federal attorneys. I
could find only one published instance where that had occurred, and it was only a measly $500
penalty. (Rule 11 sanctions are supposed to compensate the other side for the expenses of
opposing an unjustifiable position, as measured by the reasonable billing rate of the other
side's lawyers, although judges do have authority for departures.)
Misbehavior by federal lawyers is exceedingly common, I suspect precisely because they are
so seldom held to account for unprincipled behavior. That Mueller conducted such a shoddy
investigation is no surprise to me.
Me Myself , July 25, 2019 at 13:31
Robert Mueller can easily be seen as carrying democrats hopes and dreams just like a good
Mueller.
Why does it matter where truth of damning information about our government officials comes
from ( rhetorical ).
I appreciate knowing it.
Watching what appears to be a modern day Coup d'état in this country is more than just
disappointing not surprising though.
No focus from congress on what was clearly demonstrated in the evidence provided by
publishing's of undisputed truth by (Chelsea Manning .Julian Assange and Others)
I thought it would be interesting living in the Middle Ages, once upon a time, Its not as
fun as thought it might.
Russia interfered on a massive scale and is doing it again as we sit here! Just how
massive? They spent $100,000 on clickbait ads from a company owned by a man who was in a
photo with the evil mastermind!
How evil? Well do the math. $43,000 to $46,000 of that was spent during the election and
of those ads 8.4 percent were political. That's $3,684 dollars.
But the political ads were aimed in both directions so that's roughly $1,932 spent
"promoting" Trump.
And now Mueller tells us the evil mastermind is at it again -- as we sit here -- probably
spending even more this time. Let us know when he's spent a full thousand dollars Bob and
we'll start loading the bombs.
Oh, and we found all this out for around thirty million dollars.
think about it! with the myriad of problems we must contend with: growing social
inequality, huge tax breaks for the rich, government deregulation of private business, a
climate catastrophe, unending wars, nuclear annihilation spurred on especially by u.s.
imperialism, the gutting of what little social safety net we have left and so on and so so
on. and we are supposed to be outraged at supposed foreign interference with our supposed
democratic process? please, this is total insanity!!!
Of course, relatively speaking, it’s a nothing. Every knowledgeable person knows
that we in the US orchestrated both the financing and the strategy of the 1996 Yeltsin
campaign -- a political rescue so efficiently carried out that our operatives bragged
brazenly about it to Time Magazine, which made it the cover story for its July 14, 1996
edition (“Yanks to the Rescue”).
The Lamestream Corporate media always underplayed the fact that Yeltsin ordered the
execution of 1,100 demonstrators who protested the IMF backed “reforms”, and that
Clinton approved of his deadly and heavy hand in implementing a neoliberal economic order.
Clinton never threatened to suspend aid to the Russian Federation despite its numerous abuses
of human rights.
Also forgotten is that Yeltsin ordered the Russian Parliament (Duma) shelled before it
could vote on Yeltsin’s economic “reforms”, which were implemented at the
point of a gun. At various times between 1993 and 1997, it was Yeltsin who declared martial
law, suspended the Duma, and declared himself possessed of dictatorial powers.
How many Americans ever knew this? 20%? How many remember it today? Maybe 5%? That means
there is no context for gauging Muellers’ testimony.
But, it is, by MSNBC standards, Vladimir Putin who is Evil Incarnate. Has Maddow ever
mentioned Yeltsin, a tyrant of the first order? No, because at GE, Comcast, and NBC, tyranny
in the name of enforcing neoliberalism is perfectly acceptable.
This post is a bit off topic, and is a bit relativistic, as I know we should be concerned
if it is really true that Manafort was giving internal polling data to a Russian Federation
person so that the IRA could better target swing states in our Midwest.
Bob Van Noy , July 26, 2019 at 08:26
John Wolfe, your comment is not off topic at all, it’s crucial to further
understanding of the totality of the Russia did it mentality, and That is well documented in
a small but powerful book called “Manifest Destiny: Democracy as Cognitive
Dissonance” by F. William Engdahl which I will link.
The American People have been propagandized so thoroughly that they can hardly recognize
the truth any longer.
Too, I will link an article in Off Guardian this morning that is worth mentioning if one
wants to see Real Reporting On MH-17.
Evidence accumulates that Obama was the real leader of this color revolution against Trump with Brannan as his chief lieutenant
and Comey as a willing accomplice.
Now that the dust has settled, one must ask why the Deep State wanted Trump gone. Why does the Obama-Clinton mafia hates him so
much? Is this due to Trump committed an unforgivable sin in suggesting we “get along with Russia” and thus potentially cut the
revenues of military-industrial complex ? This is not true -- Trump inflated the Pentagon budget to astronomical height. Then
why ?
Notable quotes:
"... The full details of the plot to take out Donald Trump remain to be revealed. But there should now be no doubt that his effort was not the work of a few rogue intelligence and law enforcement officials acting on their own. This was a full blown covert action undertaken with the full knowledge and blessing of Barack Obama. ..."
"... Operation Crossfire Hurricane was launched the end of July 2016. CIA Director John Brennan briefed key Democrat members of Congress in early August on allegations that Donald Trump was colluding with Vladimir Putin. And Peter Strzok traveled to London in early August 2016 to meet with the CIA and with Alexander Downer, who was claiming that George Papadopolous was talking up the Russians. Following that trip Strozk texted the following to his mistress, Lisa Page : ..."
"... We also know that Senior Obama Administration officials, such as NSC Director Susan Rice and UN Ambassdor Samantha Power, were pushing to "unmask" Trump campaign officials who were named in US intelligence documents. ..."
"... Let us look at this from another angle. If the Russians were actually trying to interfere in the 2016 election, then it was known to both US intelligence and law enforcement. Hell, we are told in the Mueller report that the FBI detected the Russians trying to hack the DNC way back in 2015. If there really was intelligence on Russian efforts to meddle why did the Obama Administration do nothing other than sanction FBI's Crossfire Hurricane? ..."
"... On what basis did Barack Obama insist it was impossible to rig the US Presidential election? This is a critical anomaly. Why was the Obama team asleep at the switch, especially on the intel front, it the Russians actually were engaged in rigging the election to install Donald Trump? ..."
"... Obama seemed to have got a taste for spying on his domestic political opponents from monitoring Israeli attempts to block the Iran nuclear deal. I think the lock her up stuff really scared the Obama people, who had much to hide. ..."
The full details of the plot to take out Donald Trump remain to be revealed. But there should now be no doubt that his effort was
not the work of a few rogue intelligence and law enforcement officials acting on their own. This was a full blown covert action undertaken
with the full knowledge and blessing of Barack Obama.
As
I have written previously , the claim that Russia tried to hijack our election is a damn lie. But you do not have to take my
word for it. Just listen to Barack Obama speaking in October 2016 in response to Donald Trump's expressed concerns about
election meddling :
"There is no serious person out there who would suggest that you could even rig America's elections, in part because they are
so decentralized. There is no evidence that that has happened in the past, or that there are instances that that could happen this
time," the president said to the future president in October 2016.
"Democracy survives because we recognize that there is something more important than any individual campaign, and that is making
sure the integrity and trust in our institutions sustains itself. Becasue Democracy works by consent, not by force," Obama said.
"I have never seen in my lifetime or in modern political history, any presidential candidate trying to discredit the elections
and the election process before votes have even taken place. It is unprecedented. It happens to be based on no fact. Every expert
regardless of political party... who has ever examined these issues in a serious way will tell you that instances of significant
voter fraud are not to be found. Keep in mind elections are run by state and local officials."
It is important to remember what had transpired in the Trump/Russia collusion case by this point. Operation Crossfire Hurricane
was launched the end of July 2016. CIA Director John Brennan briefed key Democrat members of Congress in early August on allegations
that Donald Trump was colluding with Vladimir Putin. And Peter Strzok traveled to London in early August 2016 to meet with the CIA
and with Alexander Downer, who was claiming that George Papadopolous was talking up the Russians. Following that trip
Strozk texted
the following to his mistress, Lisa Page :
Strzok: And hi. Went well, best we could have expected. Other than [REDACTED] quote: " the White House is running this. " My answer,
"well, maybe for you they are." And of course, I was planning on telling this guy, thanks for coming, we've got an hour, but with
Bill [Priestap] there, I've got no control .
Page: Yeah, whatever (re the WH comment). We've got the emails that say otherwise.
The White House clearly knew. But Strzok's text is not the only evidence. We also know that Senior Obama Administration officials,
such as NSC Director Susan Rice and UN Ambassdor Samantha Power, were pushing to "unmask" Trump campaign officials who were named
in US intelligence documents.
There are only two possibilities:
Obama was being briefed by Susan Rice and DNI James Clapper and CIA Director about the project
to take out Trump, or
Obama was kept in the dark.
Let us look at this from another angle. If the Russians were actually trying to interfere in the 2016 election, then it was known
to both US intelligence and law enforcement. Hell, we are told in the Mueller report that the FBI detected the Russians trying to
hack the DNC way back in 2015. If there really was intelligence on Russian efforts to meddle why did the Obama Administration do
nothing other than sanction FBI's Crossfire Hurricane?
On what basis did Barack Obama insist it was impossible to rig the US Presidential election? This is a critical anomaly. Why was
the Obama team asleep at the switch, especially on the intel front, it the Russians actually were engaged in rigging the election
to install Donald Trump?
My wife was for many years an election official in Virginia. IMO Obama was right in saying that a US presidential election
is impossible to "rig." The US Constitution requires that federal elections be run by the states WITHOUT federal supervision.
As a result the methods and equipment in the states and the various parts of the states vary widely and the state systems are
not tied together with a national electronic network as, for example, the system is in France where the result of a national election
is reported on TeeVee immediately when the polls close.
Asking the question, "Can you cite one specific case where a single vote was definitively changed by Russian meddling?"
causes panic in a person who is declaiming about the evils of Russian meddling in our elections.
When you ask that question, the invariable retort is that the Russians are so clever that you wouldn't know that you were being
gulled; or, when I say that I have never seen a Russian produced facebook ad, the rejoinder is that the Russians concentrated
on Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Ohio and, of course, I would have been privy to the bot-sent emails and facebook ads generated by
the Internet Research Agency.
You've maintained all along that the Russians interfered in the election, yet I believe it is your position that the Russians
did not change a single vote. Is that correct or do you believe the Russians changed the votes before tabulation?
What did the Russians do that the Trump and Hillary campaigns did not do? Did they also turnout the tens of thousands who showed
up for Trump rallies that Hillary could never muster? Are they still turning out thousands at recent Trump rallies? I'm curious
how come Brennan and Clapper could not turn out thousands to Hillary's rallies when according to our German friend "b", the omnipotent
US Intel services just turned out a quarter of the population of Hong Kong to protest CCP authoritarianism?
Did the Israeli, Saudi and Chinese governments interfere in the election? How would you compare what they did to what you believe
the Russians did?
uieter about it. All that is very different from the absolute covert nature of the Russian IO in the 2016 election. I have
no idea what China did or is doing.
You have no evidence for the so-called Russian IO. It is a fabrication. The lies on this are enormous. If the FBI really had detected
GRU hacking of the DNC in 2015, which is claimed in the fabricated meme, then you would expect the FBI and the other counter intel
elements of the USG to take action. THEY DID NOTHING.
The issue of Russian hacking only emerged when Hillary and the DNC learned that DNC emails were going to be put out by WIKILEAKS.
Again, not one shred of actual evidence that the Russians did it, but blaming the Russians became a convenient excuse in a bid
to divert attention from the real story--i.e,. Hillary and the DNC colluded to defeat Bernie Sanders.
The only real solid evidence of colluding with foreigners, in this case the Ukraine, comes courtesy of Hillary and her campaign.
Hiring a foreign intel officer (ie. Steele) who then takes info from Russians of questionable background and spread it around
as "truth". That was not a Russian IO. Pure Clinton IO.
"What the Russians did was insert misattributed information and disinformation into the election cycle...That is what separates
the Russian IO from anything Clinton, Trump or any of their supporters did."
I believe supporters of both candidates did exactly what you say the Russians did - insert misattributed information & disinformation
into the media stream. If you watch MSNBC or Fox on any given day there is much assertion & opinion masquerading as news. And
the Twitter & Facebook and blog universe are teeming with stories and innuendo that are more fiction than fact all from anonymous
accounts.
The Russia Collusion hysteria is replete with examples of "misattributed information and disinformation". It seems that yellow
journalism is as American as apple pie.
The whole opaque PAC structure with names like "Americans for Democracy" funded by chain structures hiding the real financiers
and calling up down is something that we see growing in every election cycle and is already of significant scale both in terms
of financing and dubiousness.
It is also rather common that "experts" who are called upon to opine on issues routinely never disclose their conflicts of
interest. Jeffrey Sachs and so many others on the payroll of CCP entities never disclose those payments as they extoll the virtues
of offshoring our industrial base to China and are apologists for CCP espionage.
Blue peacock, supporters of Clinton and Trump did not put out misattributed info. They both put out truth, innuendo, exaggerations,
misleading info and even outright lies, but they put it out as themselves. They didn't represent themselves as someone other than
who they were. The PAC structure comes close to skirting this requirement for truthful attribution, but a quick internet search
blows away the facades of these PACs. What the Russians did was pure black propaganda.
You mean the kindly grandmother, Loretta Lynch, Attorney General of the United States, did not inform President Obama that
the FBI had obtained a FISA warrant to surveil the Republican candidate for the presidency and members of his staff becasue he
was working with Russians? Or do you mean that James Comey failed to tell his boss, Loretta Lynch; or do you mean John Brennan
failed to tell Obama about that Steele dossier from Fusion GPS that Mueller know anything about; or do you mean that James Clapper
failed to tell Jeh Johnson about that too? The Russians made them do all those things as part of an interference campaign, right?
It couldn't have been they were corrupt and incompetant.
"Instead, Obama...." made an "If you like your doctor, you can keep you doctor" statement that he knew was completely false.
Trump didn't win, Russians influenced Americans to vote for Trump, just ask the losers of the election, their paid sources and
their colleagues in Congress. In fact Americans love Hilary so much she's just where in the polls right now?
I continue to be astounded by the outrage at "Russian meddling". So some Russians used the internet to post true or false information
on candidates in a election.... so what?...millions of American partisan trolls were doing the same thing for or against a candidate.
We had tons of fake info written by American bloggers and posters all over the net, Facebook, twitter etc..
Its not like Putin came to the US and gave a speech to congress in favor of Trump ...as Netanyahu did in appearing before the
US congress and urging them to go against President Obama's Syria policy for heaven's sake.
It is so ridiculous I have given up hope of finding enough IQs above that of a cabbage to form a sane government.
Obama seemed to have got a taste for spying on his domestic political opponents from monitoring Israeli attempts to block
the Iran nuclear deal. I think the lock her up stuff really scared the Obama people, who had much to hide.
1. The FBI cannot be trusted to uphold defend and protect our Constitution, as they sought actively
to overturn a duly elected POTUS.; and
2 - Mueller's incompetence is astounding.
Is the only entity of the Defense Department called the U.S. Army the only ones left actually upholding, defending, and protecting
our Constitution and our Constitution processes? I don't see the other entities of the DOD called Navy and Air Force doing their
jobs upholding our Constitution!
Thumbs up to the Army, thumbs down to the Navy and Air Force!
I'm a little more charitable to the FBI. The Trumps lied their asses off to the FBI about their foreign contacts. Which IMO,
wrong or right, left the FBI all but no recourse but to investigate those lies. Even if the lies were simply based in long-seated
personal habits, it takes investigation to prove that is the case.
"You have no evidence for the so-called Russian IO. It is a fabrication." In fact, Putin rejects the claim many times publicly
saying that Russia does not meddle in foreign elections as a matter of policy. Maybe I'm gullible, but I find his disclaimer pretty
convincing....
My question for Larry Johnson requires some speculation on his part: How did the claims of "Russia meddling" which began with
the DNC and Hillary campaign, take root at the FBI, CIA and NSA???
Is there an unseen connection between the Democrat leadership and the Intel agencies??? And --if there is-- does that mean
we are headed for a one-party system???
Larry, sorry to nitpick, but I have such regard for your work that it pains me to see the typographical error in your second sentence,
where you say "his error" shortly after referring to Trump. I'm guessing that you meant to say "this error", but it reads as if
it means "Trump's error".
And while I'm at it, your last sentence has "it" instead of "if".
Keep up your great work for this excellent website.
Sadly naive in that you think the conspirators were actually acting in good faith. You think they were right when they used
the Steele Dossier in applying for a FISA warrant in Colyyer's Star Chamber? Steele was a paid informant for the FBI as was Page.
"... He demonstrated a thin grasp of his own report's findings, even as he implored lawmakers in both parties to read it. He asked members of Congress to repeat their questions 48 times . ..."
"... That's not to say Mueller did nothing for Democrats. He said President Trump was not "exculpated" by his report. He raised the specter of falsified documents and all but said that he punted on obstruction of justice only because a sitting president cannot be indicted under existing Justice Department guidelines. He gamely testified his investigation was no "witch hunt." And some of his seeming confusion was likely strategic: he was trying to avoid giving partisans easy footage confirming their talking points. ..."
"... While Democrats have not totally given up on "collusion," moving the goalposts away from Hillary Clinton's detailed explanation of how the Trump campaign conspired with Russia to fix the election toward vaguer references to "contacts" and "foreign help," obstruction of justice was the name of the game. Mueller acknowledged that there was insufficient evidence to charge anyone in the Trump campaign with collusion-related crimes, even if he stopped short of calling that an exoneration of the president. Paul Manafort, George Papadopolous, Carter Page, Roger Stone -- these were not criminal masterminds. In fact, they were all incredibly sloppy. If they had colluded, they all could easily have been charged. ..."
"... No one who could be indicted was charged with aiding the president in obstructing the investigation either. ..."
"... The real answer Mueller declined to give appears to be that his obstruction allegations would have hinged heavily on Trump's use presidential powers under Article II of the Constitution. The Justice Department under Barr's leadership does not believe this amounted to obstruction in theory or practice. Thus the self-evidently never-fired Mueller was reduced to dropping breadcrumbs and hoping congressional Democrats would find them. ..."
"... Mueller's seeming lack of familiarity with his own investigation lessened the GOP's problem because it helps shift the focus to the "angry Democrats" in the special counsel's office -- people like Andrew Weissman, who attended Hillary's election night party -- rather than Mueller himself. The Democrats are still at square one, trying to dial back Manchurian candidate expectations among the base and shift the impeachment rationale to Trump's passive willingness to benefit from Russian interference without expressing a modicum of outrage. ..."
"... With 95 Democrats willing to impeach Trump over mean tweets, anything is possible. But it's going to take a lot more than Mueller to move House Speaker Nancy Pelosi into that camp. ..."
"... The Steele dossier, whether a truthful compilation or a complete fabrication, is itself an attempt by foreign spies to influence our election. "Collusion" staring us in the face right here. ..."
"... The public spectacle was heart-breaking. It was obvious that Mueller had lost some mental faculties. Surely his special investigative team had to know that, having worked with him for 2+ years, and so the Democrat leadership had to know that as well. And yet they insisted he testify, even though he basically begged to not testify and let him just go off into the twilight of retirement. But no, they threatened to subpoena him. ..."
"... Actually, Trump committed a lot of unforced errors, as well as being generally lazy, stupid and unprepared. ..."
"... With this in mind, to believe the RussiaGate conspiracy theories, one must simultaneously believe that the Russians have abilities that border on psychic mind control superpowers, but at the same time, these same evil geniuses cannot be bothered to plan what to do if their nefarious schemes actually worked out. ..."
"... One can easily accept that Trump is a roaring moron, but one also has to believe that his alleged puppetmaster cannot take the time to consult an attorney or a peruse a copy of the United States Code, available for free on the internet to anyone who bothers to take a peek. And that's just the legal requirements. I won't even go into the clownshow that was Trump's appointments and staffing. ..."
"... The testimony was a complete success because it maintained the status quo. Trump is not going anywhere, both Democrats and Republicans agreed that Russia tampered with the election rendering even more sanctions and increasing cold war tensions, and the only ones indicted were accused of process crimes. Meanwhile, the business of Goldman Sachs gets done in the halls of power. ..."
"... Robert "Saddam has WMD of Mass Destruction" Mueller has been the bag man for the establishment for a long time. Even his dotage, he still managed to perform his job flawlessly. ..."
"... 12 indictments against often former employees of a Russian clickbait farm for spectacularly laughable memes that will never amount to anything because there will never be a trial. One of the parties showed up in court and demanded actual evidence as part of discovery, causing Mueller to desperately ask for a continuance. The judge called Mueller out by denying it. The judge also called Mueller out by showing that he had no evidence that the defendant at issue had any ties tot he Russian government. ..."
"... A paltry $150k was spent for online ads over two years, by Russians, they tell you. They also tell you that about half those ads didn't run until after the election was over and that most of the ads didn't endorse a specific candidate or policy. Yet, you insist this Russian social media blitz altered the outcome of your election somehow. With well north of $3 billion spent on traditional advertising, leave it to MSM to float a turd of such odious girth. ..."
"... Next, Mueller indicts 13 Russian intelligence journeymen and it will never amount to anything. None of them will ever be extradited. There will never be a trial. Never a legal discovery process. No burden of proof that they actually hacked or colluded. No US intelligence agency has ever examined the servers in question. ..."
"... An impeachment is another word for "indictment", and as the saying goes you can indict a ham sandwich. Or impeach a baloney sandwich. If Trump were to wind up in the dock it would be "anything goes", including subpoenas being issued to Madame Hillary. There won't be any impeachment. Too much of a danger of overflowing sewage. ..."
"... Seth Rich could rise up from the dead and show us all, live on CNN, how he leaked the DNC emails, right after DWS confessed on MSNBC to ordering Seth Rich's murder and HRC admitted under oath that she invented russiagate on a bet with Podesta to see whether people really are that stupid and gullible, and CNN, MSNBC and the entire DNC and their cultists would keep pushing the conspiracy theory, never even missing a beat. ..."
"... I'm glad Mr. Mueller finally admitted publicly that he held the President to an Orwellian standard of "probably guilty, which we can't prove, until proven innocent, which we never do" that no American has ever been held to by law enforcement. ..."
Former Special Counsel Robert Mueller testifies before the House Intelligence Committee about his report on Russian interference
in the 2016 presidential election in the Rayburn House Office Building July 24, 2019(Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images) The late Sen.
Arlen Specter ended the drive to impeach Bill Clinton by invoking Scottish law and voting "not proven" in the 42rd president's Senate
trial. Democrats hope to begin the drive to impeach Donald Trump with a finding by special counsel Robert Mueller that the worst
allegations against the 45th president are not proven.
Even this task was made more difficult by the former FBI director and Trump-Russia investigator's unimpressive public congressional
testimony. Mueller had trouble identifying questioners. He demonstrated a thin grasp of his own report's findings, even as he
implored lawmakers in both parties to read it. He asked members of Congress to repeat their questions
48 times .
The uber-competent G-man about whom liberals
sang Christmas carols was not on display Wednesday. "Mueller Time" gave way to Mr. Magoo.
A cursory glance at Politico 's homepage revealed the damage. "'Euphoria': White House, GOP exult after a flat Mueller
performance," blared the top headline. Another reads, "Bob Mueller is struggling." And another: "Impeachment drive slowed by Mueller's
troubles." Even the New York Times could only manage: "Mueller sticks to script but shows flashes of indignation."
"This is delicate to say, but Mueller, whom I deeply respect, has not publicly testified before Congress in at least six years,"
fretted Barack Obama's man David Axelrod. "And he does not appear as sharp as he was then."
That's not to say Mueller did nothing for Democrats. He said President Trump was not "exculpated" by his report. He raised
the specter of falsified documents and all but said that he punted on obstruction of justice only because a sitting president cannot
be indicted under existing Justice Department guidelines. He gamely testified his investigation was no "witch hunt." And some of
his seeming confusion was likely strategic: he was trying to avoid giving partisans easy footage confirming their talking points.
But Democrats wanted much more. Ever since Attorney General William Barr released his summary, they have wanted to challenge his
framing of the report. His testimony, like that 448-page document, contained plenty of damning information. The bottom line -- that
Mueller could not prove a Trump-Russia conspiracy to swing the 2016 presidential election and lacks a convincing explanation for
his obstruction equivocation -- remains unchanged.
While Democrats have not totally given up on "collusion,"
moving the goalposts away
from Hillary Clinton's
detailed explanation
of how the Trump campaign conspired with Russia to fix the election toward vaguer references to "contacts" and "foreign help,"
obstruction of justice was the name of the game. Mueller acknowledged that there was insufficient evidence to charge anyone in the
Trump campaign with collusion-related crimes, even if he stopped short of calling that an exoneration of the president. Paul Manafort,
George Papadopolous, Carter Page, Roger Stone -- these were not criminal masterminds. In fact, they were all incredibly sloppy. If
they had colluded, they all could easily have been charged.
If Justice Department regulations on presidential indictments did not prevent a finding of insufficient evidence to charge conspiracy,
why did these guidelines require Congress to make the final determination on obstruction? No one who could be indicted was charged
with aiding the president in obstructing the investigation either.
The real answer Mueller declined to give appears to be that his obstruction allegations would have hinged heavily on Trump's
use presidential powers under Article II of the Constitution. The Justice Department under Barr's leadership does not believe this
amounted to obstruction in theory or practice. Thus the self-evidently never-fired Mueller was reduced to dropping breadcrumbs and
hoping congressional Democrats would find them.
Both parties entered the hearings with a fundamental problem. For Republicans, how do you discredit Mueller for his negative
findings about the president while also affirming his failure to prove an election-related conspiracy as definitive? The Democrats'
dilemma was that they knew Trump had behaved badly in response to Russian election interference and the subsequent investigation,
but hoped Mueller would discover something worse. When he merely supplied color and a reliable narrator for what we largely already
knew, many Democrats wanted to pivot back to impeaching Trump over that unseemly behavior.
Mueller's seeming lack of familiarity with his own investigation lessened the GOP's problem because it helps shift the focus
to the "angry Democrats" in the special counsel's office -- people like Andrew Weissman, who attended Hillary's election night party
-- rather than Mueller himself. The Democrats are still at square one, trying to dial back Manchurian candidate expectations among
the base and shift the impeachment rationale to Trump's passive willingness to benefit from Russian interference without expressing
a modicum of outrage.
You can argue that we should expect more from a president than to simply have refrained from directly conspiring with a hostile
foreign power to reach the White House. Yet that case becomes harder to make when that is precisely what you have conditioned rank-and-file
Democrats to expect from the Mueller report. No dramatic reading of that report, least of all by a 74-year-old clearly no longer
accustomed to congressional testimony, will deliver on those expectations.
With
95 Democrats willing to impeach Trump over mean tweets, anything is possible. But it's going to take a lot more than Mueller
to move House Speaker Nancy Pelosi into that camp.
I would say this is by far the most charitable interpretation of Mueller's testimony I've seen. He didn't want to talk about the
'Steele Dossier' ... the whole basis for the Russiagate farce, and then claimed he didn't know who GPS Fusion was ... the outfit
hired by Clinton to write the dossier in the first place. That this whole pile of rubbish was not laughed out of existence is
a tribute to the ability of the media (who hated Trump), to convince a large number of people of a preposterous fantasy.
He reminds me a little bit of my dad, and a little bit of Cato the Younger. But to his fellow Republicans--he's Mr. Magoo.
The Steele dossier, whether a truthful compilation or a complete fabrication, is itself an attempt by foreign spies to influence
our election. "Collusion" staring us in the face right here.
Why haven't the Democrats been investigated for it?
Maybe because there's a little difference between hiring a private firm to do opposition research, and Russian military intelligence
stealing and releasing tens of thousands of private documents from one political party to help the other win the Presidency?
"You can argue that we should expect more from a president than to simply have refrained from directly conspiring with a hostile
foreign power to reach the White House."
Even after the spectacle, and the grueling two years of media hype, nothing has moved the dial from those who hate Trump, and
those who are Trump supporters. The 2020 election may again come down to the electoral college system. We already know where voters
on the upper east coast and California stand. Major populations.
The public spectacle was heart-breaking. It was obvious that Mueller had lost some mental faculties. Surely his special investigative
team had to know that, having worked with him for 2+ years, and so the Democrat leadership had to know that as well. And yet they
insisted he testify, even though he basically begged to not testify and let him just go off into the twilight of retirement. But
no, they threatened to subpoena him.
By all accounts, Mueller had a long a admirable career. Its disgusting that most people's memory of him and his legacy will
be of this last public embarrassing spectacle.
The Democratic Party has shown its complete lack of moral compass. When it comes to politics, anything goes, including the
destruction of people's lives. They even eat their own when its considered politically expedient. The Anita Hill hearings, Kavannah
hearings, me too movement, show me the man and the people around him, we'll find the crimes mentality. What's next? Murder? It
would not surprise me in the least.
Its clear now that the entire Russian collusion narrative was a set-up by the Democratic party. It was all about entrapment,
perjury traps, and selective media leaking.
The bottom line was, is, and always will be as follows: The Democrat Party expected their candidate to win in a cakewalk over
Trump. If she won we wouldn't have heard one word about these Russians (Oh, and by the way, do these "Russians" have names?).
It was Clinton's election to lose and she promptly went out and lost it! Period! End of story! In their eyes the candidate of
"The Deplorables" won and the Democrats are enraged--so enraged that since Election Day 2016 they have been doing all they can
do to delegitimize the election and Trump's status as POTUS. And all the while-- thanks to BOTH parties--the nation's infrastructure
steadily crumbles and the immigration crisis remains unresolved (to cite just two examples).
"On impeachment: Just imagine that Barak Obama had illegally spent $120,000 of his campaign cash for hush money to his prostitute.
What would happen?"--interguru
Democrats would rise in unison and begin shouting "It's only about sex!" And that time, they'd be correct.
Admit it, interguru, all the covering for Clinton that the Democrats conducted in order to yank his lying-under-oath balls
out of the fire rendered impotent their usual tactics of denigrate and defame.
Fine, but that has nothing to do with the russiagate conspiracy theory.
In fact, if Trump were really a puppet of Russia, they'd never let him commit an unforced error that pointless. Some money
could be funneled from any of a million sources, and nobody would be any the wiser.
Actually, Trump committed a lot of unforced errors, as well as being generally lazy, stupid and unprepared.
With this in mind, to believe the RussiaGate conspiracy theories, one must simultaneously believe that the Russians have
abilities that border on psychic mind control superpowers, but at the same time, these same evil geniuses cannot be bothered to
plan what to do if their nefarious schemes actually worked out.
Orwell wept.
One can easily accept that Trump is a roaring moron, but one also has to believe that his alleged puppetmaster cannot take
the time to consult an attorney or a peruse a copy of the United States Code, available for free on the internet to anyone who
bothers to take a peek. And that's just the legal requirements. I won't even go into the clownshow that was Trump's appointments
and staffing.
The testimony was a complete success because it maintained the status quo. Trump is not going anywhere, both Democrats and
Republicans agreed that Russia tampered with the election rendering even more sanctions and increasing cold war tensions, and
the only ones indicted were accused of process crimes. Meanwhile, the business of Goldman Sachs gets done in the halls of power.
Robert "Saddam has WMD of Mass Destruction" Mueller has been the bag man for the establishment for a long time. Even his
dotage, he still managed to perform his job flawlessly.
What utter nonsense, unless you believe that "Russia" wrote the DNC emails, or that a clickbait troll farm (see paragraph 95 of
the IRA indictment if you don't believe me) that has no discernable connection tot he Russian government has some amazing influence
over gullible American voters.
12 indictments against often former employees of a Russian clickbait farm for spectacularly laughable memes that will never
amount to anything because there will never be a trial. One of the parties showed up in court and demanded actual evidence as
part of discovery, causing Mueller to desperately ask for a continuance. The judge called Mueller out by denying it. The judge
also called Mueller out by showing that he had no evidence that the defendant at issue had any ties tot he Russian government.
A paltry $150k was spent for online ads over two years, by Russians, they tell you. They also tell you that about half
those ads didn't run until after the election was over and that most of the ads didn't endorse a specific candidate or policy.
Yet, you insist this Russian social media blitz altered the outcome of your election somehow. With well north of $3 billion spent
on traditional advertising, leave it to MSM to float a turd of such odious girth.
Next, Mueller indicts 13 Russian intelligence journeymen and it will never amount to anything. None of them will ever be
extradited. There will never be a trial. Never a legal discovery process. No burden of proof that they actually hacked or colluded.
No US intelligence agency has ever examined the servers in question.
Russians didn't write the emails and Julian Assange is emphatic that Russia had nothing to do with them. Yet, no one in our
vast and vaunted intelligence community has bothered to interview him. As they say, a smart lawyer never asks a question if he
might not want to hear the answer.
Everything, all of it, is based on intel supplied by a cyber security firm on the DNC payroll. You can't make this shit up.
The other indictments are thoroughly unrelated to hacking or collusion by anybody, much less Russia.
Sen Specter did NOT "end the drive to impeach Bill Clinton", as the opening sentence of this article declares. The drive to impeach
Bill Clinton ended when the House passed articles of impeachment. That's right: Bill Clinton was actually impeached. No, he wasn't
"convicted" in his senate trial (thanks to Specter) and so wasn't removed from office. But he was, actually, impeached.
Good question for trivia buffs: Only one of these presidents was impeached: Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton. Which one was it?
(Hint: Nixon resigned before the House impeached him.)
An impeachment is another word for "indictment", and as the saying goes you can indict a ham sandwich. Or impeach a baloney
sandwich. If Trump were to wind up in the dock it would be "anything goes", including subpoenas being issued to Madame Hillary.
There won't be any impeachment. Too much of a danger of overflowing sewage.
Seth Rich could rise up from the dead and show us all, live on CNN, how he leaked the DNC emails, right after DWS confessed
on MSNBC to ordering Seth Rich's murder and HRC admitted under oath that she invented russiagate on a bet with Podesta to see
whether people really are that stupid and gullible, and CNN, MSNBC and the entire DNC and their cultists would keep pushing the
conspiracy theory, never even missing a beat.
I'm thinking the Democrats just wanted Mueller to give them the go ahead on impeachment... that way they could always blame it
on him if the ploy failed... Too bad they are such cowards that none of the want to sign their name to impeachment proceedings...
I'm glad Mr. Mueller finally admitted publicly that he held the President to an Orwellian standard of "probably guilty, which
we can't prove, until proven innocent, which we never do" that no American has ever been held to by law enforcement.
I'll illustrate:
"If we had had confidence the President clearly committed a crime, we would have said so. We did not make a determination
as to whether the President did commit a crime."
"If we had had confidence the President clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said so. We did not make a determination
as to whether the President did commit a crime."
Can anybody tell me the legal difference between those two statements? I really don't see any. Also, what was fascinating about
Mr. Mueller's press conference was when he said this:
"These indictments contain allegations and we are not commenting on the guilt or the innocence of any specific defendant.
Every defendant is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty."
He actually paid indicted Russian nationals who will never stand trial in this country more constitutional lip service than
Trump. Absolutely gorgeous...
If the Democrats were using Mueller as their smoking gun to nail Trump it failed miserably. If they still want to impeach go ahead.
It guarantees Trump's reelection.
Mueller's investigation ended after all the subpoenas had been served, all the witnesses had been deposed, and all the evidence
analyzed. If, after that, he could not determine that the president had committed a crime, then, according to established jurisprudential
practice, the decision is that he is not guilty. It is singular that the 2 accusations, collusion and obstruction, were evaluated
differently.
In the case of conspiracy ("collusion") the final report says, "The investigation did not establish that members of the Trump
campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities." In the case of obstruction
of justice, the final report says, "If we had confidence after a thorough investigation of the facts that the president clearly
did not commit obstruction of justice, we would so state Based on the facts and the applicable legal standards, we are unable
to reach that judgment."
So, in the case of conspiracy, the prosecutor had to prove that the President was guilty ("did not establish" conspiracy);
in the case of obstruction, they had to prove that he was innocent ("did not commit obstruction"). Why did different standards
apply to the two accusations?
Mueller said he didn't recommend that the grand jury indict the President for obstruction because one cannot indict a sitting
President. But the President either obstructed justice or he didn't. If he did, why didn't Mueller say so? He didn't have to recommend
as indictment in order to state a conclusion based on facts revealed in the investigation. What he appears to be saying is that
because he couldn't prove that the President did not commit obstruction, he would recommend that congress play impeachment politics
with the issue.
So, instead of a resolution of this matter, Mueller decided to bequeath to the nation a festering sore that, with that aid
of congressional Democrats, would continue to undermine the President's administration.
Russia interfered on a massive scale and is doing it again as we sit here! Just how
massive? They spent $100,000 on clickbait ads from a company owned by a man who was in a
photo with the evil mastermind!
How evil? Well do the math. $43,000 to $46,000 of that was spent during the election and
of those ads 8.4 percent were political. That's $3,684 dollars.
But the political ads were aimed in both directions so that's roughly $1,932 spent
"promoting" Trump.
And now Mueller tells us the evil mastermind is at it again -- as we sit here -- probably
spending even more this time. Let us know when he's spent a full thousand dollars Bob and
we'll start loading the bombs.
Oh, and we found all this out for around thirty million dollars.
think about it! with the myriad of problems we must contend with: growing social
inequality, huge tax breaks for the rich, government deregulation of private business, a
climate catastrophe, unending wars, nuclear annihilation spurred on especially by u.s.
imperialism, the gutting of what little social safety net we have left and so on and so so
on. and we are supposed to be outraged at supposed foreign interference with our supposed
democratic process? please, this is total insanity!!!
Of course, relatively speaking, it’s a nothing. Every knowledgeable person knows
that we in the US orchestrated both the financing and the strategy of the 1996 Yeltsin
campaign -- a political rescue so efficiently carried out that our operatives bragged
brazenly about it to Time Magazine, which made it the cover story for its July 14, 1996
edition (“Yanks to the Rescue”).
The Lamestream Corporate media always underplayed the fact that Yeltsin ordered the
execution of 1,100 demonstrators who protested the IMF backed “reforms”, and that
Clinton approved of his deadly and heavy hand in implementing a neoliberal economic order.
Clinton never threatened to suspend aid to the Russian Federation despite its numerous abuses
of human rights.
Also forgotten is that Yeltsin ordered the Russian Parliament (Duma) shelled before it
could vote on Yeltsin’s economic “reforms”, which were implemented at the
point of a gun. At various times between 1993 and 1997, it was Yeltsin who declared martial
law, suspended the Duma, and declared himself possessed of dictatorial powers.
How many Americans ever knew this? 20%? How many remember it today? Maybe 5%? That means
there is no context for gauging Muellers’ testimony.
But, it is, by MSNBC standards, Vladimir Putin who is Evil Incarnate. Has Maddow ever
mentioned Yeltsin, a tyrant of the first order? No, because at GE, Comcast, and NBC, tyranny
in the name of enforcing neoliberalism is perfectly acceptable.
This post is a bit off topic, and is a bit relativistic, as I know we should be concerned
if it is really true that Manafort was giving internal polling data to a Russian Federation
person so that the IRA could better target swing states in our Midwest.
Bob Van Noy , July 26, 2019 at 08:26
John Wolfe, your comment is not off topic at all, it’s crucial to further
understanding of the totality of the Russia did it mentality, and That is well documented in
a small but powerful book called “Manifest Destiny: Democracy as Cognitive
Dissonance” by F. William Engdahl which I will link.
The American People have been propagandized so thoroughly that they can hardly recognize
the truth any longer.
Too, I will link an article in Off Guardian this morning that is worth mentioning if one
wants to see Real Reporting On MH-17.
Looks like Mueller is not currently mentally capable of programming his microwave, never mind to be the primary author of his
eport or supervise the investigation.
Shouldn't James Comey and Rod Rosenstein be sitting there, its obvious to me that Mueller is the patsy here.
Notable quotes:
"... Mueller : What page are you referencing? I can't find it" ..."
"... Rep: "Sir, you have the report upsidedown" ..."
I agree wholeheartedly with Tucker Carlson...This whole stupid Russia hysteria propagated
by most of the media made me, an old timer liberal, agree with Tucker. Well played Democratic
Party... well played.
Tucker's question about what should happen to the people who attempted to reverse the will
of the American people? The answer is very straightforward. Those found guilty of sedition
and treason should by law hanged by the neck until dead. This might discourage further
efforts to undermine the will of the American people.
Looks like Mueller is not currently mentally capable of programming his microwave, never mind to be the primary author of his
eport or supervise the investigation.
Shouldn't James Comey and Rod Rosenstein be sitting there, its obvious to me that Mueller is the patsy here.
Notable quotes:
"... Mueller : What page are you referencing? I can't find it" ..."
"... Rep: "Sir, you have the report upsidedown" ..."
When Alex Stamos announced that the Internet Research Agency's ad buys were a drop in
the ocean, Zuckerberg was promptly taken to the Congressional Woodshed and told to report
to the Atlantic Council. Those two billion-odd fake accounts may be a fraud perpetrated on
the advertisers, but they are invaluable to US "law" enforcement and to US propaganda, where
the ability to open a fake account on Facebook gives the illusion of privacy.
With all due respect to Mr. Greenspan and his Lowell House creds, I think he fails to
understand that Facebook is now an NSA asset.
This is a fascinating article and it certainly put a smile on my dial. As an asset for use
by governments around the world, Facebook may be too invaluable to just let sink. One guy
reported that he was in a meeting with Facebook’s top brass including the Zuck when a
head honcho of the FBI came into the meeting and sang Zuck’s praises for all the help
that Facebook gave the FBI. So the question remains. Just how many “real” Facebook
accounts does Facebook have? Ones that people check on daily. Now that is the killer
question.
That would be like Archibald Cox saying he never heard of Watergate! Does Mueller have Alzheimer's? If he doesn't know that
much, what's the point of even talking to him?
Dems should have adjourned right then, to save further embarrassment.
I have three Facebook accounts. The two I never ever look at are the one for my cat and
the one for my feminine alter ego. My own account is used for only one thing, watching
"People You May Know" to see how far they've penetrated my graph; occasionally disturbing,
occasionally hilarious. I've never looked at my "wall", issued or accepted a friend request,
posted anything, messaged anyone but they have my email, and wow do I hate this company!
May 2018, a woman I loved and was ultimately going to get to move in died (age 70, natural
causes). Twice a week on average I get emails from Facebook inviting me to read her most
recent messages. You can imagine how I feel about that. SHE DED!
Facebook has boasted on the order of 2-3 billion users, a significant percentage of the
world's population, and I don't believe a word of it. One may assume that the early adopters
were people with more tech savvy, affluence and most important, leisure time to screw around
on the internet, and the proles don't have a lot of leisure time. Moreover, the value to the
advertiser of a set of eyeball impressions is directly related to the amount of disposable
income those eyeballs have, and sure, India has about one and a half billion people, but a
lot of them have zero disposable income and zero leisure time.
"Based on a combination of publicly available research and Plaintiffs' own analysis, among
18-34 years-olds in Chicago, for example, Facebook asserted its Potential Reach was
approximately 4 times (400%) higher than the number of real 18-34 year-olds with Facebook
accounts in Chicago. Based on a combination of publicly available research and Plaintiffs'
own analysis, Facebook's asserted Potential Reach in Kansas City was approximately 200%
higher than the number of actual 18-54 year-olds with Facebook accounts in Kansas City. This
inflation is apparent in other age categories as well."
"These foundational representations are false. Based on publicly available research and
Plaintiffs' own analysis, Facebook overstates the Potential Reach of its advertisements. For
example, based on publicly available data, Facebook's purported Potential Reach among the key
18-34 year-
22 old demographic in every state exceeds the actual population of 18-34 year-olds ."
"... Russiagate, the most extensive disinformation/propaganda campaign since Iraqi WMD, has fallen/is falling apart without any need to reference fake Facebook accounts. ..."
"... The Collusion narrative/conspiracy theory was preposterous from the get-go, riven with internal inconsistencies, and the recent Federal court ruling that prevents Mueller from continuing to publicly accuse Concord management of "undermining our democracy" (that's a hot one) discredits the second of the three bases of the narrative. ..."
Russiagate, the most extensive disinformation/propaganda campaign since Iraqi WMD, has
fallen/is falling apart without any need to reference fake Facebook accounts.
The Collusion narrative/conspiracy theory was preposterous from the get-go, riven with
internal inconsistencies, and the recent Federal court ruling that prevents Mueller from
continuing to publicly accuse Concord management of "undermining our democracy" (that's a hot
one) discredits the second of the three bases of the narrative.
Someday the McResistance TM and unhinged liberals possessed by magical thinking must grapple
with the fact that Trump was elected in America, by Americans, and that there is no Santa
Claus.
"... "Russia" with respect to Facebook was "Internet Research Agency," a Russian troll farm that ran a teeny number of ads in terms of both volume and dollar spend. A Federal judge ordered Muller to quit trying to depict its principals as connected to the Russian government because it was prejudicial to their case. No connection has ever been established nor is it it likely to be established. The ads were stunningly amateurish, all over the map in terms of messages, and apparently 25% were never viewed, and IIRC, over half ran after the election. ..."
Yep, those "Buff Bernie" and "Jesus Arm Wrestling With Satan" pages, often written in
broken English and most of which appeared after the election, really did the job, didn't
they?
In case you didn't notice, Mueller has been enjoined from making any more claims about
those Facebook pages as products of Russian state actors, since the accused unexpectedly
showed up in court and demanded discovery of evidence, which Saint Santa Claus Mueller was
unable to provide.
Give it up, already: Trumpismo must be defeated politically, through traditional and
creative political methods, and not via wishful thinking based on an opportunistic
convergence of interests among the Clinton/Obama/Donor Class wing of the Democratic Party,
factions in the National Security State that don't consider him an effective steward of
empire, and a corporate media that gave him billions in free media but now wants us to think
it opposes him.
Leslie Moonves of CBS' quote about how Trump was bad for America, but great for CBS
shareholders, says far more about Trump's victory than all the hair-on-fire reports about
Russia and Putin.
If there isn't some kind of reckoning for this disgraceful episode, which has only
inoculated Trump against reports of what he actually is doing, and is an inestimable
political gift to him, the Next Trump is going to make far more sinister use of it.
I look at the "Facebook threw the election to Trump" story as equivalent to blaming the
camel's back breaking last piece of straw for the camel's injury without observing that the
entire prior heavy straw loading made this possible.
The exposure of HRC's "deplorables" comment, or her "public positions vs private
positions" comment or her selection of Tim Kaine as VP or her Wall Street speeches could have
all been far more significant in her loss than any liked/forwarded Russian Facebook
postings.
I have never done Facebook, so perhaps I am completely in the dark as far as its influence
on potential voters.
How does one know that actual votes were flipped via a Facebook posting?
For example, if the Facebook forwarding content served only for confirmation bias, perhaps
a very small number of voter minds were changed, as the voters were already Trump
leaning.
That is a fundamental problem of any advertising/influence campaign, getting an ad
possibly viewed is one thing, knowing that it was influenial is very difficult.
How exactly did Mueller determine, with any confidence, that voters' minds were changed
via the Facebook platform?
If Mueller determined that these Facebook postings were truly influential in changing
would be HRC voters to Trump voters, he could have a new, very profitable, career in the
advertising industry.
I find it hard to believe social media had more of an effect than constant mainstream
media coverage and as far as I know noone has accused them of being influenced by Russians.
Can you show otherwise on either of those points?
Because if the negative influence of Putin whatever it may be is less than the negative
influence of selling ad revenue on t.v. well then the problem is capitalism not Russian
oligarchy destroying democracy.
"Russia" with respect to Facebook was "Internet Research Agency," a Russian troll farm
that ran a teeny number of ads in terms of both volume and dollar spend. A Federal judge
ordered Muller to quit trying to depict its principals as connected to the Russian government
because it was prejudicial to their case. No connection has ever been established nor is it
it likely to be established. The ads were stunningly amateurish, all over the map in terms of
messages, and apparently 25% were never viewed, and IIRC, over half ran after the
election.
"... Imagine you are a horny 15 year old boy and you have been promised sex with an incredible Hollywood talent. Driven by surging hormones your anticipation and excitement are off the scale. You are taken to the place where the tryst will happen. And you open the door. Waiting of you is Barney Fife. ..."
Imagine you are a horny 15 year old boy and you have been promised sex with an incredible Hollywood talent. Driven by surging
hormones your anticipation and excitement are off the scale. You are taken to the place where the tryst will happen. And you open
the door. Waiting of you is Barney Fife.
That sort of sums up what is likely to happen tomorrow when Robert Mueller testifies before the House Judiciary and the House
Intelligence committees. I have shut off almost all cable news. I cannot stomach the relentless hype about tomorrow's supposed "big
day."
Hmmm, given how the legacy media has managed to completely misinterpret what Mueller's Report actually says, imagine what a field
day they will have interpreting "nothing" to mean something. Now, I wonder what that something might be...?
"The press of the United States? It is a parasitic growth that battens on the capitalist
class. Its function is to serve the established by moulding public opinion, and right well it
serves it.
I know nothing that I may say can influence you. You have no souls to be influenced. You are
spineless, flaccid things. You pompously call yourselves Republicans and Democrats. There is no
Republican Party. There is no Democratic Party.
There are no Republicans nor Democrats in this House. You are lick-spittlers and panderers,
the creatures of the Plutocracy.
You talk verbosely in antiquated terminology of your love of liberty, and all the while you
wear the scarlet livery of the Iron Heel."
"... I originally published this as a satirical Facebook Note on February 21, 2018, after the New York Times reported on February 16, 2018 that Special Counsel Robert Mueller had indicted 13 Russians. ..."
I originally published this as a satirical Facebook Note on February 21, 2018, after the
New York Times reported on February 16, 2018 that Special Counsel Robert Mueller had indicted
13 Russians.
February 21, 2018
The Honorable Robert Swan Mueller III
Special Investigating Counsel
U.S. Department of Justice
950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW Washington, DC 20530–0001
Dear Mr. Mueller:
I read with great interest your indictments of 13 Russian citizens and three Russian
corporations.
Please note that Russia encourages you to continue your investigatory efforts as we are
confident you will find that neither myself or any representatives of my office and government
have anything to do with what many of your politicians and media members are describing as
"Russian collusion" or "Russian meddling" with the US 2016 elections.
Also, as a side note, please know that we in Russia are completely surprised at how you
conducted your 2016 election. From the vantage point of anyone living outside of America those
elections did not appear fair at all. We in Russia are surprised by this as we thought you were
a better nation than what we saw from your 2016 national elections.
Although the United States of America and The Russian Federation hold no formal extradition
treaty agreement, please be advised I am willing to use the powers of my office to contact
those whom you've indicted and I will do my utmost to encourage them to come to America in
order to stand the trial of your indictments. We are confident that your jurisprudence system
for legal discovery will produce both remarkable and enlightening evidence for your
investigation.
On a mundane matter, would you be willing to pay for the costs of their travel and housing
expenses while they stand trial in America, or would you prefer that The Russian Federation to
cover this expense?
Finally, please find attached a copy of the Constitution of The Russian Federation. You are
welcome to share with your fellow citizens as we are confident they will become very surprised
by what they learn from reading the contents of our Constitution.
PS: I strongly recommend that your FBI, NSA and DHS departments thoroughly examine the DNC
computers in order to determine if they were actually "hacked." I'm confident you will discover
that the documents published by Wikileaks were the product of an inside "leak" onto a thumb
drive. Please note that I am shocked that the thoroughness of your investigation has not yet
accomplished this simple and obvious task.
"... I originally published this as a satirical Facebook Note on February 21, 2018, after the New York Times reported on February 16, 2018 that Special Counsel Robert Mueller had indicted 13 Russians. ..."
I originally published this as a satirical Facebook Note on February 21, 2018, after the
New York Times reported on February 16, 2018 that Special Counsel Robert Mueller had indicted
13 Russians.
February 21, 2018
The Honorable Robert Swan Mueller III
Special Investigating Counsel
U.S. Department of Justice
950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW Washington, DC 20530–0001
Dear Mr. Mueller:
I read with great interest your indictments of 13 Russian citizens and three Russian
corporations.
Please note that Russia encourages you to continue your investigatory efforts as we are
confident you will find that neither myself or any representatives of my office and government
have anything to do with what many of your politicians and media members are describing as
"Russian collusion" or "Russian meddling" with the US 2016 elections.
Also, as a side note, please know that we in Russia are completely surprised at how you
conducted your 2016 election. From the vantage point of anyone living outside of America those
elections did not appear fair at all. We in Russia are surprised by this as we thought you were
a better nation than what we saw from your 2016 national elections.
Although the United States of America and The Russian Federation hold no formal extradition
treaty agreement, please be advised I am willing to use the powers of my office to contact
those whom you've indicted and I will do my utmost to encourage them to come to America in
order to stand the trial of your indictments. We are confident that your jurisprudence system
for legal discovery will produce both remarkable and enlightening evidence for your
investigation.
On a mundane matter, would you be willing to pay for the costs of their travel and housing
expenses while they stand trial in America, or would you prefer that The Russian Federation to
cover this expense?
Finally, please find attached a copy of the Constitution of The Russian Federation. You are
welcome to share with your fellow citizens as we are confident they will become very surprised
by what they learn from reading the contents of our Constitution.
PS: I strongly recommend that your FBI, NSA and DHS departments thoroughly examine the DNC
computers in order to determine if they were actually "hacked." I'm confident you will discover
that the documents published by Wikileaks were the product of an inside "leak" onto a thumb
drive. Please note that I am shocked that the thoroughness of your investigation has not yet
accomplished this simple and obvious task.
Mueller looks more and more like dirty Clinton fixer.
Notable quotes:
"... The Feb. 2018 indictment referred repeatedly to the IRA simply as a "Russian organization." But in Mueller's report 14 months later, the "Russian organization" had somehow morphed into "Russia." The IRA's lawyers argued, in effect, that Mueller's ipse-dixit "Russia did it" does not suffice as proof of Russian government involvement. Federal Judge Friedrich agreed and ordered Mueller to cease promoting his evidence-less charge against the IRA; she added that "any future violations of her order will trigger a range of potential sanctions." ..."
"... In testimony to Congress in October 2017, Facebook General Counsel Colin Stretch had cautioned earlier that from 2015 to 2017, "Americans using Facebook were exposed to, or 'served,' a total of over 33 trillion stories in their News Feeds." Shamefully misleading "analysis" by Times reporters Scott Shane and Mark Mazzetti in a 10,000-word article on September 20, 2018 made the case that the IRA's 80,000 posts helped deliver the presidency to Trump. ..."
"... Shane and Mazzetti neglected to report the 33 trillion number for needed context, even though the Times ' own coverage of Stretch's 2017 testimony stated outright: "Facebook cautioned that the Russia-linked posts represented a minuscule amount of content compared with the billions of posts that flow through users' News Feeds everyday." ..."
"... CrowdStrike, the controversial cybersecurity firm that the Democratic National Committee chose over the FBI in 2016 to examine its compromised computer servers, never produced an un-redacted or final forensic report for the government because the FBI never required it to, the Justice Department admitted. ..."
"... With Erin Ratner being named as a conduit between Seth Rich and Wikileaks in a lawsuit yesterday – the second flimsy leg of Mueller's claims – gets cut off at the knees. ..."
Daniel Lazare's July 12 Consortium Newspiece
shatters one of the twin prongs in Mueller's case that "the Russian government interfered in
the 2016 presidential election in sweeping and systematic fashion." It was the prong dripping
with incessant drivel about the Kremlin using social media to help Trump win in 2016.
Mueller led off his Russiagate report, a redacted version of which was published on April
18, with the dubious claim that his investigation had
" established that Russia interfered in the 2016 election principally through two
operations. First, a Russian entity carried out a social media campaign that favored
presidential candidate Donald J. Trump and disparaged presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.
Second, a Russian intelligence service conducted computer-intrusion operations against
entities, employees, and volunteers working in the Clinton campaign, and then released stolen
documents."
Judge to Mueller: Put Up or Shut Up
Mueller: Needs more time. (Flickr)
Regarding the social-media accusation, Judge Friederich has now told Mueller, in effect, to
put up or shut up. What happened was this: On February 16, 2018 a typically credulous grand
jury -- the usual kind that cynics say can be persuaded to indict the proverbial ham sandwich
-- was convinced by Mueller to return 16 indictments of the Internet Research Agency (IRA) and
associates in St. Petersburg, giving his all-deliberate-speed investigation some momentum and a
much-needed, if short-lived, "big win" in "proving" interference by Russia in the 2016
election. It apparently never occurred to Mueller and the super-smart lawyers around him that
the Russians would outsmart them by hiring their own lawyers to show up in U.S. court and seek
discovery. Oops.
The Feb. 2018 indictment referred repeatedly to the IRA simply as a "Russian organization."
But in Mueller's report 14 months later, the "Russian organization" had somehow morphed into
"Russia." The IRA's lawyers argued, in effect, that Mueller's ipse-dixit "Russia did it"
does not suffice as proof of Russian government involvement. Federal Judge Friedrich agreed and
ordered Mueller to
cease promoting his evidence-less charge against the IRA; she added that "any future violations
of her order will trigger a range of potential sanctions."
More specifically, at the conclusion of a hearing held under seal on May 28, Judge Friedrich
ordered the government "to refrain from making or authorizing any public statement that links
the alleged conspiracy in the indictment to the Russian government or its agencies." The judge
ordered further that "any public statement about the allegations in the indictment . . . must
make clear that, one, the government is summarizing the allegations in the indictment which
remain unproven, and, two, the government does not express an opinion on the defendant's guilt
or innocence or the strength of the evidence in this case."
Reporting Thursday on Judge Friedrich's ruling, former CIA and State Department official
Larry C. Johnson
described it as a "potential game changer," observing that Mueller "has not offered one
piece of solid evidence that the defendants were involved in any way with the government of
Russia." After including a lot of useful background material, Johnson ends by noting:
"Some readers will insist that Mueller and his team have actual intelligence but cannot
put that in an indictment. Well boys and girls, here is a simple truth–if you cannot
produce evidence that can be presented in court then you do not have a case. There is that
part of the Constitution that allows those accused of a crime to confront their
accusers."
IRA Story a 'Stretch'
Last fall, investigative journalist Gareth Porter dissected and
debunkedThe New York Times 's far-fetched claim that 80,000 Facebook posts by the
Internet Research Agency helped swing the election to Donald Trump. What the Times story
neglected to say is that the relatively paltry 80,000 posts were engulfed in literally
trillions of posts on Facebook over the two-year period in question -- before and after the
2016 election.
Stretch and executives from Facebook, Twitter and Google hauled before a Senate Judiciary
subcommittee on crime and terrorism on Oct. 31, 2017.
In testimony to Congress in October 2017, Facebook General Counsel Colin Stretch had
cautioned earlier that from 2015 to 2017, "Americans using Facebook were exposed to, or
'served,' a total of over 33 trillion stories in their News Feeds." Shamefully misleading
"analysis" by Times reporters Scott Shane and Mark Mazzetti in a 10,000-word
article on September 20, 2018 made the case that the IRA's 80,000 posts helped deliver the
presidency to Trump.
Shane and Mazzetti neglected to report the 33 trillion number for needed context, even
though the Times ' own coverage of Stretch's 2017 testimony stated
outright: "Facebook cautioned that the Russia-linked posts represented a minuscule amount of
content compared with the billions of posts that flow through users' News Feeds everyday."
The chances that Americans saw any of these IRA ads -- let alone were influenced by them --
are infinitismal. Porter and others did the math and found that over the two-year period, the
80,000 Russian-origin Facebook posts represented just 0.0000000024 of total Facebook content in
that time. Porter commented that this particular Times contribution to the Russiagate
story "should vie in the annals of journalism as one of the most spectacularly misleading uses
of statistics of all time."
And now we know, courtesy of Judge Friederich, that Mueller has never produced proof, beyond
his say-so, that the Russian government was responsible for the activities of the IRA --
feckless as they were. That they swung the election is clearly a stretch.
The Other Prong: Hacking the DNC
The second of Mueller's two major accusations of Russian interference, as noted above,
charged that "a Russian intelligence service conducted computer-intrusion operations against
entities, employees, and volunteers working in the Clinton campaign, and then released stolen
documents." Sadly for Russiagate aficionados, the evidence behind that charge doesn't hold
water either.
CrowdStrike, the controversial cybersecurity firm that the Democratic National Committee
chose over the FBI in 2016 to examine its compromised computer servers, never produced an
un-redacted or final forensic report for the government because the FBI never required it to,
the Justice Department
admitted.
The
revelation came in a
court filing by the government in the pre-trial phase of Roger Stone, a long-time
Republican operative who had an unofficial role in the campaign of candidate Donald Trump.
Stone has been charged with misleading Congress, obstructing justice and intimidating a
witness.
The filing was in response to a motion by Stone's lawyers asking for "unredacted reports"
from CrowdStrike challenging the government to prove that Russia hacked the DNC server. "The
government does not possess the information the defendant seeks," the DOJ filing says.
Small wonder that Mueller had hoped to escape further questioning. If he does testify on
July 24, the committee hearings will be well worth watching.
Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the
Saviour in inner-city Washington. He was a CIA analyst for 27 years and a presidential briefer.
In retirement he co-founded Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity. His colleagues and
he have been following closely the ins and outs of Russiagate.
Carlos , July 17, 2019 at 12:52
With Erin Ratner being named as a conduit between Seth Rich and Wikileaks in a lawsuit
yesterday – the second flimsy leg of Mueller's claims – gets cut off at the
knees.
cletus , July 17, 2019 at 05:29
just read your article at lewrockwell on 7/17.
you gave all the facts that irrefutably condemn the mueller hoax and reveal what a con man
he is. I salute you for this.
unfortutunately, you then come to a conclusion that cannot be supported by an reasonable
person.
you think that mueller's con will be called out by the republicans on the committee.
what a joke. They will avoid like the plague revealling that the russia claims by mueller
are a hoax.
they'll focus completely on ' you did conclude that trump didn't collude with the russians,
right?"
anyone who's been paying attention at all knows this.
Robert G. Hilton , July 17, 2019 at 01:13
There was no expert report showing hacking because the expert had found that the Russians
did not hack. Simple as that. The way it works is, that an expert puts nothing in writing
until AFTER orally consulting with the attorney who hired him. If the news is bad for said
attorney, then the expert is instructed NEVER to put the bad news in writing. I used to hire
experts when I litigated patent infringement cases, and that is the way it works. If you pay
the expert, then you make the rules. The judge may understand this too. I'm pretty sure that
the Crowd Strike expert also gave Muller (Andrew Wiseman?) the same news about no
hacking.
michael weddle , July 16, 2019 at 22:41
Why, shortly after Random Juan claimed the presidency, was a Crowdstrike employee trying
to stoke the Venezuelan coup?
I wish that this constant debunking of Russia Gate would be doing some good. Sadly it's
not. Most of the members of daily kos believe everything about Russia Gate and even after
reading some of the great essays written here that debunks it they instead say that this
website has been bought out by Russia.
I once thought that if people really looked at the evidence or lack of it that they would
wake up and smell the propaganda. It has always been so obvious to me that there was never
any there there and I couldn't understand how people bought into it. But I think it has to do
with who people voted for in the last election. Hillary's supporters just can't believe that
she could have lost without outside interference. Sad.
ex-PFC Chuck , July 16, 2019 at 18:08
A post yesterday at The Conservative Treehouse expands on a Gateway Pundit post about an
amended filing to the court in a Texas libel suit that could blow the whole Russia-gate hoax
wide open, taking with it whatever shred of credibility the Mueller Report might still have.
Not to mention the rationale for silencing Assange, General Flynn's prosecution, and the
murder of Seth Rich.
It looks like this fraudulent fable has finally been debunked by the US judicial system.
Now the Hillary bots will have to come up with another excuse for her wealthy donors as to
why she lost the election to a much maligned TV host that spent a small fraction of her
campaign funding. This also takes some of the fuel out of using the Russiagate fraud for a
march to war with Russia that was accompanied by large defense spending increases. Russiagate
was the perfect gift to the Clinton campaign apologists and the MIC that needs a causus belli
to feed the public war machine. That gift box has now been unraveled to display an empty box.
I'm surprised Ray McGovern did not bring up the issue of the alleged hacking of DNC emails to
have been contrary to the capability of the internet at that time. The rate of transfer was
consistent with downloading to a flash drive but impossible for transfer of packets across an
IP network – further debunking the Russia hacking narrative. This whole house of cards
has crashed in and it seems that it will be impossible for the Russiagate fraudsters to
reconstruct their tawdry myth.
jaycee , July 16, 2019 at 14:08
Perceptive bloggers identified the IRA as a commercial clickbait operation two years ago.
Everything about that operation was consistent with that description. Describing the IRA as a
Russian government psy-op program, in turn, was inconsistent with the evidence at hand and so
required the assumption that its purpose was to "sow chaos", or similar guesswork. It should
be remembered that the Facebook / Twitter people were initially reluctant to go along with
the latter theory, and only came on board after a great deal of pressure from members of
Congress such as Mark Warner. So this whole nonsensical story was magnified at the insistence
of powerful Democratic congressional persons, and Mueller was simply bolstering their
arguments – which was his job it appears. The result has been not only a false
consciousness deliberately seeded through the public, but also a raft of social media and
alternative news censorship which has been silencing both alt-right and progressive
voices.
Jeff Harrison , July 16, 2019 at 13:45
Thanx, Ray. I've said from the outset that Russiagate was bullshit perpetrated by Three
Names who just couldn't stand the fact that this was the latest in a long string of failures
that this incompetent, arrogant woman perpetrated on the American people. It was bullshit
from jump street because Three Names won the election by 3M votes but in the American
presidential election you not only need the votes, you need the distribution. Distribution
she didn't have. Russia (or any other actor sufficiently large and determined) can sway votes
for one candidate or another but they can't sway distribution. I personally thought the claim
that Russia via the Internet Research Agency sought to sway the election by disparaging Three
Names and pumping up Thump. Three Names won by 3M votes. Looks like Russia's IRA did a
spectacularly poor job of meddling.
There are some take aways from this that the government should be looking into/doing
something about.
1. Russiagate never had any legs. The legs that it got came from an effort by the deep state
to create them out of thin air. The deep state tried to take on the role of the Praetorian
Guard in old Rome. Their role originally was to protect the emperor but it morphed over the
years into picking who would be the emperor. The likes of Comey, Brennan, Clapper, Struck
(however you spell it) and his femme fatale (at a minimum, there may be more) should all be
marched off to jail and locked up for a considerable period of time for their attempts to
destroy our democracy (or republic – a distinction without a difference).
2. Seth Rich's murder needs to be actually investigated now that he has been outed as the
source of the leak to Wikileaks.
3. The Republican party needs to be banned as a political party. Any clear eyed view of
the 2016 election will conclude that the decades old effort by the Republicans at voter
suppression and gerrymandering are what resulted in the 2016 results. 80,000 votes in three
states that the Republicans have invested great voter suppression efforts – Wisconsin,
Michigan, and Pennsylvania would have changed the election results. This should have been a
major neon sign that winner take all for electoral votes is a bad idea. If proportional EC
votes were mandated, third parties would have a chance and our presidential elections might
become actual contests. Otherwise, we'll continue to have elections that are between two
candidates – worse and worser.
John Puma , July 16, 2019 at 12:36
The proportion of IRA "stories" among total Facebook postings
in the period in question, can be expressed in manner a bit more
readily grasped: on average, one IRA posting appeared among
every 412 million total. For perspective the US population is now
about 330 million.
The FBIs bungling with Crowdstrike information is reminiscent
of its reported 9-11 careless incompetence.
Jill , July 16, 2019 at 13:06
This may be why NPR featured that story:
"Businessman Ed Butowsky filed a lawsuit on Monday that outed FOX News reporter Ellen
Ratner was his source for the Seth Rich information.
This comes after Michael Isikoff's report last week that labeled Butowsky as a Russian
source."
Yahoo's reporter Michael Isikoff is a sock puppet for the CIA/FBI that provided the info
to NPR and was one of the first to spread the lies told to him by Steele about Russian
interference. He must have tried to head off the lawsuit filed today. Ed Butowsky filed a
lawsuit against the liberal media claiming defamation and business disparagement. He claims
that Assange told Ellen Ratner (Fox News analyst and sister of Assange's lawyer who passed
away) that Seth and Aaron Rich provided the emails to Wikileaks.
I don't think anyone with a couple of brain cells would dismiss the idea that an insider
with the DNC having access to delicate, perhaps damaging material, being what seems on the
surface, to be the victim of a motiveless murder would ask the question, was there any
connection between Seth Rich's demise and the crap storm that ensued after the Wikileaks
release. Really hello !
LarcoMarco , July 16, 2019 at 17:46
"NPR's Steve Inskeep talks to Michael Isikoff" – what a predictable farce! "We
talked to Deborah Sines, who was the federal prosecutor in charge of the investigation into
Seth Rich's death. She was an assistant U.S. attorney in the U.S. attorney's office in the
District of Columbia, which prosecutes local murders. And she would see these conspiracy
theories about her case circulating on the Web. She was – she wanted to find out where
they were coming from."
At least we now know that Seth Rich's death is/was a Federal case. No more claiming the
DCPD has jurisdiction. But no disclosures of the contents of Seth Rich's cell phone and
laptop.
Eric32 , July 16, 2019 at 10:38
The author seems consumed by this carnival of politicized legalized covert intelligence
operations, by people and entities trying to retain money and power.
What's important is that the system hasn't been working for decades, and there's going to
be increasingly serious problems, maybe fatal ones, rising if a big overhaul doesn't
occur.
Al Pinto , July 16, 2019 at 09:43
The DNC and MSM sold, and sold well, the Russiagate to the general public. Does it really
matter, if the "Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election has now come
apart at the seams"? Neither the DNC, nor the MSM will report/mention either of the court
case, pretty much a blackout for the general public.
Even, if these court cases are widely reported, do you really believe that the majority of
the people would change their mind? After almost three years, there's no way that these
people will change their mind. The only change that widely reporting these court cases would
result in is, that Trump and HRC supporters would hate each other even more.
This Russiagate will be with us pretty much forever, it'll morph in to accusing people of
being Russian agents and/or Russian Bots. We already see this taking place and just wait,
until next year. It's not going to be pretty
michael , July 16, 2019 at 12:40
Aaron Mate has done a brilliant job researching and debunking Russiagate. Unfortunately
for him, he is now ostracized and has to survive on the margins, with other people with
critical thinking skills.
You're right. The truth doesn't matter, just the BS narrative that has been shoved down
our throats for the last few years. It never made any sense to anyone who really thought
about it but the media whores just keep spewing total nonsense and they surely won't change
their ways now. The fact that the entire crock is really irrelevant to the majority of our
citizens doesn't matter to them a bit.
AnneR , July 16, 2019 at 09:42
Thank you again Mr McGovern for another article on this never ending saga. While I hope
that sanity begins to dawn among the so-called progressives, I have serious doubts.
1. Neither the BBC World Service nor NPR have mentioned (at least while I've been
listening) Judge Friedrich's ruling vis a vis provide the evidence (discovery) to the IRA
12's lawyers or tear up the indictment (essentially). Indeed, I've not heard, on the MSM,
anything about those 12 IRA folks employing a lawyer and challenging Mueller's indictment.
Silence works as well as obfuscation, lies.
2. The Demrats simply will not let their Russophobia go. I gather (from RT – tut tut
I must be an RU bottle) that Ms Harris AIPAC schmoozer, keen and eager lock 'em up and throw
away the key, corporate-capitalist crony Kamala has been accusing the Russians of stirring up
the controversy surrounding Kaepernick's bending of the knee. The Russians and their bots did
it.
3. And then this morning on NPR – a Steve Inskip interview with Michael Isikoff
focusing on the Seth Rich "conspiracy theory" and of course the whole thing (or that segment
which I could stomach hearing) presumed as a matter of established, and thus true, fact that
everything that went wrong for the DNC's HRC campaign was caused by the Russians – for
which read Putin. Isikoff was there as an "investigative" journalist for "Yahoo News" –
and his "investigation" had shown that the Russians were – who else – behind the
conspiracy theory that Seth Rich was killed by HRC thugs in order to keep him permanently
quiet about corruption in the DNC. (Corruption – a rather mealy-mouthed way of avoiding
bringing into NPR daylight what the DNC were actually doing: determining who would be the Dem
candidate willy nilly of who the voters wanted. But this mealy-mouthedness is fully in
keeping with NPR's basic silence on what Wikileaks revealed via that insider download.)
Orwellian. Propaganda at its Bernays, Goebbels best. Despair . This business is *not*
going away. The Demrats – both in DC and their bourgeois/progressive supporters have
far too much invested in the whole confabulation for them to admit that the former
deliberately lied and the latter were willing? hoodwinked.
Thanks for your comment. I would like it if somehow "despair," could be disallowed.
There are enough of us, after all. And, as Annie Dillard put it, "There never was anybody
but us."
I also take some inspiration from the dismal-sounding, yet somehow uplifting words of I.
F. Stone:
"The only kinds of fights worth fighting are those you're going to lose, because somebody
has to fight them and lose and lose and lose until someday, somebody who believes as you do
wins."
THE CHALLENGE IS TO ACCEPT THAT, AND FIND JOY IN TRYING -- AND EVEN IN LOSING.
I believe the losing does not last forever; think we all need to do our part in the
"interim."
Best regards,
Ray
DW Bartoo , July 16, 2019 at 19:44
That sums things up precisely, Ray.
None of us may live to see a complete turn-around, yet it is the honest effort to
encourage and build the foundation for that fundamental systemic change to conscious and
principled human awareness which is the measure we must make of ourselves.
Your sense of moral presence, Ray, is very much appreciated.
It serves as inspiration for all, and especially the young, who already understand, and
encourages, as example, those who are coming to understand.
DW
AnneR , July 17, 2019 at 08:33
Dear Mr McGovern – thank you for reading and replying to my comment.
And, yes, I do understand the objection to despair – though not, might I add, any
thought that its frank expression be expunged!
Were it only the whole Russiagate fabrication, delusions, time and money waste (oh well,
only taxpayers' money) and fallout that was so dreadfully wrong, being heinously enacted.
Indeed were it all that our taxes were being wasted on.
Perhaps that's it – Russiagate while distracting from the things that the DNC and
HRC did, said, *also* makes for good deflection from the war crimes we are committing, the
never ending imperialist warmongering we are engaged in, from the fact that many Demrats
voted for those nice tax breaks given to the wealthiest tiers in our society, that many of
those Demrats voted to hand over to the MIC *even more* loot even as the Pentagon can't
account for the billions, or whatever fantastikal amount, it has already received over the
years, deflection from the fact that despite such a "good" economy increasing numbers of
people are living ever more economically precarious lives, rents rise astronomically,
healthcare is a joke (or would be were its lack not so serious for so many). And that's not
to mention the realities of climate change or the continuing (and MSM ignored) 70 plus year
plight of Palestinians, among so many others.
My late husband used to tell me to write to NPR, the BBC, to let them know that they
weren't codding everyone with their disinformation, non-information, lack of objectivity
– their propaganda. And I did, often and used to ask for a response. Did I even get
those? You must be joking
AnneR , July 17, 2019 at 14:08
In case someone might think that I expected either the BBC or NPR to alter their ways
because of my "letters" (interestingly the BBC only allows/ed for around 1000 characters or
something equally useless) – no. But when (in the case of the BBC) you can tick the
"please reply" box and get total silence, not even a "thank you for your blah blah we shan't
pay any attention to your complaints ," in response it is pretty frustrating.
As for NPR – I stopped our contributions. Why would we *pay* for the privilege of
being propagandized? I just wish we had stopped them years earlier
Anyway, thank you Mr McGovern for your continuing coverage of this whole affair. I just
wish my late partner in life and love had known of this website.
ML , July 16, 2019 at 09:24
Each morning when I arise, I get my coffee and settle down to read Consortium News. I also
make a habit of a quick perusal of what the stenographers are jawing about on CNN today,
there is a real doozy smearing Assange. The spinners are working overtime to patch over all
the holes in their hoax story. I couldn't get through the whole thing because it's another
smear piece and a long one including the old saw that Assange smeared feces on the Ecuadorian
embassy's walls. I had to stop reading. Gosh, I can't abide those people. Thanks Ray, for
telling the truth. We are drowning in $h** out there in la-la land. CN offers a much-needed
dose of reality medicine. Thank you kindly, all.
Skip Scott , July 16, 2019 at 10:19
Here's a good essay by Caitlin Johnstone regarding the Assange hit-piece.
Even worse news for the Russiahoaxers is the recent revelation , documented in a lawsuit ,
that Ellen Ratner , sister of deceased Wikileaks' lawyer Michael Ratner, met with Assange in
the fall of 2016 and was told by him that Aaron and Seth Rich provided the DNC leaks to
Wikileaks. Ed Butowsky was made aware of this , with instructions by Ms. Ratner for him to
relay the information to the Rich family. When he did so , in December 2016 , he was told by
Joel Rich , Seth's father , that he was already aware of his sons' involvement.
This is no longer conspiracy talk , folks. Ed Butowsky is not dumb enough to make these
claims on court documents without knowing he can back them up. Shit is about to get real for
Mueller and the DNC.
"BREAKING: Lawsuit Outs Reporter Ellen Ratner as Source for Seth Rich Information" @
Gateway Pundit
Well, Skip Scott, either this revelation will put "paid" to the "Russia-did-it!" charade,
or else the Voracious Memory Hole will act like a giant black hole and the event horizon will
be swallowed into total nothingness as a new Middle-Eastern Adventure captures the hearts and
minds of the happy warriors and consumers of U$ Imperialism.
Whatever happens, it will be wholey interesting times ahead.
DW
jmg , July 16, 2019 at 10:01
There was a related, extensive 2018 interview about Butowsky's private investigation into
the Seth Rich case to help the family, what they found, and what happened (the DNC assigned
someone to represent the family, etc.; the mentioned lawsuits were later dropped/dismissed).
It included, without naming Ratner, the unverified mention: "his friend came back from London
with information that he said he wanted to get to the Rich family." Since this alleged
private message appears to be not only doubtful, but of course also not confirmed by
WikiLeaks, we can't really know if it happened or not.
Seth Rich, disgruntled DNC worker, blows the whistle on HillBillary Clinton rigging the
Democratic presidential primary against Bernie Sanders, so he gives data supporting his
discovery of rigging to Wikileaks. Rich got the data on a thumdrive downloaded at DNC HQ
itself.
No Russians, no hacking, just a whistleblower on the fraud ironically called US
"democracy." We've all seen the data Rich leaked. Emails detailing HillBillary Clinton's
graft and fraud and collusion against Sanders.
No wonder no other candidates besides Sanders ran against HillBillary, for they all knew
the fix was in from its inception!
I dunno who killed Seth Rich, but I do know the Democratic party stole the election from
Bernie, then projected its own crimes onto Russia, same way a kid projects his own crime of
breaking a cookie jar on his brother when he tells Momma "He dit it –> He ate the
cookies and broke the jar!" Meanwhile, there's chocolate smeared all over the DNC's face.
We have evidence for this, the leaked emails themselves tell the story
Gregory Herr , July 16, 2019 at 18:15
Seth Rich copied and leaked the DNC e-mails and was murdered for it. For this to become
irrefutable common knowledge will be quite one godsend of a reality check. Maddow might not
be able to get out of bed for weeks.
Repeat after me Rachel there was no Russian hack, there was no Russian hack, there was no
Russian hack
jmg , July 16, 2019 at 07:13
From the Brennan–Comey–Rogers assessment/opinion (January 6, 2017):
"We also assess Putin and the Russian Government aspired to help President-elect Trump's
election chances when possible by discrediting Secretary Clinton and publicly contrasting her
unfavorably to him. All three agencies agree with this judgment. CIA and FBI have high
confidence in this judgment; NSA has moderate confidence. . . .
"- High confidence generally indicates that judgments are based on high-quality
information from multiple sources. High confidence in a judgment does not imply that the
assessment is a fact or a certainty; such judgments might be wrong.
"- Moderate confidence generally means that the information is credibly sourced and
plausible but not of sufficient quality or corroborated sufficiently to warrant a higher
level of confidence."
"When they say they have 'high confidence', that means they don't have any evidence!"
-- Bill Binney, former NSA Technical Director
DW Bartoo , July 16, 2019 at 07:10
Thank you, Ray McGovern for this splendid article laying out the facts which make clear
the absurdities of these last several years. One hopes, now that the "Russia-did-it" canard
is fully exposed, by US courts, that the truth may finally get through, over or around, the
media wall of enforced ignorance and Mueller hero-worship, and reach the ears and eyes of the
people.
Should that actually happen, it might even be possible that other truth, long subject to
media manipulation and distortion, the cases of Julian Assange and Chelsea Manning come
readily to mind, could be seen in the honest light of day after an almost eight year
protracted nightmare of media driven deceit, psychological torture, and deliberately vicious
character assassination is revealed, in Assange's case, as it might well be, by Nils Melzer's
report to the UN.
The legacy U$ corporate media have much to answer for, from promulgating lies that led to
war, to missile attacks, and to brutal economic sanctions, a form of economic warfare, to
efforts to start a new Cold War, and to aggrandize intelligence agencies which have sought to
pervert justice and to illegally influence the political process by falsely accusing, on the
flimsy words of partisan political operatives, another nation of the very actions those
agencies have used, repeatedly and for many decades,to destroy the political processes of
other nations, including the very nation singled out to take the blame for Hillary Clinton's
abysmal and pathetic failure in the 2016 election.
What a waste of time, resources, trust, and energy it has bee, these last years, yet it
was all so very profitable and lucrative for the media, even if it were "not good" for the
country.
The media have damned and convicted themselves.
The U$ intelligence agencies have exposed themselves as corrupt, completely dishonest,
vindictive, petty, and thoroughly untrustworthy.
It remains to be seen if the people have learned anything, and whether they will do
anything with this costly, yet necessary, education.
DW
Allan , July 16, 2019 at 07:04
Will Adam Schiff spend the week with Bob Mueller to get their story straight
UserFriendly , July 16, 2019 at 05:18
?Unfortunately this is partially bunk. The first bit the judge didn't rule that there was
no evidence, she ruled that Mueller publicly saying that the IRA = kremlin and they did try
to help Trump win was prejudicial in the case against the IRA (quite obviously so). But him
not being able to say that during his testimony should go over well with the democrats. Of
course if he actually wanted to explain all he would have to do is drop the case against the
IRA because it's never going to trial anyways. Almost makes you wonder if he filed those
charges expressly so he wouldn't have to connect the imaginary dotts.
Aiya , July 16, 2019 at 11:03
What they called "trying to help Trump" was a miniscule amount of social media posts, 56%
of which were made AFTER the election. And Facebook had to look 3 times to come up with
ANYTHING–what they finally reported were posts coming from Russia or eastern Europe,
posts in Cyrillic language, and posts from people with Russian/European names.
"... This commentary is based on Stephen F. Cohen's most recent weekly discussion with the host of ..."
"... Now in their sixth year, previous installments are at ..."
"... New York Times ..."
"... Washington Post ..."
"... This commentary is based on Stephen F. Cohen's most recent weekly discussion with the host of The John Batchelor Show . Now in their sixth year, previous installments are at ..."
"... War With Russia? From Putin & Ukraine to Trump & Russiagate ..."
his
Wikipedia biography , he has -- or he had -- "a sterling reputation" both among Republicans
and Democrats. That changed when Barr announced his ongoing investigation into the origins of
Russiagate, a vital subject
I, too, have explored .
As Barr explained , "What we're looking at is: What was the predicate for conducting a
counterintelligence investigation on the Trump campaign. How did the bogus narrative begin that
Trump was essentially in cahoots with Russia to interfere with the U.S. election?" Still more,
Barr, who is empowered to declassify highly sensitive documents, made clear that his primary
focus was not the hapless FBI under James Comey but the CIA under John Brennan. Evidently this
was too much for leading Democratic Senator Charles Schumer, who assailed Barr for having "just
destroyed the scintilla of credibility that he had left." Not known for a sense of irony,
Schumer accused Barr of using "the words of conspiracy theorists," as though Russiagate
itself is not among the most malign and consequential conspiracy theories in American political
history.
More indicative is the reaction of the generally liberal pro-Democratic New York
Times and Washington Post , the country's two most important political
newspapers, to Barr's investigation. Leaning heavily on the "expert" opinion of former
intelligence officials and McCarthy-echoing members of Congress such as Adam Schiff, both
papers went into outrage mode.
The Times bemoaned Barr's "drastic escalation of [Trump's] yearslong assault on
the intelligence community" while rejecting "the president's unfounded claims that his campaign
had been spied on," even though some forms of FBI and CIA infiltration and surveillance of the
2016 Trump campaign are now well documented. (See, for example,
Lee Smith's reporting .)
Unconcerned by the activities of either agency, the papers
warned ominously that Barr's probe "effectively strips [the CIA] of its most critical
power: choosing which secrets it shares and which remain hidden." It "could be tremendously
damaging to the C.I.A. and other intelligence agencies." Not surprisingly, given the
Times ' three-year role in promulgating Russiagate allegations, it preempted Barr's
investigation
by declaring that US intelligence agencies' covert actions were part of "a lawful
investigation aimed at understanding a foreign power's efforts to manipulate an American
election." Considering what is now known, this generalization seems a whitewash both of the
Times ' coverage and the agencies' conduct. (In the Post , see coverage by
Toluse Olorunnipa and
Shane Harris .)
Hillary Clinton, also not surprisingly, agreed. As paraphrased by Matt Stevens
in the Times on May 3 , she accused Barr of diverting attention "from what the
real story is. The real story is the Russian interference in our election." According to the
defeated Democratic candidate, "the Russians were successful in sowing 'discord and
divisiveness' in the country, and helping Mr. Trump." But who has actually sowed more "discord
and divisiveness" in America -- the Russians or Mrs. Clinton and her supporters, by still
refusing to accept the legitimacy of her electoral loss and Trump's victory?
Unfortunately, but predictably, Barr's investigation has become polarizing, with Fox News,
for example, bannering each new unsavory Russiagate revelation and the Times and the
Post mostly ignoring them altogether. In particular, the Democratic Party, once
traditionally skeptical of intelligence agencies, is becoming the party of an intel cult and
thus of the new US-Russian Cold War. Only a few of the party's leaders, notably presidential
candidate Tulsi Gabbard, demur from this dangerous folly. (Might Democratic reticence also be
due to the circumstance that the intelligence chiefs now under investigation were appointees of
former President Obama, who has been remarkably silent about the entire Russiagate saga? What,
as I have asked previously, did Obama know, when did he know it, and what did he do?)
Everyone who cares about the quality of American political life, no matter what they think
about Trump, should encourage Barr's probe. To resort to a familiar cliché, Russiagate
allegations have become a spreading cancer in American politics, with Democratic congressional
candidates raising funds by promising, despite the exculpatory findings of Robert Mueller
regarding "collusion," to fight evil "Trump-Putin" forces in Washington. Meanwhile, some
Republicans, despite ample contrary evidence, preposterously blame Russia itself -- for the
infamous Steele Dossier, for example. (By the way, for more irony, Trump is regularly accused
in the above-cited news accounts of "siding with" Russian President Vladimir Putin in denying
that any "collusion" determined the outcome of the 2016 presidential election, a conclusion
also reached by Mueller, thereby putting Trump, Putin, and Mueller on the same
"side.")
Ideally, we would have an investigation of the intelligence agencies entirely independent of
the White House and headed by an eminent political figure who is not a presidential appointee,
as was the 1975 Senate Church Committee. For now, we have only Trump's attorney general,
William Barr. Nonetheless, we should support him, however conditionally. Rogue intelligence
agencies subvert democracy, and the next candidate they target -- as they did Trump -- may be
yours.
This commentary is based on Stephen F. Cohen's most recent weekly discussion with the
host ofThe John Batchelor
Show . Now in their sixth year, previous installments are atTheNation.com .William Barr, a
two-time attorney general who served at the CIA in the 1970s, would seem to be an ultimate
Washington insider. According to his Wikipedia biography , he has -- or he had
-- "a sterling reputation" both among Republicans and Democrats. That changed when Barr
announced his ongoing investigation into the origins of Russiagate, a vital subject I, too, have
explored .
As Barr
explained , "What we're looking at is: What was the predicate for conducting a
counterintelligence investigation on the Trump campaign. How did the bogus narrative begin that
Trump was essentially in cahoots with Russia to interfere with the U.S. election?" Still more,
Barr, who is empowered to declassify highly sensitive documents, made clear that his primary
focus was not the hapless FBI under James Comey but the CIA under John Brennan. Evidently this
was too much for leading Democratic Senator Charles Schumer, who assailed Barr for having "just
destroyed the scintilla of credibility that he had left." Not known for a sense of irony,
Schumer accused Barr of using "the words of conspiracy theorists," as though Russiagate
itself is not among the most malign and consequential conspiracy theories in American political
history.
More indicative is the reaction of the generally liberal pro-Democratic New York
Times and Washington Post , the country's two most important political
newspapers, to Barr's investigation. Leaning heavily on the "expert" opinion of former
intelligence officials and McCarthy-echoing members of congress such as Adam Schiff, both
papers went into outrage mode. The
Times bemoaned Barr's "drastic escalation of [Trump's] yearslong assault on the
intelligence community" while rejecting "the president's unfounded claims that his campaign had
been spied on," even though some forms of FBI and CIA infiltration and surveillance of the 2016
Trump campaign are now well documented. (See, for example,
Lee Smith's reporting .)
Support Progressive Journalism
If you like this article, please give today to help fund The Nation 's work.
Unconcerned by the activities of either agency, the papers warned
ominously that Barr's probe "effectively strips [the CIA] of its most critical power:
choosing which secrets it shares and which remain hidden." It "could be tremendously damaging
to the C.I.A. and other intelligence agencies." Not surprisingly, given the Times '
three-year role in promulgating Russiagate allegations, it preempted Barr's investigation by
declaring
that US intelligence agencies' covert actions were part of "a lawful investigation aimed at
understanding a foreign power's efforts to manipulate an American election." Considering what
is now known, this generalization seems a whitewash both of the Times ' coverage and
the agencies' conduct. (Writing for the Post , see coverage
by Toluse Olorunnipa and
Shane Harris .)
Hillary Clinton, also not surprisingly, agreed. As paraphrased by Matt Stevens in the
Times on May 3 , she accused Barr of diverting attention "from what the real story
is. The real story is the Russian interference in our election." According to the defeated
Democratic candidate, "the Russians were successful in sowing 'discord and divisiveness' in the
country, and helping Mr. Trump." But who has actually sowed more "discord and divisiveness" in
America -- the Russians or Mrs. Clinton and her supporters, by still refusing to accept the
legitimacy of her electoral loss and Trump's victory?
Unfortunately, but predictably, Barr's investigation has become polarizing, with Fox News,
for example, bannering each new unsavory Russiagate revelation and the Times and
Post mostly ignoring them altogether. In particular, the Democratic Party, once
traditionally skeptical of intelligence agencies, is becoming the party of an intel cult and
thus of the new US-Russian Cold War. Only a few of the party's leaders, notably presidential
candidate Tulsi Gabbard, demur from this dangerous folly. (Might Democratic reticence also be
due to the circumstance that the intelligence chiefs now under investigation were appointees of
former President Obama, who has been remarkably silent about the entire Russiagate saga? What,
as I have asked previously, did Obama know, when did he know it, and what did he do?)
Everyone who cares about the quality of American political life, no matter what they think
about Trump, should encourage Barr's probe. To resort to a familiar cliché, Russiagate
allegations have become a spreading cancer in American politics, with Democratic congressional
candidates fund-raising by promising, despite the exculpatory findings of Robert Mueller
regarding "collusion," to fight evil "Trump-Putin" forces in Washington. Meanwhile, some
Republicans, despite ample contrary evidence, preposterously blame Russia itself -- for the
infamous Steele Dossier, for example. (By the way, for more irony, Trump is regularly accused
in the above-cited news accounts of "siding with" Russian President Vladimir Putin in denying
that any "collusion" determined the outcome of the 2016 presidential election, a conclusion
also reached by Mueller, thereby putting Trump, Putin, and Mueller on the same "side.")
Ideally, we would have an investigation of the intelligence agencies entirely independent of
the White House headed by an eminent political figure who is not a presidential appointee, as
was the 1975 Senate Church Committee. For now, we have only Trump's attorney general, William
Barr. Nonetheless, we should support him, however conditionally. Rogue intelligence agencies
subvert democracy, and the next candidate they target -- as they did Trump -- may be yours.
This commentary is based on Stephen F. Cohen's most recent weekly discussion with the
host of The John Batchelor Show .
Now in their sixth year, previous installments are atTheNation.com . Ad PolicyStephen F. Cohen Stephen F. Cohen is a
professor emeritus of Russian studies and politics at New York University and Princeton
University. A Nation contributing editor, his new book War With Russia? From Putin
& Ukraine to Trump & Russiagate is available in paperback and in an ebook
edition.
That's a great article Ray. Thank you!
Now I am wondering if there is any chance you could take apart Rachel Maddow's report on
Monday night. I confess I turned her off about half way through it, because I couldn't stand
listening to her lies. But she was going on about how Russia gave wikileaks the DNC stuff and
how some new evidence proves it.
I wondered at the time why she was doing this again, but now I understand – it was
because of the Judge and I think word must have come down to trash Assange (she did have some
nasty things to say about him). None of what I heard made sense to me or why it was taking up
so much of her hour so I turned back to NPR, but the vehemance of her lies (she was pushing
this version pretty hard) stuck with me.
So could you write something about this please? If not on CN maybe you could give us a
link to another web site or broadcast that discusses what she is doing and the damage she is
causing.
Thanks again for your efforts to keep this story straight.
Joe Tedesky , July 16, 2019 at 15:52
Finally after proving that she was the worst possible presidential candidate the
Democrat's could have ever endorsed our anointed one Madam Hillary left her wandering party
with the oversold ominous Russia Gate fiasco to waste this country's easily distracted
valuable time with. This waste of time should be criminally prosecuted for all the disruption
it has caused. Such a parting spectacle of arrogance it is that Hillary Clinton left her
struggling party with these multiple claimed allegations without evidence filled nonsensical
accusations of Russian collusion that the country is even more divided than ever due too even
more unreal false flag issues for it's citizenry to deal with. Where in this Hillary created
event is Patriotism to be found? Like where is love of country even considered when releasing
upon the world such a mean spirited compromise driven hoax? When it comes to this issue of
Russia Gate Investigation the wrong party is being investigated.
Skip Scott , July 17, 2019 at 07:20
Hi Joe-
I think you might be giving Hillary too much credit as being the "creator" of RussiaGate.
She was certainly on board, but I think it is most likely John Brennan's baby.
For the evil ones leading our so-called "intelligence" agencies, there is no patriotism,
only power. They are servants of an empire that goes beyond our borders. They seek global
dominance for the Oligarchy at any cost. Patriotism is for us "little" folk. For them it is a
quaint notion to be used to manipulate the proles.
Al Pinto , July 16, 2019 at 09:43
The DNC and MSM sold, and sold well, the Russiagate to the general public. Does it really
matter, if the "Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election has now come
apart at the seams"? Neither the DNC, nor the MSM will report/mention either of the court
case, pretty much a blackout for the general public.
Even, if these court cases are widely reported, do you really believe that the majority of
the people would change their mind? After almost three years, there's no way that these
people will change their mind. The only change that widely reporting these court cases would
result in is, that Trump and HRC supporters would hate each other even more.
This Russiagate will be with us pretty much forever, it'll morph in to accusing people of
being Russian agents and/or Russian Bots. We already see this taking place and just wait,
until next year. It's not going to be pretty
DW Bartoo , July 16, 2019 at 12:17
I do not know where you got the CNN story, ML, though it appears you got it straight from
gift-donkey's mouth.
From RT (today, at 11AM Eastern time)
"CNN has released a new 'exclusive' report, accusing Julian Assange of conspiracy with
Russia (including RT) to meddle in the 2016 US election.
Citing a report compiled by a private Spanish security company – but not providing
any of it – the network basically rehashed the entirety of the Russiagate conspiracy on
Monday "
The whole article is well worth a gander, as the Dem-media attempt goose up the drivel for
what they hope will be a slam dunk (most fowl).
Apparently, the Dem-leaning MSM has no intention of letting go the lucrative idiocy of
'Russia-did-it! with the angry assistance of Awful Assange.
The MSM is not bound, of course, by the legal constraints now judicially imposed upon
Mueller and other government agents, so they can claim and conflate whatever they wish.
Thus, Skip Scott's very legitimate concerns, about the amnesia memory hole, may well be
assuaged by a media hell-bent on slathering lipstick on this particular pig as they attempt,
once again, to launch it into perpetual orbit,
at least until after Assange is locked away for the rest of his life.
Perhaps getting Assange and continuing to demonize Russia is far more important to certain
"interests", than is the other service of Russiagate, the saving of private-public Hillary's
reputation of being the permanent victim of vast conspiracies as official history. She may
now be relegated to the hoary realm of legend and myth. (Which may be the best that wannabees
may hope for, short of making the ultimate "great" career move.)
The two-fer-one deal may be unraveling, at least in part.
Getting Assange must be the real deep state/media deal.
DW
ML , July 16, 2019 at 16:07
Hey DW, yes, it was on CNN yesterday. It was ridiculous. Full of lies and spin. Today, I
didn't see it still there, but it might have been hiding in the shadows on that sorry site.
Can't stand to spend more than about 5 minutes there, just to see what they're lying and
obfuscating about any given day
Skip Scott , July 17, 2019 at 07:42
I hope you are right and that we are witnessing the death throes of empire. I also hope
for some kind of retribution for the masters and their evil servants.
I can't watch the world news at all, but even local news goes to the "national" desk to
torture those of us just interested in what's going on locally. I walk out of the room or
push the mute button. I don't have any TV at home, but I have been caregiving an elderly
uncle for the past 2-1/2 yrs at his place. I don't know who is more demented, my uncle or
CNN.
Liberals had better wake up now to realize that Russiagate was all a hoax perpetrated by
Clinton and cronies because she lost the 2016 election. I'm ashamed to say I voted for
Hillary – wow what a huge mistake on my part. Fortunately she did lose the election or
who knows where we'd be now. Don't get me wrong, Trump is an absolute nightmare but at the
very least you know where he is coming from. On the other hand Clinton , Obama and other
mainstream politicians are underhanded, secretive and subversive all while smiling and
selling us lie after lie We came, we saw, he died? What the hell kind of sick, deluded person
would say such a thing?
What Robert Mueller hasn't done is provide any public evidence of Russian collusion, which
was his mandate.
Show me the money. Where's the evidence? That's correct, show me the evidence. You know,
the evidence Mueller (or anyone else has) Donald Trump committed treason as John Brennan
says, and is guilty of collusion with Putin, as Hillary Clinton says.
I mean, you can't can't show me where the evidence is because there isn't any. No pee
tapes, no smoking guns, no nothing. And that's a problem. A big problem, because it means the
entire Mueller spaghetti Western unraveled into something not even my cat is interested in
playing with. The yarn got no evidence.
Prove me wrong. Please. We know how this story ends and have from the beginning. There's
no evidence. It's bullshit. Yes, every word that comes out of Donald Trump's mouth is
bullshit. Problem is Trump's lies don't exonerate Clinton and Obama's lies. All the stuff
coming out of Comey, Clapper, and Brennan's mouths is bullshit too.
Even worse news for the Russiahoaxers is the recent revelation , documented in a lawsuit ,
that Ellen Ratner , sister of deceased Wikileaks' lawyer Michael Ratner, met with Assange in
the fall of 2016 and was told by him that Aaron and Seth Rich provided the DNC leaks to
Wikileaks. Ed Butowsky was made aware of this , with instructions by Ms. Ratner for him to
relay the information to the Rich family. When he did so , in December 2016 , he was told by
Joel Rich , Seth's father , that he was already aware of his sons' involvement.
This is no longer conspiracy talk , folks. Ed Butowsky is not dumb enough to make these
claims on court documents without knowing he can back them up. Shit is about to get real for
Mueller and the DNC.
"BREAKING: Lawsuit Outs Reporter Ellen Ratner as Source for Seth Rich Information" @
Gateway Pundit
Alongside and consistent with other privilege- and power-serving missions, so-called
mainstream corporate media's role is to keep the populace focused as best it can on relatively
trivial matters and diverted from the most urgent topics of our time.
Kamala Harris Wants to Kill Your Health Insurance
Two Sundays ago, in a fit of masochistic media research, I watched some cable news talking
heads do their weekly news roundups. CNN had a panel of know-it-all neoliberals who reflected
on the Democratic Party's first two presidential debates. Everyone agreed that Kamala Harris
had been the big winner but had erred badly by embracing "the abolition of private health
insurance."
That's how CNN's "expert commentators" describe Medicare for All – not as high quality
and low-cost health care as a human right with great direct and collateral benefits resulting
from the eviction of corporate profit from coverage. Not as a great potential social and human
rights victory, but as destruction : the "abolition" of (unmentionably parasitic,
classist, exclusionary, inferior, and expensive, for-profit) health insurance.
Not that Senator Harris would seriously fight for Single Payer. She wouldn't. She's a
corporate
Democrat .
But I digress.
The chattering CNN craniums shifted to the United States Women's World Cup soccer team that
was triumphing in Paris. The panelists applauded the team's star, Megan Rapione, a lesbian who
refuses to visit the Donald Trump White House. (Good for her, but why not visit and spit in the
Malignant One's eye?).
Joy Reid Blames Russia for Anti-Kamala Birtherism
Over on the openly partisan-Democratic cable network MSNBC (hereafter "MSDNC"), morning host
Joy Reid was going off about the Huxwellian idiocy of Donald Trump's DMZ handshake with Kim
Jong-Un and the strange kind of love Trump has for the North Korean dictator and other
authoritarian heads-of-state. As usual with MSDNC, it was hard to detect the line separating
the network's proper criticism of Trump from its
deep investment in U.S. imperialism .
Consistent with the investment, Reid turned to the noxious racist vulgarity of online
rightists who claim that Kamala Harris isn't a "real African-American." Reid showed viewers a
copy of the Mueller Report and claimed without a hint of proof that the neo-Birther
Internet campaign against Harris was directed by the Russians? Her evidence? The Mueller
Report, completed prior to the Harris smear.
"... The whole story of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election is "crazy," he says. Hillary Clinton had done everything wrong as a candidate, had led the Democratic Party into misfortune. There was no need for anything Russian. "Where is the evidence? There is none." ..."
"... Two years ago Hersh published a piece on Syria in Welt. He needs to go to Deutschland to get published, being banned from the MSM. ..."
"... Just like Col. Lang, Juan Cole and so many others. Our press is strictly controlled to focus on The Narrative. ..."
"... "Please watch this clip. It captures Russiagate perfectly: blaming Russian bots, neoliberals like Kamala Harris show ignorance about domestic injustices & contempt for those fighting it; while at the same time, sounding like deranged conspiracy theorists in the process." ..."
"... Lots of garbage trying to pollute our minds. Truth is the only antidote, but at times it's hard to find. Search for it and fight complacency. ..."
Form a
portrait of Seymour Hersh in the German weekly Die Zeit (my translation):
The whole story of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election is "crazy," he
says. Hillary Clinton had done everything wrong as a candidate, had led the Democratic Party
into misfortune. There was no need for anything Russian. "Where is the evidence? There is
none."
Use as open thread ...
Posted by b on July 14, 2019 at 13:16 UTC | Permalink
"Please watch this clip. It captures Russiagate perfectly: blaming Russian bots,
neoliberals like Kamala Harris show ignorance about domestic injustices & contempt for
those fighting it; while at the same time, sounding like deranged conspiracy theorists in the
process."
"This is really good -- from calling out U.S. foreign policy that causes ppl to migrate to
the history of the term 'concentration camps' to the larger tradition of racist, state
sanctioned violence against ppl from the Southern border region."
Lots of garbage trying to pollute our minds. Truth is the only antidote, but at times it's
hard to find. Search for it and fight complacency.
If you have ever traveled in Russia outside of Moscow, you certainly have some horrible
stories to tell about its atrocious roads, food and lodging or rather lack thereof. Things have
changed greatly, and they keep changing. Now there are modern highways, plenty of cafés
and restaurants, a lot of small hotels; plumbing has risen to Western standards; the old pearls
of architecture have been lavishly restored; people live better than they ever did. They still
complain a lot, but that is human nature. Young and middle-aged Russians own or charter motor
boats and sail their plentiful rivers; they own country houses ("dachas") more than anywhere
else. They travel abroad for their vacations, pay enormous sums of money for concerts of
visiting celebrities, ride bikes in the cities – in short, Russia has become as
prosperous as any European country.
This hard-earned prosperity and political longevity allows President Putin to hold his own
in the international affairs. He is one of a few experienced leaders on the planet with twenty
years at the top job. He has met with three Popes of Rome, four US Presidents, and many other
rulers. This is important: 93-years old Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad who ruled his Malaysia
for 40 years and has been elected again said the first ten years of a ruler are usually wasted
in learning the ropes, and only after first twenty does he becomes proficient in the art of
government. The first enemy a ruler must fight is his own establishment: media, army,
intelligence and judges. While Trump is still losing in this conflict, Putin is doing fine
– by his Judoka evasive action.
Recently a small tempest has risen in the Russian media, when a young journalist was
detained by police, and a small quantity of drugs was allegedly discovered on his body. The
police made many mistakes in handling the case. Perhaps they planted the evidence to frame the
young man; perhaps they had made the obvious mistakes to frame the government. The response has
been tremendous, as if the whole case had been prepared well in advance by the opposition
hell-bent to annoy and wake up the people's ire against the police and administration. Instead
of supporting the police, as Putin usually does, in this case he had the journalist released
and senior police officers arrested. This prompt evasive action undid the opposition's build-up
by one masterly stroke.
Recently he openly declared his distaste for liberalism in the interview for the FT . This is a major
heresy, like Luther's Ninety-five Theses. "The liberals cannot dictate Their diktat can be seen
everywhere: both in the media and in real life. It is deemed unbecoming even to mention some
topics The liberal idea has become obsolete. It has come into conflict with the interests of
the overwhelming majority of the population." Putin condemned liberals' drive for more
immigration. He called Angela Merkel's decision to admit millions of immigrants a "cardinal
mistake"; he "understood" Trump's attempt to stop the flow of migrants and drugs from
Mexico.
Putin is not an enemy of liberalism. He is rather an old-fashionable liberal of the 19
th century style. Not a current 'liberal', but a true liberal, rejecting
totalitarian dogma of gender, immigration, multiculturalism and R2P wars. "The liberal idea
cannot be destroyed; it has the right to exist and it should even be supported in some things.
But it has no right to be the absolute dominating factor."
In Putin's Russia liberalism is non-exclusive, but presents just one possible line of
development. Homosexuals are not discriminated against nor promoted. There are no gay parades,
no persecution of gays, either. Russian children aren't being brainwashed to hate their
fathers, taken away from their families and given to same-sex maniacs, as it happened in the
recent Italian case . Kids aren't
being introduced to joys of sex in primary schools. People are not requested to swear love to
transgenders and immigrants. You can do whatever you wish, just do not force others to follow
you – this is Putin's first rule, and this is true liberalism in my book.
There is very little immigration into Russia despite millions of requests: foreigners can
come in as guest workers, but this does not lead to permanent residency or citizenship. The
Police frequently check foreign-looking people and rapidly deport them if found in breach of
visa rules. Russian nationalists would want even more action, but Putin is a true liberal.
... ... ...
Why does Putin care about the US? Why can't he just stop taking dollars? This means he is an
American stooge! – an eager-for-action hothead zealot would exclaim. The answer is, the
US has gained a lot of power; much more than it had in 1988, when Reagan negotiated with
Gorbachev. The years of being the sole superpower weren't wasted. American might is not to be
trifled with.
New York Times insinuated.
True, Russia is big enough to survive even that treatment, but Russians have got used to a
good life, and they won't cherish being returned to the year 1956. They took action to prevent
these worst-case scenarios; for instance, they sold much of their US debt and
moved out of Microsoft , but these things are time-consuming and expensive. Putin hopes
that eventually the US will abandon its quest for dominance and assume a live-and-let-live
attitude as demanded by the international law. Until it happens, he is forced to play by
Washington rules and try to limit antagonism.
An experienced broker came in, promising to deliver the deal. It is the Jewish state,
claiming to have the means to navigate the US in the desired direction. This is a traditional
Jewish claim, used in the days of the WWI to convince the UK to enter the deal: you give us
Palestine; we shall bring the US into the European war on your side. Then it worked: the Brits
and their Aussie allies stormed Gaza, eventually took over the Holy Land, issued the Balfour
declaration promising to pass Palestine to the Jews, and in return, fresh American troops
poured into the European theatre of war, causing German surrender.
This time, the Jewish state proposed that Putin should give up his ties with Iran; in
return, they promised to assist in general warming of Russo-American relations. Putin had a
bigger counter-proposal: Let the US lift its Iran sanctions and withdraw its armed forces from
Syria, and Russia will try to usher Iranian armed forces out of Syria, too. The ensuing
negotiations around Iran-Syria deal would lead to recognition of the US and Israel interests in
Syria, and further on it could lead to negotiations in other spheres.
This was a clear win-win proposal. Iran would emerge free of sanctions; Israel and the US
would have their interests recognised in Syria; the much-needed dialogue between Russia and the
US will get a jump-start. But Israel does not like win-win proposals. The Jewish state wants
clear victories, preferably with their enemy defeated, humiliated, hanged. Israel rejected the
proposal, for it wanted Iran to suffer under sanctions.
... ... ...
Russia certainly wants to live in peace with the US, but not at the price Mr Netanyahu
suggested. Mr Patrushev condemned the US sanctions against Iran. He
said that Iran shot down the giant American drone RQ-4A Global Hawk worth more than a hundred
million dollars over Iranian territory, not in the international airspace as the Pentagon
claimed. He stated that American "evidence" that Iran had sabotaged tankers in the Persian Gulf
was inconclusive. Russia demanded that the United States stop its economic war against Iran,
recognize the legitimate authorities of Syria, led by President Bashar Assad, and withdraw its
troops from Syria. Russia expressed its support for the legitimate government in Venezuela.
Thus, Russia showed itself at this difficult moment as a reliable ally and partner, and at the
same time assured the staggering Israeli leadership of its friendship.
The problem is that the drive for war with Iran is not gone. A few days ago, the Brits
seized an Iranian super-tanker in the Straits of Gibraltar. The tanker was on its way to
deliver oil to Syria. Before that, the United States had almost launched a missile attack on
Iran. At the last moment, when the planes were already in the air, Trump stopped the operation.
It is particularly disturbing that he himself unambiguously hinted that the operation was
launched
without his knowledge . That is, the chain of commands in the US is now torn, and it is not
clear who can start a war. This has to be taken into account both in Moscow and in Tehran.
... ... ...
Russia wants to help Iran, not out of sheer love to the Islamic Republic, but as a part of
its struggle for multi-polar world, where independent states carry on the way they like. Iran,
North Korea, Venezuela – their fight for survival is a part and parcel of Russia's
struggle. If these states will be taken over, Russia can become the next victim, Putin
feels.
... ... ...
In this situation, Putin tries to build bridges to the new forces in Europe and the US, to
work with nationalist right. It is not the most obvious partner for this old-fashioned liberal,
but they fit into his idea of multi-polarity, of supremacy of national sovereignty and of
resistance to the world hegemony of Atlantic powers. His recent visit to Italy, a country with
strong nationalist political forces, had been successful; so was his meeting with the Pope.
In the aftermath of the audience with the Pope, Putin strongly defended the Catholic Church,
saying that "There are problems, but they cannot be over-exaggerated and used for destroying
the Roman Catholic Church itself. I get the feeling that these liberal circles are beginning to
use certain problems of the Catholic Church as a tool for destroying the Church itself. This is
what I consider to be incorrect and dangerous. After all, we live in a world based on Biblical
values and traditional values are more stable and more important for millions of people than
this liberal idea, which, in my opinion, is really ceasing to exist". For years, the Europeans
haven't heard this message. Perhaps this is the right time to listen.
The author is referring to WWI and the Balfour Declaration of Nov 1917 which indeed was
drafted on behalf of Jewish Zionist interests who in return did their level best in bringing
Wilson, who was long backed by NYC banking interests (hence the Federal Reserve Act of 1913
enacted on his watch), into the war which materially changed its dynamics and outcome.
The Ukraine in all this? I would think it a far bigger concern for Russia in any
trilateral meeting.
Do not expect anything on the Ukraine in the near future. Trump wants the DNC to nominate
guaranteed loser Biden. Then he can beat him senseless using 'Ukrainian tampering with U.S.
elections' via Biden's family business interests (1).
_____
Now that the Mueller exoneration is complete, the door is open to improved U.S. –
Russia relations. The important thing is looking at Putin's and Trump's actions , more
so than their words.
Trump's words sound 'officially concerned' about Crimea. However, this is primarily for EU
consumption. What actions has the Trump administration taken about Crimea? Little or nothing
depending on how you score the matter. So tacit acknowledgement pending a quid pro quo
.
Putin administration words (but not Putin himself) have said strong sounding things about
Iran. However, there are no actions that support a deep relationship.
-- Russia sells munitions to Iran on a 'cash & carry' basis along with many other nations
including Turkey. Russia and Israel have much stronger ties on the military equipment basis.
Look at their recent joint sale of AWACS to India (2).
-- Russia continues to let the Israeli air force freely strike Iranian al'Hezbollah and
al'Quds targets in Syria.
It looks like the quid pro quo arrangement will be Crimea for an Iranian exit from
Syria. It's a deal that would help peace throughout the region.
But he is hampered by his "deep state", by Pompeo and Bolton; about the latter, Trump
himself said that he wants to fight with the whole world. Presidents can't always remove
the ministers from whom they want to get rid of – even the absolute monarchs of the
past did not always succeed.
Actually, Trump is using Bolton against the deep state.
First and foremost, it is and advanced and skillful form of ' Good Cop – Bad
Cop '. When Bolton says something and Trump openly disagrees, it places the Fake Steam
Media complex in an untenable position. If they treat the story fairly, they embrace the
anathema of saying positive things about Trump. But they do not have any options to twist the
facts into their desired anti-American propaganda.
Secondarily, it also cleverly drives a wedge between two DNC factions:
-1- The true Clintonista believer, stricken by Trump Derangement Syndrome [TDS], will not
accept anything less than Impeachment. Preferably followed by turning him over to the Fascist
Stormtroopers of Antifa.
-2- Those with a less deranged view realise that a successful Impeachment process would
generate President Pence. And, he would be much more likely to accept Bolton's advice.
Perhaps Pence would pick Bolton to be Vice President.
Look at the circular firing squad that is forming up in the DNC nomination process to see
how Trump's deliberate agitation of various factions is working in his favor. The TDS faction
is winning and as a result the eventual DNC candidate will be unelectable.
@AghaHussain sts
plans have failed to materialise in Syria. The author here does a very good job of explaining
Russia's position and between his and Saker's analyses your argument is kaput and only fools
would buy it.
The Zionists went away empty handed with their visits to Russia and President Putin and if
anything Russia's resistance to the Zionists has hardened lately.
People who have two dimensional thinking and a limited box of clues seem to think it is as
simple as just saying no and digging their heels in but that way makes wars. Russia does not
have the sort of power nor an insane leadership that it would take for that.
The best hope for an internal Iranian solution is IRGC enlightened self interest. A fairly
bloodless replacement of Khameni with a general from the IRGC. It worked in Egypt and the
world welcomed that military solution. One can be 99% certain that replacing Khameni would be
just as welcome.
The new 'General Ayatollah in Chief' would have a free hand to disengage from Khameni's
extremism. The economic recovery from ending sanctions would guarantee internal popularity.
Think of it as MIGA, Make Iran Great Again , though they are unlikely to use that
exact phrase.
It's ludicrous to imagine that Russians are so wedded to the good life that they do not
dare antagonise Amerikastan. What "good life" is this? Ask the pensioners struggling on a few
thousand rubles a month how the hell they are supposed to manage. The luxuries enjoyed by the
yuppies in Moscow (most of whom, fluently English speaking and firmly pro-Amerikastani, are a
fifth column of Quislings) are not the life that the factory worker in Volgograd or the
farmer outside St Petersburg will recognise.
I want to sidetrack the thread to the matter of Edward Snowden.
Putin made a comment early on 'a strange young man'.
I understand exactly what he was saying. I am the same. No leaks. ht is a matter of
honour.
OTOH, confronted by wall-to-wal evil bullshit as he was, I think he was not in the wrong
(but have a little internal conflict on that, since the secrets 4 have to keep now are ooly
technical and at times commercial, such a dilemna never arises.
In no situation would such be ethical.
he was sorry for Sowden's girlfriend, he dumped her. but, not long after, she was with
him. Very romantic. Doubtless, Russian secret services had some role.
I like the happy ending there, it is very romantic.
Would make a great movie, but not possible from Hollywood, perhaps Russia could revive its
moribund film industry?
Oct 20, 2018 Putin: Russia Getting Rid Of US Dollar Matter Of National Security
Russian president Vladimir Putin: "That's what our American friends are doing. They're
undermining trust in the dollar as a universal payment instrument and the main reserve
currency."
@AmRusDebate t in
2014, and had gone so deep that there is no light at the end of the tunnel now. It is still
used by the Empire as an annoying sore right next to Russia, but that's all it can be. It did
not and could not deliver what the Empire was hoping for. The imperial planners never take
into account the critical condition for their "color revolutions" to bring US-friendly
compradores to power anywhere: the country in question must be rotten through and through.
Thus, instead of useful sharp tools they get worthless pieces of shit. They are still trying
to use an inevitable stink for their purposes, but that's the only use shit is good for.
It's not just Moscow yuppies. Visit any provincial city in Russia today and you'd see that
it looks way better than it ever did in the USSR. There are cafes everywhere and lots of
people in them spending serious money, because they can afford that. Drive on any road, in or
between the cities, and you can see that the roads are in a better shape than they ever were,
and there are lots of gas stations, cafes, and hotels along them, all doing brisk business.
Russians have ten times more cars now than they had in the USSR, and they drive a lot.
@A123 be deployed
right on Russia's border on yet another side. Russia would be readily bottled up and be
denied the freedom to navigate through the surrounding waters. And it would be more
vulnerable to land invasion from more points.
Russia should continue disentangling itself from US and US-Controller financial systems
and institutions. Keep becoming more able to sustain its people without so many imports of
foodstuffs and manufactured goods alike.
Far from giving up Crimea, Russia should bide its time and wait to retake the Donbass
region or more when Ukraine collapses, breaks up, and/or is outright occupied by the US.
I rather doubt you're in any position to judge whether Khameni is a sociopath.
And your fixation on regime change is noted. The ultimate expression of Western arrogance:
You, you benighted, retrograde, sociopathic worm, are not a fit chief executive of your
nation so we have decided you must go. If we have to kill hundreds of thousands of your
people that's just an unavoidable cost of our being the excellent people we are.
Liberalism in the West today is similar to communism in the SU in the late 80's: a
decrepit ideology that offers nothing to ordinary people and whose adherents are incapable of
anything but mouthing the same rubbish over and over. It will similarly die a well-deserved
death.
Looks like Mueller and his team were extremely sloppy and just milked the US government and try to feed rumors to the media.
Mueller emerged as a stooge of Clinton mafia.
Notable quotes:
"... In short, the US Government cannot come out and declare that Concord Management, for example, was acting on behalf or or in collaboration with the Russian Government without presenting actual evidence. A prosecutor cannot simply claim that Concord is a Putin Stooge. ..."
"... The lawyers for Concord Management read the Mueller report and noted significant discrepancies between what was alleged in the original complaint and what was asserted as "fact" in the Mueller report. ..."
"... On April 25, 2019, Concord filed the instant motion in which it argues that the Attorney General and Special Counsel violated Local Rule 57.7 by releasing information to the public that was not contained in the indictment. Concord's main contention is that the Special Counsel's Report, as released to the public, and the Attorney General's related public statements improperly suggested a link between the defendants and the Russian government and expressed an opinion about the defendants' guilt and the evidence against them. ..."
"... Concord's lawyers wanted Judge Friedrich to find Robert Mueller and Attorney General Barr in contempt for violating rule 57.7. ..."
"... the Court has entered an order limiting public statements about this case moving forward and cautions the government that any future violations of that order will trigger a range of potential sanctions. ..."
"... But the Judge did not stop there. She pointed out some glaring discrepancies between the Mueller Report and the actual indictment: ..."
"... By attributing IRA's conduct to "Russia" -- as opposed to Russian individuals or entities -- the Report suggests that the activities alleged in the indictment were undertaken on behalf of, if not at the direction of, the Russian government. ..."
"... But the activities of the IRA and Concord Management are not established. In fact, Mueller's own report undermines his claims, as noted in a recent article by Nation's Aaron Mate. ..."
"... Mate's article, as I mentioned in a previous piece, does an excellent job of showing that the Mueller Report is based on heartfelt beliefs but devoid of corroborating evidence. ..."
"... I think Mueller, Weissman, et al did not expect Concord to contest their indictment. They believed they could continue their PR effort that Russia changed the outcome of the election by sending out tweets and Facebook posts without anyone calling them out. ..."
"... The national security surveillance state is only going to get bigger and more powerful. I suppose that is the real competition between the CCP & the USA who can get more totalitarian sooner. ..."
"... a very valuable recent piece in the 'Epoch Times' about the questions that need to be put to Mueller, Jeff Carlson discusses some of the problems relating both to Christopher Steele's involvement with Oleg Deripaska, and the involvement of Fusion GPS with Natalia Veseltnitskaya which led to the Trump Tower meeting. (See https://www.theepochtimes.com/33-key-questions-for-robert-mueller_2988876.html .) ..."
"... Andrew McCarthy, in the 'National Review', picks up one of the most interesting, and puzzling, moments in the fascinating notes by Kathy Kavalec of the conversation she had with Steele when Jonathan Winer brought him to see on her in October 2016. (See https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/07/oleg-deripaska-fbi-russia-collusion-theory/ ) ..."
"... 'Moreover, by January 2017, F.B.I. agents had tracked down and interviewed one of Mr. Steele's main sources, a Russian speaker from a former Soviet republic who had spent time in the West, according to a Justice Department document obtained by The New York Times and three people familiar with the events. After questioning him, F.B.I. officials came to suspect that the man might have added his own interpretations to reports from his own sources that he passed on to Mr. Steele, calling into question the reliability of the information.' ..."
"... Without wanting to prejudge things, it seems to me quite likely that what Horowitz has been contemplating is a kind of 'limited hangout'. So, the idea could be to suggest that Steele did have sources, that however these were not as reliable as he thought they were, but everything was done in good faith etc etc. In the light of information coming out, including that in the Friedrich ruling, he may however have decided to 'hold his horses.' ..."
"... It is important that the general pattern of assuming that Putin is some kind of omnipotent Sauron-figure, which has clearly left Mueller open to a counter-attack by Concord, was given a classic expression in the testimony which Glenn Simpson gave to the House Intelligence Committee in November 2017. ..."
"... Litvinenko himself, as well as having been a key member of the late Boris Berezovsky's 'information operations team', was an agent, as distinct from an informant, of MI6: accounts differ as to whether Steele was his personal 'handler' (John Sipher), or had never met him (Luke Harding). ..."
"... Also relevant is the fact that Shvets, a fanatical Ukrainian nationalist, and an important figure in the original 'Orange Revolution', was also a key member of Berezovsky's 'information operations' team. ..."
"... The account of his career by the 'New York Times' journalist Barry Meier in his 2016 study 'Missing Man' is a tissue of sleazy evasions, not least in relation to the role of Levinson in 'investigating' the notorious mobster Semion Mogilevich, a key figure in 'information operations' against both Putin and Trump, and also the opponents of Yulia Tymoshenko. ..."
"... A large question involved is how co-operation between not simply elements in MI6 and the CIA, but also in the FBI, with the oligarchs who refused to accept Putin's terms goes back a very long way. ..."
Mueller Does Not Have Evidence That The IRA Was Part of Russian Government Meddling by
Larry C Johnson
In the criminal case against alleged Russian operatives--Internet Research Agency and
Concord Management and Consulting LLC--a Federal judge has declared that Robert Mueller has not
offered one piece of solid evidence that these defendants were involved in any way with the
Government of Russia. I think this is a potential game changer.
The world of law as opposed to the world of intelligence is as different as Mercury and
Mars. The intelligence community aka IC can traffic in rumor and speculation. IC "solid"
intelligence may be nothing more than the strident assertion of a source who lacks actual first
hand knowledge of an event. The legal world does not enjoy that kind of sloppiness. If a
prosecutor makes a claim, i.e., Jack shot Jill, then said prosecutor must show that Jack owned
a firearm that matches the bullets recovered from Jill's body. Then the prosecutor needs to
show that Jack was with Jill when the shooting took place and that forensic evidence recovered
from Jack showed he had fired a firearm. Keep this distinction in mind as you consider what has
transpired in the case against the Internet Research Agency and Concord Management and
Consulting.
To understand why Judge Friedrich ruled as she did you must understand Local Rule 57.7.
That rule: restricts public dissemination of information by attorneys involved in criminal cases where
"there is a reasonable likelihood that such dissemination will interfere with a fair trial or
otherwise prejudice the administration of justice." It also authorizes the court "[i]n a widely
publicized or sensational criminal case" to issue a special order governing extrajudicial
statements and other matters designed to limit publicity that might interfere with the conduct
of a fair trial. . . .
The rule prohibits lawyers associated with the prosecution or defense
from publishing, between the time of the indictment and the commencement of trial, "[a]ny
opinion as to the accused's guilt or innocence or as to the merits of the case or the evidence
in the case."
In short, the US Government cannot come out and declare that Concord Management, for
example, was acting on behalf or or in collaboration with the Russian Government without
presenting actual evidence. A prosecutor cannot simply claim that Concord is a Putin
Stooge.
The lawyers for Concord Management read the Mueller report and noted significant
discrepancies between what was alleged in the original complaint and what was asserted as
"fact" in the Mueller report.
On April 25, 2019, Concord filed the instant motion in which it argues that the Attorney
General and Special Counsel violated Local Rule 57.7 by releasing information to the public
that was not contained in the indictment. Concord's main contention is that the Special
Counsel's Report, as released to the public, and the Attorney General's related public
statements improperly suggested a link between the defendants and the Russian government and
expressed an opinion about the defendants' guilt and the evidence against them.
Concord's lawyers wanted Judge Friedrich to find Robert Mueller and Attorney General Barr in
contempt for violating rule 57.7.
Judge Friedrich gave Concord a partial victory:
Although the Court agrees that the government violated Rule 57.7 , it disagrees that
contempt proceedings are an appropriate response to that violation. Instead, the Court has
entered an order limiting public statements about this case moving forward and cautions the
government that any future violations of that order will trigger a range of potential
sanctions.
But the Judge did not stop there. She pointed out some glaring discrepancies between the
Mueller Report and the actual indictment:
The Special Counsel Report describes efforts by the Russian government to interfere with the
2016 presidential election. . . . But the indictment . . . does not link the defendants to the
Russian government. Save for a single allegation that Concord and Concord Catering had several
"government contracts" (with no further elaboration), id. ¶ 11, the indictment alleges
only private conduct by private actors.
. . . the concluding paragraph of the section of the [Mueller] Report related to Concord
states that the Special Counsel's "investigation established that Russia interfered in the 2016
presidential election through the 'active measures' social media campaign carried out by"
Concord's co-defendant, the Internet Research Agency (IRA). By attributing IRA's conduct to
"Russia" -- as opposed to Russian individuals or entities -- the Report suggests that the
activities alleged in the indictment were undertaken on behalf of, if not at the direction of,
the Russian government.
Similarly, the Attorney General drew a link between the Russian government and this case
during a press conference in which he stated that "[t]he Special Counsel's report outlines two
main efforts by the Russian government to influence the 2016 election." . . . The "[f]irst"
involved "efforts by the Internet Research Agency, a Russian company with close ties to the
Russian government, to sow social discord among American voters through disinformation and
social media operations." Id. The "[s]econd" involved "efforts by Russian military officials
associated with the GRU," a Russian intelligence agency, to hack and leak private documents and
emails from the Democratic Party and the Clinton Campaign.
The Report explains that it used the term "established" whenever "substantial, credible
evidence enabled the Office to reach a conclusion with confidence." . . . It then states in its
conclusion that the Special Counsel's "investigation established that Russia interfered in the
2016 presidential election through the 'active measures' social media campaign carried out by
the IRA." In context, this statement characterizes the evidence against the defendants as
"substantial" and "credible," and it provides the Special Counsel's Office's "conclusion" about
what actually occurred.
But the activities of the IRA and Concord Management are not established. In fact, Mueller's
own report undermines his claims, as noted in a recent article by Nation's Aaron Mate. Although
Mueller claims that it was "established that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential
election through the 'active measures' social media campaign carried out by" Concord's
co-defendant, the Internet Research Agency (IRA), he provided no such evidence.
After two years and $35 million, Mueller apparently failed to uncover any direct evidence
linking the Prigozhin-controlled IRA's activities to the Kremlin. His best evidence is that
"[n]umerous media sources have reported on Prigozhin's ties to Putin, and the two have appeared
together in public photographs."
Mate's article, as I mentioned in a previous piece, does an excellent job of showing that
the Mueller Report is based on heartfelt beliefs but devoid of corroborating evidence.
Some readers will insist that Mueller and his team have actual intelligence but cannot put
that in an indictment. Well boys and girls, here is a simple truth--if you cannot produce
evidence that can be presented in court then you do not have a case. There is that part of the
Constitution that allows those accused of a crime to confront their accusers.
Minor quibble: Judge
Friedrich is a woman.
I expect that this will get no play from the MSM, since Judge Friedrich was appointed by
Trump, and "everyone" knows she's just covering up for him.
Under the conditions and in the environment that it was returned, this indictment was
Mueller and his partisan team throwing raw meat fo the media so as to prolong their mission,
nothing more. Once filed, no one involved ever expected to appear in a courtroom to prosecute
anyone, or defend any part of it. It was an abuse of process, pure and simple.
Consider it as a count against Mueller, his competence or his integrity, maybe both. He let
himself become a tool.
Johnson refers to "heartfelt beliefs" but i doubt Mueller believes his own bs. in this i
guess he distinguishes himself from earlier witch-hunters, who apparently sincerely believed
their targets were minions of satan.
I think Mueller, Weissman, et al did not expect Concord to contest their indictment. They
believed they could continue their PR effort that Russia changed the outcome of the election
by sending out tweets and Facebook posts without anyone calling them out.
It seems on the current trajectory both the Trump colluded with Russia and our law
enforcement & IC attempted a soft-coup will die on the vine. The latter because Trump is
unwilling to declassify. It seems for him it was all just another reality TV show and him
tweeting "witch hunt" constantly was what the script called for.
The next time the IC &
law enforcement who now must believe that they are the real power behind the throne decide to
exercise that power it will be a doozie.
The national security surveillance state is only going to get bigger and more powerful. I
suppose that is the real competition between the CCP & the USA who can get more
totalitarian sooner.
I think a large question is raised as to how far the kind of sloppiness in the handling of
evidence which Judge Friedrich identified in the Mueller report may have characterised a
great deal of the treatment of matters to do with the post-Soviet space by the FBI and others
– including almost all MSM journalists – for a very long time.
Unfortunately, one also finds this among some of the most useful critics of 'Russiagate'.
So, for example, in a very valuable recent piece in the 'Epoch Times' about the questions
that need to be put to Mueller, Jeff Carlson discusses some of the problems relating both to
Christopher Steele's involvement with Oleg Deripaska, and the involvement of Fusion GPS with
Natalia Veseltnitskaya which led to the Trump Tower meeting. (See https://www.theepochtimes.com/33-key-questions-for-robert-mueller_2988876.html
.)
He then however goes on to write: 'In other words, not only was the firm that hired
Steele, Fusion GPS, hired by the Russians, but Steele himself was hired directly by the
Russians.'
And Andrew McCarthy, in the 'National Review', picks up one of the most interesting, and
puzzling, moments in the fascinating notes by Kathy Kavalec of the conversation she had with
Steele when Jonathan Winer brought him to see on her in October 2016. (See https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/07/oleg-deripaska-fbi-russia-collusion-theory/
)
Commenting on the fact that, in her scribbled notes, beside the names of Vladislav Surkov
and Vyacheslav Trubnikov, who are indeed a top Putin adviser and a former SVR chief
respectively, Kavalec writes 'source', McCarthy simply concludes that she meant that he had
said that these were his – indirect – sources, and that this was accurate. And he
goes on to write:
'Deripaska, Surkov, and Trubnikov were not informing on the Kremlin. These are Putin's
guys. They were peddling what the Kremlin wanted the world to believe, and what the Kremlin
shrewdly calculated would sow division in the American body politic. So, the question is: Did
they find the perfect patsy in Christopher Steele?'
If you look at Kavalec's typing up of the notes, among a good deal of what looks to me
like pure 'horse manure' – including the claim that 'Manafort has been the go-between
with the campaign' – the single reference to Surkov and Trubnikov is that they are said
to be 'also involved.'
As it happens, Surkov is a very complex figure indeed. His talents as a 'political
technologist' were first identified by Khodorkovsky, before he subsequently played that role
for Putin. It would obviously be possible that he and Steele still had common contacts.
The suggestion in Kavalec's notes that Sergei Millian 'may be involved in some way,' and
also that, 'Per Steele, Millian is connected Simon Kukes (who took over management of Yukos
when Khodorkovsky was arrested)' is interesting, but would seem to suggest that he would not
have been cited to Kavalec as an intermediary.
All this is obviously worth putting together with claims made in the 'New York Times'
follow-up on 9 July to the Reuters report on the same day breaking the story of the
interviews carried out with Steele by the Inspector General's team in early June.
'Moreover, by January 2017, F.B.I. agents had tracked down and interviewed one of Mr.
Steele's main sources, a Russian speaker from a former Soviet republic who had spent time in
the West, according to a Justice Department document obtained by The New York Times and three
people familiar with the events. After questioning him, F.B.I. officials came to suspect that
the man might have added his own interpretations to reports from his own sources that he
passed on to Mr. Steele, calling into question the reliability of the information.'
Some observations prompted by all this.
Without wanting to prejudge things, it seems to me quite likely that what Horowitz has
been contemplating is a kind of 'limited hangout'. So, the idea could be to suggest that
Steele did have sources, that however these were not as reliable as he thought they were, but
everything was done in good faith etc etc. In the light of information coming out, including
that in the Friedrich ruling, he may however have decided to 'hold his horses.'
In trying to put together the accumulating evidence, it is necessary to realise, as so
many people seem to find it difficult to do, that in matters like these people commonly play
double games – often for very good reasons.
To say as Carlson does that Fusion and Steele were hired by 'the Russians' implies that
these are some kind of collective entity – and then, one is one step away from the
assumption that Veselnitskaya and Deripaska, as well as 'Putin's Cook', are simply puppets
controlled by the master manipulator in the Kremlin. (The fact that Friedrich applies serious
standards for assessing evidence to Mueller's version of this is one of the reasons why her
judgement is so important.)
As regards what McCarthy says, to lump Surkov and Deripaska together as 'Putin's guys' is
unhelpful. Actually, it seems to me very unlikely, although perhaps not absolutely
impossible, that, had he been implicated in any conspiracy to intervene in an American
election, Surkov would have been talking candidly about his role to anyone liable to relay
the information to Steele.
Likewise, however, the notion of a Machiachiavellian Surkov, feeding disinformation about
a non-existent plot through an intermediary to Steele, who swallows it hook, line and sinker,
does not seem particularly plausible.
A rather more obvious possibility is that the intermediaries who were supposed to have
conveyed a whole lot of 'smoking gun' evidence to Steele were either 1. fabrications, 2.
people whom without their knowledge he cast in this role, or 3. co-conspirators. It would,
obviously, be possible that Millian, although one can say no more than that at this stage,
was involved in either or both of roles 2. and 3.
It is important that the general pattern of assuming that Putin is some kind of omnipotent
Sauron-figure, which has clearly left Mueller open to a counter-attack by Concord, was given
a classic expression in the testimony which Glenn Simpson gave to the House Intelligence
Committee in November 2017.
Providing his version of what was going on following his move from the Washington office
of the 'Wall Street Journal' to its European headquarters in January 2005, Simpson told the
Committee:
'And the oligarchs, during this period of consolidation of power by Vladimir Putin, when I
was living in Brussels and doing all this work, was about him essentially taking control over
both the oligarchs and the mafia groups. And so basically everyone in Russia works for Putin
now. And that's true of the diaspora as well. So the Russian mafia in the United States is
believed bylaw enforcement criminologists to have – to be under the influence of the
Russian security services. And this is convenient for the security services because it gives
them a level of deniability.'
A bit less than two years after Simpson's move to Brussels, a similar account featured in
what appears to have been the first attempt by Christopher Steele and his confederates to
provide a 'narrative' in terms of which could situate the supposed assassination by polonium
poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko.
This came in a BBC Radio 4 programme, entitled 'The Litvinenko Mystery', in which a
veteran presenter with the Corporation, Tom Mangold, produced an account by the former KGB
Major Yuri Shvets, supported by the former FBI Agent Robert Levinson, and an 'Unidentified
Informer', who is told by Mangold that he cannot be identified 'reasons of your own personal
security'.
This figure, whose credentials we have no means of assessing, explains:
'Well it's not well known to Western leaders or Western people but it is pretty well known
in Russia. Because essentially it is common knowledge in Russia that by the end of Nineties
the so called Russian organised crime had been destroyed by the Government and then the
Russian security agencies, primarily the law enforcement and primarily the FSB, essentially
assumes the functions and methods of Russian organised crime. And they became one of the most
dangerous organised crime group because they are protected by law. They're protected by all
power of the State. They have essentially the free hand in the country and this shadow
establishment essentially includes the entire structure of the FSB from the very top people
in Moscow going down to the low offices.'
The story Mangold told was a pathetic tale of how Litvinenko and Shvets, trying to turn an
honest penny from 'due diligence' work, identified damning evidence about the links of a
figure close to Putin to organised crime, who in return sent Andrei Lugovoi to poison the
former with polonium.
A few problems with this version have, however, subsequently, emerged. Among them is the
fact that, at the time, Litvinenko himself, as well as having been a key member of the late
Boris Berezovsky's 'information operations team', was an agent, as distinct from an
informant, of MI6: accounts differ as to whether Steele was his personal 'handler' (John
Sipher), or had never met him (Luke Harding).
Also relevant is the fact that Shvets, a fanatical Ukrainian nationalist, and an important
figure in the original 'Orange Revolution', was also a key member of Berezovsky's
'information operations' team.
Perhaps most interesting is the fact that the disappearance of Levinson, on the Iranian
island of Kish, the following March, was not as was claimed for years related to his private
sector work. His entrapment and imprisonment – from which we now know Deripaska was
later involved in attempting to rescue him – related to an undercover mission on behalf
of elements in the CIA.
The account of his career by the 'New York Times' journalist Barry Meier in his 2016 study
'Missing Man' is a tissue of sleazy evasions, not least in relation to the role of Levinson
in 'investigating' the notorious mobster Semion Mogilevich, a key figure in 'information
operations' against both Putin and Trump, and also the opponents of Yulia Tymoshenko.
A large question involved is how co-operation between not simply elements in MI6 and the
CIA, but also in the FBI, with the oligarchs who refused to accept Putin's terms goes back a
very long way.
And, among other things, that raises a whole range of questions about Mueller.
Great info, thanks. I admittedly don't watch the skeptics' comments closely enough, and
can be susceptible to twisted observations from guys like Carlson and Solomon.
The extent of Israeli spying directed against the United States is a huge story that is
only rarely addressed in the mainstream media. The Jewish state regularly tops the list for ostensibly friendly countries that
aggressively conduct espionage against the U.S. and Jewish American Jonathan Pollard, who was imprisoned in 1987 for spying for
Israel, is now regarded as the most damaging spy in the history of the United States.
Last week I wrote about how
Israeli spies operating more-or-less freely in the U.S. are rarely interfered with, much less arrested and prosecuted, because there
is an unwillingness on the part of upper echelons of government to do so. I cited the case of Arnon Milchan, a billionaire Hollywood
movie producer who had a secret life that included stealing restricted technology in the United States to enable development of
Israel's nuclear weapons program, something that was very much against U.S. interests. Milchan was involved in a number of other
thefts as well as arms sales on behalf of the Jewish state, so much so that his work as a movie producer was actually reported to
be less lucrative than his work as a spy and black-market arms merchant, for which he operated on a commission basis.
That Milchan has never been arrested by the United States government or even questioned about his illegal activity, which was
well known to the authorities, is just one more manifestation of the effectiveness of Jewish power in Washington, but a far more
compelling case involving possible espionage with major political manifestations has just re-surfaced. I am referring to Jeffrey
Epstein, the billionaire Wall Street "financier" who has been arrested and charged with operating a "vast" network of underage girls
for sex, operating out of his mansions in New York City and Florida as well as his private island in the Caribbean, referred to
by visitors as "Orgy Island." Among other high-value associates, it is claimed that Epstein was particularly close to Bill Clinton,
who flew dozens of times on Epstein's private 727.
Alex Acosta (L) Jeffrey Epstein (R)
Epstein was arrested on July 8th after indictment
by a federal grand jury in New York. It was more than a decade after Alexander Acosta, the top federal prosecutor in Miami, who
is now President Trump's secretary of labor, accepted a plea bargain involving similar allegations regarding
pedophilia
that was not shared with the accusers prior to being finalized in court. There were reportedly hundreds of victims, some 35 of whom
were identified, but Acosta deliberately denied the two actual plaintiffs their day in court to testify before sentencing.
Acosta's intervention meant that Epstein avoided both a public trial and a possible federal prison sentence, instead serving
only 13 months of an 18-month sentence in the almost-no-security Palm Beach County Jail on charges of soliciting prostitution in
Florida. While in custody, he was permitted to leave jail for sixteen hours six days a week to work in his office.
Epstein's crimes were carried out in his $56 million
Manhattan mansion and in his oceanside villa in Palm Beach Florida. Both residences were equipped with hidden cameras and microphones
in the bedrooms, which Epstein reportedly used to record sexual encounters between his high-profile guests and his underage girls,
many of whom came from poor backgrounds, who were recruited by procurers to engage in what was euphemistically described as "massages"
for money. Epstein apparently hardly made any effort to conceal what he was up to: his airplane was called the "Lolita Express."
The Democrats are calling for an investigation of the Epstein affair, as well as the resignation of Acosta, but they might well
wind up regretting their demands. Trump, the real target of the Acosta fury, apparently did not know about the details of the plea
bargain that ended the Epstein court case. Bill and Hillary Clinton were, however, very close associates of Epstein. Bill, who flew
on the "Lolita Express"
at least 26 times , could plausibly be implicated in the pedophilia given his track record and relative lack of conventional
morals. On many of the trips, Bill refused Secret Service escorts, who would have been witnesses of any misbehavior. On
one lengthy trip
to Africa in 2002, Bill and Jeffrey were accompanied by accused pedophile actor Kevin Spacey and a number of young girls, scantily
clad "employees" identified only as "massage." Epstein was also a major contributor to the Clinton Foundation and was present at
the wedding of Chelsea Clinton in 2010.
With an election year coming up, the Democrats would hardly want the public to be reminded of Bill's exploits, but one has to
wonder where and how deep the investigation might go. There is also a possible Donald Trump angle. Though Donald may not have been
a frequent flyer on the "Lolita Express," he certainly moved in the same circles as the Clintons and Epstein in New York and Palm
Beach, plus he is by his own words roughly as amoral as Bill Clinton. In June 2016, one
Katie Johnson filed lawsuit in
New York claiming she had been repeatedly raped by Trump at an Epstein gathering in 1993 when she was 13 years old. In a 2002
New York Magazineinterview
Trump said "I've known Jeff for fifteen years. Terrific guy he's a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful
women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side. No doubt about it – Jeffrey enjoys his social life."
Selective inquiries into wrongdoing to include intense finger pointing are the name of the game in Washington, and the affaire
Epstein also has all the hallmarks of a major espionage case, possibly tied to Israel. Unless Epstein is an extremely sick pedophile
who enjoys watching films of other men screwing twelve-year-old girls the whole filming procedure smacks of a sophisticated intelligence
service compiling material to blackmail prominent politicians and other public figures. Those blackmailed would undoubtedly in most
cases cooperate with the foreign government involved to avoid a major scandal. It is called recruiting "agents of influence." That
is how intelligence agencies work and it is what they do.
That Epstein was perceived as being intelligence-linked was made clear
in Acosta's comments when being
cleared by the Trump transition team. He was asked "Is the Epstein case going to cause a problem [for confirmation hearings]?" "Acosta
had explained, breezily, apparently, that back in the day he'd had just one meeting on the Epstein case. He'd cut the non-prosecution
deal with one of Epstein's attorneys because he had 'been told' to back off, that Epstein was above his pay grade. 'I was told Epstein
belonged to intelligence and to leave it alone.'"
Questions about Epstein's wealth also suggest a connection with a secretive government agency with deep pockets. The New York
Timesreports that
"Exactly what his money management operation did was cloaked in secrecy, as were most of the names of whomever he did it for. He
claimed to work for a number of billionaires, but the only known major client was Leslie Wexner, the billionaire founder of several
retail chains, including The Limited."
But whose intelligence service? CIA and the Russian FSB services are obvious candidates, but they would have no particular motive
to acquire an agent like Epstein. That leaves Israel, which would have been eager to have a stable of high-level agents of influence
in Europe and the United States. Epstein's contact with the Israeli intelligence service may have plausibly come through his associations
with Ghislaine Maxwell, who allegedly served as his key procurer of young girls. Ghislaine is the
daughter of Robert Maxwell , who
died or possibly was assassinated in mysterious circumstances in 1991. Maxwell was an Anglo-Jewish businessman, very cosmopolitan
in profile, like Epstein, a multi-millionaire who was very controversial with what were regarded as ongoing ties to Mossad. After
his death, he was given a state funeral by Israel in which six serving and former heads of Israeli intelligence listened while Prime
Minister Yitzhak Shamir eulogized
: "He has done more for Israel than can today be said"
Trump (left) with Robert Maxwell (right) at an event
Epstein kept a black
book identifying many of his social contacts, which is now in the hands of investigators. It included fourteen personal phone
numbers belonging to Donald Trump, including ex-wife Ivana, daughter Ivanka and current wife Melania. It also included Prince Bandar
of Saudi Arabia, Tony Blair, Jon Huntsman, Senator Ted Kennedy, Henry Kissinger, David Koch, Ehud Barak, Alan Dershowitz, John Kerry,
George Mitchell, David Rockefeller, Richard Branson, Michael Bloomfield, Dustin Hoffman, Queen Elizabeth, Saudi King Salman and
Edward de Rothschild.
Mossad would have exploited Epstein's contacts, arranging their cooperation by having Epstein wining and dining them while flying
them off to exotic locations, providing them with women and entertainment. If they refused to cooperate, it would be time for blackmail,
photos and videos of the sex with underage women.
It will be very interesting to see just how far and how deep the investigation into Epstein and his activities goes. One can
expect that efforts will be made to protect top politicians like Clinton and Trump and to avoid any examination of a possible Israeli
role. That is the normal practice, witness the 9/11 Report and the Mueller investigation, both of which eschewed any inquiry into
what Israel might have been up to. But this time, if it was indeed an Israeli operation, it might prove difficult to cover up the
story since the pedophile aspect of it has unleashed considerable public anger from all across the political spectrum.
Senator Chuck Schumer , self-described
as Israel's "protector" in the Senate, is loudly calling for the resignation of Acosta. He just might change his tune if it turns
out that Israel is a major part of the story.
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational
foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is
councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is[email protected]
aanirfan.blogspot.com in an article entitled " Epstein , Trump, 9/11 ' has identified Epstein's links not only to Mossad
but to his business relationships with CIA controlled airlines and perhaps to the false flag attacks on 9/11 .According to Aangirfan
, Epstein is a member of both the Council on Foreign Relations and the Trilateral Commission. The CIA and Mossad have strong
ties resulting from the efforts , according to the Wall Street Journal no less, of former CIA chiefs William Casey and James
Angleton . As Acosta has confirmed , Epstein has links to "intelligence " .
The presence of Ghislaine Maxwell is proof of Mossad's ownership of Epstein's kompromat operation. Ghislaine's father, Robert
Maxwell, created the Neva network -- a consortium of technology companies, banks, and Russian and Bulgarian organized crime
networks -- for his Mossad masters. Keeping up the family business, Ghislaine was running Epstein for the Israelis.
Speculation or scenario: the highest levels of the CIA and Mossad have been closely allied since the late 1940s (see especially
the role of James Angleton) and are pursuing common strategic objectives.
The New York Post remarked in March 2000:
"Epstein is an enigmatic figure. Rumors abound -- including wild ones about a career in the Mossad and, contrarily, the CIA."
Perhaps Epstein has been sponsored, funded, directed and protected by both agencies working in combination.
"Those blackmailed would undoubtedly in most cases cooperate with the foreign government involved to avoid a major scandal.
It is called recruiting "agents of influence." That is how intelligence agencies work and it is what they do."
But would not a single intelligence agency typically target and trap one isolated person, not a whole set of interconnected
people? That is, this is more like the way the P2 lodge worked in Italy, that is, a society.
With all the mystery surrounding how Epstein obtained such great wealth, I can't help but think it may be a global money
laundering operation connected to the global drug trade.
Books have been written about the CIA's involvement in cocaine and heroin distribution. Whether it's HW Bush and Iran Contra(cocaine)
and Bill Clinton with Mena, AR airport complicity in same or the explosion in poppy (HW's nickname just a coincidence ) production
in Afghanistan since the 2001 invasion, drugs seem to connect all these dots and more.
And, let's not forget the Israeli "Art Student" operation that targeted DEA offices.
A way for Epstein to get out from under this with the CUFI crowd might be to point out Mary, mother of Jesus, was pregnant
out of wedlock at 14 so what's the big deal?
NYT and Bloomberg have been writing about the mysterious source of Epstein's wealth. Epstein's hedge fund is established
offshore and has a hush-hush list of "clients". He was once sued by a guy named Michael Stroll who said he lost all $450k of
his money investing with Epstein, and he told an interviewer that everyone thought Epstein "was some kind of genius, but I never
saw any genius, and I never saw him work. Anyone that wealthy would have to work 26 hours a day, Epstein played 26 hours a day."
Bloomberg estimated that at best his net worth is $77m, which obviously is not enough to support his lavish lifestyle with 12
homes, a private island, private jet, 15 cars.
Epstein was "let go" by Bear Sterns because of his involvement in an insider trading case involving Edgar Bronfman, whose
firm Seagram was in a hostile takeover bid of another firm. Bronfman, former president of World Jewish Congress, and his two
daughters are investors in NXIVM which was recently charged with sex trafficking and other corruptions. Bronfman and Les Wexner,
the single largest investor in Epstein's "hedge fund", were co-founders of the Zionist org. Mega. All these people are in one
way or another connected with Israel.
I suspect Epstein and Bronfman were in fact running an international sex trafficking-racketeering ring on behalf of Mossad.
That would explain his mysterious source of wealth. His little black book is rumored to include 1,500 names of who's who in
politics, business and arts, and includes royalty, several foreign presidents and a famous prime minister.
Acosta needs to show some integrity and resign. But of course, if he had any, he would never have signed that plea bargain
to begin with.
First Mueller, now Epstein, two chances for Barr to turn the Deep State inside out, upside down once and for all. Will he
do it? I have my doubts. William Barr's father, Donald Barr, was the one who recruited Jeffrey Epstein, a two time college dropout,
to be a calculus and physics teacher at the prestigious Dalton School in NYC when he was the headmaster there. Donald Barr,
born Jewish but "converted" to Catholicism, was later ousted by a group of "progressive" parents at Dalton for being too conservative.
But he was the one who gave Epstein the foot in the door. From there he got to teach the son of Bear Stern's CEO Ace Greenberg,
and was recruited by the latter to work at Bear Sterns.
I wouldn't count out the CIA here. It is telling that one of Epstein's havens was overseas, several of them. These are locations
where the CIA could legally operate. After collecting dirt, they could then funnel some of it selectively to the Israelis for
distribution so the CIA could maintain plausible deniability while having a wall of separation between themselves and the Mossad-picked
third party that leaked the info.
In fact, this is the most plausible scenario; it fits with everything we know: 1) "intelligence" reportedly told Acosta to
back off 2) Epstein has been linked to the CIA 3) some of these locations were overseas, giving the CIA a legal justification
for spying 4) these were largely American politicians and American allies 5) the CIA reportedly threatened Trump when he came
into office by implying they would leak stuff on him: the Micheal Wolfe book, Fire and Fury I believe it was, related a story
of Trump being pressured to set up a meeting with the CIA where he'd speak to them and, essentially, pledge loyalty to them
because they would be his enemies otherwise (that's treason, btw); Trump dutifully complied 6) Epstein's mysterious wealth and
property management would have attracted CIA attention long ago, meaning they should have been aware of this unless they helped
set it up, including the guy's fake wealth (a front to get close to the powerful) anyone got a tax return for this guy?
This smells like CIA-Mossad joint op. If it were solely Mossad, the CIA should have stepped in and broken up this guy's little
operation considering his targets. They should have followed up by either eliminating Epstein as a message to Mossad not to
leak any of their dirt or threatened Epstein with punishment if he leaked or continued his activities. Tellingly, they covered
for the guy.
Also, does this sorry state of affairs make it more likely that Trump will "Wag the Dog" on Iran? Would the Epstein arrest
have even happened if Trump had done Bibi's bidding and attacked Iran when the False Flag of the drone shoot down had been teed
up for him like a driver smacking a golf ball. Conspiracy Theories is all we have left in the crumbling Empire of Lust and Greed.
Perhaps I'm just paranoid.
Milchan was involved in a number of other thefts as well as arms sales on behalf of the Jewish state
One of many apparently.
The scum described here was rewarded with becoming the mayor of Jerusalem.
We've been involved in everything we've been asked to do [re Israel].
[Dad] went and he bought all of the equipment from the plant. It ended up being shipped to Israel. Because you know at
that time, there was a complete embargo from the United States, and what little [the Israelis] got– well Most of what
they got were smuggled in.Most of them were illegal, all the arms. That's what Teddy Kollek did. That was his job before
he became a mayor [of Jerusalem]. He was a master smuggler. And he was good. Oh was he good! [laughter]
The honey trap is one of the most powerful (and legitimate) ways to compromise public officials, including heads of state.
Epstein is almost certainly Mossad.
This has been the talk and pretty obvious conclusion now for some time. Of COURSE Epstein was/is a MOSSAD asset if not agent.
What's more his usefullness to them isn't over yet, especially if Trump is one of the names he has.
I think if Trump caves next false flag and has a go at Iran, it will imply that Trump is dirty and Epstein can prove it.
I'm saying MOSSAD could be behind Epstein going down now as it makes his blakmail potential an imperitive. Hopefully Trump is
clean and there are indications he is. If not then he just lost any ability to resist whatever the zippers now want of him.
The sort of influence Zionist "Israel" needs to wield and does requires exactly such an interconnected and multilayered stable
of highly placed assets. Redundancy built in and how else do you think they manage to control so much AND avoid accountability?
They cast a wide net. But you knew that I think.
@Tired
of Not Winning deal with one of Epstein's attorneys because he had "been told" to back off, that Epstein was above his pay
grade. "I was told Epstein 'belonged to intelligence' and to leave it alone," he told his interviewers'
#4 Offshore Tax Schemes / Money Laundering
Deutsche Bank seems to be the Gordian Knot of financial filth and corruption. Epstein was a client of Deutsche Bank's 'special
services department' same as Trump and Kushner ..same Deutsche bank as already fined for money laundering.
Possible Epstein and whoever was behind him engaged in all of these. If congress is going to question Acosta .first question
should be who told him Epstein belonged to intelligence.
That 2002 New York piece Phil mentioned has some great tid-bits:
For more than ten years, he's been linked to Manhattan-London society figure Ghislaine Maxwell, daughter of the mysteriously
deceased media titan Robert Maxwell
He is an enthusiastic member of the Trilateral Commission and the Council on Foreign Relations.
Indicative of globalism, Zionism and Jewish group interest.
those close to him say the reason he quit his board seat at the Rockefeller Institute was that he hated wearing a suit.
Obviously a falsely contrived reason, wonder what the deal was here
"I invest in people – be it politics or science. It's what I do," he has said to friends. And his latest prize addition
is the former president [Bill Clinton].
Certainly suggestive of an intelligence operative mindset.
Before Clinton, Epstein's rare appearances in the gossip columns tended to be speculation as to the true nature of his
relationship with Ghislaine Maxwell. While they are still friends, the English tabloids have postulated that Maxwell has
longed for a more permanent pairing and that for undetermined reasons Epstein has not reciprocated in kind. "It's a mysterious
relationship that they have," says society journalist David Patrick Columbia. "In one way, they are soul mates, yet they
are hardly companions anymore. It's a nice conventional relationship, where they serve each other's purposes."
Friends of the two say that Maxwell, whose social life has always been higher-octane than Epstein's, lent a little pizzazz
to the lower-profile Epstein. Indeed, at a party at Maxwell's house, her friends say, one is just as apt to see Russian
ladies of the night as one is to see Prince Andrew.
Another interpretation is that his combination with Ghislaine was bringing a bit too much public attention to Epstein and
his activities and therefore it was decided to let things die down a bit.
in 1976, he dropped everything and reported to work at Bear Stearns, where he started off as a junior assistant to a
floor trader at the American Stock Exchange. His ascent was rapid.
At the time, options trading was an arcane and dimly understood field, just beginning to take off. To trade options,
one had to value them, and to value them, one needed to be able to master such abstruse mathematical confections as the
Black-Scholes option-pricing model. For Epstein, breaking down such models was pure sport, and within just a few years he
had his own stable of clients. "He was not your conventional broker saying 'Buy IBM' or 'Sell Xerox,' " says Bear Stearns
CEO Jimmy Cayne. "Given his mathematical background, we put him in our special-products division, where he would advise
our wealthier clients on the tax implications of their portfolios. He would recommend certain tax-advantageous transactions.
He is a very smart guy and has become a very important client for the firm as well."
In 1980, Epstein made partner, but he had left the firm by 1981. Working in a bureaucracy was not for him
Obviously, important facts are being left out. He is a talented options analyst but they have him advising clients on investment
structures to save taxes? Why wouldn't they put him on principal trades for Bear if he was such an options whiz?
And why did he leave? Trading firms are notoriously NOT bureaucracies, and anyone with a talent for making money, especially
in the early 80s, would find few fetters. Whole story not given here.
In 1982, according to those who know Epstein, he set up his own shop, J. Epstein and Co., which remains his core business
today. The premise behind it was simple: Epstein would manage the individual and family fortunes of clients with $1 billion
or more. Which is where the mystery deepens. Because according to the lore, Epstein, in 1982, immediately began collecting
clients. There were no road shows, no whiz-bang marketing demos – just this: Jeff Epstein was open for business for those
with $1 billion–plus.
Getting clients in asset management is a cut-throat business. But Epstein did not even have to make a pretense of competing
for business?
His firm would be different, too. He was not here just to offer investment advice; he saw himself as the financial architect
of every aspect of his client's wealth – from investments to philanthropy to tax planning to security to assuaging the guilt
and burdens that large sums of inherited wealth can bring on.
the conditions for investing with Epstein were steep: He would take total control of the billion dollars, charge a flat
fee, and assume power of attorney to do whatever he thought was necessary to advance his client's financial cause. And he
remained true to the $1 billion entry fee. According to people who know him, if you were worth $700 million and felt the
need for the services of Epstein and Co., you would receive a not-so-polite no-thank-you from Epstein.
Minimum $1b invested, no track record by the asset manager, and he claims the clients give him carte blanche? This is not
normal wealth management.
Turning down giant new stakes just because they fall short of $1b? Nonsense. The name of the game on the buy side on Wall
Street is size, because that gives you negotiating power with the sell side.
Epstein runs a lean operation, and those close to him say that his actual staff – based here in Manhattan at the Villard
House (home to Le Cirque); New Albany, Ohio; and St. Thomas, where he reincorporated his company seven years ago (now called
Financial Trust Co.) – numbers around 150 and is purely administrative. When it comes to putting these billions to work
in the markets, it is Epstein himself making all the investment calls – there are no analysts or portfolio managers, just
twenty accountants to keep the wheels greased and a bevy of assistants – many of them conspicuously attractive young women
– to organize his hectic life. So assuming, conservatively, a fee of .5 percent (he takes no commissions or percentages)
on $15 billion, that makes for a management fee of $75 million a year straight into Jeff Epstein's pocket.
Epstein makes all the daily investment decisions on $15b, yet no one on the sell side knows him? In other words Epstein does
not invest in new issues. But new issues are the gravy for making money on the buy side – think IPO discount. This is not normal
asset management.
some have speculated that Wexner is the primary source of Epstein's lavish life – but friends leap to his defense. "Let
me tell you: Jeffrey Epstein has other clients besides Wexner. I know because some of them are my clients," says noted m&a
lawyer Dennis Block of Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft. "I sent him a $500 million client a few years ago and he wouldn't
take him. Said the account was too small. Both the client and I were amazed. But that's Jeffrey."
You can always trust the word of an M&A lawyer. They would never mislead anyone for advantage.
he found himself spending there [in Santa Fe], talking elementary particle physics with his friend Murray Gell-Mann,
a Nobel Prize–winning physicist and co-chair of the science board at the Santa Fe Institute.
his covey of scientists that inspires Epstein's true rapture. Epstein spends $20 million a year on them
Gerald Edelman won the Nobel Prize for physiology and medicine in 1972 and now presides over the Neurosciences Institute
in La Jolla. "Jeff is extraordinary in his ability to pick up on quantitative relations," says Edelman. "He came to see
us recently. He is concerned with this basic question: Is it true that the brain is not a computer? He is very quick."
Stephen Kosslyn, a psychologist at Harvard. Epstein flew up to Kosslyn's laboratory in Cambridge this year to witness
an experiment that Kosslyn was conducting and Epstein was funding. Namely: Is it true that certain Tibetan monks are capable
of holding a distinct mental image in their minds for twenty minutes straight?
Epstein has a particularly close relationship with Martin Nowak, an Austrian biology and mathematics professor who heads
the theoretical-biology program at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton. Nowak is examining how game theory can
be used to answer some of the basic evolutionary questions – e.g., why, in our Darwinian society, does altruistic behavior
exist?
Danny Hillis, an MIT-educated computer scientist whose company, Thinking Machines, was at the forefront of the supercomputing
world in the eighties, and who used to run R&D at Walt Disney Imagineering
An intelligence operative would certainly have no interest in cultivating, buying or blackmailing scientists in the fields
of nuclear physics, controlling human behavior or supercomputers!
And by the way, the need to explain "altruism" in terms of game theory is a tip-off that Epstein and Nowak have no spiritual
life and cannot comprehend of it in other people. No surprise to find "do what thou wilt" as his guiding principle.
Strangely enough, given his scientific obsessions, he is a computer-phobe and does not use e-mail.
Before taking a big position, Epstein will usually fly to the country in question. He recently spent a week in Germany
meeting with various government officials and financial types, and he has a trip to Brazil coming up in the next few weeks.
On all of these trips, he flies alone in his commercial-jet-size 727.
Friends of Epstein say he is horrified at the recent swell of media attention around him
He has never granted a formal interview, and did not offer one to this magazine, nor has his picture appeared in any
publication.
The final straws. If he's not an intelligence operative, he's doing everything he can to give that impression!
He "flies alone." LOL! Poor Jeffrey, he so ronery!
When Bob Maxwell died at sea or disappeared it turned out that he had used or stolen every penny of ALL the pensions of his
employees .which were never recovered. After her father was given a state funeral in Israel (not England where he and his family
lived and worked) there followed a 2 year court case in which his 6 children were finally excused from any responsibility for
these pensions, despite inheriting his money and two of them working in his companies.
And now Ghislaine turns up as a US socialite, multi-decade pedophile procurer and international human trafficker. Nice family
.nice values! ...
Since the Little SAINT James pedo-island
that was allegedly owned by Jeffery Epstein did not have an airport (the closest one being
Curil E King airport in St. Thomas (about ten miles away)) that
means the 'guests' would either have to take a boat trip or a helicopter trip. Since Little SAINT James does have a
clearly marked helicopter landing site at the north central east part of the island (when viewed on google maps in satellite
view) one would suspect that is how these so-called 'guests' arrived at this pedo-island.
Those activities are not mutually exclusive. It could be #5: All of the above. We all know how Mossad operates. Nothing is
beyond them. The end justifies the means.
Acosta is a distraction .and possibly innocent since he did what he was told which was to go easy on an intelligence asset.
Forget the small fry and concentrate on the real criminals please.
Senator Chuck Schumer, self-described as Israel's "protector" in the Senate, is loudly calling for the resignation of
Acosta. He just might change his tune if it turns out that Israel is a major part of the story.
Schumer would already have been tipped of if is was an Israeli operation. It's an anti Trump thing.
The fact that the case has been moved to the Southern District of New York validates your cynicism.
Has the Only Democracy in the Middle East decided to sacrifice Epstein (he can be sprung later, his jig was up anyway) so
that an Epstein circus can replace Russiagate?
From renfro, the following great point:
"If congress is going to question Acosta .first question should be who told him Epstein belonged to intelligence."
, renfro! Thanks & my respect.
Because I have special enthusiasm for renfro's advice to "Congress," such will not fly with "congress."
Quote: "It will be very interesting to see just how far and how deep the investigation into Epstein and his activities goes."
Reply: We'll get a glistening kabuki show, with lots of wailing [walls], thunder and lightening, twists and turns, but, in
the end [as this case will go on and on – Harvey Weinstein, anyone?] people will forget about it.
I fear that this is all rapidly turning into a modified limited hangout. A whole lot of dirt will be inconclusively exposed
and, even though everyone will have a pretty good idea of what happened, there won't be enough will to do anything about it.
The caveat will be when the financial system finally implodes. A horde of jobless and desperate people will rapidly lose
their patience for being governed by a bunch of incompetent pedophile oligarchs, but until then everyone will just go with the
flow.
@Rabbitnexus
ut it looks more like a millionaire club. Intelligence agencies prefer to use secretaries and other less visible people as spies.
I would look for some association of friends of Israel, something that has lots of money, wants lots of power, spies on people,
both enemies and friends, and has some special love for Israel.
I maybe wrong, but this does not seem to me to be a single intelligence agency of any country. It operates in an age old
method of a secret society, like mafia or masons. It is neither mafia nor masons, but some that especially likes to help Israel
and probably created it. I guess there are such friends of Israel organizations, several.
In social science it is often assumed that people are selfish. The attempt to show that altruism contributes positively to
the prospects for survival and reproduction is important in defeating the presumption of underlying selfishness. It's not a
very deep idea. If ten people carry a gene that causes one of them to throw himself on a hand-grenade, thereby saving the other
nine, that gives the gene a better chance of being passed along than if the grenade goes off and most or all of the carriers
are killed. If interested, see the book Evolution of the Social Contract by Brian Skyrms.
First a question: who says the telephone numbers were the sort only an intimate or ultimate insider would have? Queen Elizabeth's
would surely have had to be the Buckingham Palace, Windsor Castle, Sandringham or Balmoral switchboard.
Then there is what a sleazy or dangerous guy like Epstein might be expected to do, namely toss in a whole lot of names (with
or without true up to date direct line numbers) to confuse and provide diversion and cover. Cute though isn't that he was supposed
still to be using an old fashioned address book in the 21st Century rather than an encrypted or at least password protected
smartphone.
The Palm Beach mansion Epstein owned was rigged with hidden cameras in some of the guest bedrooms according to an article
I read a couple of years back.
Im glad we have forums like this so the word can get out: honeypot operations are not a thing of just the KGB/Cold War past,
but of the Soros/intel orgs/globalist/Establishment present.
Future politicians and wealthy businesspersons need to be aware of this. The Bible has a great old verse that goes something
like, "Be sure your sins will find you out".
"Pedophilia"? Has anyone accused Epstein of mistreating pre-pubescent girls? I don't think so. If Mr. Giraldi wants to deplore
what Epstein is accused of, fine. But don't try to confuse us by suggesting that he attacked children rather than underage teens.
@follyofwar
even Israel understand this would not be regime change business as usual.
U.S. war gamers for years have been saying there's no way the U.S. could significantly "win" the war. It would surely drive
gas prices way up, and wake up the American public, creating a probably insurmountable political problem for Trump. Israel is
liable to get pelted from all sides -- Hezbollah has promised to attack in the event of war, and there are probably ways of
striking from Syria and Iran. Then there are the wild cards of Russia and China. No one knows for sure what Putin would do if
Iran were attacked, but he could certainly turn Israel into a parking lot very quickly if he wanted to.
Well founded scepticism. Still, now we know the extent of what Bernie Madoff got away with perhaps someone who was clever
and charming and appealed to those who wouldn't have invested with Madoff just might have put together enough billion dollar
portfolios to be able, as long as he managed his tax affairs well to become very rich during the 80s. It would be interesting
to know how he handled the October 1988 melt down.
One aspect of this entire Epstein Talmudic child abuse saga that really p*sses me off is the active participation of the
IRS. It was the same with Madoff and Maxwell. None of these talmudic ponzi's could have gotten off the ground if these gangsters
had been correctly filing all the correct tax forms like all the other goy schmucks.
Since 2012, with the Statute of Limitations retroactively extended 3 years to a total of 6 years backwards to 2006, all undeclared
foreign bank accounts of US persons or green card holders on IRS FBAR forms (Foreign Bank Account Report), and since 2012 form
8948 (Statement of Specified Foreign Financial Assets), which is even more intrusive, face IRS penalties of 50% of the highest
annual balance, and many tax sinners have been forced to pay more in taxes than these bank accounts ever contained. This is
the tip of the iceberg compared to jewish charity and foundation and estate fraud.
Epstein supposedly was "gifted" the NY mansion from his "mentor" at the defunct and fraudulent money changer Bear Stearns
for what must have been more than 50 Million. Rick Wiles drilled down in detail into this gift on
Thursday .
These kinds of shenanigans, like flying "friends" around the world to your various child abuse temples in your private jets,
are taxable gifts. In fact double taxed, taxed first as income and second with the gift tax. The Lolita Express could never
be declared as a business expense either.
The entire rotten affair stinks on every level and it gets more putrid at every layer of talmudic control is peeled bank.
At each level more Jews and Zionists come wiggling out and scurrying off to disappear from social and dinosaur media. But also
as each layer gets peeled bank we get closer to the core, which with ever more certainty is ritual child sacrifice used for
talmudic control.
Forget the small fry and concentrate on the real criminals please.
It's going to be difficult
Maurene Comey, one of the lead prosecutors who is handling the Epstein case, happens to be James Comey's daughter, the ex
FBI boss.
It remains to be seen if she will be giving Bill Clinton special treatment, just like her father gave to Hillary's "lock her
up".
Moreover, Judge Berman who preside the case, happens to be also a Clinton appointee (in 1998).
In 1982, according to those who know Epstein, he set up his own shop, J. Epstein and Co., which remains his core business
today. The premise behind it was simple: Epstein would manage the individual and family fortunes of clients with $1 billion
or more. Which is where the mystery deepens. Because according to the lore, Epstein, in 1982, immediately began collecting
clients. There were no road shows, no whiz-bang marketing demos – just this: Jeff Epstein was open for business for those
with $1 billion–plus.
The fly in the ointment of this carefully cultivated cover story:
"Statistics published in Forbes magazine's annual survey of America's billionaires expose this little known but shocking
reality. In 1982 there were 13 billionaires; in 1983 15″
There's no need for anything so crude as either the head of the CIA or FBI reporting directly to the Mossad when both agencies
are riddled from top to bottom with de facto Israeli espionage agents.
It's a Fool's Errand to think you can solve Epstein like a puzzle. Most, like Giraldi, are engaged in bias confirmation.
That isn't to say his speculations are entirely wrong but that we're all part of the play in one way or another.
In my view timing is rarely if ever coincidental. That seems glaringly obvious here. The Epstein scandal was resurrected
now for a reason. I suspect that like the Academic Admissions scandal the Permanent Government is throwing its weight around.
Warning (once again) that it can inflict casualties if exposing its 2016 malefactions is taken too far.
Weinstein served the same function -- with poor Meryl Streep the Sgt. Schultz headliner.
Put yourself in the mind of the various filth (e.g. Brennan) implicated in attempting to throw the election to Hillary and,
failing that, frame-up and destroy the duly elected POTUS. They think they're entitled to a pass given all they've turned a
blind eye to over the years.
Epstein's arrest strikes me as a shot across the bow in the context of the upcoming IG Report/Durham Investigation. I'm not
picking on Giraldi but all of his fans here should note he's been Mumble Mouth at best on those malefactions. Nor am I saying
that isn't the wise move for him.
The scandal that needs to be buried is that they built a global surveillance (and storage) apparatus, including of the American
people. There was widespread, systematic abuse of it during the Obama Administration ('000s of people). Whatever limitations
there were, effectively Mutually Assured Destruction with the establishment factions keeping an eye on each other, collapsed
as they all united to stop Trump.
Epstein, like Weinstein and the Academic Admissions scandal, is both distraction and a warning to the Governing and Business
Classes -- keep you heads down and mouths shut about these powerful intelligence/national security entities.
I generally think waiting to see how matters fall out is a very good idea. But when I read the information of Mr. Acosta's
interview, I sank a bit. Because it strongly suggested vested interest by the government – not to get to the truth.
That even the circus that usually comes to surround even credible cases will so muddy the waters as to avoid a rendering
of what actually took place.
And given how compromised the collusion matter is was or will continue to be – the stakes may be higher here such that muddying
the waters will be some relief for those involved.
Myth of brilliance has been created to explain origin of his wealth . But even that shit was not enough , more myths had
to be created like capacity of having brilliant discussions with Nobel laureate ( Physics) or with great educators , and with
world renowned economist .
I guess authorities can get away with saying what F lies they can say until it blows up on their faces . Jew thinks goym
are stupid , so tell them whatever come to mind like having a great autonomous brain that doesn't depend on education or training
or publicly visible job to figure out the finances , economy, hard computer , physical and cognitive sciences and earning millions
,
while busy with
1 taking nude picture and storing them in 3-4 different areas
2 ferrying big guns from 3 different continents to Orgy Islsnd
3 Getting their intimate information , charting them connecting them and storing them
4 having parties with semi nude girls but attended by celebrities
5 holding message parkour parties from girls procured from shanty , trailer park ,
6 having serial girl friends
– there are more .
Oh yeah!!! No wonder people under pressure , lack of information , from removal of connecting dots , undue respect for glory
money power , fear for being seen as ' naysayer ' or pessimist or low IQ uninformed , and fear of public ridicule can believe
or can feign to believe the wildest whoopers / lies/ plaint shit dished out by the upper echelon of the society .
( then we wonder why people believe in UFO , big foot ,
, personal angels , apparitions, or America is a force for good )
Epstein in my opinion is a mossad officer whose agenda is to compromise zio/US politicians for the benefit of Israel and
in this he is just one of many in the zio/US and in fact the zio/US gov is infested with dual Israeli citizens whose first and
only loyalty is to Israel.
Read the book Blood in the Water by Joan Mellen about the attack on the USS Liberty by Israel and the US government to see
how intertwined the mossad and the CIA are and remember the joint Israeli and zio/US gov attack on the WTC on 911, the zionists
rule America!
"CIA and the Russian FSB services are obvious candidates, but they would have no particular motive to acquire an agent like
Epstein."
This is an assertion with nothing to back it up. The CIA, in particular, has every reason to use an 'Epstein' for its nefarious
purposes as it IS the deep state or at least a major part of it.
The CIA owns the drug trade in Afghanistan and Mena, Arkansas can easily be connected to CIA activities along with gun running
in Mexico. The CIA is the official criminal organization within the US gov't and it went rogue decades ago. It can afford to
have multiple 'Epstein' clones running around to make sure it can control the US political class to not investigate its activities
too closely.
The CIA and Israel are indistinguishable from each other. Israel runs US foreign policy via the CIA and their own Mossad.
Come on, Phil Giraldi. Do you believe in an independent American justice system? What a joke. It's corrupt to the bone. Weinstein,
Epstein, Maxwell, Adelson, Saban, Koch you name it, have America in their pocket like Sharon used to say. During a furious beef
between Sharon and Shimon Peres, Sharon turned toward Peres, saying "every time we do something you tell me Americans will do
this and will do that. I want to tell you something obvious, don't worry about American pressure on Israel, we, the Jewish people,
control America, and the Americans know it."
Could anyone but an intelligence agency get away with all of the following: 1) harassing witnesses (forcing their cars off
the road public highways), 2) searching the trash of police officers in an attempt to find dirt on the officers and 3) obtaining
a sweet heart plea bargain when the police had dozens of victims (who didn't even know each other) telling the exact same story
and ready to testify – as well as photos of nude adolescents seized in a search.
Who could have done such things and got away with it.
Epstein must have been an operative. The only question is: for whom did he work?
Gasp!!! Are you suggesting sweet, innocent Monica was blowing Slick Willie for reasons other than his taking advantage
of her?
In his book Gideon's Spies the late Welsh author Gordon Thomas claimed Mossad had tapes of the same for blackmail
reasons. However, this has never been confirmed.
Epstein will "cop a plea" and avoid a trial. That is certain.
A couple of things I'd like to ask the brilliant Epstein: Why did you engage in your nefarious sexual activity in New York
State and Florida? The "age of consent" in both states is 18. In New Jersey, PA and other states, it's 16. Now US federal law
prohibits sex between people 12 to 16 if one of the participants is 4 years or more older than the other. The law says "between"
not inclusive of 16. So 16 might be OK. That's young enough.
Also Jeffrey, why didn't you take your "Lolita Express" to Tel Aviv? It's legal in Israel and no one checks up of the actual
ages of the "working girls." And most are the tall blond/blue and slim types from Eastern Europe.
"Pedophile" is incorrect, as a commenter noted. The age cutoff is 13 for pedophilia. DSM-5. These escapades comprise different
serious felonies. However, the Epstein colleagues can rest easy, if Rush's instinct about prosecuting Hillary is correct. Rush
has said that prosecuting Hillary will not happen, because it would "roil" the nation. Same here. I expect to see a lot of MSM
passive voice, and intransitive verbs, but no roiling. "The car drove off the side of the bridge."
Asimov's father once wrote a book called "The Sensuous Dirty Old Man." Hmm .
More seriously, did it ever occur to you that someone might want to know your source before accepting your claim that Mueller
"supposedly classified Epstein as an informant"? Supposed by whom?? Eh????
believes Epstein allegedly preyed on Araoz when she was 14 because she was vulnerable.
"She had just transferred to a new school and didn't know anybody," attorney Kimberly Lerner said in an interview. "She
didn't have a father. Her mother was very poor. She was from a single-parent home. She was really struggling, and she wanted
to be a model and an actress. He absolutely preyed upon the most vulnerable."
@Lou123
n Ring' which supposedly was providing child prostitutes to high level US politicians who in turn were then being blackmailed
by the existence of surreptitious recordings having been made of these incidents by US intelligence agencies.
The below newspaper article explains what ultimately happened to the lead investigator of the case. Gary Caradori had been
hired by the Nebraska state legislature to find out what had actually transpired regarding the alleged Nebraska based ring.
Needless to say his investigation was unexpectedly 'cut short'.
What if .Acostoa is just a stooge, In fact he probably insisted on SOME jail time here. Otherwise the rest of the US "justice"
system could care less. Even NYC is complicit. It's a snow job of theater, this democracy is. It's a joke. It only looks like
a democracy on tv.
Mossad, CIA, FBI, MI5, who cares? All of these are criminal enterprises, just like the governments providing them cover and
"legitimacy".
Really interesting aspect of any elite in-fighting is that it exposes an "uncomfortable truth" that there is only one elite
running the show. That there is only Republicratic party, which regularly organizes (for the benefit of sheeple still believing
in "democracy") puppet shows called elections, where ostensibly Democrats battle Republicans. In fact, both are just two hands
of the same puppet master. That's why the same criminals are prominent at all "Republican" and "Democratic" functions.
The other thing that the story of that Epstein character clearly shows is that all those "respectable people" are nothing
more than rich criminals, and the only reason they aren't in jail is that they have enough money to get away with any crime.
@Talha
refully scripted to identify girls who could be vulnerable to manipulation, have a chaotic family life, need money, need social
connections for career advancement . The female procurer would report to Epstein and receive instructions to abandon or continue
to recruit the "candidate". A female procurer is used as she will not arouse suspicion in a young girl. These are simple techniques
that have been used for centuries worldwide. A father must cultivate a close relationship with his daughter, know when she is
OK or not OK, and most importantly be an example of a quality man that his daughter will compare to every man she meets(being
overprotective merely makes her more vulnerable).
Meh. Get ready for a tidal wave of MSM articles talking about how the deranged, alt-right internet conspiracy theorists are
having a field day with the Epstein case, after which your average American moron will be programmed to just smirk and roll
his eyes whenever the facts touched on in this article are brought up.
Ms. Aroaz's father was deceased before she met the female procurer
Well, then I take back what I said – obviously can't blame a dead man for not being there.
A father must cultivate a close relationship with his daughter, know when she is OK or not OK, and most importantly be
an example of a quality man that his daughter will compare to every man she meets
I don't know if Giraldi is a plant or not. However, the first law of understanding "intelligence agents" or ex spooks is
to always be suspicious of everyone. The group he belongs too seems legitimate enough but we have been set up before. I've be
reading Giraldi a long time and he has a similar "theme" in every piece but he also leaves small things out that should be in
his articles. The Devil is in the Details and man with his experience should be "Detailed Oriented."
He should know about Epstein and Muller and a few other things since this is the stock and trade of all intelligence agencies.
The interesting thing about this case is, the left wants it exposed because they think it'll take down Trump, the right wants
it exposed because they think it'll take down Bill Clinton. My guess is, more Dems will go down than Republicans. Trump was
a Democrat and a big supporter of Clintons and Chuck Schumer before he decided to run as a GOP in 2016. He could've gone either
way.
Sex scandals tend to plague the left, especially sexual perversions like porn, prostitution, child sex or gay sex. It's coz
the left is dominated by Jews who are prone to sexual perversion, and also because liberals believe feelings and passion trump
all, anything you do is not your fault as long as you are just following your feelings.
One reason Trump is so pro-Israel and hell bent on attacking Iran could be because the Jews have something on him, which
is not too hard since he's been in business with them for a lifetime and is as unctuous and unscrupulous as any of them. They
might be getting impatient with him on Iran and wants someone who can get the job done like Mike Pence to take over. Epstein
could take down both Clinton and Trump, Clinton has outlived his usefulness to them since Hillary didn't win, he'll be the sacrificial
lamb while they take out Trump for Pence.
Republic asked the following critical question which should not be cast away:
"If Epstein worked for Mossad, why wasn't he tipped off in Paris not to return to the US?"
! Mossad deception is sophisticated & patterns of telling a lie upon another improved lie ar characteristic.
Also, Mossad's implemented practices/techniques are adaptable to circumstances which seem supportive of what dumb goyim consider
"justice served," but they actually benefit Israel.
A thought. I figure Epstein knew what fate awaited him prior to landing at Teterboro Airport tarmac.
Well, Giraldi did work there and would have heard people complaining about the presence and influence of Israeli spies. Colonel
Kiatowoski's book about the presence of Israeli spies in the Pentagon made it clear Pentagon personnel resented the Israeli
spies but could do nothing about it.
@Talha
ing to a recently divorced man whose x-wife hates him (nothing new), and who has two teenage daughters. The x has poisoned the
daughters against him, (nothing new), and because he was trying to be strident with his elder daughter vis-a-vis drugs, (nothing
new), he now is not allowed to have any contact with them via the skewed courts, (nothing new).
They're doing a Weimar regime redux. That was the apex of their heyday, when the children of Germany were their playthings,
and Berlin was a giant brothel- girls and boys for sale, especially the ones whose fathers had died in their holocaust
that was WWI.
@j2
has maybe 10 Israeli immigrants or American Jews who work for him. Each has 10-15 American Jews who can be called upon. So it's
a wide network.
You're right that clerks secretaries accountants have great access to information. But the Israeli system is widespread.
Plus, the information needn't always come from Jews.
It really does exist. There's an Israeli who hosts sabbath dinners in Los Angeles. He invites American Jews to be briefed
on what's going on in Israel. I'm positive he also recruits agents in place he spots at those dinners. Guests who have no access
to anything useful at least get to feel they're participating in the cause.
@AnonFromTN
he only reason they aren't in jail is that they have enough money to get away with any crime.
True. And this Epstein coverage is bringing out more nooks and crannies of how the really rich control systems for their
own benefit.
Like why was Epsteins tax rate on his NY mansion only 0.6% .why is Bill de Blasio tax rate on his mansion only 0.2% ..when
other NY'ers taxrate is 12%.
@ChuckOrloski
howed the original twelve members in indecent poses . At the entrance to the abbey, there was an inscription which read Fay
ce que voudras – do what thou wilt – a term which Aleister Crowley borrowed nearly 200 years later. "
Ben Franklin likely would have been a prominent visitor to Little St. James, just as he was to
West Wycombe in his day.
Thomas Paine too.
There is regular sex and "deviation", pornography, pedophilia
There is drugs, illegal and legal, hard and soft
Then there is finance, always pimping, always on exploitation, abuse of minors, as young as not yet born, globally, and to
be comitted legally. Pedophilia and drugs are soft core, barely leveling at the sock suspenders of our financiers.
A few hundred of the top tier Wall Street-ers belong in jail, as rats eating their own tail, they only can be administered
there. Starting with Mnuchin. Epstein should be let alone, so he can decoy a little longer, and await his turn, pecking order
obliges. Ah, the public sector, the ones with faces, real fungi are minding the dark.
Linked on this same site today, Michael Hudson, seems to attribute Empire and financial capitalism, debt, the demise of the
dollar, to Trump. ?. Of all men, another scripted clown gets the blame. The shredding is spoiling the carpet.
If unz.com is so willingly pointing out the third liners, as Maya sacrifices to the deities in the shades, then there you
have one more reason the rag is impervious to censorship.
Gardner's and retail store clerks have personal phone numbers of the rich and famous. For instance, clerks at high
end retail clothing stores are supposed to cultivate shoppers on a personal level so they can call them up with the great news
of items they'd like to buy.
Actors producers directors numbers and home addresses can be obtained from people who work at their agents accountants PR
and attorney offices
Police departments have access to all phone numbers. Most of the Find a Number websites don't have the private number of
celebrities. But there are plenty of people who can access all the cell phone records.
How to get away with blackmailing without blackmailing.
First, you need to recruit people in. Have lots of massive parties at your spacious home for wealthy men. Have lots of women
mostly teens and under aged.
Sooner or later there will be some mingling going on. Some billionaire will get handsy and end up in a room with a girl ..and
hidden cameras.
Epstein informs him later the girl was really 15, but offers him a nice, neat way to buy silence: a large allocation to his
hedge fund, which charges 5% ..with power of attorney for himself.
To ease the pain for the black mailee Epstein puts the money in something as safe as treasury notes or money market fund.
Then Epstein collects his 'fees' ..x millions on the interest from treasury notes or etc..
Soooo no traceable blackmail payoff checks or wire transfers from his fellow pedos.
Epstein may also try this on other important political figures, mayors, prosecutors, etc. He doesnt blackmail them to 'invest'
in his fund but has them in his pocket.
The evidence would probably be in a deposit box in his offshore Caribbean bank.
One reason Trump is so pro-Israel and hell bent on attacking Iran could be because the Jews have something on him, which
is not too hard since he's been in business with them for a lifetime and is as unctuous and unscrupulous as any of them.
They might be getting impatient with him on Iran and wants someone who can get the job done like Mike Pence to take over.
Epstein could take down both Clinton and Trump, Clinton has outlived his usefulness to them since Hillary didn't win, he'll
be the sacrificial lamb while they take out Trump for Pence.
Just what I was going to write, but you got there first.
Thank you very much. pedophilia stops at the victims 13th birthday. Then it's various degrees of molestation of a minor .
It's usually 13 and 14, then 15. Then 16 and 17. In some states the age of consent is 16. Epstein's activities weren't just
molestation of minors. They were procuring for prostitution as well.
I have been meaning to ask this for a while, Dr. Giraldi, let’s say stuff you write about Israel is all true, you are ex-CIA,
then can we assume there are many like you or is that not the case? If that’s the case, then why none of them stand up and oppose?
Or are they too afraid of standing up for their country?
There are at least nine factions in the CIA concerning Israeli politics:
1. anti-Israel for emotional reasons (instinctive hostile feelings towards Jews, Judeophobia)
2. anti-Israel for ideological reasons (reasoned opposition towards Judaism and Zionism as doctrines)
3. anti-Israel for strategic reasons (bad for long-term American interests)
4. pro-Israel for emotional reasons (warm feelings towards Jews)
5. pro-Israel for ideological reasons (for instance, Christian Zionists)
6. pro-Israel for occult reasons (the world’s most powerful secret society mandates support as part of a grand mystical scheme)
7. pro-Israel for reasons of personal self-interest (issues concerning bribery, blackmail, careerism, etc.)
8. pro-Israel for strategic reasons (good for long-term American strategic interests)
9. pro-Israel for strategic reasons AND hostile to Jews (Jewish nationalists provide a counterweight to Jewish leftists in
the Diaspora, divide and conquer tactics)
Since the late 1940s, the pro-Israel factions in the CIA have easily dominated the anti-Israel (or Israel-skeptical) factions.
By the way, most CIA employees, including many high level employees, don't have a full understanding of what is going on
in the CIA, including knowledge of the most influential players and operations and their connections.
You can bet that the likes of Rachel Maddow will never change their tune on the subject
of Russiagate.
However, with the election season heating up, it might seem wise for them to
start singing a different tune altogether, such as Sanders and Warren are too radical to have
any chance of defeating Trump.
The saddest thing of all is that the Dems' fixation on Russia
and Putin is now coming back to bite them in the ass. Trump could not have asked for a better
gift.
"... You hypocrites! You build monuments for the prophets and decorate the graves of the righteous. And you say, 'If we had lived in the days of our ancestors , we would not have taken part with them in shedding the blood of His messengers ..."
"... this entire Russian collusion meme seems as though it is an hysterical reaction to the spin put out by the Clinton political faction and their neoliberal enablers after their shocking loss in the 2016 Presidential election. ..."
"... the financial corruption and private pilfering using public power, money laundering and the kind of soft corruption that is rampant amongst our new elite is all there ..."
"... We are reassured and misled by the same kinds of voices that have always served the status quo and the monied interests, the think tanks, the so-called 'institutes,' and the web sites and former con men who offer a constant stream of thinly disguised propaganda and misstatements of principle and history. We are comforted by their lies. ..."
"... We wish to strike a deal with the Lord, and a deal with the Devil -- to serve both God and Mammon as it suits us. It really is that cliché. And it is so finely woven into the fabric of our day that we cannot see it; we cannot see that it is happening to us and around us. ..."
"... It has always been so, especially in times of such vanity and greed as are these. Then is now. There is nothing new under the sun. And certainly nothing exceptional about the likes of us in our indulgent self-destruction. ..."
"He drew near and saw the city, and he wept for it saying, 'If you had only recognized the things that make for peace.
But now you are blinded to them. Truly, the days will come when your enemies will set up barriers to surround you, and hem
you in on every side. Then they will crush you into the earth, you and your children. And they will not leave one stone
upon another, because you did not recognize the way to your salvation.'"
Luke 19:41-44
"You hypocrites! You build monuments for the prophets and decorate the graves of the righteous. And you say, 'If
we had lived in the days of our ancestors, we would not have taken part with them in shedding the blood of His messengers.'"
Matthew 23:29-30
...the results of the Senate GOP finding no evidence of 'collusion' with Russia by the Trump Administration to influence the
results of the presidential election..
This last item is not surprising, because this entire Russian collusion meme seems as though it is an hysterical reaction
to the spin put out by the Clinton political faction and their neoliberal enablers after their shocking loss in the 2016 Presidential
election.
Too bad though, because the financial corruption and private pilfering using public power, money laundering and the kind
of soft corruption that is rampant amongst our new elite is all there. And by there we mean on both sides of the fence -- which
is why it had to take a back seat to a manufactured boogeyman.
... ... ...
There is a long road ahead before we see anything like a resolution to this troubling period in American political history.
We look back at other troubled periods and places, and either see them as discrete and fictional, a very different world apart,
or through some rosy lenses of good old times which were largely benign and peaceful. We fail to see the continuity, the similarity,
and the commonality of a dangerous path with ourselves. As they did with their own times gone by. Madness blinds its acolytes, because
they wish it so. They embrace it to hide their shame.
We are reassured and misled by the same kinds of voices that have always served the status quo and the monied interests,
the think tanks, the so-called 'institutes,' and the web sites and former con men who offer a constant stream of thinly disguised
propaganda and misstatements of principle and history. We are comforted by their lies.
People want to hear these reassuring words of comfort and embrace it like a 'religion,' because they do not wish to draw the
conclusions that the genuine principles of faith suggest (dare we say command in this day and age) in their daily lives.
They blind themselves by adopting a kind of a schizoid approach to life, where 'religion' occupies a discrete, rarefied space, and
'political or economic philosophy' dictates another set of everyday 'practical' observances and behaviors which are more pliable,
and pleasing to our hardened and prideful hearts.
We wish to strike a deal with the Lord, and a deal with the Devil -- to serve both God and Mammon as it suits us. It really is
that cliché. And it is so finely woven into the fabric of our day that we cannot see it; we cannot see that it is happening to us
and around us.
And so we trot on into the abyss, one exception and excuse and rationalization for ourselves at a time. And we blind ourselves
with false prophets and their profane theories and philosophies.
As for truth, the truth that brings life, we would interrupt the sermon on the mount itself, saying that this sentiment was all
very well and good, but what stocks should we buy for our portfolio, and what horse is going to win the fifth at Belmont? Tell us
something useful, practical! Oh, and can you please fix this twinge in my left shoulder? It is ruining my golf game.
"Those among the rich who are not, in the rigorous sense, damned, can understand poverty, because they are poor themselves,
after a fashion; they cannot understand destitution. Capable of giving alms, perhaps, but incapable of stripping themselves
bare, they will be moved, to the sound of beautiful music, at Jesus's sufferings, but His Cross, the reality of His Cross, will
horrify them. They want it all out of gold, bathed in light, costly and of little weight; pleasant to see, hanging from a woman's
beautiful throat."
Léon Bloy
No surprise in this. It has always been so, especially in times of such vanity and greed as are these. Then is now. There
is nothing new under the sun. And certainly nothing exceptional about the likes of us in our indulgent self-destruction.
"... Thus, the IRA played a major role in the vast Kremlin conspiracy to alter the outcome of the 2016 election and install Donald Trump in office. But now Judge Dabney Friedrich has ordered Mueller to stop pushing such stories because they're unfair to Concord Management and Consulting, another Prigozhin company, which astonished the legal world in May 2018 by hiring an expensive Washington law firm and demanding its day in court ..."
"... Without the IRA, the only argument left in Mueller's brief is that Russia stole some 28,000 emails and other electronic documents from Democratic National Committee computers and then passed them along to WikiLeaks , which published them to great fanfare in July 2016. ..."
"... But as Consortium News pointed out the day the Mueller report came out, that's dubious as well. [See " The 'Guccifer 2.0' Gaps in Mueller's Full Report ," April 18.] The reason: it rests on a timeline that doesn't make sense: ..."
"... why would Assange announce the leaked emails on June 12 before hearing from the source on June 22? ..."
"... How could that be enough time to review the contents and ensure they were genuine? "If a single one of those emails had been shown to be maliciously altered," blogger Mark F. McCarty points out , "WikiLeaks's reputation would have been in tatters." Quite right. So if Mueller's chronology doesn't hold up, then Assange's original statement that "our source is not the Russian government and it is not a state party" still stands – which it plainly does. ..."
"... Bottom line: Russiagate is going up in smoke. The claim that Russian military intelligence fed thousands of emails to WikiLeaks doesn't stand up to scrutiny while Mueller is not only unable to a prove a connection between the Internet Research Agency and the Kremlin but is barred from even discussing it, according to Friedrich's ruling, without risking a charge of contempt. After 22 months of investigating the ins and outs of Russian interference, Mueller seems to have finally come up dry. ..."
"... "Revenge of the oligarchs" might be a good headline for this story. The IRA indictment initially seemed to be a no-lose proposition for Mueller. He got to look good in the press, the media got to indulge in yet another round of Russia-bashing, while, best of all, no one had to prove a thing. "Mueller's allegations will never be tested in court," noted Andrew C. McCarthy, a former federal prosecutor turned pundit for the rightwing National Review . "That makes his indictment more a political statement than a charging instrument." ..."
"... Then came the unexpected. Concord Management hired Reed Smith, a top-flight law firm with offices around the world, and demanded to be heard. ..."
"... then the firm demanded to exercise its right of discovery, meaning that it wanted access to Mueller's immense investigative file. Blindsided, Mueller's requested a delay "on the astonishing ground," according to McCarthy , "that the defendant has not been properly served – notwithstanding that the defendant has shown up in court and asked to be arraigned." ..."
"... Prigozhin was forcing the special prosecutor to show what he's got, McCarthy went on, at zero risk to himself since he was not on U.S. soil. What was once a no-lose proposition for Mueller was suddenly a no-lose proposition for Putin's unexpectedly clever cook. ..."
"... Now Mueller is in an even worse pickle because he's barred from mentioning a major chunk of his report. What will he discuss if Democrats succeed in getting him to testify before the House intelligence and judiciary committees next week – the weather? ..."
"... If his team goes forward with the Concord prosecution, he'll risk having to turn over sensitive information while involving himself in a legal tangle that could go on for years, all without any conceivable payoff. If he drops it, the upshot will be a public-relations disaster of the first order ..."
"... As skeptics have pointed out, the IRA's social-media campaign was both more modest and more ineffectual then the Mueller report's over-the-top language about a "sweeping and systematic" conspiracy would suggest. Yet after Facebook Vice President Rob Goldman tweeted that "the majority of the Russian ad spend happened AFTER the election," he was forced to beg for forgiveness like a defendant in a Moscow show trial for daring to play down the magnitude of the crime. ..."
"... Hard to believe, but it is possible that the dumb Dem leaders still -- to this day -- believe their story-line. How else to account for the incredible denseness of Pelosi and Nadler, both of whom should be down at the southern border rather than fiddling on a rusty Russia-gate Stradivarius -- fiddling while little kids burn. ..."
"... Trump may be vulgar and unorganized but his efforts to maintain our sovereign borders are welcomed and will secure his second term. 6 or 7 years ago, every senior Democrat (Biden, Hillary, Schumer, Pelosi, etc.) were against open borders and illegal immigrants. Their current stance is crass politics not concern for human welfare. ..."
"... The whole Mueller investigation was always "theatre" and not "law." And not just "theatre" by Mueller, but by the media and the Democratic Party as well. ..."
"... Only a few things were proven: Mueller has no credibility, the "Justice Department" is dysfunctional, the mainstream media is a joke and the the DNC was able to rig the primaries and effectively hide that fact using the fog of the Russiagate farce. ..."
"... What do you do now Mr Mueller, now that your bluff has been called? Another one of many nails in the coffin of this ridiculous, American, Hallucination Hoax called Russiagate! ..."
"... Mueller thought he was simply practicing the real government policy on fooling the public with endless iterations of horse hockey which Dubya tried to obscure with his "fool me once, fool me twice " razz-ma-tazz. ..."
"... You can bet that the likes of Rachel Maddow will never change their tune on the subject of Russiagate. However, with the election season heating up, it might seem wise for them to start singing a different tune altogether, such as Sanders and Warren are too radical to have any chance of defeating Trump. The saddest thing of all is that the Dems' fixation on Russia and Putin is now coming back to bite them in the ass. Trump could not have asked for a better gift. ..."
"... These indictments (including the 12 GRU) were all press releases to fuel the "I'm doing something" and "Russia's involved" noise. Not a lawyer but those who are commented that these Russian "indictments" were not only without evidence (which would have come out in a court had such been the intent) but they went way beyond a straightforward indictment to something approximating an OP ED for the WoPo or NYT. ..."
"... I watched the excellent movie "The Big Short" last night, it was my second viewing after seeing it at the theater. It was painful to watch because it's about the abject failure and corruption of Wall Street, but beyond that, it's about the failure of Our System and about how the People always are the essential losers. ..."
"... We here at Consortiumnews have basically known these facts since Robert Parry's death, why?, because Robert was an extraordinary reporter who actually looked into the underlying dynamic of the subject he reported on. And, relying on his honesty, we were brought along on the Real story leading up to this. ..."
"... What's needed to convince Americans that "Russia" did not interfere in the election and did not hack the DNC is not a judge but an exorcist. ..."
"... This profound belief based on DNC, HRC confabulated and paid for evidence is in so many ways, if not totally, akin to the belief in UFOs and little green men (why is it always "men"?). Yet the same people who are "Russia and Putin did it" frenetic are those who denounce as insane nutters those who believe in the existence of UFOs and those grass colored men ..."
"... It should be interesting to see how this plays out, if the judiciary has the fortitude to stand up to the Den of Spooks. ..."
Don't look now, but a federal judge in Washington, D.C., has just shut down half of Robert
Mueller's Russian-interference case.
In February 2018, the special prosecutor indicted a St. Petersburg troll farm called the
Internet Research Agency along with two other companies, their owner, Yevgeniy Prigozhin, and
12 employees. The charge: fraud, traveling to the United States under false pretenses, and
using social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter to "sow discord" and "interfere in US
political and electoral processes without detection of their Russian affiliation."
The charge was both legally dubious and heavy-handed, a case of using a sledge hammer to
swat a fly. But Mueller went even further in his report , an
expurgated version of which was made public in April. No longer just a Russian company, the IRA
was now an arm of the Russian government. "[T]he Special Counsel's investigation," it declared
on page one, "established that Russia interfered in the 2016 election principally through two
operations.
First, a Russian entity carried out a social media campaign that favored
presidential candidate Donald J. Trump and disparaged presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.
Second, a Russian intelligence service conducted computer-intrusion operations against
entities, employees, and volunteers working in the Clinton campaign and then released stolen
documents."
"Prigozhin," the report added, referring to the IRA owner, "is widely reported to have ties
to Russian President Vladimir Putin." A few pages later, it said that the IRA's efforts
"constituted 'active measures' a term that typically refers to operations conducted by Russian
security services aimed at influencing the course of international affairs."
Thus, the IRA played a major role in the vast Kremlin conspiracy to alter the outcome of the
2016 election and install Donald Trump in office. But now Judge Dabney Friedrich has ordered
Mueller to stop pushing such stories because they're unfair to Concord Management and
Consulting, another Prigozhin company, which astonished the legal world in May 2018 by hiring
an expensive Washington law firm and demanding its day in court.
Contrary to internet chatter , Friedrich
did not offer an opinion as to whether the IRA-Kremlin connection is true or false. Rather, she
told the special prosecutor to keep quiet because such statements go beyond the scope of the
original indictment and are therefore prejudicial to the defendant. But it may be a distinction
without a difference since the only evidence that Mueller puts forth in the public version of
his report is a New York Timesarticle
from February 2018 entitled "Yevgeny Prigozhin, Russian Oligarch Indicted by US, Is Known as
'Putin's Cook.'"
It's a case of trial by press clip that should have been laughed out of court – and
now, more or less, it is. Without the IRA, the only argument left in Mueller's brief is that
Russia stole some 28,000 emails and other electronic documents from Democratic National
Committee computers and then passed them along to WikiLeaks , which published them to
great fanfare in July 2016.
But as Consortium News pointed out the day the Mueller report came out, that's
dubious as well. [See " The
'Guccifer 2.0' Gaps in Mueller's Full Report ," April 18.] The reason: it rests on a
timeline that doesn't make sense:
June 12, 2016: WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange
announces that "leaks in relation to Hillary Clinton" were on the way.
June 15: Guccifer 2.0,
allegedly a stand-in for Russian military intelligence, goes on line to claim credit for the
hack.
June 22: Guccifer and WikiLeaks establish contact.
July 14: Guccifer sends WikiLeaks an encrypted file.
July 18: WikiLeaks confirms that it's opened it up.
July 22: The group releases a giant email cache indicating that the DNC rigged the nominating
process in favor of Hillary Clinton and against Bernie Sanders.
But why would Assange announce the leaked emails on June 12 before hearing from the source
on June 22? Was he clairvoyant? Why would he release a massive file just eight days after
receiving it and as a little as four days after opening it up?
How could that be enough time to
review the contents and ensure they were genuine? "If a single one of those emails had been
shown to be maliciously altered," blogger Mark F. McCarty
points out , "WikiLeaks's reputation would have been in tatters." Quite right. So if
Mueller's chronology doesn't hold up, then Assange's original
statement that "our source is not the Russian government and it is not a state party" still
stands – which it plainly does.
Going Up in Smoke
Bottom line: Russiagate is going up in smoke. The claim that Russian military intelligence
fed thousands of emails to WikiLeaks doesn't stand up to scrutiny while Mueller is not
only unable to a prove a connection between the Internet Research Agency and the Kremlin but is
barred from even discussing it, according to Friedrich's ruling, without risking a charge of
contempt. After 22 months of investigating the ins and outs of Russian interference, Mueller
seems to have finally come up dry.
"Revenge of the oligarchs" might be a good headline for this story. The IRA indictment
initially seemed to be a no-lose proposition for Mueller. He got to look good in the press, the
media got to indulge in yet another round of Russia-bashing, while, best of all, no one had to
prove a thing. "Mueller's allegations will never be tested in court," noted Andrew C. McCarthy,
a former federal prosecutor turned pundit for the rightwing National Review . "That
makes his indictment more a political statement than a charging instrument."
Then came the unexpected. Concord Management hired Reed Smith, a top-flight law firm with
offices around the world, and demanded to be heard. The move was "a real head-scratcher," one
Washington attorney
toldBuzzfeed , because Concord was beyond the reach of U.S. law and therefore had
nothing to fear from an indictment and nothing to gain, apparently, from going to court. But
then the firm demanded to exercise its right of discovery, meaning that it wanted access to
Mueller's immense investigative file. Blindsided, Mueller's requested a delay "on the
astonishing ground," according to McCarthy
, "that the defendant has not been properly served – notwithstanding that the defendant
has shown up in court and asked to be arraigned."
Prigozhin was forcing the special prosecutor to show what he's got, McCarthy went on, at
zero risk to himself since he was not on U.S. soil. What was once a no-lose proposition for
Mueller was suddenly a no-lose proposition for Putin's unexpectedly clever cook.
Now Mueller is in an even worse pickle because he's barred from mentioning a major chunk of
his report. What will he discuss if Democrats
succeed in getting him to testify before the House intelligence and judiciary committees next
week – the weather?
If his team goes forward with the Concord prosecution, he'll risk
having to turn over sensitive information while involving himself in a legal tangle that could
go on for years, all without any conceivable payoff. If he drops it, the upshot will be a
public-relations disaster of the first order.
As skeptics have pointed out, the IRA's social-media campaign was both more modest and more
ineffectual then the Mueller report's over-the-top language about a "sweeping and systematic"
conspiracy would suggest. Yet after Facebook Vice President Rob Goldman tweeted that "the majority
of the Russian ad spend happened AFTER the election," he was forced to
beg for forgiveness like a defendant in a Moscow show trial for daring to play down the
magnitude of the crime.
But it wasn't Goldman who shaved the truth. Rather, it was Mueller. Thanks to the unexpected
appearance of Concord Management, he's now paying the price.
Daniel Lazare is the author of "The Frozen Republic: How the Constitution Is Paralyzing
Democracy" (Harcourt Brace, 1996) and other books about American politics. He has written for a
wide variety of publications from The Nation to Le Monde Diplomatique and blogs
about the Constitution and related matters at D aniellazare.com .
If you value this original article, please considermaking a donationto Consortium News so we can bring you more stories
like this one.
David H , July 12, 2019 at 18:17
Does "prejudicial to the defendant" mean the same thing as prejudiced against the
defendant?
Stan W. , July 12, 2019 at 13:55
The myth regarding Russian influence in the 2016 election that enabled Donald Trump to
"steal" the presidency from Hillary Clinton would make a good sequel to a movie from 1966.
Its title: "THE RUSSIANS ARE COMING! THE RUSSIANS ARE COMING!"
Jeff Harrison , July 12, 2019 at 12:33
The one thing I'd like to know is: did Mueller ever provide the requested discovery
documents or not?
BRAVO, Dan. AND, as you aware, the "hacking half" of Mueller's magnum opus also cannot
bear close scrutiny.
Remember where you heard this first, "Current and former intelligence officials" tell me
that Mueller has asked his mother to write a note to be excused from the field trip to
Congress next Thursday, the 17th.
In my view, the only sympathy Mueller should be able to elicit at this point is the cruel
reality that he chose to perform one last job for the Deep State after he had reached the age
of statutory senility. His handlers will try to prop him up to the extent possible, but the
die is now cast. The whipping-up of Russia-gate can now be seen -- at least by consortium
news readers -- as a "best-defense-is-a-good-offensive" operation to obfuscate the reality of
Deep-State-gate.
Hard to believe, but it is possible that the dumb Dem leaders still -- to this day --
believe their story-line. How else to account for the incredible denseness of Pelosi and
Nadler, both of whom should be down at the southern border rather than fiddling on a rusty
Russia-gate Stradivarius -- fiddling while little kids burn. They ought to do their
Constitutional duty to impeach -- not on the basis of evidence-less Russia-gate charges --
but because the President is treading heavily on KIDS, as well as the Constitution.
Let's hear more from Tulsi Gabbard.
Again, great job, Dan. I can almost see Bob Parry smiling.
Ray
Chet Roman , July 12, 2019 at 18:15
You've been right all along Ray. Appreciate all your accurate investigating and
reporting.
However, I must disagree with your suggestion of impeachment on two phony issues: kids and
the constitution. You should focus your wrath on the Democrats that will not correct our
immigration laws. The only reason there is a surge of children and families is because the
democrats and their radical liberals have made it clear to the world that if you bring
children you are free to illegally cross the border. You may be stopped but the kids you
bring with you (your own or rent-a-kiddie) are essentially a get out of jail card. We now
have Africans from the Congo crossing over with luggage, the latest group are Haitians,
WTF?
As an immigrant I support our immigrants that come here legally but not those that break
the law. Diversity is not our strength but just adds to the division and conflict within our
society. Trump may be vulgar and unorganized but his efforts to maintain our sovereign
borders are welcomed and will secure his second term. 6 or 7 years ago, every senior Democrat
(Biden, Hillary, Schumer, Pelosi, etc.) were against open borders and illegal immigrants.
Their current stance is crass politics not concern for human welfare.
Mike from Jersey , July 12, 2019 at 10:20
The whole Mueller investigation was always "theatre" and not "law." And not just "theatre"
by Mueller, but by the media and the Democratic Party as well. And the Republicans cannot
rejoice in the result since – not only did Mueller baselessly refuse to concede
"exoneration" – Mueller's report itself is a joke in the first place. This article
points that out.
So what are we left with?
Only a few things were proven: Mueller has no credibility, the "Justice Department" is
dysfunctional, the mainstream media is a joke and the the DNC was able to rig the primaries
and effectively hide that fact using the fog of the Russiagate farce.
In short, America's political system is completely broken.
We have heard the name of Judge Dabney Freidrich before. She is a bit of a wildcard here,
as she does not necessarily do what the powers that be expect of her. Here she pulls the rug
out from under Mueller when he and the Scooby Doo gang was no doubt expecting never to
actually have to go to court against the Russian meddling kids:
and here she has Kavanaugh's back during his Supreme Court nomination process as he
screams about his entitlement to do whatever he damned well pleases because he's entitled
rich folk who went to Yale part of the Club aristocracy:
About Prigozhin the oligarch, Wikipedia: "The Anti-Corruption Foundation accused Prigozhin
of corrupt business practices. They estimated his illegal wealth to be worth more than one
billion rubles.[11]" So the opposition outfit (and those exist in "dictatorial" Russia)
accuses Prigozhin of amassing 16 million dollars of "illegal wealth". Poor Russia. In USA, a
single doctor can get more by overbilling Medicare, Workers' Compensation etc.
KiwiAntz , July 12, 2019 at 09:16
Mueller, Mueller, Mueller- Class, anyone, anyone?? Ferris Mueller's Day Off is turning
into a nightmare & his Report is crashing & burning, faster than a US Drone, shot
down & blasted out of the Sky, by the IRG in the Sea of Homuz? It's all very well
accusing people of crimes & slandering reputations knowing or hoping that under normal
circumstances the accused wouldn't show up to defend the charges, but these accused Russians
are prepared to challenge Mueller's fictitious findings? What do you do now Mr Mueller, now
that your bluff has been called? Another one of many nails in the coffin of this ridiculous,
American, Hallucination Hoax called Russiagate!
Realist , July 12, 2019 at 16:08
Mueller thought he was simply practicing the real government policy on fooling the public
with endless iterations of horse hockey which Dubya tried to obscure with his "fool me once,
fool me twice " razz-ma-tazz.
Mr. Mueller will take the "A" train to Davy Jones' locker
trying to hoodwink the public on this fiasco, rather than getting religion and uttering the
more appropriate "mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa."
AnneR , July 12, 2019 at 09:07
Nice, Mr Lazare, very, very nice. One can only hope that Mueller and the rest of the
conspirators (for what else are they?) get their full comeuppance. However, I doubt that
given past history and the ability of all those with and in power to escape full scrutiny and
real punishment (a lengthy prison sentence).
Unfortunately and dishearteningly, I also doubt that the true believers, of which there
are all too many and among whom all too many are highly and expensively educated, will let
any of this alter by one iota their apparently adamantine position on "Russiagate," their
anti-Putin Russophobia. Or their equally apparent adoration of HRC.
Rob , July 12, 2019 at 12:27
You can bet that the likes of Rachel Maddow will never change their tune on the subject of
Russiagate. However, with the election season heating up, it might seem wise for them to
start singing a different tune altogether, such as Sanders and Warren are too radical to have
any chance of defeating Trump. The saddest thing of all is that the Dems' fixation on Russia
and Putin is now coming back to bite them in the ass. Trump could not have asked for a better
gift.
Antonio Costa , July 12, 2019 at 09:01
These indictments (including the 12 GRU) were all press releases to fuel the "I'm doing
something" and "Russia's involved" noise. Not a lawyer but those who are commented that these
Russian "indictments" were not only without evidence (which would have come out in a court
had such been the intent) but they went way beyond a straightforward indictment to something
approximating an OP ED for the WoPo or NYT.
The intel report ordered by Obama (2 of them) had no evidence, and the last one went on
and on about RT as if RT has conspired to infiltrate the minds of US voters (huge laugh given
their reach and those who watch, or listen generally don't need convincing of US government
nefarious doings).
I did read both reports and indictments, and as a lay person it was clear there was no
substance. In the case of the intel report even Obama concluded there was nothing.
Yet the 2+ year circus went on and on as a media ($$$) frenzy. No one really cared, nor do
they to this day.
This is what the unraveling of an empire looks like. Let's hope there's a truly new and
better day ahead after the collapse.
OlyaPola , July 12, 2019 at 08:58
When deflating a balloon care is required to ensure it doesn't shoot off in all directions
exposing the skill levels of would-be performers.
Bob Van Noy , July 12, 2019 at 08:05
I watched the excellent movie "The Big Short" last night, it was my second viewing after
seeing it at the theater. It was painful to watch because it's about the abject failure and
corruption of Wall Street, but beyond that, it's about the failure of Our System and about
how the People always are the essential losers.
We here at Consortiumnews have basically known these facts since Robert Parry's death,
why?, because Robert was an extraordinary reporter who actually looked into the underlying
dynamic of the subject he reported on. And, relying on his honesty, we were brought along on
the Real story leading up to this.
Now, much like the movie I mentioned, we know we were right to trust CN, but there is
little joy in watching the confirmation of a failed fourth estate and failed democratic
experiment. Now we are left with the anxiety of how to repair this mess
What's needed to convince Americans that "Russia" did not interfere in the election and
did not hack the DNC is not a judge but an exorcist.
AnneR , July 12, 2019 at 09:13
Truly. This profound belief based on DNC, HRC confabulated and paid for evidence is in so
many ways, if not totally, akin to the belief in UFOs and little green men (why is it always
"men"?). Yet the same people who are "Russia and Putin did it" frenetic are those who
denounce as insane nutters those who believe in the existence of UFOs and those grass colored
men
Realist , July 12, 2019 at 04:17
Maybe Mueller should ask Putin for asylum before he concedes the truth and implicates
Brennan, Clapper, Hillary and Obama as masterminds of Intelgate. I don't think he's getting a
pardon from Trump.
That Hillary was so clever in her design to fatally slur both the Donald
and the "New Hitler" in Moscow with one big lie, while deftly knifing Bernie in the back as
attentions were directed at the bigger fish. Not!
It should be interesting to see how this
plays out, if the judiciary has the fortitude to stand up to the Den of Spooks.
You have that right, as usual. "If the judiciary ." A very BIG "If." How many judges like Dabney Friedrich, I wonder, are still on the bench? We may be about
to see.
This debauchery is a part of the crisis of neoliberalism. It does increases the level of de-legitimization of neoliberal elite.
As one commenter pointed out: we need the names of scum, wealthy perverts from the United States who travelled to Epstein
island-sized rape dungeon off the coast of Saint Thomas.
Notable quotes:
"... This appears to be something of a pattern. "What is so amazing to me is how his entire social circle knew about this and just blithely overlooked it," Ward says of Epstein's pederasty. "While praising his charm, brilliance and generous donations to Harvard, those [I] spoke to all mentioned the girls as an aside." ..."
"... The Epstein case is first and foremost about the casual victimization of vulnerable girls. But it is also a political scandal, if not a partisan one. It reveals a deep corruption among mostly male elites across parties, and the way the very rich can often purchase impunity for even the most loathsome of crimes ..."
"... our elites still love Epstein, even if he does rape little girls ..."
"... This is how America is. This is how our ruling class works: Democrat, Republican, whatever. As the inimitable Matthew Walther points out , there's a reason people believe in Pizzagate. The Hellfire Club is real. And for decades, we've emboldened them considerably. ..."
"... Surely I'm not the only one who noticed that the Epstein sex abuse timeline is nearly identical to the Catholic Church sex abuse timeline. Both investigations were initiated in the early 2000s. Both revealed that the exploitation of children was an open secret in the highest echelons of power. Both investigations were closed a few years later, though not resolved. We assumed justice would take its course, and slowly began to forget. And then within two years of each other, both scandals emerged again, more sordid than ever. And on both occasions, we realized that nothing had changed. ..."
"... Of course, we know where that leads us. For two centuries, conservatives have tried to dampen the passions that led France to cannibalize herself circa 1789. ..."
"... Yes: those passions are legitimate. We should feel contempt for our leaders when we discover that two presidents cavorted with Epstein, almost certainly aware that he preyed on minors. We should feel disgust at the mere possibility that Pope Francis rehabilitated Theodore McCarrick. And we should be furious that these injustices haven't even come close to being properly redressed. ..."
"... This isn't about politics. This is about common decency and respect for the most vulnerable. Clinton? Trump? Who cares? If--and that's a big "if"--it comes to pass that either or both were involved in the Epstein festivities then either or both are scum and should be punished accordingly --along with the rest of their playmates at the Epstein playground. ..."
"... Does the author have some evidence to prove that President Trump is a pedophile, as he suggests in this article? Are all persons who may have been friends with Epstein perverts and criminals? ..."
"... If our decadent elite falls at all, it will be from imperial over-reach and losing a major foreign war, not from pedophilia, which is rapidly being normalized along with the rest of LGBTQWERTYUIOP. ..."
"... The so called elites seem above reproach. Our morality has been skewed through the soul. ..."
"... I applaud the courageous outliers like Ryan Dawson and Phil Giraldi that have considerably more guts than me. Blessings ..."
"... I don't think there is going to be a revolution, whether in UK or US, at most people would be outraged for couple of weeks and then forget. ..."
"... Excellent article. But off the mark on one key point. The corruption of the elites and Ruling Class -- and they are sickeningly corrupt -- is only a reflection of, or if you will a leading indicator, of a related corruption of the body politic. ..."
"... So Trump simply makes a comment, has no record of any flights, attendance or participation and this article would have you believe that it equates as despicable as a frequent flyer on the Lolita Express? This author is no different than the fake news. ..."
"... Trump did allegedly make one flight on the plane, from the NY area to Florida. No records show him flying to the "orgy island". ..."
"... Actually, the logs don't show that he was on the plane. Epstein's brother CLAIMS he was on the plane...the most anybody else has said to support that is that Trump looked at the plane on the ground. ..."
"... It's a Trump problem insofar as he continues to defend Acosta. This is the Sec of Labor who effectively let Epstein walk and who now oversees anti-human trafficking efforts (which he has repeatedly tried to gut the funding for). ..."
"... Did you see Acosta's press conference? The local State DA wanted to let Epstein walk - on a lesser state charge through a Grand Jury. Acosta's US Attorney office stepped in to get the charges increased as much as they could so that Epstein would do SOME jail time and - more importantly - have to register as a sex offender. ..."
"... I agree. As much as I detest Trump, I don't think that he was involved with Epstein's debauchery. However, I do believe the women that claim being assaulted, because he is on tape claiming to do what they describe. And there is so many of them. And he has had multiple documented affairs while married to every one of his wives. But no evidence yet of him with underage girls. ..."
"... Right, because those Kavanaugh accusers were so credible, right? No evidence, decades later? Nope. Unlike Kavanaugh, Trump was on a big stage for decades and was a pretty easy target with the tabloids looking for dirt...but none of them came forward. ..."
"... Trump owes America an apology, reading his comments it is obvious he was aware of, and disapproved of, Epstien proclivities, but didn't have the guts to stand up. (I do not believe the stories of Trump being involved, but if it turns out I am wrong on that, fry him ) ..."
Our elites cavorted with a pedophile, almost certainly aware of what he was up to. This is how revolutions begin.
Bill Clinton (Wikipedia Commons); Jeffrey Epstein mugshot (public domain) and Donald Trump
(Gabe Skidmore /Flickr)
For once, I'm with New York Times writer Michelle Goldberg: Jeffrey Epstein is the ultimate symbol of plutocratic rot.
In her
latest column , Goldberg interviews Vicky Ward, who covered the 2003 revelations of Epstein's sex abuse for Vanity Fair
. Ward's editor, Graydon Carter, allegedly ran interference for the high-flying pervert, nixing her discussion with two women
who claimed to have been assaulted by Epstein. "He's sensitive about the young women," Carter explained to Ward.
This appears to be something of a pattern. "What is so amazing to me is how his entire social circle knew about this and
just blithely overlooked it," Ward says of Epstein's pederasty. "While praising his charm, brilliance and generous donations to
Harvard, those [I] spoke to all mentioned the girls as an aside."
Back to Goldberg:
The Epstein case is first and foremost about the casual victimization of vulnerable girls. But it is also a political
scandal, if not a partisan one. It reveals a deep corruption among mostly male elites across parties, and the way the very rich
can often purchase impunity for even the most loathsome of crimes. If it were fiction, it would be both too sordid and
too on-the-nose to be believable, like a season of "True Detective" penned by a doctrinaire Marxist.
Of course, Goldberg -- being a Democrat -- doesn't want us to think of this as a partisan scandal. Yet Nancy Pelosi's daughter
conspicuously tweeted that it's "quite likely
that some of our faves are implicated." We all know by now that President Bill Clinton was a
frequent flyer on the Lolita Express, Epstein's
private jet, which ferried wealthy perverts from the United States to his island-sized rape dungeon off the coast of Saint Thomas.
Still, a few Republicans will almost certainly be implicated, too. Now, look: I voted for President Donald Trump in 2016. If
I don't vote for him in 2020, it will be because I've lost faith in the whole democratic process and have moved to a hole in the
ground to live as a hobbit. Having said that, Trump is definitely tainted by Epstein. In a 2002 interview with New York Magazine
, the president called him a "terrific guy." "It
is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do," Trump said, "and many of them are on the younger side."
Don't pretend that's an innocent remark. It's like when Uncle Steve passes out face-down on the kitchen floor at the family Christmas
party and Uncle Bill says, "I guess that one likes to drink." We still love Uncle Steve, even if he does overdo it on the
fire water. And our elites still love Epstein, even if he does rape little girls. None of us is perfect, after all.
This is how America is. This is how our ruling class works: Democrat, Republican, whatever. As the inimitable Matthew Walther
points out ,
there's a reason people believe in Pizzagate. The Hellfire Club is real. And for decades, we've emboldened them considerably.
Remember how Democrats and centrist Republicans mocked conservatives for making such a stink about Monica Lewinsky's blue dress?
The media elite competed to see who could appear the most unfazed by the fact that our sax-playing president was getting a bit on
the side. "I mean, heh heh, I love my wife, but, heh, the 1950s called, man! They want their morality police back."
Well, look where that got us. Two confirmed adulterers have occupied the White House in living memory; both are now under fire
for cavorting with a child sex slaver on Orgy Island. Go ahead and act surprised, Renault.
♦♦♦
Surely I'm not the only one who noticed that the Epstein sex abuse timeline is nearly identical to the Catholic Church sex abuse
timeline. Both investigations were initiated in the early 2000s. Both revealed that the exploitation of children was an open secret
in the highest echelons of power. Both investigations were closed a few years later, though not resolved. We assumed justice would
take its course, and slowly began to forget. And then within two years of each other, both scandals emerged again, more sordid than
ever. And on both occasions, we realized that nothing had changed.
Whew. Now I get why people become communists. Not the new-wave, gender-fluid, pink-haired Trots, of course. Nor the new far Left,
which condemns child predators like Epstein out one side of its mouth while
demanding
sympathy for pedophiles out the other.
No: I mean the old-fashioned, blue-collar, square-jawed Stalinists. I mean the guy with eight fingers and 12 kids who saw photos
of the annual Manhattan debutantes' ball, felt the rumble in his stomach, and figured he may as well eat the rich.
Of course, we know where that leads us. For two centuries, conservatives have tried to dampen the passions that led France to
cannibalize herself circa 1789.
Nevertheless, those passions weren't illegitimate -- they were just misdirected. Only an Englishman like Edmund Burke could have
referred to the reign of Louis XIV as "the age of chivalry." Joseph de Maistre spoke for real French conservatives when he said
the decadent, feckless aristocracy deserved to be guillotined. The problem is, Maistre argued, there was no one more suitable to
succeed them.
Yes: those passions are legitimate. We should feel contempt for our leaders when we discover that two presidents cavorted
with Epstein, almost certainly aware that he preyed on minors. We should feel disgust at the
mere
possibility that Pope Francis rehabilitated Theodore McCarrick. And we should be furious that these injustices haven't even
come close to being properly redressed.
"Us Democrats"??? This isn't about politics. This is about common decency and respect for the most vulnerable. Clinton? Trump?
Who cares? If--and that's a big "if"--it comes to pass that either or both were involved in the Epstein festivities then either
or both are scum and should be punished accordingly --along with the rest of their playmates at the Epstein playground.
The only question is whether or not those who participated in this apparent debauch will ever be brought to justice--so,
on that note--let the dissembling begin!
Does the author have some evidence to prove that President Trump is a pedophile, as he suggests in this article? Are all
persons who may have been friends with Epstein perverts and criminals?
You are as my grandfather told me repeatedly: "You are your associates & colleagues, their morality or lack thereof, will
in time infect you as well, despite all protests to the contrary; choose wisely."
If our decadent elite falls at all, it will be from imperial over-reach and losing a major foreign war, not from pedophilia,
which is rapidly being normalized along with the rest of LGBTQWERTYUIOP.
In France, the generation of aristocrats and especially
the royal family who were guillotined were relatively conservative in their sexual habits compared to the bloodthirsty sexual
revolutionaries who murdered them. And the libertine aristocrats of Great Britain (I believe that's where the actual hellfire
club was from) led the war against Napoleon and the temporary victory of the old order which followed his defeat.
The so called elites seem above reproach. Our morality has been skewed through the soul. Tribalism is alive and well. Wars,
diversity, erasing of our most cherished values, and a mainstream media that is in lockstep the rulers and those who see fit
to erase Freedom of Speech and make arbitrarily decisions as to what we can and cannot say. It is like living a bad dream.
I
applaud the courageous outliers like Ryan Dawson and Phil Giraldi that have considerably more guts than me. Blessings
It's the mainstream media that forced this into the light. The elites and the justice system did all they could to cover
it up, same as with the Catholic Church.
As for "our most cherished virtues", this has all been going on forever. Kings and courtiers, masters and slaves, the son
of the manor and the serving girls. Give me a break.
The only thing that is changing it is a shift in power to women.
"Paederasty" is better reserved for relationships between patrician
men, and boys, in which there was an expectation that the boy would
eventually approximate the social rank of his lover. Not to be applied
to a man running a little-girl brothel.
In UK thousands of girls were raped and nobody lost their job over it. Well, correction, people who tried to bring attention
to the horrific crimes happening lost their jobs or were prosecuted. After the scandal could no longer be contained and arrests
were finally made, there was no reckoning. No people marching in the streets, demanding heads of the goverment. I don't think
there is going to be a revolution, whether in UK or US, at most people would be outraged for couple of weeks and then forget.
Or might possibly be that upon examination, it became abundantly clear that the allegations were highly exaggerated as is
typically the case in these matters.
It might be a good idea to keep a clear head and hope that evidence "actual evidence" will determine events as opposed to
the salacious hysetria that usually surrounds these cases.
"...the decadent, feckless aristocracy deserve to be guillotined. The problem is...there is no one suitable to replace them."
100%. And I work as a psychiatric RN in a busy Emergency Room. Believe me, depravity in this country is not in the least
bit confined to 'elites'. They just make convenient scapegoats. I can tell you hundreds of stories. But conservatively, I would
estimate that anywhere from 50% to 75% of the women I care for were abused as children. And I have cared for literally thousands
of women over the years.
"This is how revolutions are born."
Not so fast. The French peasants were rioting over bread, not aristocratic decadence. In 21st Century America, no one is
starving. The poor in this country are obese, for Chr-sakes! And half the country is implicated in so-called 'aristocratic decadence',
through online porn.
And like John Lennon once wrote, "You say you want a revolution?" Be careful what you wish for...
Prosecutors will tiptoe around anything that puts them in an awkward position vis-a-vis the rich and powerful.
These are people that prosecutors want to owe you favors, and these are also people that can ruin the lives and career prospects
of law enforcement.
This explains why, to give instance, Comey engaged in comically tortured legal reasoning to justify not bringing charges
against HRC for servergate, when she would be cooling her heels in a SuperMax if she were a normie. According to conventional
wisdom, HRC was going to be the next president, already anointed practically, and that meant that she was someone that would
be in a position to do Comey big favors, and at the same time, someone that you did not want to make an enemy of.
Excellent article. But off the mark on one key point. The corruption of the elites and Ruling Class -- and they are sickeningly
corrupt -- is only a reflection of, or if you will a leading indicator, of a related corruption of the body politic.
The Clintons, for example, have been getting away with sordid and even criminal behavior for a long time. It didn't stop
a major political party from putting one of them at the top of its presidential ticket only a few years ago nor a majority of
voters from pulling the lever for her.
In fact, going back to the Lewinsky saga, it was not only the elites who pooh-poohed the whole thing; it was also the citizenry.
Check the record. Yeah, the Clintons are Exhibit A of the Real Problem. Anyway, there ain't gonna be a revolution, at least
not the kind that Michael Warren Davis warns of.
"In fact, going back to the Lewinsky saga, it was not only the elites who pooh-poohed the whole thing; it was also the citizenry.
Check the record. "
The equivalent today would have been if Mueller's replacement spent a few more years 'investigating' Trump, only to set him
up with a perjury trap over whether or not he committed adultery.
This piece at the very least is not well researched hit piece on Trump but seems more to be a rabble rousing class warfare
type click bait filler. James Patterson reports that Trump kicked Epstein out of Maro-a-Lago 15 years ago after there were complaints
that he was abusive to women and more recently has said he is not a fan of Epstein. I've seen no evidence that Trump participated
in the abuse of underage girls with Epstein. Trump is no saint but sensationalizing this story and implicating Trump to sell
your copy is not journalism.
So Trump simply makes a comment, has no record of any flights, attendance or participation and this article would have you
believe that it equates as despicable as a frequent flyer on the Lolita Express? This author is no different than the fake news.
And it was a comment made three years before the first known report to police about Epstein's behavior.
I read Trump's comment as Trump being Trump. Unless he is responding to a personal attack, Trump tends to layer on the compliments
and tries to speak positive about people.
Trump did allegedly make one flight on the plane, from the NY area to Florida. No records show him flying to the "orgy island".
Actually, the logs don't show that he was on the plane. Epstein's brother CLAIMS he was on the plane...the most anybody else
has said to support that is that Trump looked at the plane on the ground.
The author throws around "revolution" so casually... The guillotine definitely needs a resurgence; unfortunately, it's not just the aristocracy that needs it; moreover, there
are still none better suited to take over after they chopping has stopped.
And throws without not even a thought but also without care to learn or now.
It is funny that American journo is now invoking Stalin's ghost, but.... Stalinists were COUNTER-revolutionaries.
And he says he is sure he knows who they felt?
.
Inflation, words means nothing today for journos, being merely a click-bait
It's a Trump problem insofar as he continues to defend Acosta. This is the Sec of Labor who effectively let Epstein walk
and who now oversees anti-human trafficking efforts (which he has repeatedly tried to gut the funding for).
Also, Trump supposedly told a campaign aide that he barred Epstein. Perhaps that's true. Hard to know with this inveterate
liar.
Did you see Acosta's press conference? The local State DA wanted to let Epstein walk - on a lesser state charge through a
Grand Jury. Acosta's US Attorney office stepped in to get the charges increased as much as they could so that Epstein would
do SOME jail time and - more importantly - have to register as a sex offender.
Now, should the Feds have interfered in a State case is a matter for another discussion. But Actosta's office did MORE than
what they should and everything they could with the evidence at the time.
As to Trump banning Epstein - it isn't "Trump told some aide", it is in the court records of the trial. Trump was subpoenaed
and talked voluntarily to the attorney for the girls. The attorney for the girls researched it and he says, and it is in the
court record, that Trump banned Epstein.
This is not a "Trump problem" as the media is trying to make it...this is a Dem problem.
I agree. As much as I detest Trump, I don't think that he was involved with Epstein's debauchery. However, I do believe the
women that claim being assaulted, because he is on tape claiming to do what they describe. And there is so many of them. And
he has had multiple documented affairs while married to every one of his wives. But no evidence yet of him with underage girls.
Right, because those Kavanaugh accusers were so credible, right? No evidence, decades later? Nope. Unlike Kavanaugh, Trump
was on a big stage for decades and was a pretty easy target with the tabloids looking for dirt...but none of them came forward.
THAT is your biggest clue that their claims are, as the judge recently said in dismissing one of these laughable cases, ""As
currently stated, the Complaint presents a political lawsuit, not a tort and wages lawsuit,"
Then, of course, the Trump lawyers just released a video of what happened that shows he gave her a peck on the cheek during
a conversation as he was leaving. She lied.
I think some conservative, maybe Rubio, needs to stand up and simply state they are going to lead on this, and then do so.
Simply go after anyone that is involved and make the casual nature of peoples knowledge of this kind of behavior into a something
that has to be repented of.
Trump owes America an apology, reading his comments it is obvious he was aware of, and disapproved of, Epstien proclivities,
but didn't have the guts to stand up. (I do not believe the stories of Trump being involved, but if it turns out I am wrong
on that, fry him )
For a republican leader to stand up as I am suggesting, would force the left to make a decision. Either abandon their current
attitudes towards sexual permissiveness, or defend them. Either way conservatives win.
That comment was from three years before Epstein was charged. But YOUNG does not mean TOO young, always, and Trump was obviously
speaking of what OTHERS say, not what he knew for a fact.
Davis--and many TAC readers--voted for Trump even though the then-candidate sexually assaulted women and got caught bragging
about it.
While I welcome conservatives to the #metoo era, it must be acknowledged that their "outrage" didn't come to life until they
could attach the dirty deeds to Bill Clinton and other "elites" (whatever that overused term means).
No, it came with Weinstein...who proved what Trump ACTUALLY said on the bus to be true. Not that HE, Trump, HAD grabbed women,
but that young women seeking fame would LET the rich and famous grab them. Shortly after we found out that this was true when
we found out about Weinstein and what those young starlets allowed. What people knew, all good Hollywood liberals and Dems,
and LET continue while accepting Weinstein's political contributions and working with him professionally.
Essentially Epstein run a brothel for influential politicians and other stars. Girls were paid so they were hired prostitutes.
That fact that he did it with impunity for so long suggest state sponsorship.
Notable quotes:
"... In fact, the case against Epstein seems so overwhelming that it's already been reported , albeit not confirmed, that his lawyers are seeking a plea bargain. Yet even if Epstein doesn't "flip," it's a cinch that many luminaries -- in politics, business, and entertainment -- will at least be named, if not outright inculpated. ..."
"... Yet perhaps the most aching parallel to Epstein is the NXIUM sex slave case, which has already led to guilty pleas and entangled not only Hollywood stars but also heirs to one of North America's great fortunes, the Bronfmans. ..."
"... In 1944, film legend Charlie Chaplin, too, found himself busted on a Mann Act rap. Chaplin was accused of transporting a young "actress" across state lines; he was acquitted after a sensational trial, but not before it was learned that he had financed his lover's two abortions. Chaplin's career in Hollywood was effectively over. ..."
"... In fact, if one takes all these horrible cases in their totality -- Varsity Blues, NXIUM, Epstein -- one might fairly conclude that the problem is larger than just a few rich and twisted nogoodniks. ..."
"... Hardly. It merely puts it into historical perspective. Epstein is but one of a long line of serial sexual predators through the ages. ..."
"... Biological parentage is no guarantee of virtue towards children. Predatory behaviour towards children is most likely to come from within the family. ..."
"... Bill Clinton had at least 26 international trips on Epstein's private plane, including 18 to Epstein's private Caribbean island, which was reportedly staffed with dozens of underage women, mostly from Latin America. It was referred to as "Orgy Island" or "Pedo Island" by the locals. ..."
"... I disagree show me where the Progressives have any morals after all look at Clinton. Even the so called fake republicans are guilty. Our country is in the toilet . The schools are hotbeds of moral decay teaching kids LGBT sex education etc. ..."
"... Marx himself understood, capitalism is a fundamentally chaotic, disruptive, even revolutionary force that destroys everything that conservatives value the most (and want to "conserve.") The free-market fundamentalism that so many conservatives accept as gospel truth really is nothing more than a "false consciousness." ..."
"... If ever a situation called for rendition, this is it. I've been following this since 2007, and my intuition tells many more important people are involved than those we know. ..."
"... Be very skeptical. Why is DOJ suddenly resurrecting a case that was settled 10 years ago? I can't help to wonder if this isn't yet another part of the coup attempt. ..."
"... Trump also gave other evidence and information he had gleaned to prosecutors during the first Epstien trial. ..."
"... We should point this out as often as possible because liberal media is trying to smear Trump by including his name next to Epstien in every article. ..."
Jeffrey Epstein's trial may do what no other could: Bring populists and progressives together against predatory elites.
By JAMES P. PINKERTON •
July 10, 2019
Jeffrey Epstein mugshot (public domain)
The legal proceedings against financier Jeffrey Epstein are going to be spectacular. The sober-minded New York Times is
already running
headlines such as "Raid on Epstein's Mansion Uncovered Nude Photos of Girls," describing the victims as "minors, some as young
as 14." So, yes, this story is going to be, well, lit .
Epstein is the pluperfect "Great White Defendant," to borrow the phrase from Tom Wolfe's 1987 novel The Bonfire of the Vanities.
In Epstein's case, even the left, normally indulgent on crime, is going to be chanting: lock him up.
In fact, the case against Epstein seems so overwhelming that it's already been
reported , albeit not confirmed, that
his lawyers are seeking a plea bargain. Yet even if Epstein doesn't "flip," it's a cinch that many luminaries -- in politics, business,
and entertainment -- will at least be named, if not outright inculpated.
Which is to say, the Epstein case is shaping up as yet another lurid look at the lifestyles of the rich, famous, and powerful,
sure to boil the blood of populists on the right and class warriors on the left. In this same vein, one also thinks of the "Varsity
Blues" college admissions scandal, as well as the post-Harvey Weinstein #MeToo movement.
Yet perhaps the most aching parallel to Epstein is the
NXIUM sex slave case, which has already led to guilty pleas and entangled not only Hollywood stars but also heirs to one of
North America's great fortunes, the Bronfmans.
In that NXIUM case, it's hard not to notice the similarity between "NXIUM" and "Nexum," which was the ancient Roman word for
personal debt bondage -- that is, a form of slavery.
The Romans, of course, were big on conquest and enslavement, and such aggression always had a sexual dimension, as has been the
case, of course, for all empires, everywhere. Thus we come to a consistent theme across human history, namely the importation of
pretty young things from the provinces for the lecherous benefit of the rich and powerful.
It's believed that Saint Gregory the Great, the pope in the late sixth and early seventh centuries, gazed upon English boys at
a Roman slave market and remarked, non Angli, sed angeli, si forent Christiani ; that is, "They are not Angles, but angels,
if they were Christian." Gregory's point was that such lovely beings needed to be converted to Christianity, although, of course,
others had, and would continue to have, other intentions.
If we fast-forward a thousand years or so, we see another kind of enslavement, resulting, at least in part, from profound economic
inequality. William Hogarth's famous prints , "A
Harlot's Progress," follow the brief life of the fictive yet fetching Moll Hackabout, who comes from the provinces to London seeking
employment as a seamstress -- only to end up as a kept woman, then as a prostitute, before dying of syphilis.
Interestingly, a traditional song about descent into earthly hell, "House of the Rising Sun,"
made popular again in the '60s , also makes reference
to past honest work in the garment trade -- "my mother was a tailor."
If we step back and survey civilization's sad saga of exploitation, we see that it occurs under all manner of political and economic
systems, from feudalism to capitalism to, yes, communism. As for ravenous reds, there's the notorious case of Stalinist apparatchik
Lavrenti Beria, whom one chronicler
says enjoyed "a Draculean sex life that combined love, rape, and perversity in almost equal measure."
In the face of such a distressing litany, it's no wonder that there have been periodic reactions, some of them violent and extreme,
such as the original "bonfire of the vanities" back in the 15th century, led by the zealously puritanical cleric, Savonarola.
Yet for most of us, it's more cheering to think that prudential reform can succeed. One landmark of American reform was the
White-Slave Traffic Act , signed into law in 1910
("white slavery," we might note, is known today as "sex trafficking"). That law, aimed at preventing not only prostitution but also
"debauchery," is known as the Mann Act in honor of its principal author, Representative James R. Mann, Republican of Illinois, who
served in Congress from 1897 to 1922.
Mann's career mostly coincided with the presidential tenures of two great reformers, Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson. And
it's hard to overstate just how central to progressive thinking was the combatting of "vice." After all, if the goal was to create
a just society, it also had to be a wholesome society; otherwise no justice could be sustainable. Thus when Roosevelt served
as police commissioner of New York City in the mid-1890s, he focused on fighting vice, rackets, and corruption.
Of course, Mann, Roosevelt, and Wilson had much more on their minds than just cleaning up depravity. They saw themselves as reformers
across the board; that is, they were eager to improve economic conditions as well as social ones.
So it was that Mann also co-authored the Mann-Elkins
Act , further regulating the railroads; he also spearheaded the
Pure Food and Drug Act
, creating the FDA. It's interesting that when Mann died in 1922, The New York Times ran an entirely admiring
obituary , recalling him as "a dominating figure in the House [a] leader in dozens of parliamentary battles." In other words,
back then, the Times was fully onboard with full-spectrum cleanup, on the Right as well as the Left.
To be sure, the Mann Act hardly eradicated the problem of sex-trafficking, just as Mann's other legislative efforts did not put
an end to abuses in transportation and in foods and drugs. However, we can say that Mann made things better .
Of course, the Mann Act has long been controversial. Back in 1913, the African-American boxer Jack Johnson was convicted according
to its provisions. (Intriguingly, in 2018, Johnson was posthumously
pardoned
by President Trump.)
In 1944, film legend Charlie Chaplin, too, found himself busted on a Mann Act rap. Chaplin was accused of transporting a
young "actress" across state lines; he was acquitted after a sensational trial, but not before it was learned that he had financed
his lover's two abortions. Chaplin's career in Hollywood was effectively over.
Cases such as these made the Mann Act distinctly unpopular in "sophisticated" circles. Of course, criticism from the smart set
is not the same as proof that the law is not still valuable. That's why, more than a century after its passage, the Mann Act is
still on the books, albeit much amended. Lawmakers agree that it's still necessary, because, after all, there's always a need to
protect women
from wolves .
Now back to Epstein. If we learn that he was actually running something called the "Lolita Express," that would be a signal that
prosecutors have a lot of work to do, rounding up the pedophile joyriders. So it was interesting on July 6 to see Christine Pelosi,
daughter of the House speaker, posting a stern
tweet : "This Epstein case is horrific and the young women deserve justice. It is quite likely that some of our faves are implicated
but we must follow the facts and let the chips fall where they may -- whether on Republicans or Democrats."
So we can see: the younger Pelosi wants one standard -- a standard that applies to all.
In fact, if one takes all these horrible cases in their totality -- Varsity Blues, NXIUM, Epstein -- one might fairly conclude
that the problem is larger than just a few rich and twisted nogoodniks.
That is, the underlying issues of regional and social inequality -- measured in power as well as wealth -- must be addressed.
To put the matter another way, we need a bourgeoisie that is sturdier economically and more sure of itself culturally. Only then
will we have Legions of Decency and other
Schlafly-esque activist groups to function as counterweights to a corrosive and exploitative culture.
Of course, as TR and company knew, if we seek a better and more protective American equilibrium, a lot will have to change --
and not just in the culture.
Most likely, a true solution will have "conservative" elements, as in social and cultural norming, and "liberal" elements, as
in higher taxes on city slickers coupled with conscious economic development for the proletarians and for the heartland. Only with
these economic and governmental changes can we be sure that it's possible to have a nice life in Anytown, safely far away from beguiling
pleasuredomes.
To be sure, we can't expect ever to solve all the troubles of human nature -- including the rage for fame that drives some youths
from the boondocks. But we can at least bolster the bourgeois alternative to predatory Hefnerism.
In the meantime, unless we can achieve such structural changes, rich and powerful potentates will continue to pull innocent angels
into their gilded dens of iniquity.
James P. Pinkerton is an author and contributing editor at . He served as a White House policy aide to both Presidents
Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.
"Most likely, a true solution will have "conservative" elements, as in social and cultural norming, and "liberal" elements,
as in higher taxes on city slickers coupled with conscious economic development for the proletarians and for the heartland."
Neither of which will happen with the blue megacities having political control.
"(T)here's always a need to protect women from wolves." It should be noted that boys who are sex-trafficked also fall under
the Mann Act. This may not be clear from Wikipedia.
Wow! What a wonderful article! The compassion for the young victims just jumps off the screen along with the disgust at the
corruption that has allowed this predator to damage so many lives over at least three decades.
No, the fact is that your dispassionate, detached, political assessment objectifies and dehumanizes the girls that
were abused by Epstein and by the stupidly named "justice system" and reflects the obnoxious rot at the root of our society
when it comes to the abuse of women and children.
When it comes right down to it, this doesn't really matter to you, it is just another political amusement.
"Most likely, a true solution will have "conservative" elements, as in social and cultural norming, and "liberal" elements,
as in higher taxes on city slickers coupled with conscious economic development for the proletarians and for the heartland.
Only with these economic and governmental changes can we be sure that it's possible to have a nice life in Anytown, safely far
away from beguiling pleasuredomes."
Liberal "social and cultural norming" (as in feminism, consent, discussion of sexual matters (gasp!) in the public sphere,
#MeToo, etc.) is what is making a difference more because such things are encouraging victims and giving them support. The (cough)
"justice" system needs reform so that rape kits get processed, victims are listened to instead of shamed, cases are actually
investigated, rapists aren't let off because "he comes from a good family" etc. The Nevada Legislature with it's recent legislation
is leading the way, because it has a female majority. THAT is what will change things FINALLY.
His "historical perspective" is just more of the same sh*t we have heard for millennia as are his prescriptions for solutions.
A key conclusion of the article is that Epstein and other recent scandals about the abuse of power mean "issues of regional
and social inequality -- measured in power as well as wealth -- must be addressed."
So if all regions and all social classes were equal, this would go away? First, gifts have always been and will always be
distributed unequally, so this egalitarian utopia will never be obtained -- leading to the indefinite justification "we have
more work to do" to force people and society into an unattainable intellectual ideal, and justifying endless injustices in the
process. Second, the article itself points out that the Soviets who ostensibly pursued an egalitarian state had a famous abuser
among the ranks of their political bosses (and likely had others we don't known about).
Ultimately, kids are best cared for and defended in family with their biological parents -- the very unit of society that's
been under unceasing attack for decades. Support the family and support small business which is responsible for something like
80% of new jobs created in the US. Then vigorously enforce the laws that are already on the books. A key problem with Epstein
was the law was for years or decades not enforced against him, I strongly suspect because he had very highly placed political
connections, probably several of which were sexually abusing young girls (and/or boys?) Epstein "introduced" them to. What amount
of social engineering or experimentation is going to eliminate that kind of political corruption? I highly doubt any will. Once
it's discovered, everyone involved should be prosecuted and exposed -- and any other cases of sex slavery rings discovered in
the process likewise have all their members prosecuted & exposed.
Lavrenti Beria as the prescient symbol of Soviet Babbitry v. worldwide immorality! So was Ernst Rohm! Thank god for the KGB
and SS as harbingers of true moral concern over sex abuse!
"Ultimately, kids are best cared for and defended in family with their biological parents "
LMAO. Historically the family and biologoical parents were part and parcel in many of the deals involved with these trades.
Biological parentage is no guarantee of virtue towards children. Predatory behaviour towards children is most likely
to come from within the family. I can't remember the family name but there was a family that made a big thing of their
"Proper Christian Family" even while one son was abusing his younger sister/s and the Parents protected and shielded him.
"In Epstein's case, even the left, normally indulgent on crime, is going to be chanting: lock him up." - You almost lost
me on that one. The Left is not normally 'indulgent on crime'. However, The Left is resistant to making 'immorality' (pot smoking,
sodomy, gambling, gay marriage, etc) criminal, given how driving 'vice' underground and making it illegal has unintended consequences
(such as creating the mafia and Latin American drug cartels) that are worse than 'the crime', but I decided to read on.
"That is, the underlying issues of regional and social inequality -- measured in power as well as wealth -- must be addressed."
- All in for that one. Glad to see your 'wokeness'. Please send a check to Bernie.
"In the meantime, unless we can achieve such structural changes, rich and powerful potentates will continue to pull innocent
angels into their gilded dens of iniquity" - Like Donald Trump, Roger Ailes, Roy Moore, David Vitter, Dennis Hastert, Chris
Collins, Duncan Hunter, Michael Grimm, and on and on.
The Democrats have shown they are more than willing to ostracize members of their own team (Al Franken) for alleged and actual
wrongdoing. The Republicans, not so much, since they usually overlook all kinds of deviance if a politically expedient. Such
as Tim Murphy from PA and Scott DesJarlais from TN, both married 'anti-abortion' zealots caught urging their mistresses to have
abortions.
"The Democrats have shown they are more than willing to ostracize members of their own team (Al Franken) for alleged
and actual wrongdoing."
Like Bill Clinton. The same Team D Wokemon champions who insisted that any form of sexual or romantic contact between a male
supervisor and a female subordinate was by definition sexual harassment suddenly changed their tune when Bill Clinton was the
supervisor.
Not only that, but they came up with the most hilarious tortured redefinitions of "perjury" in order to justify their hero.
For the record: I am not a Team R fan either, but I am not so naive as to think the problem is limited to one team.
It is not. Bill Clinton was a cad. No doubt. But I find it very interesting that Juanita Broaddick recanted her allegations
against Clinton when Ken Starr put her under oath.
The only outrage Democrats will actually express over Epstein is to again tar and feather Trump in the usual fashion: Nibble
at the toes of hapless political operatives and bureaucrats like Acosta, and then accuse the President of colluding in his own
purported ignorance and self-enrichment.
There is an elephant in the room I think many conservatives are ignoring right now. A real big one...
"President Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein, the 66-year-old hedge fund manager charged this week with sex trafficking and
conspiracy to commit sex trafficking, were the only other attendees to a party that consisted of roughly two dozen women at
his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, according to a New York Times report."
"In 1992, the women were reportedly flown in for a "calendar girl" competition that was requested by Trump, The Times said.
"At the very first party, I said, 'Who's coming tonight? I have 28 girls coming,'" former Trump associate George Houraney
reportedly said. "It was him and Epstein."
"I said, 'Donald, this is supposed to be a party with VIPs. You're telling me it's you and Epstein," he recalled saying."
"Houraney claimed to have warned Trump about Epstein's behavior and said the real estate tycoon did not heed his notice.
Houraney, a businessman, reportedly said Trump "didn't care" about how he had to ban Epstein from his events."
This is an old elephant. It raised its head during the campaign and did not make much in the way of waves. Will it come back
to bite the president today -- one hopes that its all rumor hearsay and gossip.
I am willing to grant that the president may have been a "masher" in his day. Whether that means relations with children
is another matter.
Bill Clinton had at least 26 international trips on Epstein's private plane, including 18 to Epstein's private Caribbean
island, which was reportedly staffed with dozens of underage women, mostly from Latin America. It was referred to as "Orgy Island"
or "Pedo Island" by the locals.
One is a retired politician. The other is the current POTUS. If Bill is guilty, lock him up. If Trump is guilty - we need
to know ASAP and he can no longer be the president.
If Jeffery Epstein is such a monster then what is one to make of a man who has been quoted as saying "You can do what ever
you want, grab them by the *****." and then during a presidential debate shamelessly state "I have great respect for women.
Nobody has more respect for women than I do."?
Laughing good grief --- First I have to get passed the suggestion that guys bragging nonsensically about their female conquests
is the same hiring teens to for relations.
Good grief . . . these types of issues are ripe for hysterics.
excuse my politically incorrect suggestion of making the categorical distinctions
I disagree show me where the Progressives have any morals after all look at Clinton. Even the so called fake republicans
are guilty. Our country is in the toilet . The schools are hotbeds of moral decay teaching kids LGBT sex education etc.
Cultural Marxism is at play and next they will soften up and normalize pedophile. As far as the women's movement they are bitter
progressives who on there Facebook moaning about how they make less money then men. Who is taking of the kids? There are no
real men any more they have become boys!! Sex is every where and no one cares they all going along with the new world order!
You forgot to mention our current thrice divorced President who cheats on his wife with porn stars and pays them to stay
quiet. Strong moral leadership....
If this happened, my faith in the "rule of law" and in prosecutors and law enforcement treating everyone equally might be
restored. But, alas, we all know this is not going to happen.
"...the younger Pelosi wants one standard -- a standard that applies to all."
Don't we all. But if history teaches us anything it teaches that the higher up the socioeconomic food chain we go, the more
"flexible" that standard becomes.
So we'll see about Epstein--and all the other big shots who were in on this debauch.
"...the younger Pelosi wants one standard -- a standard that applies to all."
Does she want that single standard to apply to people that flaunt our laws by having, say, a clandestine and illegal email
server that was used for classified correspondence?
Mr. Pinkerton apparently (like many) needs to learn what the definition of pedophile is (hint: It's doesn't mean any and
all sex under he legal age of consent). However illegal (to say nothing of distasteful and immoral) Epstein's actions may have
been, based on the claims I've seen, he is not a pedophile.
I also find it hard to believe that Clinton and others didn't know. Rumours of Epstein's proclivities, and his plane being
called "Lolita Express," have been around for along-time, but Epstein has been protected by his connections and wealth. Clinton
flew nearly 30 times on Epstein's private jet. Is he the only person in the world who never heard the stories about him? What
did he know and when did he know it?
If you're asking that question about Clinton- a 90s has-been politician whose own party has moved on past him, then I hope
you're also asking it about the current president who was also a bosom buddy to Epstein.
According to flight manifests, Trump flew one time, from New York to Palm Beach, on Epstein's plane. Clinton took at least
26 international trips on the Lolita Express, including 18 trips to Epstein's private Caribbean island, where he supposedly
had dozens of underage women from Latin America kept. The locals referred to it at 'Orgy Island" and "Pedo Island". We're not
exactly comparing apples to apples here, are we?
Compare the Mueller soap opera. The characters in that story were sleazy international fixers and blackmailers who worked
for everyone. Same type as Epstein. They worked for KGB, CIA, Clinton, Trump, Mossad, Saudi. Despite the universality of the
crimes, Mueller meticulously "saw" only the crimes that involved Trump and Russia. FBI always works that way. Any accusation
or evidence that doesn't fit the predefined story disappears.
Muller had a specific investigatory mission. He was not empowered to look into every government scandal since Alexander Hamilton
was blackmailed by Maria Reynolds.
Part of what doomed the post-WWII "Right" was the "fusionism" between conservatism and capitalism. While the latter got real
policy results, the former was merely pandered to during elections but otherwise ignored. As a result, leftists and centrists
mistakenly came to believe that being "right-wing" means being a corporate shill lobbying to cut taxes for the rich and pay
for it by cutting programs for the poor.
At the same time,
as Marx himself understood, capitalism is a fundamentally chaotic, disruptive, even revolutionary force that destroys
everything that conservatives value the most (and want to "conserve.") The free-market fundamentalism that so many conservatives
accept as gospel truth really is nothing more than a "false consciousness."
Many traditionalists (such as Russell Kirk) resisted fusionism for placing too much emphasis on markets and not enough on
the conservative commitment "to religious belief, to national loyalty, to established rights in society, and to the wisdom
of our ancestors." And many libertarians (such as F.A. Hayek) explicitly rejected conservatism for being too nationalistic
and hostile toward open systems.
If conservatives want any political future in this country, then they're going to have to "de-fuse," so to speak, with capitalism,
which has been exploiting their support in order to advance policies against their own interests and values. If
"Woke Capitalism" isn't the final straw, then what will it take? Conservatives could learn a lot from the Progressive Movement
of the 1890s-1920s, which despite its name was far more conservative than the David-Frenchist National Review is nowadays.
Indeed, the Progressives' reformist playbook (which recognized that the rapid changes brought by industrialization, immigration,
and urbanization had caused corruption, poverty, and vice) could and should be dusted off for today.
As far as Epstein goes, I'm rather pessimistic that he'll ever be punished and that the public will ever learn the full extent
of his crimes. While Nancy Pelosi's daughter may be principled (and good for her), the fact that so many wealthy and powerful
people may be incriminated is precisely why he'll be let off easy and the evidence will be covered up, just like last time.
I have zero confidence in our justice system, particularly in the hyper-politicized SDNY.
If ever a situation called for rendition, this is it. I've been following this since 2007, and my intuition tells many
more important people are involved than those we know. Anyone involved would be terrified; they'll have to break someone
to get the facts. As someone who was almost abducted at age 9, I say get on it.
Be very skeptical. Why is DOJ suddenly resurrecting a case that was settled 10 years ago? I can't help to wonder if this
isn't yet another part of the coup attempt.
Twisted sisters will do what they do with or without social disparities. All you can do is bury them when you catch them.
If the rich and famous get caught up, no ones fault but their own.
The Mann Act mainly served to enforce Roman Catholic ideas about marriage's being somehow special. The Bible offers no such
thing as an example of a religious marriage, whether Muslim, Catholic or Protestant, unless it be that of Job.
You expect a free pass for this term paper theory that downright American types are going to unite to stop sexual predation,
and their brains will swirl with reminiscences of St. Gregory and Sen. Mann?
I am unaware that Chaplin's career was "effectively over" after his sex trial. Chaplin made "Monsieur Verdoux" in 1947 in
good time after the modern Bluebeard of France, Marcel Petiot made headlines (this predator swindled Jews of safe passage money
out of France, poisoned them, and burned their bodies in his home. No time of reckoning for France or Francophiles here). Five
years later he released "Limelight", which could be called a loving tribute to vaudeville and silent film at the same time (Buster
Keaton appeared, and it is said that many omitted segments were his finest hour in the sound era. Note that financially and
at box office, Keaton was as ruined and burned out as countless others, but was in the end a hard working trouper who even made
it to Samuel Beckett!). Chaplin flagged thereafter, but made films at exactly the pace he wished, as characterized by the slow
linger from "Modern Times" to "The Great Dictator".
Errol Flynn on the other hand was boosted by his sex scandal as alleged with a 15 year old. His release "They Died With Their
Boots On" made reference to the allegation that Flynn was naked except for a pair of boots. And remember the original Hollywood
Confidential scandal that rounded up dozens of celebrities including Lizbeth Scott in a prostitution ring? All forgotten.
So if your going to make big analogies between Hollywood, celebrity, and yet another paroxysm of soon to evaporate Puritan
righteousness, at least know what you're talking about.
For the record, I believe that if Epstein punched 8 years above his weight in his choice of femmes, he might never have been
caught.
The article is way to long and I read the first paragraph and after the words "The sober-minded New York Times" I jumped
to the comments. The headline was enough for me...I agree, Lock Him Up.
"... Bear Stearns -- the bank that had given Mr. Epstein his start -- was still among his investments when the crisis hit. According to a lawsuit he later filed against the bank, Mr. Epstein controlled about 176,000 shares of Bear Stearns, worth nearly $18 million, in August 2007. ..."
"... Mr. Epstein sold 56,000 shares at $101 each that month. He sold the remaining 120,000 shares in March 2008 as the firm was collapsing -- 20,000 at $35 and the rest at $3.04, losing big. He also lost about $50 million in one of Bear's hedge funds. ..."
"... By the time Bear Stearns came apart, Mr. Epstein was at the center of his first abuse case. He pleaded guilty to prostitution charges in 2008, receiving a jail sentence that allowed him to work at home during the day but also required him to register as a sex offender ..."
"... The court document alleges: "Epstein also sexually trafficked the then-minor Jane Doe (a name used in US legal proceedings for people with anonymity), making her available for sex to politically connected and financially powerful people. ..."
"... "Epstein's purposes in 'lending' Jane Doe (along with other young girls) to such powerful people were to ingratiate himself with them for business, personal, political, and financial gain, as well as to obtain potential blackmail information. ..."
"... Journalist George Webb, watch his Youtube channel, has been following Epstein 'activities' for decades, connecting him all the way back to the Bush Sr. and Jr. Boys Town White House peadophile ring. Epstein was the 'go to guy' for rat line trafficking missions, into Kosovo, Sudan, Somalia, Ethiopia, every war zone across the world one can think of, to move dark ops in and out of, closely linked to DynCorp, which core business is 'aviation security services' and infamous for enabling and promoting underage transgressions of all of its personnel in Yugoslavia where Bill Clinton has murdered many thousands unbeknownst to the gullible and rather retarded Americuh public ..."
Jeffrey Epstein's wealth has long been a topic of discussion since becoming known as a 'billionaire pedophile' and other similar
monickers. Described by prosecuitors this week as a "man of nearly infinite means," a
2011 SEC filing has
provided a window into the registered sex offender's elite Wall Street links, according to the
Financial Times .
Epstein, who caught a lucky break tutoring the son of Bear Stearns chairman Alan Greenberg before joining the firm, left the
investment bank in 1981 to set up his own financial firm. While he reportedly managed money for billionaires for decades, most of
Epstein's dealings have been done in the shadows.
A 2011 SEC filing reveals that Epstein's privately held firm, the Financial Trust Company , took a 6.1% stake in Pennsylvania-based
catalytic converter maker Environmental Solutions Worldwide (ESW) backed by Leon Black, the billionaire founder of Apollo Global
Management .
ESW itself has a checkered past. In 2002, its then-chairman Bengt Odner was accused by the SEC of participating with others in
a $15 million "pump and dump" scheme with ESW stock. The case was settled a year later according to FT , with Odner ordered to pay
a $25,000 civil penalty. Of note, ESW accepted Epstein's investment several years after he had registered as a sex offender in a
controversial 2008 plea deal in Florida.
Epstein's connection to Black doesn't stop there - as the financier served as a director on the Leon Black Family Foundation
for over a decade until 2012 according to IRS filings. A spokeswoman for the foundation claims that Epstein had resigned in July
2007, and that his name continued to appear on the IRS filings "due to a recording error" for five years. A 2015 document signed
by Epstein provided to the Financial Times appears to confirm this.
Epstein also built his wealth with Steven J. Hoffenberg and Leslie H. Wexner, the former of whom was convicted of running a giant
Ponzi scheme, and the latter a clothing magnate.
Mr. Epstein's wealth may have depended less on his math acumen than his connections to two men -- Steven J. Hoffenberg, a
onetime owner of The New York Post and a notorious fraudster later convicted of running
a $460 million Ponzi scheme , and Leslie H. Wexner, the billionaire founder of retail chains including The Limited and the
chief executive of the company that owns Victoria's Secret.
Mr. Hoffenberg was Mr. Epstein's partner in two ill-fated takeover bids in the 1980 s, including one of Pan American World
Airways, and would later claim that Mr. Epstein had been part of the scheme that landed him in jail -- although Mr. Epstein
was never charged. With Mr. Wexner, Mr. Epstein formed a financial and personal bond that baffled longtime associates of the
wealthy retail magnate, who was his only publicly disclosed investor. -
New York Times
"I think we both possess the skill of seeing patterns," Wexner told Vanity Fair in 2003. "But Jeffrey sees patterns in politics
and financial markets, and I see patterns in lifestyle and fashion trends."
Those around Wexner were mystified over Wexner's affinity for Epstein.
" Everyone was mystified as to what his appeal was ," said Robert Morosky, a former vice chairman of The Limited. "I checked
around and found out he was a private high school math teacher, and that was all I could find out. There was just nothing there."
As the New York Times
noted on Wednesday, Epstein's "infinite means" may be a mirage, as while he is undoubtedly extremely rich, there is "little
evidence that Mr. Epstein is a billionaire."
While Epstein told potential clients he only accepted investments of $1 billion or more, his investment firm reported having
$88 million in capital from his shareholders, and 20 employees according to a 2002 court filing - far fewer than figures being reported
at the time.
And while most of Epstein's dealings are unknown, his Financial Trust Company also had a $121 million investment in DB Zwirn
& Co, which shuttered its doors in 2008, and had a stake in Bear Stearns's failed High-Grade Structured Credit Strategies Enhanced
Leverage Fund - the collapse of which helped spark the global financial crisis.
Epstein was hit hard by the financial crisis a decade ago, while allegations of sexual abuse of teenage girls caused many associates
- such as Wexner - to sever ties with him.
Bear Stearns -- the bank that had given Mr. Epstein his start -- was still among his investments when the crisis hit.
According to a lawsuit he later filed against the bank, Mr. Epstein controlled about 176,000 shares of Bear Stearns, worth nearly
$18 million, in August 2007.
Mr. Epstein sold 56,000 shares at $101 each that month. He sold the remaining 120,000 shares in March 2008 as the firm was
collapsing -- 20,000 at $35 and the rest at $3.04, losing big. He also lost about $50 million in one of Bear's hedge funds.
By the time Bear Stearns came apart, Mr. Epstein was at the center of his first abuse case. He pleaded guilty to prostitution
charges in 2008, receiving a jail sentence that allowed him to work at home during the day but also required him to register
as a sex offender. -
New York Times
In trying to determine what Epstein is actually worth, Bloomberg notes that " So little is known about Epstein's current business
or clients that the only things that can be valued with any certainty are his properties. The Manhattan mansion is estimated to
be worth at least $ 77 million , according to a federal document submitted in advance of his bail hearing."
He also has properties in New Mexico, Paris and the U.S. Virgin Islands, where he has a private island, and a Palm Beach
estate with an assessed value of more than $12 million . He shuttles between them by private jet and has at least 15 cars, including
seven Chevrolet Suburbans, according to federal authorities. -
Bloomberg
Deutsche Bank, meanwhile,
severed ties with Epstein earlier this year - right as federal prosecutors were preparing to charge him with operating a sex-trafficking
ring of underage girls out of his sprawling homes in Manhattan and Palm Beach, according to Bloomberg , citing a person familiar
with the situation. It is unknown how much money was involved or how long Epstein had been a client.
3 play_arrow 1
FKTHEGVNMNT , 1 hour ago
That black book is still missing, it is actually a meticulous journal. His butler who died at 60 due to mesothelioma kept
it as insurance, those snippets was just him saying " I got the goods.
Dr.Strangelove , 1 hour ago
The Feds should do what they did with Al Capone, and put him in the slammer on tax evasion charges. I'm sure Epstein has
reported all of his ill gotten billions to the IRS tax man.....NOT.
CheapBastard , 43 minutes ago
I wonder how many human assets, aka, slave girls, he owns? I guess they could value the slave child based on how much revenue
they brought in.
FKTHEGVNMNT , 2 hours ago
The court document alleges: "Epstein also sexually trafficked the then-minor Jane Doe (a name used in US legal proceedings
for people with anonymity), making her available for sex to politically connected and financially powerful people.
"Epstein's purposes in 'lending' Jane Doe (along with other young girls) to such powerful people were to ingratiate himself
with them for business, personal, political, and financial gain, as well as to obtain potential blackmail information.
I wonder if Prince Andrew has deleted him from Facebook
marcel tjoeng , 3 hours ago
Journalist George Webb, watch his Youtube channel, has been following Epstein 'activities' for decades, connecting him
all the way back to the Bush Sr. and Jr. Boys Town White House peadophile ring. Epstein was the 'go to guy' for rat line
trafficking missions, into Kosovo, Sudan, Somalia, Ethiopia, every war zone across the world one can think of, to move dark
ops in and out of, closely linked to DynCorp, which core business is 'aviation security services' and infamous for enabling
and promoting underage transgressions of all of its personnel in Yugoslavia where Bill Clinton has murdered many thousands unbeknownst
to the gullible and rather retarded Americuh public.
Trafficking underage girls from Ukraine back and forth to the USA to pimp out to every diplomat from every country that bought
and sold state secrets, flying underage girls to the Middle East to peddle to oil sheiks, involved with obtaining and exchanging
state secrets of for instance American DARPA, the top secret military research giant, to any 'diplomat' connected to the secretive
network of an 'Illuminati' type deep state collusion, the power brokers of war and sex.
The Irgun of Menachem Begin, the Mossad of Moshe Dayan were infamous for their poolside parties where all the jewish female
'pretty' Israeli agents were used and trained to be honey pot sex objects, with mandatory sex orgies that lasted for days, the
worst of a James Bond type environment but without the glitter.
on the contrary, the secret world of parasites that practice and trade in massive scale rape, war, torture, sex aberrations,
***********, blackmail, extortion, paedophilia, child trafficking, international orphan trafficking, drugs, trafficking underage
sex slaves to be used as dolls and much much worse,
that is who is Jeffrey Epstein is.
The front cover of rape, murder and mayhem international Inc., the go-to-boy of sick Wall Street, Washington DC, the CIA,
NSA, Dyncorp, the power brokers within the DNC and the GOP,
all the usual sick subjects whose code mantra is 'we have unlimited funding', which means the FED, Wall Street, the BIS,
the whole of the Central Bank System that originated in Europe in Venice, and then spread to Amsterdam, the Dutch House of Orange,
London, New York, the British paedophile Empire,
Epstein lives in what is reputed to be the largest private dwelling in New Mexico, on an $18 million, 7,500-acre ranch
which he named Zorro.
Jeffrey Epstein's palatial New Mexico home is relatively near to a top military base. The Epstein home is in Stanley
in New Mexico.
Albuquerque now has a variety of Jewish synagogues and a Chabad house.
Mossad sex party, according to former Mossad case officer Victor Ostrovsky
There were about 25 people in and around the pool and none of them had a stitch of clothing on.
The second-in-command of the Mossad -- today, he is the head -- was there.
Hessner. Various secretaries. It was incredible. Some of the men were not a pretty sight, but most of the girls were
quite impressive. I must say they looked much better than they did in uniform! Most of them were female soldiers assigned
to the office, and were only 18 or 20 years old.
Some of the partiers were in the water playing, some were dancing, others were on blankets to the left and the right
having a fine old time vigorously screwing each other right there...
It was the top brass all right, and they were swapping partners. It really shook me. That's sure not what you expect.
You look at these people as heroes, you look up to them, and then you see them having a sex party by the pool.
-- Ostrovsky, Victor, By Way of Deception, (1990), pg. 96
ReflectoMatic , 2 hours ago
Because what George Webb is saying is so important in expanding the scope of understanding what is going on:
George Webb on youtube
JSBach1 , 3 hours ago
Researcher Wayne Madsen: Trump's Connection to Epstein Needs to Be Exposed
I like Miles' work a lot, but I don't always agree with the results of his studies. There are a great many fabricated events.
Events like those are cover for other very real events. The clowns will fake (or real) blow up townships just to prevent a case
from going to trial or getting news feed, OKC comes to mind. And there's always more than one reason for it behind the BS cover
story. It's tactical. Ep is just another arm of the octopus: Ep is definitely a middle man, a bag man, a front man, an intel
asset (for several agancies no doubt) and he got his cover job as a "financier" along with a client that got rich selling women's
underwear and kids clothes as whitewash. A guy who wrote a paper on how America perceives Israel and how to influence that perception.
That is the definition of magic and it's intel.
Ep definitely uses his own product... He had to be sure he could bounce those children off his clients, for one. Years of
grooming, investing in an asset, categorizing each one. It's an industry, for sure. I don't think the numbers are fabricated.
I don't think his black book was fabricated. Bloomberg was in there, btw, along with Bronfman, and Murdoch. The remoteness of
7500 acres in New Mexico, an Island, the planes, all neon signs that say "SECRET". But, you have to recruit from large population
areas to find suitable victims, er, individuals. I think it's more likely that this is real world and not a manufactured event.
Look: there are theories. I collect theories. Miles is a great researcher and he makes distinctions and observations that
are all very good. Reading him, I throw a lot of theories and music and vomit in the trash after. But when you peel back all
the fake events... the "Kansas"... One day Kansas is gone. Once and for all. What's left is this: there's some very real ****
on the down-low going on that has, until now, been permitted and some people who liked it that way are gonna be on the news
for it. Pelosi's kid tweeted it. What about, say, what might a sheriff of a certain New Mexico county know? Santa Fe is totally
compromised because it's an "Art" hub, for one. The unincorporated location is called "Stanley" which ought to ring bells. Right
by a military base, Kirtland and Los Alamos Demo Army base, god knows what else. It's the perfect M.O. of the fake events Miles
writes about. Miles sees patterns.
There is everything that is not real, and then there is everything that is real. For me it comes down to the Cartesian Brain
in a Vat theory, that, indeed, is "the Matrix" pop culture go-to of today, err, 20 years ago. Red pilled means you can't go
back. Get blue pilled you Get woke and go broke. It doesn't mean that everything is fake, but for all I know 2012 was real and
we live on this timeline now and maybe I am a brain in a vat. So cogito ergo sum. And that is kind of a statement of faith or
belief. It's the deep irony of philosophy. It's the glitch.
Ep is not the psyop. He's the guy you do the psyop to cover up. It's a better question to ask what generation MK Ultra are
we on? What subset? What might Cathy O'Brien have to say about it? Don't flame the victims, or make Miles look stupid because
you think it's all fake. Andrew Breitbart didn't think this **** was fake and he's dead. God bless him.
Theosebes Goodfellow , 3 hours ago
~Those around Wexner were mystified over Wexner's affinity for Epstein.~
Apparently those around Wexner were not familiar with the term "fourteen year-old spinner".
Lumberjack , 3 hours ago
...
Dershowitz was one of several heavy-hitters on Epstein's first legal defense team. Epstein's lead attorney in the Florida
case was Jack Goldberger, who now represents New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft. His legal team also included Roy Black,
Jay Lefkowitz, Gerald Lefcourt, former U.S. Attorney Guy Lewis and Kenneth Starr, the special prosecutor who investigated Bill
Clinton's sexual affair with Monica Lewinsky.
Asked why he took Epstein as a client, given the unsavory nature of his alleged crimes, Dershowitz stated bluntly, "That's
what I do."
"I take controversial cases and I will continue to do so," he told Sinclair Broadcast Group in a Tuesday interview. "I defended
Jeff Epstein for the same reason John Adams defended the people accused of the Boston Massacre
On that note, Schumer said he'll give the money he received to help children and women.
I'd bet twice that amount it goes to Israeli causes. Not to real victims and the kahkzucker gets another nice write off.
Epstein's intel connections must be brought forth. My guess is when Kraft got busted that there were really big names that
are still being hidden. A long time and VERY TRUSTED ZH member that I know a bit and collaborated a bit with on the Linda Green
fiasco caught on and commented about it including providing solid evidence.
Maybe they should stop blaming Iran and Russia and look at Linda herself.
"... As Congress arrives back into town and the House Judiciary and Intelligence Committees prepare to question ex-Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller on July 17, partisan lines are being drawn even more sharply, as Russias-gate blossoms into Deep-State-gate. On Sunday, a top Republican legislator, Rep. Peter King (R-NY) took the gloves off in an unusually acerbic public attack on former leaders of the FBI and CIA. ..."
"... "The media went along with this – actually, keeping this farcical, ridiculous thought going that the President of the United States was somehow involved in a conspiracy with Russia against his own country." ..."
"... Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. No fan of the current President, Ray has been trained to follow and analyze the facts, wherever they may lead. He spent 27 years as a CIA analyst, and prepared the President's Daily Brief for three presidents. In retirement he co-founded Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS). ..."
"... Mr. McGovern you are right in your analysis. Obama is in this up to his neck, however there will be a limited investigation at best because the Jews and Israel don't want this. They are involved and a real investigation would show what control they have over the FBI and CIA. ..."
"... The world is controlled by the Corporate Fascist Military-Intelligence Police State in which governments are nothing more than Proxies with Intelligence Agencies who work against the average citizen and for the Corporations. Politicians like Trump are nothing more than figureheads who must "Toe the Line" or else. ..."
As Congress arrives back into town and the House Judiciary and Intelligence Committees
prepare to question ex-Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller on July 17, partisan lines are being
drawn even more sharply, as Russias-gate blossoms into Deep-State-gate. On Sunday, a top
Republican legislator, Rep. Peter King (R-NY) took the gloves off in an unusually acerbic
public attack on former leaders of the FBI and CIA.
"There is no doubt to me there was severe, serious abuses that were carried out in the FBI
and, I believe, top levels of the CIA against the President of the United States or, at that
time, presidential candidate Donald Trump," according to The Hill.
King (image on the right), a senior congressman specializing in national security, twice
chaired the House Homeland Security Committee and currently heads its Subcommittee on
Counterterrorism and Intelligence. He also served for several years on the House Intelligence
Committee.
He asserted:
"There was no legal basis at all for them to begin this investigation of his campaign
– and the way they carried it forward, and the way information was leaked. All of this
is going to come out. It's going to show the bias. It's going to show the baselessness of the
investigation and I would say the same thing if this were done to Hillary Clinton or Bernie
Sanders It's just wrong."
The Long Island Republican added a well aimed swipe at what passes for the media today:
"The media went along with this – actually, keeping this farcical, ridiculous
thought going that the President of the United States was somehow involved in a conspiracy
with Russia against his own country."
According to King, the Justice Department's review, ordered by Attorney General William Barr
, would prove that former officials acted improperly. He was alluding to the investigation led
by John Durham , U.S. Attorney in Connecticut. Sounds nice. But waiting for Durham to complete
his investigation at a typically lawyerly pace would, I fear, be much like the experience of
waiting for Mueller to finish his; that is, like waiting for Godot. What about now?
So Where is the IG Report on FISA?
That's the big one. If Horowitz is able to speak freely about what he has learned, his
report could lead to indictments of former CIA Director John Brennan , former FBI Director
James Comey , former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe , former Deputy Attorneys General Sally
Yates and Rod Rosenstein , and Dana Boente -- Boente being the only signer of the relevant FISA
applications still in office. (No, he has not been demoted to file clerk in the FBI library; at
last report, he is FBI General Counsel!).
The DOJ inspector General's investigation, launched in March 2018, has centered on whether
the FBI and DOJ filing of four FISA applications and renewals beginning in October 2016 to
surveil former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page amounted to abuse of the FISA process.
(Fortunately for the IG, Obama's top intelligence and law enforcement officials were so sure
that Hillary Clinton would win that they did not do much to hide their tracks.)
The Washington Examiner
reported last Tuesday, "The Justice Department inspector general's investigation of
potential abuse of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act is complete, a Republican
congressman said, though a report on its findings might not be released for a month." The
report continued:
"House Judiciary Committee member John Ratcliffe (R, Texas) said Monday he'd met with DOJ
watchdog Michael Horowitz last week about his FISA abuse report. In a media interview,
Ratcliffe said they'd discussed the timing, but not the content of his report and Horowitz
'related that his team's investigative work is complete and they're now in the process of
drafting that report. Ratcliffe said he was doubtful that Horowitz's report would be made
available to the public or the Congress anytime soon. 'He [Horowitz] did relay that as much
as 20% of his report is going to include classified information, so that draft report will
have to undergo a classification review at the FBI and at the Department of Justice,'
Ratcliffe said. 'So, while I'm hopeful that we members of Congress might see it before the
August recess, I'm not too certain about that.'"
Earlier, Horowitz had predicted that his report would be ready in May or June but there may,
in fact, be good reason for some delay. Fox News reported Friday that "key
witnesses sought for questioning by Justice Department Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz
(image on the left) early in his investigation into alleged government surveillance abuse have
come forward at the 11th hour." According to Fox's sources, at least one witness outside the
Justice Department and FBI has started cooperating -- a breakthrough that came after Durham was
assigned to lead a separate investigation into the origins of the FBI's 2016 Russia case that
led to Special Counsel Robert Mueller's probe.
"Classification," however, has been one of the Deep State's favorite tactics to stymie
investigations -- especially when the material in question yields serious embarrassment or
reveals crimes. And the stakes this time are huge.
Judging by past precedent, Deep State intelligence and law enforcement officials will do all
they can to use the "but-it's-classified" excuse to avoid putting themselves and their former
colleagues in legal jeopardy. (Though this would violate Obama's executive order 13526 ,
prohibiting classification of embarrassing or criminal information).
It is far from clear that DOJ IG Horowitz and Attorney General Barr will prevail in the end,
even though President Trump has given Barr nominal authority to declassify as necessary. Why
are the the stakes so extraordinarily high?
What Did Obama Know, and When Did He Know It?
Recall that in a Sept. 2, 2016 text message to the FBI's then-deputy chief of
counterintelligence Peter Strzok, his girlfriend and then-top legal adviser to Deputy FBI
Director McCabe, Lisa Page , wrote that she was preparing talking points because the president
"wants to know everything we're doing." [Emphasis added.] It does not seem likely that
the Director of National Intelligence, DOJ, FBI, and CIA all kept President Obama in the dark
about their FISA and other machinations -- although it is possible they did so out of a desire
to provide him with "plausible denial."
It seems more likely that Obama's closest intelligence confidant, Brennan, told him about
the shenanigans with FISA, that Obama gave him approval (perhaps just tacit approval), and that
Brennan used that to harness top intelligence and law enforcement officials behind the effort
to defeat Trump and, later, to emasculate and, if possible, remove him.
Moreover, one should not rule out seeing in the coming months an "Obama-made-us-do-it"
defense -- whether grounded in fact or not -- by Brennan and perhaps the rest of the gang.
Brennan may even have a piece of paper recording the President's "approval" for this or that --
or could readily have his former subordinates prepare one that appears authentic.
Reining in Devin Nunes
That the Deep State retains formidable power can be seen in the repeated
Lucy-holding-then-withdrawing-the-football-for-Charlie Brown treatment experienced by House
Intelligence Committee Ranking Member, Devin Nunes (R-CA, image on the right). On April 5,
2019, in the apparent belief he had a green light to go on the offensive, Nunes
wrote that committee Republicans "will soon be submitting criminal referrals on numerous
individuals involved in the abuse of intelligence for political purposes. These people must be
held to account to prevent similar abuses from occurring in the future."
On April 7, Nunes was even more specific, telling Fox News that he was preparing to send
eight criminal referrals to the Department of Justice "this week," concerning alleged
misconduct during the Trump-Russia investigation, including leaks of "highly classified
material" and conspiracies to lie to Congress and the FISA court. It seemed to be
no-holds-barred for Nunes, who had begun to
talk publicly about prison time for those who might be brought to trial.
Except for Fox, the corporate media ignored Nunes's explosive comments. The media seemed
smugly convinced that Nunes's talk of "referrals" could be safely ignored -- even though a new
sheriff, Barr, had come to town. And sure enough, now, three months later, where are the
criminal referrals?
There is ample evidence that President Trump is afraid to run afoul of the Deep State
functionaries he inherited. And the Deep State almost always wins. But if Attorney General Barr
leans hard on the president to unfetter Nunes, IG Horowitz, Durham and like-minded
investigators, all hell may break lose, because the evidence against those who took serious
liberties with the law is staring them all in the face.
Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the
Saviour in inner-city Washington. No fan of the current President, Ray has been trained to
follow and analyze the facts, wherever they may lead. He spent 27 years as a CIA analyst, and
prepared the President's Daily Brief for three presidents. In retirement he co-founded Veteran
Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).
Mr. McGovern you are right in your analysis. Obama is in this up to his neck, however
there will be a limited investigation at best because the Jews and Israel don't want this.
They are involved and a real investigation would show what control they have over the FBI and
CIA.
Trump by now realizes these agencies can make anything up and the Jewish owned and
controlled media will do their bidding. I have to assume that Trump has come to the
conclusion that he wasn't suppose to win and that the NWO wasn't happy with that because he
stands in their way especially on World Trade and Immigration.
The world is controlled by the Corporate Fascist Military-Intelligence Police State in
which governments are nothing more than Proxies with Intelligence Agencies who work against
the average citizen and for the Corporations. Politicians like Trump are nothing more than
figureheads who must "Toe the Line" or else.
I believe Trump knows he could be assassinated at any time. Obama the "God King" did his
part for NWO and that's why he gets a King's Ransom for his speeches for reading a
teleprompter and banging on his chest and saying, "I did that." What he is really saying is I
did that for you -- now where's my check!
"... Halper, such as he could be called a source at all, appears to have been, has to have been, working in the UK with Agency people and almost certainly with MI6 as well. ..."
"... If John Brennan was not there at the genesis of this fiasco, I will eat my hat; and I cannot see how there weren't high level officials at MI6 engaged as well ..."
"... Similarly, Steele is dredging for Russian dirt wherever he can get it and he's sealed himself off from his former employer? Not likely. ..."
"... The one thing which overwhelms all else is the actual nature of the material that came from the DNC servers and appeared on Wikileaks. A great deal of noise is made about that information's journey, who stole (hacked or copied) it, how it was done, who transmitted it, etc. But no noise whatever is made about the information itself, or at least when an attempt is made it is buried by the "Russia meddled" noise. ..."
"... The information itself is that the DNC is a bad actor, that it rigged the primary election for Hillary Clinton. No one, no one , denies the truth of the information itself. When what the DNC did is mentioned the conversation instantly changes to the Russians having "meddled in our election." ..."
"... Buried in the noise is that the DNC meddled in the electoral process far more destructively and far more directly than the Rusians did, if the Russians did so at all, which I perceive as highly doubtful. ..."
I would guess that the Bureau Agents had to be read in on what the Agency people had been
doing with Halper and possibly Mifsud,; that, and to bring their purported
counter-intelligence expertise to bear. Active investigation in the UK with respect to
Papadopolis was in prospect, probably to include tech surveillance, and the Bureau has no
authority to conduct active independent investigation overseas.
Halper, such as he could be called a source at all, appears to have been, has to have
been, working in the UK with Agency people and almost certainly with MI6 as well.
If NSA was there in the UK, it was with a view to coordinating tech; but with that said,
it would be highly irregular for our people to be conducting active investigation, especially
if it included physical and technical surveillance, without coordinating at some level with
MI6 and 5 as well.
If John Brennan was not there at the genesis of this fiasco, I will eat my hat; and I
cannot see how there weren't high level officials at MI6 engaged as well .
Halper is working in the UK with the Agency in re Russia and not working with the Russia
obsessed MI6? Similarly, Steele is dredging for Russian dirt wherever he can get it and
he's sealed himself off from his former employer? Not likely.
The one thing which overwhelms all else is the actual nature of the material that came
from the DNC servers and appeared on Wikileaks. A great deal of noise is made about that
information's journey, who stole (hacked or copied) it, how it was done, who transmitted it,
etc. But no noise whatever is made about the information itself, or at least when an attempt
is made it is buried by the "Russia meddled" noise.
The information itself is that the DNC is a bad actor, that it rigged the primary election
for Hillary Clinton. No one, no one , denies the truth of the information itself. When
what the DNC did is mentioned the conversation instantly changes to the Russians having
"meddled in our election."
Buried in the noise is that the DNC meddled in the electoral process far more
destructively and far more directly than the Rusians did, if the Russians did so at all,
which I perceive as highly doubtful.
i'm not familiar with all the intricate details of the "investigation" (i just detect a
strong smell of bs coming from mueller), and I found this piece hard to follow on the
page-strzok texts and their significance.
This from the Fox article: "Fox News has learned some of the words and names that were
redacted in the string of Strzok-Page messages" prompts a (maybe dumb) question:
Do we know/can we infer how Fox managed to fill in just some of the redacted info?
It seems odd to me that only a few of the blanks have been filled in, as if Fox had access to
the original FBI phone records they'd have all of it. Also, the new handwritten parts seem to
contain information which could not possibly have been gathered from any other source outside
of this private 2 way conversation - e.g. "Just you two? Was DCM present for the interview?"
and the reply "No, two of them, two of us".
Do Fox have it all and are they then just teasing us, or is perhaps one of the two
star-crossed lovers singing?
The signs are always there, it will always seem, in retrospect. Russian meddling in American
elections. You double-take as you hear President Obama admonish the Russians, shortly after the
2016 presidential election, "We can do stuff to you." I'm old enough to remember that such
'stuff' has been going on for awhile. In 1996, Americans crowed about having meddled in
the Russian presidential election. Well, you could argue that they can do stuff too.
Let's recount. Reagan told Gorbachev to "tear down that wall" in Berlin. He did, along with
the Iron Curtain. The neoliberals rushed in like RawdyYates in Rawhide with their bling and sto
ho ethos. The oligarchs took over in Russia. Clinton installed the dancing circus bear Boris
Yeltsin and laughed so hard at
the president's buffoonery that it looked for awhile like America would be friends-for-life
with the Russkies. Maybe they could do stuff together.
... ... ...
John Kendall Hawkins is an American ex-pat freelancer based in Australia. He is a former
reporter for The New Bedford Standard-Times
"... It wasn't to provide dirt on Hillary Clinton, which the Russian lawyer did not have and never produced. That was a ploy by Robert Goldstone, a British music publicist whose job is to get what his clients want, in this case, a meeting. So, recklessly, he invented the idea of Clinton dirt as a bait-and-switch to get Trump's people to come to it. He got the lawyer the meeting for her to lobby a potentially incoming administration against the Magnitsky Act, which is why she was in the United States in the first place. ..."
"... The lawyer lobbying against the act, Natalia Veselnitskaya, told Trump Jr., Kushner and Manafort that Browder's story was fake, a smokescreen to block the Russians from going after him for multi-millions in tax evasion. She argued the Magnitsky Act was built on this fraud. Manafort's notes, included in the Mueller Report, trace what she said. ..."
"... The Mueller investigators appear not to have looked into her charges. The report promotes Browder's fabrications, citing "the Magnitsky Act, which imposed financial sanctions and travel restrictions on Russian officials and which was named for a Russian tax specialist who exposed a fraud and later died in a Russian prison." ..."
"... But instead of his "lawyer" Magnitsky exposing Russian fraud, for which he was jailed and killed in prison, Magnitsky was actually Browder's accountant who was detained under investigation for his part in Browder's tax evasion and died of natural causes in prison, as Magnitsky's own mother admits to filmmaker Andrei Nekrasov in the film "The Magnitsky Act: Behind the Scenes." ..."
"... The documents include a deposition where Browder admits that the alleged "lawyer" Magnitsky did not go to law school nor have a law degree. Magnitsky's own testimony file identifies him as an "auditor." ..."
"... I interviewed Veselnitskaya in New York in November 2016. She explained what she later told the Trump group, that Browder's clients the Ziff Brothers had invested in Russian shares in a way that routed the money through loans so that they could evade U.S. taxes. ["Not invest – loans" in Manafort's notes.] ..."
Natalia Veselnitskaya didn't have "dirt" on Hillary Clinton and when the Russian lawyer met
with Trump's people her focus was not on the 2016 campaign, writes Lucy Komisar.
By Lucy Komisar Special to Consortium News
A "key event" described in the Mueller
Report is the Trump Tower meeting where a Russian lawyer met with the president's son
Donald Trump Jr, his son-in-law Jared Kushner and his campaign chairman Paul Manafort.
Russiagaters have been obsessed with the meeting saying it was the smoking gun to prove
collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign to steal the 2016 election. Months after
Mueller concluded that there was no collusion at all, the obsession has switched to
"obstruction of justice," which is like someone being apprehended for resisting arrest without
committing any other crime.
Natalia Veselnitskaya, the Russian lawyer who met with Trump team members in Trump Tower,
and her interpreter, in background. (Lucy Komisar)
The Mueller report thus focuses instead on "efforts to prevent disclosure of information
about the June 9, 2016 Trump Tower meeting between Russians and senior campaign officials."
But the report on this topic is deceptive. Ironically, as it attacks Donald Trump and top
campaign officials for lying, the report itself lies about the issue the meeting addressed.
It wasn't to provide dirt on Hillary Clinton, which the Russian lawyer did not have and
never produced. That was a ploy by Robert Goldstone, a British music publicist whose job is to
get what his clients want, in this case, a meeting. So, recklessly, he invented the idea of
Clinton dirt as a bait-and-switch to get Trump's people to come to it. He got the lawyer the
meeting for her to lobby a potentially incoming administration against the Magnitsky Act, which
is why she was in the United States in the first place.
The Magnitsky Act is a 2012 U.S. law that was promoted by William Browder, an American-born
British citizen and hedge fund investor, who claimed his "lawyer" Sergei Magnitsky had been
imprisoned and murdered because he uncovered a scheme by Russian officials to steal $230
million from the Russian Treasury. It sanctioned Russians he said were involved or benefitted
from Magnitsky's death. It has since been used by the U.S. to put sanctions on other Russians
and nationals from other countries.
The lawyer lobbying against the act, Natalia Veselnitskaya, told Trump Jr., Kushner and
Manafort that Browder's story was fake, a smokescreen to block the Russians from going after
him for multi-millions in tax evasion. She argued the Magnitsky Act was built on this fraud.
Manafort's notes, included in the Mueller Report, trace what she said.
Nothing Illegal
The Trump people did nothing illegal to meet with her. Their problem was the exaggerating
communications Goldstone sent them about Veselnitskaya having "dirt" on Clinton. (While U.S.
election laws says it's illegal for a campaign to receive "a thing of value" from a foreign
source, it's never been established by a court that opposition research fits that description,
the Mueller Report admits. ) Veselnitskaya
testified to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee in November 2017 that Browder's major
American client, the Ziff brothers, had cheated on American and Russian taxes and contributed
the "dirty money" to the Democrats.
The Mueller investigators appear not to have looked into her charges. The report
promotes Browder's fabrications, citing "the Magnitsky Act, which imposed financial sanctions
and travel restrictions on Russian officials and which was named for a Russian tax specialist
who exposed a fraud and later died in a Russian prison."
But instead of his "lawyer" Magnitsky exposing Russian fraud, for which he was jailed
and killed in prison, Magnitsky was actually Browder's accountant who was detained under
investigation for his part in Browder's tax evasion and died of natural causes in prison, as
Magnitsky's own mother admits to filmmaker Andrei Nekrasov in the film "The Magnitsky Act: Behind the Scenes."
Mueller's investigators might have started with documents filed in U.S. federal court in the
case of Veselnitskaya's client, Prevezon, a Russian holding company that settled a
civil-forfeiture claim by the U.S. government that linked it, without proof, to the tax
fraud.
The documents include a deposition where
Browder admits that the alleged "lawyer" Magnitsky did not go to law school nor have a law
degree. Magnitsky's own testimony
file identifies him as an "auditor."
Why does that matter? Because it was Browder's red herring. Magnitsky had worked as
Browder's accountant since 1997, fiddling on Browder's taxes on profits from sales of shares
held by Russian shell companies run by his Hermitage Fund. He was not an attorney hired in 2007
to investigate and then expose a tax fraud against the Russian Treasury.
That fraud was exposed by Rimma Starova, the Russian nominee director of a British Virgin
Islands shell company that held Hermitage's reregistered companies and who gave testimony to
Russian police on
April 9 and
July 10, 2008 . It was reported
by The New York Times and Vedomosti
on July 24, 2008, months before Magnitsky mentioned it in an Oct. 7 interrogation.
Kremlin-connected?
Trump Tower in Midtown Manhattan. (Jorge Láscar, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia
Commons)
The Mueller Report says Veselnitskaya promised dirt on Hillary Clinton as "part of Russia
and its government support for Trump." Two days before the meeting, Goldstone emailed Trump Jr.
and said "the Russian government attorney" was flying in from Moscow. She had not been a
government attorney since 2001, 15 years earlier.
I interviewed Veselnitskaya in New York in November 2016. She explained what she later
told the Trump group, that Browder's clients the Ziff Brothers had invested in Russian shares
in a way that routed the money through loans so that they could evade U.S. taxes. ["Not invest
– loans" in Manafort's notes.]
The report says, "Natalia Veselnitskaya had previously worked for the Russian government and
maintained a relationship with that government throughout this period of time." Later it says
that from 1998 to 2001, she had worked as a prosecutor for the "Central Administrative
District" of the Russian Prosecutor's office. "And continued to perform government-related work
and maintain ties to the Russian government following her departure." We are meant to presume,
with no evidence, as the media does – that means "a Kremlin-connected lawyer."
When Trump Jr asked for evidence, how the payments could be tied to the Clinton campaign,
she said she couldn't trace them, according to the Mueller Report.
Then she turned to the Magnitsky Act. The report repeats earlier fakery: "She lobbied and
testified about the Magnitsky Act, which imposed financial sanctions and travel restrictions on
Russian officials and which was named for a Russian tax specialist who exposed a fraud and
later died in a Russian prison." Magnitsky did not expose a fraud. Rimma Starova
did.
A footnote in the report said: "Browder hired Magnitsky to investigate tax fraud by Russian
officials, and Magnitsky was charged with helping Browder embezzle money." Browder did not hire
Magnitsky to investigate the fraud. Magnitsky had been the accountant in charge of Hermitage
since 1997, 10 years before the fraud. Embezzlement refers to Browder shifting assets out of
Russia without paying taxes.
But the investigation's focus was not on Browder's fakery -- the substance of the Trump
Tower meeting -- but on the communications organizing the event. The section on obstruction
says Trump became aware of "emails setting up the June 9, 2016 meeting between senior campaign
officials and Russians who offered derogatory information on Hillary Clinton as 'part of Russia
and its government's support for Mr. Trump.'"
That would have been inflated Goldstone's promises.
The report says "at the meeting the Russian attorney claimed that funds derived from illegal
activities in Russia were provided to Hillary Clinton and other Democrats." Trump Jr. told a
White House press officer that "they started with some Hillary thing, which was bs and some
other nonsense, which we shot down fast."
As Veselnitskaya told me, she knew the Ziffs made contributions to Democrats. She probably
started with that. Manafort's notes don't report a "Hillary thing," but are about Browder and
the Ziffs.
On the issue of Browder, the Magnitsky story and the essence of the Trump Tower meeting, the
Mueller Report is a deception intended to keep the myth of collusion in the air while
dismissing that any collusion took place.
Lucy Komisar is an investigative reporter who writes about financial corruption and
won a Gerald Loeb award, the most important prize in financial journalism, for breaking the
story about how Ponzi schemer Allen Stanford got the Florida Banking Dept to allow him to move
money offshore with no regulation. Her stories about William Browder focus on tax evasion. Find
out more on The Komisar Scoop and on
Twitter, @lucykomisar
.
If you enjoyed this original article, please considermaking a donationto Consortium News so we can bring you more stories like this
one.
"... Somehow, I think Kevin's being too generous saying NY Times is moderate when it comes to political views. IMO, reactionary is more appropriate given its editorial stances and what it's championed over its history. ..."
Interesting observation of
NY Times attitude after first D-Party debate noted by Kevin Gosztola:
"'Moderates' seems to be the New York Times media company's euphemism for itself. Liberals
at the Democratic presidential debate made the Times company 'anxious.'"
Somehow, I think Kevin's being too generous saying NY Times is moderate when it
comes to political views. IMO, reactionary is more appropriate given its editorial stances
and what it's championed over its history.
"... Somehow, I think Kevin's being too generous saying NY Times is moderate when it comes to political views. IMO, reactionary is more appropriate given its editorial stances and what it's championed over its history. ..."
Interesting observation of
NY Times attitude after first D-Party debate noted by Kevin Gosztola:
"'Moderates' seems to be the New York Times media company's euphemism for itself. Liberals
at the Democratic presidential debate made the Times company 'anxious.'"
Somehow, I think Kevin's being too generous saying NY Times is moderate when it
comes to political views. IMO, reactionary is more appropriate given its editorial stances
and what it's championed over its history.
Less than four days after the Parkland school shooting, the New York Times has found
a way to turn a national tragedy that claimed the lives of 17 high school students into an
opportunity to escalate its unrelenting campaign of anti-Russian propaganda, involving the
continuous bombardment of the public with reactionary lies and warmongering.
Against the backdrop of a major escalation of military tensions between the two countries,
the Times seized upon the Justice Department indictment of Russian nationals over the
weekend to claim that Russia is at "war" with the United States. Now, the Times has
widened this claim into an argument that Russia somehow bears responsibility for social
divisions over the latest mass shooting in America.
Its lead headline Tuesday morning blared: "SHOTS ARE FIRED, AND BOTS SWARM TO SOCIAL DIVIDES
- Florida School Shooting Draws an Army Ready to Spread Discord"
According to the Times , Russian "bots," or automated social media accounts, sought
"to widen the divide" on issues of gun control and mental illness, in order to "make compromise
even more difficult." Russia sought to exploit "the issue of mental illness in the gun control
debate," and "propagated the notion that Nikolas Cruz, the suspected gunman" was "mentally
ill."
The absurd claim that Russia is responsible for the existence of social divisions in America
is belied by the shooting itself, which is a testament to the fact that American society is
riven by antagonisms that express themselves, in the absence of a progressive outlet, in
outpourings of mass violence.
The aim of this campaign is to target anyone who would criticize the underlying social
causes of the shooting -- the violence of American society, the nonexistence of mental health
services, or even the social psychology that gives rise to mass shootings -- as a "Russian
agent" seeking to "sow divisions" in American society.
The Times lead is based entirely on a "dashboard" called Hamilton 68 created by the
German Marshall Fund's Alliance for Securing Democracy, whose lead spokesman is Clint Watts,
the former US intelligence agent and censorship advocate who declared in November that social
media companies must "silence" sources of "rebellion."
Without naming any of the accounts it follows, Hamilton 68 claims to track content tweeted
by "Russian bots and trolls." But most of the trends leading the dashboard are news stories,
many posted by Russia Today and Sputnik News , that are identical with the
trending topics followed by any other news agency. Thus, Hamilton 68 provides an instant New
York Times headline generator: Any major news story can be presented as the result of
"Russian bots."
The New York Times is making its claims about "Russian meddling" with what is known
in the law as "unclean hands." That is, the Times practices the very actions of which it
accuses others.
Here is not the place to deal with the long and bloody history of American destabilization
campaigns and their horrific consequences in Latin America and the Middle East, or to review
the fact that many American journalists serving abroad had dual functions -- as reporters and
as agents.
But it is worth noting that, particularly in recent decades, and under the auspices of
Editorial Page editor James Bennet, there has been a remarkable integration of the Times
with the major operations of the US intelligence agencies.
This is particularly true with regard to Russia, in regard to which the Times acts as
an instrument of US foreign policy misinformation, practicing exactly what it accuse the
Kremlin of.
Take, for example, the so-called political "dissident" Aleksei Navalny. This proponent of
extreme nationalism and xenophobia, with deep ties to Russia's fascistic right, and extensive
connections to US intelligence agencies, has been championed by the Times as the voice
of social dissent in Russia. Despite his miniscule support within Russia, Navalny's activities
generate front-page headlines in the Times , which has mentioned him in over 400
separate articles.
Another example is the Times ' promotion of the "feminist" rock band Pussy Riot,
which makes a habit of getting themselves arrested by taking their clothes off in Russian
Orthodox churches, and whose fate the Times holds up as a horrific example of Russian
oppression. The very name "Pussy Riot," which in typical usage is not even translated into
Russian, expresses the fact that this operation aims to influence American, and not Russian,
public opinion.
In 2014, the Times met with members of Pussy Riot at their editorial offices, and
have since extensively promoted the group, having mentioned it in over 400 articles. The term
"anti-Putin opposition" is mentioned in another 600 articles.
The logic of the Times ' campaign was expressed most clearly by its columnist Thomas
Friedman, the personification of the pundit as state intelligence mouthpiece whose career was
aptly summed up in a biography titled Imperial Messenger . In a column published on
February 18 ("Whatever Trump is Hiding is Hurting All of US Now"), Friedman declares a "code
red" threat to the integrity of American democracy.
"At a time when the special prosecutor Robert Mueller -- leveraging several years of
intelligence gathering by the F.B.I., C.I.A. and N.S.A. -- has brought indictments against 13
Russian nationals and three Russian groups -- all linked in some way to the Kremlin -- for
interfering with the 2016 U.S. elections," Friedman writes, "America needs a president who will
lead our nation's defense against this attack on the integrity of our electoral democracy."
This "defense," according to Friedman, would include "bring[ing] together our intelligence
and military experts to mount an effective offense against Putin -- the best defense of all."
In other words, war.
The task of all war propaganda is to divert internal social tensions outwards, and the
Times ' campaign is no different. Its aim is to take the anger that millions of people
feel at a society riven by social inequality, mass alienation, police violence, and endless
war, and pin it on some shady foreign adversary.
The New York Times ' claims of Russian "meddling" in the Parkland shooting set the
tone for even more hysterical coverage in the broadcast evening news. NBC News cited Jonathan
Morgan, another collaborator on the Hamilton 68 project, who declared that Russia is "really
interested in sowing discord amongst Americans. That way we're not focused on putting a unified
front out to foreign adversaries."
The goal of the ruling class and its media accomplices is to put on "a unified front"
through the suppression of social opposition within the United States. Along these Lines, NBC
added, "Researchers tell us it's not just Russia deploying these attacks on social media,"
adding "many small independent groups are trying to divide Americans and create chaos."
Who are these "small independent groups" seeking to "create chaos"? By this, they no doubt
mean any news or political organization that dares question the official line that everything
is fine in America, and that argues that the horrendous levels of violence that pervade
American society are somehow related to social inequality and the wars supported and justified
by the entire US political establishment.
It is worth noting that these claims were made on the same day that Fox News ran a story
alleging that Michael Moore, the director of Bowling for Columbine , a film that related
the 1999 Columbine High School massacre to US wars abroad, had attended an anti-Trump
demonstration allegedly set up by Russia.
As the World Socialist Web Site has repeatedly warned, the targets of this campaign
are left-wing, antiwar and progressive web sites, political organizations, and news outlets,
and, by extension, the freedom of the press and freedom of expression of the entire American
public. In the name of providing a "unified front" to "foreign adversaries," the conditions are
being created for the criminalization and banning of political dissent.
"... This is just wanton shit-faced stupidity. We are referring to the Trump Administration's escalation of sanctions on Iran's Ayatollah Khamenei and its foreign minister, and then the Donald's tweet-storm of bluster, threats and implicit redlines when they didn't take too kindly to this latest act of aggression by Washington. ..."
"... That last point can't be emphasized enough. Iran is zero threat to the American homeland and has never engaged in any hostile action on U.S soil or even threatened the same. ..."
"... To the contrary, Washington's massive naval and military arsenal in the middle east is essentially the occupational force of a naked aggressor that has created mayhem through the Persian Gulf and middle eastern region for the past three decades; and has done so in pursuit of the will-o-wisp of oil security and the neocon agenda of demonizing and isolating the Iranian regime. ..."
"... the demonization of the Iranian regime is based on lies and propaganda ginned up by the Bibi Netanyahu branch of the War Party (that has falsely made Iran an "existential" threat in order to win elections in Israel). ..."
"... Likewise, it has presumed to have an independent foreign policy involving Washington proscribed alliances with the sovereign state of Syria, the leading political party of Lebanon (Hezbollah), the ruling authorities in Baghdad and the reining power in the Yemen capital of Sana'a (the Houthis). All these regimes except the puppet state of Iraq are deemed by Washington to be sources of unsanctioned "regional instability" and Iran's alliances with them have been capriciously labeled as acts of state sponsored terrorism. ..."
"... The same goes for Washington's demarche against Iran's modest array of short, medium and intermediate range ballistic missiles. These weapons are palpably instruments of self-defense, but Imperial Washington insists their purpose is aggression – unlike the case of practically every other nation which offers its custom to American arms merchants for like and similar weapons. ..."
"... For example, Iran's arch-rival across the Persian Gulf, Saudi Arabia, has more advanced NATO supplied ballistic missiles with even greater range (2,600 km range). So does Israel, Pakistan, India and a half-dozen other nations, which are either Washington allies or have been given a hall-pass in order to bolster US arms exports. ..."
"... In short, Washington's escalating war on Iran is an exercise in global hegemony, not territorial self-defense ..."
"... When the cold-war officially ended in 1991, in fact, the Cheney/neocon cabal feared the kind of drastic demobilization of the US military-industrial complex that was warranted by the suddenly more pacific strategic environment. In response, they developed an anti-Iranian doctrine that was explicitly described as a way of keeping defense spending at high cold war levels. ..."
"... Iranians had a case is beyond doubt. The open US archives now prove that the CIA overthrew Iran's democratically elected government in 1953 and put the utterly unsuited and megalomaniacal Mohammad Reza Shah on the peacock throne to rule as a puppet in behalf of US security and oil interests. ..."
"... Indeed, in this very context the new Iranian regime proved quite dramatically that it was not hell bent on obtaining nuclear bombs or any other weapons of mass destruction. In the midst of Iraq's unprovoked invasion of Iran in the early 1980s the Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa against biological and chemical weapons. ..."
"... Yet at that very time, Saddam was dropping these horrific weapons on Iranian battle forces – some of them barely armed teenage boys – with the spotting help of CIA tracking satellites and the concurrence of Washington. So from the very beginning, the Iranian posture was wholly contrary to the War Party's endless blizzard of false charges about its quest for nukes. ..."
"... However benighted and medieval its religious views, the theocracy which rules Iran does not consist of demented war mongers. In the heat of battle they were willing to sacrifice their own forces rather than violate their religious scruples to counter Saddam's WMDs. ..."
"... Then in 1983 the new Iranian regime decided to complete the Bushehr power plant and some additional elements of the Shah's grand plan. But when they attempted to reactivate the French enrichment services contract and buy necessary power plant equipment from the original German suppliers they were stopped cold by Washington. And when the tried to get their $2 billion deposit back, they were curtly denied that, too. ..."
This is just wanton shit-faced stupidity. We are referring to
the Trump Administration's escalation of sanctions on Iran's Ayatollah Khamenei and its foreign
minister, and then the Donald's tweet-storm of bluster, threats and implicit redlines when they
didn't take too kindly to this latest act of aggression by Washington.
That last point can't be emphasized enough. Iran is zero threat to the American homeland
and has never engaged in any hostile action on U.S soil or even threatened the same.
To the contrary, Washington's massive naval and military arsenal in the middle east is
essentially the occupational force of a naked aggressor that has created mayhem through the
Persian Gulf and middle eastern region for the past three decades; and has done so in pursuit
of the will-o-wisp of oil security and the neocon agenda of demonizing and isolating the
Iranian regime.
But as we have demonstrated previously, the best cure for high oil prices is the global
market, not the Fifth Fleet. And the demonization of the Iranian regime is based on lies
and propaganda ginned up by the Bibi Netanyahu branch of the War Party (that has falsely made
Iran an "existential" threat in order to win elections in Israel).
Stated differently, the American people have no dog in the political hunts of Washington's
so-called allies in the region; and will be no worse for the wear economically if Washington
were to dispense with its idiotic economic warfare against Iran's 4 million barrel per day oil
industry and allow all exporters in the region to produce and sell every single barrel they can
economically extract.
Viewed in the proper context, Iran's response to the new sanctions and intensified efforts
to destroy their economy was readily warranted:
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani called the new sanctions "outrageous and stupid." Mr.
Khamenei, while the political leader of Iran, also is one of the world's leading authorities
for Shia Muslims.
"Would any administration with a bit of wisdom [sanction] the highest authority of a
country? And not only a political authority, a religious, social, spiritual one, and not the
leader of Iran only, the leader of the Islamic revolution all over the world?" Mr. Rouhani said
in a speech broadcast on state television.
He said it was "obvious" that the US was lying about wanting to negotiate with Iran: "You
want us to negotiate with you again?" Mr. Rouhani said, "and at the same time you seek to
sanction the foreign minister too?"
Iran also said these sanctions closed the door on diplomacy and threatened global
stability, as American officials renewed efforts to build a global alliance against
Tehran.
Unfortunately, it didn't take the Donald long to upchuck what amounted to a dangerous
tantrum:
.Iran's very ignorant and insulting statement, put out today, only shows that they do not
understand reality. Any attack by Iran on anything American will be met with great and
overwhelming force. In some areas, overwhelming will mean obliteration. No more John Kerry
& Obama!
Those words are utterly reckless and outrageous. The Donald is carrying water for the
neocons, Bibi and the Saudis without really understanding what he is doing and in the process
is betraying America First and inching closer to an utterly unnecessary conflagration in the
Persian Gulf that will virtually upend the global economy.
Worst of all, as he escalates the confrontation with the Iranian regime, he espouses a pack
of lies and distortions that do no remotely comport with the facts. For instance, the following
tweet is absolutely neocon baloney:
.The wonderful Iranian people are suffering, and for no reason at all. Their leadership
spends all of its money on Terror, and little on anything else. The US has not forgotten Iran's
use of IED's & EFP's (bombs), which killed 2000 Americans, and wounded many
more
The truth of the matter is that the Donald is referring to attacks on US forces by the
Shiite militias in Iraq during Washington's misbegotten invasion and occupation of that
woebegone nation during the last decades. The Shiite live there, constitute the majority of its
electorate, didn't want America there in the first place, and now actually run the government
that Washington placed in power and are totally opposed to Trump's confrontation with their
Shiite compatriots in Iran.
Talk about the pot calling the kettle black!
Better still, it is crucial to understand that this entire dangerous escalation is owing to
the fact that the Donald got into his thick head that utter nonsense that the Iran nuke deal
was some kind of disaster, and from there walked-away from the deal and restarted a brutal
economic war against Iran in the guise of sanctions.
But nothing could be further from the truth. The Donald's action to terminate the Iranian
nuclear deal was a complete triumph for the War Party.
It gutted the very idea of America First because Washington's renewed round of
sanctions constitute economic aggression against a country that is no threat to the US homeland
whatsoever.
In fact, Iran did not violate any term of the nuke deal, and as we demonstrate below,
scrupulously adhered to the letter of it. So the real reasons for Trump's abandonment of the
nuke deal have everything to do with the kind of Imperial interventionism that is the
antithesis of America First.
Trump's action, in fact, is predicated on the decades long neocon-inspired Big Lie that Iran
is an aggressive expansionist and terrorism-supporting rogue state which threatens the security
of not just the region, but America too.
But that's flat out poppycock. As we documented last week, the claim that Iran is the
expansionist leader of the Shiite Crescent is based on nothing more than the fact that Tehran
has an independent foreign policy based on its own interests and confessional affiliations
– legitimate relationships that are demonized by virtue of not being approved by
Washington.
Likewise, the official charge that Iran is the leading state sponsor of terrorism is not
remotely warranted by the facts: The listing is essentially a State Department favor to the
Netanyahu branch of the War Party.
The fact is, the Iranian regime with its piddling $14 billion military budget has no means
to attack America militarily and has never threatened to do so. Nor has it invaded any other
country in the region where it was not invited by a sovereign government host.
As Ron Paul cogently observed:
Is Iran really the aggressive one? When you unilaterally pull out of an agreement that
was reducing tensions and boosting trade; when you begin applying sanctions designed to
completely destroy another country's economy; when you position military assets right offshore
of that country; when you threaten to destroy that country on a regular basis, calling it a
campaign of "maximum pressure," to me it seems a stretch to play the victim when that country
retaliates by shooting a spy plane that is likely looking for the best way to attack.
Even if the US spy plane was not in Iranian airspace – but it increasingly looks
like it was – it was just another part of an already-existing US war on Iran. Yes,
sanctions are a form of war, not a substitute for war.
The point is Washington's case is almost entirely bogus. To wit:
Mr. Trump also reiterated his demands Monday at the White House: "We will continue to
increase pressure on Tehran until the regime abandons its dangerous activities and its
aspirations, including the pursuit of nuclear weapons, increased enrichment of uranium,
development of ballistic missiles, engagement in and support for terrorism, fueling of foreign
conflicts, and belligerent acts directed against the United States and its allies."
Let's see about those "dangerous activities and aspirations".
In fact, Iran has no blue water navy that could effectively operate outside of the Persian
Gulf; its longest range warplanes can barely get to Rome without refueling; and its array of
mainly defensive medium and intermediate range missiles cannot strike most of NATO, to say
nothing of the North American continent.
Likewise, it has presumed to have an independent foreign policy involving Washington
proscribed alliances with the sovereign state of Syria, the leading political party of Lebanon
(Hezbollah), the ruling authorities in Baghdad and the reining power in the Yemen capital of
Sana'a (the Houthis). All these regimes except the puppet state of Iraq are deemed by Washington to be sources of
unsanctioned "regional instability" and Iran's alliances with them have been capriciously
labeled as acts of state sponsored terrorism.
The same goes for Washington's demarche against Iran's modest array of short, medium and
intermediate range ballistic missiles. These weapons are palpably instruments of self-defense,
but Imperial Washington insists their purpose is aggression – unlike the case of
practically every other nation which offers its custom to American arms merchants for like and
similar weapons.
For example, Iran's arch-rival across the Persian Gulf, Saudi Arabia, has more advanced NATO
supplied ballistic missiles with even greater range (2,600 km range). So does Israel, Pakistan,
India and a half-dozen other nations, which are either Washington allies or have been given a
hall-pass in order to bolster US arms exports.
In short, Washington's escalating war on Iran is an exercise in global hegemony, not
territorial self-defense. It is a testament to the manner in which the historic notion of
national defense has morphed into Washington's arrogant claim that it constitutes the
"Indispensable Nation" which purportedly stands as mankind's bulwark against global disorder
and chaos among nations.
Likewise, the Shiite theocracy ensconced in Tehran was an unfortunate albatross on the
Persian people, but it was no threat to America's safety and security. The very idea that
Tehran is an expansionist power bent on exporting terrorism to the rest of the world is a giant
fiction and tissue of lies invented by the Washington War Party and its Bibi Netanyahu branch
in order to win political support for their confrontationist policies.
Indeed, the three decade long demonization of Iran has served one overarching purpose.
Namely, it enabled both branches of the War Party to conjure up a fearsome enemy, thereby
justifying aggressive policies that call for a constant state of war and military
mobilization.
When the cold-war officially ended in 1991, in fact, the Cheney/neocon cabal feared the kind
of drastic demobilization of the US military-industrial complex that was warranted by the
suddenly more pacific strategic environment. In response, they developed an anti-Iranian
doctrine that was explicitly described as a way of keeping defense spending at high cold war
levels.
And the narrative they developed to this end is one of the more egregious Big Lies ever to
come out of the beltway. It puts you in mind of the young boy who killed his parents, and then
threw himself on the mercy of the courts on the grounds that he was an orphan!
To wit, during the 1980s the neocons in the Reagan Administration issued their own fatwa
again the Islamic Republic of Iran based on its rhetorical hostility to America. Yet that
enmity was grounded in Washington's 25-year support for the tyrannical and illegitimate regime
of the Shah, and constituted a founding narrative of the Islamic Republic that was not much
different than America's revolutionary castigation of King George.
That the Iranians had a case is beyond doubt. The open US archives now prove that the CIA
overthrew Iran's democratically elected government in 1953 and put the utterly unsuited and
megalomaniacal Mohammad Reza Shah on the peacock throne to rule as a puppet in behalf of US
security and oil interests.
During the subsequent decades the Shah not only massively and baldly plundered the wealth of
the Persian nation. With the help of the CIA and US military, he also created a brutal secret
police force known as the Savak, which made the East German Stasi look civilized by
comparison.
All elements of Iranian society including universities, labor unions, businesses, civic
organizations, peasant farmers and many more were subjected to intense surveillance by the
Savak agents and paid informants. As one critic described it:
Over the years, Savak became a law unto itself, having legal authority to arrest, detain,
brutally interrogate and torture suspected people indefinitely. Savak operated its own prisons
in Tehran, such as Qezel-Qalaeh and Evin facilities and many suspected places throughout the
country as well.
Ironically, among his many grandiose follies, the Shah embarked on a massive civilian
nuclear power campaign in the 1970s, which envisioned literally paving the Iranian landscape
with dozens of nuclear power plants.
He would use Iran's surging oil revenues after 1973 to buy all the equipment required from
Western companies – and also fuel cycle support services such as uranium enrichment
– in order to provide his kingdom with cheap power for centuries.
At the time of the Revolution, the first of these plants at Bushehr was nearly complete, but
the whole grandiose project was put on hold amidst the turmoil of the new regime and the onset
of Saddam Hussein's war against Iran in September 1980. As a consequence, a $2 billion deposit
languished at the French nuclear agency that had originally obtained it from the Shah to fund a
ramp-up of its enrichment capacity to supply his planned battery of reactors.
Indeed, in this very context the new Iranian regime proved quite dramatically that it was
not hell bent on obtaining nuclear bombs or any other weapons of mass destruction. In the midst
of Iraq's unprovoked invasion of Iran in the early 1980s the Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa
against biological and chemical weapons.
Yet at that very time, Saddam was dropping these horrific weapons on Iranian battle forces
– some of them barely armed teenage boys – with the spotting help of CIA tracking
satellites and the concurrence of Washington. So from the very beginning, the Iranian posture
was wholly contrary to the War Party's endless blizzard of false charges about its quest for
nukes.
However benighted and medieval its religious views, the theocracy which rules Iran does not
consist of demented war mongers. In the heat of battle they were willing to sacrifice their own
forces rather than violate their religious scruples to counter Saddam's WMDs.
Then in 1983 the new Iranian regime decided to complete the Bushehr power plant and some
additional elements of the Shah's grand plan. But when they attempted to reactivate the French
enrichment services contract and buy necessary power plant equipment from the original German
suppliers they were stopped cold by Washington. And when the tried to get their $2 billion
deposit back, they were curtly denied that, too.
To make a long story short, the entire subsequent history of off again/on again efforts by
the Iranians to purchase dual use equipment and components on the international market, often
from black market sources like Pakistan, was in response to Washington's relentless efforts to
block its legitimate rights as a signatory to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) to
complete some parts of the Shah's civilian nuclear project.
Needless to say, it did not take much effort by the neocon "regime change" fanatics which
inhabited the national security machinery, especially after the 2000 election, to spin every
attempt by Iran to purchase even a lowly pump or pipe fitting as evidence of a secret campaign
to get the bomb.
The exaggerations, lies, distortions and fear-mongering which came out of this neocon
campaign are downright despicable. Yet they incepted way back in the early 1990s when George
H.W. Bush actually did reach out to the newly elected government of Hashemi Rafsanjani to bury
the hatchet after it had cooperated in obtaining the release of American prisoners being held
in Lebanon in 1989.
Rafsanjani was self-evidently a pragmatist who did not want conflict with the United States
and the West; and after the devastation of the eight year war with Iraq was wholly focused on
economic reconstruction and even free market reforms of Iran's faltering economy.
It is one of the great tragedies of history that the neocons managed to squelch even George
Bush's better instincts with respect to rapprochement with Tehran.
The Neocon Big Lie About Iranian Nukes And Terrorism
So the prisoner release opening was short-lived – especially after the top post at the
CIA was assumed in 1991 by Robert Gates. As one of the very worst of the unreconstructed cold
war apparatchiks, it can be well and truly said that Gates looked peace in the eye and then
elected to pervert John Quincy Adams' wise maxim by searching the globe for monsters to
fabricate.
In this case the motivation was especially loathsome. Gates had been Bill Casey's right hand
man during the latter's rogue tenure at the CIA in the Reagan administration. Among the many
untoward projects that Gates shepherded was the Iran-Contra affair that nearly destroyed his
career when it blew-up, and for which he blamed the Iranians for its public disclosure.
From his post as deputy national security director in 1989 and then as CIA head Gates pulled
out all the stops to get even. Almost single-handedly he killed-off the White House goodwill
from the prisoner release, and launched the blatant myth that Iran was both sponsoring
terrorism and seeking to obtain nuclear weapons.
Indeed, it was Gates who was the architect of the demonization of Iran that became a staple
of War Party propaganda after the 1991. In time that morphed into the utterly false claim that
Iran is an aggressive wanna be hegemon that is a fount of terrorism and is dedicated to the
destruction of the state of Israel, among other treacherous purposes.
That giant lie was almost single-handedly fashioned by the neocons and Bibi Netanyahu's
coterie of power-hungry henchman after the mid-1990s. Indeed, the false claim that Iran posses
an "existential threat" to Israel is a product of the pure red meat domestic Israeli politics
that have kept Bibi in power for much of the last two decades.
But the truth is Iran has only a tiny fraction of Israel's conventional military capability.
And compared to the latter's 100 odd nukes, Iran has never had a nuclear weaponization program
after a small scale research program was ended in 2003.
That is not merely our opinion. It's been the sober assessment of the nation's top 17
intelligence agencies in the official National Intelligence Estimates ever since 2007. And now
in conjunction with a further study undertaken pursuant to the 2015 nuke deal, the IAEA has
also concluded the Iran had no secret program after 2003.
On the political and foreign policy front, Iran is no better or worse than any of the other
major powers in the Middle East. In many ways it is far less of a threat to regional peace and
stability than the military butchers who now run Egypt on $1.5 billion per year of US aid.
And it is surely no worse than the royal family tyrants who squander the massive oil
resources of Saudi Arabia in pursuit of unspeakable opulence and decadence to the detriment of
the 30 million citizens which are not part of the regime, and who one day may well reach the
point of revolt.
When it comes to the support of terrorism, the Saudis have funded more jihadists and
terrorists throughout the region than Iran ever even imagined.
In fact, Iran is a nearly bankrupt country that has no capability whatsoever to
threaten the security and safety of the citizens of Spokane WA, Peoria IL or anywhere else in
the USA.
Its $460 billion GDP is the size of Indiana's and its 68,000 man military is only slightly
larger than the national guard of Texas.
It is a land of severe mountains and daunting swamps that are not all that conducive to
rapid economic progress and advanced industrialization. It has no blue water navy, no missiles
with more than a few hundred miles of range, and, we must repeat again, has had no nuclear
weapons program for more than a decade.
Moreover, Donald's incessant charge that the Obama Administration gave away the store during
the nuke deal negotiations that led to the JCPA is just blatant nonsense. In fact, the Iranians
made huge concessions on nearly every issue that made a difference.
That included deep concessions on the number of permitted centrifuges at Natanz; the
dismantlement of the Fordow and Arak nuclear operations; the virtually complete liquidation of
its enriched uranium stockpiles; the intrusiveness and scope of the inspections regime; and the
provisions with respect to Iran's so-called "breakout" capacity.
For instance, while every signatory of the non-proliferation treaty has the right to
civilian enrichment, Iran agreed to reduce the number of centrifuges by 70% from 20,000 to
6,000.
And its effective spinning capacity was reduced by significantly more. That's because the
permitted Natanz centrifuges now consist exclusively of its most rudimentary, outdated
equipment – first-generation IR-1 knockoffs of 1970s European models.
Not only was Iran not be allowed to build or develop newer models, but even those remaining
were permitted to enrich uranium to a limit of only 3.75% purity. That is to say, to the
generation of fissile material that is not remotely capable of reaching bomb grade
concentrations of 90%.
Equally importantly, pursuant to the agreement Iran has eliminated enrichment activity
entirely at its Fordow plant – a facility that had been Iran's one truly advanced,
hardened site that could withstand an onslaught of Israeli or US bunker busters.
Instead, Fordow has become a small time underground science lab devoted to medical isotope
research and crawling with international inspectors. In effectively decommissioning Fordow and
thereby eliminating any capacity to cheat from a secure facility – what Iran got in
return was at best a fig leave of salve for its national pride.
The disposition of the reactor at Arak has been even more dispositive. For years, the War
Party has falsely waved the bloody shirt of "plutonium" because the civilian nuclear reactor
being built there was of Canadian "heavy water" design rather than GE or Westinghouse "light
water" design; and, accordingly, when finished it would have generated plutonium as a waste
product rather than conventional spent nuclear fuel rods.
In truth, the Iranians couldn't have bombed a beehive with the Arak plutonium because you
need a reprocessing plant to convert it into bomb grade material. Needless to say, Iran never
had such a plant – nor any plans to build one, and no prospect for getting the requisite
technology and equipment.
But now even that bogeyman no longer exists. Iran removed and destroyed the reactor core of
its existing Arak plant in 2016 and filled it with cement, as attested to by international
inspectors under the JCPA.
As to its already existing enriched stock piles, including some 20% medical-grade material,
97% has been eliminated as per the agreement. That is, Iran now holds only 300 kilograms of its
10,000 kilogram stockpile in useable or recoverable form. Senator Kirk could store what is left
in his wine cellar.
But where the framework agreement decisively shut down the War Party was with respect to its
provision for a robust, comprehensive and even prophylactic inspections regime. All of the
major provision itemized above are being enforced by continuous IAEA access to existing
facilities including its main centrifuge complex at Natanz – along with Fordow, Arak and
a half dozen other sites.
Indeed, the real breakthrough in the JCPA lies in Iran's agreement to what amounts to a
cradle-to-grave inspection regime. It encompasses the entire nuclear fuel chain.
That means international inspectors can visit Iran's uranium mines and milling and fuel
preparation operations. This encompasses even its enrichment equipment manufacturing and
fabrication plants, including centrifuge rotor and bellows production and storage
facilities.
Beyond that, Iran has also been subject to a robust program of IAEA inspections to prevent
smuggling of materials into the country to illicit sites outside of the named facilities under
the agreement. This encompasses imports of nuclear fuel cycle equipment and materials,
including so-called "dual use" items which are essentially civilian imports that can be
repurposed to nuclear uses, even peaceful domestic power generation.
In short, not even a Houdini could secretly breakout of the control box established by the
JCPA and confront the world with some kind of fait accompli threat to use the bomb.
That's because what it would take to do so is absurdly implausible. That is, Iran would need
to secretly divert thousands of tons of domestically produced or imported uranium and then
illicitly mill and upgrade such material at secret fuel preparation plants.
It would also need to secretly construct new, hidden enrichment operations of such massive
scale that they could house more than 10,000 new centrifuges. Moreover, they would need to
build these massive spinning arrays from millions of component parts smuggled into the country
and transported to remote enrichment operations – all undetected by the massive complex
of spy satellites overhead and covert US ands Israeli intelligence agency operatives on the
ground in Iran.
Finally, it would require the activation from scratch of a weaponization program which has
been dormant according to the National Intelligence Estimates (NIEs) for more than a decade.
And then, that the Iranian regime – after cobbling together one or two bombs without
testing them or their launch vehicles – would nevertheless be willing to threaten to use
them sight unseen.
So just stop it!
You need to be a raging, certifiable paranoid boob to believe that the Iranians can break
out of this framework box based on a secret new capacity to enrich the requisite fissile
material and make a bomb.
In the alternative scenario, you have to be a willful know-nothing to think that if it
publicly repudiates the agreement, Iran could get a bomb overnight before the international
community could take action.
To get enough nuclear material to make a bomb from the output of the 5,000 "old and slow"
centrifuges remaining at Natanz would take years, not months. And if subject to an embargo on
imported components, as it would be after a unilateral Iranian repudiation of the JCPA, it
could not rebuild its now dismantled enrichment capacity rapidly, either.
At the end of the day, in fact, what you really have to believe is that Iran is run by
absolutely irrational, suicidal madmen. After all, even if they managed to defy the immensely
prohibitive constraints described above and get one or a even a few nuclear bombs, what in the
world would they do with them?
Drop them on Tel Aviv? That would absolutely insure Israel's navy and air force would
unleash its 100-plus nukes and thereby incinerate the entire industrial base and major
population centers of Iran.
Indeed, the very idea that deterrence would fail even if a future Iranian regime were to
defy all the odds, and also defy the fatwa against nuclear weapons issued by their Supreme
Leader, amounts to one of the most preposterous Big Lies ever concocted.
There is no plausible or rational basis for believing it outside of the axis-of-evil
narrative. So what's really behind Trump's withdrawal from the JCPA is nothing more than the
immense tissue of lies and unwarranted demonization of Iran that the War Party has fabricated
over the last three decades.
Iran Never Wanted the Bomb
At bottom, all the hysteria about the mullahs getting the bomb was based on the wholly
theoretically supposition that they wanted civilian enrichment only as a stepping stone to the
bomb. Yet the entirety of the US intelligence complex as well as the attestation of George W.
Bush himself say it isn't so.
As we have previously indicated, the blinding truth of that proposition first came in the
National Intelligence Estimates of 2007. These NIEs represent a consensus of all 17 US
intelligence agencies on salient issues each year, and on the matter of Iran's nuclear weapons
program they could not have been more unequivocal:
"We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear
weapons program; we also assess with moderate-to-high confidence that Tehran at a minimum is
keeping open the option to develop nuclear weapons. We assess with moderate confidence Tehran
had not restarted its nuclear weapons program as of mid-2007, but we do not know whether it
currently intends to develop nuclear weapons.
"Our assessment that Iran halted the program in 2003 primarily in response to
international pressure indicates Tehran's decisions are guided by a cost-benefit approach
rather than a rush to a weapon irrespective of the political, economic and military
costs."
Moreover, as former CIA analyst Ray McGovern noted recently, the NIE's have not changed
since then.
An equally important fact ignored by the mainstream media is that the key judgments of
that NIE have been revalidated by the intelligence community every year since.
More crucially, there is the matter of "Dubya's" memoirs. Near the end of his term in office
he was under immense pressure to authorize a bombing campaign against Iran's civilian nuclear
facilities.
But once the 2007 NIEs came out, even the "mission accomplished" President in the bomber
jacket was caught up short. As McGovern further notes,
Bush lets it all hang out in his memoir, Decision Points. Most revealingly, he complains
bitterly that the NIE "tied my hands on the military side" and called its findings
"eye-popping."
A disgruntled Bush writes, "The backlash was immediate ."I don't know why the NIE was
written the way it was. Whatever the explanation, the NIE had a big impact – and not a
good one."
Spelling out how the Estimate had tied his hands "on the military side," Bush included
this (apparently unedited) kicker: "But after the NIE, how could I possibly explain using
the military to destroy the nuclear facilities of a country the intelligence community said had
no active nuclear weapons program?"
So there you have it. How is it possible to believe that the Iranian's were hell-bent on a
nuclear holocaust when they didn't even have a nuclear weapons program?
And why in the world is the Donald taking America and the world to the edge of a utterly
unnecessary war in order to force a better deal when the one he shit-canned was more than
serviceable?
The answer to that momentous questions lies with the Bombzie Twins (Pompeo and Bolton) and
the malign influence of the Donald's son-in-law and Bibi Netanyahu toady, Jared Kushner.
Rarely have a small group of fanatics more dangerously and wantonly jeopardized the
security, blood and treasure of the American people.
IMHO, 'calling it off because casualties' was to generate a bragging point to use in his
campaign 'look what a nice guy I am for not wanting to hurt people'. There have been a couple
of other things that have happened that look like set pieces to give him crowing points.
"Better to have said nothing"
Totally agree but we will need to wait and see what he says on the stump. If a war starts the
disciples may not think much of rising oil prices, shortages and falling stock markets.
There"s allways a chance that he finally comprehended some of Putin`s wisdom that conflict in
MENA would be a catastrophic disaster for all. There is always a sliver of hope he has the
Neocons close on purpose to limit some of the chaos they create.
I'd say the neocons are convenient – Trump likes being on the brink of war to keep
everyone scared. Fear is his ally. But actual war would be a negative, so he's on a
tightrope.
A very risky strategy, except that I think the rest of the world understands it, and it's
convenient for some other countries, who are using the same strategy to maintain domestic
power.
It is interesting that Trump destiny now depends on geopolitical events he can't control namely actions of Iran and China.
Trump foreign policy appears to be driven by a combination of resentment and arrogance -- not a good combination for survival of
Trump and/or mankind
Was with Iran might result in high oil prices would kill the already anemic global growth and cause a recession (I guess
the volatility in oil prices will go through the roof at that point), Iran can destabilize the global economy by destroying most
of the oil production infrastructure around the gulf.
While Lyndon Johnson had chosen not running for reelection in 1968 because anti-war sentiment was high, G W Bush who was
reelected and the USA have now contractor army and casualties without draft does not matter much.
Notable quotes:
"... More likely they attack Saudi Arabia directly. Same impact, more justifiable if not outright popular. No one likes Prince Bone Saw. ..."
"... Iran could take those 10 million barrels a day away in 15 minutes. ..."
China will play a large roll in whether trump get re-elected.
If they decide they prefer his dysfunctional governance to his opponent, then they will engage
in a trade deal that will allow to trump to declare victory. It will likely be a very
superficial victory.
If they decide they would prefer to engage with a different administration, they will likely
refrain from a trade deal until after the election.
Have you asked yourself why Putin preferred trump? The answer is not pretty (for trump, or the
USA).
This is probably an absurd point of view. But in my opinion, it might be in Iran's interest
to drag the U.S into war, probably as indirectly as possible. That way they might
significantly reduce the chance of Trump being re-elected. (Obviously lives will be
sacrificed in this scenario)
The question is if it would work and would a Democrat president stop the war and go into the
same JCPOA deal again. Who knows. Very unpredictable.
Well, Mike, as absurd IMO is that Iran would risk self-destruction to get rid of Trump. He's
certainly a PITA for them, but closing the Strait of Hormuz to crash the global economy and
to blame it on Trump wouldn't work: Trump could blame it all on Iran while keeping on cooking
a controlled conflict with them, showing the world that the US doesn't depend on oil from any
other continent.
This would be a very difficult situation for a Democrat to step in and to
promise a better solution. The US would be relatively well off compared to Asia and Europe
and even could emerge out of such a constellation relatively more powerful.
But it could also
end up in a terrible mess. As you wrote: Who knows. Very unpredictable.
From
Unz
comment: "Tangentially related, but check out this great interview with Putin:
https://www.ft.com/content/878d2344-98f0-11e9-9573-ee5cbb98ed36 The man's intelligence and seriousness is always impressive. The contrast with the nauseating rubbish that
comes out of Western politicians could not be more striking, no wonder they hate the guy."
Notable quotes:
"... "One of the things we must do in Russia is never to forget that the purpose of the operation and existence of any government is to create a stable, normal, safe and predictable life for the people and to work towards a better future ." ..."
"... Putin has recognized the influence of our "regime change" wars on the immigrant problem in Europe. He addressed it forcefully in his UN General Assembly speech in 2015 where he asks NATO "Do you know what you've done?" with regards to creating the immigration problems in Europe. Watch here https://youtu.be/q13yzl6k6w0. ..."
"... From Putin's 2007 Munich speech to this 2015 UN speech and many interviews along the way, I've learned to pay attention to what Putin says. He seems to have an extremely good handle on world events and where they are leading. ..."
"... The neoliberal economic plan is to suck the wealth out of the working class and funnel it up to the top 10%, especially the 1%. How to keep the working class from noticing the theft? ..."
"... neo-liberalism (aka "crony capitalism") is about compromising the state and the society that it protects in favor of wealthy, powerful interests. Thus, at it's core, it's against the people. ..."
"... Look at the whine ass, crying, warmongering. narcissist psychopathic bullies we get. I am envious of the Russians having a leader they can be proud of. ..."
"... Been about 60 years since I have had a president to be proud of, back when America WAS great,,, and they killed him. ..."
Putin said in an interview with the Financial Times Friday that the "[neo]liberal idea has
become obsolete," and referred to Germany's decision to welcome more than one million
refugees -- many fleeing savage urban warfare in Syria -- as a "cardinal mistake."
It is only the last part of the very long interview, where Putin indeed speaks of the
'obsolesce' of the '[neo]liberal idea', that seems to be of interest to the media. Most of the
interview is in fact about other issues. The media also do not capture how his 'obsolete'
argument is ingrained in the worldview Putin developed, and how it reflects in many of his
answers.
Here are excerpts that show that the gist of Putin's 'obsolete' argument is not against the
'[neo]liberal idea', but against what may be best called 'international
(neo-)[liberalism'.
Putin explains why U.S. President Donald Trump was elected:
Has anyone ever given a thought to who actually benefited and what benefits were gained from
globalisation, the development of which we have been observing and participating in over the
past 25 years, since the 1990s?
China has made use of globalisation, in particular, to pull millions of Chinese out of
poverty.
What happened in the US, and how did it happen? In the US, the leading US companies -- the
companies, their managers, shareholders and partners -- made use of these benefits. [..] The
middle class in the US has not benefited from globalisation; it was left out when this pie
was divided up.
The Trump team sensed this very keenly and clearly, and they used this in the election
campaign. It is where you should look for reasons behind Trump's victory, rather than in any
alleged foreign interference.
On Syria:
Primarily, this concerns Syria, we have managed to preserve Syrian statehood, no matter what,
and we have prevented Libya-style chaos there. And a worst-case scenario would spell out
negative consequences for Russia.
...
I believe that the Syrian people should be free to choose their own future.
...
When we discussed this matter only recently with the previous US administration, we said,
suppose Assad steps down today, what will happen tomorrow?
Your colleague did well to laugh, because the answer we got was very amusing. You cannot
even imagine how funny it was. They said, "We don't know." But when you do not know what
happens tomorrow, why shoot from the hip today? This may sound primitive, but this is how it
is.
On 'western' interventionism and 'democracy promotion':
Incidentally, the president of France said recently that the American democratic model
differs greatly from the European model. So there are no common democratic standards. And do
you, well, not you, but our Western partners, want a region such as Libya to have the same
democratic standards as Europe and the US? The region has only monarchies or countries with a
system similar to the one that existed in Libya.
But I am sure that, as a historian, you will agree with me at heart. I do not know whether
you will publicly agree with this or not, but it is impossible to impose current and viable
French or Swiss democratic standards on North African residents who have never lived in
conditions of French or Swiss democratic institutions. Impossible, isn't it? And they tried
to impose something like that on them. Or they tried to impose something that they had never
known or even heard of. All this led to conflict and intertribal discord. In fact, a war
continues in Libya.
So why should we do the same in Venezuela? ...
Asked about the turn towards nationalism and more rightwing policies in the U.S. and many
European countries, Putin names immigration as the primary problem:
What is happening in the West? What is the reason for the Trump phenomenon, as you said, in
the US? What is happening in Europe as well? The ruling elites have broken away from the
people. The obvious problem is the gap between the interests of the elites and the
overwhelming majority of the people .
Of course, we must always bear this in mind. One of the things we must do in Russia is
never to forget that the purpose of the operation and existence of any government is to
create a stable, normal, safe and predictable life for the people and to work towards a
better future.
There is also the so-called [neo]liberal idea, which has outlived its purpose. Our Western
partners have admitted that some elements of the [neo]liberal idea, such as multiculturalism,
are no longer tenable.
When the migration problem came to a head, many people admitted that the policy of
multiculturalism is not effective and that the interests of the core population should be
considered. Although those who have run into difficulties because of political problems in
their home countries need our assistance as well. That is great, but what about the interests
of their own population when the number of migrants heading to Western Europe is not just a
handful of people but thousands or hundreds of thousands?
...
What am I driving at? Those who are concerned about this, ordinary Americans, they look at
this and say, Good for [Trump], at least he is doing something, suggesting ideas and looking
for a solution.
As for the [neo]liberal idea, its proponents are not doing anything. They say that all is
well, that everything is as it should be. But is it? They are sitting in their cosy offices,
while those who are facing the problem every day in Texas or Florida are not happy, they will
soon have problems of their own. Does anyone think about them?
The same is happening in Europe. I discussed this with many of my colleagues, but nobody
has the answer. The say they cannot pursue a hardline policy for various reasons. Why
exactly? Just because. We have the law, they say. Well, then change the law!
We have quite a few problems of our own in this sphere as well.
...
In other words, the situation is not simple in Russia either, but we have started working to
improve it. Whereas the [neo]liberal idea presupposes that nothing needs to be done. The
migrants can kill, plunder and rape with impunity because their rights as migrants must be
protected. What rights are these? Every crime must have its punishment.
So, the [neo]liberal idea has become obsolete. It has come into conflict with the
interests of the overwhelming majority of the population. Or take the traditional values. I
am not trying to insult anyone, because we have been condemned for our alleged homophobia as
it is. But we have no problems with LGBT persons. God forbid, let them live as they wish. But
some things do appear excessive to us.
They claim now that children can play five or six gender roles. I cannot even say exactly
what genders these are, I have no notion. Let everyone be happy, we have no problem with
that. But this must not be allowed to overshadow the culture, traditions and traditional
family values of millions of people making up the core population.
While Putin says that [neo]liberalism is 'obsolete' he does not declare it dead. He sees it
as part of a spectrum, but says that it should not have a leading role:
You know, it seems to me that purely [neo]liberal or purely traditional ideas have never
existed. Probably, they did once exist in the history of humankind, but everything very
quickly ends in a deadlock if there is no diversity. Everything starts to become extreme one
way or another.
Various ideas and various opinions should have a chance to exist and manifest themselves,
but at the same time interests of the general public, those millions of people and their
lives, should never be forgotten. This is something that should not be overlooked.
Then, it seems to me, we would be able to avoid major political upheavals and troubles.
This applies to the [neo]liberal idea as well. It does not mean (I think, this is ceasing to
be a dominating factor) that it must be immediately destroyed. This point of view, this
position should also be treated with respect.
They cannot simply dictate anything to anyone just like they have been attempting to do
over the recent decades. Diktat can be seen everywhere: both in the media and in real life.
It is deemed unbecoming even to mention some topics. But why?
For this reason, I am not a fan of quickly shutting, tying, closing, disbanding
everything, arresting everybody or dispersing everybody. Of course, not. The [neo]liberal
idea cannot be destroyed either; it has the right to exist and it should even be supported in
some things. But you should not think that it has the right to be the absolute dominating
factor. That is the point. Please.
There is much more in the interview - about Russia's relations with China, North Korea, the
Skripal incident, the Russian economy, orthodoxy and the [neo]liberal attack on the Catholic
church, multilateralism, arms control and the G-20 summit happening today.
But most '[neo]liberal' media will only point to the 'obsolete' part and condemn Putin for
his rallying against immigration. They will paint him as being in an alt-right corner. But even
the Dalai Lama, held up as an icon by many [neo]liberals, says that "Europe is for
Europeans" and that immigrants should go back to their own countries.
Moreover, as Leonid Bershidsky
points out , Putin himself is, with regards to the economy and immigration, a staunch
[neo]liberal:
Putin's cultural conservatism is consistent and sincere.
...
On immigration, however, Putin is, in practice, more [neo]liberal than most European leaders.
He has consistently resisted calls to impose visa requirements on Central Asian countries, an
important source of migrant labor. Given Russia's shrinking working-age population and
shortage of manual workers, Putin isn't about to stem that flow, even though Central Asians
are Muslims – the kind of immigrants Merkel's opponents, including Trump, distrust and
fear the most.
What Putin is aiming at, says Bershidsky, is the larger picture:
[W]hat Putin believes has outlived its usefulness isn't the [neo]liberal approach to
migration or gender, nor is it [neo]liberal economics – even though Russia has, in
recent months, seen something of a shift toward central planning. It is the [neo]liberal
world order. Putin wants to keep any talk of values out of international politics and forge
pragmatic relationships based on specific interests.
...
Putin's drive to put global politics on a more transactional basis isn't easy to defeat; it's
a siren song, and the anti-immigrant, culturally conservative rhetoric is merely part of the
music.
There is in my view no 'siren-song' there and nothing that has to be defeated. It is just
that Putin is more willing to listen to the people than most of the western wannabe
'elite'.
The people's interest is simply not served well by globalization, [neo]liberal
internationalism and interventionism. A transactional approach to international policies, with
respect for basic human decency, is in almost every case better for them.
Politicians who want the people's votes should listen to them, and to Vladimir Putin.
Posted by b on June 28, 2019 at 01:50 PM |
Permalink
It is hard to exaggerate Putin's accomplishments. He almost single-handedly saved Russia from
the chaos of the Yeltsin era and near collapse. He has reestablished Russia as a major power.
In the face of the American world rampage, he has helped stabilize MENA. By merging Russia's
Eurasian Union with China's OBOR, he has helped to set Eurasia on a road to peaceful economic
development. He has even managed to get China, India, and Pakistan talking to one another and
cooperating in a variety of Eurasian projects.
I doubt he has more than 10 years left as a Russian leader, and maybe not even that. When
he finally passes, he will be remembered as another Churchill or Bismarck.
Hmmm... Putin says the problem is 'multi-culturalism', 'migrants'? What kind of bullshit is
this?
Putin doesn't mention that the migrant crisis was caused by Western resource wars, in
Syria, Libya and elsewhere. That neoliberalism's impact on the poor countries has led to
the vast exodus into Europe and N. America.
I have a feeling that Putin is playing the 'RT game', targeting those disaffected people,
who have, in turn been the target of racist, islamaphobic propaganda by Western states,
states that for obvious reasons (self-incrimination) won't state the real reasons for
the exodus.
The page on [neo]liberalism in the classic sense the way it was envisioned in the late 18th
and 19th century has long been passed. [neo]liberalism as in nurturing the human soul and
intellect and allowing each individual to draw on their qualities and contribute to society
with their fullest potential has been supplanted by material and physical liberties alone
(Gender, Sexuality, Free Trade, Free Migration aka Free Movement of Slave Labor etc). What
today is called [neo]liberalism, which I like to equate with neo-[neo]liberalism and social
'progressivism', are both parts of post-modernism, a societal model that is falling and
failing under its own weight of hubris and inconsistencies.
The 'Do as thou wilt' mindset pushed on the people by the elites is deliberate with the
only end goal of creating their 'ideal' world. A world not based on morality, spirituality
and absolute truths, but relativism, materialism, loss of basic notions such as gender,
family, belonging, in short loss of identity and purpose for mankind to obtain ever greater
control over the masses. People are beginning to notice it, however, even if only
subconsciously and start to push back against it. Putin knows this, and that is what he is
laying out in his interview.
"They claim now that children can play five or six gender roles. I cannot even say exactly
what genders these are, I have no notion. Let everyone be happy, we have no problem with
that. But this must not be allowed to overshadow the culture, traditions and traditional
family values of millions of people making up the core population.'
It has become la la land in the West in regards to gender...if a person wants to be gay,
be gay, but let's not force everyone else to pretend reality is not reality..nature choose
(dichotomy) for you to be male or female, sucks if that doesn't match your preferences but
better luck next life...accept the reality you are in and let's not force everyone one else
to pander to your delusions..
See also:
'Sex change' is biologically impossible," said McHugh. "People who undergo
sex-reassignment surgery do not change from men to women or vice versa. Rather, they become
feminized men or masculinized women. Claiming that this is civil-rights matter and
encouraging surgical intervention is in reality to collaborate with and promote a mental
disorder."
I'm reading the Kremlin's transcript I linked to at the Gabbard thread where I posted a very
short excerpt. I continue to read it but stopped to post another very short excerpt IMO is
very important:
"One of the things we must do in Russia is never to forget that the purpose of the
operation and existence of any government is to create a stable, normal, safe and predictable
life for the people and to work towards a better future ." [My Emphasis]
Here are excerpts that show that the gist of Putin's 'obsolete' argument is not against the
'[neo]liberal idea', but against what may be best called 'international
(neo-)liberalism'.
Just a matter of academic rigour: liberalism is extinct; neoliberalism is
literally the "new liberalism", it's successor doctrine. Therefore, when we speak of
"liberalism" after 1945, we're automatically referring to neoliberalism.
neoliberalism was created at Mont Pelerin in the 1930s, and its founding narrative
states that everything that happened between/since the death of liberalism (1914-1918)
and their own hegemony (1974-75) was an abortion of History and should've never happened.
Hence the name "neoliberalism": the new liberalism (adapted to the system of fiat
currency instead of the gold standard); the revival of liberalism; the return of
liberalism (the [neo]liberals).
It's also important to highlight that neoliberalism is not an ideology, but a
doctrine (which encompass mainly policies, but may also encompass ideals). It is wrong, for
example, to compare socialism with neoliberalism (socialism as anti-neoliberalism):
socialism is a scientific theory, and, as a social theory, encompasses a new socioeconomic
system, a new set of ideologies, a new set of cultures and a new set of political doctrines.
Neoliberalism, therefore, is just one aspect with which the capitalist elites engage
against socialism historically (in the doctrinal "front").
Generic question: How many of the 2020 candidates for US President could hold up their end of
an interview with such knowledge and style?
Personally I was impressed by Putin's bluntness in stating Merkel had made a "cardinal
mistake" when she opened the borders to the hundreds of thousands of illegals. And also
this:
And we set ourselves a goal, a task -- which, I am certain, will be achieved -- to adjust
pensions by a percentage that is above the inflation rate.
Compare that to the deliberate US policy if doing the exact opposite.
Can you imagine Trump writing like this? Or Obama, for that matter? Or Bush the Dimmer, or
Clinton, or Bush the Spook, or Reagan, or Carter...Hell, you'd have to go back to JFK to find
this sort of skill with language and deep analysis. And maybe not then. "They" say you get
the leaders you deserve. In that case the Russians have been nice and we Americans have been
very, very naughty.
Putin has recognized the influence of our "regime change" wars on the immigrant problem in
Europe. He addressed it forcefully in his UN General Assembly speech in 2015 where he asks
NATO "Do you know what you've done?" with regards to creating the immigration problems in
Europe. Watch here https://youtu.be/q13yzl6k6w0.
From Putin's 2007 Munich speech to this 2015 UN speech and many interviews along the way,
I've learned to pay attention to what Putin says. He seems to have an extremely good handle
on world events and where they are leading.
In the west our governments call Mr Putin a thug, a gangster. But, I've never seen any of our
politicians sit down and frankly and comprehensively lay out there views, goals, thoughts and
musings. To be a good leader or politician you have do have vision, but in the west here i
just see talking heads and soundbites, no soul.
Oh, yeah, the "[neo]liberals" are indignant over his pointing out that mass migration causes
social disruption.
He racist!
The neoliberal economic plan is to suck the wealth out of the working class and funnel
it up to the top 10%, especially the 1%. How to keep the working class from noticing the
theft?
How about divide and conquer? That seems to work. Take the native working class and divide it
any way that works in that society. In the US, traditionally, it was race, but they added sex
a couple of decades ago, then opened the doors to immigration and threw in national origin,
and now, just for kicks and giggles, everybody gets to define their own gender and sexual
preferences. Awesome. The US is now divided into 243,000,000 separate categories of
specialness. And if you don't accept everything someone else tells you as gospel, you are a
bigot of some sort (depending on their self identification. It varies.)
They divided up Yemen and Libya by tribes, Iraq and Yugoslavia by religion, it works the same
in every country.
When the US blows, it's going to be spectacular.
I'm always impressed with Putin's grasp and breadth a la Chirac, whom he admires and
emulates.
I posted a few excerpts I felt very important to this and the Gabbard threads; and at the
latter I now insist this interview be read, not just suggested. That BigLie Media chose to
pounce on Putin's critique of the [neo]liberal Idea displays its agenda and its extremely
sorry attempt to discredit/smear Putin yet again. IMO, such media smeared itself. The
give-and-take was very productive and informative, containing many lessons, a few of which I
pointed to.
Putin's now at the G-20 and has already had one bilateral meeting with TrumpCo.
Sputnik offers this recap that includes links to its additional articles published
during the day. Much has occurred, and Trump has yet to storm out. Some of the photos are
priceless, the May/Putin handshake perhaps being the most telling.
That there is a Putin that today leads a great country like Russia seems like a miracle and
he appeared at the very moment that Russia needed him.
Part of the West elite hate of Putin is that compared to them he gives off an aura of
honesty and truthfulness that is absent from leaders in the West.
The "multi-cultural" issue, to the extent that it is an issue, is only an issue as an
effect of the actual problem. It is effectively a scapegoat. No one would care about
"multiculturalism" if there was a fair economic order in which living standards were
increasing.
The problem is that western capitalism wants it both ways, it sees the
demographic problem it faces and it wants the labor of migrants but it does not want to
improve society, it wants to keep its slice of the pie. Hence things will get economically
worse while migrants will be an easy "cause" at which to point for the unthinking person. In
that sense it becomes a problem insofar as it contributes to fascism, nothing else
changing.
Putin is right about China utilizing globalization to the benefit of society while
the west is only interested in globalization insofar as it opens markets and creates profit
for those who own social production. But of course Marx predicted this all long ago, so it is
not perhaps surprising that the Chinese Communist Party would be more intelligent here. There
is nothing more symptomatic or demonstrative here than the fact that, while western countries
debate over a few tens of thousands of immigrants being "too many", China is capable of such
feats as eradicating poverty and building incredible and modern infrastructure while being a
land of over a billion people.
Reading over the Gabbard comments, I was reminded of another big divide in the US by party.
Americans treat their parties like their tribes and viciously attack heretics of other
tribes. The media fans the flames and keeps the "elections" going for years, without a
break.
Meanwhile, our ruling overlords pick their next puppet, let us all "vote" on computerized
machines, and then the talking heads announce the "winner".
And it all starts over.
neo-liberalism (aka "crony capitalism") is about compromising the state and the society
that it protects in favor of wealthy, powerful interests. Thus, at it's core, it's against
the people.
To compensate and distract from this corruption, the people are presented with the
'fruits' of a [neo]liberal society: quasi"-freedoms" like gender rights, civil rights, and
human rights. I say "quasi-" because these rights are abridged by the powerful elite as they
see fit (witness rendition and torture, pervasive surveillance, and Assange).
We fight among ourselves about walls and bathrooms as elites destroy the Commons. In this
way, they pick our pockets and kneecap our ability to fight back at the same time.
Boy did Russia luck out. Yeltsin was smart picking this man.... Look at the whine ass,
crying, warmongering. narcissist psychopathic bullies we get. I am envious of the Russians
having a leader they can be proud of.
Been about 60 years since I have had a president to be proud of, back when America WAS
great,,, and they killed him.
"... Obviously , Russia is a threat to the US of A -- see the 1992 "Wolfowitz doctrine", where it stated directly. Consequently, Russia is also a threat to the major protectorates of the US, euphemistically described as "Euro-Atlantic community". The rest is propaganda, and demonizing the enemy is a trivial matter. ..."
"... The call to look for the root causes is very laudable, but often more than not is carried out in "7 blind men and an elephant" fashion. "Blind men" are also "biased men", some of whom, using their other senses instead of sight (e.g., olfactory organs) deliberately position themselves at poor elephant's derrière , perform (time and again – to the thunderous applause and approval of the Enlightened Western Public ™) an act of amateur colonoscopy and proclaim: "Behold! That's the essence of the Elephant!". ..."
"... Sometimes, the Elephants becomes annoyed – or enraged and tries to stomp on the irritant. Biased Blind Men promptly call for help from the professionals whose job is to kill all sorts of animals for fun and profit. That's my allegory to the Western Russia analysis. ..."
"... I will not pretend for a second that the Russians are either passive or angelic. However, since as the book you review and others have pointed out a lot of Western concepts are projected onto Russian thinking and actions that don't have much basis in how the Russians actually think, perhaps we also project some of our thinking onto them. In particular with what is happening in Iran and Venezuela, these seem to be actions very much in line with what we accuse the Russians of doing. ..."
"... Finally, I should also note that I think a huge factor in lowering the quality of Russia experts is exemplified by a Soviet joke "What is the difference between western Russia experts and western China experts? The China experts love China!" I myself was motivated to study Russia for what you might loosely call Military Industrial Complex reasons, but I conceived of the Russians less as an enemy to be feared and loathed and rather a country and people to be studied in its own right, and I also was moved by a profound respect for the people and the Army that saved Europe from the night of fascism. ..."
June 25, 2019PaulR14 Comments
'How do you deal with a problem like the Russians?' It's a question which seems to dominate public discourse nowadays, with the Russian
Federation elevated to the status of Enemy Number One in much of the Western world. Oxford University's Andrew Monaghan has an answer
– 'not like we've done so far'. In his last book, The New Politics of Russia , he attacked the mainstream Western view of
Russia as 'narrow, simplistic, and repetitive'. Now, in a new book Dealing with the Russians , he lambasts the Euro-Atlantic
security community for its approach to the 'Russia challenge'. 'The problem Russia poses is being misdiagnosed and the responses,
therefore, poorly framed,' he argues. It is time for the 'retirement of the worn-out and out-of-date repetitions, and the tired clichés
and template phrases that currently dominate the public policy lexicon.' What we need, says Monaghan, is 'fresh thinking.'
To make his case, Monaghan frames the book's problem in two parts: first, how to interpret its nature (is Russia a threat? and
if so, how big, and of what sort?); and second, how to respond to it (dialogue or deterrence?). He then rounds this off with a discussion
of what he thinks needs to be done to improve matters. This last section is directed primarily at a British audience, but most of
what Monaghan says could apply equally to other major Western states.
As far as the first of these issues is concerned, Monaghan is clear that, 'Russia poses a major challenge to the Euro-Atlantic
community.' He claims, however, that the nature of that challenge is misunderstood – 'The challenge is based, though, not on an expansive,
aggressive Russian plan, but instead on a series of contemporary (if long running) policy disagreements that are emphasized by different
understandings of today's international environment.'
Clearly, the responses required to combat an 'expansive, aggressive Russian plan' are rather different to those required to resolve
'different understandings of the international environment.' Interpreting the problem correctly is thus a matter of some significance.
Unfortunately, says Monaghan, most Western analyses of the 'Russia challenge' get it badly wrong. 'Thinking about Russia is stuck
in the twentieth century,' he writes. It is founded on outdated analogies of the Cold War and Munich/Hitler, but these are entirely
inappropriate for understanding the contemporary international environment. We need to start thinking about the world today, says
Monaghan, not the world of yesterday.
Another problem is that 'Russia is conceptualized through 'buzzwords and abstract labels'. As an example, Monaghan discusses the
idea of 'Anti-Access/Area Denial (A2/AD)', an idea which, he says, has 'crossed the buzzword threshold'. A2/AD
refers to efforts to 'prevent or constrain
the deployment of opposing forces into a given theater of operations and reduce their freedom of maneuver once in a theater,' and
it is often claimed that the Russian military has been expanding its A2/AD capabilities in the Baltic region so as to prevent NATO
from deploying forces there in case of war. This supposedly seriously threatens European security. The problem with this idea, says
Monaghan, is that 'Russia has no new concept or doctrine that would correspond to Western understandings of A2/AD A2/AD is a concept
that is foreign to them. Thinking in these terms imposes a Western operational thought process onto the Russian one.'
Similarly, Monaghan denounces the entire industry which has developed in the past five years devoted to hyping the threat of Russia
'hybrid war'. 'Hybrid war' is another baseless buzzword, he says ; it 'does not relate to Russian concepts. [It] is not a Russian
construction – there is not a " Russian hybrid war" in the way it is conceived'. Talk of hybrid war produces 'an inaccurate
view of Russian defence and security thinking', and 'magnifies Russian capabilities, effectively asserting the omniscience and omnipotence
of the Russian leadership' (which, I suspect, is precisely the point!).
All in all, therefore, Monaghan concludes that thinking about the Russian threat 'is in the grip of exhausted metaphorical
shorthand introducing shibboleths and myths – not to say fantasies – to the debate. . This shorthand has thus introduced rigidity
and dogma'. This is pretty stern stuff. One has to agree with Monaghan that we need some new thinking about the nature of the threat.
The same applies to thinking about how the West should respond to the Russian challenge. Too often this is reduced to a choice
of two options – dialogue or deterrence. Both have their limitations. Given the depth of the disagreements between Russia and the
West, Monaghan believes that it is very unlikely that dialogue will produce meaningful results. That leaves deterrence. But to deter
effectively one has to know what it is one is deterring. That means having a proper understanding of the threat – i.e. of Russian
intentions and capabilities. Unfortunately, instead of being analysed realistically, the threat is generally 'framed as Russian foreign
policy adventurism, an unprovoked strike from a clear blue sky'. Deterring fantasies isn't of much value, but that's what we seem
intent on doing.
Monaghan concludes that 'Neither dialogue nor deterrence is an end in itself.' What is needed is a 'broader strategy'. For that,
'there is a need to develop a better understanding of Russian defence and security thinking.' And that brings us to Monaghan's main
point of what we have to do to 'deal with the Russians' – we have to understand them better. And that requires us to open our minds
to alternative points of view. He argues that the experience of the invasion of Iraq in 2003 showed the dangers of groupthink and
the need for 'real diversity of thought rather than shades of mainstream thinking'. Unfortunately at present,
Thinking about Russia fails to understand the social, economic, political and cultural factors on the ground in Russia. Instead,
as we have seen, there is a narrow, abstract and clichéd view of Russia. This has driven a narrative about Russia that has been
impervious to reasonable challenge. important sections of established Russia expertise are largely ignored.
From this, Monaghan concludes that the West needs 'a coherent, sustained and thorough reinvigoration of Russia expertise The point
is that there is too little sophisticated expertise on Russia and that which does exist is overwhelmed by simplistic and misguided
jingoism.'
This is all very true. Monaghan's critiques of Western perceptions of Russia are very apt. He deserves a lot of credit for having
the courage to say all this, especially as in the current climate anybody who says this kind of thing is liable to find himself denounced
as an 'agent of influence', 'Russian proxy', or ' Kremlin Trojan Horse'. But while Monaghan's attacks on current Western thinking
and policy are bang on the nail, his recommendations of what needs to be done instead are a little thin – strategy rather than tactics;
and more investment in Russia expertise. The first is valid in any situation; the second, in my view, is somewhat problematic. Monaghan
made the same recommendation in his last book. In my
review , I
cast doubt on it, noting that, 'the problems we have in understanding Russia today appear to have more to do with the quality of
analysis than the quantity of experts.' I still think that's a valid criticism. Simply churning out more Russia 'experts' won't necessarily
improve the quality of analysis, especially if education in things Russian is driven by demand from the military industrial complex.
Furthermore, even if better analysis does result, that won't necessarily produce better policy. There are already plenty of people
in academia, business, and so on, who know Russia well and have balanced, sensible views about it, whom governments could consult
if they wanted to. They don't want to. Take a look at the list of witnesses to the relevant parliamentary select committees, and
you'll understand this soon enough. You can have more and better experts, but if they're saying something politically unwelcome,
it probably won't make much difference.
In a sense, therefore, this book would be better titled How not to deal with the Russians since it's stronger as a critique
of existing policy than as a set of positive recommendations for a new one. I don't want to make that sound too negative. The critique
is excellent, and I'm well aware that this blog is guilty of much the same thing – lots of carping about all the nonsense which people
are saying, but not much by way of positive proposals. There's a good reason for that – the prevailing narrative is so strong that
until something is done to demolish it, alternative policies are never going to get a hearing. At some point, though, we're going
to have go one step further.
To be fair to Monaghan, though, he says upfront at the start of his book that it aims 'not so much to make specific policy recommendations
about how to "deal with the Russians" but to step back to make a bigger argument for a broader shift in terms of conceiving the nature
of the challenge Russia poses.' He achieves his aim, and for that we must thank him. It's a shift which is long overdue.
Obviously , Russia is a threat to the US of A -- see the 1992 "Wolfowitz doctrine", where it stated directly. Consequently,
Russia is also a threat to the major protectorates of the US, euphemistically described as "Euro-Atlantic community". The rest
is propaganda, and demonizing the enemy is a trivial matter.
If he wants a different approach, better understanding, peace, love, harmony and bubble gum, then what he needs to question
are the underlying assumptions, the root cause. For the US, it's the basic imperial strategies a-la "Wolfowitz doctrine", and
for the "Euro-Atlantic community" it's their acceptance of American domination.
In his final paragraphs Professor approaches dangerously close to the heart of the matter, but then, naturally, rushes back from
the precipice of the Abyss, which proximity alone began to sap his ideological resolve and sunny Western liberal disposish. Mao
Cheng Ji writes all right and obvious things, but commits a mortal unhandshakable sin of mentioning the Wolfowitz doctrine – meaning
that he will be ignored by "proper people".
The call to look for the root causes is very laudable, but often more than not is carried out in "7 blind men and an elephant"
fashion. "Blind men" are also "biased men", some of whom, using their other senses instead of sight (e.g., olfactory organs) deliberately
position themselves at poor elephant's derrière , perform (time and again – to the thunderous applause and approval of
the Enlightened Western Public ™) an act of amateur colonoscopy and proclaim: "Behold! That's the essence of the Elephant!".
Sometimes,
the Elephants becomes annoyed – or enraged and tries to stomp on the irritant. Biased Blind Men promptly call for help from the
professionals whose job is to kill all sorts of animals for fun and profit. That's my allegory to the Western Russia analysis.
No, instead of biased talk about "root causes" or "how to deal with [Outsiders X/Y/Z]", these authors in their books should
finally start asking the ur-question – how to deal with ourselves?
Professor Robinson writes:
"Simply churning out more Russia 'experts' won't necessarily improve the quality of analysis, especially if education in
things Russian is driven by demand from the military industrial complex . Furthermore, even if better analysis does result, that
won't necessarily produce better policy. There are already plenty of people in academia, business, and so on, who know Russia
well and have balanced, sensible views about it, whom governments could consult if they wanted to. They don't want to You can
have more and better experts, but if they're saying something politically unwelcome, it probably won't make much difference."
He also wrote in the same blogpost:
"At some point, though, we're going to have go one step further."
^This. You said "A", Professor – how about saying "B" and then the rest of the alphabet? Okay, here's a hint. Try to answer
the question – "who are you?". Who is Monaghan? Who are these "experts" and "Russia studying academia?". Here's another hint:
"The evidence suggests that foreign policymakers do not seek insight from scholars, but rather support for what they already
want to do . As Desch quotes a World War II U.S. Navy anthropologist, " the administrator uses social science the way the drunk
uses a lamppost, for support rather than illumination ." Scholars' disinclination to be used in this way helps explain more of
the distance.
It also explains the rise of think tanks , which are more pliant than academics but provide similar marketing support. As
Benjamin Friedman and I wrote in a 2015 article on the subject, think tanks undertake research with an operational mindset: that
is, "the approach of a passenger riding shotgun who studies the map to find the ideal route, adjusts the engine if need be, and
always accepts the destination without protest ."
As former senator Olympia Snowe once put it, "you can find a think tank to buttress any view or position, and then you give
it the aura of legitimacy and credibility by referring to their report." Or consider the view of Rory Stewart, now a member of
parliament in the UK, but once an expert on Afghanistan who was consulted on the Afghan surge but opposed it:
"It's like they're coming in and saying to you, "I'm going to drive my car off a cliff. Should I or should I not wear a
seatbelt?" And you say, "I don't think you should drive your car off the cliff." And they say, "No, no, that bit's already been
decided -- the question is whether to wear a seatbelt." And you say, "Well, you might as well wear a seatbelt." And then they
say, "We've consulted with policy expert Rory Stewart, and he says "
Or look at how policymakers themselves define relevance. Stephen Krasner, an academic who became a policymaker, lamented
the uselessness of much academic security studies literature because "[e]ven the most convincing empirical findings may be of
no practical use because they do not include factors that policy makers can manipulate."
The explicit claim here is that for scholarship to be of any practical use, it must include factors that policymakers can
manipulate. This reflects a strong bias toward action, even in relatively restrained presidencies." – Justin Logan, "
Cult of the Irrelevant: National Security Eggheads and Academics "
I remember when you posted your presentation and the following Q&A session on the topic of the history of Russian conservative
thought, professor. The questions being asked amounted to
a) Present day hot-button issues (aka "how Russia is baaaaad")
and
b) To what degree these conservative thinkers influence modern Russia (aka "How Russia has always been baaaaad")
None (NO ONE) of them, precious gentle students in the heartland of the West, ever thought that you just did what any scientist
have to do – carried out a research to further humanity's collective body of knowledge about us and the universe. No – they, these
precious children, want the real life application from the "Russian studies", i.e. it must help them wage the War. You, in this
regard, thoroughly failed them – and other, full grown, and even old and senile children that more often than not call all the
shots.
Or, screw it, TL;DR version – Professor, why can't you just admit that you as a member of intelligentsia belong to the
strata whose function is to serve the ruling class? That, despite all the illusions of the privilege and self-importance, no,
you, white-collar Western intellectual mass, are not "the power" – you are hired workers, hired to deliver a preset result. Maybe
after developing a certain conscience about yourself and your real status, you might then proceed to talk about how the
policymaking really works or how you (general "you") have so little impact on it despite your shiny Ivory Towers and data stuffed
brains.
P.S. Btw, case in study. Did Boris
answer your letter? Do you plan to write another one to him soon?
I remember that Roger McDermott wrote that the idea 'hybrid warfare' is alien to Russian defence thinking.
Another thing I think that maybe is missing – a bit adventuresome and without proof from the words of very high ranking policy
makers but with some from lower ranking persons – is that perhaps some of our thinking about Russia is us projecting our aggressive
and plotting tendencies onto the Russians.
I will not pretend for a second that the Russians are either passive or angelic. However, since as the book you review and
others have pointed out a lot of Western concepts are projected onto Russian thinking and actions that don't have much basis in
how the Russians actually think, perhaps we also project some of our thinking onto them. In particular with what is happening
in Iran and Venezuela, these seem to be actions very much in line with what we accuse the Russians of doing.
Finally, I should also note that I think a huge factor in lowering the quality of Russia experts is exemplified by a Soviet
joke "What is the difference between western Russia experts and western China experts? The China experts love China!" I myself
was motivated to study Russia for what you might loosely call Military Industrial Complex reasons, but I conceived of the Russians
less as an enemy to be feared and loathed and rather a country and people to be studied in its own right, and I also was moved
by a profound respect for the people and the Army that saved Europe from the night of fascism.
And as I read people like Herspring
and Glantz while comparing them to others such as Anthony Beevor or any number of German officers writing about the Soviet Army,
I realized much of the popular history, even taught history – which is what most politicians will be aware of to the extent they
are aware of history – was riddled with Patrick Armstrong wrote in THE FIRE BELOW "a series of memes."
To conclude this overly long comment, one example will do. One the one hand the Russians and Russian defense policymakers have
a perverse pride in the number of dead of WWII. To both William Odom and Herspring Russian military interviewees said a variation
of "the value of human life is not as high in Russia as it is in the West." One the other hand, post-Stalin Soviet Armed Forces
doctrine aimed to use firepower and materiel to cut down on casualties as far as possible, and the Soviet Army invested a lot
in its medical infrastructure. In the Afghan War the 40th Army was supplied with improved body armour to reduce fatalities. These
are not actions consistent with a set of policymakers utterly indifferent or uncaring to human life.
"On the one hand the Russians and Russian defense policymakers have a perverse pride in the number of dead of WWII."
We are not. Stop your gratitious Russophobia masquerading as "respect", dewittbourchier.
"On the other hand, post-Stalin Soviet Armed Forces doctrine aimed to use firepower and materiel to cut down on casualties
as far as possible, and the Soviet Army invested a lot in its medical infrastructure."
Fucking bullshit in lieu of "Stalin drowned the [racially superior proper European] enemy in [subhuman Asiatic] corpses" narrative.
One has just to analyze Red and then Soviet Army battle doctire, after action reports and results of various engagement during
the war.
It's just that other countries facing Hitler on their soil (with some rare exceptions) did not have to fight for their survavial
as human species, opting for a comfortable civilized occupation instead. Thus idea to sacrifice – continiously – their
own people in order for the rest to stay alive had never faced them. E.g. –
Soviet Army's Posnan's offensive
operation or, even earlier, near complete annihilation of 40-50 "Panthers" taskforce sent to
relieve of Ternopol's
siege – all with minimal casualties to own side. Or just one phrase – "Kessel von Halbe".
My comment as is stands. One of these reasons Khrushchev dismissed Zhukov was that Khrushchev believed Zhukov was too willing
to accept casualties in a future war, and Khrushchev wanted a Marshal who would focus more on developing a doctrine designed to
minimise casualties as far as possible without compromising the overall operational and strategic effectiveness of the Soviet
Armed Forces.
Also I would highly recommend you consider things such as the Ardeatine Massacre and Oradour Sur Glane before you call German
occupations civilized. They were anything but, they were deeply traumatic for the occupied countries and in places like France
and Italy resistance grew and grew. In both countries rations the Germans gave out were barely above the levels they gave to Poles.
This is hardly 'civilised.' It is barbarous.
It just means that what they did in the Soviet Union was so much worse.
The accusation played important role in unleashing neo-McCartyism campaign in the USA. So "The Moor has done his duty. The Moor
can go ...."
Notable quotes:
"... Russian information troll farm the Internet Research Agency spent just 0.05 percent as much on Facebook ads as Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump's campaigns combined in the run-up to the 2016 U.S. presidential election, yet still reached a massive audience. While there might have been other Russian disinformation groups, the IRA spent $46,000 on pre-election day Facebook ads compared to $81 million spent by Clinton and Trump together, discluding political action committees who could have spent even more than that on the campaigns' behalf. ..."
"... So, the Lilliputian Russians, spending a pittance compared to the Goliaths of the Clinton and Trump campaigns, was the deciding factor in 2016? Bullshit. ..."
"... The pathetic and laughable U.S. intelligence community (aka IC) did not do a state-by-state breakdown of how these various social media campaigns operated in those states that swung the election to Trump. ..."
"... the IC is completely silent on the efforts of other countries, such as China and Israel. ..."
"... I had my own experience with Russian media influence, or the lack of such influence to be more precise. I was interviewed on Russia Today aka RT on March 4, 2017 to comment on Donald Trump's claim that the FBI had wiretapped Trump Towers. During that interview I noted that the Brits, not the FBI, were ones doing electronic surveillance of Trump. And how did the public and the media react to that bomb shell pronouncement by me? Crickets. No reaction. ..."
"... The crazy insistence that Russia grossly interfered in our 2016 election is a canard. Too bad the vast majority of America has bought into this absurd nonsense. Yes, there were groups linked to the Russian government that were pushing stories on social media. ..."
"... I think Iran/Contra was the watershed moment. The CIA became very politicized and the quality of analysis and spy trade craft declined significantly. John Brennan turned the place into a freak show. When you have "Dykes on Bikes" day at CIA Headquarters you know you have lost your way. ..."
"... Not only is the IC community discredited but so should most of the Democratic media operations and campaign advisors. ..."
Republicans and Democrats, along with almost all of the media, have accepted the lie that
the Russians engaged in unprecedented "interference" in the 2016 Presidential election. It is a
ridiculous proposition and is based on a presumption rather than actual evidence. The Intel
Community said it is true so, by definition, it must be true.
Let's focus on the actual numbers. How much money did the Russians spend? According to
Robert Mueller, $1.25
million per month . If you start that money clock in May of 2016, that means those pesky
Rookies spent $8.75 million. But let us be generous and add on the previous four months,
essentially starting the clock in January 2016 before the first primary votes. That brings the
total to $13 million.
Russian information troll farm the Internet Research Agency spent just 0.05 percent as much
on Facebook ads as
Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump's campaigns combined in the run-up to the 2016 U.S.
presidential election, yet still reached a massive audience. While there might have been other
Russian disinformation groups, the IRA spent $46,000 on pre-election day Facebook ads compared
to $81 million spent by Clinton and Trump together, discluding political action committees who
could have spent even more than that on the campaigns' behalf.
Trump and Clinton, when you factor in their various political action committees, spent
millions more.
A fuller analysis of the spending on the major social media platforms was provided by
Medium.com :
Surprisingly, Clinton's campaign was overall more active on Twitter and on Facebook than
Trump's , generating 19 percent more messages (11,475 messages by Clinton to 9,390 by Trump).
On Facebook, Clinton generated 500 more messages than Trump. While Trump's tweets seemed to
garner more news coverage, Clinton's campaign was actually substantially more active on social
media, generating 25 messages a day on average to Trump's 20.
Yet, Trump's social media following was larger than Clinton's . In November 2015, Clinton
had 1.7 million followers on Facebook. By Election Day that had grown to 8.4 million, a 394
percent increase. Trump had 4.2 million Followers on Facebook in November 2015. By Election
Day, that number jumped to 12.35 million, a 194 percent increase. So, while Clinton saw a
greater increase, Trump still had nearly 4 million more followers. . . .
All of this suggests that while Clinton's campaign was overall more active on its social
media accounts, it did not receive the same amount of attention and support on social media as
compared with Donald Trump. . . .
In the last months of the campaign, generally the focus shifted to voter registration and
then get-out-the vote efforts. Social media can be a useful starting place for helping give
supporters events and activities to do to be part of the campaign and to help with the effort
of winning the election. Although both campaigns, indeed, increased their calls-to-action in
the last two months of the campaign, Clinton beat Trump in volume of such messages on Facebook
and Twitter, producing a third more call-to-action type messages (See Figure 17). If we only
look at Facebook, however, Trump's campaign produced as many call-to-action type message as
Clinton in October.
When it came to asking people to vote, the Clinton campaign produced more than twice as many
messages asking for people to vote on election day on the two platforms (See Figure 18), but
most of that was on Twitter. On Facebook, both campaigns urged people to vote at the same rate,
but on Twitter, Clinton's campaign produces three times more appeals for votes than does
Trump.
So, the Lilliputian Russians, spending a pittance compared to the Goliaths of the Clinton
and Trump campaigns, was the deciding factor in 2016? Bullshit.
The pathetic and laughable U.S. intelligence community (aka IC) did not do a state-by-state
breakdown of how these various social media campaigns operated in those states that swung the
election to Trump. Nor did the IC look back at the Russian and Soviet Union covert propaganda
efforts over the previous 90 years. If you are going to do a comparison you need to have a
benchmark. This is what we know for certain--Russia and its predecessor, the USSR, ran
comprehensive and continuous information operations in the United States, including computer
network operations.
No one can say with any degree of certainty that what Russia did in 2016 was qualitatively
and quantitatively different. Also, the IC is completely silent on the efforts of other
countries, such as China and Israel. Nope, just accept on faith that the Russians committed an
attack worse than Pearl Harbor.
I had my own experience with Russian media influence, or the lack of such influence to be
more precise. I was interviewed on Russia Today aka RT on March 4, 2017 to comment on Donald
Trump's claim that the FBI had wiretapped Trump Towers. During that interview I noted that the
Brits, not the FBI, were ones doing electronic surveillance of Trump. And how did the public
and the media react to that bomb shell pronouncement by me? Crickets. No reaction.
The crazy insistence that Russia grossly interfered in our 2016 election is a canard. Too
bad the vast majority of America has bought into this absurd nonsense. Yes, there were groups
linked to the Russian government that were pushing stories on social media. The Chinese did the
same thing. So did the Israelis and the Brits. I am sure there are other countries who were
pushing their own agenda as well. But that is a truth American is too damn lazy to grasp.
Well, you're dead ass wrong. Shocker. I did not "leave" with a solid pension. I stayed four
years. No pension. But I did maintain clearances and continued to work with CIA, DIA and NSA
over the ensuing 25 years. My criticism is grounded in experience. I think Iran/Contra was
the watershed moment. The CIA became very politicized and the quality of analysis and spy
trade craft declined significantly. John Brennan turned the place into a freak show. When you
have "Dykes on Bikes" day at CIA Headquarters you know you have lost your way.
"...did not do a state-by-state breakdown of how these various social media campaigns
operated in those states that swung the election to Trump. "
Hilary's campaign staff didn't do this level of work when directing their own media efforts
either. At some point she, being the head of the campaign, should have been able to get
answers to the questions "what is the return for each advertising effort" and "what does that
do to the electoral vote count." Not only is the IC community discredited but so should most
of the Democratic media operations and campaign advisors.
"... Risen detailed how his editors had been "quite willing to cooperate with the government." In fact, a top CIA official even told Risen that his rule of thumb for approving a covert operation was, "How will this look on the front page of the New York Times?" ..."
"... Bernstein obtained CIA documents that revealed that more than 400 American journalists in the previous 25 years had "secretly carried out assignments for the Central Intelligence Agency." ..."
"... Virtually all major US media outlets cooperated with the CIA, Bernstein revealed, including ABC, NBC, the AP, UPI, Reuters, Newsweek, Hearst newspapers, the Miami Herald, the Saturday Evening Post, and the New York Herald‑Tribune. ..."
"... However, he added, "By far the most valuable of these associations, according to CIA officials, have been with the New York Times, CBS and Time Inc." ..."
"... These layers of state manipulation, censorship, and even direct crafting of the news media show that, as much as they claim to be independent, The New York Times and other outlets effectively serve as de facto spokespeople for the government -- or at least for the US national security state. ..."
The New York Times casually acknowledged that it sends major scoops to the US government
before publication, to make sure "national security officials" have "no concerns."
By Ben Norton
June 25, 2019 " Information Clearing House " - The New York
Times has publicly acknowledged that it sends some of its stories to the US government for
approval from "national security officials" before publication.
This confirms what veteran New York Times correspondents like James Risen have said: The
American newspaper of record regularly collaborates with the US government, suppressing
reporting that top officials don't want made public.
On June 15, the Times reported that the US government is escalating its cyber
attacks on Russia's power grid . According to the article, "the Trump administration is
using new authorities to deploy cybertools more aggressively," as part of a larger "digital
Cold War between Washington and Moscow."
In response to the report, Donald Trump attacked the
Times on Twitter, calling the article "a virtual act of Treason."
The New York Times PR office replied to Trump from its official Twitter account, defending
the story and noting that it had, in fact, been cleared with the US government before being
printed.
"Accusing the press of treason is dangerous," the Times communications team said. "We
described the article to the government before publication."
"As our story notes, President Trump's own national security officials said there were no
concerns," the Times added.
NY Times editors 'quite willing to cooperate with
the government'
The symbiotic relationship between the US corporate media and the government has been known
for some time. American intelligence agencies play the press like a musical instrument, using
it it to selectively leak information at opportune moments to push US soft power and advance
Washington's interests.
But rarely is this symbiotic relationship so casually and publicly acknowledged.
In 2018, former New York Times reporter James Risen published a 15,000-word article in
The Intercept providing further insight into how this unspoken alliance operates.
Risen
detailed how his editors had been "quite willing to cooperate with the government." In fact, a
top CIA official even told Risen that his rule of thumb for approving a covert operation was,
"How will this look on the front page of the New York Times?"
There is an "informal arrangement" between the state and the press, Risen explained, where
US government officials "regularly engaged in quiet negotiations with the press to try to stop
the publication of sensitive national security stories."
"At the time, I usually went along with these negotiations," the former New York Times
reported said. He recalled an example of a story he was writing on Afghanistan just prior to
the September 11, 2001 attacks. Then-CIA Director George Tenet called Risen personally and
asked him to kill the story.
"He told me the disclosure would threaten the safety of the CIA officers in Afghanistan,"
Risen said. "I agreed."
Risen said he later questioned whether or not this was the right decision. "If I had
reported the story before 9/11, the CIA would have been angry, but it might have led to a
public debate about whether the United States was doing enough to capture or kill bin Laden,"
he wrote. "That public debate might have forced the CIA to take the effort to get bin Laden
more seriously."
This dilemma led Risen to reconsider responding to US government requests to censor stories.
"And that ultimately set me on a collision course with the editors at the New York Times," he
said.
"After the 9/11 attacks, the Bush administration began asking the press to kill stories more
frequently," Risen continued. "They did it so often that I became convinced the administration
was invoking national security to quash stories that were merely politically embarrassing." In
the lead-up to the Iraq War, Risen frequently "clashed" with Times editors because he raised
questions about the US government's lies. But his stories "stories raising questions about the
intelligence, particularly the administration's claims of a link between Iraq and Al Qaeda,
were being cut, buried, or held out of the paper altogether."
The Times' executive editor Howell Raines "was believed by many at the paper to prefer
stories that supported the case for war," Risen said.
In another anecdote, the former Times journalist recalled a scoop he had uncovered on a
botched CIA plot. The Bush administration got wind of it and called him to the White House,
where then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice ordered the Times to bury the story.
Risen said Rice told him "to forget about the story, destroy my notes, and never make
another phone call to discuss the matter with anyone."
"The Bush administration was successfully convincing the press to hold or kill national
security stories," Risen wrote. And the Barack Obama administration subsequently accelerated
the "war on the press."
CIA media infiltration and manufacturing consent
In their renowned study of US media, "
Manufacturing Consent : The Political Economy of the Mass Media," Edward S. Herman and
Chomsky articulated a "propaganda model," showing how "the media serve, and propagandize on
behalf of, the powerful societal interests that control and finance them," through "the
selection of right-thinking personnel and by the editors' and working journalists'
internalization of priorities and definitions of newsworthiness that conform to the
institution's policy."
But in some cases, the relationship between US intelligence agencies and the corporate media
is not just one of mere ideological policing, indirect pressure, or friendship, but rather one
of employment.
In the 1950s, the CIA launched a covert operation called Project Mockingbird, in which it
surveilled, influenced, and manipulated American journalists and media coverage, explicitly in
order to direct public opinion against the Soviet Union, China, and the growing international
communist movement.
Legendary journalist Carl Bernstein, a former Washington Post reporter who helped uncover
the Watergate scandal, published a major cover story for Rolling Stone in 1977 titled "
The CIA and
the Media : How America's Most Powerful News Media Worked Hand in Glove with the Central
Intelligence Agency and Why the Church Committee Covered It Up."
Bernstein obtained CIA documents that revealed that more than 400 American journalists in
the previous 25 years had "secretly carried out assignments for the Central Intelligence
Agency."
Bernstein wrote:
"Some of these journalists' relationships with the Agency were tacit; some were explicit.
There was cooperation, accommodation and overlap. Journalists provided a full range of
clandestine services -- from simple intelligence gathering to serving as go‑betweens with
spies in Communist countries. Reporters shared their notebooks with the CIA. Editors shared
their staffs. Some of the journalists were Pulitzer Prize winners, distinguished reporters who
considered themselves ambassadors without‑portfolio for their country. Most were less
exalted: foreign correspondents who found that their association with the Agency helped their
work; stringers and freelancers who were as interested in the derring‑do of the spy
business as in filing articles; and, the smallest category, full‑time CIA employees
masquerading as journalists abroad. In many instances, CIA documents show, journalists were
engaged to perform tasks for the CIA with the consent of the managements of America's leading
news organizations."
Virtually all major US media outlets cooperated with the CIA, Bernstein revealed, including
ABC, NBC, the AP, UPI, Reuters, Newsweek, Hearst newspapers, the Miami Herald, the Saturday
Evening Post, and the New York Herald‑Tribune.
However, he added, "By far the most valuable of these associations, according to CIA
officials, have been with the New York Times, CBS and Time Inc."
These layers of state
manipulation, censorship, and even direct crafting of the news media show that, as much as they
claim to be independent, The New York Times and other outlets effectively serve as de facto
spokespeople for the government -- or at least for the US national security state.
Ben Norton is a journalist and writer. He is a reporter for The Grayzone, and the producer
of the Moderate Rebels podcast,
which he co-hosts with Max Blumenthal. His website is BenNorton.com , and he tweets at @ BenjaminNorton .
This article was originally published by " Grayzone
"
"... Nobody at the Pentagon of any consequence. This is a massive opportunity for the president to do what he seems to be insinuating he wants to do, and that is to say to have himself be the only person making any decision in the world, but it's also because of his disingenuousness, his narcissism, his ego and the very fact that he contends that he's in control for this bureaucracy, this massive imperial bureaucracy, to take over. ..."
"... So the only conclusion I can come to is that Donald Trump is an absolute genius -- you will excuse me if I don't arrive at that conclusion -- or he's an inexperienced, narcissistic, egotistical man who's going to get in big trouble sooner or later, if he's not already. ..."
COL. LAWRENCE WILKERSON Well, John Bolton stands first and foremost. I'm told right
now that with the lack of leadership at the Pentagon, Bolton treats the Pentagon as if it were
his vassal state. I'm told that Mike Pompeo is pretty much the same way. Let's look at the
strategic genius we have dealing with Iran right here. Mike Pompeo, a former Army Captain. Wow,
there's a strategic genius for you. Tom Cotton, former Army Captain. Wow, there's another
strategic genius for you.
Nobody at the Pentagon of any consequence. This is a massive opportunity for the
president to do what he seems to be insinuating he wants to do, and that is to say to have
himself be the only person making any decision in the world, but it's also because of his
disingenuousness, his narcissism, his ego and the very fact that he contends that he's in
control for this bureaucracy, this massive imperial bureaucracy, to take over.
I've studied every president since Harry Truman, studied the decision-making process of
every one of them. I've been up close and personal with four of those presidents'
decision-making processes. Some of them are more competent, some of them are very incompetent
depending on the particular decision. But across the board, none of them work like this
administration. Not a single one of them even remotely resembles this administration. So
the only conclusion I can come to is that Donald Trump is an absolute genius -- you will excuse
me if I don't arrive at that conclusion -- or he's an inexperienced, narcissistic, egotistical
man who's going to get in big trouble sooner or later, if he's not already.
GREG WILPERT And what about the other allies of the United States? What role are they
playing? I'm particularly thinking, of course, of Saudi Arabia and Israel.
COL. LAWRENCE WILKERSON Yes. I think Mike Pompeo went to Riyadh. Others have been
dispatched -- Bolton. And they're saying sorry, we told you it was coming. But standby, it will
come. I think we have outside Washington some really powerful figures pushing for this too.
Bibi Netanyahu, Mohammad bin Salman, and maybe even Mohammed bin Zayed in the Emirates, all
want bombs to fall on Iran. I don't think they want an invasion, but that shows how little they
know about strategy because if bombs fall on Iran, here's what will happen. No matter how
precise, how around-the-clock, how devastating, no matter where they're dropped -- on the
nuclear complex, on the IRGC, on the Quds force, wherever they might be dropped.
All those bombs will do besides destroying infrastructure and killing people, all they will
do is force the Iranian people to coalesce around this very, very bad government, which they
aren't right now. They're finding it corrupter and corrupter. And so, they are as against their
government as they've ever been, as a bloc, all echelons of Iranian society, but we will force
them together with those bombs and they'll stand with their government. The second thing they
will do is go right back to North Korea, which they did when I was in government. They'll learn
more about going underground. They will go underground. They'll build a nuclear weapon. They'll
test it and then they'll say, okay, now come get us. And we'll do the same thing we're doing
with North Korea right now and they know that we will not invade. So what do we do after we've
dropped the bombs? We figure all this out real quickly and we invade. And invasion of Iran --
you heard it here -- is a disaster in the making.
GREG WILPERT Now, Iran says that it would be willing to negotiate if first the sanctions are
lifted. Earlier this year though, Mike Pompeo outlined twelve separate issues for negotiation
-- several of which go far beyond the issue of nuclear power; such as ending support for
Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis in Yemen. Now, it looks like there's a complete impasse
basically between the two sides. Do you think there is any chance that this conflict could
still be worked out peacefully, given how far apart the two sides are?
COL. LAWRENCE WILKERSON I don't want to dismiss it entirely because I think people like Bill
Burns and others who did some of the significant negotiating for President Obama that led to
the JCPOA, the nuclear agreement with Iran. I think that is still possible. I think there's
still places like Oman that would offer their good offices, like maybe Prime Minister Abe from
Japan or Sisi in Egypt. There are a lot of people out there who would offer their good offices
and might be able to affect some kind of beginning of talks. Here's the problem though. As long
as you have a thug like Mike Pompeo calling other world leaders "thugs," principally those in
Iran, and using that kind of language, and treating them the way we treat them, then there's no
respect being shown by the United States for the other party. Iran -- a 5,000-year-old
civilization. A country for a long-time homogeneous, 50-plus percent are Persian, 80 million
people, a vast country -- You've got to show that country some respect. You can't talk to them
the way Trump, Pompeo, and Bolton do. You can't disrespect them consistently like that and
expect them to ever come talk to you. So that has to stop, and I don't see it stopping anytime
soon -- let alone, taking on a more positive turn. And therefore, I don't see how we can
talk.
GREG WILPERT Okay. Well we're going to leave it there for now. I was speaking to Colonel
Larry Wilkerson, Distinguished Adjunct Professor of Government and Public Policy at the College
of William and Mary. Thanks again, Larry, for having joined us today.
Thanks for this, I largely agree with Col. Wilkerson’s impression, and his comment
about disrespect, among other things.
It’s a minor detail, but I wonder on what he bases his view of the level of corruption
in the society there. Does he think it’s American-level corruption, or less, or more? The
type of nuance and detailed information that would be required to make that type of judgement
in my view is difficult to find in the West these days.
It’s unfortunate and telling in a way also that in the article RepubAnon mentions
above, the Middle East Monitor didn’t manage to get Khamenei’s name right
either.
Trump has finally gone full banana peel. Anyone who is able to stand up straight for five
minutes without falling over backward cannot still doubt that Trump is a dangerous lunatic,
so intellectually stunted, ignorant and narcissistic (constantly measuring the heat and
brightness of the spotlight he desperately craves, like a hypochondriac taking his
temperature and blood pressure every 10 minutes) and so easily teed up and maneuvered in this
grotesque Iran con by psychotic madmen/sycophants like Pompous & Bolton and
breathtakingly devious vipers like Bibi Satanyahu and Saudi butcher MSOB. It is plain as
doomsday.
Trump’s repudiation of the JCPOA has created an interesting situation. No country
should deal with the US unless the contents of the deal offered have prior approval from both
the House and the Senate.
Scott Ritter had a good interview with Chris Hedges detailing Pompeo’s ridiculous
preconditions. Iran should start setting their own.
As for who was responsible for the damage to the two tankers in the Gulf of Oman, I think
the market called BS on it. One filled with naptha, the other with kerosene/jet1… not
hard to make them go “BOOM”. I’m waiting for an LNG tanker to go up –
they have calorific equivalents close to low yield nuclear weapons.
They’ll learn more about going underground. They will go underground.
They’ll build a nuclear weapon. They’ll test it and then they’ll say,
okay, now come get us. And we’ll do the same thing we’re doing with North Korea
right now and they know that we will not invade. So what do we do after we’ve dropped
the bombs? We figure all this out real quickly and we invade. And invasion of Iran—
you heard it here— is a disaster in the making.
This is an interesting point that I must admit I hadn’t thought of before. It seems
obvious to anyone with even a modicum of military knowledge that an invasion of Iran would be
a gigantic and maybe impossible task, it would require an effort significantly larger than
the Vietnam War – almost certainly the largest mobilisation since WWII, and one with no
guarantee whatever of even limited success. When you read ‘insider’ articles on
the topic there is a general assumption that a war with Iran is something very different
– essentially, a stand off assault intended to cripple Iran through air strikes.
But it may well be that Bolton and his crazies (plus the Saudis and Israelis) are actually
playing a double game with the Pentagon. They are persuading them that all that’s
needed is a manageable air and naval war (which is comfortable ground for US military
strategists), while full well knowing that Iran is highly unlikely to collapse under that
sort of stress. Bit by bit, the US will be dragged into a ground war, one created by the
unstoppable momentum of a large scale air strike. This may well be the neocons actual
strategy.
No, Trump didn't become President last night. Last night was the culmination of two and a
half years of incredibly stupid foreign policy by a man who clearly doesn't know what he is
doing and us unfit to be the President. Obama left Trump with a situation where a wise
leader could have taken the deal endorsed by every other important nation on the planet and
created a detente with Iran. Instead, he handed policy over to the most beligarant war
hawks and gave them free reign to drive our country to the brink of a disastrous war. And
now we are supposed to congratulate Trump for failing to pull the trigger on the action
that every single step he had taken until now has been leading?
When you take the job of President of the United States, you don't get to be graded on a
curve. The fact that he didn't make the worst possible choice at the end of a long chain of
bad choices doesn't make him a good President.
"... It is utterly bizarre to hear people who believe Trump is unfit to lead seem disappointed that he isn't taking us to war. ..."
"... This is a crisis of his own making and he should get kudos for not making it any worse, but that's it. ..."
"... The author seems to think this was some kind of well-considered decision, while Trump is quoted as saying he "thought about it for a second". He could, and almost certainly will change his mind after about the same amount of reflection. ..."
"... Yes, Iran dodged a bullet in this instance. So did our country. Maybe if Trump gets enough positive reinforcement from his last-second audible, he'll be less inclined to "cock and load" the American military in the future. For my part, I'm starting to think his "hawk" advisors are getting closer and closer to hitting pay dirt. By the way, who are his "dove" advisors? ..."
"... If anyone believes the reason Trump gave for calling off the strike, I refer them to his 10,000+ lies since he's been in office. My guess is he changed his mind watching Tucker. ..."
"... Trump staggers through his presidency like a pinball bouncing its way through the machine - first this side, then that side, then being flipped back up to the top by a comment he hears on Fox News to start it all over again. ..."
"... "It does not require Nostradamus-like skills to anticipate how the good cop, bad cop routine Trump appears to be trying with Bolton in particular could end in disaster." ..."
"... the entire U.S. foreign policy architecture remains hyper-busted. I.e., An Imperial President, a feckless Congress that has abrogated its constitutional responsibilities, and Pentagon Brass who think that they swore an oath to be mindless automatons obeying the illegal orders of the Imperial President rather than being defenders of the Constitution. ..."
"... And Tucker Carlson aside, the MSM, sycophantic lapdog of the Pentagon, is still all in to the illegal and unconstitutional Warfare State con. ..."
No matter how laudable averting war is, the fact is that we would have never been in this
situation if Trump had not unilaterally abandoned the Iran deal. This is a crisis of his
own making and he should get kudos for not making it any worse, but that's it.
The author seems to think this was some kind of well-considered decision, while Trump is
quoted as saying he "thought about it for a second". He could, and almost certainly will
change his mind after about the same amount of reflection.
I don't know. Maybe a wise president would not have appointed Bolton and Pompeo in the first
place. Nor would a wise president have had a $130 million drone flying over Iranian air space
(or right on its border).
Yes, Iran dodged a bullet in this instance. So did our country. Maybe if Trump gets
enough positive reinforcement from his last-second audible, he'll be less inclined to "cock
and load" the American military in the future. For my part, I'm starting to think his "hawk"
advisors are getting closer and closer to hitting pay dirt. By the way, who are his "dove"
advisors?
Please, he didn't even know about projected casualties until ten minutes before the attack
was to be launched, no doubt because he's too lazy smart to attend planning
meetings/briefings.
If anyone believes the reason Trump gave for calling off the strike, I refer them to his
10,000+ lies since he's been in office. My guess is he changed his mind watching Tucker.
Trump staggers through his presidency like a pinball bouncing its way through the machine
- first this side, then that side, then being flipped back up to the top by a comment he
hears on Fox News to start it all over again.
But just because on this pass he happened to randomly bounce off of a "good" bumper, we're
supposed to congratulate him for finally "becoming President". The only thing bizarre here is
the contortions his supporters put themselves through to try to deny what is obvious to
everyone else.
If I go to my neighbors front yard with a gun, point it at their house, then don't shoot, I
am not practicing restraint. I should be arrested for brandishing a firearm. This article is
crop.
Lighten up, folks. Obviously, Antle's headline, "The Night Donald Trump Became President," is
a play on the same words that a lot of talking heads (not just unreconstructed
neoconservatives like Bill Kristol, but "mainstream" centrists like Fareed Zakaria) used when
Trump bombed Syria for the first time.
He's being facetious, not serious. He isn't praising Trump or his "B-Team" for their
restraint (on the contrary, they have created a crisis for no good reason and have brought us
to the brink of war as a result) so much as he's criticizing the media for its
warmongering.
The media is actually trying to bait the President into a unilateral act of war against
another country that hasn't attacked us and couldn't threaten us even if it did.
"It does not require Nostradamus-like skills to anticipate how the good cop, bad cop
routine Trump appears to be trying with Bolton in particular could end in disaster."
At this point, I am almost afraid to check the latest news-with tapeworm Bolton, it is a
matter of time before the situation blows up.
Re: "If Trump continues to break with this pattern, however, it will be less celebrated
in Washington than it would deserve to be. Putting the unelected hawks in their proper
place would be a truly presidential act."
However, note that Trump refuses to concede any Imperial authority to wage war that
illegally violates the Constitution. He just chose not to start a war with Iran - this time.
(And also note that the Pentagon is always happy to oblige the Imperial President and kill
and destroy without question.)
So the entire U.S. foreign policy architecture remains hyper-busted. I.e., An Imperial
President, a feckless Congress that has abrogated its constitutional responsibilities, and
Pentagon Brass who think that they swore an oath to be mindless automatons obeying the
illegal orders of the Imperial President rather than being defenders of the
Constitution.
And Tucker Carlson aside, the MSM, sycophantic lapdog of the Pentagon, is still all in
to the illegal and unconstitutional Warfare State con.
"... This is a crisis of his own making and he should get kudos for not making it any worse, but that's it. ..."
"... The author seems to think this was some kind of well-considered decision, while Trump is quoted as saying he "thought about it for a second". He could, and almost certainly will change his mind after about the same amount of reflection. ..."
"... "If Trump continues to break with this pattern, however, it will be less celebrated in Washington than it would deserve to be. Putting the unelected hawks in their proper place would be a truly presidential act." ..."
...This Administration's handling of Iran, as compared to the last, is anything but stupid.
Unless, of course, you're of the opinion we should be going to war, and you're pissed that
this President made the right decision at the right time. Nice try, because thinking the
way you are is stupid.
No matter how laudable averting war is, the fact is that we would have never been in this
situation if Trump had not unilaterally abandoned the Iran deal. This is a crisis of
his own making and he should get kudos for not making it any worse, but that's it.
The author seems to think this was some kind of well-considered decision, while Trump
is quoted as saying he "thought about it for a second". He could, and almost certainly will
change his mind after about the same amount of reflection.
I don't know. Maybe a wise president would not have appointed Bolton and Pompeo in the
first place. Nor would a wise president have had a $130 million drone flying over Iranian
air space (or right on its border).
Yes, Iran dodged a bullet in this instance. So did our country. Maybe if Trump gets
enough positive reinforcement from his last-second audible, he'll be less inclined to "cock
and load" the American military in the future.
For my part, I'm starting to think his "hawk" advisors are getting closer and closer to
hitting pay dirt.
Well, this article vanquished my very recent admiration for Michael Brendan Dougherty,
acquired by way of Mr. Dreher.
"articulates a classical Augustinian just war argument ..."
That's like claiming Mrs O'Leary's cow that kicked over the lantern and burned Chicago
to the ground was articulating the finer points of preventing forest fires originated by
Smokey the Bear.
Do the writers here do a little physical stretching before contorting yourselves into
pretzel shapes trying to justify every lantern Trump kicks over into poles of dry hay as he
goes along?
Of course conservative Christians hate pulling back from imminent, and possibly nuclear
war. When haven't they in American history?
Please, he didn't even know about projected casualties until ten minutes before the attack
was to be launched, no doubt because he's too lazy smart to attend planning
meetings/briefings.
If anyone believes the reason Trump gave for calling off the strike, I refer them to his
10,000+ lies since he's been in office. My guess is he changed his mind watching
Tucker.
Trump staggers through his presidency like a pinball bouncing its way through the machine -
first this side, then that side, then being flipped back up to the top by a comment he
hears on Fox News to start it all over again. But just because on this pass he happened to
randomly bounce off of a "good" bumper, we're supposed to congratulate him for finally
"becoming President". The only thing bizarre here is the contortions his supporters put
themselves through to try to deny what is obvious to everyone else.
If I go to my neighbors front yard with a gun, point it at their house, then don't shoot, I
am not practicing restraint. I should be arrested for brandishing a firearm. This article
is crop.
Lighten up, folks. Obviously, Antle's headline, "The Night Donald Trump Became President,"
is a play on the same words that a lot of talking heads (not just unreconstructed
neoconservatives like Bill Kristol, but "mainstream" centrists like Fareed Zakaria) used
when Trump bombed Syria for the first time. He's being facetious, not serious. He isn't
praising Trump or his "B-Team" for their restraint (on the contrary, they have created a
crisis for no good reason and have brought us to the brink of war as a result) so much as
he's criticizing the media for its warmongering. The media is actually trying to bait the
President into a unilateral act of war against another country that hasn't attacked us and
couldn't threaten us even if it did.
"It does not require Nostradamus-like
skills to anticipate how the good cop, bad cop routine Trump appears to
be trying with Bolton in particular could end in disaster."
At this point, I am almost afraid to check the latest news-with tapeworm bolton, it is a
matter of time before the situation blows up.
Re: "If Trump continues to break with this
pattern, however, it will be less celebrated in Washington than it would
deserve to be. Putting the unelected hawks in their proper place would
be a truly presidential act."
However, note that Trump refuses to concede any Imperial authority to wage war that
illegally violates the Constitution. He just chose not to start a war with Iran - this
time. (And also note that the Pentagon is always happy to oblige the Imperial President and
kill and destroy without question.)
So the entire U.S. foreign policy architecture remains hyper-busted. I.e., An Imperial
President, a feckless Congress that has abrogated its constitutional responsibilities, and
Pentagon Brass who think that they swore an oath to be mindless automatons obeying the
illegal orders of the Imperial President rather than being defenders of the
Constitution.
And Tucker Carlson aside, the MSM, sycophantic lapdog of the Pentagon, is still all in
to the illegal and unconstitutional Warfare State con.
This type of article is the reason I read The American Conservative. Thank you for
addressing this important issue from a cautious and realistic perspective.
Although Donald Trump and I are on opposite sides of the fence on nearly every issue, I
do prefer his restrained foreign policy instincts to the hawkish ones of Hillary
Clinton.
Goodness you people and your Nobel prize obsession. The last guy got one he didn't deserve
so I should get one too. Whether the decision was presidential or not is hinged on motive
in my view.
If it was an assessment that if our drone did in fly over US airspace, then it
represented a legitimate target for Iran - then certainly critical thinking as expressed
has some merit to sound management.
If the matter was decided on the messiness of conflict and calculating one's political
carreer, the level of sound management is simply not a factor.
THIS is what white supremacy looks like: Punish Iran because one day in the far off future
they may develop an atomic bomb but gift Israel $3 billion a year while it harbors hundreds
of nukes. Meanwhile, pat head choppers like Saudi Arabia on the head -- As long as they
buys billions in US weapons and force nations to use US dollars to buy oil.
Do you realize that Iran is an Aryan nation, which would make them white? Israel is a
Jewish nation, which most white supremacists hate. And Saudi Arabia is an Arab country,
which would not make it a white country.
So how in the world is this what white supremacy looks like?
"... If the reports are true then Trump made an offer to the Iranians: let me bomb a few token sites - heck, I'll even let you nominate them - and then I'll declare victory and we can sit down and talk. ..."
"... Nope, said the Iranians. If you launch even a token attack then we will reply with everything we have got, and so will Hezbollah and so will Syria. Your call, Donald. ..."
"... That's the reality, apparently. One spark from Trump and the entire region goes up in flames. ..."
"how long before Iran realizes it will lose and calls on all of its asymmetric
regional forces to attack in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, UAE, Saudi Arabia and the Straits
of Hormuz"
Oh, about 12 hours, there or thereabouts. That is Iran's "Trump card". If the reports are true then Trump made an offer to the Iranians: let me bomb a few token
sites - heck, I'll even let you nominate them - and then I'll declare victory and we can sit
down and talk.
Nope, said the Iranians. If you launch even a token attack then we will reply with
everything we have got, and so will Hezbollah and so will Syria. Your call, Donald.
That's the reality, apparently. One spark from Trump and the entire region goes up in
flames.
"... Standards of evidence have gone out the window when it comes to attacking President Trump. ..."
"... Asked if Trump was a Russian asset, as former acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe had suggested was possible, Clapper said, "I completely agree with the way Andy characterized it." He added a "caveat" that it could have been "witting or unwitting." ..."
"... Here we get to a fundamental element of McCarthyism, which can be illustrated by an exploration of the real McCarthy and his followers back in the early 1950s. These days we often see, in Hollywood movies and intellectual history, a view of the Wisconsin senator as coming out of the blue, roiling a serene nation with utterly false and brutal accusations of communist activity when there was no such threat at all. ..."
Standards of evidence have gone out the window when it comes to attacking President Trump.
TO WHAT extent does the two-year political investigation into Donald Trump and his top aides and family members, based on suspicions
of treacherous "collusion" with the Russian government, represent a kind of McCarthyism? Most people involved in that investigation
no doubt would be aghast at the question. After all, they might say, they were only trying to save the country from an obviously
bad man who had both motive and opportunity to scheme with the Russians for his own nefarious purposes. Even after Special Counsel
Robert Mueller made clear that his two-year investigation could find no evidence of collusion to justify any legal action, many on
the anti-Trump Left continued to insist that it had happened and they would continue the assault.
But Mueller's finding of no collusion does raise questions about the propriety of an inquiry based on suspicions and fragments
of evidence that never added up to any serious proof of such cravenness. That was a frequent complaint about McCarthyism back in
the days of its greatest menacing influence. And, just as Senator Joseph McCarthy sought to leverage his allegations of communist
collusion into partisan political advantage, so too did Trump's accusers seek to bring down a president and curtail his range of
executive action.
TO EXPLORE the issue further, it's helpful to explore what is meant by McCarthyism. Webster's defines it as "the use
of indiscriminate, often unfounded, accusations, sensationalism, inquisitorial investigative methods, etc., ostensibly in suppression
of communism."
The motive of suppressing communism no longer applies, of course, as the primary sources of anticommunist anxiety in McCarthy's
day -- the expansionist Soviet empire and its Chinese counterpart -- no longer exist. But today's obsession with Russia as a threat,
although it represents hardly a fragment of the old postwar capacity for menace, could be considered a stand-in for the anti-Soviet
obsession of old.
What about "indiscriminate, often unfounded, accusations"? The Russia collusion episode certainly qualifies on that count. Adam
Schiff, the California Democrat and ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee (now chairman), said he had "plenty of evidence
of collusion or conspiracy" -- and, he added, this was "more than circumstantial evidence." Given Mueller's ultimate conclusion on
the same question, with all of the investigative resources at his command, one has to wonder what evidence Schiff was talking about.
Meanwhile, another California Democrat, Eric Swalwell, accused Trump of being an "agent" of Russia. He added, by way of elaboration,
"he certainly acts on Russia's behalf."
These accusations also comport with Webster's definitional element of "sensationalism." But it's even more sensational
and damaging when coming from former top-level intelligence officials, such as James Clapper and John Brennan. Brennan said that
"Watergate pales really, in my view, compared to what we're confronting now." He described Trump's claim of no collusion as "hogwash,"
which was a roundabout accusation of treason. He dispensed with the circumlocution when he called Trump's performance in Helsinki,
Finland, following a summit with Russian president Vladimir Putin, "nothing short of treasonous."
Clapper, meanwhile, invoked the constitutional definition of treason when he said Trump was "essentially aiding and abetting the
Russians" though he later said he used the term "only in a...colloquial sense," whatever that means. Asked if Trump was a Russian
asset, as former acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe had suggested was possible, Clapper said, "I completely agree with the way Andy
characterized it." He added a "caveat" that it could have been "witting or unwitting."
Here we get to a fundamental element of McCarthyism, which can be illustrated by an exploration of the real McCarthy and his
followers back in the early 1950s. These days we often see, in Hollywood movies and intellectual history, a view of the Wisconsin
senator as coming out of the blue, roiling a serene nation with utterly false and brutal accusations of communist activity when there
was no such threat at all.
Not so. A couple weeks before McCarthy's first anticommunism rant, Alger Hiss, accused of passing secret U.S. documents to a Soviet
spy when he was a high-level government official, was convicted of perjury. It was a signal victory for the House Committee on Un-American
Activities, the communist-hunting panel of Congress, and a great embarrassment for members of the country's Northeastern elite who
had testified on behalf of Hiss' integrity and patriotism. Two weeks later, the government reported that Klaus Fuchs, a British physicist
who had worked at the Los Alamos atomic-weapons facility during the war, had been arrested as a Soviet spy. This was powerful stuff
when most Americans believed, correctly, that the U.S. nuclear monopoly had been the margin of security in saving Western Europe
from being overrun by the Soviets.
"... Rob Reiner (backed by David Frum, Max Boot, James Clapper and their absolutely-not-xenophobic-sounding "Committee to Investigate Russia") continues to use Hollywood celebrities to spread the Trump Derangement Syndrome. First it was Morgan Freeman. Didn't go over too well. Even the "liberals" hated it. Now it's Robert De Niro, Martin Sheen, Laurence Fishburne, Stephen King, George Takei, and a few lesser known actors. ..."
"... Woah! Stop right there! The "Trump adviser" is George Papadopoulos -- that is clear from the video sequence. So the "Russian operative" they're talking about is none other than Joseph Mifsud. ..."
"... So how can it be that Joseph Mifsud is now a "Russian operative"? Well, look no further than his Wikipedia page. You see, he visited Valdai Discussion Club annual conference once or twice. Apparently, that's all it takes nowadays to become a Russian-linked Russian operative with close connections to Russia. ..."
Rob Reiner (backed by David Frum, Max Boot, James Clapper and their
absolutely-not-xenophobic-sounding "Committee to Investigate Russia") continues to use
Hollywood celebrities to spread the Trump Derangement Syndrome. First it was Morgan Freeman.
Didn't go over too well. Even the "liberals" hated it. Now it's Robert De Niro, Martin Sheen,
Laurence Fishburne, Stephen King, George Takei, and a few lesser known actors. Here's an
excerpt:
Stephen King: Here are some other specific examples from the Mueller report.
Sophia Bush: One: in the Spring of 2016, a Russian operative told a Trump adviser
that the Russian government had dirt on Hillary Clinton in the form of thousands of
emails.
Jonathan Van Ness: The adviser then worked to arrange a meeting between the
campaign and the Russian government.
Laurence Fishburne: That's collusion.
Woah! Stop right there! The "Trump adviser" is George Papadopoulos -- that is clear from
the video sequence. So the "Russian operative" they're talking about is none other than
Joseph Mifsud. Here's Papadopoulos himself talking about Mifsud in an April 16, 2019
interview with Michael Tracey:
George Papadopoulos: He remains an enigma to this day and no one could track him
down, but I've been told recently he's not dead, so there's some improvements.
Michael Tracey: Right, we should say I mean, he was rumored to have been deceased
at a certain point, right?
George Papadopoulos: That's right.
Michael Tracey: And now it appears he might be living under an assumed name [?]
but nobody's heard from him quite a while.
George Papadopoulos: Well, the only in-public statements that he's made were two.
One, he gave an interview -- a bizarre interview -- to the Italian media the day my name
was released and he said he's never heard of "Putin's niece" and "George is probably
talking about some girl that he was trying to have a romantic relationship with" (and we
could get into that aspect of my relationship with Joseph Mifsud). And also he his lawyer,
this man named Stephan Roh, who's a prominent Swiss attorney, has gone public numerous
times and stated that Joseph Mifsud was no Russian asset, but he was a Western intelligence
operative, and he was working under the guidance of the FBI when he was interacting with
Papadopoulos. He said this on CNN during a one-hour short documentary that CNN had about my
life, and he's given interviews subsequently to The Daily Caller , where he
suggested the same exact thing.
Now, anybody who's been following my case and who could just simply google Joseph Mifsud
can also see that: Joseph Mifsud, of course, was dealing with MI6 figures at the highest
level; three months after I notified the FBI that he could be potentially a Russian asset,
he was in Saudi Arabia on a panel with Ash Carter, who was the former defense secretary
under Obama; and around the time [?] my name was released in October of 2017, he was
photographed in The Guardian attending private parties with Boris Johnson, who just
happened to be the Secretary of State of the UK. So, unless the Russians, basically,
infiltrated the upper echelons of the U.S. and UK security establishment, then Mifsud was
no Russian agent, and he's, in my opinion, and what everybody now who is objective believes
is that he was actually an operative working on behalf of the West to, basically, entrap me
with this unsolicited information regarding Hillary Clinton and her emails, and that's why
he's gone underground, and he's living somewhere in Italy, I've been told, and he's
actually on the payroll of Italian intelligence -- that's what I've been told recently. So,
it's a very bizarre story, but I can try and go step-by-step and explain my entire
encounters with him, and what we know now about him.
And he does indeed go step-by-step and describe his encounters with Mifsud in the full
two-hour interview
(continue from 15:14). And of course after Mifsud told Papadopoulos during their last meeting
that "the Russians have Hillary Clinton's emails", no attempt was made by Papadopoulos to
"arrange a meeting between the Trump campaign and the Russian government". In fact,
Papadopoulos was scared and confused as it was right after that meeting that his life went
very bizarre.
So how can it be that Joseph Mifsud is now a "Russian operative"? Well,
look no further than his Wikipedia page. You see, he visited Valdai Discussion Club annual
conference once or twice. Apparently, that's all it takes nowadays to become a Russian-linked
Russian operative with close connections to Russia.
It would all be very funny if it weren't so depressing. I can understand Hollywood actors
doing this -- after all, these people excel at reading from a script for money. But Stephen
King? I thought he was somewhat of an intellectual. Apparently not. Or perhaps he's buddies
with CIA shill Reiner. Who knows.
President Donald Trump likes to think of himself as a statesman, an author, an A-level negotiator, but at heart, he's one thing:
an insult comic.
Every day in D.C. is a roast, the insults and belittling nicknames wielded like tiny comedy bullets. And if you haven't seen enough
of the fusillade on Twitter, all you need to do is turn on late night TV. Television comedy has a strange, symbiotic relationship
with the real political world, something between a feedback loop and a funhouse mirror....
What I best like about Trump is that he drives the media and political establishment
batshit crazy.
Considering that we have spent several trillion dollars on our foreign interventions
mostly on behalf of neocon and zionist pipe dreams of hegemony and domination with nothing
positive to show for, and with a consequence of a massive buildup of a national security
surveillance state that acts with impunity shredding what limited rule of law we have, IMO,
that is the single most important political issue we have if we want to retain even a small
semblance of a constitutional republic. Trump has not been a change agent here. The best he's
done is openly support Bibi's maximalist vision stripping away the false mask previous
president's have worn in this matter. IMO, the American people need to continue to vote for
change agents on this issue until they can finally get someone with sufficient character to
dismantle the Borg influence.
I also believe that the real national security threat is China's totalitarian CCP. This
not just a trade dispute we have with them. They've been fully engaged in a strategic
non-military war with us for decades. I give kudos to Trump for highlighting it but IMO he's
not gone far enough and the jury's out whether he'll cave to Wall St and corporate interests
who were instrumental in us voluntarily supporting the CCP's strategic war aims.
IMO, the data does not support increase in capital investment due to the tax cuts and
favorable terms if repatriation of offshore corporate funds. What we've got instead is
massive stock buybacks that benefit management and Wall St. Main St is also not doing as well
as the headlines purport when one delves deeper into the economic and financial data. I read
a lot of perjorative comments when anyone proposes "socialism" for the bottom 80%. However
the reality of the past 60 years is that we've only had socialism for the top 0.01%.There's
more economic concentration than at anytime over the last century. Across every major sector.
We've financialized our economy and de-emphasized the real economy to the benefit of the
oligarchy. The symbiotic relationship between big business and big government has never been
stronger in my 80+ year lifetime.
The political duopoly has not served us well as all we get is Tweedle Dee or Tweedle
Dum.
With the Democrats you'll get the same foreign policy at the end of day and a foreign
invasion of the US + socialism + general post modern anti-American insanity culture.
The Pomp publicly says that Trump doesn't want war with Iran and I believe that; if for no
other reason than Trump knows that's the one thing that would damage his sure thing win in
2020 - though actually, I'm pretty sure Trump sees it for what it is and what it is offends
his business sense (bad ROI, etc).
Now if I were a subscriber to Patrick Armstrong's Trump cutting the Gordian knot of foreign
entanglements theory, I might just be persuaded that he has deliberately allowed the neocons
enough rope to hang themselves, or at least to cut the blood supply off where it really
matters.
The House has put the noose around its neck, will the Senate open the trapdoor? Is Patrick
right, is Iran a long con and if so who is in on it? Is the Very Stable Genius the most
underestimated man in history?
You know, BA, I always hate those '400D chess' theories concerning Trump, since they are
completely unfalsifiable. And yet, and yet, and yet ... I have to admit that, up till now at
least, pretty much everything that's happened in the Persian Gulf has been completely
consistent with Patrick Armstrong's thesis, so who knows. One thing's for certain: I can't
hope that Armstrong is wrong .
Our taxes went up and Trump endorsed the bureaucratic NASA vision of the future, which is
wasteful, already delayed, over budget and undesirable. There is a competing vision, which
would be cheaper, is ready to go now and involves private enterprise. Other than that, Trump
will be regarded as the worst POTUS ever and hopefully will remain as such for a very long
time.
"... You might think the Democratic Party would be horrified at this result, which one conservative analyst calls: "one of the greatest self-defeating acts in history." You might think Democrats would now move quickly and decisively toward a strategy of offering a substantive political alternative, and abandon this awful own-goal Mueller/Russiagate tack that has already helped Trump immensely (and which they are not going to turn their way). That is obviously what would happen if the Democrats' main goal was to defeat Trump. But it isn't. ..."
"... As discussed above, the Democratic establishment's' main goal throughout this was not to "get" Trump, but to channel its own voters' disgust with him into support for some halcyon, liberal, status quo ante-Trump, and away from left demands for a radical change to the social, economic, and political conditions that produced him and his clueless establishment opponent in 2016. The Democrats' goal was, and is, not to defeat Trump, but to stave off the left. ..."
"... The Democrats' main goal in all this is not to impeach, or stop the re-election of, Donald Trump; it's to prevent the nomination and election of Bernie Sanders, or anyone like him. ..."
"... You mean the five million people who voted for Obama in 2012, in the 90% of counties that voted for Obama either in 2008 or 2012, but would not vote for Hillary in 2019, aren’t streaming back into—are indeed still streaming out of—the Democratic Party, despite all the Mueller investigation has done for them? Imagine that. ..."
"... What has Russiagate/The Mueller Investigation wrought? It’s either a shrewd political gambit sure to take down Trump, or it’s ridiculous political theater leading Democrats, and the country, over another cliff. Double-down or leave that table? ..."
So the Mueller investigation is over. The official "Report on the
Investigation into Russian Interference in the 2016 Presidential Election" has been written,
and is in the hands of Attorney General William Barr, who has issued a summary of its findings.
On the core mandate of the investigation, given to Special Counsel Mueller by Rod Rosenstein as
Acting Attorney General in May of 2017 -- to investigate "any links and/or coordination between
the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump"
-- the takeaway conclusion stated in the Mueller report, as quoted in the Barr summary, is that
"[T]he investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or
coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.1"
In the footnote indicated at the end of that sentence, Barr further clarifies the
comprehensive meaning of that conclusion, again quoting the Report's own words: "In assessing
potential conspiracy charges, the Special Counsel also considered whether members of the Trump
campaign 'coordinated' with Russian election interference activities. The Special Counsel
defined 'coordination' as an 'agreement -- tacit or express -- between the Trump Campaign and
the Russian government on election interference'."
Barr restates the point of the cited conclusion from the Mueller Report a number of times:
"The Special Counsel's investigation did not find that the Trump campaign or anyone associated
with it conspired or coordinated with Russia in its efforts to influence the 2016 U.S.
presidential election the Special Counsel did not find that any U.S. person or Trump campaign
official or associate conspired or knowingly coordinated with the IRA [Internet Research
Agency, the indicted Russian clickbait operation] in its efforts."
Thus, the Mueller investigation found no "conspiracy," no "coordination," -- i.e., no
"collusion" -- "tacit or express" between the Trump campaign or any U.S. person and the Russian
government. The Mueller investigation did not make, seal, or recommend any indictment for any
U.S. person for any such crime.
This is as clear and forceful a repudiation as one can get of the "collusion" narrative that
has been insistently shoved down our throats by the Democratic Party, its McResistance, its
allied media, and its allied intelligence and national security agencies and officials.
Whatever one wants to say about any other aspect of this investigation -- campaign finance
violations, obstruction of justice, etc. -- they were not the main saga for the past two+ years
as spun by the Russiagaters. The core narrative was that Donald Trump was some kind of Russian
agent or asset, arguably guilty of treason and taking orders from his handler/blackmailer
Vladimir Putin, who conspired with him to steal the 2016 election, and, furthermore, that Saint
Mueller and his investigation team of patriotic FBI/CIA agents were going to find the goods
that would have the Donald taken out of the White House in handcuffs for that.
Keith Olbermann's spectacular rant in January 2017 defined the core narrative and
exemplified the Trump Derangement Syndrome that powered it: an emotional, visceral hatred of
Donald Trump wrapped in the fantasy -- insisted upon as "elemental, existential fact" -- that
he was "put in power by Vladimir Putin." A projection and deflection, I would say, of liberals'
self-hatred for creating the conditions -- eight years of war and wealth transfer capped off by
a despised and entitled candidate -- that allowed a vapid clown like Trump to be elected. It
couldn't be our fault! It must have been Putin who arranged it!
Here's a highlight of Keith's delusional discourse. But, please watch the whole six-minute
video below. They may have been a bit calmer, but this is the fundamental lunacy that was
exuding from the rhetorical pores of Rachel, Chris, and Co. day after day for two+ years:
The military apparatus of this country is about to be handed over to scum, who are
beholden to scum, Russian scum! As things are today January 20th will not be an inauguration
but rather the end of the United States as an independent country. Donald John Trump is not a
president; he is a puppet, put in power by Vladimir Putin. Those who ignore these elemental,
existential facts -- Democrats or Republicans -- are traitors to this country. [Emphases in
original. Really, watch it.]
This -- Trump's secret, treasonous collusion with Putin, and not hush money or campaign
finance violations or "obstruction of justice" or his obvious overall sleaziness -- was
Russiagate.
Russiagate is Dead! Long Live Russiagate!
And it still is. Here's the demonstration in New York last Thursday, convened by the
MoveOn/Maddow #Resistance, singing from "the hymnal" about how Trump is a "Russian whore" who
is "busy blowing Vladimir":
Here are the three lines of excuse and denial currently being fired off by diehard
Russiagaters in their fighting retreat, and my responses to them.
1. The Mueller Report is irrelevant, anyhow. 'Cause either A) Per Congressional blowhard
Adam Schiff: There already "is direct evidence" proving Trump-Russia collusion, dating from
before the Mueller Investigation, so who cares what that doesn't find; or B) (My personal
favorite) Per former prosecutor and CNN legal expert Renato Mariotti: Of course there is no
evidence of Trump-Russia collusion, and it's "your fault" for letting Trump fool you into
thinking Mueller's job was to find it. (The Mueller "collusion" investigation was a red herring
orchestrated/promoted by Trump! I cannot make this up.)
Mueller's report will almost certainly disappoint you, and it's not his fault. It's your
fault for buying into Trump's false narrative that it is Mueller's' job to prove "collusion,"
a nearly impossible bar for any prosecutor to clear.
This is, of course, the weakest volley. It's absurd, patent bad faith, for Russiagaters to
pretend that they knew, thought, or suggested the Mueller investigation was irrelevant. It is
they who have been insisting that the integrity and super-sleuthiness of the "revered" Robert
Mueller himself was the thing that would nail Donald Trump for Russian collusion. To now deny
that any of that was important only acknowledges how thoroughly they have been fooling the
American people and/or themselves for two years. Either Adam Schiff had the goods on Trump's
traitorous Russian collusion two years ago, in which case he's got a lot of explaining to do
about why he's been stringing us along with Mueller, or Schiff is just bluffing. Place your
bets.
Russiagaters in 2017: YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT MUELLER KNOWS
Russiagaters in 2018: YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT MUELLER KNOWS
Russiagaters in 2019: Shut up Mueller, what would you know.
2. The Mueller Report didn't exonerate Trump entirely. It was agnostic about whether
Trump was guilty of "obstruction of justice," and there are probably many nasty things in the
report that may not be provably criminal, but nonetheless demonstrate what a slimeball Trump
is.
No, Russiagaters will not get away with denying that the core purpose of the Mueller
investigation was to prove Trump's traitorous relation to Vladimir Putin and the Russian
government, which helped him win the 2016 election. They will not get away with denying that,
if the Mueller investigation failed to prove that, it failed in its main purpose, as they
constantly defined and reinforced it, with table-pounding, hyperventilating, and -- a few days
ago! -- disco-dancing to "the hymnal."
They will not get away with trying to appropriate, as if it were their point all along, what
the left critics of Russiagate have been saying for two+ years -- that Donald Trump is a
slimeball grifter whose culpability for politically substantive and probably legally actionable
crimes and misdemeanors should not be hard to establish, without reverting to the absurd
accusation that he's a Russian agent.
These are the left critics of Russiagate and Trump, whom Russiagaters deliberately excluded
from all their media platforms, in order to make it seem that only right-wing Trump supporters
could be skeptical of Russiagate -- the left critics Russiagaters then excoriated as "Trump
enablers" and "Putin apologists" for speaking on the only media platforms that would host them.
Among them, Glenn Greenwald and Aaron Maté (who just deservedly won the I.F. Stone prize
for his Russiagate coverage) were the most prominent, but many others, including me, made this
point week after week (Brian Becker, Dave Lindorff, Dan Kovalik, Daniel Lazare, Ted Rall, to
name a few). As I put it in an essay last year: "There are a thousand reasons to criticize
Donald Trump That Donald Trump is a Russian agent is not one of them. There are a number of
very good justifications for seeking his impeachment That he is a Kremlin agent is not one of
them."
So, it's a particularly slimy for Russiagaters to slip into the position that we Russiagate
skeptics have been enunciating, and they have been excluding, for two years, without
acknowledging that we were right and they were wrong and accounting for their effort to edit us
out.
3. But we haven't seen the whole Mueller Report! Barr may be fooling us! Mueller's own
team says so! You are now doing what you accused us of doing for two years -- abandoning proper
skepticism about Republicans like Barr and even Mueller (Yup. He's a suspicious Republican
now!), and assuming a final result we have not yet seen.
This is the one the Russiagaters like the most. Gotcha with your own logic!
Well, let's first of all thank those who are saying this for, again, recognizing that we
Russiagate critics had the right attitude toward such an investigation: cautious skepticism as
opposed to false certainty. And let's linger for a moment or more on how belated that
recognition is and what its delay cost.
But let's also recognize that what's being expressed here is the last-minute hope on the
part of the Russiagaters that the Mueller report actually does contain dispositive evidence of
Trump's treasonous Russian collusion. Because, again, that is the core accusation that hopeful
Russiagaters are still singing about, and nobody ever argued that evidence of other hijinks was
unlikely.
Well, that hope can only be realized if one or both of the following are true: 1) Barr's
quotes from the report exonerating Trump of collusion are complete fabrications, or 2) Mueller
both wrote those words even though they contradict the substance of his own report and declined
to indict a single U.S. person for such "collusion" even though he could have.
Sure, in the abstract, one or both of those conditions could be true. But there is no
evidence, none, that either is. The New York Times (NYT) report that set everyone aflutter
about the "concern" from "some members of Mr. Mueller's team" is anonymous, unspecified, and
second-hand. Read it carefully: The NYT did not report what any member of Mueller's team said,
but what "government officials and others familiar with their simmering frustrations" said.
Those "officials and others interviewed [not members of the Mueller team itself] declined to
flesh out" to the NYT what "some of the special counsel's investigators" were unhappy about. To
that empty hearsay, the NYT appends the phrase "although the report is believed to examine Mr.
Trump's efforts to thwart the investigation" -- suggesting, but not stating, that obstruction
of justice issues are the reasons for the investigators' "vexation." The NYT cannot state,
because it does not know, anything. It is reporting empty hearsay that is evidence of nothing,
but is meant to keep hope alive.
"[T]he report is believed to examine" is a particularly strange locution. Is the NYT
suggesting that the Mueller report might not have examined obstruction of justice
possibilities? Or is it just getting tangled up in its attempt to suggest this or that? Hey, it
could just as well be true that Barr's characterization of what the Mueller Report says about
"obstruction of justice" is a misleading fabrication. Maybe Mueller actually exonerated Trump
of that. If you mistrust Barr's version of what the Mueller Report says about collusion, why
not equally mistrust what it says about obstruction of justice?
There is no evidence that Barr's summary is radically misleading about the core collusion
conclusion of the Mueller Report. The walls are closing in, alright, on that story. The I'm
just being as cautious now as you were before! line is the opposite of the reasonable
skepticism is claims to be; it's Russiagaters clinging to a wish and a belief that something
they want to be true is, despite the determinate lack of any evidence.
It's not just the words; it's the melody, and the desperation in the voices. The core
Trump-blowing-Vladimir collusion song that #Resisters are still singing is a fantastical
fiction and the people still singing it are the pathetic choir on the Russiagate Titanic. And
while they're singing as they sink, Trump is escaping in the lifeboat they have provided him.
The single most definite and undeniable effect of the Mueller investigation on American
politics has been to hand Donald Trump a potent political weapon for his 2020 re-election
campaign. A real bombshell.
But it's worse than that. The falsity of the Trump-as-a-Russian-agent narrative does not
depend on any confidence in Mueller and his report or Barr and his summary. The truth is there
was no Russiagate investigation, in the sense of a serious attempt to find out whether Donald
Trump was taking orders from, or "coordinating" with, Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin.
No person in their right mind could believe that. Robert Mueller doesn't believe it. Nancy
Pelosi doesn't believe it. Adam Schiff doesn't believe it. John Brennan, James Clapper, and the
heads of intelligence agencies do not believe it. Not for a second. No knowledgeable
international affairs journalist or academic who thinks about it for two minutes believes it.
Sure, some politicians and media pundits did work themselves up into a state where they
internalized and projected a belief in the narrative, but few of them really believed it. They
were serving the Kool-Aid. Only the most gullible sectors of their target audience drank
it.
With some exceptions, to be sure (Donald Trump among them), the people in the highest
echelons of the state-media-academic apparatus are just not that stupid. And, most obvious and
important, Vladimir Putin is not that stupid, and they know he is not. Vladimir Putin would
never rely on Donald Trump to be his operative in a complex operation that required shrewdly
playing and evading the US intelligence and media apparatuses. Nobody is that stupid. Thinking
about it that way for a second dissipates the entire ridiculous idea. (Not to mention that
Trump ended up enacting a number of policies -- many more than Obama! -- contrary to Russian
interests.)
The obvious, which many people in the independent media and none in the mainstream media
(because it is so obvious, and would have blown their game) have pointed out, is that any real
investigation of Russiagate would have sought to talk with the principals who had direct
knowledge of who is responsible for leaking the infamous DNC documents: Julian Assange and
former British ambassador Craig Murray ("I know who leaked them. I've met the person who leaked
them."). They were essentially two undisputed eyewitnesses to the crime Mueller was supposed to
be investigating, and he made no effort to talk to either of them. Ipso facto, it was not
really an investigation, not a project whole purpose was to find the truth about whatever the
thing called "Russiagate" is supposed to be.
The Eternal Witch-hunt
It was a theater of discipline. Its purpose, which it achieved, was to discipline Trump, the
Democratic electorate, and the media. Its method was fishing around in the muck of Washington
consultants, lobbyists, and influence peddlers to generate indictments and plea bargains for
crimes irrelevant to the core mandate. Not hard, in a carceral state where prosecutors can pin
three felonies a day on anyone.
The US establishment, especially its national security arm, was genuinely shocked that their
anointed candidate, Hillary, who was, as Glen Ford puts it "'all in' with the global military
offensive" that Obama had run through Libya, Syria, and the coup in Ukraine, was defeated by a
nitwit candidate who was making impermissibly non-aggressive noises about things like Russia
and NATO, and who actually wanted to lose. For their part, the Democrats were horrified, and
did not want to face the necessary reckoning about the complete failure of their candidate, and
the best-of-all-possible-liberaloid-worlds strategy she personified.
So, "within 24 hours of her concession speech" Hillary's campaign team (Robby Mook and John
Podesta) created a "script they would pitch to the press and the public" to explain why she
lost. "Russian hacking was the centerpiece of the argument." A few months later, a coalition of
congressional Democrats,, establishment Republicans, and intelligence/natsec professionals
pressured Trump (who, we can now see clearly, is putty in the hands of the latter) to initiate
a Special Counsel investigation. Its ostensible goal was to investigate Russian collusion, but
its real goals were:
1) To discipline Trump, preventing any backpedaling on NATO/imperialist war-mongering
against Russia or any other target. Frankly, I think this was unnecessary. Trump never had any
depth of principle in his remarks about de-escalating with Russia and Syria. He was always a
staunch American exceptionalist and Zionist. Nobody has forced him (that's a right-wing
fantasy) to attack Syria, appoint John Bolton, recognize Israeli authority over Jerusalem and
the Golan Heights, or threaten Iran and Venezuela. But the natsec deep state actors did (and
do) not trust Trump's impulsiveness. They probably also thought it would be useful to "send a
message" to Russia, which, in their arrogance, they think they can, but they cannot,
"discipline," as I've discussed in a previous essay.
2) To discipline the media, making "Russian collusion," as Off-Guardian journalist Kit
Knightly says, "a concept that keeps everyone in check." Thus, a Russophobia-related
McCarthyite hysteria was engendered that defined any strong anti-interventionist or
anti-establishment sentiment as Russian-sown "divisiveness" and "Putin apologetics." This
discipline was eagerly accepted by the mainstream media, which joined in the related drive to
demand new forms of censorship for independent and internet media. The epitome of this is the
mainstream media's execrable, tacit and sometimes explicit acceptance of the US government's
campaign to prosecute Julian Assange.
3) To discipline and corral the Democratic constituency. Establishment Dems riled up
outraged progressives with deceptive implied promises to take Trump down based on the collusion
fiction, which excused Hillary and diverted their attention from the real egregious failures
and crimes that led their party to political ruin, and culminated in the election of Trump in
the first place. This discipline also instituted a #Resistance to Trump that involved the party
doing nothing substantively progressive in policy -- indeed, it allowed embracing Trump's most
egregious militarism and promoting an alliance with, a positive reverence for, the most
deceptive and reactionary institutions of the state.
Finally, incorporating point 2, perhaps the main point of this discipline -- indeed of the
whole Mueller enterprise -- was to stigmatize the leftists and socialists in and around the
party, who were questioning the collusion fiction and calling critical attention to the party's
failures, as crypto-fascist "Trump enablers" or "Putin's useful idiots." It's all about fencing
out the left and corralling the base.
Note the point regarding the deceptive implications about taking down Trump. Though they
gave the opposite impression to rile up their constituents, Democratic Congressional leaders,
for the reasons given above and others I laid out in a previous essay, did not think for a
second they were going to impeach Trump. They were never really after impeaching Trump; they
were and are after stringing along their dissatisfied progressive-minded voters. They, not
Trump, were and are the target of the foolery.
We should recognize that Russiagate/The Mueller Investigation achieved all of these goals,
and was therefore a great success. That's the case whatever part of the Mueller Report is
summarized and released, and whoever interprets it. The whole report with all of the underlying
evidence cannot legally be released to the public, and the Democrats know that. So, even if the
House gets it, the public will only ever see portions doled out by various interested
parties.
Thus, it will continue to be a great success. There will be endless leaks, and
interpretations of leaks, and arguments about the interpretations of leaks based on speculation
about what's still hidden. The Mueller Investigation has morphed into the Mueller Report, a
hermeneutical exercise that will go on forever.
The Mueller Investigation never happened and will never end.
It wasn't an investigation. It was/is an act of political theater, staged in an ongoing
dramatic festival where, increasingly, litigation substitutes for politics. Neither party has
anything of real, lasting, positive political substance to offer, and each finds itself in
power only because it conned the electorate into thinking it offered something new. That
results in every politician being vulnerable, but to a politically vacuous opposition that can
only mount its attacks on largely politically irrelevant, often impossible to adjudicate,
legalistic or moralistic grounds. Prosecutorial inquiry becomes a substitute for substantive
political challenge.
It's the template that was established by the Republicans against Bill Clinton, has been
adapted by the Democrats for Trump and Russiagate, and will be ceaselessly repeated. What's
coming next, already hinted at in William Barr's congressional testimony, will be an
investigation of FISAGate -- an inquiry into whether the FISA warrants for spying on the Trump
campaign and administration were obtained legally ("adequately predicated"). And/or
UkraineGate, about the evidence "Ukrainian law enforcement officials believe they have of
wrongdoing by American Democrats and their allies in Kiev, ranging from 2016 election
interference to obstructing criminal probes," involving Tony Podesta (who worked right
alongside Paul Manafort in Ukraine), Hillary Clinton's campaign, Joe Biden and his son, et. al.
And/or CampaignGate, the lawsuit claiming that Hillary's national campaign illegally took $84
million of "straw man" contributions made to state Democratic campaigns. And/or CraigGate,
involving powerful Democratic fixer and Obama White House Counsel, Gregory Craig, who has
already been referred to federal prosecutors by Mueller, and whose law firm has already paid a
$4.6 million-dollar fine for making false statement and failing to register under the Foreign
Agents Registration Act -- for work he did in Ukraine with -- who else? -- Paul Manafort.
There are Gates galore. If you haven't heard about any of these simmering scandals in the
way you've heard incessantly about, you know, Paul Manafort, perhaps that's because they didn't
fit into the "get Trump" theme of the Mueller Investigation/Russiagate political theater. Rest
assured the Republicans have, and will likely make sure that you do. If you think the
Republicans do not have at least as much of a chance to make a serious case with some of these
as Mueller did with Trump, you are wrong. If you think the Republicans will pursue any of these
investigations because they have the same principled concern as the Democrats about foreign
collusion in US elections, or the legality of campaign contributions or surveillance warrants,
you are right. They have none. Like the Democrats, they have zero concern for the ostensible
issues of principle, and infinite enthusiasm for mounting "gotcha" political theater.
Neither party really wants, or knows how, to engage in a sustained, principled debate on
substantive political issues -- things like universal-coverage, single-payer health insurance,
a job guarantee, a radical reduction of the military budget, an end to imperialist
intervention, increasing taxes on the wealthy and lowering them for working people, a break
from the "overwhelming" and destructive influence of Zionism, to name a few of the policies the
Democratic congressional leadership could have insisted on "investigating" over the last two
years..
Instead, both parties' political campaigns rely on otherizing appeals based on superficial
identity politics (white-affirmative on the one hand, POC-affirmative on the other) and,
mainly, on bashing the other party for all the problems it ignored or exacerbated, and all the
terrible policies it enacted, when it was in power -- and for the version of superficial,
otherizing identity politics it supposedly based those policies on (the real determinants of
class power remaining invisible). What both parties know how and will continue to do is mount
hypocritical legalistic and moralistic "investigations" of illegal campaign contributions,
support from foreign governments, teenage make-out sessions, personal-space violations, et.
al., that they are just "shocked, shocked" about.
It's Investigation Nation. Fake politics in the simulacrum of a democratic polity. Indeed,
someone, of some political perspicuity, might just notice, if only for a flash, that the people
who do pretty well politically are often the ones who frankly don't give a crap about all that.
Maybe because they're talking to people who don't give a crap about all that. But we wouldn't
want to confuse ourselves thinking on that for too long.
Which brings us to the last point about Russiagate/The Mueller Investigation mentioned
above. It may not (or may!) have been an intended goal, but it has been its most definite
political effect: The Mueller Investigation has been a great political gift to Donald Trump.
#Resisters and Russiagaters can wriggle around that all they want. They can insist that, once
we get the whole Report, we'll turn the corner, the bombshell will explode, the walls will
close in -- for real, this time. Sure.
But even they can't deny that's the case right now. Trump is saying the Mueller
investigation was a political counterattack against the result of the election, masquerading as
a disinterested judicial investigation; that it was based on a flimsy fiction and designed to
dig around in every corner of his closets to find nasty and incriminating things that were
entirely irrelevant to the ostensible mandate of the investigation and to any substantive,
upfront political critique -- a "witchhunt," a "fishing expedition." And he is right. And too
many people in the country know he's right. At this point, even most Russiagaters themselves
know it -- though they don't care, and will never admit it.
So now Trump, who could have been attacked for two years politically on substance for
betraying most of the promises that got him elected -- more aggressive war, more tax cuts for
the wealthy, threatening Medicare and Social Security -- has instead been handed, by the
Democrats, the strongest arrow he now has in his political quiver. As Matt Taibbi says: "Trump
couldn't have asked for a juicier campaign issue, and an easier way to argue that 'elites'
don't respect the democratic choices of flyover voters. It's hard to imagine what could look
worse."
You might think the Democratic Party would be horrified at this result, which one conservative
analyst calls: "one of the greatest self-defeating acts in history." You might think Democrats
would now move quickly and decisively toward a strategy of offering a substantive political
alternative, and abandon this awful own-goal Mueller/Russiagate tack that has already helped
Trump immensely (and which they are not going to turn their way). That is obviously what would
happen if the Democrats' main goal was to defeat Trump. But it isn't.
As discussed above, the Democratic establishment's' main goal throughout this was not to "get"
Trump, but to channel its own voters' disgust with him into support for some halcyon, liberal,
status quo ante-Trump, and away from left demands for a radical change to the social, economic,
and political conditions that produced him and his clueless establishment opponent in 2016. The
Democrats' goal was, and is, not to defeat Trump, but to stave off the left.
What they are doing with the Mueller Investigation/Russiagate is what they did in the
primaries in 2016: Then, they deliberately promoted Trump as an opponent, while working
assiduously to cheat their own leftist candidate; now, they gin up a fictional spy story whose
inevitable collapse helps Trump, but on which they will double down, in order to continue
branding "divisive" leftists who challenge any return to their version of status-quo normalcy
as the Kremlin's "useful idiots."
The Democrats' main goal in all this is not to impeach, or stop the re-election of, Donald
Trump; it's to prevent the nomination and election of Bernie Sanders, or anyone like him.
Russiagate Forever
Here's Tim Ryan's presidential campaign kickoff speech in Youngstown, Ohio, a poster city of
late American capitalist deindustrialization, explaining to the voters what is causing the
destruction of their lives and towns. After complaining that "We have politicians and leaders
today that want to divide us. They want to put us in one box or the other. You know, you can't
be for business and for labor," he elaborates:
Yup, it’s those Russians, you see, sowing division through certain “politicians and leaders,” who are preventing us from
fixing our healthcare, education, economic and government systems. This—doubling down on Russiagate—is the centrist Democrats’
idea of a winning political appeal. I consider it utterly delusional.
I heard last week from a friend in Western Pennsylvania, not too far from Youngstown. She’s a good person who is trying to
organize Democrats in the area to beat Trump in 2020, and, pleading for advice, she expressed her exasperation: “They’re leaving
the party!”
You mean the five million people who voted for Obama in 2012, in the 90% of counties that voted for Obama either in 2008
or 2012, but would not vote for Hillary in 2019, aren’t streaming back into—are indeed still streaming out of—the Democratic
Party, despite all the Mueller investigation has done for them? Imagine that.
What has Russiagate/The Mueller Investigation wrought? It’s either a shrewd political gambit sure to take down Trump, or
it’s ridiculous political theater leading Democrats, and the country, over another cliff. Double-down or leave that table?
"... What is the significance of this story, apart from what it tells us about the graver dangers of the new US-Russian Cold War, which now includes, we are informed, a uniquely fraught "digital Cold War"? Not so long ago, mainstream liberal Democrats, and the Times itself, would have been outraged by revelations that defense and intelligence officials were making such existential policy behind the back of a president. No longer, it seems. There have been no liberal, Democratic, or for the most part any other, mainstream protests, but instead a lawyerly apologia justifying the intelligence-defense operation without the president's knowledge. ..."
"... As I have often emphasized, the long historical struggle for American-Russian (Soviet and post-Soviet) détente, or broad cooperation, has featured many acts of attempted sabotage on both sides, though most often by US intelligence and defense agencies. ..."
"... Now the sabotaging of détente appears be happening again. As the Times article makes clear, Washington's war party, or perhaps zealous Cold War party, referred to euphemistically by Sanger and Perlroth as "advocates of the more aggressive strategy," is on the move. ..."
"... Détente with Russia has always been a fiercely opposed, crisis-ridden policy pursuit, but one manifestly in the interests of the United States and the world. No American president can achieve it without substantial bipartisan support at home, which Trump manifestly lacks. What kind of catastrophe will it take -- in Ukraine, the Baltic region, Syria, or somewhere on Russia's electric grid -- to shock US Democrats and others out of what has been called, not unreasonably, their Trump Derangement Syndrome, particularly in the realm of American national security? Meanwhile, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists has recently reset its Doomsday Clock to two minutes before midnight. ..."
Occasionally, a revelatory, and profoundly alarming,
article passes almost unnoticed, even when published on the front page of The New York
Times . Such was the case with
reporting by David E. Sanger and Nicole Perlroth , bearing the Strangelovian title "U.S.
Buries Digital Land Mines to Menace Russia's Power Grid," which appeared in the print edition
on June 16. The article contained two revelations.
First, according to Sanger and Perlroth, with my ellipses duly noted, "The United States is
stepping up digital incursions into Russia's electric power grid. Advocates of the more
aggressive strategy said it was long overdue " The operation "carries significant risk of
escalating the daily digital Cold War between Washington and Moscow." Though under way at least
since 2012, "now the American strategy has shifted more toward offense with the placement of
potentially crippling malware inside the Russian system at a depth and with an aggressiveness
that had never been tried before." At this point, the Times reporters add an Orwellian
touch. The head of the U.S. Cyber Command characterizes the assault on Russia's grid, which
affects everything from the country's water supply, medical services, and transportation to
control over its nuclear weapons, as "the need to 'defend forward,'" because "they don't fear
us."
Nowhere do Sanger and Perlroth seem alarmed by the implicit risks of this "defend forward"
attack on the infrastructure of the other nuclear superpower. Indeed, they wonder "whether it
would be possible to plunge Russia into darkness." And toward the end, they quote an American
lawyer and former Obama official, whose expertise on the matter is unclear, to assure readers
sanguinely, "We might have to risk taking some broken bones of our own from a counter response.
Sometimes you have to take a bloody nose to not take a bullet in the head down the road." The
"broken bones," "bloody nose," and "bullet" are, of course, metaphorical references to the
potential consequences of nuclear war.
The second revelation comes midway in the Times story: "[President] Trump had not
been briefed in any detail about the steps to place 'implants' inside the Russian grid" because
"he might countermand it or discuss it with foreign officials." (Indeed, Trump issued an
angry tweet when he saw the Times report, though leaving unclear which part of it
most aroused his anger.)
What is the significance of this story, apart from what it tells us about the graver dangers
of the new US-Russian Cold War, which now includes, we are informed, a uniquely fraught
"digital Cold War"? Not so long ago, mainstream liberal Democrats, and the Times itself,
would have been outraged by revelations that defense and intelligence officials were making
such existential policy behind the back of a president. No longer, it seems. There have been no
liberal, Democratic, or for the most part any other, mainstream protests, but instead a
lawyerly apologia justifying the intelligence-defense operation without the president's
knowledge.
The political significance, however, seems clear enough. The leak to the Times and
the paper's publication of the article come in the run-up to a scheduled meeting between
President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin at the G-20 meeting in Japan on June
28–29. Both leaders had recently expressed hope for improved US-Russian relations. On May
4, Trump again
tweeted his longstanding aspiration for a "good/great relationship with Russia"; and this
month Putin lamented that relations "
are getting worse and worse " but hoped that he and Trump could move their countries beyond
"the games played by intelligence services."
As I have often emphasized, the long historical struggle for American-Russian (Soviet and
post-Soviet) détente, or broad cooperation, has featured many acts of attempted sabotage
on both sides, though most often by US intelligence and defense agencies. Readers may recall
the Eisenhower-Khrushchev summit meeting that was to take place in Paris in 1960, but which was
aborted by the Soviet shoot-down of a US spy plane over the Soviet Union, an intrusive flight
apparently not authorized by President Eisenhower. And more recently,
the 2016 plan by then-President Obama and Putin for US-Russian cooperation in Syria, which
was aborted by a Department of Defense attack on Russian-backed Syrian troops.
Now the sabotaging of détente appears be happening again. As the Times article
makes clear, Washington's war party, or perhaps zealous Cold War party, referred to
euphemistically by Sanger and Perlroth as "advocates of the more aggressive strategy," is on
the move. Certainly, Trump has been repeatedly thwarted in his previous détente
attempts, primarily by discredited Russiagate allegations that continue to be promoted by the
war party even though they still lack any evidential basis. (It may also be recalled that his
previous summit meeting with Putin was widely and shamefully assailed as "treason" by
influential segments of the US political-media establishment.)
Détente with Russia has always been a fiercely opposed, crisis-ridden policy pursuit,
but one manifestly in the interests of the United States and the world. No American president
can achieve it without substantial bipartisan support at home, which Trump manifestly lacks.
What kind of catastrophe will it take -- in Ukraine, the Baltic region, Syria, or somewhere on
Russia's electric grid -- to shock US Democrats and others out of what has been called, not
unreasonably, their Trump Derangement Syndrome, particularly in the realm of American national
security? Meanwhile, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists has recently reset its Doomsday Clock to two minutes
before midnight.
This commentary is based on Stephen F. Cohen's most recent weekly discussion with the
host of The John Batchelor Show
. Now in their sixth year, previous installments are at TheNation.com . Ad Policy Stephen F. Cohen is a
professor emeritus of Russian studies and politics at New York University and Princeton
University. A Nation contributing editor, his new book War With Russia? From Putin
& Ukraine to Trump & Russiagate is available in paperback and in an ebook
edition.
"... In a recent irruption of his self-sabotaging panglossia, Trump has given a bizarre interview to the New York Times in which, among other gems: 1) He warned the Special Counsel to stay away from his businesses. 2) He stated that health insurance costs $12 a year. 3) He taught his interviewers that the head of the FBI does not report to the Attorney General. And 4) In a series of blurts that I find particularly bizarre and telling, he repeatedly emphasized that French President Emmanuel Macron is a "strong" guy who "loves holding my hand people don't realize he loves holding my hand He's a very good person. And a tough guy but he does love holding my hand." As the man with the cigar might say, textbook symptomatic utterance. ( It's such a feeling I can't hide. I can't hide. I can't hide .) ..."
"... These are all signs of Trump's complete ignorance regarding policy fundamentals as well as his overwhelming narcissism. It's quite a bonus that it comes so obviously tinged with a familiar "bromantic"–I i.e., per cigar-man, homo-erotic–attraction for strong men who (he imagines) give him the love he so desperately needs. There are charming versions of that in the playfulness of the locker room or at the chessboard , but it's somewhat more disturbing as a central, unrecognized obsession of the pussy-grabbing leader of the most powerful country in the world, whose discourse seems to whirl around a black hole of narcissism and need. It makes for a hollow and dangerous man. ..."
"... The late Wayne Barrett chronicled Trump's quasi-criminal business dealings masterfully and relentlessly. As his warnings about Mueller indicate, Trump's real pedestrian crimes as the High Rise Grifter (rather than his fictional treason as Putin's Secret Agent) are what he is afraid of, and what might bring him down, should RepubliDems and their plutocrat patrons dare to open that worm-laden investigative precedent. ..."
"... Now that he's entered the glass-walled penthouse of political power, his blatant, grabby, unreliability and untrustworthiness become a different kind of liability. Trump comes to this high level, high stakes political game with no political experience or organization, confronting the resentment and/or enmity of the entire political establishment -- including the many Republicans he left in the electoral dust. Unlike them, Trump has no political apparatus -- what we might call strategic political depth -- in Washington, and his incoherence, impulsiveness, and need for constant, absolute adoration, is driving away even his closest henchpersons ( Buh-Bye, Sean! Watch your step, Jeff! ). ..."
"... The crisis that is fracturing the Republican Party is a result of its victory, which calls its bluff on all the purportedly virtuous libertarian policies they've been promoting -- the enactment of which, they know , will create social catastrophe for the American people and political catastrophe for them. Trump doesn't create that crisis, but he does exacerbate it. ..."
"... The Democrats' aggressive attacks, through an overwhelming array of sympathetic media and Deep State channels, have worked to provoke and exacerbate the ongoing decompensation and self-sabotage of the Trump administration. Clearly, the Democrats hope the disarray around Trump will drive enough of their constituency, many of whom left the playground in the 2016 election, to return to the Democratic end of the electoral seesaw. This is not such a good thing. ..."
"... So, Trump's incompetence may be used to increase voter disaffection with the Republicans without increasing voter affection for the Democrats at all. And that would be a good thing. As I've argued before , I think it would be a good thing if more people reject the plutocrat-controlled, designed-for-fraud, two-party election circus. ..."
"... Besides, Trump's positions are not just incipient, they are inconsequentially weak. Schrödinger's Trump is for and against healthcare for everyone, for and against NATO, for and against the war on Syria. ( We're stopping our support of CIA-sponsored rebels, except we're still paying their salaries , " pouring " arms into" Syria, and maintaining ten military bases . ) Trump is susceptible to any determined bi-partisan pressure–indeed, to the last authoritative voice that has shouted sweet praise in his ear. He has no firm political ideology or organization that can resist such charms. For all his bluster, he is swinging wildly, and easily pushed around. As we've seen, he's especially impressed by tough, strong men who know how to handle his narcissism and need. The military and the neocon Deep State are full of Mad Dogs. ..."
"... It's not anything Russia did that's undermining American democracy; it's what the Trump victory lays bare about abysmal state of America political culture: the contradictions within the ruling parties; the discrepancy between their public and private policy positions, and the plutocratic corruption that represents; the silently tolerated, atavistic and anti-democratic elements of our constitutional and federal arrangements (i.e., the Electoral College); the infantile understanding of the world promoted throughout the narrow spectrum of mainstream media from Fox to MSNBC. That media apparatus constitutes the principal form of mass political education. It creates a political world in which someone like Donald Trump can be been seriously as a presidential candidate, and the seesaw between him and someone like Hillary Clinton can be taken as anything other than the insult to the people that it is. It's all that which undermines the credibility of actually-existing American democracy, and It's all that which will become more embarrassingly obvious every day that Donald Trump is president. ..."
"... Under a kind, tolerant president like Obama of Assisi, you see, things like torture and multiple state-destroying imperial wars don't really affect America's "moral standing" or its "ability to make alliances." Only the "political chaos" brought on by Atilla the Trump "undermines the strength" that allows "the most powerful nation" to do those things while maintaining its "ability to lead by example"–that is, its ability to get compliant European governments to get their war-averse populations to go along with the alliances needed to wage American imperialist wars in the guise of international humanitarian crusades. In the vacuum that Trump is creating, European countries might actually have to seize the initiative to make independent decisions, maybe driven by the needs of their own people rather than by the precious, special clout of the most powerful nation in the world. The horror! ..."
"... I am not one who thinks the Trump administration will be any less aggressive and imperialist than its predecessors. It's simply not in the nature of who he, or the American presidency, is. ..."
"... It's not that Trump will be any less imperialist than Obama was or Clinton would have been; it's just, again, that he'll be worse at it -- from the whole "moral standing, needed alliances" point of view. The insufferable sanctimony of American exceptionalism has been an ideological pillar of the imperial project, and anything that undermines it should be welcomed. I doubt anything coming out of the #Resistance, the electoral seesaw, or the thoroughly marginalized radical left in the United States will be more consequential. ..."
"... In sum, the Trump effect is destroying the graven image of the presidency, the Euro-American imperial alliance, the Republican and maybe even the Democratic, Party. ..."
Oh please say to me
You'll let me be your man
And please say to me
You'll let me hold your hand
Now, let me hold your hand
I wanna hold your hand
So, we've officially gone from The West Wing to Animal House. To the regret of Democrats and
liberals, Donald Trump cuts a presidential image far removed from the Sorkinite Aristotelian Quaalude (h/t
Emmet Penney ) of a Jed Bartlett in the Oval Office. To the chagrin of Republicans and
corporate conservatives, his demeanor increasingly resembles the adolescent antics of a Bluto
punching it out ringside at the WWF. Politicians and commentators from both sides of the narrow
aisle are all shocked and saddened at the ongoing insult to American "presidentialness."
In a recent irruption of his self-sabotaging panglossia, Trump has given a bizarre
interview to the New York Times in which, among other gems: 1) He warned the Special
Counsel to stay away from his businesses. 2) He stated that health insurance costs $12 a year.
3) He taught his interviewers that the head of the FBI does not report to the Attorney General.
And 4) In a series of blurts that I find particularly bizarre and telling, he repeatedly
emphasized that French President Emmanuel Macron is a "strong" guy who "loves holding my hand
people don't realize he loves holding my hand He's a very good person. And a tough guy but he
does love holding my hand." As the man with the cigar might say, textbook symptomatic
utterance. ( It's such a feeling I can't hide. I can't hide. I can't hide .)
These are all signs of Trump's complete ignorance regarding policy fundamentals as well as
his overwhelming narcissism. It's quite a bonus that it comes so obviously tinged with a
familiar "bromantic"–I i.e., per cigar-man, homo-erotic–attraction for strong men
who (he imagines) give him the love he so desperately needs. There are charming versions of
that in the playfulness of the locker room or at the chessboard , but it's
somewhat more disturbing as a central, unrecognized obsession of the pussy-grabbing leader of
the most powerful country in the world, whose discourse seems to whirl around a black hole of
narcissism and need. It makes for a hollow and dangerous man.
People who have dealt with him in New York City over the past decades have come to know
Trump's boundless self-obsession very well -- and not just leftists who were disgusted by his
horrid screed about the Central Park Five. My nephew worked taking bids for a contractor in the
city whose first rule of business was: "No Trump properties. We do not work on Trump
properties. He doesn't pay." I also have a high school classmate who invested in one of his
projects. Trump packed the Board of Directors with his cronies, sucked all the money out, and
bankrupted the company. The late
Wayne Barrett chronicled Trump's quasi-criminal business dealings masterfully and
relentlessly. As his warnings about Mueller indicate, Trump's real pedestrian crimes as the
High Rise Grifter (rather than his fictional treason as Putin's Secret Agent) are what he is
afraid of, and what might bring him down, should RepubliDems and their plutocrat patrons dare
to open that worm-laden investigative precedent.
Now that he's entered the glass-walled penthouse of political power, his blatant, grabby,
unreliability and untrustworthiness become a different kind of liability. Trump comes to this
high level, high stakes political game with no political experience or organization,
confronting the resentment and/or enmity of the entire political establishment -- including the
many Republicans he left in the electoral dust. Unlike them, Trump has no political apparatus
-- what we might call strategic political depth -- in Washington, and his incoherence,
impulsiveness, and need for constant, absolute adoration, is driving away even his closest
henchpersons ( Buh-Bye, Sean! Watch your step, Jeff! ).
Paranoia is part of the narcissism, and it's contagious. Trump can neither trust nor be
trusted, can neither give nor receive loyalty -- only its simulacrum: shallow and fleeting
obsequiousness.
It's wonderful to behold how this is playing out with Trump's new Director of
Communications, the too-perfectly-named Anthony Scaramucci. Nobody
has taken the measure of Trump more accurately than
Scaramucci -- who, not so long ago,
called Trump "anti-American," a "hack," an "unbridled demagogue," an "inherited-money dude
from Queens County," only qualified to be "president of The Queens County bullies." Anthony
would know, since he is himself a low-road
hedge-fund grifter and mini-Trump. According to Reuters business reporter Felix Salmon,
Scaramucci, like Trump, " has two ways to make money: either find stupid people to give him
their money, or else shower himself with so many conspicuous indicia of success that people
just want to buy into his perceived success." Tony S's flourish on the art of deal-making
includes soliciting clients with the admonition: "Always invest with an Italian." (I guess
that's a weak attempt at invoking some kind of motivating appeal to ethnic stereotype, like a
Bernie Madoff saying: "Always invest with a Jew" -- although in some other register. The Dapper
Dick?)
And nothing epitomizes the hollowness of people like birds-of-a-feather Trump and
Scaramucci, as well as the hollowness of the political culture they represent (which includes
Clinton and the Democrats, whom Trump and Scaramucci both eagerly
supported -- and got love from in return -- when convenient for all), than Scaramucci's
instantaneous, transparently opportunistic, pivot to obsequious adoration
of Donald Trump. Really, a dozen or more times
: "I love the President," "We love the President," "The American people love the President,"
because Donald Trump has "some of the best political instincts in the world and perhaps in
history."
Yup, Scaramucci's got the measure of the man alright. Knows exactly what he wants, and
needs . I'm sure they will be working together, The Dapper Dick and The Donald,
hand-in-tiny-hand. Cage aux Folles .
Until Anthony, too, is chased off the stage like the other characters in this comedy. Nobody
who works for Trump comes away the better off for it. All of this insecurity, impulsiveness,
and constant churn of personnel makes for a politically surrealistic whirlpool of uncertainty
and instability. Was that the Nightly News or Twin Peaks?
Combined with Trump's lack of any coherent political program or political apparatus,
it adds up to an administration in chaos and disarray, and it makes Trump a startlingly weak
president. He maintains a core base of support among his voters, but he has no intrinsic
support among Washington power brokers and policy makers, the Congress, the intelligence
apparatus, or any sector or the permanent government known as the Deep State. It's not a matter
of disagreement, but distrust. Everyone distrusts him, in a radical sense, and for good reason:
No one, including him, knows what he will do or say next. He's got some stubs of ideas, a few
of which are not bad (Let's get along with Russia. Let's fight ISIS, not Syria. ) and
most of which are terrible, but he doesn't have the intellectual capacity for thinking any of
them through, let alone the political facility for executing them. He is way out of his
depth.
With all these weaknesses, Trump's only possible political role is to serve as the front man
for congressional Republicans, who do have thought-out political ideas and programs, and
dangerous ones. They hoped he would play, or could be forced to play, that role for them. The
Republican Party is itself a precarious mix of factions -- hardline libertarians, religious
fanatics, neocon hawks, and legacy Chamber of Commerce types -- all of whom are frantically
trying to stay united around their one common priority: the worship and protection of capital.
They need a leader who can mediate among them, and be an effective and reassuring presence to
the public, helping them put over policy changes that are going to devastate the lives of most
Americans. What they got instead is an incoherent, peripatetic, self-obsessed incompetent, who
can't control his cabinet, his family, or his mouth, and who only further confuses their
agenda.
This is a good thing.
From the Republicans' perspective, it's become clear that Trump is another problem that they
will have to move out of the way or continually work around and make excuses for. From a
slightly more nuanced perspective, Trump's confusion and disarray are helping to cover and
deflect theirs . Trump does nothing (and can do nothing, since he understands nothing
about it) to help the Republicans pass their healthcare "reform," but the real obstacle is the
fact that even some of them, who do understand what it's about, are afraid of the social
cruelty it represents. Donald Trump will sign just about anything the Republicans put before
him, and declare it a huge win. Donald Trump won't stop the healthcare bill; Susan
Collins & Co. will.
The crisis that is fracturing the Republican Party is a result of its victory, which calls
its bluff on all the purportedly virtuous libertarian policies they've been promoting -- the
enactment of which, they know , will create social catastrophe for the American people
and political catastrophe for them. Trump doesn't create that crisis, but he does exacerbate
it.
And that's a good thing.
The Democrats' aggressive attacks, through an overwhelming array of sympathetic media and
Deep State channels, have worked to provoke and exacerbate the ongoing decompensation and
self-sabotage of the Trump administration. Clearly, the Democrats hope the disarray around
Trump will drive enough of their constituency, many of whom left the playground in the 2016
election, to return to the Democratic end of the electoral seesaw. This is not such a good
thing.
But Trump's election caused a crisis in the Democratic Party, too -- or, more accurately,
made critical faults therein impossible to ignore. The Democrats' insistence on burning Trump
on the stake of Russian-agent treason gets no purchase on the concrete issues of permanent
austerity and war that flipped so many voters from Democratic to Republican over the past few
election cycles. It ignores the concerns of the millions of voters and Democrats who rallied
around Bernie Sanders, making the self-identified socialist the most popular politician in
America. That constituency tends to see the Russia fixation, per
Max Blumenthal , as "a way of opposing Trump without doing anything remotely progressive."
It ends up highlighting the Democrats lack of a comprehensive, coherent program of their own,
and fueling their decomposition and disarray.
Indeed, whatever damage has been done to the Trump brand, Hillary Clinton is still
more disliked . And it is corporate-donor Clintonism -- including Hillary's personal
henchpersons -- that still remains firmly in control of setting the Democratic Party agenda,
engendering increasingly widespread and active resistance from the Democratic constituency.
Governed by its commitment to the worship and protection of capital, the Democratic
party's leadership still refuses single-payer healthcare -- which is immensely popular, is
recognized even by some conservatives
as the only "fix" for the current horrible "market" system, and would guarantee electoral
success. It also proposes a "Better Deal" for disaffected working-class voters based on that
one-hit wonder from the 80s mix tape: "a large tax credit" for businesses to re-train
workers to become computer programmers Uber slaves. Zombie Clintonism, paving the way for a
Democratic dream ticket. Kamala Harris and Mark Cuban
Me, habitual non-voter in semi-rural PA county that flipped Obama-Trump: "Well, now that
I've heard about the small business tax credit "
So, Trump's incompetence may be used to increase voter disaffection with the Republicans
without increasing voter affection for the Democrats at all. And that would be a good thing. As
I've argued before , I think it would be a good
thing if more people reject the plutocrat-controlled, designed-for-fraud, two-party election
circus.
At this point, both domestic political parties want rid of Trump. Both adamantly oppose his
incipient positions on improving relations with Russia, and are assiduously working to cage him
in the aggressive posture they demand. The constant pressure of the Special Counsel
investigation is one tool of that. The new anti-Russia sanctions legislation that sets an
unprecedented constraint on presidential authority in the matter, which passed the Senate and
Congress overwhelmingly, is another. They have plenty of ways to discipline Trump, and are not
going to be shy to use them.
Besides, Trump's positions are not just incipient, they are inconsequentially weak.
Schrödinger's Trump
is for and against healthcare for everyone, for and against NATO, for and
against the war on Syria. ( We're stopping our support of CIA-sponsored rebels, except we're
stillpaying their
salaries, "pouring" arms into" Syria, and maintainingten
military bases. ) Trump is susceptible to any determined bi-partisan
pressure–indeed, to the last authoritative voice that has shouted sweet praise in his
ear. He has no firm political ideology or organization that can resist such charms. For all his
bluster, he is swinging wildly, and easily pushed around. As we've seen, he's especially
impressed by tough, strong men who know how to handle his narcissism and need. The military and
the neocon Deep State are full of Mad Dogs.
The real problem is that it's always going to be a struggle for the Serious Politicians of
both parties to work around Trump's confusion and inconsistency, and that effort will only
highlight and complicate their own decomposition and disarray. So, both parties want to think
they'll find a way to tame him. They won't. They can't control him, and he can't control them.
His personal impulsiveness will not abate or be discretely managed, and maintaining four years
of constant investigation and media hysteria against him will only increase the sense that the
American government is losing its grip. Confusion -- indeed, dread -- hangs over Wahington as
this realization dawns on the congress and the media.
And that's a good thing.
It's not anything Russia did that's undermining American democracy; it's what the Trump
victory lays bare about abysmal state of America political culture: the contradictions within
the ruling parties; the discrepancy between their public and private policy positions, and the
plutocratic corruption that represents; the silently tolerated, atavistic and anti-democratic
elements of our constitutional and federal arrangements (i.e., the Electoral College); the
infantile understanding of the world promoted throughout the narrow spectrum of mainstream
media from Fox to MSNBC. That media apparatus constitutes the principal form of mass political
education. It creates a political world in which someone like Donald Trump can be been
seriously as a presidential candidate, and the seesaw between him and someone like Hillary
Clinton can be taken as anything other than the insult to the people that it is. It's all that
which undermines the credibility of actually-existing American democracy, and It's all that
which will become more embarrassingly obvious every day that Donald Trump is president.
And that's a good thing.
Trump is diminishing the aura of the presidency, and generally gumming up the works. As Rob
Urie puts it :
"The most public political tension now playing out is between those who prefer the veil of
'system' against the venal vulgarity of that system's product now visible for all to see. What
Mr. Trump's political opponents appear to be demanding is a better veil." Not I. The lipstick
is off the "presidency" and the whole political beast it sits atop of. Good. Let's have no
nostalgia for a time when a smooth operator was picking your pocket with a smile while you were
transfixed by his mellifluous patter.
After all, it's not as if Donald Trump is the first incompetent to be president. Ronald
Reagan and Woodrow Wilson both occupied the office for years in a mentally-enfeebled state.
Popular media history just ignores that, and both still have millions of admirers who are
blissfully unaware of the holes in the story, and in their heroes', and their own, minds.
Nor is Trump the first (or worst) liar. He's just the worst at it. Indeed, it seems a
category error to say Trump is "lying." His discourse is so obsessively fixed on emphasizing
how great he is that he seems unaware of the meaning of what he's saying, which is all meant to
reinforce that self-aggrandizement. Effective, ongoing political deception is an art. It
requires skill and finesse in soliciting an audience -- on a national scale, that means a wide
and diverse audience -- to identify with you as the projected image of their needs and desires,
without seeming to center yourself . Trump gets away with some of that for some of the
people for some of the time, but he's a rookie. Obama was the champ -- easily the most
successfully deceptive president I've lived under. He's still got legions of empty-pocketed
fans thanking him for his service. I only hope that fewer Trump voters will remain in his
thrall four or eight years from now.
It's also undeniable that Trump does not get the pass for his flaws that most of his
predecessors got, and most of his contemporary colleagues still get. His many flaws get exposed
and magnified and scrutinized on a daily basis. He's under the most relentless pressure put on
a president since Nixon. It is a witch-hunt, and Trump does keep riding his broom
straight into it. Appointing a Special Counsel was a trap that precisely demonstrates how out
of his depth he is. The Special Counsel investigation constitutes a permanent, limitless,
intrusive machine that works under the
three felonies a day rule. It's an ongoing threat, put in place to enforce his compliance
with Deep State mandates.
So, is Trump going to be impeached (and convicted)? Leaving aside the substantive question
(Why would anyone want to? To have Pence and Cruz running the country?), it's virtually
impossible. Do the math. It would require a majority of an overwhelmingly Republican Congress,
and two-thirds of a Republican-majority Senate.
Then do the politics. Sure, as I suggested above, many Republicans would like to get rid of
Trump and replace him with a Pence-Cruz government. But almost every Republican also knows s/he
can only lose by championing that. Paul Ryan will not get any Democratic votes by voting to
impeach Trump; he will only be sure to get fewer Republican votes, and probably get primaried.
Despite the current situation, the Republican Party is electorally very weak, as would be
obvious if it weren't for gerrymandering and election rigging. Trump brought out
anti-establishment voters who are convinced that the bi-partisan elite is contemptuous of them
and would like to nullify their choice. They are right, and impeachment would prove it.
Republicans will never vote to impeach Trump unless he does something that's egregious for
those voters , who also aren't too impressed with the aura of the presidency. Good luck
with that Russiagate thing.
So, impeachment would help neither the Democrats nor the Republicans. Barring a deus ex
machina -- and a fortuitous lone gunman cannot be ruled out -- we are going to have Donald
Trump to kick around for a lot more time.
And here's the main reason that's not such a bad thing: Every day of Donald Trump's
presidency further erodes the thin remaining patina of America's "soft power" in the world.
That's a very good thing, more likely to yield substantive benefit than any domestic
turmoil.
The headlines tell the tale: "Allies Fear Trump Is Eroding America's Moral Authority" (
NYT ), "European leaders fear Trump's political chaos is undermining U.S. power" (
WaPo ).
According to Alyssa Rubin in The New York Times , more than a dozen diplomats,
international politicians, and other such mucky-mucks she interviewed, worry that, although
"America's own actions over the years [mentioning torture, Guantánamo, wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan] have already eroded its moral standing," there is great fear that under Trump, who
"appeared like some kind of Attila, [the United States] was poised to cede its ability to lead
by example." With Trump as president, the United States might lose the "moral authority [that]
has imbued America with a special kind of clout in the world," or even "its ability to make
needed alliances."
In the Washington Post , Michael Birnbaum reports that "Washington's closest allies
in Europe are increasingly worried that rising political chaos in the United States is
undermining the strength of the most powerful nation in the world," and quotes a Dutch member
of the European Parliament that: "this internal chaos in the United States is growing to an
unimaginable scale," creating a "vacuum [that] may encourage people all over the world to seize
the moment of an absent United States."
Under a kind, tolerant president like Obama of Assisi, you see, things like torture and
multiple state-destroying imperial wars don't really affect America's "moral standing" or its
"ability to make alliances." Only the "political chaos" brought on by Atilla the Trump
"undermines the strength" that allows "the most powerful nation" to do those things while
maintaining its "ability to lead by example"–that is, its ability to get compliant
European governments to get their war-averse populations to go along with the alliances needed
to wage American imperialist wars in the guise of international humanitarian crusades. In the
vacuum that Trump is creating, European countries might actually have to seize the initiative
to make independent decisions, maybe driven by the needs of their own people rather than by the
precious, special clout of the most powerful nation in the world. The horror!
A better argument for what a good thing the Trump-effect is would be hard to find. I'll take
Atilla.
I am not one who thinks the Trump administration will be any less aggressive and imperialist
than its predecessors. It's simply not in the nature of who he, or the American presidency, is.
He probably has some sincere bits of thoughts about better relations with Russia and winding
down the war on Syria, but I do not think he has the intrinsic commitment, or the ability in
the face of Deep State pressure, to effect substantive change in America's fundamental imperial
policies. I see the cessation of aid to certain rebel groups in Syria, for example, as part to
a pivot to a Plan C -- an option that may give up on the "Sunnistan" part of breaking up Syria,
but drives forward on tearing away a Kurdish statelet, as well as gearing up for new and
dangerous aggression against Iran. I doubt Trump understands much of that, but he'll do it,
hugely.
It's not that Trump will be any less imperialist than Obama was or Clinton would have been;
it's just, again, that he'll be worse at it -- from the whole "moral standing, needed
alliances" point of view. The insufferable sanctimony of American exceptionalism has been an
ideological pillar of the imperial project, and anything that undermines it should be welcomed.
I doubt anything coming out of the #Resistance, the electoral seesaw, or the thoroughly
marginalized radical left in the United States will be more consequential.
In sum, the Trump effect is destroying the graven image of the presidency, the Euro-American
imperial alliance, the Republican and maybe even the Democratic, Party.
"... Speaking as a Deplorable, and having laughed my way through each of the first 60 side-splitting pages of Fire And Fury, Wolff's depiction of Trump as an incurious naif over-exploits humorous rhetoric to sell the fanciful notion that Trump is an incompetent one-dimensional character who won a US Presidential Election by accident. ..."
@Madison James , Jun 19, 2019 2:47:33 PM | 4 (Fire And Fury)
Speaking as a Deplorable, and having laughed my way through each of the first 60
side-splitting pages of Fire And Fury, Wolff's depiction of Trump as an incurious naif
over-exploits humorous rhetoric to sell the fanciful notion that Trump is an incompetent
one-dimensional character who won a US Presidential Election by accident.
Having followed Trump's relentless campaigning from beginning to end, and compared Trump's
Herculean energy with Crooked Hillary's lazy excuse for dynamism, I have no hesitation in
concluding that Wolff's is a preposterous assumption.
Americans were reminded on Tuesday night that the president of the United States has just
one big and very limited political talent: the capacity to elicit anger and resentment in a
certain segment of the American electorate using a mixture of outright lies and flagrant
demagoguery. That's it. When it comes to politics, he knows -- and knows how to do -- nothing
else.
"... Theresa May's immediate conclusion that the Russian government bears certain and sole responsibility for the nerve-agent poisoning of the Skripals is logically, scientifically, and forensically impossible. ..."
"... Teresa May is lying, everyone who seconds her assertion of false certainty is lying, they all know they are lying, and the Russians know that they know they are lying. ..."
"... "War" is what they seem to want it to be. For the past 18 to 24 months, we've also been inundated with Morgan Freeman and Rob Reiner's ominous "We have been attacked. We are at war," video, as well as the bipartisan ( Hillary Clinton , John McCain ) insistence that alleged Russian election meddling should be considered an "act of war" equivalent to Pearl Harbor . Indeed, Trump's new National Security advisor, the warmongering lunatic John Bolton, calls it , explicitly "a casus belli , a true act of war." ..."
"... Even the military is getting in on the act. The nerve-agent accusation has been followed up by General John Nicholson, the commander of U.S. Forces in Afghanistan, accusing Russia of arming the Taliban! It's noteworthy that this senior American military general casually refers to Russia as "the enemy": "We've had stories written by the Taliban that have appeared in the media about financial support provided by the enemy." ..."
"... The economic war against Russian is being waged through a series of sanctions that seem impossible to reverse, because their expressed goal is to extract confession, repentance, and restitution for crimes ascribed to Russia that Russia has not committed, or has not been proven to have committed, or are entirely fictional and have not been committed by anyone at all. We will only stop taking your bank accounts and consulates and let you play games with us if you confess and repent every crime we accuse you of. No questions permitted. ..."
It's a relentless economic, diplomatic, and ideological war, spiced with (so far) just a
dash of military war, and the strong scent of more to come.
I mean war with Russia, of course, although Russia is the point target for a constellation
of emerging adversaries the US is desperate to entame before any one or combination of them
becomes too strong to defeat. These include countries like Iran and China, which are developing
forces capable of resisting American military aggression against their own territory and on a
regional level, and have shown quite too much uppitiness about staying in their
previously-assigned geopolitical cages.
But Russia is the only country that has put its military forces in the way of a U.S. program
of regime change -- indirectly in Ukraine, where Russia would not get out of the way, and
directly in Syria, where Russia actively got in the way. So Russia is the focus of
attack, the prime target for an exemplary comeuppance.
Is it, then, a new Cold War, even more dangerous than the old one, as Stephen F. Cohen
says ?
That terminology was apt even a few months ago, but the speed, ferocity, and
coordination of the West/NATO's reaction to the alleged nerve-agent poisoning of the
Skripals, as well as the formation of a War Cabinet in Washington, indicates to me that we've
moved to another level of aggression.
It's beyond Cold. Call it the Warm War. And the temperature's rising.
The Nerve of Them
There are two underlying presumptions that, combined, make present situation more dangerous
than a Cold War.
One is the presumption of guilt -- or, more precisely, the presumption that the presumption
of Russian guilt can always be made, and made to stick in the Western mind.
The confected furor over the alleged nerve-agent poisoning of the Skripals demonstrates this
dramatically.
Theresa May's immediate conclusion that the Russian government bears certain and sole
responsibility for the nerve-agent poisoning of the Skripals is logically, scientifically, and
forensically impossible.
False certainty is the ultimate fake news. It is just not true that, as she says: "There is
no alternative conclusion other than the Russian state is culpable." This falsity of this
statement has been demonstrated by a slew of sources -- including the
developers of the alleged "Novichok" agent themselves, a thorough
analysis by a former UN inspector in Iraq who worked on the destruction of chemical
weapons, establishment Western scientific outlets like New Scientist ("
Other countries could have made 'Russian' nerve agent "), and the British government's own
mealy-mouthed, effective-but-unacknowledged disavowal
of that conclusion. In its own words, The British government found: "a nerve agent or
related compound," " of a type developed by Russia." So, it's absolutely,
positively, certainly, without a doubt, Russian-government-produced "Novichok" .or something
else.
Teresa May is lying, everyone who seconds her assertion of false certainty is lying, they
all know they are lying, and the Russians know that they know they are lying. It's a
It boggles the -- or at least, my -- mind how, in the face of all this, anyone could take
seriously her ultimatum, ignoring the procedures of the
Chemical Weapons Convention , gave Russia 24 hours to "explain" -- i.e., confess and beg
forgiveness for -- this alleged crime.
Indeed, it's noteworthy that France initially, and rather sharply, refused to assume Russian
guilt, with a government spokesman saying, "We don't do fantasy politics. Once the elements are
proven, then the time will come for decisions to be made." But the whip was cracked -- and
surely not by the weak hand of Whitehall -- demanding EU/NATO unity in the condemnation of
Russia. So, in an extraordinary show of discipline that could only be ordered and orchestrated
by the imperial center, France joined the United States and 20 other countries in the largest
mass expulsion of Russian diplomats ever.
Western governments and their compliant media have mandated that Russian government guilt
for the "
first offensive use of a nerve agent " in Europe since World War II is to be taken as flat
fact. Anyone -- like Jeremy Corbyn or Craig Murray -- who
dares to interrupt the "Sentence first! Verdict afterwards!" chorus to ask for, uh, evidence,
is treated to a storm of obloquy
.
At this point, Western accusers don't seem to care how blatantly unfounded, if not
ludicrous, an accusation is. The presumption of Russian guilt, along with the shaming of anyone
who questions it, has become an unquestionable standard of Western/American political and media
discourse.
Old Cold War McCarthyism has become new Warm War fantasy politics.
Helled in Contempt
This declaration of diplomatic war over the Skripal incident is the culmination of an
ongoing drumbeat of ideological warfare, demonizing Russia and Putin personally in the most
predictable and inflammatory terms.
For the past couple of years, we've been
told by Hillary Clinton, John McCain, Marco Rubio, and
Boris Johnson that Putin is the new Hitler. That's a particularly galling analogy for the
Russians. Soviet Russia, after all, was Hitler's main enemy, that defeated the Nazi army at the
cost of 20+ million of its people -- while the British Royal Family was not
un-smitten with the charms of
Hitlerian fascism , and British footballers had a poignant moment in 1938 Berlin
saluting the Fuhre.:
"War" is what they seem to want it to be. For the past 18 to 24 months, we've also been
inundated with Morgan Freeman and Rob Reiner's ominous "We have been attacked. We are at war,"
video, as well as the bipartisan (
Hillary Clinton ,
John McCain ) insistence that alleged Russian election meddling should be considered an
"act of war"
equivalent to Pearl Harbor . Indeed, Trump's new National Security advisor, the
warmongering lunatic John Bolton,
calls it , explicitly "a casus belli , a true act of war."
Even the military is getting in on the act. The nerve-agent accusation has been followed up
by General John Nicholson, the commander of U.S. Forces in Afghanistan, accusing Russia of arming the Taliban! It's
noteworthy that this senior American military general casually refers to Russia as "the enemy":
"We've had stories written by the Taliban that have appeared in the media about financial
support provided by the enemy."
Which is strange, because, since the Taliban emerged from the American-jihadi war against
Soviet forces in Afghanistan, and the Taliban and Russia have "enduring enmity" towards each
other, as Kate Clark of the Afghanistan Analysts Network puts it . Furthermore, the sixteen-year-long
American war against the Taliban has depended on Russia allowing the U.S. to move
supplies through its territory, and being "the principal source of
fuel for the alliance's needs in Afghanistan."
So the general has to admit that this alleged Russian "destabilising activity" is a new
thing: "This activity really picked up in the last 18 to 24 months When you look at the timing
it roughly correlates to when things started to heat up in Syria. So it's interesting to note
the timing of the whole thing."
Yes, it is.
The economic war against Russian is being waged through a series of sanctions that seem
impossible to reverse, because their expressed goal is to extract confession, repentance, and
restitution for crimes ascribed to Russia that Russia has not committed, or has not been proven
to have committed, or are entirely fictional and have not been committed by anyone at all.
We will only stop taking your bank accounts and consulates and let you play games with us if
you confess and repent every crime we accuse you of. No questions permitted.
This is not a serious framework for respectful international relations between two sovereign
nations. It's downright childish. It paints everyone, including the party trying to impose it,
into an impossible corner. Is Russia ever going to abandon Crimea, confess that it shot down
the Malaysian jet, tricked us into electing Donald Trump, murdered the Skripals, is secretly
arming the Taliban, et. al .? Is the U.S. ever going to say: "Never mind"? What's the
next step? It's the predicament of the bully.
This is not, either, an approach that really seeks to address any of the "crimes" charged.
As Victoria Nuland (a Clintonite John Bolton) put it on NPR, it's about, "sending a message" to
Russia. Well, as Russia's ambassador to Washington, Anatoly Antonov
said , with this latest mass expulsion of diplomats, the United States is, "Destroying what
little remained of US-Russian ties." He got the message.
All of this looks like a coordinated campaign that began in response to Russia's
interruption of American regime-change projects in Ukraine and especially Syria, that was
harmonized -- over the last 18 to 24 months -- with various elite and popular motifs of
discontent over the 2016 election, and that has reached a crescendo in the last few weeks with
ubiquitous and unconstrained " enemization " [1] of Russia.
It's hard to describe it as anything other than war propaganda -- manufacturing the
citizenry's consent for a military confrontation.
Destroying the possibility of normal, non-conflictual, state-to-state relations and
constituting Russia as "the enemy" is exactly what this campaign is about. That is its
"message" and its effect -- for the American people as much as for the Russia
government. The heightened danger, I think, is that Russia, which has for a long time been
reluctant to accept that America wasn't interested in "partnership", has now heard and
understood this message, while the American people have only heard but do not understand
it.
It's hard to see where this can go that doesn't involve military conflict. This is
especially the case with the appointments of Mike Pompeo, Gina Haspel, and John Bolton -- a
veritable murderers' row that many see as the core of a Trump War Cabinet. Bolton, who does not
need Senate confirmation, is a particularly dangerous fanatic, who tried to
get the Israelis to attack Iran before even they wanted to, and has
promised regime change in Iran by 2019. As mentioned, he considers that Russia has already
given him a " casus belli. " Even the staid New York Timeswarns
that, with these appointments, "the odds of taking military action will rise dramatically."
The second presumption in the American mindset today makes military confrontation more
likely than it was during the Cold War: Not only is there a presumption of guilt, there is a
presumption of weakness . The presumption of guilt is something the American imperial
managers are confident they can induce and maintain in the Western world; the presumption of
weakness is one they -- or, I fear, too many of them -- have all-too blithely
internalized.
This is an aspect of the American self-image among policymakers whose careers matured in a
post-Soviet world. During the Cold War, Americans held themselves in check by the assumption,
that, militarily, the Soviet Union was a peer adversary, a country that could and would defend
certain territories and interests against direct American military aggression -- "spheres of
interest" that should not be attacked. The fundamental antagonism was managed with grudging
mutual respect.
There was, after all, a shared recent history of alliance against fascism. And there was an
awareness that the Soviet Union, in however distorted a way, both represented the possibility
of a post-capitalist future and supported post-colonial national liberation movements, which
gave it considerable stature in the world.
American leadership might have hated the Soviet Union, but it was not contemptuous of it. No
American leader would have called the Soviet Union, as John McCain called Russia, just "a gas
station masquerading as a country." And no senior American or British leader would have told
the Soviet Union what British Defense Secretary Gavin Williamson told Russia last week: to "go
away and shut up."
This is a discourse that assumes its own righteousness, authority, and superior power, even
as it betrays its own weakness. It's the discourse of a frustrated child. Or bully. Russia
isn't shutting up and going away, and the British are not -- and know they're not -- going to
make it. But they may think the Big Daddy backing them up can and will. And daddy may think so
himself.
Like all bullies, the people enmeshed in this arrogant discourse don't seem to understand
that it is not frightening Russia. It's only insulting the country, and leading it to conclude
that there is indeed nothing remaining of productive, non-conflictual, US-Russian "partnership"
ties. The post-Skripal worldwide diplomatic expulsions, which seem deliberately and desperately
excessive, may have finally convinced Russia that there is no longer any use trying. Those who
should be frightened of this are the American people.
The enemy of my enemy is me.
The United States is only succeeding in turning itself into an enemy for Russians. Americans
would do well to understand how thoroughly their hypocritical and contemptuous stance has
alienated the Russian people and strengthened Vladimir Putin's leadership -- as many of Putin's
critics warned
them it would. The fantasy of stoking a "liberal" movement in Russia that will install some
nouveau-Yeltsin-ish figure is dissipated in the cold light of a 77% election day. Putin is
widely and firmly supported in Russia because he represents the resistance to any such
scheme.
Americans who want to understand that dynamic, and what America itself has wrought in
Russia, should heed the passion, anger, and disappointment in this statement about
Putin's election from a self-described "liberal" (using the word, I think, in the intellectual
tradition, not the American political, sense), Margarita Simonyan, editor-in-chief of RT TV
(errors in translation by another person):
Essentially, the West should be horrified not because 76% of Russians voted for Putin, but
because this elections have demonstrated that 95% of Russia's population supports
conservative-patriotic, communist and nationalist ideas. That means that liberal ideas are
barely surviving among measly 5% of population.
And that's your fault, my Western friends. It was you who pushed us into "Russians never
surrender" mode
[W]ith all your injustice and cruelty, inquisitorial hypocrisy and lies you forced us to
stop respecting you. You and your so called "values."
We don't want to live like you live, anymore. For fifty years, secretly and openly, we
wanted to live like you, but not any longer.
We have no more respect for you, and for those amongst us that you support, and for all
those people who support you.
For that you only have yourself to blame.
In meantime, you've pushed us to rally around your enemy. Immediately, after you declared
him an enemy, we united around him .
It was you who imposed an opposition between patriotism and liberalism. Although, they
shouldn't be mutually exclusive notions. This false dilemma, created by you, made us to chose
patriotism.
Even though, many of us are really liberals, myself included.
Get cleaned up, now. You don't have much time left.
In fact, the whole "uprising"/color revolution strategy throughout the world is over. It's
been fatally discredited by its own purported successes. Everybody in the Middle East has seen
how that worked out for Iraq, Libya, and Syria, and the Russians have seen how it worked out
for Ukraine and for Russia
itself . In neither Russia nor Iran (nor anywhere else of importance) are the Americans,
with their sanctions and their NGOs and their
cookies ,going to stoke a popular uprising that turns a country into a fractured client of
the Washington Consensus. More fantasy politics.
The old new world Washington wants won't be born without a military midwife. The U.S. wants
a compliant Russia ( and "international community") back, and it thinks it can force it
into being.
Fear Knot
Consider this quote from
The Saker , a defense analyst who was born in Switzerland to a Russian military family,
"studied Russian and Soviet military affairs all [his] life," and lived for 20 years in the
United States. He's been one of the sharpest analysts of Russia and Syria over the last few
years. This was his take a year ago, after Trump's cruise missile attack on Syria's Al Shayrat
airfield -- another instant punishment for an absolutely, positively, proven-in-a day, chemical
crime:
For one thing, there is no US policy on anything.
The Russians expressed their total disgust and outrage at this attack and openly began
saying that the Americans were
"недоговороспособны".
What that word means is literally "not-agreement-capable" or unable to make and then abide by
an agreement. While polite, this expression is also extremely strong as it implies not so
much a deliberate deception as the lack of the very ability to make a deal and abide by it.
But to say that a nuclear world superpower is "not-agreement-capable" is a terrible and
extreme diagnostic.
This means that the Russians have basically given up on the notion of having an adult,
sober and mentally sane partner to have a dialog with.
In all my years of training and work as a military analyst I have always had to assume
that everybody involved was what we called a "rational actor". The Soviets sure where. As
were the Americans.
Not only do I find the Trump administration "not agreement-capable", I find it completely
detached from reality. Delusional in other words.
Alas, just like Obama before him, Trump seems to think that he can win a game of nuclear
chicken against Russia. But he can't. Let me be clear here: if pushed into a corner the
Russian will fight, even if that means nuclear war.
There is a reason for this American delusion. The present generation of American leadership
was spoiled and addled by the blissful post-Soviet decades of American impunity.
The problem is not exactly that the U.S. wants full-on war with Russia, it's that
America does not fear it. [2]
Why should it? It hasn't had to for twenty years during which the US assumed it could bully
Russia to stay out of its imperial way anywhere it wanted to intervene.
After the Soviet Union broke up (and only because the Soviet Union disappeared) the
United States was free to use its military power with impunity. For some time, the U.S. had its
drunken stooge, Yeltsin, running Russia and keeping it out of America's military way. There was
nary a peep when Bill Clinton effectively conferred on NATO (meaning the U.S. itself) the
authority to decide what military interventions were necessary and legitimate. For about twenty
years -- from the Yugoslavia through the Libya intervention -- no nation had the military power
or politico-diplomatic will to resist this.
But that situation has changed. Even the Pentagon
recognizes that the American Empire is in a "post-primacy" phase -- certainly "fraying,"
and maybe even "collapsing." The world has seen America's social and economic strength
dissipate, and its pretense of legitimacy disappear entirely. The world has seen American
military overreach everywhere while winning nothing of stable value anywhere. Sixteen years,
and the mighty U.S. Army cannot defeat the Taliban. Now, that's Russia's fault!
Meanwhile, a number of countries in key areas have gained the military confidence and
political will to refuse the presumptions of American arrogance -- China in the Pacific, Iran
in the Middle East, and Russia in Europe and, surprisingly, the Middle East as well. In a
familiar pattern, America's resultant anxiety about waning power increases its
compensatory aggression. And, as mentioned, since it was Russia that most effectively
demonstrated that new military confidence, it's Russia that has to be dealt with first.
The incessant wave of sanctions and expulsions is the bully in the schoolyard clenching his
fist to scare the new kid away. OK, everyone's got the message now. Unclench or punch?
Let's be clear about who is the world's bully. As is evident to any half-conscious person,
Russia is not going to attack the United States or Europe. Russia doesn't have scores of
military bases, combat ships and aircraft up on America's borders. It doesn't have almost a
thousand military bases around the world. Russia does not have the military forces to rampage
around the world as America does, and it doesn't want or need to. That's not because of
Russia's or Vladimir Putin's pacifism, but because Russia, as presently situated in the
political economy of the world, has nothing to gain from it.
Nor does Russia need some huge troll-farm offensive to "destabilize" and sow division in
Western Europe and the United States. Inequality, austerity, waves of immigrants from
regime-change wars, and trigger-happy cops are doing a fine job of that. Russia isn't
responsible for American problems with Black Lives Matter or with the Taliban.
All of this is fantasy politics.
It's the United States, with its fraying empire, that has a problem requiring military
aggression. What other tools does the U.S. have left to put the upstarts, Russia first, back in
their places?
It must be hard for folks who have had their way with country after country for twenty years
not to think they can push Russia out of the way with some really, really scary threats, or
maybe one or two "bloody nose" punches. Some finite number of discrete little escalations.
There's already been some shoving -- that cruise missile attack, Turkey's downing of a Russian
jet, American attacks on Russian personnel (ostensibly private mercenaries) in Syria -- and,
look, Ma, no big war. But sometimes you learn the hard way the truth of the reverse Mike Tyson
rule: "Everyone has a game plan until they smack the other guy in the face."
Consider one concrete risk of escalation that every informed observer is, and every American
should be, aware of.
The place where the United States and Russia are literally, geographically, closest to
confrontation is Syria. As mentioned, the U.S. and its NATO ally, Turkey, have already attacked
and killed Russians in Syria, and the U.S. and its NATO allies have a far larger military force
than Russia in Syria and the surrounding area. On the other hand, Russia has made very
effective use of its forces, including what Reuters
calls "advanced cruise missiles" launched from planes,
ships , and
submarines that hit ISIS targets with high precision from 1000 kilometers.
Russia is also operating in accordance with international law, while the U.S. is not. Russia
is fighting with Syria for the defeat of jihadi forces and the unification of the Syrian state.
The United States is fighting with its jihadi clients for the overthrow of the Syrian
government and the division of the country. Russia intervened in Syria after Obama announced
that the U.S. would attack Syrian army troops, effectively declaring war. If neither side
accepts defeat and goes home, it is quite possible there will be some direct confrontation
over this. In fact, it's hard to imagine that there won't.
A couple of weeks ago Syria and Russia
said the U.S. was planning a major offensive against the Syrian government, including
bombing the government quarter in Damascus. Valery Gerasimov, head of Russia's General Staff,
warned: "In the event of a threat to the lives of our servicemen, Russia's armed forces will
take retaliatory measures against the missiles and launchers used." In this context,
"launchers" means American ships in the Mediterranean.
Also a couple of weeks ago, Russia announced a number of new, highly-advanced weapons
systems. There's discussion about whether some of the yet-to-be-deployed weapons announced
may or
may not
be a bluff, but one that has already been deployed, called Dagger ( Kinzhal, not the
missiles mentioned above), is an air-launched hypersonic cruise missile that files at 5-7,000
miles per hour, with a range of 1200 miles. Analyst Andrei Martyanov claims that: "no
modern or perspective air-defense system deployed today by any NATO fleet can intercept even a
single missile with such characteristics. A salvo of 5-6 such missiles guarantees the
destruction of any Carrier Battle Group or any other surface group, for that matter."
Air-launched. From anywhere.
The U.S. attack has not (yet) happened, for whatever reason (Sputnik reporter Suliman
Mulhem, citing "a military monitor," claims
that's because of the Russian warnings). Great. But given the current state of America's
anxiously aggressive "post-primacy" policy -- including the Russiamania, the Zionist-driven
need to destroy Syria and Iran, and the War Cabinet -- how unlikely is that the U.S. will, in
the near future, make some such attack on some such target that Russia considers crucial to
defend?
And Syria is just one theater where, unless one side accepts defeat and goes home, military
conflict with Russia is highly likely. Is Russia going to abandon the Russian-speaking people
of the Donbass if they're attacked by fascist Kiev forces backed by the U.S.? Is it going to
sit back and watch passively if American and Israeli forces attack Iran? Which one is going to
give up and accept a loss: John Bolton or Vladimir Putin?
Which brings us to the pointed question: What will the U.S. do if Russia sinks an American
ship? How many steps before that goes full-scale, even nuclear? Or maybe American planners (and
you, dear reader) are absolutely, positively sure that will never happen, because the U.S. has
cool weapons, too, and a lot more of them, and the Russians will probably lose all their ships
in the Mediterranean immediately, if not something worse, and they'll put up with anything
rather than go one more step. The Russians, like everybody, must know the Americans always
win.
Happy with that, are we? Snug in our homeland rug? 'Cause Russians won't fight, but the
Taliban will.
This is exactly what is meant by Americans not fearing war with Russia (or war in general
for that matter). Nothing but contempt.
The Skripal opera, directed by the United States, with the whole of Europe and the entire
Western media apparatus singing in harmony, makes it clear that the American producers have no
speaking role for Russia in their staging of the world. And that contempt makes war much more
likely. Here's The Saker again, on how
dangerous the isolation the U.S. and its European clients are so carelessly imposing on Russia
and themselves is for everybody:
Right now they are expelling Russian diplomats en mass e and they are feeling very
strong and manly.
The truth is that this is only the tip of a much bigger iceberg. In reality, crucial
expert-level consultations, which are so vitally important between nuclear superpowers, have
all but stopped a long time ago. We are down to top level telephone calls. That kind of stuff
happens when two sides are about to go to war. For many months now Russia and NATO have made
preparations for war in Europe. Very rapidly the real action will be left to the USA and
Russia. Thus any conflict will go nuclear very fast. And, for the first time in history, the
USA will be hit very, very hard, not only in Europe, the Middle-East or Asia, but also on the
continental US.
Mass diplomatic expulsions, economic warfare, lockstep propaganda, no interest whatsoever in
respectfully addressing or hearing from the other side. What we've been seeing over the past
few months is the "kind of stuff that happens when two sides are about to go to war."
The less Americans fear war, the less they respect the possibility of it, the more likely
they are to get it.
Ready or Not
The Saker makes a diptych of a point that gets to the heart of the matter. We'd do well to
read and think on it carefully:
1/ The Russians are afraid of war. The Americans are not.
2/ The Russians are ready for war. The Americans are not.
Russia is afraid of war. More than twenty million Soviet citizens were
killed in WWII, about half of them civilians. That was more than twenty times the number of
Americans and British casualties combined. The entire country was devastated. Millions died in
the 872-day siege of Leningrad alone, including Vladimir Putin's brother. The city's population
was decimated by disease and starvation, with some reduced to cannibalism. Wikileaks calls it "one of the
longest and most destructive sieges in history [and] possibly the
costliest
in casualties." Another million-plus died in the nine-month siege of Stalingrad.
Every Russian knows this history. Millions of Russian families have suffered from it. Of
course, there was mythification of the struggle and its heroes, but the Russians, viscerally,
know war and know it can happen to them . They do not want to go through it
again. They will do almost anything to avoid it. Russians are not flippant about war. They fear
it. They respect it.
The Americans are not (afraid of war). Americans have never experienced anything
remotely as devastating as this. About 620,000 Americans died in the Civil War, 150 years ago.
(And we're still entangled in that!) The American mainland has not been attacked by a
significant military force since the War of 1812. Since then, the worst attacks on American
territory are two one-off incidents (Pearl Harbor and 9/11), separated by seventy years,
totaling about six-thousand casualties. These are the iconic moments of America Under
Siege.
For the American populace, wars are "over there," fought by a small group of Americans who
go away and either come back or don't. The death, destruction, and aroma of warfare -- which
the United States visits on people around the world incessantly -- is unseen and unexperienced
at home. Americans do not, cannot, believe, in any but the most abstract intellectual sense,
that war can happen here , to them. For the general populace, talk of war is just more
political background noise, Morgan Freeman competing for attention with Stormy Daniels and the
Kardashians.
Americans are supremely insouciant about war: They threaten countries with it incessantly,
the government routinely sells it with lies, and the political parties promote it
opportunistically to defeat their opponents -- and nobody cares. For Americans, war is part of
a game. They do not fear it. They do not respect it.
The Russians are ready for war. The Nazi onslaught was defeated -- in Soviet Russia,
by Soviet Citizens and the Red Army -- because the mass of people stood and fought together for
a victory they understood was important. They could not have withstood horrific sieges and
defeated the Nazis any other way. Russians understand, in other words, that war is a crisis of
death and destruction visited on the whole of society, which can only be won by a massive and
difficult effort grounded in social solidarity. If the Russians feel they have to fight, if
they feel besieged, they know they will have to stand together, take the hits that come, and
fight to the finish. They will not again permit war to be brought to their cities while their
attacker stays snug. There will be a world of hurt. They will develop and use any weapon they
can. And their toughest weapon is not a hypersonic missile; it's that solidarity, implied by
that 77%. (Did you read that Simonyan statement?) They may not be seeking it, but, insofar as
anybody can be, they are ready to fight.
Americans are not (ready for war): Americans experience the horror of wars as a
series of discrete tragedies visited upon families of fallen soldiers, reported in
human-interest vignettes at the end of the nightly news. Individual tragedies, not a social
disaster.
It's hard to imagine the social devastation of war in any case, but American culture wants
no part of thinking about that concretely. The social imagination of war is deflected into
fantastic scenarios of a super-hero universe or a zombie apocalypse. The alien death-ray may
blow up the Empire State Building, but the hero and his family (now including his or her
gender-ambivalent teenager, and, of course, the dog) will survive and triumph. Cartoon
villains, cartoon heroes, and a cartoon society.
One reason for this, we have to recognize, is the victory of the
Thatcherite/libertarian-capitalist "no such thing as society" ideology. Congratulations, Ayn
Rand, there is no such thing as American society now. It's every incipient entrepreneur
for him or herself. This does not a comradely, fighting band of brothers and sisters make.
Furthermore, though America is constantly at war, nobody understands the purpose of it.
That's because the real purpose can never be explained, and must be hidden behind some facile
abstraction -- "democracy," "our freedoms," etc. This kind of discourse can get some of the
people motivated for some of the time, but it loses its charm the minute someone gets smacked
in the face.
Once they take a moment, everybody can see that there is nobody with an army threatening to
attack and destroy the United States, and if they take a few moments, everybody can see how
phony the "democracy and freedom" stuff is and remember how often they've been lied to before.
There's just too much information out there. (Which is why the Imperial High Command wants to
control the internet.) Why the hell am I fighting? What in hell are we fighting
for? These are questions everybody will ask after, and too many people are now asking
before, they get smacked in the face.
This lack of social understanding and lack of political support translates into the
impossibility of fighting a major, sustained war that requires taking heavy casualties -- even
"over there," but certainly in the snug. American culture might be all gung-ho about Seal Team
Six kicking ass, but the minute American homes start blowing up and American bodies start
falling, Hoo-hah becomes Uh-oh , and it's going to be Outta here .
Americans are ready for Hoo-hah and the Shark Tank and the Zombie Apocalypse. They
are not ready for war.
You Get What You Play For
"Russiagate," which started quite banally in the presidential campaign as a Democratic arrow
to take down Trump, is now Russiamania -- a battery of weapons wielded by various sectors of
the state, aimed at an array of targets deemed even potentially resistant to imperial
militarism. Trump himself -- still, and for as long as he's deemed unreliable -- is targeted by
a legal prosecution of infinite reach (whose likeliest threat is to take him down for something
that has nothing to do with Russia). Russia itself is now targeted in full force by economic,
diplomatic, ideological -- and, tentatively, military -- weapons of the state. Perhaps most
importantly, American and European people, especially dissidents, are targeted by a unified
media barrage that attacks any expression of radical critique, anything that "sows division" --
from Black Lives Matter, to the Sanders campaign, to "But other countries could have made it"
-- as Russian treachery.
The stunning success of that last offensive is crucial to making a war more likely, and must
be fought. To increase the risk of war with a nuclear power in order to score points against
Donald Trump or Jill Stein -- well, only those who neither respect, fear, nor are ready for war
would do such a stupid and dangerous thing.
It's impossible to predict with certainty whether, when, or with whom a major hot war will
be started. The same chaotic disarray and impulsiveness of the Trump administration that
increases the danger of war might also work to prevent it. John Bolton may be fired before he
trims his moustache. But it's a pressure-cooker, and the temperature has spiked
drastically.
In a previous
essay , I said that Venezuela was a likely first target for military attack, precisely
because it would make for an easy victory that didn't risk military confrontation with Russia.
That's still a good possibility. As we saw with Iraq Wars 1 (which helped to end the "Vietnam
Syndrome") and 2 (which somewhat resurrected it), the imperial high command needs to inure the
American public with a virtually American-casualty-free victory and in order to lure them into
taking on a war that's going to hurt.
But the new War Cabinet may be pumped for the main event -- an attack on Iran. Trump,
Pompeo, and Bolton are all rabid proponents of regime-change in Iran. We can be certain
that the Iran nuclear deal will be scrapped, and everyone will work hard to implement the
secret agreementthe Trump administration already has with Israel to "to deal
with Iran's nuclear drive, its missile programs and its other threatening activities" -- or, as
Trump himself expresses it: "cripple the [Iranian] regime and bring it to collapse." (That
agreement, by the way, was negotiated and signed by the previous, supposedly not-so-belligerent
National Security Advisor, H. R. McMaster.)
Still, as I also said in the previous essay, an attack on Iran means the Americans must
either make sure Russia doesn't get in the way or make clear that they don't care if it
does. So, threatening moves -- not excluding probing military moves -- against Russia will
increase, whether Russia is the preferred direct target or not.
The siege is on.
Americans who want to continue playing with this fire would do well to pay some respectful
attention to the target whose face they want to smack. Russia did not boast or brag or threaten
or Hoo-Hah about sending military forces to Syria. When it was deemed necessary -- when
the United States declared its intention to attack the Syrian Army -- it just did it. And
American10-dimensional-chess players have been squirming around trying to deal with the
implications of that ever since. They're working hard on finding the right mix of threats,
bluffs, sanctions, expulsions, "Shut up and go away!" insults, military forces on the border,
and "bloody nose" attacks to force a capitulation. They should be listening to their target,
who has not tired of asking for a "partnership," who has clearly stated what his country would
do in reaction to previous moves (e.g., the abrogation of the ABM Treaty and stationing of ABM
bases in Eastern Europe), whose country and family have suffered from wartime devastation
Americans cannot imagine, who therefore respects, fears, and is ready for war in ways Americans
are not, and who is not playing their game:
[2]
Though it's ridiculous that it needs to be said: I'm not talking here about the phony fear
engendered by the media presentation of the "strongman," "brutal dictator" Vladimir Putin. This
is part and parcel of comic-book politics -- conjuring a super-villain, who, we all know, is
destined to be defeated. Join the debate on
Facebook More articles by: Jim Kavanagh
Leda Cosmides at the University of California, Santa Barbara, points to her work with her colleague
John Tooby on the use of outrage to mobilize people: "The campaign was more about outrage than
about policies," she says. And when a politician can create a sense of moral outrage, truth
ceases to matter. People will go along with the emotion, support the cause and retrench into
their own core group identities. The actual substance stops being of any relevance.
Brendan Nyhan, a political scientist at Dartmouth University who studies false beliefs,
has found that
when false information is specifically political in nature, part of our political identity, it
becomes almost impossible to correct lies.
... ... ...
As the 19th-century Scottish philosopher Alexander Bain
put it, “The great master fallacy of the
human mind is believing too much.” False beliefs, once established, are incredibly tricky to correct. A leader who lies
constantly creates a new landscape, and a citizenry whose sense of reality may end up swaying far more than they think possible.
"... "The Times has run neck-and-neck with the Washington Post in stirring up fears of the Russian information war and illicit involvement with Trump. The Times now easily conflates fake news with any criticism of established institutions, as in Mark Scott and Melissa Eddy's 'Europe Combats a New Foe of Political Stability: Fake News,' February 20, 2017. But what is more extraordinary is the uniformity with which the paper's regular columnists accept as a given the CIA's assessment of the Russian hacking and transmission to WikiLeaks, the possibility or likelihood that Trump is a Putin puppet, and the urgent need of a congressional and 'non-partisan' investigation of these claims. This swallowing of a new war-party line has extended widely in the liberal media. Both the Times and Washington Post have lent tacit support to the idea that this 'fake news' threat needs to be curbed, possibly by some form of voluntary media-organized censorship or government intervention that would at least expose the fakery. ..."
"... "The most remarkable media episode in this anti-influence-campaign was the Post's piece by Craig Timberg, 'Russian propaganda effort helped spread 'fake news' during election, experts say,' which featured a report by a group of anonymous "experts" entity called PropOrNot that claimed to have identified two hundred websites that, wittingly or not, were 'routine peddlers of Russian propaganda.' While smearing these websites, many of them independent news outlets whose only shared trait was their critical stance toward U.S. foreign policy, the 'experts' refused to identify themselves, allegedly out of fear of being 'targeted by legions of skilled hackers.' As journalist Matt Taibbi wrote, 'You want to blacklist hundreds of people, but you won't put your name to your claims? Take a hike.' ..."
"... But the Post welcomed and promoted this McCarthyite effort, which might well be a product of Pentagon or CIA information warfare. (And these entities are themselves well-funded and heavily into the propaganda business.) ..."
"... "The success of the war party's campaign to contain or reverse any tendency to ease tensions with Russia was made dramatically clear in the Trump administration's speedy bombing response to the April 4, 2017, Syrian chemical weapons deaths. The Times and other mainstream media editors and journalists greeted this aggressive move with almost uniform enthusiasm, and once again did not require evidence of Assad's guilt beyond their government's claims. The action was damaging to Assad and Russia, but served the rebels well. ..."
"It has been amusing to watch the New York Times and other mainstream media outlets express their dismay over the rise and
spread of 'fake news.' These publications take it as an obvious truth that what they provide is straightforward, unbiased, fact-based
reporting. They do offer such news, but they also provide a steady flow of their own varied forms of fake news, often by disseminating
false or misleading information supplied to them by the national security state, other branches of government, and sites of corporate
power.
"An important form of mainstream media fake news is that which is presented while suppressing information that calls the preferred
news into question. [ ]
"The Times has run neck-and-neck with the Washington Post in stirring up fears of the Russian information war and illicit involvement
with Trump. The Times now easily conflates fake news with any criticism of established institutions, as in Mark Scott and Melissa
Eddy's 'Europe Combats a New Foe of Political Stability: Fake News,' February 20, 2017. But what is more extraordinary is the
uniformity with which the paper's regular columnists accept as a given the CIA's assessment of the Russian hacking and transmission
to WikiLeaks, the possibility or likelihood that Trump is a Putin puppet, and the urgent need of a congressional and 'non-partisan'
investigation of these claims. This swallowing of a new war-party line has extended widely in the liberal media. Both the Times
and Washington Post have lent tacit support to the idea that this 'fake news' threat needs to be curbed, possibly by some form
of voluntary media-organized censorship or government intervention that would at least expose the fakery.
"The most remarkable media episode in this anti-influence-campaign was the Post's piece by Craig Timberg, 'Russian propaganda
effort helped spread 'fake news' during election, experts say,' which featured a report by a group of anonymous "experts" entity
called PropOrNot that claimed to have identified two hundred websites that, wittingly or not, were 'routine peddlers of Russian
propaganda.' While smearing these websites, many of them independent news outlets whose only shared trait was their critical stance
toward U.S. foreign policy, the 'experts' refused to identify themselves, allegedly out of fear of being 'targeted by legions
of skilled hackers.' As journalist Matt Taibbi wrote, 'You want to blacklist hundreds of people, but you won't put your name to
your claims? Take a hike.'
But the Post welcomed and promoted this McCarthyite effort, which might well be a product of Pentagon
or CIA information warfare. (And these entities are themselves well-funded and heavily into the propaganda business.)
"On December 23, 2016, President Obama signed the Portman-Murphy Countering Disinformation and Propaganda Act, which will supposedly
allow the United States to more effectively combat foreign (namely Russian and Chinese) propaganda and disinformation. It will
encourage more government counter-propaganda efforts, and provide funding to non-government entities to help in this enterprise.
It is clearly a follow-on to the claims of Russian hacking and propaganda, and shares the spirit of the listing of two hundred
tools of Moscow featured in the Washington Post. (Perhaps PropOrNot will qualify for a subsidy and be able to enlarge its list.)
Liberals have been quiet on this new threat to freedom of speech, undoubtedly influenced by their fears of Russian-based fake
news and propaganda. But they may yet take notice, even if belatedly, when Trump or one of his successors puts it to work on their
own notions of fake news and propaganda.
"The success of the war party's campaign to contain or reverse any tendency to ease tensions with Russia was made dramatically
clear in the Trump administration's speedy bombing response to the April 4, 2017, Syrian chemical weapons deaths. The Times and
other mainstream media editors and journalists greeted this aggressive move with almost uniform enthusiasm, and once again did
not require evidence of Assad's guilt beyond their government's claims. The action was damaging to Assad and Russia, but served
the rebels well.
"But the mainstream media never ask cui bono? in cases like this. In 2013, a similar charge against Assad, which brought the
United States to the brink of a full-scale bombing war in Syria, turned out to be a false flag operation, and some authorities
believe the current case is equally problematic. Nevertheless, Trump moved quickly (and illegally), dealing a blow to any further
rapprochement between the United States and Russia. The CIA, the Pentagon, leading Democrats, and the rest of the war party had
won an important skirmish in the struggle over permanent war."
Fake News on Russia and Other Official Enemies: The New York Times, 1917–2017
You can adopt a lot of things about society as given; people will always defend those they
know against those they don't. They will always defend their own even when they suspect or
even know they are in the wrong. People will mostly help those who are in trouble if it costs
them little or nothing to lend their support. And so on – people are mostly predictable
as examples of collective will.
And people will often champion the elevation to positions of power of radicals, so long as
that person's radical beliefs and policies further their own aims. Going beyond requires that
we examine that society for cynicism and naivete. A naive society assumes that once the
radical's aims have been achieved – in this case, the joining of the European Union and
NATO by Ukraine – the radical will be satisfied, and will become a peaceful and
productive servant of freedom and democracy rather than a fierce adherent to his or her own
radical policies, but now within European society, where they might not be so welcome. The
cynic assumes the radical will be used as long as he or she is useful to reaching the goals
the cynics have set for the country, and then shunted aside or otherwise marginalized if he
or she is no longer useful.
Which is it, do you think? I vote for cynicism, and I base that judgment on how smoothly
the west transitioned from Nadya Savchenko the heroic martyr to Nadya Savchenko the radical
anarchist who wanted to blow up the Rada.
Wonder if Yasha Levine has ever thought of discussing the points he raises in his above
linked article with his erstwhile and also present-day fellow country persons Maria Gessen
and Yulia
"I-can-pronounce-Шереметьево"
Ioffe?
[I absolutely refuse to call Gessen "Masha" (Molly)! She's not my pal!]
Yasha should not kvetch so much, the current anti-Russian witch hunt won't reach the likes of
him. I know some Jewish Russian émigré families in the U.S., they can still
skate by on their former "victimhood": They were required to whine about Soviet
anti-Semitism, now all that is needed is a supplementary "I hate Putin, Yankee Doodle Dandy",
and they're good to go.
These are the ones I actually despise the most, because they are ungrateful wretches. The
Soviet Union saved their collective asses from Hitler, and look how they repayed the debt
I don't begrudge them emigrating to the U.S. if they did so for career reasons, maybe they
could find better job opportunities, better conditions to raise their kids, etc. They could
do that, but nobody really forced them to slime their former country as viciously as they
did. And taught their kids to hate everything Russian. Ingrates!
"... "The Times has run neck-and-neck with the Washington Post in stirring up fears of the Russian information war and illicit involvement with Trump. The Times now easily conflates fake news with any criticism of established institutions, as in Mark Scott and Melissa Eddy's 'Europe Combats a New Foe of Political Stability: Fake News,' February 20, 2017. But what is more extraordinary is the uniformity with which the paper's regular columnists accept as a given the CIA's assessment of the Russian hacking and transmission to WikiLeaks, the possibility or likelihood that Trump is a Putin puppet, and the urgent need of a congressional and 'non-partisan' investigation of these claims. This swallowing of a new war-party line has extended widely in the liberal media. Both the Times and Washington Post have lent tacit support to the idea that this 'fake news' threat needs to be curbed, possibly by some form of voluntary media-organized censorship or government intervention that would at least expose the fakery. ..."
"... "The most remarkable media episode in this anti-influence-campaign was the Post's piece by Craig Timberg, 'Russian propaganda effort helped spread 'fake news' during election, experts say,' which featured a report by a group of anonymous "experts" entity called PropOrNot that claimed to have identified two hundred websites that, wittingly or not, were 'routine peddlers of Russian propaganda.' While smearing these websites, many of them independent news outlets whose only shared trait was their critical stance toward U.S. foreign policy, the 'experts' refused to identify themselves, allegedly out of fear of being 'targeted by legions of skilled hackers.' As journalist Matt Taibbi wrote, 'You want to blacklist hundreds of people, but you won't put your name to your claims? Take a hike.' ..."
"... But the Post welcomed and promoted this McCarthyite effort, which might well be a product of Pentagon or CIA information warfare. (And these entities are themselves well-funded and heavily into the propaganda business.) ..."
"... "The success of the war party's campaign to contain or reverse any tendency to ease tensions with Russia was made dramatically clear in the Trump administration's speedy bombing response to the April 4, 2017, Syrian chemical weapons deaths. The Times and other mainstream media editors and journalists greeted this aggressive move with almost uniform enthusiasm, and once again did not require evidence of Assad's guilt beyond their government's claims. The action was damaging to Assad and Russia, but served the rebels well. ..."
"It has been amusing to watch the New York Times and other mainstream media outlets express their dismay over the rise and
spread of 'fake news.' These publications take it as an obvious truth that what they provide is straightforward, unbiased, fact-based
reporting. They do offer such news, but they also provide a steady flow of their own varied forms of fake news, often by disseminating
false or misleading information supplied to them by the national security state, other branches of government, and sites of corporate
power.
"An important form of mainstream media fake news is that which is presented while suppressing information that calls the preferred
news into question. [ ]
"The Times has run neck-and-neck with the Washington Post in stirring up fears of the Russian information war and illicit involvement
with Trump. The Times now easily conflates fake news with any criticism of established institutions, as in Mark Scott and Melissa
Eddy's 'Europe Combats a New Foe of Political Stability: Fake News,' February 20, 2017. But what is more extraordinary is the
uniformity with which the paper's regular columnists accept as a given the CIA's assessment of the Russian hacking and transmission
to WikiLeaks, the possibility or likelihood that Trump is a Putin puppet, and the urgent need of a congressional and 'non-partisan'
investigation of these claims. This swallowing of a new war-party line has extended widely in the liberal media. Both the Times
and Washington Post have lent tacit support to the idea that this 'fake news' threat needs to be curbed, possibly by some form
of voluntary media-organized censorship or government intervention that would at least expose the fakery.
"The most remarkable media episode in this anti-influence-campaign was the Post's piece by Craig Timberg, 'Russian propaganda
effort helped spread 'fake news' during election, experts say,' which featured a report by a group of anonymous "experts" entity
called PropOrNot that claimed to have identified two hundred websites that, wittingly or not, were 'routine peddlers of Russian
propaganda.' While smearing these websites, many of them independent news outlets whose only shared trait was their critical stance
toward U.S. foreign policy, the 'experts' refused to identify themselves, allegedly out of fear of being 'targeted by legions
of skilled hackers.' As journalist Matt Taibbi wrote, 'You want to blacklist hundreds of people, but you won't put your name to
your claims? Take a hike.'
But the Post welcomed and promoted this McCarthyite effort, which might well be a product of Pentagon
or CIA information warfare. (And these entities are themselves well-funded and heavily into the propaganda business.)
"On December 23, 2016, President Obama signed the Portman-Murphy Countering Disinformation and Propaganda Act, which will supposedly
allow the United States to more effectively combat foreign (namely Russian and Chinese) propaganda and disinformation. It will
encourage more government counter-propaganda efforts, and provide funding to non-government entities to help in this enterprise.
It is clearly a follow-on to the claims of Russian hacking and propaganda, and shares the spirit of the listing of two hundred
tools of Moscow featured in the Washington Post. (Perhaps PropOrNot will qualify for a subsidy and be able to enlarge its list.)
Liberals have been quiet on this new threat to freedom of speech, undoubtedly influenced by their fears of Russian-based fake
news and propaganda. But they may yet take notice, even if belatedly, when Trump or one of his successors puts it to work on their
own notions of fake news and propaganda.
"The success of the war party's campaign to contain or reverse any tendency to ease tensions with Russia was made dramatically
clear in the Trump administration's speedy bombing response to the April 4, 2017, Syrian chemical weapons deaths. The Times and
other mainstream media editors and journalists greeted this aggressive move with almost uniform enthusiasm, and once again did
not require evidence of Assad's guilt beyond their government's claims. The action was damaging to Assad and Russia, but served
the rebels well.
"But the mainstream media never ask cui bono? in cases like this. In 2013, a similar charge against Assad, which brought the
United States to the brink of a full-scale bombing war in Syria, turned out to be a false flag operation, and some authorities
believe the current case is equally problematic. Nevertheless, Trump moved quickly (and illegally), dealing a blow to any further
rapprochement between the United States and Russia. The CIA, the Pentagon, leading Democrats, and the rest of the war party had
won an important skirmish in the struggle over permanent war."
Fake News on Russia and Other Official Enemies: The New York Times, 1917–2017
The Mueller Report, recently released, tried its best to imply that there was
collusion even as it stated baldly that the investigation had yielded no evidence of collusion.
But what struck me with the most force was the manner in which the Democrats – and the
entire crowd which has so much invested in having had an illegitimate president foisted upon
them by the Godless Russians – simply shook its head, took a deep breath and went right
on blathering the same lunatic narrative. The Russians interfered with our democracy. Nothing
is safe. Russia is the enemy of democracy, and will not suffer a democracy to live. Get the
kids and pack up enough food for traveling, Mabel; we're headed for the mountains – it's
"Red Dawn", babycakes.
Amazing as it will sound, America has learned nothing.
Part of it, of course, is America's belief in its own omnipotence; if something came out
differently from the way it was planned to come out, then America was tricked. Hoodwinked, by
unscrupulous actors. It cannot be that America is subject to the same vagaries and pressures
and caprices as the rest of the world; America decides, and so it shall be. Part of it is the
diligent pick-and-shovel work that America's political forces do to preserve that illusion;
that America is an unstoppable force, so much more than just a big rich country.
So, the premise endures. Russian trolls, acting on the personal orders of Vladimir Putin,
generated a storm of hateful social-media messages on race relations in America, in a
coordinated strike which included Russian release of Hillary Clinton's personal emails, and
America faltered. It scratched its head in doubt, and Donald Trump slipped past the worthy
– and oh, so wronged – Mrs. Clinton to seize the presidency with his soiled
hands.
Matt Taibbi did
some excellent work on the subject , which I admit grudgingly, as I hoped to get something
out on America's inability to learn from its mistakes before the heavyweights. Taibbi's writing
will make you wonder whether you should laugh or cry, as you wonder how an influential country
could survive the embarrassment of the past couple of years, encapsulated by a journalistic
mantra which holds that the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Russia is guilty as
sin, and you can take that to the bank, so the very fact that Mueller will not leak any proof
to us must mean that his findings are so devastating, so jaw-dropping, so "shut up !!"
that they would break the media. The one possibility which was not considered a possibility at
all was that there was nothing, and that the accusations had been fabrication and desperate
damage control from the first.
But the frustrated narrative of Russian collusion is the only component which has been
discredited to the point that Democrats and Russophobes of all political persuasions must admit
there is no happy ending to the promise that Donald Trump was going to be fired so high he
would need to go on oxygen. Mueller – probably deliberately – continued to hint
that Russia had 'meddled' in the 2016 election, and that the effect had been important enough
that democracy is under attack. No longer listening to anyone outside the party-faithful echo
chamber, the Democrats now insist that US
Attorney-General William Barr resign , for 'misleading the American people about collusion
between the Trump campaign and Russia".
"Barr's news conference ultimately did nothing to help Trump, because the public has
eyes. Americans could read the damning evidence of obstruction of justice and communications
with Russians for themselves and make their own judgements."
Democrats continue to try to make up in volume and intensity for the fact that there is no
evidence at all of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, nor of obstruction of
justice by Trump. The Republicans shout that the Democrats are on a senseless witch hunt, that
the report makes clear there was no collusion between Trump and the Russians but are perfectly
happy to agree that Russia meddled in the election. For his part, Mueller is happy to drop
hints that both obstruction and collusion probably took place – he just couldn't find any
proof.
All are loony. Russia did not interfere in the 2016 election at all, at least no further
than Europe did. A
lengthy list of European political leaders and former leaders publicly expressed their
support for Mrs. Clinton's election to the office of President of the United States. In 2008,
just one is recorded as having done so ; Mona Sahlin, leader of Sweden's Social Democrats.
Interestingly, in the same list of endorsements of Mrs. Clinton in 2008 – right after
"Adult Entertainment Artists" – is this one: under "Well-Known Individuals",
"Businessman and television personality, Future Presidential Candidate & Rival for the
United States presidential election 2016, future President of the United States Donald
Trump" .
There's gratitude for you.
The Presidents of Taiwan, Chile, France and Ukraine, the former Presidents of Mexico,
France, Kosovo and Ecuador, the Prime Ministers of the Czech Republic, France, Italy, New
Zealand and Sweden and former Prime Ministers of Sweden, the UK, Canada, Australia and France
all openly expressed their hope that Mrs. Clinton would be elected President of the United
States. None of this was considered meddling. I don't recall any official endorsement from
Russia, although the international English-speaking media helpfully informed us that Putin
hoped Trump would win, because he felt Trump would be more approachable for concessions and
because he disliked Mrs. Clinton. When Trump did win, despite wrong guesses by just
about every political analyst on the planet, it was considered 'additional evidence' that
meddling had taken place, instigated by you-know-who.
Perhaps, in highlighting just how stupid America is making itself look with this painfully
stubborn insistence that Russia rolled it in 2016, it would be useful to take another look at
what American partisans claimed to already know, and could prove as easily as
demonstrating that if you put your hand on a hot stove, you will burn it.
One of my favourite American partisans is the Duchess of Displacement, the Baroness of Bulk,
Molly McKew . We
took a look at her work a long time ago , on the old blog – just before Trump
commenced his term, in fact – or perhaps I should say his first term, since the
barking madness of the political landscape in today's America makes it entirely possible he
will serve a second, unbelievable as that may sound. In that article, we closed out like this;
"Look, we're getting close to the end of this, and it's time for plain speaking. Americans
are confused and don't know fact from fiction because their own government feeds them bullshit
with a side of spin day in, day out, and you're part of it. There was no Russian interference
in the American elections, and you know it." My take on what happened has not changed a
bit.
McKew is still regarded – highly, I should imagine, by her feeble-minded peers –
as an 'information-warfare expert'. Hardly amazing that she sees information-warfare attacks
everywhere. Here's
what she claimed to know about Russian election interference and general friggin' in the
riggin', a little over a year ago. She bases her conclusions on Mueller's Grand Jury
indictment, which was issued more than a year in advance of his report – an indictment in
which Mueller claimed the Defendants (a variety of Russian advertising and research agencies
operating both in Russia and the United States) " knowingly and intentionally conspired with
each other (and with persons known and unknown to the Grand Jury) to defraud the United States
by impairing, obstructing, and defeating the lawful functions of the government through fraud
and deceit for the purpose of interfering with the U.S. political and electoral processes,
including the presidential election of 2016."
You know the old quote about how easy it is to get a Grand Jury to indict someone or
something.
Something McKew claims is now – meaning as of early 2018 – "undeniable" is that
Russia had, and has "a broad, sophisticated system that can influence American opinion, which
cost tens of millions of dollars spent over several years to build." She must be talking about RT ,
although I suggest her cost estimate is a little low. RT, which the west considers a
'propaganda network', cost $30 million to set up, in 2005. Its operating costs now are in the
hundreds of millions annually, although 80% of the costs are incurred outside Russia, paying
for partner networks who distribute its channels.
We kind of have to give her that one, because it is true that RT's coverage is often at odds
with the bullshit du jour that CNN and NBC and FOX are spreading. Bullshit, for example,
like CNN's non-stop
yammering about the collusion that Mueller could find no evidence ever occurred, and said
so. Bullshit like NBC News anchor Brian Williams' recollections about his helicopter being shot
down in Iraq – echoes of Hillary 'sniper fire' Clinton
– ,
which never happened . Williams is not a nobody; he was the nation's longest-serving and
top-rated news anchor.
I submit, however, that the American people are not subjected to RT's 'propaganda and
disinformation' about American propaganda and disinformation against their will; there is a
button on the remote called "On/Off" that will free the American enslaved from malign Kremlin
influence. Alternatively, they can switch to another channel. I would just point out, though,
that if they switch to a popular US news channel, they are very likely to be listening to a
broadcast which has been curated by its corporate owners, and who " are unlikely to report
news that is broadly hostile to corporate capitalism and the American elite ." That's
according to a report entitled
"Corporate Control of the Media" (in the USA), printed in 2009.
Warming to her subject, McKew goes on to claim "The Russian efforts described in the
indictment focused on establishing deep, authenticated, long-term identities for individuals
and groups within specific communities. This was underlaid by the establishment of servers and
VPNs based in the US to mask the location of the individuals involved. US-based email accounts
linked to fake or stolen US identity documents (driver licenses, social security numbers, and
more) were used to back the online identities. These identities were also used to launder
payments through PayPal and cryptocurrency accounts. All of this deception was designed to make
it appear that these activities were being carried out by Americans."
This might be a good point at which to suggest there is every reason to believe 'these
activities' were carried out by Americans. Americans working for national intelligence
agencies.
In March 2017, The Washington Post's Ellen Nakashima had an article published which
was entitled "WikiLeaks' latest release of CIA cyber-tools could blow the cover on agency
hacking operations." It detailed, among other things, a cyber tool
called "Marble Framework" . This could be used, it was claimed, to re-assign attribution of
material posted on the internet so that it appeared, for forensic purposes, to have originated
from a different source. Test samples, it was reported, were included in Chinese, Russian,
Korean, Arabic and Farsi.
The report which encouraged President Trump to ask his CIA Director – Mike Pompeo, at
the time, who is currently the National Security Advisor – what he knew about this was
co-authored by Skip Folden, who for 25 years was the IT Program Manager for IBM. I think it is
safe to say he has some credibility in the field of cyber-forensics. The authors of the report
contended that the 'hack' of the DNC's server was not actually a hack at all, but the at-source
copying of data directly from the server using a storage device, probably a thumb drive. The
data transfer rate, the authors claimed, was far too rapid to have occurred over the
internet.
Since then I have seen a couple of 'rebuttals' which claimed that under certain conditions
– like if nobody else was using the internet during that time – such copying from a
remote source was possible. I never saw anything like proof. Like someone demonstrating how it
could be done. Much like the old 'clean pee swap' the completely-discredited McLaren Report
claimed the Russians performed on athletes' urine samples; he claimed to know how it was done,
but never demonstrated it, and appeared to be unable to do so, as it would have strongly
supported his allegations.
Having taken us such an eye-blurring distance on the blarney rollercoaster, Molly at last
falls apart. "So anyone trying to tell you there was little impact on political views from
the tools the Russians used doesn't know. Because none of us knows. No one has looked . Social
media companies don't want us to know, and they obfuscate and drag their feet rather than
disclosing information. The analytical tools to quantify the impact don't readily exist. But we
know what we see, and what we heard -- and the narratives pushed by the Russian information
operation made it to all of our ears and eyes" , she tells us.
So if you saw advertising by Black Lives Matter, or perhaps some other civil-rights
organization, pushing a false narrative that blacks are second-class citizens in their own
country, then you were exposed to Kremlin propaganda. And it affected how you voted, if you're
an American. How much? Nobody knows. What everybody does know, or should, is that Hillary
Clinton won the popular vote, although not the determinate vote in the electoral college
– quite a trick for the Russians to manage.
Let's summarize. Americans were supposedly pushed into voting for Donald Trump by the misuse
of stolen data which was all true. The DNC did conspire to rig the primary so that Clinton was
the Democratic candidate rather than Bernie Sanders; the Chair of the DNC
resigned in disgrace because of the revelations which came to light. Her replacement, Donna
Brazile, admitted to having
fed the primary debate questions to Clinton in advance , giving her an advantage over
Sanders, who was unaware of them as he should have been. At its very core, the Democratic party
is as corrupt as the Nigerian prince who keeps e-mailing me to help him hide his ill-gotten
fortune. American intelligence and technical professionals with no discernible benefit in
making their country look bad insist that no hacking of the DNC's server took place, and that
the stolen information which kicked the Democrats' feet out from under them on the eve of the
election was not hacked, but stolen by direct physical transfer from the server using a
portable storage device. Wikileaks insisted the information it released did not come from the
Russians. The serving American intelligence services at the time of the 2016 election had a
secret program which was capable of mimicking the origin of posted information on social media
so that forensic investigation would find traces of Russian authorship, or other non-American
authorship. The CIA has vigorously denied any involvement whatsoever in various international
events at the time they occurred, only to admit much later – when it would be pointless
to punish it – that they did in fact play an influential role. Data from 2014 established
that at that time, 27% of black Americans lived below the poverty line , compared
with 11% of all Americans; 38% of black children lived in poverty compared with 22% of all
American children. I have seen no compelling evidence that this situation has improved.
According to the perfidious Kremlin mouthpiece RT, citing American sources, American blacks are
incarcerated at a rate six times as high as the
national average .
Molly McKew, the information-warfare goddess, tells us that it is 'undeniable' that Russia
interfered in the 2016 election, by making Americans doubt the integrity of their political
candidates. In the case of the Democrats – which is by no means intended to spare the
Republicans – they were demonstrated by their own repeatedly-verified and admitted
shenanigans to understand 'integrity' about as well as the average crab fisherman understands
how to calculate the mass of the sun. Everything they were accused of doing, they did.
Candidate Hillary Clinton unambiguously lied – as she has done on other occasions –
about the security classification of her 'private' emails and completely fabricated consent of
the State Department for her to maintain a private email server for the sending and receiving
of official message traffic. America does have an uneven scale of justice, law enforcement and
standard of living based on race. There is no proof at all which has so far been made public
that any of those situations were reported, compelled, exacerbated or invented by Russia, or by
anyone from Russia. According to persistent revelations from Kiev, the American Democratic
party energetically sought dirt on candidate Trump from
Ukrainian sources , not Russian. McKew closes her soliloquy on election interference by
maintaining that while it is undeniable that Russian interference occurred, nobody knows the
extent to which it influenced the vote, which resulted in a popular win for the candidate who
lost the election.
Let me posit another reality. Russia played no part at all in the outcome of the 2016
election, although it certainly was a surprise to most. There is no proof even offered that
there was any collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian officials of any description,
and no proof which could not have been fabricated that any coherent social-media campaign
originating with Russian operatives took place, or that any such imaginary social-media
campaign had anything to do with Trump's victory. The Democrats, by sticking to their
ridiculous and incredible narrative of Russian masterminds warping American democracy, are
setting themselves up for having their headlights sucked out again by the passing Trump
juggernaut in the next election, when they will be totally out of excuses if they do not wake
up and do some serious retrenching.
But we are probably going to have to wait for history to teach that lesson to Americans.
"MSNBC and New York Times at odds over reporter appearances on Maddow" [
CNN
]. "New York Times executive editor Dean Baquet and MSNBC president Phil Griffin met last week
amid tensions between their two news organizations. But the lengthy lunch did not resolve the
issues at hand, according to four sources with knowledge of the sit-down. The executives remain
at an impasse. The specific issue is about television appearances by Times reporters on Rachel
Maddow's MSNBC show .
The dust-up dates back to May 30, when Vanity Fair caused a ruckus by
reporting that Times management wants reporters to 'steer clear of any cable-news shows that
the masthead perceives as too partisan.' 'The Rachel Maddow Show' is evidently one of those
shows [ incroyable! ] -- and Maddow is not happy about it.
The prime time host prides
herself on her support for newspaper journalists Complicating matters further: Numerous Times
reporters are also paid contributors to MSNBC and CNN. For example, Matthew Rosenberg and Mark Mazzetti of The Times, who are also paid by CNN, have both appeared on 'CNN Tonight' in recent
days. CNN declined to comment on the booking relationship with The Times."
• It's
impossible for me to understand how the beacons of integrity at the Times could appear in a
cesspit like The Rachel Maddow Show. T
"... Never mind that to this day the DNC servers have not been examined by the FBI, nor indeed were they examined by the Special Counsel of Robert " Iraq has WMD " Mueller, preferring instead to go with the analyses of this extremely shady outfit with extensive and well-documented ties with the oligarchic leaders of the US-centralized empire. ..."
"... When the Romanian REAL Guccifer got Podesta password (password) by phishing, exposing his pizza and walnut sauce perversions, the US had him jailed. When WikiLeaks made a DNC dump, CrowdStrike concocted Guccifer 2.0, then more leaks Fancy Bear, and more leaks Cozy Bear. All these CrowdStrike fabrications used CIA Vault 7 fingerprints to frame Russia. It is time to execute our ruling demonic warlords. ..."
A
new article by Forbes reports that the CEO of Crowdstrike, the extremely shady
cybersecurity corporation which was foundational in the construction of the official CIA/CNN
Russian hacking narrative, is now a billionaire. George Kurtz ascended to the billionaire
rankings on the back of
soaring stocks immediately after the company went public, carried no doubt on the winds of
the international fame it gained from its central protagonistic role in the most well-known
hacking news story of all time.
Never mind that to this day the DNC servers have not been examined
by the FBI,
nor indeed were they examined by the Special Counsel of Robert "
Iraq has WMD " Mueller, preferring instead to
go with the analyses of this extremely shady outfit with extensive and well-documented ties with
the oligarchic leaders of the US-centralized empire.
The CEO of the Atlantic Council-tied Crowdstrike, which formed the foundation of the official
CIA/CNN Russian hacking narrative, is now a billionaire. I'm telling you, the real underlying
currency of this world is narrative and the ability to control it. https://t.co/XsBCvkIDzJ -- Caitlin Johnstone ⏳ (@caitoz)
June 12, 2019
As I never tire of saying, the real underlying currency in our world is not gold,
nor bureaucratic fiat, nor even raw military might.
The real underlying currency of our world is
narrative, and the ability to control it.
As soon as you really grok this dynamic, you start
noticing it everywhere.
George Kurtz is one clear example today of narrative control's central role in the maintenance and expansion of existing
power structures, as well as an illustration of how the empire is wired to reward those who advance pro-empire narratives and
punish those who damage them...
When the Romanian REAL Guccifer got Podesta password (password) by phishing, exposing his
pizza and walnut sauce perversions, the US had him jailed. When WikiLeaks made a DNC dump,
CrowdStrike concocted Guccifer 2.0, then more leaks Fancy Bear, and more leaks Cozy Bear. All
these CrowdStrike fabrications used CIA Vault 7 fingerprints to frame Russia. It is time to
execute our ruling demonic warlords.
"MSNBC and New York Times at odds over reporter appearances on Maddow" [
CNN
]. "New York Times executive editor Dean Baquet and MSNBC president Phil Griffin met last week
amid tensions between their two news organizations. But the lengthy lunch did not resolve the
issues at hand, according to four sources with knowledge of the sit-down. The executives remain
at an impasse. The specific issue is about television appearances by Times reporters on Rachel
Maddow's MSNBC show .
The dust-up dates back to May 30, when Vanity Fair caused a ruckus by
reporting that Times management wants reporters to 'steer clear of any cable-news shows that
the masthead perceives as too partisan.' 'The Rachel Maddow Show' is evidently one of those
shows [ incroyable! ] -- and Maddow is not happy about it.
The prime time host prides
herself on her support for newspaper journalists Complicating matters further: Numerous Times
reporters are also paid contributors to MSNBC and CNN. For example, Matthew Rosenberg and Mark Mazzetti of The Times, who are also paid by CNN, have both appeared on 'CNN Tonight' in recent
days. CNN declined to comment on the booking relationship with The Times."
• It's
impossible for me to understand how the beacons of integrity at the Times could appear in a
cesspit like The Rachel Maddow Show. T
that's a real insult. Madcow is probably the worst person to sk any question you can imagine... she is kind of female McCarthy
re-incarnation -- crazy Russiagater...
Why have any moderators? They should have an auctioneer instead. He'll
quickly determine who is willing to offer us the biggest bribes with our own money, in exchange
for a vote.
And we'll learn how many different ways can one say "FREE! FREE! FREE!" 5 hours ago
XXX:
"The questions will be available for a small fee?" DJT
So Russiagater was not fired. Madcow was promoted to more freely spead her "Madcow desease"
(Neo-McCarthysim actually) into unsuspecting public ...
Notable quotes:
"... Almost none of the "celebrity" tv journalists have earned one sniff of their regard by having a sufficient amount of smarts, insight, and humility it requires to deliver the news. Especially in trying times like these. ..."
"... She's a borderline conspiracy theorist and more of a star than a newswoman. ..."
"... In what alternate universe does Maddow even have a hint of non-bias? She is not a journalist. ..."
"... maddow is all about opinion, hers, and the one given out to msm by the dem party everyday. aka : the meme of the day. maddow is an partisan idiot. always was, always will be ..."
On Tuesday, NBC announced that its lineup of moderators will include Rachel Maddow of
MSNBC's The Rachel Maddow Show , Lester Holt of NBC Nightly News and Dateline
NBC, José Diaz-Balart of Noticias Telemundo and NBC Nightly News
Saturday , Savannah Guthrie of Today , and Chuck Todd of Meet the Press .
... ... ...
UltraViolet Action co-founder and executive director Shaunna Thomas praised the moderator
decision to the Cut. "NBC's decision to ensure that four out of the five moderators for the
first Democratic presidential primary debate are women or people of color is a huge win for
representation at the debates and a welcome change from the status quo," Thomas said in a
statement. She also stated that she hopes other networks follow suit.
Cags
Almost none of the "celebrity" tv journalists have earned one sniff of their regard by having
a sufficient amount of smarts, insight, and humility it requires to deliver the news.
Especially in trying times like these.
joaniesausquoi, 3 hours ago
Whattya got against Rachel, Cags?
Cags, 2 hours ago
She's a borderline conspiracy theorist and more of a star than a newswoman.
Daxter , 6 hours ago (Edited)
In what alternate universe does Maddow even have a hint of non-bias? She is not a
journalist.
Having Rachel Maddow moderate is like having Sean Hannity moderate.
indigo710, 5 hours ago
maddow is all about opinion, hers, and the one given out to msm by the dem party
everyday. aka : the meme of the day. maddow is an partisan idiot. always was, always will
be . "lawer" is spelled "lawyer".
that's a real insult. Madcow is probably the worst person to sk any question you can imagine... she is kind of female McCarthy
re-incarnation -- crazy Russiagater...
Why have any moderators? They should have an auctioneer instead. He'll
quickly determine who is willing to offer us the biggest bribes with our own money, in exchange
for a vote.
And we'll learn how many different ways can one say "FREE! FREE! FREE!" 5 hours ago
XXX:
"The questions will be available for a small fee?" DJT
Trump was eager to boast about Moscow's withdrawal of its troops from Venezuela, but it
turned out that he or someone else in the administration just made it up:
The Kremlin said on Tuesday it didn't know where U.S. President Donald Trump had got the
idea Moscow had removed most of its military specialists from Venezuela, who it said
continued to work there.
Trump tweeted on Monday that Russia had told the United States it had removed "most of
their people" from Venezuela, where Moscow has maintained close military and economic ties
with socialist President Nicolas Maduro.
Trump's Venezuela policy is a shambles, and Russia previously brushed off his ultimatum to
remove their forces from the country. It isn't surprising that he would try to spin any
development in his favor, but in this case it seems that he just invented something out of thin
air so that his Venezuela policy wouldn't look quite so feckless. He has no genuine successes
that he can talk about, so he has to have pretend victories instead. The original tweet is
still up:
Claiming that "Russia informed" him of this thing that didn't happen makes it even sillier,
because it immediately prompted the Russian government to announce that they couldn't have
informed Trump about something that hadn't occurred. Now that Russia has corrected the record,
the president looks even more ridiculous than usual.
This episode isn't that important by itself, but it shows how easily Trump can be convinced
of the reality of things that haven't happened and how readily he will accept any story, no
matter how unfounded it may be, if it flatters him and bolsters his agenda. That makes him
unusually easy to manipulate and provoke, and it makes him an exceptionally easy mark for
misinformation. That puts the president's decision-making completely at the mercy of the
advisers that control what he sees and hears.
that his Venezuela policy wouldn't look quite so feckless.
Not a Trump fan, but is Trump's Venezuela policy feckless? Or just Trump somehow
understands that it is not our problem and/or military intervention is just a bad investment.
For the life of me, I don't understand why Russia desires to part of the Venezuelan mess, but
most of their interference is minimal in nature and really has little impact on the
situation. I get the Bay Of Bolton was half assed coup that probably did more damage to
Guaido chances for new elections. (Guaido is being painted as the Trump Imperialism candidate
which is not popular.)
The big question is why this is not China's problem? At this point, Venezuela is
completely with them.
Re: "Trump's Venezuela policy is a shambles, and Russia previously brushed off his
ultimatum to remove their forces from the country."
Agree. But the larger subtext is that the U.S. now has zero credibility with
anything . The assumption by every country on the planet has to be that the U.S. word
is not worth squat.
Fat Pompeo with his big mouth, "We lie, cheat and steal" mind-dump says it all. The
Russians are anything but saints, but they knew that the U.S. planned on having Russia
ejected from its Crimean Naval Base in Sevastopol after the coup that Nitwit Nuland and her
barrel of CIA monkeys engineered.
Similarly, the Russians know that if/when the U.S. puts sock puppet Guaido in power, they
will ensure he stiffs the Russians out of all of their claims and assets in Venezuela.
The Russians don't want to wrestle with the Gorilla, but they have no other choice.
Given the way the dealings with North Korea have gone, I expect that Trump will soon be
announcing that Kim Jong-Un has destroyed all his nuclear weapons and pledged not to build
any more. Needless to say, it will not have happened.
But, as they say, fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice shame on me. The question
really becomes why so many of Trump's followers continue to believe everything he says when
he lies so blatantly so often.
"The question really becomes why so many of Trump's followers continue to believe
everything he says when he lies so blatantly so often."
I don't know that they do. I tend to think that they just hate what has happened to the
country since Reagan and Clinton so much that they just want Trump to keep bashing Congress
over the head, even with stupidity.
Not to mention that humans have an innate exploitable weakness: the desire to transfer
someone else's perceived greatness on to themselves. Hence the inclination of sports fans and
adoration of the military.
So "Team America" is great, therefore I am great, and Trump represents us, therefore Trump
is great.
One should not wish ill on any other human being, even though i have contemplated several
slapstick scenarios involving certain politicians, however
Donald Trump is in the process of discovering that one cannot ignore Reality, since it
Bites, that live is not a reality TV show (the most unreal thing on television), and that
chickens do indeed come home to roost.
Unfortunately, it's been a difficult learning curve, and pathetic boasts to the contrary,
he has managed to turn both the Conservative Movement and the Republican Party into a pile of
smoking rubble.
It conservatism can be rebuilt in a score of years, it would be a miracle. More like, a
generation.
Trump's Venezuelan policy is a series of hallucination's. This article just describes the
most recent. It begins with the hallucination that Maduro is a dictator, when in reality he
won an election in May 2018 with 67% of the vote in an election that more than 150
international election observers unanimously agreed met all international standards for
democratic elections. It follows with the hallucination that the Venezuelan military would
join the US in rising up against their elected president rather than support the
constitutional government. It continues with the hallucination that the people of Venezuela
would join a US-inspired coup against the president they had just re-elected rather than join
a 2 million person plus civilian militia to defend against a US attack. And, it continues
with the hallucination that Juan Guaido is the interim president when his self-appointment
violated the Venezuelan Constitution and the United Nations and Venezuelan law recognize
Nicolas Maduro as the legitimate president of Venezuela.
The antidote of these ongoing hallucinatory experiences is for Trump to no longer trust
his advisors and end the US coup attempt, which has already failed multiple times in
Venezuela. John Bolton, Mike Pompeo, and Elliot Abrams have made Trump see hallucinations
that are complete falsehoods. They have led the president into an embarrassing trap that he
now needs to get out of. They have made Trump look like a fool.
It is time for Trump to take steps to normalize relations with Venezuela. That begins with
a mutual Protecting Power Agreement between the US and Venezuela for Switzerland to be a
Protecting Power of the US Embassy in Caracas and Turkey to be a Protecting of the Venezuelan
Embassy in Washington, DC. Following from that the US and Venezuela should negotiate the sale
of Venezuelan resources, primarily oil, in return for the end of the illegal unilateral
coercive measures (inaccurately called sanctions) against Venezuela. Negotiating with
Venezuela will be less expensive than a war that will become a quagmire that will end in
failure after costing more than $1 trillion and causing chaos in the region. Then, Trump and
Maduro should meet to chart a course that begins with mutual respect for the independence and
sovereignty of each nation and then determines where the two nations interests are consistent
with each other. It is time to leave the hallucinations behind and come back to reality.
The ease with which Trump is manipulated and provoked can be added to the explanation of why
Bibi is now in possession of Jerusalem and war against Iran is a high probability. That
should terrify Americans.
Capitalists, with media in tow, demonized communists and anarchists. The Alien Registration
Act of 1940 aimed to preserve the status quo. Japanese-Americans were interred. Communists were
targeted.
The FBI was involved. Edgar Hoover had leftists monitored and surveilled by tactics
including wiretaps and break-ins. The anti-leftism was so extreme that a section of corporate
America supported fascism. The fascists supported Nazi Germany in WWII. 1
Post-WWII the top income tax rate was 91% until 1964. One-third of workers belonged to a
union. From 1940 to 1967 real wages doubled. Living standards doubled.
However, the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947 would attack workers, banning many types of
strikes, closed union shops, union political contributions, communists and radicals in union
leadership, and the compelled payment of union dues. The Supreme Court upheld Taft-Hartley, and
it remains in force today.
The film also examines McCarthyism, a witch hunt against communists or communist-leaning
types, as a psychological attack against Americans. No one was safe. Blacklisting was in vogue
and among the first blacklisted were the so-called Hollywood 10 for either communist
sympathies or refusal to aid Congress' House Un-American Activities Committee investigations
into the Communist party or having fought for the rights of Blacks and workers. The list
expanded much past 10. One celebrity given in-depth prominence in Subterranean Fire was
singer Paul Robeson who refused to back down before Congress, stated he was for Negro and
worker rights, and accused Congress of neo-fascism.
McCarthyism hit hysterical heights as exemplified by Texas proposing the death penalty for
communist membership and Indiana calling for the banning of Robin Hood.
McCarthyism was foiled when it bit off more than it could chew. When McCarthyism took on
the establishment, in particular the military, its impetus ground to an inglorious halt. The
Alien Registration Act was ruled unconstitutional, and the First Amendment right to political
beliefs was upheld.
Subterranean Fire notes that the damage to the labor movement was already done. A
permanent war economy was established: overtly through the military and covertly through the
CIA. Come 2001, union membership had dropped to 13.5%. Radicals were disconnected from their
communities; union democracy was subverted by a top-down leadership which avoided the tactic of
striking for collective bargaining; the court system was heavily backlogged with
labor-management issues, which usually were ruled in favor of management.
Some outcomes noted in the film,
In the early 21st century, Americans took on the dubious distinction of working more hours
than any other country .
There is no single county in America where a minimum wage earner can support a family.
The Rise
Grotesque income and wealth disparity signifies the current state of neoliberalism. Yet
Subterranean Fire finds glimmers of change for working men and women.
Despite relating the historical trampling of the working class, the film concludes on a
sanguine note. Union strength appears to be on the rebound with solidarity being a linchpin.
Labor strikes were on the upswing in the US, with teachers leading the way. Fast-food workers
are fighting for a decent wage. Labor, which has seen real wages stagnate in the age of
neoliberalism, is fighting back worldwide. Autoworkers in Matamoros, Mexico are striking and
colleagues in Detroit, Michigan have expressed support for their sisters and brothers. The
Gilet Jaunes in France have been joined by labor. A huge general strike took place in
India. The uptick of resistance was not just pro-labor but anti-global warming in Manchester,
UK; Tokyo, Japan; Cape Town, South Africa; Helsinki, Finland; Genoa, Italy; and, Nelson,
Aotearoa (New Zealand).
All this, however, must be considered through the lens of the current political context. A
virulent anti-socialist president and his hawkish administration occupy the White House in
Washington. Despite the nationwide strike actions, the right-wing BJP and prime minister
Narendra Modi won a recent huge re-election in India. The purportedly centrist Liberal Party in
Canada, rhetoric aside, has been, in large part, in virtual lockstep with the US
administration. 2
The Importance of Metanoia Films
Today, people with access to the internet have little excuse for continuing to depend on
state-corporate media sources. Why would anyone willingly subject himself to disinformation and
propaganda? Not too mention paying for access to such unreliable information and the
soul-sapping advertisements that accompany it.
It is important that we be cognizant of the search engine manipulations of Google, the
biased opinions parlayed by moneyed corporate media, and the censorship of social media
data-mining sites. The corporate-state media nexus wants to limit and shape what we know. The
current war on WikiLeaks and Julian Assange is proof
positive of this. Assange and WikiLeaks exposed horrific war crimes. It is a no-brainer that a
person should be congratulated for bringing such evil perpetrated by the state to the public
awareness. Instead the establishment seeks to destroy WikiLeaks, the publisher Assange, and
Chelsea Manning who is accused of providing the information to WikiLeaks.
Given the corporate-state power structure's ideological opposition to WikiLeaks and freedom
on information as well as the preponderance of disinformation that emanates from monopoly
media, it seems eminently responsible that people seek out credible independent sources of
information. Metanoia Films stands out as a credible source.
There are plenty of independent news and information sites that provide analysis that treat
the reader/viewer with respect by substantiating information provided in reports and articles
with evidence, logic, and even morality. The reader/viewer who seeks veracity has an obligation
to consider the facts, sources, and reasoning offered and arrive at her own conclusions.
Metanoia documentaries lay out a historical context that helps us understand how we arrived
at the state of affairs we find ourselves in today. It is an understanding that is crucial to
come up with solutions for a world in which far too many languish in poverty, suffer in war
zones, and are degraded by the cruelties of inequality. It is an understanding that is crucial
for communicating, planning, and organizing the establishment of new societies in which all may
flourish and of which all may be proud.
Independent media is meant for independent thinkers and those who aspire to a better world.
Watch Plutocracy V: Subterranean Fire and the first four parts in the Plutocracy series
and become informed. Kim Petersen is a former co-editor of theDissident Voicenewsletter. He can be reached at: [email protected] .
Twitter: @kimpetersen .
Read other articles by
Kim .
"... Julian E. Barnes is obviously a long-term intelligence asset and his stories are not based on independent research but are just a repetition of the yarn that the CIA want to spin. Julian E. Barnes and the CIA obviously think Americans and other westerners are DAF. ..."
"... And should we be surprised that such false information about Gina Haspel and Donald Trump puts Trump in a bad light and somehow humanises a CIA director with a reputation for torturing prisoners? ..."
"... A week or 3 ago, a Barnes co-reported "article" flat out stated that Iran has a nuclear weapons program. This was done by pretending to quote someone in the the US Defense establishment as saying "we believe Iran will redouble its work on nuclear weapons". ..."
"... Julian Barnes is a well established liar. Sort of akin to Judith Miller and Michael Gordon. ..."
"... Now the Washington post's narrative is quite colorful too. So Trump really was concerned how many Russians Germany or France expelled? Why was he angry? The vassals did not follow his example as they should have? ..."
"... The CIA and MI6 boys must have blanked out to let this one slip through the cracks. We pay them billions to run false flag and cover-up operations. This makes those of us that believe their lying narratives look stupid. I guess we need to add more billions to their annual budgets. ..."
"... More believable that Julian Barnes performs no cross-referencing and zero research. Investigative reporting (or asking questions) is not the job of the modern MSM stenographer. His job - pushing the war machine agenda. He simply writes that which he is instructed to write. Probably emails all of his articles to his CIA liason for approval prior to publication. ..."
"... In the Skripnal psyop one can readily assess that the only truly "dead ducks" are the MSM journalists and the Western politicians who peddled this incredible slapstick nonsense story in order to further the "demonization of Russia" narrative of Western oligarchy. That these same media "dead ducks" appear to have not even the very slightest interest whatsoever in the current whereabouts or safety of said Skripnals speaks volumes about the true nature of this intelligence operation. ..."
"... both versions of the story expose Gina as a untrustworthy ratfucker ..."
"... At the moment the UK is run by MI6 which sees itself as the real political directorate of the CIA and the Deep State in the US. It seriously believes that it is on the verge of establishing global hegemony. ..."
"... Please note, everyone, that not all of these sad excuses for "journalists" are on the CIA payroll. In fact, very few of them are. Most work with the CIA out of warped senses of patriotism and duty to the empire. Most would never think of themselves as intelligence agency assets, and no small number of them probably think their relationships with the CIA are unique. They think that they are special and that their contacts on the inside at the CIA are unusual. Few would guess that they are just another propaganda mule in the CIA's stable, and that friendly guy who "leaks" to them is actually their handler; their "operator" in spook-speak. ..."
"... CIA did not control many of the Vietnam era journalists that had their pieces printed in mainstream media of the day. Not many left now and perhaps since the nineties they could no longer get their articles published. Regan brought in perception management which eventually brought all MSM 100% under US -CIA control. ..."
"... If you're a CIA guy, you get the editor and the ombudsman on the payroll and he will make certain that the desired propaganda gets published. If he's a Zionist, he's on the same page from the start, anyway. ..."
"... What a strange construction. Doesn't the CIA have PR staff? A decent PR team would review every item referencing their boss and issue clarifications and/or demand corrections immediately. There should have been no need for Julian E. Barnes to figure anything out as the CIA should have pointed out his mistake very quickly. This explanation/exculpation is utter bullshit! ..."
"... I doubt that Trump asked questions about how those ducks and kids were doing. More likely that MI5 was annoyed that they were exposed as the providers of the duck snuff pictures, and put pressure on the NY Times. ..."
"... Those who advocated the strong response to Russia are the intellectual authors of "Russia Gate" to thwart detente with Russia. ..."
A piece in the New York Times showed how in March 2018 Trump was manipulated by the
CIA and MI6 into expelling 60 Russian diplomats. Eight weeks after it was published the New
York Times 'corrects' that narrative and exculpates the CIA and MI6 of that manipulation.
Its explanation for the correction makes little sense.
On April 16 the New York Times published a report by Julian E. Barnes and Adam
Goldman about the relation between CIA Director Gina Haspal and President Donald Trump.
The piece described a scene in the White House shortly after the
contentious Skripal/Novichok incident in Britain. It originally said (emphasis added):
During the discussion, Ms. Haspel, then deputy C.I.A. director, turned toward Mr. Trump. She
outlined possible responses in a quiet but firm voice, then leaned forward and told the
president that the "strong option" was to expel 60 diplomats.
To persuade Mr. Trump, according to people briefed on the conversation, officials
including Ms. Haspel also tried to show him that Mr. Skripal and his daughter were not the
only victims of Russia's attack.
Ms. Haspel showed pictures the British government had supplied her of young children
hospitalized after being sickened by the Novichok nerve agent that poisoned the Skripals. She
then showed a photograph of ducks that British officials said were inadvertently killed by
the sloppy work of the Russian operatives.
The 60 Russian diplomats were
expelled on March 26 2018. Other countries only expelled a handful of diplomats over the
Skripal incident. On April 15 2018 the Washington Post
reported that Trump was furious about this:
The next day, when the expulsions were announced publicly, Trump erupted, officials said. To
his shock and dismay, France and Germany were each expelling only four Russian officials --
far fewer than the 60 his administration had decided on. The President, who seemed to believe
that other individual countries would largely equal the United States, was furious that his
administration was being portrayed in the media as taking by far the toughest stance on
Russia.
...
Growing angrier, Trump insisted that his aides had misled him about the magnitude of the
expulsions. 'There were curse words,' the official said, 'a lot of curse words.
In that context the 2019 NYT report about Haspel showing Trump dead duck pictures
provided by the Brits made sense. Trump was, as he himself claimed, manipulated into the large
expulsion.
The NYT report created some waves. On April 18 2019 the Guardian
headlined:
The report of the dead duck pictures in the New York Times was a problem for the CIA
and the British government. Not only did it say that they manipulated Trump by providing him
with false pictures, but the non-dead ducks also demonstrated that the official narrative of
the allegedly poisoning of the Skripals has some huge holes. As Rob Slane of the
BlogMirenoted
:
In addition to the extraordinary nature of this revelation, there is also a huge irony
here. Along with many others, I have long felt that the duck feed is one of the many achilles
heels of the whole story we've been presented with about what happened in Salisbury on 4th
March 2018. And the reason for this is precisely because if it were true, there would
indeed have been dead ducks and sick children .
According to the official story, Mr Skripal and his daughter became contaminated with
"Novichok" by touching the handle of his front door at some point between 13:00 and 13:30
that afternoon. A few minutes later (13:45), they were filmed on CCTV camera feeding
ducks, and handing bread to three local boys, one of whom ate a piece . After this they
went to Zizzis, where they apparently so contaminated the table they sat at, that it had to
be incinerated.
You see the problem? According to the official story, ducks should have died. According to
the official story children should have become contaminated and ended up in hospital. Yet as
it happens, no ducks died, and no boys got sick (all that happened was that the boys' parents
were contacted two weeks later by police, the boys were sent for tests, and they were given
the all clear).
After the NYT story was published the CIA and the British government had to remove
the problematic narrative from the record. Yesterday they finally succeeded. Nearly eight weeks
after the original publishing of the White House scene the NYT recanted and issued
a correction
(emphasis. added):
Correction: June 5, 2019
An earlier version of this article incorrectly described the photos that Gina Haspel
showed to President Trump during a discussion about responding to the nerve agent attack in
Britain on a former Russian intelligence officer. Ms. Haspel displayed pictures illustrating
the consequences of nerve agent attacks, not images specific to the chemical attack in
Britain. This correction was delayed because of the time needed for research.
The original paragraphs quoted above were changed into this:
During the discussion, Ms. Haspel, then deputy C.I.A. director, turned toward Mr. Trump. She
outlined possible responses in a quiet but firm voice, then leaned forward and told the
president that the "strong option" was to expel 60 diplomats.
To persuade Mr. Trump, according to people briefed on the conversation, officials
including Ms. Haspel tried to demonstrate the dangers of using a nerve agent like Novichok in
a populated area. Ms. Haspel showed pictures from other nerve agent attacks that showed their
effects on people.
The British government had told Trump administration officials about early intelligence
reports that said children were sickened and ducks were inadvertently killed by the sloppy
work of the Russian operatives.
The information was based on early reporting, and Trump administration officials had
requested more details about the children and ducks, a person familiar with the intelligence
said, though Ms. Haspel did not present that information to the president. After this article
was published, local health officials in Britain said that no children were harmed.
So instead of pictures of dead ducks in Salisbury the CIA director showed pictures of some
random dead ducks or hospitalized children or whatever to illustrate the effects consequences
of nerve agent incidents?
That the children were taken to hospital but unharmed was already reported in Britishmedia on
March 24 2018, before the Russian diplomats were expelled, not only after the NYT piece
was published in April 2019.
Yesterday the author of the NYT piece, Julian E. Barnes, turned to Twitter to
issue a lengthy 'apology':
I made a significant error in my April 16 profile of Gina Haspel. It took a while to
figure out where I went wrong. Here is the correction: 1/9
[...]
The intelligence about the ducks and children were based on an early intelligence report,
according to people familiar with the matter. The intelligence was presented to the US in an
effort to share all that was known, not to deceive the Trump administration. 7/9
This correction was delayed because conducting the research to figure out what I got
wrong, how I got it wrong and what was the correct information took time. 8/9
I regret the error and offer my apology. I strive to get information right the first time.
That is what subscribers pay for. But when I get something wrong, I fix it. 9/9
Barnes covers national security and intelligence issues for the Times Washington
bureau. His job depends on good access to 'sources' in those circles.
It is remarkable that the CIA spokesperson never came out to deny the original NYT
report. There was zero visible push back against its narrative. It is also remarkable that the
correction comes just as Trump is on a state visit in Britain.
The original report was sourced on 'people briefed on the conversation'. The
corrected version is also based on 'people briefed on the conversation' but adds 'a
person familiar with the intelligence'. Do the originally cited 'people' now tell a different
story? Are we to trust a single 'person familiar with the intelligence' more than those
multiple 'people'? What kind of 'research' did the reporter do to correct what he then and now
claims was told to him by 'people'? Why did this 'research' take eight weeks?
That the 'paper of the record' now corrects said 'record' solves a big problem for Gina
Haspel, the CIA/MI6 and the British government. They can no longer be accused of manipulating
Trump (even as we can be quite sure that such manipulations happen all the time).
In the end it is for the reader to decide if the original report makes more sense than the
corrected one.
---
This is a Moon of Alabama fundraising week. Please consider to support
our work .
Posted by b on June 6, 2019 at 06:12 AM |
Permalink
Julian E. Barnes is obviously a long-term intelligence asset and his stories are not based on
independent research but are just a repetition of the yarn that the CIA want to spin. Julian
E. Barnes and the CIA obviously think Americans and other westerners are DAF.
Surely the time and effort Julian Barnes needed to check what information he had got wrong
and how he got it wrong should not have been as major as he makes out. Animals dying and
children falling sick to a toxin that could have killed them are incidents that should have
stuck out like sore thumbs and warranted careful checks with different and independent
sources before reporting that Gina Haspel apparently showed the US President pictures of dead
ducks and sick boys in Salisbury.
No wonder Barnes got such a roasting on Twitter after making his abject apology.
And should we be surprised that such false information about Gina Haspel and Donald Trump
puts Trump in a bad light and somehow humanises a CIA director with a reputation for
torturing prisoners?
During years I researched articles published in @nytimes we fact-checked BEFORE publication. Here it comes
AFTER bloggers, officials et al point out fatal flaws. That no children were poisoned, and no
ducks killed, by #novichok
in #Salisbury + was known
in Spring 2018. #propaganda
A week or 3 ago, a Barnes co-reported "article" flat out stated that Iran has a nuclear
weapons program. This was done by pretending to quote someone in the the US Defense
establishment as saying "we believe Iran will redouble its work on nuclear weapons".
Except in the Barnes construction it wasn't a quotation, or anything like a phrasing that
made clear that the Pentagon source was guessing, not stating, that Iran has a nuclear
weapons program.
This was NOT corrected.
Eric Schmitt was the other NY Times "reporter" who signed the article.
And here's what the two liars reported, pretending that an Iranian nuclear weapons program is
a real thing, first paragraph:
"Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan presented an updated military plan that envisions sending as many as 120,000 troops to the Middle East should Iran attack American forces or accelerate work on nuclear weapons, administration officials said."
So Julian Barnes is a well established liar. Sort of akin to Judith Miller and Michael
Gordon.
Barnes provides the truth then provides a lie about the truth....par for the course at
NYT.
(Remember Judith Miller?) A fake news organization spreading fake news with revised fake
news.
can't really get excited by the fact that not everything in this type of creative writing is
taken serious. Did anyone expect otherwise?
During the discussion, Ms. Haspel, then deputy C.I.A. director, turned toward Mr.
Trump. She outlined possible responses in a quiet but firm voice, then leaned forward and
told the president that the "strong option" was to expel 60 diplomats.
To persuade Mr. Trump, according to people briefed on the conversation, officials
including Ms. Haspel also tried to show him that Mr. Skripal and his daughter were not the
only victims of Russia's attack.
It's pretty obvious that his/their narrative necessarily must be cobbled together by a lot
of sources. Some by phone. Those may not even share the same idea what image of the president
or Haspel they should convey. I always wonder with this type of newspaper reporting. Maybe
both writers should write novels.
Now the Washington post's narrative is quite colorful too. So Trump really was concerned
how many Russians Germany or France expelled? Why was he angry? The vassals did not follow
his example as they should have?
Superb analysis! Been coming here for 11 years now, and I just have to say that "b" is the
best propaganda analyst in the English language. He is the sturdiest anchor in these stormy
seas:)
The CIA and MI6 boys must have blanked out to let this one slip through the cracks. We pay
them billions to run false flag and cover-up operations. This makes those of us that believe
their lying narratives look stupid. I guess we need to add more billions to their annual
budgets.
Sarcasm is just about the last pleasure one can get from watching the horrific antics of
these morons.
More believable that Julian Barnes performs no cross-referencing and zero research.
Investigative reporting (or asking questions) is not the job of the modern MSM stenographer.
His job - pushing the war machine agenda.
He simply writes that which he is instructed to write. Probably emails all of his articles
to his CIA liason for approval prior to publication.
Perhaps, the liason can see what this fool types in real time. Who knows?
As the story of the dead ducks and sick children unraveled and fell apart, a sloppy patch
up had to be made. Now its fixed. Like a Boeing 737 MAX.
BoTh vErSioNs of the story (I checked with the "Wayback Machine") still include this
paragraph (6th paragraph of story):
Unusually for a president, Mr. Trump has publicly rejected not
only intelligence agencies' analysis, but also the facts they have gathered.
And that has created a perilous situation for the C.I.A.
As usual for the NYT, they did not publicly reject the intelligence agencies'
analysis,
but also the facts they had gathered.
That, of course, would have created a perilous situation for the NYT.
As the saying goes: "if it looks like a false-flag, walks like a false-flag, and talks like a
false-flag, it just might be a "duck."
In the Skripnal psyop one can readily assess that the only truly "dead ducks" are the MSM
journalists and the Western politicians who peddled this incredible slapstick nonsense story
in order to further the "demonization of Russia" narrative of Western oligarchy. That these
same media "dead ducks" appear to have not even the very slightest interest whatsoever in the
current whereabouts or safety of said Skripnals speaks volumes about the true nature of this
intelligence operation.
"I made a significant error in my April 16 profile of Gina Haspel. It took a while to figure
out where I went wrong".
It was only when I found the horses head next to me in bed when I woke up, that I realized
what a stupid mistake I had made.
Gina Haspel has to be as dumb and incompetent as I suspected: someone is paying good money to
make her look like an ordinary sociopath, not a depraved tart who sucked cock to climb to the
head of the organisation.
Slane is ++ on the Skirpals. One 'fact' that emerged early on, made public by Slane, is that
the proposed 'official' time-line ( > press, Gvmt between the lines) of the Skripal
movements - trivial as in a town, drinkies, lunch, feeding ducks, etc. -- was never reported
correctly, obfuscated.
Idk the reasons, but it is a vital point.
___________________________________
Trump, we see, is treated like the zombie public, flashed random photos, sold tearful
narratives about babies, children, recall incubator babies, horrific bio-weapons
threats...
The PTB loathes him, Pres. are supposed to be complicit like Obama - or at least keep
their resistance toned down, be ready to compromise. .. Obama objected to, and refused to act
on, at least two engineered / fake Syria chem. 'attacks.' (Just looked on Goog and can't find
links to support.)
The only EU figure who stated there is no evidence that the Russkies novichoked
Sergei and Yulia was Macron, afaik. He didn't get the memo in time (the Elysée is
inefficient, lots of screw-ups there) but soon caught up! and expelled the minimum. -- I have
heard, hush hush, one in F was a receptionist - gofer (an excellent + extremely highly paid
position) who is now at the Emb. in Washington! Most likely merely emblematic story (see
telephone game) .. but telling.
I like this story. It makes Trump look like a naif which wouldn't bother President Teflon in
the least. On the other hand, both versions of the story expose Gina as a untrustworthy ratfucker.
I'm hoping she said "cross my heart and hope to die" when he queried her advice...
I'm glad I checked to see if anyone had mentioned this hack's article about Russia
restarting nuclear testing. Using his name as one search item I tried a number of current
issues. Like the fellows at local intersections holding up signs "will work for money",
Barnes might as well have a tattoo saying "I'll write anything if the price is right.
That it took so long to come up with a half-assed "explanation" shows he's not the brightest
bulb in the lamp. I suppose people whose jobs consist of slightly re-writing Deep State
dictation don't have to be especially clever.
That "apology" by Barnes is completely nonsensical. How would you know that there was
something wrong with your story, that there was an error in it, without knowing what it was?
If the CIA, various bloggers, commenters, etc., alerted him to the errors, it's unlikely they
would say, "There's something wrong in this story but I'm not going to say what it is. You'll
have to re-research they whole thing to figure it out." I don't think that's how people
usually point out errors.
"Which narrative is unraveling and which is gathering momentum?"psychohistorian@19
One thing that seems to be unravelling is the tight political cartel that controls Foreign
Policy in the UK.
If it does unravel and Labour turns to an independent foreign policy while it reverses the
disaster of 'austerity' and neo-liberalism, cases such as that of Assange and the Skripal
affair, both products of extremists within the Establishment who regard themselves as
privileged members of the DC Beltway, are going to be re-opened.
At the moment the UK is run by MI6 which sees itself as the real political directorate of the
CIA and the Deep State in the US. It seriously believes that it is on the verge of
establishing global hegemony. And this at a time when the UK is falling apart and its
population teeters on the brink of economic disaster. It has fallen into this delusion over
the years as it has been able to offer the CIA services which it is afraid to initiate
itself. Hence, most recently, the entire Russiagate nonsense which has British fingerprints
all over it. Hence too the new aggressiveness in DC towards Assange. Hence the disappearance,
without explanation, of the Skripals.
Julian Barnes is like Winston Smith without the intellectual curiosity. He quote happily goes
about his work. lol. What is the matter with you people? You are supposed to embrace the new
narrative!
From wikidpeida... A memory hole is any mechanism for the alteration or disappearance of
inconvenient or embarrassing documents, photographs, transcripts or other records, such as
from a website or other archive, particularly as part of an attempt to give the impression
that something never happened.[1][2] The concept was first popularized by George Orwell's
dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, where the Party's Ministry of Truth systematically
re-created all potentially embarrassing historical documents, in effect, re-writing all of
history to match the often-changing state propaganda. These changes were complete and
undetectable.
@37 bevin... maybe they will do with assange what they have done with the skripals... the uk
is more then pathetic at this point in time.. craig murray had more to say on the assange
case yesterday - A
Swedish Court Injects Some Sense
Julian E. Barnes' humble confession (a self-incrimination) sounds like one made in a Gulag.
failure of imaginati , Jun 6, 2019 2:23:10 PM |
35
Further down the memory hole is the side tale of the daughter of Brutish Army Chief Nurse
helping Skirpals and getting an award without contaminating the news. Was the girl's father
Pablo Miller,(of Orbis Dossier MFG) and a pal of Skirpal? There's debunk in their poor
narrative. The public has a photogenic memory.
There are 2 Julian Barneses (at the very least!), one is an English writer, the other has
mostly been writing for the WSJ ( https://www.wsj.com/news/author/julian-e.-barnes)
but since recently again for the NYTimes .
Trump is a drug-addled, brain-damaged, hollowed-out shell of the dull con man he once
was.
But, he perceives himself to be a brilliant mastermind - a stable genius. So, he might
indeed, be prone to making inquiries (generally these would induce the toadies around him to
stifle their laughter).
It makes sense that he might ask, while in GB, about the Skirpal incident, since he pulled
60 people from their posts and he remembered the fantasy he was lead to believe about sick
children and dead ducks.
The fact that he overreacted without sufficient evidence, may have inspired a tiny amount
of self-reflection simply because it may have embarrassed him to have been caught on his back
foot. He was lead to believe that his contemporaries intended to react in equal measure. They
did not. Therefore - he was "fooled" or tricked.
This is the only way to embarrass the buffoon. That is to have someone fool him
personally. And to make him look stupid.
He doesn't mind that he is a fat oaf, a greed head and a pig, but that is the stuff of his
own doing. He is comfortable in this. Money is the end-all, etc.
He bought Mar A Lago, making it his own club, because the Palm Beach Club and its elite
snobs would not let him join.
Trump was betrayed by Gina Haskell, the CIA and the NYT.
All of Western media has been compromised by the CIA and friends since at least the 50s.
Remember what late CIA director William Casey said in 1981; "We'll know our disinformation
program is complete when everything the US public believes is false".
They 'CIA' controls every talking head you can name. Believe no one. Sad isn't it.
Please note, everyone, that not all of these sad excuses for "journalists" are on the
CIA payroll. In fact, very few of them are. Most work with the CIA out of warped senses of
patriotism and duty to the empire. Most would never think of themselves as intelligence
agency assets, and no small number of them probably think their relationships with the CIA
are unique. They think that they are special and that their contacts on the inside at
the CIA are unusual. Few would guess that they are just another propaganda mule in the CIA's
stable, and that friendly guy who "leaks" to them is actually their handler; their
"operator" in spook-speak.
Of course, there is also the incentive provided by just having to take the story their CIA
"friend" gives them, edit it a little to fit their employer's style guidelines, and
then submit it as their own. A whole day's worth of work and they can have it finished in
half an hour. What's not to like about that?
CIA did not control many of the Vietnam era journalists that had their pieces printed in
mainstream media of the day. Not many left now and perhaps since the nineties they could no
longer get their articles published. Regan brought in perception management which eventually
brought all MSM 100% under US -CIA control.
If you're a CIA guy, you get the editor and the ombudsman on the payroll and he will make
certain that the desired propaganda gets published. If he's a Zionist, he's on the same page from the start, anyway.
The self-important "journalists" are controlled and in fact, they are flattered by their
special relationships with informants and the owner/managers. After one has sucked his or her way to the upper level, kissing up and kicking down... Laziness is a bonus.
I made a significant error in my April 16 profile of Gina Haspel. It took a while to figure
out where I went wrong.
What a strange construction. Doesn't the CIA have PR staff? A decent PR team would review
every item referencing their boss and issue clarifications and/or demand corrections
immediately. There should have been no need for Julian E. Barnes to figure anything out as
the CIA should have pointed out his mistake very quickly. This explanation/exculpation is
utter bullshit!
Every day when I turn on my computer, I am enticed with offers to "see how the Brady Bunch
kids look today" or "what do the stars of the 80s look like today?".
Apparently, there is quite a demand for updates on celebrities and their current well
being.
So why would Julian Barnes do an article about the Skirpals without showing us how they look
today? And just where are they living? Enquiring minds want to know!
I doubt that Trump asked questions about how those ducks and kids were doing. More likely
that MI5 was annoyed that they were exposed as the providers of the duck snuff pictures, and
put pressure on the NY Times.
Using ducks is easier. Gina Haspel could always ask one of the bottom-feeding subordinates
to nip down the road to one of those Chinese BBQ shops and
photograph the display of roast ducks hanging in the shop window . The photos can be
uploaded and altered to remove the background of the chef and the cashier and then the actual
ducks can be altered or colored appropriately before the pictures are sent to Haspel. Anyone
looking at the altered pictures would never guess their actual provenance.
:-)
I'm not sure where Haspel can find hippos or any other large animals that might topple on
top of someone (with dire consequences) were s/he to apply a whiff of nerve agent.
Thanks b for a good laugh at Barnes and Goldman's expense. I note Goldman is silent and I
guess that is because he would likely get his apology wrong and contradict Barnes BS.
Here's my profile of Gina Haspal: war criminal
Here's my profile of Julian Barnes: Fwit and BShitter
Here's my profile of Adam Goldman: Fwit and BShitter.
CNN, Maddow Ratings In Absolute Freefall After Russia Narrative Collapses
by Tyler Durden Tue, 06/04/2019 - 18:25 0 SHARES
Twitter Facebook Reddit Email Print
Ratings for the anti-Trump media have taken an absolute nosedive ever since the Mueller report dispelled their multi-year narrative
that President Trump is a Kremlin agent.
According to
Breitbart 's John Nolte, CNN's primetime ratings suffered a 16% collapse in May -
luring just 761,000 members of the resistance and captive airport audiences alike. Overall, the network's total day viewers dropped
to just 559,000.
As Nolte points out, "Fox News earned
three times as many primetime viewers (2.34 million) and more than twice as many total day viewers (1.34 million). What's more,
when compared to this same month last year, Fox lost none of its primetime viewers and only four percent of its total day viewers."
Do you have any idea just how low 761,000 primetime viewers is ?
How does a nationally known brand like CNN, a brand that is decades old, only manage to attract 761,000 viewers throughout
a gonzo news month in a country of over 300 million?
But his is just how far over the cliff CNN has gone CNN has lost almost all of its viewers, all of its moral authority, and
every bit of trust it once had . Over the past six years, as soon as Jeff Zucker took over, CNN got every major national story
exactly wrong, including
Hispanic George Zimmerman: The White Racist Killer
Hands Up, Don't Shoot
Trump Can't Win
Brett Kavanaugh: Serial Rapist
The KKKids from KKKovington High School
Trump Colluded with Russia
And in every one of those cases, CNN got it deliberately wrong because CNN is nothing less than a hysterical propaganda outlet,
a fire hose of
hate , violence
, and
lies -
Breitbart
During the first quarter of 2019, prior to the release of the Mueller Report (which debunked the media's Russia Collusion Hoax
and
proved Trump did not obstruct justice), Maddow averaged 3.1 million nightly viewers. Last month, after the release of the
Mueller Report (which debunked the media's Russia Collusion Hoax and
proved Trump did not obstruct justice), she averaged only 2.6 million viewers. -
Breitbart
In other words, networks which bet the farm on the Mueller report finding collusion have lost all credibility and are now suffering
financially. Those such as Fox News 's Sean Hannity - who has consistently been right about the Russia hoax , are experiencing a
surge in viewership .
And as Nolte concludes, " Maddow is damaged goods, damaged beyond repair, a fool and a liar exposed beyond redemption. "
The systemwide US Russophobia that reached its nadir with Russiagate has created a "catastrophe" for both domestic politics and
foreign relations that threatens the future of the American system, professor Stephen Cohen
tells RT.
War with Russia could easily break out if the US insists on pursuing the policy of " demonization " that birthed Russiagate instead
of returning to detente and cooperation, New York University professor emeritus of Russian history Stephen Cohen argues on Chris
Hedges' On Contact. While NATO deliberately antagonized post-Soviet Russia by expanding up to its borders, the US deployed missile
defense systems along those borders after scrapping an arms treaty, leaving President Vladimir Putin devoid of " illusions " about
the goodwill of the West – but armed with " nuclear missiles that can evade and elude any missile defense system ."
" Now is the time for a serious, new arms control agreement. What do we get? Russiagate instead ."
Cohen believes the conspiracy theory – which remains front-page news in US media despite being thoroughly discredited, both by
independent investigators and last month by special counsel Robert Mueller's report – is the work of the CIA and its former director,
John Brennan, who are dead set against any kind of cooperation with Russia. Attorney General William Barr, who is investigating
the FBI over how the 2016 counterintelligence probe began, should take a look at Brennan and his agency, Cohen says.
" If our intelligence services are off the reservation to the point that they can first try to destroy a presidential candidate
and then a president we need to know it ," Cohen says.
" This is the worst scandal in American history. It's the worst, at least, since the Civil War ."
And the damage wrought by this " catastrophe " hasn't stopped at the US border.
The idea that Trump is a Russian agent has been devastating to " our own institutions, to the presidency, to our electoral system,
to Congress, to the American mainstream media, not to mention the damage it's done to American-Russian relations, the damage it
has done to the way Russians, both elite Russians and young Russians, look at America today , " Cohen declares.
"Russiagate is one of the greatest new threats to national security. I have five listed in the book. Russia and China aren't
on there. Russiagate is number one."
And the potential damage it could still cause is enormous.
Amazing, 30 million dollars spent for an investigation that produced nothing and some believe that Russiagate is still reality.
This paranoia is unbelievable except for a psychotic public - pathetic.
If the neo-con/Nazi assholes embedded in the M.I.C. and the US government continue down this road of demonizing and antagonizing
Russia it is not going to end well for the people of the US. Putin and the rest of the Russian leadership have made it crystal
clear that they are only going to be pushed so far. The problem is when Russia snaps they are going to do their damdest to try
to cut the head of the snake off in one shot. There's a good chance they could actually pull that off.
"... Inertia often reigns because no one in this administration ever seems to know what the boss wants; his mind changes from moment to moment and he has the attention span of a toddler in the ball pit at Chuck E. Cheese. ..."
"... A few days ago, Gabriel Sherman of Vanity Fair reported, "The White House's chaotic policymaking process can best be viewed as a series of collisions between Donald Trump's I-alone-can-fix-it campaign boasts and reality. ..."
"... One thing that has been a throughline in the nation's history is that you cannot have democracy or sustain freedom at home if the global context is shaped by militarism, racism and corporate power. ..."
"... the way we've fought the kind of forever wars for the last 15 years, the Iraq war at the center, where you have failed intelligence as the basis for a truly regional catastrophe. It delegitimized the national security establishment as the grownups in the room ..."
"... We're at this extraordinary moment in which the bipartisan foreign policy establishment is discredited. ..."
That's why the president's shambolic foreign policy can be both a curse and a sort of
blessing. On the one hand, his inchoate fumbling and lack of coherent doctrine has us upending
the planet and could at any moment walk us right off a cliff and down into major fresh hell. On
the other, this same haplessness and uncertainty has kept some truly gruesome ideas from being
implemented. Inertia often reigns because no one in this administration ever seems to know
what the boss wants; his mind changes from moment to moment and he has the attention span of a
toddler in the ball pit at Chuck E. Cheese.
A few days ago, Gabriel Sherman of Vanity Fair reported, "The White House's chaotic
policymaking process can best be viewed as a series of collisions between Donald Trump's
I-alone-can-fix-it campaign boasts and reality.
So far, damage from these crashes with the real world has been contained to domestic
issues.
... ... ...
More important, according to polling, foreign policy issues just don't register among voters
right now. An NBC News/Wall Street Journal survey found only 11 percent listing national
security and terrorism as a top government priority -- down from 21 percent four years ago.
Of course, it would only take a major attack on US soil, an event like the Iranian hostage
crisis in 1979 that stretched through the 1980 election campaign, or a sudden American
intervention overseas to snap the public's attention back to reality. But this current
indifference may also reflect a general distrust of various iterations of the national
security/foreign policy establishment that since the end of World War II has made most of the
decisions on these issues -- with some success but often with disastrous outcomes.
Which is why I attended a morning panel a week and a half ago at the City University of New
York titled "The Making of a Progressive Foreign Policy." Moderated by historian Steve Fraser,
it was essentially a conversation between Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor and publisher of The
Nation, and constitutional law professor Aziz Rana, author of The Two Faces of American
Freedom.
"I think the key in this presidential campaign should be a focus on how we prevent war, not
how we wage war," vanden Heuvel said. "There should be new institutions that appear in this
period of ferment that speak to a social democratic, demilitarized, deescalating kind of
foreign policy .... One thing that has been a throughline in the nation's history is that
you cannot have democracy or sustain freedom at home if the global context is shaped by
militarism, racism and corporate power. "
Aziz Rana agreed, and added, "This is a really remarkable moment in the life of the country
but also in terms of thinking about alternatives to the national security establishment when it
comes to foreign policy for a number of reasons that kind of join together. One is the way in
which the way we've fought the kind of forever wars for the last 15 years, the Iraq war at the
center, where you have failed intelligence as the basis for a truly regional catastrophe. It
delegitimized the national security establishment as the grownups in the room."
Yes, vanden Heuvel noted, " We're at this extraordinary moment in which the bipartisan
foreign policy establishment is discredited. But that demands activist movements to drive
forward, to show how discredited they are, because Washington is a glacial institution... But
you know, zombies can keep on moving for long periods of time and I think it's our job to
continue to expose as well as struggle against."
OPSW proved to be a gang of a despicable, completely bought by the USA bottomfeeders. Looks like they are now a part
of "Intergity Initiative"
At this point credibility of the USA and UK experts on the topic is not zero, it is negative: they systematically generate
false flags.
Truth be told after Skripals affair the level of credibility of the UK government and expects is far below zero in any case.
This is just a gang of despicable warmongers.
Notable quotes:
"... If SST readers are confused by OPCW's constantly shifting explanations for why the Final Report on the Douma incident excluded the Engineering Assessment, they're not the only ones. ..."
"... Unfortunately for whoever thought up this defence, it is explicitly contradicted by both the Interim Report (published last July) and the Final Report, which state that the objective of the engineering studies was to evaluate how the cylinders arrived in position. ..."
Comments on official response to the release of the Engineering
Assessment of the Douma cylinders Paul McKeigue, David Miller, Jake Mason, Piers
Robinson
This post comments on the response to our
release of the Executive Summary of the Engineering Assessment of the Douma cylinders on 13
May 2018. All emphases in quoted passages are added by us. After OPCW had confirmed the
document to be genuine, the story was covered extensively by Russian media.
An informed commentary by Professor
Hiroyuki Aoyama in Tokyo has been published on Yahoo News's Japanese site. The only coverage in
western corporate media has been by Peter Hitchens in the
Mail on Sunday , Robert Fisk in the
Independent and Tucker Carlson on
Fox .
Other journalists who have been in
touch with us have told us that their stories were spiked by editors. As expected, the story
has reached much larger numbers through websites and videos that have disseminated it.
2
OPCW's response to the release of the document
2.1 Official response
In an email dated 11 May and shown to us, Deepti Choubey, the head of OPCW Public Affairs,
wrote:
Thank you for reaching out to us. It is exclusively through the Fact-Finding Mission, set
up in 2014, that the OPCW establishes facts surrounding allegations of use of toxic chemicals
for hostile purposes in the Syrian Arab Republic. On 1 March 2019, the OPCW has issued its
final and only valid official report, signed by the Director-General, regarding the incident
that took place in Douma, Syrian Arab Republic, on 7 April 2018. The document you shared with
us is not part of any of the material produced by the FFM. The individual mentioned in the
document has never been a member of the FFM .
The OPCW establishes facts surrounding allegations of the use of toxic chemicals for
hostile purposes in the Syrian Arab Republic through the Fact-Finding Mission (FFM), which
was set up in 2014. The OPCW Technical Secretariat reaffirms that the FFM complies with
established methodologies and practices to ensure the integrity of its findings. The FFM
takes into account all available, relevant, and reliable information and analysis within the
scope of its mandate to determine its findings. Per standard practice, the FFM draws
expertise from different divisions across the Technical Secretariat as needed. All
information was taken into account, deliberated, and weighed when formulating the final
report regarding the incident in Douma, Syrian Arab Republic, on 7 April 2018. On 1 March
2019, the OPCW issued its final report on this incident, signed by the Director-General.
Per OPCW rules and regulations, and in order to ensure the privacy, safety, and security
of personnel, the OPCW does not provide information about individual staff members of the
Technical Secretariat. Pursuant to its established policies and practices, the OPCW Technical
Secretariat is conducting an internal investigation about the unauthorised release of the
document in question. At this time, there is no further public information on this matter and
the OPCW is unable to accommodate requests for interviews.
This was taken as confirmation that the document was genuine.
2.2 Unofficial
briefings
Following OPCW's confirmation on 16 May that the document we had released was genuine, two
individuals in the UK whose communications have supported UK government policy on Syria
favoring regime change – Professor Scott Lucas of Birmingham University, and the former
Guardian journalist Brian Whitaker – began reporting that they had inside information on
how the Engineering Assessment had been excluded from the Final Report.
Henderson was writing what was, in effect, a dissenting assessment from that of most of
the OPCW's team and consultant experts. His findings were considered but were a minority
opinion as final report was written.
He followed this with a remarkably indiscreet
tweet asserting that "I know
how OPCW review process was conducted and what place Henderson's assessment had in it." When
challenged to explain his
connection to OPCW, Lucas did not answer. Hitchens
reported on 24 May that OPCW
Public Affairs had refused to comment on whether Lucas was receiving authorised briefings from
OPCW.
2.2.2 Whitaker
Whitaker was at first more circumspect about his sources,
reporting on 16 May that:
One story circulating in the chemical weapons community (though not confirmed) is that
Henderson had wanted to join the FFM and got rebuffed but was then given permission to do
some investigating on the sidelines of the FFM.
Eliot Higgins of Bellingcat extended Whitaker's version
with:
This reporting by @Brian_Whit on the leaked Douma report that the conspiracy theorists and
chemical weapon denialists are so excited about is consistent with what I'm hearing . Looks
like they all got played by a disgruntled OPCW employee.
In an
article
posted on 24 May, Whitaker was more explicit in reporting the spin of "an informed source" on
the Engineering Assessment.
an informed source has now shed some light on it. The key point here is the FFM's terms of
reference. Its basic role was to establish facts about the alleged attack, and it was not
allowed to apportion blame -- that is the job of the OPCW's newly-created Investigation and
Identification Team (IIT). Although the FFM determined that the cylinders were probably
dropped from the air, the published report (in line with its mandate) omitted any mention of
the obvious implication that they had been dropped by regime aircraft. According to the
informed source, when Henderson's assessment was reviewed there were concerns that it came
too close to attributing responsibility, and thus fell outside the scope of the FFM's
mandate. Whether or not that was the right decision, there was no doubt that Henderson's
assessment did fall within the mandate of the new Investigation and Identification Team. For
that reason, according to the source, he was advised to pass it to the IIT instead -- and he
did so.
Unless this account was entirely fabricated, it could only have come from someone with close
knowledge of how the Final Report had been prepared. A subsequent
tweet from Whitaker on 25 May,
presumably channelling the same source, confirmed that "Henderson and others" had been in
Douma:
Henderson and others did go to Douma to provide temporary support to the FFM, but they
were not official members of the FFM.
2.3 What the channelling of off-the-record briefings tells us
It is likely that (at least on this occasion) Lucas and Whitaker are telling the truth, and
that they have been briefed by someone with close knowledge of how the FFM Final Report was
prepared. If these briefings had not been authorised, OPCW Public Affairs could easily have
responded to Hitchens's question with a standard statement reiterating that "there is no
further public information on this matter" and that this extended to off-the-record briefings.
We would expect OPCW press officers to be reluctant to issue further statements that could
subsequently be shown to be false.
Like cellular biologists who perturb a complex system and measure its outputs, we can infer
from these observations the existence of a pathway. This pathway connects the production of
OPCW reports on alleged chemical attacks in Syria with a network of communicators in the UK who
in different ways have promoted the cause of regime change in Syria since 2012. It is evident
that Lucas and Whitaker are output nodes of this pathway. From August 2012, Whitaker as the
Guardian's Middle East editor
promoted Higgins from obscure beginnings as a blogger to become a widely-cited source on
the Syrian conflict. Whitaker was the first journalist to devote an
article to
attacking the Working Group, in February 2018 when its only collective output had been a brief
blog post.
It is of course possible that OPCW management for some procedural reason was unable to
provide further information on the record, and sought to disseminate an accurate version of
events via off-the-record briefings. But the choice of such highly partisan commentators as
Lucas and Whitaker as channels inevitably calls into question the good faith of whoever
provided these briefings, and undermines any remaining pretence to impartiality on the part of
OPCW management.
2.4 Discrepancies between versions of OPCW's response
An established method in investigative journalism is to compare official versions and to
infer from discrepancies what they are trying to hide. On 11 May OPCW Public Affairs stated
that "The document you shared with us is not part of any of the material produced by the FFM.
The individual mentioned in the document has never been a member of the FFM". After we pointed
out that these two statements were provably false – the external collaboration on the
engineering assessment of the Douma cylinders must have been authorised by OPCW, and Henderson
could hardly have been in Damascus on a tourist visa – they were not repeated on the
record. By 16 May OPCW Public Affairs had formulated a new policy: "Per OPCW rules and
regulations the OPCW does not provide information about individual staff members of the
Technical Secretariat." A more subtle version of Henderson's role was then channelled through
Lucas and Whitaker: "minority opinion", "on the sidelines" and elaborated by Higgins as
"disgruntled OPCW employee"'. Between 16 May and 25 May the story channelled through Whitaker
changed from "Henderson had wanted to join the FFM and got rebuffed but was then given
permission to do some investigating on the sidelines of the FFM." to admitting that "Henderson
and others" were in Douma "to provide temporary support to the FFM".
On 24 May Whitaker's informed source admits that "Henderson's assessment was reviewed" for
the Final Report, no longer attempting to maintain that the Engineering Assessment was not part
of the FFM's process. If we strip away the flannel from this latest story, it appears to be
accurate. The "informed source" tells us that the Engineering Assessment was excluded from the
Final Report not because its technical analysis had been rebutted, but because the conclusion
that the cylinders had been placed in position rather than dropped from the air would
necessarily have attributed responsibility for the incident to the opposition .
The argument that the mandate of the FFM prevented it from endorsing the Engineering
Assessment's conclusion is easily refuted as a matter of logic. Announcing the release of the
Final Report, OPCW
stated that "The FFM's mandate is to determine whether chemical weapons or toxic chemicals
as weapons have been used in Syria." In Douma this could be reduced to deciding between two
alternatives: (1) the gas cylinders were dropped from the air, implying that they were used as
chemical weapons; (2) the cylinders were placed in position, implying that the incident was
staged and that no chemical attack had occurred. Although to conclude that alternative (2) was
correct would implicate the opposition, this would not be attribution of blame for a chemical
attack but rather a determination that chemical weapons had not been used.
Clearly a verdict that the alleged chemical attack had been staged would have been
unacceptable to the French government, which had joined in the US-led missile attack on 14
April 2018. We can surmise that the Chief of Cabinet of OPCW, Sébastien Braha, who
(according to his Linkedin profile ) is still in post as
a French diplomat, would have been in a difficult position if he had allowed the FFM to release
a report that reached this conclusion. He would be in an even more difficult position if he
were to allow the newly-established
Investigation and
Identification Team (IIT), which also reports to him, to overturn the conclusions of the
Final Report and report that the alleged chemical attack was staged. Even if Braha's failure to
update his online profile with the date of leaving his diplomatic post is an oversight, this
would still be a conflict of interest based on the OECD definition of what "a reasonable
person, knowing the relevant facts, would conclude". As we have noted, OPCW appears to have no
arrangements for managing conflicts of interest. Until the governance and working practices of
OPCW are radically reformed, it is hard to see how neutral observers can have confidence in the
impartiality of the FFM or the IIT.
3 Government responses to an alleged chlorine attack on
19 May3.1 Reports of the alleged attack
Possible allusions to the release of the Engineering Assessment on 13 May can be
discerned in government responses to a report of an alleged chlorine attack in Idlib on 19
May. The earliest report , mentioning three missiles or
shells loaded with chlorine was from an Arabic-language website named ebaa.news at
11.01 am Syrian time. The location was given as Kubina Hill in Kabbana village, on the border
with Lattakia. At 12.46 am Syrian time Hamish de Bretton-Gordon (HdBG)
tweeted
Appears to be a chlorine attack from Regime artillery shells in Jose Al Shugour village -
4 casualties being evacuated for treatment
"Jose Al Shugour village" is presumably the town of Jisr Al-Shughour. Rami Abdulrahman's
Syrian Observatory for Human
Rights reported on 22 May that four fighters were treated in hospital after they
"suffocated in the intense and violent shelling by the regime forces, within caves and
trenches" but did not endorse the claims of a chlorine attack, noting that the source of this
story was "the Media platform of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham". The story was
elaborated in
a Fox News report on 23 May that quoted a "Dr Ahmad" from Idlib, who reported that he had
treated the casualties. Fox News also quoted Nidal Shikhani of the Chemical Violations Documentation
Centre Syria (CVDCS).
A possible match for the identity of "Dr Ahmad" is Dr Ahmad al-Dbis,
quoted by Reuters on 4 May 2019 as Safety and Security Manager for the Union of Medical
Care and Relief Organisations (UOSSM), describing airstrikes on Idlib and northern Hama. Since
2016 both HdBG
and the
CBRN Task Force that he set up in 2013 have been affiliated to UOSSM. A
report from 2014 quotes a "Dr Ahmad" described as a medic trained by HdBG for the CBRN Task
Force. CVDCS is an
NGO that has worked closely with the OPCW Fact-Finding Mission since 2015 to provide
purported eyewitnesses for interview in Syria, originally established in 2012 as the
Office of Documentation of the Chemical File in Syria , and later registered in Brussels as
a non-profit company named Same Justice. This company never complied with the legal requirement
to file accounts, and went into
liquidation on 27 February 2019.
The ebaa.news site appears to be closely linked to Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS),
frequently quoting HTS spokesmen and sometimes reporting exclusive stories obtained from HTS.
On 31 May 2018 HTS was
designated
by the US Department of State as a Foreign Terrorist Organization and a Specially Designated
Global Terrorist. The Coordinator for Counterterrorism noted that this designation "serves
notice that the United States is not fooled by this al-Qa'ida affiliate's attempt to rebrand
itself." In conclusion, the provenance of this story of a chemical attack on 19 May is dubious,
and the extent to which the sources are independent of one another is not clear.
British experts are this morning investigating a suspected chlorine attack by al-Assad in
Idlib. If it is proved, will she lead the international response against the return of this
indiscriminate evil?
As expected, the Prime Minister gave a bellicose answer, but made no reference to OPCW.
We of course acted in Syria, with France and the United States, when we saw chemical
weapons being used there. We are in close contact with the United States and are monitoring
the situation closely, and if any use of chemical weapons is confirmed, we will respond
appropriately.
Woodcock's "British experts" appear to have included HdBG, who had suggested in a
tweet the day
before that Woodcock should ask the Prime Minister about Idlib, though not about a chemical
attack. In a subsequent tweet Woodcock stated that his
experts were "on the ground in Syria".
3.3 French response
The daily press from the French foreign ministry on 22 May responded to a question on the
alleged chemical attack on 19 May with:
We have noted with concern these allegations which must be investigated. We have full
confidence in the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons .
3.4 US response
A press
statement from State Department Spokesperson Morgan Ortagus on 21 May dealt with the
alleged chemical attack two days earlier:
Unfortunately, we continue to see signs that the Assad regime may be renewing its use of
chemical weapons, including an alleged chlorine attack in northwest Syria on the morning of
May 19, 2019. We are still gathering information on this incident, but we repeat our warning
that if the Assad regime uses chemical weapons, the United States and our allies will respond
quickly and appropriately.
She mentioned a " continuing disinformation campaign " to "create the false narrative that
others are to blame for chemical weapons attacks that the Assad regime itself is conducting".
The following day Mr James Jeffrey, the State Department's special representative to Syria,
testified to the House Foreign Affairs Committee that "So far we cannot confirm [the reports of
chemical weapons use] but we're watching it". The New York Times
reported
this to be a "carefully worded recalibration" of the announcement by Morgan Ortagus the day
before, and that American military officials had "expressed surprise over the State
Department's strong statement". 4 Comparison of the Engineering Assessment with the
published Final Report
A comparison of the Engineering Assessment and the Final Report have been reported in
outline form by McIntyre . As Larson has
noted
, there are indications in the
Final
Report that whoever drafted it had access to an earlier version of the Engineering
Assessment (the released version dated 27 February 2019 is marked Rev 1) and was attempting to
rebut it without overtly mentioning it. For instance the Engineering Assessment lists five
points supporting the opinion of experts that the crater at location 2 had been created by a
the explosion of a mortar round or artillery rocket rather than an impact from a falling
object. These points included:
"an (unusually elevated, but possible) fragmentation pattern on upper walls"
"(whilst it was observed that a fire had been created in the corner of the room) black
scorching on the crater underside and ceiling."
The Final Report states falsely that a fragmentation pattern, visible in open-source images,
was absent:
The FFM analysed the damage on the rooftop terrace and below the crater in order to
determine if it had been created by an explosive device. However, this hypothesis is unlikely
given the absence of primary and secondary fragmentation characteristic of an explosion that
may have created the crater and the damage surrounding it.
This is followed by a paragraph that notes the blackening of the ceiling and attributes it
to the fire set in the room. The Final Report's allusion to the possibility of an explosive
device, with mention of fragmentation pattern and the setting of a fire in the room appears to
be an attempt to explain away the argument made in the Engineering Assessment.
We note that several of the key findings of the Engineering Assessment are based only on
examination of the cylinders. For instance the Engineering Assessment reports that the cylinder
at Location 2 bears no markings that would be consistent with the frame with fins (lying on the
balcony) ever having been attached to it, let alone the markings that would be expected if the
frame had been stripped off by impact. The Final Report records that the Syrian government
insisted on retaining custody of the cylinders for criminal investigation purposes.
Accordingly:
On 4 June, FFM team members tagged and sealed the cylinders from Locations 2 and 4, and
documented the procedure.
A useful way to take forward the investigation of the Douma incident would now be for the
Syrian government to invite an international team of neutral experts to examine the cylinders,
to assess whether the observations support the findings of the Engineering Assessment or the
conclusions of the published FFM Final Report, and to publish their findings in a form that
allows peer review and reproducibility of results from data. The next step would be a criminal
investigation of this incident, focusing on where, how and by whom were the 35 victims seen in
images at Location 2 killed.
If SST readers are confused by OPCW's constantly shifting explanations for why the Final
Report on the Douma incident excluded the Engineering Assessment, they're not the only
ones.
Yesterday OPCW released its official response (dated 21 May) to Russian criticisms (dated
26 April) of the Final Report of the Fact-Finding Mission on the Douma incident. In this
response OPCW made, officially and on the record, the same argument as that made by
Whitaker's "informed source: that to assess how the cylinders arrived in their positions was
outside the mandate of the FFM.
Unfortunately for whoever thought up this defence, it is explicitly contradicted by both
the Interim Report (published last July) and the Final Report, which state that the objective
of the engineering studies was to evaluate how the cylinders arrived in position.
Peter Hitchens is on the case, and has listed these contradictions and requested an
explanation from OPCW.
"... Immigrant life was tough -- especially for the adults. People struggled to make ends meet and to fit into a totally new society ..."
"... Life was hard and integration was difficult. ..."
"... We were mostly Jewish and mostly seen as white. And we had a special, glorified place in American political culture: We were victims of Soviet repression and antisemitism, saved by an altruistic America. We were paraded around as a living example of American superiority and a symbol a Soviet barbarism. ..."
"... For nearly four years now, Soviet and Russian immigrants have watched America's liberal political elite shift the blame for their country's domestic political problems away from themselves and onto a fictitious, inscrutable foreign enemy: a xenophobic campaign that put people like us -- "the Russians" -- at the center of everything that's gone wrong in America. We've watched as this panic grew from a fear of the Russian government to an all-encompassing, irrational racist conspiracy theory that put a cloud over not just Russian nationals or Russian government officials, but anyone from the lands of the former Soviet union. ..."
"... Immigrants turned on the TV to see top American security officials, politicians, respected journalists, analysts, and pundits tell national viewers that they were right to be afraid of us: Russians are devious, untrustworthy, wired to hate democracy , and genetically driven to lie and cheat. People like us pose a threat. We are a possible fifth column -- whether we know it it or not, and that includes Russian pensioners and infants. In the words of Keith Olbermann, we were "Russian scum." ..."
"... In all of this, "Russian" has been a mutable category, flexible enough rope in Russian-Jews, Ukrainian-Jews, ethnic Russians, Azerbaijanis, Ukrainians and all sorts of other ethnicities. Any one of those could fit, depending on the need of the constantly evolving conspiracy theory. In America, this added up to something like three million people. ..."
"... This bigoted campaign has gone on non-stop for nearly four years -- and it's come from the very top: primed by American security services and pumped out by respectable liberal media institutions. To Soviet immigrants, it's been disorienting and confusing. It's the first time since coming to America that we have found ourselves targeted this way. ..."
"... And that's the funny thing about this Russia panic. For years, a huge chunk of America's political class has been screeching that "the Russians" are undermining trust in American institutions. But to many Soviet immigrants here in America, it's precisely this xenophobic panic that's been doing the undermining. ..."
"... Soviet immigrants have always had an implicit belief in the superiority of American institutions. It's been a religious thing for them. But seeing themselves get swept up and demonized in this way has bred disillusionment and revulsion with American politics on a level I have never seen. In that sense, Russiagate has been a coming of age moment: it has undermined their naive fresh-off-the-boat faith and gave them a personal glimpse into an America that's paranoid, venal, and unapologetically xenophobic. ..."
I was talking recently to
a Russian acquaintance of mine who lives in the New York area. Years ago, he had studied
engineering in Moscow and later transferred to a university here in the states. He told me that
not long after moved, he got an unexpected visit from a couple of FBI agents who tried to recruit
him. They came right to his apartment and seemed to know everything about him. They had a
detailed file which, among other things, included every application he had submitted to American
universities. They also had a dossier on his old academic advisor back in Moscow containing intel
about the research the professor was doing and the contracts he had with the Russian military.
They wanted to know what he knew about this military work and then asked him to identify
photographs of various equipment and instruments. He was stunned by their sudden appearance and
spooked by their efficiency and competence. He was also smitten with the female agent. "She was
gorgeous. I would have told her anything," he told me. But he didn't have anything to tell. Back
in Moscow he had been a nerdy kid studying engineering. He had no idea about any of the stuff
they were asking. After a while, the FBI agents left. They never contacted him again. But the
message was clear: they were watching, and they could pop in at any time again. His story is not
unique. The FBI does this kind of stuff on a regular basis. By some estimates, at least
a third of all international students get a similar visit from a friendly pair of agents.
And
given the national security panic about China and Russia being whipped up right now, I wouldn't
be surprised if that number is a helluva lot higher. Just the other week, the New York
Times reported that the FBI
has ramped up its surveillance, intimidation and deportation of Chinese academics in America.
As FBI director Christopher Wray explained, America's security apparatus isn't just worried about
the Chinese government. To them, all Chinese are suspect -- they pose a "whole-of-society
threat." Even progressive political strategists believe China is an existential threat to America
and are helping fan a bipartisan sinophobic campaign that's ensnared people I know .
With Russia and China convulsing our body
politic, my buddy's "unremarkable" story got me thinking about how easily and naturally
xenophobic panics fit into American political culture -- and how, until fairly recently, Russian
and Soviet immigrants like me had never really felt the brunt of these campaigns. From my
earliest days as Soviet immigrant kid in America, I've been primed to see this country as a
unique beacon of tolerance -- a place where bigotry and racism, if they exist at all, are
banished to the far dark edges of society. It was a truism to us that unlike the Soviet Union --
which was "closed," "bigoted," "paranoid," and "repressive" -- America was "open," "tolerant" and
"accepting." Later as an adult, I came to understand just much how bigotry and systemic racism
and exclusion are engrained in the politics and culture of modern America. Working as a
journalist and reporting on the darkest recesses of America, it was impossible not to.
But
growing up in an insular, fresh-off-the-boat immigrant community in sleepy San Francisco, it was
easy to believe in an idealized, whitewashed vision of the country that took us in. Immigrant
life was tough -- especially for the adults. People struggled to make ends meet and to fit into a
totally new society. There was the usual petty crime and a bit of violence. People hustled to
make money -- some succeeded, others failed and suffered. Life was hard and integration was
difficult. But compared to other immigrant and minority groups, we were a relatively privileged
bunch.
We were mostly Jewish and mostly seen as white. And we had a special, glorified place in
American political culture: We were victims of Soviet repression and antisemitism, saved by an
altruistic America. We were paraded around as a living example of American superiority and a
symbol a Soviet barbarism. For most the 20th century, American lawmakers had crafted laws to
specifically keep Jews out. We were "rats," according to Wisconsin Senator Alexander Wiley, who
helped craft a 1948 law to prevent victims of the Holocaust from immigrating to America. But with
us it was different. Americans protested outside Soviet embassies on our behalf. Lobbyists and
lawmakers from Washington DC championed our cause and put together sanctions to secure our
release. We were a bipartisan project -- supported by the might of the American empire.
Yasha Levine, Judeo-Bolshevik infiltrator. San Francisco, 1999
My immigrant community was privileged in that way. And because of that, we never really
worried about mass immigration raids. We weren't punitively targeted by cops just because of
the color of our skin. We weren't seen as a terrorist threat and targeted for infiltration and
entrapment by the FBI. We never turned on the TV to see ourselves dehumanized or branded as a
threat from within -- as enemies of the American way of life. Looking back on all the petty --
and not so petty -- crime we got into as kids, I'm amazed by how leniently the cops dealt with
us.
We occupied a special spot in the immigrant pyramid. And because of it, we had never been in
the crosshairs of a good ol' traditional American xenophobic panic. The anti-Russian hysteria
of the early 20th century and the Red Scare of the Cold War was a distant past that few us even
were even aware existed. We never knew what it was like to have the country's media and
political class brand people like you a possible threat. In fact, watching other minority and
immigrant groups get demonized only reinforced my community's feeling of superiority. My fellow
Soviet immigrants have never been known for their progressive racial politics -- well, when you
get down to it, quite a few are generic, down-the-line bigots. And so the general sense was,
"We're not like them. We're different. And anyway, if some ethnic groups are being targeted,
there must a good reason for it. America is a nation of laws, after all. People here aren't
hounded for bigoted political reasons like they are in repressive authoritarian countries."
But this belief in the infallibility of American institutions started taking a big nose dive
right around Donald Trump won the election.
For nearly four years now, Soviet and Russian immigrants have watched America's liberal
political elite shift the blame for their
country's domestic political problems away from themselves and onto a fictitious, inscrutable
foreign enemy: a xenophobic campaign that put people like us -- "the Russians" -- at the center
of everything that's gone wrong in America. We've watched as this panic grew from a fear of the
Russian government to an all-encompassing, irrational racist conspiracy theory that put a cloud
over not just Russian nationals or Russian government officials, but anyone from the lands of
the former Soviet union.
Immigrants turned on the TV to see top American security officials, politicians, respected
journalists, analysts, and pundits tell national viewers that they were right to be afraid of
us: Russians are devious, untrustworthy, wired to hate
democracy , and genetically driven to lie and cheat. People like us pose a threat. We are a
possible fifth column -- whether we know it it or not, and that includes Russian
pensioners and infants. In the words of Keith Olbermann, we were "Russian scum."
In all of this, "Russian" has been a mutable category, flexible enough rope in Russian-Jews,
Ukrainian-Jews, ethnic Russians, Azerbaijanis, Ukrainians and all sorts of other ethnicities.
Any one of those could fit, depending on the need of the constantly evolving conspiracy theory.
In America, this added up to something like three million people.
Putin's anchor babies, a ticking demographic time bomb that will blow up American
democracy.
This bigoted campaign has gone on non-stop for nearly four years -- and it's come from the
very top: primed by American security services and pumped out by respectable liberal media
institutions. To Soviet immigrants, it's been disorienting and confusing. It's the first time
since coming to America that we have found ourselves targeted this way.
At first it seemed like a joke. People laughed at it and mocked it. We were sure that this
weird bigoted panic would pass. But when it didn't, when it continued to grow and seep into
ever corner of our liberal media, we stopped being sure of what to do. We cycled through
various modes: from dismissive to angry to depressed, to repressing it altogether. But talking
to people about this, I get the sense that for many of us one feeling has stayed pretty much
constant: a growing contempt for America's hallowed institutions: its press, its politicians,
its national security elite.
And that's the funny thing about this Russia panic. For years, a huge chunk of America's
political class has been screeching that "the Russians" are undermining trust in American
institutions. But to many Soviet immigrants here in America, it's precisely this xenophobic
panic that's been doing the undermining.
Soviet immigrants have always had an implicit belief in the superiority of American
institutions. It's been a religious thing for them. But seeing themselves get swept up and
demonized in this way has bred disillusionment and revulsion with American politics on a level
I have never seen. In that sense, Russiagate has been a coming of age moment: it has undermined
their naive fresh-off-the-boat faith and gave them a personal glimpse into an America that's
paranoid, venal, and unapologetically xenophobic.
Is this coming of age a good thing? Well, I guess it had to happen at some point. But the
way this disenchantment has unfolded -- driven by America's liberal ruling class -- has pretty
much ensured that most Soviet immigrants will come out the other end even more reactionary than
they were before. And who knew that was even possible?
During a press conference in Japan U.S. President Donald Trump today
said ( video ):
And I'm not looking to hurt Iran at all. I'm looking to have Iran say, "No nuclear weapons." We have enough problems in this world
right now with nuclear weapons. No nuclear weapons for Iran.
And I think we'll make a deal.
Iran said: "No nuclear weapons." It said that several times. It continues to say that.
Iran does not have the intent to make nuclear weapons. It has no nuclear weapons program.
But Trump may be confused because the U.S. 'paper of the record', the New York Times, recently again began to falsely assert
that Iran has such a program.
A May 4 editorial in the Times claimed that Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps was running such a nuclear weapons program.
After a loud public outrage the Times corrected the editorial. Iran's UN office wrote a letter to the Times which was
published on May 6:
In an early version of "Trump Dials Up the Pressure on Iran" (editorial, nytimes.com, May 4), now corrected, you referred to a
nuclear weapons program in describing the reach of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.
...
The editorial is correct in criticizing the punishing aspects of the Trump administration policy toward Iran -- one that has brought
only suffering to the Iranian people and one that will not result in any change in Iran's policies. But it was wrong to refer
to a weapons program -- a dangerous assertion that could lead to a great misunderstanding among the public .
Unfortunately that did not help. The NYT continues with the "dangerous assertion".
At a meeting of President Trump's top national security aides last Thursday, Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan presented
an updated military plan that envisions sending as many as 120,000 troops to the Middle East should Iran attack American forces
or accelerate work on nuclear weapons , administration officials said.
One can not accelerate one's car, if one does not have one. The phrase "accelerate work on nuclear weapons" implies that Iran
has a nuclear weapons program. It may that the White House falsely claimed that but the authors use the phrase and never debunk it.
A May 14 NYT piece by Helene Cooper and Edward Wong
repeats the false claim
without pointing out that it is wrong:
The Trump administration is looking at plans to send as many as 120,000 troops to the Middle East should Iran attack American
forces or accelerate work on nuclear weapons , The New York Times reported.
Also on May 14 the NYT 's editorial cartoon was published under the caption
Will Iran Revive Its Nuclear Program?
The caption of the orientalist cartoon falsely asserted that Iran had enriched Uranium to weapons grade. And no, Iran does not have
a nuclear weapon or a nuclear weapons program in its freezer.
On May 16, after another public outcry, a correction was added to the cartoon:
An earlier version of a caption with this cartoon erroneously attributed a distinction to Iran's nuclear program. Iran has not
produced highly enriched uranium.
After this onslaught of false New York Times claims about Iran NYT critic Belen Fernandez asked:
Has the New York Times declared
war on Iran? She lists other claims made by the Times about Iran that are far from the truth.
Three days later, on May 25, Palko Karasz
reported in the
New York Times on Iran's reaction to Trump's
tiny
troop buildup in the Persian Gulf region. Again the obviously false "accelerate" phrase was used:
Under White House plans revised after pressure from hard-liners led by John R. Bolton, the president's national security adviser,
if Iran were to accelerate work on nuclear weapons , defense officials envision sending as many as 120,000 troops to the Middle
East.
Iran does not have a nuclear program. It can not "accelerate" one. The U.S. claims that Iran once had such a program but also
says that it was ended in 2003. The
standardformulation that
Reuters uses in its Iran reporting is thereby appropriate:
The United States and the U.N. nuclear watchdog believe Iran had a nuclear weapons program that it abandoned. Tehran denies ever
having had one.
Each non-nuclear-weapon State Party to the Treaty undertakes not to receive the transfer from any transfer or whatsoever of nuclear
weapons or other nuclear explosive devices or of control over such weapons or explosive devices directly, or indirectly; not to
manufacture or otherwise acquire nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices; and not to seek or receive any assistance
in the manufacture of nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices.
With that Iran said "No nuclear weapons". Iran also accepted the nuclear safeguards demand in Article III of the treaty in form
of routine inspections by the treaty's nuclear watchdog organization IAEA.
Article IV of the NPT gives all non-nuclear-weapon state parties like Iran the "inalienable right" to "develop research, production
and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes without discrimination." After signing the NPT Iran launched several civil nuclear
projects. These started under the Shah in 1970s and continued after the 1979 revolution in Iran.
Ever since the Iranian revolution the U.S. expressed explicit hostility to the Islamic Republic of Iran. It instigated the President
Saddam Hussein of Iraq to launch a war against the Islamic Republic and actively supported him throughout. It attempted and continues
to attempt to hobble Iran's development, nuclear and non-nuclear, by all possible means.
Under U.S. President George W. Bush the U.S. government claimed that Iran had a nuclear weapons program. The Islamic Republic
Iran rejected that claim and in 2004 signed the
Additional Protocol to the NPT which allows the IAEA
to do more rigorous, short-notice inspections at declared and undeclared nuclear facilities to look for secret nuclear activities.
With that the Islamic Republic of Iran said: "No nuclear weapons".
In a 2006 New York Times op-ed Javid Zarif, then the Iranian Ambassador to the United Nations,
wrote :
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the leader of the Islamic Republic, has issued a decree against the development, production, stockpiling
and use of nuclear weapons.
With that Iran's highest political and religious leader said: "No nuclear weapons".
Not only did Iran sign the NPT and its Additional Protocol but its political leadership outright rejects the development and ownership
of nuclear weapons.
Zarif also pointed out that the IAEA found that Iran had missed to declare some nuclear activities but also confirmed that it
never had the nuclear weapons program the Bush administration claimed it had:
In November 2003, for example, the agency confirmed that "to date, there is no evidence that the previously undeclared nuclear
material and activities were related to a nuclear weapons program."
During the "previously undeclared nuclear material and activities" which the IAEA investigated, some Iranian scientists worked
on a 'plan for a plan' towards nuclear weapons. They seem to have discussed what steps Iran would have to take, what materials, and
what kind of organization it would need to launch a nuclear weapons program. The work was not officially sanctioned and no actual
nuclear weapons program was ever launched. It is believed that the Iranian scientists worked on a 'plan for a plan' because they
were concerned that Iran's then arch enemy Saddam Hussein, who had bombarded Iranian cities with chemical weapons, was working towards
nuclear weapons. In 2003, after the U.S. invaded Iraq, that concern proved to be unfounded and the 'plan for a plan' project was
shut down.
In December 2007 all 16 U.S. intelligence agencies
confirmed the shut down:
A new assessment by American intelligence agencies concludes that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003 and that the
program remains frozen, contradicting judgment two years ago that Tehran was working relentlessly toward building a nuclear bomb.
...
[T]he new [National Intelligence Estimate] declares with "high confidence" that a military-run Iranian program intended to transform
that raw material into a nuclear weapon has been shut down since 2003, and also says with high confidence that the halt "was directed
primarily in response to increasing international scrutiny and pressure."
The National Intelligence Estimate ended efforts by the Bush administration to threaten Iran with war. But the U.S. government,
under Bush and then under President Obama, continued its effort to deny Iran its "inalienable right" to civil nuclear programs.
Obama waged a campaign of ever increasing sanctions on Iran. But the country did not give in. It countered by accelerating its
civil nuclear programs. It enriched more Uranium to civil use levels and developed more efficiant enrichment centrifuges. It was
the Obama administration that finally gave up on its escalatory course. It conceded that Iran has the "inalienable right" to run
its civil nuclear programs including Uranium enrichment. It was this concession, not the sanctions, that brought Iran to the table
for talks about its nuclear programs.
The result of those talks was the The Joint
Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) which was endorsed by UN Security Council Resolution 2231, adopted on July 20, 2015.
The JCPOA gives the IAEA additional tools to inspect
facilities in Iran. It restricts Iran's civil nuclear program to certain limits which will terminate in October 2025. The JCPOA also
reaffirms that Iran has full rights under the NPT. The IAEA since regularly inspects facilities in Iran and consistently reaffirms
in its reports that Iran has no nuclear weapons program.
The Trump administrations hostility to Iran has nothing to do with anything nuclear. The U.S. wants hegemony over the Persian Gulf
region. Iran rejects such imperial desires. The U.S. wants to control the flow of hydrocarbon resources to its competitors, primarily
China. Iran does not allow such controls over its exports. The U.S. wants that all hydrocarbon sales are made in U.S. dollars. Iran
demands payments in other currencies. Israel, which has significant influence within the Trump administration, uses claims of a non
existing Iranian nuclear weapons program to manipulate the U.S. public and to divert from its racist apartheid policies in Palestine.
Trump's talk - "I'm looking to have Iran say, "No nuclear weapons."" - is simply bullshit. Iran said so several times and continues
to say so. But Trump obviously believes that he can get away with making such idiotic claims.
The New York Times proves him right. It is again slipping into the role that it played during the propaganda run-up to
the war on Iraq in 2002/2003. False claims made by members of the Bush administration about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq were
reported by the Times as true, even while diligent reporters at other outlets
debunked those claims again and again.
The Times later apologized and fired Judith Miller, one of its reporters who wrote several of the pieces that supported the
false claims.
But it was never a problem of one reporter who channeled false claims by anonymous administration officials into her reports.
It was the editorial decision by the Times , taken long before the war on Iraq began, to use its power to support such a war. That
editorial decision made it possible that those false claims appeared in the paper.
This month alone one NYT editorial, one editorial cartoon and at least five reporters in three pieces published in the New
York Times made false claims about an Iranian nuclear weapons program that, as all the relevant official institutions confirm, does
not exist. This does not happen by chance.
It it is now obvious that the Times again decided to support false claims by an administration that is pushing the U.S. towards
another war in the Middle East.
Trump is
sign of degeneration of the US political elite. Much like Pompeo and Bolton.
But his hostility to Iran is just desire to please people who control him and finance his re-election bid .
Notable quotes:
"... ran sees no prospect of negotiations with the United States, a foreign ministry spokesman said on Tuesday ..."
"... Iranian officials have repeatedly stated that there won't be any talks with the U.S. until our government rejoins the JCPOA. ..."
"... I don't see how Iranians could view Trump as anything other than a menace when one of his first acts as president was to declare all of them to be potential security threats with the unnecessary and cruel travel ban. His hostility to and contempt for Iran and its people have been intense and consistent for more than two years. ..."
"... When the president veers between "genocidal tweets" and disingenuous offers to talk, this doesn't come across as the work of a master negotiator but rather the impulsive babbling of a leader who can be easily enraged by the smallest and most inconsequential things that he happens to see on television ..."
"... Trump is not talking to Iran but his lackies in the U.S. MSM. They are seeing Iran as being fanatic and unreasonable in refusing to talk. This will be one of the justifications for war and permanent hostilities. ..."
"... I think you're wrong here. Trump doesn't hate or have contempt for Iranians. He's supremely indifferent to them. The hostility and contempt he has shown Iran and Iranians is meant to keep his major Israel and Saudi Arabia donors happy. That's been true from the beginning. Scores of millions in campaign contributions are riding on it. ..."
"... Increasingly, Donaldius Iohannes Trumpius reminds me of some latter day Roman emperor like Caligula or Nero. Absolute power, depravity, insatiable appetites for everything from power to money and women, a pathological lack of empathy, fawning courtiers – it's all there. ..."
In case there was any doubt, the Iranian government
made clear that they were not interested in talking to Trump:
I ran sees no prospect of negotiations with the United States, a foreign ministry
spokesman said on Tuesday , a day after U.S. President Donald Trump said a deal with
Tehran on its nuclear program was possible.
Iranian officials have repeatedly stated that there won't be any talks with the U.S.
until our government rejoins the JCPOA. That definitely won't happen under the current
administration, so there has never been a realistic chance of starting up U.S.-Iranian
negotiations in the near term. Everyone understands that, and that makes the president's random
"offers" to talk all the more ridiculous. Iran has already been burned by Trump's decision to
renege on the nuclear deal and wage economic war on the entire country, so there would have to
be a major effort on the U.S. side to regain Iranian trust. The Trump administration would have
to reverse course and undo every anti-Iranian thing that it has done over the last two years,
and even then that would barely get the U.S. and Iran back to where they had been in 2017.
Trump wouldn't ever do that because it would require him to admit being completely wrong.
Najmeh Bozorgmehr reports on how Iranians
are adapting to life under U.S. economic warfare against them:
Iranian analysts tell me the US made one big mistake this time. It used almost all its
non-military leverage against Iran over the wrong issue, because the country was not
violating the 2015 nuclear accord. Iranians may despise their rulers but they are aware that
the US is not righteous, either. How can they see Mr Trump as a saviour when he calls Iran "a
nation of terror" and promises "the official end of Iran"?
I don't see how Iranians could view Trump as anything other than a menace when one of
his first acts as president was to declare all of them to be potential security threats with
the unnecessary and cruel travel ban. His hostility to and contempt for Iran and its people
have been intense and consistent for more than two years. The complete lack of respect
that Trump has shown to Iranian leaders and the Iranian people alike stands in sharp contrast
to his fawning praise for the North Korean leader, and they cannot help but take that as an
insult. It also isn't lost on the people being strangled by Trump's sanctions that they are
being punished for abiding by an international agreement backed by the world's major powers
while North Korea is celebrated after successfully defying the rest of the world by building up
their nuclear arsenal and long-range missiles. Iran is being penalized because they trusted the
U.S., and Trump has proven to them that this was a foolish thing for them to do. Why would they
reward Trump's aggression and make the same mistake twice?
When the president veers between "genocidal tweets" and disingenuous offers to talk,
this doesn't come across as the work of a master negotiator but rather the impulsive babbling
of a leader who can be easily enraged by the smallest and most inconsequential things that he
happens to see on television . As the North Koreans have also learned, no one can
successfully negotiate with a person as unreliable and moody as Trump. No one in Iran's
government is going to go out on a limb and take the political risk of engaging with the U.S.
again after the last effort blew up in their faces, and Trump's mercurial instability
guarantees that it would be a waste of everyone's time.
Trump is not talking to Iran but his lackies in the U.S. MSM. They are seeing Iran as
being fanatic and unreasonable in refusing to talk. This will be one of the justifications
for war and permanent hostilities.
Our own acts of aggression are completely ignored.
"His hostility to and contempt for Iran and its people have been intense and consistent
for more than two years. "
I think you're wrong here. Trump doesn't hate or have contempt for Iranians. He's
supremely indifferent to them. The hostility and contempt he has shown Iran and Iranians is
meant to keep his major Israel and Saudi Arabia donors happy. That's been true from the
beginning. Scores of millions in campaign contributions are riding on it.
Increasingly, Donaldius Iohannes Trumpius reminds me of some latter day Roman emperor like
Caligula or Nero. Absolute power, depravity, insatiable appetites for everything from power
to money and women, a pathological lack of empathy, fawning courtiers – it's all
there.
During a press conference in Japan U.S. President Donald Trump today
said ( video ):
And I'm not looking to hurt Iran at all. I'm looking to have Iran say, "No nuclear weapons." We have enough problems in this world
right now with nuclear weapons. No nuclear weapons for Iran.
And I think we'll make a deal.
Iran said: "No nuclear weapons." It said that several times. It continues to say that.
Iran does not have the intent to make nuclear weapons. It has no nuclear weapons program.
But Trump may be confused because the U.S. 'paper of the record', the New York Times, recently again began to falsely assert
that Iran has such a program.
A May 4 editorial in the Times claimed that Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps was running such a nuclear weapons program.
After a loud public outrage the Times corrected the editorial. Iran's UN office wrote a letter to the Times which was
published on May 6:
In an early version of "Trump Dials Up the Pressure on Iran" (editorial, nytimes.com, May 4), now corrected, you referred to a
nuclear weapons program in describing the reach of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.
...
The editorial is correct in criticizing the punishing aspects of the Trump administration policy toward Iran -- one that has brought
only suffering to the Iranian people and one that will not result in any change in Iran's policies. But it was wrong to refer
to a weapons program -- a dangerous assertion that could lead to a great misunderstanding among the public .
Unfortunately that did not help. The NYT continues with the "dangerous assertion".
At a meeting of President Trump's top national security aides last Thursday, Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan presented
an updated military plan that envisions sending as many as 120,000 troops to the Middle East should Iran attack American forces
or accelerate work on nuclear weapons , administration officials said.
One can not accelerate one's car, if one does not have one. The phrase "accelerate work on nuclear weapons" implies that Iran
has a nuclear weapons program. It may that the White House falsely claimed that but the authors use the phrase and never debunk it.
A May 14 NYT piece by Helene Cooper and Edward Wong
repeats the false claim
without pointing out that it is wrong:
The Trump administration is looking at plans to send as many as 120,000 troops to the Middle East should Iran attack American
forces or accelerate work on nuclear weapons , The New York Times reported.
Also on May 14 the NYT 's editorial cartoon was published under the caption
Will Iran Revive Its Nuclear Program?
The caption of the orientalist cartoon falsely asserted that Iran had enriched Uranium to weapons grade. And no, Iran does not have
a nuclear weapon or a nuclear weapons program in its freezer.
On May 16, after another public outcry, a correction was added to the cartoon:
An earlier version of a caption with this cartoon erroneously attributed a distinction to Iran's nuclear program. Iran has not
produced highly enriched uranium.
After this onslaught of false New York Times claims about Iran NYT critic Belen Fernandez asked:
Has the New York Times declared
war on Iran? She lists other claims made by the Times about Iran that are far from the truth.
Three days later, on May 25, Palko Karasz
reported in the
New York Times on Iran's reaction to Trump's
tiny
troop buildup in the Persian Gulf region. Again the obviously false "accelerate" phrase was used:
Under White House plans revised after pressure from hard-liners led by John R. Bolton, the president's national security adviser,
if Iran were to accelerate work on nuclear weapons , defense officials envision sending as many as 120,000 troops to the Middle
East.
Iran does not have a nuclear program. It can not "accelerate" one. The U.S. claims that Iran once had such a program but also
says that it was ended in 2003. The
standardformulation that
Reuters uses in its Iran reporting is thereby appropriate:
The United States and the U.N. nuclear watchdog believe Iran had a nuclear weapons program that it abandoned. Tehran denies ever
having had one.
Each non-nuclear-weapon State Party to the Treaty undertakes not to receive the transfer from any transfer or whatsoever of nuclear
weapons or other nuclear explosive devices or of control over such weapons or explosive devices directly, or indirectly; not to
manufacture or otherwise acquire nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices; and not to seek or receive any assistance
in the manufacture of nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices.
With that Iran said "No nuclear weapons". Iran also accepted the nuclear safeguards demand in Article III of the treaty in form
of routine inspections by the treaty's nuclear watchdog organization IAEA.
Article IV of the NPT gives all non-nuclear-weapon state parties like Iran the "inalienable right" to "develop research, production
and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes without discrimination." After signing the NPT Iran launched several civil nuclear
projects. These started under the Shah in 1970s and continued after the 1979 revolution in Iran.
Ever since the Iranian revolution the U.S. expressed explicit hostility to the Islamic Republic of Iran. It instigated the President
Saddam Hussein of Iraq to launch a war against the Islamic Republic and actively supported him throughout. It attempted and continues
to attempt to hobble Iran's development, nuclear and non-nuclear, by all possible means.
Under U.S. President George W. Bush the U.S. government claimed that Iran had a nuclear weapons program. The Islamic Republic
Iran rejected that claim and in 2004 signed the
Additional Protocol to the NPT which allows the IAEA
to do more rigorous, short-notice inspections at declared and undeclared nuclear facilities to look for secret nuclear activities.
With that the Islamic Republic of Iran said: "No nuclear weapons".
In a 2006 New York Times op-ed Javid Zarif, then the Iranian Ambassador to the United Nations,
wrote :
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the leader of the Islamic Republic, has issued a decree against the development, production, stockpiling
and use of nuclear weapons.
With that Iran's highest political and religious leader said: "No nuclear weapons".
Not only did Iran sign the NPT and its Additional Protocol but its political leadership outright rejects the development and ownership
of nuclear weapons.
Zarif also pointed out that the IAEA found that Iran had missed to declare some nuclear activities but also confirmed that it
never had the nuclear weapons program the Bush administration claimed it had:
In November 2003, for example, the agency confirmed that "to date, there is no evidence that the previously undeclared nuclear
material and activities were related to a nuclear weapons program."
During the "previously undeclared nuclear material and activities" which the IAEA investigated, some Iranian scientists worked
on a 'plan for a plan' towards nuclear weapons. They seem to have discussed what steps Iran would have to take, what materials, and
what kind of organization it would need to launch a nuclear weapons program. The work was not officially sanctioned and no actual
nuclear weapons program was ever launched. It is believed that the Iranian scientists worked on a 'plan for a plan' because they
were concerned that Iran's then arch enemy Saddam Hussein, who had bombarded Iranian cities with chemical weapons, was working towards
nuclear weapons. In 2003, after the U.S. invaded Iraq, that concern proved to be unfounded and the 'plan for a plan' project was
shut down.
In December 2007 all 16 U.S. intelligence agencies
confirmed the shut down:
A new assessment by American intelligence agencies concludes that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003 and that the
program remains frozen, contradicting judgment two years ago that Tehran was working relentlessly toward building a nuclear bomb.
...
[T]he new [National Intelligence Estimate] declares with "high confidence" that a military-run Iranian program intended to transform
that raw material into a nuclear weapon has been shut down since 2003, and also says with high confidence that the halt "was directed
primarily in response to increasing international scrutiny and pressure."
The National Intelligence Estimate ended efforts by the Bush administration to threaten Iran with war. But the U.S. government,
under Bush and then under President Obama, continued its effort to deny Iran its "inalienable right" to civil nuclear programs.
Obama waged a campaign of ever increasing sanctions on Iran. But the country did not give in. It countered by accelerating its
civil nuclear programs. It enriched more Uranium to civil use levels and developed more efficiant enrichment centrifuges. It was
the Obama administration that finally gave up on its escalatory course. It conceded that Iran has the "inalienable right" to run
its civil nuclear programs including Uranium enrichment. It was this concession, not the sanctions, that brought Iran to the table
for talks about its nuclear programs.
The result of those talks was the The Joint
Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) which was endorsed by UN Security Council Resolution 2231, adopted on July 20, 2015.
The JCPOA gives the IAEA additional tools to inspect
facilities in Iran. It restricts Iran's civil nuclear program to certain limits which will terminate in October 2025. The JCPOA also
reaffirms that Iran has full rights under the NPT. The IAEA since regularly inspects facilities in Iran and consistently reaffirms
in its reports that Iran has no nuclear weapons program.
The Trump administrations hostility to Iran has nothing to do with anything nuclear. The U.S. wants hegemony over the Persian Gulf
region. Iran rejects such imperial desires. The U.S. wants to control the flow of hydrocarbon resources to its competitors, primarily
China. Iran does not allow such controls over its exports. The U.S. wants that all hydrocarbon sales are made in U.S. dollars. Iran
demands payments in other currencies. Israel, which has significant influence within the Trump administration, uses claims of a non
existing Iranian nuclear weapons program to manipulate the U.S. public and to divert from its racist apartheid policies in Palestine.
Trump's talk - "I'm looking to have Iran say, "No nuclear weapons."" - is simply bullshit. Iran said so several times and continues
to say so. But Trump obviously believes that he can get away with making such idiotic claims.
The New York Times proves him right. It is again slipping into the role that it played during the propaganda run-up to
the war on Iraq in 2002/2003. False claims made by members of the Bush administration about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq were
reported by the Times as true, even while diligent reporters at other outlets
debunked those claims again and again.
The Times later apologized and fired Judith Miller, one of its reporters who wrote several of the pieces that supported the
false claims.
But it was never a problem of one reporter who channeled false claims by anonymous administration officials into her reports.
It was the editorial decision by the Times , taken long before the war on Iraq began, to use its power to support such a war. That
editorial decision made it possible that those false claims appeared in the paper.
This month alone one NYT editorial, one editorial cartoon and at least five reporters in three pieces published in the New
York Times made false claims about an Iranian nuclear weapons program that, as all the relevant official institutions confirm, does
not exist. This does not happen by chance.
It it is now obvious that the Times again decided to support false claims by an administration that is pushing the U.S. towards
another war in the Middle East.
Russiagate is definitely connected to military industrial complex. But it is also connect to
the attempt of neoliberal elite to cements cracks in the neoliberal facade of the US global
empire by using external scapegoat. British elite was traditionally Russophobic as they competed
for influence with Russia and tried to prevent alliance of Germany and Russia.
Notable quotes:
"... The British aristocracy has a condescending view of the hoi polloi who voted for Brexit, regarding them as easily manipulated Pygmalion-like by smarter people. They assumed Vladimir Putin was somehow playing Professor Henry Higgins to the flower girls who voted to reject the EU, because that's how they see the world. Among the Cambridge class, this simple prejudice renders Russian collusion a first principle with no need for supporting evidence". ..."
"... Unconventional candidate Donald Trump " rattled Washington " to its core in March 2016 when he wondered about NATO's continued relevance and questioned America's foreign policy in Ukraine. ..."
"... That's when this "Putin's candidate" stuff started among both Republicans and Democrats " egged on by Ukrainians " who almost certainly fed Steele the fake kompromat " in the dossier. ..."
"... Russia may be a convenient boogeyman that serves as a necessary foil to both sides in the Washington establishment. But, for once, let's fight the real enemy: the global elites who started this nonsense. ..."
Attorney General William Barr has turned the attention of the Russia probe to its origin.
Who started this and why? The answer, as in all the best crime dramas, is probably hiding in
plain sight.
The British aristocracy has a condescending view of the hoi polloi who voted for
Brexit, regarding them as easily manipulated Pygmalion-like by smarter people. They assumed
Vladimir Putin was somehow playing Professor Henry Higgins to the flower girls who voted to
reject the EU, because that's how they see the world. Among the Cambridge class, this simple
prejudice renders Russian collusion a first principle with no need for supporting
evidence".
Without supporting evidence to prove their fantastical worldview, the global elite set out
to manufacture some.
...
President Eisenhower " the furthest thing from a conspiracy theorist America has ever
produced " famously warned in his farewell address to beware "the military industrial
complex"
The great funding pipeline that makes Washington D.C. the wealthiest region in America feeds
mostly on military spending which still, nearly thirty years removed from the Cold War,
requires a Russian enemy.
Unconventional candidate Donald Trump " rattled Washington " to
its core in March 2016 when he wondered about NATO's continued relevance and questioned
America's foreign policy in Ukraine.
Russia may be a convenient boogeyman that serves as a necessary foil to both sides in
the Washington establishment. But, for once, let's fight the real enemy: the global elites who
started this nonsense.
Why all the fuss about Russia? Liberal elites – who tended to love the Soviet
Union – hate present day Russia, which dares to assert nationality and culture
against the pieties of the one-world-order crowd.
I can confirm. This is what American Leftist Operatives who travel to Russia to organize
coops, etc have told me.
Also note that, while Russia is the designated Villain, the real threat since the 1980s
onward has actually been the Chinese. But the up until now had managed to co-opt both Parties
via the doctrine of constructive engagement and NeoLiberal Free Trade.
"Make China prosperous and the factory of the world and then it will adopt Republican
Democracy!", they said.
Ya. Not so much.
Russia was the excuse to build the high tech fighters but no one dared to name China for
fear of losing financial support coming from industries now dependent on the good graces of
the Chinese Communist Party.
Thank your lucky stars that someone had the ability and ego to step in and expose this
mess for what it was.
The word "hysteria" isn't used nearly enough in analyses like these. Hysteria is almost
defined by the complete absence of thought or rationality, which characterizes the useful
idiots who are the target of this propaganda.
Our government is too easily manipulated to serve narrow interest groups (with money)
rather than the interest of the nation (as constuted) or of the people (who generally dont
have money). Also the legal system does not seem to be serving the law - has dispensed with
the concept of intent.
Those who strive to serve and benefit from interests of industry or foreign governments
should be investigated and tried for treason (where warranted)
The Bushes and Cheney and Hitlary should be tried for war crimes.
Despicable neocons like Natasha Bertrand are cowards and attack people only because then feel the power on MIC and
intelligence agencies behind their backs
In normal circumstances and normal society she would be the history the next day. But politico is a slimy rag, so what to
expect of them
Notable quotes:
"... Politico's "Mueller report reveals Kushner's contacts with a 'pro-Kremlin' campaign adviser" (Politico, April 29, 2019), is dishonest, destructive, and should never have appeared in print. ..."
"... The author of the piece, Natasha Bertrand, initially refers to Dimitri Simes, CEO of the Center for the National Interest, not as an American citizen, although of course he is and has been for many years, nor as a leading representative of realist foreign policy thinking in the United States, which would have also been true. ..."
"... Instead, she initially frames him (in every sense of the word 'frame') as "a Russian willing to assist" the Trump campaign. This word choice rings, and is intended to ring, the Pavlovian bells of the Russia-gate narrative. Aside from being dishonest, her word choice smacks of racism -- a habit, to be sure, which is now widespread, as long as the object of that racism is Russia. ..."
"... 'Maybe Simes is a traitor -- although there are those who think he may not be.' If you accuse some Mr. X of being a rapist, and then add another opinion saying, 'Gosh, I don't think he is a rapist,' what is the impact on the reader? ..."
Politico's "Mueller report reveals Kushner's contacts with a 'pro-Kremlin' campaign adviser"
(Politico, April 29, 2019), is dishonest, destructive, and should never have appeared in
print.
The author of the piece, Natasha Bertrand, initially refers to Dimitri Simes, CEO of the
Center for the National Interest, not as an American citizen, although of course he is and has
been for many years, nor as a leading representative of realist foreign policy thinking in the
United States, which would have also been true.
Instead, she initially frames him (in every sense of the word 'frame') as "a Russian willing
to assist" the Trump campaign. This word choice rings, and is intended to ring, the Pavlovian
bells of the Russia-gate narrative. Aside from being dishonest, her word choice smacks of
racism -- a habit, to be sure, which is now widespread, as long as the object of that racism is
Russia.
If Ms. Bertrand has regularly watched the program The Great Game (Bol'shaia igra), and
understands it, and if she is familiar with Simes' writings and conferences and the
publications that appear in The National Interest, then she has no excuse for writing this
piece in the first place. The genre to which this piece belongs is clear.
It is called a hit piece.
Bertrand deploys, of course, a few fig leaves of pretend objectivity, which may have helped
assuage her conscience, but that is all that these fig leaves can do. What we have here is a
list of scurrilous attacks ("he [Simes] is completely pro-Kremlin and always has been"). These
attacks are then countered by opinions to the contrary, but without any suggestion as to where
the preponderance of evidence lies. There is insufficient detail.
And that is the whole point, isn't it? 'Maybe Simes is a traitor -- although there are those
who think he may not be.' If you accuse some Mr. X of being a rapist, and then add another
opinion saying, 'Gosh, I don't think he is a rapist,' what is the impact on the reader? In the
present context, the impact is this: if you take into consideration a Russian perspective in
any way, shape, or form, even for the purposes of avoiding war -- and this is precisely what Simes is constantly doing, and with considerable intelligence and courage -- then you are going
to get a nasty hit piece written about you by the likes of Politico and Ms. Bertrand.
I regularly watch The Great Game, which Mr. Simes co-hosts on Channel 1 with Vyacheslav
Nikonov, and I have seen how he not just once, but in virtually every single program defends US
interests, and disagrees when Russian colleagues try to make a one-sided case against the U.S.
Simes regularly invites Atlantic Council spokespersons, or their policy equivalent, to the
program, and there they have the freedom to make their case in great detail and without
interruption, and inevitably they make statements that are sharply critical of the Russian
government and its policies. It is Mr. Simes who sees to it that these voices from the Atlantic
Council are heard by the Russian side.
As a result, Simes is carrying out vitally important work of diplomacy that allows for a
two-way communication between policy elites on both sides, and he very adeptly is doing so in a
way that allows both sides to actually listen and hear what is being said. If he simply
screamed politically correct slogans, it would either shut this channel of communications down
or turn it into another pointless circus where no one really listens.
I find it baffling that Politico wants to undermine this virtually unique remaining channel
of diplomacy. For the sake of what? Would Politico prefer that there be no conversation
whatsoever between the US and Russia? Why? Isn't it obviously preferable that we make an effort
to understand a potential adversary's perspective, particularly when that potential adversary
is the other nuclear superpower? It is astonishing -- and foolish -- that no program anything
like The Great Game can be found anywhere in US media. In the US, we hear only variations on
our own perspective on our big news programs. Where do we allow voices from the other side to
make their case?
Simes should be thanked for his work. Instead what he gets is this hit piece. It is not only
disgusting and disheartening, it is frightening.
Paul R. Grenier is a co-founder of the Simone Weil Center for Political Philosophy. He
worked for many years as a simultaneous interpreter for the U.S. Defense and State Departments,
interpreting for Gen. Tommy Franks and serving as lead interpreter for US Central Command's
peacekeeping exercises with post-Soviet states.
Scripals's poisoning connected Prime Minister soon will be gone for good.
Novichok has lasting effects on British PM ;-) Now it will be much easier to investigate her role in spying on Trump,
British government role in creation of Steele dossier, and in launching neo-McCarthyism campaign against Russia (aka
Russiagate).
Notable quotes:
"... During her tumultuous tenure as PM, May survived two no-confidence votes. ..."
"... Crying May. What a Loser. Plus, she may have well co-conspired against Trump. ..."
May, the second - but certainly not the last - female prime minister in the UK, will
abandon her supremely unpopular withdrawal agreement instead of trying to force it through
the Commons for the fourth time. May's decision to call for a fourth vote on the withdrawal
agreement, this time packaging it in a bill that could have opened to door to a second
confirmatory referendum, was more than her fellow conservatives could tolerate. One of her
top cabinet ministers resigned and Graham Brady, the leader of the Tory backbenchers,
effectively forced May out by rounding up the votes for a rule change that would have allowed
MPs to oust her.
During her tumultuous tenure as PM, May survived two no-confidence votes.
Though May will stay on as caretaker until a new leader can be chosen, the race to succeed
May begins now...odds are that a 'Brexiteer' will fill the role. Whatever happens, the
contest should take a few weeks, and afterwards May will be on her way back to
Maidenhead.
"It is and will always remain a deep regret for me that I was not able to deliver
Brexit...I was not able to reach a consensus...that job will now fall to my successor," May
said.
Between now and May's resignation, May still has work to do: President Trump will travel
to the UK for a state visit, while Europe will also celebrate the 75th anniversary of
D-Day.
It's fitting that May touted the virtues of her moderate approach to governance during her
resignation speech, considering that her attempts to chart a middle path through Brexit ended
up alienating hard-core Brexiteers and remainers alike. Her fate was effectively sealed
nearly two years ago, after she called for a general election that cost the Tories their
majority in Parliament and emboldened Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.
The pound's reaction was relatively muted, as May's decision to step down had been
telegraphed well in advance.
She didn't cry for syrians when she declared bombing Syria and using the firm her
husband is involved in,. They made billion, and she didn't cry over her makeover afterwards
new hair clothes and big jewels and cuddles with her husband in the media.
Many women in esteemed positions are just affirmative action or window dressing to
placate the masses with supposed maternal love but they end up being wicked as heck.
Perhaps, but it's worse than that:
They are part of the Divide & Conquer strategy, while (((Global-lusts))) are
plundering the Wealth Of Nations and taking over the real reigns of power.
Americants are easily distracted or fooled.
ps. "...wicked as heck." Wicked? Heck? What's up with the careful avoidance of "cuss
words"? It's ok, you're safe... No "ladies or preachers" (bitches or scammers) nearby. And
the Tylers or NSA won't rat you out.
"... "To watch what happened in the White House would make your jaw drop," Schumer said afterwards, "It's clear this was not a spontaneous move on the president's part. It was planned." ..."
U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday cut off
infrastructure talks with congressional Democratic leaders, demanding House Democrats to end
their "phony investigations" before talks resume.
"I've said from the beginning that you probably can't go down two tracks ... You can go down
the investigation track or you can go down the investment track ... We're going to go down one
track at a time," Trump told reporters in the White House Rose Garden after the meeting
abruptly ended.
Earlier on Wednesday, after a closed-door meeting with all House Democrats, Speaker Nancy
Pelosi said House Democrats "believe the President of the United States is engaged in a
cover-up."
"I don't do cover-ups," Trump responded during his remarks.
Trump said he was dismayed to learn that Pelosi had convened a meeting before their meeting
on infrastructure "to talk about the i-word," referring to impeachment.
Regarding the bipartisan initial plan to spend 2 trillion U.S. dollars on infrastructure,
Trump said he told Pelosi and Schumer: "You can't do it under these circumstances. So, get
these phony investigations over with."
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said that Trump was prepared to quickly end the
meeting.
"To watch what happened in the White House would make your jaw drop," Schumer said
afterwards, "It's clear this was not a spontaneous move on the president's part. It was
planned."
House Democratic leaders are facing increased pressure to begin impeachment proceedings
against Trump, which has further raised partisan tensions in Washington.
"... The Economist and Stephens are correct. The trade dispute is merely a small part of a much larger and even more intense geopolitical rivalry that could ignite what Stephens describes as "an altogether hotter war." ..."
"... From the mid-1940s onward, the primacy of the United States was assumed as a given. History had rendered a verdict: we -- not the Brits and certainly not the Germans, French, or Russians -- were number one, and, more importantly, were meant to be. That history's verdict might be subject to revision was literally unimaginable, especially to anyone making a living in or near Washington, D.C. ..."
"... Choose your own favorite post-Cold War paean to American power and privilege. Mine remains Madeleine Albright's justification for some now-forgotten episode of armed intervention, uttered 20 years ago when American wars were merely occasional (and therefore required some nominal justification) rather then perpetual (and therefore requiring no justification whatsoever). ..."
"... Like some idiot savant, Donald Trump understood this. He grasped that the establishment's formula for militarized global leadership applied to actually existing post-Cold War circumstances was spurring American decline. Certainly other observers, including contributors to this publication, had for years been making the same argument, but in the halls of power their dissent counted for nothing. ..."
"... Yet in 2016, Trump's critique of U.S. policy resonated with many ordinary Americans and formed the basis of his successful run for the presidency. Unfortunately, once Trump assumed office, that critique did not translate into anything even remotely approximating a coherent strategy. President Trump's half-baked formula for Making America Great Again -- building "the wall," provoking trade wars, and elevating Iran to the status of existential threat -- is, to put it mildly, flawed, if not altogether irrelevant. His own manifest incompetence and limited attention span don't help ..."
"... There is no countervailing force within the USA that is able to tame MIC appetites, which are constantly growing. In a sense the nation is taken hostage with no root for escape via internal political mechanisms (for all practical purposes I would consider neocons that dominate the USA foreign policy to be highly paid lobbyists of MIC.) ..."
"... In this sense the alliance of China, Iran, Russia and Turkey might serve as an external countervailing force which allows some level of return to sanity, like was the case when the USSR existed. ..."
"... I agree with Bacevich that the dissolution of the USSR corrupted the US elite to the extent that it became reckless and somewhat suicidal in seeking "Full Spectrum Dominance" (which is an illusive goal in any case taking into account existing arsenals in China and Russia and the growing distance between EU and the USA) ..."
The Great Power Game is On and China is Winning If America wants to maintain any influence in Asia, it needs to wake
up. By Robert W. Merry •
May 22,
2019
President Donald J. Trump participates in a bilateral meeting with President Xi Jinping at the Great Hall of the People, Thursday,
November 9, 2017, in Beijing, People's Republic of China. (
Official White House Photo
by Shealah Craighead) From across the pond come two geopolitical analyses in two top-quality British publications that lay out
in stark terms the looming struggle between the United States and China. It isn't just a trade war, says The Economist in
a major cover package. "Trade is not the half of it," declares the magazine. "The United States and China are contesting every domain,
from semiconductors to submarines and from blockbuster films to lunar exploration." The days when the two superpowers sought a win-win
world are gone.
For its own cover, The Financial Times ' Philip Stephens produced a piece entitled, "Trade is just an opening shot in a
wider US-China conflict." The subhead: "The current standoff is part of a struggle for global pre-eminence." Writes Stephens: "The
trade narrative is now being subsumed into a much more alarming one. Economics has merged with geopolitics. China, you can hear on
almost every corner in sight of the White House and Congress, is not just a dangerous economic competitor but a looming existential
threat."
Stephens quotes from the so-called National Defense Strategy, entitled "Sharpening the American Military's Competitive Edge,"
released last year by President Donald Trump's Pentagon. In the South China Sea, for example, says the strategic paper, "China has
mounted a rapid military modernization campaign designed to limit U.S. access to the region and provide China a freer hand there."
The broader Chinese goal, warns the Pentagon, is "Indo-Pacific regional hegemony in the near-term and displacement of the United
States to achieve global pre-eminence in the future."
The Economist and Stephens are correct. The trade dispute is merely a small part of a much larger and even more
intense geopolitical rivalry that could ignite what Stephens describes as "an altogether hotter war."
... ... ..
Russia: Of all the developments percolating in the world today, none is more ominous than the growing prospect of an anti-American
alliance involving Russia, China, Turkey, and Iran. Yet such an alliance is in the works, largely as a result of America's inability
to forge a foreign policy that recognizes the legitimate geopolitical interests of other nations. If the United States is to maintain
its position in Asia, this trend must be reversed.
The key is Russia, largely by dint of its geopolitical position in the Eurasian heartland. If China's global rise is to be thwarted,
it must be prevented from gaining dominance over Eurasia. Only Russia can do that. But Russia has no incentive to act because it
feels threatened by the West. NATO has pushed eastward right up to its borders and threatened to incorporate regions that have been
part of Russia's sphere of influence -- and its defense perimeter -- for centuries.
Given the trends that are plainly discernible in the Far East, the West must normalize relations with Russia. That means providing
assurances that NATO expansion is over for good. It means the West recognizing that Georgia, Belarus, and, yes, Ukraine are within
Russia's natural zone of influence. They will never be invited into NATO, and any solution to the Ukraine conundrum will have to
accommodate Russian interests. Further, the West must get over Russia's annexation of the Crimean peninsula. It is a fait accompli
-- and one that any other nation, including America, would have executed in similar circumstances.
Would Russian President Vladimir Putin spurn these overtures and maintain a posture of bellicosity toward the West? We can't be
sure, but that certainly wouldn't be in his interest. And how will we ever know when it's never been tried? We now understand that
allegations of Trump's campaign colluding with Russia were meritless, so it's time to determine the true nature and extent of Putin's
strategic aims. That's impossible so long as America maintains its sanctions and general bellicosity.
NATO: Trump was right during the 2016 presidential campaign when he said that NATO was obsolete. He later dialed back on
that, but any neutral observer can see that the circumstances that spawned NATO as an imperative of Western survival no longer exist.
The Soviet Union is gone, and the 1.3 million Russian and client state troops it placed on Western Europe's doorstep are gone as
well.
So what kind of threat could Russia pose to Europe and the West? The European Union's GDP is more than 12 times that of Russia's,
while Russia's per capita GDP is only a fourth of Europe's. The Russian population is 144.5 million to Europe's 512 million. Does
anyone seriously think that Russia poses a serious threat to Europe or that Europe needs the American big brother for survival, as
in the immediate postwar years? Of course not. This is just a ruse for the maintenance of the status quo -- Europe as subservient
to America, the Russian bear as menacing grizzly, America as protective slayer in the event of an attack.
This is all ridiculous. NATO shouldn't be abolished. It should be reconfigured for the realities of today. It should be European-led,
not American-led. It should pay for its own defense entirely, whatever that might be (and Europe's calculation of that will inform
us as to its true assessment of the Russian threat). America should be its primary ally, but not committed to intervene whenever
a tiny European nation feels threatened. NATO's Article 5, committing all alliance nations to the defense of any other when attacked,
should be scrapped in favor of language that calls for U.S. intervention only in the event of a true threat to Western Civilization
itself.
And while a European-led NATO would find it difficult to pull back from its forward eastern positions after adding so many nations
in the post-Cold War era, it should extend assurances to Russia that it has no intention of acting provocatively -- absent, of course,
any Russian provocations.
Pragmatic isolationalism is a better deal then the current neocon foreign policy. Which Trump is pursuing with the zeal similar
to Obama (who continued all Bush II wars and started two new in Libya and Syria.) Probably this partially can be explained by
his dependence of Adelson and pro-Israeli lobby.
But the problem is deeper then Trump: it is the power of MIC and American exeptionalism ( which can be viewed as a form of
far right nationalism ) about which Andrew Bacevich have written a lot:
From the mid-1940s onward, the primacy of the United States was assumed as a given. History had rendered a verdict: we --
not the Brits and certainly not the Germans, French, or Russians -- were number one, and, more importantly, were meant
to be. That history's verdict might be subject to revision was literally unimaginable, especially to anyone making a living
in or near Washington, D.C.
If doubts remained on that score, the end of the Cold War removed them. With the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse
of communism, politicians, journalists, and policy intellectuals threw themselves headlong into a competition over who could
explain best just how unprecedented, how complete, and how wondrous was the global preeminence of the United States.
Choose your own favorite post-Cold War paean to American power and privilege. Mine remains Madeleine Albright's justification
for some now-forgotten episode of armed intervention, uttered 20 years ago when American wars were merely occasional (and therefore
required some nominal justification) rather then perpetual (and therefore requiring no justification whatsoever).
"If we have to use force," Secretary of State Albright announced on morning television in February 1998, "it is because
we are America. We are the indispensable nation. We stand tall. We see further into the future."
Back then, it was Albright's claim to American indispensability that stuck in my craw. Yet as a testimony to ruling class
hubris, the assertion of indispensability pales in comparison to Albright's insistence that "we see further into the future."
In fact, from February 1998 down to the present, events have time and again caught Albright's "we" napping. The 9/11 terrorist
attacks and the several unsuccessful wars of choice that followed offer prime examples. But so too did Washington's belated
and inadequate recognition of the developments that actually endanger the wellbeing of 21st-century Americans, namely climate
change, cyber threats, and the ongoing reallocation of global power prompted by the rise of China. Rather than seeing far into
the future, American elites have struggled to discern what might happen next week. More often than not, they get even that
wrong.
Like some idiot savant, Donald Trump understood this. He grasped that the establishment's formula for militarized global
leadership applied to actually existing post-Cold War circumstances was spurring American decline. Certainly other observers,
including contributors to this publication, had for years been making the same argument, but in the halls of power their dissent
counted for nothing.
Yet in 2016, Trump's critique of U.S. policy resonated with many ordinary Americans and formed the basis of his successful
run for the presidency. Unfortunately, once Trump assumed office, that critique did not translate into anything even remotely
approximating a coherent strategy. President Trump's half-baked formula for Making America Great Again -- building "the wall,"
provoking trade wars, and elevating Iran to the status of existential threat -- is, to put it mildly, flawed, if not altogether
irrelevant. His own manifest incompetence and limited attention span don't help.
There is no countervailing force within the USA that is able to tame MIC appetites, which are constantly growing. In a sense
the nation is taken hostage with no root for escape via internal political mechanisms (for all practical purposes I would consider
neocons that dominate the USA foreign policy to be highly paid lobbyists of MIC.)
In this sense the alliance of China, Iran, Russia
and Turkey might serve as an external countervailing force which allows some level of return to sanity, like was the case when
the USSR existed.
I agree with Bacevich that the dissolution of the USSR corrupted the US elite to the extent that it became reckless and somewhat
suicidal in seeking "Full Spectrum Dominance" (which is an illusive goal in any case taking into account existing arsenals in
China and Russia and the growing distance between EU and the USA)
"... There are differences between the parties, but they are mainly centered around social issues and disputes with little or no consequence to the long-term path of the country. The real ruling oligarchs essentially allow controlled opposition within each party to make it appear you have a legitimate choice at the ballot box. Nothing could be further from the truth. ..."
"... There has been an unwritten agreement between the parties for decades where the Democrats pretend to be against war and the Republicans pretend to be against welfare. Meanwhile, spending on war and welfare relentlessly grows into the trillions, with no effort whatsoever from either party to even slow the rate of growth, let alone cut spending. The proliferation of the military industrial complex like a poisonous weed has been inexorable, as the corporate arms dealers place their facilities of death in the congressional districts of Democrats and Republicans. In addition, these corporate manufacturers of murder dole out "legal" payoffs to corrupt politicians of both parties in the form of political contributions. The Deep State knows bribes and well-paying jobs ensure no spineless congressman will ever vote against a defense spending increase. ..."
"... Of course, the warfare/welfare state couldn't grow to its immense size without financing from the Wall Street cabal and their feckless academic puppets at the Federal Reserve. The Too Big to Trust Wall Street banks, whose willful control fraud nearly wrecked the global economy in 2008, were rewarded by their Deep State patrons by getting bigger and more powerful as people on Main Street and senior citizen savers were thrown under the bus. ..."
"... When these criminal bankers have their reckless bets blow up in their faces they are bailed out by the American taxpayers, but when the Fed rigs the system so they are guaranteed billions in risk free profits, they reward themselves with massive bonuses and lobby for a huge tax cut used to buy back their stock. With bank branches in every congressional district in every state, and bankers spreading protection money to greedy politicians across the land, no legislation damaging to the banking cartel is ever passed. ..."
"... I voted for Trump because he wasn't Hillary. ..."
"... If the Chinese refuse to yield for fear of losing face, and the tariff war accelerates, a global recession is a certainty. ..."
"... These sociopaths are not liberal or conservative. They are not Democrats or Republicans. They are not beholden to a country or community. They care not for their fellow man. They don't care about future generations. They care about their own power, wealth and control over others. They have no conscience. They have no empathy. Right and wrong are meaningless in their unquenchable thirst for more. They will lie, steal and kill to achieve their goal of controlling everything and everyone in this world. This precisely describes virtually every politician in Washington DC, Wall Street banker, mega-corporation CEO, government agency head, MSM talking head, church leader, billionaire activist, and blood sucking advisor to the president. ..."
"... The problem is we have gone too far. The "American Dream" has become a grotesque nightmare because people by the millions sit around and dream about being a Kardashian. Makes me want to puke. ..."
"I'll show you politics in America. Here it is, right here. "I think the puppet on the
right shares my beliefs." "I think the puppet on the left is more to my liking." "Hey, wait a
minute, there's one guy holding out both puppets!"" – Bill Hicks
Anyone who frequents Twitter, Facebook, political blogs, economic blogs, or fake-news
mainstream media channels knows our world is driven by the "Us versus Them" narrative. It's
almost as if "they" are forcing us to choose sides and believe the other side is evil. Bill
Hicks died in 1994, but his above quote is truer today then it was then. As the American Empire
continues its long-term decline, the proles are manipulated through Bernaysian propaganda
techniques, honed over the course of decades by the ruling oligarchs, to root for their
assigned puppets.
Most people can't discern they are being manipulated and duped by the Deep State
controllers. The most terrifying outcome for these Deep State controllers would be for the
masses to realize it is us versus them. But they don't believe there is a chance in hell of
this happening. Their arrogance is palatable.
Their hubris has reached astronomical levels as they blew up the world economy in 2008 and
successfully managed to have the innocent victims bail them out to the tune of $700 billion,
pillaged the wealth of the nation through their capture of the Federal Reserve (QE, ZIRP),
rigged the financial markets in their favor through collusion, used the hundreds of billions in
corporate tax cuts to buy back their stock and further pump the stock market, all while their
corporate media mouthpieces mislead and misinform the proles.
There are differences between the parties, but they are mainly centered around social
issues and disputes with little or no consequence to the long-term path of the country. The
real ruling oligarchs essentially allow controlled opposition within each party to make it
appear you have a legitimate choice at the ballot box. Nothing could be further from the
truth.
There has been an unwritten agreement between the parties for decades where the
Democrats pretend to be against war and the Republicans pretend to be against welfare.
Meanwhile, spending on war and welfare relentlessly grows into the trillions, with no effort
whatsoever from either party to even slow the rate of growth, let alone cut spending. The
proliferation of the military industrial complex like a poisonous weed has been inexorable, as
the corporate arms dealers place their facilities of death in the congressional districts of
Democrats and Republicans. In addition, these corporate manufacturers of murder dole out
"legal" payoffs to corrupt politicians of both parties in the form of political contributions.
The Deep State knows bribes and well-paying jobs ensure no spineless congressman will ever vote
against a defense spending increase.
Of course, the warfare/welfare state couldn't grow to its immense size without financing
from the Wall Street cabal and their feckless academic puppets at the Federal Reserve. The Too
Big to Trust Wall Street banks, whose willful control fraud nearly wrecked the global economy
in 2008, were rewarded by their Deep State patrons by getting bigger and more powerful as
people on Main Street and senior citizen savers were thrown under the bus.
When these criminal bankers have their reckless bets blow up in their faces they are
bailed out by the American taxpayers, but when the Fed rigs the system so they are guaranteed
billions in risk free profits, they reward themselves with massive bonuses and lobby for a huge
tax cut used to buy back their stock. With bank branches in every congressional district in
every state, and bankers spreading protection money to greedy politicians across the land, no
legislation damaging to the banking cartel is ever passed.
I've never been big on joining a group. I tend to believe Groucho Marx and his cynical line,
"I don't care to belong to any club that will have me as a member". The "Us vs. Them" narrative
doesn't connect with my view of the world. As a realistic libertarian I know libertarian ideals
will never proliferate in a society of government dependency, willful ignorance of the masses,
thousands of laws, and a weak-kneed populace afraid of freedom and liberty. The only true
libertarian politician, Ron Paul, was only able to connect with about 5% of the voting public.
There is no chance a candidate with a libertarian platform will ever win a national election.
This country cannot be fixed through the ballot box. Bill Hicks somewhat foreshadowed the last
election by referencing another famous cynic.
"I ascribe to Mark Twain's theory that the last person who should be President is the one
who wants it the most. The one who should be picked is the one who should be dragged kicking
and screaming into the White House." ― Bill Hicks
Hillary Clinton wanted to be president so badly, she colluded with Barack Obama, Jim Comey,
John Brennan, James Clapper, Loretta Lynch and numerous other Deep State sycophants to ensure
her victory, by attempting to entrap Donald Trump in a concocted Russian collusion plot and
subsequent post-election coup to cover for their traitorous plot. I wouldn't say Donald Trump
was dragged kicking and screaming into the White House, but when he ascended on the escalator
at Trump Tower in June of 2015, I'm not convinced he believed he could win the presidency.
As the greatest self-promoter of our time, I think he believed a presidential run would be
good for his brand, more revenue for his properties and more interest in his reality TV
ventures. He was despised by the establishment within the Republican and Democrat parties. The
vested interests controlling the media and levers of power in society scorned and ridiculed
this brash uncouth outsider. In an upset for the ages, Trump tapped into a vein of rage and
disgruntlement in flyover country and pockets within swing states, to win the presidency over
Crooked Hillary and her Deep State backers.
I voted for Trump because he wasn't Hillary. I hadn't voted for a Republican since
2000, casting protest votes for Libertarian and Constitutional Party candidates along the way.
I despise the establishment, so their hatred of Trump made me vote for him. His campaign
stances against foreign wars and Federal Reserve reckless bubble blowing appealed to me. I
don't worship at the altar of the cult of personality. I judge men by their actions and not
their words.
Trump's first two years have been endlessly entertaining as he waged war against fake news
CNN, establishment Republicans, the Deep State coup attempt, and Obama loving globalists. The
Twitter in Chief has bypassed the fake news media and tweets relentlessly to his followers. He
provokes outrage in his enemies and enthralls his worshipers. With millions in each camp it is
difficult to find an unbiased assessment of narrative versus real accomplishments.
I'm happy he has been able to stop the relentless leftward progression of our Federal
judiciary. Cutting regulations and rolling back environmental mandates has been a positive.
Exiting the Paris Climate Agreement and TPP, forcing NATO members to pay their fair share, and
renegotiating NAFTA were all needed. Ending the war on coal and approving pipelines will keep
energy costs lower. His attempts to vet Muslims entering the country have been the right thing
to do. Building a wall on our southern border is the right thing to do, but he should have
gotten it done when he controlled both houses.
The use of tariffs to force China to renegotiate one sided trade deals as a negotiating
tactic is a high-risk, high reward gamble. If his game of chicken is successful and he gets
better terms from the Chicoms, while reversing the tariffs, it would be a huge win. If the
Chinese refuse to yield for fear of losing face, and the tariff war accelerates, a global
recession is a certainty. Who has the upper hand? Xi is essentially a dictator for life
and doesn't have to worry about elections or popularity polls. Dissent is crushed. A global
recession and stock market crash would make Trump's re-election in 2020 problematic.
I'm a big supporter of lower taxes. The Trump tax cuts were sold as beneficial to the middle
class. That is a false narrative. The vast majority of the tax cut benefits went to
mega-corporations and rich people. Middle class home owning families with children received
little or no tax relief, as exemptions were eliminated and tax deductions capped. In many
cases, taxes rose for working class Americans.
With corporate profits at all time highs, massive tax cuts put billions more into their
coffers. They didn't repatriate their overseas profits to a great extent. They didn't go on a
massive hiring spree. They didn't invest in new facilities. They did buy back their own stock
to help drive the stock market to stratospheric heights. So corporate executives gave
themselves billions in bonuses, which were taxed at a much lower rate. This is considered
winning in present day America.
The "Us vs. Them" issue rears its ugly head whenever Trump is held accountable for promises
unkept, blatant failures, and his own version of fake news. Holding Trump to the same standards
as Obama is considered traitorous by those who only root for their home team. Their standard
response is that you are a Hillary sycophant or a turncoat to the home team. If you agree with
a particular viewpoint or position of a liberal then you are a bad person and accused of being
a lefty by Trump fanboys. Facts don't matter to cheerleaders. Competing narratives rule the
day. Truthfulness not required.
The refusal to distinguish between positive actions and negative actions when assessing the
performance of what passes for our political leadership by the masses is why cynicism has
become my standard response to everything I see, hear or he read. The incessant level of lies
permeating our society and its acceptance as the norm has led to moral decay and rampant
criminality from the White House, to the halls of Congress, to corporate boardrooms, to
corporate newsrooms, to government run classrooms, to the Vatican, and to households across the
land. It's interesting that one of our founding fathers reflected upon this detestable human
trait over two hundred years ago.
"It is impossible to calculate the moral mischief, if I may so express it, that mental
lying has produced in society. When a man has so far corrupted and prostituted the chastity
of his mind as to subscribe his professional belief to things he does not believe, he has
prepared himself for the commission of every other crime." – Thomas Paine
Thomas Paine's description of how moral mischief can ruin a society was written when less
than 3 million people inhabited America. Consider his accurate assessment of humanity when over
300 million occupy these lands. The staggering number of corrupt prostituted sociopaths
occupying positions of power within the government, corporations, media, military, churches,
and academia has created a morally bankrupt empire of debt.
These sociopaths are not liberal or conservative. They are not Democrats or Republicans.
They are not beholden to a country or community. They care not for their fellow man. They don't
care about future generations. They care about their own power, wealth and control over others.
They have no conscience. They have no empathy. Right and wrong are meaningless in their
unquenchable thirst for more. They will lie, steal and kill to achieve their goal of
controlling everything and everyone in this world. This precisely describes virtually every
politician in Washington DC, Wall Street banker, mega-corporation CEO, government agency head,
MSM talking head, church leader, billionaire activist, and blood sucking advisor to the
president.
The question pondered every day on blogs, social media, news channels, and in households
around the country is whether Trump is one of Us or one of Them. The answer to that question
will strongly impact the direction and intensity of the climactic years of this Fourth Turning.
What I've noticed is the shunning of those who don't take an all or nothing position regarding
Trump. If you disagree with a decision, policy, or hiring decision by the man, you are accused
by the pro-Trump team of being one of them (aka liberals, lefties, Hillary lovers).
If you don't agree with everything Trump does or says, you are dead to the Trumpeteers. I
don't want to be Us or Them. I just want to be me. I will judge everyone by their actions and
their results. I can agree with Trump on many issues, while also agreeing with Tulsi Gabbard,
Rand Paul, Glenn Greenwald or Matt Taibbi on other issues. I don't prescribe to the cult of
personality school of thought. I didn't believe the false narratives during the Bush or Obama
years, and I won't worship at the altar of the Trump narrative now.
In Part II of this article I'll assess Trump's progress thus far and try to determine
whether he can defeat the Deep State.
"The scientific and industrial revolution of modern times represents the next giant
step in the mastery over nature; and here, too, an enormous increase in man's power over
nature is followed by an apocalyptic drive to subjugate man and reduce human nature to the
status of nature. Even where enslavement is employed in a mighty effort to tame nature, one
has the feeling that the effort is but a tactic to legitimize total subjugation. Thus,
despite its spectacular achievements in science and technology, the twentieth century will
probably be seen in retrospect as a century mainly preoccupied with the mastery and
manipulation of men. Nationalism, socialism, communism, fascism, and militarism,
cartelization and unionization, propaganda and advertising are all aspects of a general
relentless drive to manipulate men and neutralize the unpredictability of human nature. Here,
too, the atmosphere is heavy-laden with coercion and magic." --Eric Hoffer
If you don't agree with everything Trump does or says, you are dead to the
Trumpeteers
That's not true. When Trump kisses Israeli ***, most "Trumpeteers" are outraged. That does
not mean they're going to vote for Joe "I'm a Zionist" Biden, or Honest Hillary because of
it, but they're still pissed.
These predators (((them))) need to fear the Victims, us! That is what the 2ND Amendment is
for. It's coming, slowly for now, but eventually it speeds up.
Any piece like this better be littered with footnotes and cited sources before I'm
swallowing it.
I'll say it again: this is the internet, people. There's no "shortage of column space" to
include links back to primary sources for your assertions. Otherwise, how am I supposed to
distinguish you from another "psy op" or "paid opposition hit piece"?
"The question pondered every day on blogs, social media, news channels, and in households
around the country is whether Trump is one of Us or one of Them."
If you still ponder this question, then you are pretty frickin' thick. It is obvious at
this point, that he betrayed everything he campaigned on. You don't do that and call yourself
one of "us".......damn sure aren't one of "me".
If I couldn't keep my word and wouldn't do what it takes to do what is right.....then I
would resign. But I would not go on playing politics in a world that needs some real
leadership and not another political hack.
The real battle is between Truth and Lie. No matter the name of your "team" or the "side"
you support. Truth is truth and lies are lies. We don't stand for political parties, we stand
for truth. We don't stand for national pride, we take pride in a nation that is truthful and
trustworthy. The minute a "side" or "team" starts lying.....and justifying it.....that is the
minute they become them and not one of us.
Any thinking person in this country today knows we are being lied to by the entire
complex. Until someone starts telling the truth.....we are on our own. But I be damned before
I am going to support any of these lying sons of bitches......and that includes Trump.
Dark comedy. All the elections have been **** choices until the last one. Take a look at
Arkancide.com and start counting the
bodies.
Anyone remember the news telling us how North Korea promised to turn the US into a sea of
fire?? Trump absolutely went to bat for every single American to de-escalate that
situation.
Don't tell me about Arkancide or the Clintons. I grew up in Arkansas with that sack of
**** as my governor for 12 years.
NK was never a real threat to anyone. Trump didn't do ****. NK is back to building and
shooting off missiles and will be teaming up with the Russians and Chinese. You are a duped
bafoon.
I don't think anybody thought NK was an existential threat to the US. It has still been
nice making progress on bringing them back into the world and making them less of a threat to
Japan and S. Korea. Trump did that.
Dennis Rodman did that, or that is to say, Trump an extension thereof ..
Great theater..
Look, i thought it was great that Trump went Kim Unning. I mean after all, i had talked
with a few elderly folks that get their news directly from the mainstream of mainstream,
vanilla news reportage. Propaganda central casting. I remember them being extremely
concerned, outright petrified about that evil menace, kim gonna launch nukes any minute now.
If the news would have been announced a major troop mobilization, bombing campaigns, to begin
immediately they would have been completely onboard, waving the flag.
Frankly, it is only a matter of time, and folks can speculate on the country of interest,
but it is coming soon to a theater near you. So many being in the crosshairs. Iran i suspect
.. that's the big prize, that makes these sociopaths cream in their panties.
Probably. In the second term .. and so far, if ones honestly evaluates the "brain trust" /
current crop of dimwit opposition, and in light of their past 2 plus years of moronic
posturing with their hair on fire, trump will get his second term ..
Until the last one? You are retarded, the last election was a masterpiece of Rothschilds
Productions. The Illuminati was watching you at their private cinema when you were voting for
Trump and they were laughing their asses off.
The author does not realize that everyone in America, except Native American Indians, were
immigrants drawn towards the false promise of hope that is the American Dream, turned
nightmare..
Owning your own home, car, & raising a family in this country is so damn expensive
& risky, that you'd have be on drugs or an idiot to even fall for the lies.
I don't see an us vs them, I see the #FakeMoney printers monetized every facet of life,
own everything, & it truly is RENT-A-LIFE USSA, complete with bills galore, taxes galore,
laws galore, jails & prisons galore, & the worst fkn country anyone would want to
live in poverty & homelessness in.
At least in many 3rd world nations there is land to live off of & joblessness does not
= a financial death sentence.
Sure. Lets all go back to living in huts.....off the land....no cars.....no
electricity.....no running water......no roads....
There is a price to pay for things and it is not always in the form of money. We have
given up some of our freedom for the ease and conveniences we want.
The problem is we have gone too far. The "American Dream" has become a grotesque nightmare
because people by the millions sit around and dream about being a Kardashian. Makes me want
to puke.
There is a balance. Don't take the other extreme or we never find balance.
This article is moronic. One can easily prove that Trump is not like all the others in the
poster. Has this author been living under a rock for the last 2.5 yrs? The past 5 presidents
represent a group that has been literally trying to assassinate Trump, ruin his family, his
reputation, his buisness and his future, for the audacity to be an ousider to the power
network and steal (win) the presidency from under their noses. He's kept us OUT of war. He's
dissolved the treachery that was keeping us in the middle east through gaslighitng and a
proxy fake war that is ISIS, the globalists' / nato / fiveys / uk's fake mercenary army
The greatest threat to the USA is its own dumbed down drugged up citizens who cannot
compete with anyone. America is a big military powerhouse but that doens't make successful
countries
Notice how modern narrative is getting manipulated. What is being reported and referenced
is completely different from how things are. And knowing that we can assume that the entire
history is a fabricated lie, written by the ruling class to support its status in the minds
of obedient citizens.
This article is garbage propaganda that proves that they think we aren't keeping score or
paying attention. The gaslighting won't work when it relies on so much counterthink, willful
ignorance, counterfacts and weaponized omissions
The reality is the de-escalation of wars, the stability of our currency and our economy,
and the moral re-grounding of our culture does not occur until we do what over 100 countries
have done over the centuries, beginning in Carthage in 250AD.
The congress are statusquotarians. If they solved the problems they say they would,they'd
be out of a job. and that job is sitting there acting like a naddler or toxic post turtle
leprechaun with a charisma and skill level of zero. Their staff do all the work, half of them
barely read, though they probably can
I still think 1st and 2nd ammedment is predicated on which party rules the house. If a Dem
gets into the WH, we're fucked. Kiss those Iast two dying amendments goodbye for good.
If we rely on any party to preserve the 1st or 2nd Amendments, we are already fucked. What
should preserve the 1st and 2nd Amendments is the absolute fear of anyone in government even
mentioning suppressing or removing them. When the very thought of doing anything to lessen
the rights advocated in these two amendments, causes a politician to piss in their pants,
liberty will be preserved. As it is now citizens fear the government, and as a result tyranny
continues to grow and fester as a cancer.
You may very well be right. I still hold out hope, but upon seeing what our society is
quickly morphing into, that hope seems to fade more each and every day.
If you think the 1st and 2nd amendments are reliant on who is in office, then you are
already done. Why don't you try growing a pair and being an American for once in your
life.
I will always have a 1st and 2nd "amendment" for as long as I live. Life is meaningless
without them.....as far as I am concerned. Good thing the founders didn't wait for king
George to give them what they "felt" was theirs.....by the laws of Nature and Nature's
God.
I hope the democrats get the power......and I hope they come for the guns......maybe then
pussies like you will finally have to **** or get off the pot......for once in your life.
There are worse things than dying.
This country cannot be fixed through the ballot box. Unless we get rid of *** influencing
from abroad and domestically. Getting rid of English King few hundred years ago was a joke!
this would be a challenge because dual-citizens masquerading as locals.
Last revolution (1776) we targeted the WRONG ENEMY.
We targeted King George III instead of the private bankers who owned of the Bank of
England and the issued of the British-pound currency.
George III was himself up to his ears in debt to them by 1776, when the bankers installed
George Washington to replace George III as their middleman in the American colonies, by way
of the phony revolution.
Phony because ownership of the central bank and currency (Federal-Reserve Banks,
Federal-Reserve notes) we use, remains in the same banking families' hands to this day. The
same parasite remains within our government.
It is this strangely incomplete calculus that creates the shifting Loser world of
rifts and alliances. By operating with a more complete calculus, Sociopaths are able to
manipulate this world through the divide-and-conquer mechanisms. The result is that the
Losers end up blaming each other for their losses, seek collective emotional resolution,
and fail to adequately address the balance sheet of material rewards and losses.
To succeed, this strategy requires that Losers not look too closely at the non-emotional
books. This is why, as we saw last time, divide-and-conquer is the most effective means for
dealing with them, since it naturally creates emotional drama that keeps them busy while
they are being manipulated.
This was a color revolution run by consortium of intelligence agencies and the leadership of the Democratic Party, not "wild
goose chase". The key participants perfectly undersood that this is "regime change" operation.
And Russiagate was not about Trump but about profits of military industrial complex and control over US foreign policy. BTW
Trump folded just in three months after inauguration.
This is a very weak article, but some comments are excellent.
Notable quotes:
"... The damage the Democrats (and their allies in the FBI and media) have done to the country is incalculable, but even worse, is the damage they've done to their own party. ..."
"... the Democrats have betrayed the trust of the people who supported their respective campaigns with the implicit understanding that they would work for the progressive reforms that improve the lives of ordinary working people and not behave like hectoring, obstructionist crybabies who refuse to respect the outcome of elections if the winner is not to their liking ..."
"... What we've seen in the last few years is not only unacceptable, it's also degraded our politics and divided the country into rival camps ..."
"... Russiagate has shed light on the cozy relationship between the Democratic party, the Intelligence Agencies, the FBI and the media. ..."
"... Their relentless, but coordinated attacks on the president strongly suggest that there may be an alliance between the various groups of which the American people are completely unaware. This suspicion seems at least partially substantiated by an article that appeared in the World Socialist Web Site titled "The CIA Democrats". ..."
"... CIA ran this whole show. Not Brennan, CIA the institution. Gina Haspel was in London marshaling the foreign intelligence cutouts, and now she's DCI. ..."
"... In this day and age nobody swallows the CIA propaganda "CIA works for the president." Don Gregg stuck that into the Pike Report after he threatened the committees with martial law. So let's stop pretending that CIA rule is man bites dog. Your government is CIA. ..."
"... Far from mourning its failure to depose Trump, the Deep State is celebrating its own prowess in leading him by the nose. The Deep State has learned to stop worrying and love the bombastic orange clown. ..."
"... Lets not pretend Russia-phobia isn't bipartisan. Even Trump went along with it by placing sanctions on Russia for imaginary "meddling". Making RT register as foreign agent. ..."
"... Lets not forget that Trump admin also expelled Russian diplomats and closed their consulate in Seattle over the bogus Skripal attack in Britain. ..."
"... Trump also launched missiles on Syria over the false flag chemical attack staged by the White Helmets (ISIS), that Trump admin. is still funding. Further poking at Russia. ..."
"... The Trump-Russia collusion scandal was the Deep State's attempt at a coup. The Mueller investigation failed to deliver so they now move on to their next coup attempt. ..."
"... In the 2018 mid-terms some 70 percent of Democratic voters, along with a high number of Independents and even Republicans believed that Trump had colluded with Russia. Yet with so many voters basing their voting decisions on fake news and misinformation, once again, the Left doesn't seemed concerned at all. ..."
"... The "Democrats" – one half of the corrupt set of American bootlicking politicians – spent three years screaming and howling and wearing Trump down until now he is governing just like Hillary Clinton would have. Endless pointless winless wars that serve only to spread chaos and enrich defense contractors, continuing subsidies of Wall Street, tax cuts for big time-plutocrats and coming soon nice juicey regressive taxes for you and me! – and of course, more legal immigration and a government-enabled invasion of our southern border by central America because the rich like cheap labor. ..."
"... That Müeller found nothing to corroborate collusion is likely the result of NSA intercepts that would disprove anything his team and the other agencies might fabricate as proof of the charge. There are a couple serious dividing lines in the national security state that have made it difficult for the coup conspirators to succeed; what will be interesting is if they do in fact get away with trying. ..."
"... Bill Clinton's telecommunication act of 1996 did a lot of damage. Clinton was a CFR agent for the parasite. ..."
"... The fourth estate centralized and came under corporate control after 1996. Those who are remotely aware know that the press organs are owned by our favorite in-group which has messianic goals. This in-group, while small in number, has goals amplified by money power. ..."
"... The neoCONs won and have Trump under control and he's hiring Bush-men as fast as he can ..."
"... it looks like Trump will run in 2020 as a WAR President, in Venezuela and/or Iran. The Bush/Trump Crime Family has been born from the ashes of the Bush/Clinton Crime Family. ..."
"... A crime of obstruction would be something like the destruction subpoenaed evidence; such as taking Bleachbit to your e-mails, or smashing your smartphones with hammers ..."
"... They just go from one lie they're more than happy to believe to another – this time its "obstruction" and the media will push that lie too ..."
"... You can legally hire or fire your maid but if your motivation -- intention in either of those acts is to bribe her or threaten her because she knows something about you that could get you in legal trouble. Then it is obstruction. ..."
For the last two and a half years, the Democrats have led the country on a wild goose chase
that has been a complete waste of time and achieved absolutely nothing. The absurd conspiracy
theory that the President of the United States was an agent of the Kremlin has been thoroughly
debunked by the Mueller Report which states that there was neither "coordination" nor
"conspiracy with the Trump campaign and Russia." Even so, congressional Democrats– still
determined to destroy Trump by whatever means possible– have switched from the
"collusion" allegations to vicious attacks on Attorney General William Barr and demands for
Trump's tax returns.
The ease with which the Dems have shifted from their ridiculous claims that Trump was
"Putin's stooge" to this new round of vitriolic accusations and mud-slinging, shows that party
leaders have not only lost touch with reality, but also, that they have no interest in
governing the country. The Democratic party in its current form, is less a political
organization than it is a permanent inquisition led by duplicitous vipers (Adam Schiff, Eric
Swalwell, Jerry Nadler) who feel entitled to use the Justice System to pursue their own petty
political vendetta against a Beltway outsider who had the audacity to win the 2016 presidential
election and whose views on foreign policy do not jibe with those of their elite
paymasters.
The damage the Democrats (and their allies in the FBI and media) have done to the country is
incalculable, but even worse, is the damage they've done to their own party. By focusing
exclusively on Donald Trump and the fictitious Russian boogieman, the Democrats have betrayed
the trust of the people who supported their respective campaigns with the implicit
understanding that they would work for the progressive reforms that improve the lives of
ordinary working people and not behave like hectoring, obstructionist crybabies who refuse to
respect the outcome of elections if the winner is not to their liking.
These are the people who
have been hurt most by the Russiagate fiasco, the people who thought their Democratic
candidates actually wanted to run the country, but soon discovered that those same
representatives would rather spend all of their time chasing Russian ghosts down a rabbit
hole.
Here's an excerpt from an article by Andrew McCarthy that helps to explain what the Russia
probe was really all about:
"Russiagate has always been a political narrative masquerading as a federal investigation.
Its objective, plain and simple, has been twofold: first, to hamstring Donald Trump's
capacity to press the agenda on which he ran .and ultimately, to render him unelectable come
autumn 2020 .
The Russia counterintelligence probe, based on the fraudulent projection of a
Trump-Putin conspiracy, was always a pretext to conduct a criminal investigation despite the
absence of a predicate crime. The criminal investigation, in turn, was always a pretext
for congressional impeachment chatter. And the congressional impeachment chatter is a pretext
for the real agenda: Making Trump an ineffective president now, and an un-reelectable
president 18 months from now.
Indeed, Russiagate "has always been politics", but the quality of our politics has
deteriorated significantly in the last few years, a point that's worth mulling over for a
minute or two. For nearly three years we've seen one party rip up the rulebook and engage in a
full-blown, scorched earth, no-holds-barred blitzkrieg on the president of the United States.
At no time has there been any effort to discuss issues, ideals, policies, or competing visions
of the future. Instead, every ounce of energy has been devoted to inflicting maximum damage on
the man who, many Democrats think, is deserving of whatever horrendous reprisal they direct at
him.
The Democrats have made no secret of their hatred for Trump or their desire to drive him
from office. They have openly supported the dirty tricks, the hyper-ventilating headlines, and
the relentless smear campaigns that have been aimed at him from Day 1. Through Russiagate, the
Dems have tried to frame Trump as a backstabbing traitor who sold out his country to a foreign
power, but now that Mueller has proved that Trump was falsely accused, the Dems have deftly
switched to another line of attack altogether. This isn't how sincere liberals fight to
implement a plan for progressive change. This is how unprincipled mercenaries pursue the
politics of personal destruction. There's a big difference.
This isn't about Trump. Trump could be the worst president in history, and it still wouldn't
excuse the contemptible way he's been treated. Is it ever acceptable to spy on a presidential
campaign, to insert confidential informants who try to entrap campaign assistants to gather
information that can be used to intimidate, blackmail or impeach the president? Is it ever
acceptable to leak classified information to the media as part of a malignant scheme to destroy
a candidate's reputation? Is it ever acceptable to enlist senior-level officials at the FBI,
CIA and NSA to prevent a candidate from being elected or to engage in a stealth campaign of
slanders, smears and innuendo that cast a shadow over the legitimacy of the government?
No, it's not acceptable. Never.
What we've seen in the last few years is not only unacceptable, it's also degraded our
politics and divided the country into rival camps. We've come to expect that every morning will
bring some new crisis centered on Trump's latest tweet followed by hours of incendiary coverage
on the cable news channels, all aimed at throwing more gas on the raging fire that's engulfed
the country. And, of course, no one scandal has consumed more time or been more inflammatory
than the Russia probe. Here's how The Nation's Stephen Cohen sums it up in a recent
article:
"Now in its third year, Russiagate is the worst, most corrosive, and most fraudulent
political scandal in modern American history. these Russiagate allegations continue to
inflict grave damage on fundamental institutions of American democracy. They impugn the
integrity of the presidency and now the office of the attorney general. They degrade the many
Democratic members of Congress who persist in clinging to the allegations and thus the
Democratic Party and Congress. And they have enticed mainstream media into one of the worst
episodes of journalistic malpractice in modern times.
Cohen's piece cuts to the heart of the matter. Russiagate has not only undermined our
"fundamental institutions", it has also impacted our "national security." But I would argue
that the damage caused by the Trump-Russia investigation is even greater than Cohen describes,
mainly because Russiagate has shed light on the cozy relationship between the Democratic party,
the Intelligence Agencies, the FBI and the media. These are the institutions that have waged
war on Trump from the very beginning. Their relentless, but coordinated attacks on the
president strongly suggest that there may be an alliance between the various groups of which
the American people are completely unaware. This suspicion seems at least partially
substantiated by an article that appeared in the World Socialist Web Site titled "The CIA
Democrats". Here's an excerpt:
"An extraordinary number of former intelligence and military operatives from the CIA,
Pentagon, National Security Council and State Department are seeking nomination as Democratic
candidates for Congress in the 2018 midterm elections. The potential influx of
military-intelligence personnel into the legislature has no precedent in US political
history.
If the Democrats capture a majority in the House of Representatives on November 6, as
widely predicted, candidates drawn from the military-intelligence apparatus will comprise as
many as half of the new Democratic members of Congress. They will hold the balance of power
in the lower chamber of Congress." ( "The CIA Democrats" , Patrick
Martin, World Socialist Web Site)
Would anyone be surprised to find out that the CIA was taking a more activist role in
domestic politics; that it's actually grooming its own candidates for elections, that it's
strengthening its influence in the media and its ties with one of the main political parties,
all in an effort to better control electoral outcomes and tighten its grip on power?
No, no one would be surprised at all. And although we don't yet know all the details, there
are signs that the Intel agencies, the FBI, the media and high-ranking Democrats may have been
working secretively for the same objectives, to either sabotage the 2016 presidential election
or gather incriminating information on Trump that could be used at some later date. All of this
coordinated activity hints at the emergence of a one-party political system that is guided by
agents and elites who the American people don't know and never voted for.
In any event, we're going to find out alot more about these illicit connections as the
Justice Department's three separate probes gain pace and reveal how "the FBI used one party's
'opposition research' as the basis to get a warrant from a secret court to spy on the other
party's campaign." That is the crux of the matter. That's the question that will throw open the
curtains and shed light on the suspicious ties between the DNC, the CIA, the FBI and the media,
all of who may have been directly involved in the dodgy plan to depose the president of the
United States.
THE DEMOGANGSTERS ARE THE REAL CRIMINALS; MUELLER WAS AN AGENT OF THE DEEP STATE, BUT STILL
FOUND NO EVIDENCE.
Thanks, Sir. You are so right -- Russiagate is a manufactured scam to get an elected
President out of office, to carry out a coup by using our criminal justice system as a
criminal enterprise. And to cover up the real crimes of the real criminals, the Demogangsters
like Hillary, etc.
Mueller was a member of the Deep State. If there was ANY collusion (whatever statute there
is that outlaws talking to somebody in a foreign country), Mueller would have found it or
invented it.
The fact that he could not shows that the the Demogangsters had no grounds whatsoever to
manufacture this fake "Russiagate" scandal.
In reality, this scandal should be called Demogangstergate.
The DOJ should now investigate the real criminals, the Demogansters. Hillary and Soros are
America's biggest criminals and they belongs in prison for life.
Two minutes – that would let you easily quantify how tired someone is, how badly they
are suffering from the flu, whether they are showing unusual intellectual decline with age,
If I were an employer I might like to learn how my staff's performance declined with
longer working days, with a view to telling them not to work excessive hours. Or with a view
to finding how best to intersperse the working day with breaks – for food, chat,
exercise, or whatever.
I've long wondered why corporations pay large sums to, for instance, management
consultants or lawyers, when much of the work will be done by novices, sobbing from
exhaustion at their desks.
Is it ever acceptable to spy on a presidential campaign ? Is it ever acceptable to leak
classified information to the media as part of a malignant scheme to destroy a candidate's
reputation? Is it ever acceptable to enlist senior-level officials at the FBI, CIA and NSA
to prevent a candidate from being elected ?
No, it's not acceptable. Never.
Sure it is! If you're Anastacio Somoza, and you're running a banana republic which is,
sadly, what we now are.
There's an odd relapse into statist indoctrination in this generally sound argument. The idea
that a rigidly-controlled centralized state party can "enlist senior-level officials at the
FBI, CIA and NSA" is bassackwards. CIA ran this whole show. Not Brennan, CIA the institution.
Gina Haspel was in London marshaling the foreign intelligence cutouts, and now she's DCI. As
for the litany of political interference in the paragraphs, CIA's been doing that for seven
decades now. In this day and age nobody swallows the CIA propaganda "CIA works for the
president." Don Gregg stuck that into the Pike Report after he threatened the committees with
martial law. So let's stop pretending that CIA rule is man bites dog. Your government is CIA.
And outrage over casting a shadow over the 'legitimacy' of government? Pul-leeease.
Legitimacy is a squishy term. Let's stick to the term of art, sovereignty. Sovereignty is
responsibility. One agency, CIA, is chartered with impunity. They do anything they they want
and get away with it. CIA's freedom from responsibility means the USA is not a sovereign
state but a criminal enterprise. Perhaps you want to defend the legitimacy of the criminal
enterprise that's got its hooks in you. Knock yourself out.
This is not to impugn your good faith. We all have to fight our way out of decades of CIA
brainwashing. It's simple. CIA has multiple redundant get-out-of-jail-free cards and secret
books for untrammeled power of the purse. That's the definition of arbitrary rule. The crux
of the matter is CIA runs your country.
Far from mourning its failure to depose Trump, the Deep State is celebrating its own prowess
in leading him by the nose. The Deep State has learned to stop worrying and love the
bombastic orange clown.
If they apologize, it will remove their Russian Trolls decoy, the one placed carefully in the
water to keep the corporate-owned media focused on just this one cluster of minor global
shenanigans, not all of the others, like the Biden's involvement in Ukraine or most of the US
Congress getting rich off of something It's not by building businesses than employ
underemployed US citizens. In addition to their multi six-figure salaries, they're all
getting rich off of placing bets on the rigged stock casino and the global-offshoring /
outsourcing / welfare-rigged-mass-immigration economy.
Lets not pretend Russia-phobia isn't bipartisan. Even Trump went along with it by placing
sanctions on Russia for imaginary "meddling". Making RT register as foreign agent. Its all a
distraction. Might have to actually do some real work if we weren't having this replay of the
red scare. People might start talking about Trumps, as well as most of DC's real owners if
they stop screaming about Putin.
Not everyone went along with it, Tulsi didn't, she even introduced legislation to require
paper ballots in future elections to prevent imaginary "meddling" or hacking, no one in DC is
interested, which either means there is no election meddling, or they don't actually care,
they just wanted to poke at Russia.
Lets not forget that Trump admin also expelled Russian diplomats and closed their
consulate in Seattle over the bogus Skripal attack in Britain.
Trump also launched missiles on Syria over the false flag chemical attack staged by the
White Helmets (ISIS), that Trump admin. is still funding. Further poking at Russia.
But I would argue that the damage caused by the Trump-Russia investigation is even
greater than Cohen describes, mainly because Russiagate has shed light on the cozy
relationship between the Democratic party, the Intelligence Agencies, the FBI and the
media.
nails it. You cannot call this a democracy when a political party, the federal police, the
intelligence agencies and the media all collude to invalidate an election. You can call it a lot of things, but you can't call it democracy.
The Trump-Russia collusion scandal was the Deep State's attempt at a coup. The Mueller
investigation failed to deliver so they now move on to their next coup attempt.
We know that the Left and the Democrats are insincere when they say they are outraged by
Trump colluding with Russia. They aren't. If it is treason to get "dirt" on your political
opponent from Russia then why isn't the Left and Democrats outraged by the DNC, the Clinton
campaign, and Fusion GPS. The Steele dossier which was used to get a FISA warrant to spy on
Carter Page and the Trump campaign came in part from Russian sources. So paid for political
opposition, with Russian sub-sources, was used to go after Trump and interfere in an
election. Yet they aren't the slightest bit bothered by any of this. In the 2018 mid-terms
some 70 percent of Democratic voters, along with a high number of Independents and even
Republicans believed that Trump had colluded with Russia. Yet with so many voters basing
their voting decisions on fake news and misinformation, once again, the Left doesn't seemed
concerned at all.
The Trump-Russia collusion narrative was just a pretext to start an investigation to
hamstring the Trump Presidency. It is the same story all over again. Why did we invade Iraq
in 2003? Was it because of Weapons of Mass Destruction(WMD) and links to Al-Qaeda? No, that
was just the pretext to start the war. The real reasons for the Iraq war and the Russian
Collusion conspiracy can never be stated publically.
The "Democrats" – one half of the corrupt set of American bootlicking politicians
– spent three years screaming and howling and wearing Trump down until now he is
governing just like Hillary Clinton would have. Endless pointless winless wars that serve
only to spread chaos and enrich defense contractors, continuing subsidies of Wall Street, tax
cuts for big time-plutocrats and coming soon nice juicey regressive taxes for you and me!
– and of course, more legal immigration and a government-enabled invasion of our
southern border by central America because the rich like cheap labor.
The "Democrats" do not exist as a coherent ideology, they are a collection of whores who
will do whatever they are paid to do. They have served their purpose in whipping up mindless
hysteria – really, wanting to save trillions by not fighting pointless foreign wars and
spending that on ourselves, that's racism and fascism and Literally Hitler? Really?
So I would say that, operationally, mission accomplished.
CIA ran this whole show. maybe, but I think it was all of the intelligence agencies.. British
M-16, Israeli Mossad, and the Saudi Arabian groups..French, and even the Egyptian.. .. Turkey
too.. they operate the functional parts of government everywhere.
That Müeller found nothing to corroborate collusion is likely the result of NSA
intercepts that would disprove anything his team and the other agencies might fabricate as
proof of the charge. There are a couple serious dividing lines in the national security state
that have made it difficult for the coup conspirators to succeed; what will be interesting is
if they do in fact get away with trying.
The essay's ending – we will: "find out a lot more" "reveal" "throw open the curtain"
"shed light". That's it??? Maybe this a deliberately subtle way of saying: there will be no real consequences; and so
all is lost; banana Republic, soft dictatorship. In fact, if it's merely an opened-up curtain, the result in the MSM will be plaudits for
the actors' patriotism.
The "Democrats" do not exist as a coherent ideology, they are a collection of whores who
will do whatever they are paid to do. They have served their purpose in whipping up
mindless hysteria – really, wanting to save trillions by not fighting pointless
foreign wars and spending that on ourselves, that's racism and fascism and Literally
Hitler? Really?
They think as a group and take their "lifestyle" cues from the likes of Rachel MadCow,
HRC, the Obamas and "their" opinion on foreign policy comes from 3 letter agency people who
"warn" them about treasonous Trump and foreign super villains. They wring their hands and
clutch their pearls over the laws of the land being enforced at the southern border and the
"Muslim ban" but nothing brings out the preemptive smelling salts quicker than Trump's
refusal to adhere to liberal speech codes and middle class fake politeness.
When Trump and his neocon attack dogs threaten war on multiple fronts, drone Muslim
wedding parties and goat herders, aid and abet the KSA and UAE war against Yemen, use
sanctions as a weapon of war against countries that present no threat to America and
prioritize Israel's interests over our own, the liberals breathe a secret sigh of relief and
commend "literally Hitler" for finally acting presidential. All the righteous "concern" about
POC, transfags and other "traditionally" oppressed groups is fake and a way for them to
soothe the cognitive dissonance between their own self-image as "caring" and fair minded
people and the reality that they don't care how many foreigners get killed by DC's foreign
policy or how many of their own countrymen are left to suffer in despair from the fallout of
their livelihoods being offshored.
What they do care about is their own material comfort and the illusion/delusion
that they are good, morally upright people who deserve all the good things life has to offer
because they work hard and are on the "right side of history." They have discovered that
letting Democrat propagandists and liberal celebrities do their thinking for them is a good
way for them to maintain their delusional world view and avoid thinking about the
mind-boggling hypocrisies and double-standards they unquestioningly accept.
Don't get me wrong, there are lots of people on the political right who are just as crazy
(e.g. the dedicated race warriors who take the 'war' part literally) but everyone knows this
and few people take them seriously. It is old news that mainstream Republicans and Democrats
are pretty much in lockstep when it comes to terrible foreign policy the ideological space
between neocons like Bolton and Pompeo and neoliberal Democrats like Clinton and Biden is
slim and right now there is more pushback against them coming from the conservatives
side.
The disconcerting thing about deluded libtards is their unmatched ability to believe their
own bullshit and the global reach this bullshit has via the mainstream media. It is ironic
that the same people who made their "self-identities" as morally pure humanitarians and
protectors of the weak and downtrodden a status marker have turned out to be some of the most
arrogant, vapid and destructive hypocrites around, but it shouldn't be that surprising. In my
experience people who go out of their way to highlight their own do-goodery and moral
superiority sooner or later out themselves as virtue signalling bullshitters and hypocrites
who are just following a trend. If these people had no real influence they would be a minor
annoyance unfortunately they have quite a bit of influence. Not as much as they used to,
hence their panic, but still enough to cause all kinds of trouble.
This Russia collusion scam proved that ... the CIA and the FBI and the Justice dept. are all corrupt as hell and
all of these and more are under zionist control and there is no justice in America, justice
is gone with the wind!
Regarding Cohen's assertion that the MSM was "enticed" into one of the worst journalistic
malpractices of modern times, I am heartily skeptical of the portrayal of the MSM as being
seduced into acting like the whores they are.
You have to love the imaginations of these hoax writers. The CIA doesn't have time on their
various networks and news websites to post any truth. They have so many lies scripted for so
many years in advance the producers would lose it if someone tried to slip in a couple of
minutes of truth.
@C3H8NO5P Agree, see the book The Secret Team, the CIA and its allies in control of
America and the world, by Col. L. Fletcher Prouty, this is the most accurate book ever
written about the chain dogs who guard the world for their zionist masters!
Bill Clinton's telecommunication act of 1996 did a lot of damage. Clinton was a CFR agent for
the parasite.
The fourth estate centralized and came under corporate control after 1996. Those who are
remotely aware know that the press organs are owned by our favorite in-group which has
messianic goals. This in-group, while small in number, has goals amplified by money
power.
The parasite operates on multiple fronts. 1) Own the power to create bank credit as money
2) Collect interest on credit issued 3) Use debt slavery (expanding claims of debts) to make
populations servile 4) Buy out and own the press (see #2) 5) Push a narrative good for your
in-group. (see#4) 6) Messianic religion, where the people become their own god. An Oligarchy
is then sanctioned because after all – we are our own gods.
Meanwhile, false narrative and twisted scripture has created Zionist Christians, who do
the bidding of their masters.
The parasite is an evolutionary construct, with methods honed through the ages. His
weakness is the falsity of his claims, which require a tower of lies to maintain. The other
weakness is money power, which also relies on deception. The founders gave Congress the money
power, hence it was to be under control of the law (and the people), but through deception
the money power transferred to a private money trust in 1913.
A parasite needs fuel from the host, and this fuel is derived as usury from money power.
Funding then allows issuance of narrative and hypnosis (including towering lies) to control
the host.
The construct of secret services being part of control matrix goes back to Bank of England
in 1694 becoming first debt spreading bank, which soon put its population into debts, and
gained control over parliament. British East Indies company had its own mercenary soldiers
and was fore-runner to MI6. In other words, MI6 was patterned on East Indies Company, and MI6
was grandfather to CIA.
It should be no surprise at all that Zionist World Government emanates from London, Wall
Street, and Tel Aviv.
Returning the money power to law, is a simple law change. But, since Congress and
Parliaments are owned, it is an uphill battle.
Say, the Russians and Putin DID mess with our elections.
So, what is the big deal?
We get involved messing with other Nations interior affairs, since the 18th century, if not
earlier.
So, why these "ethical" bastards (dems and some republicans) are crying about?
Plus, WHO holds the license to determine WHO is our friend and WHO is our enemy?
CNN? CNBC? ABC? FOX?
I guess, I 'll come back to the phrase:
It's ALL about Benjamins, baby.
P.S.
And NO:
Hillary and Soros, ARE criminals but The REAL CRIMINALS and TRAITORS of the USA, are Israel
and it supporters.
@Squarebeard Yeah there's totally no race war going on, at all. Only crazy people would
think such a thing. It's not like the entire ruling class is in lockstep regarding laws and
policies that cripple and destroy whites.
They don't allow non whites to attack whites, with little to no accountability, they don't
bring them in by the millions, to swamp whites and "breed us out". They don't churn out
endless anti white propaganda, showing whites as weak, submissive, old, and needing strong
and vibrant non whites to "save" them from their own evil racism. They certainly don't shout
it from their official positions and gloat about how whites are soon to be minorities in
their own lands. They don't push endless race mixing propaganda, that somehow only shows
"white + non white", and rarely ever something like "black + Asian". They don't mock and
belittle whites every chance they get. They don't use "white" as a slur and a synonym for
"uncool, hopeless, nerdy, weak". They don't refuse to allow whites to have racially based
groups and institutions, while actively encouraging non whites to do just that. They don't
give preferential treatment in every walk of life, to non whites at the expense of the better
qualified and more intelligent whites.
They don't institute draconian and repressive "hate crime" laws designed to harshly punish
whites for any "wrong thought" or imagined transgression against a holy and sainted oppressed
non white. They certainly don't let non whites get away with racially targeted attacks
(Rotherham, etc), and force the police to ignore it and prosecute the victims and their
families when they seek justice.
If you don't think there's a race war happening, I can see that. Because really, only one
side is fighting. The other side is too busy pretending it isn't happening, or
enthusiastically groveling at the feet of the non whites, hoping to expiate their evil sin of
whiteness.
Ignoring reality isn't going to spare you from the consequences of ignoring reality. All
you have to do is look around whatever white country you're living in. It's not a secret.
@ABC 123 You got that dead right ABC 123. The evil group in the shadows that really runs
the government is called "the intelligence community." Some community! More like a giant
Mafia.
The CIA needs reform and oversight. It should be divided into pieces that cannot
communicate with each other, but only through oversight that is legally forbidden to ever
become part of or get paid by CIA. I would suggest a section for each continent, or maybe
even each country. Is have these sections in different buildings in different cities in
America.
They should be allowed zero media infiltration in the United States.
If that reform failed, Id build a rival CIA and slowly give it the CIAs current workload,
forcing the current brass into retirement. The new intel agency could be restricted from
hiring any current CIA management, only hiring active spooks.
@mike kThe neoCONs won and have Trump under control and he's hiring Bush-men as fast as
he can. NOTE: Both the new Attorney General and the newly announced Assistant Attorney
General are both Bush-men, and even worse, they're Bush Sr. Bush-men. So it looks like Trump
will run in 2020 as a WAR President, in Venezuela and/or Iran. The Bush/Trump Crime Family
has been born from the ashes of the Bush/Clinton Crime Family.
Thank you for bringing these facts, and the artful assembly of them, to public scrutiny.
The damage the Democrats (and their allies in the FBI and media) have done to the
country is incalculable, but even worse, is the damage they've done to their own party.
We're still discussing these things, and others, on the overall degradation of social
infrastructures, almost as if they are unrelated, but, these breakdowns have startling
similarities, and even superficial inspection suggests a pattern and affiliation between the
key controlling interests.
Is it " The FBI ", or an elite controlling faction, having hijacked the FBI?
Is it " The Democratic Party ", or an elite controlling faction, having hijacked the
Democratic Party?
Regardless, it will be the reputation/credibility of the entire FBI and Democratic Party,
which takes the hit, not the specific agent-provokateurs , in fact, " The Media
", will never get around to figuring it out, and airing them out, let alone, drawing
similarities between these agent-provokateurs and those agent-provokateurs
Oh and BTW, just who, precisely, is " The Media "?
And while the discussion about the " The Democrats " is liberal, the discussion
about " The Republicans Party ", is a bit on the conservative side.
But ultimately, what's the difference? Both these parties are dedicated to the 0.1% socio-economic elite , and their
traditional hanger-ons/henchmen.
In fact, much of the artificial delineations of people, are controlled by the same
people!
They are effectively different " brandings " of bullshit-artistry , to baffle
the minds of the 99%, and the first grift is that there is actually choice
between two meaningfully different options.
Made US tech a liability for everyone outside the US
Failed coup in Venezuela
Moron Whitney seems to think political parties matter. Why do the lower classes think any
difference exists between the scum that rules over them? Only the slow minded see a
difference between the republicans and the democrats. Trump supporters openly want a police
state with a giant military and more and more cops, so the Russian thing was a great
diversion. Obama supporters pretended they don't want the same, but voted for it anyway also
promoting fear, obedience and the Russian thing.
This is a classic case of Betteridge's Law of Headlines: "an adage that states: 'Any headline
that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no.'"
@Peter Akuleyev It's obvious you haven't read the report Peter. Exactly what crimes did
Trump commit.? And don't repeat what every ignorant liberal moron has been chanting for the
last 3 years, "obstruction of justice"
Please note, a crime must be committed before any suspect, victim, witness anyone
obstructs justice also known as obstruction of the investigation of the alleged crime that
may or may not have been committed. The FBI investigated and investigated and investigated
Trump and found nothing to investigate.
Since he was plotting away in New York and the District of Columbia, you might want to
read the pertinent laws regarding obstruction of justice. No crime, no obstruction.
The demo's need to chill like you know man.not going to make 2020 because the carpet is ready
for a woman.madam president erect ek se.soft power.in like a banana out like a pineapple.
They need to go to prison for attempting to undemocratically overturn an election using an
invented narrative.
The press as well as the individuals associated with the special interest groups and
government who were involved in this effort must face severe consequences. We'll be waiting
until that happens, and we will not forget.
That's what they've created with this. A simmering nation awaiting justice.
@renfro So what's your point? The prosecutor "ultimately concludes one isn't guilty of
crime X" actually proves Alden's point: a prosecutor would have to identify "crime X". Since
"crime X" was fabricated, there was nothing to be guilty of, and since Trump knew that, there
could be no obstruction.
As for Mueller's report, it was a political document. All of the hearsay about what Trump
was thinking about means jackshit. Thinking about doing something isn't a crime – yet.
All of the bogus "conspiracy to commit " trials, when no illegal action was taken, are
Stalinist show trials – just like the Democrats and never Trumpers were hoping Mueller
could produce for them.
You can obstruct justice even if a prosecutor ultimately finds you were not guilty of
committing the crime that was the focus of the underlying investigation
Yes, but you still must commit a crime of obstruction. A crime of obstruction would be
something like the destruction subpoenaed evidence; such as taking Bleachbit to your e-mails,
or smashing your smartphones with hammers. However, the firing James Comey is completely
legal and allowed by the Executive. A prosecutor cannot event a crime of obstruction when the
action was perfectly legal. This is in effect what the Democrats and the Left are arguing
for, the invention of new crimes to impeach Trump.
Excellent article. I'm glad I read it.
Secret intelligence gathering agencies with huge budgets "to keep us safe" are a problem.
Always have been, always will be. Trump should be given credit for causing all this to be
brought to light.
The Democrats Just Led the Country on a Three Year-Long Wild Goose Chase. Will They
Apologize?
Of course not. They just go from one lie they're more than happy to believe to another – this time
its "obstruction" and the media will push that lie too
However, the firing James Comey is completely legal and allowed by the Executive. A
prosecutor cannot event a crime of obstruction when the action was perfectly legal
Wrong again ..its obvious none of you know how to find the legal cites on the elements of
obstruction. Whether Trump can 'legally' fire someone or not is immaterial .the court (and the
law) looks at the INTENT behind the act. Period.
You can legally hire or fire your maid but if your motivation -- intention in either
of those acts is to bribe her or threaten her because she knows something about you that
could get you in legal trouble. Then it is obstruction.
"... What he said is, 'I Donald Trump am going to be a champion of the working class I know you are working longer hours for lower wages, seeing your jobs going to China, can't afford childcare, can't afford to send your kids to college. I Donald Trump alone can solve these problems.' What you have is a guy who utilized the media, manipulated the media very well. He is an entertainer, he is a professional at that. But I will tell you that I think there needs to be a profound change in the way the Democratic Party does business. It is not good enough to have a liberal elite. I come from the white working class and I am deeply humiliated that the Democratic Party cannot talk to the people where I came from." ..."
"... when the Clinton team first learned that Wikileaks was going to release damaging Democratic National Party emails in June 2016, they "brought in outside consultants to plot a PR strategy for handling the news of the hack the story would advance a narrative that benefited the Clinton campaign and the Democrats: The Russians were interfering in the US election, presumably to assist Trump." ..."
"... After losing the election, Team Clinton doubled down on this PR strategy. As described in the book Shattered (p. 395) the day after the election campaign managers assembled the communication team "to engineer the case that the election wasn't entirely on the up and up . they went over the script they would pitch to the press and the public. Already, Russian hacking was the centerpiece of the argument." ..."
"... A progressive team produced a very different analysis titled Autopsy: The Democratic Party in Crisis . They did this because "the (Democratic) party's national leadership has shown scant interest in addressing many of the key factors that led to electoral disaster." The report analyzes why the party turnout was less than expected and why traditional Democratic Party supporters are declining. ..."
"... Since the 2016 election there has been little public discussion of the process whereby Hillary Clinton became the Democratic Party nominee. It's apparent she was pre-ordained by the Democratic Party elite. As exposed in the DNC emails, there was bias and violations of the party obligations at the highest levels. On top of that, it should now be clear that the pundits, pollsters and election experts were out of touch, made poor predictions and decisions. ..."
"... The 2016 election is highly relevant today. Already we see the same pattern of establishment bias and "horse race" journalism which focuses on fund-raising, polls and elite-biased "electability" instead of dealing with real issues, who has solutions, who has appeal to which groups. ..."
"... The establishment bias for Biden is matched by the bias against Democratic Party candidates who directly challenge Wall Street and US foreign policy. On Wall Street, that would be Bernie Sanders. On foreign policy, that is Tulsi Gabbard. With a military background Tulsi Gabbard has broad appeal, an inclusive message and a uniquely sharp critique of US "regime change" foreign policy. ..."
"... Blaming an outside power is a good way to prevent self analysis and positive change. It's gone on far too long. ..."
An
honest and accurate analysis of the 2016 election is not just an academic exercise. It is very
relevant to the current election campaign. Yet over the past two years, Russiagate has
dominated media and political debate and largely replaced a serious analysis of the factors
leading to Trump's victory. The public has been flooded with the various elements of the story
that Russia intervened and Trump colluded with them. The latter accusation was negated by the
Mueller Report but elements of the Democratic Party and media refuse to move on. Now it's the
lofty but vague accusations of "obstruction of justice" along with renewed dirt digging. To
some it is a "constitutional crisis", but to many it looks like more partisan fighting.
Russiagate has distracted from pressing issues
Russiagate has distracted attention and energy away from crucial and pressing issues such as
income inequality, the housing and homeless crisis, inadequate healthcare, militarized police,
over-priced college education, impossible student loans and deteriorating infrastructure. The
tax structure was changed to benefit wealthy individuals and corporations with little
opposition. The Trump administration has undermined environmental laws, civil rights, national
parks and women's equality while directing ever
more money to military contractors. Working class Americans are struggling with rising
living costs, low wages, student debt, and racism. They constitute the bulk of the military
which is spread all over the world, sustaining continuing occupations in war zones including
Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and parts of Africa. While all this has been going on, the Democratic
establishment and much of the media have been focused on Russiagate, the Mueller Report, and
related issues.
Immediately after the 2016 Election
In the immediate wake of the 2016 election there was some forthright analysis. Bernie
Sanders
said , "What Trump did very effectively is tap the angst and the anger and the hurt and
pain that millions of working class people are feeling. What he said is, 'I Donald Trump am
going to be a champion of the working class I know you are working longer hours for lower
wages, seeing your jobs going to China, can't afford childcare, can't afford to send your kids
to college. I Donald Trump alone can solve these problems.' What you have is a guy who utilized
the media, manipulated the media very well. He is an entertainer, he is a professional at that.
But I will tell you that I think there needs to be a profound change in the way the Democratic
Party does business. It is not good enough to have a liberal elite. I come from the white
working class and I am deeply humiliated that the Democratic Party cannot talk to the people
where I came from."
Days after the election, the Washington Post published an op-ed titled "
Hillary Clinton Lost. Bernie Sanders could have won. We chose the wrong candidate ." The
author analyzed the results saying , "Donald Trump's stunning victory is less surprising
when we remember a simple fact: Hillary Clinton is a deeply unpopular politician." The
writer analyzed why Sanders would have prevailed against Trump and predicted "there will be
years of recriminations."
Russiagate replaced Recrimination
But instead of analysis, the media and Democrats have emphasized foreign interference. There
is an element of self-interest in this narrative. As reported in "Russian Roulette" (p127),
when the Clinton team first learned that Wikileaks was going to release damaging Democratic
National Party emails in June 2016, they "brought in outside consultants to plot a PR
strategy for handling the news of the hack the story would advance a narrative that benefited
the Clinton campaign and the Democrats: The Russians were interfering in the US election,
presumably to assist Trump."
After losing the election, Team Clinton doubled down on this PR strategy. As described in
the book Shattered (p. 395) the day after the election campaign managers assembled the
communication team "to engineer the case that the election wasn't entirely on the up and up
. they went over the script they would pitch to the press and the public. Already, Russian
hacking was the centerpiece of the argument."
This narrative has been remarkably effective in supplanting critical review of the
election.
One Year After the Election
The Center for American Progress (CAP) was founded by John Podesta and is closely aligned
with the Democratic Party. In November 2017 they produced an analysis titled "
Voter Trends in 2016: A Final Examination ". Interestingly, there is not a single reference
to Russia. Key conclusions are that "it is critical for Democrats to attract more support from
the white non-college-educated voting bloc" and "Democrats must go beyond the 'identity
politics' versus 'economic populism' debate to create a genuine cross-racial, cross-class
coalition " It suggests that Wall Street has the same interests as Main Street and the working
class.
A progressive team produced a very different analysis titled Autopsy: The Democratic Party in
Crisis . They did this because "the (Democratic) party's national leadership has shown scant interest in addressing many of
the key factors that led to electoral disaster." The report analyzes why the party turnout was less than expected and why
traditional Democratic Party supporters are declining. It includes recommendations to end the party's undemocratic
practices, expand voting rights and counter voter suppression. The report contains details and specific recommendations lacking
in the CAP report. It includes an overall analysis which says "The Democratic Party should disentangle itself – ideologically
and financially – from Wall Street, the military-industrial complex and other corporate interests that put profits ahead of
public needs."
Two Years After the Election
In October 2018, the progressive team produced a follow-up report titled "
Autopsy: One Year Later ". It says, "The Democratic Party has implemented modest reforms,
but corporate power continues to dominate the party."
In a recent phone interview, the editor of that report, Norman Solomon, said it appears some
in the Democratic Party establishment would rather lose the next election to Republicans than
give up control of the party.
What really happened in 2016?
Beyond the initial critiques and "Autopsy" research, there has been little discussion,
debate or lessons learned about the 2016 election. Politics has been dominated by
Russiagate.
Why did so many working class voters switch from Obama to Trump? A major reason is because
Hillary Clinton is associated with Wall Street and the economic policies of her husband
President Bill Clinton. The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), promoted by Bill
Clinton, resulted in huge decline in manufacturing jobs in
swing states such as Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania. Of course, this would influence their
thinking and votes. Hillary Clinton's support for the Trans Pacific Partnership was another
indication of her policies.
What about the low turnout from the African American community? Again, the lack of
enthusiasm is rooted in objective reality. Hillary Clinton is associated with "welfare reform"
promoted by her husband. According to this study from
the University of Michigan, "As of the beginning of 2011, about 1.46 million U.S. households
with about 2.8 million children were surviving on $2 or less in income per person per day in a
given month The prevalence of extreme poverty rose sharply between 1996 and 2011. This growth
has been concentrated among those groups that were most affected by the 1996 welfare
reform. "
Over the past several decades there has been a huge increase in prison
incarceration due to increasingly strict punishments and mandatory prison sentences. Since
the poor and working class have been the primary victims of welfare and criminal justice
"reforms" initiated or sustained through the Clinton presidency, it's understandable why they
were not keen on Hillary Clinton. The notion that low turnout was due to African Americans
being unduly influenced by Russian Facebook posts is seen as "bigoted paternalism" by blogger Teodrose
Fikremanian who says, "The corporate recorders at the NY Times would have us believe that
the reason African-Americans did not uniformly vote for Hillary Clinton and the Democrats is
because they were too dimwitted to think for themselves and were subsequently manipulated by
foreign agents. This yellow press drivel is nothing more than propaganda that could have been
written by George Wallace."
How Clinton became the Nominee
Since the 2016 election there has been little public discussion of the process whereby
Hillary Clinton became the Democratic Party nominee. It's apparent she was pre-ordained by the
Democratic Party elite. As exposed in the DNC emails, there was bias and violations of the
party obligations at the highest levels. On top of that, it should now be clear that the
pundits, pollsters and election experts were out of touch, made poor predictions and
decisions.
Bernie Sanders would have been a much stronger candidate. He would have won the same party
loyalists who voted for Clinton. His message attacking Wall Street would have resonated with
significant sections of the working class and poor who were unenthusiastic (to say the least)
about Clinton. An indication is that in critical swing states such as Wisconsin and
Michigan Bernie
Sanders beat Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primary race.
Clinton had no response for Trump's attacks on multinational trade agreements and his false
promises of serving the working class. Sanders would have had vastly more appeal to working
class and minorities. His primary campaign showed his huge appeal to youth and third party
voters. In short, it's likely that Sanders would have trounced Trump. Where is the
accountability for how Clinton ended up as the Democratic Party candidate?
The Relevance of 2016 to 2020
The 2016 election is highly relevant today. Already we see the same pattern of establishment
bias and "horse race" journalism which focuses on fund-raising, polls and elite-biased
"electability" instead of dealing with real issues, who has solutions, who has appeal to which
groups.
Mainstream media and pundits are already promoting Joe Biden. Syndicated columnist EJ
Dionne, a Democratic establishment favorite, is indicative. In his article "
Can Biden be the helmsman who gets us past the storm? " Dionne speaks of the "strength he
(Biden) brings" and the "comfort he creates". In the same vein, Andrew Sullivan pushes Biden in
his article "
Why Joe Biden Might be the Best to Beat Trump ". Sullivan thinks that Biden has appeal in
the working class because he joked about claims he is too 'hands on'. But while Biden may be
tight with AFL-CIO leadership, he is closely associated with highly unpopular neoliberal trade
deals which have resulted in manufacturing decline.
The establishment bias for Biden is matched by the bias against Democratic Party candidates
who directly challenge Wall Street and US foreign policy. On Wall Street, that would be Bernie
Sanders. On foreign policy, that is Tulsi Gabbard. With a military background Tulsi Gabbard has
broad appeal, an inclusive message and a uniquely sharp critique of US "regime change" foreign
policy. She calls
out media pundits like Fareed Zakaria for goading Trump to invade Venezuela. In contrast
with Rachel Maddow taunting
John Bolton and Mike Pompeo to be MORE aggressive, Tulsi Gabbard has been
denouncing Trump's collusion with Saudi Arabia and Israel's Netanyahu, saying it's not in
US interests. Gabbard's anti-interventionist anti-occupation perspective has significant
support from US troops. A
recent poll indicates that military families want complete withdrawal from Afghanistan and
Syria. It seems conservatives have become more anti-war than liberals.
This points to another important yet under-discussed lesson from 2016: a factor in Trump's
victory was that he campaigned as an anti-war candidate against the hawkish Hillary Clinton. As
pointed out
here, "Donald Trump won more votes from communities with high military casualties than
from similar communities which suffered fewer casualties."
Russiagate has distracted most Democrats from analyzing how they lost in 2016. It has given
them the dubious belief that it was because of foreign interference. They have failed to
analyze or take stock of the consequences of DNC bias, the preference for Wall Street over
working class concerns, and the failure to challenge the military industrial complex and
foreign policy based on 'regime change' interventions.
There needs to be more analysis and lessons learned from the 2016 election to avoid a repeat
of that disaster. As indicated in the
Autopsy , there needs to be a transparent and fair campaign for nominee based on more than
establishment and Wall Street favoritism. There also needs to be consideration of which
candidates reach beyond the partisan divide and can energize and advance the interests of the
majority of Americans rather than the elite. The most crucial issues and especially US military
and foreign policy need to be seriously debated.
Blaming an outside power is a good way to prevent self analysis and positive change. It's
gone on far too long.
Rick Sterling is an investigative journalist who grew up in Canada but currently lives in
the San Francisco Bay Area of California. He can be reached at [email protected] . Read other articles by Rick .
"... what is true is that May was judge, jury and executioner in convicting Russia of the poisoning and refused to follow an evidence based discovery process that lies at the heart of the UK justice system - by hiding behind those powers that the UK intelligence community "needs" in order to protect british (not russian, british) citizens from the sinister influences of foreign powers. ..."
"... the criminal activities of howler monkeys, like Strzok, Page, Brennan, McCabe, SUSAN RICE, Comey, Ohr, BIDEN, OBAMA, etc in the USA are bad enough (whilst hardly impacting civilian life in the US - BUT - the tactics used have been deployed to starve, cause disease, "dumb down", reduce life chances all over the middle east and elsewhere for countless millions of people. ..."
Couple of factors not mentioned. one is Israel and the other is more sinister still and tied
to the conclusions to be drawn from the Mueller report.
it may be true that Skripal helped Steele with some elements of the dossier compiled by
Steele, via SKripals handler Pablo Miller. It may be true that Skripal went "stir crazy" and an
attempt was made to silence him and his daughter - permanently, because they simply cold not be
trusted. a similar motivation could be drawn up against Russia - with the two Russians visiting
Salisbury used as diversionary "stool pigeons". It may be true that the "poisoning" was self
inflicted and was in fact a murder/suicide attempt as a result of depression along the ines
"what's the point of it all".
what is true is that May was judge, jury and executioner in convicting Russia of the
poisoning and refused to follow an evidence based discovery process that lies at the heart of
the UK justice system - by hiding behind those powers that the UK intelligence community
"needs" in order to protect british (not russian, british) citizens from the sinister
influences of foreign powers.
what ought to be apparent is
- the same tactics used by the special prosecutor to investigate the "Russia collusion"
smoke screen erected by the howler monkeys in the US intel agencies (aided and abetter by
howler monkeys in UK intel agencies) to stymie the US executive branch (Trump) are likely to be
used by the the UK government and some more as well - in true Le Carre fashion, but with much
dumber and less principled actors than Smiley's people.
these tactics prevented (and continue to prevent) investigation and prosecution of heinous
corruption within the obama administration of the previous 8 years - these howler monkey
intelligence agency tactics include(d) entrapment, honeypots, racketeering, blackmail, de facto
kidnapping (in the case of Skripals), bribery, wire fraud, unauthorized wire-tapping, breach of
authorized intel agency activities (like the FBI operating overseas and the CIA operating
domestically in the US, false and unverified claims in FISA warrants, NSA providing unauthorized
information to the CIA and FBI etc)
- given the howler monkey activities of the alphabet soup, it is not beyond the imagination
to draw parallels with the CIA's reporting and analysis of situations on the ground wherever
they operate to provide intel ahead of military activity. the DOD has already proved complicit
by hiring Halper (for hundreds of thousands of dollars) to assist with the entrapment of Trump
operative Papadopoulos. Mifsud is likely a CIA, not a Russian, asset.
- given that we have ample evidence of the howler monkeys in the alphabet soup seeking to
facilitate a coup against a sitting US president, it is certainly plausible that - as with the
US goverment sponsoring the mujaheedin, isis and al qaeda in afghanistan to fight the russians
in late 80's early 90's, Iraq yellow cake and WMD - that the howler monkeys paid the white
helmets to ovethrow assad and foment civil war in Syria - thus causing the migration of some 5
million syrians into europe, iraq, turkey, jordan, turkey and lebanon.
so , the case is that howler monkey activity in intel agencies of the UK and US (add
(F)rance to get FUKUS) are guilty of the manufacture of human conflict by fabricating evidence,
breaking the laws (certainly of the targeted countries, but also of the UK and US), providing
shitty analysis (howler monkeys are only good at swinging in trees and flinging ****) and
generally operating as evil actors on the dark side of humanity.
this can only be brought into sharp relief if howler monkey activities were instead shown to
be powers for good rather than the geo-political risks that persist in Iran, North Korea,
Venezuela, Yemen, Libya and so on and so forth.
Never mind how much past conflicts in Iraq, Syria, Libya, Afghanistan and so on relied on
evidence and analysis thrown at us by the howler monkeys in the tree tops, how much of what we
we are doing now is a fabrication causing needless suffering by civilian (not politicians or
military engaged in conflict) populations?
the criminal activities of howler monkeys, like Strzok, Page, Brennan, McCabe, SUSAN RICE,
Comey, Ohr, BIDEN, OBAMA, etc in the USA are bad enough (whilst hardly impacting civilian life
in the US - BUT - the tactics used have been deployed to starve, cause disease, "dumb down",
reduce life chances all over the middle east and elsewhere for countless millions of
people.
there are equivalents of strzok, page, ohr right throughout the US and UK government
"machines" operating overseas. think about that. crimes exposed by Barr et al in the US -
against a sitting president - are replicated wherever howler monkeys operate overseas as well.
"... The neocon faction in the US is usually (and reasonably) regarded as the motivator behind much of the western aggression in the Middle East. ..."
"... Granted the US has been looking for excuses to intervene ever more overtly in Syria since 2013, and in that sense this Douma "initiative" is a continuation of their longterm policy. It's also true Russia was warning just such a false flag would be attempted in early March. But in the intervening month the situation on the ground has changed so radically that such an attempt no longer made any sense. ..."
"... A false flag in early March, while pockets of the US proxy army were still holding ground in Ghouta would have enabled a possible offensive in their support which would prevent Ghouta falling entirely into government hands and thereby also maintain the pressure on Damascus. A false flag in early April is all but useless because the US proxy army in the region was completely vanquished and nothing would be gained by an offensive in that place at that time. ..."
"... The US media has been similarly, and uncharacteristically divided and apparently unsure. Tucker Carlson railed against the stupidity of attacking Syria. Commentators on MSNBC were also expressing intense scepticism of the US intent and fear about possible escalation. ..."
"... The official story is a hot mess of proven falsehoods, contradictions, implausible conspiracy theories, more falsehoods and inexplicable silences were cricket chirps tell us all we need to know. ..."
"... The UK government has lied and evaded on every key aspect. ..."
"... Indeed if current claims by Russian FM Lavrov turn out to be true, a "novichok" (whatever that precisely means in this case) may not have been the only substance found in those samples, and a compound called "BZ", a non-lethal agent developed in Europe and America, has been discovered and suppressed in the OPCW report (more about that later). ..."
"... The Skripals themselves were announced to be alive and out of danger mere days after claims they were all but certain to die. Yulia, soon thereafter, apparently called her cousin Viktoria only to subsequently announce, indirectly through the helpful agency of the Metropolitan Police, that she didn't want to talk to her cousin – or anyone else – at all. ..."
"... She is now allegedly discharged from hospital and has "specially trained officers helping to take care of" her in an undisclosed location. A form or words so creepily sinister it's hard to imagine how they were ever permitted the light of day. ..."
"... If a false flag chemical attack had taken place in Syria at the time Russia predicted, just a week or two after the Skripal poisoning, a lot of the attention that's been paid to the Skripals over the last month would likely have been diverted. Many of the questions being asked by Russia and in the alt media may never have been asked as the focus of the world turned to a possible superpower stand-off in the Middle East. ..."
"... So, could it be the Skripal event was never intended to last so long in the public eye? Could it be that it was indeed a false flag, or a fake event, as many have alleged, planned as a sketchy prelude to, or warm up act for a bigger chemical attack in Syria, scheduled for a week or so later in mid-March – just around the time Russia was warning of such a possibility? ..."
"... This would explain why the UK may have been pushing for the false flag to happen (as claimed by Russia) even after it could no longer serve much useful purpose on the ground, and why the Douma "attack" seems to have been so sketchily done by a gang on the run. The UK needed the second part to happen in order to distract from the first. ..."
"... If this is true, Theresa May and her cabinet are currently way out on a limb even by cynical UK standards. Not only have they lied about the Skripal event, but in order to cover up that lie they have promoted a false flag in Syria, and "responded" to it by a flagrant breach of international and domestic law. Worst of all, if the Russians aren't bluffing, they have some evidence to prove some of the most egregious parts of this. ..."
"... But even if some or all of our speculation proves false, and even if the Russian claims of UK collusion with terrorists in Syria prove unfounded, May is still guilty of multiple lies and has still waged war without parliamentary approval. ..."
"... The UK were the most vocal about Syria, and desperately tried to drum up support over Skripal, but it all came to nothing much in the end. ..."
"... Theresa May's political career still hangs by a thread, and her "Falklands moment", at best, staved off the inevitable for a few months. A washout in the EU elections, a very real threat from Farage's Brexit party, and rumblings inside her own party, make her position as unstable as ever. ..."
"... In the US, generally speaking, it seems that the Trump admin – or at least whichever interested parties currently have control of the wheels of government – have called time on war in Syria. Instead, they've moved on to projects in Venezuela and North Korea, and even war with Iran. ..."
"... The failure of the Douma false flag to cause the war it was meant to cause, and the vast collection of evidence that suggests it was a false flag, should be spread far and wide. Not just because it's a truth which vindicates the smeared minority in the alternate media. ..."
In view of the latest revelations from the leaked report, which seem to prove that at least some elements of the Douma "chemical
attack" were entirely staged, we want to take look back at the chaotic events of Spring 2018.
What was the agenda behind the Douma false flag?
Why was the US response seemingly token and ineffective?
Why was the Secretary of State Rex Tillerson fired?
What agenda tied the Skripal case to the Douma attack?
The following is an extract from an article by Catte originally published April 14th last year, which takes on a greater weight
in light of certain evidence – not only that the Douma attack was faked, but that the OPCW is compromised.
The neocon faction in the US is usually (and reasonably) regarded as the motivator behind much of the western aggression
in the Middle East.
Since at least 2001 and the launch of the "War on Terror" the US has led the way in finding or creating facile excuses to fight
oil wars and hegemonic wars and proxy wars in the region. But this time the dynamics look a little different.
This time it really looks as if the UK has been setting the pace of the "response".
The fact (as stated above) that Mattis was apparently telegraphing his own private doubts a)about the verifiability of the
attacks, and b)about the dangers of a military response suggests he was a far from enthusiastic partaker in this adventure.
Trump's attitude is harder to gauge. His tweets veered wildly between unhinged threats and apparent efforts at conciliation.
But he must have known he would lose (and seemingly has lost) a great part of his natural voter base (who elected him on a no-more-war
mandate) by an act of open aggression that threatened confrontation with Russia on the flimsiest of pretexts.
Granted the US has been looking for excuses to intervene ever more overtly in Syria since 2013, and in that sense this
Douma "initiative" is a continuation of their longterm policy. It's also true Russia was warning just such a false flag would
be attempted in early March. But in the intervening month the situation on the ground has changed so radically that such an attempt
no longer made any sense.
A false flag in early March, while pockets of the US proxy army were still holding ground in Ghouta would have enabled
a possible offensive in their support which would prevent Ghouta falling entirely into government hands and thereby also maintain
the pressure on Damascus. A false flag in early April is all but useless because the US proxy army in the region was completely
vanquished and nothing would be gained by an offensive in that place at that time.
You can see why Mattis and others in the administration might be reluctant to take part in the false flag/punitive air strike
narrative if they saw nothing currently to be gained to repay the risk. They may have preferred to wait for developments and plan
for a more productive way of playing the R2P card in the future.
The US media has been similarly, and uncharacteristically divided and apparently unsure. Tucker Carlson railed against
the stupidity of attacking Syria. Commentators on MSNBC were also expressing intense scepticism of the US intent and fear about
possible escalation.
The UK govt and media on the other hand has been much more homogeneous in advocating for action. No doubts of the type expressed
by Mattis have been heard from the lips of an UK government minister. Even May, a cowardly PM, has been (under how much pressure?)
voicing sterling certitude in public that action HAD to be taken.
Couple this with the – as yet unverified – claims by Russia of direct UK involvement in arranging the Douma "attack", and the
claims by Syria that the perps are in their custody, and a tentative storyline emerges. It's possible this time there were other
considerations in the mix beside the usual need to "be seen to do something" and Trump's perpetual requirement to appease the
liberal Russiagaters and lunatic warmongers at home. Maybe this time it was also about helping the UK out of a sticky problem.
THE SKRIPAL CONSIDERATION
Probably the only thing we can all broadly agree on about the Skripal narrative is that it manifestly did not go according
to plan. However it was intended to play out, it wasn't this way. Since some time in mid to late March it's been clear the entire
thing has become little more than an exercise in damage-limitation, leak-plugging and general containment.
The official story is a hot mess of proven falsehoods, contradictions, implausible conspiracy theories, more falsehoods
and inexplicable silences were cricket chirps tell us all we need to know.
The UK government has lied and evaded on every key aspect.
It lied again and again about the information Porton Down had given it
Its lawyers all but lied to Mr Justice Robinson about whether or not the Skripals had relatives in Russia in an unscrupulous
attempt to maintain total control of them, or at least of the narrative.
It is not publishing the OPCW report on the chemical analyses, and the summary of that report reads like an exercise in
allusion and weasel-wording. Even the name of the "toxic substance" found in the Skripals' blood is omitted, and the only thing
tying it to the UK government's public claims of "novichok" is association by inference and proximity.
Indeed if current claims by Russian FM Lavrov turn out to be true, a "novichok" (whatever that precisely means in this
case) may not have been the only substance found in those samples, and a compound called "BZ", a non-lethal agent developed in
Europe and America, has been discovered and suppressed in the OPCW report (more about that later).
None of the alleged victims of this alleged attack has been seen in public even in passing since the event. There is no film
or photographs of DS Bailey leaving the hospital, no film or photographs of his wife or family members doing the same. No interviews
with Bailey, no interviews with his wife, family, distant relatives, work colleagues.
The Skripals themselves were announced to be alive and out of danger mere days after claims they were all but certain to
die. Yulia, soon thereafter, apparently called her cousin Viktoria only to subsequently announce, indirectly through the helpful
agency of the Metropolitan Police, that she didn't want to talk to her cousin – or anyone else – at all.
She is now allegedly discharged from hospital and has "specially trained officers helping to take care of" her in an undisclosed
location. A form or words so creepily sinister it's hard to imagine how they were ever permitted the light of day.
Very little of this bizarre, self-defeating, embarrassing, hysterical story makes any sense other than as a random narrative,
snaking wildly in response to events the narrative-makers can't completely control.
Why? What went wrong? Why has the UK government got itself into this mess? And how much did the Douma "gas attack" and subsequent
drive for a concerted western "response" have to do with trying to fix that?
IS THIS WHAT HAPPENED?
If a false flag chemical attack had taken place in Syria at the time Russia predicted, just a week or two after the Skripal
poisoning, a lot of the attention that's been paid to the Skripals over the last month would likely have been diverted. Many of
the questions being asked by Russia and in the alt media may never have been asked as the focus of the world turned to a possible
superpower stand-off in the Middle East.
So, could it be the Skripal event was never intended to last so long in the public eye? Could it be that it was indeed
a false flag, or a fake event, as many have alleged, planned as a sketchy prelude to, or warm up act for a bigger chemical attack
in Syria, scheduled for a week or so later in mid-March – just around the time Russia was warning of such a possibility?
Could it be this planned event was unexpectedly canceled by the leading players in the drama (the US) when the Russians called
them out and the rapid and unexpected fall of Ghouta meant any such intervention became pointless at least for the moment?
Did this cancelation leave the UK swinging in the wind, with a fantastical story that was never intended to withstand close
scrutiny, and no second act for distraction?
So, did they push on with the now virtually useless "chemical attack", botch it (again), leaving a clear evidence trail leading
back to them? Did they then further insist on an allied "response" to their botched false flag in order to provide yet more distraction
and hopefully destroy some of that evidence?
This would explain why the UK may have been pushing for the false flag to happen (as claimed by Russia) even after it could
no longer serve much useful purpose on the ground, and why the Douma "attack" seems to have been so sketchily done by a gang on
the run. The UK needed the second part to happen in order to distract from the first.
It would explain why the US has been less than enthused by the idea of reprisals. Because while killing Syrians to further
geo-strategic interests is not a problem, killing Syrians (and risking escalation with Russia) in order to rescue an embarrassed
UK government is less appealing.
And it would explain why the "reprisals" when they came were so half-hearted.
If this is true, Theresa May and her cabinet are currently way out on a limb even by cynical UK standards. Not only have
they lied about the Skripal event, but in order to cover up that lie they have promoted a false flag in Syria, and "responded"
to it by a flagrant breach of international and domestic law. Worst of all, if the Russians aren't bluffing, they have some evidence
to prove some of the most egregious parts of this.
This is very bad.
But even if some or all of our speculation proves false, and even if the Russian claims of UK collusion with terrorists
in Syria prove unfounded, May is still guilty of multiple lies and has still waged war without parliamentary approval.
This is a major issue. She and her government should resign. But it's unlikely that will happen.
So what next? There is a sense this is a watershed for many of the parties involved and for the citizens of the countries drawn
into this.
Will the usual suspects try to avoid paying for their crimes and misadventures by more rhetoric, more false flags, more "reprisals"?
Or will this signal some other change in direction?
We'll all know soon enough.
* * *
Back to today...
...and while things have moved on, we're still puzzling over all the same issues.
What was the purpose of the Skripal attack?
What was the original plan of the Douma attack?
Is there, as it appears, an internal power struggle in the Trump administration?
Has that resolved? Who is running the United States?
Seeing as the OPCW has been shown to cover-up evidence in Douma, can we trust them on Skripal? Or anything else?
Speaking of which, where on Earth IS Sergei Skripal?
All these questions stand, and are important, but more important than all of that is the lesson: They tried it before, and just
because it didn't work doesn't mean they won't try it again.
Last spring, the Western powers showed they will deploy a false flag if they need too, for domestic or international motives.
And they have the motives right now.
The UK were the most vocal about Syria, and desperately tried to drum up support over Skripal, but it all came to nothing
much in the end.
Theresa May's political career still hangs by a thread, and her "Falklands moment", at best, staved off the inevitable for
a few months. A washout in the EU elections, a very real threat from Farage's Brexit party, and rumblings inside her own party, make
her position as unstable as ever.
Britain had the most to gain, of all NATO countries, and that is still true. We don't know what they might do.
This time they might even receive greater support from France this time around – since Macron is facing a revolution at home and
would kill (possibly literally) for a nice international distraction.
In the US, generally speaking, it seems that the Trump admin – or at least whichever interested parties currently have control
of the wheels of government – have called time on war in Syria. Instead, they've moved on to projects in Venezuela and North Korea,
and even war with Iran.
That's not to say Syria is safe, far from it. They are always just one carefully place false-flag away from all-out war. Last
year, Mattis (or whoever) decided war with Syria was not an option – that it was too risky or complicated. That might not happen
next time.
Clearly, the US hasn't totally seen sense in terms of stoking conflict with Russia – as seen by the decision to pull out of the
INF Treaty late last year. And further demonstrated by their attempts to overthrow Russia's ally Nicolas Maduro. Another ripe candidate
for a false flag.
The failure of the Douma false flag to cause the war it was meant to cause, and the vast collection of evidence that suggests
it was a false flag, should be spread far and wide. Not just because it's a truth which vindicates the smeared minority in the alternate
media.
But because recognising what they were trying to do last time , is the best defense when they try it again next time .
Trump Administration Withholds Information That Could Debunk Russian Interference
Claims
Lavrov responded first to the question. He said that there is no evidence that shows any
Russian interference in the U.S. elections. He continued:
Speaking about the most recent US presidential campaign in particular, we have had in
place an information exchange channel about potential unintended risks arising in cyberspace
since 2013. From October 2016 (when the US Democratic Administration first raised this issue)
until January 2017 (before Donald Trump's inauguration), this channel was used to handle
requests and responses. Not so long ago, when the attacks on Russia in connection with the
alleged interference in the elections reached their high point, we proposed publishing this
exchange of messages between these two entities, which engage in staving off cyberspace
incidents. I reminded Mr Pompeo about this today. The administration, now led by President
Trump, refused to do so. I'm not sure who was behind this decision, but the idea to publish
this data was blocked by the United States. However, we believe that publishing it would
remove many currently circulating fabrications. Of course, we will not unilaterally make
these exchanges public, but I would still like to make this fact known.
The communication channel about cyber issues did indeed exist. In June 2013 the Presidents
of the United States and Russia issued a Joint Statement about "Information and
Communications Technologies (ICTs)". The parties agreed to establishing communication
channels between each other computer emergency response teams, to use the direct
communication link of the Nuclear Risk Reduction Centers for cyber issue exchanges, and to
have direct communication links between high-level officials in the White House and Kremlin
for such matter. A Fact Sheet published by the Obama White House detailed the implementation
of these three channels.
One inference from Lavrov's statement is that the "fundamental understanding on this
matter" between the two presidents that has "not been fully implemented" is the release of
the communications about cyberspace incidents. The Russians clearly think that a release of
the communications with the Obama administration would exculpate them. That would also
exculpate Trump from any further collusion allegations. Why then does the Trump
administration reject the release? Who is blocking it?
Cont. reading: Trump Administration Withholds Information That Could Debunk Russian
Interference Claims
Emin just called and asked me to contact you with something very interesting.
The Crown prosecutor of Russia met with his father Aras this morning and in their meeting offered to provide the Trump campaign
with some official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia and would be very useful
to your father.
This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government's support for Mr. Trump -
helped along by Aras and Emin.
What do you think is the best way to handle this information and would you be able to speak to Emin about it directly?
I can also send this info to your father via Rhona, but it is ultra sensitive so wanted to send to you first.
Best
Rob Goldstone
On Jun 3, 2016, at 10:53, Donald Trump Jr. wrote:
Thanks Rob I appreciate that. I am on the road at the moment but perhaps I just speak to Emin first. Seems we have some time and
if it's what you say I love it especially later in the summer. Could we do a call first thing next week when I am back?
US foreign policy under President Trump is remarkably similar to what it would have been
under Hillary...
except even she wouldnt have put a Chabad Orthodox *** in charge of a mideast 'peace'
plan, let alone a 'solution' for the illegal immigration crisis which Trump did nothing about
when the GOP controlled both House and Senate
I do not think Putin is an idiot...he has consistently made good decisions and judgements
and outsmarted both Obama and Trump on every occasion. For some reason I am worried that he
is palling up to the wrong guy. Trump and the US cannot be trusted to observe any agreement
or treaty and have displayed this over and over again.
Putin should be aligning with China who can be trusted to honour deals made. A military
alliance between Russia and China with mutual aid of attacked by a third party would make the
best strategic sense. If Putin doesn't;t do this he will get weakened economically and then
when he is weak, the US will invade.
As quoted by the Moon Of Alabama Lavrov claimed there were back channels between the US
and Russia from 2013 to Trumps taking office. Lavov claims these communications would shed
lots of light on the Russians not interfering in the election and other stuff the Russians
have been falsely accused of. Russia wants to release these communications and will only do
so if the US agrees which they have not. Pompeo was silent.
...what motive would they possibly have, these enormous corporate media conglomerates, and the transnational corporations that
own them, and these intelligence agencies, and their fronts and cutouts, and corporate lobbyists and PR firms, and councils, and
think tanks, and research institutes, to disinform the Western masses, or to manufacture an official narrative that allows them
to systematically stigmatize, marginalize, criminalize, deplatform, demonetize, and otherwise eliminate any type of speech they
deem to be "Russian disinformation," or "extremist content," or a "conspiracy theory," or simply too "dangerous," "divisive,"
or "confusing" to circulate among the general public?
No see? That makes no sense. That's just an example of the type of fascist disinformation these Putin-Nazi disinformationists
are trying to spread to confuse us to the point where we can't even concentrate long enough to think anymore, or parse the meaningless
jargon-laden nonsense they're trying to deceive us with, and just devolve into these Pavlovian imbeciles conditioned to respond
to specific trigger words, like "extremist," "terrorist," "fascist," "populist," "anti-Semitic," "Russians," "hackers," and whatever
other emotional stimuli we are being trained to instantly recognize and robotically react to like circus animals.
Or I don't know, maybe it isn't. I'm not even sure what I'm trying to say. Probably they've already got to me. I'd better get
back down into my anti-disinformation bunker, pull up The Guardian , or The Washington Post , or Der Spiegel
on my child-proof computer, and immerse myself in some objective journalism, before the Putin-Nazi spywhale makes its way up the
Landwehrkanal, takes control of what's left of my mind, and forces me into going out and trying to vote for Hitler or something.
I recommend you do the same, and I'll see you when this nightmare over.
C. J. Hopkins is an award-winning American playwright, novelist and political satirist based in Berlin. His plays are published
by Bloomsbury Publishing (UK) and Broadway Play Publishing (USA). His debut novel,
ZONE 23 , is published by Snoggsworthy,
Swaine & Cormorant Paperbacks. He can be reached at cjhopkins.com or
consentfactory.org .
"... I don' know what are the revenues of NYT or The Guardian, but I know that the US government spends 750 million a year on the Agency for Global Media (formerly Broadcasting Board of Governors). If you think US or France is under attack by warmongers, you can't imagine how many propagandists are these 750 million hiring in low-COL places like Serbia, Burma, Venezuela. ..."
"... The situation is even worse today as the CIA and Pentagon have massive propaganda budgets and have infiltrated the media at every level , the public is unaware that each day they are brainwashed by the MSM to support the agenda of the "deep State' and the MIC. ..."
"... No mention of the journalists as CIA assets who publish planted stories? Isn't Dr Udo Ulfkotte one who did that, repented, told all in his best-seller Bought Journalists, and as a warning to others unselfishly dropped dead of a heart attack within a couple of years? ..."
"... The best sentence was the one expressing the Establishment's collective faux shock that anything other than Russian spybots could be responsible for the serfs' rejection of the "two centrist parties" that have sponged up lobbyist money for 3 decades, cashing in on the globalist-Neoliberal economy, as rents rose and wages fell. ..."
"... Not too sure about the US even remaining important as a continent wide farm.. The aquifers in the West and Midwest are being inexorably drawn down to sustain the current rate of farming, so it's possible North America's value would primarily be as a source of pockets of human talent in the sciences and technologies. ..."
the hysteria emanating from the nyt, cnn and the rest of the msm is the result of a conscious
or subconscious grasp that socialism dying worldwide. the great ponzi scam of forcing future
generations to pay for the cookies and ice cream of the present generation has hit the math
of the complete dearth of unencumbered assets from which to emit more unpayable debt,
insufficient economic growth upon which to pretend the debt can be serviced forget about
repayment and the simple fact demographichs throughout the west are so negative the
government and public pension scheme blowup in the several years
the more intelligent members of the establishment know in their bones the jig is up. hence
the great and urgent need to turn up .lets over throw sovereign nations so the plunder model
..venezuela, syria, russia, china et al.can find more unencumbered assets to be brought into
the nyc, london orbit of banks from which new debt can be emitted.
the west is staring at its last decade of global rule, a rule that began 500 years ago. by
the 2030's finance, manufacturing and all the global power and prestige that goes with it
moves from ny, london to shanghai and moscow.
if the united states is lucky and remains intact, a giant IF, we may wind up as continent
size farm with a smidgen of non competitive industry here and there.
the west has only disinformation with which to go to war against the rising east. the
weapons of the west are powerful ONLY in their quantity. Russian weapons already are many
years beyond anything the pentagon has in the field and the gap is only increasing, ergo the
us treasury is forced to fight the battle using sanctions and other forms of restrictions, a
long term losing strategy irrespective of any short terms gains.
so, cj worry not, the disinformation campaign is backed by nothing but hot air and the
rage from being thwarted by china and russia as well as brave pipsqueakes like iran and
venezuela.
see it for what it is, transparent sound and fury signifying nothing
I don' know what are the revenues of NYT or The Guardian, but I know that the US government
spends 750 million a year on the Agency for Global Media (formerly Broadcasting Board of
Governors). If you think US or France is under attack by warmongers, you can't imagine how
many propagandists are these 750 million hiring in low-COL places like Serbia, Burma,
Venezuela.
I don' know what are the revenues of NYT or The Guardian, but I know that the US
government spends 750 million a year on the Agency for Global Media (formerly Broadcasting
Board of Governors). If you think US or France is under attack by warmongers, you can't
imagine how many propagandists are these 750 million hiring in low-COL places like Serbia,
Burma, Venezuela.
In 1917 US Congressman Calloway informed Congress that J.P. Morgan interests had purchased 25
of the nations leading newspapers and replaced their editors in order to control the mass
media for the benefit of the plutocrats/money interests who ran the country and who still do
. The situation is even worse today as the CIA and Pentagon have massive propaganda budgets
and have infiltrated the media at every level , the public is unaware that each day they are
brainwashed by the MSM to support the agenda of the "deep State' and the MIC.
See, half a century after McCarthy, wingers got their noses into some (not all) Soviet files,
and got to scream, nonstop and to this day, "See!@@#$% McCarthy was RIGHT!"
Betya in a half century, if we're still around, the same type people are going to get
nosing in some files somewhere and find incontrovertible evidence that: "See!@#%$%^^ The New
York Times was RIGHT!"
And then there's the evil Russian spywhale, which the disinformationists want us to
believe is just a harmless "therapy Beluga" for kids, but which has clearly been strapped
with some sort of monstrous, mind-controlling apparatus that enables the Kremlin to
remotely implant a host of dangerous "populist" ideas in the brains of defenseless
Norwegian fishermen, weaponizing them into a horde of neo-Odinist Viking berserkers who
will scream down out of Scandinavia and storm the EU Parliament in Brussels smelling of
akvavit and fermented shark.
You had me doing a cartoon spit-take with this beaut!
these enormous corporate media conglomerates, and the transnational corporations that
own them, and these intelligence agencies, and their fronts and cutouts, and corporate
lobbyists and PR firms, and councils, and think tanks, and research institutes, to
disinform the Western masses, or to manufacture an official narrative
No mention of the journalists as CIA assets who publish planted stories? Isn't Dr Udo
Ulfkotte one who did that, repented, told all in his best-seller Bought Journalists, and as a
warning to others unselfishly dropped dead of a heart attack within a couple of years?
" that enables the Kremlin to remotely implant a host of dangerous "populist" ideas in
the brains of defenseless Norwegian fishermen, weaponizing them into a horde of neo-Odinist
Viking berserkers who will scream down out of Scandinavia and storm the EU Parliament in
Brussels smelling of akvavit and fermented shark "
It isn't the akvavit that does it, but you can't do it without the akvavit.
And then there's the evil Russian spywhale, which the disinformationists want us to
believe is just a harmless "therapy Beluga" for kids, but which has clearly been strapped
with some sort of monstrous, mind-controlling apparatus that enables the Kremlin to
remotely implant a host of dangerous "populist" ideas in the brains of defenseless
Norwegian fishermen, weaponizing them into a horde of neo-Odinist Viking berserkers who
will scream down out of Scandinavia and storm the EU Parliament in Brussels smelling of
akvavit and fermented shark.
I had a good laugh at the Spy Whale schtick. One look at the thing, and you get the
idea it should've been in a Pink Panther movie.
Made up shit that only a mind of a child could believe.
The best sentence was the one expressing the Establishment's collective faux shock that
anything other than Russian spybots could be responsible for the serfs' rejection of the "two
centrist parties" that have sponged up lobbyist money for 3 decades, cashing in on the
globalist-Neoliberal economy, as rents rose and wages fell.
The serfs have to love that. How
could they not embrace it? Only spybots beaming up doom-and-gloom messages from halfway
around the globe could persuade the thick-headed serfs that the part-time / churn / gig
economy is anything but nirvana.
@paraglider I think
you're probably right about the inevitable collapse of the West as the dominant global power.
Not too sure about the US even remaining important as a continent wide farm.. The aquifers
in the West and Midwest are being inexorably drawn down to sustain the current rate of
farming, so it's possible North America's value would primarily be as a source of pockets of
human talent in the sciences and technologies.
Also Russia has been making some progress, but unless that continues it may not reach the
level of competitiveness in science, industry and domestic product to be any more than a
junior partner to China.
Whatever happens, a sea change in history seems unavoidable and it won't be what our
present rulers think it will. I don't pretend to think I can reliably predict what is
coming.
I used to know Russian disinformation when I saw it because it was obvious when it came from
the USSR. Then the MSM peddled it as authentic as when, in response to Soviet deployment of
IRBM in Europe, pinkos magically appeared to protest the American deployment of similar
weapons. It was well funded too as Brezhnev had serious oil revenues to finance both his
military and his disinformation campaigns and the USSR had 125% of America's population and a
satellite Eastern Europe to boot.
Now I am to believe a motheaten "Russia' with less than half the US population, a hostile
Ukraine and no Eastern European satrapies is able to exert more 'influence' in the West than
the mighty USSR. Yet those same 'pinkos' would have me believe a castrated Russia is an
existential threat. Come on!
...what motive would they possibly have, these enormous corporate media conglomerates, and the transnational corporations that
own them, and these intelligence agencies, and their fronts and cutouts, and corporate lobbyists and PR firms, and councils, and
think tanks, and research institutes, to disinform the Western masses, or to manufacture an official narrative that allows them
to systematically stigmatize, marginalize, criminalize, deplatform, demonetize, and otherwise eliminate any type of speech they
deem to be "Russian disinformation," or "extremist content," or a "conspiracy theory," or simply too "dangerous," "divisive,"
or "confusing" to circulate among the general public?
No see? That makes no sense. That's just an example of the type of fascist disinformation these Putin-Nazi disinformationists
are trying to spread to confuse us to the point where we can't even concentrate long enough to think anymore, or parse the meaningless
jargon-laden nonsense they're trying to deceive us with, and just devolve into these Pavlovian imbeciles conditioned to respond
to specific trigger words, like "extremist," "terrorist," "fascist," "populist," "anti-Semitic," "Russians," "hackers," and whatever
other emotional stimuli we are being trained to instantly recognize and robotically react to like circus animals.
Or I don't know, maybe it isn't. I'm not even sure what I'm trying to say. Probably they've already got to me. I'd better get
back down into my anti-disinformation bunker, pull up The Guardian , or The Washington Post , or Der Spiegel
on my child-proof computer, and immerse myself in some objective journalism, before the Putin-Nazi spywhale makes its way up the
Landwehrkanal, takes control of what's left of my mind, and forces me into going out and trying to vote for Hitler or something.
I recommend you do the same, and I'll see you when this nightmare over.
C. J. Hopkins is an award-winning American playwright, novelist and political satirist based in Berlin. His plays are published
by Bloomsbury Publishing (UK) and Broadway Play Publishing (USA). His debut novel,
ZONE 23 , is published by Snoggsworthy,
Swaine & Cormorant Paperbacks. He can be reached at cjhopkins.com or
consentfactory.org .
Neocons and neolibs control the USA foreign policy. That's given. NYT just reflects foreign policy establishment talking points.
Links between Daniel Jones and Steele are really interesting and new information
Notable quotes:
"... "The goal here is bigger than any one election," said Daniel Jones, a former F.B.I. analyst and Senate investigator whose nonprofit group, Advance Democracy, recently flagged a number of suspicious websites and social media accounts to law enforcement authorities. ..."
"... According to a report published this morning, he notes that the Silicon Valley Community Foundation, which has received "significant funding" from technology billionaires, funneled $500,000 to the non-profit group Advance Democracy. That organization shares a street address with The Democracy Integrity Project. ..."
"... That's because both organizations were founded by former Senate Intel staffer Daniel Jones, who at that time worked for Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who hails from just down the road from Silicon Valley in San Francisco. As TruNews has previously reported, those connections to the Senate Intel Committee have played a significant role in the ongoing "Russia Narrative" drama in Washington, D.C. ..."
"... Jones has been previously identified as a central figure in the investigation who served as potential go-between with the committee's ranking Democrat, Sen. Mark Warner, and former MI6 agent Christopher Steele. ..."
"... The NYT is very much invested in the post Cold War status quo. ..."
"... That would be the Clintons and the Bushes. Both political parties and every POTUS since 1968. In fact, I believe this is the main reason why the Dems created and are pushing Russiagate so hard. They don't want us looking at what really gave us Trump: the neoliberal neoconservative fiasco of the past 40+ years. ..."
"... told about Russia and that they interfered with not only our elections, but in so many other countries too. I remember a time when people would insist on seeing the evidence on stuff the intelligence agencies tell them, but ever since Her lost the election they lost their minds. I'll see references to articles that say something, but offer no evidence. Like the one this essay is about. ..."
"... Plus they tried to kill the Skripals. And the GOP are also under Vlad's thumb. This is why Russia Gate has to be debunked. ..."
"... So, yes, it's going to take too long. Short of a miracle, I'm starting to think we're all going to be radioactive ash before Cold War II ends. There was a modicum of restraint with Cold War I; some people had enough sense to realize the end result was nuclear war. That type of sense seems nowhere to be found in Washington, D.C., these days. ..."
"... Dick Cheney is as evil as any human being I've ever heard of. I doubt whether he's done everything some folks believe he's done -- but not because he isn't evil enough, only because he lacked either the guts or the necessity. I believe he would have fit in perfectly well with Himmler and Goebbels, and he would enthusiastically embraced their approach to getting and wielding power. ..."
"... A few months ago, I made a comment to someone that it's like we're supposed to hate them (Russia) for their freedoms. ..."
gjohnsit on Sun, 05/12/2019 - 5:32pm The NY Times just posted one of the most atrocious pieces of
journalistic malpractice I have ever read.
Less than two weeks before pivotal elections for the European Parliament, a constellation of websites and social media accounts
linked to Russia or far-right groups is spreading disinformation, encouraging discord and amplifying distrust in the centrist
parties that have governed for decades.
European Union investigators, academics and advocacy groups say the new disinformation efforts share many of the same digital
fingerprints or tactics used in previous Russian attacks, including the Kremlin's interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign.
That's a powerful statement. There's just one problem: the article doesn't present a single bit of proof. Just anecdotes. In fact,
it doesn't even quote anyone to back up these claims, but for one single exception.
"The goal here is bigger than any one election," said Daniel Jones, a former F.B.I. analyst and Senate investigator whose
nonprofit group, Advance Democracy, recently flagged a number of suspicious websites and social media accounts to law enforcement
authorities.
"It is to constantly divide, increase distrust and undermine our faith in institutions and democracy itself. They're working
to destroy everything that was built post-World War II."
Russia is why people are losing faith in our government institutions. Not because they are owned by oligarchs. If you listen closely
you can hear President Bush.
So who is Daniel Jones and Advance Democracy? That's an
interesting story .
According to a report published this morning, he notes that the Silicon Valley Community Foundation, which has received "significant
funding" from technology billionaires, funneled $500,000 to the non-profit group Advance Democracy. That organization shares a
street address with The Democracy Integrity Project.
That's because both organizations were founded by former Senate Intel staffer Daniel Jones, who at that time worked for
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who hails from just down the road from Silicon Valley in San Francisco. As TruNews has previously
reported, those connections to the Senate Intel Committee have played a significant role in the ongoing "Russia Narrative" drama
in Washington, D.C.
Jones has been previously identified as a central figure in the investigation who served as potential go-between with the
committee's ranking Democrat, Sen. Mark Warner, and former MI6 agent Christopher Steele. That's because TDIP, which receives
significant funding from George Soros, funneled some of that money toward Steele's research for Fusion GPS that led to the infamous
dossier on President Donald Trump.
However, as Ross reports today: "Mystery surrounds both of Jones's operations. The identities of both groups' donors have largely
been kept secret, as Jones has avoided revealing his backers.
Nothing to see here. Just two sketchy political organizations sharing the same street address. Perfectly normal.
"The election has yet to come, and we are already suspected of doing something wrong?" the Russian prime minister, Dmitri A.
Medvedev, said in March. "Suspecting someone of an event that has not yet happened is a bunch of paranoid nonsense."
It's not nonsense. It's scapegoating. There's a difference.
CBS News (2/4/19) briefly interviewed Honolulu Civil Beats reporter Nick Grube regarding Gabbard's campaign announcement. The
anchors had clearly never encountered the term anti-interventionism before, struggling to even pronounce the word, then laughing
and saying it "doesn't roll off the tongue."
They're [the Kremlin] working to destroy everything that was built post-World War II.
That would be the Clintons and the Bushes. Both political parties and every POTUS since 1968. In fact, I believe this is
the main reason why the Dems created and are pushing Russiagate so hard. They don't want us looking at what really gave us Trump:
the neoliberal neoconservative fiasco of the past 40+ years.
It's also why so many people of my generation (over 60) are having trouble understanding and accepting what's going on. To
do so will require letting go of everything they thought was true. That kind of change does not come easy to many people.
I heard someone recently say "We have to elect a Dem or else our post-War advantages will disappear."
Got to wonder where he's been for the past 40 years. That horse left the barn a long time ago.
told about Russia and that they interfered with not only our elections, but in so many other countries too. I remember
a time when people would insist on seeing the evidence on stuff the intelligence agencies tell them, but ever since Her lost the
election they lost their minds. I'll see references to articles that say something, but offer no evidence. Like the one this essay
is about.
Plus they tried to kill the Skripals. And the GOP are also under Vlad's thumb. This is why Russia Gate has to be debunked.
People say that Mueller has put to rest the fact that Russia indeed interfered with the election, but all he showed was the
FBIs "belief' that they did and that some Russians will ties to Vlad hacked the DNC computers. He didn't interview anyone involved
with that as laid out in my recent essay.
I've even seen people who were once against our invasions being okay with them and repeating the party line. Unfuckingbelievable!
The Year 2000 was not that long ago, and we were bombarded for two decades beforehand with talk of all the dreadful things
that might happen, could happen, and some people firmly believed would happen - and then didn't happen. (As it turned out,
the most obvious sign of "Y2K" was the "19100" bug that plagued Web pages for months afterward. It was cosmetic and harmless,
but annoying.)
I expected it to take about ten years for sanity to return - but it looks like being more like fifty. And there will probably
be some cultists who construct their own "reality" around what didn't happen, like the 1840s Millerites (who spun off the still-extant
Seventh Day Adventists).
The NYT and WaPoo have new articles out about how bad the dastardly Russians are still interfering with the whole dang country
now. And WaPoo had some university do a study on how Russia tried to get people to vote for Bernie and blah, blah,...
I read an article last year saying that Bernie needs to knock off being with the Russia Gaters because he is going to be accused
of being in Vlad's pockets anyway. But he's still saying that Trump is under Russia's thumb and that Russia is doing all kinds
of bad stuff.
Then there's all the websites like DK, emptyhead, democratic underground and others saying that Mueller confirmed Russia did
bad things and maybe if the democrats work harder on their investigations they will find stuff that Mueller missed. I think 10
years is optimistic, but however long it's going to take its going to be too long.
I think 10 years is optimistic, but however long it's going to take it's going to be too long.
Consider how long it took for Cold War I to finally start to ebb. It took at least a decade, and that was with the memory of
a horrendous world war fresh on most minds. Now, we're so insulated from the reality of war, not even allowed reports from the
battlefields, much less accurate information and numbers, that we have lost touch with the horror. Evil men such as Bolton spend
every minute of every day trying to embroil us in deadly excursions and foreign entanglements. Our "intelligence" agencies are
no more than modern versions of the NAZI era Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda.
So, yes, it's going to take too long. Short of a miracle, I'm starting to think we're all going to be radioactive
ash before Cold War II ends. There was a modicum of restraint with Cold War I; some people had enough sense to realize the end
result was nuclear war. That type of sense seems nowhere to be found in Washington, D.C., these days.
So, yes, it's going to take too long. Short of a miracle, I'm starting to think we're all going to be radioactive ash before
Cold War II ends. There was a modicum of restraint with Cold War I; some people had enough sense to realize the end result
was nuclear war. That type of sense seems nowhere to be found in Washington, D.C., these days.
Fortunately for us ordinary Americans, the Russians really do love their children too.....
@snoopydawg
Are they going to say they're both (Bernie and Trump) working with Russia? That would be amusing. I wonder if it would cause any
of them to vote third party or not vote at all.
...who was a software development consultant at the time, the reason nothing much happened was that's lot of people worked
their butts off for several years. COBOL programmers were dragged out of retirement and all kinds of goofy OS and library hacks
were implemented to reduce the amount of work and risk.
It's also why so many people of my generation (over 60) are having trouble understanding and accepting what's going on.
To do so will require letting go of everything they thought was true. That kind of change does not come easy to many people.
I spent several years grappling with my fall down the rabbit hole. I started freeing myself from the matrix during #Occupy
and towards the end of Obama's first term I was starting to really get it... at least get it enough to know I wasn't voting for
him a second time. Then Bernie arrived on the scene and it was music to my ears. That pretty much completed the process for me
but it STILL took time and I STILL have places where I "don't believe they are that evil" (twin towers anyone) yet I suspect that
in the fullness of time I may yet find that they are in fact that evil.
I have a lot of sympathy for those still caught in the matrix. It's a really good trap. That doesn't change the fact that I
see them as my enemy and the enemy of all mankind but I at least understand.
@SnappleBC Dick Cheney is as evil as any human being I've ever heard of. I doubt whether he's done everything some folks believe he's
done -- but not because he isn't evil enough, only because he lacked either the guts or the necessity. I believe he would have
fit in perfectly well with Himmler and Goebbels, and he would enthusiastically embraced their approach to getting and wielding
power.
Just this century this country has killed a million Iraqis and who knows how many people in the other countries we've invaded?
40,000 Venezuelans died last year because of our sanctions and no matter how many people in Yemen die every day because of the
Saudis we will continue supporting them.
Then there's Hiroshima and Nagasaki as aliasalias stated. Oh hell yes they are that evil.
killed and displaced around the Globe by the Empire in just this century alone, so many still can't believe this same government
could murder 3000 on 9/11.
Cognitive dissidence doesn't even start to explain it.
...is the intense access that these privatized propagandists have to the New York Times . And certainly the Times
should explain why it freely publishes radical divisive stories that cannot be verified from compromised sources that have previously
been exposed as disreputable. This is what Russia is accused of doing, sewing confusion and fear in the US, based on misinformation.
Now the New York Times is doing it for them. The fact that a US media outlet is deliberately sabotaging the domestic tranquility
with alarming lies is exactly what congress should be investigating. But any congressperson that did so would see their careers
destroyed. Congress surrendered to the media monopolies a long time ago.
What we can do is confirm for Americans that they must never trust anything they read in the New York Times and the
Washington Post . Remind them of the tragic facts in recent history. The lies that endangers people's lives and disables
their intelligence are written between the lines.
The NYT and WaPoo and other media are continuing to come up with new stories every day telling us something new that Russia
is doing. This is not going away any time soon. Unfortunately.
@Lookout@Lookout with
us all getting under our desks or along the walls if we are in the hallway and I don't think any one of us didn't treat this as
something critical for us to learn in order to survive.
As a kid that loved riding a bicycle one Public Service announcement I paid careful attention to was the instruction to do if
I saw that bright flash which was to throw the bike down and curl up along the curb, I even thought about that problem on unpaved
streets.
I remember bomb shelters were advertised a lot and I remember some tv dramas were about people fleeing to their bomb shelter
and the dilemma of being only fit to hold a small group but had neighbors, friends and strangers pleading to be let in.
The 'Twilight Zone' series even had one episode where a very wealthy man with a shelter picked certain important people in
his life, his school teacher, Priest and others were offered shelter only if they will apologize for things he'd caught criticism
for his behavior in his past. Trivial stuff, but he had a screen for them to watch the destruction live.
Long story short, they'd rather die than spend the rest of their lives with him. Especially with all their friends and family
gone, so he is alone, goes crazy, runs outside and is found by a policemen to be crying and babbling at a city fountain, in a
city that had not been bombed, but for him it had happened and all he could see was destruction around him.
All that aside considering we'd already dropped 'the' bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki those behind all the public warnings and
information that was needed in order for people to know how to survive couldn't really believe that nonsense.
Unless they could believe all those dead Japanese would've likely survived if they had ducked under their desks or curled up
along a curb, and if that were true they were as loony as the 'Twilight Zone' character.
Yeah if only all those schoolchildren had jumped under their desk before the building and everything around it was obliterated.
...if you see a light brighter than the sun. (1 min)
in the top of the ninth the screen goes black, the live stream has stopped because the electrical grid the Tropicana had shut
down and the stadium was without power for the lights, scoreboard, broadcast, etc. were down.
It took about forty-five minutes for power to be restored but right when it happened I thought it was the stream I was watching
so I clicked on other streaming sites and it was on a couple of them I read why all broadcasts were off.
But in the chat box I really couldn't tell if a few were joking or not when they blamed it on the Russians. One in particular
didn't look like they were joking as that person repeated the claim a few times. No kidding, and one lamented that (paraphrasing)
'now the Russians are messing with our National sport'.
Any time something happens now people will willingly accept that Russia did something that caused it. See the tweet I posted
above. Secret service agents and police are doing nothing as the Guaido goons keeps people from delivering food and stuff to the
embassy sitters. One goon tried taking the bag out of a guy's hands and they just watched. One person tried to throw a cucumber
and the cops pounced on him, pushed him to the ground and bloodied him up. But Russia is the one who put the embassy sitters into
the embassy and is supporting them. SMDH!
Advance Democracy, recently flagged a number of suspicious websites and social media accounts to law enforcement authorities."It
is to constantly divide, increase distrust and undermine our faith in institutions and democracy itself.
An organization that reports undesirable speech to law enforcement is worried about the undermining of democracy. Got it.
"... "Instead," McConnell went on, "the previous administration sent the Kremlin a signal they could get away with almost anything, almost anything. So is it surprising that we got the brazen interference detailed in special counsel Mueller's report?" ..."
"... Yes, Russia kicked most US NGOs out of the country. With good reason. Most of them were deliberately undermining the host country (this is not limited to Russia, they do that in most of their host countries, especially those we want to mess with). The National Endowment for Democracy is a classic case in point. The counter point here isn't RT. It's a news outlet that has proven to be far more reliable than the US corporate media. Does Russia send NGOs around the world to infest other countries with their vision of government? ..."
"... It is exactly as Mr. Lazare says, Americans think that their country can do no wrong. ..."
"... Several of my late husband's FB friends fall well into these categories and they really believe, wholeheartedly, the propaganda against Russia (and to some extent against China – Huawei, 5G, and so on), almost to the point of paranoia. The Demrat politicos and their corporate-capitalist-imperialist funders together with the despicable, groupthinking Orwellian media have done a real number on these people – usually the ones who *vote.* ..."
"... Most are Democrats who embrace the 'neoliberal groupthink' you referred to. There was a time I believed one of the conclusions of a famous study on authoritarian personalities that claimed the vast majority of authoritarians (active and passive) were Republicans. Just as the Democratic Party has morphed into the 80's Republican Party, so too have these liberals. Their cognitive dissonance is more powerful than any I have encountered in my lifetime. Their core belief system now includes incrementalism, lesser-evilism and an overwhelming sense of goodness that at least they are 'doing something positive' by supporting all Democrats at all costs. ..."
"... I don't get why, supposedly intelligent, informed people are wondering why Russia is being blamed for so much. Let me remind you that the extremely powerful Israel Lobby is VERY BUSY supporting the agenda of the right wing Likud government in Israel. ..."
"... One of the goals of Likud is the Zionist agenda that includes Greater Israel which requires Israel to acquire more water and land in Lebanon, Syria and Iraq, Iran is a very strong supporter of the Palestinians and Syrian President Assad and Iraqi independence from US domination. ..."
"... Why, on this good earth, does anyone pay any attention to Schumer and Schiff and McConnell? Shills, do nothing crackpots and traitors to this nation; when you see that's what they are, you have to ignore them. ..."
Russia-gate has shed any premise of being about Russian interference, writes Daniel Lazare, but the idea that America may in anyway
be responsible for its own fate is of course unthinkable.
Americans used to think that Russia-gate was about a plot to hack the 2016 election. They were wrong. Russia-gate is really about
an immense conspiracy to do four things:
No. 1: Ratchet up tensions with Russia to ever more dangerous levels;
No. 2: Show that Democrats are even more useless than people imagined;
No. 3: Persecute Julian Assange;
No. 4: Re-elect Donald Trump as president.
This was the takeaway from Mitch McConnell's devastating "
case closed " speech last week in which the Senate majority
leader jeered at President Barack Obama for mocking Mitt Romney's claim (seven years ago now) that Russia was America's "number one
geopolitical
foe
." As Obama famously replied during that presidential debate:
"The 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back because the Cold War's been over for 20 years."
But that was so 2012. Now, says McConnell, it looks like Romney was right:
"We'd have been better off if the administration hadn't swept [Russian President Vladimir] Putin's invasion and occupation
of Georgia under the rug or looked away as Russia forced out western NGO's and cracked down on civil society. If President Obama
hadn't let Assad trample his red line in Syria or embraced Putin's fake deal on chemical weapons, if the Obama administration
had responded firmly to Putin's invasion and occupation of Ukraine in 2014, to the assassination of Boris Nemtsov in 2015, and
to Russia intervention in Syria -- maybe stronger leadership would have left the Kremlin less emboldened, maybe tampering with
our democracy wouldn't have seemed so very tempting.
"Instead," McConnell went on, "the previous administration sent the Kremlin a signal they could get away with almost anything,
almost anything. So is it surprising that we got the brazen interference detailed in special counsel Mueller's report?"
Lies and Distortions
Like so much out of Congress these days, this was a farrago of lies and distortions. It wasn't Moscow that started the 2008 Russo-Georgian
War, but Tbilisi . While
Russia has indeed cracked down on U.S.-backed NGO's, Washington has done the same by forcing Russia's highly successful news agency
RT to register as a foreign
agent and by sentencing Maria Butina, a Russian national studying at American University, to
18 months in prison
for the crime of hobnobbing
with members of the National Rifle Association. The charge that Syrian President Bashar al Assad "trampled" Obama's red line by using
chemical weapons is hardly as clear-cut as imperial propagandists like to believe –
to say the least – while the agreement between Putin and former Secretary
of State John Kerry to rid Syria of chemical weapons was not fake at all, but an example, increasingly rare unfortunately, of diplomacy
being used to prevent an international crisis from getting out of hand.
And so on ad nauseum . But what could Democrats say in response given that they've spent the last three years trying to
out-hawk the GOP? Answer: nothing. All they could do was try to turn tables on McConnell by charging him with not being anti-Russian
enough. Thus, New York's Sen. Chuck Schumer accused him of "
aiding and abetting
" Moscow while Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin
accused
him of running interference for Putin because he "feels the Russians were on the side of the Republicans in 2016 and just might be
again in 2020."
Democrats Feed the Super Hawks
The result: a Democratic consensus that Russia can't be trusted and that America must put itself on a war footing to prevent Putin
from "toppl[ing] the mighty oak that has been our republic for two hundred years," as Schumer put it. It's an across-the-board agreement
that the long-awaited Mueller report has only strengthened by regurgitating the intelligence-community line that "[t]he Russian government
interfered in the 2016 presidential election in sweeping and systematic fashion" and then cherry-picking the facts to fit its preconceived
thesis. (See " Top Ten
Questions About the Mueller Report ," May 6.)
Democrats claim to oppose National Security Advisor John Bolton, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Vice President Mike Pence,
but the anti-Russian hysteria they promote strengthens the hand of such super-hawks. It makes military conflict more likely, if not
with Russia then with perceived Russian surrogates such as Venezuela or Iran.
Schiff increasingly unhinged.
Simultaneously, it backfires on Democrats by making them look weak and foolish as they argue that even though the Mueller report
says "the investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government,"
somehow "significant evidence of collusion" still exists, as an increasingly unhinged Rep. Adam Schiff
maintains . In the
Alice-in-Wonderland world of congressional Democrats, no evidence does not mean no evidence. In fact, it means the opposite.
Voters are unmoved. Ten times more Americans – 80 versus 8 percent – care about healthcare than about Russia according to
a recent survey . When CNN pollsters asked a thousand people in mid-March to name the issues that matter most,
not one mentioned Russia or the Mueller
probe . If they didn't care when collusion was still an open question, they care even less now that the only issue is obstruction
plus a phony constitutional crisis that desperate Democrats have conjured up out of thin air.
Trump the Chief Beneficiary
Besides Fox News – whose ratings have
soared while Russia-obsessed CNN's have plummeted – the chief beneficiary is Trump. Post-Mueller, the man has the wind in his
sails. Come 2020, Sen. Bernie Sanders could cut through his phony populism with ease. But if Jeff Bezos's Washington Post
succeeds in
tarring him with Russia the same way it tried to tar Trump, then the Democratic nominee will be a bland centrist whom the incumbent
will happily bludgeon. Former Vice President Joe Biden – the
John McCain-loving ,
speech-slurring ,
child-fondler who was
for a wall along the Mexican border before he was against
it – will end up as a bug splat on the Orange One's windshield.
Trump ready to take on challengers. (Caricature/DonkeyHotey via Flickr)
Beto O'Rourke, the rich-kid airhead who
declared shortly before the Mueller report was released that Trump, "beyond the shadow of a doubt, sought to collude with the
Russian government," will not fare much better. Sen. Elizabeth Warren meanwhile seems to be tripping over her own two feet as she
predicts one moment that Trump is
heading
to jail , declares the next that voters
don't care
about the Mueller report because they're too concerned with bread-and-butter issues, and then
calls for dragging Congress into the impeachment morass
regardless.
Such "logic" is lost on voters, so it seems to be a safe bet that enough will stay home next Election Day to allow the rough beast
to slouch towards Bethlehem yet again.
Assange Convicted in Eyes of Press
Then there's Julian Assange, currently serving a 50-week sentence in a supermax prison outside of London after being ejected from
the Ecuadorian Embassy. By claiming that the WikiLeaks founder was "dissembling" by denying that Russia was the source of
the mammoth Democratic National Committee leak in July 2016, Special Counsel Robert Mueller has effectively convicted him in the
eyes of Congress and the press.
The New York Times thus reports that Mueller has "
revealed " that
Russian intelligence was the source while, in
a venomous piece by Middlebury College professor Allison Stanger, The Washington Post declared that Assange "is neither
whistleblower nor journalist," but someone who helped Russian intelligence interfere in "the American electoral process."
Schumer thus greeted Assange's April 11 arrest by
tweeting his "hope [that] he will soon be
held to account for his meddling in our elections on behalf of Putin and the Russian government," while, in
a truly chilling
statement , Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia declared that "[i]t will be really good to get him back on United States
soil [so] we can get the facts and the truth from him."
Now that Julian Assange has been arrested, I hope he will soon be held to account for his meddling in our elections on behalf
of Putin and the Russian government.
Assange is guiltier than ever. If Washington gets its hands on him, he'll no doubt be hauled before some sort of Star Chamber
and then clapped in a dungeon somewhere until he confesses that Russian intelligence made him do it, even though a careful reading
of the Mueller report strongly suggests the opposite. (See "
The 'Guccifer 2.0'
Gaps in Mueller's Full Report ," April 18.)
Assange languishing behind bars, war breaking out in Latin America or the Persian Gulf, Trump in the Oval Office for four years
more – it's the worst of all possible worlds, and the Democratic Party's bizarre fixation with Vladimir Putin is what's pushing it.
Ultimately, Russia-gate is yet a variation on the tired old theme of American innocence. If something goes wrong, it can't be
the fault of decent Americans who, as we all know, are too good for our deeply flawed world. Rather, it must be the fault of dastardly
foreigners trying to hack our democracy. It's a deep-rooted form of xenophobia that has fueled everything from the criminalization
of marijuana (smuggled in by evil Mexicans) to the 1950s Red Scare (a reaction to Communism smuggled in by evil Russians), and the
war on terrorism (the work of evil Muslims). The idea that America may in anyway be responsible for its own fate is of course unthinkable.
But Russia-gate may be the greatest delusion of all. After decades of celebrating Donald Trump as the essence of American flash
and hustle, the corporate media have decided that the only way he could have gotten into the White House is if Putin put him there.
The upshot is a giant conspiracy to force Americans to turn their back on reality, an effort that can only end in disaster for all
concerned, Democrats first and foremost.
Daniel Lazare is the author of "The Frozen Republic: How the Constitution Is Paralyzing Democracy" (Harcourt Brace, 1996)
and other books about American politics. He has written for a wide variety of publications from The Nation to Le Monde Diplomatique
and blogs about the Constitution and related matters at D aniellazare.com .
Tick Tock , May 15, 2019 at 11:30
Sorry Folks but both Mr Lazare's text and the majority of the comments here clearly illustrate that the major problem for America
and its Citizens is that they are way too full of themselves and easily manipulated because of that. Seriously, the vast majority
of the Worlds population Could Not Give a Rat's Ass about America except when they are being attacked either with Real Bombs or
Economically.
No normal Human Being wants to be Israel's Stooge. You have to think you are are really important for someone in another Country
to want to select your leaders. Oh yes that is what the US Deep State does and now it's been clearly exposed it does the same
thing at home.. Of course if your motto is that "You are god's chosen people!", it could get you into trouble now and then with
the rest of God's People. Like Bob Dylan wrote a few years ago, "I used to care!" Only a fool would care now.
Jeff Harrison , May 15, 2019 at 11:23
This is where we learn the importance of an objective press and one that can bring all the threads of a story together. And
it's also most likely to be a disaster.
Yes, Russia kicked most US NGOs out of the country. With good reason. Most of them were deliberately undermining the host country
(this is not limited to Russia, they do that in most of their host countries, especially those we want to mess with). The National
Endowment for Democracy is a classic case in point. The counter point here isn't RT. It's a news outlet that has proven to be
far more reliable than the US corporate media. Does Russia send NGOs around the world to infest other countries with their vision
of government?
The US/EU fomented the coup in Ukraine that resulted in Crimea deciding they didn't want to be associated with Ukraine any
longer. Did the US press tell the truth here? No. They made it sound as if Crimea was a part of Ukraine when, in fact, the Turkic
Muslims of Crimea were never a part of the Christian Slavs of Ukraine. They also didn't explain the terms by which Khrushchev
administratively slapped the two together in 1957 which give the Crimeans the ability to opt out.
It is exactly as Mr. Lazare says, Americans think that their country can do no wrong. We don't see the coups we foist on other
countries. We don't see the lies and fake news we spread in other countries we wish to undermine. They don't see the consequences
of our abuse of our economic power. The myopia is powerful in this one as my representatives tried to tell me that Venezuela was
a prosperous and happy country before Chavez and that their current travails are as a result of the socialism and not two coup
attempts and a long string of sanctions from the US. We are remarkably good at blaming the victim.
There's a good chance that this will rise up and bite us in the ass and the American people will have no idea why ..
AnneR , May 15, 2019 at 08:52
Mr Lazare, while I would certainly agree with much you have written, on one point at least I am much less certain: that most
Americans care less about Russia than about health care.
While this might be true for the majority of the population who are in the lower middle, working classes and poor, I am much
less certain about the "well" educated, comfortably off, well health insured, middling and upper bourgeoisie. The sort who, even
when on Medicare, are on the upper rungs of it (paying extra for better and more expansive treatment; and I do mean Medicare here).
The sort who frequently have been privately educated.
Several of my late husband's FB friends fall well into these categories and they really believe, wholeheartedly, the propaganda
against Russia (and to some extent against China – Huawei, 5G, and so on), almost to the point of paranoia. The Demrat politicos
and their corporate-capitalist-imperialist funders together with the despicable, groupthinking Orwellian media have done a real
number on these people – usually the ones who *vote.*
These same people evince absolutely, and I mean absolutely, NO concern or interest in the constant war-making and warmongering,
the illegal invasions, electoral meddling/coups/"regime" changes, destruction of peoples that this country (and its allies) engage
in. Not happening here, therefore not anything to do with "us."
I know that my late husband would be utterly devastated knowing that some of his students, with whom he worked assiduously
to develop real critical thinking (via much difficult reading in historiography, sociology and philosophy, discussion and writing),
have fallen hook, line and sinker for the neoliberal groupthink supporting the corporate-capitalist-imperialist (and of course,
orientalist) line. One can only imagine that they were already well primed for this mindset.
MattZ , May 15, 2019 at 11:43
Anne -- your post resonates deeply with me. I would guess you and I are of similar ages and have similar friends and acquaintances.
We certainly share the exact same experiences with these people. They are proud 'liberals' (lately donning the 'progressive' robe
with equal exuberance). None are members of the elite one-percenters, but all belong to what Nader refers to as the 'contented
class', that 9% buffer zone between the elite and the increasingly miserable lower 90%-ers.
Most are Democrats who embrace the 'neoliberal groupthink' you referred to. There was a time I believed one of the conclusions
of a famous study on authoritarian personalities that claimed the vast majority of authoritarians (active and passive) were Republicans.
Just as the Democratic Party has morphed into the 80's Republican Party, so too have these liberals. Their cognitive dissonance
is more powerful than any I have encountered in my lifetime. Their core belief system now includes incrementalism, lesser-evilism
and an overwhelming sense of goodness that at least they are 'doing something positive' by supporting all Democrats at all costs.
Appallingly, their new heroes are historically-proven liars, psychopaths and Deep State organizations like the CIA and FBI.
Their Trump Derangement Syndrome has destroyed all ability to think critically or accept transparent and obvious truths. They
accept no criticism of their actions and attack those who question them. To them, the 'end' of removing Trump justifies any evil.
Gaia help us all.
Skip Scott , May 15, 2019 at 08:04
The root of the Democrats problem is they feed from the same trough as the GOP. They can't do anything substantial about health
care or the declining middle class because they'd piss off their donors. Since they can't stand for "the working man" any longer,
they are trying to cobble together "Identity Politics" and "Political Correctness" to eke out a majority. Good luck with that!
They can give us non gender specific restrooms with our Forever War! Why aren't we feeling the love?
I think the time has never been more ripe for a serious third party challenge than 2020.
Realist , May 15, 2019 at 10:42
Perfect thumbnail obituary for the Democratic Party, Skip. It got hijacked by corporatists who saw an opportunity to push the
GOP agenda from both directions. Maybe that's what Hillary meant by "stronger together."
If you want to be entertained and titillated turn on the national evening news shows. The 2020 election circus has already
begun. Don't watch that, switch channels and watch the obstruction of justice infotainment. Want news, read between the lines
of the major newspapers. Go to PBS to be rescued, good luck.
Has it always been thus. Maybe, but it's a much better show today.
If I could figure out long ago Russia-gate was going to lead to Trump's reelection (see above link), you would think Brennan/
Clinton/ Pelosi could figure it out too. Which begs the questions:
Is Trump good for business for the Democratic party financial patrons? Do they really want him impeached? Did the Pied Piper
strategy ever end? Does Bernie Sanders scare them so much they'd rather promote Trump than have Sanders in the Oval Office?
Realist , May 15, 2019 at 10:35
Your last explanation is the one that Jimmy Dore seems to favor. The party string pullers are obviously desperate when they
back one near-octogenarian (Crazy Joe Biden) for the nomination against another near-octogenarian (Sanders). Counter move by the
GOPers may be to run Tricky Dick Nixon's head-in-a-bottle for the office, like in Futurama.
Realist , May 15, 2019 at 02:05
Wow, gotta hand it to McConnell. That man can shamelessly pack multiple whoppers into every single sentence uttered in his
public speaking. Quite a tour de force of pure undiluted bullshit by the turtle. With his rhetorical skills to deliver talking
points at a newly realised zenith, there's sure to be a job for him on Madison Avenue when he's finally kicked to the curb as
happens to every politician when a better snake oil salesman inevitably comes along.
John Sanguinetti , May 15, 2019 at 00:05
I don't get why, supposedly intelligent, informed people are wondering why Russia is being blamed for so much. Let me remind
you that the extremely powerful Israel Lobby is VERY BUSY supporting the agenda of the right wing Likud government in Israel.
One of the goals of Likud is the Zionist agenda that includes Greater Israel which requires Israel to acquire more water and land
in Lebanon, Syria and Iraq, Iran is a very strong supporter of the Palestinians and Syrian President Assad and Iraqi independence
from US domination.
Russia, with it's very effective support for Assad and collaboration with Iran is blocking progress on the
Zionist agenda. So, putting pressure on Russia is a way of trying to force them to back off from their support for Syria and Iran
or at least to scare them with the power of our military and a crazy unpredictable leader who might do anything. Israel has besides
it's VERY STRONG and active lobbies in the US and UK a large and VERY Active 5th column that spends a LOT of money and effort
influencing the people who run our government.
CitizenOne , May 14, 2019 at 23:43
I believe it but with some editing of the authors original four things. I have deleted the case against Assange as a sideshow
that does nor resonate with Americans any more than the nightly rumor mill about celebrities. Here goes.
Americans used to think that Russia-gate was about a plot to hack the 2016 election. They were wrong. Russia-gate is really
about an immense conspiracy to do four things:
No. 1: Ratchet up tensions with Russia to ever more dangerous levels;
No. 2: Show that Democrats are even more useless than people imagined;
No. 3: Win the 2020 elections and reelect Trump and preserve the republican majority in the Senate and win back the democrat
controlled House
No. 4: Wage wars in oil rich nations being Iran and Venezuela to fulfill the agenda of the energy companies via military action.
While McConnell rails against Obama for his weaknesses we have the historical record that Obama declared Venezuela as a national
security threat, levied massive sanctions against Russia for their presumed invasion of Ukraine, launched a war against the Syrian
government, preserved and supported our wars in Afghanistan and in Iraq.
We see today that Chuck Schumer is still committed to the theory that Russia is the single reason that the democrats lost the
last election which is absurd and is rejected by not only a significant number of liberal journalists but also by a majority of
Americans. Why do the democrats continue to promote conspiracy theories that the majority of Americans reject as nonsense?
The republicans have the democrats over a barrel and will push it over and watch the democrats wallow in the mud with much
amusement.
This could not have have happened to the democrats without a complete lack of foresight or even a slightest attempt to rely
on the truth to guide them.
From day one after the election, the democrats swallowed the bait hook line and sinker and now the hook is buried deep in their
gullets and they still insist that they are free swimming fish on a mission to prove Russia was responsible for the last election.
With every gulp they swallow the hook deeper apparently unaware that they are about to be reeled in and captured by their unfounded
beliefs that the bait is is a real meal they can sustain themselves on. Just like a fooled fish they are on the hook.
The announcement that the AG is launching an investigation led by republicans to investigate the Russia Gate investigation
will most certainly tarnish democrats and stain their efforts that will be seen as even more dull as the tarnish they try to put
on Trump. Even uninformed citizens will ask what is up with the democrats who are trying to bring down Trump even though their
reliable news sources tell them that Russia Gate is all a lie.
Meanwhile the democrats who have declared come up not only short on ideas but appear to be suicidal.
Elisabeth Warren has declared war on monopolies in an era where unlimited spending by corporations is legally protected as
free speech. How can she hope to win by pledging to breakup monopolies that are well equipped to outspend her in their bid for
survival?
The democrats have failed to do the math and their strategies for appealing to the masses will be shot down by the right wing
controlled "free press". It is not a liberal press. It is the enemy of liberals controlled by wealthy liberal hating, libertarian
loving billionaires. Public vows by democrats who pledge to destroy it will be met with the full force of their arsenal which
includes complete control over the microphone that steers debate and is the chief influence of elections. As Mark Twain put it,
" It is unwise to wage a war of words against men who buy ink by the barrel".
Howard Dean met his end when the major media outlets conspired to elevate "The Dean Scream" to levels questioning his sanity.
The nearly constant barrage of over 4,000 replays of the Dean Scream leading up to the democratic primaries effectively put an
end to his bid for nomination.
But why did all of the the major media outlets conspire to conduct a character assassination of the Howard Dean movement? Just
two weeks before the Dean Scream was endlessly broadcasted by the media with news commentators chiming in that he was likely an
insane man who must be exposed and stopped in his tracks he made a fatal flaw. He made a campaign speech where he said that if
he was elected he would impose regulations on the media. Boom Boom out went the lights.
How can any democrat win when they oppose corporations that include the media corporations in America? How can Elisabeth Warren
wither the name calling that she will suffer as Trump claims she has a Pocahontas syndrome while also alienating the largest campaign
contributors with her pledge to destroy them? How will her insistence that she has Indian blood possibly win her fans when the
majority of Americans will mock her. They have been honed on the strop of right wing money into believing that everything they
hear and see is factual even though it is not factual or real. Such is the suicidal gamble of the soon to be defeated democratic
party.
Why they continue to go down the path toward blind alleys where they will be trapped and defeated baffles me.
geeyp , May 15, 2019 at 11:32
Why, on this good earth, does anyone pay any attention to Schumer and Schiff and McConnell? Shills, do nothing crackpots and
traitors to this nation; when you see that's what they are, you have to ignore them.
jmg , May 14, 2019 at 19:57
Daniel Lazare: "( ) it must be the fault of dastardly foreigners trying to hack our democracy. It's a deep-rooted form of xenophobia
that has fueled everything ( ) The idea that America may in anyway be responsible for its own fate is of course unthinkable."
Yes, that's the way it is. About WikiLeaks, as they have repeated many times:
"Craig Murray, the former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan, who is a close associate of Assange, called the CIA claims 'bullshit',
adding: 'They are absolutely making it up.'
"'I know who leaked them,' Murray said. 'I've met the person who leaked them, and they are certainly not Russian and it's an
insider. It's a leak, not a hack; the two are different things.'"
"... MSNBC is also that bastion of journalistic integrity that hired an exposed CIA mole, Ken Dilanian, to feed its viewers propaganda about "national security ..."
"... Now, the parties truly "meddling in America's democracy" should be very clear, although I can only scratch the surface here concerning the long history of media corruption and outright lies broadcast all the time. ..."
"... The criminal behaviour continues unabated. Lies and fraud abound. American behaviour worldwide is an embarrassment to any free thinking individual. They are a danger to all of us. ..."
"... Organisations like the BBC and all the rest of the corporate media are a greater threat to democracy than any foreign army or terrorist organisation. ..."
CNN rigged a poll to censor out nearly everyone under 45 years of age. Based on this nonsensical false sampling they claim Biden
is now in the lead.
MSNBC was caught making up false numbers to report, increasing Biden from an actual 25% approval to a magical 28%, just enough
to edge out Bernie Sanders. But this is a fraud, deliberate journalistic malfeasance at the highest levels. How could such a thing
happen?
MSNBC is also that bastion of journalistic integrity that hired an exposed CIA mole, Ken Dilanian, to feed its viewers propaganda
about "national security."
MSNBC also made hysterical, highly dangerous, and false claims about the Russians' ability and intention to shut down America's
electrical grid, a completely false story that was retracted as soon as it went out by the Washington Post. This kind of unhinged
war propaganda could lead the world straight to Armageddon.
Now, the parties truly "meddling in America's democracy" should be very clear, although I can only scratch the surface here
concerning the long history of media corruption and outright lies broadcast all the time.
Grafter
The criminal behaviour continues unabated. Lies and fraud abound. American behaviour worldwide is an embarrassment to any
free thinking individual. They are a danger to all of us. We can start by removing them from Europe along with their so called
"allies". Here in the disunited UK T.May and her little gang of Tory millionaires should be top priority for political oblivion.
People worldwide urgently need to wake up to the sick joke that goes under the name of "American democracy".
mark
Organisations like the BBC and all the rest of the corporate media are a greater threat to democracy than any foreign army
or terrorist organisation.
They need to be constantly exposed for what they are rather than actually suppressed or controlled. They can be safely left
to wither on the vine and decline into irrelevance. Social media and sites like this are a powerful antidote.
"... You know the ones: articles predicting whatever the news of the day will be The End of Democracy. Alongside The New York Times and The Washington Post , whose op-ed pages are pretty much a daily End of Days, practitioners include Chicken Little regulars Rachel Maddow , Lawrence Tribe, Malcolm Nance, David Corn, Benjamin Wittes, Charles Pierce, Bob Cesca, and Marcy Wheeler. ..."
"... We've gone from thinking the president is literally a Russian agent (since 1987, the last year your mom and dad dated!) to worrying the attorney general is trying to obstruct a House committee from investigating a completed investigation into obstruction by writing a summary not everyone liked of a report already released. But the actual content is irrelevant. What matters is there is another crisis to write about! The op-ed industry can't keep up with all the Republic-ending stuff Trump and his henchworld are up to. ..."
"... All persons with Russian-sounding names are Kremlin Agents(tm) *except* the alleged sources for The Dossier(tm). Those anonymous Russians can be trusted implicitly. ..."
"... Matt Tiabbi has a book out on hate, Hate Inc, and has done an excellent interview with Chris Hedges on RT. ..."
"... Rep. Eric Swalwell (D, California), who sits on the House Intelligence Committee, before Mueller finished his investigation, on Hardball on MSNBC, Jan. 2019: ..."
"... Matthews: "Do you believe the president, right now, has been an agent of the Russians?" Swalwell: "Yes, I think there's more evidence that he is-" Matthews: "Agent?" Swalwell: "Yes. and I think all the arrows point in that direction, and I haven't seen a single piece of evidence that he's not." Matthews: "An agent like in the 1940s where you had people who were 'reds,' to use an old term, like that? In other words, working for a foreign power?" Swalwell: "He's working on behalf of the Russians, yes." ..."
"... One of the best things to come from Trump's election has been the lengths some of his opponents will go to discredit themselves in the court of public opinion: Brennan, Clapper, Clinton, Comey, McCabe, the list goes on and on, often merely to make a buck. Even Watergate figures like Carl Bernstein and John Dean have demolished their own reputations, or what was left of them to begin with. If they only knew, or cared, how badly they look in hindsight. ..."
"... @MM: >>One of the best things to come from Trump's election has been the lengths some of his opponents will go to discredit themselves in the court of public opinion << ..."
"... These people don't care about "public opinion." They operate inside a circle-jerk echo chamber whose membership includes the powers dominating the culture, the media (both mainstream and social), the government, and, increasingly, the major corporations. In short, the bulk of what some call the Ruling Class. ..."
"... Facts, evidence, and truth have nothing to do with it. So an investigation, rigged though it was, nonetheless clears Trump of conspiring with Moscow, but the story becomes how Trump is guilty anyway. Orwell, a man well ahead of his time, had the whole thing figured out long ago. ..."
"... "Now tell me again it's all 'sound and fury, signifying nothing.'" On the issue of Trump/Russia collusion, it is, and always was, because we now know it started with the Clinton campaign and a now-discredited dossier. ..."
"... These are the people who we elect to "govern" us. If one looks back upon the 230 years or so during which this thing of ours has been in existence, the overwhelming majority of our elected officials (federal, state and local) have probably been, to one degree or another, narcissistic, mendacious and just generally dishonest incompetents. ..."
"... Lynch, Holder, Obama as silent as church mice. i:e who gave Comey his marching orders ? ..."
"... What "illegal things" were revealed in the Mueller report? Trump was trying to obstruct an INJUSTICE, i.e. the "soft coup" done by the anti-American, lawless leftist Dems. ..."
"... On the Big Ugly Lie*, what's their excuse? * Trump colluded with Russia to steal the election, an attack on par with Pearl Harbor and 9/11. ..."
You know the ones: articles predicting whatever the news of the day will be The End of
Democracy. Alongside TheNew York Times and TheWashington Post ,
whose op-ed pages are pretty much a daily End of Days, practitioners include Chicken Little
regulars Rachel
Maddow , Lawrence Tribe, Malcolm Nance, David Corn, Benjamin Wittes, Charles Pierce, Bob
Cesca, and Marcy Wheeler.
You'd have thought after almost three years of wrong predictions (no new wars, no economic
collapse, no Russiagate) this industry would have slam shut faster than a Rust Belt union hall.
You would have especially thought these kinds of articles would have tapered off with the
release of the Mueller Report. It turned out to be the opposite -- while Mueller found no
conspiracy and charged no obstruction, the dang report turns out to be chock-a-block with
hidden messages, secret road maps, and voices speaking in tongues (albeit only to Democrats)
about obstruction.
We've gone from thinking the president is literally a Russian agent (since 1987, the last
year your mom and dad dated!) to worrying the attorney general is trying to obstruct a House
committee from investigating a completed investigation into obstruction by writing a summary
not everyone liked of a report already released. But the actual content is irrelevant. What
matters is there is another crisis to write about! The op-ed industry can't keep up with
all the Republic-ending stuff Trump and his henchworld are up to.
Help has arrived. Now anyone can write their own fear-mongering article, using this handy
tool, the op-ed-o-Matic. The GoFundMe for the AI-driven app version will be up soon, but for
now, simply follow these simple steps to punditry!
Start with a terrifying cliche. Here are some to choose from: There is a clear and
present danger; Dark clouds gather, the center cannot hold; It is unclear the Republic will
survive; Democracy itself is under attack; We face a profound/unique/existential
threat/crisis/turning point/test. Also, that "First they came for "
poem is good. Be creative; The Washington Post
calls the present state of things "constitutional nihilism." Snappy!
Be philosophical and slightly weary in tone,
such as "I am in despair as I have never been before about the future of our experiment in
self-rule." Say you're
sad for the state of the nation. Claim time is short, but there just may be a chance to
stop this. Add " by any means necessary."
Then choose a follow-on quote to reinforce the danger, maybe from: The Federalist Papers,
especially Madison on tyranny; Lincoln, pretty much anything about "the people, government,
test for our great nation, blah blah;" the Jack Nicholson character about not being able to
handle the truth; something from the neocons like Bill Kristol or Max Boot who now hate Trump.
Start with "even" as in " even arch conservative Jennifer Rubin now says "
After all that to get the blood up, explain the current bad thing Trump did. Label it "a
high crime or misdemeanor if there ever was one." Use some legalese, such as proffer, colorable
argument, inter alia, sinecure, duly-authorized, perjurious, and that little law book squiggly
thingy (18 USC § 1513.) Be sure to say "no one is above the law," then a dramatic hyphen,
then "even the president." Law school is overrated; you and Google know as much as anyone about
emoluments, perjury, campaign finance regulations, contempt, tax law, subpoenas, obstruction,
or whatever the day's thing is, and it changes a lot. But whatever, the bastard is obviously
guilty. Your standard is
tabloid-level , so just make it too good to be true.
Next, find an old Trump tweet where he criticized someone for doing just what he is doing.
That never gets old! Reference burning the Reichstag. If the crisis you're writing about deals
with immigration or white supremacy (meh, basically the same thing, right?), refer to
Kristallnacht.
Include every bad thing Trump ever did as examples of why whatever you're talking about must
be true. Swing for the fence with lines like "seeks to destroy decades of LGBTQIXYZ progress"
or "built concentration camps to murder children." Cite Trump accepting Putin's word over the
findings of "our" intelligence community, his "very fine people" support for Nazi cosplayers,
the magic list of 10,000 lies, how Trump has blood on his hands for endangering the press as
the enemy of the people, and how Trump caused the hurricane in Puerto Rico.
And Nixon. Always bring up Nixon. The context or details don't matter. In case Wikipedia is
down, he was one of the presidents before Trump your grandpa liked for awhile and then didn't
like after Robert Redford showed he was a clear and present danger to Saturday Night Live, or
the Saturday Night Massacre, it doesn't matter, we all agree Nixon.
Focus on the villain, who must be unhinged, off the rails, over the edge, diseased, out of
control, a danger to himself and others, straight-up diagnosed
mentally ill , or under Trump/Putin's spell. Barr is currently the Vader-du-jour. The
New York Timescharacterized him as
"The transformation of William Barr from respected establishment lawyer to evil genius
outplaying and undermining his old friend Robert Mueller is a Grand Guignol spectacle." James
Comey went as far as
describing Trump people as having had their souls eaten by the president. That's not
hyperbole, it's journalism!
But also hold out for a hero, the Neo one inside Trumpworld who will rise, flip, or leak to
save us. Forget past nominees like the pee tape, Comey, Clapper, Flynn, Page, Papadopoulos,
Manafort, Cohen, Mattis, Kelly, Barr, Linda Sarsour (replace with Ilhan Omar,) Avenatti, and
Omarosa to focus on McGahn. He's gonna be the one!
Then call for everyone else bad to resign, be impeached, go to jail, have their old statues
torn down, delete their accounts, be referred to the SDNY, be smited by the 25th Amendment, or
have their last election delegitimized by the Night King. Draw your rationale from either the
most obscure corner of the Founding Founders' work ("the rough draft, subsection IIXX of the
Articles of Confederation addendum, Spanish language edition, makes clear Trump is unfit for
office") or go broad as in "his oath requires him to uphold the Constitution, which he clearly
is not doing." Like Nancy Pelosi, mention how Trump seems unlikely to voluntarily cede power if
he loses in 2020.
Cultural references are important. Out of fashion: Godfather memes especially about
who is going to be Fredo, 'bots, weaponize, Pussy Hats, the Parkland Kids, Putin homophobe
themes, incest "jokes" about Ivanka, the phrases the walls are closing in, tick tock, take to
the streets, adult in the room, just wait for Mueller Time, and let that sink in.
Things you can still use: abyss, grifter, crime family, not who we are, follow the money.
Also you may make breaking news out of Twitter typos. Stylistically anyone with a
Russian-sounding name must be either an oligarch, friend of Putin, or have ties to the Kremlin.
Same for anyone who has done business with Trump or used the ATM in the Deutsche Bank lobby in
New York. Mention Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez somewhere because every article has to mention AOC
somewhere now.
Finally, your op-ed should end either with this House Judiciary Committee chair Jerry Nadler
faux Kennedy-esque
quote, "The choice is simple: We can stand up to this president in defense of the country
and the Constitution and the liberty we love, or we can let the moment pass us by. History will
judge us for how we face this challenge" or, if you want to go old school, this one from
Hillary Clinton
saying, "I really believe that we are in a crisis, a constitutional crisis. We are in a
crisis of confidence and a crisis over the rule of law and the institutions that have weathered
a lot of problems over so many years. And it is something that, regardless of where you stand
in the political spectrum, should give real heartburn to everybody. Because this is a test for
our country."
Crisis. Test. Judgment of history. Readers love that stuff, because it equates Trump's dumb
tweets with Lincoln pulling the Union together after a literal civil war that killed millions
of Americans in brother-to-brother conflict. As long as the rubes believe the world is coming
to an end, you might as well make a buck writing about it.
Liberal journalists seem to think that Trump is either an ignorant oaf or an evil genius.
These views are oppositional, but many liberal journalists seem to hold both of them.
I pretty much lost all respect for the Washington Post during the last election. Each WaPo
anti-Trump op ed became increasingly apocalyptic until you imagined that the universe would
implode should he be elected. It was that silly.
But other media promote "end of the world as we know it "scenarios also. TAC included.
Seriously, if I read one more article about how flyover America is a drug infested,
impoverished wasteland inhabited by those not intelligent or ambitious enough to move to the
coasts.
Drama draws readers and online traffic.
I guess it's up to the reader to sift through the competing narratives for the truth.
On the one hand, I agree that it's laughable and ridiculous -- this flood of apocalyptic
predictions and articles, wherein Trump, a juvenile buffoon who in fact does not even control
the government he nominally heads, is depicted as some kind of unprecedented threat to
democracy and Everything We Hold Dear.
I mean, OK, the judgment of the libs and neocons writing this stuff is clearly addled by
their irrational and rabid hatred for Trump. Still, are they really that stupid or is it just
that they are hopelessly dishonest? I lean toward the latter explanation.
That said, the abiding irony is that there is in fact a deepening crisis in this country.
It's about an increasingly dysfunctional democracy, a bitterly alienated and divided
citizenry, a set of ruling elites who despise a large percentage of their countrymen and have
contrived an economic and political system that enriches themselves while consigning the
despised percentage to permanent struggling status, a cultural establishment that rejects the
traditional Judeo-Christian values that built Western civilization and, Jacobin-style, is
busily overturning and replacing those values with their own would-be New Moral Order.
And so forth.
So yeah, there most definitely is a crisis and it might even be apocalyptic in dimension
and character. (Heck, it put Trump in the White House.) But the actual crisis is not the one
the fools are writing about. In fact, not only are they not writing about it -- they're in
large part responsible for it.
Like I said: an abiding irony. One for the history books.
All persons with Russian-sounding names are Kremlin Agents(tm) *except* the alleged sources
for The Dossier(tm). Those anonymous Russians can be trusted implicitly.
Van Buren has apparently chosen to forget the apocalyptic rants from the right during the
Obama administration. As for today's alarmists, as I write this the Dow is down over 700
points due to Trump's foolish trade war, his administration is ignoring two centuries of
tradition by stonewalling Congress' legitimate oversight authority and John Bolton is trying
to provoke a war with Iran. Now tell me again it's all "sound and fury, signifying nothing."
Rep. Eric Swalwell (D, California), who sits on the House Intelligence Committee, before
Mueller finished his investigation, on Hardball on MSNBC, Jan. 2019:
Matthews: "Do you believe the president, right now, has been an agent of the
Russians?"
Swalwell: "Yes, I think there's more evidence that he is-"
Matthews: "Agent?"
Swalwell: "Yes. and I think all the arrows point in that direction, and I haven't seen a
single piece of evidence that he's not."
Matthews: "An agent like in the 1940s where you had people who were 'reds,' to use an old
term, like that? In other words, working for a foreign power?"
Swalwell: "He's working on behalf of the Russians, yes."
The same congressman, who makes Joseph McCarthy look moderate, after Mueller completed his
investigation, on Fox News, Mar. 2019:
Cavuto: "Would you say the president is not a Russian agent?"
Swalwell: "The president acts on Russia's behalf, I don't need to see the Mueller report for
that."
And this month, after he had annouced his presidential bid, on Face the Nation:
Brennan: "But I know you have been talking because you are also in an intelligence role on
that House committee saying a number of things that I want to quote back to you. Up until
this point you said when you were asked in January, 'do you believe the president right now
has been an agent of the Russians?' You said, 'yes,' you were asked again at the end of that
month by a questioner, 'I'm still not hearing any evidence that he's an agent of Russia.' And
you said, 'Yeah I think it's pretty clear it's almost hiding in plain sight.' The Mueller
report did not substantiate any conspiracy or coordination with Russia. Do you regret
prejudging the outcome?"
Swalwell: "No, actually I- I- I think I should have been louder."
And people say Denin Nunes politicized the House Intelligence Committee?
One of the best things to come from Trump's election has been the lengths some of his
opponents will go to discredit themselves in the court of public opinion: Brennan, Clapper,
Clinton, Comey, McCabe, the list goes on and on, often merely to make a buck. Even Watergate
figures like Carl Bernstein and John Dean have demolished their own reputations, or what was
left of them to begin with. If they only knew, or cared, how badly they look in
hindsight.
"Liberal journalists seem to think that Trump is either an ignorant oaf or an evil
genius."
You're missing the point, it's Trump's ignorance, his extreme sense of entitlement and
limitless ego that are a danger to our democracy. He doesn't understand the norms of
democracy, otherwise known as American principles. All he understands is what he wants and
his notion of American greatness, which has nothing to do with true American principles.
@MM: >>One of the best things to come from Trump's election has been the lengths some
of his opponents will go to discredit themselves in the court of public opinion <<
These people don't care about "public opinion." They operate inside a circle-jerk echo
chamber whose membership includes the powers dominating the culture, the media (both
mainstream and social), the government, and, increasingly, the major corporations. In short,
the bulk of what some call the Ruling Class.
In their minds, public opinion can be suppressed or at least controlled by their near
monopoly on major media. The stories they want told will get told. The stories they don't
want told will not get told. Except at more or less isolated right-wing websites and such
whose audience and reach are limited.
Facts, evidence, and truth have nothing to do with it. So an investigation, rigged though
it was, nonetheless clears Trump of conspiring with Moscow, but the story becomes how Trump
is guilty anyway. Orwell, a man well ahead of his time, had the whole thing figured out long
ago.
jhawk: "As I write this the Dow is down over 700 points."
This is the same Dow Jones that, even with today's drop is still 40% higher than it was
right before the 2016 election, correct?
"Now tell me again it's all 'sound and fury, signifying nothing.'" On the issue of Trump/Russia collusion, it is, and always was, because we now know it
started with the Clinton campaign and a now-discredited dossier.
These are the people who we elect to "govern" us. If one looks back upon the 230 years or
so during which this thing of ours has been in existence, the overwhelming majority of our
elected officials (federal, state and local) have probably been, to one degree or another,
narcissistic, mendacious and just generally dishonest incompetents. It seems that it's only
when we hit rock bottom and the country's very survival is at stake that the cream rises to
the top and the very best step to the plate, so given what we have in Washington now, maybe
we haven't reached that point–at least not yet.
This is a hoot. Little Pettie strikes again! Projecting his own myopia as always! His Greater
Leader, The Trumpster, and the sycophants who worship him daily (for a fee, of course) daily
tweets or shouts from a podium the impending doom of our nations due to hoards of the "other"
spreading disease and violence nationwide while supported by the great love of Evangelical
"Christians" who faith not merely predicts but yearns for the end of the world!!!
Can't quite tell. It is hypocrisy or grand delusions blooming brightly at TAC!
CT Farmer: "If one looks back upon the 230 years or so during which this thing of ours has
been in existence, the overwhelming majority of our elected officials have probably been, to
one degree or another, narcissistic, mendacious and just generally dishonest incompetents."
No doubt, I only picked on him because he represents the crappiest district in the Bay
Area, which I have personal experience on, and he's running for president on the "Trump is a
Russian agent" platform, which even Joseph McCarthy was too timid to attempt.
That's either saying something, or it's nothing. I could've quoted another presidential candidate who's claimed that law enforcement and
criminal justice in America is racist from top to bottom and front to back. Or I could've quoted a different presidential candidate who's stated unequivocally that
every human being, not just American citizen, is entitled to free education and health care,
without regard to cost or need.
Just a few thoughts about comments above: Who "yearns for the end of the world"?? Give names
please, stop slandering. What "illegal things" were revealed in the Mueller report? Trump was
trying to obstruct an INJUSTICE, i.e. the "soft coup" done by the anti-American, lawless
leftist Dems. The fact is that we are a nation of laws and illegals (no matter where they are
from, Mars, Supitor; whether they are green, purple, whatever color) are a threat to our
country. I heard report that about a third of the crimes in the USA are done by illegals, at
a cost of billions. Well, more crap from brain washed boobs above, but I'm done trying to
point them out ..
" you know, we're all at it, breathing apocalyptic fire and brimstone, left and right. No
point throwing stones at each other on this subject."
**************
My thoughts, too. It's difficult to sift through the hype on all sides & find anything
solid. Outrage generates traffic, thoughtful discussion-not so much. So we end up with
clickbait & tabloids.
Maybe the Dems and their supporters should spend more time trying to understand why they lost
and less time complaining about it. But then that's not nearly as much fun.
Thanks for the voice of reason. A couple of complaints on Trump: he hasn't accomplished much
on the border; budgets continue to bleed red ink. He at least could have vetoed the budgets.
Isn't it a bit rich to suggest that the outrage media started in 2016? How long have
Limbaugh, Coulter, Ingraham, Levin, Hannity, .. been milking the Republican multiverse.
Sean: "Isn't it a bit rich to suggest that the outrage media started in 2016?"
That's a bit like saying because my neighbor ran over my dog, I'll then bulldoze his
house. Besides, the left and the press are supposed to be superior to the right and the unwashed
masses. They always fact-based, logical, reasonable, non-ideological, and consistent.
On the Big Ugly Lie*, what's their excuse?
* Trump colluded with Russia to steal the election, an attack on par with Pearl Harbor and
9/11.
Neocons and neolibs control the USA foreign policy. That's given. NYT just reflects foreign policy establishment talking points.
Links between Daniel Jones and Steele are really interesting and new information
Notable quotes:
"... "The goal here is bigger than any one election," said Daniel Jones, a former F.B.I. analyst and Senate investigator whose nonprofit group, Advance Democracy, recently flagged a number of suspicious websites and social media accounts to law enforcement authorities. ..."
"... According to a report published this morning, he notes that the Silicon Valley Community Foundation, which has received "significant funding" from technology billionaires, funneled $500,000 to the non-profit group Advance Democracy. That organization shares a street address with The Democracy Integrity Project. ..."
"... That's because both organizations were founded by former Senate Intel staffer Daniel Jones, who at that time worked for Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who hails from just down the road from Silicon Valley in San Francisco. As TruNews has previously reported, those connections to the Senate Intel Committee have played a significant role in the ongoing "Russia Narrative" drama in Washington, D.C. ..."
"... Jones has been previously identified as a central figure in the investigation who served as potential go-between with the committee's ranking Democrat, Sen. Mark Warner, and former MI6 agent Christopher Steele. ..."
"... The NYT is very much invested in the post Cold War status quo. ..."
"... That would be the Clintons and the Bushes. Both political parties and every POTUS since 1968. In fact, I believe this is the main reason why the Dems created and are pushing Russiagate so hard. They don't want us looking at what really gave us Trump: the neoliberal neoconservative fiasco of the past 40+ years. ..."
"... told about Russia and that they interfered with not only our elections, but in so many other countries too. I remember a time when people would insist on seeing the evidence on stuff the intelligence agencies tell them, but ever since Her lost the election they lost their minds. I'll see references to articles that say something, but offer no evidence. Like the one this essay is about. ..."
"... Plus they tried to kill the Skripals. And the GOP are also under Vlad's thumb. This is why Russia Gate has to be debunked. ..."
"... So, yes, it's going to take too long. Short of a miracle, I'm starting to think we're all going to be radioactive ash before Cold War II ends. There was a modicum of restraint with Cold War I; some people had enough sense to realize the end result was nuclear war. That type of sense seems nowhere to be found in Washington, D.C., these days. ..."
"... Dick Cheney is as evil as any human being I've ever heard of. I doubt whether he's done everything some folks believe he's done -- but not because he isn't evil enough, only because he lacked either the guts or the necessity. I believe he would have fit in perfectly well with Himmler and Goebbels, and he would enthusiastically embraced their approach to getting and wielding power. ..."
"... A few months ago, I made a comment to someone that it's like we're supposed to hate them (Russia) for their freedoms. ..."
gjohnsit on Sun, 05/12/2019 - 5:32pm The NY Times just posted one of the most atrocious pieces of
journalistic malpractice I have ever read.
Less than two weeks before pivotal elections for the European Parliament, a constellation of websites and social media accounts
linked to Russia or far-right groups is spreading disinformation, encouraging discord and amplifying distrust in the centrist
parties that have governed for decades.
European Union investigators, academics and advocacy groups say the new disinformation efforts share many of the same digital
fingerprints or tactics used in previous Russian attacks, including the Kremlin's interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign.
That's a powerful statement. There's just one problem: the article doesn't present a single bit of proof. Just anecdotes. In fact,
it doesn't even quote anyone to back up these claims, but for one single exception.
"The goal here is bigger than any one election," said Daniel Jones, a former F.B.I. analyst and Senate investigator whose
nonprofit group, Advance Democracy, recently flagged a number of suspicious websites and social media accounts to law enforcement
authorities.
"It is to constantly divide, increase distrust and undermine our faith in institutions and democracy itself. They're working
to destroy everything that was built post-World War II."
Russia is why people are losing faith in our government institutions. Not because they are owned by oligarchs. If you listen closely
you can hear President Bush.
So who is Daniel Jones and Advance Democracy? That's an
interesting story .
According to a report published this morning, he notes that the Silicon Valley Community Foundation, which has received "significant
funding" from technology billionaires, funneled $500,000 to the non-profit group Advance Democracy. That organization shares a
street address with The Democracy Integrity Project.
That's because both organizations were founded by former Senate Intel staffer Daniel Jones, who at that time worked for
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who hails from just down the road from Silicon Valley in San Francisco. As TruNews has previously
reported, those connections to the Senate Intel Committee have played a significant role in the ongoing "Russia Narrative" drama
in Washington, D.C.
Jones has been previously identified as a central figure in the investigation who served as potential go-between with the
committee's ranking Democrat, Sen. Mark Warner, and former MI6 agent Christopher Steele. That's because TDIP, which receives
significant funding from George Soros, funneled some of that money toward Steele's research for Fusion GPS that led to the infamous
dossier on President Donald Trump.
However, as Ross reports today: "Mystery surrounds both of Jones's operations. The identities of both groups' donors have largely
been kept secret, as Jones has avoided revealing his backers.
Nothing to see here. Just two sketchy political organizations sharing the same street address. Perfectly normal.
"The election has yet to come, and we are already suspected of doing something wrong?" the Russian prime minister, Dmitri A.
Medvedev, said in March. "Suspecting someone of an event that has not yet happened is a bunch of paranoid nonsense."
It's not nonsense. It's scapegoating. There's a difference.
CBS News (2/4/19) briefly interviewed Honolulu Civil Beats reporter Nick Grube regarding Gabbard's campaign announcement. The
anchors had clearly never encountered the term anti-interventionism before, struggling to even pronounce the word, then laughing
and saying it "doesn't roll off the tongue."
They're [the Kremlin] working to destroy everything that was built post-World War II.
That would be the Clintons and the Bushes. Both political parties and every POTUS since 1968. In fact, I believe this is
the main reason why the Dems created and are pushing Russiagate so hard. They don't want us looking at what really gave us Trump:
the neoliberal neoconservative fiasco of the past 40+ years.
It's also why so many people of my generation (over 60) are having trouble understanding and accepting what's going on. To
do so will require letting go of everything they thought was true. That kind of change does not come easy to many people.
I heard someone recently say "We have to elect a Dem or else our post-War advantages will disappear."
Got to wonder where he's been for the past 40 years. That horse left the barn a long time ago.
told about Russia and that they interfered with not only our elections, but in so many other countries too. I remember
a time when people would insist on seeing the evidence on stuff the intelligence agencies tell them, but ever since Her lost the
election they lost their minds. I'll see references to articles that say something, but offer no evidence. Like the one this essay
is about.
Plus they tried to kill the Skripals. And the GOP are also under Vlad's thumb. This is why Russia Gate has to be debunked.
People say that Mueller has put to rest the fact that Russia indeed interfered with the election, but all he showed was the
FBIs "belief' that they did and that some Russians will ties to Vlad hacked the DNC computers. He didn't interview anyone involved
with that as laid out in my recent essay.
I've even seen people who were once against our invasions being okay with them and repeating the party line. Unfuckingbelievable!
The Year 2000 was not that long ago, and we were bombarded for two decades beforehand with talk of all the dreadful things
that might happen, could happen, and some people firmly believed would happen - and then didn't happen. (As it turned out,
the most obvious sign of "Y2K" was the "19100" bug that plagued Web pages for months afterward. It was cosmetic and harmless,
but annoying.)
I expected it to take about ten years for sanity to return - but it looks like being more like fifty. And there will probably
be some cultists who construct their own "reality" around what didn't happen, like the 1840s Millerites (who spun off the still-extant
Seventh Day Adventists).
The NYT and WaPoo have new articles out about how bad the dastardly Russians are still interfering with the whole dang country
now. And WaPoo had some university do a study on how Russia tried to get people to vote for Bernie and blah, blah,...
I read an article last year saying that Bernie needs to knock off being with the Russia Gaters because he is going to be accused
of being in Vlad's pockets anyway. But he's still saying that Trump is under Russia's thumb and that Russia is doing all kinds
of bad stuff.
Then there's all the websites like DK, emptyhead, democratic underground and others saying that Mueller confirmed Russia did
bad things and maybe if the democrats work harder on their investigations they will find stuff that Mueller missed. I think 10
years is optimistic, but however long it's going to take its going to be too long.
I think 10 years is optimistic, but however long it's going to take it's going to be too long.
Consider how long it took for Cold War I to finally start to ebb. It took at least a decade, and that was with the memory of
a horrendous world war fresh on most minds. Now, we're so insulated from the reality of war, not even allowed reports from the
battlefields, much less accurate information and numbers, that we have lost touch with the horror. Evil men such as Bolton spend
every minute of every day trying to embroil us in deadly excursions and foreign entanglements. Our "intelligence" agencies are
no more than modern versions of the NAZI era Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda.
So, yes, it's going to take too long. Short of a miracle, I'm starting to think we're all going to be radioactive
ash before Cold War II ends. There was a modicum of restraint with Cold War I; some people had enough sense to realize the end
result was nuclear war. That type of sense seems nowhere to be found in Washington, D.C., these days.
So, yes, it's going to take too long. Short of a miracle, I'm starting to think we're all going to be radioactive ash before
Cold War II ends. There was a modicum of restraint with Cold War I; some people had enough sense to realize the end result
was nuclear war. That type of sense seems nowhere to be found in Washington, D.C., these days.
Fortunately for us ordinary Americans, the Russians really do love their children too.....
@snoopydawg
Are they going to say they're both (Bernie and Trump) working with Russia? That would be amusing. I wonder if it would cause any
of them to vote third party or not vote at all.
...who was a software development consultant at the time, the reason nothing much happened was that's lot of people worked
their butts off for several years. COBOL programmers were dragged out of retirement and all kinds of goofy OS and library hacks
were implemented to reduce the amount of work and risk.
It's also why so many people of my generation (over 60) are having trouble understanding and accepting what's going on.
To do so will require letting go of everything they thought was true. That kind of change does not come easy to many people.
I spent several years grappling with my fall down the rabbit hole. I started freeing myself from the matrix during #Occupy
and towards the end of Obama's first term I was starting to really get it... at least get it enough to know I wasn't voting for
him a second time. Then Bernie arrived on the scene and it was music to my ears. That pretty much completed the process for me
but it STILL took time and I STILL have places where I "don't believe they are that evil" (twin towers anyone) yet I suspect that
in the fullness of time I may yet find that they are in fact that evil.
I have a lot of sympathy for those still caught in the matrix. It's a really good trap. That doesn't change the fact that I
see them as my enemy and the enemy of all mankind but I at least understand.
@SnappleBC Dick Cheney is as evil as any human being I've ever heard of. I doubt whether he's done everything some folks believe he's
done -- but not because he isn't evil enough, only because he lacked either the guts or the necessity. I believe he would have
fit in perfectly well with Himmler and Goebbels, and he would enthusiastically embraced their approach to getting and wielding
power.
Just this century this country has killed a million Iraqis and who knows how many people in the other countries we've invaded?
40,000 Venezuelans died last year because of our sanctions and no matter how many people in Yemen die every day because of the
Saudis we will continue supporting them.
Then there's Hiroshima and Nagasaki as aliasalias stated. Oh hell yes they are that evil.
killed and displaced around the Globe by the Empire in just this century alone, so many still can't believe this same government
could murder 3000 on 9/11.
Cognitive dissidence doesn't even start to explain it.
...is the intense access that these privatized propagandists have to the New York Times . And certainly the Times
should explain why it freely publishes radical divisive stories that cannot be verified from compromised sources that have previously
been exposed as disreputable. This is what Russia is accused of doing, sewing confusion and fear in the US, based on misinformation.
Now the New York Times is doing it for them. The fact that a US media outlet is deliberately sabotaging the domestic tranquility
with alarming lies is exactly what congress should be investigating. But any congressperson that did so would see their careers
destroyed. Congress surrendered to the media monopolies a long time ago.
What we can do is confirm for Americans that they must never trust anything they read in the New York Times and the
Washington Post . Remind them of the tragic facts in recent history. The lies that endangers people's lives and disables
their intelligence are written between the lines.
The NYT and WaPoo and other media are continuing to come up with new stories every day telling us something new that Russia
is doing. This is not going away any time soon. Unfortunately.
@Lookout@Lookout with
us all getting under our desks or along the walls if we are in the hallway and I don't think any one of us didn't treat this as
something critical for us to learn in order to survive.
As a kid that loved riding a bicycle one Public Service announcement I paid careful attention to was the instruction to do if
I saw that bright flash which was to throw the bike down and curl up along the curb, I even thought about that problem on unpaved
streets.
I remember bomb shelters were advertised a lot and I remember some tv dramas were about people fleeing to their bomb shelter
and the dilemma of being only fit to hold a small group but had neighbors, friends and strangers pleading to be let in.
The 'Twilight Zone' series even had one episode where a very wealthy man with a shelter picked certain important people in
his life, his school teacher, Priest and others were offered shelter only if they will apologize for things he'd caught criticism
for his behavior in his past. Trivial stuff, but he had a screen for them to watch the destruction live.
Long story short, they'd rather die than spend the rest of their lives with him. Especially with all their friends and family
gone, so he is alone, goes crazy, runs outside and is found by a policemen to be crying and babbling at a city fountain, in a
city that had not been bombed, but for him it had happened and all he could see was destruction around him.
All that aside considering we'd already dropped 'the' bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki those behind all the public warnings and
information that was needed in order for people to know how to survive couldn't really believe that nonsense.
Unless they could believe all those dead Japanese would've likely survived if they had ducked under their desks or curled up
along a curb, and if that were true they were as loony as the 'Twilight Zone' character.
Yeah if only all those schoolchildren had jumped under their desk before the building and everything around it was obliterated.
...if you see a light brighter than the sun. (1 min)
in the top of the ninth the screen goes black, the live stream has stopped because the electrical grid the Tropicana had shut
down and the stadium was without power for the lights, scoreboard, broadcast, etc. were down.
It took about forty-five minutes for power to be restored but right when it happened I thought it was the stream I was watching
so I clicked on other streaming sites and it was on a couple of them I read why all broadcasts were off.
But in the chat box I really couldn't tell if a few were joking or not when they blamed it on the Russians. One in particular
didn't look like they were joking as that person repeated the claim a few times. No kidding, and one lamented that (paraphrasing)
'now the Russians are messing with our National sport'.
Any time something happens now people will willingly accept that Russia did something that caused it. See the tweet I posted
above. Secret service agents and police are doing nothing as the Guaido goons keeps people from delivering food and stuff to the
embassy sitters. One goon tried taking the bag out of a guy's hands and they just watched. One person tried to throw a cucumber
and the cops pounced on him, pushed him to the ground and bloodied him up. But Russia is the one who put the embassy sitters into
the embassy and is supporting them. SMDH!
Advance Democracy, recently flagged a number of suspicious websites and social media accounts to law enforcement authorities."It
is to constantly divide, increase distrust and undermine our faith in institutions and democracy itself.
An organization that reports undesirable speech to law enforcement is worried about the undermining of democracy. Got it.
Important article that shed some light on the methods of disinformation in foreign events used by neoliberal MSM
Notable quotes:
"... However, there is a simple reason why the global agencies, despite their importance, are virtually unknown to the general public. To quote a Swiss media professor: "Radio and television usually do not name their sources, and only specialists can decipher references in magazines." (Blum 1995, P. 9) The motive for this discretion, however, should be clear: news outlets are not particularly keen to let readers know that they haven't researched most of their contributions themselves. ..."
"... Much of our media does not have own foreign correspondents, so they have no choice but to rely completely on global agencies for foreign news. But what about the big daily newspapers and TV stations that have their own international correspondents? In German-speaking countries, for example, these include newspapers such NZZ, FAZ, Sueddeutsche Zeitung, Welt, and public broadcasters. ..."
"... Moreover, in war zones, correspondents rarely venture out. On the Syria war, for example, many journalists "reported" from cities such as Istanbul, Beirut, Cairo or even from Cyprus. In addition, many journalists lack the language skills to understand local people and media. ..."
"... How do correspondents under such circumstances know what the "news" is in their region of the world? The main answer is once again: from global agencies. The Dutch Middle East correspondent Joris Luyendijk has impressively described how correspondents work and how they depend on the world agencies in his book "People Like Us: Misrepresenting the Middle East" : ..."
"... The central role of news agencies also explains why, in geopolitical conflicts, most media use the same original sources. In the Syrian war, for example, the "Syrian Observatory for Human Rights" – a dubious one-man organization based in London – featured prominently. The media rarely inquired directly at this "Observatory", as its operator was in fact difficult to reach, even for journalists. ..."
"... Ulrich Tilgner, a veteran Middle East correspondent for German and Swiss television, warned in 2003, shortly after the Iraq war, of acts of deception by the military and the role played by the media: ..."
"... What is known to the US military, would not be foreign to US intelligence services. In a remarkable report by British Channel 4, former CIA officials and a Reuters correspondent spoke candidly about the systematic dissemination of propaganda and misinformation in reporting on geopolitical conflicts: ..."
"... "In all press systems, the news media are instruments of those who exercise political and economic power. Newspapers, periodicals, radio and television stations do not act independently, although they have the possibility of independent exercise of power." (Altschull 1984/1995, p. 298) ..."
"How does the newspaper know what it knows?" The answer to this question is likely to
surprise some newspaper readers: "The main source of information is stories from news agencies.
The almost anonymously operating news agencies are in a way the key to world events. So what
are the names of these agencies, how do they work and who finances them? To judge how well one
is informed about events in East and West, one should know the answers to these questions."
(Höhne 1977, p. 11)
A Swiss media researcher points out:
"The news agencies are the most important suppliers of material to mass media. No daily
media outlet can manage without them. () So the news agencies influence our image of the
world; above all, we get to know what they have selected." (Blum 1995, p. 9)
In view of their essential importance, it is all the more astonishing that these agencies
are hardly known to the public:
"A large part of society is unaware that news agencies exist at all In fact, they play an
enormously important role in the media market. But despite this great importance, little
attention has been paid to them in the past." (Schulten-Jaspers 2013, p. 13)
Even the head of a news agency noted:
"There is something strange about news agencies. They are little known to the public.
Unlike a newspaper, their activity is not so much in the spotlight, yet they can always be
found at the source of the story." (Segbers 2007, p. 9)
"The Invisible Nerve Center of the Media System"
So what are the names of these agencies that are "always at the source of the story"? There
are now only three global agencies left:
The American Associated Press ( AP ) with over 4000 employees worldwide.
The AP belongs to US media companies and has its main editorial office in New York. AP news
is used by around 12,000 international media outlets, reaching more than half of the world's
population every day.
The quasi-governmental French Agence France-Presse ( AFP ) based in Paris and with around
4000 employees. The AFP sends over 3000 stories and photos every day to media all over the
world.
The British agency Reuters in London, which is privately owned and employs just over 3000
people. Reuters was acquired in 2008 by Canadian media entrepreneur Thomson – one of
the 25 richest people in the world – and merged into Thomson Reuters , headquartered in New York.
In addition, many countries run their own news agencies. However, when it comes to
international news, these usually rely on the three global agencies and simply copy and
translate their reports.
The three global news agencies Reuters, AFP and AP, and the three national agencies of the
German-speaking countries of Austria (APA), Germany (DPA) and Switzerland (SDA).
Wolfgang Vyslozil, former managing director of the Austrian APA, described the key role of
news agencies with these words:
"News agencies are rarely in the public eye. Yet they are one of the most influential and
at the same time one of the least known media types. They are key institutions of substantial
importance to any media system. They are the invisible nerve center that connects all parts
of this system." (Segbers 2007, p.10)
Small abbreviation, great effect
However, there is a simple reason why the global agencies, despite their importance, are
virtually unknown to the general public. To quote a Swiss media professor: "Radio and
television usually do not name their sources, and only specialists can decipher references in
magazines." (Blum 1995, P. 9) The motive for this discretion, however, should be clear: news outlets are not particularly
keen to let readers know that they haven't researched most of their contributions
themselves.
The following figure shows some examples of source tagging in popular German-language
newspapers. Next to the agency abbreviations we find the initials of editors who have edited
the respective agency report.
News agencies as sources in newspaper articles
Occasionally, newspapers use agency material but do not label it at all. A study in 2011
from the Swiss Research Institute for the Public Sphere and Society at the University of
Zurich came to the following conclusions (FOEG 2011):
"Agency contributions are exploited integrally without labeling them, or they are
partially rewritten to make them appear as an editorial contribution. In addition, there is a
practice of 'spicing up' agency reports with little effort; for example, visualization
techniques are used: unpublished agency reports are enriched with images and graphics and
presented as comprehensive reports."
The agencies play a prominent role not only in the press, but also in private and public
broadcasting. This is confirmed by Volker Braeutigam, who worked
for the German state broadcaster ARD for ten years and views the dominance of these agencies
critically:
"One fundamental problem is that the newsroom at ARD sources its information mainly from
three sources: the news agencies DPA/AP, Reuters and AFP: one German/American, one British
and one French. () The editor working on a news topic only needs to select a few text
passages on the screen that he considers essential, rearrange them and glue them together
with a few flourishes."
Swiss Radio and Television (SRF), too, largely bases itself on reports from these agencies.
Asked by viewers why a peace march in Ukraine was not reported, the editors
said : "To date, we have not received a single report of this march from the independent
agencies Reuters, AP and AFP."
In fact, not only the text, but also the images, sound and video recordings that we
encounter in our media every day, are mostly from the very same agencies. What the uninitiated
audience might think of as contributions from their local newspaper or TV station, are actually
copied reports from New York, London and Paris.
Some media have even gone a step further and have, for lack of resources, outsourced their
entire foreign editorial office to an agency. Moreover, it is well known that many news portals
on the internet mostly publish agency reports (see e.g., Paterson 2007, Johnston 2011,
MacGregor 2013).
In the end, this dependency on the global agencies creates a striking similarity in
international reporting: from Vienna to Washington, our media often report the same topics,
using many of the same phrases – a phenomenon that would otherwise rather be associated
with "controlled media" in authoritarian states.
The following graphic shows some examples from German and international publications. As you
can see, despite the claimed objectivity, a slight (geo-)political bias sometimes creeps
in.
"Putin threatens", "Iran provokes", "NATO concerned", "Assad stronghold": Similarities in
content and wording due to reports by global news agencies.
The role of correspondents
Much of our media does not have own foreign correspondents, so they have no choice but to
rely completely on global agencies for foreign news. But what about the big daily newspapers
and TV stations that have their own international correspondents? In German-speaking countries,
for example, these include newspapers such NZZ, FAZ, Sueddeutsche Zeitung, Welt, and public
broadcasters.
First of all, the size ratios should be kept in mind: while the global agencies have several
thousand employees worldwide, even the Swiss newspaper NZZ, known for its international
reporting, maintains only 35 foreign correspondents (including their business correspondents).
In huge countries such as China or India, only one correspondent is stationed; all of South
America is covered by only two journalists, while in even larger Africa no-one is on the ground
permanently.
Moreover, in war zones, correspondents rarely venture out. On the Syria war, for example,
many journalists "reported" from cities such as Istanbul, Beirut, Cairo or even from Cyprus. In
addition, many journalists lack the language skills to understand local people and media.
How do correspondents under such circumstances know what the "news" is in their region of
the world? The main answer is once again: from global agencies. The Dutch Middle East
correspondent Joris Luyendijk has impressively described how correspondents work and how they
depend on the world agencies in his book "People Like Us:
Misrepresenting the Middle East" :
"I'd imagined correspondents to be historians-of-the-moment. When something important
happened, they'd go after it, find out what was going on, and report on it. But I didn't go
off to find out what was going on; that had been done long before. I went along to present an
on-the-spot report. ()
The editors in the Netherlands called when something happened, they faxed or emailed the
press releases, and I'd retell them in my own words on the radio, or rework them into an
article for the newspaper. This was the reason my editors found it more important that I
could be reached in the place itself than that I knew what was going on. The news agencies
provided enough information for you to be able to write or talk you way through any crisis or
summit meeting.
That's why you often come across the same images and stories if you leaf through a few
different newspapers or click the news channels.
Our men and women in London, Paris, Berlin and Washington bureaus – all thought that
wrong topics were dominating the news and that we were following the standards of the news
agencies too slavishly. ()
The common idea about correspondents is that they 'have the story', () but the reality is
that the news is a conveyor belt in a bread factory. The correspondents stand at the end of
the conveyor belt, pretending we've baked that white loaf ourselves, while in fact all we've
done is put it in its wrapping. ()
Afterwards, a friend asked me how I'd managed to answer all the questions during those
cross-talks, every hour and without hesitation. When I told him that, like on the TV-news,
you knew all the questions in advance, his e-mailed response came packed with expletives. My
friend had relalized that, for decades, what he'd been watching and listening to on the news
was pure theatre." (Luyendjik 2009, p. 20-22, 76, 189)
In other words, the typical correspondent is in general not able to do independent research,
but rather deals with and reinforces those topics that are already prescribed by the news
agencies – the notorious "mainstream effect".
In addition, for cost-saving reasons many media outlets nowadays have to share their few
foreign correspondents, and within individual media groups, foreign reports are often used by
several publications – none of which contributes to diversity in reporting.
"What the agency does not report, does not take place"
The central role of news agencies also explains why, in geopolitical conflicts, most media
use the same original sources. In the Syrian war, for example, the "Syrian Observatory for
Human Rights" – a dubious one-man organization based in London – featured
prominently. The media rarely inquired directly at this "Observatory", as its operator was in
fact difficult to reach, even for journalists.
Rather, the "Observatory" delivered its stories to global agencies, which then forwarded
them to thousands of media outlets, which in turn "informed" hundreds of millions of readers
and viewers worldwide. The reason why the agencies, of all places, referred to this strange
"Observatory" in their reporting – and who really financed it – is a question that
was rarely asked.
The former chief editor of the German news agency DPA, Manfred Steffens, therefore states in
his book "The Business of News":
"A news story does not become more correct simply because one is able to provide a source
for it. It is indeed rather questionable to trust a news story more just because a source is
cited. () Behind the protective shield such a 'source' means for a news story, some people
are quite inclined to spread rather adventurous things, even if they themselves have
legitimate doubts about their correctness; the responsibility, at least morally, can always
be attributed to the cited source." (Steffens 1969, p. 106)
Dependence on global agencies is also a major reason why media coverage of geopolitical
conflicts is often superficial and erratic, while historic relationships and background are
fragmented or altogether absent. As put by Steffens:
"News agencies receive their impulses almost exclusively from current events and are
therefore by their very nature ahistoric. They are reluctant to add any more context than is
strictly required." (Steffens 1969, p. 32)
Finally, the dominance of global agencies explains why certain geopolitical issues and
events – which often do not fit very well into the US/NATO narrative or are too
"unimportant" – are not mentioned in our media at all: if the agencies do not report on
something, then most Western media will not be aware of it. As pointed out on the occasion of
the 50th anniversary of the German DPA: "What the agency does not report, does not take place."
(Wilke 2000, p. 1)
While some topics do not appear at all in our media, other topics are very prominent –
even though they shouldn't actually be: "Often the mass media do not report on reality, but on
a constructed or staged reality. () Several studies have shown that the mass media are
predominantly determined by PR activities and that passive, receptive attitudes outweigh
active-researching ones." (Blum 1995, p. 16)
In fact, due to the rather low journalistic performance of our media and their high
dependence on a few news agencies, it is easy for interested parties to spread propaganda and
disinformation in a supposedly respectable format to a worldwide audience. DPA editor Steffens
warned of this danger:
"The critical sense gets more lulled the more respected the news agency or newspaper is.
Someone who wants to introduce a questionable story into the world press only needs to try to
put his story in a reasonably reputable agency, to be sure that it then appears a little
later in the others. Sometimes it happens that a hoax passes from agency to agency and
becomes ever more credible." (Steffens 1969, p. 234)
Among the most active actors in "injecting" questionable geopolitical news are the military
and defense ministries. For example, in 2009, the head of the American news agency AP, Tom
Curley,
made public that the Pentagon employs more than 27,000 PR specialists who, with a budget of
nearly $ 5 billion a year, are working the media and circulating targeted manipulations. In
addition, high-ranking US generals had threatened that they would "ruin" the AP and him if the
journalists reported too critically on the US military.
Despite – or because of? – such threats our media regularly publish dubious
stories sourced to some unnamed "informants" from "US defense circles".
Ulrich Tilgner, a veteran Middle East correspondent for German and Swiss television, warned
in 2003, shortly after the Iraq war, of acts of deception by the military and the role played
by the media:
"With the help of the media, the military determine the public perception and use it for
their plans. They manage to stir expectations and spread scenarios and deceptions. In this
new kind of war, the PR strategists of the US administration fulfill a similar function as
the bomber pilots. The special departments for public relations in the Pentagon and in the
secret services have become combatants in the information war. () The US military
specifically uses the lack of transparency in media coverage for their deception maneuvers.
The way they spread information, which is then picked up and distributed by newspapers and
broadcasters, makes it impossible for readers, listeners or viewers to trace the original
source. Thus, the audience will fail to recognize the actual intention of the military."
(Tilgner 2003, p. 132)
What is known to the US military, would not be foreign to US intelligence services. In a
remarkable report
by British Channel 4, former CIA officials and a Reuters correspondent spoke candidly about the
systematic dissemination of propaganda and misinformation in reporting on geopolitical
conflicts:
Former CIA officer and whistleblower John Stockwell said of his work in the
Angolan war,
"The basic theme was to make it look like an [enemy] aggression in Angola. So any kind of
story that you could write and get into the media anywhere in the world, that pushed that
line, we did. One third of my staff in this task force were covert action, were
propagandists, whose professional career job was to make up stories and finding ways of
getting them into the press. () The editors in most Western newspapers are not too skeptical
of messages that conform to general views and prejudices. () So we came up with another
story, and it was kept going for weeks. () [But] it was all fiction."
Fred Bridgland
looked back on his work as a war correspondent for the Reuters agency: "We based our reports on
official communications. It was not until years later that I learned a little CIA
disinformation expert had sat in the US embassy, in Lusaka and composed that communiqué,
and it bore no relation at all to truth. () Basically, and to put it very crudely, you can
publish any old crap and it will get newspaper room."
And former CIA analyst David MacMichael described his work in the
Contra War in Nicaragua with these words:
"They said our intelligence of Nicaragua was so good that we could even register when
someone flushed a toilet. But I had the feeling that the stories we were giving to the press
came straight out of the toilet." (Hird 1985)
Of course, the intelligence services also have a large number of direct contacts in our media,
which can be "leaked" information to if necessary. But without the central role of the global
news agencies, the worldwide synchronization of propaganda and disinformation would never be so
efficient.
Through this "propaganda multiplier", dubious stories from PR experts working for
governments, military and intelligence services reach the general public more or less unchecked
and unfiltered. The journalists refer to the news agencies and the news agencies refer to their
sources. Although they often attempt to point out uncertainties with terms such as "apparent",
"alleged" and the like – by then the rumor has long been spread to the world and its
effect taken place.
The Propaganda Multiplier: Governments, military and intelligence services using global
news agencies to disseminate their messages to a worldwide audience.
As the New York Times reported
In addition to global news agencies, there is another source that is often used by media
outlets around the world to report on geopolitical conflicts, namely the major publications in
Great Britain and the US.
For example, news outlets like the New York Times or BBC have up to 100 foreign
correspondents and other external employees. However, Middle East correspondent Luyendijk
points out:
"Dutch news teams, me included, fed on the selection of news made by quality media like
CNN, the BBC, and the New York Times . We did that on the assumption
that their correspondents understood the Arab world and commanded a view of it – but
many of them turned out not to speak Arabic, or at least not enough to be able to have a
conversation in it or to follow the local media. Many of the top dogs at CNN, the BBC, the
Independent, the Guardian, the New Yorker, and the NYT were more often than not dependent on
assistants and translators." (Luyendijk p. 47)
In addition, the sources of these media outlets are often not easy to verify ("military
circles", "anonymous government officials", "intelligence officials" and the like) and can
therefore also be used for the dissemination of propaganda. In any case, the widespread
orientation towards the Anglo-Saxon publications leads to a further convergence in the
geopolitical coverage in our media.
The following figure shows some examples of such citation based on the Syria coverage of the
largest daily newspaper in Switzerland, Tages-Anzeiger. The articles are all from the first
days of October 2015, when Russia for the first time intervened directly in the Syrian war
(US/UK sources are highlighted):
Frequent citation of British and US media, exemplified by the Syria war coverage of Swiss
daily newspaper Tages-Anzeiger in October 2015.
The desired narrative
But why do journalists in our media not simply try to research and report independently of
the global agencies and the Anglo-Saxon media? Middle East correspondent Luyendijk describes
his experiences:
"You might suggest that I should have looked for sources I could trust. I did try, but
whenever I wanted to write a story without using news agencies, the main Anglo-Saxon media,
or talking heads, it fell apart. () Obviously I, as a correspondent, could tell very
different stories about one and the same situation. But the media could only present one of
them, and often enough, that was exactly the story that confirmed the prevailing image."
(Luyendijk p.54ff)
Media researcher Noam Chomsky has described this effect in his essay "What makes the mainstream media mainstream" as
follows: "If you leave the official line, if you produce dissenting reports, then you will soon
feel this. () There are many ways to get you back in line quickly. If you don't follow the
guidelines, you will not keep your job long. This system works pretty well, and it reflects
established power structures." (Chomsky 1997)
Nevertheless, some of the leading journalists continue to believe that nobody can tell them
what to write. How does this add up? Media researcher Chomsky clarifies the apparent contradiction:
"[T]he point is that they wouldn't be there unless they had already demonstrated that
nobody has to tell them what to write because they are going say the right thing. If they had
started off at the Metro desk, or something, and had pursued the wrong kind of stories, they
never would have made it to the positions where they can now say anything they like. () They
have been through the socialization system." (Chomsky 1997)
Ultimately, this "socialization process" leads to a journalism that generally no longer
independently researches and critically reports on geopolitical conflicts (and some other
topics), but seeks to consolidate the desired narrative through appropriate editorials,
commentary, and interviewees.
Conclusion: The "First Law of Journalism"
Former AP journalist Herbert Altschull called it the First Law of Journalism:
"In all press systems, the news media are instruments of those who exercise political and
economic power. Newspapers, periodicals, radio and television stations do not act
independently, although they have the possibility of independent exercise of power."
(Altschull 1984/1995, p. 298)
In that sense, it is logical that our traditional media – which are predominantly
financed by advertising or the state – represent the geopolitical interests of the
transatlantic alliance, given that both the advertising corporations as well as the states
themselves are dependent on the US dominated transatlantic economic and security
architecture.
In addition, our leading media and their key people are – in the spirit of Chomsky's
"socialization" – often themselves part of the networks of the transatlantic elite. Some
of the most important institutions in this regard include the US Council on Foreign Relations
(CFR), the Bilderberg Group, and the Trilateral Commission (see in-depth study of these networks
).
Indeed, most well-known publications basically may be seen as "establishment media". This is
because, in the past, the freedom of the press was rather theoretical, given significant entry
barriers such as broadcasting licenses, frequency slots, requirements for financing and
technical infrastructure, limited sales channels, dependence on advertising, and other
restrictions.
It was only due to the Internet that Altschull's First Law has been broken to some extent.
Thus, in recent years a high-quality, reader-funded journalism has emerged, often outperforming
traditional media in terms of critical reporting. Some of these "alternative" publications
already reach a very large audience, showing that the „mass" does not have to be a
problem for the quality of a media outlet.
Nevertheless, up to now the traditional media has been able to attract a solid majority of
online visitors, too. This, in turn, is closely linked to the hidden role of news agencies,
whose up-to-the-minute reports form the backbone of most news portals.
Will "political and economic power", according to Altschull's Law, retain control over the
news, or will "uncontrolled" news change the political and economic power structure? The coming
years will show.
Case study: Syria war coverage
As part of a case study, the Syria war coverage of nine leading daily newspapers from
Germany, Austria and Switzerland were examined for plurality of viewpoints and reliance on news
agencies. The following newspapers were selected:
For Germany: Die Welt, Süddeutsche Zeitung (SZ), and Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
(FAZ)
For Switzerland: Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ), Tagesanzeiger (TA), and Basler Zeitung
(BaZ)
For Austria: Standard, Kurier, and Die Presse
The investigation period was defined as October 1 to 15, 2015, i.e. the first two weeks
after Russia's direct intervention in the Syrian conflict. The entire print and online coverage
of these newspapers was taken into account. Any Sunday editions were not taken into account, as
not all of the newspapers examined have such. In total, 381 newspaper articles met the stated
criteria.
In a first step, the articles were classified according to their properties into the
following groups:
Agencies : Reports from news agencies (with agency code)
Mixed : Simple reports (with author names) that are based in whole or in part on agency
reports
Reports : Editorial background reports and analyzes
Opinions/Comments : Opinions and guest comments
Interviews : interviews with experts, politicians etc.
Investigative : Investigative research that reveals new information or context
The following Figure 1 shows the composition of the articles for the nine newspapers
analyzed in total. As can be seen, 55% of articles were news agency reports; 23% editorial
reports based on agency material; 9% background reports; 10% opinions and guest comments; 2%
interviews; and 0% based on investigative research.
Figure 1: Types of articles (total; n=381)
The pure agency texts – from short notices to the detailed reports – were mostly
on the Internet pages of the daily newspapers: on the one hand, the pressure for breaking news
is higher than in the printed edition, on the other hand, there are no space restrictions. Most
other types of articles were found in both the online and printed editions; some exclusive
interviews and background reports were found only in the printed editions. All items were
collected only once for the investigation.
The following Figure 2 shows the same classification on a per newspaper basis. During the
observation period (two weeks), most newspapers published between 40 and 50 articles on the
Syrian conflict (print and online). In the German newspaper Die Welt there were more
(58), in the Basler Zeitung and the Austrian Kurier , however, significantly less
(29 or 33).
Depending on which newspaper, the share of agency reports is almost 50% (Welt,
Süddeutsche, NZZ, Basler Zeitung), just under 60% (FAZ, Tagesanzeiger), and 60 to 70%
(Presse, Standard, Kurier). Together with the agency-based reports, the proportion in most
newspapers is between approx. 70% and 80%. These proportions are consistent with previous media
studies (e.g., Blum 1995, Johnston 2011, MacGregor 2013, Paterson 2007).
In the background reports, the Swiss newspapers were leading (five to six pieces), followed
by Welt , Süddeutsche and Standard (four each) and the other
newspapers (one to three). The background reports and analyzes were in particular devoted to
the situation and development in the Middle East, as well as to the motives and interests of
individual actors (for example Russia, Turkey, the Islamic State).
However, most of the commentaries were to be found in the German newspapers (seven comments
each), followed by Standard (five), NZZ and Tagesanzeiger (four each).
Basler Zeitung did not publish any commentaries during the observation period, but two
interviews. Other interviews were conducted by Standard (three) and Kurier and
Presse (one each). Investigative research, however, could not be found in any of the
newspapers.
In particular, in the case of the three German newspapers, a journalistically problematic
blending of opinion pieces and reports was noted. Reports contained strong expressions of
opinion even though they were not marked as commentary. The present study was in any case based
on the article labeling by the newspaper.
Figure 2: Types of articles per newspaper
The following Figure 3 shows the breakdown of agency stories (by agency abbreviation) for
each news agency, in total and per country. The 211 agency reports carried a total of 277
agency codes (a story may consist of material from more than one agency). In total, 24% of
agency reports came from the AFP; about 20% each by the DPA, APA and Reuters; 9% of the SDA; 6%
of the AP; and 11% were unknown (no labeling or blanket term "agencies").
In Germany, the DPA, AFP and Reuters each have a share of about one third of the news
stories. In Switzerland, the SDA and the AFP are in the lead, and in Austria, the APA and
Reuters.
In fact, the shares of the global agencies AFP, AP and Reuters are likely to be even higher,
as the Swiss SDA and the Austrian APA obtain their international reports mainly from the global
agencies and the German DPA cooperates closely with the American AP.
It should also be noted that, for historical reasons, the global agencies are represented
differently in different regions of the world. For events in Asia, Ukraine or Africa, the share
of each agency will therefore be different than from events in the Middle East.
Figure 3: Share of news agencies, total (n=277) and per country
In the next step, central statements were used to rate the orientation of editorial opinions
(28), guest comments (10) and interview partners (7) (a total of 45 articles). As Figure 4
shows, 82% of the contributions were generally US/NATO friendly, 16% neutral or balanced, and
2% predominantly US/NATO critical.
The only predominantly US/NATO-critical contribution was an op-ed in the Austrian
Standard on October 2, 2015, titled: "The strategy of regime change has failed. A
distinction between ‚good' and ‚bad' terrorist groups in Syria makes the Western
policy untrustworthy."
Figure 4: Orientation of editorial opinions, guest comments, and interviewees (total;
n=45).
The following Figure 5 shows the orientation of the contributions, guest comments and
interviewees, in turn broken down by individual newspapers. As can be seen, Welt,
Süddeutsche Zeitung, NZZ, Zürcher Tagesanzeiger and the Austrian newspaper
Kurier presented exclusively US/NATO-friendly opinion and guest contributions; this goes
for FAZ too, with the exception of one neutral/balanced contribution. The
Standard brought four US/NATO friendly, three balanced/neutral, as well as the already
mentioned US/NATO critical opinion contributions.
Presse was the only one of the examined newspapers to predominantly publish
neutral/balanced opinions and guest contributions. The Basler Zeitung published one
US/NATO-friendly and one balanced contribution. Shortly after the observation period (October
16, 2015), Basler Zeitung also published an interview with the President of the Russian
Parliament. This would of course have been counted as a contribution critical of the
US/NATO.
Figure 5: Basic orientation of opinion pieces and interviewees per newspaper
In a further analysis, a full-text keyword search for "propaganda" (and word combinations
thereof) was used to investigate in which cases the newspapers themselves identified propaganda
in one of the two geopolitical conflict sides, USA/NATO or Russia (the participant "IS/ISIS"
was not considered). In total, twenty such cases were identified. Figure 6 shows the result: in
85% of the cases, propaganda was identified on the Russian side of the conflict, in 15% the
identification was neutral or unstated, and in 0% of the cases propaganda was identified on the
USA/NATO side of the conflict.
It should be noted that about half of the cases (nine) were in the Swiss NZZ , which
spoke of Russian propaganda quite frequently ("Kremlin propaganda", "Moscow propaganda
machine", "propaganda stories", "Russian propaganda apparatus" etc.), followed by German
FAZ (three), Welt and Süddeutsche Zeitung (two each) and the Austrian
newspaper Kurier (one). The other newspapers did not mention propaganda, or only in a
neutral context (or in the context of IS).
Figure 6: Attribution of propaganda to conflict parties (total; n=20).
Conclusion
In this case study, the geopolitical coverage in nine leading daily newspapers from Germany,
Austria and Switzerland was examined for diversity and journalistic performance using the
example of the Syrian war.
The results confirm the high dependence on the global news agencies (63 to 90%, excluding
commentaries and interviews) and the lack of own investigative research, as well as the rather
biased commenting on events in favor of the US/NATO side (82% positive; 2% negative), whose
stories were not checked by the newspapers for any propaganda.
*
Note to readers: please click the share buttons below. Forward this article to your email
lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.
Bolton power over Trump is connected to Adelson power over Trump. To think about Bolton as pure advisor is to seriously
underestimate his role and influence.
Notable quotes:
"... But I always figured you needed to keep the blowhards under cover so they wouldn't stick their feet in their mouths and that the public position jobs should go to the smoothies..You, know, diplomats who were capable of some measure of subtlety. ..."
"... A clod like Bolton should be put aside and assigned the job of preparing position papers and a lout Like Pompeo should be a football coach at RoosterPoot U. ..."
"... "Once he's committed to a war in the Mideast, he's just screwed," ..."
"... Not only Trump, at the same time the swamp creatures risk losing control over the Democrat primaries, too. With a new major war in the Mideast, Tulsi Gabbard's core message of non-interventionism will resonate a lot more, and that will lower the chances of the corporate DNC picks. A dangerous gamble. ..."
"... The other day I was thinking to myself that if Trump decides to dismiss Bolton or Pompeo, especially given how terrible Venezuela, NKorea, and Iran policies have turned out (clearly at odds with his non-interventionist campaign platform), who would he appoint as State Sec and NS adviser? and since Bolton was personally pushed to Trump by Adelson in exchange for campaign donation, would there be a backlash from the Jewish Republican donors and the loss of support? I think in both cases Trump is facing with big dilemmas. ..."
"... Tulsi for Sec of State 2020... ..."
"... Keeping Bolton and Pompeo on board is consistent with Trump's negotiating style. He is full of bluster and demands to put the other side in a defensive position. I guess it was a successful strategy for him so he continues it. Many years ago I was across the table from Trump negotiating the sale of the land under the Empire State Building which at the time was owned by Prudential even though Trump already had locked up the actual building. I just sat there, impassively, while Trump went on with his fire and fury. When I did not budge, he turned to his Japanese financial partner and said "take care of this" and walked out of the room. Then we were able to talk and negotiate in a logical manner and consumate a deal that was double Trump's negotiating bid. I learned later he was furious with his Japanese partner for failing to "win". ..."
"... You can still these same traits in the way that Trump thinks about other countries - they can be cajoled or pushed into doing what Trump wants. If the other countries just wait Trump out they can usually get a much better deal. Bolton and Pompeo, as Blusterers, are useful in pursuing the same negotiation style, for better or worse, Trump has used for probably for the last 50 years. ..."
"... I have seen this style of negotiations work on occasion. The most important lesson I've learned is the willingness to walk. I'm not sure that Trump's personal style matters that much in complex negotiations among states. There's too many people and far too many details. ..."
"... Having the neocons front & center on his foreign policy team I believe has negative consequences for him politically. IMO, he won support from the anti-interventionists due to his strong campaign stance. While they may be a small segment in America in a tight race they could matter. ..."
"... Additionally as Col. Lang notes the neocons could start a shooting match due to their hubris and that can always escalate and go awry. We can only hope that he's smart enough to recognize that. I remain convinced that our fawning allegiance to Bibi is central to many of our poor strategic decision making. ..."
"... I agree that this is Trump's style but what he does not seem to understand is that in using jugheads like these guys on the international scene he may precipitate a war when he really does not want one. ..."
"... "Perhaps the biggest lie the mainstream media have tried to get over on the American public is the idea that it is conservatives, that start wars. That's total nonsense of course. Almost all of America's wars in the 20th century were stared by liberal Democrats." ..."
"... So what exactly is Pussy John, then, just a Yosemite Sam-type bureaucrat with no actual portfolio, so to speak? I defer to your vastly greater knowledge of these matters, but at times it sure seems like they are pursuing a rear-guard action as the US Empire shrinks ..."
"... If were Lavrov, what would I think to myself were I to find myself on the other side of a phone call from PJ or the Malignant Manatee? ..."
It's time for Trump to stop John Bolton and Mike Pompeo from
sabotaging his foreign policy | Mulshine
"I put that question to another military vet, former Vietnam Green Beret Pat Lang.
"Once he's committed to a war in the Mideast, he's just screwed," said Lang of Trump.
But Lang, who later spent more than a decade in the Mideast, noted that Bolton has no direct
control over the military.
"Bolton has a problem," he said. "If he can just get the generals to obey him, he can start
all the wars he wants. But they don't obey him."
They obey the commander-in-chief. And Trump has a history of hiring war-crazed advisors who
end up losing their jobs when they get a bit too bellicose. Former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley
comes to mind."
" In Lang's view, anyone who sees Trump as some sort of ideologue is missing the point.
"He's an entrepreneurial businessman who hires consultants for their advice and then gets
rid of them when he doesn't want that advice," he said.
So far that advice hasn't been very helpful, at least in the case of Bolton. His big mouth
seems to have deep-sixed Trump's chance of a summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. And
that failed coup in Venezuela has brought up comparisons to the failed Bay of Pigs invasion
during the Kennedy administration." Mulshine
--------------
Well, pilgrims, I worked exclusively on the subject of the Islamic culture continent for the
USG from 1972 to 1994 and then in business from 1994 to 2006. I suppose I am still working on
the subject. pl
I don't get it I suppose. I'd always thought that maybe you wanted highly opinionated Type A
personalities in the role of privy council, etc. You know, people who could forcefully
advocate positions in closed session meetings and weren't afraid of taking contrary
positions. But I always figured you needed to keep the blowhards under cover so they wouldn't
stick their feet in their mouths and that the public position jobs should go to the smoothies..You, know, diplomats who were capable of some measure of subtlety.
But these days it's the loudmouths who get these jobs, to our detriment. When will senior
govt. leaders understand that just because a person is a success in running for Congress
doesn't mean he/she should be sent forth to mingle with the many different personalities and
cultures running the rest of the world?
A clod like Bolton should be put aside and assigned
the job of preparing position papers and a lout Like Pompeo should be a football coach at RoosterPoot U.
No. I would like to see highly opinionated Type B personalities like me hold those jobs. Type
B does not mean you are passive. It means you are not obsessively competitive.
"Once he's committed to a war in the Mideast, he's just screwed,"
Not only Trump, at the same time the swamp creatures risk losing control over the Democrat
primaries, too. With a new major war in the Mideast, Tulsi Gabbard's core message of
non-interventionism will resonate a lot more, and that will lower the chances of the
corporate DNC picks. A dangerous gamble.
Interesting post, thank you sir. Prior to this recent post I had never heard of Paul
Mulshine. In fact I went through some of his earlier posts on Trump's foreign policy and I
found a fair amount of common sense in them. He strikes me as a paleocon, like Pat Buchanan,
Paul Craig Roberts, Michael Scheuer, Doug Bandow, Tucker Carlson and others in that mold.
The other day I was thinking to myself that if Trump decides to dismiss Bolton or Pompeo,
especially given how terrible Venezuela, NKorea, and Iran policies have turned out (clearly
at odds with his non-interventionist campaign platform), who would he appoint as State Sec
and NS adviser? and since Bolton was personally pushed to Trump by Adelson in exchange for
campaign donation, would there be a backlash from the Jewish Republican donors and the loss
of support? I think in both cases Trump is facing with big dilemmas.
My best hope is that
Trump teams up with libertarians and maybe even paleocons to run his foreign policy. So far
Trump has not succeeded in draining the Swamp. Bolton, Pompeo and their respective staff
"are" indeed the Swamp creatures and they run their own policies that run against Trump's
America First policy. Any thoughts?
Keeping Bolton and Pompeo on board is consistent with Trump's negotiating style. He is full
of bluster and demands to put the other side in a defensive position. I guess it was a
successful strategy for him so he continues it. Many years ago I was across the table from
Trump negotiating the sale of the land under the Empire State Building which at the time was
owned by Prudential even though Trump already had locked up the actual building. I just sat
there, impassively, while Trump went on with his fire and fury. When I did not budge, he
turned to his Japanese financial partner and said "take care of this" and walked out of the
room. Then we were able to talk and negotiate in a logical manner and consumate a deal that
was double Trump's negotiating bid. I learned later he was furious with his Japanese partner
for failing to "win".
You can still these same traits in the way that Trump thinks about other countries - they
can be cajoled or pushed into doing what Trump wants. If the other countries just wait Trump
out they can usually get a much better deal. Bolton and Pompeo, as Blusterers, are useful in
pursuing the same negotiation style, for better or worse, Trump has used for probably for the
last 50 years.
I have seen this style of negotiations work on occasion. The most important lesson I've learned is the willingness to
walk. I'm not sure that Trump's personal style matters that much in complex negotiations among states. There's too many people
and far too many details. I see he and his trade team not buckling to the Chinese at least not yet despite the intense
pressure from Wall St and the big corporations.
Having the neocons front & center on his foreign policy team I believe has negative
consequences for him politically. IMO, he won support from the anti-interventionists due to
his strong campaign stance. While they may be a small segment in America in a tight race they
could matter.
Additionally as Col. Lang notes the neocons could start a shooting match due to
their hubris and that can always escalate and go awry. We can only hope that he's smart
enough to recognize that. I remain convinced that our fawning allegiance to Bibi is central
to many of our poor strategic decision making.
Just out of curiosity: Did the deal go through in the end, despite Trump's ire? Or was
Trump so furious with the negotiating result of his Japanese partner that he tore up the
draft once it was presented to him?
I agree that this is Trump's style but what he does not seem to understand is that in
using jugheads like these guys on the international scene he may precipitate a war when he
really does not want one.
Mulshine's article has some good points, but he does include some hilariously ignorant bits
which undermine his credibility.
"Jose Gomez Rivera is a Jersey guy who served in the State Department in Venezuela at the
time of the coup that brought the current socialist regime to power."
Wrong. Maduro was elected and international observers seem to agree the election was
fair.
"Perhaps the biggest lie the mainstream media have tried to get over on the American
public is the idea that it is conservatives, that start wars. That's total nonsense of
course. Almost all of America's wars in the 20th century were stared by liberal Democrats."
So what exactly is Pussy John, then, just a Yosemite Sam-type bureaucrat with no actual
portfolio, so to speak? I defer to your vastly greater knowledge of these matters, but at
times it sure seems like they are pursuing a rear-guard action as the US Empire shrinks and
shudders in its death throes underneath them, and at others it seems like they really have no
idea what to do, other than engage in juvenile antics, snort some glue from a paper bag and
set fires in the dumpsters behind the Taco Bell before going out into a darkened field
somewhere to violate farm animals.
If were Lavrov, what would I think to myself were I to
find myself on the other side of a phone call from PJ or the Malignant Manatee?
"... Historians will study this period when there was a convergence in the objectives of the US intelligence agencies, the leaders of the Hillary Clinton wing of the Democratic Party, the majority of Republican politicians and the anti-Trump media. That common objective was stopping any entente between Moscow and Washington. ..."
"... Each group had its own motive. The intelligence community and elements in the Pentagon feared a rapprochement between Trump and Putin would deprive them of a 'presentable' enemy once ISIS's military power was destroyed. The Clinton camp was keen to ascribe an unexpected defeat to a cause other than the candidate and her inept campaign; Moscow's alleged hacking of Democratic Party emails fitted the bill. And the neocons, who 'promoted the Iraq war, detest Putin and consider Israel's security non-negotiable' ( 8 ), hated Trump's neo-isolationist instincts. ..."
"... This is why the Democratic Party data hack, which the US intelligence services allege is the work of the Russians, obsesses the party, and the press. It strikes two targets: delegitimising Trump's election and stopping his promotion of a thaw with Russia. Has Washington's aggrieved reaction to a foreign power's interference in a state's domestic affairs, and its elections, struck no one as odd? Why do just a handful of people point out that, not long ago, Angela Merkel's phone was tapped not by the Kremlin but by the Obama administration? ..."
"... Now the Times is in the vanguard of those preparing psychologically for conflict with Russia. There is almost no remaining resistance to its line. On the right, as the Wall Street Journal called for the US to arm Ukraine on 3 August, Vice-President Mike Pence spoke on a visit to Estonia about 'the spectre of [Russian] aggression', encouraged Georgia to join NATO, and paid tribute to Montenegro, NATO's newest member. ..."
"... At this stage, it doesn't matter any more what Trump thinks. He is no longer able to get his way on the issue. Moscow has noted this and is drawing its own conclusions. ..."
Trump was after a good deal from Russia. A new partnership would have reversed deteriorating relations between the powers by encouraging
their alliance against ISIS and recognising the importance of Ukraine to Russia's security. Current US paranoia about everything
Kremlin-related has encouraged amnesia about what President Barack Obama said in 2016, after the annexation of the Crimea and Russia's
direct intervention in Syria. He too put the danger posed by President Vladimir Putin into perspective: the interventions in Ukraine
and the Middle East were, Obama said, improvised 'in response to a client state that was about to slip out of his grasp' (
5 ).
Obama went on: 'The Russians can't change us or significantly weaken us. They are a smaller country, they are a weaker country,
their economy doesn't produce anything that anybody wants to buy, except oil and gas and arms.' What he feared most about Putin was
the sympathy he inspired in Trump and his supporters: '37% of Republican voters approve of Putin, the former head of the KGB. Ronald
Reagan would roll over in his grave' ( 6 ).
By January 2017, Reagan's eternal rest was no longer threatened. 'Presidents come and go but the policy never changes,' Putin
concluded ( 7 ). Historians will study
this period when there was a convergence in the objectives of the US intelligence agencies, the leaders of the Hillary Clinton wing
of the Democratic Party, the majority of Republican politicians and the anti-Trump media. That common objective was stopping any
entente between Moscow and Washington.
Each group had its own motive. The intelligence community and elements in the Pentagon feared a rapprochement between Trump
and Putin would deprive them of a 'presentable' enemy once ISIS's military power was destroyed. The Clinton camp was keen to ascribe
an unexpected defeat to a cause other than the candidate and her inept campaign; Moscow's alleged hacking of Democratic Party emails
fitted the bill. And the neocons, who 'promoted the Iraq war, detest Putin and consider Israel's security non-negotiable' (
8 ), hated Trump's neo-isolationist instincts.
The media, especially the New York Times and Washington Post, eagerly sought a new Watergate scandal and knew their
middle-class, urban, educated readers loathe Trump for his vulgarity, affection for the far right, violence and lack of culture (
9 ). So they were searching for any information
or rumour that could cause his removal or force a resignation. As in Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express, everyone
had his particular motive for striking the same victim.
The intrigue developed quickly as these four areas have fairly porous boundaries. The understanding between Republican hawks such
as John McCain, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and the military-industrial complex was a given. The architects
of recent US imperial adventures, especially Iraq, had not enjoyed the 2016 campaign or Trump's jibes about their expertise. During
the campaign, some 50 intellectuals and officials announced that, despite being Republicans, they would not support Trump because
he 'would put at risk our country's national security and wellbeing.' Some went so far as to vote for Clinton (
10 ).
Ambitions of a 'deep state'?
The press feared that Trump's incompetence would threaten the US-dominated international order. It had no problem with military
crusades, especially when emblazoned with grand humanitarian, internationalist or progressive principles. According to the press
criteria, Putin and his predilection for rightwing nationalists were obvious culprits. But so were Saudi Arabia or Israel, though
that did not prevent the Saudis being able to count on the ferociously anti-Russian Wall Street Journal, or Israel enjoying
the support of almost all US media, despite having a far-right element in its government.
Just over a week before Trump took office, journalist Glenn Greenwald, who broke the Edward Snowden story that revealed the mass
surveillance programmes run by the National Security Agency, warned of the direction of travel. He observed that the US media had
become the intelligence services' 'most valuable instrument, much of which reflexively reveres, serves, believes, and sides with
hidden intelligence officials.' This at a time when 'Democrats, still reeling from their unexpected and traumatic election loss as
well as a systemic collapse of their party, seemingly divorced further and further from reason with each passing day, are willing
-- eager -- to embrace any claim, cheer any tactic, align with any villain, regardless of how unsupported, tawdry and damaging
those behaviours might be' ( 11 ).
The anti-Russian coalition hadn't then achieved all its objectives, but Greenwald already discerned the ambitions of a 'deep state'.
'There really is, at this point,' he said 'obvious open warfare between this unelected but very powerful faction that resides in
Washington and sees presidents come and go, on the one hand, and the person that the American democracy elected to be the president
on the other.' One suspicion, fed by the intelligence services, galvanised all Trump's enemies: Moscow had compromising secrets about
Trump -- financial, electoral, sexual -- capable of paralysing him should a crisis between the two countries occur (
12 ).
Covert opposition to Trump
The suspicion of such a murky understanding, summed up by the pro-Clinton economist Paul Krugman as a 'Trump-Putin ticket', has
transformed the anti-Russian activity into a domestic political weapon against a president increasingly hated outside the ultraconservative
bloc. It is no longer unusual to hear leftwing activists turn FBI or CIA apologists, since these agencies became a home for a covert
opposition to Trump and the source of many leaks.
This is why the Democratic Party data hack, which the US intelligence services allege is the work of the Russians, obsesses
the party, and the press. It strikes two targets: delegitimising Trump's election and stopping his promotion of a thaw with Russia.
Has Washington's aggrieved reaction to a foreign power's interference in a state's domestic affairs, and its elections, struck no
one as odd? Why do just a handful of people point out that, not long ago, Angela Merkel's phone was tapped not by the Kremlin but
by the Obama administration?
The silence was once broken when the Republican representative for North Carolina, Tom Tillis, questioned former CIA director
James Clapper in January: 'The United States has been involved in one way or another in 81 different elections since World War II.
That doesn't include coups or the regime changes, some tangible evidence where we have tried to affect an outcome to our purpose.
Russia has done it some 36 times.' This perspective rarely disturbs the New York Times 's fulminations against Moscow's trickery.
The Times also failed to inform younger readers that Russia's president Boris Yeltsin, who picked Putin as his successor
in 1999, had been re-elected in 1996, though seriously ill and often drunk, in a fraudulent election conducted with the assistance
of US advisers and the overt support of President Bill Clinton. The Times hailed the result as 'a victory for Russian democracy'
and declared that 'the forces of democracy and reform won a vital but not definitive victory in Russia yesterday For the first time
in history, a free Russia has freely chosen its leader.'
Now the Times is in the vanguard of those preparing psychologically for conflict with Russia. There is almost no remaining
resistance to its line. On the right, as the Wall Street Journal called for the US to arm Ukraine on 3 August, Vice-President
Mike Pence spoke on a visit to Estonia about 'the spectre of [Russian] aggression', encouraged Georgia to join NATO, and paid tribute
to Montenegro, NATO's newest member.
No longer getting his way
But the Times, far from worrying about these provocative gestures coinciding with heightened tensions between great powers
(trade sanctions against Russia, Moscow's expulsion of US diplomats), poured oil on the fire. On 2 August it praised the reaffirmation
of 'America's commitment to defend democratic nations against those countries that would undermine them' and regretted that Mike
Pence's views 'aren't as eagerly embraced and celebrated by the man he works for back in the White House.'
At this stage, it doesn't
matter any more what Trump thinks. He is no longer able to get his way on the issue. Moscow has noted this and is drawing its own
conclusions.
maybe Trump finally has his hands untied to start doing the things he promised
I really hope so .
But I fear he is an unfocused egomaniac, without overarching philosophy or principles,
blown by the winds and susceptible to any path that seems interesting to him at the present
time or that massages his ego.
The Russian Foreign Ministry called the 18-month prison sentence for student Maria Butina a
"politically motivated" decision "in the spirit of McCarthyism," adding that her only crime was
being a Russian citizen in the US. "From the moment of her arrest we have pointed out that
the accusations against her of attempting to influence internal American political processes
were completely contrived and fabricated, " the ministry said in a statement on Friday. "
Her confession, which was coerced through harsh imprisonment conditions and threats of a
lengthy sentence, changes nothing."
Butina was sentenced on Friday to 18 months in
prison and deportation from the US by a federal judge in Washington, DC. She was arrested by
the FBI in June last year and charged with being an unregistered foreign agent. The nine months
she has already spent in jail – much of it in solitary confinement – will count
towards her sentence.
The American University graduate who sought to make connections with the National Rifle
Association ended up pleading guilty in December to
failing to register as an agent of the Russian government. Moscow has repeatedly said it had
nothing to do with Butina, who prior to her studies in the US campaigned for American-style gun
laws in Russia.
" Our compatriot's only crime was being a citizen of Russia. She became a victim of a
bitter battle between political forces inside the US, and an unbridled anti-Russian campaign in
the spirit of McCarthyism," the Foreign Ministry said on Friday, describing Butina's
sentence as a "shameful stain on the American judicial system " that put itself in the
service of a blatantly political agenda.
Butina's arrest came at the height of 'Russiagate' hysteria, as special counsel Robert
Mueller investigated claims by Democrats that President Donald Trump and his campaign
"colluded" with Russia during the 2016 US presidential election. Mueller's report, made public
last week, found no collusion, but claimed – without evidence –
that Russia did interfere in the election. Butina was not mentioned anywhere in its 448 pages
.
Breathless media reports about Butina's indictment smeared her as a spy who traded sex for
influence in order to embed herself into the US political establishment. That allegation
persisted
in the media even after prosecutors quietly dropped it and apologized for misreading one
of her text messages.
In George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, the Two Minutes' Hate is a daily period in
which Party members of the society of Oceania must watch a film depicting the Party's enemies
(notably Emmanuel Goldstein and his followers) and express their hatred for them.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/0vvvPZd6_D8
In case anyone is interested, here is what Goldstein actually says in that scene (you
can't make it out, cause the crowd is shouting over it, but that's what he says according to
the subtitles)
"Nothing the Party says is true. Nothing the Party does is good. Even the war itself isn't
real. The Party wants you to believe we are at war so as to channel your aggression away from
their rightful target: the Party. Big Brother is not real. He is pure fiction, created by the
Party. The real rulers of the State are unknown, faceless manipulators who, because they are
not known are able to wield power without let or hindrance. People of Oceania, you are being
duped. The Party doesn't serve the people -- it serves itself. We are not at war with
Eurasia. You are being made into obedient, stupid slaves of the Party. Open your eyes. See
the evil that is happening to you. The Party drops bombs on its own citizens. It is the
Party, not the Eurasians, who are our enemies."
Don't underestimate the power of progressive self hate indoctrination reinforced by
decades of corruption.
There are no "good guys" but those professing our allegiance to empathy are voting for
suicide.
Yes it is important to understand the motivations of those who would do us harm, but
empathy suggests that we substitute the interests of others over our own.
If we are to understand anything, it is that humanity has been studied longer than
anything else on the planet, and as such, there are no alternatives not anticipated and
planned for.
From off the grid prepper to the head of Goldman Sachs, each plays a role.
This is a Matrix, but not by AI but by multigenerational planning, and a thorough
understanding of human behavior, as they would with every variety of plant and animal on the
planet.
CIA chief from the 80s William Casey said, "We know our job is complete when all the
information the American people get is 100% lies."
The only truth in this world comes from the Bible, which tells right from the get go how
the Earth was made, it's a special FIXED place, no where does it say we are a spinning ball,
everything spins around us. There is water above the firmament which are the heavens where
god lives and there are waters under the firmament on the Earth where man lives. The
Antarctic surrounds the flat plane and it is approx. 67,000 miles all the way around and the
north pole and Polaris are the center. In the 50s they tried to blast thru the firmament and
failed, with their rockets and all this NASA stuff is just another way to drain money from
you and you can never go to the moon, what you saw was made in a Hollywood basement. The evil
in this world wants to take you away from God because Lucifer was jealous God made you in his
imagine and he wants to prove you are no good and will take down as many of us as he can just
prove his point.
In this case he looks like Bill Clinton impersonalization ;-) That's probably how Adelson controls Bolton ;-)
Notable quotes:
"... Larry Flint had offered a Million dollars to anyone who had proof of republican sexual exploits. He was quickly fingered by someone who attended those clubs. He was forced to accept a temporary position and quietly resigned after a few months so as to avoid facing questions. ..."
@FB Yeah brother,
that POS was called out during his confirmation hearings during baby Bush's presidency. Larry Flint had offered a Million
dollars to anyone who had proof of republican sexual exploits. He was quickly fingered by someone who attended those clubs. He
was forced to accept a temporary position and quietly resigned after a few months so as to avoid facing questions.
Someone said they saw him proposition a teenage girl outside one of the swinger clubs he frequented.
A really interesting discussion. the problem with discussion on new direction of the USA foreign policy is that forces that
control the current forign policy will not allow any changes. Russiagate was in part a paranoid reaction of the Deep State to the
possibility of detente with Russia and also questioning "neoliberal sacred truth" like who did 9/11 (to suggest that Bush is
guilty was a clear "Red Flag") and critical attribute to forrign wars which feed so many Imperial servants.
BTW Trump completely disappointed his supporters in the foreign policy is continuing to accelerate that direction
Here is how you chart a Progressive foreign policy stop treating the US intelligence
agencies of the CIA and FBI as orgs of integrity. Ban all foreign lobbying so no foreign
government can influence foreign policy.
Disband the Veto powers that the US holds over the UN
security council. Prosecute former Presidents and Government officials for the illegal regime
change wars.
Connect with other progressive politicians around the world such as Jeremy Corbyn,
Jean Luc Melenchon and Moon Jae In. End the arms race and begin a peaceful space race to
colonize the moon diverting funds from the military industrial complex into something
fulfilling.
What BULL while world under the fog of Berlin wall down, USA VP Bush attacks
Panama 8000 Marines kills 3500 panamanians , gives the banks to CIA, therefore Panama papers.
Another coup in Latin America. When V.P. Bush "we had to get over the Vietnam Syndrome". So
Killing 3500 people , to get over the loser spirit, suicidal influence from Vietnam. SHAME USA
more hate for Americans. And Now Venezuela, more Shame and Hate for Americans. Yankee go home,
Gringo stay home is chanted once more.
The audio is a little off especially for a couple speakers but this discussion is
great. Trump ran on a non-interventionist platform, but in his typical dishonest fashion, he
appointed people who are developing usable nukes like characters out of Dr. Strangelove.
Nuclear weapons and climate change are both existential threats that all the world needs to act
together to address.
17 plus years later some people are finally starting to talk about the $6
trillion wars and the $750 billion annual Defense Department Budget.... Please consider giving
Tulsi Gabbard at least a $1 contribution so she can be part of the debate between Democratic
presidential candidates. She has made ending the wars on terrorism and regime change the
primary issue of her candidacy. She is an Iraq vet and currently in the National Guard. Her
rank is Colonel. She needs $62,500 and contributions from 200 people in each of 20 states.
Thanks for anything you can do.
Jim R2 months ago
President Eisenhower's farewell address warned us of the very thing that is happening today with the industrial military
complex and the power and influence that that entity weilds.
chickendinner2012, 2 months ago
End the wars, no more imperialism, instead have fair trade prioritizing countries that have a living wage and aren't
waging war etc. No more supporting massive human rights abusers like Saudi Arabia, Israel, UAE etc. and we need to get three
of the most aggressive countries the F UK US coalition that constantly invades and bombs everyone they want to steal from to
stop doing war, stop coups, stop covert sabotage, stop sanctions.
asbeautifulasasunset, 2 months ago
17 plus years later some people are finally starting to talk about the $6 trillion wars and the $750 billion annual
Defense Department Budget.... Please consider giving Tulsi Gabbard at least a $1 contribution so she can be part of the
debate between Democratic presidential candidates. She has made ending the wars on terrorism and regime change the primary
issue of her candidacy. She is an Iraq vet and currently in the National Guard. Her rank is Colonel. She needs $62,500 and
contributions from 200 people in each of 20 states. Thanks for anything you can do.
carol wagner sudol2 months ago
Israel today has become a nazi like state. period. That says it all. This is heart-breaking. Gaza is simply a
concentration camp.
Tom Hall, 2 months ago
All our post WWII foreign policy has been about securing maintaining and enhancing corporate commercial interests. What
would seem to progressives as catastrophic failures are in fact monumental achievements of wealth creation and concentration.
The billions spent on think tanks to develop policy are mostly about how to develop grand narratives that conceal the true
beneficiaries of US foreign policy and create fear, uncertainty and insecurity at home and abroad.
Unlike Raymond Shaw in The Manchurian Candidate, brainwashing does not turn people into hypnotized
zombies who would be ready to kill a presidential candidate at a command. Instead,
it
transforms them into the sort of people who would be willing to kill someone for political reasons.
The distinction is why so few people understand the sources of political radicalism and
violence.
Brainwashing isn't magic, but it can look like magic.
The sleight of hand that
causes us to think so is our firm belief in our reason and free will. It's easier to believe in
changing minds through hypnotism and drugs, than to understand, what the successful practitioners
of brainwashing do, that the human mind is more malleable than we like to think, and that the
subconscious is more powerful than the conscious.
The art and science of brainwashing is well known. We don't know it because we choose not to.
Brainwashing happens every day.
It doesn't have to mean a complete
transformation of identity. On the simplest level, it means compelling someone to believe something
that isn't true.
It's as simple as two cops browbeating an innocent suspect into believing that he's guilty. The
officers and the suspect won't see their interaction as brainwashing. The officers can honestly
believe in his guilt. And, at the end of the process, the suspect will also believe that he
committed the crime. He will even be able to describe in great detail how he committed it. That's
common, everyday brainwashing.
The key elements of brainwashing are present in that cold room with the peeling paint on the
walls. Those three elements are control, crisis and emotional resonance. To successfully brainwash
someone, you have to control their environment, force a crisis on them, and then tap into core
emotions, fear, love, guilt, hate, shame, and guide them through the crisis by accepting and
internalizing a new belief.
The belief can be anything, but the pseudo-religious ritual taps into an emotional core
requiring them to believe that they were bad people, and that by accepting this new belief, they
are now good people.
This false conversion is the essence of brainwashing and of leftist political awakening
narratives.
The human mind, like the human body, adapts to a crisis with a fight-or-flight response.
Brainwashing forces the mind into a flight response. Once in flight mode, the mind can rationalize
a new belief as a protective behavior that will keep it safe. Even when, as in the case of the
suspect, the new belief will actually destroy his life. Fight or flight mode inhibits long term
thinking. In panic mode, destructive and suicidal behaviors seem like solutions because they offer
an escape from unbearable chemical stresses.
There's a good biological reason for that. Our minds stop us from thinking too much in a crisis
so that we can take urgent action, like running into a fire or at a gunman, that our rational minds
might not allow us to do. But that same function can be 'hacked' by artificially putting people
into fight-or-flight mode to break them down and shortcut their higher reasoning functions.
Decisions reached subconsciously in fight-or-flight mode will then be rationalized and internalized
after the initial crisis has passed.
When that internalization happens, then the brainwashing is real.
Almost anyone can be compelled to say anything under enough stress. Many can be forced
to believe it. The acid test of brainwashing is whether they will retain that belief once
fight-or-flight mode passes.
Cults, abusive relationships and totalitarian movements maintain 'total crisis', shutting
down higher reasoning, creating a permanent state of stress by triggering fight-or-flight responses
unpredictably. This leads to Stockholm Syndrome, where the captive tries to control their fate
through total emotional identification with their captor, pack behavior, loss of identity and will,
and eventually suicide or death.
Total crisis leads to burnout, emotional exhaustion, detachment from friends and family, and
violence.
How do you brainwash a nation?
Control the national environment, force a crisis on the country, and tap into their fear
and guilt...
... ... ...
The panic over Trump is a micro-crisis of the sort that leftists detonate in the
political opposition, but the fear, anger, terror, stress and violence on display are typical of
the crisis mode of fight-or-flight.
The "Resistance" isn't a political movement. It's a political cult whose crisis was the 2016
election. Its irrational belief that Trump is a Russian agent is typical of the conspiratorial
mindset of cults. Its inability to understand that its convictions are completely irrational show
how brainwashing works.
The 2016 election inflicted on its members a loss of control. Trump became the crisis
embodying their loss of control. Their fear, guilt and anger induced stress that altered their
behavior and beliefs.
And, within the very recent past, millions came to believe that Trump was really working
for Moscow.
This is brainwashing on a timescale so immediate that we can easily recall it. Yet most of us
have trouble understanding how it works and why it works. And that lack of understanding is holding
us back.
How can smart people fall for minor variations of the same lie in generation after generation?
Smart people make the best brainwashing targets. Cults recruit bright students on college
campuses, they target aspiring executives looking for leadership training, and dissatisfied
professionals searching for meaning. Cults are rarely made up of stupid people. They're made up of
smart, vulnerable people.
Human beings don't behave rationally. We rationalize our behavior.
The more people rationalize, the more they can be brainwashed. Your old Casio digital watch
can't be hacked. Even if it were hacked, there's not much it could be made to do. Your smartphone
can be hacked and made to do more. Your desktop can be hacked and made to do even more.
Intelligence doesn't make us less vulnerable to being manipulated, it leaves us much more
vulnerable.
The political brainwashing campaign in this country targets the upper class and the
middle class. The best subjects for brainwashing are intelligent and emotionally vulnerable.
They're easier to manipulate by using the gap between their emotions and their reason, and
their emotional instability makes it easier to force them into crisis mode. The ideal subjects are
in their teens and their early twenties. In modern times, that's a period in which identity is
still developing, and can be fractured and remade.
... ... ...
The techniques aren't new. They're as evil and old as time itself.
The targets do have things in common, even
curiosity, but I believe the brainwashed have some social needs
that are handily exploited and money could be one of them. The
mode for communist brainwashing is rage for the enemies,
acceptance into a new just group, small operations at first that
guarantee success, then the big sell that usually gets the
activist committing a felony and if unlucky in prison. Then once
in prison, you have a soldier that works for no other cause. What
do you think is playing over those expensive headphones we see
every day, nursery rhymes?
Yep, it doesn't matter what side of the fence a person is on,
in fact, there are going to be people that let us down. We just
get back up and keep on going.
TV combines audio and visual components to render a very effective
method of brainwashing. It also doesn't provide the audience much
time to analyze a message before they are bombarded with the next
series of information. The presenters' personas are usually
appealing for target messages to be absorbed and accepted by the
masses.
And yet representatives from both
sides agree that the Pentagon should receive plenty of funding, do
plenty of murdering, and undergo no audits (despite a $20T
'accounting error').
Brainwashing is not confined to the left it seems.
Corruption is not related to either side but one side is ruled
far more by emotion, right? They're the ones who are most
easily sent into spasms of negative emotion that a "savior"
like Obama is to fix.
Pretty lengthy article to explain that even though "fly over"
country may have their "hold my beer" moments, large swaths of
urban America are dumb Schiffs.
That works both ways, as both parties are systems of brainwashing
that manifests itself into the divisions and cult like behavior
in the country that we see now.
That there are two distinct
parties is an illusion, the greatest sleight of hand and the elite
know it and that's why they exploit both 2 party cult followers in
the way that they do with racism, bigotry, xenophobia, identity
politics, etc, that keep followers at each other's throats.
The 2016 election was traumatic for many people. The Democratic
party fooled millions in exploiting their hope that change was at
hand through Bernie Sanders. His betrayal of millions who followed
him gave him million of dollars to be their voice, turned out to
be a complete fake and fraud. A shepherd for the very candidate
they HATED and would otherwise never vote for. Blaming Russia was
too convenient. Those millions of US who knew that the primary had
been rigged by Clinton & the DNC who had the GALL to cast blame on
a foreign power for the outright rejection of the DNC anointed
one, DemExited in the millions and refused to be brainwashed into
believing the blatant absurdity that in order to buy this ********
Russiagate narrative you had to believe that Russia influenced our
vote, MY VOTE. Think about that a minute. Did Russia influence the
idiots who voted for Clinton? Even I didn't believe that. But that
is indeed what you had to swallow if you remained within the
confines of the party of cult persuasion. Russiagate itself IS a
cult.
Those of us that knew Clinton/DNC rigged the primary against
Sanders yet who suspected Sanders was also in on it when he threw
voters under the bus for Clinton at the Convention in the most
malicious way, could not be brainwashed. We understood the source
of the trauma, keeping our heads clear through crisis.
I see the same in Trump followers. His ability to exploit
racism and bigotry keeps Trumptards enthralled. But Trump has
broken ever promise and is a SWINDLER. This Zionist stooge
betrayal of his base in such a profound way has them all clinging
to him MORE hoping that this round of 64735D chess is going to be
the one where he is the DC outsider he pretended to be. Just like
Bernie but in a different way.
To be clear means seeing you've been swindled. Admitting you're
vulnerable to exploitation is hard, especially when that
vulnerability lies in hate, through racism and bigotry or when it
simply stands to make you feel a damned fool.
Personally I tend to admire people who can admit they were
taken. The same happened to me with Prez Hopey Changey and again
in believing in Bernie.
Brainwashing can't work when you admit you were taken by a
psychopath or two. Doing so just leads to more growth I think. 100
million did not vote in 2016, the majority vote. They didn't much
care for the lesser of two evils level of brainwashing that keeps
people subservient to the 2 party cult like system
Good article however there is no connection between IQ and
susceptibility to propaganda. The idea that smarter people are
more susceptible is absurd. In college the radical leftists always
tended to be the stupidest. While highly intelligent people are
indeed brainwashed every day, the idea that being stupid protects
you is contrary to my entire life experience and to basic common
sense. For example, if only those with IQ's above 140 were allowed
to vote, the result would be a much freer republic because no
amount of propaganda can convince smart people that they are
better off being government slaves. It's the brainwashed dummies
that crave big brother ****.
Red baiting is very profitable. That's why it now imprinted in most common US citizens brains
and that's why we have on trillion (if counted from all sources)
sneezer1 month ago
Jimmy is great, hopefully they dont suicide him. Narratives of Old1
month ago (edited) mafia state...?? ridiculous.. in a 1000 years the mafia could not
kill as many people the US killed in Iraq in few years .. we are beyond
redemption.....
45 46
View 3 replies Hide replies Gypsy Jiver1 week
ago As George Carlin said the US is a oil company with a army. Ruly Tores1 week
ago You are right. The USA is a Criminal State, War Dependent Economy Carl Hopkinson5 days ago
Wow!! George Carlin would be proud of you, Jimmy Dore !!!! Premed19811 month
ago HOLY SHIT Ive never seen jimmy spitting so much fire and truth even on his own
show world peace1 week
ago Jimmy Dore is the greatest. God bless this man for his honesty and bravery. Chloe Lin1 week ago
(edited) Jimmy Dore a great and patriotic American who wants to save the nation!
👍👍👍 globalman1 week
ago Afshins becomes a bit uncomfortable when Jimmy includes former Prime Minister Tony
Blair in his list of war criminals. I salute Dore for the light shed on Obama. He was just
another tool of the Shadow government and I lament how so many were duped into believing that
Obama was a new hope. They played the black man card and the usamericans fell for it wanting to
show themselves as beyond racism. Another fallacy as racism is alive and well in the usa. There
have been NO legitimate presidential leaders since Eisenhower and JFK. They were the last ....
all the rest have been pawns and then to puppets. Just wish Jimmy was not quite so shrill and
hysterical because that tends to turn off those who would otherwise be in total agreement. I
understand his personality and character but too many people judge the superficial first
leaving them deaf to important content. The reference to the Mafia is very accurate. The USA
secret agencies learned most of what they know to carry out their clandestine and criminal
activities from two main sources. The Nazis and the 3 Mafia branches in the USA. That is, the
Mafia was the Italian families, Murder Inc. were the Jewish version and the Irish Mob. The very
close contact and raids, interrogations, torture of these men taught the government agencies
all they needed to know. The CIA has been training terrorists to overthrow governments since
many, many decades for the USA's own self serving desires. They never change their game plan
even when those very CIA trained terrorists turn around and bite the hands that fed them and
become enemies of the USA as we see around the globe. Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and numerous
other places. Googazon Twitterberg5
days ago Jimmy's the only remotely sane progressive. Anne Wood2 days ago
(edited) Absolute truth spoken by Jimmy Dore and most people of the US and UK are in total
agreement. I can tell you as a Brit Tony Blair is known as a war criminal by the people in the
UK. multiplexed2 days
ago Corporatism at it's best... even the democrats don't realize they're corporatists.
Pasha
Pasovski1 week ago
Mafia used to have honor, US never did!
2 3 ArdaSu20081 month
ago (edited) I totally agree with Jimmy on his critics about corrupt US and European
governments, intelligence services and MSM. They all, both right and social democrats, have
been serving to the military industrial complex and big corporations and headed to a total
destruction of economy and the environment globally. Their failure is also the main reason to
those uprising ultra right wing populistic parties all over the Europe. Fucking bastards, liers
and disgusting puppets are all of them! Politis aziminas alétheia1 week ago
Jimmy Dore at his best! The arrogant and criminal U.S.-empire-rulers and their
corporate-news-media are in a process of disintegration! And Jimmy is right, "it's also the
European Union"! CandC681 month ago
(edited) So, Jimmy, how do you really feel? Our country has gone insane. Politics is a
beauty pageant. Business is organized crime. News (MSM) is disinformation. Comedians are the
best source for information. Our leaders want education to be eliminated so we are incapable of
thinking. What's not to like. Mrs Miggins2 days
ago Jimmy mentioned some very good journalists who are on his progressive wavelength, but
he didn't mention some of the serious conservative investigative reporters like John Solomon,
Sara Carter, Kimberly Strassel, Chuck Ross, Paul Sperry, Judicial Watch and Dan Bongino, all of
whom have done the hard work necessary to piece together names, places, dates, documentation
that exposes the RussiaRussiaRussia hoax. We owe all of these people respect for putting
themselves on the line to try and inform the public. AniishAu1 month
ago That's the best Jimmy Dore I've heard! He needs an extra to breath for him.
1 2 Mark
El1 month ago
Oligarchs used us veterans & continue to use service members as their "mafia
muscle."
47 48
View reply Hide replies Rossboe11 month
ago (edited) Jeremy Scahill , Mehdi Hassan and Matt Taibbi also great journalists.
"... Their existence within the bubble enables them a to complete an unbridgeable detachment from the real world and an unflinching acceptance of belief in their own palpable absurdities. Madeleine Albright, John Bolton, Rachel Maddow are perhaps the archetypes. How can anyone who is not clinically insane think that the destruction of 500,000 deaths of Iraqi children due to the US embargo which took place between the two gulf wars, was "worth it." Well Madeleine Albright was okay with it, and she said as much. ..."
"... Maddow half-opportunist and half lunatic, along with Bolton a proven imbecile-lunatic were also a sub-species of the same pathology. ..."
"... The ruling institutions in the United States (not forgetting Saudi Arabia and Israel) have begun to take on the characteristics of a mafia state, and this to a slightly less degree in the rest of the empire. Ostensibly NATO – the capo – exists to protect the world from Russian/Chinese/Iranian "aggression" – whereas in fact NATO is a protection racket, which goes looking for trouble anywhere but the north Atlantic looking for hapless states to be 'whacked'. Libya and Yugoslavia come to mind. ..."
On Fox News Channel's May 2nd edition of "The Story with Martha MacCallum" was alleged, by the program host (at
2:45 in this video),
that one reason we must invade Venezuela (if we will) is that "People have lost 24 pounds" there. So (her point was), if we invade,
that's not evil, it's no coup, but instead it's humanitarian (presumably like it was in Iraq in 2003, when we invaded that country,
which likewise had never invaded nor threatened to invade the United States - it was raw international aggression, by our country,
against Iraq).
Individuals who fall for a liar once, will typically fall for that liar again and again, without limit, because they are (for
whatever reason) prejudiced to trust him. But is this attempt, at "regime change" in Venezuela, yet another example of that, or
might it instead really be the case (this time) that (as this Fox host implies) to invade Venezuela will help the people there (gain
back that lost weight, etc.), not kill many of them and destroy their nation even worse than it already was?
Francis Lee,
May 11, 2019 7:44 PM
I think it would be true to say that the people who wish for, power, status and money, should be the last to be given it. They
appear afflicted by a virulent form of grotesque self-aggrandisement comparable to bulimia – they simply can't get enough; and
anyone who gets in their way will simply be swept aside. Such is the worldview and ideological disposition of the ruling elites
ensconsed in the command posts of the media, political and business institutions.
Their existence within the bubble enables them a to complete an unbridgeable detachment from the real world and an
unflinching acceptance of belief in their own palpable absurdities. Madeleine Albright, John Bolton, Rachel Maddow are perhaps
the archetypes. How can anyone who is not clinically insane think that the destruction of 500,000 deaths of Iraqi children due to
the US embargo which took place between the two gulf wars, was "worth it." Well Madeleine Albright was okay with it, and she said
as much.
Maddow half-opportunist and half lunatic, along with Bolton a proven imbecile-lunatic were also a sub-species of the same
pathology. Listening in particular to Albright I wonder if she is really 'human' in the generally understood meaning of the term.
I am even beginning to believe the theory of David Icke that she and the rest of them may be some form of alien taken reptilian
life which has assumed human form.
The ruling institutions in the United States (not forgetting Saudi Arabia and Israel) have begun to take on the
characteristics of a mafia state, and this to a slightly less degree in the rest of the empire. Ostensibly NATO – the capo –
exists to protect the world from Russian/Chinese/Iranian "aggression" – whereas in fact NATO is a protection racket, which goes
looking for trouble anywhere but the north Atlantic looking for hapless states to be 'whacked'. Libya and Yugoslavia come to
mind.
How this plays out is anyone's guess. History provides any number of instances of the self-righteousnes, stupidity and hubris
of ruling elites and the destruction which they imposed upon the world. But the difference between then and now is that the
stakes are now so much higher. The fall of the Roman empire did not result into the extinction of all life on earth; the fall of
the Anglo-Zionist empire may well do.
A foreign intelligence asset was used to justify surveillance of Trump[ and some of his associates
Notable quotes:
"... What is clear from the new records is that Christopher Steele, a foreign intelligence officer, had frequent and extensive contacts with the FBI. Who was his FBI Case Agent? ..."
"... The main thing I want to know is WHEN was the decision made to tar Trump with Russia - both at the FBI (and likely CIA) and at the DNC (over the leak) - and WHO was the deciding entity - Comey, Brennan, Clinton, Obama or someone else? And perhaps who came up with the idea in the first place (at the DNC, it was very likely Alexandra Chalupa, the Ukrainian-American DNC "consultant"). ..."
"... The bad thing is that our MSM is so reverent of our Intel agencies that I see them encouraged to increasingly put their hand on the scale. ..."
"... Recently, I saw arm flailing by a Congressman, Dan Coats, and Mueller about how the Russians are still at it. They are trying to disrupt or influence the 2018. Really, then I demand to get a list of the pro-Kremlin candidates. How long before the mere threat of being outed as a Kremlin agent is used to punish elected officials if they are not sufficiently hawkish or don't support certain programs. Unchallenged claims by Intel agencies gives them a lot of political power. ..."
"... I am skeptical. Russia has a lot of fish to fry, why would they expend resources on midterm elections. Now everyone in the U.S. hates them, both traditional hawk Republicans and born again uber-hawk Democrats. There is a tiger behind both doors. ..."
"... if Steele had been a CHS since at least February of 2016, what was the purpose of passing the Dossier to the FBI through Fusion GPS? Why not just going to his FBI handler? Was Steele collaboration with Fusion even in compliance with FBI regulations? Did the FBI know? ..."
"... Because part of the plan was to leak the information in order to damage Trump. FBI could not do that. Would have exposed them to some real legal jeopardy. This was a dual track strategy. Diabolical almost. ..."
"... Don't forget the Nellie Ohr (Fusion GPS) -> Bruce Ohr (DOJ) back channel. The husband & wife tag team. Yes, the same Nellie that was investigating using ham radio to communicate to avoid NSA mass surveillance. ..."
"... From the very beginning that information about all this was slowly leaking from the Congressional investigation, this whole thing smelled very fishy. Then add intense effort at DOJ & FBI to obstruct and obfuscate. And the unhinged tweets and interviews by Brennan, Clapper & Comey. ..."
"... He was working with FBI and GPS at the same time. GPS was in the dark supposedly about his work with the FBI and Steele got their approval to hand over what he had delivered to GPS to the FBI as a cover for his work with the FBI. ..."
"... its also likely FBI had some input into the content of what was delivered to GPS, and more importantly what was not delivered. ..."
"... Re the 'standing agreement to not recruit each other's intelligence personnel for clandestine activities.' As Steele was not by this time a current employee of MI6, was the FBI in technical violation of this? ..."
"... A central question in regard to Steele, as with quite a number of former intelligence/law enforcement/military people who have started at least ostensibly private sector operations, is how far these are being used as 'cover' for activities conducted on behalf of either the state agencies for which they used to work, or other state agencies. ..."
"... It is at least possible that one advantage of such arrangements may be that they make it possible to evade the letter of agreements between intelligence agencies in different countries ..."
"... If, as seems likely, both current and former top FBI and DOJ people – very likely Mueller as well as Comey, Strzok and many others – were intimately involved in the conspiracy to subvert the constitution, then a means of making it possible for Steele to combine feeding information to the FBI while also engaging in 'StratCom' via the MSM could have been necessary. ..."
"... An obvious means of 'squaring the circle' would have been to issue a formal 'termination' to Steele, while creating 'back channels' to those who were officially supposed not to be talking to him ..."
"... A report yesterday by John Solomon in 'The Hill' quotes from messages exchanged between Steele and Bruce Ohr after the supposed termination ..."
"... 'In all, Ohr's notes, emails and texts identify more than 60 contacts with Steele and/or Simpson, some dating to 2002 in London. But the vast majority occurred during the 2016-2017 timeframe that gave birth to one of the most controversial counterintelligence probes in American history.' ..."
"... I have just finished taking a fresh look at Sir Robert Owen's travesty of a report into the death of Litvinenko. In large measure, this develops claims originally made in Christopher Steele's first attempt to provide a convincing account of why figures close to Putin might have thought it made sense to assassinate that figure, and to do so with polonium. The sheer volume of fabrication which has been deployed in an attempt to defend the patently indefensible almost beggars belief. ..."
"... Just as a question arises as to whether Steele is essentially acting on behalf of MI6, a question also arises as to whether the FBI leadership were knowledgeable about, and possibly involved with, the various shenanigans in which Shvets and Levinson were involved. Given that claims about Mogilevich have turned out to be central to 'Russiagate', that seems a rather important issue, and I am curious as to whether Ohr's communications with Steele may cast any light on it. ..."
"... Apparently the FBI got Deripaksa to fund the rescue of Levinson from Iran. Furthermore apparently FBI personnel maybe including McCabe visited with Deripaksa and showed him the Steele dossier. He supposedly had a nice guffaw and dismissed it as nonsense. So on the one hand while they make Russia out to be the most evil they play footsie with Russian oligarchs. ..."
"... Thinking about "Christopher Steele was terminated as a Confidential Human Source for cause.", something that doesn't seem to have gotten as much attention is that Peter Strzok failed his poly: ..."
"... Steele's relationship with the FBI extends far further back than February 2016. Shortly after he left MI6, he contracted with the Football Association to investigate possible FIFA corruption. Once he realized the massiveness of this corruption he contacted his old friends at the FBI Eurasian Crimes Task Force in 2011. Thus began his association with the FBI as a CHS. That investigation culminated in the 2015 FIFA corruption indictments and convictions. ..."
"... One thing I don't understand...we have the anti-Trumpers saying that Donald Junior meeting with a Russian national to get 'dirt' on Hillary is illegal...due to some law about candidates collaborating with foreigners or something like that...[obviously I'm foggy on the technical details]... Yet we know that the Hillary campaign worked with a foreign national, Steele, to get dirt on Trump...how is this not the same...? ..."
"... What role did Stefan Halper and Mifsud play as Confidential Human Sources in all this? ..."
"... Why was British Intelligence allegedly collecting and passing along info about Donald Trump in the first place? Or could this have been a pretext created to give cover and/or support to the agenda here in the US to insure his defeat? Could a foreign intelligence source such as this trigger/facilitate/justify the US counterintelligence investigation of Trump, or give cover to a covert investigation that may have already begun? ..."
"... British intelligence was collecting / passing on info about Trump because of his campaign stance on NATO (he said it was obsolete), his desire to end regime change wars (he castigated the fiasco in Iraq, took Bush to task over it etc.), and his often stated desire to get along with Russia (and China). Trump also talked of ending certain economic policies (NAFTA, TPP, etc.) and reenacting others (Glass-Steagall, the American System of Economics i.e. Hamilton, Carey, Clay), If Trump had acted on those, which he has not so far, he would changed the entire world system, a system in place since the end of WW II, or earlier. That was a risk too big to take without some kind of insurance policy - I believe Christopher Steele was that insurance policy. ..."
"... British Intelligence is verifiably the foreign source with the most extensive and effective meddling in the 2016 election. Perfidious Albion. ..."
"... Or, GSHQ was hovering up signint on Trump campaign early-on (using domestics US resources and databases via their 5-Eyes "sharing agreement" with NSA) cuz Brennan asked them to do it? ..."
"... Trump announced his run for President in 2015. I'm pretty sure that every intel service on the planet was watching him, they would be derelict not to. GCHQ may have been collecting intel on all the candidates, ..."
"... Trump announced his run for President in 2015. I'm pretty sure that every intel service on the planet was watching him, they would be derelict not to. GCHQ may have been collecting intel on all the candidates, ..."
"... I've heard that the Echelon system is used by the Five Eyes IC to do something similar. The Brits spy on US, and give the NSA the data so the NSA can evade US laws prohibiting spying on us, and we return the favor to help them evade what (few) laws they have that prohibits spying on their people. ..."
"... still wonder why the US would need to rely so much on British intelligence sources ..."
"... I've read that Steele's cover was blown 20 years ago and he hasn't even been to Russia since, so I wonder why he was considered such a reliable source by both the US and UK? In my opinion as an absolute naif about such things, Steele seems like he may be a has-been when it comes to Russia. ..."
"... Here is a simple explanation from someone who knows almost nothing about how any of the people in power work: Most of them are not as clever and smart as they think they are. And most of the regular people who are just citizens are smarter than these people think they are. ..."
"... It's simply that their arrogant assessment of their own superiority caused them to do really stupid things ..."
The revelations from US Government records about the FBI/Intel Community plot to take out Donald Trump continue to flow thanks
to the dogged efforts of Judicial Watch. The latest nugget came last Friday with the release of FBI records detailing their recruitment
and management of Britain's ostensibly retired Intelligence Officer, Christopher Steele. He was an officially recruited FBI source
and received at least 11 payments during the 9 month period that he was signed up as a Confidential Human Source.
You may find it strange that we can glean so much information from
a document dump that is almost
entirely redacted . The key is to look at the report forms; there are three types--FD-1023 (Source Reports), FD-209a (Contact
Reports) and FD-794b (Payment Requests). There are 15 different 1023s, 13 209a reports and 11 794b payment requests covering the
period from 2 February 2016 thru 1 November 2016. That is a total of nine months.
These reports totally destroy the existing meme that Steele only came into contact with the FBI sometime in July 2016. It is important
for you to understand that a 1023 Source Report is filled out each time that the FBI source handler has contact with the source.
This can be an in person meeting or a phone call. Each report lists the name of the Case Agent; the date, time and location of the
meeting; any other people attending the meeting; and a summary of what was discussed.
What is clear from the new records is that Christopher Steele, a foreign intelligence officer, had frequent and extensive
contacts with the FBI. Who was his FBI Case Agent?
The main thing I want to know is WHEN was the decision made to tar Trump with Russia - both at the FBI (and likely CIA)
and at the DNC (over the leak) - and WHO was the deciding entity - Comey, Brennan, Clinton, Obama or someone else? And perhaps
who came up with the idea in the first place (at the DNC, it was very likely Alexandra Chalupa, the Ukrainian-American DNC "consultant").
We can be pretty sure this predates any alleged Russian "hacking" (unless it occurred as a result of alleged Russian hacking
of the DNC in 2015).
This needs to be pinned down if anyone is to be successfully prosecuted for creating this treasonous hoax.
A very closely related topic, Victor Davis Hanson is onto something but it is darker than he suggests,
https://www.nationalreview.... Paraphrasing, he gives the typical, rally around the flag we must stop the Russians intro but
then documents how govt flaks abused their power to influence our elections and then makes the point, 'this is why the public
is skeptical of their claims'.
The bad thing is that our MSM is so reverent of our Intel agencies that I see them encouraged to increasingly put their
hand on the scale.
Recently, I saw arm flailing by a Congressman, Dan Coats, and Mueller about how the Russians are still at it. They are
trying to disrupt or influence the 2018. Really, then I demand to get a list of the pro-Kremlin candidates. How long before the
mere threat of being outed as a Kremlin agent is used to punish elected officials if they are not sufficiently hawkish or don't
support certain programs. Unchallenged claims by Intel agencies gives them a lot of political power.
I am skeptical. Russia has a lot of fish to fry, why would they expend resources on midterm elections. Now everyone in
the U.S. hates them, both traditional hawk Republicans and born again uber-hawk Democrats. There is a tiger behind both doors.
What I can't figure out is: if Steele had been a CHS since at least February of 2016, what was the purpose of passing the
Dossier to the FBI through Fusion GPS? Why not just going to his FBI handler? Was Steele collaboration with Fusion even in compliance
with FBI regulations? Did the FBI know?
Because part of the plan was to leak the information in order to damage Trump. FBI could not do that. Would have exposed them
to some real legal jeopardy. This was a dual track strategy. Diabolical almost.
Don't forget the Nellie Ohr (Fusion GPS) -> Bruce Ohr (DOJ) back channel. The husband & wife tag team. Yes, the same Nellie
that was investigating using ham radio to communicate to avoid NSA mass surveillance.
From the very beginning that information about all this was slowly leaking from the Congressional investigation, this whole
thing smelled very fishy. Then add intense effort at DOJ & FBI to obstruct and obfuscate. And the unhinged tweets and interviews
by Brennan, Clapper & Comey. And of course the media narrative that Rep. Nunes, Goodlatte and others were endangering "national
security" by casting aspersions on the "patriotic" law enforcement and intelligence agencies.
He was working with FBI and GPS at the same time. GPS was in the dark supposedly about his work with the FBI and Steele got
their approval to hand over what he had delivered to GPS to the FBI as a cover for his work with the FBI.
Of course, he had most likely already done so and its also likely FBI had some input into the content of what was delivered
to GPS, and more importantly what was not delivered.
Re the 'standing agreement to not recruit each other's intelligence personnel for clandestine activities.' As Steele was
not by this time a current employee of MI6, was the FBI in technical violation of this?
The point is not merely a quibble. A central question in regard to Steele, as with quite a number of former intelligence/law
enforcement/military people who have started at least ostensibly private sector operations, is how far these are being used as
'cover' for activities conducted on behalf of either the state agencies for which they used to work, or other state agencies.
It is at least possible that one advantage of such arrangements may be that they make it possible to evade the letter of
agreements between intelligence agencies in different countries.
Another related matter has to do with the termination of Steele as a 'Confidential Human Source.'
It has long seemed to me that it was more than possible that this was not to be taken at face value. If, as seems likely,
both current and former top FBI and DOJ people – very likely Mueller as well as Comey, Strzok and many others – were intimately
involved in the conspiracy to subvert the constitution, then a means of making it possible for Steele to combine feeding information
to the FBI while also engaging in 'StratCom' via the MSM could have been necessary.
An obvious means of 'squaring the circle' would have been to issue a formal 'termination' to Steele, while creating 'back
channels' to those who were officially supposed not to be talking to him.
A report yesterday by John Solomon in 'The Hill' quotes from messages exchanged between Steele and Bruce Ohr after the
supposed termination.
When on 31 January 2017 – well after the publication of the dossier by BuzzFeed – Ohr provided reassurance that he could continue
to help feed information to the FBI, Steele texted back:
"If you end up out though, I really need another (bureau?) contact point/number who is briefed. We can't allow our guy to be
forced to go back home. It would be disastrous."
At that point, Solomon tells us that 'Investigators are trying to determine who Steele was referring to.' This seems to me
a rather important question. It would seem likely, although not certain, that he is talking about another Brit. If he is, would
it have been someone else employed by Orbis? Or someone currently working for British intelligence? What is the precise significance
of 'forced to go back home', and why would this have been 'disastrous'?
Another crucial paragraph:
'In all, Ohr's notes, emails and texts identify more than 60 contacts with Steele and/or Simpson, some dating to 2002 in
London. But the vast majority occurred during the 2016-2017 timeframe that gave birth to one of the most controversial counterintelligence
probes in American history.'
The earlier contacts may be of little interest, but there again they may not be.
As it happens, it was following Berezovsky's arrival in London in October 2001 that the 'information operations' network he
created began to move into high gear. It is moreover clear that this was always a transatlantic operation, and also fragments
of evidence suggest that the FBI may have had some involvement from early on.
I have just finished taking a fresh look at Sir Robert Owen's travesty of a report into the death of Litvinenko. In large
measure, this develops claims originally made in Christopher Steele's first attempt to provide a convincing account of why figures
close to Putin might have thought it made sense to assassinate that figure, and to do so with polonium. The sheer volume of fabrication
which has been deployed in an attempt to defend the patently indefensible almost beggars belief.
The original attempt came in a radio programme broadcast by the BBC – which was to become known to some of us as the 'Berezovsky
Broadcasting Corporation' – on 16 December 2006, presented by Tom Mangold, a familiar 'trusty' for the intelligence services.
(A transcript sent out from the Cabinet Office at the time is available on the archived 'Evidence' page for the Inquiry, at
http://webarchive.nationala... , as HMG000513. There is an interesting and rather important question as to whether those who
sent it out, and those who received it, knew that it was more or less BS from start to finish.)
The programme was wholly devoted to claims made by the former KGB operative Yuri Shvets, who was presented as an independent
'due diligence' expert, without any mention of the rather major role he had played in the original 'Orange Revolution.'
Back-up was provided by his supposed collaborator in 'due diligence', the former FBI operative Robert 'Bobby' Levinson. No
mention was made of the fact that he had been, in the 'Nineties, a, if not the lead FBI investigator into the notorious Ukrainian
Jewish mobster Semyon Mogilevich.
The following March Levinson would disappear on the Iranian island of Kish, on what we now know was a covert mission on behalf
of elements in the CIA.
Just as a question arises as to whether Steele is essentially acting on behalf of MI6, a question also arises as to whether
the FBI leadership were knowledgeable about, and possibly involved with, the various shenanigans in which Shvets and Levinson
were involved. Given that claims about Mogilevich have turned out to be central to 'Russiagate', that seems a rather important
issue, and I am curious as to whether Ohr's communications with Steele may cast any light on it.
Apparently the FBI got Deripaksa to fund the rescue of Levinson from Iran. Furthermore apparently FBI personnel maybe including
McCabe visited with Deripaksa and showed him the Steele dossier. He supposedly had a nice guffaw and dismissed it as nonsense.
So on the one hand while they make Russia out to be the most evil they play footsie with Russian oligarchs.
Thinking about "Christopher Steele was terminated as a Confidential Human Source for cause.", something that doesn't seem
to have gotten as much attention is that Peter Strzok failed his poly:
Steele's relationship with the FBI extends far further back than February 2016. Shortly after he left MI6, he contracted with
the Football Association to investigate possible FIFA corruption. Once he realized the massiveness of this corruption he contacted
his old friends at the FBI Eurasian Crimes Task Force in 2011. Thus began his association with the FBI as a CHS. That investigation
culminated in the 2015 FIFA corruption indictments and convictions. His initial contact with old friends at the FBI Eurasian
Crime Task Force is awfully similar to his contacting these same friends in 2016 after deciding his initial Trump research was
potentially bigger than mere opposition research.
One thing I don't understand...we have the anti-Trumpers saying that Donald Junior meeting with a Russian national to get
'dirt' on Hillary is illegal...due to some law about candidates collaborating with foreigners or something like that...[obviously
I'm foggy on the technical details]... Yet we know that the Hillary campaign worked with a foreign national, Steele, to get dirt
on Trump...how is this not the same...?
Even worse is that the FBI was using this same foreign agent that a presidential
candidate had hired to get dirt on an opponent... Even knowing nothing about legalities this just doesn't look very good...
Stupid question? As the Col. has explained, the President can declassify any document he pleases. So, why doesn't Donaldo unredact
the redacted portions of these bullcrap docs? What is he afraid of? That the Intel community will get mad and be out to get him?
Isn't time for him to show some cojones?
Why was British Intelligence allegedly collecting and passing along info about Donald Trump in the first place? Or could this
have been a pretext created to give cover and/or support to the agenda here in the US to insure his defeat? Could a foreign intelligence
source such as this trigger/facilitate/justify the US counterintelligence investigation of Trump, or give cover to a covert investigation
that may have already begun?
British intelligence was collecting / passing on info about Trump because of his campaign stance on NATO (he said it was obsolete),
his desire to end regime change wars (he castigated the fiasco in Iraq, took Bush to task over it etc.), and his often stated
desire to get along with Russia (and China). Trump also talked of ending certain economic policies (NAFTA, TPP, etc.) and reenacting
others (Glass-Steagall, the American System of Economics i.e. Hamilton, Carey, Clay), If Trump had acted on those, which he has
not so far, he would changed the entire world system, a system in place since the end of WW II, or earlier. That was a risk too
big to take without some kind of insurance policy - I believe Christopher Steele was that insurance policy.
Or, GSHQ was hovering up signint on Trump campaign early-on (using domestics US resources and databases via their 5-Eyes "sharing
agreement" with NSA) cuz Brennan asked them to do it? And therefore without having to mess about with any formal FISA warrant
thingy's ... But, then use what might be found (or plausibly alleged) to try to get a proper FISA warrant later on (July 2016)?
'Parallel Discovery' of sorts; with Fusion GPS also a leaky cut-out: channelling media reports to be used as confirmation of Steele's
"raw intelligence" in the formal FISA application(s)?
Trump announced his run for President in 2015. I'm pretty sure that every intel service on the planet was watching him, they
would be derelict not to. GCHQ may have been collecting intel on all the candidates,
" Trump announced his run for President in 2015. I'm pretty sure that every intel service on the planet was watching
him, they would be derelict not to. GCHQ may have been collecting intel on all the candidates, "
That's a good question, could it legally enable an end run around the FISC until enough evidence was gathered for a FISC surveillance
authorization?.
I've heard that the Echelon system is used by the Five Eyes IC to do something similar. The Brits spy on US, and give the
NSA the data so the NSA can evade US laws prohibiting spying on us, and we return the favor to help them evade what (few) laws
they have that prohibits spying on their people.
Only a matter of time until someone figured out the same method could be used to "meddle" in national affairs.
I understand, but still wonder why the US would need to rely so much on British intelligence sources such as Steele about
a very high profile American citizen and businessman -- aren't our intelligence services competent enough to have known and discovered
as much if not more about Trump than other countries' intelligence services? I've read that Steele's cover was blown 20 years
ago and he hasn't even been to Russia since, so I wonder why he was considered such a reliable source by both the US and UK? In
my opinion as an absolute naif about such things, Steele seems like he may be a has-been when it comes to Russia.
Here is a simple explanation from someone who knows almost nothing about how any of the people in power work: Most of them
are not as clever and smart as they think they are. And most of the regular people who are just citizens are smarter than these
people think they are.
It's simply that their arrogant assessment of their own superiority caused them to do really stupid things.
If prophecy does not happen, Russiagaters like typical members of "Doomsday
cults" just became more bound to their sect as admitting this means destroying self-respect.
Notable quotes:
"... What does it say about American society that so many people are actually enrolled in believing that this man could be any kind of a savior? What does that say about the divisions and the conflicts and the contradictions and the genuine problems in this culture? And how do we address those issues? ..."
"... I mean there was a massive denial of the actual dynamics in American society that led to the election of this traumatized and traumatizing individual as President, number one. ..."
"... Now, you may think that's a good thing to do. I'm not arguing about that. I'm not arguing politics. All I'm saying is projection is when we project onto somebody else the things that we do ourselves, and we refuse to deal with the implications of it. So there's denial and then there's projection. ..."
"... And I think there was this huge element of victimhood in this Russiagate process. ..."
"... ("The Resistance With Keith Olbermann", GQ, December 2016) ..."
"... ("The Rachel Maddow Show", MSNBC, March 2017) ..."
"... ("All In With Chris Hayes", MSNBC, February 2018) ..."
"... ("AM Joy", MSNBC, February 2018) ..."
"... GABOR MATÉ : And the assumption, that even if you take all the things that Russia was charged with in this whole Russiagate narrative over the last two and a half years, and if you multiply it by a hundred times, even then, you could not have possibly destroyed the United States. Even then, what is our self image if we think we're that weak, that that kind of external interference could undermine everything that you believed this country has built over the last few centuries?' ..."
"... (FBI Director Robert Mueller, Congressional Testimony, February 2003) ..."
"... ROBERT MUELLER : As Director Tenet has pointed out, Secretary Powell presented evidence last week that Baghdad has failed to disarm its weapons of mass destruction and willfully attempting to evade and deceive the international community. Our particular concern is that Saddam Hussein may supply terrorists with biological, chemical or radiological material. ..."
"... GABOR MATÉ : So given the line supported by Mueller led to the deaths of several hundred thousand Iraqi people and thousands of Americans, and has incurred costs that we all are fully aware of in terms of rise in terrorism and embroilment in multiple wars and situations, it takes an act of powerful historical amnesia for people to believe that this man is going to be our savior. That's the first point. Just incredible historical amnesia number one. ..."
"... ooking at how under the Bushes and under Obama, there was this massive transfer of wealth upwards. Instead of asking why Barack Obama gets $400,000 for an hour speech to Wall Street, which means that maybe our faith in how our system operates needs to be shaken a bit so we can actually look at what's really going on, let's just put our attention on some foreign devil again. ..."
"... How did the Democratic elite deliberately try to marginalize the progressive candidate? ..."
"... Like if he lacks discretion, let's assume that Russia did leak those Democratic e mails. Let's assume that. We don't know that they did. But we don't know that they didn't either. Let's assume that they did. Which is the greater assault on American democracy? The fact that the Russians leaked the document? Or that the American national Democratic leadership deliberately tried to marginalize one of their own candidates? ..."
"... We screwed up. We actually tried to undemocratically interfere with the Democratic nomination. We didn't pay attention to the people that were really hurting in the society because of our policies. We as the press gave this man all kinds of attention that he never deserved and never merited because he was interesting news and sold copies. ..."
"... AARON MATÉ: And there's a material incentive to do it. Because as you've talked about, if you're the Democrats and you look at the lessons of the election, you saw that people rejected your neoliberal economic legacy, that means you have to start challenging the powerful corporate sectors that you've been representing for a long time, actually posing real alternative policies to Donald Trump. ..."
"... If you do that, though, you risk losing your privileged status within the power structure. And the same thing if you're in the media and you identify with that faction of the power structure. ..."
AARON MATÉ : So we've just been through this two-year ordeal with
Russiagate. It's in a new phase now with Robert Mueller rejecting the outcome that so many were
expecting, that there would be a Trump-Russia conspiracy. Your sense of how this whole thing
has gone?
GABOR MATÉ : What's interesting is that in the aftermath of the Mueller thunderbolt
of no proof of collusion, there were articles about how people are disappointed about this
finding.
Now, disappointment means that you're expecting something and you wanted something to
happen, and it didn't happen. So that means that some people wanted Mueller to find evidence of
collusion, which means that emotionally they were invested in it. It wasn't just that they
wanted to know the truth. They actually wanted the truth to look a certain way. And wherever we
want the truth to look a certain way, there's some reason that has to do with their own
emotional needs and not just with the concern for reality.
And in politics in general, we think that people make decisions on intellectual grounds
based on facts and beliefs. Very often, actually, people's dynamics are driven by emotional
forces that they're not even aware of in themselves. And I, really, as I observed this whole
Russiagate phenomenon from the beginning, it really seemed to me that there was a lot of
emotionality in it that had little to do with the actual facts of the case.
... ... ...
What does it say about American society that so many people are actually enrolled in
believing that this man could be any kind of a savior? What does that say about the divisions
and the conflicts and the contradictions and the genuine problems in this culture? And how do
we address those issues?
... ... ...
I mean there was a massive denial of the actual dynamics in American society that led to
the election of this traumatized and traumatizing individual as President, number one.
... ... ...
GABOR MATÉ : So even if it's true what the Russians have even if it's the worst thing
that's alleged about the Russians is true, it's not even on miniscule proportion of what
America has publicly acknowledged it has done all around the world. And so this rage that we
project, then, and this bad guy image that we project onto the Russians, it's simply a mirror a
very inadequate mirror of what America publicly and openly and repeatedly does all around the
world.
Now, you may think that's a good thing to do. I'm not arguing about that. I'm not arguing
politics. All I'm saying is projection is when we project onto somebody else the things that we
do ourselves, and we refuse to deal with the implications of it. So there's denial and then
there's projection.
And then, there's just something in people. I can tell you well, your mother can tell you
this that in relationships it's always easier to see ourselves as the victims than as the
perpetrators. So there's something comforting about seeing oneself as the victim of somebody
else. Nobody likes to be a victim. But people like to see themselves as victims because it
means they don't have to take responsibility for what we do ourselves.
AARON MATÉ : I can relate to that, too.
GABOR MATÉ : Yeah. I'm just saying the effect of somebody else. So this functions
beautifully in politics. And populist politicians and xenophobic politicians around the world
use this dynamic all the time. That whether it's Great Britain, or whether it's France with
their vast colonial empires, they're always the victims of everybody else. The United States is
always the victim of everybody else. All these enemies that are threatening us. It's the most
powerful nation on earth, a nation that could single handedly destroy the earth a billion times
over with the weapons that are at its disposal, and it's always the victim.
So this victimhood, there is something comforting about it because, again, it allows us not
to look at ourselves. And I think there was this huge element of victimhood in this
Russiagate process.
Noam Chomsky on Mass Media Obsession with Russia & the Stories Not Being Covered in the
Trump Era
("The Resistance With Keith Olbermann", GQ, December 2016)
KEITH OLBERMANN : The nation and all of our freedoms hang by a thread. And the military
apparatus of this country is about to be handed over to scum who are beholden to scum,
Russian scum. As things are today, January 20th will not be an inauguration but rather the
end of the United States as an independent country
("The Rachel Maddow Show", MSNBC, March 2017)
RACHEL MADDOW : But the important thing here is that that Bernie Sanders lovers page run
out of Albania, it's still there. Still running. Still operating. Still churning this stuff
out. Now. This is not part of American politics. This is not, you know, partisan warfare
between Republicans and Democrats. This is international warfare against our country.
("All In With Chris Hayes", MSNBC, February 2018)
JERROLD NADLER : Imagine if FDR had denied that the Japanese attacked us at Pearl Harbor
and didn't react, that's the equivalent.
CHRIS HAYES : Well, it's a bit of a different thing. I mean --
JERROLD NADLER : No, it's not.
CHRIS HAYES : They didn't kill anyone.
JERROLD NADLER : They didn't kill anyone, but they're destroying our country, our
democratic process.
CHRIS HAYES : Do you really think it's on par?
JERROLD NADLER : Not in the amount of violence, but I think in the seriousness it is very
much on par. This country exists to have a democratic system with a small D, that's what the
country's all about, and this is an attempt to destroy that.
("AM Joy", MSNBC, February 2018)
ROB REINER : We have been invaded in such a subtle way because we don't see planes hitting
the buildings. We don't see bombs dropping in Pearl Harbor. But we have been invaded as
Malcolm [Nance] points out. We are under attack, but we don't feel it. But it's like walking
around with high blood pressure and then all of a sudden you're not aware of it and you drop
dead.
So it's insidious, and it has affected our blood stream. And if we don't do something
about it – and that's why, guys like John Brennan and James Clapper are running around
with their hair on fire because they're trying to wake people up to tell them: We have to do
something about it. We have to protect ourselves and if we don't, our 241 years of democracy
and self-governance will start to collapse.
GABOR MATÉ : And the assumption, that even if you take all the things that Russia
was charged with in this whole Russiagate narrative over the last two and a half years, and if
you multiply it by a hundred times, even then, you could not have possibly destroyed the United
States. Even then, what is our self image if we think we're that weak, that that kind of
external interference could undermine everything that you believed this country has built over
the last few centuries?'
So it shows to me a real shock reaction. And what has been shocked here is our beliefs in
what this country is about.
And again, as I said before, it's in a sense more comforting. It's frightening, but at the
same time more comforting to see the problem as coming from the outside than to search for it
with amongst ourselves and within ourselves.
AARON MATÉ : How about then the aspect of this that puts so much hope into Robert
Mueller? Because Robert Mueller was supposed to be our savior.
GABOR MATÉ : First of all, if we actually look at who Mueller is, who is he?
He's a man who, amongst many others, was 100 percent convinced that Iraq had weapons of mass
discussion.
VIDEO CLIP
(FBI Director Robert Mueller, Congressional Testimony, February 2003)
ROBERT MUELLER : As Director Tenet has pointed out, Secretary Powell presented evidence
last week that Baghdad has failed to disarm its weapons of mass destruction and willfully
attempting to evade and deceive the international community. Our particular concern is that
Saddam Hussein may supply terrorists with biological, chemical or radiological
material.
GABOR MATÉ : So given the line supported by Mueller led to the deaths of several
hundred thousand Iraqi people and thousands of Americans, and has incurred costs that we all
are fully aware of in terms of rise in terrorism and embroilment in multiple wars and
situations, it takes an act of powerful historical amnesia for people to believe that this man
is going to be our savior. That's the first point. Just incredible historical amnesia number
one.
Number two, America, if you can judge by its TV shows, is very much addicted to the good
guy/bad guy scenario. So that reality is not complex. And it's not subtle. And it's not a build
up of multiple dynamics, internal and external. But, basically, there's evil and there's good.
And evil is going to be cut out by the good and destroyed by it. And that's really how the
American narrative very often is presented.
Now, the same thing is projected into politics. So now if there's a bad guy called Putin and
his puppet called Trump, then there has to be a good guy that is going to save us from it. Some
guy on a white charger that's going to move in here, and is silver haired, patrician looking
man who's going to find the truth and rescue us all, which again is a projection of people's
hopes for truth outside of themselves onto some kind of a benevolent savior figure.
Needless to say, when that savior figure doesn't deliver, then we have to argue that maybe
he was bought off or corrupt or stupid himself or insufficient himself. Or that there's
something secret that has yet to be uncovered that some day will come to the surface that
Mueller himself was unable to discover for himself.
But, again, this projection of hope onto some savior figure. Rather than saying, okay,
there's a big problem here. We've elected a highly traumatized grandiose, intellectually
unstable, emotionally unstable, misogynist, self aggrandizer to power. Something in our society
made that happen. And let's look at what that was. And let's clear up those issues if we can.
And let's look at the people on the liberal side who, instead of challenging all those issues,
put all their energies into this foreign conspiracy explanation. Because to have challenged
those issues would have meant looking at their own policies, which tended in the same
direction.
Rather than looking at how under the Clinton, they've jailed hundreds of thousands of people
who should never have been in jail. L ooking at how under the Bushes and under Obama, there
was this massive transfer of wealth upwards. Instead of asking why Barack Obama gets $400,000
for an hour speech to Wall Street, which means that maybe our faith in how our system operates
needs to be shaken a bit so we can actually look at what's really going on, let's just put our
attention on some foreign devil again.
... ... ...
GABOR MATÉ : .... How did the Democratic elite deliberately try to marginalize the
progressive candidate?
Like if he lacks discretion, let's assume that Russia did leak those Democratic e mails.
Let's assume that. We don't know that they did. But we don't know that they didn't either.
Let's assume that they did. Which is the greater assault on American democracy? The fact that
the Russians leaked the document? Or that the American national Democratic leadership
deliberately tried to marginalize one of their own candidates?
... ... ...
GABOR MATÉ : Let me just interrupt to say that if I were those people, then, then
quite apart from the shock defense that we've already talked about, it'd be so much more
convenient for me to go to the Russia narrative than to say publicly, you know what? We
screwed up. We actually tried to undemocratically interfere with the Democratic nomination. We
didn't pay attention to the people that were really hurting in the society because of our
policies. We as the press gave this man all kinds of attention that he never deserved and never
merited because he was interesting news and sold copies.
... ... ...
AARON MATÉ: And there's a material incentive to do it. Because as you've talked
about, if you're the Democrats and you look at the lessons of the election, you saw that people
rejected your neoliberal economic legacy, that means you have to start challenging the powerful
corporate sectors that you've been representing for a long time, actually posing real
alternative policies to Donald Trump.
If you do that, though, you risk losing your privileged status within the power
structure. And the same thing if you're in the media and you identify with that faction of the
power structure.
"... What is Russiagate? Is it when a foreign country interferes in our elections? Or is it Really Hillarygate? a Clinton campaign ploy to deflect from her own shortcomings (emails revelations, her own collusion, her loss to Donald Trump). ..."
"... Russiagate and it's associated delusional bullshit is a way for the establishment to avoid dealing with actual issues ..."
"... It's just another form of the xenophobia behind the cold war and the war on terrorism, used to distract the public and destroy those who would attempt to inform the public of what is really going on (you know, the endless looting of the Treasury and the poisoning of people and planets in the name of shareholder returns). ..."
"... It's antisemitism for 'enlightened' people. ..."
"... Darn it, I forgot the big kahuna in my list of disasters caused by Russiagate: Trump's possible re-election. My sense is that once Mueller files his report sans collusion charges, the Republicans are going to come after the "fake news" press, the Never-Trumpers, and the Dem conspiracy theorists with far more force than they are now. ..."
"... When that happens, all of Trump's endless stream of lies and stupidity will become nothing but confetti in his ticker-tape parade. He and his allies can crow loudly, and rightly, about the press being 100% biased against him, and being given to ridiculous conspiracy theories, which neutralizes the MSM's very accurate assessment of his endless lying (on matters other than Russiagate). ..."
"... Russiagate may have been the most successful dirty trick in American history for 2-1/2 years, but it may well explode into the biggest backfire in U.S. history, too. ..."
"... Mind you, the MSM will never concede they were absurdly, grossly, disgustingly wrong about the whole thing. They will vainly cling to their fantasy. Too big to fail. But I think the Trump people will gain a lot of leverage over swing voters when everyone realizes Russiagate was bullshit from the word go. ..."
"... Russiagate: Democrat's own version of Birthergate. ..."
"... Except that the Birthers had less FISA abuse. Although, funny story, it was started by Clinton toady, Sidney Blumenthal, as a dirty trick to hurt Obama in South Carolina. ..."
"... And RussiaRussiaRussiagate started by... Clinton ops to deflect from her own scandals and shortcomings. Jeez, it’s almost like Hillary Clinton is an incredibly poisonous and corrosive influrnce on American politics. ..."
"... So what if there are now more oligarchs than Communists in Russia these days? The name Russia still conjures up "enemy?" writ large. And then, there are all those US fellow travelers, meaning anyone to the right of Senator Graham--and sometimes even he is a little too left for my taste. ..."
"... Need to assess the massive damage of what was likely the biggest and most successful dirty political trick in U.S. history. (1) turned Democrats into shills for the CIA and FBI; (2) created a new Cold War; (3) pushed Trump into the arms of Bolton and Pompeo, partly because he had to prove he wasn't a Russian agent or dupe; (4) triggered a vast and largely unreported censorship campaign that is aimed mostly at progressive outlets and progressive social media, though purporting to be primarily against things like Infowars; (5) encouraged Trump to send lethal arms to Ukraine (again, to prove himself a patriot); (6) encouraged Trump to abandon the INF; (7) encouraged Trump to discuss abandoning SALT; (8) turned Dems into a pro-Syrian occupation party (any talk of leaving is dismissed as serving Putin); helped turn Dems into a pro-Venezuela putsch party (again, because not overthrowing Maduro would ostensibly be serving Putin); turned a huge chunk of the party more dramatically against anti-war Dems like Sanders and Gabbard, who are "Putin dupes"; made progressive news outlets hawkish, e.g., Democracy Now, which picked Marcy Wheeler from all the other kooks and grifters to be their expert on Russiagate; and of course turned MSNBC, NBC, CNN, the WaPo, the NYT, and other legacy media into conspiracy theory cesspools that made HUGE HUGE HUGE money on Russiagate grifting. ..."
"... as if Russiagate was a Shadow Hillary Clinton Government. ..."
That phrase has been swirling around my head all morning after watching MSNBC admit that
there was no evidence of collusion as they hedged and tried to keep the question of collusion
open a little longer. I won't expect Rachel-RussiaRussia-Maddow to retreat anytime time soon
either.
I'm a bit confused as to what the statement above really means because I'm not quite sure
what Russiagate means for everyone else. If you search DuckDuckGo, you come up with different
result and meanings.
What is Russiagate? Is it when a foreign country interferes in our
elections? Or is it Really Hillarygate? a Clinton campaign ploy to deflect from her own
shortcomings (emails revelations, her own collusion, her loss to Donald Trump).
People seem to define Russiagate differently. In it's simplest form, -gate denotes scandal,
so which one? What would the statement above mean?
So if I said Russiagate is Dead, Long Live Russiagate would mean...
A: Collusion with Russia has been debunked, Long live the real collusion with Israel
B: One Clinton campaign ploy fizzles, and yet another on comes in 2020
C: MSNBC has admitted they were wrong, but will keep on it anyway.
D: Russia is going to keep colluding in our 2020 elections
What does the statement above mean for you? See where I'm going here?
Russiagate and it's associated delusional bullshit is a way for the establishment to avoid
dealing with actual issues, like the death of the natural world, for starters. It's just
another form of the xenophobia behind the cold war and the war on terrorism, used to distract
the public and destroy those who would attempt to inform the public of what is really going
on (you know, the endless looting of the Treasury and the poisoning of people and planets in
the name of shareholder returns).
Anybody with any notion of equality before the law know that Clinton and Trump are guilty
of multiple crimes that any of us lesser mortals would be doing hard time for. The delusion
we are supposed to buy into is that neither is or was a criminal or guilty of criminal acts
and/or misconduct when the opposite is patently true. Furthermore we are supposed to believe
that the criminality on display is due solely to Russian malfeasance. One of the key elements
of brainwashing (ala 1984) is making you believe that the lie is truth. Things like
"billionaires EARNED their billions" is the same kind brainwashing. And fucking
advertising.
FThumb
Bernie or Bust isn't a demand, it's a prophecy 5 points 6 points 7 points 2 months ago
(0 children)
It's just another form of the xenophobia behind the cold war and the war on
terrorism
Darn it, I forgot the big kahuna in my list of disasters caused by Russiagate: Trump's
possible re-election. My sense is that once Mueller files his report sans collusion charges,
the Republicans are going to come after the "fake news" press, the Never-Trumpers, and the
Dem conspiracy theorists with far more force than they are now.
To some extent, Trump's allies have held their fire hitherto, in part because a lot of
them weren't completely sure whether there was something to the charges. But also, I think,
they've held their fire (to an extent) because nothing they say will have traction until
after Mueller reports.
When that happens, all of Trump's endless stream of lies and stupidity will become nothing
but confetti in his ticker-tape parade. He and his allies can crow loudly, and rightly, about
the press being 100% biased against him, and being given to ridiculous conspiracy theories,
which neutralizes the MSM's very accurate assessment of his endless lying (on matters other
than Russiagate).
The press comes out the loser here. So does the Democratic Party. So do Never-Trump
Republicans. So do progressives, for the reasons I gave in my previous comment.
And who comes out the possible winner is Donald Trump, who, after Mueller files, will be
in a much stronger position to get re-elected. Republicans, moreover, may well recover much
of the ground lost in the 2018 "blue wave."
Russiagate may have been the most successful dirty trick in American history for 2-1/2
years, but it may well explode into the biggest backfire in U.S. history, too.
Mind you, the MSM will never concede they were absurdly, grossly, disgustingly wrong about
the whole thing. They will vainly cling to their fantasy. Too big to fail. But I think the
Trump people will gain a lot of leverage over swing voters when everyone realizes Russiagate
was bullshit from the word go.
Russiagate: Democrat's own version of Birthergate.
Blackhalo Purity pony:
Российский бот 14
points 15 points 16 points 2 months ago (1 child)
Except that the Birthers had less FISA abuse. Although, funny story, it was started by
Clinton toady, Sidney Blumenthal, as a dirty trick to hurt Obama in South Carolina.
And RussiaRussiaRussiagate started by... Clinton ops to deflect from her own scandals and
shortcomings. Jeez, it’s almost like Hillary Clinton is an incredibly poisonous and corrosive
influrnce on American politics.
This country's fight against socialism began in the later 1800s and pivoted to this
country's fight against Communism/RUSSIA as soon as the American Communist Party formed, if
not sooner. That's almost 150 years and untold trillions of dollars, plus a cold war and
several hot ones invested in fighting the socialist/Communist/Russian/red menace. You cannot
expect America to waste all that investment.
So what if there are now more oligarchs than Communists in Russia these days? The name
Russia still conjures up "enemy?" writ large. And then, there are all those US fellow
travelers, meaning anyone to the right of Senator Graham--and sometimes even he is a little
too left for my taste.
Need to assess the massive damage of what was likely the biggest and most successful dirty
political trick in U.S. history. (1) turned Democrats into shills for the CIA and FBI; (2)
created a new Cold War; (3) pushed Trump into the arms of Bolton and Pompeo, partly because
he had to prove he wasn't a Russian agent or dupe; (4) triggered a vast and largely
unreported censorship campaign that is aimed mostly at progressive outlets and progressive
social media, though purporting to be primarily against things like Infowars; (5) encouraged
Trump to send lethal arms to Ukraine (again, to prove himself a patriot); (6) encouraged
Trump to abandon the INF; (7) encouraged Trump to discuss abandoning SALT; (8) turned Dems
into a pro-Syrian occupation party (any talk of leaving is dismissed as serving Putin);
helped turn Dems into a pro-Venezuela putsch party (again, because not overthrowing Maduro
would ostensibly be serving Putin); turned a huge chunk of the party more dramatically
against anti-war Dems like Sanders and Gabbard, who are "Putin dupes"; made progressive news
outlets hawkish, e.g., Democracy Now, which picked Marcy Wheeler from all the other kooks and
grifters to be their expert on Russiagate; and of course turned MSNBC, NBC, CNN, the WaPo,
the NYT, and other legacy media into conspiracy theory cesspools that made HUGE HUGE HUGE
money on Russiagate grifting.
The poll found that more than two-thirds of the public (69%) think the news media "is
more concerned with advancing its points of view rather than reporting all the facts." Only
29% of the public disagrees with that statement.
"Russia!"
No way should Rachel Maddow have a job after this plays out.
You can literally call for the murder of white people(Al Sharpton, multiple times) in
sermons, demand gays get killed or hispanic-Americans tossed out(Joy Reid)on a blog and keep
your job at MSNBC.
Yeah, that WaPo ad stands at the dizzying height of arrogance and hypocrisy. Democracy dies
in darkness, and the Post has helped created it.
And yes, Maddow should be forever banned from reporting, but she has too many admirers for
that to happen. She has made mountains of money for MSNBC; they love her. She'll just cling
to the fantasy of collusion no matter how much evidence comes out, and millions will stand by
her.
The Mouse That Roared is a 1959 British satirical Eastman Color comedy film based on
Leonard Wibberley's novel The Mouse That Roared (1955). It stars Peter Sellers in three
roles: Duchess Gloriana XII; Count Rupert Mountjoy, the Prime Minister; and Tully Bascomb,
the military leader; and co-stars Jean Seberg. The film was directed by Jack Arnold, and the
screenplay was written by Roger MacDougall and Stanley Mann.
When I say Russiagate I mean the conspiracy theory that Russia meddled in the 2016 election
in a meaningful way. It has varying levels of craziness, as the goal post has moved:
It started as "Russia hacked the DNC server and you should distrust the emails because
the messenger is a bad actor", followed closely by "you should distrust the emails because
they may have been tampered with", or even "we won't say if the emails are real and we'll
let the media imply that they may be fiction."
It progressed to Russia colluded with Trump to swing the election. This is apparently
the holy grail. Find evidence of this and Trump is finished. Or something. Apparently,
Trump is a mastermind and if Russia wanted to meddle they'd need his permission or his help
or something.
It progressed to Russia swung the election in close states by manipulating social
media. In fact, they did manipulate social media. What's missing from this narrative is the
scope ($100K on facebook ads, only half of it before the election, and $4700 in google ads)
and motive (the indictment itself says the purpose of the effort seems to have been to gain
viewership for ads, to earn money) and even the truth of the premise (by money spent, they
didn't target swing states at all).
In its current state, Russiagate is all and it is none of the above. None of it has gone
anywhere, so now the plan is to simply mention Russia or call people Putin puppets or bots,
and let the viewer conclude any of the above. It has been reduced to lying by implication.
Let the well-trained viewer lie to themselves when they are triggered by the right words.
Very close. We should have the final written report by late 2019. But based on zero
indictments/convictions related to collusion, zero evidence of collusion and the Senate
investigation finding no collusion we can safely say this whole thing was a witch-hunt. I
strongly dislike Trump as a person and the terrible direction he's taken this country in but
Russiagate was 100% a political witch-hunt. But just because Trump/Russia collusion is dead
doesn't mean the tactic is. It'll just be used against the left now.
We've had experts in the field exploring different and less transparent ways to say zero, but
the best we've been able to come up with is just producing a report that's so long and boring
and obtuse that nobody will ever read it. Then people can insinuate that it contains whatever
they want it to contain.
You can indict anyone. As the saying goes, you can indict a turnip. The Internet Research
Agency indictments, which Mueller trotted out, were not actually the result of the FBI
investigation. The information was publicly available and was published by a Russian
investigative news team. The IRA was the company responsible for the Google and Facebook
buys. What is not usually mentioned is that the IRA is a clickbait factory that makes money
by getting people to click on links that show news, etc. and adds. Clinton and Trump are
clickbait. The posts were not all pro-Trump and, as mentioned, many were well after the
election. It is an open question to me as to whether there was small and lame attempt to
influence the election, or just an attempt to make a few rubles (or both) by getting people
to click on anti-Trump or anti-Clinton items (or pro-Trump or pro-Clinton for that matter). I
read one of the indictments the other day and it was ridiculous. There was a lot of preamble,
trying to make the IRA effort seem sinister, but if one continued to read, it was obvious
that she was essentially being accused of being an accountant that might have been involved
in money transfers that were used for add buys. The FBI has depended on the fact that these
people will not come to the US to stand trial and, therefore, the FBI will not have to
produce any real evidence.
Also, these indictments against Russians, with whom we have no extradition treaty were
'safe', in that nobody would actually face charges, so they'd never have to make their
pathetic case. When some US lawyers showed up on behalf of one group of defendents demanding
discovery, Meuller panicked, tried to claim national security, delayed and finally handed the
case off to some lower profile lawyers who will suffocate the whole case quietly with a
pillow as soon as the 18 month American memory has lapsed.
Blackhalo Purity pony:
Российский бот 6
points 7 points 8 points 2 months ago (1 child)
The only arrests and pleas were for lying to the FBI on unrelated matters, acting as an
unregistered lobbyist for Ukraine and the troll farm where the charges will be quickly
dropped as the "evidence" won't stand up in court.
Inuma I
take the headspace of idiots 8 points 9 points 10 points 2 months ago (0 children)
Even lying to the FBI is a stretch when they lost the paperwork and manipulated and deleted
evidence to collude with their narrative...
I think that Dem morons are now rabidly anti-Russia. It is time to flip the script and get
the Rep morons to hate Russia because of collusion between Putin and the Clinton campaign.
Russia will continue to offer western critics of empire a platform, and war-loving westerners
will continue their tantrums over getting facts from outside of the propaganda bubble.
Blackhalo Purity pony:
Российский бот 10
points 11 points 12 points 2 months ago (2 children)
collusion between Putin and the Clinton campaign.
Podesta was literally acting as a foreign lobbyist for Russian toady Yanukovych
An example of this is the Podesta Group’s $200,000 contract with an entity called
the European Centre for a Modern Ukraine. Podesta Group is an American lobbying firm run by
Tony Podesta. And the European Centre for a Modern Ukraine? That just happens to be an
operation controlled by Yanukovych, according to Ukrainska Pravda.
Yeah the case for Clinton/Russia collusion around Uranium One and the election is a million
times stronger than trying to claim Trump colluded because he wanted oppo research. We at
least have the Steele Dossier which was provided mostly by Russia to Trump's opponents.
Nobody has ever shown any credible evidence Russia did any of the hacking, or that Saddam
killed babies or had WMD, or that we were attacked in the Gulf of Tonkin.
Russiagate is a psyop and there never was any evidence to begin with or even an alleged
crime. So us not finding evidence doesn’t end it because these guys are desperate for
this to be real. They have become fully propagandized and useful idiots of the permanent
state.
Inuma I
take the headspace of idiots 7 points 8 points 9 points 2 months ago (2 children)
Mueller is a career hit man lawyer with insider ties to the FBI/CIA as well as the Bush
Administration.
Ya gotta ask yourself, Who does Russiagate benefit? From every possible angle it benefits
the establishment in both parties. It checks off every box on the wishlist, distracts from
their bought off immorality, election rigging, and fraud, while propping up aggressive war
and military spending.
Thank God Almighty you never have to subject yourself to this sub again. Come to think of it,
you never had to subject yourself to it at all, did you, troll?
I don't think ratings or money have anything to do with it anymore. I leave as evidence that
Jeff Bezos bought the Washington Post without researching its market or its financials, and
he spent just 1/400th of his wealth to acquire it.
Do you think that with so little money at stake (to him), and without even knowing if
there was money to be earned, that he bought it to make money with it?
News media is no longer about making money. Not directly, anyway. It's now about
control.
It's handy that Trump is earning them money, but that's not what's going on. Trump wasn't
supposed to win. It was a mistake. They are trying to eject him. They are exercising their
control to rid the system of an untrusted president. They are exercising their control to
make sure a progressive doesn't replace him. The financials are secondary.
Or is it Really Hillarygate? a Clinton campaign ploy to deflect from her own
shortcomings (emails revelations, her own collusion, her loss to Donald Trump).
Its been this since the morning after the election, and it's only been this.
It was that long before the morning after the election. They cooked it up probably in like
March 2016, even before the DNC announced they were hacked. The Clinton campaign thought its
greatest weakness was her coziness with Russia (one of the Podesta emails released by
Wikileaks put this as their #1 weakness). Knowing that Trump also had tons of connections
with Russians, they hired Cody Shearer and Sid Blumenthal to put together dossiers charging
Trump with being a Russian agent. They later got Fusion GPS to hire Steele to give the final
product more heft and authenticity, since he was an actual retired MI6 spook. Then then they
made the rounds with media outlets and Deep State agencies, trying to get them to open an
investigation, and to report on it. The effort wasn't hugely successful at first, but they
did get Brennan and Clapper to buy it, then Comey, and also David Corn of Mother Jones, and
Michael Isikoff.
Biggest and most successful dirty political trick in all U.S. history.
Except it may backfire in the end, since Trump now can credibly charge the media with
"fake news" and bias against him. I think the Republicans are just waiting for Mueller to
file his report before making a huge stink about the whole thing, as they should.
A huge disaster for the American people and for progressives especially, even though it
worked as a political trick, at least for 2-1/2 years.
Don't forget the Veselnitskaya meeting with Trump Jr. It was set up by Fusion GPS and the
co-founder of Fusion GPS, Glenn Simpson, met with her before and after the Trump tower
meeting. She was suddenly granted a special visa to allow her to enter the country. The
meeting was useless to Trump because Veselnitskaya only wanted to talk about the Magnitsky
act. It was a total set up to provide ammunition so that security agencies could go to the
FISA court and get permission to spy on the Trump campaign.
EvilPhd666 "The Spoiler" Führer Twinkle
Gypsy / межразмерная
контрразведка 37
points 38 points 39 points 2 months ago (2 children)
The next phase of Russiagate is to go directly after the anti war movement. Leftist,
progressives, non interventionist conservatives are going to get painted as "influenced by
Russia" or agents of the Kremlin.
Bingo. Tulsi's experience is the canary in the coal mine.
Trump is irrelevant. What matters is that through Russiagate, we now have a huge swath of
"progressive" liberals, including many public intellectuals, celebrities, and others with
good reputations in society- who are completely inoculated with cold war era propaganda and
paranoia, and most critically the authoritarian mindset (listen to authority, questioning is
treason, consensus is truth, etc).
Conservatives are already susceptible to that mindset, so there's plenty of them (the
anti-trump and/or pro-war factions) that are ready to swallow whatever they're told as
well.
To put it simply, we have a giant cross-section of the populace that cuts across
ideological lines and is completely prepped for authoritarianism.
Naturally, the people who gravitate towards this will be the more comfortable among us,
because they aren't faced with social decay every day. Less fortunate people have a harder
time maintaining the contradiction of a perfect society ruined by foreign interference, but
the petty bourgeois and above have no such issue.
We're seeing open declarations that any attempt to reduce American empire, or head off
further expansion- even when it's solely about helping Americans rather than justice for
victims of imperialism- must be a foreign plot. Why?
Well (X foreign rival) clearly would rather we don't run the whole world, so obviously,
any attempt to prevent us from doing so- even if it's just so we don't bankrupt ourselves and
fall apart from within- is a plot by the Kremlin or Beijing or (insert foreign rival
here).
All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for
lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any
country.
In light of these revelations, I've become more active in calling out and engaging facebook
friends for posting russiagate bs - like stupid memes about russian collusion, telling them
it is a dangerous game and we in Europe don't want to be the next Cuban Missile Crisis.
"... Particularly shameless was Florida Rep. Mario Díaz-Balart, who went on Tucker Carlson's show to peddle half-baked innuendo as brazen as anything claimed in the lead up to the Iraq War. If Maduro's government survived, he claimed, it would be "a green light, an open door for the Russians and for the Chinese and for others to increase their activity against our national security interest right here in our hemisphere." ..."
Russiagate hysteria is already being used to push Trump into an act of armed aggression against Venezuela. It's a disastrous result
of a pointless delusion.
One of the things Russiagate skeptics found unsettling about the frenzy over supposed "collusion" was that it made war more likely.
Not only did the now-debunked conspiracy theories and resulting political climate push officials into a more aggressive posture toward
Russia, but once the Kremlin was returned to its status as the foreign policy elite's Big Bad, it was easy to imagine a situation
where the threat of a Russian bogeyman could be used to justify any number of unrelated foreign adventures. This appears to be exactly
what's happening with
Venezuela
right now.
First there was Fareed Zakaria, who two months ago
tried to goad Trump into attacking Venezuela by pointing to Russia's support for Maduro. "Putin's efforts seem designed to taunt
the United States," he said (it might also have something to do with the
billions of dollars Russia
sank into the country), making reference to the Monroe Doctrine. He asked if Washington would "allow Moscow to make a mockery of
another American red line," warning that "if Washington does not back its words with deeds" the country could become another Syria.
Zakaria concluded: "will Venezuela finally be the moment when Trump finally ends his appeasement?"
More recently, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo
charged that Russia had "invaded" Venezuela before claiming the Kremlin had dissuaded Maduro from fleeing the country at the
last moment, something Pompeo has provided no evidence for but much of the media has treated as fact since.
National Security Advisor
John Bolton has
said that "this is our hemisphere"
and "not where the Russians ought to be interfering." Democratic Sen. Doug Jones
echoed this sentiment on CNN, praising the Trump
administration for saying "all options are on the table" to deal with Venezuela, something he suggested may have to be acted on "if
there is some more intervention [by] Russia."
The national press, taking a break from warning about Trump being a dangerous authoritarian, has been
demanding to know why he hasn't been more aggressive toward the country over this.
Particularly shameless was Florida Rep. Mario Díaz-Balart, who went on Tucker Carlson's show to
peddle half-baked
innuendo as brazen as anything claimed in the lead up to the Iraq War. If Maduro's government survived, he claimed, it would be "a
green light, an open door for the Russians and for the Chinese and for others to increase their activity against our national security
interest right here in our hemisphere."
He went on to claim that Russia had already placed nuclear missiles in the country, and that it could lead to a Cuban missile
crisis-like conflict. There is no evidence this is true, and Díaz-Balart didn't provide any.
Of course, no coverage of the Trump administration's relations with Russia would be complete without a trip into Rachel Maddow's
fractured psyche. After Trump repeated Putin's personal assurances that he wasn't interested in getting involved in Venezuela --
contradicting Pompeo and Bolton -- Maddow addressed the two
officials :
Hey John Bolton, hey Mike Pompeo, are you guys enjoying your jobs right now? You each thought your job this week was to name
and shame and threaten and counter Russian government involvement in Venezuela while saber-rattling about how everybody else better
get out of the way because the US is really mad about it. Guys, turns out your actual job is figuring out how and why you work
for a president who says whatever Vladimir Putin tells him.
Maddow went on to express her sympathy for one of the
most unhinged warmongers
in a city teeming with them ("I mean, John Bolton, God bless you"), and again seemed to suggest that Bolton's "job" of "push[ing]
Russia back because of what they're doing in Venezuela" was the correct course of action.
It's now clear there is nothing -- not Trump's years-long belligerence toward Russia's Venezuelan ally, not his
near-constant
bellicosity toward Russia since taking office, not
Robert Mueller's failure
to indict a single person for conspiring with Russia, not even his report's explicit and implicit denial that any such conspiracy
existed -- that will make these people give up the talking point that Trump is secretly in bed with Putin. If Mueller himself denied
it, they would claim he was a Russian in disguise. It's simply too convenient an attack line, and too professionally embarrassing
to admit otherwise.
There is also an Orwellian level of doublethink going on here. Russia, a Venezuelan ally, has sent personnel and equipment to
the country with the consent of its government at a time when it's being threatened by multiple hostile regional powers. Meanwhile
the US, one of those hostile powers, has for years been
laying siege to the country
and killing its people, trying to destabilize and oust its leadership, and even threatening to invade it.
Yet according to the media and political class, it's Russia's actions that are an unacceptable intrusion into another country's
affairs -- an "invasion," even. They are holding up four fingers to your face and telling you you're seeing five.
Meanwhile, these same quarters, after spending close to three years hyperventilating about Russia's meddling in domestic US affairs
-- an "act of war," in some minds -- have now seamlessly pivoted to cheering Trump as he attempts to
engineer a change
of Venezuela's government, even calling for him to possibly attack the country. This is glaringly hypocritical, but the
Russiagate
frenzy was never about principled outrage or any sort of moral consistency.
Lastly and most significantly, the rhetoric around Venezuela is now taking on an explicitly imperialistic character, in the most
literal sense of that word. Zakaria invoked the Monroe Doctrine to urge Trump to intervene in Venezuela; National Security Advisor
John Bolton "proudly proclaim[ed]" upon
launching
a fresh round of sanctions that "the Monroe Doctrine is alive and well," and one MSNBC guest
insisted the Trump administration was "right in being completely flabbergasted" at Russia's presence in the country because "this
is our hemisphere," echoing
Bolton
.
When these figures talk about "our hemisphere," they don't mean the hemisphere in which the US happens to be located; they mean
this is literally their hemisphere. The US is the imperial power with dominion over this part of the world, and only it has
the right to interfere in the countries that populate it.
Their objection is not that an outside power is involving itself in a Latin American country's business, but that this outside
power isn't the one in Washington. The fact that the US has been doing this very thing for years in Russia's part of the world --
expanding NATO right up to its
border, sending weapons to Ukraine -- goes conveniently unmentioned.
Russiagate skeptics were criticized for being hyperbolic in
comparing that scandal to the bogus
WMD tale that led to the Iraq War; the latter, after all, killed hundreds of thousands and destabilized an entire region. But the
full consequences of Russiagate will not be felt immediately; they will unfold over time. And while floating the specter of Russia
might not work this time, expect it to be used over and over in the coming years to justify all manner of
military aggression
.
Rachel's the MSM poster child for aggressive and dedicated stupidity.
Notable quotes:
"... Funny how these people push Russiagate and then support regime change everywhere and most recently Venezuela. ..."
"... Rachel Maddow is an establishment "TOADIE." Is that right? ..."
"... As George Carlin said, "bipartisanship means a larger than usual deception is going on." ..."
"... What would happen if Zionists took the control of US Government? ... O, wait... ..."
"... Rachel's the MSM poster child for aggressive and dedicated stupidity. ..."
"... Maddow, like every other MSM propaganda bullhorn, is "manufacturing consent" for the neocon wars to come. ..."
"... Should Madame Walking Corruption decide to run again, Rachel is the perfect choice for VP. ..."
"... She's the neo lib version of Glen Beck ..."
"... Rachel Maddow is the Alex Jones of the left - Nothing but a controlled CIA tool. ..."
"... "The nuclear arms race is like two sworn enemies standing waist deep in gasoline, one with three matches, the other with five." ― Carl Sagan ..."
"... This Maddow segment will be referenced by future historians as "end-stage Russia-gate." ..."
"... Madcow disease is contagious. ..."
"... Maddow has lost her ever loving mind. She's the neolib answer to Alex Jones. ..."
"... If I was American, i would take any of these Russian scare stories as an assault of my intellect. These MSM clowns are basically saying their audience are a dumb as planks. ..."
The power grid in this country is more likely to be jeopardized because it's out of date and woefully neglected by the scare-mongering,
Russia-baiting idiots in charge; more concerned with dominating the planet than keeping our infrastructure maintained. Maddow
could mention that, but I guess then she'd piss her bosses(the fuel industry &MIC) off.
There actually was a story about there being a fire at a prison in NY and the inmates going without heat during the polar vortex.
Needless to say, it wasn't Russia but good ol' American disregard for people who see as worthless and so they are dragging their
feet in fixing the problem, plus they are pepper spraying the families of the inmates who are protesting the conditions inside
the prison. We don't need to make out Russia to be the boogey man when we are better at being that for our own citizens.
Omg so funny! You guys made my night. People like you give me hope that we can avoid the catastrophe. As a Russian, I want
to say, let's not kill each other.
She being a Rhodes Scholar, I often wonder if she wasn't recruited early on by the CIA. That's an investigation about collusion
between US corporate media and the deep state to influence US elections I'd like to see.
What if the Lucky Charm leprechaun breaks into my house and eats my magically delicious stars and moons and leaves just the
cereal? What will happen then?
How is she what she saying any different than conspiracies? She sounds like a flat eather who spent too much time clocking
hours in the crazy part of YouTube.
So who was it that said, "The most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle
is borne in mind constantly - it must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over"? Some guy named "Joseph"?
Rachel Maddow is a perfect example of what happens when you entrench yourself on the wrong side of the issues snuggling up
to those big corporate advertisers like big oil or Boeing before you know it you have painted yourself into a corner just like
fox news hosts as you make a complete fool of yourself sounding like a blithering idiot totally devoid of any shred of journalistic
integrity she is the old washed up sorcerer that has lost her power all she has left is a few old pieces of magic corn. she may
well indeed have the highest ratings but I don't believe the people are buying what she is trying to sell them!
How long until Jimmy Dore gets deplatformed? Anyone who rooted against Alex Jones is short-sighted. He was against the iraq
and afghan wars. He was the 1st to report the false flag in syria. He cried when Trump dropped that MOAB. Support Alex Jones!
This msnbc news is just how much American mainstream media are pure joke with zero credit😂. In the end, these "journalists"
owe their job to Russia, what would they do without it since they always talk about it😂😂😂😂😂
13:27 That's Senator John D. Rockefeller IV,
'Jay' Rockefeller. The Rockefeller family owns the world's biggest oil companies, ExxonMobil, Chevron, ConocoPhilips, the Amoco
in BP-Amoco all came from the companies created after the breakup of John D. Rockefellers' Standard Oil Trust.
I just figured out who/how they got to her: "Her paternal grandfather was from a family of Eastern European Jews (the original
family surname being "Medwedof")" Amazing how much that sounds like "Madoff", isn't it?
The huge elephant in the room is of course global weather engineering. None of our efforts to cut emissions will stop the current
climate collapse, until all weather-/geo-engineering programs have been terminated worldwide. We need to stop weather warfare
now.
What would happen? An army of privileged entitled white men would go out in the 50 below weather and work 24/7 in deadly conditions
to fix it and have the power back up in hours, like they do every winter.. Just like the white men who put on wetsuits and dive
into literal lakes of shit and piss to clear the tampons and pads out of the grates and pumps in the sewer treatment plants so
the toilets of people like Maddow continue to function.. The people who are completely invisible to morons like Maddow.
Our little boy Rachel Maddow still Russia-ing it! World's still waiting for Trump's taxes from our little boy! Maybe we could
ask her man Susan Mikula LAUD HAM MERCY 😲
Ottawa is the second coldest national capital city in the world (after first place coldes Ulan Bator, Outer Mongolia). Moscow
is NOT so cold as Ottawa is, guys!
"What if Russia cut the power while you were watching porn right before you came, and then you had blue balls forever?" That
line was the funniest in this whole video. Another one that had me laughing so hard was this: "So what's the purple area?"
If I was American, i would take any of these Russian scare stories as an assault of my intellect. These MSM clowns are
basically saying their audience are a dumb as planks.
Jimmy, I love your show and, even though I'm essentially conservative and think Trump is exactly the wrench needed to throw
into the works of the globalists who I believe almost took complete control of everything in 2016, I agree with you quite often
and share many of your videos with both far-leftist and right-wing nuts. That said, the fact of the matter is that a single international
ballistic missle loaded with a "nuclear" EMP device, exploded a couple hundred miles over the middle of our country, would totally
destroy the power infrastructure across our country and quite literally leave us in the dark ages for months. If this happened,
our country would be thrown total chaos and takeover by invasion would be very easy for any semi-powerful country who could get
here: Russia and China are basically it. I can't stand Rachel Maddow, but I have a feeling she may have been referring to this
extremely serious problem which, by the way, would cost very little to fix. Why we haven't fixed it, but continue to spend more
than what the fix would cost to stay Afghanistan every single month is beyond anything even resembling rational thought.
I wouldn't be surprised if Rachel Maddow were exposing a pre-programming agenda that OUR government is plotting -- not the
goddamn Russians. Remember: The Freemasons believe in "Order Out Of Chaos."
What if we decentralized the power grid by implimenting solar power and batteries on homes? Maddow - The Russians would go
house to house with wire cutters.
I'm from MN, you wouldn't believe how often I'm accused of being a Russian bot by coastal idiots. Note: Not everyone on the
coast is an idiot obviously but the idiots who say this always seem to live in CA or NY.
Are they SCREAMING to seem funny or is that the only way
#MAGA know how to communicate? This is like
that Guntfeld show on Fox but without a budget. Are we sure @jimmy_dore isn't actually @maddow in drag?
1/ If YouTube were to recommend your show, it'd be recommending the leading purveyor of now debunked Trump-Russia conspiracy
theories, falsehoods & innuendo of the last 2+ years. Here's a sample:
Aaron Maté 10:27 AM - 28 Apr 2019
2/ Just recently you were caught in real-time lying to your audience. You claimed Barr was handling the redactions by himself.
But the chyron -- on screen right below -- told viewers the truth, that Mueller was in fact "assisting" w/ the redactions:
pic.twitter.com/rTSAABngp2
Aaron Maté 10:29 AM - 28 Apr 2019
3/ There was that time in Jan 2017 when you speculated that Putin may use the pee tape & other kompromat to force Trump into
withdrawing US troops near Russia. How did that one turn out? pic.twitter.com/XuXXagyCNb
Aaron Maté 10:35 AM - 28 Apr 2019
4/ BTW, just last week you falsely said that "the one thing I refused to let myself think about" was that Putin had tapes of
Trump -- the very prospect you had previously floated to posit that Putin may blackmail Trump into withdrawing troops.
pic.twitter.com/xMC4uPrjSK
Aaron Maté 10:37 AM - 28 Apr 2019
5/ Who could forget that time this past winter when you seized on life-threatening cold temperatures to fear-monger that Russia
could kill Americans by knocking out their heat? pic.twitter.com/deo2H4SBBQ
Aaron Maté 10:40 AM - 28 Apr 2019
6/ There was that time when you explored the scenario under which Putin "gives orders" to his puppet Trump at an upcoming meeting.
Do you think Putin ordered Trump to stage a coup in Venezuela/try to kill the German-Russia gas pipeline/nix the INF treaty?
pic.twitter.com/cbSrGt2xR3
8/ How about when you suggested that Putin has gotten Trump to "bleed out" the FBI? If Mueller and the FBI found proof of that,
I missed that part of their report. pic.twitter.com/hFT0ByWzlQ
Aaron Maté 10:45 AM - 28 Apr 2019
9/ How about the time when you speculated that Putin installed Rex Tillerson as Secretary of State?
pic.twitter.com/YiUYWdxpZ5
11/ Then there was that time when you lamented the suspension of US war games in Korea, and speculated that it was the fault
of Putin: pic.twitter.com/cuDgHyDQPs
Aaron Maté 10:50 AM - 28 Apr 2019
12/ Have we ever gotten to the bottom of your "New Scrutiny on Russians at Trump's Inauguration" in Jan 2017 -- aka a Russian
couple who posted video of their attendance? pic.twitter.com/HAieukFsWI
Aaron Maté 10:51 AM - 28 Apr 2019
13/ Based on this sample alone, dare I say that your coverage of Trump-Russia very much amounts to the "deliberate trafficking
in unreality": pic.twitter.com/2OXbHhUDHa
Aaron Maté 10:56 AM - 28 Apr 2019
14/ Looking back, do you think maybe that declaring that a fake Bernie Sanders fan page run out of Albania amounted to "international
warfare against our country" was perhaps a little hyperbolic? pic.twitter.com/5Meg0xLNqg
Aaron Maté 11:03 AM - 28 Apr 2019
15/ How about when you speculated that Maria Butina may have played a role in a secret Russian government plot to funnel money
to the NRA in order to influence the 2016 election? How did that one pan out?
pic.twitter.com/eaRgZdauty
Aaron Maté 1:46 PM - 28 Apr 2019
16/ How about when you said in 3/2017 that "if the American presidency right now is the product of collusion between the Russian
intelligence services & an American campaign... we need to start preparing for what the consequences are going to be if it proves
to be true." Did it? pic.twitter.com/RO71MGdICd
Aaron Maté 4:27 PM - 28 Apr 2019
17/ or when you falsely insinuated that activity in a Wikileaks grand jury was related to the Russian probe, even though the
WP article you briefly flashed on screen accurately noted it "is based on [Assange's] pre-2016 conduct, not the election hacks":
pic.twitter.com/0NyHxzfzmt
Aaron Maté 4:36 PM - 28 Apr 2019
18/ or when you recently claimed that the hashtag #Kids4Trump was part of a Russian effort "to destroy American democracy." How much contempt do you have for
American democracy to suggest that Russian trolls could "destroy" it? pic.twitter.com/WcuG1RibkB
Aaron Maté 6:35 PM - 28 Apr 2019
19/ Remember earlier where we saw you suggest that Russia chose Tillerson as Sec of State? How about also when you pondered
the same about Paul Manafort? "I mean, take the view from Moscow. If you know a guy who needs a presidential campaign manager,
how about our friend Paul?": pic.twitter.com/5xcFarXakV
Duped by Russians. apparently. 10:57 AM - 28 Apr 2019
"... As Kunstler puts it, "The Special Prosecutor's main bit of mischief, of course, was his refusal to reach a conclusion on the obstruction of justice charge. What the media refuses to accept and make clear is that a prosecutor's failure to reach a conclusion is exactly the same thing as an inability to make a case, and it was a breach of Mr. Mueller's duty to dishonestly present that failure as anything but that in his report -- and possibly an act of criminal prosecutorial misconduct" on Mueller's part. ..."
"... But this is not the only dishonesty in Mueller's report. Although Mueller's report clearly obliterates the Russiagate conspiracy theory peddled by the military/security complex, the Democrats, and the presstitutes, Mueller's report takes for granted that Russia interfered in the election but not in collusion with Trump or Trump officials. Mueller states this interference as if it were a fact without providing one drop of evidence. Indeed, nowhere in the report, or anywhere else, is there any evidence of Russian interference. ..."
"... Mueller simply takes Russian interference for granted as if endless repeating by a bunch of presstitutes makes it so. For example, the Mueller report says that the Russians hacked the DNC emails, a claim for which no evidence exists. Moreover, it is a claim that is contradicted by the known evidence. William Binney and other experts have demonstrated that the DNC emails were, according to their time stamps, downloaded much more quickly than is possible over the Internet. This fact has been carefully ignored by Mueller, the Democrats and the presstitutes ..."
"... Indictments do not require evidence, and Mueller had none. Moreover, Mueller could not possibly know the identities of the Russian intelligence agents who allegedly did the hacking. This was of no concern to Mueller. He knew he needed no evidence, because he knew there would be no trial. The indictment was political propaganda, not real. ..."
"... The myth of Russian interference is so well established that even Glenn Greenwald in his otherwise careful and correct exposition of the Russiagate hoax buys into Russian interference as if it were a fact. Indeed, many if not most of Trump's supporters are ready to blame Russia for trying, but failing, to ensnare their man Trump. ..."
"... The falsity of Russiagate and the political purposes of the hoax are completely obvious, but even Trump supporters tip their hats to the falsehood of Russian interference so that they do not look guilty of excessive support for Trump. In other words, Russiagate has succeeded in constraining how far Trump's supporters can go in defending him, especially if he has any remaining intent to reduce tensions with Russia. ..."
"... Russiagate has succeeded in criminalizing in the American mind any contact with Russia. Thus has the military/security complex guaranteed that its budget and power will not be threatened by any move toward peace between nuclear powers. ..."
"... Just as Mueller indicted Russian intelligence agents without evidence, he could have indicted Trump without evidence, but a case against a president that is without evidence is not one a prosecutor wants to take to court as it is obviously an act of sedition. ..."
"... That the Democrats and the presstitutes want Trump indicted for obstructing a crime that did not occur shows how insane they have been driven by their hatred of Trump. What is operating in the Democratic Party and in the American media is insanity and hatred. Nothing else. ..."
"... Journalists who lie for the Establishment have no need of the First Amendment. Perhaps this is why they have no concern that Washington's attack on Julian Assange will destroy the First Amendment. They are helping Washington destroy Assange so that their self-esteem will no longer be threatened by the fact that there is a real journalist out there doing real journalism. Mueller Report ..."
One is to prevent President Trump from endangering the vast budget and power of the
military/security complex by normalizing relations with Russia.
Another, in the words of James Howard Kunstler, is "to conceal the criminal conduct of US
government officials meddling in the 2016 election in collusion with the Hillary Clinton
campaign," by focusing all public and political attention on a hoax distraction.
The third is to obstruct Trump's campaign and distract him from his agenda when he won the
election.
Despite the inability of Mueller to find any evidence that Trump or Trump officials colluded
with Russia to steal the US presidential election, and the inability of Mueller to find
evidence with which to accuse Trump of obstruction of justice, Russiagate has achieved all of
its purposes.
Trump has been locked into a hostile relationship with Russia. Neoconservatives have
succeeded in worsening this hostile relationship by manipulating Trump into a blatant criminal
attempt to overthrow in broad daylight the Venezuelan government.
Hillary's criminal conduct and the criminal conduct of the CIA, FBI, and Obama Justice (sic)
Department that resulted in a variety of felonies, including the FBI obtaining spy warrants for
partisan political purposes on false pretexts from the FISA court, were swept out of sight by
the Russiagate hoax.
The Mueller report was written in such a way that despite the absence of any evidence
supporting any indictment of Trump, the report refused to clear Trump of obstruction and passed
the buck to the Attorney General. In other words, Mueller in the absence of any evidence kept
the controversy going by setting up Attorney General Barr for cover-up charges.
It is evidence of Mueller's corruption that he does not explain just how it is possible for
Trump to possibly have obstructed justice when Mueller states in his report that the crime he
was empowered to investigate could not be found. How does one obstruct the investigation of a
crime that did not occur?
As Kunstler puts it, "The Special Prosecutor's main bit of mischief, of course, was his
refusal to reach a conclusion on the obstruction of justice charge. What the media refuses to
accept and make clear is that a prosecutor's failure to reach a conclusion is exactly the same
thing as an inability to make a case, and it was a breach of Mr. Mueller's duty to dishonestly
present that failure as anything but that in his report -- and possibly an act of criminal
prosecutorial misconduct" on Mueller's part.
But this is not the only dishonesty in Mueller's report. Although Mueller's report clearly
obliterates the Russiagate conspiracy theory peddled by the military/security complex, the
Democrats, and the presstitutes, Mueller's report takes for granted that Russia interfered in
the election but not in collusion with Trump or Trump officials. Mueller states this
interference as if it were a fact without providing one drop of evidence. Indeed, nowhere in
the report, or anywhere else, is there any evidence of Russian interference.
Mueller simply takes Russian interference for granted as if endless repeating by a bunch of
presstitutes makes it so. For example, the Mueller report says that the Russians hacked the DNC
emails, a claim for which no evidence exists. Moreover, it is a claim that is contradicted by
the known evidence. William Binney and other experts have demonstrated that the DNC emails
were, according to their time stamps, downloaded much more quickly than is possible over the
Internet. This fact has been carefully ignored by Mueller, the Democrats and the
presstitutes.
One reason for ignoring this undisputed fact is that they all want to get Julian Assange,
and the public case concocted against Assange is that Assange is in cahoots with the Russians
who allegedly gave him the hacked emails. As there is no evidence that Russia hacked the emails
and as Assange has said Russia is not the source, what is Mueller's evidence? Apparently,
Mueller's evidence is his own political indictment of Russian individuals who Mueller alleged
hacked the DNC computers. This false indictment for which there is no evidence was designed by
Mueller to poison the Helsinki meeting between Trump and Putin and announced on the eve of the
meeting.
Indictments do not require evidence, and Mueller had none. Moreover, Mueller could not
possibly know the identities of the Russian intelligence agents who allegedly did the hacking.
This was of no concern to Mueller. He knew he needed no evidence, because he knew there would
be no trial. The indictment was political propaganda, not real.
The myth of Russian interference is so well established that even Glenn Greenwald in his
otherwise careful and correct exposition of the Russiagate hoax buys into Russian interference
as if it were a fact. Indeed, many if not most of Trump's supporters are ready to blame Russia
for trying, but failing, to ensnare their man Trump.
The falsity of Russiagate and the political purposes of the hoax are completely obvious, but
even Trump supporters tip their hats to the falsehood of Russian interference so that they do
not look guilty of excessive support for Trump. In other words, Russiagate has succeeded in
constraining how far Trump's supporters can go in defending him, especially if he has any
remaining intent to reduce tensions with Russia.
Russiagate has succeeded in criminalizing in the American mind any contact with Russia. Thus
has the military/security complex guaranteed that its budget and power will not be threatened
by any move toward peace between nuclear powers.
The Democratic Party and the presstitutes cannot be bothered by facts. They are committed to
getting Trump regardless of the facts. And so is Mueller, and Brennan, and Comey, and a slew of
other corrupt public officials.
A good example of journalistic misconduct is James Risen writing in Glenn Greenwald's
Intercept of all places, "WILLIAM BARR MISLED EVERYONE ABOUT THE MUELLER REPORT. NOW DEMOCRATS
ARE CALLING FOR HIS RESIGNATION." Quoting the same posse of "hang Trump high" Democrats, Risen,
without questioning their disproven lies, lets the Democrats build a case that Mueller's report
proves Trump's guilt. Then Risen himself misrepresents the report in support of the Democrats.
He says there is a huge difference between Barr's memo on the report and the report itself as
if Barr would misrepresent a report that he is about to release.
Length is the only difference between the memo and the report. This doesn't stop Risen from
writing: "In fact, the Mueller report makes it clear that a key reason Mueller did not seek to
prosecute Trump for obstruction was a longstanding Justice Department legal opinion saying that
the Justice Department can't indict a sitting president." This is something Mueller threw in
after saying he didn't have the evidence to indict Trump. It is yet another reason for not
indicting, not the reason. Risen then backs up his misreport with that of a partisan Democrat,
Renato Mariotti who claims that Mueller could have indicted Trump except it is against US
Justice Department policy. Again, there is no explanation from Risen, Mariotti, or anyone else
how Mueller could have indicted Trump for obstructing what Mueller concludes was a crime that
did not happen.
Just as Mueller indicted Russian intelligence agents without evidence, he could have
indicted Trump without evidence, but a case against a president that is without evidence is not
one a prosecutor wants to take to court as it is obviously an act of sedition.
That the Democrats and the presstitutes want Trump indicted for obstructing a crime that did
not occur shows how insane they have been driven by their hatred of Trump. What is operating in
the Democratic Party and in the American media is insanity and hatred. Nothing else.
Risen also alleges that the unproven Russian hacks were passed over by Barr in his memo on
the report. Not only is this incorrect, but also Risen apparently has forgot that the
investigation was about Trump's collusion with Russia to do something illegal and the
investigation found that no such thing occurred. Risen, like the rest of the presstitutes and
even Greenwald himself, takes for granted that the unproven Russian hacks happened. Again we
see that the longer a lie is repeated the more it becomes true. Not even Greenwald can detect
that he has been bamboozled.
At one time James Risen was an honest reporter. He won a Pulitzer prize, and he was
threatened with prison by the Department of Justice when he refused to reveal his source for
his reporting on illegal actions of the CIA. But Risen discovered that in the new world of
journalism, telling the truth is punished while lying is rewarded. Risen, like all the others,
decided that his income was more important than the truth.
Journalists who lie for the Establishment have no need of the First Amendment. Perhaps this
is why they have no concern that Washington's attack on Julian Assange will destroy the First
Amendment. They are helping Washington destroy Assange so that their self-esteem will no longer
be threatened by the fact that there is a real journalist out there doing real journalism.
Mueller Report
Paul Craig Roberts has had careers in scholarship and academia, journalism, public service,
and business. He is chairman of The Institute for Political Economy.
In some respects, the media has played the most disingenuous of roles. Areas of investigation that historically would have proven
irresistible to reporters of the past have been steadfastly ignored. False narratives have been all-too-willingly promoted and facts
ignored. Fusion GPS personally made a
series of payments to several as-of-yet-
unnamed reporters .
The majority of the mainstream media has represented positions of the DNC and the Clinton campaign.
Steele met with members of certain media with relative frequency. In
September 2016 ,
he met with a number of U.S. journalists for "The New York Times, the Washington Post, Yahoo! News, the New Yorker and CNN," according
to The Guardian. It was during this period that Steele met with Michael Isikoff of Yahoo News.
In mid-October
2016, Steele returned to New York and met with reporters again. Toward the end of October, Steele spoke via Skype with Mother
Jones reporter David Corn.
Leaking, including felony leaking of classified information, has been widespread. The Carter Page FISA warrant -- likely the unredacted
version -- has been in the possession of The Washington Post and The New York Times since March 2017. Traditionally, the intelligence
community leaked to The Washington Post while the DOJ leaked to sources within The New York Times. This was a historical pattern
that stood until this election. The leaking became so widespread, even this tradition was broken.
On April 3, 2017, BuzzFeed reporter Ali Watkins wrote the article "
A Former Trump Adviser Met With a Russian Spy ." In the article, she identified "Male-1," referred to in
court documents
relating to the case of Russian spy Evgeny Buryakov, as Trump campaign adviser Carter Page, who had provided the FBI with assistance
in the case. Just over a week later, on April 11, 2017, a Washington Post article, "
FBI Obtained FISA Warrant to Monitor Former Trump Adviser Carter Page ," confirmed the existence of the October 2016 Page FISA
warrant.
The information contained within both articles likely came via felony leaks from James Wolfe, former director of security for
the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, who was arrested on June 7, 2018, and
charged with one count of lying
to the FBI. Wolfe's indictment
alleges that he was leaking classified information to multiple reporters over an extended period of time.
Reporter
Ali Watkins likely received the undredacted FISA application on Carter Page from James Wolfe.
It appears probable that Wolfe leaked unredacted copies of the Page FISA application.
According to the indictment
, Wolfe exchanged 82 text messages
with Watkins on March 17, 2017. That same evening they engaged in a 28-minute phone call.
The original Page FISA application is 83 pages long, including one final signatory page.
In the public version of the application, there are 37 fully redacted pages. In addition to that, several other pages have redactions
for all but the header. There are only two pages in the entire document that contain no redactions.
Why would Wolfe bother to send 37 pages of complete redactions? It seems more than plausible that Wolfe took pictures of the original
unredacted FISA application and sent them by text to Watkins.
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes has repeatedly
stated that evidence within the FISA application
shows the counterintelligence agencies were abused by the Obama administration. Most of the mainstream media has known this.
Despite this, most major news organizations for over two years have promoted the Russia-collusion narrative. Despite ample evidence
having come out to the contrary, they have not admitted they were wrong, likely because doing so would mean they would have to admit
their complicity.
Jeff Carlson is a regular contributor to The Epoch Times. He also runs the website TheMarketsWork.com and can be followed
on Twitter @themarketswork.
This cartoon seems to me very apposite. The capacity of the mainstream media repeatedly to
promote the myth that Russia caused Clinton's defeat, while never mentioning what the
information was that had been so damaging to Hillary, should be alarming to anybody under the
illusion that we have a working "free media". There are literally hundreds of thousands of
mainstream media articles and broadcasts, from every single one of the very biggest names in
the Western media, which were predicated on the complete nonsense that Russia had conspired to
install Donald Trump as President of the United States.
I genuinely have never quite understood whether the journalists who wrote this guff believed
it, whether they were cynically pumping out propaganda and taking their pay cheque, or whether
they just did their "job" and chose to avoid asking themselves whether they were producing
truth or lies.
I suspect the answer varies from journalist to journalist. At the Guardian, for example, I
get the impression that Carole Cadwalladr is sufficiently divorced from reality to believe all
that she writes. Having done a very good job in investigating the nasty right wing British
Establishment tool that was Cambridge Analytica, Cadwalladr became deluded by her own fame and
self-importance and decided that her discovery was the key to understanding all of world
politics. In her head it explained all the disappointments of Clintonites and Blairites
everywhere. She is not so high-minded however as to have refused the blandishments of the
Integrity Initiative.
Luke Harding is in a different category. Harding has become so malleable a tool of the
security services it is impossible to believe he is not willingly being used. It would be
embarrassing to have written a bestseller called "Collusion", the entire premiss for which has
now been disproven, had Harding not made so much money out of it.
Harding's interview with Aaron Mate of The Real News was a truly enlightening moment. The
August elite of the mainstream media virtually never meet anybody who subjects their narrative
to critical intellectual scrutiny. Harding's utter inability to deal with unanticipated
scepticism descends from hilarious to toe-curlingly embarrassing.
In general, since the Mueller report confirmed that $50 million worth of investigation had
been unable to uncover any evidence of Russiagate collusion, the media has been astonishingly
unrepentant about the absolute rubbish they have been churning out for years.
Harding and the
Guardian's story about Manafort repeatedly calling on Assange in the Ecuador Embassy is one
of the most blatant and malicious fabrications in modern media history. It has been widely
ridiculed, no evidence of any kind has ever been produced to substantiate it, and the story has
been repeatedly edited on the Guardian website to introduce further qualifications and
acknowledgments of dubious attribution, not present as originally published. But still neither
Editor Katherine Viner nor author Luke Harding has either retracted or apologised, something
which calls the fundamental honesty of both into question.
Manafort is now in prison, because as with many others interviewed, the Mueller
investigation found he had been involved in several incidences of wrongdoing. Right up until
Mueller finalised his report, media articles and broadcasts repeatedly, again and again and
again every single day, presented these convictions as proving that there had been collusion
with Russia. The media very seldom pointed out that none of the convictions related to
collusion. In fact for the most part they related to totally extraneous events, like unrelated
tax frauds or Trump's hush-money to (very All-American) prostitutes. The "Russians" that
Manafort was convicted of lobbying for without declaration, were Ukrainian and the offences
occurred ten years ago and had no connection to Trump of any kind. Rather similarly the lies of
which Roger Stone stands accused relate to his invention, for personal gain, of a non-existent
relationship with Wikileaks.
The truth is that, if proper and detailed investigation were done into any group of wealthy
politicos in Washington, numerous crimes would be uncovered, especially in the fields of tax
and lobbying. Rich political operatives are very sleazy. This is hardly news, and if those
around Clinton had been investigated there would be just as many convictions and of similar
kinds. it is a pity there is not more of this type of work, all the time. But the Russophobic
motive behind the Mueller Inquiry was not forwarded by any of the evidence obtained.
My analysis of the Steele dossier, written before I was aware that Sergei Skripal probably
had a hand in it, has stood the test of time very well. It is a confection of fantasy concocted
for money by a charlatan.
We should not forget at this stage to mention the unfortunate political prisoner Maria
Butina, whose offence is to be Russian and very marginally involved in American politics at the
moment when there was a massive witchhunt for Russian spies in progress, that makes The
Crucible look like a study in calm rationality. Ms Butina was attempting to make her way in the
US political world, no doubt, and she had at least one patron in Moscow who was assisting her
with a view to increasing their own political influence. But nothing Butina did was covert or
sinister. Her efforts to win favour within the NRA were notable chiefly because of the irony
that the NRA has been historically responsible for many more American deaths than Russia.
Any narrative of which the Establishment does not approve is decried as conspiracy theory.
Yet the "Russiagate" conspiracy theory – which truly is Fake News – has been
promoted massively by the entire weight of western corporate and state media. "Russiagate", a
breathtaking plot in which Russia and a high profile US TV personality collude together to take
control of the most militarily powerful country in the world, knocks "The Manchurian Candidate"
into a cocked hat. A Google "news search" restricts results to mainstream media outlets. Such a
search for the term "Russiagate" brings 230,000 results. That is almost a quarter of a million
incidents of the mainstream media not only reporting the fake "Russiagate" story, but
specifically using that term to describe it.
Compare that with a story which is not an outlandish fake conspiracy theory, but a very real
conspiracy.
If, by contrast, you do a Google "news search" for the term "Integrity Initiative", the UK
government's covert multi million pound programme to pay senior mainstream media journalists to
pump out anti-Russian propaganda worldwide, you only get one eighth of the results you get for
"Russiagate". Because the mainstream media have been enthusiastically promoting the fake
conspiracy story, and deliberately suppressing the very real conspiracy in which many of their
own luminaries are personally implicated.
... ... ...
Furthermore – and this is a truly tremendous irony, which relates back to the cartoon
at the start – only two of the top ten news results for "Integrity Initiative" come from
the Western corporate media.
And this next fact comes nearly into the "too good to be true" category for my argument.
Those two MSM mentions, from Sky News and the Guardian, do not complain of the covert
anti-Russian propaganda campaign that is the Integrity Initiative. They rather complain that it
was an alleged "Russian hack" that made the wrongdoing public!! You could not make it up, you
really could not.
According to the mainstream media, it is not Hillary Clinton's fault for conspiring with the
DNC to cheat Bernie out of the nomination, it is Russia's fault for allegedly helping to reveal
it. It is not the British government's, or their media collaborators', fault for running a
covert propaganda scheme to dupe the public of the UK and many other countries, it is the
Russians' fault for allegedly helping to reveal it!
Which brings us full circle to the DNC leak that sparked Muellergate and the claims that it
was the Russians who lost Hillary the election. Robert Mueller repeats the assertion from the
US security services that it was Russian hackers who obtained the DNC emails and passed them on
to Wikileaks. I am telling you from my personal knowledge that this is not true.
Neither Mueller's team, not the FBI, nor the NSA, nor any US Intelligence agency, has ever
carried out any forensic analysis on the DNC's servers. The DNC consistently refused to make
them available. The allegation against Russia is based purely on information from the DNC's own
consultants, Crowdstrike.
William Binney, former Technical Director of the NSA (America's US$40 billion a year
communications intercept organisation),
has proven beyond argument that it is a technical impossibility for the DNC emails to have
been transmitted by an external hack – they were rather downloaded locally, probably on
to a memory stick. Binney's analysis is fully endorsed by former NSA systems expert Ed Loomis.
There simply are no two people on the planet more technically qualified to make this judgement.
Yet, astonishingly, Mueller refused to call Binney or Loomis (or me) to testify. Compare this,
for example, with his calling to testify my friend Randy Credico, who had no involvement
whatsoever in the matter, but Mueller's team hoped to finger as a Trump/Assange link.
The DNC servers have never been examined by intelligence agencies, law enforcement or by
Mueller's team. Binney and Loomis have written that it is impossible this was an external hack.
Wikileaks have consistently stressed no state actor was involved. No evidence whatsoever has
been produced of the transfer of the material from the "Russians" to Wikileaks. Wikileaks Vault
7 release of CIA documents shows that the planting of false Russian hacking "fingerprints" is
an established CIA practice . Yet
none of this is reflected at all by Mueller nor by the mainstream media.
"Collusion" may be dead, but the "Russiagate" false narrative limps on.
I should add it seems to me very probable Russia did make some efforts to influence the US
election. I worked a a British diplomat for 20 years and spent a lot of time trying to
influence political outcomes in the country in which I was posted, in Eastern Europe and in
Africa. It is part of the geopolitical game. The United States is of course the world leader by
a long way in attempting to influence elections abroad, spending hundreds of millions of
dollars to that effect in countries including Ukraine, Georgia, Ecuador and Venezuela recently,
and pretty well everywhere in Africa. It is a part of normal diplomatic life.
Mueller uncovered some high level influence-broking meetings. This is what states do. He
uncovered some sleazy deals. This is what rich people do. He uncovered some US $110,000 of
Facebook ad spending from Russia targeted on the USA, some of which promoted sex toys, some of
which was post-election, but some of which was apparently trying to assist Trump against
Clinton. Compared to the amount the USA pumps into similar arms length assistance to Putin
opponents in Russia alone, it was negligible. That this tiny bit of Facebook advertising
crucially impacted the US $13,000,000,000 PR campaigns of the candidates is a ludicrous
proposition.
That every country stay out of every other country's politics is arguably desirable. It is
not however the status quo, and the United States is in the worst position of all to
complain.
Stop fear-mongering and engaging in "acceptable" bigotry.-- Jimmy Dore , comedian, host of the Jimmy Dore Show
When Keith Olbermann
pounded his fist on his table, screaming, "SCUM! RUSSIAN SCUM!!!" I couldn't help but
thinking, that's the only nationality he could insert there and get away with it. He couldn't
scream "Mexican scum" or "Chinese scum" or "Indian scum." Russian bigotry is, I think, the only
acceptable bigotry among the liberal media. Totally acceptable to the liberal media.
Rachel Maddow
telling her audience in the middle of a polar vortex that Russia controls their power grid
and could freeze them all to death at a moment's notice was by far the most egregious example
of fear-mongering. But that's not the only bad thing the media's done. They're currently
pushing regime-change wars in Syria and Venezuela.
The corporate news will never regain my trust or redeem itself, because they are owned and
funded by the people they're supposed to be investigating and exposing, like the richest man in
the world, for instance, Jeff Bezos. He controls 51 percent of all the internet sales in the
United States, sits on a Pentagon board and has a $600 million deal with the CIA. That's the
guy running the news!
The thing is that America's media obsession with the Russian menace -- this idea that Russia
is the greatest threat to liberal civilization -- predates the Mueller investigation. It
predates the 2016 election, and it predates Trump. So this wasn't a sudden mistake about a
single investigation, but something that America's been moving towards for over a decade. The
Russian Menace has been a lucrative racket -- paying the mortgages, car loans, kids' college
tuitions, for thousands of think-tankers, military contractors, academics and journalists.
After Trump, the Russia hysteria hit a new level of paranoia and bigotry. There was a need
to blame America's domestic political turmoil, and the failure of its political establishment,
on someone or something -- to deflect responsibility for what happened. So suddenly liberal
media began to see "the Russians" everywhere -- part of a shadowy foreign conspiracy to
undermine America from within.
They weren't just threatening Europe and NATO. They were in the White House, in American
voting machines, in American electrical grids, in American children's cartoons. They were
hacking people's minds. They were controlling both the international left and the international
right -- against the respectable political center. That's how sneaky and devious and cynical
they are. That's how much they want to destroy America's liberal democracy.
The Mueller report may provide us some much-needed respite from this insanity for a few
weeks or months, but this focus on the Russian menace isn't going away any time soon. You can
already see Joe Biden's creepy behavior with women being blamed on a devious Russian plot to
help elect Bernie. So as we get closer to the election, this kind of stuff is gonna fire up
again big time.
To treat this issue as a media problem that we "can solve" and "get right" in the future is
a bit too optimistic, in my opinion. It assumes that our political and media establishment
wants to actually "get it right." What does getting it right mean, when they are the problem
that needs to be corrected? To "get it right," they'd have to admit that they've been wrong --
not just about Mueller, but about the decades of bankrupt neoliberal politics they've been
complicit in pushing on America and around the world. To get it right, our political and media
elite would have to voluntarily deplatform itself. And I don't see that happening anytime
soon.
4. Talk to people with an actual understanding of history and Russia, not fake
experts and uninformed pundits.
-- Carl Beijer , writer
It's remarkable how often the problems of Russiagate coverage came down to simple ignorance.
From references to Russia as a "Communist" nation to basic translation errors, we've seen
prominent pundits make mistakes that would embarrass a grade-school Muscovite.
This was in part a problem of people exaggerating their own credentials, but it was also a
problem of the media deciding that no real expertise was needed. I don't want to call for
academic entry exams, but I think it's clear that the media needs to move in the direction of
treating Russian studies as a field of knowledge like any other. Do you speak the language?
Have you spent more than a few weeks in the country? What and where have you published? Do you
have a directly relevant professional background?
There are so many people who could give extraordinary answers to all of these questions, so
it says everything about Russiagate when you look at who we heard from instead. From overt
operatives to media hacks, corporate news is now overrun by pundits who function as PR
professionals for the major parties. All of their professional and social incentives compel
them to carry water for their party; if they happen to be right about a given issue, it's
purely by accident.
And with Russiagate, we saw the worst-case scenario play out: Republicans, who will defend
Trump over anything, ended up being right -- while Democrats, desperate to believe they had
caught him in an impeachable crime, got it wrong. The only way around this problem, as far as I
can tell, is to talk to pundits who are acting against their own political interests.
In this case, there were plenty of people in liberal-left media who clearly want to see
Trump fail, but who were nevertheless Russiagate skeptics. Some of those voices were just being
contrarians, of course, but some of them were acting from a place of conviction.
5. Don't
manipulate the truth to justify war.-- Rania Khalek , journalist, host of In the Now
From the start, we were
warning people
that pushing this evidence-free conspiracy theory was ultimately going to empower Trump.
But even worse, it actually made the world a more dangerous place. In order to prove he wasn't
in bed with the Russians, the Trump administration pushed some of the most anti-Russia policies
in the post Cold War-era, moving us closer to nuclear war and increasing the likelihood of more
violence in places like Syria, Venezuela and Ukraine, all to prove that Trump isn't Putin's
puppet.
This entire affair has also resurrected the careers of the neocons, who, until Trump came
along, were largely disgraced for the horrors they inflicted on Iraq. Now they've been embraced
by liberals for being anti-Trump, and they have more influence than ever. Not to mention the
new McCarthyism that frames everything, from the NRA to white nationalism to even progressive
advocacy groups that challenge the Democratic Party, as agents of the Kremlin, distorting
everyone's understanding of what's going on today.
The Russiagate narrative has been a disaster, and it's going to continue to be a disaster,
because, despite being proven to be a sham, the corporate media and the corporate Democrats are
still pushing it, distracting everyone from the real reasons for our miserable status quo.
"... Stephen F. Cohen is a professor emeritus of Russian studies and politics at New York University and Princeton University. A Nation contributing editor, his new book War With Russia? From Putin & Ukraine to Trump & Russiagate is available in paperback and in an ebook edition. ..."
"... What we are witnessing now is the almost complete ignorance in the MSM and among people like Clapper about the extraordinary damage done to the Russian economy under Clinton in the 1990s, a story well told by Mr. Cohen in the book "Failed Crusade." The immense hypocrisy of accusing Russia of interference in 2016 leaves me breathless. The US has been interfering in the affairs of every major country on earth, beginning with War of 1812 ..."
"... I recall an interesting comment by Mao Zedong about the Cuban Missile Crisis in which Mao said that Nikita Khrushchev was stupid to put missiles in Cuba and he was a coward to take them out. ..."
"... Based on the recent conversations between Stephen Cohen and John Batchelor, I'll paraphrase Mao's comment to say that the intelligence agencies were stupid to originate Russiagate and the Democrats and their media allies are cowards not to stop it. ..."
"... Pompous comes out and says the US is back and we're a force for good. This in the face of widespread destruction all over the Middle East, hundreds of thousands of dead, the creation of numerous groups of crazy zealots that we created, cultivated, and supported to be our proxies in the overthrow of elected governments. All of that death and destruction, including that perpetrated by our proxies is 100% the fault and responsibility of the United States. But Pompous and the American people in general are so myopic that they don't see all that. Thank you, worthless press. If the press actually told the American people what was being done in their name, I think most of us would be disgusted but they don't. They cheer lead for the beltway and their imperial pretensions. ..."
"... If Clapper and Brennan actually created a sting operation against the Trump Campaign, would you denounce that act? If Obama had approved such an operation, would you believe he was ethically entitled to do such? ..."
N ow in its third year, Russiagate is the worst, most corrosive, and most fraudulent
political scandal in modern American history. It rests on two related core allegations: that
Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an "attack on American democracy" during the 2016
presidential campaign in order to put Donald Trump in the White House, and that Trump and his
associates willfully colluded, or conspired, in this Kremlin "attack." As I have argued from
the outset -- see my regular commentaries posted at
TheNation.com and my recent book War With
Russia? -- and as recently confirmed, explicitly and tacitly, by special prosecutor
Robert Mueller's report, there is no factual evidence for either allegation.
Nonetheless, these Russiagate allegations, not "Putin's Russia," continue to inflict grave
damage on fundamental institutions of American democracy. They impugn the integrity of the
presidency and now the office of the attorney general. They degrade the many Democratic
members of Congress who persist in clinging to the allegations and thus the Democratic Party
and Congress. And they have enticed mainstream media into one of the worst episodes
of journalistic malpractice in modern times .
But equally alarming, Russiagate continues to endanger American national security by
depriving a US president, for the first time in the nuclear age, of the diplomatic
flexibility to deal with a Kremlin leader in times of crisis. We were given a vivid example
in July 2018, when Trump held a summit with the current Kremlin occupant, as every president
had done since Dwight Eisenhower. For that conventional, even necessary, act of diplomacy,
Trump was widely accused of treasonous behavior, a charge that persists. Now we have another
alarming example of this reckless disregard for US national security on the part of
Russiagate zealots.
On May 3, Trump called Putin. They discussed various issues, including the Mueller report.
(As before, Putin had to know if Trump was free to implement any acts of security cooperation
they might agree on. Indeed, the Russian policy elite openly debates this question, many of
its members having decided that Trump cannot cooperate with Russia no matter his intentions.)
A major subject of the conversation was unavoidably the growing conflict over Venezuela,
where Washington and Moscow have long-standing economic and political interests. Trump
administration spokespeople have warned Moscow against interfering in America's neighborhood,
ignoring, of course, Washington's deep involvement for years in the former Soviet republics
of Ukraine and Georgia. Kremlin representatives, on the other hand, have warned Washington
against violating Venezuela's sovereignty. Increasingly, there is talk, at least in Moscow
policy circles, of a Cuban Missile–like crisis, the closest the United States and
Russia (then Soviet Russia) ever came to nuclear war.
To the extent, however remote, that Venezuela might grow into a Cuba-like US-Russian
military confrontation, would Trump be sufficiently free of Russiagate allegations to resolve
it peacefully, as President John Kennedy did in 1962? Judging by mainstream media commentary
on the May 3 phone conversation, the answer seems to be no. Considering the mounting
confrontation in Venezuela, Trump was right, even obligated, to call Putin, but he got no
applause, only condemnation. To take some random examples:
§ Democratic Representative David Cicilline asked CNN's Chris Cuomo rhetorically on
May 3, "Why does the president give the benefit of doubt to a person who attacked our
democracy?" while assailing Trump for not confronting Putin with the Mueller report.
§ The same evening, CNN's Don Lemon editorialized on the phone call: "The president
of the United States had just a normal old call with his pal Vladimir Putin. Didn't tell him
not to interfere in the election. Like he did in 2016, like he did in 2018, like we know he
is planning to do again in 2020 . You just don't seem to want us to know exactly what was
said . Nothing to see when the president talks for more than an hour with the leader of an
enemy nation. One that has repeatedly attacked our democracy and will do so again." (Lemon
did not say on what he based the expanded, serial charges against Putin and thus against
Trump or his allegation about the 2018 elections, which congressional Democrats mostly won,
or his foreknowledge about 2020 or generally and with major ramifications why he branded
Russia an "enemy nation.")
§ We might expect something more exalted from James Risen ,
once a critical-minded investigative reporter, who found it suspicious that "Trump and Putin
were both eager to put the Mueller report behind them," even for the sake of needed
diplomacy.
§ Senator Amy Klobuchar and Representative Eric Swalwell, both candidates for the
2020 Democratic presidential nomination, also
expressed deep suspicion regarding the Trump-Putin phone talk. Swalwell was sure it meant
that Trump "acts on their behalf," that he "is putting the Russians' interests ahead of the
United States' interests." (Voters may wonder if these candidates and quite a few others who
continue to promote extremist Russiagate allegations are emerging American statesmen.)
§ Not surprisingly,
a Washington Post opinion writer argued that the phone call meant "Trump is
counting on Russian help to get reelected."
None of these "opinion leaders" mentioned the danger of a US-Russian military
confrontation over Venezuela or elsewhere on the several fraught fronts of the new Cold War.
Indeed, retired admiral James Stavridis, once supreme allied commander of NATO forces and
formerly associated with Hillary Clinton's campaign, all but proposed war on
Russia in retaliation for its "attack on our democracy," including "unprecedented
measures" such as cyberattacks.
Russiagate's unproven allegations are an aggressive malignancy spreading through America's
politics to the most vital areas of national security policy. A full nonpartisan
investigation into their origins is urgently needed, but US intelligence agencies were almost
certainly present at their creation, which is why I have long argued that
Russiagate is actually Intelgate . If so, James Comey, then FBI director, was present at
the creation, though initially in a lesser role than were President Barack Obama's CIA
Director John Brennan and intelligence overlord James Clapper.
Comey recently deplored Attorney General William Barr's declaration that US intelligence
agencies resorted to "spying" on the Trump campaign. (In fact, Barr mischaracterized what
happened: The agencies, first and foremost Brennan's CIA, it seems, ran an entrapment
operation against members of the campaign.) Comey warned
Barr that he will discover that Trump "has eaten your soul."
It would be more accurate to say -- and certainly more important -- that baseless
Russiagate allegations are eating America's national security.
This commentary is based on Stephen F. Cohen's most recent weekly discussion with the host
of The John Batchelor Show. Now in their sixth year, previous installments are at
TheNation.com .
Stephen F. Cohen is a professor emeritus of Russian studies and politics at New York University and Princeton
University. A Nation contributing editor, his new book War With Russia? From Putin & Ukraine to Trump & Russiagate is
available in paperback and in an ebook edition.
Phillip Sawicki says: May 9, 2019 at 7:52 pm
What we are witnessing now is the almost complete ignorance in the MSM and among people
like Clapper about the extraordinary damage done to the Russian economy under Clinton in the
1990s, a story well told by Mr. Cohen in the book "Failed Crusade." The immense hypocrisy of
accusing Russia of interference in 2016 leaves me breathless. The US has been interfering in
the affairs of every major country on earth, beginning with War of 1812.
In case people have
forgotten, The US sought to annex Canada. The Canadians resisted, and so then the US set up a
false flag attack in 1845 to start the Mexican-American War. Hundreds of interventions in
other countries, but if someone is alleged to have done so to us, it's a capital crime. What
arrogance!
Victor Sciamarelli says: May 9, 2019 at 4:17 pm
I recall an interesting comment by Mao Zedong about the Cuban Missile Crisis in which Mao
said that Nikita Khrushchev was stupid to put missiles in Cuba and he was a coward to take
them out.
Based on the recent conversations between Stephen Cohen and John Batchelor, I'll paraphrase
Mao's comment to say that the intelligence agencies were stupid to originate Russiagate and
the Democrats and their media allies are cowards not to stop it.
Another point is that the downside of the policy elites' belief in "American exceptionalism"
is that it is also a trap. They claim our "indispensable nation" rests upon values and
principles such as the rule of law, respect for human rights, and freedom of speech, even
though reality often tells us something different.
Thus, if Putin is a thug, if not a murderer, who attacked the US, undermined our democracy,
and is an autocrat who cares nothing about our values and principles, then what place is
there for diplomacy because you can't negotiate or compromise our immutable principles and
values.
Another observation is we often hear the statement that, "All options are on the table." This
sounds tough to an American mind because it includes nuclear weapons. All options means all
options. Nonetheless, someone else might interpret this to mean you are not confident or
certain that your conventional forces are capable of doing the mission and you are more
likely or willing to resort to a nuclear weapon. This can make any confrontation whether in
Venezuela, Ukraine, Syria, or Iran more dangerous that it needs to be.
In addition, Trump has sent an aircraft carrier group to the Middle East. The Guardian on May
6, 2019, stated that according to one report, information passed on by Israeli intelligence
contributed to the US threat assessment.
If we are now approaching war based on Israeli intelligence then I think we are also
approaching our Dr. Strangelove moment.
Jeffrey Harrison says: May 9, 2019 at 11:55 am
Arrogance, myopia. Those two words define the US today.
Pompous comes out and says the US is back and we're a force for good. This in the face of
widespread destruction all over the Middle East, hundreds of thousands of dead, the creation
of numerous groups of crazy zealots that we created, cultivated, and supported to be our
proxies in the overthrow of elected governments. All of that death and destruction, including
that perpetrated by our proxies is 100% the fault and responsibility of the United States.
But Pompous and the American people in general are so myopic that they don't see all that.
Thank you, worthless press. If the press actually told the American people what was being
done in their name, I think most of us would be disgusted but they don't. They cheer lead for
the beltway and their imperial pretensions.
This Stavridis bozo is a prime example. "all but proposed war on Russia in retaliation for
its "attack on our democracy," including "unprecedented measures" such as cyber attacks." I
realize that we are in a post proof world where any claim, no matter how inane, is
automatically taken as proven. No actual proof required. The "attack on our democracy" is
based on this totally bogus claim (never proven) that Russia hacked into the DNC's e-mails
(on a server that no law enforcement agency ever inspected to prove the claim of hacking)
that undermined our democracy by revealing how corrupt and slimy the DNC actually is. All the
while we're so myopic that we don't see the Republican party destroying our democracy from
within with voter ID requirements for a non-existent problem, gerrymandering themselves into
a permanent majority of a minority, voter suppression schemes such as purging voter rolls,
closing polling places, and generally making it difficult for people to vote.
But this Stavridis bozo wasn't done yet. The Russians he claims perpetrated unprecedented
measures such as cyber attacks. Really? The only cyber attacks that I'm actually aware of in
the US were actually perpetrated by the Department of Homeland Security who was playing
bureaucratic turf games. The admiral's ignorance is in full display when he forgets the
STUXTNET worm that absolutely was a cyber attack on Iran by the US and Israel, and that the
NSA hacked the personal cell phone of Angela Merkel, the Prime Minister of Germany, and the
trick revealed by Ed Snowden that the NSA would open computer boxes destined for certain
countries and install chips that would allow us to control the server, or that the only known
backdoor in a piece of Hauwei equipment was installed there by the NSA.
I'm suspecting that we need to clean up our act a lot more that most of the rest of the
world.
J McCormick says: May 8, 2019 at 11:57 pm
So much scorn heaped on members of the opposition party and the media and what I hear here
is a call for respect for and deference to the office of the presidency.
If there is cause for concern and worry , and I fervently believe that there is , I leave
it to others to offer up what they believe that cause might be.
History records that that the Congress relinquished powers that were properly theirs
(trade, war powers) and now they so far appear impotent in the face of executive overreach
when an effective check on the executive branch is critically needed.
Even if your opinion runs counter to mine I am reasonably certain we agree that
dysfunction and chaos rule the day in Washington and beyond.
Clark Shanahan says: May 9, 2019 at 6:26 pm
"So much scorn heaped on members of the opposition party and the media"
Tell me, J., do you believe Russia is our adversary?
If so, when did they become such?
If Clapper and Brennan actually created a sting operation against the Trump Campaign,
would you denounce that act?
If Obama had approved such an operation, would you believe he was ethically entitled to do
such?
"... The Jimi Dore show is what the Daily Show used to be. ..."
"... NYTimes and Washington Post won the Pulitzer prizes for "thorough coverage" of 2016 Russia collusion ..."
"... The xenophobia towards Russia is higher than during the cold war. It's embarrassing imo. ..."
"... 14:52 Russian Troll farm: spends 15k on adds America: We lost the war we are no longer a sovereign nation ..."
"... Russiagate distracts from the very real Israelgate. #BDS ..."
"... so alex jones got banned from all platforms for being a conspiracy theorist while the MSM were pushing one for two years?! wow ..."
"... Pretty sure psychopaths will not feel embarrassment or humiliation, only rage and vengeance. ..."
"... CNN is actually a cult and It has a following. ..."
"... The funny thing about Dems claiming Trump wouldn't accept the result of the election - Cohen testified to Congress that Trump actually expected to lose and was running as a PR stunt. ..."
"... Keith Olbermann is Grandpa Maddow ..."
"... If somebody in power is after you, the feds will indict a ham sandwich... ..."
"... I kinda figured out myself that this Russia Gate was a load of lies and/or wishful thinking. Jimmy and his guests showed me that i wasn't wrong of nuts even. Thanks Jimmy, for hooking me up. ..."
"... We've known all along this has been a coup. This is not news to the informed. ..."
"... The Soviet Union moved from Russia, to the ruling class of DC and NYC. ..."
Now that Trump has agreed to go along with the war with Russia, they will back off on Trump and let him continue provoking
Russia in Syria, Venezuela and by flying US planes into Russian air space. Mueller helped Bush lie America into destroying Iraq.
US Empire wants military bases in more and more nations.
The funny thing about Dems claiming Trump wouldn't accept the result of the election - Cohen testified to Congress that Trump
actually expected to lose and was running as a PR stunt. LOL. Can't make this stuff up. The danger here is that the what really
happened was a deep state effort with mainstream media to overthrow a lawfully elected president of country. That's scarier than
any thing Trump may ever do.
I'm a conservative and have tremendous amount of respect for Jimmy Dore and Aaron Mate'. I may not agree with them on specific
policies but I know these two guys come from a sincere, honest place. I usually just blow off liberal rhetoric but I listen to
what Jimmy has to say. God bless them
FLYNN The FBI has concluded that Michael Flynn did not have any secret relationship with Russia and has cleared the retired
Lt. General of any wrongdoing. According to a U.S. intelligence official speaking with NPR, after reviewing the transcripts, FBI
agents found that Michael Flynn's forced resignation could only have been orchestrated from Obama insiders operating within the
White House.
"The FBI reviewed intercepts
of communications between the Russian ambassador to the United States and retired Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn -- national security
adviser to then-President-elect Trump -- but has not found any evidence of wrongdoing or illicit ties to the Russian government,
U.S. officials said."
Another current U.S Intelligence official agreed with the FBI and told NPR , "there is no evidence of criminal
wrongdoing in the transcripts of of former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn's conversations with Russian Ambassador Sergey
Kislyak, The official also said there was "absolutely nothing" in the transcripts that suggests Flynn was acting under instructions
"or that the trail leads higher." "I don't think [Flynn] knew he was doing anything wrong," the official said. "Flynn talked about
sanctions, but no specific promises were made. Flynn was speaking more in general 'maybe we'll take a look at this going forward'
terms."
So why aren't we listening to the officials who actually HEARD the calls? Don't be fooled, this isn't about Flynn discussing
sanctions or anything else with Russia for that matter. This is about delegitimizing a president. There is a reason why Democrats
are still determined to investigate Flynn even though he has already resigned. They are using this as a way to prove that Trump
was "in with Russia" and therefore an illegitimate president. Democrats will stop at nothing to get Trump out of the White House.
They don't care how many lives they have to ruin.
Communists on the Left colluded with Soviet Russia for decades and infiltrated politics, academia, education, media. Now
that Russia doesn't represent a threat and is now a growing Christian democracy...they hate it.
Jimmy: they (the globalist elite) want to defeat all of us. We all (Progressives, Christians, Conservatives, people who love
their country ) are on the same boat. The globalists want to destroy all of us. They are against the nation state, against people
having their own culture and defending it, they are against Christians (look at the way Obama referred to Catholics who were attacked
in Sri Lanka (Easter worshippers)), they are against true democracy meaning against a government that has the true interest of
their citizens in mind not the interest of the elite that controls all branches of the government. I might disagree with your
socialist policies and particularly what you said about Venezuela (I am from Colombia and saw the disastrous policies of Chavez
and Maduro destroying that nation) but we all have a common enemy and the Right and the true Left should come together in this
fight.
Because (CIA agent) Anderson "Cooper" Vanderbilt is the most trusted "NAME™" in News. Yeah, right. We already know the truth
about this porky mofo. His time is coming.
Remember this is the Special Counsel Investigation, the "Ultimate" Investigation. Which is also the 3rd Investigation. We already
had the House & then the Senate Investigate Russia Collusion & both came up with NO Evidence. So they started as Special Counsel
Investigation which has now come up with the same Conclusion as they did🤔
I always believed in you when it came to Russia Jimmy. I don't agree with you on everything, but you and Kyle are definitely
one of the new progressives that didn't go off the deep end with this conspiracy.
And yes, exactly what Aaron says. I kinda figured out myself that this Russia Gate was a load of lies and/or wishful thinking.
Jimmy and his guests showed me that i wasn't wrong of nuts even. Thanks Jimmy, for hooking me up.
It's only fair that "news journalists" start doing stand-up routines - it's your fault Jimmy for taking over the role of serious
news journalism from them, was probably inevitable, LOL.
I used to respect Keith Olberman (and Rachael Maddow as well!) when they were criticizing Bush for lying us into a war over
a non existent weapons of mass destruction program. I think these living colostomy bags are promoted to their positions to undermine
legitimate criticism of the criminal dirtbags that run this nation. They were right about Bush Jr, wrong about Obozo - and of
course, other...
The two of you are both great! I think so highly of Aaron, and the fact that he seems to have chosen Jimmy's show for his first
lengthy take on the "end of Russiagate" is telling! Both of you deserve our props and thanks for helping keep us ALL sane over
the past couple of years.
I'm sure they all still believe Trump will be indicted or impeached "any day now". These people are mentally unstable, they
are the textbook example of delusional.
Mon 29 Apr 2019 01.55 EDT Marine experts in Norway believe they have stumbled upon a white whale that was trained by the Russian
navy as part of a programme to use underwater mammals as a special ops force.
1 week ago
The whale was the secret intermediary between Mr. Putin and Mr. Trump. The messages were transmitted during weekly 'Whales-R-Us'
peer support sessions. It's ironic it turns up now, after Mr. Mueller's report has already been issued.
1 week ago (Edited)
I'm pretty sure "Nessie" is a mobile underwater propoganda base used by the Russians since the time of the Bolshevic revolution.
Originally, it was merely a base to hide the Reds operating on the outskirts of the Capitalist capitol of London. Scotland was
the perfect hiding place.
Now however, it's outfitted with the most sophisticated internet hacking equipment, AI technology so advanced it can
alter your political ideology just by selling you a mailorder slavic blow-up doll.
Chris Hedges, host of "On Contact," joins Rick Sanchez to discuss the role of the Democratic establishment in the "Russiagate"
media frenzy. He argues that it was an unsustainable narrative given the actions of the White House but that the Democratic elite
are unable to face their own role in the economic and social crises for which they are in large part to blame. They also discuss
NATO's expansionary tendencies and how profitable it is for US defense contractors.
Years ago I kept hearing from the newsmedia that Russia was the "enemy".
Frontline had a show about "Putin's Brain". Even Free
Speech TV shows like Bill Press and "The Nation" authors like Eric Alterman push the Hillary style warmongering and do nothing
to expose the outright lies out there.
These are supposed to be thought outside of the corporate mainstream newsmedia. The emphasis
only on Trump and Fox News is totally hypocritical.
Mon 29 Apr 2019 01.55 EDT Marine experts in Norway believe they have stumbled upon a white whale that was trained by the Russian
navy as part of a programme to use underwater mammals as a special ops force.
1 week ago
The whale was the secret intermediary between Mr. Putin and Mr. Trump. The messages were transmitted during weekly 'Whales-R-Us'
peer support sessions. It's ironic it turns up now, after Mr. Mueller's report has already been issued.
1 week ago (Edited)
I'm pretty sure "Nessie" is a mobile underwater propoganda base used by the Russians since the time of the Bolshevic revolution.
Originally, it was merely a base to hide the Reds operating on the outskirts of the Capitalist capitol of London. Scotland was
the perfect hiding place.
Now however, it's outfitted with the most sophisticated internet hacking equipment, AI technology so advanced it can
alter your political ideology just by selling you a mailorder slavic blow-up doll.
Re: my above link (you're welcome those of you who have problems with long URLs!):
Contrast Maddow's "Trump is making John Bolton act too nice" monologue with a recent
segment on Fox News' Tucker Carlson Tonight, conducted in the aftermath of last week's
attempt at a military coup by opposition leader Juan Guaido. Journalist Anya Parampil
appeared on the show and delivered a scathing criticism of the Trump administration's
heinous actions in Venezuela based on her findings during her recent visit to that country.
She was allowed to speak uninhibited and without attack, even bringing up the Center for
Economic and Policy Research study which found Trump administration sanctions responsible
for the deaths of over 40,000 Venezuelans, a story that has gone completely ignored by
western mainstream media.
Carlson introduced the interview with a clip from an earlier talk he'd had with Florida
Congressman Mario Diaz-Balart, who supports direct military action to overthrow Maduro and
whose arguments Carlson had attacked on the basis that it would cost American lives and
cause a refugee crisis. Parampil said the media is lying about what's happening in
Venezuela and compared Guaido's coup attempt to a scenario in which Hillary Clinton had
refused to cede the election, banded together 24 US soldiers and attempted to take the
White House by force.
"I was there for a month earlier this year," Parampil said. "The opposition has no
popular support. Juan Guaido proved today, once again, that he will only ride in to power
on the back of a US tank. And what's more, we hear about a humanitarian crisis there,
Tucker, but what we never hear is that is the intended result of US sanctions that have
targeted Venezuelans since 2015, sanctions which according to a report that was released
just last week by the Center for Economic and Policy Research has led to the deaths of
40,000 Venezuelans, and will lead to the death of thousands more if these sanctions aren't
overturned. President Trump, if he truly cared for the Venezuelan people, and the American
people for that matter, he would end this disastrous policy. He would end the sanctions,
and he would look into John Bolton's eyes, into Elliott Abrams' eyes, into Mike Pompeo's
eyes, and say you are fired. You are leading me down a disastrous path, another war for
oil. Something the president said–he was celebrated by the American people when he
said Iraq was a mistake, and now he's willing to do it again."
"I believe in an open debate," Carlson responded. "And I'm not sure I agree with
everything you've said, but I'm glad that you could say it here. And you were just there,
and I don't think you'd be allowed on any other show to say that."
"No I certainly don't," Parampil replied. "And I really appreciate you giving me the
opportunity, because
President Trump promised to drain the swamp, and he flooded his national security team
with that exact swamp
Maddow is the MSM version of a liberal. She's a DNC warmonger's warmonger - the blue flavor
warmonger to counter the red flavor warmonger. This became apparent 10 years ago. She is the
MSM version of a lefty. Not leftist really, just a 1969 Nixon to put up against all the late
model Bush Clinton Obama Trump lunatics.
I get paranoid real fast when unexpected URL difficulties arise. I cut/pasted your first
link, then one I found myself into a word processor, and both of them had a string of numbers
at the end. Different numbers! Finally learned those numbers were unnecessary and I had
something which worked.
I can sometimes navigate the internet, but I'm aware there are people out there who can
tie it in knots. Corporate meddling is becoming an issue as well. Yesterday or day before my
Firefox browser suddenly had all the addons disabled. The Mozilla company must have gotten an
earful, so they've half-fixed it. Now the addons are working again, but have a big warning
label on each and every one of them.
Back to Maddow. There are people who adore her, and I believe I've mentioned being taken
to task by one of them. Seems I hang out at "weird" sites like this one when I could be
getting ALL my news from Maddow - just as this person bragged about doing.
That's all there is to it. No corporate trackers (such as FB or IG adding crap onto the
end). That's as simple as they get, unfortunately, but still long enough to prompt me to
shorten it for Circe and those who apparently have major issues with links.
"... And now, months into 2019, we get to hear Maddow waxing eloquent about the innocent "human side" of none other than John Bolton. Of course, Maddow should first consider whether Bolton or his neocon ilk ever once paused to consider whether those they advocate dropping bombs on -- from Iraq to Syria to Libya to Yemen to Gaza to Venezuela -- are themselves actually human beings who simply wish to live out their daily lives in peace. ..."
"Just A Human Being": Rachel Maddow's Latest Resistance Hero
This is were three years of failed Russiagate conspiracy theorizing and fixation leads you
-- into the arms of fanatical endless war proponent John Bolton: "John Bolton God bless you,
good luck.." one can now hear on "resistance" network MSNBC prime time.
MSNBC's Rachel Maddow is now championing neocon national security adviser John Bolton's
"humanity" given he apparently went loose cannon this past week, vowing to confront Russia over
Venezuela even as his boss President Trump downplayed Moscow's role in the crisis after a
Friday phone call with Putin.
"This is what John Bolton, human being, thought his job was this week," Maddow said on her
show Friday night. Both Pompeo and Bolton had clearly gone a bit
rogue with their overly bellicose Venezuela comments, while Trump appeared to be more
restrained -- and for Maddow this was of course cause for championing the neocon
interventionist line: "Hey, John Bolton, hey, Mike Pompeo, are you guys enjoying your jobs
right now?" she questioned.
On Friday Trump had said following the phone call, Putin is "not looking at all to get
involved in Venezuela other than he'd like to see something positive happen in Venezuela, and I
feel the same way ."
Maddow, who once prided herself on slamming and deconstructing Bush-era regime change wars,
now finds Trump not jingoistic enough. She stridently questioned:
"How do you come to work anymore if you're John Bolton? Right, regardless of what you
thought about John Bolton before this, his whole career and his track record, I mean, just
think of John Bolton as a human being. This is what John Bolton, human being, thought his job
was this week."
She further cut to a clip of Bolton criticizing Russia's alleged military involvement in
Venezuela to prop up Maduro, because apparently uber-hawk Bolton is now a "fearless
truth-teller" in Maddow's world.
"You thought that was your job," Maddow said. "But it turns out not at all, not after
Vladimir Putin gets done with President Trump today."
It bears repeating that among the loudest right-leaning voices who joined the chorus of
leading establishment Democrat Russiagaters included previously forgotten about neocons who
were quickly rehabilitated by the "Resistance" -- David Frum, Max Boot, Robert Kagan, Bill
Kristol among them.
And then there was the nauseating phenomenon of watching liberals lionizing Trump-skeptical
Republican Congressional leaders like Lindsey Graham, Jeff Flake, and the late Sen. McCain.
Because it's awful, just awful! - that Trump might actually prefer peace to waging war in
multiple places... Restraint vs. war in multiple places? Maddow apparently advances the
humanity of those advocating the latter.
It amounted to, at times, a picture of a President at odds with the officials who this
week have called vociferously for a change in power in Caracas and have consistently declined
to rule out a US military intervention.
Trump has become frustrated this week as national security adviser John Bolton and others
openly teased military options and has told friends that if Bolton had his way he'd already
be at war in multiple places . --
CNN
And now, months into 2019, we get to hear Maddow waxing eloquent about the innocent
"human side" of none other than John Bolton. Of course, Maddow should first consider whether
Bolton or his neocon ilk ever once paused to consider whether those they advocate dropping
bombs on -- from Iraq to Syria to Libya to Yemen to Gaza to Venezuela -- are themselves
actually human beings who simply wish to live out their daily lives in peace.
How does MadCow remain employed. I'll hazard an answer. She's Jewish, a true jewess,
therefore untouchable, and she does a fine job dividing the dim witted public. Her head
reminds me of an hatchet. MadCow aka Hatchethead. She blows everybody.
"... On June 14th, the DNC, in conjunction with the Crowdstrike cybersecurity firm that they had hired, announced that its servers had been hacked, and that a file on Trump opposition research had been taken. An entity dubbed "Guccifer 2.0" popped up online a day later, claiming to be the source for the soon-to-be-released Wikileaks DNC material, and obligingly posting a file on Trump opposition research, as well as several other files. Forensic analyses have indicated that the posted documents had had their metadata intentionally altered to leave "Russian fingerprints". ..."
"... We need to determine who created the Guccifer 2.0 hoax, and prosecute them to the full extent of the law. The "intelligence agents" who concluded "with high confidence" that Guccifer 2.0 was a Wikileaks source need to be fired or demoted. If the FBI has known all along that Seth was a Wikileaks source, those who shielded the public from this crucial information need to be unmasked. The "journalists" who have been credulously spreading the "Russia interfered" narrative 24/7 for most of a year, without making the least effort to question the veracity of these assertions, should be recognized by the public as the willing tools of lying warmongers that they are, and their future work studiously ignored. The sanctions recently implemented on Russia should be lifted, and the politicians who played the most egregious role in hyping the Russian interference narrative and pushing the sanctions should be repudiated at the polls when they come up for re-election. (I confess, however, that I will not hold my breath waiting for any of these things to happen.) ..."
"... Why do you not see this as our intelligence agencies working with the DNC and providing them with bogus clues to work with? Doesn't the record now show that the CIA provided the premise for starting the FBI counterintelligence investigation into collusion? And doesn't the record now show that the premise was based on the activities of CIA and FBI informant actors infiltrated into the Trump campaign? ..."
"... With new information about the "U.K. operation" using Stefan Halper (CIA asset and FBI informant); and the details of the contacts by U.S. intelligence operative Azra Turk; we can overlay the timeline and see a clear picture ..."
veganmark on Fri, 05/03/2019 - 8:00am Originally published Aug 11, 2017
I have written a rather comprehensive debunking of the "Russia interfered in our election" narrative that has obsessed the MSM
for most of a year. Since its first posting, I have been updating it; its expanded form is available here:
I don't pretend to be an investigative journalist -- rather, what I have done is to assemble the findings of respected journalists,
intelligence experts, and cyberanalysts who have examined the interference narrative with a critical eye. The links are the best
part of my essay, and I refer you to them if you want verification for the views I express below.
What I would like to do here is present, in summary form, my own best guess as to what actually happened, in light of the evidence
and analyses I cite. Other interpretations are possible, but most of these have a Rube Goldberg-type complexity and illogic that
render them quite dubious. Whereas this interpretation fits the known evidence rather straightforwardly:
Seth Rich was the source for the DNC emails which Wikileaks published; Assange has been silently screaming this for months, both
through statements and tweets, while strenuously denying that the Russian government played any role in this regard. How Seth obtained
these emails, and how he conveyed them to Wikileaks, remain to be determined. If the FBI inside source which Sy Hersh discussed in
his taped conversation with Ed Butowski is accurate, Seth provided them by drop box, giving Wikileaks the password. There is a recent
claim that Seth had had a raucous argument with Donna Brazile regarding DNC unfairness to Bernie; this concern may have motivated
Seth's leaking, though he may also have sought payment for his risky efforts.
On June 12th of last year, Wikileaks announced that it would soon be releasing material pertinent to Hillary's campaign. Whether
the DNC knew at this time that Seth was the source is unclear. What is clear is that DNC officials, who had previously been informed
that their server had been hacked, quickly decided to convince our intelligence agencies, the press, and the public that Russian
hackers, acting at the behest of the Russian government, were the source of the damaging material to be released -- in that way,
focusing attention on the evil machinations of the Russians, slamming Wikileaks, and detracting attention from the content of the
released material.
On June 14th, the DNC, in conjunction with the Crowdstrike cybersecurity firm that they had hired, announced that its servers
had been hacked, and that a file on Trump opposition research had been taken. An entity dubbed "Guccifer 2.0" popped up online a
day later, claiming to be the source for the soon-to-be-released Wikileaks DNC material, and obligingly posting a file on Trump opposition
research, as well as several other files. Forensic analyses have indicated that the posted documents had had their metadata intentionally
altered to leave "Russian fingerprints".
On July 5th, Guccifer 2.0 downloaded from the DNC server a number of additional documents, some of which -- all of them relatively
innocuous -- he subsequently posted on his own website. Forensic analysis of this download indicated that it occurred locally,
most likely via USB port, and that it took place on the East Coast.
An overview suggests that the Guccifer 2.0 persona was created by people with inside connections to the DNC. The evident intent
of this charade was to trick our intelligence agencies into concluding that Guccifer 2.0 was the Wikileaks source and was acting
at the behest of the Russian government. The fact that he released Trump opposition material a day after the DNC proclaimed that
it had been taken by hackers strongly suggests collusion between top people in the DNC and the people concocting Guccifer 2.0. As
Adam Carter notes, it is not at all clear how the DNC/Crowdstrike could have known that this particular file had been taken. Carter
suspects that principals at Crowdstrike played a key role in creating Guccifer 2.0, as they would have had the expertise required
to pull off such a scam. (Whether Imran Awan possesses such skill is not clear.)
Five days later (July 10th), Seth Rich was murdered, most likely by hitmen. The DNC might have known by this point that Seth was
the leaker to Wikileaks -- and that he therefore would have been in a position to completely destroy the Russian interference hoax
if he had chosen to do so.
Crowdstrike, whose founders are known to despise the Russian government, rapidly concluded that the DNC server had been hacked
by Russians affiliated with Russian intelligence. According to experts who have examined this claim, the logic behind this conclusion
is unconvincing and puerile. Moreover, Crowdstrike's previous effort to implicate Russian intelligence in a hack had been shown to
be bogus. Nonetheless, the FBI chose to accept the Crowdstrike conclusions, even though they had never been able to examine the DNC
servers themselves because the DNC had refused to turn them over, and the FBI had failed to subpoena them.
If Hersh's source inside the FBI is to be believed, the FBI has known for over a year that Seth Rich was a Wikileaks source, and
has kept this knowledge secret. The FBI states that they have not participated in the investigation of Seth's murder -- thereby
tacitly implying, without saying so directly, that they have not examined his computer. Given that Assange, who presumably has direct
knowledge on the issue, has hinted as strongly as possible that Seth was one of his sources, the FBI would be severely derelict if
indeed it has not examined Seth computer(s).
The Obama administration was soon fully on board with the "Russia interfered" narrative, which initially shielded Hillary from
the full import of the Wikileaks revelations, and, after the election, provided Hillary's campaign with an excuse for its failure
while enabling an ancillary "Trump colluded in the interference" narrative that could be employed to disable the Trump presidency.
Despite Hillary's concocted claim about "17 intelligence agencies" verifying the Russian interference story, the Obama administration
made sure that the standard appropriate process for our intelligence agencies to provide a balanced evaluation -- a National Intelligence
Assessment, entailing participation by a number of agencies and including any dissenting judgements -- was NOT FOLLOWED. Rather,
the histrionic Russophobes James Clapper and John Brennan were allowed to hand-pick a group of a couple dozen intelligence personnel
from just 3 agencies. The declassified version of the Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) which they drafted, free of any dissents,
accused the Russian government of a conscious campaign to support the candidacy of Trump by hacking several key political websites
and providing their contents to Wikileaks and other outlets. Guccifer 2.0 was specifically cited as a Wikileaks source.
Critics immediately noted that the declassified ICA provided no hard evidence whatever to document its claims, and that over half
its length was devoted to a criticism of the RT television network as a supposed propaganda outlet. In particular, no insight was
provided as to how the authors of the report had concluded that the hacked documents had been transferred to Wikileaks. The conclusions
of this report evidently fit seamlessly into a broader strategy of demonizing Russia, the intent being to insure that our military-industrial
complex and NATO continue to receive an outrageous level of funding, and that the warped policy agendas of the neo-cons are satisfied.
Our MSM immediately embraced the conclusions of the ICA as Gospel truth, frequently referring to "our 17 intelligence agencies"
as the source for this report. They completely ignored the fact that the "assessments" of this report are in effect just "best guesses",
that the preamble of the report pointed out that "assessments" should not necessarily be equated to "facts", and that the NSA --
which, as William Binney notes, should have been able to obtain definitive proof for any actual hacking that had occurred -- expressed
only "moderate confidence" in the conclusions. This sycophantic credulity is particularly inexcusable in the context of the previous
"Saddam's WMDs" hoax which they likewise had swallowed uncritically, resulting in an illegal war with utterly catastrophic consequences.
The initial claims of Russian interference were soon embellished by media reports claiming that, according to anonymous intelligence
sources, the Russian government had attempted to hack into the voter registration files of 21 states, had conducted hacking operations
intended to interfere in German and French elections, and had hacked into the Qatari state news agency to plant a fake news story.
The veracity of each of these unsourced claims has been called into question, and in some cases disproved, by cyberanalysts, intelligence
experts, and journalists. The conclusions of the NSA document leaked by Reality Winner have likewise been shown to be purely speculative.
Claims that Russian bots and paid trolls assaulted our social media in the months prior to the election are poorly documented, and,
in any case, rather comical.
Following the election, the Russian interference narrative was echoed unceasingly by the Democratic establishment, as this was
the necessary concomitant of the "Trump collusion" claims that they were using to slam and cripple Trump -- in the hopes of eventually
impeaching him. (It presumably would have been hard for Trump to collude in Russian election interference if in fact there had been
no Russian interference.) Hysterical attacks on Russia accelerated to the point that some pols referred to the "Russian interference"
as "an act of war". This New McCarthyism ultimately led to our Congress placing severe new sanctions on Russia which also harm our
European allies, and which these allies decry as illegal. In other words, we are punishing Russia for a crime they almost certainly
did not commit, alienating key allies in the process, and amping up a Second Cold War, with all the expense and severe danger which
this may entail.
All because the DNC and its associates concocted an overt fraud to protect and excuse Hillary, and to use as a cudgel over Trump
-- a fraud that was readily lapped up and sold to the public by hand-picked Russophobes in our intelligence community, and by a
MSM that cares far less about truth than about access and ratings.
We need to determine who created the Guccifer 2.0 hoax, and prosecute them to the full extent of the law. The "intelligence
agents" who concluded "with high confidence" that Guccifer 2.0 was a Wikileaks source need to be fired or demoted. If the FBI has
known all along that Seth was a Wikileaks source, those who shielded the public from this crucial information need to be unmasked.
The "journalists" who have been credulously spreading the "Russia interfered" narrative 24/7 for most of a year, without making the
least effort to question the veracity of these assertions, should be recognized by the public as the willing tools of lying warmongers
that they are, and their future work studiously ignored. The sanctions recently implemented on Russia should be lifted, and the politicians
who played the most egregious role in hyping the Russian interference narrative and pushing the sanctions should be repudiated at
the polls when they come up for re-election. (I confess, however, that I will not hold my breath waiting for any of these things
to happen.)
And let's do our best to find out who murdered Seth Rich, and why. The DNC and its media acolytes have been heaping hysterical
abuse on anyone who entertains the possibility that Seth may have been a Wikileaks source, or who undertakes to investigate his murder.
Donna Brazile and Seth's brother Aaron have done their best to impede the investigative efforts of Rod Wheeler. There is reason to
suspect that the DC police have backed off the investigation of the murder, accepting the very dubious view that Seth's murder was
just a "botched robbery". And why did Democratic operatives feel it necessary to supply the Rich family with a "crisis consultant"
after Assange mentioned Seth -- when they couldn't be bothered to offer an award for apprehension of Seth's murderer? This behavior
is highly suspicious -- if Seth was indeed the victim of random street violence, what would the DNC have to fear from further investigation?
Let's get to the bottom of this!
I appreciate your presenting and thoroughly examining the facets of this issue, and I think the more we look at it the better
equipped we'll be to deal with whatever happens when the Attorney General or the Republicans begin to address what happened, if
they do.
The part of your essay I question is this:
The evident intent of this charade was to trick our intelligence agencies into concluding that Guccifer 2.0 was the Wikileaks
source and was acting at the behest of the Russian government.
Why do you not see this as our intelligence agencies working with the DNC and providing them with bogus clues to work with?
Doesn't the record now show that the CIA provided the premise for starting the FBI counterintelligence investigation into collusion?
And doesn't the record now show that the premise was based on the activities of CIA and FBI informant actors infiltrated into
the Trump campaign?
Big Puzzle Pieces Connecting – The CIA, FBI, and 2016 Political Surveillance is Merging
Posted on May 2, 2019 by sundance
The admissions within the New York Times story today -outlining how President Obama's intelligence apparatus ran simultaneous
intelligence operations against the Trump campaign- are starting to merge the FBI and CIA operations. CTH anticipated this.
With new information about the "U.K. operation" using Stefan Halper (CIA asset and FBI informant); and the details of
the contacts by U.S. intelligence operative Azra Turk; we can overlay the timeline and see a clear picture
Papadopoulos Responds to Admissions the FBI/CIA Ran "Operations" Against Him .
Posted on May 2, 2019 by sundance
Former Trump campaign aide George Papadopoulos appears on Fox with Tucker Carlson to discuss the revelations of the FBI/CIA
running spy operations against him during the 2016 election. Papadopoulos says the FBI spy wanted him to slip up and say something;
however, he had no information...
I have not followed this as closely as others, so I greatly appreciate this review. I think Linda may have a point about our
"seventeen" intelligence agencies working with the guilty. Everyone from Hillary to Morning Joe has mentioned so many times what
our intelligence agencies have said about Russia. The universal repetition makes it smell coordinated and therefore fishy.
And all America, if not the world, knows that Clapper had no compunction about lying to Congress about an unrelated subject.
Nor did he need to have any compunction about it. At the very least, he should have been fired for it, if not prosecuted. Neither
happened, even though he served "at the pleasure of the President."
I don't want to say # AGBarr is positively engaged
on the Dem(on)rats. His mere level headed and professionalism exposed the Dem(on)rats' circus act.
Notable quotes:
"... You might remember that McCabe picked Goldman of all people to interview him about the use of 'Confidential Human Sources' in Operation Crossfire Hurricane - funny that! ..."
"... Goldman's (McCabe's) argument is that the President was a national security risk because he fired Comey. "Counterintelligence investigators had to consider whether the president's own actions constituted a possible threat to national security." ..."
"... 3 years and at least 33 million have been wasted in attempt to link Trump campaign to Russian intelligence ..."
"... Brennan used any Russian talking to a U.S. person as a reason to surveillance the U.S. person. Red scare...the century old excuse used by the FBI to illegally spy on Americans. The history books won't describe his actions as honorable ..."
"... What was it that prompted Goldman (ie McCabe) to publish his latest article on the FBI Russia investigation? Answer: Barr's criticism's of the FBI. ..."
"... CIA/FBI helping each other out. Informally of course. Standard off the books quid pro quo. ..."
"... The F.B.I. received the information from the Australian government on July 26, 2016, the special counsel's report said, and the bureau code-named its investigation Crossfire Hurricane . ..."
Both the Washington Post and CNN - which breathlessly reported on their peers' anonymously-sourced anti-Trump propaganda for two
years - have somehow failed to write a single article mentioning Azra Turk . As the Times revealed on Thursday, the FBI operative
who went by the name Azra Turk repeatedly flirted with Trump aide George Papadopoulos during their encounters as well as in email
exchanges according to an October, 2018
Daily Caller report, confirmed by
the Times.
While in London in 2016, Ms. Turk exchanged emails with Mr. Papadopoulos, saying meeting him had been the " highlight of my
trip ," according to messages provided by Mr. Papadopoulos.
" I am excited about what the future holds for us :), " she wrote. -
New York Times
And as the Times makes clear, "the FBI sent her to London as part of the counterintelligence inquiry opened that summer" to investigate
the Trump campaign. Verified account @ ByronYork May 2 Follow Follow @ ByronYork Following
Following @ ByronYork Unfollow Unfollow @ ByronYork Blocked Blocked @ ByronYork Unblock Unblock @ ByronYork Pending Pending follow
request from @ ByronYork Cancel Cancel your follow request to @ ByronYork More
In his House testimony, George Papadopoulos described undercover FBI informant Stefan Halper introducing him to undercover FBI
informant 'Azra Turk.' pic.twitter.com/8jO4lK6Ldt
So I get there. I get to
London. And he introduces -- or he does not introduce me to, but I can't remember exactly how I came into contact with his assistant,
this young lady named Azra Turk, which I think is a fake name, by the way. My --
Mr. Meadows. Why do you believe it's a fake name?
Mr. Papadopoulos. Reading -- reading Twitter and people saying that Azra in Turkish means pure and then Turk. So unless she has
the name of pure Turk. I don't know. Maybe that's -- those are common names in Turkey. I don't know. But it just seems that it was
probably a fake alias.
Another beautiful young lady -- you know, I had many young beautiful ladies coming into my life with Joseph Mifsud and now another
professor. The professors liked to introduce me to young beautiful women.
And we're sitting there, and she didn't strike me as a Cambridge associate at all. So right away, I was suspicious that there
was something not right here. She -- her English was very bad. She spoke with -- I think she was a Turkish national, but she also
might have been a dual American citizen. I'm not sure. And she took me to -- out for drinks in London and was probing me a lot.
Meanwhile, a Russian-born academic falsely accused of being a Kremlin 'honeypot' operative against Mike Flynn, Svetlana Lokhova,
has an interesting theory as to why the Times published the '2nd spy' revelation in the first place.
I am a 'veteran' of reading Adam Goldman (NYT) articles about Halper's role with the FBI so here are pointers. You always have
to ask: 1) Why did he write the article? 2) When did he write the article? 3) What is the narrative he is placing? 4) What has
he left out? THREAD
2/ You might remember that McCabe picked Goldman of all people to interview him about the use of 'Confidential Human Sources'
in
Operation Crossfire Hurricane - funny that!
Andrew McCabe intervied by NYT's Adam Goldma...
Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe discussed his career, the FBI, and his firing from the Bureau. He was interviewed
by New York Times reporter Adam Go...
4/ Goldman's (McCabe's) argument is that the President was a national security risk because he fired Comey. "Counterintelligence
investigators had to consider whether the president's own actions constituted a possible threat to national security."
3 years and at least 33 million have been wasted in attempt to link Trump campaign to Russian intelligence. As I stated 2 years
ago, I am not A Russian honeytrap for Gen Flynn.
Brennan used any Russian talking to a U.S. person as a reason to surveillance the U.S. person. Red scare...the century
old excuse used by the FBI to illegally spy on Americans. The history books won't describe his actions as honorable
Svetlana Lokhova @RealSLokhova • 7h v
7/ This is Goldman's implausible explanation for spying. The President is portrayed as nuts, nytimes.com/2018/05/18/us/...
President Trump accused the without evidence, of planting a mole inside his campaign to undermine his presidential run. But
the F.B.I. in fact dispatched a confidential informant to meet with Trump campaign advisers as it began its investigation into
possible links between his campaign and Russia.
8/ What was it that prompted Goldman (ie McCabe) to publish his latest article on the FBI Russia investigation? Answer:
Barr's criticism's of the FBI.
Barr: One of the things I want to look -- there are people -- many people seem to assume that the only intelligence collection
that occurred was a single confidential informant and a FISA warrant. I would like to find out whether that is, in fact, true.
It strikes me as a fairly anemic effort if that was the counterintelligence effort designed to stop the threat as it's being represented.
9/ The message by NYT (McCabe) is that the FBI threw their best guys at this, hence sudden reference to Operation 'Ghost Stories'.
10/ The main message is that the Russia investigation was legally predicated,
CNN law enforcement analyst and retired FBI agent James A. Gagliano opined on Twitter that perhaps the Times was helping the intelligence
community get out in front of the upcoming Inspector General report on the FBI's conduct during the 2016 election.
James A. Gagliano @JamesAGagliano
Must caveat with -- would have had to have been a "CERTIFIED" FBI Undercover Agent (UCA), who had passed the UCA course,
been pre-screened (psychologicals) and been handpicked by FBI HQ for a high-profile overseas assignment. Also, Legat London
would've assuredly coordinated w/MI5.
James A. Gagliano @JamesAGagliano
Unless it was foreign intelligence service supplying the "honey trap.'' Papadopoulos argued *Azra Turk* had thick accent
-- which wouldn't preclude her from FBI service, if US citizen. Some argue Agency employee. Surmise, absent heavy redaction,
pending IG report lays this bare.
James A. Gagliano @JamesAGagliano
MAYBE this is why @nytimes helped get out in front of the news cycle that will roil following IG report that may be released
this month or next.
As I understand it, the CIA is not supposed to be involved with spying on American citizens, but the FBI has wide ranging latitude.
This article says she was presumed to be FBI, but Papadoploulos says he thinks she was CIA. So, it would be a graver offense if
she was CIA and busy performing illegal spying activities on an American citizen.
If I am fuzzy on this, maybe someone can clarify who knows the rules a little better.
MSM burying the truth? Well imagine my shock. I'm surprised the likes of CNN and Facebook are still trying to hide their ban
on truth and just openly claim truth is hate speech.
If you work at the CIA, do you get "honeypot" privileges ?
They must have a lot of downtime.
Wonder if "honeypot" is a line item in the CIA budget and how they forecast that. Do their rates decline over time, maybe with
an associated depletion account set up like for petroleum reserves. Lots of questions here.
"Mr. Barr reignited the controversy last month when
he told
Congress , "I think spying on a political campaign is a big deal." He backed off the charged declaration later in the same
hearing, saying: "I think spying did occur. The question is whether it was adequately predicated. And I'm not suggesting that
it wasn't adequately predicated. But I need to explore that." "
......
Mr. Barr again defended his use of the term "spying" at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Wednesday, saying he wanted
to know more about the F.B.I.'s investigative efforts during 2016 and explained that the early inquiry most likely went beyond
the use of an informant and a court-authorized wiretap of a former Trump campaign adviser, Carter Page, who had interacted with
a Russian intelligence officer.
.....
Weeks before Mr. Papadopoulos met with Ms. Turk and Mr. Halper, the F.B.I. had opened its investigation into the Russia effort
-- based largely on information that Mr. Papadopoulos had relayed to an Australian diplomat about a Russian offer to help the
Trump campaign by releasing thousands of hacked Democratic emails.
The F.B.I. received the information from the Australian government on July 26, 2016, the special counsel's report said, and
the bureau code-named its investigation
Crossfire Hurricane .
Investigators scrambled to determine whether Mr. Papadopoulos had any Russian contacts while deciding to scrutinize three additional
Trump campaign aides who had concerning ties to Russia: Paul Manafort, its chairman; Michael T. Flynn, who went on to be the president's
first national security adviser; and Mr. Page.
His response: "I'm just going to leave it right now as a 'government investigator.' I use that wording for a reason, and
I'm going to leave it at that."
Priceless!
Not FBI, just a 'government investigator.' and "I use that wording for a reason," and people on Twitter all trying to solve
that complicated puzzle ! LOL.
There Was Spying: NYT Admits Obama Admin Used 'Honeypot' To Spy Against Trump Campaign In
2016
My response: Why would the MSM want to get out in front of what is coming by issuing this
news story? May be they are implicated as well! Below is the list of MSM career criminals who
are facing the real possibility of jail time.
=== List of MSM Career Criminals Guilty of TREASON, SEDITION and/or SUBVERSIVE
activities!! ===
These reporters and networks have been named in the WikiLeaks to have colluded with the
DNC or Hillary campaign during the 2016 election cycle:
ABC – Cecilia Vega ABC - David Muir ABC – Diane Sawyer ABC – George Stephanoplous ABC – Jon Karl ABC – Liz Kreutz AP – Julie Pace AP – Ken Thomas AP – Lisa Lerer AURN – April Ryan Bloomberg – Jennifer Epstein Bloomberg – John Heillman Bloomberg/MSNBC – Jonathan Alter Bloomberg – Mark Halperin Buzzfeed – Ben Smith Buzzfeed – Ruby Cramer CBS – Gayle King CBS – John Dickerson CBS – Norah O'Donnell CBS – Steve Chagaris CBS – Vicki Gordon CNBC – John Harwood CNN – Brianna Keilar CNN – Dan Merica CNN – David Chailan CNN – Erin Burnett CNN – Gloria Borger CNN – Jake Tapper CNN – Jeff Zeleny CNN - Jeff Zucker CNN – John Berman CNN – Kate Bouldan CNN – Maria Cardona CNN – Mark Preston CNN – Sam Feist Daily Beast – Jackie Kucinich GPG – Mike Feldman HuffPo – Amanda Terkel HuffPo – Arianna Huffington HuffPo – Sam Stein HuffPo – Whitney Snyder LAT – Evan Handler LAT – Mike Memoli McClatchy – Anita Kumar MORE – Betsy Fisher Martin MSNBC – Alex Seitz-Wald MSNBC – Alex Wagner MSNBC – Andrea Mitchell MSNBC - Beth Fouhy MSNBC – Ed Schultz MSNBC – Joe Scarborough MSNBC – Mika Brzezinski MSNBC – Phil Griffin MSNBC – Rachel Maddow MSNBC – Rachel Racusen MSNBC – Thomas Roberts National Journal – Emily Schultheis NBC – Chuck Todd NBC – Mark Murray NBC – Savannah Gutherie New Yorker – David Remnick New Yorker – Ryan Liza NPR – Mike Oreskes NPR – Tamara Keith NY Post – Geofe Earl NYT – Amy Chozik NYT – Carolyn Ryan NYT – Gail Collins NYT – John Harwoodje NYT – Jonathan Martin NYT – Maggie Haberman NYT – Pat Healey PBS – Charlie Rose People – Sandra Sobieraj Westfall Politico – Annie Karni Politico – Gabe Debenedetti Politico – Glenn Thrush Politico – Kenneth Vogel Politico – Mike Allen Reuters – Amanda Becker Tina Brown – Tina Brown The Hill – Amie Parnes Univision – Maria-Elena Salinas Vice – Alyssa Mastramonoco Vox – Jon Allen WaPo – Anne Gearan WaPo – Greg Sargent WSJ – Laura Meckler WSJ – Peter Nicholas WSJ – Colleen McCain Nelson Yahoo – Matt Bai
Here is my take, on this entire Sh*tshow, running in Washington DC, for the last two
years.
1. All the evidences are pointing the most likely scenario that Donald Trump is a
Manchurian Candidate ordered by the Kremelin to run for Office, in 2016.
2. Then, Donald Trump COLLUDED with the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service to win the
Presidency of United States, with shocking easy.
3. This was because Hitlery Clinton and Joe Biden , was bribed by Putin, through the
Ukrainians, with hundred of millions of dollars, so she would purposely lose the "sure win"
race, to a political nobody, Donald Trump.
4. Then, the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service, produced the Steele Dossier, a
political disinformation tool, in collaboration with Britain's Mi6 and CIA.
5. Then the Russians leaked the COLLUSION story to the CIA controlled MSM such as New York
Time, Washington Post, CNN, CNBC, etc . . ., so they would predictably kicked a storm of
controversy over the COLLUSION, and demand the DOJ to appoint a Special Prosecutor to initial
an investigation.
6. This diabolically devilish Special PsyOps by the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service
has succeeded in tying up Washington DC, in a Sh*tshow, for the last two years, and divided
the Country in bitter controversy.
7. The Russian Foreign Intelligence Service and Chinese Communists' Intelligence Service
have thoroughly infiltrated America's Department of Justice, FBI, and CIA, and NSA, and use
their high levels agents, such as O'bomer, Hitlery, Clapper, Comey, McCabe, Strozk, Page,
and rosenstein to stirred up this COLLUSION storm, to paralyze America's political system
for as long as possible.
In Summary, the entire sh*tshow is a production of a Special PsyOps by the Russkies and
ChiComs' Intelligence Services. It has nothing to do with America's dysfunctional government,
called DemoCrazy .
"... Zero Percent of Elite Commentators Oppose Regime Change in Venezuela ..."
"... It's so frustrating to see the current lunacy in the mainstream media, and the idiotocracy at work in Washington DC, regardless of political party or who's fat ass sits in the oval office. Tulsi Gabbard is about the only sane person in DC right now on foreign affairs - forget Sanders, Warren and 'regular guy' Joe Biden ..."
< somewhat surprising to me at first glance, but with a little further thought, as to be
expected - the US media is corporate controlled, pro-militarism, pro-interventionism,
pro-armaments sales, and totally pro-regime change - anywhere in the world. All
editorialists are neo-colonialists and imperialists at heart, regardless of who occupies
the white house>
Zero Percent of Elite Commentators Oppose Regime Change in Venezuela
A FAIR survey of US opinion journalism on Venezuela found no voices in elite corporate
media that opposed regime change in that country. Over a three-month period (1/15/19 --
4/15/19), zero opinion pieces in the New York Times and Washington Post took an anti --
regime change or pro-Maduro/Chavista position.
Not a single commentator on the big three
Sunday morning talkshows or PBS NewsHour came out against President Nicolás Maduro
stepping down from the Venezuelan government.....
Let's make a mess of Venezuela, you know, like the US has done across the middle
east/north Africa since.... well since almost forever....
It's so frustrating to see the current lunacy in the mainstream media, and the idiotocracy
at work in Washington DC, regardless of political party or who's fat ass sits in the oval
office. Tulsi Gabbard is about the only sane person in DC right now on foreign affairs -
forget Sanders, Warren and 'regular guy' Joe Biden
Here is my take, on this entire Sh*tshow, running in Washington DC, for the last two
years.
1. All the evidences are pointing the most likely scenario that Donald Trump is a
Manchurian Candidate ordered by the Kremelin to run for Office, in 2016.
2. Then, Donald Trump COLLUDED with the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service to win the
Presidency of United States, with shocking easy.
3. This was because Hitlery Clinton and Joe Biden , was bribed by Putin, through the
Ukrainians, with hundred of millions of dollars, so she would purposely lose the "sure win"
race, to a political nobody, Donald Trump.
4. Then, the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service, produced the Steele Dossier, a
political disinformation tool, in collaboration with Britain's Mi6 and CIA.
5. Then the Russians leaked the COLLUSION story to the CIA controlled MSM such as New York
Time, Washington Post, CNN, CNBC, etc . . ., so they would predictably kicked a storm of
controversy over the COLLUSION, and demand the DOJ to appoint a Special Prosecutor to initial
an investigation.
6. This diabolically devilish Special PsyOps by the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service
has succeeded in tying up Washington DC, in a Sh*tshow, for the last two years, and divided
the Country in bitter controversy.
7. The Russian Foreign Intelligence Service and Chinese Communists' Intelligence Service
have thoroughly infiltrated America's Department of Justice, FBI, and CIA, and NSA, and use
their high levels agents, such as O'bomer, Hitlery, Clapper, Comey, McCabe, Strozk, Page,
and rosenstein to stirred up this COLLUSION storm, to paralyze America's political system
for as long as possible.
In Summary, the entire sh*tshow is a production of a Special PsyOps by the Russkies and
ChiComs' Intelligence Services. It has nothing to do with America's dysfunctional government,
called DemoCrazy .
"Russiagate without Russia" actually means "Isrealgate". This individual points that he mentions below does not matter. Russiagate was a carefully planned and
brilliantly executed false flag operation run by intelligences
agencies (with GB agencies playing an important in some episodes decisive role) and headed probably by Obama himself via Brennan. There
were two goals: (1) to exclude any possibility of detente with Russia and (2) to block any Trump attempts to change the USA foreign
policy including running foreign war that enrich Pentagon contractors and justify supersized budget for intelligence agencies. As such
is was a great success.
The fact that no American was indicted and that Mueller attempt to prosecute Russian marketing agneces failed does not matter. The
atmosphere is now posoned for a generation. Americans are brainwashed and residue of Russiagate will stay for a long, long time. Neocons
Bolton and Pompeo now run Trump administration foreign policy with Trump performing most ceremonial role in foreign policy domain.
In this sense Skripals poisoning was another false flag operation, which was the logical continuation of Russiagate. And Magnitsky
killing (with Browder now a primary suspect) was a precursor to it. Both were run from Great Britain.
It is actually interesting how Mueller report swiped under the carpet the role of Great Britain in unleashing the Russiagate hysteria.
Two important foreign forces in the 2016 US Presidential elections was the Israel lobby and Great Britain. Trump proved to be a
marionette not of Russia but of Israeli lobby. so sad...
Notable quotes:
"... Mueller's report does answer that question: There were effectively no "Kremlin intermediaries." The report contains no evidence that anyone from the Trump campaign spoke to a Kremlin representative during the election, aside from conversations with the Russian ambassador and a press-office assistant, both of whom were ruled out as having participated in a conspiracy (more on them later). ..."
For more than two years, leading US political and media voices promoted a narrative that Donald Trump conspired with or was compromised
by the Kremlin, and that Special Counsel Robert Mueller would prove it. In the process, they overlooked countervailing evidence and
diverted anti-Trump energies into fervent speculation and prolonged anticipation. So long as Mueller was on the case, it was possible
to believe that " The Walls Are Closing In " on the
traitor /
puppet / asset in the
White House
.
The long-awaited completion of Mueller's probe, and the release of his redacted report, reveals this narrative -- and the expectations
it fueled -- to be unfounded. No American was indicted for conspiring with Russia to influence the 2016 election. Mueller's report
does lay out extensive evidence that Trump sought to impede the investigation, but it declines to issue a verdict on obstruction.
It presents no evidence that the Trump campaign conspired with an alleged effort by the Russian government to defeat Hillary Clinton,
and instead renders this conclusion: "Ultimately, the investigation did not establish that the [Trump] Campaign coordinated or conspired
with the Russian government in its election-interference activities." As a result, Mueller's report provides the opposite of what
Russiagate promoters led their audiences to expect: Rather than detailing a sinister collusion plot with Russia, it presents what
amounts to an extended indictment of the conspiracy theory itself.
1. Russiagate Without Russia
The most fundamental element of a conspiracy is contact between the two parties doing the conspiring. Hence, on the eve of the
report's release, The New York
Times noted that among the "outstanding questions" that Mueller would answer were the nature of "contacts between Kremlin
intermediaries and the Trump campaign."
Mueller's report does answer that question: There were effectively no "Kremlin intermediaries." The report contains no evidence
that anyone from the Trump campaign spoke to a Kremlin representative during the election, aside from conversations with the Russian
ambassador and a press-office assistant, both of whom were ruled out as having participated in a conspiracy (more on them later).
It should be no surprise, then, to learn from Mueller that, when "Russian government officials and prominent Russian businessmen
began trying to make inroads into the new administration" after Trump's election victory, they did not know whom to call. These powerful
Russians, Mueller noted, "appeared not to have preexisting contacts and struggled to connect with senior officials around the President-Elect."
If top Russians did not have "preexisting contacts and struggled to connect with" the people that they supposedly conspired with,
perhaps that is because they did not actually conspire.
To borrow a phrase from Nation contributing editor Stephen F. Cohen, when it comes to the core question of contacts between
Trump and the Russian government, we are left with a "Russiagate without Russia." Instead we have a series of interactions where
Trump associates speak with Russian nationals, people with ties to Russian nationals, or people who claim to have ties to
the Russian government. But none of these "links," "ties," or associations ever entail a member of the Trump campaign interacting
with a Kremlin intermediary. Russiagate promoters have nonetheless fueled a dogged media effort to track
every
known instance in which someone in Trump's orbit
interacted with " the Russians ," or
someone who can be linked
to them . There is nothing illegal or inherently suspect about speaking to a Russian national -- but there is something xenophobic
about implying as much.
2. Russiagate's Predicate Led Nowhere
The most glaring absence of a Kremlin intermediary comes in the case that ostensibly prompted the entire Trump-Russia investigation.
During an April 2016 meeting in Rome, a London-based professor named Joseph Mifsud reportedly informed Trump campaign aide George
Papadopoulos that "the Russians" had obtained "thousands of emails" containing "dirt" on Hillary Clinton. That information made its
way to the FBI, which used it as a pretext to open the "Crossfire Hurricane" probe on July 31, 2016. Papadopoulos was later indicted
for lying to FBI agents about the timing of his contacts with Mifsud. The case stoked speculation that Papadopoulos acted as an
intermediary between
Trump and Russia
.
But Papadopoulos played no such role. And while the Mueller report says that Papadopoulos "understood Mifsud to have substantial
connections to high-level Russian government officials," it never asserts that Mifsud actuall y had those connections.
Since Mifsud's suspected Russian connections were the purported predicate for the FBI's initial Trump-Russia investigation, that
is a conspicuous non-call. Another is the revelation from Mueller that
Mifsud made false statements to FBI investigators
when they interviewed him in February 2017 -- but yet, unlike Papadopoulos, Mifsud was not indicted. Thus, even the interaction that
sparked the Russia-collusion probe did not reveal collusion.
3. Sergey Kislyak Had "Brief and Non-Substantive" Interactions With the Trump Camp
Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak's conversations with Trump campaign officials and associates during and after the 2016 election
were the focus of intense controversy and speculation, leading to the recusal of
Jeff Sessions, then attorney
general, and to the indictment of National Security Adviser Michael Flynn.
After an exhaustive review, Mueller concluded that Kislyak's interactions with Trump campaign officials at public events "were
brief, public, and non-substantive." As for Kislyak's
much –
ballyhooed meeting which Sessions in September 2016, Mueller saw no reason to dispute that it "included any more than a passing
mention of the presidential campaign." When Kislyak spoke with other Trump aides after the August 2016 Republican National Convention,
Mueller "did not identify evidence in those interactions of coordination between the Campaign and the Russian government."
The same goes for Kislyak's post-election conversations with Flynn. Mueller indicted Flynn for making "false statements and omissions"
in an interview with the FBI about his contacts with Kislyak during the transition in December 2016. The prevailing supposition was
that Flynn lied in order to hide from the FBI an
election-related payoff or "
quid pro quo
" with the Kremlin. The report punctures that thesis by reaffirming the facts in Flynn's indictment: What Flynn hid from agents
was that he had "called Kislyak to request Russian restraint" in response to sanctions imposed by the outgoing Obama administration,
and that Kislyak had agreed. Mueller ruled out the possibility that Flynn could have implicated Trump in anything criminal by noting
the absence of evidence that Flynn "possessed information damaging to the President that would give the President a personal incentive
to end the FBI's inquiry into Flynn's conduct."
4. Trump Tower Moscow Had No Help From Moscow
The November 2018 indictment of Trump's former lawyer, Michael Cohen, was widely seen as damning, possibly impeachment-worthy,
for Trump. Cohen admitted to giving false written answers to Congress in a bid to downplay Trump's personal knowledge of his company's
failed effort to build a Trump Tower in Moscow. To proponents of the collusion theory, Cohen's admitted lies were proof that "
Trump is compromised by
Russia ," " full stop ."
But the Mueller report does not show any such compromise, and, in fact, shows there to be no Trump-Kremlin relationship. Cohen,
the report notes, "requested [Kremlin] assistance in moving the project forward, both in securing land to build the project and with
financing." The request was evidently rejected. Elena Poliakova, the personal assistant to Kremlin Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov,
spoke with Cohen by phone after he e-mailed her office for help. After their 20-minute call, the report says, "Cohen could not recall
any direct follow-up from Poliakova or from any other representative of the Russian government, nor did the [Special Counsel's] Office
identify any evidence of direct follow-up."
5. and Trump Didn't Ask Cohen to Lie About It
The Mueller report not only dispels the notion that Trump had secret dealings with the Kremlin over Trump Tower Moscow; it also
rejects a related impeachment-level "bombshell." In January, BuzzFeed News
reported that Mueller had evidence that Trump "directed" Cohen to lie to Congress about the Moscow project. But according to
Mueller, "the evidence available to us does not establish that the President directed or aided Cohen's false testimony," and that
Cohen himself testified "that he and the President did not explicitly discuss whether Cohen's testimony about the Trump Tower Moscow
project would be or was false." In a de-facto retraction, BuzzFeed updated its story with an
acknowledgment
of Mueller's conclusion .
6. The Trump Tower Meeting Really Was Just a "Waste of Time"
The June 2016 meeting in Trump Tower was
widely
dubbed
the
" Smoking
Gun ." An e-mail chain showed that Donald Trump Jr. welcomed an offer to accept compromising information about Clinton as "part
of Russia and its government's support for Mr. Trump." But the pitch did not come from the meeting's Russian participants, but instead
from Rob Goldstone, a British music publicist acting on their behalf. Goldstone said that he invented "publicist puff" to secure
the meeting, because in reality,
as he told NPR , "I had no idea what I was talking about."
Mueller noted that Trump Jr.'s response "showed that the Campaign anticipated receiving information from Russia that could assist
candidate Trump's electoral prospects, but the Russian lawyer's presentation did not provide such information [emphasis mine]."
The report further recounts that during the meeting Jared Kushner texted then-Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort that it was a "waste
of time," and requested that his assistants "call him to give him an excuse to leave." Accordingly, when "Veselnitskaya made additional
efforts to follow up on the meeting," after the election, "the Trump Transition Team did not engage."
7. Manafort Did Not Share Polling Data to Meddle in the US Election
In January, Mueller accused Manafort of lying to investigators about several matters, including sharing Trump polling data and
discussing a Ukraine peace plan with a Ukrainian-Russian colleague, Konstantin Kilimnik, during the 2016 campaign. According to Mueller,
the FBI "assesses" that Kilimnik has unspecified "ties to Russian intelligence." To collusion proponents, the revelation was dubbed
" the closest we've seen yet to real, live, actual
collusion " and even the "
Russian collusion smoking gun ."
Mueller, of course, reached a different conclusion: He "did not identify evidence of a connection between Manafort's sharing polling
data and Russia's interference in the election," and, moreover, "did not establish that Manafort otherwise coordinated with the Russian
government on its election-interference efforts." Mueller noted that he "could not reliably determine Manafort's purpose in sharing"
the polling data, but also acknowledged (and bolstered) the explanation of his star witness, Rick Gates, that Manafort was motivated
by proving his financial value to former and future clients.
Mueller also gave us new reasons to doubt the assertions that Kilimnik himself is a Russian intelligence asset or spy. First,
Mueller did not join
media pundits in asserting such about
Kilimnik. Second, to support his vague contention that Kilimnik has, according to the FBI, "ties to Russian intelligence," Mueller
offered up a list of " pieces of the Office's
Evidence" that contains no direct evidence. For his part, Kilimnik has repeatedly stated that he has no such ties, and recently
told The Washington Post that Mueller never attempted to interview him.
8. The Steele Dossier Was Fiction
The Steele dossier -- a collection of Democratic National Committee-funded opposition research alleging a high-level Trump-Russia
criminal relationship -- played a critical role in the Russiagate saga. The FBI relied on it for leads and evidentiary material in
its investigation of the Trump campaign ties to Russia, and prominent
politicians ,
pundits , and
media
outlets promoted it as
credible .
The Mueller report,
The New York Times
noted last week , has "underscored what had grown clearer for months some of the most sensational claims in the dossier appeared
to be false, and others were impossible to prove." Steele reported that low-level Trump aide Carter Page was offered a 19 percent
stake in the state-owned Russian oil company Rosneft if he could get Trump to lift Western sanctions. In October 2016 the FBI, citing
the Steele dossier, told the FISA court that it "believes that [Russia's] efforts are being coordinated with Page and perhaps other
individuals associated with" the Trump campaign. The Mueller report, however, could "not establish that Page coordinated with the
Russian government in its efforts to interfere with the 2016 presidential election."
The Steele dossier claimed that Michael Cohen visited Prague to meet Russian agents in the summer of 2016. In April 2018, McClatchy
reported to much fanfare that Mueller's team "has evidence" that placed Cohen in Prague during the period in question. Cohen later
denied the claim under oath, and Mueller agreed, noting that Cohen "never traveled to Prague."
After reports emerged in August 2016 that the Trump campaign had rejected an amendment to the Republican National Committee platform
that called for arming Ukraine, Steele claimed that it was the result of a quid pro quo. The Mueller report "did not establish that"
the rejection of the Ukraine amendment was "undertaken at the behest of candidate Trump or Russia."
9. The Trump Campaign Had No Secret Channel to WikiLeaks
In January, veteran Republican operative and conspiracy theorist Roger Stone caused a stir when he was indicted for lying to Congress
about his efforts to make contact with WikiLeaks. But Mueller's indictment actually showed that Stone
had no communications with WikiLeaks
before the election and no privileged information about its releases . Most significantly, it revealed that Trump officials were
trying to learn about the WikiLeaks releases through Stone -- a fact that underscored that the Trump campaign neither worked with
WikiLeaks nor had advance knowledge of its e-mail dumps.
Mueller's final report does nothing to alter that picture. Its sections on Stone are heavily redacted, owing to Stone's pending
trial. But they do make clear that Mueller conducted an extensive search to establish a tie between WikiLeaks, the Trump campaign,
and Stone -- and came up empty. New
reporting from The Washington Post underscores just how far their farcical efforts went. The Mueller team devoted
time and energy to determine whether far-right conspiracy theorist Jerome Corsi, best known for promoting the false claim that Barack
Obama was born outside the United States, served as a link between Stone and WikiLeaks. Mueller's prosecutors "spent weeks coaxing,
cajoling and admonishing the conspiracy theorist, as they pressed him to stick to facts and not reconstruct stories," the Post
reports. "At times, they had debated the nature of memory itself." It is unsurprising that this led Mueller's prosecutors to
ultimately declare, according to Corsi's attorney, "We can't use any of this."
10. There Was No Cover-Up
The Mueller report does not just dispel the conspiracy theories that have engulfed political and media circles for two years;
it puts to rest the most popular, recent one: that Attorney General William Barr engaged in a
cover-up . According to the dominant narrative, Barr was
somehow concealing Mueller's damning evidence
, while Mueller, even more improbably, stayed silent.
One could argue that Barr's summary downplays the obstruction findings, though it accurately relays that Mueller's report does
"not exonerate" Trump. It was Mueller's decision to leave the verdict on obstruction to Barr and make clear that if Congress disagrees,
it has the power to indict Trump on its own. Mueller's office assisted with Barr's redactions, which proved to be, as Barr had pledged,
extremely limited. Despite containing numerous embarrassing details about Trump, no executive privilege was invoked to censor the
report's contents.
In the end, Mueller's report shows that the Trump-Russia collusion narrative embraced and evangelized by the US political and
media establishments to be a work of
fiction . The American public
was presented with a far different picture from what was expected, because leading pundits, outlets, and politicians ignored the
countervailing facts and promoted maximalist interpretations of others. Anonymous officials also leaked explosive yet uncorroborated
claims, leaving behind many stories that were subsequently discredited, retracted, or remain unconfirmed to this day.
It is too early to assess the damage that influential Russiagate promoters have done to their own reputations; to public confidence
in our democratic system and media; and to the prospects of defeating Trump, who always stood to benefit if the all-consuming conspiracy
theory ultimately collapsed. The scale of the wreckage, confirmed by Mueller's report, may prove to be the ultimate Russiagate scandal.
Leading up to the Mueller report, one of the long-promised "gotchas" peddled by the anti-Trump
media is that that Donald Trump Jr. would be indicted over a June 9, 2016 meeting in Trump Tower
with Russian representatives who promised negative information on Hillary Clinton.
Keep in mind, the Russian attorney who sought the discussion - Natalia Veselnitskaya -
met with Fusion GPS co-founder
Glenn Simpson
before and after the Trump Tower meeting.
Fusion was hired by the Clinton campaign and the DNC to produce the now-infamous "Steele
Dossier."
Also keep in mind that Trump Jr. reportedly shut down the meeting when it was obviously not
going to bear fruit.
Obvious setups
aside, former US Attorney Joe diGenova has penned an Op-Ed for
Fox
News
excoriating the media
for 'recklessly' promoting an untested
falsehood; that the meeting was illegal in the first place.
Don Jr. and the Trump Tower meeting -- What happens when fake news collides with
zero intent. The reporting on
Donald
Trump, Jr.'s treatment
in the
Mueller
report
has been woefully inaccurate.
The president's eldest son, an outspoken and unapologetic conservative, is a favorite punching
bag of the left. For more than two years, liberal journalists and shrieking "#resistance" activists
have salivated over the thought of seeing Don Jr. carted off in handcuffs.
To their dismay, there is only one crucial takeaway from the
Mueller
report's conclusions
about the utterly inconsequential "Trump Tower meeting" between Don Jr.,
several Russians, and others: neither Don Jr. nor anyone else involved in the meeting was charged
with any crime.
The reasons are clear. The entire theory about what was potentially illegal about the meeting
was speculative and untested. What's more, even if it were illegal, the report concluded that Don
Jr. didn't have the "willful" intent to break the law that would be necessary to make it a crime.
In their disappointment, Don Jr.'s detractors have latched on to a new theory: that he was
simply "too stupid" to be charged with a crime because he didn't know that his conduct was illegal.
They hang this blatant misconstruction on these words from the report: "the Office did not
obtain admissible evidence likely to meet the government's burden to prove beyond a reasonable
doubt that these individuals acted 'willfully,' i.e. with general knowledge of the illegality of
their conduct."
That's not just some minor technicality, absent which Robert Mueller's prosecutors would have
had Don Jr. in shackles while revelers in cat-eared pink hats danced in the streets. It's a central
element of the offense they were investigating, and they decided to clear Don Jr. because without
it there is no crime.
One often-used definition of "willful" intent states that it "requires proof beyond a reasonable
doubt that the defendant knew his or her conduct was unlawful and intended to do something that the
law forbids; that the defendant acted with a purpose to disobey or disregard the law."
In essence, in order to be charged with conspiring to cheat, you have to have been actually
meaning to cheat. That's the law. Without intent, there is no crime. And Mueller's team, even his
hand-picked Democrat attack dog Andrew Weissmann, knew they didn't have evidence to convince a jury
that Don Jr. meant to circumvent election laws when he typed "I love it" in response to a
tangentially-related British publicist's suggestion the Russian government might have "information
that would incriminate Hillary." Don Jr. even voluntarily released his email correspondence related
to that meeting.
But even if there were the requisite intent, the Mueller report still exonerates Don Jr.,
stating that "the government would likely encounter difficulty proving beyond a reasonable doubt
that the value of the promised information exceeded the threshold for a criminal violation."
Did you catch that?
For the English speakers among you, let me translate that from Weissmann-speak: "This 'crime' we
thought up as a way to nail Don Jr. is so speculative and unprecedented, we don't think there's a
court in the land that would let this fly."
The entire notion of a criminal conspiracy is predicated on the idea that the federal election
law's ban on campaigns taking "contributions" or "things of value" from foreign nationals also
applies to "dirt" on opposing candidates.
That's hardly an established interpretation of the law. In fact, no one has ever been convicted
of something similar. If "dirt" is a "thing of value" for campaign finance purposes, that is a
dangerously radical innovation with huge potential First Amendment implications.
Personally, I think it's a completely untenable interpretation, but don't take my word it.
Mueller and his team considered it, as well -- and then rejected it as too "difficult to prove" in
their report.
I wonder how many of the journalists calling Don Jr. stupid were so certain about this
far-fetched legal theory. I further wonder how many of them felt the same way when foreign national
Christopher Steele handed the Hillary Clinton campaign a whole dossier of "dirt" on President Trump
-- at a hefty, agreed-upon price, no less.
The whole thing is pure "#resistance" fantasy.
It was reckless for the media to promote the Trump Tower meeting as a crime, and it was
irresponsible for Mueller's report to discuss the matter using language that allows people who hate
Don Jr. to continue in that delusion.
This is why Russia Gate is never going away. People who bought into from the start will
probably buy anything else that gets thrown at them. I think this smear about Russia helping
him came from some of the Facebook ads. Russia was very busy during the last election and
since it worked so well they're going to do it again.
But did you notice that up to a few weeks before the midterms we heard that Russia was
busy doing hanky panky, but then for some reason they stopped and let democrats take back the
house. You'd think that they would want the GOP to stay in control because of reasons....
like it would have been better for Trump? But hey I guess Putin threw democrat a bone. I
think.
Seriously though you would be surprised that so many people believe that.
#4 What in
the hell does that mean? I think the Great One was just trying to associate Russians with
Bernie. A harbinger of things to come.
https://c.deployads.com/sync?f=html&s=2297&u=https%3A%2F%2Fangrybearblog.com%2F2019%2F04%2Fpanetta-and-trump-who-are-you-calling-chumps.html%23comments
Panetta
and Trump: Who are You Calling Chumps?
Check out the entire interview as it was excellent. But I had to look up this old fashion
word :
a person who is easily tricked : a stupid or foolish person
OK – Trump supporters are easily tricked. But Trump wants to pretend he is a young
vigorous man! Chris Matthews did talk about young people who are more likely to check out
Urban
Dictionary than the old fashion Merriam-Webster dictionary:
Someone who does not understand the basics of life on earth. Confused easily.
Actually this is the perfect description for Trump supporters. There are more definitions at
Urban Dictionary that I would submit also apply!
ilsm , April 28, 2019 9:18 am
Who does Panetta think is "easily tricked"?
Those who believe that Russia had a impact on dumping Clinton are very easily tricked.
Sad that Krugman, among the media blizzard against the presidency, is one selling the
.00000001 chance that Russia effected the election as if it were truth.
"Easily tricked" is buying Mueller's top cover for the Russia gate operation.
https://c.deployads.com/sync?f=html&s=2297&u=https%3A%2F%2Fangrybearblog.com%2F2019%2F04%2Fpanetta-and-trump-who-are-you-calling-chumps.html%23comments
Panetta
and Trump: Who are You Calling Chumps?
Check out the entire interview as it was excellent. But I had to look up this old fashion
word :
a person who is easily tricked : a stupid or foolish person
OK – Trump supporters are easily tricked. But Trump wants to pretend he is a young
vigorous man! Chris Matthews did talk about young people who are more likely to check out
Urban
Dictionary than the old fashion Merriam-Webster dictionary:
Someone who does not understand the basics of life on earth. Confused easily.
Actually this is the perfect description for Trump supporters. There are more definitions at
Urban Dictionary that I would submit also apply!
Those who believe that Russia had a impact on dumping Clinton are very easily tricked.
Sad that Krugman, among the media blizzard against the presidency, is one selling the
.00000001 chance that Russia effected the election as if it were truth.
"Easily tricked" is buying Mueller's top cover for the Russia gate operation.
"... In the case of retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, Trump's first national security adviser, acting Attorney General Sally Yates used the archaic Logan Act of 1799 to create a predicate for the FBI to interrogate Flynn about a Dec. 29, 2016 conversation with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, i.e., after Trump's election but before the Inauguration. ..."
"... Yates also concocted a bizarre argument that the discrepancies between Flynn's account of the call and the transcript left him open to Russian blackmail although how that would work – since the Russians surely assumed that Kislyak's calls would be monitored by U.S. intelligence and thus offered them no leverage with Flynn – was never explained. ..."
"... So, perhaps the biggest similarity between Russia-gate and Watergate is that Richard Nixon and Donald Trump were both highly unpopular with the Washington establishment and thus had few influential defenders, while an important contrast with Iran-Contra was that Reagan and Bush were very well liked, especially among news executives such as Washington Post publisher Katharine Graham who, by all accounts, did not care for the uncouth Nixon. Today, the senior executives of The New York Times, The Washington Post and other major news outlets have made no secret of their disdain for the buffoonish Trump and their hostility toward Russian President Vladimir Putin. ..."
"... In other words, what is driving Russia-gate – for both the mainstream news media and the Democrats – appears to be a political agenda, i.e., the desire to remove Trump from office while also ratcheting up a New Cold War with Russia, a priority for Washington's neoconservatives and their liberal-interventionist sidekicks. ..."
"... If this political drama were playing out in some other country, we would be talking about a "soft coup" in which the "oligarchy" or some other "deep state" force was using semi-constitutional means to engineer a disfavored leader's removal. ..."
In the case of retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, Trump's first national security adviser,
acting Attorney General Sally Yates used the archaic Logan Act of 1799 to create a predicate
for the FBI to interrogate Flynn about a Dec. 29, 2016 conversation with Russian Ambassador
Sergey Kislyak, i.e., after Trump's election but before the Inauguration.
The Logan Act, which has never resulted in a prosecution in 218 years, was enacted during
the period of the Alien and Sedition Acts to bar private citizens from negotiating on their own
with foreign governments. It was never intended to apply to a national security adviser of an
elected President, albeit before he was sworn in.
But it became the predicate for the FBI interrogation -- and the FBI agents were armed with
a transcript of the intercepted Kislyak-Flynn phone call so they could catch Flynn on any gaps
in his recollection, which might have been made even hazier because he was on vacation in the
Dominican Republic when Kislyak called.
Yates also concocted a bizarre argument that the discrepancies between Flynn's account of
the call and the transcript left him open to Russian blackmail although how that would work
– since the Russians surely assumed that Kislyak's calls would be monitored by U.S.
intelligence and thus offered them no leverage with Flynn – was never explained.
Still, Flynn's failure to recount the phone call precisely and the controversy stirred up
around it became the basis for an obstruction of justice investigation of Flynn and led to
President Trump's firing Flynn on Feb. 13.
Trump may have thought that tossing Flynn overboard to the circling sharks would calm down
the sharks but the blood in the water only excited them more. According to then-FBI Director
James Comey, Trump talked to him one-on-one the next day, Feb. 14, and said, "'I hope you can
see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go. He is a good guy. I hope you can
let this go."
Trump's "hope" and the fact that he later fired Comey have reportedly led special prosecutor
Mueller to look at a possible obstruction of justice case against Trump. In other words, Trump
could be accused of obstructing what appears to have been a trumped-up case against Flynn.
Of course, there remains the possibility that evidence might surface of Trump or his
campaign colluding with the Russians, but such evidence has so far not been presented. Or
Mueller's investigation might turn over some rock and reveal some unrelated crime, possibly
financial wrongdoing by Trump or an associate.
(Something similar happened in the Republican investigation of the Sept. 11, 2012 Benghazi
attack, a largely fruitless inquiry except that it revealed that Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton sent and received official emails over a private server, which Comey decried during
last year's campaign as "extremely careless" but not criminal.)
Curb the Enthusiasm
Another contrast between the earlier scandals (Watergate and Iran-Contra) and Russia-gate is
the degree of enthusiasm and excitement that the U.S. mainstream media and congressional
Democrats have shown today as opposed to 1972 and 1986.
The Washington Post's Watergate team, including from left to right, publisher Katharine
Graham, Carl Bernstein, Bob Woodward, Howard Simons, and executive editor Ben Bradlee.
Though The Washington Post's Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein aggressively pursued the
Watergate scandal, there was much less interest elsewhere in major news outlets until Nixon's
criminality became obvious in 1973. Many national Democrats, including DNC
Chairman Bob Strauss , were extremely hesitant to pursue the scandal if not outright
against it.
Similarly, although Brian Barger and I at The Associated Press were pursuing aspects of
Iran-Contra since early 1985, the big newspapers and networks consistently gave the Reagan
administration the benefit of the doubt – at least before the scandal finally burst into
view in fall 1986 (when a Contra-supply plane crashed inside Nicaragua and a Lebanese newspaper
revealed U.S. arms shipments to Iran).
For several months, there was a flurry of attention to the complex Iran-Contra scandal, but
the big media still ignored evidence of a White House cover-up and soon lost interest in the
difficult work of unraveling the convoluted networks for arms smuggling, money laundering and
cocaine trafficking.
Congressional Democrats also shied away from a constitutional confrontation with the popular
Reagan and his well-connected Vice President George H.W. Bush.
After moving from AP to Newsweek in early 1987, I learned that the senior executives at
Newsweek, then part of The Washington Post Company, didn't want "another Watergate"; they felt
another such scandal was not "good for the country" and wanted Iran-Contra to go away as soon
as possible. I was even told not to read the congressional Iran-Contra report when it was
published in October 1987 (although I ignored that order and kept trying to keep my own
investigation going in defiance of the wishes of the Newsweek brass until those repeated
clashes led to my departure in June 1990).
So, perhaps the biggest similarity between Russia-gate and Watergate is that Richard Nixon
and Donald Trump were both highly unpopular with the Washington establishment and thus had few
influential defenders, while an important contrast with Iran-Contra was that Reagan and Bush
were very well liked, especially among news executives such as Washington Post publisher
Katharine Graham who, by all accounts, did not care for the uncouth Nixon. Today, the senior
executives of The New York Times, The Washington Post and other major news outlets have made no
secret of their disdain for the buffoonish Trump and their hostility toward Russian President
Vladimir Putin.
In other words, what is driving Russia-gate – for both the mainstream news media and
the Democrats – appears to be a political agenda, i.e., the desire to remove Trump from
office while also ratcheting up a New Cold War with Russia, a priority for Washington's
neoconservatives and their liberal-interventionist sidekicks.
If this political drama were playing out in some other country, we would be talking about a
"soft coup" in which the "oligarchy" or some other "deep state" force was using
semi-constitutional means to engineer a disfavored leader's removal.
Of course, since the ongoing campaign to remove Trump is happening in the United States, it
must be presented as a principled pursuit of truth and a righteous application of the rule of
law. But the comparisons to Watergate and Iran-Contra are a stretch.
The late investigative reporter Robert Parry, the founder of Consortium News, broke
many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s.
"... Americans - stop whining, that you will not help. You have a main problem with lobbyists and officials who are well able to promote the interests of lobbyists at the expense of national interests. Replace the word Russian with the word Israeli and get the exact name of the problem. ..."
"... The Russians did not interfere more or less than any other country in U.S. elections. What interferes in the all election in the world is "Money", the great un-equalizer. Lobbyists the evil that keeps giving. F them all. ..."
"... The whole narrative was made up propaganda by Clinton spin doctors and Obama admin to change discussion from content of emails and cover up crimes using domestic intell to illegally spy on Trump. Joke, no examination of DNC or Podesta servers, just take word of Crowdstrike hired by Perkins Coie, same people who hired and paid Fusion GPS to write dossier. ..."
"... Better yet let's just let Israel interfere......oh wait. ..."
"... Mueller wasn't running an investigation . . . It was a "Coverup Operation" and one of the biggest scams ever perpetrated on the American people. "A complete and total fraud" ..."
"... Except [neo]liberal f-wits that don't want to know. Might upset their fragile grip on reality. ..."
"... I don't see (in the immortal words of G Dubya) how this sucker doesn't go down. This **** is bad, very bad .. ..."
"... I mean, this doesn't even come as a controlled demolition anymore. It is merely shredding any and all vestige of hope of ever ( at least n my lifetime) righting the ship of state, proper. There ain't no winners in this, none .. ..."
"... If they did, it was a blessing in disguise. Maybe the Russians didn't relish the idea of going to war with the US. I'm convinced to the marrow of my bones that Hitlery would have poked the Bear. It would not have been pretty. ..."
"... Election interference? You wanna see some interference, watch Obama, Hillary and Merkel laser bomb Gaddafi after putting him on a "most loved dictator" list just prior. Election interference, this is some stupid **** for stupid people. Some Russians on Facebook may have...gimme a break. ..."
"... Then...there's Kiev in 2014... ..."
"... Somewhat related to the media's lies. They dripped/leaked damaging information for 2 years but not a word on when Mueller knew the investigation was over, what, 18 months ago? Not a single leak or drip saying Trump was innocent nor any leaked evidence. Completely complicit. ..."
"... Given the history of lies by Blo's administration against Putin's Russia... and without hard, corroborated evidence to the contrary...it didn't happen. On the other hand, we read recently about heavy outside (western) money trying to influence the outcome of the recent Ukraine election.. ..."
"... In court a befuddled prosecution team (who never dreamed anyone would step up to face the charges) listed the date of the supposed crimes a Russian company had committed... at the time, the company did not exist! ..."
"... How I would love to see THIS honest headline... "Did The Israelis (AIPAC) Interfere In U.S. Elections?" The answer is as obvious as the 600-pound gorilla in the room. ..."
"... The 600-pound gorilla headline would be killed by the third-rail, and then trampled by an elephant. If it somehow survived, it would be convicted of a hate crime for attacking the gorilla, charged with animal abuse for hurting the elephant's foot, and convicted of rape for touching the third-rail. ..."
"... A much bigger question is, Did/does Israel interfere in U.S. elections? ..."
It is more probable that some patriots at NSA seeing what was going on hacked and leaked
emails not wanting corrupt Hillary and criminal empire taking hold of US gov rather than
Russians doing such.
Americans - stop whining, that you will not help. You have a main problem with lobbyists
and officials who are well able to promote the interests of lobbyists at the expense of
national interests. Replace the word Russian with the word Israeli and get the exact name of
the problem.
The Russians did not interfere more or less than any other country in U.S. elections. What
interferes in the all election in the world is "Money", the great un-equalizer. Lobbyists the
evil that keeps giving. F them all.
If Hillary was elected, she would have been owned. Clintons met with Putin right before
Uranium 1 deal went through and Bill got his half million dollar one night speaking fee and
millions to the Clinton Foundation. Hillary used unsecured communications while Secratary of
State. She is the most corrupt person ever to run for POTUS. Plenty more dirt under her ***,
bribery, corruption. Hey, what about husband's phone sex tape with Lewinski Russians
supposedly had which is more beleiveable than made up Russian prostitute pissing on bed.
The whole narrative was made up propaganda by Clinton spin doctors and Obama admin to
change discussion from content of emails and cover up crimes using domestic intell to
illegally spy on Trump. Joke, no examination of DNC or Podesta servers, just take word of
Crowdstrike hired by Perkins Coie, same people who hired and paid Fusion GPS to write
dossier.
With all this flap, hell, let't just let the Russians vote in the next one. Then, in time,
we could vote in their elections, kinda like a collusion cultural exchange program.
I mean, stuff like this just begs the question, why not just go right to jumping the
shark, and call it a day .,
There's much more reason to believe the prog left deliberately fucked with the midterm
vote in Florida last year...than there is actual evidence of Russian interference in
the 2016 election...
Mueller wasn't running an investigation . . . It was a "Coverup Operation" and one of the
biggest scams ever perpetrated on the American people. "A complete and total fraud"
We have been an evidence free idiocracy for 20 years now. I am hopeful that we are
witnessing the end of that now. "The Trump campaign was spied upon" represented a critical
turning point...
Or maybe a critical implosion point. I do not believe it is clear, meaning who will be
left standing, either way. Someone, or a whole lot of someone's need's to pay for these sins,
and as is painfully obvious, the ******** slinging and screeching rhetoric meter, is red
lining. I don't see (in the immortal words of G Dubya) how this sucker doesn't go down. This
**** is bad, very bad ..
I mean, this doesn't even come as a controlled demolition anymore. It is merely shredding
any and all vestige of hope of ever ( at least n my lifetime) righting the ship of state,
proper. There ain't no winners in this, none ..
If they did, it was a blessing in disguise. Maybe the Russians didn't relish the idea of going to war with the US. I'm convinced to the marrow of my bones that Hitlery would have poked the Bear. It would not have been pretty.
Election interference? You wanna see some interference, watch Obama, Hillary and Merkel
laser bomb Gaddafi after putting him on a "most loved dictator" list just prior. Election
interference, this is some stupid **** for stupid people. Some Russians on Facebook may
have...gimme a break.
Somewhat related to the media's lies. They dripped/leaked damaging information for 2 years
but not a word on when Mueller knew the investigation was over, what, 18 months ago? Not a
single leak or drip saying Trump was innocent nor any leaked evidence. Completely
complicit.
" But that assertion - is it truly backed up factually? Where is the evidence, other than
largely questionable information sourced from our largely discredited intelligence agencies
which, as we know, had a determined goal of overthrowing the president by any means
possible?"
Precisely.
Given the history of lies by Blo's administration against Putin's Russia... and
without hard, corroborated evidence to the contrary...it didn't happen. On the other hand, we read recently about heavy outside (western) money trying to
influence the outcome of the recent Ukraine election..
In court a befuddled prosecution team (who never dreamed anyone would step up to face the
charges) listed the date of the supposed crimes a Russian company had committed... at the
time, the company did not exist!
Some kind of catering business (not sure of the connection to the hacking team but the
lawyer commented in court it appeared the Mueller had indeed indicted the proverbial "Ham
Sandwich!"
How I would love to see THIS honest headline... "Did The Israelis (AIPAC) Interfere In U.S. Elections?" The answer is as obvious as the 600-pound gorilla in the room.
The 600-pound gorilla headline would be killed by the third-rail, and then trampled by an
elephant. If it somehow survived, it would be convicted of a hate crime for attacking the
gorilla, charged with animal abuse for hurting the elephant's foot, and convicted of rape for
touching the third-rail.
"... The truth is, that a foreign government did indeed meddle in the American Presidential election, in a failed attempt to fix the outcome, but it was not Russia. It was the City of London, and the Five Eyes imperial intelligence services of the British Commonwealth, along with treasonous, "Tory" American elements. If that admission is forced to the surface, through the vigorous actions of all that oppose the presently dominant Big Lie tyranny, that revelation will shock and liberate people all over the world. The mental stranglehold of "fake news" media outlets can be permanently broken. That is the task of the next days and weeks. ..."
"... Apart from documenting the presence of "former" British intelligence agent Christopher Steele, former MI6 head Sir Richard Dearlove, and former GCHQ head Robert Hannigan at the center of the Russiagate campaign against President Trump for the past several years, we must, in order to expose this successfully, identify not only what was actually done and who was doing it, but the deeper policy motivation: why it was done. ..."
"... President Donald Trump has no vested interest in protecting the British "special relationship." From his second day in office, Trump declared that he would clean out the intelligence agencies. If Trump were to do that, however, the real, tragic history of America's last 50 years would be exhumed from that swamp. Shining a light into that darkness would illuminate the world. The American people would stop playing Othello to the City of London's Iago. They would denounce the British "special relationship," never again to fight imperial wars for the greater glory of the British Empire. They would learn the true story of Vietnam, of Iraq 1991 and Iraq 2003, of Libya 2011, and many other conflicts, special operations, and assassinations. The American people would know the truth, and the truth would set them free. ..."
"... The current insurrection against the United States Presidency is part of a global strategic battle: will a conspiracy of republican forces overcome the modern day British imperial system, centered in the hot money centers of the City of London and Wall Street, or will the oligarchical system once again triumph, immiserating all but the very wealthy? That is the real issue of the insurrection against the maverick American president being conducted by the London and NATO-centered enforcers of the old world. To paraphrase the American Declaration of Independence, ..."
"... According to CIA Director John Brennan's Congressional testimony, the British began complaining loudly about candidate Trump and Russia in late 2015. Brennan's statements were echoed in articles in The Guardian . According to Brennan, intelligence leads about Trump and Russia had been forwarded to Brennan from both British intelligence and from Estonia. ..."
"... This task force targeted Trump campaign volunteers Carter Page and George Papadopoulos in entrapment operations on British soil, using British agents, during the spring and summer of 2016. ..."
"... Hannigan abruptly resigned from GCHQ shortly after the election, sparking widespread speculation that the British were making an attempt at damage control. ..."
"... In 2016, the Manafort investigation migrated to the Democratic National Committee with direct assistance provided by Ukrainian state intelligence. This effort was led by Alexandra Chalupa, an admirer of Stepan Bandera and other heroes of Nazi history in Ukraine. Chalupa also had deep connections to British-oriented networks at the U.S. State Department. ..."
"... The final nail in this case has been provided by The Hill 's John Solomon. He says that Steele told former Associate Attorney General Bruce Ohr about the sources for the dirty dossier. According to Solomon, Ohr's notes reveal one main source, a former senior Russian intelligence official living in the United States. But, as anyone familiar with the territory would know, there is no such retired senior Russian intelligence official living in the United States whose entire life is not controlled by the CIA. ..."
"... As a result of Congressional investigations of Russiagate, it has become abundantly clear that the British operation against Trump was aided and abetted by the Obama White House, the State Department, the CIA, the FBI, and personalities associated with the National Endowment for Democracy. ..."
"... Out of the Ukraine coup, an entire military-centered propaganda apparatus arose, first through NATO, and then out from there to military units and diplomatic centers in the U.S., Europe, and Britain, to run low intensity operations, and black propaganda, against Russia. ..."
"... The British end of the operation includes the Integrity Initiative, the 77th Brigade, and NATO's Strategic Communications Center. In the United States, the Integrity Initiative has been integrated into the Global Engagement Center at the U.S. State Department. Most certainly, this operation is poised again to intervene in the U.S. elections; the British House of Lords have stated explicitly, in their December 2018 report, British Foreign Policy in a Shifting World Order, that Donald Trump must not be re-elected. ..."
"... This is why the British are yelping that under no circumstances can the classified documents concerning their role in the attempted coup against Donald Trump be declassified. It would end their leverage over the United States and much of Europe. That is why these documents must indeed be declassified, and parallel investigations by citizens and government officials concerned with ending the imperial system, otherwise known as the current "war party," must begin in earnest. ..."
"... Why did the DNC not allow the FBI to investigate the so-called" Russian hacked" emails? Rather, they hire CrowdStrike did you know: ..."
"... War with Afghanistan was Obama's payoff to the MIC, just as Russia is now Trump's payoff. ..."
"... The important truth about the emails is in their authenticity and in the contents. No one has even attempted to claim that they are not authentic or that the contents we've seen are other than the actual contents of the authentic messages. ..."
"... That is what i think. People should not concentrate on how, who and where. This is just a smokescreen to avoid talking about the content of the emails and Hillary Clinton's disgusting actions. She is a criminal and a murderess just like Obama and Tony Blair are lyers and mass murderers. ..."
The British Role in 'Russiagate' Is About to Be Fully Exposed April 8, 2019
20190408-russiagate-exposed-brits.pdf
The "fake news" media has now dropped its pretense of having ever had any intention of allowing the truth -- as documented in
U.S. Attorney General Barr's summary of Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller's report, exonerating President Donald Trump of having
"conspired or coordinated with the Russian government" -- to thoroughly refute the Russiagate "Big Lie." Soon, however, it is certain
that the deliberate, British Intelligence-originated, military-grade disinformation campaign carried out against the United States,
including to this day, will be exposed.
The truth is, that a foreign government did indeed meddle in the American Presidential election, in a failed attempt to fix
the outcome, but it was not Russia. It was the City of London, and the Five Eyes imperial intelligence services of the British Commonwealth,
along with treasonous, "Tory" American elements. If that admission is forced to the surface, through the vigorous actions of all
that oppose the presently dominant Big Lie tyranny, that revelation will shock and liberate people all over the world. The mental
stranglehold of "fake news" media outlets can be permanently broken. That is the task of the next days and weeks.
"It's hard to find a black cat in a dark room, especially if there is no cat," says the Chinese proverb. Yet, although the Mueller
report was called a "nothing burger," it was not: it still presented the potentially lethal lie that twelve Russian gremlins, code-named
Guccifer 2.0, hacked the DNC. Sundry media meatheads thus continue to blog and broadcast about "what else is really there."
The false Russian hack story, still being repeated, marches on, undeterred, like the emperor without any clothes. One lame-brained
variation, promoted in order to cover up the British role, states that Hillary Clinton, rather than Trump, colluded with the Russians.
It is being repeated by Republicans and Democrats alike, some of them malicious, some of them confused, and all of them completely
wrong. The media, such as the failed New York Times and various electronic media, must be forced to either admit the truth,
or be even more thoroughly discredited than they already have been. They must stop their constant repetition of this Joseph Goebbels-like
Big Lie. There must be a vigorous dissemination of the truth by all those journalists, politicians, activists and citizens that love
truth more than their own assumptions, including about President Trump, or other dearly-held systems of false belief.
Apart from documenting the presence of "former" British intelligence agent Christopher Steele, former MI6 head Sir Richard
Dearlove, and former GCHQ head Robert Hannigan at the center of the Russiagate campaign against President Trump for the past several
years, we must, in order to expose this successfully, identify not only what was actually done and who was doing it, but the deeper
policy motivation: why it was done.
A New Cultural Paradigm
The world is actually on the verge of ending the military conflicts among the major world powers, such as Russia, China, the United
States, and India. These four powers, and not the City of London, are the key fulcrum around which a new era in humanity's future
will be decided. A new monetary and credit system brought into being through these four powers would foster the greatest physical
economic growth in the history of humanity. In addition, discussions involving Italy working with China on the industrialization
of the African continent (discussions which could soon also involve the United States) show that sections of Europe want to join
China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and leave the dying trans-Atlantic financial empire behind.
The recent announcement of a United States commitment to return to the Moon by 2024 can, in particular, become the basis for a
proposal to other nations -- for example, China, Russia, and India, all of whom are space powers of demonstrated capability -- to
resolve their differences on Earth in a higher, joint mission. As Russia's Roscosmos Director Dmitry Rogozin said in a recent interview:
"I am a fierce proponent of international cooperation, including with Americans, because their country is big and technologically
advanced, and they can make good partners Especially since personal and professional relations between Roscosmos and NASA at the
working level are great."
There is also the possibility of ending the danger of thermonuclear war. President Trump, speaking on April 4 of the prospects
for world peace, stated:
"Between Russia, China, and us, we're all making hundreds of billions of dollars worth of weapons, including nuclear, which is
ridiculous. I think it's much better if we all got together and didn't make these weapons those three countries I think can come
together and stop the spending and spend on things that are more productive toward long-term peace."
This is a statement of real importance. Such an outlook is a rejection of the "perpetual crisis/perpetual war" outlook of the
Bush-Obama Administration, a four-term "war presidency" which was abruptly, unexpectedly ended in 2016. The British were not amused.
It is to stop this new cultural paradigm, pivoted on the Pacific and the potential Four Powers alliance, that British imperial
forces have deployed. The 2016 election of President Trump, and his personal friendship with President Xi Jinping and desire to work
with President Putin, are an intolerable strategic threat to the eighteenth-century geopolitics of the British empire. They have
repeatedly used Russiagate to disrupt the process of deliberation among Presidents Xi, Trump, and Putin, thus increasing the danger
of war. Russiagate, in the interest of international security, must be ended by exposing it for the utter fraud that it is.
The Truth Set Free
President Donald Trump has no vested interest in protecting the British "special relationship." From his second day in office,
Trump declared that he would clean out the intelligence agencies. If Trump were to do that, however, the real, tragic history of
America's last 50 years would be exhumed from that swamp. Shining a light into that darkness would illuminate the world. The American
people would stop playing Othello to the City of London's Iago. They would denounce the British "special relationship," never again
to fight imperial wars for the greater glory of the British Empire. They would learn the true story of Vietnam, of Iraq 1991 and
Iraq 2003, of Libya 2011, and many other conflicts, special operations, and assassinations. The American people would know the truth,
and the truth would set them free.
The current insurrection against the United States Presidency is part of a global strategic battle: will a conspiracy of republican
forces overcome the modern day British imperial system, centered in the hot money centers of the City of London and Wall Street,
or will the oligarchical system once again triumph, immiserating all but the very wealthy? That is the real issue of the insurrection
against the maverick American president being conducted by the London and NATO-centered enforcers of the old world. To paraphrase
the American Declaration of Independence,
"The history of the present Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the
undermining of the United States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world."
DOCUMENTATION
While Robert Mueller found that there was "no collusion" between Donald Trump or the Trump Campaign and Russia, he also filed
two indictments regarding alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election. The first alleges that 12 members of Russian Military
Intelligence hacked the DNC and John Podesta and delivered the purloined files to WikiLeaks for strategic publication before the
July 2016 Democratic National Convention and in October 2016, one month before the election. The second indictment charges the Internet
Research Agency, a Russian internet merchandising and marketing firm, with running social media campaigns in the U.S. in 2016 designed
to impact the election. When the fuller version of the Mueller report becomes public, it is certain to recharge the claims of Russian
interference based on the so-called background "evidence" supporting these indictments.
The good news, however, is that investigations in the United States and Britain, have unearthed significant contrary evidence
exposing British Intelligence, NATO, and, to a lesser extent, Ukraine, as the actual foreign actors in the 2016 U.S. presidential
election. We provide a short summary of the main aspects of that evidence to spark further investigations of the British intelligence
networks, entities, and methods at issue, internationally. More detailed accounts concerning specific aspects of what we recite here
can be found on our website.
The Russian Hack That Wasn't
The Veterans Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, an association of former U.S. intelligence officials, have demonstrated that
the Russian hack of the DNC alleged by Robert Mueller, was more likely an internal leak,
rather than a hack conducted
over the internet. William Binney, who conducted the main investigations for the VIPS, spent 30 years at the National Security Agency,
becoming Technical Director. He designed the sorts of NSA programs that would detect a Russian hack if one occurred. Binney conducted
an actual forensic examination of the DNC files released by WikiLeaks, and the related files circulated by the persona Guccifer 2.0,
who Robert Mueller claims is a GRU creation. Binney has demonstrated that the calculated transfer speeds and metadata characteristics
of these files are consistent with downloading to a thumb drive or storage device rather than an internet-based hack. This supports
the account by WikiLeaks of how it obtained the files. According to WikiLeaks and former Ambassador Craig Murray, they were obtained
from a person who was not a Russian state actor of any kind, in Washington, D.C. WikiLeaks offered to tell the Justice Department
all about this, and actual negotiations to this effect were proceeding in early 2017, when Senator Mark Warner and FBI Director James
Comey acted to sabotage and end the negotiations.
Further, as opposed to the hyperbole in the media and in Robert Mueller's indictment, analysis of the Internet Research Agency's
alleged "weaponization" of Facebook in 2016 involved
a paltry total of $46,000 in Facebook
ads and $4,700 spent on Google platforms . In an election in which the major campaigns spend tens of thousands of dollars every
day on these platforms, whatever the IRA thought it was doing in its amateurish and juvenile memes and tropes was like throwing a
stone in the ocean. Most of these activities occurred after the election and never mentioned either candidate. The interpretation
that these ads were designed to draw clicks and website traffic, rather than influence the election, must be considered.
The "evidence" for Mueller's GRU hacking indictment was provided, in part, by CrowdStrike, the DNC vendor that originated the
claims that the Russians had hacked that entity. CrowdStrike is closely associated with the Atlantic Council's Digital Research Lab
(DRL), an operation jointly funded by NATO's Strategic Communications Center and the U.S. State Department, to counter Russian "hybrid
warfare." CrowdStrike has been caught more than once falsely attributing hacks to the Russians and the Atlantic Council's DRL is
a font of anti-Russian intelligence operations.
The British Target Trump
According to CIA Director John Brennan's Congressional testimony, the British began complaining loudly about candidate Trump
and Russia in late 2015. Brennan's statements were echoed in articles in The Guardian . According to Brennan, intelligence
leads about Trump and Russia had been forwarded to Brennan from both British intelligence and from Estonia. The former head
of the Russia Desk for MI6 and protégé of Sir Richard Dearlove, Christopher Steele, fresh from working for British Intelligence,
the FBI, and U.S. State Department in the 2014 Ukraine coup, assembled in 2016 a phony dossier called Operation Charlemagne, claiming
widespread Russian interference in European elections, including in the Brexit vote. By the spring of 2016, Steele was contributing
to a British/U.S. intelligence task force on the Trump Campaign which had been convened at CIA headquarters under John Brennan's
direction.
This task force targeted Trump campaign volunteers Carter Page and George Papadopoulos in entrapment operations on British
soil, using British agents, during the spring and summer of 2016. The personnel employed in these operations all had multiple
connections to the British firm Hakluyt, to Steele's firm Orbis, and to the British military's Integrity Initiative. Sometime in
the summer of 2016, Robert Hannigan, then head of GCHQ, flew to Washington to brief John Brennan personally. Hannigan abruptly
resigned from GCHQ shortly after the election, sparking widespread speculation that the British were making an attempt at damage
control.
Michael Flynn and Paul Manafort were already on the radar and under investigation by the same British, Dearlove-centered intelligence
network and by Christopher Steele specifically. Flynn had been defamed by Dearlove and Stefan Halper, as a possible Russian agent
way back in 2014 because he spoke to Russian researcher Svetlana Lokhova at a dinner sponsored by Dearlove's Cambridge Security Forum.
Or, at least that was the pretext for the targeting of Flynn, who otherwise defied British intelligence by exposing Western support
for terrorist operations in Syria and sought a collaborative relationship with Russia to counter ISIS. Manafort was under FBI investigation
throughout 2014 and 2015, largely in retaliation for his role in steering the Party of the Regions to political power in Ukraine.
In 2016, the Manafort investigation migrated to the Democratic National Committee with direct assistance provided by Ukrainian
state intelligence. This effort was led by Alexandra Chalupa, an admirer of Stepan Bandera and other heroes of Nazi history in Ukraine.
Chalupa also had deep connections to British-oriented networks at the U.S. State Department.
In or around June 2016, Christopher Steele began writing his dirty and bogus dossier about Trump and Russia. This is the dossier
which claimed that Trump was compromised by Putin and that Putin was coordinating with Trump in the 2016 election. The main "legend"
of this full-spectrum information warfare operation run from Britain, was that Donald Trump was receiving "dirt" on Hillary Clinton
from Russia. The operations targeting Page and Papadopoulos consisted of multiple attempts to plant fabricated evidence on them which
would reflect what Steele himself was fabricating in the dirty dossier. At the very same time, the infamous June 2016 meeting at
Trump Tower was being set up. That meeting involved the Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya, who, it was alleged in a series of
bizarre emails written by British publicist Ron Goldstone to set up the meeting, could deliver "dirt" on Hillary Clinton direct from
the Russian government. Veselnitskaya didn't deliver any such dirt. But the entire operation was being monitored by State Department
intelligence agent Kyle Parker, an expert on Russia. Parker's emails reveal deep ties to the highest levels of British intelligence
and much chatter between them about Trump and Russia.
A now-changed version of the website for Christopher Steele's firm, Orbis, trumpeted an expertise in information warfare operations,
and the networks in which Steele runs are deeply integrated into the British military's Integrity Initiative. The Integrity Initiative
is a rapid response propaganda operation using major journalists in the United States and Europe to carry out targeted defamation
campaigns. Its central charge, according to documents posted by the hacking group Anonymous, is selling the United States and Western
Europe on the immediate need for regime change in Russia, even if that involves war.
Much has been made by Republicans and other lunkheads in the U.S. Congress of Steele's contacts with Russians for his dossier.
They claim that such contacts resulted in a Russian disinformation operation being run through the duped Christopher Steele. Nothing
could be further from the truth.
MI6's Dirty Dossier on Donald Trump: Full-Spectrum Information Warfare
On its face, Steele's dossier would immediately be recognized as a complete fabrication by any competent intelligence analyst.
He cites some 32 sources inside the Russian government for his fabricated claims about Trump. What they allegedly told him is specific
enough in time and content to identify them. To believe that the dossier is true or that actual Russians contributed to it, you must
also believe that that the British government was willing to roll up this entire network, exposing them, since the intention was
for the dossier's wild claims to be published as widely as possible. By all accounts, Britain and the United States together do not
have 32 highly placed sources inside the Russian government, nor would they ever make them public in this way or with this very sloppy
tradecraft. Steele's fabrication also uses aspects of readily available public information, such as the sale of 19% of the energy
company Rosneft, (the alleged bribe offered to Carter Page for lifting sanctions) to concoct a fictional narrative of high crimes
and misdemeanors.
Other claims in the dossier were published, publicly, in various Ukrainian publications. The famous claim that Trump directed
prostitutes to urinate on a bed once slept upon by Barack Obama seems to be plagiarized from similarly fake 2009 British propaganda
stories about Silvio Berlusconi spending the night with a prostitute in a hotel room in Rome, "defiling" Putin's bed. According to
various sources in the United States, this outrageous claim was made by Sergei Millian. George Papadopoulos has stated that he believes
Millian is an FBI informant, recounting in his book how a friend of Millian's blurted this out when Millian, Papadopoulos and the
friend were having coffee.
The final nail in this case has been provided by The Hill 's John Solomon. He says that Steele told former Associate
Attorney General Bruce Ohr about the sources for the dirty dossier. According to Solomon, Ohr's notes reveal one main source, a former
senior Russian intelligence official living in the United States. But, as anyone familiar with the territory would know, there is
no such retired senior Russian intelligence official living in the United States whose entire life is not controlled by the CIA.
Despite its obvious fake pedigree, Steele's dossier was laundered into the Justice Department repeatedly, by the CIA and State
Department and the Obama White House. It was used to obtain FISA surveillance warrants turning key members of the Trump Campaign
into walking microphones. It was circulated endlessly by the Clinton Campaign to a network of reporters in the U.S. known to serve
as scribes for the intelligence community. John Brennan used it to conduct a special emergency briefing of the leading members of
the U.S. Congress charged with intelligence responsibilities in August of 2016 and to brief Harry Reid, who was Senate Majority Leader
at the time. All of this activity meant that the salacious accusation that Trump was a Putin pawn and the FBI was investigating the
matter, leaked out and was used by the Clinton Campaign to defame Trump for its electoral advantage. When Trump won, Steele's nonsense
received the stamp of the U.S. intelligence community and official currency in the campaign to take out the President.
As a result of Congressional investigations of Russiagate, it has become abundantly clear that the British operation against
Trump was aided and abetted by the Obama White House, the State Department, the CIA, the FBI, and personalities associated with the
National Endowment for Democracy. The individuals involved might be named Veterans of the 2014 Ukrainian Coup, since all of
them also worked on this operation. It is no accident that Victoria Nuland, the case agent for the Ukraine coup, played a major role
in bolstering Steele's credentials for the purpose of selling his dirty dossier to the media and to the Justice Department. This
went so far as Steele giving a full scale briefing on his fabricated dossier at the State Department in October 2016.
Out of the Ukraine coup, an entire military-centered propaganda apparatus arose, first through NATO, and then out from there
to military units and diplomatic centers in the U.S., Europe, and Britain, to run low intensity operations, and black propaganda,
against Russia.
The British end of the operation includes the Integrity Initiative, the 77th Brigade, and NATO's Strategic Communications
Center. In the United States, the Integrity Initiative has been integrated into the Global Engagement Center at the U.S. State Department.
Most certainly, this operation is poised again to intervene in the U.S. elections; the British House of Lords have stated explicitly,
in their December 2018 report, British Foreign Policy in a Shifting World Order, that Donald Trump must not be re-elected.
This is why the British are yelping that under no circumstances can the classified documents concerning their role in the
attempted coup against Donald Trump be declassified. It would end their leverage over the United States and much of Europe. That
is why these documents must indeed be declassified, and parallel investigations by citizens and government officials concerned with
ending the imperial system, otherwise known as the current "war party," must begin in earnest.
"in a post-Iraq invasion world, only herd-minded human livestock believe"
Perhaps add mainstream media to the list of such sincere believers, they will fire their own real journalists.
David Walters , April 24, 2019 at 13:14
"This doesn't mean that Russia would never use hackers to interfere in world political affairs or that Vladimir Putin is some
sort of virtuous girl scout, it just means that in a post-Iraq invasion world, only herd-minded human livestock believe the unsubstantiated
assertions of opaque and unaccountable government agencies about governments who are oppositional to those same agencies."
Absolutely correct.
Anyone who still believes what the IC says if a moron. As Pompeo recently said to the student body of Texas A&M University,
my alma matta, the CIA's job is to lie, cheat and steel. He went on the explain that the CIA has courses to teach their agent
that dark "art".
Right, David Walters, and see Pompous Pompeo now. The only truths he's told was to a student body of Texas A&M University –
his own alma mater – the CIA's job is to lie, cheat and steal.
Even though he's left his post as CIA Director and assumed his current post of Secretary of State. Pompous Pompeo continues his
CIA traits of lying, cheating, and stealing. It's in a way similar to a phrase, "A leopard never changes its spots". This is why
the DPRK govt issued a Persona Non Grata on Pompous Pompeo – that he isn't a bona fide diplomat, but a CIA official.
CWG , April 22, 2019 at 17:15
Here's my take on the 'Russian Collusion Deep State LIE.
There was NO Russian Collusion at all to get Trump in the White House. Most probably, Putin would have favored Clinton, since
she could be bought. Trump can't.
What did happen was illegal spying on the Trump campaign. That started late 2015, WITHOUT a FISA warrant. They only obtained
that in 2016, through lying to the FISA Court. The basis for that first warrant was the Fusion GPS Steele Dossier.
Ever since Trump won the election, they real conspirators knew they had a problem. That was apparent ever after Devin Nunes
did the right thing by informing Trump they were spying on him.
Since they obtained those FISA warrant through lying to the FISA Court (which is treason) they needed to cover that up as quickly
as possible.
So what did they do? Instead of admitting they lied to the FISA Court they kept on lying till this very day. The same lie through
which they obtained the FISA warrants to spy on the Trump campaign was being pushed openly.
The lie is and was 'Trump colluded with the Russians in order to win the Presidential Election'.
They knew from day one Trump didn't do anything wrong. They did know they spied on Trump through lying to the FISA Court, which
again, is treason. According to the Constitution, lying to the FISA court= Treason.
In order to avoid being indicted and prosecuted, they somehow needed to 'take down' the Attorney General. At all costs, they
needed to try and hide what really happened.
So there they went. 'Trump colluded with the Russians. Not just Trump, but the entire Trump campaign!'.
'Sessions should recuse himself', the propaganda MSM said in unison. 'Recuse, recuse'.
Sessions, naively recused himself. Back then, even he probably didn't know the entire story. It was only later on that Sarah
Carter and Jon Solomon found out it had been Hillary who ordered and paid the Steele Dossier.
The real conspirators hoped that through the Special Counsel rat Mueller they might be able to achieve three main objectives.
1: Convince the American people Russia indeed was meddling in the Presidential Election.
2: Find any sort of dirt on Trump and/or people who helped him win the Election in order to 'take them down'.
Many people were indicted, some were prosecuted. Yet NONE of them were convicted for a crime that had ANYTHING to with with
the elections. NONE.
They stretched it out as long as possible. 'The longer you repeat a lie, the more people are willing to believe the lie'.
So that is what they did. They still do it. Mueller took TWO years to brainwash as many people as possible. 'Russian Collusion,
Russian Collusion. Russia. Russia. Russia. Russia. Rusiaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhh ..
Why did they want to make sure they could keep telling that lie as long as possible?
Because they FEAR people will learn the truth. There was NEVER any Russian Collusion with the Trump campaign.
There was spying on the Trump campaign by Obama in order to try and make Hillary win the Presidential Election.
That is the actual COLLUSION between the Clinton Campaign and a weaponized Obama regime!!
So what did 'Herr Mueller' do?
He took YEARS to come up with the conclusion that the Trump campaign did NOT collude with Russia.
The MSM tried to make us all believe it was about that. Yet it was NOT.
His conclusive report is all about the question 'did or didn't the Trump campaign collude with the Russians'.
Trump exonerated, and the MSM only talks about that. Trump, Trump, Trump.
They still want us all to believe that was what the Mueller 'investigation' was all about. Yet it was not.
The most important objective of the Mueller 'investigation' was not to 'investigate'.
It was to 'instigate' that HUGE lie.
The same lie which they used to obtain the FISA warrant on the Trump campaign.
"Russia'.
So what has 'Herr Mueller' done?
A: He finds ZERO evidence at all which proves the Trump campaign colluded with ANY Russians.
And now the huge lie, which after all was the main objective right from the get go. (A was only a distraction)
B: Russians hacked the DNC.
That is what they wants us all to believe. That Russia somehow did bad stuff.
Now it was not Russia who did bad stuff.
It was Obama working together with the Clinton campaign. Obama weaponized his entire regime in order to let Clinton win the
Presidency.
That is the REAL collusion. The real CRIME. Treason!
In order to create a 'cover up' Mueller NEEDED to instigate that Russia somehow did bad things.
That's what the Mueller Dossier is ALL about. They now have 'black on white' 'evidence' that Russia somehow did bad things.
Because if Russia didn't do anything like that, it would make us all ask the fair question 'why did Obama spy on the Trump
Campaign'.
Let's go a bit deeper still.
Here's a trap Mueller created. What if Trump would openly doubt the LIE they still push? The HUGE lie that Russia did bad things?
After all, they NEED that LIE in order to COVER UP their own crime.
If Trump would say 'I do not believe Russia did anything to influence the elections, I think Mueller wrote that to COVER UP
the real crime', what would happen?
They would say 'GOTCHA now, see Trump is colluding with Russia? He even refuses to accept Russia hacked the DNC, this ultimately
proofs Trump indeed is a Russian asset'.
They believe that trap will work. They needed that trap, since if Russia wasn't doing anything wrong, it would show us all
THEY were the criminals.
They NEED that lie, in order to COVER UP.
That is the 'Insurance Policy' Stzrok and Page texted about. Even Sarah Carter and Jon Solomon still don't seem to see all
that.
They should have attacked the HUGE lie that Russia was somehow hacking the DNC. That is simply not true. It's a Mueller created
LIE.
That LIE = the Insurance Policy.
What did they need an Insurance Policy for? They want us all to believe that was about preventing Trump from being elected.
Although true, that is only A.
They NEEDED an Insurance Policy in the unlikely case Trump would become President and would find out they were illegally spying
on him!
The REAL crime is Obama weaponized the American Government to spy on even a duly elected President.
What's the punishment for Treason?
About Assange and Seth Rich.
Days after Mueller finishes his 'mission' (Establish the LIE Russia did bad things) which seems to be succesfull, the Deep
State arrest the ONLY source who could undermine that lie.
Assange Since he knows who is (Seth Rich?) and who isn't (Russia) the source.
If Assange could testify under oath the emails did not come from Russia, the LIE would be exposed.
No coincidences here. I fear Assange will never testify under oath. I actually fear for his life.
Deniz , April 23, 2019 at 13:48
While I wholeheartedly agree with you that Obama and Clinton are criminals, the far less convincing part of your argument is
that Trump is not now beholden to the same MIC interests. Bolton, Abrahams, Pompeo, Pence his relationship with Netanyahu, the
overthrow of Madura are all glaring examples that contradict the Rights narrative that he is some type of hero. Trump may not
have colluded with Russia, but he does seem to be colluding with Saudia Arabia, Israel, Big Oil and the MIC.
Whether one is on the Right or Left, the house is still made of glass.
boxerwars , April 22, 2019 at 17:13
RE: "A Russian Agent Smear"
:::
Was Pat Tillman Murdered?
JUL 30, 2007
I don't know, but it seems increasingly conceivable. Just absorb these facts:
O'Neal said Tillman, a corporal, threw a smoke grenade to identify themselves to fellow soldiers who were firing at them. Tillman
was waving his arms shouting "Cease fire, friendlies, I am Pat [expletive] Tillman, damn it!" again and again when he was killed,
O'Neal said
In the same testimony, medical examiners said the bullet holes in Tillman's head were so close together that it appeared the
Army Ranger was cut down by an M-16 fired from a mere 10 yards or so away.
The motive? I don't know. It's still likeliest it was an accident. But there's some mysterious testimony in the SI report about
nameless snipers. A reader suggests the following interpretation:
News this weekend said that there were "snipers" present and the witnesses didn't remember their names. I believe that's code
in the Army–these guys were Delta. In the Tillman incident, these snipers weren't part of the unit and they were never mentioned
publicly before. That's a key indicator that they weren't supposed to be acknowledged.
If you've ever read Blackhawk Down, Mark Bowden explains how he grew frustrated because interviewed Rangers kept referring
to "soldiers from another unit" while claiming they didn't know the unit ID or the soldiers' names. It took him months to crack
the unit ID and find people from Delta who were present at the fight.
Randy Shugart and Gary Gordon, the Delta operators who earned Medals of Honor in Mogadishu, have always been identified as
snipers, too.
If my theory is correct, the Delta guys could have fired the shots – a three-round burst to the forehead from 50 yards is impossible
for normal soldiers and Rangers, but is probably an easy shot for those guys. But because Delta doesn't officially exist and Tillman
was a hero, nobody in the Army would want to have to explain exactly how the event went down. Easier just to claim hostile fire
until the family forced them to do otherwise.
This makes some sense to me, although we shouldn't dismiss the chance he was murdered. Tillman was a star and might have aroused
jealousy or resentment. He also opposed the Iraq war and was a proud atheist. In Bush's increasingly sectarian military, that
might have stirred hostility. I don't know. But I know enough to want a deeper investigation. My atheist readers will no doubt
admire the way Tillman left this world, according to the man who was with him:
As bullets flew above their heads, the young soldier at Pat Tillman's side started praying. "I thought I was praying to myself,
but I guess he heard me," Sgt. Bryan O'Neal recalled in an interview Saturday with The Associated Press. "He said something like,
'Hey, O'Neal, why are you praying? God can't help us now."'
(Maybe the Congress can )
////// The USA is aghast with "smears" and "internal investigations" and promised but never produced "White Papers" 'as the
world turns' and circles continents Dominated by American Military Power / Predominantly Barbarous / Uncivilized Use of Force
/ and Arrogantly Effective in it's use of Dominating Military Power.
\\\\ The Poorer Peoples of the World accept their lots-in-life with some acceptance of reality vis-a-vis the "lot-in-life"
they've been alleged/assigned.
/// But How Do We Accept The Fact that our Self-Sacrificiing Hero,Pat Tillman, was slaughtered in Afghanistan,
(WITH POSITIVE PROOF) – by his own Fellow American soldiers – ???
!!!! What i'm say'n is, if Tillman represents the Life Surrendering "American Hero"
WHY DID HIS FELLOW "AMERICAN SOLDIERS" ASSASSINATE & MURDER HIM ???????
AND WHY IS THIS STORY BURIED ALONG WITH MANY OTHER SMEAR Stories
that provide prophylactic protection for all the Trump pianist prophylaxis cover
Up for the Right Wing theft of American Democracy under FDR
In favor of Ayn Rand's prevalent OBJECTIVISM under Trump.
"Capitalism and Altruism
are incompatible
capitalism and altruism
cannot coexist in man,
or in the same society".
President Trump represents
Stark & Total Capitalism
Just as "Conservative Party"
Core is in The Confederacy
AKA; The RIGHT WING
The Right Wing of US Gov't
Is All About PRESERVING
Confederate States' Laws
Written by Thomas Jefferson
Prior to The Constitution, which
became the Received/Judicial
Constitutional Law of the Land in
The Republic of the "United States"
It's not enough that Trump is clearly a classic narcissist whose behavior will continue to deteriorate the more his actions
and statements are attacked and countered? You know what happens when narcissists are driven into a corner by people tearing them
down? They get weapons and start killing people.
There is already more than ample evidence to remove Donald Trump from office, not the least being he's clearly mentally unfit.
Yet the Democrats, some of whom ran for office on a promise to impeach, are suddenly reticent to act without "more investigation".
Nancy Pelosi stated on the record prior to release of the Mueller report impeachment wasn't on the agenda "for now". She's now
making noises in the opposite direction, but that's all they are: noise.
The bottom line is the Clintonite New Democrats currently running the party have only one issue to run on next year: getting
rid of Donald Trump. They still operate under the delusion they will be able to use him to draw off moderate Republican voters,
the same ones they were positive would come out for Hillary Clinton in '16. Their multitude of candidates pay lip service to progressive
policy then carefully walk back to the standard centrist positions once the donations start coming, but the common underlying
theme was and continues to be "Donald Trump is evil, and we need to elect a Democrat."
In short, without Donald Trump in the Oval Office, the Democrat Party has no platform. They need him there as a target, because
Mike Pence would be impossible for them to beat. They are under orders, according to various writers who've addressed the Clinton
campaign, to block Bernie Sanders and his platform at all costs; and they will allow the country to crash and burn before they
disobey those orders. That means keeping Donald Trump right where he is through next November.
Eddie S , April 24, 2019 at 21:14
Exactly right, EKB -- - you can't ballroom dance without a partner! Also reminds me of the couples you occasionally run into
where one partner repeatedly runs-down the other, and you get the feeling that the critical partner doesn't have much going on
in his/her life so they deflect that by focusing on the other partner
Johnny Ryan S , April 22, 2019 at 13:38
Why did the DNC not allow the FBI to investigate the so-called" Russian hacked" emails? Rather, they hire CrowdStrike did
you know:
1)Obama Appoints CrowdStrike Officer To Admin Post Two Months Before June 2016 Report On Russia Hacking DNC
2) CrowdStrike Co-Founder Is Fellow On Russia Hawk Group, Has Connections To George Soros, Ukrainian Billionaire
3) DNC stayed that the FBI never asked to investigate the servers – that is a lie.
4) CrowdStrike received $100 million in investments led by Google Capital (since re-branded as CapitalG) in 2015. CapitalG is
owned by Alphabet, and Eric Schmidt, Alphabet's chairman, was a supporter of Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election. More than just
supporting Clinton, leaked emails from Wikileaks in November 2016 showed that in 2014 he wanted to have an active role in the
campaign.
-daily caller and dan bongino have been bringing these points up since 2016.
Deniz , April 22, 2019 at 12:36
The Right is currently salivating over the tough law enforcement rhetoric coming out of Barr and Trump.
It reminds me of when Obama was running for office in 2008 when everyone, including myself, was in awe of him. What kept slipping
into his soaring anti-intervention speeches, was a commitment to the good war in Afghanistan, which seemed totally out of place
with the rest of his rhetoric. The fine print was far more reflective of his administration actions as the rest of it his communications
turned out to be just telling people what they wanted to hear.
War with Afghanistan was Obama's payoff to the MIC, just as Russia is now Trump's payoff.
The argument about not inserting Rich and the download is a good one as a defense strategy but doesn't help with finding the
truth about the emails. We can only hope that pursuing the truth and producing it will have a cumulative effect and the illusory
truth effect will include this truth.
Red Douglas , April 22, 2019 at 16:00
>>> ". . . doesn't help with finding the truth about the emails."
The important truth about the emails is in their authenticity and in the contents. No one has even attempted to claim that
they are not authentic or that the contents we've seen are other than the actual contents of the authentic messages.
Why should we much care how they were acquired and provided to the publisher?
Lily , April 22, 2019 at 17:55
That is what i think. People should not concentrate on how, who and where. This is just a smokescreen to avoid talking about
the content of the emails and Hillary Clinton's disgusting actions. She is a criminal and a murderess just like Obama and Tony
Blair are lyers and mass murderers.
All three of them are free, earning millions with their publicity whereas two brave persons who were telling the truth have
been tortured and are still in jail. Reality has become like the most horrible nightmare. Everything simply seems to have turned
upside down. No writer would invent such a primitive plot. And yet it is the unbelievable reality.
Dump Pelousy , April 23, 2019 at 13:21
I totally agree with you, and in fact believe that this whole 22month expensive and mind numbing circus has been played out
JUST to keep the public from knowing what the emails actually said. Can you imagine Madcow focusing with such ferocity on John
Pedesta as she has on Putin, by discussing what he wrote during a presidential campaign to "influence the election" ? We'd be
a different country now, not fighting our way thru the McCarthite Swamp she helped create.
SBS broadcast a 4 part doco called The Fourth Estate in June last year. It's about the NYT unhealthy obsession with Trump.
Episode 1 begins with his swearing in and cuts to stunned(?) NYT staffers watching the speech in which he says "For too long,
our politicians have prospered while (blah blah blah) and this stops, right here, and right now."
From then on it consists of an endless stream of huddles as various groups of staffers ponder the best way to spin various 'angles'
and approaches, or solo senior staffers pontificating on all manner of hypotheticals. There are lots of opinionated people working
at the NYT and none of them is 'stupid'.
I recorded Episode 1 and my conclusion from watching it is that NOTHING the NYT publishes is accidental. I began recording Episode
2 but aborted the mission after 30 minutes or so because the repetitive self-worship and drivel was eerily similar to Episode
1.
Wikipedia has an entry devoted to the series and it's freely available on the www. I recommend watching the first few minutes
of Episode 1 just to get a feeling for the tone.
The cartoon in question was published in an International Edition as a gloat or a public (private) joke, imo. I remain unconvinced
that the Editorial Staff at the Jew York Times was blissfully unaware that the cartoon 'might' create an opportunity for the "Anti-Semitism!!?"
crowd to stir up, and capitalise upon, the ensuing indignation and outrage.
In case after case, Maddow and others in corporate media used crafted language that was
speculation designed to appear as cold hard facts to the the viewer. This was no only bad
reporting, It was a conspiracy of sorts. Maddow regularly would say, "If Russia did this, it
would be an attack on the US..." Leaving the viewer with the impression that "Russia did
this!". Then she would go to stir the cauldron for war.. This rises to the level of a
crime.
Since when is Hilary Clinton on the left? Since when are the are e-mails of the democratic
party protected government secrets? Are the Afghanistan and Iraq war logs important? Is it
strange that after 18 long years of war there is no anti-war movement? Are the people
reporting on Cable News real journalists? Well done Aaron and Chris!
democrats would rather Turmp be president than Bernie, they will throw the election before
they let Bernie create change... but then even if he is elected, it wont do much good with
corporate shills in congress in senate
I enjoy listening to Aaron, a person of integrity and also a down to earth, interesting
journalist who has worked hard to uncover the truth on this subject and knows it backwards
and forwards. I like when he can't help but laugh at certain absurdities in mainstream media
coverage of Russiagate.
I've got to admit,I get a massive dopamine rush hearing these two
sane, intelligent, critical thinkers, skillfully dissect this convoluted quadrafuck that has
wasted some much of our precious time. I literally feel washed clean for a
moment.
You can count the number of real journalists left in the US on two hands. Here are two of
the best and the bravest. Thank you, RT, for providing us with a platform for real
journalists.
as an outsider.....i view the whole thing as a smokescreen...........keeping people
occupied while planning & carrying out worse things that are being done in the
dark..........
Aaron Mate's courageous stance regarding Palestinians deserves all my respect and support.
His analysts of Rusiagate and all the fanfare associated with the so called investigations
seems most accurate.
Journalist Aaron Mate has eviscerated MSNBC's Rachel Maddow for peddling "Trump-Russia
conspiracy theories, falsehoods & innuendo," after Maddow threw a tantrum when YouTube
dared to recommend an RT video. Mate, a longtime skeptic of the mainstream media's beloved
'Russiagate' narrative, was the subject of a recent interview with RT. When MSNBC's
Russiagater-in-chief Rachel Maddow found out that YouTube's algorithm had actually suggested
the interview to viewers, she saw more Russian meddling and proclaimed the recommendation
"death by algorithm."
Death by algorithm. "YouTube recommended Russia Today for understanding Mueller report."
https://t.co/q6McajcNo3
Mate unloaded on Maddow on Sunday, systematically destroying the MSNBC host for her two
years as "the leading purveyor of now debunked Trump-Russia conspiracy theories, falsehoods
& innuendo." Buckle up.
1/ If YouTube were to recommend your show, it'd be recommending the leading purveyor of
now debunked Trump-Russia conspiracy theories, falsehoods & innuendo of the last 2+
years. Here's a sample:
"Just recently you were caught in real-time lying to your audience," he began.
"You claimed Barr was handling the redactions by himself. But the chyron -- on screen right
below -- told viewers the truth, that Mueller was in fact 'assisting' w/ the
redactions."
2/ Just recently you were caught in real-time lying to your audience. You claimed Barr was
handling the redactions by himself. But the chyron -- on screen right below -- told viewers
the truth, that Mueller was in fact "assisting" w/ the redactions: pic.twitter.com/rTSAABngp2
With Maddow seemingly content to lie on live television, it fell upon her show's producers
to flash the truth on viewers' screens.
Mate then recalled the time Maddow suggested that Russian President Vladimir Putin would use
the 'pee tape' (the most far-fetched allegation in the Democrat-commissioned, internet-sourced Steele
dossier) to force Trump into withdrawing US troops stationed near Russia. Of course, this never
happened, and Trump recently announced plans to ramp up deployments to Poland. A swing and a
miss for Maddow.
3/ There was that time in Jan 2017 when you speculated that Putin may use the pee tape
& other kompromat to force Trump into withdrawing US troops near Russia. How did that one
turn out? pic.twitter.com/XuXXagyCNb
Maddow contradicted herself on the 'pee tape' only last week, telling viewers she
"refused" to let herself "think about" the possibility of these tapes
existing.
4/ BTW, just last week you falsely said that "the one thing I refused to let myself think
about" was that Putin had tapes of Trump -- the very prospect you had previously floated to
posit that Putin may blackmail Trump into withdrawing troops. pic.twitter.com/xMC4uPrjSK
"Who could forget that time this past winter when you seized on life-threatening cold
temperatures to fear-monger that Russia could kill Americans by knocking out their heat?"
Mate continued, mocking Maddow's claim that the Kremlin could "kill the power" and
freeze Americans to death.
5/ Who could forget that time this past winter when you seized on life-threatening cold
temperatures to fear-monger that Russia could kill Americans by knocking out their heat?
pic.twitter.com/deo2H4SBBQ
"There was that time when you explored the scenario under which Putin 'gives orders' to
his puppet Trump at an upcoming meeting," Mate continued. "Do you think Putin ordered
Trump to stage a coup in Venezuela/try to kill the German-Russia gas pipeline/nix the INF
treaty?"
6/ There was that time when you explored the scenario under which Putin "gives orders" to
his puppet Trump at an upcoming meeting. Do you think Putin ordered Trump to stage a coup in
Venezuela/try to kill the German-Russia gas pipeline/nix the INF treaty? pic.twitter.com/cbSrGt2xR3
Mate ridiculed Maddow for suggesting that the Trump campaign set aside funds to pay for the
services of "Russian hackers."
7/ How about that time when you speculated -- citing the Steele dossier -- that Cohen
billed Trump $50k for "tech services" to pay off Russian hackers? It was actually to pay a US
firm ( https://t.co/GGK6FQLvRJ ).
pic.twitter.com/TcqdN8mC4z
And that the existence of an Albanian Bernie Sanders fan page on Facebook was an act of
"international warfare against our country."
14/ Looking back, do you think maybe that declaring that a fake Bernie Sanders fan page
run out of Albania amounted to "international warfare against our country" was perhaps a
little hyperbolic? pic.twitter.com/5Meg0xLNqg
Despite peddling baseless conspiracies and flagrant Russophobia every night, Maddow remains
one of the US' most popular news anchors, and one of the best paid. The MSNBC host regularly
vies with Fox News' Sean Hannity for the top spot on the cable news ratings, and earns a cool
$7 million per year for her work.
Although Maddow has been perhaps the most fervent promoter of Russiagate hysteria on
television, her ratings have clumped after Special Counsel Robert Mueller's report put most of
her theories to bed last month. Maddow's show slipped from its number one position after the
report dropped, and lost half a million
viewers in the space of a week.
Mate, although reporting to a far smaller audience, has received an Izzy Award for his
"meticulous reporting" that "challenged the way the public was being informed about
the Mueller investigation."
While the MSM peddled tin-foil Trump-Russia collusion conspiracies for more than two years, one pundit
in particular stands head-and-shoulders above the rest;
MSNBC'
s Rachel Maddow.
Night after night Maddow told lie after lie - promising her viewers Trump was
finally,
actually, definitely
finished for one reason or another.
Maddow's propaganda rants are too numerous to count - however
The Nation
's Aaron Maté is
currently in the middle of a
devastating Twitter takedown
highlighting some of the
MSNBC
anchor's
most pathetic attempts to delegitimize the sitting president of the United States - after Maddow
tweeted a
Washington Post
article about YouTube recommending an
RT
interview
with Maté
.
"... "Death by algorithm," a despondent Maddow commented. The video in question – an episode of On Contact, which is hosted by Pulitzer prize-winning American journalist Chris Hedges – features an interview with Canadian journalist Aaron Mate. A fierce critic of the Trump-Russia collusion theory promoted by mainstream media, Mate recently received an Izzy Award for his contrarian reporting on Russiagate. ..."
"... While Maddow was apparently horrified by the thought of impressionable Americans watching a video of two acclaimed journalists discussing current events, others were more perturbed by the MSNBC host's melodramatic tweeting. ..."
"... Actually, the entire premise of Maddow's outrage is highly suspect. The Washington Post report quietly notes that the RT video in question has accumulated "only about 55,000 views," and that the interview was by far from the most recommended Mueller-related video. "The Late Show With Stephen Colbert" was recommended more than five million times, WaPo reported, while other channels, such as Fox and PBS NewsHour, received hundreds of thousands of recommendations for their Russiagate videos. ..."
"... In fact, the Washington Post story was so shaky that it had to issue a clickbait-deflating correction: An earlier version of their report had erroneously claimed that YouTube had recommended RT's take on the Mueller report more often than other networks' programming. ..."
Russiagate guru Rachel Maddow has caught wind of the latest Kremlin-linked outrage: YouTube recommended an RT video about the
Mueller report! And now social media users have lined up to laugh at her.
The MSNBC host ascended her Twitter pulpit to share a shocking Washington Post article
detailing how YouTube allegedly recommended an RT video "hundreds of thousands of times" to users seeking information
about the recently released report by special counsel Robert Mueller.
Death by algorithm. "YouTube recommended Russia Today for understanding Mueller report."
https://t.co/q6McajcNo3
"Death by algorithm," a despondent Maddow commented. The video in question – an episode of On Contact, which is hosted
by Pulitzer prize-winning American journalist Chris Hedges – features an interview with Canadian journalist Aaron Mate. A fierce
critic of the Trump-Russia collusion theory promoted by mainstream media, Mate recently received an Izzy Award for his contrarian
reporting on Russiagate.
While Maddow was apparently horrified by the thought of impressionable Americans watching a video of two acclaimed journalists
discussing current events, others were more perturbed by the MSNBC host's melodramatic tweeting.
"This YouTube [video] is so much better than the war mongering conspiracy lunacy that comes from you. You should be
ashamed to smear good people & good content in such a base & McCarthyite way," replied one disappointed Twitter user.
Chris Hedges won a Pulitzer prize, Aaron Maté just won an Izzy. This YouTube is so much better than the war mongering conspiracy
lunacy that comes from you. You should be ashamed to smear good people & good content in such a base & McCarthyite way.
Others took issue with Maddow's bizarre suggestion that YouTube's algorithm could somehow bring about "death."
"'Death?' No one's lives were threatened by a conversation between two award winning journalists about the massive disinformation
campaign you're waged on the minds of suggestible Democrats. But they are endangered by the Cold War you've helped to stir up,"
Max Blumenthal, editor of the Grayzone Project, noted.
"Death?" No one's lives were threatened by a conversation between two award winning journalists about the massive disinformation
campaign you're waged on the minds of suggestible Democrats. But they are endangered by the Cold War you've helped to stir up.
https://t.co/Z0lQlGjHQS
Mate himself joined the chorus of criticism directed at Maddow.
"I was interviewed on RT by the Pulitzer-winning journalist Chris Hedges about Russiagate. YouTube recommended it. How fitting
then that the leading Russiagate conspiracy theorist calls this 'death by algorithm' – to a propagandist, dissent from orthodoxy
is 'death' indeed," he wrote.
I was interviewed on RT by the Pulitzer-winning journalist Chris Hedges about Russiagate. YouTube recommended it. How fitting
then that the leading Russiagate conspiracy theorist calls this "Death by algorithm" -- to a propagandist, dissent from orthodoxy
is "Death" indeed: https://t.co/dFa8B815js
Actually, the entire premise of Maddow's outrage is highly suspect. The Washington Post report quietly notes that the RT video
in question has accumulated "only about 55,000 views," and that the interview was by far from the most recommended Mueller-related
video. "The Late Show With Stephen Colbert" was recommended more than five million times, WaPo reported, while other channels,
such as Fox and PBS NewsHour, received hundreds of thousands of recommendations for their Russiagate videos.
To make matters even less scary, YouTube disputed the article's core claims, which were originally made by media watchdog group
AlgoTransparency. YouTube said it could not reproduce the group's data allegedly showing that the RT video had been recommended hundreds
of thousands of times by the site's algorithm.
In fact, the Washington Post story was so shaky that it had to issue a clickbait-deflating correction: An earlier version
of their report had erroneously claimed that YouTube had recommended RT's take on the Mueller report more often than other networks'
programming.
WaPo runs with this fabricated imperial xenophobia -- all while contradicting and correcting its own claims!
As Blumenthal observed, the WaPo story appears to be yet another tired attempt to shame anyone who doesn't regurgitate narratives
promoted by US corporate media.
The real problems with the @aaronjmate interview
are identified in the body of the article:
1. It contains content that offends professional Cold Warriors and Russiagate hustlers
2. It was not published by a "verified" (read: US-approved corporate or mainstream) news source
pic.twitter.com/Sn87ZUUvkZ
"... Now, conflating any individual with Russia, will always immediately result in that person becoming, in the US, in the U.K. and in other US-kept vassal nations totally tarred with all sorts of nefarious and always unexamined assumptions. ..."
"... Mark Twain once suggested that the deity created war that USians might learn geography. Clearly, it is a laborious process and has failed to create much global geographical awareness among the millions, most of whom are content to think whatever nation is correctly being ministered to or in the sights of "everything is on the table" as simply being, vaguely, "over there". ..."
"... Thanks to the intelligence community, the political elite, notably in the Democratic "wing" of the War Party, but with the support of the Republican wing of that party, and certain individual players aligned with the US policy "Full Spectrum Dominance" which, of course, is compassionate goodness and not to be confused with the vile aims of Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, Venezuela, Cuba, and a whole host of other "bad guy" nations or amorphous groups known as "terrorists. ..."
"... Clearly, the consensus opinion is shaped, not inside the minds of millions of people, all projecting their very worst fears or even their own worst proclivities on individuals like Putin or whoever is the "Hitler" of the convenient moment, but rather on the efforts of, let us call them "entities" who plan to benefit from a populous aroused to anxiety or even fear itself. ..."
"... The list of beneficiaries includes the financial elites who always profit from war and "confusion", the political elites who serve those monied interests, the media, academia, the military, intelligence, weapons manufacturers, energy producers, military contractors and so on. ..."
When vilification occurs a very necessary question that critical thought must ponder is
who benefits from such scapegoating?
However, for the moment, let us ponder, again in service to actual critical thought, why
aligning Assange with Russia is expected by those who will and intend to benefit from that
association. Why is suggesting that Assange is "a Russian agent" expected to convince
millions of USians that Assange is "a bad person"?
Why would millions accept that assertion without questioning it at all?
Caitlin suggest that those millions are "herd animals", implying that they are led into
believing two things. The first is that Russia and the Russian people are "bad", we have even
recently had a much trusted official suggest that Russians are "genetically" predisposed to
badness with a malignant tendency to single out the innocent, and one indispensable nation,
the United States for the most nefarious of Russian "interventions", amounting, according to
a famous Hollywood actor, who occasionally portrays a certain deity in the movies, to "an
attack".
In the meager interest of context and history, stretching back a bit more than a century,
some USians who are aware of that history, recognize that the US, under President Woodrow
Wilson sent US military troops into Russia in order to end the rise of the Bolshevik
rebellion/revolution.
Thus began the official demonization of Russia. A demonization very convenient to the
necessity of having an implacable enemy always ready to pounce on the good, moral,
humanitarian, and freely enterprising United States.
Now, conflating any individual with Russia, will always immediately result in that person
becoming, in the US, in the U.K. and in other US-kept vassal nations totally tarred with all
sorts of nefarious and always unexamined assumptions.
Mark Twain once suggested that the deity created war that USians might learn geography.
Clearly, it is a laborious process and has failed to create much global geographical
awareness among the millions, most of whom are content to think whatever nation is correctly
being ministered to or in the sights of "everything is on the table" as simply being,
vaguely, "over there".
That is why the US must strike "them" "over there" so as to avoid the frightening thought
of having "them" have to be dealt with "here" in the "Homeland" of "the free and the
brave".
This suggests that the "herd" has to be led to certain conclusions.
Unlike horses, the herd HAS to drink.
If the herd does not consume the elixir, then it may not be willing to joyfully send the
"flower of its youth" off to become cannon fodder should the Table of Everything so
demand.
I grew up in the nineteen fifties when the first Cold War was in full blossom. We school
students were told and taught that Russia hated us, wanted to attack and kill us all,
intended to rule the world with an iron hand and ruthless godlessness.
Thanks to the intelligence community, the political elite, notably in the Democratic
"wing" of the War Party, but with the support of the Republican wing of that party, and
certain individual players aligned with the US policy "Full Spectrum Dominance" which, of
course, is compassionate goodness and not to be confused with the vile aims of Russia, China,
Iran, North Korea, Venezuela, Cuba, and a whole host of other "bad guy" nations or amorphous
groups known as "terrorists.
Now, by tying Assange to that hodge-podge of baddies, the many may rest assured that he
has been put in his proper place.
Clearly, the consensus opinion is shaped, not inside the minds of millions of people, all
projecting their very worst fears or even their own worst proclivities on individuals like
Putin or whoever is the "Hitler" of the convenient moment, but rather on the efforts of, let
us call them "entities" who plan to benefit from a populous aroused to anxiety or even fear
itself.
The list of beneficiaries includes the financial elites who always profit from war and
"confusion", the political elites who serve those monied interests, the media, academia, the
military, intelligence, weapons manufacturers, energy producers, military contractors and so
on.
Assange, to his great and everlasting credit, exposed a very large amount of this
including, with the invaluable efforts
of Chelsea Manning, actual war crimes perpetrated by the US, even beyond beginning wars based
on lies.
Fortunately, the media, having overplayed it hand in the manipulation has exposed itself
to many as being but a propaganda industry.
A very real question for those concerned with engaging critical thought processes is just
how many humans are still being led, rather easily, around by the fallacious and very
dangerous concoctions of the opinion "shapers" in think tanks, media echo chambers, corporate
boardrooms, and academic snake pits?
Perhaps there comes a time for humanity, if it is not to trot along in the footsteps of
the dodo bird to look not where the fingers of deceit are pointing, but at those to whom the
fingers are attached?
AnneR , April 22, 2019 at 09:33
DWB – as a USian of English birth (of about the same age, I would imagine) I am
amazed at the fear the US had of the USSR back in the 1950s. When my husband told me, in the
1980s, about how he and his schoolmates had had nuclear air raid attack drills (sheltering
under desks and so on!) I'm sure that I gawped, fly-catchingly. What??? Nowt remotely similar
occurred in the UK during the 1950s in schools or elsewhere.
It was only since I began studying history (late in life) that I learnt that the British
ruling elites have hated the Russians for well over a hundred years. Still not quite sure
why, nor yet why whatever the Russians did (Crimean War in the 1850s?) that pissed them off
so royally should have any bearing on Russia-UK relations nowadays. But that could be because
I'm dim. And because I've no hatred, dislike, fear of Russians (or Chinese or Iranians) at
all. My fears revolve around the hubris-arrogance and determination to retain economic and
more general world domination by the US and its poodles in the UK-FR-NATO and Israel (though
their status as dog or leash is debatable). These are the countries to be afraid of.
Sam F , April 22, 2019 at 20:34
Yes, the remarkably unprovoked hatred of Russia among the UK aristocracy, regardless of
era or government there, is a great wonder. They did not even have eras of invasion threats,
colonial competition, or competing navies, as with France, Spain, and Portugal. Britain's
19th century invasions of Afghanistan were apparently provoked by nothing but fear, and their
several lost wars there apparently did not even engage Russians. Even complete transitions of
Russian government from monarchy to communism to capitalism failed to affect UK's fears. If
the cause were mere cultural difference, they would have feared the orient.
Perhaps their aristocracy was not polite enough, or those backwards Ns, upside down Rs,
and Pi symbols terrified the British.
geeyp , April 22, 2019 at 23:49
Anne R. – For more on your second paragraph, visit Larouchepac.org The late Lyndon
Larouche's site has a lot of info on this.
Zhu , April 23, 2019 at 00:50
Britain & Russia were rivals for empire. Both were expanding in Asia – The Great
Game. Russia got Turkestan, Britain got India, both wanted China. Hence the elite's hatred,
although now it's probably traditional and automatic.
Keep studying history – it's ales ts enlightening!
AnneR , April 23, 2019 at 09:22
Yes Zhu – I do continue with history, although of course no historian and thus
history is ever free (as with all scholars) of their personal worldview. And yes I realize
that the UK, when an imperial power, viewed the world pretty much as the US does now: its
domain. So obviously any and all contenders were up for vitriolic loathing and war. But it
still doesn't explain the particularly vicious attitude toward Russia on the part of the
British ruling elites. After all the Brits also had France, Holland and Germany (earlier
Spain and Portugal) as competitors, admittedly at different time periods, and no they weren't
"liked" and were often at war with each other. But there was never the same bitterness toward
western European rivals as there was and continues to be toward Russia.
That the USSR provoked deep, undying hatred among the aristos and their hangers' on does
not surprise: can't have anything remotely similar happening in our cushy backyard, can't
have the unwashed, ignorant, prole herd actually learning any lessons from the Soviets.
Yet even so – no nuclear air raid drills in schools or anywhere during red-baiting
season. Nothing kindred.
The truth is Hillary Clinton, John Brennan, Rachel Maddow, and the rest if the Scooby Doo
gang handed Agent Orange the victimhood script he needs to feed his Trumpets to win the 2020
election.
They've also guaranteed no matter what heinous gangster scam shit he has done in the past
or will do in the future, none of it will stick because he'll play the falsely accused
card.
For the idiot Americans watching White House reality TV at home, this means celebrity
Trump now has immunity and can't be voted off the island this season or next.
Assange publishes hacks from Snowden, Manning, and Russia. Do they publish anything on
Russia?
Nope.
Assange and you are tools of Russia. Obvious to anyone
Skip Scott , April 22, 2019 at 12:01
Ah yes, the evil Rooskies.
From the article you obviously didn't read:
In fact, WikiLeaks has published hundreds of thousands of documents pertaining to Russia,
has made critical comments about the Russian government and defended dissident Russian
activists, and in 2017 published an entire trove called the Spy Files Russia exposing Russian
surveillance practices.
"The only people claiming that Assange is a Russian agent are those who are unhappy with
the things that WikiLeaks publications have exposed, whether that be U.S. war crimes or the
corrupt manipulations of Democratic Party leaders."
Perhaps fuller understanding would be gained by considering the following pathway.
People who who think that "Assange is a Russian agent" is a plausible belief are the
audience encouraged in the view that "Assange is a Russian agent".
Much of this notion of plausible belief is founded on the creation of holograms consisting
in large part of projections of the believer's expectations/experiences of the evaluation
criteria used in choosing agents to recruit (for the public largely projected from their
experience of creating resumes and attending job interviews) , what motivates an agent to be
recruited, how such motivation can facilitate the purpose of the recruiter of the agent, what
are the potential dangers of recruiting the agent, and most importantly what is the purpose
of and reasons why the recruiter considers recruiting an agent to achieve her/his
purpose.
On projection catalysing plausible belief you will be aware that some encourage the belief
that Mr. Putin is the richest man on the planet since in all societies there are
assumptions/expectations on motivations.
However in the presently self-designated "The United States of America" as functions of
"exceptionalism", "we the people hold these truths to be self-evident" and lack of direct
experience of foreign cultures by many, the population are particulrly prone to projection
giving rise to the paradox of "exceptionalists" engaging in the them/us conflation.
SBS broadcast a 4 part doco called The Fourth Estate in June last year. It's about the NYT unhealthy obsession with Trump.
Episode 1 begins with his swearing in and cuts to stunned(?) NYT staffers watching the speech in which he says "For too long,
our politicians have prospered while (blah blah blah) and this stops, right here, and right now."
From then on it consists of an endless stream of huddles as various groups of staffers ponder the best way to spin various 'angles'
and approaches, or solo senior staffers pontificating on all manner of hypotheticals. There are lots of opinionated people working
at the NYT and none of them is 'stupid'.
I recorded Episode 1 and my conclusion from watching it is that NOTHING the NYT publishes is accidental. I began recording Episode
2 but aborted the mission after 30 minutes or so because the repetitive self-worship and drivel was eerily similar to Episode
1.
Wikipedia has an entry devoted to the series and it's freely available on the www. I recommend watching the first few minutes
of Episode 1 just to get a feeling for the tone.
The cartoon in question was published in an International Edition as a gloat or a public (private) joke, imo. I remain unconvinced
that the Editorial Staff at the Jew York Times was blissfully unaware that the cartoon 'might' create an opportunity for the "Anti-Semitism!!?"
crowd to stir up, and capitalise upon, the ensuing indignation and outrage.
"... Significantly, Google CEO Sundar Pichai testified to the U.S. House Judiciary Committee hearing on December 11th, 2018 that "ad accounts linked to Russia" spent about $4,700 in advertising" to politically influence Americans during the 2016 presidential election season. ..."
The Mueller Report is now public, and our Mainstream Media have filled the airways with all sorts of commentaries and interpretations.
We know that - despite the very best efforts of the dedicated Leftist attorneys on Special Counsel Robert Mueller's staff - there
was absolutely no coordination between members of the Trump campaign, or any of his staffers, with Russians. No additional charges
have come as a result, other than accusations made earlier of "process crimes" (e.g. failure to report earnings on tax forms, failure
to report lobbying work, or not telling investigators what they demanded to hear -- "crimes" that practically every politician in
Washington has been guilty of at one time or another and would normally not cause much of a stir). None of these involved Russia.
Of course, that finding has not satisfied many Democrats or the unhinged Leftist crazies in the media, who continue to have visions
of "collusion" -- a kind of communications Alzheimers that has poisoned our media now for years. Thus, Representative Eric Swalwell
(who is one of nearly two dozen Democrats running for president) continues to assert that there was "collusion," as does the irrepressible
(and irresponsible) Adam Schiff: "it's there in plain sight," they insist, "if you just look hard enough, and maybe squint just a
bit -- or maybe have those specialized 3-D Russia glasses!"
Such political leaders -- along with those further out in the Leftist loonysphere like Representatives Maxine Waters and Alexandra
Ocasio-Cortes -- continue down their Primrose path of post-Marxist madness.
But beyond the collusion/coordination issue, the past couple of weeks have been filled with a swirling controversy concerning
what is called "obstruction of justice." And once again, the fundamental issues have been incredibly politicized. Special Counsel
Robert Mueller had an obligation, if he and his minions discovered "obstruction of justice," that is, concerted and illegal attempts
to obstruct the investigations by the president or his staff, to present charges to the Department of Justice. Yet, all he was able
to do was assemble a farrago of "he said/she said" instances, none of which rose to the level of criminal activity. Apparently President
Trump told a subaltern "I wish would you fire Mueller," or he wished in a speech in his joking style that "if the Russians had Hillary's
emails, they would release them," or he had a private conversation with Vladimir Putin when they met (as all national leaders do!),
or his son met with a Russian attorney who supposedly had some "dirt" on the Hillary Clinton campaign (which did not turn out to
be the reason for the Trump Tower meeting at all).
None of the ten or eleven cited instances came anywhere close to being actionable or criminal under settled law. In each instance
cited, the president's actions (or desires) fell within his purview and authority under Article II of the Constitution. And regarding
Trump's desire to fire Mueller, he was on solid legal ground; the Supreme Court in its 1997 decision, Edmonds vs. the United States
, declared that "inferior" officials, including an independent counsel, could be removed by presidential action as part of
his delegated powers . And, in any case, Mueller
was not dismissed.
Mueller had an obligation after examining these situations to make a finding; he did not. By so doing, by avoiding decisions and
stringing out such instances in an obviously political sense, he abdicated his responsibility and did his best to impugn Donald Trump
and his administration and thus offer grist for continued Democrat attacks on the president all the way through the 2020 election.
Mueller left it up to the Attorney General William Barr and Congress to decide how to proceed. And that is where we are today.
The one issue that both Democrats and most Republicans seem to agree on, the issue which both say is "proven conclusively" by
Mueller is that the Russians "attempted to interfere and did interfere" in our 2016 election.
Interesting, is it not, that the Republicans who zealously defend the president and attack the obviously political nature of the
Mueller Report would accept, as if on faith and without question, the accusations of Russian interference, also contained in the
report?
Turn on Fox and watch, say, Martha MacCallum (e.g., "The Story," April 24, 2019) declare "we all know now without doubt that the
Russians tried to interfere" in our elections, or listen to most any GOP congressman repeat that same narrative with unquestioning
certitude.
But that assertion - is it truly backed up factually? Where is the evidence, other than largely questionable information sourced
from our largely discredited intelligence agencies which, as we know, had a determined goal of overthrowing the president by any
means possible?
Almost three years have passed from the first fake news that appeared in the media on the subject of "Russian collusion," a concerted
effort launched to discredit at first the Donald Trump candidacy and then sabotage his presidency, including his efforts to stabilize
Russian-American relations.
As proof of Russian actions, the Mueller Report cites the indictments against twenty-five Russian citizens who were indicted for
attempted "interference" (those Russians are, let us add, quite conveniently out of the country and thus not prosecutable). When
those indictments were issued, Russia pointed out the flimsy, unsupported and transparently made-up nature of the charges, and demanded
that American authorities provide conclusive proof. Such requests were rebuffed.
In order to evaluate the evidence, the Russian government proposed reestablishing the bilateral expert group on information security
that the Obama Administration had terminated, which could have served as a platform for conversation on these matters. The American
side was also invited to send Justice Department officials to Russia to attend the proposed public questioning of the Russian citizens
named by Mueller. Additionally, Russia offered to publicize the exchanges between the two countries following the publication of
the accusations of cyberattacks, exchanges which were conducted through existing channels between October 2016 and January 2017.
Our government refused every offer.
A careful analysis, in fact, fails to show any substantial evidence of Russian cyberattacks and attempts to "subvert democracy."
By some estimates, possibly $160,000 -- a paltry sum -- was spent by the Russians during 2016 on social media activities in the United
States. Does anyone wish to discover and compare the amount the Chinese Communists or the Saudis would have expended during the same
period, for their continued influence and power in Washington and inside-the-Beltway?
It is helpful to examine the charges that have been made, some included in the Mueller Report and accepted blindly by most pundits
and politicians, both on the Left and by establishment conservatives.
The Russian government, via their embassy in Washington, has published
a 120 page "white paper,"
The Russiagate Hysteria: A Case of Severe Russiaphobia , responding to the accusations made against them since 2016. Obviously,
the Russian document has a particular viewpoint and very specific goal, but that should not deter us from examining it and evaluating
its arguments. (I have written on Russia and its relations with the United States on a number of occasions since 2015 and had pieces
published by The Unz Review , Communities Digital News , and elsewhere.
On my blog , "MY CORNER by Boyd Cathey," I have authored
a dozen columns addressing this question).
Here following I list twenty-one claims made regarding Russian interference in the 2016 election and in American domestic affairs.
I follow each claim with the Russian response and how others, as noted, have also responded. In most cases I retain the original
text, at times with my editing, but, in every case, with all the referenced sources.
These twenty-one claims should be examined more closely and more calmly, and the "Russophobic" hysteria we have experienced during
the past several years needs to be put aside for the sake of rational investigative inquiry -- and discovering how the Managerial
State and global elites have attempted a "silent coup" against what's left of our republic.
These claims and the responses deserve respectful consideration and detailed responses:
CLAIM: Russia "meddled" in the U.S. elections by conducting influence operations, including through social media.
FACT
All of the claims of Russian trolls that surfaced over the last few years (such as Russians using the Pokémon Go mobile
game and sex toy ads
to meddle in the elections
– ) are so preposterous and contradictory that they virtually disprove themselves.
Not to mention the absurdity of the whole notion of 13 persons and 3 organizations (whichever country they might represent)
charged on February 16, 2018, by Robert Mueller with criminally interfering with the elections, affecting in any way electoral
processes in a country of more than 300 million people.
It is telling that when pressed about the scope of the alleged influence campaign, representatives of American social media
companies give numbers, that even if they were valid (and there's no evidence of a connection to the Russian government), are
so minuscule as to be basically non-existent. For example, Facebook has identified 3,000 Russia-linked ads costing a total
of about $100,000. That's a
miniscule number of ads
and a fraction of Facebook's revenues, which totaled $28 billion. Facebook estimates that 126 million people might – the
emphasis is on the word "might" – have seen this content. But this number represents just 0.004% of the content those people
saw on the Facebook platform.
Significantly, Google CEO Sundar Pichai
testified
to the U.S. House Judiciary Committee hearing on December 11th, 2018 that "ad accounts linked to Russia" spent
about $4,700 in advertising" to politically influence Americans during the 2016 presidential election season.
To further cast doubt on the allegations, an American watchdog group "Campaign for Accountability" ("CFA") admitted on September
4th, 2018, that it deliberately posted propaganda materials on Google disguised as "Russian hackers from the Internet Research
Agency" to check how they would be filtered for "foreign interference". Google officials then accused the CFA as having ties
to a rival tech company "Oracle". In other words,
corporate intrigues disguised
as "Russian interference".
As American media has admitted, out of several dozen pre-election rallies supposedly organized by Russians, Special Counsel
Mueller mentions in his indictment that only a couple actually appear to have successfully attracted anyone, and those that
did were sparsely attended and, almost without exception, in deep-red enclaves that
would have voted for Trump anyway
.
Amidst all the hysteria about the alleged Russian meddling it is worth reading various research studies which show, quoting
"The Washington Post", that it is Americans, in particular our intelligence service,
that peddle disinformation
and hate speech.
According to Graham Brookie, director of the Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research Lab, the scale and scope of domestic
disinformation is much larger than any foreign influence operation. And academics from the Harvard's Shorenstein Center on
Media, Politics and Public Policy document in their study that there had been major spikes in outright fabrication and misleading
information proliferating online before the 2018 U.S. election. A "significant portion" of the disinformation appeared to come
from Americans, not foreigners, the Harvard researchers said.
CLAIM:Russian hackers accessed computer servers of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and leaked materials through Wikileaks
and other intermediaries
FACT
As President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin noted in his interview with NBC on June 5, 2017, when flatly denying
any allegations of Russia interfering in internal affairs of the U.S., that today's technology is such that the final internet
address can be masked and camouflaged to an extent that no one will be able to understand the origin of that address. It is possible
to set up any entity that may indicate one source when, in fact,
the source is completely different .
No evidence has been presented linking Russia to leaked emails. In fact, there are credible studies arguing that DNC servers
are much more likely to have been breached by someone with immediate and physical access. In 2017 a group of former officers of
the U.S. intelligence community, members of the "Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity" (VIPS), met with then-CIA Director
Mike Pompeo to present their findings.
Another counterargument to the "Russian hackers" claim is that the DNC files published by Wikileaks were initially stored under
the FAT (File Allocation System) method which is not related to internet transfers and can only be forwarded to an external device
such as a thumb drive.
It is also suspicious that the DNC prohibited the FBI from examining the servers. Instead, a third-party tech firm was hired,
"Crowd Strike", which is known for peddling the "Russian interference" claims. And soon enough it, indeed, announced that "Russian
malware" has been found, but again no solid evidence was produced.
According to the respected former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter,
the indictment by the Mueller
team on July 13, 2018 of the 12 supposed Russian operatives was
a politically motivated fraud . As Ritter explains, Mueller seems to have borrowed his list from an organizational chart of
a supposed Russian military intelligence unit, contained in a classified document from the NSA titled "Spear-Phishing Campaign
TTPs Used Against U.S. And Foreign Government Political Entities", which
was published by The Intercept online. As stated in that document, this is just a subjective judgement, not a known fact.
Ritter concludes, that this is a far cry from the kind of incontrovertible proof that Mueller's team suggests as existing to support
its indictment.
Moreover, it is telling that the indictment
was released just before the
meeting between President Putin and Trump in Helsinki on July 16, 2018, seemingly as if the aim was to intentionally derail the
bilateral summit.
CLAIM: Donald Trump colluded with Russia in the 2016 U.S. Presidential elections.
FACT
As concluded in the summary of the Special Counsel Robert Mueller's report, the investigation did not find that the Trump campaign
or anyone associated with
it conspired
or coordinated with Russia
If the Mueller team, having all the resources of the U.S. government, after 22 months of work,
many millions
of dollars spent , more than 2800 subpoenas issued, nearly 500 search warrants and 500 witness interviews, didn't find any
evidence of "collusion", it is simply because there was never any. The whole claim of collusion was launched and peddled by the
same group of Democrats, liberal-leaning media and the so-called "Never Trump Republicans", as it became clear that Donald Trump
had real chances of winning the election. And later it morphed into a campaign to derail the newly-elected President agenda, including
his efforts to mitigate the damage done to U.S.-Russian relations.
CLAIM: Hacking of American political institutions was personally ordered by the Russian President Vladimir Putin.
FACT
This claim is based on nothing else but the infamous fraudulent
"Steele Dossier" , paid for by political opponents [i.e., the Hilary Clinton campaign] of Donald Trump, and
wild conjectures that "nothing in Russia happens without Putin's approval" .
Needless to say, zero proof is presented. By the same logic, nothing in the U.S. happens without the President's approval.
For example, is he also responsible for Edward Snowden? After all, Mr. Snowden was doing work for the U.S. intelligence services.
Or the deaths of all the civilians killed abroad by U.S. drone strikes? Every minute detail approved by the President?
CLAIM: Russia did not cooperate with the U.S. in tracing the source of the alleged hacking.
FACT
Russia has repeatedly offered to set up a professional and de-politicized dialogue on international information security only
to be rebuffed by the U.S. State Department. For instance, following the discussion between Presidents Vladimir Putin and Donald
Trump in Hamburg on July 7, 2017, Russia forwarded to the U.S. a proposal to reestablish a bilateral working group on cyber threats
which would have been a perfect medium to discuss American concerns. Moreover, during his meeting with Donald Trump in Helsinki
on July 17, 2018, Vladimir Putin offered to allow U.S. representatives to be present at an interrogation of the Russian citizens
who were previously accused by the office of Special Counsel Robert Mueller of
being guilty of electoral interference.
Furthermore, in February 2019 the Russian government suggested publishing bilateral correspondence on the subject of unsanctioned
access to U.S. electronic networks, which was conducted between Washington and Moscow through the Nuclear Threat Reduction Centers
in the period from October 2016 to the end of January 2017.
Needless to say, all Russian offers were rejected. A conclusion is naturally reached that American State Department officials
have little interest in hearing anything that contradicts their own narrative or the discredited version of the CIA.
CLAIM: Russia is interfering in elections all over the world
FACT
No credible evidence has been produced not only of Russia's supposed meddling in the U.S. political processes, but to support
similar allegations made by the U.S. in respect to other countries. For example, former National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster
insinuated that Russia was interfering in
the Mexican presidential elections of 2018. However, Mexican officials,
including
the president of the Mexican Senate Ernesto Cordero Arroyo, and Ambassador to Russia Norma Pensado
during a press conference in Moscow in February, 2018, debunked
this baseless claim.
Another example of fake news were reports saying that U.S.
was increasingly convinced that Russia hacked French election on May 9, 2017. However, on June 1, 2017, the head of the French
government's cyber security agency said no trace
was found of the claimed Russian hacking group behind the attack. On the other hand, the history of U.S. interfering in other
countries' elections
is well documented by American sources (see: ).
For example, a Carnegie Mellon scholar, Dov H. Levin, has scoured the historical record and
found 81 examples of U.S. election influence operations from 1946- to 2000. Often cited examples include Chile in 1964, Guyana
in 1968, Nicaragua in 1990, Yugoslavia in 2000, Afghanistan in 2009, Ukraine in 2014, not to mention Russia in 1996! And how else
could the current situation in Ukraine and Venezuela be described, with U.S. representative for Ukraine Kurt Volker openly pressuring
Ukrainian voters
to support the incumbent , and Washington
possibly plotting a
coup in Caracas?
CLAIM: The lawsuit of the Democratic National Committee against the Russian Federation related to "interference in the election"
has a legal standing.
FACT
The DNC filed a civil lawsuit on April 20, 2018 against the Russian Federation and other entities and individuals. Named as
defendants in the lawsuit are the Russian Federation; the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation (GRU); the
GRU operative using the pseudonym "Guccifer 2.0"; Aras Iskenerovich Agalarov; Emin Araz Agalarov; Joseph Mifsud; WikiLeaks; Julian
Assange; the Trump campaign (formally "Donald J. Trump for President, Inc."); Donald Trump, Jr.; Paul Manafort; Roger Stone; Jared
Kushner; George Papadopoulos; Richard W. Gates; and unnamed defendants sued as John Does 1–10. The DNC's complaint accuses the
Trump campaign of engaging in a racketeering enterprise in conjunction with Russia and WikiLeaks.
Even irrespective of the fact that there was no "interference" in the first place, the case has no legal standing. Exercise
of U.S. jurisdiction over the pending case with respect to the Russian Federation is a violation of the international law, specifically,
violation of jurisdictional immunities of the Russian Federation arising from the principle of the sovereign equality of states.
CLAIM: Russian Ambassador to the U.S. Sergey Kislyak was a spy.
FACT
In March of 2017 U.S. media
began libeling
Sergey Kislyak a "top spy and spy-recruiter" This preposterous claim was based on nothing but his contacts with Trump confidant
Senator Jeff Sessions – carrying out work any ambassador would do. Per the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations of 1961,
among core diplomatic functions is ascertaining
by all lawful means conditions
and developments in the receiving state, and that certainly includes openly meeting leaders of Congress on Capitol Hill. Even
former CIA Director John McLaughlin
noted that Mr. Kislyak is an experienced diplomat, not a spy.
CLAIM: Russian Embassy retreat in Maryland was an intelligence base
FACT.
Among the unlawful acts that U.S. administrations undertook was the expropriation of a legal Russian property in Maryland,
a summer retreat near the Chesapeake Bay under the pretext
it was used for intelligence gathering. But where is the supposed-treasure trove of alleged spy equipment that U.S. authorities
reportedly found there? Why not show them publicly to back up the claim? After the expropriation and the claims, not a word –
silence.
The retreat, "dacha" as Russians would call it, was bought by the former Soviet Union in 1972. Since then, it was used for
recreation, including hosting a children's summer camp and regularly entertaining American visitors. One of the more popular events
was the stop-over during the annual Chesapeake Regatta, completed with an expansive tour of the property. Presumably U.S. intelligence
services could have used this for years to inspect the property. Why was nothing ever mentioned before the Obama Administration
action?
CLAIM: The meeting in Trump Tower in New York on June 9, 2016 between Trump campaign officials and Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya
was to discuss compromising materials that Russian had on Hillary Clinton.
FACT
According
to testimony provided to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, Ms. Veselnitskaya focused on explaining the illicit activities
of U.S.-British investor Bill Browder, wanted in Russia for crimes, and brought attention to the adverse effects of the so-called
"Magnitskiy Act", adopted by U.S. Congress in 2012 and lobbied for by Browder.
CLAIM: Donald Trump's former lawyer, Michael Cohen, met with Russians in Prague to "collude".
FACT
It was reported in American media that the Justice Department special counsel had evidence that Donald Trump's personal lawyer,
Michael Cohen, secretly made a trip to Prague during the 2016 presidential campaign to meet with Russian representatives,
a fact also mentioned
in the discredited "Steele Dossier". This was given as further evidence of "collusion". But Cohen vehemently denied this –
under oath. Passport records
indicate
that he never was in Prague. He was actually on vacation with his son at the supposed time. Given that he publicly turned
on his former boss and still denied the fact of ever going to Prague disproves this claim further.
CLAIM: Former member of the Trump campaign team Carter Page was a Russian intelligence asset.
FACT
According to members of Congress and journalistic investigations, the redacted declassified documents of the U.S. Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Court (FISC, also called the FISA Court)
show that the main source used by U.S. counterintelligence to justify spying on Mr. Page was the fraudulent so-called "Steele
Dossier".
Thus, Mr. Page for obvious reasons was not accused by the team of Robert Mueller of being involved in a "Russian conspiracy".
CLAIM: On August 22, 2018, The Democratic National Committee filed a claim with the FBI, accusing the "Russian hackers" of
infiltrating its electoral database.
FACT
Several days later members of the Democratic Party
admitted that it was a "false alarm", as it was simply a security check-up performed at the initiative of the Democratic Party's
affiliate in Michigan.
CLAIM: On August 8, 2018 U.S. Senator Bill Nelson accused Russia of breaching the infrastructure of the voter registration
systems in several local election offices of Florida.
FACT
Florida's Department of State spokesperson, Sarah Revell, stated on August 9, 2018, that Florida's government had not received
any evidence from competent authorities that Florida's voting systems or election records had been compromised. The U.S. Department
of Homeland Security and the FBI also
could not confirm in any manner the accusations.
CLAIM: In September, 2017 the U.S. media, referring to the Department of Homeland Security, accused Russia of "cyberattacks"
on electoral infrastructure in 21 states during the 2016 U.S. Presidential elections.
FACT
On September 27, 2017, Wisconsin and California authorities stated that their electoral systems were not targeted by cyberattacks.
On November 12, 2017, the U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin said in a CBS interview that the "hackers' activity" had
no significant consequences and did not influence the outcome of the elections. And, indeed, the
source of those attacks was not clear.
CLAIM: Russia meddled in the Alabama 2017 Senate elections to help the Republican candidate.
FACT
Despite
the initial claims , it turned out that a group of Democratic tech experts decided to imitate so-called "Russian tactics"
in the fiercely contested Alabama Senate racе. Even more jarring is the fact that one participant in the "Alabama project", Jonathon
Morgan, is chief executive of "New Knowledge", a cyber security firm that
wrote a scathing account
of Russia's social media operations in the 2016 election that was released in 2018 by the Senate Intelligence Committee. Once
again, we have one of the main private sector players in hyping the Russian threat caught red-handed.
CLAIM: Paul Manafort, Donald Trump's presidential campaign chairman, was a secret link to Russian intelligence.
FACT
Trump's former campaign chairman was hit with two indictments from Mueller's office. However, even as American media notes,
both cases have nothing to do with Russia and stemmed from his years as a political consultant for the Ukrainian government and
his failure to pay taxes on the millions he earned, his failure to report the foreign bank accounts he used to stash that money,
and his failure to report his work to the US government. In his second case in Virginia,
he was also charged with committing bank fraud to boost his assets when the Ukraine work dried up.
In fact, serious concerns have been raised in the U.S. that it was Ukrainian officials who tried to influence the 2016 elections
by leaking compromising
materials on Mr. Manafort.
The Ukrainian connection is also prevalent in the case of money transferred to accounts of American politicians. For instance,
according to a "New York Times" article, Ukrainian billionaire Viktor Pinchuk
donated over
10 million dollars to the "Clinton Foundation while just 150 thousand dollars to the "Trump Foundation".
CLAIM: Russia compromised the Vermont power grid.
FACT
On December 31, 2016, "The Washington Post", accused "Russian hackers" of compromising the Vermont power grid. The local company,
"Burlington Electric", allegedly traced a malware code in a laptop of one of its employees. It was stated that the same "code"
was used to hack the Democratic Party servers in 2016. However, the "Wordfence" cybersecurity firm checked "Burlington Electric"
for hacking, and said that the malware code was openly available, for instance, on a web-site of Ukrainian hackers . The attackers
were using IP-addresses from across the world. "The Washington Post"
later admitted that conclusions on Russia's involvement were false.
CLAIM: Russian Alfa Bank was used as a secret communication link with the Trump campaign .
FACT
In October 2016 a new "accusation" appeared,
alleging that a message exchange between the Alfa Bank server and Trump organizations indicated a "secret" Trump – Russia
communication channel.
CLAIM: Russia cracked voter registration systems during the 2016 U.S. elections.
FACT
In July 2016 the U.S. Department of Homeland Security accused Russia of gaining unauthorized access to electronic voter registration
systems in Arizona. But on April 8, 2018, "Reuters",
referring to a high-ranking U.S. administration official, wrote there was no proof Russia had anything to do with the mentioned
cyberattack.
CLAIM: Russian Embassy bank transactions were linked to "election interference".
FACT
American publication "Buzzfeed"
repeatedly claimed that U.S. authorities flagged Russian Embassy financial transfers as suspicious, many of them dated around
the 2016 election. In reality, the media outlet, by twisting the facts and placing them out of context, made routine banking transactions
– salary transfers, payments to contractors – look nefarious.
It is not
uncommon for embassy personnel to receive larger payouts, transfer or withdraw larger sums of money at the end of their work.
Furthermore, leaking of confidential banking information of persons and organizations protected by diplomatic immunity raised
concerns about the likely involvement of security services.
The
arrest in October 2018 of a U.S. Treasury Department's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network official, charged with leaking
information both about the Russian Embassy accounts and former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, provides further proof to
the theory of political skullduggery.
* * *
Most of these responses have not been fully examined or addressed by major media, nor, for that matter, by Fox News, dominated
as it is by an almost instinctive Neoconservative Russophobia (the one possible exception being Tucker Carlson).
For the American Left, since the collapse of Communism and the growth of a traditionalist nationalism (under Vladimir Putin),
Russia has become a convenient target. When the Soviets were in power prior to 1991, the USSR was seen as a "progressive" presence
in the world, even if by the requirements of American politics the Left was forced to make ritualistic condemnations of the more
extreme elements of Soviet statecraft. Now that post-Communist Russia bans same sex marriage, glorifies the traditional family,
and the conservative Russian Orthodox Church occupies a special position of esteem and prominence, that admiration has turned
to fear and loathing. And that Russia and its president have been viewed as favorable to the hated Donald Trump doubly confirms
that hostility and targeting.
For the dominant Neoconservatives and many Republicans, contemporary Russia is seen as "anti-democratic," "reactionary," and
a threat to American world hegemony (and the refusal to bow to that hegemony, whether economically, politically, or culturally).
Indeed, as a major intellectual force, Neoconservatism owes much of its origins to Eastern European and Russia Jews, many of whose
ancestors were at direct odds with the old pre-1917 Tsarist state. That animus, those nightmares of pogroms and oppression, have
never completely subsided. A modern traditionalist, Orthodox Russia is viewed as antithetical to their more liberal, even Leftwing
ideas (e.g., increasing "conservative" acceptance of same sex marriage, "moderate" feminism, and a whole panoply of "forward looking"
views on civil rights issues -- all of which are present on Fox News.)
Memory of "the bad old days" has never disappeared.
None of this history should prevent a close examination of the current accusations against Russia, nor our search for the truth.
Much -- perhaps the future of Western civilization itself -- depends on it.
"... Russia, and specifically President Putin, were presented as the ultimate global bogeyman after Crimea's 2014 reunification and Moscow's 2015 anti-terrorist military intervention in Syria changed the balance of power around the world and unquestionably ushered in the multipolar era after two and a half decades of American unipolarity. ..."
"... It was therefore thought by the ruling anti-Trump faction of the US' permanent military, intelligence, and diplomatic bureaucracies ("deep state") at the time that they could easily convince the electorate to vote against the seemingly "anti-systemic" political insurgent by implying that he's a "Russian puppet" and then later, after that didn't work, manufacturing so-called "evidence" purporting to prove this through unverified fake news claims designed to defame him. ..."
Mueller report proved that Russiagate was one long series of hoaxes designed to discredit
Trump and pave the way for his impeachment
It's finally official -- Trump and his team didn't "collude" with Russia like the Democrats
and their supporters incessantly claimed for nearly the past three years. Positive coverage of
candidate Trump's promising foreign policy platform by Russian international media and truthful
reporting about Clinton's aggressive one don't amount to "hacking" an election, nor do some
internet researchers from Russia supposedly sharing some political memes on Facebook. It's now
been revealed that Russiagate was one long series of hoaxes designed to discredit Trump and
pave the way for his impeachment after it first failed to stop him from winning the presidency.
Like the American leader himself has said on several occasions already, Russiagate was an
unconstitutional coup attempt against the country's democratically elected leadership, which
deserves to be analyzed more in depth.
Russia, and specifically President Putin, were presented as the ultimate global bogeyman
after Crimea's 2014 reunification and Moscow's 2015 anti-terrorist military intervention in
Syria changed the balance of power around the world and unquestionably ushered in the
multipolar era after two and a half decades of American unipolarity.
It was therefore thought by the ruling anti-Trump faction of the US' permanent military,
intelligence, and diplomatic bureaucracies ("deep state") at the time that they could easily
convince the electorate to vote against the seemingly "anti-systemic" political insurgent by
implying that he's a "Russian puppet" and then later, after that didn't work, manufacturing
so-called "evidence" purporting to prove this through unverified fake news claims designed to
defame him.
"... As Attorney General Barr has pointed out, including in his testimony on Capitol Hill, investigating an American presidential candidate is "a very big deal" and the Mifsud/Papadopoulos/Australian Ambassador hearsay hardly serves as adequate justification or predication. This is particularly egregious since the FBI knew that Papadopoulos never repeated to anyone in the Trump Campaign what Mifsud told him. And Mifsud is also a British intelligence asset, not a Russian intelligence asset, as suggested by Mueller's rambling legal partisans. ..."
"... Mueller, of course, never references the fact that Russiagate actually started way back in late 2015 when the British government started demanding Donald Trump's head because of his sane view of Russia, a fact acknowledged by Obama CIA chief John Brennan in his Congressional testimony ..."
"... MI6's Christopher Steele's dirty dossier was the driver of Russiagate and that Steele was a joint MI6, U.S. State Department, and FBI asset dating back to collaboration on the 2014 Ukraine coup conducted jointly by the Obama State Department, CIA, and British intelligence ..."
"... the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting involving Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya, were transparent British/State Department operations designed to plant and fabricate evidence, namely, Russian generated "dirt" on Hillary Clinton. ..."
"... Mueller completely avoided the real story, despite its public availability, in order to concoct his hit job. Each of these operations involved British intelligence personnel collaborating with Obama White House, the CIA and State Department. These entrapment efforts were designed as the pretext for creating and maintaining an FBI investigation. The FBI investigation in turn made the preposterous claims in Christopher Steele's dirty dossier, that Donald Trump had been compromised by the Russians, palatable to the journalists who repeated Steele's claims both before and after the election ..."
"... The Moscow Trump Tower project also consumes hundreds of words in Mueller's screed. It was created by long-time FBI and CIA informant Felix Sater and his childhood friend, Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, and was presented in emails by Sater in September of 2015 as a Russian project which would help elect Donald Trump President with Putin's assistance. ..."
"... Instead, Mueller's argument is essentially this: "if you take all of this together, maybe it amounts to something, but I can't decide, so Congress should just stick the knife in already." There is not sufficient evidence to charge a crime, Mueller says, but Trump has also not proved his innocence. ..."
"... Here's the CliffsNotes summary of the entire 448 pages: The President was under constant attack, including from within his own White House, in an obvious attempt to frame him up while claiming he was committing treason. He got angry and didn't sit silently by while Mueller and his minions tried to frame him up. He complained loudly. Sometimes he even asked his staff to figure out how to proclaim his innocence. Under no conceivable construction is that obstruction of justice. ..."
"... When Barack Obama imposed sanctions on Russia in the waning days of his Administration, in retaliation for what his intelligence chiefs claimed was Russian "interference" in the 2016 election, the sanctions included implantation of a Stuxnet type worm in Russian state infrastructure. This might be considered by the Russians as a very hot potential act of war. ..."
"... First, someone from a tight circle who had viewed these transcripts, leaked the classified transcripts to the Washington Post's David Ignatius who wrote a loud column about Flynn colluding with the Russians to undermine Obama. That leak was a felony. McCabe then called Flynn as the article hit, saying that he was sending over two agents to talk to him about what this was about and telling him that involving any lawyers would be an encumbrance to a relaxed conversation. ..."
"... each time Comey met with the President he returned to compose contemporaneous memos of his conversations and to plan future encounters with a close group of associates who he characterized as a "murder board." Such activities clearly indicate that Comey was engaged in attempting to set the President up. ..."
"... Furthermore, the firestorm following Comey's firing illuminated the level of plotting against the President at the top levels of the Department of Justice -- Rod Rosenstein seriously offered to wear a wire to record the President and participated in discussions centered on organizing the cabinet to orchestrate the President's removal. ..."
"... Trump called White House Counsel Don McGahn and told him to raise Mueller's conflicts of interest with the Department of Justice and -- according to McGahn -- that Mueller could not be Special Counsel. ..."
Special Counsel Robert Mueller has written a 448-page fictional novel, grounded in treason, about the British/Obama Administration
intelligence hoax known as Russiagate. It is intended to preoccupy your mind for the next two years, at least through the 2020 elections.
It is intended to stir your passions to support your absolutely mad Representative or Senator in enacting further sanctions and supporting
the British drive to overthrow Putin's government in Russia based on fictional events which, for the most part, never happened.
The British sponsored and oriented intelligence services that sponsored this hoax have also started a campaign to ensure that
the same mad passions will destroy Donald Trump's quest for new and peaceful relationships with China. Congressional investigations
based on the "road map" provided by Robert Mueller are supposed to provide, on your taxpayer dollar, possible impeachment and, at
the very least, opposition research for the 2020 Presidential campaign. This would fulfill the British vow, openly set forth in the
December 2018 House of Lords Report,
"British Foreign Policy in a Shifting World Order," that Donald Trump must not have a second term.
But, most of all, it is intended to get you to doubt what is coming next. The President's allies have promised an investigation
of the investigators and a full accounting of how this sordid affair came to be. As
Conrad Black explains in
the National Interest , what is now known is that
"senior intelligence and FBI and Justice Department officials lied under oath to Congress, or lied to federal officials in
order to influence the result, and then reverse the result, of a presidential election. In terms of subversion of the highest
constitutional process, the selection of the president and vice president of the United States, this sort of activity, that Brennan,
Clapper, Comey, McCabe, former attorney general Loretta Lynch and others appear to have engaged in, is the last stop before there
are tanks on the White House lawn and military control of the media outlets. Mueller, having failed to do anything to address
the real crisis that threatened the country, failed altogether, and compounded his failure by his sadistic entrapment of General
Michael Flynn, and hounding of Paul Manafort and others, far beyond what was necessary or excusable, in an effort to extort a
false inculpation of the president."
As most know by now, the first part of the Mueller report concludes that there was no collusion between the Russian government
and Donald Trump's campaign to swing the election to Donald Trump. This conclusion occurred despite thousands upon thousands of hours
of fake media claims, fed by British and American intelligence leaks, which made it an article of fanatical religious faith to many,
that Donald Trump was a Putin dupe. According to Mueller's report, while the Russians tried endlessly to infiltrate and steer the
Trump Campaign, they didn't succeed. Undaunted, Obama Director of National Intelligence James Clapper appeared on television on April
18 to claim that Mueller found "passive collusion." That is not an unfair characterization of the McCarthyite premises of Mueller's
report. According to Mueller, investigation of an American Presidential campaign was justified because Trump refused to toe the British
line on Putin and Russia.
Here is how Mueller blithely reports it:
"On June 16, 2015 Donald J. Trump declared his intent to seek nomination as the Republican candidate for President.
By early 2016, he distinguished himself among Republican candidates by speaking of closer ties with Russia, saying he would get
along well with Russian President Vladimir Putin, questioning whether the NATO alliance was obsolete, and praising Putin as a
'strong leader.' The press reported that Russian political analysts and commentators perceived Trump as favorable to Russia."
Beginning in February 2016, the Report continues, the "press" began to report the connections of various campaign figures
with Russia, namely, Michael Flynn, Paul Manafort, and Carter Page. According to Mueller's report, Trump pursued WikiLeaks during
the campaign regarding the timing of further releases of Clinton Campaign and State Department documents, he said that he doubted
that the Russians hacked the DNC and John Podesta, he falsely claimed that he had no business dealings in Russia, and the Campaign
was involved in changing a plank in the Republican Party platform about providing lethal assistance to Ukraine. Contrary to this
lying account by Saint Mueller, we know that the "press" were being steered by a British intelligence originated propaganda campaign
aimed at preventing any U.S. accommodation with Russia.
Now that we know that the President is not a traitor, can we move on to address the thousands of opioid deaths, adolescent and
other suicides, flooded farmlands, and crumbling infrastructure which have been pushed aside as we were trapped within the walls
of this British created delusion? Well, no, according to Mueller and his Congressional toadies, Jerry Nadler and Adam Schiff. Nadler,
who looks and acts like a venomous toad, stuffing himself into over-sized suits which have that oh so subtle Manhattan mafia cut,
vows to spend from now until 2020 redoing the Russiagate investigation. Schiff, who has constantly propounded the most fictitious
crap possible about Russiagate, is just too invested to ever be sane, if he ever was. Thus, the second part of Mueller's report attempts
to seamlessly switch the anti-Trump political narrative by presenting an entirely novel theory of obstruction of justice in which
the President knew he was innocent, while those investigating him, knowing he was innocent, sought to exploit Trump's emotions as
they rolled a full scale coup right over him, hoping he would cross the line into illegal acts. He did not, according to both Attorney
General Barr and Mueller's boss throughout this escapade, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. Mueller also acknowledges this
by saying he can't charge Trump with obstruction of justice. But Mueller also takes a cheap shot, designed to inflame the Congress
and the public, saying he cannot "exonerate" the President either. In doing so, he impermissibly shifts the burden of proof, under
our Constitution, to imply that Trump must now prove his innocence. This is, of course, reminiscent of the Star Chamber.
When Donald Trump was informed by Jeff Sessions that a Special Counsel was being appointed, he said, according to Mueller,
"Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my presidency. I'm fucked. Everyone tells me if you get one of these independent
counsels it ruins your presidency. It takes years and years and I won't be able to do anything. This is the worst thing that ever
happened to me."
Perversely, this absolutely true statement by the President, borne out by months of an insane inquisition which crippled his ability
to act, is cited by Robert Mueller's crew of biased prosecutors for the proposition that the President repeatedly skirted obstructing
justice. On April 17, Attorney General Barr said that Donald Trump confronted an unprecedented situation at the beginning of his
presidency. The President was attempting to form an administration, while his own intelligence community was investigating him as
an agent of a foreign power. Barr might have added that Trump knew -- and everyone else knew -- that "collusion" nonsense was just
that. They knew it all along. In such circumstances, there was never any ability, in reality, to charge obstruction of justice, which
requires a corrupt intent or motive. There can be no corrupt intent or motive where a President believes, rightly, that he is innocent,
that he is being framed up, and that a coup is underway. He fights back, to preserve both the Presidency and the Constitution itself,
breaking the rules of what Saint Robert Mueller considers to be appropriate conduct by those he targets – don't say or do anything,
just let us slice you up. All the while, the Mueller report makes clear, Trump's emotions about the coup are being recorded and/or
falsely portrayed, minute by minute by those who would sell him out -- some as traitors within, others, if only to save themselves.
That is the reality. It was never obstruction of justice. It was a psyop against the President attempting to drive him mad.
The British, Not the Russians, Tried to Swing the 2016 Election
Mueller makes three significant claims about Russian interference in the 2016 election. First, page after page of his report attempts
to paint an amateurish and small bore social media campaign conducted by the Internet Research Agency, a Russian internet marketing
and click bait operation, as exercising a hugely powerful lure on the American mind. Despite Mueller's indictment of the IRA, which
is pending now in Washington, D.C., and despite British intelligence's five year fixation on the IRA as the essence of newfound Russian
powers in hybrid warfare, this is a hoax.
Aaron Maté ,
Gareth Porter and others have demonstrated, conclusively, that the IRA spent minimal amounts of money on Facebook and Google
in 2016, for a campaign which barely mentioned either candidate. Only 11% of the IRA activity even occurred during the election period.
The IRA effort spent a grand total of $46,000 on Facebook Ads, compared to $81 million by the Trump and Clinton campaigns combined,
and $4,700 on Google platforms. Its most liked Facebook post was a gun-toting image of Yosemite Sam; its most shared Instagram post
said, "Click here if you like Jesus." Another favored meme featured Jesus counseling a young man how to stop masturbating. Otherwise,
the IRA's campaign was dedicated to creating revenue from themed t-shirts and LGBT positive sex toys. Mueller never explains how
this ad content impacted the election in any way, nor could he.
Mueller next focuses on the alleged Russian military intelligence hacks of the Democratic National Committee and John Podesta,
for which he has indicted 12 Russian GRU officers, secure in the knowledge that they will never appear in a U.S. courtroom to contest
the charges. The first fact lost in the sauce here is the fact that the files the Russians allegedly sent to WikiLeaks for publication
demonstrated, truthfully, that Hillary Clinton was a craven tool of Wall Street and that her campaign was illegally rigging the Democratic
primaries against Bernie Sanders's insurgent campaign. Further, the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, led by former
NSA Technical Director William Binney and former NSA cryptologist Ed Loomis, have exploded Mueller's entire theory that the Russians
hacked the DNC.
They conducted forensic studies demonstrating that what Mueller says about Guccifer 2.0 is fraudulent and that the claim that
a GRU hack of the DNC computers resulted in the WikiLeaks releases does not square with any science known currently to man. The download
speeds and file metadata point to a thumb drive or similar storage device and a human source, rather than a Russian cyber attack
conducted over the internet.
You might also ask
why Julian Assange and/or WikiLeaks were not indicted in Mueller's grand GRU conspiracy indictment . Instead, Assange was indicted
on a highly dubious charge involving the 2010 Chelsea Manning leaks which may not even survive a challenge under the statute of limitations.
Obviously, Mueller's proof of his indicted Russiagate conspiracy falls short. Indicting Assange for the claimed DNC and Podesta hack
conspiracy would necessarily allow Assange to prove that the Russian hack never happened, as he has long contended. It would expose
how James Comey and Senator Mark Warner intervened in Assange's early 2017 negotiations with the Justice Department, to ensure that
the truth would never come out. It was Comey, after all, who never secured the DNC servers for FBI forensic analysis, relying instead
on the forensics provided to him by Atlantic Council's Russia-hating CrowdStrike, the unreliable vendor to the DNC and the Clinton
Campaign. And it was Comey, it is reliably claimed, who relentlessly pushed the Russiagate narrative even after his lead case agent
told him after months of investigation, "there is no there, there." If Mueller pursued the logic of his own indictment and included
Assange in his fabricated GRU conspiracy, it would also have exposed exactly what happened after Bill Binney met with then CIA Director
Mike Pompeo at Donald Trump's direction on October 24, 2017, explaining exactly how the intelligence community was lying to the American
President. Binney's offer to collaborate in demonstrating what actually happened with the DNC and John Podesta has been successfully
blocked to date.
The last prong of Mueller's Russiagate plot involves all sorts of contacts with Russians who allegedly unsuccessfully reached
out to the Trump campaign, in order to seduce them. Here the report just lies egregiously. We are told that Russiagate started as
the result of a July 2016 report by the Australian Ambassador to London, Alexander Downer, to the FBI about a conversation he had
with a 28 year old Trump campaign volunteer, George Papadopoulos, in London. According to Mueller, Joseph Mifsud, a Maltese professor
with "connections to Russia" told Papadopoulos that the Russians had thousands of Hillary Clinton's State Department emails, and
Papadopoulos repeated this information in a meeting initiated by Downer. According to Mueller, when the DNC's computers were hacked,
the former Australian Ambassador to London remembered his early 2016 meeting with Papadopoulos in which Papadopoulos recounted Mifsud's
claim about Clinton's emails. This tidbit, according to Mueller, launched a full scale FBI counterintelligence investigation of a
U.S. presidential nominee. As Attorney General Barr has pointed out, including in his testimony on Capitol Hill, investigating
an American presidential candidate is "a very big deal" and the Mifsud/Papadopoulos/Australian Ambassador hearsay hardly serves as
adequate justification or predication. This is particularly egregious since the FBI knew that Papadopoulos never repeated to anyone
in the Trump Campaign what Mifsud told him. And Mifsud is also a British intelligence asset, not a Russian intelligence asset, as
suggested by Mueller's rambling legal partisans.
Mueller, of course, never references the fact that Russiagate actually started way back in late 2015 when the British government
started demanding Donald Trump's head because of his sane view of Russia, a fact acknowledged by Obama CIA chief John Brennan in
his Congressional testimony.
Nor does Mueller reference the fact that MI6's Christopher Steele's dirty dossier was the driver of Russiagate and that Steele
was a joint MI6, U.S. State Department, and FBI asset dating back to collaboration on the 2014 Ukraine coup conducted jointly by
the Obama State Department, CIA, and British intelligence. The Ukraine coup began a British march toward regime change in Russia,
risking nuclear war, a march which was rudely interrupted by the Brexit vote in Britain and by the candidacy and election of Donald
Trump.
The real story, the one now being promised by Trump's allies and others, is that many of the alleged Russian outreach efforts
cited in Mueller's report, such as multiple entrapment efforts conducted against Papadopoulos and Carter Page, as well as the
June 2016 Trump Tower meeting involving Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya, were transparent British/State Department operations
designed to plant and fabricate evidence, namely, Russian generated "dirt" on Hillary Clinton.
Mueller completely avoided the real story, despite its public availability, in order to concoct his hit job. Each of these
operations involved British intelligence personnel collaborating with Obama White House, the CIA and State Department. These entrapment
efforts were designed as the pretext for creating and maintaining an FBI investigation. The FBI investigation in turn made the preposterous
claims in Christopher Steele's dirty dossier, that Donald Trump had been compromised by the Russians, palatable to the journalists
who repeated Steele's claims both before and after the election.
Like the Steele dossier itself, the dirt and allegedly Russian-sourced information about Putin and Trump did not originate with
actual Russian "dirt" or with actual Russian sources. According to well-placed Congressional sources, Christopher Steele's main source
for his dodgy dossier is a former Russian intelligence officer living in the United States. But, no former Russian intelligence officer
lives in the United States without reporting to the CIA. That is just a simple fact. There is also evidence that the Trump Campaign
was being flooded with FBI informants acting as "pretend" Russian agents as early as May. Mike Caputo has documented just such as
approach by FBI informant and Russian criminal Henry Greenberg to himself and Roger Stone offering "dirt on Hillary Clinton." Papadopoulos
claims that Sergei Millian, the alleged source of the infamous Ritz Hotel prostitute claim in Steele's dirty dossier, sat silently
as Millian's friend told Papadopoulos that Millian was working for the FBI.
The Moscow Trump Tower project also consumes hundreds of words in Mueller's screed. It was created by long-time FBI and CIA
informant Felix Sater and his childhood friend, Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, and was presented in emails by Sater in September of
2015 as a Russian project which would help elect Donald Trump President with Putin's assistance. It was pushed, and pushed,
and pushed by Sater, whose agreement to become an informant, was signed by none other than Andrew Weissman, Mueller's chief henchman.
Former CIA and State Department analyst Larry Johnson
has fully demonstrated this chain of fabrications .
As for the last portion of Part I of Mueller's Report, portraying efforts to secure peace with Russia and in Ukraine during the
transition as some sort of diabolical plot -- wow, just think about that. Can you seriously join Grand Inquisitor Robert Mueller
in treating efforts to establish the foundations for peace with Russia, as some form of criminal act? Or, as crazy former DNI Jim
Clapper calls it, "passive collusion"? This is, of course, the same Jim Clapper who claims that Russians are genetically predisposed
to attack the United States. As Professor Stephen Cohen, of NYU and Princeton, continues to reiterate, there are
immense nuclear dangers in stoking hatred of Russia rather than seeking
a just accommodation. Professor Cohen noted recently that in the history of election interventions by the United States into Russia,
even if you accept all of Mueller's preposterous claims, what the Russians are accused of doing here is equivalent to jay-walking.
Compare the publication of truthful information about Hillary Clinton rigging the Democratic primaries, a juvenile and largely ineffective
social media campaign, and numerous attempts to improve U.S. Russian relations, with the $10 billion the Clinton Administration provided
to re-elect Boris Yeltsin, in 1996, for example.
Obstruction of Justice
Mueller's 250 page plus screed about obstruction of justice focuses on 10 "episodes" where he says the President almost crossed
the line into what he considers to be obstructive conduct. Mind you, he admits that as opposed to most obstruction cases, there was
no underlying crime which the President was trying to cover up. There were also never ever any acts like those Hillary Clinton's
crew committed, such as smashing cell phones with hammers and BleachBitting computers. In fact, the White House gave the Special
Counsel everything he asked for, including notes of President Trump's discussions with White House Counsel Don McGahn, over which
Executive Privilege could rightly have been claimed -- and many lawyers believe such privilege should have been exercised. Mueller
interviewed just about everyone in the White House and on the Trump Campaign, with the President's blessing and his urging them to
"cooperate." From this cooperation, Mueller's minions concocted a hit job, designed to portray the President as unstable and irrational
and out solely to protect himself, concealing derogatory facts from the American people in statements on his Twitter account and
to the press. Nowhere, however, even in this entire rabid prosecutor's screed is there any act which the courts have recognized as
obstruction of justice.
Instead, Mueller's argument is essentially this: "if you take all of this together, maybe it amounts to something, but I can't
decide, so Congress should just stick the knife in already." There is not sufficient evidence to charge a crime, Mueller says, but
Trump has also not proved his innocence.
Here's the CliffsNotes summary of the entire 448 pages: The President was under constant attack, including from within his
own White House, in an obvious attempt to frame him up while claiming he was committing treason. He got angry and didn't sit silently
by while Mueller and his minions tried to frame him up. He complained loudly. Sometimes he even asked his staff to figure out how
to proclaim his innocence. Under no conceivable construction is that obstruction of justice.
Three incidents make the fraud in Mueller's tedious novel very clear. First, Mueller babbles on about the President's conduct
concerning Michael Flynn's firing, but he never references that Michael Flynn had been targeted by the British authors of the Russiagate
hoax, the circles of Sir Richard Dearlove and his friend Stefan Halper, way back in 2014. They falsely accused Flynn of a dalliance
with Russian historian Svetlana Lokhova at a Cambridge event both attended. What really flipped the British out about Flynn, however,
was his exposure of support for Al Qaeda and similar groups in Syria by both the U.S. and British governments. Flynn had been a target
of FBI investigation and surveillance based on British demands for his head since early 2016, if not much earlier.
When Barack Obama imposed sanctions on Russia in the waning days of his Administration, in retaliation for what his intelligence
chiefs claimed was Russian "interference" in the 2016 election, the sanctions included implantation of a Stuxnet type worm in Russian
state infrastructure. This might be considered by the Russians as a very hot potential act of war. Flynn, the incoming National
Security Adviser, had conversations with Russian Ambassador Kislyak to the effect that the Russians should not overreact to Obama's
sanctions, among other things. These conversations were intercepted, and Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates and Mary McCord of the
National Security Division at DOJ, along with Deputy FBI director Andrew McCabe, plotted how to set Flynn up for undermining Obama's
dangerous threats and actions.
First, someone from a tight circle who had viewed these transcripts, leaked the classified transcripts to the Washington
Post's David Ignatius who wrote a loud column about Flynn colluding with the Russians to undermine Obama. That leak was a felony.
McCabe then called Flynn as the article hit, saying that he was sending over two agents to talk to him about what this was about
and telling him that involving any lawyers would be an encumbrance to a relaxed conversation. Flynn couldn't remember certain
things the agents asked him about. They had the transcript of Flynn's conversation and never showed it to him. In the course of the
interview, Flynn made statements at variance with what he was known to have said in the transcripts. Nonetheless, the agents themselves
said that Flynn had not deliberately lied to them when they reported back to the FBI.
After Flynn was fired for lying to Vice President Pence and others about the Kisylak conversations, FBI Director James Comey claims
that President Trump pulled him aside and said he "hoped" Comey would let the Flynn thing go because Flynn was a good guy. The maniacal
Comey insists that the President's "hope" was an "order." Comey, the fabricator, had previously insisted that the President's alleged
request for "loyalty," at a point where all of Washington was talking about RESIST members covertly acting against the President
from within his Administration, was somehow equivalent to a mafia induction ceremony. Michael Flynn was subsequently convicted by
Mueller of lying to the FBI in his White House interview despite the fact that the original agents concluded that no such lying even
occurred. This was part of a coerced plea deal resulting from the fact that Flynn was bankrupted by the legal fees necessary to defend
himself against Mueller's inquisition, and threats by Mueller to indict Flynn's son.
Then there is the Comey firing itself. Comey's Congressional testimony, which Mueller never mentions, lays out that each time
Comey met with the President he returned to compose contemporaneous memos of his conversations and to plan future encounters with
a close group of associates who he characterized as a "murder board." Such activities clearly indicate that Comey was engaged in
attempting to set the President up. Comey told Congress and Trump that he was not under investigation in Russiagate but refused
to tell the public that, knowing full well that the President felt it was completely hindering his ability to act, particularly with
respect to Russia.
Mueller does disclose that, from the beginning, Trump railed against Comey because he was blocking what Trump he wanted to do
with Russia on trade and ISIS. In fact, Trump dictated a letter to Steven Miller firing Comey because he would not tell the public
the truth about Russiagate and because it was hindering his ability to deal with Russia. Trump's letter was rejected by White House
staff, including White House Counsel Don McGahn, who came up with the idea of firing Comey based on Comey's misconduct in the Clinton
investigation. The President repeated the real reasons he was firing Comey publicly and almost immediately after Rod Rosenstein's
letter detailing Comey's misconduct in the Clinton investigation was released, and did so again, in an oval office meeting with Russian
Foreign Minister Lavrov and Ambassador Kislyak. This is hardly the concealment associated with obstruction of justice.
Furthermore, the firestorm following Comey's firing illuminated the level of plotting against the President at the top levels
of the Department of Justice -- Rod Rosenstein seriously offered to wear a wire to record the President and participated in discussions
centered on organizing the cabinet to orchestrate the President's removal. Mueller never mentions any of this in his report.
Instead he adopts, wholesale, James Comey's claim that Trump fired him to hinder the Russia investigation, despite the fact that
the investigation was never hindered. Mueller also never references Comey's leaks of classified materials to a friend for media publication,
in order to trigger Mueller's own appointment as Special Counsel, or that everyone already knew, at that point, that there was "no
there, there" with respect to collusion with Russia.
Instead, the game was on to frame the President, to build the case Comey had not been able to make about obstruction of justice.
This proceeded through a series of calculated provocations and media leaks all designed to provoke the President into overreaction.
One of these is found in the episode involving the so-called attempt to "fire Mueller" which the media and Congress are salivating
about. According to Mueller's report, Trump called White House Counsel Don McGahn and told him to raise Mueller's conflicts of
interest with the Department of Justice and -- according to McGahn -- that Mueller could not be Special Counsel.
This call occurred soon after the Washington Post published a leak that the President himself was under investigation by Mueller
for obstruction of justice. McGahn construed Trump's words as an order to fire Mueller, even though, by his own account, no such
order to fire Mueller was stated. McGahn claims that he immediately decided to resign, although he never informed the President of
this. No call was ever placed to the Justice Department, Mueller was not fired, and Trump never repeated what he allegedly said on
one heated occasion to Don McGahn. Based on his drama queen account of this alleged aborted attempt at some undetermined act of obstruction,
however, McGahn is being hailed by the anti-Trump media as a modern Sir Thomas More.
The President denies ever saying anything like this and there is considerable evidence in the Mueller report itself demonstrating
that Trump's repeatedly pronounced distrust of McGahn was fully justified. The kicker here is that even if Trump had followed through
and fired Mueller, he would have been within his Constitutional powers to do so. There would have been plenty of political heat,
but no obstruction of justice, despite McGahn's ridiculous fantasy that he was being asked to re-enact Nixon's Saturday night massacre.
Mueller's report otherwise shows White House Counsel McGahn, a total creature of the Washington Republican establishment who attached
himself to Trump early in the campaign, keeping book on the President and taking notes on everything the President allegedly said
-- hardly something typical of normal lawyering.
So, despite this weekend's huffing and puffing of the Democrats and the media about the Mueller Report, it is important to remember,
first and foremost, that they suffered a bone-crushing defeat when Saint Robert Mueller's magical curtain was pulled back, revealing
a tale, full of sound and fury, but signifying absolutely nothing. Attorney General Barr will conduct a seminar for the children
in Congress when he testifies about the actual law shortly.
The real story, the one about the attempted coup and treason against this President and its perpetrators is coming, and it will
come fast. A big opportunity is presenting itself to crush the British apparatus which has haunted this country since the end of
World War II.
Act now, don't get confused by the heat of battle, and we can take the country back.
She had cast herself as a comparative innocent caught up in a massive geopolitical power
game and at Friday's sentencing hearing, Butina appealed to Judge Tanya Chutkan to release her
with nine months of time served.
"My reputation is ruined, both here in the United States and abroad," she said, asking for
"a chance to go home and restart my life".
Chutkan, however, fully complied with the government's recommendation and sentenced Butina
to spend an additional nine months behind bars, before being deported. The judge said the
sentence was meant "to reflect the seriousness of [Butina's actions] and to promote
deterrence".
Butina's lawyers decried the judgment as overly harsh; they had characterized Butina as a
naive but ambitious international affairs student who simply didn't realize her actions
required her to register as an agent of a foreign government.
The Russian embassy in Washington responded to the sentence in a Facebook post that Butina
"is a political prisoner, a victim of provocations by special services and the arbitrary use of
repressive US legislation. We insist on the innocence of our compatriot. We demand her
immediate release. We will continue to provide her with comprehensive consular and legal
assistance."
Leonid Slutsky, chairman of the foreign affairs committee in the lower house of the Russian
parliament, said the case was "political and fabricated from air poisoned with
Russophobia".
"It is necessary to continue the fight, to file an appeal and to do everything in our power
for Maria Butina to return to Russia as soon as possible," Slutsky was quoted
as saying by the state news agency Tass.
03/28/2016 With the increasing propaganda wars, we thought a reminder of just how naive many
Westerners are when it comes to their news-feed. As
Arjun Walia, of GlobalResearch.ca, notes, Dr. Ulfkotte went on public television stating
that he was forced to publish the works of intelligence agents under his own name, also adding
that noncompliance with these orders would result in him losing his job.
He recently made an appearance on RT news to share these facts:
I've been a journalist for about 25 years, and I was educated to lie, to betray, and not
to tell the truth to the public.
But seeing right now within the last months how the German and American media tries to
bring war to the people in Europe, to bring war to Russia -- this is a point of no return and
I'm going to stand up and say it is not right what I have done in the past, to manipulate
people, to make propaganda against Russia, and it is not right what my colleagues do and have
done in the past because they are bribed to betray the people, not only in Germany, all over
Europe.
"... FARA requires all individuals and organizations acting on behalf of foreign governments to registered with the Department of Justice and to report their sources of income and contacts. Federal prosecutors have claimed that Butina was reporting back to a Russian official while deliberating cultivating influential figures in the United States as potential resources to advance Russian interests, a process that is described in intelligence circles as "spotting and assessing." ..."
"... Selective enforcement of FARA was, ironically, revealed through evidence collected and included in the Mueller Report relating to the only foreign country that actually sought to obtain favors from the incoming Trump Administration. That country was Israel and the individual who drove the process and should have been fined and required to register with FARA was President Donald Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner. As Kushner also had considerable "flight risk" to Israel, which has no extradition treaty with the United States, he should also have been imprisoned. ..."
"... Kushner reportedly aggressively pressured members of the Trump transition team to contact foreign ambassadors at the United Nations to convince them to vote against or abstain from voting on the December 2016 United Nations Security Council Resolution 2334 condemning Israeli settlements. The resolution passed when the US, acting under direction of President Barack Obama, abstained, but incoming National Security Adviser Michael Flynn did indeed contact the Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak twice and asked for Moscow's cooperation, which was refused. Kushner, who is so close to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that the latter has slept at the Kushner apartment in New York City, was clearly acting in response to direction coming from the Israeli government. ..."
"... Another interesting tidbit revealed by Mueller relates to Trump foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos's ties to Israel over an oil development scheme. Mueller "ultimately determined that the evidence was not sufficient to obtain or sustain a conviction" that Papadopoulos "committed a crime or crimes by acting as an unregistered agent of the Israeli government." Mueller went looking for a Russian connection but found only Israel and decided to do nothing about it. ..."
The Mueller Special Counsel inquiry is far from over even though a
final report on its findings has been issued. Although the investigation had a mandate to
explore all aspects of the alleged Russian interference in the 2016 US election, from the start
the focus was on the possibility that some members of the Trump campaign had colluded with the
Kremlin to influence the outcome of the election to favor the GOP candidate. Even though that
could not be demonstrated, many prominent Trump critics, to include Laurence Tribe of the
Harvard Law School,
are demanding that the investigation continue until Congress has discovered "the full facts
of Russia's interference [to include] the ways in which that interference is continuing in
anticipation of 2020, and the full story of how the president and his team welcomed, benefited
from, repaid, and obstructed lawful investigation into that interference and the president's
cooperation with it."
Tribe should perhaps read the report more carefully. While it does indeed confirm some
Russian meddling, it does not demonstrate that anyone in the Trump circle benefited from it or
cooperated with it. The objective currently being promoted by dedicated Trump critics like
Tribe is to make a case to impeach the president based on the alleged enormity of the Russian
activity, which is not borne out by the facts: the Russian role was intermittent, small scale
and basically ineffective.
One interesting aspect of the Mueller inquiry and the ongoing Russophobia that it has
generated is the essential hypocrisy of the Washington Establishment. It is generally agreed
that whatever Russia actually did, it did not affect the outcome of the election. That the
Kremlin was using intelligence resources to act against Hillary Clinton should surprise no one
as she described Russian President Vladimir Putin as Hitler and also made clear that she would
be taking a very hard line against Moscow.
The anti-Russia frenzy in Washington generated by the vengeful Democrats and an
Establishment fearful of a loss of privilege and entitlement claimed a number of victims. Among
them was Russian citizen Maria Butina, who has a court date and will very likely be
sentenced tomorrow .
Regarding Butina, the United States Department of Justice would apparently have you believe
that the Kremlin sought to subvert the five-million-member strong National Rifle Association
(NRA) by having a Russian citizen take out a life membership in the organization with the
intention of corrupting it and turning it into an instrument for subverting American democracy.
Maria Butina has, by the way, a long and well documented history as an advocate for gun
ownership and was a co-founder in Russia of Right to Bear Arms, which is not an intelligence
front organization of some kind. It is rather a genuine lobbying group with an active
membership and agenda. Contrary to what has been reported in the mainstream media, Russians can
own guns but the licensing and registration procedures are long and complicated, which Right to
Bear Arms, modeling itself on the NRA, is seeking to change.
Butina, a graduate student at American University, is now in a federal prison, having been
charged with collusion and failure to register as an agent of the Russian Federation. She was
arrested on July 15, 2018. It is decidedly unusual to arrest and confine someone who has failed
to register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938 (FARA) , but she has not been granted bail because, as a
Russian citizen, she is considered to be a "flight risk," likely to try to flee the US and
return home.
FARA requires all individuals and organizations acting on behalf of foreign governments to
registered with the Department of Justice and to report their sources of income and contacts.
Federal prosecutors have claimed that Butina was reporting back to a Russian official while
deliberating cultivating influential figures in the United States as potential resources to
advance Russian interests, a process that is described in intelligence circles as "spotting and
assessing."
Maria eventually pleaded guilty of not registering under FARA to mitigate any punishment,
hoping that she would be allowed to return to Russia after a few months in prison on top of the
nine months she has already served. She has reportedly fully cooperated the US authorities,
turning over documents, answering questions and undergoing hours of interrogation by federal
investigators before and after her guilty plea.
Maria Butina basically did nothing that damaged US security and it is difficult to see where
her behavior was even criminal, but the prosecution is asking for 18 months in prison for her
in addition to the time served. She would be, in fact, one of only a handful of individuals
ever to be imprisoned over FARA, and they all come from countries that Washington considers to
be unfriendly, to include Cuba, Saddam's Iraq and Russia. Normally the failure to comply with
FARA is handled with a fine and compulsory registration.
Butina was essentially convicted of the crime of being Russian at the wrong time and in the
wrong place and she is paying for it with prison. Selective enforcement of FARA was,
ironically, revealed through evidence collected and included in the Mueller Report relating to
the only foreign country that actually sought to obtain favors from the incoming Trump
Administration. That country was Israel and the individual who drove the process and should
have been fined and required to register with FARA was President Donald Trump's son-in-law
Jared Kushner. As Kushner also had considerable "flight risk" to Israel, which has no
extradition treaty with the United States, he should also have been imprisoned.
Kushner reportedly aggressively
pressured members of the Trump transition team to contact foreign ambassadors at the United
Nations to convince them to vote against or abstain from voting on the December 2016 United
Nations Security Council Resolution 2334 condemning Israeli settlements. The resolution passed
when the US, acting under direction of President Barack Obama, abstained, but incoming National
Security Adviser Michael Flynn did indeed contact the Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak twice
and asked for Moscow's cooperation, which was refused. Kushner, who is so close to Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that the latter has slept at the Kushner apartment in New York
City, was clearly acting in response to direction coming from the Israeli government.
Another interesting tidbit revealed by Mueller relates to Trump foreign policy adviser
George Papadopoulos's ties to Israel over an oil development scheme. Mueller "ultimately
determined that the evidence was not sufficient to obtain or sustain a conviction" that
Papadopoulos "committed a crime or crimes by acting as an unregistered agent of the Israeli
government." Mueller went looking for a Russian connection but found only Israel and decided to
do nothing about it.
As so often is the case, inquiries that begin by looking for foreign interference in
American politics start by focusing on Washington's adversaries but then comes up with Israel.
Noam Chomsky
described it best "First of all, if you're interested in foreign interference in our
elections, whatever the Russians may have done barely counts or weighs in the balance as
compared with what another state does, openly, brazenly and with enormous support. Netanyahu
goes directly to Congress, without even informing the president, and speaks to Congress, with
overwhelming applause, to try to undermine the president's policies -- what happened with Obama
and Netanyahu in 2015. Did Putin come to give an address to the joint sessions of Congress
trying to -- calling on them to reverse US policy, without even informing the president? And
that's just a tiny bit of this overwhelming influence."
Maria Butina is in jail for doing nothing while Jared Kushner, who needed a godfathered
security clearance due to his close Israeli ties, struts through the White House as senior
advisor to the president in spite of the fact that he used his nepotistically obtained access
to openly promote the interests of a foreign government. Mueller knows all about it but
recommended nothing, as if it didn't happen. The media is silent. Congress will do nothing. As
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi put it "We in Congress stand by
Israel. In Congress, we speak with one voice on the subject of Israel." Indeed.
"... How is it that the Deep State made it possible for Trump to win when it did almost everything it could to derail his chances, including the use of Obama, FBI, CIA, MI6, NSA, etc? ..."
"... Regardless one's feelings about Trump, what was done as Whitney points out is a massive danger to the fundamental aspects of the democratic process, and that's not being shown the light-of-day by BigLie Media. ..."
Mike Whitney
writes about one aspect of Russiagate that several of us have noted--the use of the FBI
and CIA to meddle in the 2016 campaign in an attempt to aid Clinton--an aspect that blows up
some of the hypotheses floated here. He begins thusly:
"Did the FBI spy on the Trump campaign?-- Yes
"Did the FBI place spies in the Trump campaign?-- Yes
"Do we know the names of the spies and how they operated?-- Yes
"Were the spies trying to entrap Trump campaign assistants in order to gather information
on Trump?-- Yes
"Did the spies try to elicit information from Trump campaign assistants in order to
justify a wider investigation and more extensive surveillance?-- Yes
"Were the spies placed in the Trump campaign based on improperly obtained FISA warrants?--
Yes
"Did the FBI agents procure these warrants based on false or misleading information?--
Yes
"Could the FBI establish 'probable cause' that Trump had committed a crime or 'colluded'
with Russia?-- No
"So the 'spying' was illegal?-- Yes
"Have many of the people who authorized the spying, already been identified in criminal
referrals presented to the Department of Justice?-- Yes
"Have the media explained the importance of these criminal referrals or the impact that
spying has on free elections?-- No
"Is the DOJ's Inspector General currently investigating whether senior-level agents in the
FBI committed crimes by improperly obtaining warrants to spy on members of the Trump team?--
Yes
"Did the FBI spy on the Trump campaign to give Hillary Clinton an unfair advantage in the
presidential race?-- Yes
"Did the FBI spy on the Trump campaign to gather incriminating information on Trump that
could be used to blackmail, intimidate or impeach him in the future?-- Yes
"Does spying pose a threat to our elections and to our democracy?-- Yes
"Do many people know that there were spies placed in the Trump campaign?-- Yes
"Have these people effectively used that information to their advantage?-- No
"Have they launched any type of public relations offensive that would draw more attention
to the critical issue of spying on a political campaign?-- No
"Have they saturated the airwaves with the truth about 'spying' the same way their rivals
have spread their disinformation about 'collusion'?-- No" [Emphasis in Original]
That's a little more than half of what Whitney lists that's quite damning as we must
admit. That it's not being discussed anywhere outside of a few social media accounts means
Trump could use the "precedent" set by Obama to do the same in 2020. Shouldn't we be
concerned about that possibility? How is it that the Deep State made it possible for Trump to
win when it did almost everything it could to derail his chances, including the use of Obama,
FBI, CIA, MI6, NSA, etc?
Regardless one's feelings about Trump, what was done as Whitney points out is a massive
danger to the fundamental aspects of the democratic process, and that's not being shown the
light-of-day by BigLie Media. And we can also see why Pelosi and Clinton don't want
Impeachment proceedings to occur as the above information would finally become far more
overt/public than it is currently.
There is also the question of Russiagate. It goes without saying that Trump would covet an
opportunity to settle scores with the Democratic Party over that witch hunt, which, in cahoots
with the mainstream media, stalked the US leader and his administration for two painstaking
years. And even now, after the release of the Mueller Report, the Democrats refuse to throw in
the towel and are plotting to
interrogate the interrogator himself, Robert Mueller. This is where Julian Assange might
help halt the madness, although that is not to suggest, of course, that he is necessarily
predisposed to such an opportunity. Yet he may find himself with no choice in the matter.
Before continuing with that line of discussion, there are some rather strange things about the
Assange case that need mentioning.
For those who may have forgotten, and it seems that many have, Rich, 27, was the Director of
Voter Expansion Data at the Democratic National Committee (DNC) at the time of his death. In
other words, he would have been in the loop to view emails showing foul play inside of the DNC.
What kind of foul play? Well, for starters, deliberate efforts to marginalize Bernie Sanders in
favor of Hillary Clinton, who responded to the arrest of Julian Assange with her trademark
cackle before remarking, "The bottom line is that he has to answer for what he has done, at
least as it has been charged." For Hillary Clinton that means wrecking her chances at the White
House.
Incidentally, it was at this time in history, in July 2016 during the release of the
incriminating DNC emails, when the perennial bogeyman Russia was
wheeled out as not only the source of the emails, but the kingmaker in the US election as
well.
At this point, it is important to emphasize that there is no proof to suggest that Rich had
anything to with leaking the DNC emails to WikiLeaks. In fact, to merely suggest such a thing
has been given the 'conspiracy theory' stamp of disapproval by the establishment. Yet that has
not stopped the flow of mysteries. For example, Rod Wheeler, a private investigator hired by
the Rich family to investigate the death of their son, said he had sources at the FBI who
"absolutely" confirmed that there was evidence on Rich's laptop that indicates he was
communicating with WikiLeaks prior to his death. However, just days after divulging this
explosive information, Wheeler backtracked on his statement,
calling his on-air comments a "miscommunication."
For what it is worth, Snopes has called the claims that
Rich leaked the emails as "false."
Yet, there remains the circumstantial evidence, namely Rich's untimely death, as well as its
uncanny timing. There also remains the question of his supervisory position inside of the DNC,
and the assertion that the DNC emails were not discovered by hackers, but rather a leaker. In
other words, an internal source at the DNC. Whether or not Mr. Rich was that source remains
questionable, however, Julian Assange not only referred to Seth Rich during an interview, he
offered a $20,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of his killer or
killers.
"Whistle-blowers go to significant efforts to get us material and often very significant
risks," Assange said
in an interview with a Dutch television station. "There's a 27-year-old who works for the
DNC, who was shot in the back, murdered, just two weeks ago, for unknown reasons as he was
walking down the street in Washington."
When pressed for more information, he said, "I'm suggesting that our sources take risks and
they become concerned to see things occurring like that."
On the basis of that comment, Assange could potentially be called to testify as a witness
should the authorities decide to reopen the case of Seth Rich's murder.
This leads us to the million-dollar question: were the DNC computers hacked by the Russians
or was the data leaked by an internal source at the organization and forwarded to WikiLeaks?
The answer to that question would not only settle the 'Russian meddling' mystery once and for
all, it would determine how the DNC/Clinton emails were compromised.
Many people are of the opinion it was not the Russians.
William Binney, a former National Security Agency official-turned-whistleblower and member
of Veterans Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), co-authored
a report (entitled, "Why the DNC was not hacked by the Russians") that says the
WikiLeaks dump was the result of a leak by "a person with physical access to the DNC's computer
system."
"The NSA had an opportunity to make it clear that there was irrefutable proof of Russian
meddling, particularly with regard to the DNC hack, when it signed on to the January 2017
'Intelligence Community Assessment,'" Binney wrote.
Instead, the NSA could only say it has "moderate confidence," which means, in intelligence
speak, "we have no hard evidence," the pair concluded.
Meanwhile, there remains the question as to how any conclusion could have been made when the
DNC refused to hand over the compromised computer servers to the FBI.
"We'd always prefer to have access hands-on ourselves if that's possible," former FBI head
James Comey
told lawmakers in October 2017. He added that he didn't know why the DNC refused the FBI,
which was forced to rely on data provided by CrowdStrike, a private security firm hired by the
DNC.
Following the release of the Mueller Report, which failed to find any proof that Trump
colluded with the Russians, there remains a glaring yet unproven accusation that needs
addressed: that is the allegation that the Russians somehow fixed the election in Trump's
favor.
Although the mainstream media may be ignoring Binney's findings, that doesn't mean everyone
is. In October 2017, Binney paid a visit to CIA headquarters, at the invitation of Donald
Trump, where he met with then agency director Mike Pompeo, as cited
by The Intercept.
Any guesses whose name was brought up in the course of the meeting between Binney and
Pompeo? Yes, that of Seth Rich. Again, whether or not that proves to be significant remains an
open question.
But make no mistake. Donald Trump would like nothing more than to remove the ugly footnote
that the Democrats have tacked to his presidency that says the Russians "succeeded beyond their
wildest dreams," to
quote former intelligence chief James Clapper, by stealing the White House from Hillary
Clinton. In other words, Trump does not deserve to be president, the Democrats continue to
chant mindlessly. And even after the Mueller Report talk of impeachment continues to hang in
the air. The only way to confront the insanity is to have Mr. Assange testify in the United
States, possibly as the result of a plea bargain, about his knowledge of Russiagate.
In fact, such an arrangement had been made before. In January 2017, Assange's lawyer Adam
Waldman "negotiated with the Justice Department on a possible deal to get the WikiLeaks founder
limited immunity and safe passage out of a London embassy to talk with U.S. officials,"
according to a
report by The Hill.
Among other things, Assange would have been expected to "provide technical information to
the U.S. ruling out certain suspects in the release of hacked DNC emails key to the Russia case
"
But the negotiations hit a snag and –
according to a source cited by John Solomon of The Hill – James Comey told Assange's
lawyer to "stand down" on the offer.
Now, considering that many of the 'old Obama guard' – like James Comey, the fired FBI
director, and Department of Justice official Bruce Ohr – are no longer steering the
investigation, there remains the possibility that the Trump administration will be willing to
hear what WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has to say about the greatest witch hunt in the
history of US politics . Assange's testimony, should it happen, may even help solve the mystery
of the Seth Rich murder.
In other words, don't believe that Russiagate has concluded. Indeed, it may have only just
begun.
Or, if the British keep holding onto him, it might be the Deep Estate and the
Obola/Clinton cabals want to keep Assange on ice so that he won't put the kabosh on the
Russia Gate narrative.
The real Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy right within the bowels of the US
Government.
And we have this from August 2017:
Republican California Representative Dana Rohrabacher met with WikiLeaks Founder Julian
Assange at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London this week.
According
to Rohrabacher, Assange "reaffirmed his aggressive denial that the Russians had anything to
do with the hacking of the DNC during the election," in the meeting, adding, "He has given
us a lot of information. He said there's more to come. We don't have the entire picture
yet."
Rohrabacher further claimed that the information he received would have "an
earth-shattering political impact."
I believe its been determined that the DNC emails were leaked, not hacked by Russians.
According to different reports the emails were downloaded to a thumbdrive as a fantastic
speed, much to fast for it to be a hack.
I was running one of the largest Bernie Groups and I was Bernie or Bust. I really believe
that Seth Reich did leak the info to Julian Assange and he was killed as a hero. DWS who is a
criminal was definitely involved and I wouldn't doubt about Mossad's involvement. Mossad is
very sneaky and professional in killing. All we need is DNC Fraud Lawsuit. But even Becks
were threatened and the case didn't go anywhere.
Trump is just extremely selfish and he used Wikileaks in his campaign by defending him.
But he doesn't give a damn about Julian Assange.
I agree. I'm ******* tired of dumbasses trying to paint Trump as a swamp-drainer when he
has already proven he's a swamp creature himself, surrounded by zios and neocons.
The neocons are bad, but it is the failure on the border, with hundreds of thousands of
visa overstays, and legal immigration increases of third world refugees, h1bs, and h2bs that
most egregious of the Trump administration.
"This leads us to the million-dollar question: were the DNC computers hacked by the
Russians or was the data leaked by an internal source at the organization and forwarded to
WikiLeaks? The answer to that question would not only settle the 'Russian meddling' mystery
once and for all, it would determine how the DNC/Clinton emails were compromised."
This author is off his nut
This is exactly why Julian is being shut down. Unable to see even his lawyers, being
denied medical treatment and likely being tortured.
This is why Comey sabotaged the deal..
Russia hack = IRAQI WMD. The elite are determined to manufacture public consent for war on
Russia.
They know Julian would not only destroy this narrative but that he would create a mass
back lash for all of US who knew Russiagate was ******** in the first place.
Trump is a Zionist stooge is arming and funding the NEONAZI THUGS in Ukraine right along
with Israhsll.
He has ZERO intention of doing what the author suggest. This is pure fantasy with
absolutely ZERO to back it up.
"... While I wholeheartedly agree with you that Obama and Clinton are criminals, the far less convincing part of your argument is that Trump is not now beholden to the same MIC interests. Bolton, Abrahams, Pompeo, Pence his relationship with Netanyahu, the overthrow of Madura are all glaring examples that contradict the Rights narrative that he is some type of hero. Trump may not have colluded with Russia, but he does seem to be colluding with Saudia Arabia, Israel, Big Oil and the MIC. ..."
"... In short, without Donald Trump in the Oval Office, the Democrat Party has no platform. They need him there as a target, because Mike Pence would be impossible for them to beat. They are under orders, according to various writers who've addressed the Clinton campaign, to block Bernie Sanders and his platform at all costs; and they will allow the country to crash and burn before they disobey those orders. That means keeping Donald Trump right where he is through next November. ..."
"... I totally agree with you, and in fact believe that this whole 22month expensive and mind numbing circus has been played out JUST to keep the public from knowing what the emails actually said. Can you imagine Madcow focusing with such ferocity on John Pedesta as she has on Putin, by discussing what he wrote during a presidential campaign to "influence the election" ? We'd be a different country now, not fighting our way thru the McCarthite Swamp she helped create. ..."
"... Thus began the official demonization of Russia. A demonization very convenient to the necessity of having an implacable enemy always ready to pounce on the good, moral, humanitarian, and freely enterprising United States. ..."
"... Now, conflating any individual with Russia, will always immediately result in that person becoming, in the US, in the U.K. and in other US-kept vassal nations totally tarred with all sorts of nefarious and always unexamined assumptions. ..."
"... Thanks to the intelligence community, the political elite, notably in the Democratic "wing" of the War Party, but with the support of the Republican wing of that party, and certain individual players aligned with the US policy "Full Spectrum Dominance" which, of course, is compassionate goodness and not to be confused with the vile aims of Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, Venezuela, Cuba, and a whole host of other "bad guy" nations or amorphous groups known as "terrorists. ..."
"... Clearly, the consensus opinion is shaped, not inside the minds of millions of people, all projecting their very worst fears or even their own worst proclivities on individuals like Putin or whoever is the "Hitler" of the convenient moment, but rather on the efforts of, let us call them "entities" who plan to benefit from a populous aroused to anxiety or even fear itself. ..."
"... the British ruling elites have hated the Russians for well over a hundred years. ..."
"... The truth is Hillary Clinton, John Brennan, Rachel Maddow, and the rest if the Scooby Doo gang handed Agent Orange the victimhood script he needs to feed his Trumpets to win the 2020 election. ..."
"... They've also guaranteed no matter what heinous gangster scam shit he has done in the past or will do in the future, none of it will stick because he'll play the falsely accused card. ..."
"... There is an inability to accept the fact that people in DC and NYC and Boston and San Francisco and other Financial/ MIC-driven areas were doing well relative to the bulk of Americans and life was wonderful until the 2016 Election. For these people "America Has Never Stopped Being Great!" (Similar to the "I've got mine, Jack! " attitude of Great Britain, as their labor unions lost unity with rest of the working class.) ..."
Here's my take on the 'Russian Collusion Deep State LIE.
There was NO Russian Collusion at all to get Trump in the White House. Most probably,
Putin would have favored Clinton, since she could be bought. Trump can't.
What did happen was illegal spying on the Trump campaign. That started late 2015, WITHOUT
a FISA warrant. They only obtained that in 2016, through lying to the FISA Court. The basis
for that first warrant was the Fusion GPS Steele Dossier.
Ever since Trump won the election, they real conspirators knew they had a problem. That
was apparent ever after Devin Nunes did the right thing by informing Trump they were spying
on him.
Since they obtained those FISA warrant through lying to the FISA Court (which is treason)
they needed to cover that up as quickly as possible.
So what did they do? Instead of admitting they lied to the FISA Court they kept on lying
till this very day. The same lie through which they obtained the FISA warrants to spy on the
Trump campaign was being pushed openly.
The lie is and was 'Trump colluded with the Russians in order to win the Presidential
Election'.
They knew from day one Trump didn't do anything wrong. They did know they spied on Trump
through lying to the FISA Court, which again, is treason. According to the Constitution,
lying to the FISA court= Treason.
In order to avoid being indicted and prosecuted, they somehow needed to 'take down' the
Attorney General. At all costs, they needed to try and hide what really happened.
So there they went. 'Trump colluded with the Russians. Not just Trump, but the entire
Trump campaign!'.
'Sessions should recuse himself', the propaganda MSM said in unison. 'Recuse, recuse'.
Sessions, naively recused himself. Back then, even he probably didn't know the entire
story. It was only later on that Sarah Carter and Jon Solomon found out it had been Hillary
who ordered and paid the Steele Dossier.
The real conspirators hoped that through the Special Counsel rat Mueller they might be
able to achieve three main objectives.
1: Convince the American people Russia indeed was meddling in the Presidential
Election.
2: Find any sort of dirt on Trump and/or people who helped him win the Election in order
to 'take them down'.
Many people were indicted, some were prosecuted. Yet NONE of them were convicted for a
crime that had ANYTHING to with with the elections. NONE.
They stretched it out as long as possible. 'The longer you repeat a lie, the more people
are willing to believe the lie'.
So that is what they did. They still do it. Mueller took TWO years to brainwash as many
people as possible. 'Russian Collusion, Russian Collusion. Russia. Russia. Russia. Russia.
Rusiaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhh ..
Why did they want to make sure they could keep telling that lie as long as possible?
Because they FEAR people will learn the truth. There was NEVER any Russian Collusion with
the Trump campaign.
There was spying on the Trump campaign by Obama in order to try and make Hillary win the
Presidential Election.
That is the actual COLLUSION between the Clinton Campaign and a weaponized Obama
regime!!
So what did 'Herr Mueller' do?
He took YEARS to come up with the conclusion that the Trump campaign did NOT collude with
Russia.
The MSM tried to make us all believe it was about that. Yet it was NOT.
His conclusive report is all about the question 'did or didn't the Trump campaign collude
with the Russians'.
Trump exonerated, and the MSM only talks about that. Trump, Trump, Trump.
They still want us all to believe that was what the Mueller 'investigation' was all about.
Yet it was not.
The most important objective of the Mueller 'investigation' was not to 'investigate'.
It was to 'instigate' that HUGE lie.
The same lie which they used to obtain the FISA warrant on the Trump campaign.
"Russia'.
So what has 'Herr Mueller' done?
A: He finds ZERO evidence at all which proves the Trump campaign colluded with ANY
Russians.
And now the huge lie, which after all was the main objective right from the get go. (A was
only a distraction)
B: Russians hacked the DNC.
That is what they wants us all to believe. That Russia somehow did bad stuff.
Now it was not Russia who did bad stuff.
It was Obama working together with the Clinton campaign. Obama weaponized his entire
regime in order to let Clinton win the Presidency.
That is the REAL collusion. The real CRIME. Treason!
In order to create a 'cover up' Mueller NEEDED to instigate that Russia somehow did bad
things.
That's what the Mueller Dossier is ALL about. They now have 'black on white' 'evidence'
that Russia somehow did bad things.
Because if Russia didn't do anything like that, it would make us all ask the fair question
'why did Obama spy on the Trump Campaign'.
Let's go a bit deeper still.
Here's a trap Mueller created. What if Trump would openly doubt the LIE they still push?
The HUGE lie that Russia did bad things?
After all, they NEED that LIE in order to COVER UP their own crime.
If Trump would say 'I do not believe Russia did anything to influence the elections, I
think Mueller wrote that to COVER UP the real crime', what would happen?
They would say 'GOTCHA now, see Trump is colluding with Russia? He even refuses to accept
Russia hacked the DNC, this ultimately proofs Trump indeed is a Russian asset'.
They believe that trap will work. They needed that trap, since if Russia wasn't doing
anything wrong, it would show us all THEY were the criminals.
They NEED that lie, in order to COVER UP.
That is the 'Insurance Policy' Stzrok and Page texted about. Even Sarah Carter and Jon
Solomon still don't seem to see all that.
They should have attacked the HUGE lie that Russia was somehow hacking the DNC. That is
simply not true. It's a Mueller created LIE. That LIE = the Insurance Policy.
What did they need an Insurance Policy for? They want us all to believe that was about
preventing Trump from being elected.
Although true, that is only A.
They NEEDED an Insurance Policy in the unlikely case Trump would become President and
would find out they were illegally spying on him!
The REAL crime is Obama weaponized the American Government to spy on even a duly elected
President.
What's the punishment for Treason?
About Assange and Seth Rich.
Days after Mueller finishes his 'mission' (Establish the LIE Russia did bad things) which
seems to be succesfull, the Deep State arrest the ONLY source who could undermine that
lie.
Assange Since he knows who is (Seth Rich?) and who isn't (Russia) the source.
If Assange could testify under oath the emails did not come from Russia, the LIE would be
exposed.
No coincidences here. I fear Assange will never testify under oath. I actually fear for
his life.
Deniz , April 23, 2019 at 13:48
While I wholeheartedly agree with you that Obama and Clinton are criminals, the far less
convincing part of your argument is that Trump is not now beholden to the same MIC interests.
Bolton, Abrahams, Pompeo, Pence his relationship with Netanyahu, the overthrow of Madura are
all glaring examples that contradict the Rights narrative that he is some type of hero. Trump
may not have colluded with Russia, but he does seem to be colluding with Saudia Arabia,
Israel, Big Oil and the MIC.
Whether one is on the Right or Left, the house is still made of glass.
It's not enough that Trump is clearly a classic narcissist whose behavior will continue to
deteriorate the more his actions and statements are attacked and countered? You know what
happens when narcissists are driven into a corner by people tearing them down? They get
weapons and start killing people.
There is already more than ample evidence to remove Donald Trump from office, not the
least being he's clearly mentally unfit. Yet the Democrats, some of whom ran for office on a
promise to impeach, are suddenly reticent to act without "more investigation". Nancy Pelosi
stated on the record prior to release of the Mueller report impeachment wasn't on the agenda
"for now". She's now making noises in the opposite direction, but that's all they are:
noise.
The bottom line is the Clintonite New Democrats currently running the party have only one
issue to run on next year: getting rid of Donald Trump. They still operate under the delusion
they will be able to use him to draw off moderate Republican voters, the same ones they were
positive would come out for Hillary Clinton in '16. Their multitude of candidates pay lip
service to progressive policy then carefully walk back to the standard centrist positions
once the donations start coming, but the common underlying theme was and continues to be
"Donald Trump is evil, and we need to elect a Democrat."
In short, without Donald Trump in the Oval Office, the Democrat Party has no platform.
They need him there as a target, because Mike Pence would be impossible for them to beat.
They are under orders, according to various writers who've addressed the Clinton campaign, to
block Bernie Sanders and his platform at all costs; and they will allow the country to crash
and burn before they disobey those orders. That means keeping Donald Trump right where he is
through next November.
Dump Pelousy , April 23, 2019 at 13:21
I totally agree with you, and in fact believe that this whole 22month expensive and mind
numbing circus has been played out JUST to keep the public from knowing what the emails
actually said. Can you imagine Madcow focusing with such ferocity on John Pedesta as she has
on Putin, by discussing what he wrote during a presidential campaign to "influence the
election" ? We'd be a different country now, not fighting our way thru the McCarthite Swamp
she helped create.
Jeff Harrison , April 22, 2019 at 10:50
Thank you, Three Names. The so-called "most qualified presidential candidate ever" who's
only actual qualifications are the destruction of what had formerly been a peaceful, secular
state into a failed state riven with religious rivalry and racking up a billion frequent
flyer miles has left us with a Gordian knot of misinformation, disinformation, and outright
lies that will bedevil the country and our relations with other countries for some time to
come.
There's a special place in hell for people like you.
Charron , April 22, 2019 at 10:04
I see that the very liberal Noam Chomsky has recently stated that he was sure the Russians
did not to do the hacking of the DNC emails and that accusing Trump of being a party to this
was only going to help him in the 2020 elations because it wasn't true.
AnneR , April 22, 2019 at 09:20
Thank you Caitlin for providing a most necessary corrective to the incessant drone that I
– unwillingly but have no other radio station available (and it is, however nauseating
and rant inducing, necessary to know what propaganda the corporate-capitalist-imperialist
state media are disseminating) – hear on both the BBC World Service and NPR. (We
refused to pay to watch television and I have continued that partnership tradition since my
husband died. So thankfully I've not seen the Maddow money raking insanity.)
And thank you for suggesting some clear ways to counter the Kool Aid infected codswallop.
It amazes just how much even the highly educated have completely accepted the
corporate-capitalist-imperialist propaganda, just as I am amazed that the same people
(friends of my husband, though what he'd think about their swallowing it all ) really seem to
be completely unconcerned about what the US has done and is doing to other peoples in other
countries (you know, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Ukraine – ah yes that coup – Yemen and
so on and on). And they clearly are more afraid of Russia than of their (our) own
military-deep state-police
DW Bartoo , April 22, 2019 at 08:16
Julian Assange is a vilified human being.
When vilification occurs a very necessary question that critical thought must ponder is
who benefits from such scapegoating?
However, for the moment, let us ponder, again in service to actual critical thought, why
aligning Assange with Russia is expected by those who will and intend to benefit from that
association. Why is suggesting that Assange is "a Russian agent" expected to convince
millions of USians that Assange is "a bad person"?
Why would millions accept that assertion without questioning it at all?
Caitlin suggest that those millions are "herd animals", implying that they are led into
believing two things. The first is that Russia and the Russian people are "bad", we have even
recently had a much trusted official suggest that Russians are "genetically" predisposed to
badness with a malignant tendency to single out the innocent, and one indispensable nation,
the United States for the most nefarious of Russian "interventions", amounting, according to
a famous Hollywood actor, who occasionally portrays a certain deity in the movies, to "an
attack".
In the meager interest of context and history, stretching back a bit more than a century,
some USians who are aware of that history, recognize that the US, under President Woodrow
Wilson sent US military troops into Russia in order to end the rise of the Bolshevik
rebellion/revolution.
Thus began the official demonization of Russia. A demonization very convenient to the
necessity of having an implacable enemy always ready to pounce on the good, moral,
humanitarian, and freely enterprising United States.
Now, conflating any individual with Russia, will always immediately result in that person
becoming, in the US, in the U.K. and in other US-kept vassal nations totally tarred with all
sorts of nefarious and always unexamined assumptions.
Mark Twain once suggested that the deity created war that USians might learn geography.
Clearly, it is a laborious process and has failed to create much global geographical
awareness among the millions, most of whom are content to think whatever nation is correctly
being ministered to or in the sights of "everything is on the table" as simply being,
vaguely, "over there".
That is why the US must strike "them" "over there" so as to avoid the frightening thought
of having "them" have to be dealt with "here" in the "Homeland" of "the free and the
brave".
This suggests that the "herd" has to be led to certain conclusions.
Unlike horses, the herd HAS to drink.
If the herd does not consume the elixir, then it may not be willing to joyfully send the
"flower of its youth" off to become cannon fodder should the Table of Everything so
demand.
I grew up in the nineteen fifties when the first Cold War was in full blossom. We school
students were told and taught that Russia hated us, wanted to attack and kill us all,
intended to rule the world with an iron hand and ruthless godlessness.
Thanks to the intelligence community, the political elite, notably in the Democratic
"wing" of the War Party, but with the support of the Republican wing of that party, and
certain individual players aligned with the US policy "Full Spectrum Dominance" which, of
course, is compassionate goodness and not to be confused with the vile aims of Russia, China,
Iran, North Korea, Venezuela, Cuba, and a whole host of other "bad guy" nations or amorphous
groups known as "terrorists.
Now, by tying Assange to that hodge-podge of baddies, the many may rest assured that he
has been put in his proper place.
Clearly, the consensus opinion is shaped, not inside the minds of millions of people, all
projecting their very worst fears or even their own worst proclivities on individuals like
Putin or whoever is the "Hitler" of the convenient moment, but rather on the efforts of, let
us call them "entities" who plan to benefit from a populous aroused to anxiety or even fear
itself.
The list of beneficiaries includes the financial elites who always profit from war and
"confusion", the political elites who serve those monied interests, the media, academia, the
military, intelligence, weapons manufacturers, energy producers, military contractors and so
on.
Assange, to his great and everlasting credit, exposed a very large amount of this
including, with the invaluable efforts
of Chelsea Manning, actual war crimes perpetrated by the US, even beyond beginning wars based
on lies.
Fortunately, the media, having overplayed it hand in the manipulation has exposed itself
to many as being but a propaganda industry.
A very real question for those concerned with engaging critical thought processes is just
how many humans are still being led, rather easily, around by the fallacious and very
dangerous concoctions of the opinion "shapers" in think tanks, media echo chambers, corporate
boardrooms, and academic snake pits?
Perhaps there comes a time for humanity, if it is not to trot along in the footsteps of
the dodo bird to look not where the fingers of deceit are pointing, but at those to whom the
fingers are attached?
AnneR , April 22, 2019 at 09:33
DWB – as a USian of English birth (of about the same age, I would imagine) I am
amazed at the fear the US had of the USSR back in the 1950s. When my husband told me, in the
1980s, about how he and his schoolmates had had nuclear air raid attack drills (sheltering
under desks and so on!) I'm sure that I gawped, fly-catchingly. What??? Nowt remotely similar
occurred in the UK during the 1950s in schools or elsewhere.
It was only since I began studying history (late in life) that I learnt that the British
ruling elites have hated the Russians for well over a hundred years. Still not quite sure
why, nor yet why whatever the Russians did (Crimean War in the 1850s?) that pissed them off
so royally should have any bearing on Russia-UK relations nowadays. But that could be because
I'm dim. And because I've no hatred, dislike, fear of Russians (or Chinese or Iranians) at
all. My fears revolve around the hubris-arrogance and determination to retain economic and
more general world domination by the US and its poodles in the UK-FR-NATO and Israel (though
their status as dog or leash is debatable). These are the countries to be afraid of.
Sam F , April 22, 2019 at 20:34
Yes, the remarkably unprovoked hatred of Russia among the UK aristocracy, regardless of
era or government there, is a great wonder. They did not even have eras of invasion threats,
colonial competition, or competing navies, as with France, Spain, and Portugal. Britain's
19th century invasions of Afghanistan were apparently provoked by nothing but fear, and their
several lost wars there apparently did not even engage Russians. Even complete transitions of
Russian government from monarchy to communism to capitalism failed to affect UK's fears. If
the cause were mere cultural difference, they would have feared the orient.
Perhaps their aristocracy was not polite enough, or those backwards Ns, upside down Rs,
and Pi symbols terrified the British.
geeyp , April 22, 2019 at 23:49
Anne R. – For more on your second paragraph, visit Larouchepac.org The late Lyndon
Larouche's site has a lot of info on this.
Zhu , April 23, 2019 at 00:50
Britain & Russia were rivals for empire. Both were expanding in Asia – The Great
Game. Russia got Turkestan, Britain got India, both wanted China. Hence the elite's hatred,
although now it's probably traditional and automatic.
Keep studying history – it's ales ts enlightening!
AnneR , April 23, 2019 at 09:22
Yes Zhu – I do continue with history, although of course no historian and thus
history is ever free (as with all scholars) of their personal worldview. And yes I realize
that the UK, when an imperial power, viewed the world pretty much as the US does now: its
domain. So obviously any and all contenders were up for vitriolic loathing and war. But it
still doesn't explain the particularly vicious attitude toward Russia on the part of the
British ruling elites. After all the Brits also had France, Holland and Germany (earlier
Spain and Portugal) as competitors, admittedly at different time periods, and no they weren't
"liked" and were often at war with each other. But there was never the same bitterness toward
western European rivals as there was and continues to be toward Russia.
That the USSR provoked deep, undying hatred among the aristos and their hangers' on does
not surprise: can't have anything remotely similar happening in our cushy backyard, can't
have the unwashed, ignorant, prole herd actually learning any lessons from the Soviets.
Yet even so – no nuclear air raid drills in schools or anywhere during red-baiting
season. Nothing kindred.
The truth is Hillary Clinton, John Brennan, Rachel Maddow, and the rest if the Scooby Doo
gang handed Agent Orange the victimhood script he needs to feed his Trumpets to win the 2020
election.
They've also guaranteed no matter what heinous gangster scam shit he has done in the past
or will do in the future, none of it will stick because he'll play the falsely accused
card.
For the idiot Americans watching White House reality TV at home, this means celebrity
Trump now has immunity and can't be voted off the island this season or next.
Ah yes, the evil Rooskies. From the article you obviously didn't read: In fact, WikiLeaks has published hundreds of thousands of documents pertaining to Russia,
has made critical comments about the Russian government and defended dissident Russian
activists, and in 2017 published an entire trove called the Spy Files Russia exposing Russian
surveillance practices. wikileaks russia files: https://wikileaks.org/spyfiles/russia/
I think we can tell who the "tool" is.
AnneR , April 22, 2019 at 12:30
Did you not actually read Caitlin's article? And other similar ones? YES Wikileaks has
published thousands of documents regarding Russian secret activities – and the Russian
government has not been at all happy about it. However, unlike the USian government it hasn't
trampled all over people's rights under international law to persecute Assange.
Frankly – if the USian government and its "comrades" in the UK don't like their
filthy linen being revealed for what it is – perhaps they should stop creating it in
the first place.
Red Douglas , April 22, 2019 at 16:08
>>> " Do they publish anything on Russia?"
Yes, as you and all of the many, many others who ignorantly and endlessly repeat this
question would know, if you had ever bothered to review WikiLeaks' work. In this case, you
would know if you had even bothered to read the article above your comment.
Likewise, the sky is green, the grass is blue and the sun rises in the West
michael , April 22, 2019 at 07:06
"People take this repetition as a substitute for proof due to a glitch in human psychology
known as the illusory truth effect, a phenomenon which causes our brains to tend to interpret
things we've heard before as known truths." I think it is a deeper phenomenon than repetition
of lies (which have been legal since 2014 with the 'modernization' of Smith-Mundt, our
anti-propaganda law).
The #resistence seems to fulfill people who have never accepted any religions
whole-heartedly; there is something in the human psyche which demands an intuitive
evidence-free, faith-based acceptance of beliefs which go beyond facts and evidence. This is
a powerful dream world where their illusions are more powerful than reality.
There is an inability to accept the fact that people in DC and NYC and Boston and San
Francisco and other Financial/ MIC-driven areas were doing well relative to the bulk of
Americans and life was wonderful until the 2016 Election. For these people "America Has Never
Stopped Being Great!" (Similar to the "I've got mine, Jack! " attitude of Great Britain, as
their labor unions lost unity with rest of the working class.)
Their comments have moved away from ad hominem "You are a Putin stooge!" arguments to appeals
to Authority fallacies: "All our Intelligence Agencies Know that Assange worked with Russians
to embarrass Hillary and cost her the Election". Religiosity is largely Authority-driven, and
avoids the angst of critical thinking and putting facts together that (thanks to our
Intelligence Agencies!) don't fit together.
OlyaPola , April 22, 2019 at 03:23
"The only people claiming that Assange is a Russian agent are those who are unhappy with
the things that WikiLeaks publications have exposed, whether that be U.S. war crimes or the
corrupt manipulations of Democratic Party leaders."
Perhaps fuller understanding would be gained by considering the following pathway.
People who who think that "Assange is a Russian agent" is a plausible belief are the
audience encouraged in the view that "Assange is a Russian agent".
Much of this notion of plausible belief is founded on the creation of holograms consisting
in large part of projections of the believer's expectations/experiences of the evaluation
criteria used in choosing agents to recruit (for the public largely projected from their
experience of creating resumes and attending job interviews) , what motivates an agent to be
recruited, how such motivation can facilitate the purpose of the recruiter of the agent, what
are the potential dangers of recruiting the agent, and most importantly what is the purpose
of and reasons why the recruiter considers recruiting an agent to achieve her/his
purpose.
On projection catalysing plausible belief you will be aware that some encourage the belief
that Mr. Putin is the richest man on the planet since in all societies there are
assumptions/expectations on motivations.
However in the presently self-designated "The United States of America" as functions of
"exceptionalism", "we the people hold these truths to be self-evident" and lack of direct
experience of foreign cultures by many, the population are particulrly prone to projection
giving rise to the paradox of "exceptionalists" engaging in the them/us conflation.
"This doesn't mean that Russia would never use hackers to interfere in world political
affairs or that Vladimir Putin is some sort of virtuous girl scout, it just means that in a
post-Iraq invasion world, only herd-minded human livestock believe the unsubstantiated
assertions of opaque and unaccountable government agencies about governments who are
oppositional to those same agencies."
Absolutely correct.
Anyone who still believes what the IC says if a moron. As Pompeo recently said to the
student body of Texas A&M University, my alma matta, the CIA's job is to lie, cheat and
steel. He went on the explain that the CIA has courses to teach their agent that dark
"art".
@Sean "Trump
owes the Russians nothing, he was their way to stop Clinton."
-- Sean, you seem as taking really seriously the $4.700 spent by Russians on the Google
ads as well as the indictment of Russian "hackers and trolls" (the alleged army of Kremlin)
in absentia. Why then Mueller backed off (in panic) from the indicted' readiness to show up
in court?
You may have some special grievances against Russia and Russians, but why such obvious
depreciation of your intelligence by repeating after Adam Schiff?
"... In May, the company, Crowdstrike, determined that the hack was the work of the Russians. As one unnamed intelligence official told BuzzFeed, "CrowdStrike is pretty good. There's no reason to believe that anything that they have concluded is not accurate ..."
"... Perhaps not. Yet Crowdstrike is hardly a disinterested party when it comes to Russia. Crowdstrike's founder and chief technology officer, Dmitri Alperovitch , is also a senior fellow at the Washington think tank, The Atlantic Council, which has been at the forefront of escalating tensions with Russia. ..."
"... As I reported in The Nation in early January , the connection between Alperovitch and the Atlantic Council is highly relevant given that the Atlantic Council is funded in part by the State Department, NATO, the governments of Latvia and Lithuania, the Ukrainian World Congress, and the Ukrainian oligarch Victor Pinchuk. In recent years, it has emerged as a leading voice calling for a new Cold War with Russia. ..."
"... But meanwhile the steady drumbeat of "blame Russia" is having an effect. According to a recent you.gov/Economist poll, 58 percent of Americans view Russia as "unfriendly/enemy" while also finding that 52 percent of Democrats believed Russia "tampered with vote tallies." ..."
Today something eerily similar to the pre-war debate over Iraq is taking place regarding the
allegations of Russian interference in the U.S. presidential election. Assurances from the
intelligence community and from anonymous Obama administration "senior officials" about the
existence of evidence is being treated as, well, actual evidence.
State
Department spokesman John Kirby told CNN that he is "100% certain" of the role that Russia
played in U.S. election. The administration's expressions of certainty are then uncritically
echoed by the mainstream media. Skeptics are likewise written off, slandered as " Kremlin
cheerleaders " or worse.
Unsurprisingly, The Washington Post is reviving its Bush-era role as principal publicist for
the government's case. Yet in its haste to do the government's bidding, the Post has published
two widely debunked stories relating to Russia (one on the scourge of Russian inspired "fake
news", the other on a non-existent Russian hack of a Vermont electric utility) onto which the
paper has had to append "editor's notes" to correct the original stories.
Yet, those misguided stories have not deterred the Post's opinion page from being equally
aggressive in its depiction of Russian malfeasance. In late December, the Post published an
op-ed by Rep. Adam Schiff and former Rep. Jane Harmon claiming "Russia's
theft and strategic leaking of emails and documents from the Democratic Party and other
officials present a challenge to the U.S. political system unlike anything we've
experienced."
On Dec. 30, the Post editorial board
chastised President-elect Trump for seeming to dismiss "a brazen and unprecedented attempt
by a hostile power to covertly sway the outcome of a U.S. presidential election." The Post
described Russia's actions as a "cyber-Pearl Harbor."
On Jan. 1, the neoconservative columnist Josh Rogin
told readers that the recent announcement of
sanctions against Russia "brought home a shocking realization that Russia is using hybrid
warfare in an aggressive attempt to disrupt and undermine our democracy."
Meanwhile, many of the same voices who were among the loudest cheerleaders for the war in
Iraq have also been reprising their Bush-era roles in vouching for the solidity of the
government's case.
Jonathan Chait, now a columnist for New York magazine, is clearly convinced by what the
government has thus far provided. "That Russia wanted Trump to win has been obvious for
months," writes Chait.
"Of course it all came from the Russians, I'm sure it's all there in the intel," Charles
Krauthammer told Fox News on Jan. 2. Krauthammer is certain.
And Andrew Sullivan is certain as to the motive. "Trump and Putin's bromance," Sullivan told MSNBC's Chris Matthews on Jan. 2, "has
one goal this year: to destroy the European Union and to undermine democracy in Western
Europe."
David Frum,
writing in The Atlantic , believes Trump "owes his office in considerable part to illegal
clandestine activities in his favor conducted by a hostile, foreign spy service."
Jacob Weisberg agrees, tweeting: "Russian covert action threw the election to Donald Trump.
It's that simple." Back in 2008, Weisberg
wrote that "the first thing I hope I've learned from this experience of being wrong about
Iraq is to be less trusting of expert opinion and received wisdom." So much for that.
Foreign Special Interests
Another, equally remarkable similarity to the period of 2002-3 is the role foreign lobbyists
have played in helping to whip up a war fever. As readers will no doubt recall, Ahmed Chalabi,
leader of the Iraqi National Congress, which served, in effect as an Iraqi government-in-exile,
worked hand in hand with the Washington lobbying firm Black, Kelly, Scruggs & Healey (BKSH)
to sell Bush's war on television and on the op-ed pages of major American newspapers.
Chalabi was also a trusted source of Judy Miller of the Times, which, in an apology to its
readers on May 26,
2004, wrote : "The most prominent of the anti-Saddam campaigners, Ahmad Chalabi, has been
named as an occasional source in Times articles since at least 1991, and has introduced
reporters to other exiles. He became a favorite of hard-liners within the Bush administration
and a paid broker of information from Iraqi exiles." The pro-war lobbying of the American
Israel Public Affairs Committee has also been exhaustivelydocumented .
Though we do not know how widespread the practice has been as of yet, something similar is
taking place today. Articles calling for confrontation with Russia over its alleged "hybrid
war" with the West are
appearingwithincreasingregularity
. Perhaps the most egregious example of this newly popular genre appeared on Jan. 1 in
Politico
magazine. That essay, which claims, among many other things, that "we're in a war" with
Russia comes courtesy of one Molly McKew.
McKew is seemingly qualified to make such a pronouncement because she, according to her bio
on the Politico website, served as an "adviser to Georgian President Saakashvili's government
from 2009-2013, and to former Moldovan Prime Minister Filat in 2014-2015." Seems reasonable
enough. That is until one discovers that McKew is actually registered with the
Department of Justice as a lobbyist for two anti-Russian political parties, Georgia's UMN
and Moldova's PLDM.
Records show her work for the consulting firm Fianna Strategies frequently takes her to
Capitol Hill to lobby U.S. Senate and Congressional staffers, as well as prominent U.S.
journalists at The Washington Post and The New York Times, on behalf of her Georgian and
Moldovan clients.
"The truth," writes McKew, "is that fighting a new Cold War would be in America's interest.
Russia teaches us a very important lesson: losing an ideological war without a fight will ruin
you as a nation. The fight is the American way." Or, put another way: the truth is that
fighting a new Cold War would be in McKew's interest -- but perhaps not America's.
While you wouldn't know it from the media coverage (or from reading deeply disingenuous
pieces like McKew's) as things now stand, the case against Russia is far from certain. New
developments are emerging almost daily. One of the latest is a report from the
cyber-engineering company Wordfence, which concluded that "The IP
addresses that DHS [Department of Homeland Security] provided may have been used for an attack
by a state actor like Russia. But they don't appear to provide any association with
Russia."
Indeed, according to Wordfence, "The malware sample is old, widely used and appears to be
Ukrainian. It has no apparent relationship with Russian intelligence and it would be an
indicator of compromise for any website."
On Jan. 4,
BuzzFeed reported that, according to the DNC, the FBI never carried out a forensic
examination on the email servers that were allegedly hacked by the Russian government. "The
FBI," said DNC spokesman Eric Walker, "never requested access to the DNC's computer
servers."
What the agency did do was rely on the findings of a private-sector, third-party vendor that
was brought in by the DNC after the initial hack was discovered. In May, the company,
Crowdstrike, determined that the hack was the work of the Russians. As one unnamed intelligence
official told BuzzFeed, "CrowdStrike is pretty good. There's no reason to believe that anything
that they have concluded is not accurate. "
Perhaps not. Yet Crowdstrike is hardly a disinterested party when it comes to Russia.
Crowdstrike's founder and chief technology officer, Dmitri Alperovitch , is also a senior fellow at the
Washington think tank, The Atlantic Council, which has been at the forefront of escalating
tensions with Russia.
As I
reported in The Nation in early January , the connection between Alperovitch and the
Atlantic Council is highly relevant given that the Atlantic Council is funded in part by the State
Department, NATO, the governments of Latvia and Lithuania, the Ukrainian World Congress, and
the Ukrainian oligarch Victor Pinchuk. In recent years, it has emerged as a leading voice
calling for a new Cold War with Russia.
Time to Rethink the 'Group Think'
And given the rather thin nature of the declassified evidence provided by the Obama
administration, might it be time to consider an alternative theory of the case? William Binney,
a 36-year veteran of the National Security Agency and the man responsible for creating many of
its collection systems, thinks so. Binney believes that the DNC emails were leaked, not hacked,
writing
that "it is puzzling why NSA cannot produce hard evidence implicating the Russian
government and WikiLeaks. Unless we are dealing with a leak from an insider, not a hack."
None of this is to say, of course, that Russia did not and could not have attempted to
influence the U.S. presidential election. The intelligence community may have
intercepted damning evidence of the Russian government's culpability. The government's
hesitation to provide the public with more convincing evidence may stem from an
understandable and wholly appropriate desire to protect the intelligence community's sources
and methods. But as it now stands the publicly available evidence is open to question.
But meanwhile the steady drumbeat of "blame Russia" is having an effect. According to a
recent you.gov/Economist
poll, 58 percent of Americans view Russia as "unfriendly/enemy" while also finding that 52
percent of Democrats believed Russia "tampered with vote tallies."
With Congress back in session, Armed Services Committee chairman John McCain is set to hold
a series of hearings focusing on Russian malfeasance, and the steady drip-drip-drip of
allegations regarding Trump and Putin is only serving to box in the new President when it comes
to pursuing a much-needed detente with Russia.
It also does not appear that a congressional inquiry will start from scratch and critically
examine the evidence. On Friday, two senators -- Republican Lindsey Graham and Democrat Sheldon
Whitehouse --
announced a Senate Judiciary subcommittee investigation into Russian interference in
elections in the U.S. and elsewhere. But they already seemed to have made up their minds about
the conclusion: "Our goal is simple," the senators said in a joint statement "To the fullest
extent possible we want to shine a light on Russian activities to undermine democracy."
So, before the next round of Cold War posturing commences, now might be the time to stop,
take a deep breath and ask: Could the rush into a new Cold War with Russia be as disastrous and
consequential -- if not more so -- as was the rush to war with Iraq nearly 15 years ago? We
may, unfortunately, find out.
James W Carden is a contributing writer for The Nation and editor of The American
Committee for East-West Accord's eastwestaccord.com. He previously served as an advisor on
Russia to the Special Representative for Global Inter-governmental Affairs at the US State
Department.
Don G. , February 5, 2017 at 14:29
Questioning whether the Russians hacked or didn’t hack is playing into the US
narrative to demonize Russia. (Putin)
It simple doesn’t matter as all nations hack as much as possible to enhance and protect
their national interests. Surely Russia has hacked against the US no more than a tenth of
what the US had done against Russia.
The narrative is nothing but a propaganda lie but it’s been accepted by the American
people and mostly because of the fight that goes on due to domestic politics, one major party
against the other.
There’s a very good reason to stop promoting the narrative because it only helps to
bring Americans onside with more efforts to demonize Putin and to keep all sides in the US
promoting their aggression worldwide. Americans are likely easily 90% prowar now and will
show little or no resistance to the coming war on Iran. <img alt=''
src='https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/f05d2bb98b641e9e9ab8f3dc738e31a0?s=60&d=identicon&r=pg'
srcset='https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/f05d2bb98b641e9e9ab8f3dc738e31a0?s=120&d=identicon&r=pg
2x' class='avatar avatar-60 photo' height='60' width='60' />
yugo , February 4, 2017 at 13:54
Hysteria has reached fever pitch. Russia’s fake news is apparently so beguiling that
it even threatens western democratic discourse. Combine this with its cyber weaponry and
Moscow, so we are told, may interfere in this year’s German elections to benefit the
hard-right. Such incessant fear mongering has already prompted calls for the censorship of
Russian propaganda. It won’t be long before a witch-hunt emerges, directed against
‘fellow travellers’, those who dare to doubt the Russian threat.
They insist the west made matters worse in Ukraine by not acknowledging that it was a
classic example of a young state that didn’t naturally command the allegiance of all
its peoples. Other examples are Georgia’s Abkhazians and South Ossetians,
Moldova’s Trans-Dniester Slavs and Azerbaijan’s Nagorno-Karabakh Armenians.
They also doubt the Russian threat to the Baltic states. What is amazing is Moscow’s
temperate response to Estonia and Latvia’s gross violation of international norms in
denying citizenship to those of its Russian minority who are not conversant in Estonian and
Latvian respectively. Nato and the EU turned a blind eye when membership was granted to these
two states.
Fellow travellers furthermore claim the west will keep on floundering in the Middle East
as long as it persists in treating Saudi Arabia as a valued ally, while viewing Iran as a
permanent enemy. We have for far too long ignored Saudi Arabia’s promotion of Wahhabism
and its playing of the destructive sectarian card against ‘apostate’ Shiites.
Take the merciless attacks on Shiite worshippers by Sunni jihadis of a Wahhabist persuasion.
It occurs with sickening regularity throughout the Middle East. The terrorists attacking
westerners are invariably Sunni jihadis, not Shiites. Worse still, Saudi Arabia together with
Nato member Turkey facilitated the emergence of Isis. We bizarrely gave priority to toppling
Syria’s secular regime.
The first loyalty of these fellow travellers is to their nation state rather than
unfettered globalism. No wonder the western elite disparage their national patriotism,
calling it populism. It was, after all, the Achilles Heel of Homo Sovieticus. The elite fear
the same fate awaits Homo Europaeus and globalist Homo Economicus.
Michael K Rohde , February 3, 2017 at 15:12
This is beginning to look exactly like Iraq 2 and why the same players that led us into
that fake war which is still not paid for because the initiators made sure and get themselves
a tax cut before they launched it are still being listened to makes it clear. Even with a
change in administrations and party our government continues in the same wrong headed
direction, to war with the enemies of Israel. When will it stop? When will we take back
control of our foreign policy and destiny. <img alt=''
src='https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/cc900a84653501242923790946494dbc?s=60&d=identicon&r=pg'
srcset='https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/cc900a84653501242923790946494dbc?s=120&d=identicon&r=pg
2x' class='avatar avatar-60 photo' height='60' width='60' />
Michael Hoefler , February 3, 2017 at 23:29
As Ray McGovern said several times (not quoting): that Israel is the elephant in the room.
Netayahu will not rest until he has all of the Arab states fighting among themselves. IMO he
thinks that that will guarantee Israel protection.
IMO – all that does is put Israel into a continuing worse situation. There will always
be someone stronger to come along to overcome them – someday – sometime. If they
made peace with those nations and worked with them, traded with them – they would be
much safer in the long run.
The mainstream media in th USA and, increasingly in the rest of the West are vehicles for
propaganda from various factions within the Imperial Deep State. All these outlets are good
for is to map the power relations between these factions at least this the case in the major
issues of the day.
This misbehavior going on right now. One factions close to Trump wants to go to war with
Iran because, of course there has to be war or the Deep State as a whole stuffers and the
people will begin to look at their shakles. The other faction wishes to go to a brinksmanship
sort of Cold War situation. The Trumpists believe that making friends with Russia and then
destroying Iranian power is the best approach to controlling the MENA region by creating a
loose alliance of KSA, Israel, Turkey and Russia in which a weak Iran would be forced to
enter the Empire and Russia in return would be given more control of Ukraine and Eastern
Europe. I suspect Trump may also want to undercut NATO and the EU. That is my guess. To put
it another way, Russia is strong and well led and Iran is not.
stan , February 3, 2017 at 14:17
You can read chapter 6 of Mein Kampf if you want to see how this war propaganda stuff
works. It is not group think or mistaken ideas. It is deliberate lies to scare you and a
carefully crafted false narrative to make it all seem reasonable. People cannot believe that
their leaders would tell such a big lie, and that’s why it works. The goal is murder
and conquest to get territory, natural resources, and control of business and commerce.
Controlling markets for drugs, gambling, and prostitution is for nickel and dime crooks.
Controlling markets for natural resources, banking, and consumer and industrial goods is
where the real money is. Think of governments as criminal business syndicates and you
aren’t far off. Remember, President Obama had a hit list, flew around plane loads of
secret cash to make illegal payoffs, and bragged about offing his opponent in the head and
dumping his body in the river.
Jeremy , February 4, 2017 at 11:33
Yes, Stan,well put! you will never see this sort of talk in the articles here, as the
consipiracy theorist label is always one to avoid, but I agree that when we think in terms of
a group of people trying to attain “security” the same way any other gangster
does, it becomes much less far fetched. George Carlin said, “It’s a big club, and
you ain’t in it!” Men and women of power and wealth will always do what they have
to in order to preserve that power and wealth for their children. There is really no
conspiracy needed, just a bunch of people at the top looking after themselves and their
families.
Tania Messina , February 3, 2017 at 14:13
Ah, yes, we’ve always needed a boogeyman to keep us all crazed with fear and the
neocons busy with their destruction of society. If there is a crazy out there today, it is
those neocons and their puppets who were so intent on destroying “seven countries in
five years” and not being able to achieve that diabolical end as so neatly planned.
And, now, they’re throwing temper tantrums, because, surprise of surprises! a non
career politician comes along who uses common sense for a change and dares to say, “Why
can’t we be friends with Russia?” With that comment many exhausted Americans
perked up and listened while the Dulles boys turned somersaults in their graves!
The arrogance and superiority of those who constantly blame Russia for their alleged
expansionist ambitions seem blinded to our own aggressions. Fifteen years in Iraq? We finally
have a president who talks of peace and we demonize him as the warmonger ready to press the
button, while I seem to remember that it was the other candidate who arrogantly referred to
Putin as Hitler!
It is articles like this one by James Carden that we should be teaching in our schools,
researching the facts and discussing in our classrooms so that hopefully a new generation
might grow up with intelligent exchange rather than the brainwash that has been strangling
our society for too many years.
Mark Thomason , February 3, 2017 at 13:04
This controversy is driven by Democratic denial of defeat, and infighting in which those
defeated seek to hang on to power inside the Democratic Party. It is the Hillary crowd. It
can be evidence free because it is driven by political calculation of private power needs,
not truth.
And the WMD fiasco is a perfect comparison, because the same people drove the same sort of
fact-free theme for private reasons, as Wolfowitz put it, the story around which varying
separate interests could be rallied.
We've discarded real historical and political analysis for a kind of Russophobia that I
actually never experienced in my lifetime before. But this is the second stage. The first stage
was demonization of Putin.
PAUL JAY Welcome back to Reality Asserts Itself on The Real News Network. I'm Paul Jay. And
we're continuing our discussions with Stephen Cohen about Russia and the United States, Trump
and Putin. Thanks for joining us again.
STEPHEN COHEN Thank you. For Steven's bio, just look under the video player. Watch the
earlier segments. But I'll plug your book. People should read this book. It's important. It's
called War with Russia? From Putin and Ukraine to Trump and Russiagate. And let me say, while
in the last segment I am arguing with you about how to characterize Trump–and I don't
know, maybe we'll argue again–I think your contribution on this issue is extremely
important. I know you've been under incredible pressure and getting isolated on this point. And
I think it's brave of you to take the stance you do.
OK, let's just move on. In the early years of Putin's presidency the West quite liked him. I
guess they thought he would be a continuation of Yeltsin. I think they had expectations that he
would help facilitate an American–I don't know what the word–'takeover' is too
strong–but allowing American mining companies and energy companies and finance to come
in. And instead what emerged was a state with real laws. And an oligarchy emerged, which I
think at some point the Russian people will have to deal with, because I don't think it's good
for them, but it's up to them. That being said, America didn't get a free-for-all.
But as this relationship with the West became more and more tense–and I think to a
large extent for these reasons. The Americans didn't get everything they wanted out of Russia.
I don't understand why Putin didn't take more of the Chinese stance, which is avoid direct
confrontation as much as you can and build up your strength. And I don't get Crimea. Crimea
was–and you suggest in your book–wasn't there an alternative to the annexation?
There wasn't, like, an immediate threat. I know there was a right-wing takeover, a far-right
takeover of Ukraine. The Americans certainly facilitated and helped engineer it. It is a kind
of strategic threat. I mean, I think that's clear, and you've made the case very eloquently.
But still, why poke Europe and the United States in the eye and kind of make the case of the
anti-detente forces? Oh, look, you know, Russia's on the move. It starts with Crimea, and
Georgia will be next, and then it will be the whole of Ukraine.
STEPHEN COHEN Of course they didn't with Crimea, and that's just the argument that people
who don't wish to understand the Russian point of view make. It didn't start with Crimea. It
began with the expansion of NATO to Russia's borders.
PAUL JAY No doubt.
STEPHEN COHEN Well, not only no doubt, but for Putin and for the Russian political class
that was the context and the prism through which they viewed Western–and particularly
American–policy toward Russia. So when the Ukrainian crisis began in 2013, let's remember
what happened, because it does lead to the annexation of Crimea.
In 2013 the European Union told the then-president of Ukraine, Yanukovych–and he may
have been a rotter, but he was constitutionally and legally elected. It would have been a clean
election. He was the president–that he needed to sign a economic partnership with the
European Union. It meant, in effect, losing his preferred trade status with Russia, which
constituted about 40 percent of Ukrainian trade. Not to mention about 3 to 4 million Ukrainians
who worked in Russia to support their families were allowed to do so, and allowed to send their
salaries back to Ukraine to support their families.
So Ukraine was heavily dependent on Russia economically, and along comes the European Union
that wants to exclude Russia from this new arrangement. So Putin says, Putin and his Foreign
Minister Lavrov say, look, guys, why not a tripartite arrangement? It would be good for
everybody. We'll have an economic preferred agreement with Russia, Ukraine, and the European
Union. And Washington and Brussels said no. Russia can't participate. Yanukovych for that
reason declined to sign the agreement, and that led to the Maidan uprising. And Yanukovych
flees from office to Russia.
So Putin now is sitting in Moscow, and Crimea comes to the fore, because you've got a very
right-wing, and I would say crazy, government in power, saying outlandish things. Including,
you know, Crimea is ours, and we're going to expel the Russian naval base there, which was
there by treaty. They had a lease, I think, 25 years on the base. There were 22,000, by law,
Russian soldiers on the Crimean base. They were already there. All right.
So Putin's sitting here. He sees some kind of threat–maybe it's rhetorical. But bad
things are happening. This was a very violent uprising. You remember the burning buildings in
Kiev and Maidan. If you watched this on TV, this was violence. It was very serious. Snipers
killed, I think, 85 to 100 people in Maidan just before Yanukovych fled. They said that the
snipers were sent by Yanukovych, but we now know they weren't. They were sent by neofascists,
Ukrainian neofascists, on Maidan. But remember, Putin is operating in a context that's moving
very fast, very dangerous. Intelligence is sparse, not clear. But there is clearly a new
government in Kiev that's laying claim not only to Crimea forever, but to expelling the Russian
naval base there. So Putin has to decide.
The back history is Putin never showed any interest in Crimea until that moment. However, it
had been an issue in Russian politics when Putin ran for president in 2000. There was a party
headed by two very influential men, the former mayor of Moscow, Luzhkov, and the former foreign
minister Primakov, who had advocated reuniting Crimea with Russia, because Crimea had
traditionally been a Russian province, I think somewhere like–don't speak of ethnicity,
speak of language. Something like 85 percent of the population speaks Russian as a native
language. I mean, enormous number. It's a Russian province. And it was only an act of accident
under Khrushchev that had been assigned administratively when the Soviet Union existed to
Ukraine, because Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union.
So what was Putin supposed to do? To the extent that we know how he made the decision, he
was told by his intelligence people–all leaders in crisis depend on intelligence
people–take Crimea today through a referendum, and peacefully. And by the way, they were
polling like crazy. They knew they'd get 85-plus. They knew this. If they had it–and the
referendum was completely open. All this crap about 'at gunpoint' is nonsense. I mean, it was a
fair referendum. And Gallup has been going back to Crimea and polling. They get the same
number; 85 percent want to be with Russia.
Putin is told do it by the ballot, the box, today, or fight a war there tomorrow. That's
what he was told. What would you have done in his place? See, it's easy for you, Paul, and me,
Steve, to sit here and debate what leaders–Trump, any leader–Kennedy, Putin, should
do in a crisis situation without knowing the circumstances, or what we would do in that
situation. I mean, they have to act and they have to act fast. And they're dependent on this
intelligence.
PAUL JAY OK, but in the book you suggest there might have been an alternative.
STEPHEN COHEN Well, I can just simply tell you what Putin was told as an alternative. One
group said "You have to take Crimea now. The polls show Crimeans will vote to join Russia.
There is an international law that referendums are binding and legal. We'll have a referendum,
we'll get the result, and they'll vote to join Russia and we'll take them in. Do that.".
The other view was "Hold the referendum, but don't welcome them into Russia. Use it as a
bargaining card with the West and Kiev when we see how the Maidan so-called revolution–it
wasn't a revolution, but the Maidan coup, it was a coup against Yanukovych–let's see what
comes next. But that'll be a diplomatic card we could play. Go ahead and have the referendum.
They will vote to join Russia, but that doesn't mean because they've requested to join Russia
we have to say OK. Just take that and say to the West, look, the Crimean people want to join
Russia. We understand that that may be, you know, difficult for you. Can we find a way to solve
this problem short of annexation?" In other words, can we get guarantees for Crimea?
So Putin was told that was an option, and he didn't choose it. And I try to put myself in
his shoes and see what would I have done? And the problem is I don't know the intelligence. For
example, there is a report, I don't believe or disbelieve it, that NATO commandos were found on
Crimea, on the peninsula. I don't know if that's true. Maybe it was scuttlebutt. Did Putin know
it to be true? I don't know. But we have yet to be told the whole story of what happened
between the coup in Kiev–because it was a coup. It overthrew the president–and the
decision, Russians don't say 'annex,' they say 'rejoined with,' or 'welcomed Crimea home,' to
make that decision. One day we'll know more, and then we'll be able to decide if Putin really
had a choice.
PAUL JAY Do you–and I don't, one, have any–I don't have any detailed knowledge
about the situation.
STEPHEN COHEN I don't have enough.
PAUL JAY Never mind not knowing the intelligence.
STEPHEN COHEN You understand that's a question mark by what I say. We don't know for
sure.
PAUL JAY Yeah. But was–Do you think there might have been an option to have a
referendum that took a little–there was more time, maybe get the United Nations involved?
Something that gives a little more recognition to it?
STEPHEN COHEN Without naming names-
PAUL JAY And I'm not talking the morality, here. I'm talking tactically.
STEPHEN COHEN Practical politics. The point is that Putin was told–now, mind you, this
is–I mean, it's a good thing that he's a former KGB officer, by the way. Henry Kissinger,
when he first met Putin, and he learned–this was when Putin was working as deputy mayor
in St. Petersburg, and Kissinger met him. And Putin said to Kissinger, "You know, I began in
intelligence." And Kissinger said, "That's the best way to start a political career." Kissinger
had started in intelligence during the war, right. Because these guys think, and maybe they're
right, that if you're trained in intelligence, or you're able to evaluate
intelligence–that is, you aren't going to be fooled by your own intelligence
people–that you can sort out false intelligence from legitimate intelligence. Putin was
in a position, I think, to evaluate the intelligence. So the question that you raise is true.
Why didn't they wait? And he was told we can't wait; events are moving too fast.
PAUL JAY In the earlier–last segment–you talked about the pressure on him that
he's not proactive enough. Is this partly responding to that kind of pressure?
STEPHEN COHEN Yes. And that's why I want to return to this issue that only once before had
Crimea been an issue in Russian politics, when a political party ran against Putin on a
platform that we should somehow get Crimea back. They got, I think, two percent of the vote.
There was no popular support for this. Putin was disdainful of the idea. In other words, this
was something–this was not aggression. This is ridiculous. This was a decision imposed
upon him by circumstances that he did not create, but to which he now had to react. And I don't
know whether he knew it or not, but that was probably his most historic decision. And I
mean–it's not his most historic, but it is part of what will forever define his role for
Russians in Russian history forever.
PAUL JAY So let's get to the big underlying question here-
STEPHEN COHEN You can go to Moscow and buy a poster in a shop. At the top is a map of
Crimea, a very distinctive peninsula, right? On one side is Krushchev, who signed Crimea over
to Ukraine, right, when–in 1954-'55, when the Soviet Union existed. On the other side is
a picture of Putin. And it simply says "He gave away. He took back." You can see these in the
shops. These were–Khrushchev frivolously, on some anniversary, said OK, Crimea is part of
Ukraine. And Putin [got it back].
PAUL JAY In your book [crosstalk] Kissinger saying he might have been drunk that night when
he did it.
STEPHEN COHEN Who?
PAUL JAY I think in your book you say that, don't you?
STEPHEN COHEN That's not me.
PAUL JAY Somebody said that Khrushchev might have been drunk the night that he gave Crimea
[crosstalk].
STEPHEN COHEN No, I didn't say that. I don't know. But-
PAUL JAY Somebody quotes Kissinger.
STEPHEN COHEN Possibly. But you know, these are–if you're a student of history, and
particularly of political leadership, as I like to think I am, this is a Graham Allison
practically made a career of writing about the Cuban missile crisis and how the Kennedy
team–right? He's famous for studying that. It's a case study in crisis leadership. And
Kennedy comes out looking pretty good. By the way, I would say Khrushchev comes out looking
pretty good, too, because the Russian reaction could have been different. But now we have Putin
in Crimea. He had to make a decision that was imposed upon him. Now, we don't have all the
information. But we should be fascinated to study and understand this rather than demonize
Putin for doing it.
PAUL JAY OK. Let me–this sort of big, underlying question. Because I mean, Kissinger
said that what Putin did in Crimea was an anomaly; that you can't extend anything from that.
That does not prove that Russia is on the march and they're going to start threatening other
Baltic states, and all this. The Crimea is a very particular situation. Clearly that was not
the predominant attitude of the West towards Crimea. So why–it began under Yeltsin, but
with Putin–and Putin seemed ready for it. Why didn't the West assimilate Russia into
Western capitalism?
... ... ...
STEPHEN COHEN Yeah. Clinton unwisely–not only Clinton. Bill Clinton, not Hillary. And
Bill Clinton was president then in the '90s–believed that he was assimilating Russia with
his policy toward Yeltsin. That's what he thought. And he was so advised by people such as
Strobe Talbott, all of whom should have known better. In fact, Russia descended in the 1990s
into the worst and most corrosive economic depression ever in peacetime. Men were dying at 57.
I think the collapse of industrial production was greater than it was during our own Great
Depression. People were not receiving their wages or their social benefits. The middle class
was being vaporized. Gangs were controlling large parts of the economy. Some people even think
it was what people call state capture, that private oligarchs had captured the state. Russia
was on the verge, if not of actually breaking up, of collapsing.
Now, flash back to that moment, 1999. Russia, the largest territorial country in the world,
even after the end of the Soviet Union, laden, laden, stockpiled with every conceivable weapon
of mass destruction, from germ, bacterial, chemical, nuclear. What if Russia had broken up?
What if? We're talking Apocalypse Now. I would think that people would give Putin a little
credit for holding Russia together, reestablishing control over the regions that had these
weapons. But he's never given any any, any credit. Russians themselves do. But in the
West–Imagine what would have happened. It wasn't just Putin alone. He put together a
team, a komanda, as it's called in Russia. No one man can do this. But he chose advisers who
understood the situation.
At the time–at the time–this was semi-welcomed in Washington. You remember that
Putin came to see the second President Bush, and they went to the ranch. And Bush said "I
looked into his eyes and I saw a good soul." And other things like that. And I think you, Paul,
are right when you say that they, meaning the people who control our foreign policy, thought
that this would be the continuation of the 1990s, except that Putin would be a healthy and
sober Yeltsin; that Yeltsin had become dysfunctional, unable to govern the country that the
West wanted to assimilate. And when it turned out that Putin wasn't Yeltsin, even though
Yeltsin put him in power–indeed, historically speaking Putin could not have been Yeltsin,
though he's never given his anti-Yeltsin speech the way Khrushchev gave his anti-Stalin speech.
This is interesting. He's been urged to give this speech, by the way; the de-Yeltsinization
speech, analogous to Khruschev's de-Stalinization speech. He's never done that. People say he's
too loyal, to a fault. Too loyal. Putin. Some trait he's got. They criticize him for it.
But nonetheless, very soon American disillusion in Putin set in. And we can date it. There
is there was, and even remains today a New York Times columnist, Nick Kristof. Nicholas
Kristof. Who wrote–I think it was 2003. Maybe I'm off a year, year and a half–that
he was greatly disillusioned, he, Kristof, that Putin had not turned out to be a sober Yeltsin.
Imagine this. In other words, they, to the extent that columnists speak for these great powers,
wanted Yeltsin, a person who by then had positive ratings in Russia of about 3 percent, who was
hated in Russia for what had happened to the country. But the only grievance in Washington was
he wasn't sober and healthy enough to continue the policy. And Putin, they thought at the
beginning was a sober healthy Yeltsin. Look at him. And Yeltsin–on what Yeltsin is. They
say he's from Yeltsin. He's got to be. But it was clear. If you'd been paying attention it
would have been clear it was impossible.
And when it dawned on them they were bitter. And I'm not sure that they started hating on
Putin because they personally had been so wrong, their analysis had been wrong, or because they
couldn't stand the thought of a non-Yeltsin to this day. Because even today you could read in
the New York Times and other analyses, so-called, how great it was under Yeltsin. It wasn't
great. It was a country in agony. And it was dangerous to us, with all those weapons.
So you know, we've discarded history. We've discarded real historical and political analysis
for a kind of Russophobia that I actually never experienced in my lifetime before. It's much
worse now. And remember one thing, as we all go forward and think about Russiagate, which I
think is going to be with us in one way or another for decades. But the Putin-phobia, the
hating on Putin, began long before Trump was a presidential candidate. Long before. The two got
fused together in Russiagate. The loathing for Putin and the loathing for Trump was fused into
this thing called Russiagate. Now, who did the initial fusing? In my book I argued it was our
intelligence services, and particularly the CIA. We will see. I think we're going to have some
investigations now. I may be wrong. I don't think it was the FBI, as people think. I think was
Brennan and Obama's CIA that got all this started.
But these–this didn't come out of nowhere. This had been developing, this demonizing
of Putin had been going on for years before Trump appeared on the scene. And then bingo, it
came together. And we're stuck with it. And it ain't going to go away. And I think it's the
worst threat to our national security. I've said Russiagate is the great number one threat to
our national security. In the book I do the five greatest threats for our national security.
The book is all short pieces. And Russia–Russia and China don't make the top five.
Russiagate's number one. Unfortunately you're younger than I am so we can't share these moments
together. But there was the Cuban missile crisis, correct?
PAUL JAY Well, I–you know, I was alive. I was very aware of it.
STEPHEN COHEN All right. But it is said that in the history books, in the textbooks, that
it's the closest we ever came to nuclear war with Russia, Soviet Russia. Correct?
PAUL JAY If you listen Ellsberg we were seconds from it.
STEPHEN COHEN OK. And yet because of the leadership of Kennedy, and I would add Khrushchev,
because it takes two to tango, as Reagan said, these two guys averted Armageddon. Correct? And
that's the lesson we've taught our kids and we teach in our textbooks. OK. Imagine
today–and it doesn't take a lot of imagining–that we have a Cuban missile
crisis-like confrontation. Could be in Venezuela. Could be in Syria. Could be in former Soviet
Georgia. Could be in Ukraine. Lots of places. It happens, suddenly. The two nuclear superpowers
are eyeball to eyeball like the Cuban missile crisis. Everybody credits Kennedy and Khrushchev
for averting the crisis.
This happens tomorrow, do you think the American political class and its media are going
to invest Trump with the authority to negotiate a way out of nuclear war? The guy they called
the Kremlin puppet? And are they going to credit Putin, the guy they've so demonized, as a
partner to avert nuclear war? They will not. And what happens then? The answer is nuclear
war. That's why I say we're walking on a razor's edge with this Russiagate demonizing Putin
nonsense. We need these two guys, whether we like them or not, to avoid nuclear war. And we
are–we have too many situations fraught with war with Russia which could become nuclear
war, more than we've ever had before. And the people who've contributed to these situations
refuse to acknowledge what they've done. Above all, the mainstream media. What you and I are
discussing today should be discussed in the major newspapers and television talk shows in this
country nightly. And I guarantee you decades ago it would have been. We've lost our way. And
the new way is exceedingly dangerous.
"Carnage needs to destroyed" mentality is dominant among the USA neoliberal elite and drives the policy toward Russia.
They all supported neoconservative extremely ambitious foreign policy agenda directed on weakening Russian and
establishing of world dominance. It also seems clear that influential journalists, such as Glenn Simpson was before founding Fusion GPS, along with his wife Mary Jacoby, have been strongly involved in this
Notable quotes:
"... There is reason to suspect that some former and very likely current employees of the FBI have been colluding with elements in other American and British intelligence agencies, in particular the CIA and MI6, in support of an extremely ambitious foreign policy agenda for a very long time. It also seems clear that influential journalists, such as Glenn Simpson was before founding Fusion GPS, along with his wife Mary Jacoby, have been strongly involved in this. ..."
"... This agenda has involved hopes for 'régime change' in Russia, whether as the result of an oligarchic coup, a popular revolt, or some combination of both. Also central have been hopes for a further 'rollback' of Russia influence in the post-Soviet space, both in areas now independent, such as Ukraine, and also ones still part of the Russian Federation, notably Chechnya. ..."
"... And, crucially, it involved exploiting the retreat of Russian power from the Middle East for 'régime change' projects which it was hoped would provide a definitive solution to the – inherently intractable – security problems of a Jewish settler state in the area. ..."
"... Important support for these strategies was provided by the 'StratCom' network centred around the late Boris Berezovsky, which clearly collaborated closely with MI6. As was apparent from the witness list at Sir Robert Owen's Inquiry into the death of Alexander Litvinenko, which produced a report based essentially on a recycling of claims made by the network's members, key players were on your side of the Atlantic – notably Alex Goldfarb, Yuri Shvets, and Yuri Felshtinsky. ..."
"... it seems to me the usa and uk have been tied at the hip for a very long time... when it comes to foreign affairs policy and wars - the one will always vouch for the other without hesitation... it tells me the relationship is really deep.. ..."
"... I and my friends consider it a given that most, if not all, anglo-zionist moves in the ME are to "provide a definitive solution to the – inherently intractable – security problems of a Jewish settler state in the area. " It is an open secret that the izzies are the reason why a few Russians, some Turks, lots of Kurds and countless Arabs are dying in the Syrian battlefields. Another open secret: the takfiris and kurds have been, and are, supported by the West. That the "masters of the universe™" have been conceiving and doubling down on such disastrous policies give lie to their much-vaunted "intelligence". ..."
"... It is the very FACT of Trump even getting elected at ALL which outrages and terrifies them so much. They are used to seeing themselves as successful manipulators and engineers of every major event. They were engineering the whole electoral battlespace to get Clinton elected. The mere fact of Trump's victory in the teeth of their Electoral Engineering for Clinton is an act of defiance which they will not tolerate. ..."
"... And if they fail to bring Trump down at all, they will stand revealed as being defeatable. And this is their big fear. That if people see they have defeated the Borg once on keeping Trump in the teeth of Borg's efforts, that people might try to defeat and smash down the Borg on another issue. And then another. And then another after that. ..."
"... Because it is not possible to do on fundamental level yet, especially with US foreign policy establishment and so called consensus being built almost entirely, in ideological and, most importantly, cadres senses, on the ultimate exceptionalist agenda in which Russia is the ultimate obstacle and enemy. Establishment in saturated with neocons and likes. They are the swamp. ..."
"... They act and believe that they are Olympians. You have to wait for them to age and die before any substantive change in Fortress West's posture; say 2040 ..."
"... In 1977 Zbigniew Brzezinski, as President Carter's National Security Adviser, forms the Nationalities Working Group (NWG) dedicated to the idea of weakening the Soviet Union by inflaming its ethnic tensions. ..."
"... State Department official Henry Precht will later recall that Brzezinski had the idea "that Islamic forces could be used against the Soviet Union. The theory was, there was an arc of crisis, and so an arc of Islam could be mobilized to contain the Soviets." [Scott, 2007, pp. 67] In November 1978, President Carter appointed George Ball head of a special White House Iran task force under Brzezinski. Ball recommends the US should drop support for the Shah of Iran and support the radical Islamist opposition of Ayatollah Khomeini. This idea is based on ideas from British Islamic expert Dr. Bernard Lewis, who advocates the balkanization of the entire Muslim Near East along tribal and religious lines. The chaos would spread in what he also calls an "arc of crisis" and ultimately destabilize the Muslim regions of the Soviet Union ..."
"... About relation Steele-MI6, well, you never leave your IS. Or to put it in another way, you are never out of the scope of your past IS ..."
"... No, three years at tops and could be much sooner if dimes starting dropping by exposed people that don't want to take the fall for their superiors whom they always detested. One possible thing to get the process started sooner is if the recent Russian Intelligence delegation to DC that Smoothie mentions on another thread gave the current administration, as a diplomatic courtesy of course, the audio recordings of Madame Sectary Nuland's infamous mental meltdown at Kaliningrad. No telling what beans were spilled in her moment of panic, but I am willing to bet key names were dropped. Either way the time is coming. ..."
"... Especially, once American policy-makers who saw and experienced war (Ike, George Marshall's generation) departed things started to roll down hill with Reagan bringing on board a whole collection of neocons. ..."
"... Unawareness is always dangerous, a complete blackout in relations between two nuclear powers is more than dangerous--it is completely reckless. Again, the way CW 1.0 is perceived in the current US "elites" it becomes extremely tempting to repeat it. Electing Hillary was another step in unleashing CW 2.0 by people who have no understanding of what they were doing. ..."
"... Obama started crushing US-Russian relations before any campaigns were launched and before Trump was even seriously considered a GOP nominee, let alone a real contender. New confrontation hinged on HRC being elected. In fact, she was one of the major driving forces behind a serious of geopolitical anti-Russian moves. Visceral Russo-phobia became a feature in HRC campaign long before any Steele's Dossier. This was a program. ..."
"... IMO, the bigger problem for American not shying away from wars, or being silent about them , is when your home, your mom and dad' home, the town you grew up in, are immune and away from the war. ..."
"... The security and safety of the two oceans, encourages or at least, in an all volunteer military makes it a secondary problem for regular people, to worry about. ..."
"... A particular interesting feature of those on the British side – in which we now know Christopher Steele must have played a leading role – were the bizarre gyrations those responsible were going through trying to explain away the extraordinary fact that when he had broken the story of his poisoning, Litvinenko had pointed the finger of suspicion at his Italian associate Mario Scaramella. ..."
"... Of course later reports in the Steele Dossier go hand in hand with a larger public relations campaign. Creating reality? Irony alert: as informer/source I would by then know what the other side wants to hear. ..."
Steele, Shvets, Levinson, Litvinenko and the 'Billion Dollar Don.'
In the light of the suggestion in the Nunes memo that Steele was 'a longtime FBI source' it seems worth sketching out some background,
which may also make it easier to see some possible reasons why he 'was desperate that Donald Trump not get elected and was passionate
about him not being president.'
There is reason to suspect that some former and very likely current employees of the FBI have been colluding with elements
in other American and British intelligence agencies, in particular the CIA and MI6, in support of an extremely ambitious foreign
policy agenda for a very long time. It also seems clear that influential journalists, such as Glenn Simpson was before founding Fusion
GPS, along with his wife Mary Jacoby, have been strongly involved in this.
This agenda has involved hopes for 'régime change' in Russia, whether as the result of an oligarchic coup, a popular revolt, or
some combination of both. Also central have been hopes for a further 'rollback' of Russia influence in the post-Soviet space, both
in areas now independent, such as Ukraine, and also ones still part of the Russian Federation, notably Chechnya.
And, crucially, it involved exploiting the retreat of Russian power from the Middle East for 'régime change' projects which it
was hoped would provide a definitive solution to the – inherently intractable – security problems of a Jewish settler state in the
area.
Important support for these strategies was provided by the 'StratCom' network centred around the late Boris Berezovsky, which
clearly collaborated closely with MI6. As was apparent from the witness list at Sir Robert Owen's Inquiry into the death of Alexander
Litvinenko, which produced a report based essentially on a recycling of claims made by the network's members, key players were on
your side of the Atlantic – notably Alex Goldfarb, Yuri Shvets, and Yuri Felshtinsky.
The question of what links these had, or did not have, with elements in U.S. intelligence agencies is thus a critical one.
In making some sense of it, the fact that one key figure we know to have been involved in this network was missing at the Inquiry
– the former FBI agent Robert Levinson, who disappeared on the Iranian island of Kish in March 2007 – is important.
Unfortunately, I only recently came across a book on Levinson published in 2016 by the 'New York Times' journalist Barry Meier,
which is now hopefully winging its way across the Atlantic. From the accounts of the book I have seen, such as one by Jeff Stein
in 'Newsweek', it seems likely that its author did not look at any of the evidence presented at Owen's Inquiry.
Had he done so, Meier might have discovered that his subject had been, as it were, 'top supporting actor' in the first fumbling
attempt by Christopher Steele et al to produce a plausible-sounding scenario as to the background to Litvinenko's death. A Radio
4 programme on 16 December 2006, presented by the veteran BBC presenter Tom Mangold, had been wholly devoted to an account by Shvets,
backed up by Levinson. Both of these were, like Litvinenko, supposed to be impartial 'due diligence' operatives.
The notion that any of them might have connections with Western intelligence agencies was not considered. The – publicly available
– evidence of the involvement of Shvets, whose surname means 'cobbler' or 'shoemaker' in Ukrainian, in the processing of the tapes
of conversations involving the former Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma supposedly recorded by Major Melnychenko, which had played
a crucial role in the 2004-5 'Orange Revolution' was not mentioned.
Still less was it mentioned that claims that the – very dangerous – late Soviet Kolchuga system, which made it possible the kind
of identification of incoming aircraft which radar had traditionally done, without sending out signals which made the destruction
of the facilities doing it possible, had been sold by Kuchma to Iraq had proven spurious.
What Shvets had done had been to take – genuine – audio in which Kuchma had discussed a possible sale, and edit it to suggest
a sale had been completed.
(See http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20160613090333/https://www.litvinenkoinquiry.org/evidence .)
As a former television current affairs producer, I can talk to you of the marvels which London audio editors can produce, very
happily. Unfortunately, the days when not all BBC and 'Guardian' journalists were corrupt stenographers for corrupt and incompetent
spooks, as Mangold and his like have been for Steele and Levinson, are long gone.
All this has become particularly relevant now, given that Simpson has placed the notorious Jewish Ukrainian mobster Semyon Mogilevich
and the 'Solntsevskaya Bratva' mafia group centre stage in his accounts not simply of Trump and Manafort, but also of William Browder.
For most of the 'Nineties, Levinson had been a, if not the, lead FBI investigator on Mogilevich.
(On this, see the 1999 BBC 'Panorama' programme 'The Billion Dollar Don', also presented by Tom Mangold, which has extensive interviews
both with Mogilevich and Levinson at
In the months leading up to Levinson's disappearance, a key priority for the advocates of the strategy I have described was to
prevent it being totally derailed by the patently catastrophic outcome of the Iraqi adventure.
Compounding the problem was the fact that this had created the 'Shia Crescent', which in turn exacerbated the potential 'existential
threat' to Israel posed by the steadily increasing range, accuracy and numbers of missiles available to Hizbullah in hardened positions
north of the Litani.
These, obviously, provided both a 'deterrent' for that organisation and Iran, and also a radical threat to the whole notion that
somehow Israel could ever be a 'safe haven' for Jews, against the supposedly ineradicable disposition of the 'goyim' sooner or later
to, as it were, revert to type. The dreadful thought that Israel might not be necessary had to be resisted at all costs.
What followed from the disaster unleashed by the – Anglo-American – 'own goal' in toppling Saddam was, ironically, a need on the
part of key players to 'double down.' Above all, it was necessary for many of those involved to counter suggestions from the Russian
side that going around smashing up 'régimes' that one might not like sometimes blew up in one's face.
Even more threatening were suggestions from the Russian side that it was foolish to think one could use jihadists without risking
'blowback', and that there might be an overwhelming common interest in combating Islamic extremism.
Another priority was to counter the pushback in the American 'intelligence community' and military, which was to produce the drastic
downgrading of the threat posed by the Iranian nuclear programme in the November 2007 NIE and then the resignation of Admiral William
Fallon as head of 'Centcom' the following March.
So in 2005 Shvets came to London. He and his audio editors had another 'bite at the cherry' of the Melnychenko tapes, so that
material that did in fact establish that both the SBU and FSB had collaborated with Mogilevich could be employed to make it seem
that Putin had a close personal relationship with the mobster.
All kinds of supposedly respectable American and British academics, like Professors Karen Dawisha and Robert Service, have fallen
for this, hook, line and sinker. It gives a new meaning to the term 'useful idiot.'
(See http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20160613090333/https://www.litvinenkoinquiry.org/evidence .)
In a letter sent in December that year by Litvinenko to the 'Mitrokhin Commission', for which his Italian associate Mario Scaramella
was a consultant, this was used in an attempt to demonstrate that Mogilevich, while acting as an agent for the FSB and under Putin's
personal 'krysha', had attempted to supply a 'mini atomic bomb' – aka 'suitcase nuke' – to Al Qaeda. Shortly after the letter was
sent Scaramella departed on a trip to Washington, where he appears to have got access to Aldrich Ames.
(See http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20160613090333/https://www.litvinenkoinquiry.org/evidence .)
At precisely this time, as Meier explains, Levinson was in the process of being recruited by a lady called Anne Jablonski who
then worked as a CIA analyst. It appears that she was furious at the failure of the operational side at the Agency to produce evidence
which would have established that Iran did indeed have an ongoing nuclear programme, and she may well have hoped would implicate
Russia in supplying materials.
There are grounds to suspect that one of the things that Berezovsky and Shvets were doing was fabricating such 'evidence.' Whether
Levinson was involved in such attempts, or genuinely looking for evidence he was convinced must be there, I cannot say. It appears
that he fell for a rather elementary entrapment operation – which could well have been organised with the collaboration of Russian
intelligence. (People do get fed up with being framed, particular if 'régime change' is the goal.)
It also seems likely that, quite possibly in a different but related entrapment operation, related to propaganda wars in which
claims and counter claims about a polonium-beryllium 'initiator' as the crucial missing part which might make a 'suitcase nuke' functional,
Litvinenko accidentally ingested fatal quantities of polonium. A good deal of evidence suggests that this may have been at Berezovsky's
offices on the night before he was supposedly assassinated.
It was, obviously, important for Steele et al to ensure that nobody looked at the 'StratCom' wars about 'suitcase nukes.' Here,
a figure who has played a key role in such wars in relation to Syria plays an interesting minor one in the story.
Some time following the destruction of the case for an immediate war by the November 2007 NIE, a chemical weapons specialist called
Dan Kaszeta, who had worked in the White House for twelve years, moved to London.
In 2011, in addition to founding a consultancy called 'Strongpoint Security', he began a writing career with articles in 'CBRNe
World.' Later, he would become the conduit through which the notorious 'hexamine hypothesis', supposedly clinching proof that the
Syrian government was responsible for the sarin incidents at Khan Sheikhoun, Ghouta, Saraqeb, and Khan Al-Asal, was disseminated.
Having been forced by the threat of a case being opened against them under human rights law into resuming the inquest into Litvinenko's
death, in August 2012 the British authorities appointed Sir Robert Owen to conduct it. (There are many honest judges in Britain,
but obviously, if one sets out to find someone who will 'cover up' for the incompetence and corruption of people like Steele, as
Lord Hutton did before him, you can find them.)
That same month, a piece appeared in 'CBRNe World' with the the strapline: 'Dan Kaszeta looks into the ultimate press story: Suitcase
nukes', and the main title 'Carry on or checked bags?' Among the grounds he gives for playing down the scare:
'Some components rely on materials with shelf life. Tritium, for example, is used in many nuclear weapon designs and has a twelve
year half-life. Polonium, used in neutron initiators in some earlier types of weapon designs, has a very short halflife. US documents
state that every nuclear weapon has "limited life components" that require periodic replacement (do an internet search for nuclear
limited life components and you can read for weeks).'
What Kaszeta has actually described are the reasons why polonium is a perfect 'StratCom' instrument. In terms of scientific plausibility,
in fact there were no 'suitcase nukes', and in any case 'initiators' using polonium had been abandoned very early on, in favour of
ones which lasted longer.
For 'StratCom' scenarios, as experience with the 'hexamine hypothesis' has proved, scientific plausibility can be irrelevant.
What polonium provides is a means of suggesting that Al Qaeda have in fact got hold of a nuclear device which they could easily
smuggle into, say, Rome or New York, or indeed Moscow, but there is a crucial missing component which the FSB is trying to provide
to them. By the same token, of course, that missing component could be depicted as one that Berezovsky and Litvinenko are conspiring
to suppl to the Chechen insurgents.
In addition, the sole known source of global supply is the Avangard plant at Sarov in Russia, so the substance is naturally suited
for 'StratCom' directed against that country, which its intelligence services would – rather naturally – try to make 'boomerang.'
According to Glenn Simpson, Christopher Steele is a 'boy scout.' This seems to me quite wrong – but, even if it were true, would
you want to unleash a 'boy scout' into these kinds of intrigue?
As it is not clear why Kaszeta introduced his – accurate but irrelevant – point about polonium into an article which was concerned
with scientific plausibility, one is left with an interesting question as to whether he cut his teeth on 'StratCom' attempting to
ensure that nobody seriously interested in CBRN science followed an obvious lead.
In relation to the question of whether current FBI personnel had been involved in the kind of 'StratCom' exercises, I have been
describing, a critical issue is the involvement of Shvets and Levinson in the Alexander Khonanykhine affair back in the 'Nineties,
and the latter's use of claims about the Solntsevskaya to prevent the key figure's extradition. But that is a matter for another
day.
A corollary of all this is that we cannot – yet at least – be absolutely confident that the account in the Nunes memo, according
to which Steele was suspended and then dismissed as an FBI source for what the organisation is reported to define as 'the most serious
of violations' – the unauthorised disclosure of a relationship with the organisation – is necessarily wholly accurate.
Who did and did not authorise which disclosures to the media, up to and including the extraordinary decision to have the full
dossier, including claims about Aleksej Gubarev and the Alfa oligarchs, in flagrant disregard of the obvious risks of defamation
suits, and who may be trying to pass the buck to others, remains I think less than totally clear.
thanks david... fascinating overview and conjecture..
it seems to me the usa and uk have been tied at the hip for a very long time... when it comes to foreign affairs policy
and wars - the one will always vouch for the other without hesitation... it tells me the relationship is really deep..
Thank you very. As ever you have illuminated a few more things for me. Kaszeta's involvement is interesting. He is someone
I am in the middle of researching in relation to Higgins and Bellingcat.
I think the English are using you, they are unsentimental empirical people that only do these that benefit the Number One.
The chief beneficiary of the Coup in Iran was England and not US.
That Newsweek piece about Levinson is very superficial to me.
Re: Levinson
# Who suggested to who 'first' the Iran caper...Anne Jablonski to Levinson or Levinson to Jablonski? It was reported earlier
by Meier that in December 2005, when Levinson was pitching Jablonski on projects he might take on when his CIA contract was approved
he sent her a lengthy memo about Dawud's potential as an informant.
# Ira Silverman, the Iran hating NBC guy, pitched a Iraq caper to Levinson with Dawud Salahuddin, as his Iran contact and Levinson
went to Jablonski with it.
# And what was with Boris Birshstein, a Russian organized crime figure who had fled to Israel and Oleg Deripaska, the "aluminum
czar" of Russia whose organized crime contacts have kept him from entering the United States jumping in to help find Levinson?
The FBI allowed Deripaska in for two visits in 2009 in exchange for his alleged help in locating Levinson but obviously nothing
came of it.
I think there were more little agents/agendas in this than Levinson and Jablonski and US CIA.
As usual a wonderful analysis. I admire your insight, integrity and courage. I wish you could write more on why the Borg
is so much against Trump, even though they have Kushner, Adelson and Co. running interference for them.
I and my friends consider it a given that most, if not all, anglo-zionist moves in the ME are to "provide a definitive
solution to the – inherently intractable – security problems of a Jewish settler state in the area. " It is an open secret that
the izzies are the reason why a few Russians, some Turks, lots of Kurds and countless Arabs are dying in the Syrian battlefields.
Another open secret: the takfiris and kurds have been, and are, supported by the West. That the "masters of the universe™" have
been conceiving and doubling down on such disastrous policies give lie to their much-vaunted "intelligence".
"There is reason to suspect that some former and very likely current employees of the FBI have been colluding with elements
in other American and British intelligence agencies, in particular the CIA and MI6, in support of an extremely ambitious foreign
policy agenda for a very long time. "
David as usual fascinating work connecting the dots. One question that comes to my mind is about the above point you are making.
Is it your understanding or believe that these IC individuals on both side of Atlantic, are pursuing/forcing their (on behalf
of the Borg) foreign policy agenda outside of their respected seating governments? If not, why is it that incoming administration
cannot stop them? So far I can't see any strategic changes on US foreign policy toward ME or Russia, at tactical level yes but
not fundamentally.
I am not David Habakkuk, obviously. But I will venture a little opinion anyway. It is not enough that the Borgists get their
policy preferences. If it were, then Kushner, Adelson and Co. running interference would be enough for them.
It is the very FACT of Trump even getting elected at ALL which outrages and terrifies them so much. They are used to seeing
themselves as successful manipulators and engineers of every major event. They were engineering the whole electoral battlespace
to get Clinton elected. The mere fact of Trump's victory in the teeth of their Electoral Engineering for Clinton is an act of
defiance which they will not tolerate.
And if they fail to bring Trump down at all, they will stand revealed as being defeatable. And this is their big fear.
That if people see they have defeated the Borg once on keeping Trump in the teeth of Borg's efforts, that people might try to
defeat and smash down the Borg on another issue. And then another. And then another after that.
So that is why the Borg cares so much. They view the Trump election as an insurgency, and they view themselves as waging a
counterinsurgency, which they dare not lose.
Thanks for your analysis. I always enjoy and learn from your posts. I wish you would post more often.
In my non-expert opinion, the Borg and the media were all in for Hillary. They were convinced that she was gonna win. To curry
favor with the Empress who would be certainly crowned after the election they were eager and convinced that their lawlessness
would become a badge for promotion and plum positions in her administration. In their conceit, they believed they could kill two
birds with one stroke. They could vilify Putin and create the mass hysteria to checkmate him, while at the same time disparage
and frame Trump as The Manchurian Candidate to seal their certain electoral victory.
Unfortunately for them voters in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin didn't buy their sales pitch despite the overwhelming
media barrage from all corners. Even news publications who have only endorsed Republican candidates for President for over a century
endorsed her.
Trump's election win caused panic among the political establishment, the media and the Deep State. They were already all-in.
Their only choice was to double down and get Trump impeached. Now their conspiracy is beginning to unravel. They are doing everything
possible to forestall their Armageddon. Of course they have many allies. This battle is gonna be interesting to watch. Trump is
clearly getting many Congressional Republicans on side as his base of Deplorables remains solidly behind him. That is what's befuddling
the Borg pundits.
So far I can't see any strategic changes on US foreign policy toward ME or Russia, at tactical level yes but not fundamentally.
Because it is not possible to do on fundamental level yet, especially with US foreign policy establishment and so called
consensus being built almost entirely, in ideological and, most importantly, cadres senses, on the ultimate exceptionalist agenda
in which Russia is the ultimate obstacle and enemy. Establishment in saturated with neocons and likes. They are the swamp.
This swamp (Borg, deep state, etc.) still thinks that it can use Cold War 1.0 Playbook and address very real and dangerous
American economic issues. They are wrong, since most of them didn't read the playbook correctly to start with.
They act and believe that they are Olympians. You have to wait for them to age and die before any substantive change in Fortress
West's posture; say 2040.
You are right CWII is very much desired and on agenda, but i am not sure of setup, the setup/board has been changed tremendously
and IMO benefits the Asian side of Bosphorus, for one thing technology is no longer exclusive, and financial burden is heavier
on atlantic side.
''Establishment in saturated with neocons and likes. They are the swamp. ''
The locust keep trying and trying, destruction is their life's work.
'1977-1981: Nationalities Working Group Advocates Using Militant Islam Against Soviet Union'
In 1977 Zbigniew Brzezinski, as President Carter's National Security Adviser, forms the Nationalities Working Group (NWG)
dedicated to the idea of weakening the Soviet Union by inflaming its ethnic tensions. The Islamic populations are regarded
as prime targets. Richard Pipes, the father of Daniel Pipes, takes over the leadership of the NWG in 1981. Pipes predicts that
with the right encouragement Soviet Muslims will "explode into genocidal fury" against Moscow. According to Richard Cottam, a
former CIA official who advised the Carter administration at the time, after the fall of the Shah of Iran in 1978, Brzezinski
favored a "de facto alliance with the forces of Islamic resurgence, and with the Republic of Iran." [Dreyfuss, 2005, pp. 241,
251 - 256]
'November 1978-February 1979: Some US Officials Want to Support Radical Muslims to Contain Soviet Union'
State Department official Henry Precht will later recall that Brzezinski had the idea "that Islamic forces could be used
against the Soviet Union. The theory was, there was an arc of crisis, and so an arc of Islam could be mobilized to contain the
Soviets." [Scott, 2007, pp. 67] In November 1978, President Carter appointed George Ball head of a special White House Iran task
force under Brzezinski. Ball recommends the US should drop support for the Shah of Iran and support the radical Islamist opposition
of Ayatollah Khomeini. This idea is based on ideas from British Islamic expert Dr. Bernard Lewis, who advocates the balkanization
of the entire Muslim Near East along tribal and religious lines. The chaos would spread in what he also calls an "arc of crisis"
and ultimately destabilize the Muslim regions of the Soviet Union
"There is reason to suspect that some former and very likely current employees of the FBI have been colluding with elements
in other American and British intelligence agencies, in particular the CIA and MI6, in support of an extremely ambitious foreign
policy agenda for a very long time."
Yes, that is what appears to be just what is coming to light. I wonder just what position Trey Gowdy is going to have since
he won't be running for re-election. The rage from the left is palpable. I'm sure the next outraged guy on the left will know
how to shoot straighter than the ones who shot up Congressman Scalise or the concert goers at Mandalay Bay.
"They are wrong, since most of them didn't read the playbook correctly to start with."
-- If they have read the important books at all... The ongoing scandal has been revealing a stunning incompetence of the "deciders."
Too often they look comical, ridiculous, undignified. This is dangerous, considering their power.
England preferred NAZI Germany to USSR, this is well known. As to what would have happened, the outcome of the war, in my opinion,
did not depend on US participation in the European Theatre. All of Europe would have become USSR satellite or joined USSR.
"unsentimental empirical people"? Absolutely disagree with you. Now the Iranians, they strike me as a singularity unsentimental
people. Just general impressions, mind you.
Yes, US was the first country to proudly deliver Manpads to be used by "rebels" (Mojahadin later Taleban) against USSR in Afghanistan
back in 80s. And, as per the architect of support for the rebels (Zbigniew Brzezinski) very proud of it with no regret. With that
in mind, I don't see how western politicians, the western governments and their related proxy war planers, will be regretting,
even sadden, once god forbid we see passenger planes with loved ones are shot down taking off or landing at various western airports
and other places around the word. Just like how superficialy with crocodile tears in their eyes they acted in aftermath of the
terrorist events in various western cities in this past 16 years. Gods knows what will happens to us if the opposite side start
to supply his own proxies with lethal anti air weapons. "Proudly", I don't think anybody in west cares or will regret of such
an escalation.
I think it likely that what Meier produces is only a 'limited hangout', and am hoping that when the book arrives it will contain
more pointers.
It is important to be clear that one is often dealing with people playing very complicated double games.
An interesting document is the 'Petition for Writ of Habeus Corpus' made on behalf of Khodorkovsky's close associate Alexander
Konanykhin back in 1997,when the Immigration and Naturalization Service were – apparently at least – cooperating with Russian
attempts to get hold of him. An extract:
'During the immigration hearing FBI SA Robert Levinson, an INS witness, confirmed that in 1992 Petitioner was kidnapped and
afterwards pursued by assassins of the Solntsevskaya organized criminal group. This organized criminal group is reportedly the
largest and the most influential organized criminal group in Russia, and operates internationally.'
Note the similarities between the 'StratCom' that Khonanykin and his associates were producing in the 'Nineties, and that which
Simpson and his associates have been producing two decades later.
Another useful example is provided by a 2004 item in the 'New American Magazine', reproduced on Konanykhin's website:
'One of those who testified on behalf of Konanykhine was KGB defector Yuri Shvets, who declared: "I have a firsthand knowledge
on similar operations conducted by the KGB." Konanykhine had brought trouble on himself, Shvets continued, when he "started bringing
charges against people who were involved with him in setting up and running commercial enterprises. They were KGB people secretly
smuggling from Russia hundreds of millions of dollars . This is [a] serious case, and I know that KGB ... desperately wants to
win this case, and everybody who won't step to their side would face problems."'
So – 'first hand knowledge', from a Ukrainian nationalist – look at what the Chalupas have been doing, it seems not much has
changed.
For a rather different perspective on what Konanykhin had actually been up to, from someone in whose honesty – if not always
judgement – I have complete confidence, see the testimony of Karon von Gerhke-Thompson to the House Committee on Banking and Financial
Services hearings on Russian Money Laundering. In this, she described how she had been approached by him in 1993:
'"Konanykhine alleged that Menatep Bank controlled $1.7bn [Ł1bn] in assets and investment portfolios of Russia's most prominent
political and social elite," she recalled. She said he wanted to move the bank's assets off shore and asked her to help buy foreign
passports for its "very, very special clients".
'In her testimony to the committee Ms Von Gerhke-Thompson said she informed the CIA of the deal, and the agency told her that
it believed Mr Konanykhine and Mr Khodorkovsky "were engaged in an elaborate money laundering scheme to launder billions of dollars
stolen by members of the KGB and high-level government officials".
Coming back to Steele's 'StratCom', in July 2008, an item appeared on the 'Newnight' programme of the BBC – which some of us
think should by then have been rechristened the 'Berezovsky Broadcasting Corporation' – in which the introduction by the presenter,
Jeremy Paxman, read as follows:
'Good evening. The New Russian President, Dmitri Medvedev, was all smiles and warm words when he met Gordon Brown today. He
said he was keen to resolve all outstanding difficulties between the two countries. Yada yada yada. Gordon Brown smiled, but he
must know what Newsnight can now reveal: that MI5 believes the Russian state was involved in the murder of Alexander Litvinenko
by radioactive poisoning. They also believe that without their intervention another London-based Russian, Boris Berezovsky, would
have been murdered. Our diplomatic editor, Mark Urban, has this exclusive report.'
When Urban repeated the claims on his blog, there was a positive eruption from someone using the name 'timelythoughts', about
the activities of someone she referred to as 'Berezovsky's disinformation specialist' – when I came across this later, it was
immediately clear to me that she was Karon von Gerhke, and he was Shvets.
She then described a visit by Scaramella to Washington, details of which had already been unearthed by my Italian collaborator,
David Loepp. Her claim to have e-mails from Shvets, from the time immediately prior to Litvinenko's death, directly contradicting
the testimony he had given, fitted with other evidence I had already unearthed.
Later, we exchanged e-mails over a quite protracted period, and a large amount of material that came into my possession as
a result was submitted by me to the Inquest team, with some of it being used in posts on the 'European Tribune' site.
What I never used publicly, because I could only partially corroborate it from the material she provided, was an extraordinary
claim about Shvets:
'He was responsible for bringing in a Kremlin initiative that was walked Vice President Cheney's office on a US government
quid pro quo with the Kremlin FSB SVR involving the arrest of Mikhail Khodorkovsky – a cease and desist on allegations of a politically
motivated arrest of Khodorkovsky, violations of rules of law and calls from Russia's expulsion from the G 8 in exchange for favorable
posturing of U.S. oil companies on Gazprom's Shtokman project and intelligence on weapon sales during the Yeltsin era to Iraq,
Iran and Syria, all documented in reports I submitted to the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and MI6.
'Berezovsky's DS could not be on both sides on that isle. His Kremlin FSB SVR sources had been vetted by the CIA and by the
National Security Council. They proved to be as represented. As we would later learn, however, he was on Berezovsky's payroll
at same time. The FSB SVR general he was coordinating the Kremlin initiative through was S. R. Subbotin, the same FSB SVR general
who was investigating Berezovsky's money laundering operations in Switzerland during the same timeframe. His FSB SVR sources surrounding
Putin were higher than any Lugovoy could have ever hoped to affiliate with.
'R. James Woolsey (former CIA DCI), Marshall Miller (former law partner of the late CIA DCI William Colby), who I coordinated
the Kremlin initiative through that Berezovsky's DS had brought in were shocked to learn that he was affiliated with Berezovsky
and Litvinenko. He was in Berezovsky's inner circle and engaged in vetting Russian business with Litvinenko. He operated Berezovsky's
Ukraine website, editing and dubbing the now infamous Kuchma tapes throughout the lead up to the elections in the Ukraine. Berezovsky
contributed $41 million to Viktor Yushchenko's campaign, which he used in an attempt to force Yushchenko to reunite with Julia
Tymoschenko. It failed but would succeed later after Berezovsky orchestrated a public relations initiative through Alan Goldfarb
in the U.S. on behalf of Tymoschenko.'
Having got to know Karon von Gerhke quite well, and also been able to corroborate a great deal of what she told me about many
things, and discussed these matters with her, it is absolutely clear to me that she was neither fabricating nor fantasising. What
later became apparent, both to her and to me, was that in the 'double game' that Shvets was playing, he had succeeded in fooling
her as to the side for which he was working.
It seems likely however that the reason Shvets could do what he did was that quite precisely that many high-up people in the
Kremlin and elsewhere were playing a 'double game.' In this, Karon von Gerhke's propensity for indiscretion – of which I, like
others, was both beneficiary and victim – could be useful.
An exercise in 'positioning', which could be used to disguise the fact that Shvets was indeed 'Berezovsky's disinformation
specialist', could be used to make it appear that 'intelligence on weapon sales during the Yeltsin era to Iraq, Iran and Syria'
was actually credible.
This could have been used to try to rescue Cheney, Bush and their associates from the mess they had got into as a result of
the failure of the invasion to provide any evidence whatsoever supporting the case which had been made for it. It could also have
been used to provide the kind of materials justifying military action against Iran for which Levinson and Jablonski were looking,
and for similar action against Syria.
Among reasons for bringing this up now is that we need to make sense of the paradox that Simpson – clearly in collusion with
Steele – was using Mogilevich and the 'Solnsetskaya Bratva' both against Manafort and Trump and against Browder.
There are various possible explanations for this. I do not want to succumb to my instinctive prejudice that this may have been
another piece of 'positioning', similar to what I think was being done with Shvets, but the hypothesis needs to be considered.
A more general point is that people in Washington and London need to 'wise up' to the kind of world with which they are dealing.
This could be done quite enjoyably: reading some of Dashiell Hammett's fictions of the United States in the Prohibition era, or
indeed buying DVDs of some of the classics of 'film noir', like 'Out of the Past' (in its British release, 'Build My Gallows High')
might be a start.
Very much of the coverage of affairs in the post-Soviet space since 1991 has read rather as though a Dashiell Hammett story
had been rewritten by someone specialising in sentimental children's, or romantic, fiction (although, come to think of it, that
is really what Brigid O'Shaughnessy does in 'The Maltese Falcon.')
The testimony of Glenn Simpson seems a case in point. The sickly sentimentality of these people does, rather often, make one
feel as though one wanted to throw up.
"They act and believe that they are Olympians. You have to wait for them to age and die before any substantive change in Fortress
West's posture; say 2040.}
No, three years at tops and could be much sooner if dimes starting dropping by exposed people that don't want to take the
fall for their superiors whom they always detested. One possible thing to get the process started sooner is if the recent Russian
Intelligence delegation to DC that Smoothie mentions on another thread gave the current administration, as a diplomatic courtesy
of course, the audio recordings of Madame Sectary Nuland's infamous mental meltdown at Kaliningrad. No telling what beans were
spilled in her moment of panic, but I am willing to bet key names were dropped. Either way the time is coming.
- If they have read the important books at all... The ongoing scandal has been revealing a stunning incompetence of the "deciders."
Too often they look comical, ridiculous, undignified. This is dangerous, considering their power.
My coming book is precisely about that. Especially, once American policy-makers who saw and experienced war (Ike, George
Marshall's generation) departed things started to roll down hill with Reagan bringing on board a whole collection of neocons.
Unawareness is always dangerous, a complete blackout in relations between two nuclear powers is more than dangerous--it
is completely reckless. Again, the way CW 1.0 is perceived in the current US "elites" it becomes extremely tempting to repeat
it. Electing Hillary was another step in unleashing CW 2.0 by people who have no understanding of what they were doing.
Obama started crushing US-Russian relations before any campaigns were launched and before Trump was even seriously considered
a GOP nominee, let alone a real contender. New confrontation hinged on HRC being elected. In fact, she was one of the major driving
forces behind a serious of geopolitical anti-Russian moves. Visceral Russo-phobia became a feature in HRC campaign long before
any Steele's Dossier. This was a program.
I think the failure of Deciders is nothing new - Fath Ali Shah attacking Russia, or the abject failure of the Deciders in 1914.
Europe is still not where she was in 1890.
I read the post and responses early on, so forgive me if this point has been addressed in the meantime. If the memo information
on non-disclosure of material evidence to the warrant issuing court is accurate, as soon as that information came to the attention
of the authorities (clearly some time ago) there was a duty on them (including the judge(s) who issued the warrants) to have the
matter brought back before the court toot sweet. If that had happened it would surely be in the public domain, so on the assumption
the prosecutors and maybe even the judge didn't see the need to review the matter, even purely on a contempt/ethics basis, the
memo information only seems convincing if the FISA system is a total sham. I really doubt that.
IMO, the bigger problem for American not shying away from wars, or being silent about them , is when your home, your mom and
dad' home, the town you grew up in, are immune and away from the war.
The security and safety of the two oceans, encourages or at least, in an all volunteer military makes it a secondary problem
for regular people, to worry about. As I remember that wasn't the case at the end of VN war when i first landed here. At
that time even though the war was on the other side of the planet and away from homeland, still people, especially young ones
in colleges were paying more attention to the cost of war.
Diana West has uncovered some interesting "Red Threads" (6 part article at dianawest-dot-net) on all the Fusion GPS folks. Seems
ole Russian speaking Nellie Ohr got herself a ham radio license recently. Wonder why she would suddenly need one of those? They
are all Marxists with potential connections back to Russia.
Been there. I am also a latecomer to SST. You have to read the back numbers. How? My IT expertise dates from the dawn of the internet
and was lamentable then but I find Wayback sometimes allows easier searches than the SST search engine. A straight search on google
also allows searches with more than one term. This link -
- gets you to a chronological list and for recent material is sometimes quicker than fiddling around with search engines. "Categories"
on the RH side is useful but then you don't get some very informative comments that cross-refer.
If those sadly elementary procedures fail resort to the nearest infant. There's a blur of fingers on the keyboard and what
you want then usually appears. Never ask them how they did it. They get so fed up when you ask them to explain it again.
"Who is David Habakkuk?" That's a quantum computer sited, from internal evidence you pick up from time to time, somewhere in
the Greater London area. Cross references like you wouldn't believe and over several fields, so maybe he's two quantum computers.
The "Borg"?. Try Wittgenstein. Likely a prog but you can't be choosy these days. Early on in "Philosophical Investigations"
(hope I get this right) he discusses the problem of how you can view as an entity something that has ill-defined or overlapping
boundaries. The "Borg" is that "you know it when you see it" sort of thing. A great merit of this site is that the owner and many
of the contributors know it from inside.
In general you may regard your new found site as a microcosm of the great battle that is raging in the West. It's a battle
between the (probably apocryphal but adequately stated) Roveian view of reality that regards truth as an adjunct to or as a by-product
of ideology and Realpolitik and the objective view of reality as something that is damned difficult to get at, and sometimes impossible,
but that has a truth in it somewhere that is independent of the views and convictions of the observer. It's a battle that's never
going to be won but unless it tilts back closer to common sense it can certainly be lost and the West with it.
Clearly the Labor Party in the UK preferred the USSR to Nazi Germany. (cepting that short interlude where the Soviets signed the
Agreement with Hitler, and the Left Organized Leadership all across Europe, for the most part, lined up with Hitler). But for
the most part, Labor was Left.
Elements (the ones that won out in the end) of the Conservative Party loathed both Hitler and Stalin. An element of the Conservative
Party was sympathetic, but only up to a certain point, with the Nazis. This ended in 1939, sept.
So I don't think it fair, or accurate, to say 'England prefered the Nazis....and even if it not those things, it certainly
not "well known", except to the people who have used the false premise to butter their wounds from supporting Stalin in his Pact
with Hitler. Or are inclined to bash the British in general.
All right, perhaps I should have said "The English Government". Google "Litvinov", you may discover how the English Government
pushed Stalin to make a deal with Hitler to buy USSR time.
Witness the infamous State Department protest memo calling for more war on Syria.
The State Department employees that signed that memo were sure that HRC would win and that their diligent work in pushing the
Deep State agenda would sure be rewarded.
Since entering office, Trump appears to have taken the line that if he gives the Deep State everything it demands, he will
be allowed to remain in office, even if he is not allowed to remain in power.
jonst That's broadly accurate, but specifically Attlee brought the motion of no confidence in Chamberlain, which the conservative
appeasers won but which led to Churchill's opportunity. Attlee was essential in cabinet to Churchill's resistance after the retreat
of the BEF.
FM
What are you doing here? You said you dislike the military. Are you really in the Spanish Basque country? Bilbao maybe? break
- David Habakkuk is a private scholar of the Litvinenko murder and Soviet/Russian politics and intelligence affairs. His surname
comes from Wales where in the 18th (?) Century the ancestral village were all "chapel" and changed their surnames to Old Testament
names. His father was master of one of the Cambridge colleges and David is himself a graduate of Cambridge. pl
The hard, blinding truth:
https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2018/02/05/will-conspiracy-trump-american-democracy-go-unpunished/
"In keeping silent about evil, in burying it so deep within us that no sign of it appears on the surface, we are implanting it,
and it will rise up a thousand fold in the future. When we neither punish nor reproach evildoers, we are not simply protecting
their trivial old age, we are thereby ripping the foundations of justice from beneath new generations." – Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn
This troll showed up recently at b's place doing the same accusations. There is group that is running sacred and pulling out
all the stops in "info ops" side of the spectrum. The damn fools don't or, most probably, won't get thru their thick heads and
even thicker hearts that it is a failed strategy that turns bystanders into their opponents.
Here for your edification is the definitive analysis of the GOP memo by Alexander Mercouris over at The Duran.
And it is a masterpriece - and quite long, possibly his longest analysis of anything so far. He buries the counterarguments
being passed around by the Democratic opposition and the anti-Trump media.
Mercouris writes on legal affairs alongside his foreign policy stuff and he writes with a lawyer's precision. And in this article
he points out that the GOP memo is writter as a legal document - probably by Trey Gowdy - with additional political insertions
by Nunes. So it should properly be referred to as the "GOP memo" or the "Gowdy memo", not the Nunes memo."
Why this is important is that the GOP memo is basically written as a defense lawyer would in contesting a case -- this case
being the FISA warrant application. Which means its orientation is proving failure to disclose relevant and material information
to the FISA court and in some cases rising to the point of contempt of court.
"Seeking transparency and cooperation should not be this challenging," Grassley said in a statement after posting a heavily
redacted version of the criminal referral that he and GOP Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina sent to the Justice Department
last month. " The government should not be blotting out information that it admits isn't secret. "
I suppose DOJ/FBI believe that by obstructing, stalling and obfuscating they can buy time and that the Republicans in Congress
will get tired of the games and go home. This seems like a pretty straightforward memo, highlighting the discrepancy between Steele's
court filings and the FBI's version of Steele's discussions with them. Grassley is pointing out that either Steele or the FBI
is lying.
What is interesting is the difference in process and ability between the House & Senate. The House can release their memos
on its own, even if not declassified by the Executive, whereas the Senate requires the Executive to declassify it's memos that
are based on classified documents.
We have not had a self declared communist on SST before although LeaNder in her youth may have come close to that exalted status.
You might want to read the wiki on me and the CV I have posted on the blog to avoid tedious accusations of this or that. I am
thought by some to have some knowledge of the ME so please do not try to lecture me about how much you love the Arabs. I speak
their language and have lived with them for a long time. There are people who write to SST who are pro-Trump and some who are
anti-Trump. I seek a mixture of views so long as personal insult and invective are eschewed. Personally, I do not belong to a
political party and would describe myself as an original intent, strict constructionist.
Trump is the constitutionally and legally elected president of the United States. Your descriptors with regard to him are,
in my opinion, only plausible if seen from the point of view of various kinds of leftist including Marxist-Leninists like you.
You sound very smug and self-satisfied but we will see if you can have an open mind at all. pl
Found him, Ali Babacan XVPM, XFM and M of finance. Yes god forbid, if he is a decendent of Ardisher Babakan and another claimant
to Iranian throne, which CIA and Soros can jump on. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ali_Babacan MBA from
Northeestern
I do not believe Trump is a misogynists - he stated publicly that he likes beautiful women. I also do not think he is a racist.
I think he is the first US leader in many decades who has been willing to publicly talk about US problems. For most other US politicians
- they largely live in "the best of all possible worlds".
Colonel - sincere apologies if my comment above disrupted the discussion on a fascinating article.
David Habakkuk - I should say that "Quantum Computer" referred solely to the ability to gather and collate great amounts of
material. It's an ability I admire. On Steele, you are among other things setting out something that is unfamiliar to me though
not to most others here, I imagine, and that is the milieu in which he is or was working as a UK Intelligence operative. That
you have also done in previous articles; it doesn't seem to be a particularly savoury milieu. As far as Steele's US activities
are concerned, from you I'm not getting the picture of a lone operative, all ties with MI6 neatly severed, working solo in the
States on some chance assignment in 2016. I'm getting the picture of someone still very much in the swim and selected because
of that.
The only problem with that second picture is the dossier, or the 30% or so of it - what Comey, I think it was, described as
"salacious and unverified". Surely that's got to be amateur night. Not something that a practised professional working with other
professionals would put his hand to. Does that not support the picture of an ex-operative who's gone off the rails and is fumbling
around unsupervised?
The Steele affair touched a nerve. One is always I suppose aware that IC professionals are getting up to all sorts and it doesn't
seem improbable that "all sorts" includes political stuff and smear campaigns. But it's not heaps of corpses in Syria or farm
boys being sent to certain death in the Ukraine. And even within the UK Intelligence Community and their contractors or whatever
they're called, compared with what our IC people have done in the ME or compared with what one fears Hamish de Bretton Gordon
might have got himself involved in, Christopher Steele's just a choirboy. Nevertheless there's something deeply repellent about
what he did. Whatever your view of Trump there he was, newly elected, obviously wanting to make a go of it, and already faced
with difficulties. Then some chancer throws "Golden Showers" in his face and makes his position, not maybe for the insiders but
for the general public, that bit more untenable.
So from a UK perspective the question of whether Steele was acting in concert with others in the UK becomes important. If he
was truly working solo then that from a UK point of view is regrettable but one of those things. In that case MI6 would just have
to tighten up its controls on what ex-operatives get up to, put out the appropriate disclaimers, and that's the end of it as far
as the UK is concerned. But if Golden Showers and the rest of it was a "Welcome Mr President" from UK IC professionals as a group
then those professionals should be hung drawn and quartered together with whoever set them on.
I've read your article several times now and apart from the fact that much of what you pull together isn't material I'm up
on, it doesn't seem to me that you're definitely coming to one conclusion or the other. There are many more facts to come out
so perhaps this question is premature, but do you think Steele was acting in concert with others in the UK or was he, at least
as far as the UK is concerned, working solo?
Most Iranian females Named Fatima/ Fatimah after prophet' daughter, call themselves Fati, and if they are of aristocrat type,
they are called Bibi Fati Khanam, which is honorable lady Fati and if they are westernized they become Fay or Fifi.
Much of your commentary seems directed to David Habakkuk and PT rather than I. I don't think the FBI would have started to
pay him until he left UK service. pl
Colonel - Further apologies - I should have submitted comment 79 as two items.
Yes, the question about Steele was in response to DH's article. The UK side of the affair is I suppose only a small part of
the question you and your Committee are examining but it's a dubious part however one looks at it. Although it's early days yet
I was hoping DH, with his encyclopaedic knowledge of the UK intelligence scene, might feel able to cast more light on that UK
side.
Cortes - " ... where, exactly, do you expect the great public to look beyond the initial scabrously defamatory storytelling about
the "golden showers"? "
I don't think one can expect the public, at least in the UK, to look very far beyond the initial scandal. The investigations
and enquiries presently under way in the US are complex and are taking place in a different system. This member of the UK public
wouldn't be able to give you a coherent account of those enquiries and I doubt many of my fellows could.
So we have to take on trust, most of us, what we're told. As far as I can tell the underlying theme from the BBC and the media
is generally that Trump is subverting the American Justice system in order to ensure his own misdemeanours aren't investigated.
Some of us take that as gospel. Others of us assume that the politicians and the media are untrustworthy and ignore them. I
doubt many of us go into much more detail than that. Therefore the original story will stick in our minds.
But for some in the UK there are questions in there as well. How come the UK got mixed up in all this? How much did the UK
get mixed up in it?
When I belatedly started looking at the Litvinenko mystery, as a result of a strange email provoked by comments of mine on
SST which arrived in my inbox in March 2007 from someone who turned out to be a key protagonist, it was rather obvious that improvised
and chaotic 'StratCom' operations had been put into place on both the Russian and British sides to cover up what had happened.
A particular interesting feature of those on the British side – in which we now know Christopher Steele must have played
a leading role – were the bizarre gyrations those responsible were going through trying to explain away the extraordinary fact
that when he had broken the story of his poisoning, Litvinenko had pointed the finger of suspicion at his Italian associate Mario
Scaramella.
When I started delving, I came across some very interesting pieces on Scaramella and related matters posted on the 'European
Tribune' website by a Rome-based blogger using the name 'de Gondi' in the period after the story broke.
His actual name is David Loepp, by profession he is an artisan jeweller specialising in ancient and traditional goldsmith techniques,
and I already knew and respected his work from his contributions to the transnational internet investigation into the Niger uranium
forgeries – an earlier MI6 clusterf**ck.
So in May 2008 I posted a longish piece on that site, setting out the problems with the evidence about the Litvinenko case
as I saw them, in the hope of reactivating his interest. This paid off in spades, when he linked to, and translated a key extract
from, the request from Italian prosecutors to use wiretaps of conversations with Senator Paolo Guzzanti in connection with their
prosecution of Scaramella for 'aggravated calumny.'
The request, which up to not so long ago was freely available on the website of the Italian Senate, was denied, but the extensive
summaries of the transcripts provided a lot of material.
The extract from the wiretap request which David Loepp posted, which like Litvinenko's letter containing the claims he and
Yuri Shvets had concocted about Putin using Mogilevich to attempt to supply Al Qaeda with a 'mini nuclear bomb' is dated 1 December
2005, contains key pointers to the conspiracy. It concludes:
'A passage on Simon Moghilevic and an agreement between the camorra to search for nuclear weapons lost during the Cold War
to be consigned to Bin Laden, a revelation made by the Israeli. According to Scaramella the circle closes: camorra, Moghilevic-
Russian mafia- services- nuclear bombs in Naples.'
Subsequent conversations make clear that Scaramella left on 6 December 2005 for Washington, on a trip where he was to meet
Shvets. The summary of a report on this to Guzzanti reads:
'12) conversation that took place on number [omissis] on December 18, 2005, at 9:41:51 n. 1426, containing explicit references
to the authenticity of the declarations of Alexander Litvinenko acquired by Scaramella, to the trustworthiness of the affirmations
made by Scaramella in his reports to the commission and to the meetings Scaramella had with Talik after having denounced them
[presumably Talik and his alleged accomplices]. (They can talk with HEIMS thanks to the help of MILLER. SHVEZ says that he had
been a companion of CARLOS at the academy; SHVEZ has already made declarations and is willing to continue collaboration. Guzzanti
warns that a document in Russian arrived in commission in which the name of SCARAMELLA appears several times, these [sic] say
that directives to the contrary had been given to Litvinenko. Scaramella says that he went to the meeting with TALIK in the company
of two treasury [police] and a cop, Talik spoke of a person from the Ukrainian GRU who would be willing to talk and a strange
Chechen ring in Naples. Assassination attempt against the pope, CASAROLI was a Soviet agent.)'
The summary of a later conversation also refers to 'MILLER':
'conversation that took place on number [omissis] on January 13, 2006, at 11:22:11 n. 2287, containing references to Scaramella's
sources in relation to facts referred in the Commission, the means by which they were obtained by Scaramella from declarations
made abroad, the role of Litvinenko, also on the occasion of declarations made by third parties and the credibility of the news
and theses given by Scaramella to the commission (Scaramella reads a text in English on the relation between the KGB and PRODI.
Guzzanti asks if its credibility can be confirmed and if the taped declarations can be backed up; Scaramella answers that there
were two testimonies, Lou Palumbo and Alexander (Litvinenko), and that the registration made in London at the beginning of the
assignment [Scaramella's?] had been authenticated by a certain BAKER of the FBI. As he translates the text from English, Scaramella
notes that the person testifying does not say he knows Prodi but only that he thinks that Prodi ...; all those who worked for
the person testifying in Scandinavia said that Prodi was "theirs." The affair in Rimini, Bielli is preparing the battle in Rimini.
Meetings with MILLER for the three things that are needed. Polemic about Pollari over the pressure exerted on Gordievski.)'
In the exchanges on my May 2008 post, I mentioned and linked to some extraordinary comments on a crucial article by Edward
Jay Epstein, in which Karon von Gerhke claimed that his sceptical account fitted with what her contacts in the British investigation
had told her. When that July I came across her equally extraordinary claims in response to the BBC's Mark Urban piece of stenography
– which Steele may also have had a hand in organising – I found she was referring to precisely that visit to Washington by Scaramella
which had been described in the wiretap request.
As you can perhaps imagine, the fact that 'Miller' had featured in the conversations with Guzzanti both as a key contact, who
could introduce Scaramella to Aldrich Ames (which is who 'Heims' clearly is), and with whom there had been meetings about 'the
three things that are needed' made me inclined to take seriously what Karon von Gerhke said about his role.
In December 2008, I put up another post on 'European Tribune', putting together the material from David Loepp and that from
Karon von Gerhke – but not discussing the references to 'Miller.' As I had hoped, this led to her getting in touch.
Among the material with which she supplied me, which I in turn supplied to the Solicitor to the Inquest, were covers of faxes
to John Rizzo, then Acting General Counsel of the CIA. From a fax dated 23 October 2005.
'John: See attached email to Chuck Patrizia. Berezovsky alleges he is in possession of a copy of a classified file given to
the CIA by Russia's FSB, which he further alleges the CIA disseminated to British, French, Italian and Israeli intelligence agencies
implicating him in business associations with the Mafia and to ties with terrorist organizations. Yuri Shvets was authorised/directed
by Berezovsky to raise the issue with Bud McFarlane scheduled for Thursday. McFarlane is unaware the issue will be raised with
him.'
From a fax dated 7 November 2005:
'John: I am attaching an email exchange between Yuri Shvets and me re: 1) article he published on his Ukraine website on alleged
sale of nuclear choke to Iran, which I reproached him on as having been planted by Berezovsky and 2 the alleged FSB/CIA document
file that Berezovsky obtained from Scaramella, which Yuri acknowledges in his e-mail to me. Like extracting wisdom teeth to get
him to put anything on paper, especially in an e-mail! [NAME REDACTED BY ME – DH] is the source McFarlane referred Yuri to re:
Berezovsky's visa issue. She proposed meeting Berezovsky in London. Alleged it would take a year to clear up USG issues and even
then could not guarantee him a visa. She too has access to USG intelligence on Berezovsky. Open book.'
From a fax dated 5 December 2005:
'John. From Mario Scaramella to Yuri Shvets to my ears, the DOJ has authorised Mario Scaramella to interview Aldrich Ames with
regard to members of the Italian Intelligence Service agent recruited by Ames for the KGB. Scaramella, as you may recall, is who
gave Boris Berezovsky's aide, a former FSB Colonel [LITVINENKO – DH], that alleged document number to the FSB file that the CIA
disseminated on Berezovsky – a file that Bud McFarlane's "Madam Visa" [NAME REDACTED BY ME – DH] is alleged is totting off to
London for a meeting with Berezovsky, who has agreed to retain her re: his visa issue. Quid pro quo's with Berezovsky and Scaramella
on the CIA agent currently facing kidnapping charges for the rendition of the Muslim cleric? Scott Armstrong has a most telling
file on Scaramella. Not a single redeeming quality.'
In the course of very extensive exchanges with Karon von Gerhke subsequently, we had some rather acute disagreements. It was
unfortunate that her filing was a shambles – a crucial hard disk failed without a backup, and the 'hard copies' appeared to be
in a chaotic state.
However, the only occasion when I can recall having reason to believe that was deliberately lying to me was when David Loepp
unearthed a cache of documentation including the full Italian text of the letter from Litvinenko containing the 'StratCom' designed
to suggest that Putin had attempted to supply a 'mini nuclear bomb' to Al Qaeda. Having been asked to keep this between ourselves
for the time being, Karon insisted on immediately sending it to her contacts in Counter Terrorism Command, and then produced bogus
justifications.
Time and again, moreover, I found that I could confirm statements that she made – see for example the two posts I put up on
the legal battles following the death in February 2008 of Berezovsky's long-term partner Arkadi 'Badri' Patarkatsishvili in June
and July 2009, which were based on careful corroboration of what she told me.
(I should also say that I acquired the greatest respect for her courage.)
And while Owen and his team suppressed all the evidence from her, and almost all of that from David Loepp, which I had I provided
to them, the dossier about Berezovsky is described in a statement made by Litvinenko in Tel Aviv in April 2006, presented in evidence
in the Inquiry.
Other evidence, moreover, strongly inclines me to believe that there were overtures for a 'quid pro quo', purporting to come
from Putin, but that this was a ruse orchestrated by Berezovsky.
Part of the purpose of this would almost certainly have been to supply probably bogus 'evidence' about arms sales in the Yeltsin
years to Iraq, Iran and Syria. Moreover, I think there was an article on the second 'Fifth Element' site run by Shvets about the
supposed sale of a nuclear 'choke' – whatever that is – to Iran.
The likelihood of the involvement of elements in the FBI in these shenanigans seems to quite high, given what has already emerged
about the activities of Levinson. Also relevant may be the fact that the 'declaration' which was part of the attempt to frame
Romano Prodi was authenticated, in London, by 'a certain BAKER of the FBI.')
I know something of spectroscopy. The critical issue here is the provenance of the samples and not the sophistication of the techniques used in the analysis
itself or its instrumentation. The paragraph that you have quoted:
"To figure out signatures based on various synthetic routes and conditions, Chipuk says that the synthetic chemists on his
team will make the same chemical threat agent as many as 2,000 times in an ..." reeks of intellectual intimidation - trying to
brow-beat any skeptic by the size of one's instrument - as it were."
And then there is a little matter of confidence level in any of the analysis - such things are normally based on prior statistics
- which did not and could not exist in this situation.
David, it's no doubt interesting to watch how attention on Victor Ivanov in another deficient inquiry on the British Isles, was
managed in that inquiry. If I may, since he pops up again in the Steele dossier. You take what's available? Is that all there
is to know?
I know its hard to communicate basics if you are deeply into matters. Usually people prefer to opt out. It's getting way too
complicated for them to follow. You made me understand this experience. But isn't this (fake) intelligence continuity "via" Yuri
Svets what connects your, no harm meant I do understand your obsession with the case, with what we deal with now in the Steele
Dossier? Again, one of the most central figures is Ivanov.
Of course later reports in the Steele Dossier go hand in hand with a larger public relations campaign. Creating reality?
Irony alert: as informer/source I would by then know what the other side wants to hear.
By the way, babbling mode, I found your Tom Mangold transcription. It felt it wasn't there on the link you gave. I used the
date, and other search terms. Maybe I am wrong. Haven't looked at what the judge ruled out of the collection. Yes, cozy session/setting.
why California, Kooshy #18? California among other things left this verbal trace, since I once upon time thought a luggage storage
in SF might be free/available now: this is my home, lady.
Tourists from many -- but not all -- foreign nations wishing to enter Kish Free Zone from legal ports are not required to
obtain any visa prior to travel. For those travelers, upon-arrival travel permits are stamped valid for 14 days by Kish officials.
Who are the not all? Can we assume Britain is not one of those? The German link is different. How about the Iranian? or isn't this the Kish we are talking about?
another Ivanov. I struggled with names (...) in Russian crime novels, admittedly. But that's long ago from times Russian crime
and Russian money flows and rogues getting hold of its nuclear material surfaced more often in Europe. 90s
"... North Stream is a problem as the goal is to economically weaken Russia, tie the EU to the USA via energy supplies and support
our new client state -- Ukraine. ..."
"... But this is also related to attempts to prevent/weaken the alliance of Russia and China. As geopolitical consequences of this
alliance for the USA-led neoliberal empire are very bad ..."
Best bet is for Russia to want to trade with the US and Europe. The gas pipeline will not be enough leverage on Germany
as it provides 9% of their needs.
Yes. And that's against the USA interests (or more correctly the US-led neoliberal empire interests). North Stream is a
problem as the goal is to economically weaken Russia, tie the EU to the USA via energy supplies and support our new client state
-- Ukraine.
As you know, nothing was proven yet in Russiagate (and DNC hacks looks more and more like a false flag operation, especially
this Guccifer 2.0 personality ), but sanctions were already imposed. And when the US government speaks "Russia" in most cases
they mean "China+Russia" ;-). Russia is just a weaker link in this alliance and, as such, it is attacked first. Russiagate is
just yet another pretext after MH17, Magnitsky and such.
To me the current Anti-Russian hysteria is mainly a smokescreen to hide attempt to cement cracks in the façade of the USA neoliberal
society that Trump election revealed (including apparent legitimization of ruling neoliberal elite represented by Hillary).
And a desperate attempt to unite the society using (false) war propaganda which requires demonization of the "enemy of the
people" and neo-McCarthyism.
But this is also related to attempts to prevent/weaken the alliance of Russia and China. As geopolitical consequences of
this alliance for the USA-led neoliberal empire are very bad (for example, military alliance means the end of the USA global
military domination; energy alliance means that is now impossible to impose a blockade on China energy supplies from Middle East
even if Iran is occupied)
In this sense the recent descent into a prolonged fit of vintage Cold War jingoistic paranoia is quite understandable. While,
at the same time, totally abhorrent. My feeling is that unless Russia folds, which is unlikely, the side effects/externalities
of this posture can be very bad for the USA. In any case, the alliance of Russia and China which Obama administration policies
forged spells troubles to the global neoliberal empire dominated by the USA.
Trump rejection of existing forms of neoliberal globalization is one sign that this process already started and some politicians
already are trying to catch the wind and adapt to a "new brave world" by using preemptive adjustments.
Which is why all this Trump-Putin summit hysteria is about.
Neither hard, nor soft neoliberals want any adjustments. They are ready to fight for the US-led neoliberal empire till the
last American (excluding, of course, themselves and their families)
That's a great interview that summarizes Russiagate in a very assessable way. This is exactly repetition of Iraq WDM and
subsequent cover up. The consequence is a new higher level of discreditation of neoliberal MSM, at least by Trump supporters They
will just ignore those bottomfeeders like Clapper and Brennan.
Endemic of Russophobia is the biggest net result of Russiagate. This is also a big election gift to Trump.
The Deep State did not view Trump as a reliable steward of neoliberal empire and that's why Russiagate was unleashed. And Trump
is an embarrassment to the empire, no questions about it.
MadCow spend two year rabidly promoting Russiagate nonsense and she still has her job. That's suggest whom she
serves. In other cased she would be discarded like used condom.
Chris Hedges discusses with Nation reporter Aaron Mate how despite the categorical statement in Robert Mueller's report that Donald
Trump and his campaign did not collude with Russia, the conspiracy theories by the nation's mainstream media show little sign of
diminishing.
We're all still waiting for MSDNC to bring on Aaron, Glenn Greenwald, Jimmy Dore, Michael Tracey and others on any of their
programs. MSDNC has not had on one single lefty who got this fraudulent and disgraceful Stalinesque political investigation right
from day one since December of 2016. Not one.
I've got to admit, I get a massive dopamine rush hearing these two sane, intelligent,critical thinkers, skillfully dissect
this convoluted quadrafuck that has wasted some much of our precious time. I literally feel washed clean for a moment.
But,
for the past three years, elite Democratic Party partisans, along with their media partners,
force-fed thousands of "Bombshell" headlines to millions of Americans, without ever providing a
lick of evidence. The absence of evidence supporting their outrageous lies coupled with the
results of Mueller's investigation and Barr's conclusions establishes collusion – not
between Russia and the Trump family to influence the 2016 presidential election, but amongst
the Democrats and mass media to delegitimize the
Trump presidency.
The Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi said, "We saw cold, hard evidence of the Trump
campaign, and indeed the Trump family, eagerly intending to collude with Russia." Pelosi has
never presented any evidence to support this claim or any of the many other suspect claims the
speaker has made.
The Chairman of House Intelligence Committee Adam Schiff said, "I have evidence of collusion
with Russia and kompromat. It's all in plain sight." Schiff regularly repeated this claim to
the public yet never provided any evidence. He appeared on CNN, MSNBC, NBC, and ABC over 150
times and was never called out for repeating these lies over and over again.
Congressman Eric Swalwell on MSNBC said, "Donald Trump is a Russian agent; we have evidence
Trump and his family colluded with Russia." Swalwell has parroted this and many other claims
since 2016. Evidence provided: none.
Congresswoman Maxine Waters stated, "Trump and his buddies are scumbags who are all Putin's
puppets; we will Impeach 45." Waters has been shrieking "Impeach 45" since election day in
2016. Water's reason: she hates Trump and the entire Grand Old Party "GOP."
Many other Democratic members of Washington DC's swamp echoed similar propaganda that
mobilized the Trump "resistance." Their hit list of frequent salacious claims included "Trump
in handcuffs;" "The entire Trump family, frog-marched, and jailed forever;" "Treason, much
worse than Watergate, we have evidence;" "Trump has been a Russian asset since 1987;" "Trump is
a racist, sexist, misogynist, Islamophobic, homophobic, transphobic, anti-Semitic, xenophobic,
white-national, white-supremacist;"
and let's not forget "He's the next Hitler." This "hit list" has become the Democratic party
mantra since Donald trump announced his candidacy in 2015.
Ex-Central Intelligence Agency "CIA" director John Brennan, who just so happens to be on
MSNBC's payroll, also weighed in on Trump. "Trump's behavior is treasonous. He committed high
crimes and misdemeanors. There is evidence that proves many people in Trump's orbit are guilty
of serious crimes and indictments are coming, and soon. Trump committed Treason" The penalty
for committing "treason" in America, death. Brennan never provided any evidence. Brennan's lies
have destroyed the CIA's reputation and credibility.
Viewers of CNN, MSNBC, NBC, and ABC were inundated with purposeful misrepresentations that
continuously promised faithful audiences that Mueller and his team had "mountains" of evidence
of Trump's collusion with Russia and obstruction of justice. Day after day, these media outlets
repeated how Mueller would deliver an indictment of President Trump, who had committed "treason
and high crimes and misdemeanors" that would lead to his impeachment and jail time. The corrupt
media represented that Trump's family members, who were also guilty of similar crimes, would be
sent to prison. All the above were outrageous lies.
In fact, the only convictions that arose through the Mueller investigation were low-level
process crimes which had NOTHING to do with Trump. $25 million wasted, bravo! These salacious
accusations proved to be part of an elaborate scheme to delegitimize the sitting president and
his administration in order to remove him from office. However, the Democrats and mass media
could not have done it without FBI Director James Comey's exploitation of the United States
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).
We know the whole coup d'état was facilitated by FBI Director James Comey's October 20,
2016 submission of a 66-page application to the FISA court.
Comey and Sally Quillian Yates, the Deputy Attorney General of the United States, signed
this application. Judge Rosemary M. Collyer, the presiding judge of the secret FISA court,
granted an order that led to our intelligence agencies spying on the presidential campaign of
Donald J. Trump. The FBI ran a counter-intelligence investigation named "Crossfire Hurricane"
on Trump's campaign.
Comey's FISA application was largely based on information contained in the Steele dossier, a
dossier written by a disgraced MI6 agent named Christopher Steele. The dossier made wild,
unsubstantiated claims and was financed by the campaign of Hillary Clinton and the Democratic
National Committee via Clinton's law firm Perkins Coie through a company named Fusion GPS.
In a meeting with President Trump in early January 2017, James Comey told President Trump
about the existence of the Steele dossier and told him not to worry about it. Comey stated that
the dossier's contents were salacious, unverified, and untrue. Apparently, James Comey knew,
yet never disclosed to Judge Collyer, that the Steele dossier was garbage prepared by political
partisans that did not want Trump to be
elected and financed by Hillary Clinton's campaign. Three days after Comey's meeting with Trump
the entire Steele dossier was "leaked" to numerous media sources and published in it's entirety
on Buzzfeed with no mention that none of the claims in the Steele dossier had been
verified.
Comey signed and submitted two more FISA applications, one in Jan 2017, and another in April
2017 which relied upon the Steele dossier. FISA Judge Michael W. Mosman signed the January
renewal, and Judge Anne C. Conway signed the April renewal.
Apparently, Comey never disclosed, to any of the FISA judges, that the Steele dossier was:
paid for by the Hillary Clinton campaign, and the DNC, or that the Department of Justice's
Bruce Ohr had warned on the credibility of the unverified Steele Dossier, or that Bruce Ohr's
wife worked for Fusion GPS and helped back door the Steele dossier into the FBI, or that the
dossier was filled with baseless allegations, lies, and
propaganda. It appears that four secret court, FISA, judges were lied to in order to kick- off
the biggest scandal in history.
FBI's Deputy Director Andrew McCabe recently stated during Congressional testimony that
"without the Steele dossier, the FISA warrants would have never been granted." Recent reports
suggest that it was ex-CIA director John Brennan who insisted that the Steele dossier be
included in the intelligence report used to request the FISA warrants. Senator Rand Paul has
issued a call that Brennan be called to testify under oath in Congress.
The entire Mueller investigation would have never been possible without this fake dossier
being used to illegally obtain FISA warrants by the omission of material facts within the
original FISA application and the three subsequent renewal applications.
Why is Judge Collyer not looking into these and other material misrepresentations used in
the FISA application to obtain search warrants to spy on Americans and on a presidential
campaign by its opposition and enabled by a weaponized Obama Department of Justice? The silence
of secret FISA court Judges Mosman, Conway, and Dearie is frightening. America's secret courts
should be abolished.
"... Sadly, Brennan's propaganda coup only works on what the Bell Curve crowd up there would call the dumbest and most technologically helpless 1.2σ. Here is how people with half a brain interpret the latest CIA whoppers. ..."
"... Convincing Americans in Russia's influence or Russia collusion with Trump was only a tool that would create pressure on Trump that together with the fear of paralysis of his administration and impeachment would push Trump into the corner from which the only thing he could do was to worsen relations with Russia. What American people believe or not is really secondary. With firing of Gen. Flynn Trump acted exactly as they wanted him to act. This was the beginning of downward slope. ..."
"... Anyway, the mission was accomplished and the relations with Russia are worse now than during Obama administration. Trump can concentrate on Iran in which he will be supported by all sides and factions including the media. Even Larry David will approve not only the zionist harpies like Pam Geller, Rita Katz and Ilana Mercer. ..."
"... The only part that is absurd is that Russia posed a bona fide threat to the US. I'm fine with the idea that he ruined Brennen's plans in Syria. But thats just ego we shouldn't have been there anyway. ..."
"... No one really cares about Ukraine. And the European/Russian trade zone? No one cares. The Eurozone has its hands full with Greece and the rest of the old EU. I have a feeling they have already gone way too far and are more likely to shrink than expand in any meaningful way ..."
"... " ..factions within the state whose interests do not coincide with those of the American people." ..."
"... All the more powerfully put because of its recognisably comical. understatement. Thank you Mr Whitney. Brilliant article that would be all over the mainstream media were the US MSM an instrument of American rather than globalist interests. ..."
"... A sad story, how the USA always was a police state, where the two percent rich manipulated the 98% poor, to stay rich. When there were insurrections federal troops restored order. Also FDR put down strikes with troops. ..."
"... The elephant in the room is Israel and the neocons , this is the force that controls America and Americas foreign policy , Brennan and the 17 intel agencies are puppets of the mossad and Israel, that is the brutal fact of the matter. ..."
"... "The absence of evidence suggests that Russia hacking narrative is a sloppy and unprofessional disinformation campaign that was hastily slapped together by over confident Intelligence officials who believed that saturating the public airwaves with one absurd story after another would achieve the desired result " ..."
"... But it DID achieve the desired result! Trump folded under the pressure, and went full out neoliberal. Starting with his missile attack on Syria, he is now OK with spending trillions fighting pointless endless foreign wars on the other side of the world. ..."
"... I think maybe half the US population does believe the Russian hacking thing, but that's not really the issue. I think that the pre-Syrian attack media blitz was more a statement of brute power to Trump: WE are in charge here, and WE can take you down and impeach you, and facts don't matter! ..."
"... Sometimes propaganda is about persuading people. And sometimes, I think, it is about intimidating them. ..."
"... The Brit secret service, in effect, created and trained not merely the CIA but also the Mossad and Saudi Arabia's General Intelligence Presidency. All four are defined by endless lies, endless acts of utterly amoral savagery. All 4 are at least as bad as the KGB ever was, and that means as bad as Hell itself. ..."
"... Traditional triumphalist American narrative history, as taught in schools up through the 60s or so, portrayed America as "wart-free." Since then, with Zinn's book playing a major role, it has increasingly been portrayed as "warts-only," which is of course at least equally flawed. I would say more so. ..."
"... Anyway, the mission was accomplished and the relations with Russia are worse now than during Obama administration. ..."
"... That pre-9/11 "cooperation" nearly destroyed Russia. Nobody in Russia (except, perhaps, for Pussy Riot) wants a return to the Yeltsin era. ..."
"... The CIA is the world largest criminal and terrorist organization. With Brennan the worst has come to the worst. The whole Russian meddling affair was initiated by the Obama/Clinton gang in cooperation with 95 percent of the media. Nothing will come out of it. ..."
"... [The key figures who had primary influence on both Trump's and Bush's Iran policies held views close to those of Israel's right-wing Likud Party. The main conduit for the Likudist line in the Trump White House is Jared Kushner, the president's son-in-law, primary foreign policy advisor, and longtime friend and supporter of Netanyahu. Kushner's parents are also long-time supporters of Israeli settlements on the occupied West Bank. ..."
"... Another figure to whom the Trump White House has turned is John Bolton, undersecretary of state and a key policymaker on Iran in the Bush administration. Although Bolton was not appointed Trump's secretary of state, as he'd hoped, he suddenly reemerged as a player on Iran policy thanks to his relationship with Kushner. Politico reports that Bolton met with Kushner a few days before the final policy statement was released and urged a complete withdrawal from the deal in favor of his own plan for containing Iran. ..."
"... Putin's dream of Greater Europe is the death knell for the unipolar world order. It means the economic center of the world will shift to Central Asia where abundant resources and cheap labor of the east will be linked to the technological advances and the Capital the of the west eliminating the need to trade in dollars or recycle profits into US debt. The US economy will slip into irreversible decline, and the global hegemon will steadily lose its grip on power. That's why it is imperative for the US prevail in Ukraine– a critical land bridge connecting the two continents– and to topple Assad in Syria in order to control vital resources and pipeline corridors. Washington must be in a position where it can continue to force its trading partners to denominate their resources in dollars and recycle the proceeds into US Treasuries if it is to maintain its global primacy. The main problem is that Russia is blocking Uncle Sam's path to success which is roiling the political establishment in Washington. ..."
"... Second, Zakharova confirms that the western media is not an independent news gathering organization, but a propaganda organ for the foreign policy establishment who dictates what they can and can't say. ..."
"... Such a truthful portrait of reality ! The ruling elite is indeed massively corrupt, compromised, and controlled by dark forces. And the police state is already here. For most people, so far, in the form of massive collection of personal data and increasing number of mandatory regulations. But just one or two big false-flags away from progressing into something much worse. ..."
"... Clearly the CIA was making war on Syria. Is secret coercive covert action against sovereign nations Ok? Is it legal? When was the CIA designated a war making entity – what part of the constitution OK's that? Isn't the congress obliged by constitutional law to declare war? (These are NOT six month actions – they go on and on.) ..."
"... Syria is only one of many nations that the CIA is attacking – how many countries are we attacking with drones? Where is congress? ..."
"... Close the CIA – give the spying to the 16 other agencies. ..."
Sadly, Brennan's propaganda coup only works on what the Bell Curve crowd up there would call
the dumbest and most technologically helpless 1.2σ. Here is how people with half a
brain interpret the latest CIA whoppers.
Again Mike Whitney does not get it. Though in the first part of the article I thought he
would. He was almost getting there. The objective was to push new administration into the
corner from which it could not improve relations with Russia as Trump indicated that he
wanted to during the campaign.
Convincing Americans in Russia's influence or Russia collusion
with Trump was only a tool that would create pressure on Trump that together with the fear of
paralysis of his administration and impeachment would push Trump into the corner from which
the only thing he could do was to worsen relations with Russia. What American people believe
or not is really secondary. With firing of Gen. Flynn Trump acted exactly as they wanted him
to act. This was the beginning of downward slope.
Anyway, the mission was accomplished and the relations with Russia are worse now than
during Obama administration. Trump can concentrate on Iran in which he will be supported by
all sides and factions including the media. Even Larry David will approve not only the
zionist harpies like Pam Geller, Rita Katz and Ilana Mercer.
The only part that is absurd is that Russia posed a bona fide threat to the US. I'm fine
with the idea that he ruined Brennen's plans in Syria. But thats just ego we shouldn't have
been there anyway.
No one really cares about Ukraine. And the European/Russian trade zone? No one cares. The
Eurozone has its hands full with Greece and the rest of the old EU. I have a feeling they
have already gone way too far and are more likely to shrink than expand in any meaningful
way
The one thing I am not positive about. If the elite really believe that Russia is a
threat, then Americans have done psych ops on themselves.
The US was only interested in Ukraine because it was there. Next in line on a map. The
rather shocking disinterest in investing money -- on both sides -- is inexplicable if it was
really important. Most of it would be a waste -- but still. The US stupidly spent $5 billion
on something -- getting duped by politicians and got theoretical regime change, but it was
hell to pry even $1 billion for real economic aid.
" ..factions within the state whose interests do not coincide with those of the American
people."
All the more powerfully put because of its recognisably comical. understatement. Thank you Mr Whitney. Brilliant article that would be all over the mainstream media were
the US MSM an instrument of American rather than globalist interests.
I am reading Howard Zinn, A Peoples History of the USA, 1492 to the Present.
A sad story, how the USA always was a police state, where the two percent rich manipulated
the 98% poor, to stay rich.
When there were insurrections federal troops restored order.
Also FDR put down strikes with troops.
You should be aware that Zinn's book is not, IMO, an honest attempt at writing history. It
is conscious propaganda intended to make Americans believe exactly what you are taking from
it.
The elephant in the room is Israel and the neocons , this is the force that controls America
and Americas foreign policy , Brennan and the 17 intel agencies are puppets of the mossad and
Israel, that is the brutal fact of the matter.
Until that fact changes Americans will continue to fight and die for Israel.
"The absence of evidence suggests that Russia hacking narrative is a sloppy and
unprofessional disinformation campaign that was hastily slapped together by over confident
Intelligence officials who believed that saturating the public airwaves with one absurd story
after another would achieve the desired result "
But it DID achieve the desired result! Trump folded under the pressure, and went full out
neoliberal. Starting with his missile attack on Syria, he is now OK with spending trillions
fighting pointless endless foreign wars on the other side of the world.
I think maybe half the US population does believe the Russian hacking thing, but that's
not really the issue. I think that the pre-Syrian attack media blitz was more a statement of
brute power to Trump: WE are in charge here, and WE can take you down and impeach you, and
facts don't matter!
Sometimes propaganda is about persuading people. And sometimes, I think, it is about
intimidating them.
Whitney is another author who declares the "Russians did it" narrative a psyop. He then
devotes entire columns to the psyop, "naww Russia didn't do it". There could be plenty to write about – recent laws that do undercut liberty, but no,
the Washington Post needs fake opposition to its fake news so you have guys like Whitney in
the less-mainstream fake news media.
So Brennan wanted revenge? Well that's simple enough to understand, without being too
stupid. But Whitney's whopper of a lie is what you're supposed to unquestionably believe. The
US has "rival political parties". Did you miss it?
The US is doing nothing more than acting as the British Empire 2.0. WASP culture was born of a Judaizing heresy: Anglo-Saxon Puritanism. That meant that the
WASP Elites of every are pro-Jewish, especially in order to wage war, physical and/or
cultural, against the vast majority of white Christians they rule.
By the early 19th century, The Brit Empire's Elites also had a strong, and growing, dose
of pro-Arabic/pro-Islamic philoSemitism. Most of that group became ardently pro-Sunni, and
most of the pro-Sunni ones eventually coalescing around promotion of the House of Saud, which
means being pro-Wahhabi and permanently desirous of killing or enslaving virtually all Shiite
Mohammedans.
So, by the time of Victoria's high reign, the Brit WASP Elites were a strange brew of
hardcoree pro-Jewish and hardcore pro-Arabic/islamic. The US foreign policy of today is an
attempt to put those two together and force it on everyone and make it work.
The Brit secret service, in effect, created and trained not merely the CIA but also the
Mossad and Saudi Arabia's General Intelligence Presidency. All four are defined by endless
lies, endless acts of utterly amoral savagery. All 4 are at least as bad as the KGB ever was,
and that means as bad as Hell itself.
Fair enough. I didn't know that about the foreword. If accurate, that's a reasonable
approach for a book.
Here's the problem.
Back when O. Cromwell was the dictator of England, he retained an artist to paint him. The
custom of the time was for artists to "clean up" their subjects, in a primitive form of
photoshopping.
OC being a religious fanatic, he informed the artist he wished to be portrayed as God had
made him, "warts and all." (Ollie had a bunch of unattractive facial warts.) Or the artist
wouldn't be paid.
Traditional triumphalist American narrative history, as taught in schools up through the
60s or so, portrayed America as "wart-free." Since then, with Zinn's book playing a major
role, it has increasingly been portrayed as "warts-only," which is of course at least equally
flawed. I would say more so.
All I am asking is that American (and other) history be written "warts and all." The
triumphalist version is true, largely, and so is the Zinn version. Gone With the Wind
and Roots both portray certain aspects of the pre-war south fairly accurately..
America has been, and is, both evil and good. As is/was true of every human institution
and government in history. Personally, I believe America, net/net, has been one of the
greatest forces for human good ever. But nobody will realize that if only the negative side
of American history is taught.
"There must be something really dirty in Russigate that hasn't yet come out to generate
this level of panic."
You continue to claim what you cannot prove.
But then you are a Jews First Zionist.
Russia-Gate Jumps the Shark
Russia-gate has jumped the shark with laughable new claims about a tiny number of
"Russia-linked" social media ads, but the US mainstream media is determined to keep a
straight face
Most of that group became ardently pro-Sunni, and most of the pro-Sunni ones eventually
coalescing around promotion of the House of Saud, which means being pro-Wahhabi and
permanently desirous of killing or enslaving virtually all Shiite Mohammedans.
Thanks for the laugh. During the 19th century, the Sauds were toothless, dirt-poor hicks
from the deep desert of zero importance on the world stage.
The Brits were not Saudi proponents, in fact promoting the Husseins of Hejaz, the guys
Lawrence of Arabia worked with. The Husseins, the Sharifs of Mecca and rulers of Hejaz, were
the hereditary enemies of the Sauds of Nejd.
After WWI, the Brits installed Husseins as rulers of both Transjordan and Iraq, which with
the Hejaz meant the Sauds were pretty much surrounded. The Sauds conquered the Hejaz in 1924,
despite lukewarm British support for the Hejaz.
Nobody in the world cared much about the Saudis one way or another until massive oil
fields were discovered, by Americans not Brits, starting in 1938. There was no reason they
should. Prior to that Saudi prominence in world affairs was about equal to that of Chad
today, and for much the same reason. Chad (and Saudi Arabia) had nothing anybody else
wanted.
'Putin stopped talking about the "Lisbon to Vladivostok" free trade area long ago" --
Michael Kenney
Putin was simply trying to sell Russia's application for EU membership with the
catch-phrase "Lisbon to Vladivostok". He continued that until the issue was triply mooted (1)
by implosion of EU growth and boosterism, (2) by NATO's aggressive stance, in effect taken by
NATO in Ukraine events and in the Baltics, and, (3) Russia's alliance with China.
It is surely still true that Russians think of themselves, categorically, as Europeans.
OTOH, we can easily imagine that Russians in Vladivostok look at things differently than do
Russians in St. Petersburg. Then again, Vladivostok only goes back about a century and a
half.
Anyway, the mission was accomplished and the relations with Russia are worse now than
during Obama administration.
I generally agree with your comment, but that part strikes me as a bit of an exaggeration.
While relations with Russia certainly haven't improved, how have they really worsened? The
second round of sanctions that Trump reluctantly approved have yet to be implemented by
Europe, which was the goal. And apart from that, what of substance has changed?
It's not surprising that 57 percent of the American people believe in Russian meddling.
Didn't two-thirds of the same crowd believe that Saddam was behind 9/11, too? The American
public is being brainwashed 24 hours a day all year long.
The CIA is the world largest criminal and terrorist organization. With Brennan the worst
has come to the worst. The whole Russian meddling affair was initiated by the Obama/Clinton
gang in cooperation with 95 percent of the media. Nothing will come out of it.
This disinformation campaign might be the prelude to an upcoming war.
Right now, the US is run by jerks and idiots. Watch the video.
Only dumb people does not know that TRUMP IS NETANYAHU'S PUPPET.
The fifth column zionist jews are running the albino stooge and foreign policy in the
Middle East to expand Israel's interest against American interest that is TREASON. One of
these FIFTH COLUMNISTS is Jared Kushner. He should be arrested.
[The key figures who had primary influence on both Trump's and Bush's Iran policies held
views close to those of Israel's right-wing Likud Party. The main conduit for the Likudist
line in the Trump White House is Jared Kushner, the president's son-in-law, primary foreign
policy advisor, and longtime friend and supporter of Netanyahu. Kushner's parents are also
long-time supporters of Israeli settlements on the occupied West Bank.
Another figure to whom the Trump White House has turned is John Bolton, undersecretary of
state and a key policymaker on Iran in the Bush administration. Although Bolton was not
appointed Trump's secretary of state, as he'd hoped, he suddenly reemerged as a player on
Iran policy thanks to his relationship with Kushner. Politico reports that Bolton met with
Kushner a few days before the final policy statement was released and urged a complete
withdrawal from the deal in favor of his own plan for containing Iran.
Bolton spoke with Trump by phone on Thursday about the paragraph in the deal that vowed it
would be "terminated" if there was any renegotiation, according to Politico. He was calling
Trump from Las Vegas, where he'd been meeting with casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, the third
major figure behind Trump's shift towards Israeli issues. Adelson is a Likud supporter who
has long been a close friend of Netanyahu's and has used his Israeli tabloid newspaper Israel
Hayomto support Netanyahu's campaigns. He was Trump's main campaign contributor in 2016,
donating $100 million. Adelson's real interest has been in supporting Israel's interests in
Washington -- especially with regard to Iran.]
Putin's dream of Greater Europe is the death knell for the unipolar world order. It
means the economic center of the world will shift to Central Asia where abundant resources
and cheap labor of the east will be linked to the technological advances and the Capital
the of the west eliminating the need to trade in dollars or recycle profits into US
debt. The US economy will slip into irreversible decline, and the global hegemon will
steadily lose its grip on power. That's why it is imperative for the US prevail in
Ukraine– a critical land bridge connecting the two continents– and to topple
Assad in Syria in order to control vital resources and pipeline corridors. Washington
must be in a position where it can continue to force its trading partners to denominate
their resources in dollars and recycle the proceeds into US Treasuries if it is to maintain
its global primacy. The main problem is that Russia is blocking Uncle Sam's path to
success which is roiling the political establishment in Washington.
American dominance is very much tied to the dollar's role as the world's reserve currency,
and the rest of the world no longer want to fund this bankrupt, warlike state –
particularly the Chinese.
First, it confirms that the US did not want to see the jihadist extremists
defeated by Russia. These mainly-Sunni militias served as Washington's proxy-army
conducting an ambitious regime change operation which coincided with US strategic
ambitions.
The CIA run US/Israeli/ISIS alliance.
Second, Zakharova confirms that the western media is not an independent news
gathering organization, but a propaganda organ for the foreign policy establishment who
dictates what they can and can't say.
They are given the political line and they broadcast it.
The loosening of rules governing the dissemination of domestic propaganda coupled with
the extraordinary advances in surveillance technology, create the perfect conditions for
the full implementation of an American police state. But what is more concerning, is
that the primary levers of state power are no longer controlled by elected officials but by
factions within the state whose interests do not coincide with those of the American
people. That can only lead to trouble.
At some point Americans are going to get a "War on Domestic Terror" cheered along by the
media. More or less the arrest and incarceration of any opposition following the Soviet
Bolshevik model.
On the plus side, everyone now knows that the Anglo-US media from the NY Times to the
Economist, from WaPo to the Gruniard, and from the BBC to CNN, the CBC and Weinstein's
Hollywood are a worthless bunch of depraved lying bastards.
Such a truthful portrait of reality ! The ruling elite is indeed massively corrupt,
compromised, and controlled by dark forces. And the police state is already here. For most
people, so far, in the form of massive collection of personal data and increasing number of
mandatory regulations. But just one or two big false-flags away from progressing into
something much worse.
The thing is, no matter how thick the mental cages are, and how carefully they are
maintained by the daily massive injections of "certified" truth (via MSM), along with
neutralizing or compromising of "troublemakers", the presence of multiple alternative sources
in the age of Internet makes people to slip out of these cages one by one, and as the last
events show – with acceleration.
It means that there's a fast approaching tipping point after which it'd be impossible for
those in power both to keep a nice "civilized" face and to control the "cage-free"
population. So, no matter how the next war will be called, it will be the war against the
free Internet and free people. That's probably why N. Korean leader has no fear to start
one.
All government secrecy is a curse on mankind. Trump is releasing the JFK murder files to the public. Kudos! Let us hope he will follow up with a full 9/11 investigation.
The objective was to push new administration into the corner from which it could not
improve relations with Russia as Trump indicated that he wanted to during the campaign.
Good point. That was probably one of the objectives (and from the point of view of the
deep-state, perhaps the most important objective) of the "Russia hacked our democracy"
narrative, in addition to the general deligitimization of the Trump administration.
And, keep in mind, Washington's Sunni proxies were not a division of the Pentagon; they
were entirely a CIA confection: CIA recruited, CIA-armed, CIA-funded and
CIA-trained.
Clearly the CIA was making war on Syria. Is secret coercive covert action against sovereign
nations Ok? Is it legal? When was the CIA designated a war making entity – what part of the constitution OK's
that? Isn't the congress obliged by constitutional law to declare war? (These are NOT six
month actions – they go on and on.)
Are committees of six congressman and six senators, who meet in secret, just avoiding the
grave constitutional questions of war? We the People cannot even interrogate these
politicians. (These politicians make big money in the secrecy swamp when they leave
office.)
Syria is only one of many nations that the CIA is attacking – how many countries are
we attacking with drones? Where is congress?
Spying is one thing – covert action is another – covert is wrong – it
goes against world order. Every year after 9/11 they say things are worse – give them
more money more power and they will make things safe. That is BS!
9/11 has opened the flood gates to the US government attacking at will, the various
peoples of this Earth. That is NOT our prerogative.
We are being exceptionally arrogant.
Close the CIA – give the spying to the 16 other agencies.
Have you ever noticed how whenever someone inconveniences the dominant western power
structure, the entire political/media class rapidly becomes very, very interested in letting us
know how evil and disgusting that person is? It's true of the leader of every nation which
refuses to allow itself to be absorbed into the blob of the US-centralized power alliance, it's
true of anti-establishment political candidates, and it's true of WikiLeaks founder Julian
Assange.
Corrupt and unaccountable power uses its
political and
media influence to smear Assange because, as far as the interests of corrupt and
unaccountable power are concerned, killing his reputation is as good as killing him. If
everyone can be paced into viewing him with hatred and revulsion, they'll be far less likely to
take WikiLeaks publications seriously, and they'll be far more likely to consent to Assange's
imprisonment, thereby
establishing a precedent for the future prosecution of leak-publishing journalists around
the world. Someone can be speaking 100 percent truth to you, but if you're suspicious of him
you won't believe anything he's saying. If they can manufacture that suspicion with total or
near-total credence, then as far as our rulers are concerned it's as good as putting a bullet
in his head.
Those of us who value truth and light need to fight this smear campaign in order to keep our
fellow man from signing off on a major leap in the direction of Orwellian dystopia, and a big
part of that means being able to argue against those smears and disinformation wherever they
appear. Unfortunately I haven't been able to find any kind of centralized source of information
which comprehensively debunks all the smears in a thorough and engaging way, so with the help
of hundreds of
tips from my
readers and social media followers
I'm going to attempt to make one here. What follows is my attempt at creating a tool kit people
can use to fight against Assange smears wherever they encounter them, by refuting the
disinformation with truth and solid argumentation.
This article is an ongoing project which will be updated regularly where it appears on
Medium and caitlinjohnstone.com as new information comes in and new smears spring up in need of
refutation.
"... Alex Carey explains is his excellent book "Taking the Risk out of Democracy" that the remarkable susceptibility of the American people to propaganda has to do with the philosophical tradition of pragmatism. Famous scholars like William James and John Dewey said things like: "What is true is that what is useful in our lives" and "Believing something helps to make that thing become true". So you want to believe because you think it serves your purposes. ..."
"... This whole Russiagate is a sort of orgy of pragmatism. This could not happen in any other country, I'm sure. The only bright lining is that apparently large parts of the US population do not care one whit about Russiagate. The thing only has traction among the educated classes. But still! Amazing to see how so many evidently smart people mislead themselves into believing this shoddy story or at least taking it way too serious. ..."
My God you Americans are so strange! (I'm from the Netherlands)
Alex Carey explains is his excellent book "Taking the Risk out of Democracy" that the remarkable susceptibility of the American
people to propaganda has to do with the philosophical tradition of pragmatism. Famous scholars like William James and John Dewey
said things like: "What is true is that what is useful in our lives" and "Believing something helps to make that thing become
true". So you want to believe because you think it serves your purposes.
Betrand Russell considered this attitude to represent
a kind of madness. Truth is the objective correspondence to the facts, was his position.
This whole Russiagate is a sort of orgy
of pragmatism. This could not happen in any other country, I'm sure. The only bright lining is that apparently large parts of
the US population do not care one whit about Russiagate. The thing only has traction among the educated classes. But still! Amazing
to see how so many evidently smart people mislead themselves into believing this shoddy story or at least taking it way too serious.
As to the title you gave these two items: "Will the Mueller Report Help Defeat Trump in 2020?" Of course not ! TO THE CONTRARY!
Sad that the Real News also has gone under in this intellectual morass. You really should have kept on Aaron Maté.
The fact that one has to go to RT for such professional journalism is telling. A pundit on
Vesti is arguing that the current situation is "USSR reversed", in that the US now feels the
need to "mute" Russia but Russia does not feel the need to "mute" the US. Because Russia is
the country whose leadership is being more truthful, this results in Russia being more open
to foreign media and dissident opinion. He says "openness is beneficial for us", "openness
makes us the winning side", and "there is nothing they can tell us about us that we don't
already know". I have been thinking along the same lines. From the 3:00 mark onwards
here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6JkAKYLklYI
The country was divided before Mueller Report. Now it is even more divided.
Notable quotes:
"... We wouldn't know that a Clinton-linked operative, Joseph Mifsud, seeded Trump campaign aide George Papadopoulos with the rumor that Russia had 'Dirt' on Hillary Clinton - which would later be coaxed out of Papadopoulos by a Clinton-linked Australian ambassador, Alexander Downer, and that this apparent 'setup' would be the genesis of the FBI's " operation crossfire hurricane " operation against the Trump campaign. ..."
"... We wouldn't know about the role of Fusion GPS - the opposition research firm hired by Hillary Clinton's campaign to commission the Steele dossier. Fusion is also linked to the infamous Trump Tower meeting , and hired Nellie Ohr - the CIA-linked wife of the DOJ's then-#4 employee, Bruce Ohr. Nellie fed her husband Bruce intelligence she had gathered against Trump while working for Fusion , according to transcripts of her closed-door Congressional testimony. ..."
"... Now the dossier -- financed by Hillary Clinton's campaign and the Democratic National Committee , and compiled by the former British intelligence agent Christopher Steele -- is likely to face new, possibly harsh scrutiny from multiple inquiries . - NYT ..."
"... The report was debunked after internet sleuths traced the IP address to a marketing server located outside Philadelphia, leading Alfa Bank executives to file a lawsuit against Fusion GPS in October 2017, claiming their reputations were harmed by the Steele Dossier. ..."
"... And who placed the Trump-Alfa theory with various media outlets? None other than former FBI counterintelligence officer and Dianne Feinstein aide Dan Jones - who is currently working with Fusion GPS and Steele to continue their Trump-Russia investigation funded in part by George Soros . ..."
"... Of course, when one stops painting with broad brush strokes, it's clear that the dossier was fabricated bullshit. ..."
"... after a nearly two-year investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller and roughly 40 FBI agents and other specialists, no evidence was found to support the dossier's wild claims of "DNC moles, Romanian hackers, Russian pensioners, or years of Trump-Putin intelligence trading ," as the Times puts it. ..."
"... As there was spying, there must necessarily also have been channels to get the information thus gathered back to its original buyer - the Clinton campaign. Who passed the information back to Clinton, and what got passed? ..."
"... the NYTt prints all the news a scumbag would. remember Judith Miller, the Zionazi reporter the NYT ..."
"... There was no 'hack.' That is the big, anti-Russia, pro-MIC lie which all the other lies serve. ..."
"... Seth Rich had the means and the motive. So did Imran Awan, but it would make no sense for Awan to turn anything over to wikileaks . . .he would have kept them as insurance. ..."
"... Until the real criminals are processed and the media can be restored you don't have a United States. This corruption is beyond comprehension. You had the (((media)) providing kickbacks to the FBI for leaked information. These bribes are how CNN was on site during Roger Stones invasion. ..."
"... So now the narrative is, "We were wrong about Russian collusion, and that's Russia's fault"?! ..."
As we now shift from the "witch hunt" against Trump to 'investigating the investigators' who spied on him - remember this; Donald
Trump was supposed to lose the 2016 election by almost all accounts. And had Hillary won, as expected, none of this would have seen
the light of day .
We wouldn't know that a Clinton-linked operative, Joseph Mifsud,
seeded Trump campaign aide George Papadopoulos with the rumor that Russia had 'Dirt' on Hillary Clinton - which would later be
coaxed out of Papadopoulos by a Clinton-linked Australian ambassador, Alexander Downer, and that this apparent 'setup' would be the
genesis of the FBI's "
operation crossfire hurricane " operation against the Trump campaign.
We wouldn't know about the role of Fusion GPS - the opposition research firm hired by Hillary Clinton's campaign to commission
the Steele dossier. Fusion is also linked to the infamous
Trump Tower meeting , and hired
Nellie Ohr - the CIA-linked wife of the DOJ's then-#4 employee, Bruce Ohr. Nellie fed her husband Bruce intelligence she had
gathered against Trump while working for Fusion ,
according to transcripts of her closed-door Congressional testimony.
And if not for reporting by the Daily
Caller 's Chuck Ross and others, we wouldn't know that the FBI sent a longtime spook, Stefan Halper, to infiltrate and spy on
the Trump campaign - after the Obama DOJ paid him over $400,000
right before the 2016 US election (out of more than $1 million he received while Obama was president).
According to the New
York Times , the tables are turning, starting with the Steele Dossier.
[T]he release on Thursday of
the report
by the special counsel , Robert S. Mueller III, underscored what had grown clearer for months -- that while many Trump aides
had welcomed contacts with the Russians, some of the most sensational claims in the dossier appeared to be false, and others were
impossible to prove . Mr. Mueller's report contained over a dozen passing references to the document's claims but no overall assessment
of why so much did not check out.
While Congressional Republicans have vowed to investigate, the DOJ's Inspector General is considering whether the FBI improperly
relied on the dossier when they used it to apply for a surveillance warrant on Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. The IG also wants
to know about Steele's sources and whether the FBI disclosed any doubts as to the veracity of the dossier .
Attorney General Barr, meanwhile, said he will review the FBI's conduct in the Russia investigation after saying the agency
spied on the Trump
campaign .
Doubts over the dossier
The FBI's scramble to vet the dossier's claims are well known. According to an April, 2017
NYT report , the FBI agreed
to pay Steele $50,000 for "solid corroboration" of his claims . Steele was apparently unable to produce satisfactory evidence - and
was ultimately not paid for his efforts:
Mr. Steele met his F.B.I. contact in Rome in early October, bringing a stack of new intelligence reports. One, dated Sept.
14, said that Mr. Putin was facing "fallout" over his apparent involvement in the D.N.C. hack and was receiving "conflicting advice"
on what to do.
The agent said that if Mr. Steele could get solid corroboration of his reports, the F.B.I. would pay him $50,000 for his efforts,
according to two people familiar with the offer. Ultimately, he was not paid . -
NYT
Still, the FBI used the dossier to obtain the FISA warrant on Page - while the document itself was heavily shopped around to various
media outlets . The late Sen. John McCain provided a copy to Former FBI Director James Comey, who already had a version, and briefed
President Trump on the salacious document. Comey's briefing to Trump was then used by CNN and BuzzFeed to justify reporting on and
publishing the dossier following the election.
Let's not forget that in October, 2016, both Hillary Clinton and her campaign chairman John Podesta promoted the conspiracy theory
that a secret Russian server was communicating with Trump Tower.
The report was debunked after internet sleuths traced the IP address to a marketing server located outside Philadelphia, leading
Alfa Bank executives to file a lawsuit against Fusion GPS in October 2017, claiming their reputations were harmed by the Steele Dossier.
And who placed the Trump-Alfa theory with various media outlets? None other than former FBI counterintelligence officer and Dianne
Feinstein aide Dan Jones - who is currently working with Fusion GPS and Steele to continue their Trump-Russia investigation funded
in part by
George Soros .
Russian tricks? The Times notes that Steele "has not ruled out" that he may have been fed Russian disinformation while assembling his dossier.
That would mean that in addition to carrying out an effective attack on the Clinton campaign, Russian spymasters hedged their
bets and placed a few land mines under Mr. Trump's presidency as well.
Oleg D. Kalugin, a former K.G.B. general who now lives outside Washington, saw that as plausible. "Russia has huge experience
in spreading false information," he said. -
NYT
In short, Steele is being given an 'out' with this admission.
A lawyer for Fusion GPS, Joshua Levy, says that the Mueller report substantiated the "core reporting" in the Steele memos - namely
that "Trump campaign figures were secretly meeting Kremlin figures," and that Russia's president, Vladimir V. Putin, had directed
"a covert operation to elect Donald J. Trump."
Of course, when one stops painting with broad brush strokes, it's clear that the dossier was fabricated bullshit.
The dossier tantalized Mr. Trump's opponents with a worst-case account of the president's conduct. And for those trying to
make sense of the Trump-Russia saga, the dossier infused the quest for understanding with urgency.
In blunt prose, it suggested that a foreign power had fully compromised the man who would become the next president of the
United States.
The Russians, it asserted, had tried winning over Mr. Trump with real estate deals in Moscow -- which he had not taken up --
and set him up with prostitutes in a Moscow hotel in 2013, filming the proceedings for future exploitation. A handful of aides
were described as conspiring with the Russians at every turn.
Mr. Trump, it said, had moles inside the D.N.C. The memos claimed that he and the Kremlin had been exchanging intelligence
for eight years and were using Romanian hackers against the Democrats , and that Russian pensioners in the United States were
running a covert communications network . -
NYT
And after a nearly two-year investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller and roughly 40 FBI agents and other specialists, no
evidence was found to support the dossier's wild claims of "DNC moles, Romanian hackers, Russian pensioners, or years of Trump-Putin
intelligence trading ," as the Times puts it.
Now that the shoe is on the other foot, and key Democrats backing away from talks of impeachment, let's see if lady justice will
follow the rest of us down the rabbit hole.
This is why the whole FISA court is a joke. What is their remedy if their power is abused? What happens. Well,... the FISA
courts was lied to and found out about it in the early 2000's. Mueller was FBI chief. So they got a strongly worded dressing-down,
a mark in their permanent record from high school, and NO ONE was fired... no one was sanctioned, no agent was transferred to
Alaska.
Fast forward 10 or 12 years and the FBI is doing this **** again. Lying to the court... you know the court where there are
no Democrat judges or Republican judges.. they are all super awesome.... and what is the remedy when the FISA court is told they've
been lied to by the FBI and used in a intel operation with MI6, inserting assets, into a freaking domestic Presidential campaign!!!
and then they WON. Good god.
And what do we hear from our court? Nadda. Do we hear of some Federal Judges hauling FBI and DOJ folks in front of them and
throwing them in jail? Nope. It appears from here... that our Federal Justices are corrupt and have no problem letting illegal
police-state actions go on with ZERO accountability or recourse. They could care less evidently. It's all secret you know... trust
us they say.. Why aren't these judges publicly making loud noises about how the judiciary is complicit , with the press, in wholesale
spying and leaking for political reasons AND a coup attempt when the wrong guy won.???
Where is awesome Justice Roberts? Why isn't he throwing down some truth on just how compromised the rule of law in his courts
clearly are in the last 10 years? The FISA court is his baby. It does no good for them to assure us they are concerned too, and
they've taken action and sent strongly worded letters. Pisses me off. ? Right? heck of rant...
When did Russians interfere in our elections?? 2016. Who was president when Russians interfered with elections?? oobama. Who
was head of the CIA?? Brennan. Who was National Intelligence director?? Clapper. Who was head of the FBI when the Russians interfered
in our elections?? Comey. The pattern is obvious. When Trump was a private citizen the oobama and all his cabinet appointees and
Intel Managers had their hands on all the levers and instruments of Government..and did nothing . Your oobama is guilty of treason
and failing his Oath Of Office...everybody knows this.
This article is still a roundabout gambit to blame Russia.
Fair enough, where's Bill Browder? In England. Browder's allegations were utilized to try and damage Russia, even though Russia
(not the USSR), is about the most reliable friend America has.
Russia helped Lincoln, and were it not for that crucial help, there'd be no America to sanction Russia today. The Tsar paid
for that help with his dynasty, when Nicholas II was murdered, and dethroned.
Americans are truly ungrateful brutes..
Now, sanctions, opprobrium, and hatred are heaped on Russia, most cogently by chauvinistic racists, who look down their noses
at Rus (Russ) and yet, cannot sacrifice 25 millions of their own people, for the sake of others.
Russians are considered subhuman, and yet, the divine spark of humanity resides solely in their breasts. The zionists claim
a false figure of 6 million for a faux holocaust, and yet, nobody pays attention to the true holocaust of 25 millions, or the
many millions before that disastrous instigated war.
That the Russians are childlike, believing others to be like them, loyal, self sacrificing, and generous, has now brought the
world to the brink of armageddon, and still, they bear the burden of proof, though their accusers, who ought provide the evidence,
are bereft of any..
Thomas Jefferson it was, who observing whatever he observed, exclaimed in cogent agitation, that "I fear for my countrymen,
when I remember that God is Just, and His Justice does not repose forever".
Investigate Jared and Ivanka Kushner, along with Charles Kushner, and much ought be clear, no cheers...
I don't buy that "Few bad apples at the top", "Good rank and file" Argument. I have never seen one. We should assume everyone
from the top to the bottom of FBI, DOJ, and State, just to get started, probably every other three better agency is bad. At least
incompotent, at worst treasonous.
As there was spying, there must necessarily also have been channels to get the information thus gathered back to its original
buyer - the Clinton campaign. Who passed the information back to Clinton, and what got passed?
the NYTt prints all the news a scumbag would. remember Judith Miller, the Zionazi reporter the NYT used to push
the Iraq war with all sorts of ********? after the war was determined to be started under a false premise and became common knowledge
there were no wmds in iraq the nyt came forward and reported the war was ******** as if they were reporting breaking news.
they have done the same thing here. they pushed the russiagate story with both barrels even though the informed populace knew
it was ******** before trump was sworn in as potus. now that the all the holes in the story are readily apparent the nyt comes
forward with breaking revelation that something is wrong with the story.
The Seth Rich investigation; where is it now? Murder of a campaign staffer; tampering with or influencing an election, is it
not? Hmmm... When nine hundred years old you become, look this good you will not.
Once upon a time there was a Bernie supporter. And his name was Seth Rich. Then there was a "botched robbery", which evidence
that was concluded on, I have no idea. Do you? Anyhow, The End.
Seth Rich had the means and the motive. So did Imran Awan, but it would make no sense for Awan to turn anything over to
wikileaks . . .he would have kept them as insurance.
Why wouldn't Assange name the source for the DNC emails? Is this a future bargaining chip? And what if he did name Seth Rich?
He would have to prove it. Could he?
They've got Assange now...Maybe they should ask him if it was Seth Rich who gave him the emails?
Maybe even do it under oath and on national television. I don't think it's still considered "burning a source" if your source
has already been murdered....
Until the real criminals are processed and the media can be restored you don't have a United States. This corruption is
beyond comprehension. You had the (((media)) providing kickbacks to the FBI for leaked information. These bribes are how CNN was
on site during Roger Stones invasion.
Treason and Sedition is rampant in America and all SPY roads lead to Clapper, Brennan and Obama...This needs attention.
The media is abusive and narrating attacks on a dully elected president
Oleg D. Kalugin, a former K.G.B. general who now lives outside Washington, saw that as plausible. "Russia has huge experience
in spreading false information," he said. -
NYT
You have got to be ******* kidding me. So now the narrative is, "We were wrong about Russian collusion, and that's
Russia's fault"?!
GREG WILPERT: Yeah. I mean, I think it's also important to note that the Internet
Research Agency only spent, according to the report itself, only spent $100,000, actually, on
their activity in terms of buying advertising in Facebook and Twitter.
And that's really absolutely nothing compared to what the campaigns more generally spend in
those areas in terms of advertising.
And so the idea that they somehow influence the election just based on social media seems
mind boggling to believe...
Yet another delusional remark at odds with reality. Haven't these people learned anything from the implosion of their pathetic
Russiagate hysteria? The Russophobes won't be happy until we're at war with a nuclear power and the nukes are about to land.
Here are things Trump has actually done, as opposed to red-limned fantasies drawn from the fever-dreams of Putin haters:
"... It is quite distressing that in may so called “progessive” or “left liberal” – self designated of course – circles in the USA and the UK such a statement will lead to your being labelled a Russian Troll or the suggestion you are being on Putin’s payrol ..."
"... “…In the era of weapons of mass destruction, not only nuclear, but primarily nuclear, ever more sophisticated, the Russians now have a new generation of nuclear weapons -- Putin announced them on March 1, they were dismissed here, but they’re real -- that can elude any missile defense. .. ..."
"... Russia has now thwarted us; they now have missile defense-evading nuclear weapons from submarines, to aircraft, to missiles. And Putin has said, ‘It’s time to negotiate an end to this new arms race,’ and he’s 100 percent right. ..."
"... So when I heard Trump say, in 2016, we have to cooperate with Russia, I had already become convinced… ..."
"... When I see the right-of-center DNC supporters saying, “Our democracy has been attacked,” I an reminded of the interview Hermann Goering gave while he was waiting to be executed. ..."
"... Perhaps the assumption of Russia meddling in our election is a simple case of projection. As has been documented, the USA has frequently meddled in other countries’ elections or election outcomes (Iran, Russia, Chile, Central America). ..."
"... To paraphrase the late Leona Helmsley, “Democracy is for little people”, not for the meddling-in-foreign-democracies policymakers of the Boston-Washington corridor. ..."
"... We live in a multi-polar world and if Washington can’t get used to it, we are the ones who may pay for their willful stubborn blindness, their inability to come to terms with a perfectly obvious developing reality. ..."
"... The neocons have not had a new idea in 30 years. I continue to be baffled by their obsession with Iran. Iran is a fact; the enmity goes back to our support for the overthrow of Mossadegh in 1953 and only made worse by our support of the Shah as our-guy-in-Tehran. ..."
"... The USA is in disarray internally and in its approach to the rest of the world. ..."
The DNC had the biggest influence on the 2016 outcome; they insisted on running a disliked candidate who was a terrible campaigner
so disliked the DNC cleared the field for her ahead of time (got Biden and others to not declare in 2016) and had to club dissenters
in their own party to make sure she got the nomination. imo. But sure, blame "those guys over there". That's the ultimate "the
dog ate my homework" excuse. meh.
Good analysis. This even makes the insanity of “Russiagate” seem strategic. (But as overwrought as saying ‘give us liberty
or give us death’. The solution to everything is somewhere in the middle.) We know that such dedicated souls as the very fatuous
Mr. Brennan cooked it all up and pretended it was because Trump was “treasonous”.
Brennan in his dotage might actually be thinking that.
I’ve always thought that Putin, like Yeltsin, was pro West. Possibly an atlanticist. Tho’ being as chauvinistic as an atlanticist
today is a little offensive to the rest of the world. Cohen’s statement that Putin is pro Russian-anti communism might be a simplification.
Russia is certainly positioning itself to be safe from our aggression. I think there are remnants of good social management that
the commies learned over the years that Russia/Putin still employs.
It’s too simplistic to say Putin is anti-communist. He’s just a realist. And he’s a nationalist. Being a nationalist-protectionist
is the worst sin against neoliberal advancement. That’s another propaganda bullet point – you never hear a rational discussion
of nationalism – it’s all trash, “Marine LePen is a fascist” exaggeration.
It is quite distressing to see the Mueller report take up as if it were settled fact the idea that Russia influenced the
2016 Presidential election, particularly since his investigation didn’t provide any information that supported this theory.
It is quite distressing that in may so called “progessive” or “left liberal” – self designated of course – circles in the
USA and the UK such a statement will lead to your being labelled a Russian Troll or the suggestion you are being on Putin’s payroll.
That is the level of rational discussion in many those circles today when it comes to the discussion about the west's relationship
to Russia.
This of course led in Russia to the conclusion that to engage with the west at present in an attempt to ease the tensions is
futile and rather counterproductive.
I think Professor Cohen has a real point in the following statements:
“…In the era of weapons of mass destruction, not only nuclear, but primarily nuclear, ever more sophisticated, the Russians
now have a new generation of nuclear weapons -- Putin announced them on March 1, they were dismissed here, but they’re real --
that can elude any missile defense. ..
Russia has now thwarted us; they now have missile defense-evading nuclear weapons from submarines, to aircraft, to missiles.
And Putin has said, ‘It’s time to negotiate an end to this new arms race,’ and he’s 100 percent right.
So when I heard Trump say, in 2016, we have to cooperate with Russia, I had already become convinced…
So I began to speak positively about Trump at that moment–that would have been probably around the summer of 2016–just on this
one point, because none of the other candidates were advocating cooperation with Russia…”
Then, when he goes on to elaborate on China’s weaponry and posit including them in the next round of draw-down negotiations,
as far off as that may look – that to me is what Trump can use for his re-election. I do believe his attitude towards Russia won
him his first term.
Those Russia-gate kooks need to focus on the American people, not on Trump. Well, maybe they did, and still do. It’s really
about us, not him.
When I see the right-of-center DNC supporters saying, “Our democracy has been attacked,” I an reminded of the interview
Hermann Goering gave while he was waiting to be executed.
Göring: Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders.
That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and
exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.
Perhaps the assumption of Russia meddling in our election is a simple case of projection. As has been documented, the USA has frequently meddled in other countries’ elections or election outcomes (Iran, Russia, Chile,
Central America).
One recent Democratic presidential candidate was taped asserting “we should not have held the election unless we could determine
the outcome” in another foreign country.
If Russia did not meddle significantly in the US election, the political class may have had to ponder that possibly the Russians
believed that the decline of the US in the world stage did not merit the effort.
To paraphrase the late Leona Helmsley, “Democracy is for little people”, not for the meddling-in-foreign-democracies policymakers
of the Boston-Washington corridor.
The thrust of Cohen’s position is correct. Quibble all you wish with the details. We live in a multi-polar world and if Washington
can’t get used to it, we are the ones who may pay for their willful stubborn blindness, their inability to come to terms with
a perfectly obvious developing reality.
The neocons have not had a new idea in 30 years. I continue to be baffled by their obsession
with Iran. Iran is a fact; the enmity goes back to our support for the overthrow of Mossadegh in 1953 and only made worse by our
support of the Shah as our-guy-in-Tehran.
The Russians really do have a new generation of weapons. The Chinese are re-assuming
a leading position in the world that has been theirs most of the time for two thousand years.
Europe is not a rising power.
The
USA is in disarray internally and in its approach to the rest of the world. I do not consider these to be opinions but objective
statements. I am not prepared to suffer for illusions and vanity among the “elite.”
"... Great points, Mr. Cohen....this protracted attack on Russia via the phoney "Russiagate" investigation has set back relations with Russia for years to come. ..."
"... That Trump represents a thinking that the post Soviet reality is not of a uni-superpower world, but one of a multi-polar world dominated by US economic empire. ..."
"... After reading "Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century" in 2005, I came to the idea that the most dangerous section of the American elite were those that posited this uni-superpower world order idea; ..."
"... The problem is the incorrigible Big C (Capital) that wanted to eat away Russian minerals that Putin stopped in national interest. Any subsequent cooperation from the Russian side was probably was only for strategic cooperation with the U.S. to have world peace. ..."
"... Not a word in Cohen's appraisal about US criminality. Jay was pushing in that direction. I hope they get around to the criminality of the Deep State Mafia. ..."
"... Despite all the chaos and the moral panics that keep rocking the White House, Trump's three National Security Advisors - Flynn, McMaster, Bolton - had one core commonality: they want war with Iran. Watching the sinister neo-con Jim Woolsey betray the frothing neo-con Flynn to Joe Biden was a comedy of neo-con infighting. A major part of Russiagate was the older 'Atlanticist' neo-cons boxing in the boorish 'Trumpist' neo-cons. Whether Atlantic Council or US-homegrown both flavors of neo-conservatism want war with Iran. ..."
PAUL JAY: Welcome back to Reality Asserts Itself on The Real News Network. I'm Paul
Jay.
And we're continuing our series of discussions with Stephen Cohen. And his biography is down
below the video player, and you really should watch the first few segments anyway and you'll
get where we are. Thanks for joining us again.
STEPHEN COHEN: Thank you.
PAUL JAY: So I've watched several of your interviews. You've done Larry King and
others, and you've been positive about Trump's attitude towards sort of a detente, lowering
tensions with Russia. And in terms of my personal view, I think you're right. I think anything
that lowers tensions between two nuclear powers is a good thing, and I think this
self-righteous American attitude towards Putin and Russia– when you look at the scale of
crimes committed by countries internationally, there is nothing that Russia has done that
compares to the Iraq war, and go on and on with the United States has done, and to have some
self-righteous attitude Two, it's clear it's so hypocritical to worry about political rights in
Russia, because it's clear in terms of U.S. foreign policy if you can ally with Saudi Arabia,
the Israeli occupation, and you name it how many dictators the United States has supported over
the years, it's not about democracy.
So whatever Trump's intent is, I think I agree that this is a good thing. I actually think
Trump framed it quite well himself, where he said, "Russia is not our adversary, they're our
competitor, the way other big capitalist countries are our competitors." I think all that makes
sense. Where I push back is I think you need to add that one of the prime reasons Trump wants
to diminish tensions with Russia–assuming he really does, because some of the people that
work for him, Nikki Haley in the UN and others, have said as outrageous stuff about Russia as
any Democrat has said.
All that being said, I think the Trump presidency is one of the most dangerous presidencies
ever, and he is planning and his whole foreign policy agenda has been regime change in Iran.
And I think that if they don't accomplish that through economic warfare against Iran, with John
Bolton there, the possibility of some kind of at least bombing attack on Iran before 2020 is
very possible. One of the reasons I think he wants to lower tensions with Russia is so he can
go after China. His acting defense secretary justified this new military expenditure, the new
budget, the 765 billion dollar budget, with three words, "China, China, China." Their strategic
vision–and you can see this in Steve Bannon's interviews and language–is diminish
the tensions with Russia, go after Iran and go after China. And I think one needs to say this,
otherwise it kind of looks like Trump is some kind of peacenik. And far from it, I think
they're militarists.
STEPHEN COHEN: Not sure what the question is, though. Is it about–
PAUL JAY: Well, my question is, I think when you are saying positive things about
Trump diminishing tensions with Russia, which I think is correct, but I think you need to add
this guy does not have peaceful intentions, he's very dangerous.
STEPHEN COHEN: I live in a social realm–to the extent that I have any social
life at all anymore– where people get very angry if I say, or anybody says, anything
positive about Donald Trump. When Trump was campaigning in 2016, he said, "I think it would be
great to cooperate with Russia." All of my adult life, my advocacy in American foreign
policy–I've known presidents, the first George Bush invited me to Camp David to consult
with him before he went to the Malta Summit. I've known presidential candidates, Senators and
the rest, and I've always said the same thing. American national security runs through Moscow,
period. Nothing's changed.
In the era of weapons of mass destruction, not only nuclear, but primarily nuclear, ever
more sophisticated, the Russians now have a new generation of nuclear weapons–Putin
announced them on March 1, they were dismissed here, but they're real–that can elude any
missile defense. We spent trillions on missile defense to acquire a first strike capability
against Russia. We said it was against or Iran, but nobody believed it. Russia has now thwarted
us; they now have missile defense-evading nuclear weapons from submarines, to aircraft, to
missiles. And Putin has said, "It's time to negotiate an end to this new arms race," and he's
100 percent right. So when I heard Trump say, in 2016, we have to cooperate with Russia, I had
already become convinced–and I spell this out in my new book, War with Russia?–that
we were in a new cold war, but a new cold war more dangerous than the preceding one for reasons
I gave in the book, one of them being these new nuclear weapons.
So I began to speak positively about Trump at that moment–that would have been
probably around the summer of 2016–just on this one point, because none of the other
candidates were advocating cooperation with Russia. And as I told you before, Paul, all my life
I've been a detente guy. Detente means cooperate with Russia. I saw in Trump the one candidate
who said this is necessary, in his own funny language. Mrs. Clinton, on the other hand, was
very much a hawk. When she said publicly that Vladimir Putin has no soul, you could not commit
or utter a more supreme statement of anti-diplomacy, and particularly addressing the Russians,
who put a lot of stock in soul. To say somebody has no soul and then go on to equate him with
Hitler, I found that so irresponsible. I didn't vote for Trump, but I did begin to write and
broadcast that this was of vital importance that we have this discussion, that we needed a new
detente because of the new and more dangerous Cold War.
Since he's been president, I think he's been ineffective in regard to pursuing detente with
Russia for a couple of reasons. I think that the people who invented Russiagate were the
enemies of detente, and they piled on. So they've now demonized Russia, they've crippled Trump.
Anything he does diplomatically with Putin is called collusion. No matter what Mueller says,
it's collusion. This is anti-democracy, and detente is pursued through democracy. So whatever
he really wants to do–it's hard to say–he's been thwarted. I think it's also one of
the reasons why he put anti-detente people around him.
PAUL JAY: Why didn't he pull out of the arms treaty?
STEPHEN COHEN: So this is a separate issue now, and a complicated one. We have been
in violation–let's be clear for folks which treaty we're talking about. We're talking
about the so-called Intermediate-Range Treaty. This band of deployment of missiles that could
fly roughly from 500, I think, to 3000 miles, they were exceedingly dangerous. The American
ones have been based in Europe. They were very dangerous because they tested high-alert
systems. They flew low, fast, they could elude radar. They were dangerous. Reagan and Gorbachev
abolished them in 1987, correct? Now, stop and think for a minute, Paul. What Reagan and
Gorbachev did in 1987 was the first ever, ever in history, act of nuclear abolitionism. They
abolished an entire category of nuclear weapons. That was a sacred act. It needed to be
cherished and preserved forever, no matter what difficulties emerged.
But then comes the history, and we need to remember the history. In 2002, the second
President Bush withdrew the United States unilaterally from the Antiballistic Missile Treaty,
correct? Now, this treaty was related, because it forbid the deployment of so-called missile
defense in a way that either side, American or Russian, could think that it had such great
missile defense, it had a first strike capability. And everybody agreed nobody should think
that. Mutually assured destruction had kept us safe in the nuclear age. But if Russia or the
United States gets a first strike capability, then you don't have assured mutual destruction,
and some crazy person might be tempted to risk it. So how did the Russians react to that? They
began to develop–as I said before, when we began to deploy missile defense–a new
generation of weapons. In other words, you're getting this classic action, reaction, action,
reaction that drove the previous nuclear arms race, and now it's happening again.
So that brings us to Trump's decision. We don't know yet where it's going to lead, because
Trump has said we're withdrawing. He said the Russians have been in violation. But in fact,
we've been in violation since we deployed the missile defense systems. Just for the record, by
the way–and professor Theodore Postol at MIT has been very good about this–these
missile defense installations that we've installed around Russia, land, air, and sea, can
actually fire cruise missiles. They are in violation of that Intermediate-Range Treaty, so
we've been in systematic violation. Pushes come to shove, we withdrew, the Russians have now
withdrawn. But Trump has said two things that are interesting and maybe correct, that
technically the treaty was out of date because of the new weaponry. And secondly, who has the
most cruise missiles? China. 30 years ago in 1987, it was only the United States and Russia,
the Soviet Union. But now China, because of its vast regional presence, has all these
intermediate range missiles.
So Trump says offhandedly, maybe in a Tweet, "Have you ever looked at the military budget of
Russia, China, and the United States? It's obscene. We should cut it." What does that mean?
What does that mean? It's a good idea, right? Then he said, "We can't have such a treaty
without China." The Russians know this too, so let us hope that what they're stumbling toward
is a new, modernized intermediate-range ban that would include China. China, however, will
never sign it. But if they begin the negotiations and China doesn't deploy any more during the
negotiations, and the negotiations go on indefinitely, we are safer than we now are. Now, do I
think that Trump is cunning and thought this up? I'm not sure, but he's got China on the mind,
and I don't quite agree with you that–he's got a kind of dualistic attitude toward China.
It's a threat, but every time he makes a new trade deal with China, he brags on it that it's
great for us.
You would agree with that, right? He's always talking about, "We're going to have this
wonderful trade agreement with China, it's going to be so good for us." So in his mind, Trump's
mind, China is kind of potentially–in his businessman mind–this big economic plus
that he alone is going to get right. Let him try.
PAUL JAY: I don't know how much of this policy at all is Trump or not Trump. I think
the brains behind a lot of this policy now is Bolton and some of the other neocon crazies
around him.
STEPHEN COHEN: But Trump has been saying the same thing about cooperating with Russia
long before he took on Bolton. There's two ways to look at this.
PAUL JAY: But his attitude towards China–
STEPHEN COHEN: Well, just stay for one minute on Russia, because the China thing is
worth talking about too. But he says, almost alone, for the first time–how long has it
been since we had a president really pursue detente? It's been a very long time. Obama called
it a reset, but it was fraudulent. It was basically saying to the Russians, "Give us
everything, and we aren't going to give you anything." It was doomed from the beginning. Plus,
they wagered that Putin wouldn't return to the presidency. Do you know, by the way, speaking of
meddling, that Biden went to Moscow and told Putin not to return to the presidency in 2012?
PAUL JAY: No.
STEPHEN COHEN: Wrap your head around that a minute. The vice president of the United
States goes to Moscow and tells Putin, who's now prime minister because he termed out, but he
could return, "We don't think you should return to the presidency." So you know what I'm
wondering, I'm wondering whether Biden's calling up Putin today and asking Putin whether Biden
should get into the presidential race here. I mean, what the hell? What the hell? And we talk
about meddling? So the point about Trump, to finish this, is for the first time in many, many
years, a presidential candidate, one that I didn't vote for and didn't care for, had said it's
necessary to cooperate with Russia.
PAUL JAY: OK, but I've got to contextualize it. Because it's not enough–because
first of all, Trump's a big liar, and everyone, from beginning to end, for real.
STEPHEN COHEN: Politicians lie, Paul. Welcome to the world,
PAUL JAY: No, but I think he lied on Russia.
STEPHEN COHEN: About what?
PAUL JAY: Well, on two things. I think number one–I think two things drove his
Russia–
STEPHEN COHEN: Let me get my word in. Then I'll give it to you, I promise I'll pass
it right to you, because this is going to set you up beautifully. When he said, Trump, 2016,
"It's necessary to cooperate with Russia," there are two ways to interpret that. He was wise
and smart, or the Kremlin had something on him.
PAUL JAY: No, I don't think either of those are true.
STEPHEN COHEN: And then we go straight to Russia.
PAUL JAY: Neither of those are true.
STEPHEN COHEN: Well, I'm not saying you say that, but that's the way it was
taken.
PAUL JAY: No, I think there's two things drove the Russia thing. Number one, they
wanted sanctions lifted because Tillerson and the American oil companies, especially Exxon,
wanted a big energy play in Russia, and they needed to lift the sanctions to do it, and
Tillerson was all positioned for it. And if it hadn't been for this whole Russiagate stuff,
they would have sailed along, had a detente, lifted the sanctions, and had a whole realm of new
energy.
STEPHEN COHEN: You mean under Trump.
PAUL JAY: Under Trump. And I think that would have been a good thing. I'm not
critiquing that in the sense that anything that reduces tensions between the United States and
Russia is a good, thing normalizing, even if it's exploitive and ripping off the Russian people
in their oil, I don't care. The nuclear threat is so paramount, anything that reduces those
tensions are good. But these are not peacenik intentions.
STEPHEN COHEN: Where do we disagree? You've lost me.
PAUL JAY: I'm not saying we necessarily disagree on this. The second part of it
is–and this is where I think is the dangerous part. Because I think sometimes when Trump
and Putin get together and talk quietly, part of that conversation could well be about Iran.
Because when they had the first big round of sanctions on Iran, Russia supported them, Russia
came in on it. And if your foreign policy objective–and clearly it is, between whether it
was Flynn, or whether it was Mattis, or whether it was Bolton, all of them are "regime change
in Iran is the prime objective." And if you want to do that, wouldn't you want Russia to at the
very least step back a little bit?
STEPHEN COHEN: I got you now, I see where you're going.
PAUL JAY: Number one. And number two, the big strategic guns are focused on China. So
if you want to focus on China, wouldn't it be nice to have a strategic normalization with
Russia, try to split Russia from China? Because in their minds, the real enemy is not Russia,
the real enemy is a superpower economy–
STEPHEN COHEN: In whose mind?
PAUL JAY: Much of the American foreign policy establishment, both Democrat and
Republican.
STEPHEN COHEN: The real enemy is ?
PAUL JAY: China. Because that's the global economy, that's going to be the competing
superpower.
STEPHEN COHEN: Let's say you're right.
PAUL JAY: And that doesn't in any way say it's still, in the final analysis, a good
thing if Trump can diminish these tensions. But let's give it the whole context.
STEPHEN COHEN: Well, but it doesn't–I'm not sure what the whole context is. It
seems to me you just said to me that Trump or these people were playing for Russia's support
against Iran in China.
PAUL JAY: As one piece of this, yeah.
STEPHEN COHEN: Well, if so, it's a fool's folly. Russia is leaving the West. I mean,
it can't leave the West geopolitically, because Russia is so big, it's half in the West and a
half in the un-West geographically. But American foreign policy, NATO expansion, the unwise
policies made in Brussels and Washington, are driving Russia from the West.
PAUL JAY: No doubt.
STEPHEN COHEN: And when you leave the West, where do you end up, Paul?
PAUL JAY: They are pushing exactly the kind of a line–
STEPHEN COHEN: Where do you go?
PAUL JAY: Well, with China, of course.
STEPHEN COHEN: And not only China, where else? All major powers that are not members
of NATO, including Iran. So when Putin came to power, he was very much in the tradition of
Gorbachev and Yeltsin. He wanted a strategic alliance with the United States. Who was the first
person to call up Bush after 9/11? Putin. And he said, "George, anything." And if you go back
and look at what the Russians did to help the American ground war in Afghanistan against the
Taliban, whether you think it was a good idea or not, that ground war, Russia did more to save
American lives–Russian soldiers fighting in Afghanistan–than any NATO country
did.
PAUL JAY: No, Iran did more than any NATO country to help America.
STEPHEN COHEN: But Russia had assets, unbelievable assets, and corridors for
transportation, and even an army, the Northern Alliance, that it kept in Afghanistan. It gave
it all to the United States. Putin wanted a strategic alliance with the United States, and what
did he get in return? He got from Bush, the second Bush, more NATO expansion right to Russia's
borders, and as I mentioned before, American withdrawal from the Antiballistic Missile Treaty,
which had been the bedrock of Russian nuclear security for 30 or 40 years. He got betrayed, and
they use that word, "We were betrayed by Washington." This is serious stuff.
The pivot away from the West begins there and continues with these crazy policies that
Washington has pursued toward Russia. It doesn't mean that Russia is gone forever from the
West, but if you look at the billions of dollars of investment, you look at which way the
pipelines flow, you look at Russia–Putin meets like six times a year, maybe more, with
the leader of China. They've each called each other their best friend in politics. Trump meets
with Putin and we think, "Oh my god, how can he meet with him." I mean, it's normal.
PAUL JAY: Netanyahu just met with Putin; nobody said a word.
STEPHEN COHEN: But the point here is that Russia has been torn between East and the
West forever. Its best policy, in its own best interest, is to straddle East and West, not to
be of the East or the West, but it's impossible in this world today. And U.S.-led Western
policy since the end of the Soviet Union, and particularly since Putin came to power in 2000,
has persuaded the Russian ruling elite that Russia can not count any longer, economically,
politically, militarily, on being part of the West. It has to go elsewhere. So all this talk
about wanting to win Russia to an American position that's anti-Iranian and anti-Chinese is
conceived in disaster and will end in disaster. They should think of some other foreign
policy.
PAUL JAY: I agree, but I think that's what Trump's–the people around Trump that
wanted the detente–
STEPHEN COHEN: We should get new people.
PAUL JAY: Well
STEPHEN COHEN: I'll tell you truthfully, if Trump really wants to cooperate with
Russia for the sake of American national security, if we forget all this Russiagate stuff and
we say, "The guy is a little dim, but his ideas are right, you've got to cooperate with
Russia," he has to get some new advisors. Because the people around him don't have a clue how
to do it.
PAUL JAY: I don't think that is the intent, the intent is make money. I don't think
there's any other intent. Make money for arms manufacturers, fossil fuel–
STEPHEN COHEN: Well, hope dies with us. I just don't see that constant bashing of
Trump demeaning him, though it's so easy to do, helps us think clearly about American national
interests.
PAUL JAY: I don't think bashing Trump by dredging up the demons of the Cold War is
anything but war mongering. On the other hand, I don't think we should create any illusions
about who Trump is.
STEPHEN COHEN: So let me give you the part with a paradox. We shouldn't have any
illusions about who Trump is, that seems like–
PAUL JAY: Or who the system is, really.
STEPHEN COHEN: OK. So let's say–I mean, that seems a sensible point of view.
But let me ask you a question. Why was it that American presidents since Eisenhower could do
detente with Soviet communist leaders, and they weren't demonized after Stalin, but we're not
permitted–and certainly Trump is not permitted–to do detente with a Russian Kremlin
anti-communist leader, which Putin is? Did we like the communists better than the
anti-communists in the Kremlin?
PAUL JAY: No. I'll give you what I think, it's just a layman's opinion. I think the
foreign policy establishment, the elite, they were absolutely furious that after all these
decades of trying to overthrow the Soviet Union, and they finally accomplish–although I
think it was mostly an internal phenomenon, but still–and then they get Yeltsin and they
have open Wild West, grabbing all these resources. I think they were really pissed that a state
emerged, led by Putin, that said, "Hold on, it may be oligarchs, but they're going to be
Russian, and you Americans aren't going to have a free-for–all, taking up the resources
and owning the finance. We're not going to be a third world country to your empire."
STEPHEN COHEN: That's correct.
PAUL JAY: And they're pissed off at that.
STEPHEN COHEN: They, meaning ?
PAUL JAY: The Americans.
STEPHEN COHEN: Our people.
PAUL JAY: Our people. Well, I don't want to even take ownership for it.
STEPHEN COHEN: Don't run away. I don't know your age–
PAUL JAY: I'm 67.
STEPHEN COHEN: So we've established that I'm older than you.
PAUL JAY: No doubt. But you look younger, and I'm pissed at that.
STEPHEN COHEN: Well, that's a separate subject.
PAUL JAY: You've got more hair.
STEPHEN COHEN: I've got more hair. You've distracted me. What we share, despite the
age difference, is that we grew up at a time when we were told–whether you or I believed
it or not, but our generations, two generations, were told we are against Russia because it's
communist. We were told that for decade after decade after decade. Now, Russia, the Kremlin, is
not communist, it's anti-communist, and we're still against Russia. How do Russian
intellectuals and policy-makers interpret that turnabout, that it was never about communism, it
was about Russia? There's a saying in Russia formulated by a philosopher, his name was
Zinoviev, he passed on but he was very influential, they were shooting–meaning the
West–they were shooting at communism, but they were aiming at Russia.
And the view, very widespread among the Russian policy intellectual class today, is that
Washington, in particular, will never accept Russia as an equal great power in world affairs,
regardless of whether Russia is communist or anti-communist. And if that is so, Russia has to
entirely reconceive its place in the world and its thinking about the West. And that point of
view is ascending in Russia today due to Western policy. But just remember the view that all
during the previous Cold War, they claim they were shooting at communism, but it was really
Russia. And they still are today.
PAUL JAY: Yeah, I agree with that. I just–
STEPHEN COHEN: But we don't–you and I may agree, but we don't want Russians to
think that way.
PAUL JAY: But I think the view coming out of World War II about being the global
hegemon, the superpower, what that also means is you can't have any adversarial regional
powers. And whether it's Russia or Iran, if you're not in the smaller American sphere of
influence, the umbrella, you can't be there.
STEPHEN COHEN: It's funny you say that. I mean, I'm not a Putin apologist or a Trump
apologist, but I do like intellectual puzzles. If you're saying that we have to give up our
thinking about a multipolar world, so to speak, that there'll be other regional superpowers or
great powers, then isn't Trump the first American president who seems to be OK with that? I
don't see in Trump much a demand that we be number one.
PAUL JAY: Oh, I think Make America Great Again?
STEPHEN COHEN: But he didn't say Make American Number One Again. Maybe that's what he
means, but you don't have Trump–
PAUL JAY: I don't think it kind of matters what the hell Trump thinks or says. And I
think–
STEPHEN COHEN: Have you heard Trump say this thing that Obama and Madeleine Albright
ran around saying for years, that American is "the indispensable nation?" Do you know how
aggravated that made other states in the world? I mean, stop and think about it. Who runs
around saying "we're indispensable?" I haven't heard Trump say that, maybe he has.
PAUL JAY: I just don't think we should put too much weight into whatever Trump says.
I think he's a vehicle, he's a vessel.
STEPHEN COHEN: You take what you can get these days.
PAUL JAY: He's a vessel, first and foremost, for the arms manufacturers, for the
fossil fuel industry. He's a vessel for right-wing evangelical politics. He's not a philosopher
king. He's not a peacenik.
STEPHEN COHEN: You have to have priorities.
PAUL JAY: I think he's rather banal.
STEPHEN COHEN: Yeah, probably, but you have to have priorities. My priority in
international affairs is to avoid a military conflict with Russia. In my book, my new book, War
with Russia?, when I start writing that book in 2013, I never intended to give it that title.
But as I worked and watched events unfold since 2013 to 2019, for the first time in my long
career, I thought war with Russia was possible. I didn't even think there was going to be a
war–as I remember it, I don't remember it vividly–during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Today, I assure you, the new Cold War is fraught with multiple Cuban Missile Crises. Take your
pick; in the Baltic area where NATO is building up, in Ukraine where we've got ourselves
involved in a proxy war, in Georgia where NATO is trespassing again as we talk, in Syria where
American and Russian forces are flying and fighting on the ground in close proximity. By the
way, Trump was absolutely right in withdrawing those–what were they–3000 Americans
in Syria because whatever, Russia had killed just one of them.
With Trump in the White House, the trip wires, a war between nuclear Russia and nuclear
America, are far greater and more multiple than they have ever been. That's the danger.
Therefore, at this moment, if Trump says it's necessary to cooperate with Russia, on that one
issue we must support him. It's existential at this moment. And believe me, and believe me,
people love to hate on Putin in this country; "Putin's evil, Putin's bad." It's nonsense. Putin
is a recognizable leader in Russia's tradition. Putin, as you said I think before, came to
power wanting an alliance with the United States. He's spoken of his own illusions publicly.
Leaders very rarely admit they ever had an illusion, rights, it's not something they do. He is
reproached in Russia, reproached in Russia, for still having illusions about the West. You know
what they say about him in high places in Russia? "He's not proactive, he just reacts, he waits
for the West to do something abysmal to Russia, and then he acts. Why doesn't he first see
what's coming?" What do they cite? They cite Ukraine.
PAUL JAY: Well, that's the next segment, because my question to you is going to be,
"Did Putin make a mistake in Crimea?" So please join us for the continuation of our series of
interviews with Stephen Cohen on Reality Asserts Itself on The Real News Network.
In a country where the media runs the lives of gullible citizens, it is easy to
believe that all the moves are being made for the peace and well being of all. Behind the
curtains, a narcissistic and egotistic machine is hard at work trying to sell war for
peace. This business only benefits a few and causes great suffering on others ... but who
am I kidding, no one cares, as long money is being made ... no one really cares!
The US Constitution and other supporting documents have long stymied attempts at
direct democracy in the US. Beware of anyone claiming to be a strict Constitutionalist !
They hate democracy and embrace slavery in all its disguises.
Great points, Mr. Cohen....this protracted attack on Russia via the phoney
"Russiagate" investigation has set back relations with Russia for years to come....of
course, even here in Bezerkeley, there were signs posted everywhere before the 2016 election: "Hillary=WWIII
(just sayin')".....even the libs around here knew the Clinton cabal wanted a war with
Russia ASAP
That Trump represents a thinking that the post Soviet reality is not of a
uni-superpower world, but one of a multi-polar world dominated by US economic empire.
I think that's true.
After reading "Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New
Century" in 2005, I came to the idea that the most dangerous section of the American
elite were those that posited this uni-superpower world order idea; an impossibility in
this age of technology (one in which even small economies like Canada could lead the
world in nuclear physics understandings and implementation, and one where our collective
wealth of scientific understanding and method, plus systems management, can 'leap' a
large agrarian/industrial economy (China) to a 2nd generation industrial world power in
50 years, proves that understanding).
I haven't read the first part. But what the second part reveals is not that
unravelling. American power is despotic. No principles. Money gain only. Russia turned
democratic after enlightened brains like Yuri Andropov (Jewish-born ex-KGB Chief), old
fox Andrei Gromyko, Gorbachev plus- plus, decided to change the system. In other words,
Russia was willing for openness. But American oligarchs wanted to usurp Russian wealth
with a hand stroke after Soviet State implosion.
Second, why did Rothschild-Rockefeller Banker vassals like Henry Kissinger, Schultz under
Edward Teller influence, sabotage the Reagan-Gorbachev understanding to eliminate nuclear
weapons entirely in Reykjavik, insisting unilateral Star Wars capability for the U.S. to
remain as sole Superpower.
The problem is the incorrigible Big C (Capital) that wanted to eat away Russian minerals
that Putin stopped in national interest. Any subsequent cooperation from the Russian side
was probably was only for strategic cooperation with the U.S. to have world peace.
Steve belongs to that lone group of handful, distinguished U.S. intellectuals who see
problems as they are in eventual meaningfulness for objective U.S. politics. I admire his
talent and courage and support him.
George Chakko, former U.N. correspondent, now retiree in Vienna, Austria.
Vienna, 20/04/2019 06:05 am CET
Not a word in Cohen's appraisal about US criminality. Jay was pushing in that
direction. I hope they get around to the criminality of the Deep State Mafia.
That is the
narrative that will get the most results. Trump is greedy and the neocons have already
attacked him on two fronts: Russiagate and his need for money. He will likely do what the
New World Order folks want him to do. Russiagate will turn out to be a benefit as long as
he sticks with the program that the Neocons want. Who has pushed the US hard to get into
war with Russia? Hilary, Obama, Cheney, now Bolton --all New World Order soldiers who
will commit any crime to rule the world. This is what we are facing.
Trump like every POTUS since JFK does the bidding of the Zionist masters. Every POTUS
except Nixon and Carter that is, and they were demonised and side tracked respectively.
Nixon for his feral decision to recognise China and Jimmy Carter for being a dangerous
liberal. But Trump is a normal run of the mill POTUS minus the PR masking tape. Perhaps
the system has decided that the nice respectable masking tape is now an unnecessary
add-on and every future president (if there are any or many) will do the will of Wall St
and Tel Aviv as openly as does Trump and the msm will assure us that this is good and
necessary. Good fo the economy and necessary to protect the poor suffering Jewish nation
from the anti Semitic hatred of the deluded Palestinian lovers
and finally i think Putin is for Russian greatness, trump is for money for himself and
his family, but also for a white America if that can fit in with his money making
schemes.
I'm sorry, but Paul Jay, whom I sincerely admire, though with some reservations,
sounds in this--very important--interview as if he were suffering from attention deficit
syndrome. You see it most of all in the transcript. Stephen Cohen attempted to keep the
discussion coherent and focused, and Paul injected irrelevancies. Paul, please keep your
eye on the ball. Stephen Cohen is presenting an important message. It's OK to disagree
with it, if you have coherent reasons, but it's important even if it's wrong.
I think it's a mistake to take Trump at his word on anything that doesn't directly
benefit himself. He is two things; an economic animal and a con man, and his motives are
no more complicated than those of a cat. Unlike HRC, Bolton, Cheney Bush etc. he's no
ideologue for war, however, I don't think he has any deep seated dislike of it either, so
taking him at his word, either for or against any military action is foolish; basically,
he's running a con and seeing where it goes, especially if there's any money in it for
him or his family, a very obvious characteristic of his relationship with the Saudis and
his continuing support of their genocidal war in Yemen, a gift he inherited from our
Nobel Peace Prize president.
In the long run, there will be no stopping an alliance between the PRC and Russia,
especially given our political elites' inability to see we are living in a world they can
no longer dominate through an institution, the military, that few have ever been in, and
those of Vietnam war draft eligibility, avoided at all costs, and they will continue that
losing effort until the combined economic might of those nations and their geographic
location on the world's most important land mass, Eurasia, and its proximity to resource
rich Africa, eventually bring about the downfall of the American Empire.
1) Trump personally doesn"t want wars, never mind a war with Russia, though he's no
philosopher or angel.
2) the neolibs, who almost had Russia in the bag before Putin came to power, have been
pissed off at Putin and want regime change in Russia.
3) the same neolibs also want to pit russia, iran, and china against each other, in order
to complete and maintain their New World Order.
4) the same neolibs panicked at Trump's election victory but has reined him in since with
Russiagate. so whatever Trump wants matters not at the moment.
5) the same neolibs have miserably failed in their pursuit of 2) and 3) because of the
alliance of the three, russia, china, and iran. now the entire arab world has declared
independence from the US of Israel, because they now see an alternative bloc of russia,
china, and iran to work with.
all the above are true. more and more people see the truth and reject the neolibs that
the DNC leadership represents.
Trump will be reelected in 2020, if he fires bolton / pompeo / mnuchin / abrams etc.
so far, he's been all bark but no bite, which is a good sign.
Ever noticed how contradictory people you know can be? Ever noticed how contradictory
in yourself, in your own attitudes and deeds you can be? So why be surprised that Trump
can be Stephen Cohen's Trump as much as Paul Jay's Trump? No problem really :-)
There is no contraction between Cohen's observation that
Trump is a voice of sanity on Russia (it just shows how bad US discourse on Russia is)
and Jay's concern that detente with
Russia is part of larger plan for war (economic, kinetic or
hybrid) against Iran and China.
Real or fake, Trump's isolationism has produced no more peace than
Obama's tepid liberalism did and Trump's veto of a bipartisan resolution to forced an end
to American military involvement in Yemen has shown any arguments for an 'anti-war' Trump
were pure self-delusion.
Despite all the chaos and the moral panics that keep rocking the White House, Trump's
three National Security Advisors - Flynn, McMaster, Bolton - had one core commonality:
they want war with Iran. Watching the sinister neo-con Jim Woolsey betray the frothing
neo-con Flynn to Joe Biden was a comedy of neo-con infighting. A major part of Russiagate
was the older 'Atlanticist' neo-cons boxing in the boorish 'Trumpist' neo-cons. Whether
Atlantic Council or US-homegrown both flavors of neo-conservatism want war with Iran.
Wonderful article with Mr Jay playing the role of village idiot ? Mr Cohen speaks with
extreme clarity on Russia, which is totally unacceptable in for profit America by all
sides, where arms sales are us. In regards to Crimea , I'd ask Mr Jay, did Bush 1 make a
mistake in Panama where we killed 4 thousand civilians in keeping China from acquiring an
interest in the Panama canal?
There are so many contradictions under the tent of Killer Clown's circus that it
really isn't possible to make clear sense of them, is there?
I'll just say that he absolutely pimps "Amerika über alles", as it's the putrid
patriotic red white and blue meat he throws his base.
Does he buy his own sales pitch? He does whatever his tiny but tricky little mind
tells him is to his benefit. He'd be perfectly happy as a Russian oligarch or Saudi
prince (as long as Putin or MBS let him bloviate to his heart's content).
His only allegiance is to the state of his ego and bank account.
"... Sanctions are road rage. When you don't have a real policy, you do sanctions. But what's the logic of the sanctions? The sanction is we put this punishment on you. But when you change your behavior we will remove the punishment. Isn't that what we say with sanctions? Therefore sanctions have to be discussed if you're going to have diplomacy. So I would expect an American president to say to the Kremlin we need to have a lot of discussions, including the discussion of sanctions. The ones we've imposed. ..."
"... Actually, by now, depending on what comes next, I don't think the Kremlin cares very much. They've coped very nicely with the sanctions. Though it's hurting their ability to roll over their loans with Western banks, it's true. But generally speaking, they've managed. And Europe wants the sanctions ended, because it's hurt European manufacturers, I think there's 9,000 German firms that were or are making a profit in Russia. It's hurt European -- we have almost no trade with Russia, the United States. Sanctions is -- hurting Europe. ..."
"... Flynn was a professional intelligence officer. Let's repeat that. A professional intelligence officer. He knew everybody was listened to. It didn't bother him. The president had told him to have conversations with the Russian ambassador. There was a tradition of doing this. He had nothing to hide. ..."
"... The psychopaths in the Clinton campaign had no concern that the Russiagate meme would cause enormous consequences in the US relationships with important governments around the globe. Hillary Clinton attempted to damage Trump, the candidate that she wished for the Republicans to nominate, by alleging he was "Putin's puppet." More importantly, Clinton wanted to change the subject from her corruption that was evidenced in her leaked emails (likely by the murdered Seth Rich to Assange). The emails, among other things, proved that she and her toady Debbie Wasserman Schultz et al schemed to steal the nomination from Bernie Sanders. ..."
"... It's about Russian interference alright, but not in the election, rather with Washington's hegemonic ambitions in Eastern Europe (Ukraine), then in the Middle East (Syria) and now in South America (Venezuela). Charles Krauthammer's "unipolar moment" is over, the Bear is back. ..."
PAUL JAY: Welcome to Reality Asserts Itself on The Real News Network. And I'm Paul
Jay.
People that follow this show know I particularly like to interview people that stick their
neck out and stick to their guns for what they believe in, what they're fighting for. And our
next guest is someone who's done both of those things under a lot of pressure. So this is the
story, to begin with, of Stephen Cohen. Stephen is emeritus professor of politics at Princeton
University, professor emeritus of Russian studies and history at New York University, and his
most recent book: War with Russia? From Putin and Ukraine to Trump and Russia. Thanks for
joining us again.
STEPHEN COHEN: Thanks, Paul.
PAUL JAY: So a lot of people were rather happy with Barr's summary of the Mueller
report. And as we sit here talking today we haven't seen the Mueller report, it hasn't been
given to Congress yet, and it may even happen tomorrow. We don't know. And it may change what
we think of what I'm about to ask, but I don't think it's going to change too much about what
I'm going to ask.
Obviously President Trump's pretty happy so far with the no collusion argument. And that was
pretty clear from what Mueller said; what Barr says Mueller said. There's a quote from Mueller
in Barr's summary. But I thought some people who've been critical of Russiagate were a little
bit too happy about this, because the more important, I thought, substance of what Mueller says
is that, in fact, Russia did interfere in the elections. And he takes it very seriously. And
the more important part of Russiagate narrative, I don't think, was ever the collusion part. In
fact, we all knew Mueller was not heading down any big collusion road anyway, because as you
pointed out in one of your interviews, I don't know if it was Larry King, you know, you could
see from how other people were being charged, Manafort and others, there was no breadcrumb
leading you to a collusion argument with Trump. The real problem is the underlying idea is that
this is an existential threat to American democracy, and Mueller more or less confirms
that.
And I thought people shouldn't be so happy about that part of it, because the substantial
argument -- and I'll quote you again -- is that whatever they did it was low-level stuff. It
happens all the time between these countries. They all interfere in each other's elections. And
then it gets raised to the existential level. That's the problem. And Mueller more or less
confirms that.
STEPHEN COHEN: You are absolutely right, only not right enough. This expression,
which has become a truth in the media and for too many politicians that "Russia attacked
America during the 2016 presidential election" is both exceedingly dangerous and a complete
falsehood. Why is it dangerous? Because if a great power is attacked, that great power has to
eventually attack back, counterattack. This is a ticking time bomb in relations with Russia. No
attack on America occurred in 2016. I was awake, present, and observant. I saw no missiles
descending on our country. No Russian paratroopers. No Russian submarines. No Russian combat
planes. Nothing. It's a complete fiction.
It's a form, I guess, of hyperbole. Did the Russians meddle? Some Russians? I don't know.
I'm not even sure the Kremlin knew anything about it. But the Russiagate story is that Putin
decided he wanted Trump to be in the White House. So he attacked American elections and rigged
it. So Trump is now in the White House. I don't know how many people actually believe this. But
too many continue to say it, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN, MSNBC. Too
many influential news outlets are putting out an exceedingly dangerous fiction which is a form
of warmongering. It didn't happen, but they won't let go of it.
So I agree with you. There was no attack on America. But they're keeping this up. Was there
meddling? As you say, sure. So let's do the -- briefly -- the history of Russian-American
meddling in each other's politics. Where would you like to begin? Should we begin with the
American intervention in the Russian Civil War in 1918? I mean, Wilson sent about 8,000
American troops to try to help overthrow the new red Communist government. Was that meddling?
Really, is it meddling? You tell me. Sounds like meddling to me.
PAUL JAY: It's armed intervention.
STEPHEN COHEN: It's armed intervention. All right. What about, to leap forward, 1996?
I was in Moscow, I observed it. Then-president of post-Soviet Russia Boris Yeltsin stood no
chance of being reelected. No chance whatsoever. He was like 3 percent in the polls. But the
Clinton administration desperately needed to keep him in power. So they meddled, big time. They
sent electoral experts -- not unlike, by the way, Paul Manafort. Guys who make a living
advising other countries about how to rig elections. We've got lots of them who do this for big
money. So they set up in the presidential hotel. You could see them. Clinton arranged, I think,
it was $10 billion, I may be wrong there, IMF loan to Yeltsin so Yeltsin could pay pensions and
salaries he hadn't paid for five years. I mean, we did the whole -- I mean this was a massive
intervention into Russia's election. And basically we kept Russia, Yeltsin, in the presidency.
Is that meddling? Is that meddling?
PAUL JAY: Yeah, of course.
STEPHEN COHEN: What happened with Russian meddling in 2016, compared to the kind of
meddling both sides have done, was jaywalking. The only reason it became one of the worst
scandals, and I think most damaging in American history, because of the loathing for Trump and
because the Clinton people couldn't accept that she was defeated fair and square. So they made
up a story. You know, there's this book Shattered which tells about how they sat around and
said we'll blame it on the Russians. However, it's exceedingly unpatriotic. It's warmongering.
It's damaging our institutions of the presidency.
I mean, if it's true -- for example, let's say it's true that the Kremlin can put Trump in
the White House. Then evidently our electoral system in this country is not reliable. And why
not a governor, or a senator, or a member of the Congress that Putin likes? And what about the
next one? I think it's going to erode confidence in our electoral system on the part of
American voters. And what about the presidency itself? I mean, people actually say that a
Kremlin puppet sits in the presidency. Do they think that the damage done to the institution of
the presidency is going to end when Trump leaves? And do they think Republicans aren't going to
do something similar to the next Democratic president?
And the media's scandalous coverage of this, abandoning their own standards. I mean, you
don't get your virginity back quite that easily. I mean, they've got a lot to atone for, but at
the moment they're not even prepared to say they did anything wrong. Just the other day the
heads of these -- CNN, the executive editor of the New York Times and the Washington Post --
all said they thought their coverage of Russiagate had been great. I mean, really? Really? I
mean, that's like a brain surgeon missing cancer, and then saying he thought he did a good job.
I mean, it's preposterous.
So we have a major problem here. And the myth -- there was no Russian attack. The Russians
meddled. Mainly what made the meddling different from the kind of meddling that went on, for
example, when there were Russian-backed American communist parties, for example, in this
country, is social media. It was a social media thing.
And a final point. Let's say that the Russians -- they didn't -- launched a major social
media attack to distort the thinking of American voters, and were successful. Because that's
one of the premises, right? People are saying that, right?
PAUL JAY: Yeah.
STEPHEN COHEN: What does that say for American voters? What contempt people have for
American voters. So-called American Democrats have contempt for American voters. And now what
are they doing? They're out busy censoring social media so that we won't get any information
that might disorient an American voter. You can't -- if you don't believe that the electorate
will reach a rational decision in voting by whatever interests individual voters have, you're
not a democrat. I don't mean a member of the Democratic Party. You're not a democratic person.
If you don't believe in voters you can't be a democratic person. Then you're an
authoritarian.
PAUL JAY: The story that got completely lost as they focused on low-level meddling
that was mostly -- that I think anyone can determine rather ineffective -- was the Cambridge
Analytica story, and Bannon, and the use of troll farms, American-controlled troll farms, to do
this targeted social media manipulation. And that's out there, including an arm of Cambridge
Analytica which helped shape the Brexit vote in the United Kingdom. And the role of Robert
Mercer, who funded Bannon and Kellyanne Conway and originally backed Cruz, and then helped
create Trump as president, I mean, that's the real story of the Trump presidency. Not this
low-level meddling. And they've never really told that story in mainstream media. We did a
whole documentary on it on The Real News. This whole thing's been lost about the real kind of
sinister dark side to the 2016 elections.
STEPHEN COHEN: What worries me more, though, is the way Russiagate, Russiagaters, the
zealots of Russiagate, have criminalized contacts with Russia. I think that this Clinton
organization -- what's it called, Center for American Progress, or something, CAP, which has a
website called Thought Progress or something -- has some posted 150 Trump-related contacts with
Russia. I mean, I've had most of those contacts with Russia. I mean, I've had contacts with
Russian intelligence agents. One was a good friend of mine. Five or six of them I worked with
in a historical archive, and we did smoking breaks and lunch breaks together, and we talked. I
mean, I've had all sorts of contacts in my nearly 50 years of dealing with Russia. There was a
time when contacts were supposed to be good because it was a way of understanding and avoiding
conflict. Part of detente. Part of diplomacy. But Russiagate, the allegations -- and I don't
believe any of them, by the way -- the allegations have criminalized contacts.
Incidentally, as we talk, this young Russian woman, Marina Butina -- sometimes pronounced
here BuTIna, but it's BUtina, B-U-T-I-N-A -- has been sitting in an American prison for more
than six months, most of it in solitary, for doing nothing other than what many Americans do in
Russia, and that is go around talking about how good the American political system is to
Russia, Russians. She went around bragging on Putin and the Russian political system here. For
that she's been kept in prison, and was, as Russians say, finally broken. Literally. That's how
Russians break people. They lock you away to you confess. We call confession a plea. So she --
and she's still in prison, even though she pled.
What did she plead guilty to? Coming here and advocating Russian perspectives without
registering as a foreign agent. This is a Soviet practice, Paul. One of the things that worries
me is that Russiagate has generated too many Soviet-style practices by American authorities.
The use of informers. People who were sent to inform on members of Trump's team, like
Papadopoulos, for example. Holding people's families hostage. I mean, Mueller held General
Flynn's son hostage, essentially, until Flynn pled. And Flynn never should have pled guilty.
Never. In fact, he said the other day he regretted it.
Let's talk about Flynn, for example, to see how bogus this is. Flynn was taped, as he knew
he would be, making contact after Trump was elected, before Trump came President, with the
Russian ambassador, correct? That was how the story began.
PAUL JAY: And they had to know they were being listened to.
STEPHEN COHEN: Of course they [inaudible].
PAUL JAY: Or he should have.
STEPHEN COHEN: Well, so you would say if he knew he was being listened to, why would
he go forward and have this meeting, or discussions, with the Russian ambassador? Because Trump
had told him to do it. And the reason is very simple to anyone who knows even a little history.
At least since Nixon -- maybe since Eisenhower and Kennedy -- but at least since Nixon, every
American president-elect has made a so-called back channel connection with the Russians, with
the Kremlin, before taking office. End of story. And we know -- I mean, Kissinger did it for
Nixon.
PAUL JAY: But Nixon did it with the North Vietnamese, and Johnson called it
treason.
STEPHEN COHEN: I don't care. The point of it is it's become traditional standard
practice for the president-elect to reach out to the Russians to say basically chill out, we're
going to discuss everything. I mean, you got to remember what happened. I mean, this was
dangerous. Obama, to his eternal disgrace, threatened the Russians with a cyberattack. He
threatened them. He said we've implanted in your infrastructure some kind of cyber thing.
PAUL JAY: And passed sanctions.
STEPHEN COHEN: But forget the sanctions. Forget the sanctions. He threatened them
with a secret attack on their infrastructure. Did it mean their medical system? Did it mean
their banking system? Did it mean their nuclear control system? And then the nitwit Vice
President -- Obama's -- goes out and tells jokes about it on late night TV. Yeah, hey, we got
him. What kind of behavior is this?
So I think Trump did absolutely the right thing. He told General Flynn, after Obama had made
this reckless statement, but after Trump was elected, but not yet president, told Flynn, go
tell the Russians not to overreact to what Obama said. Don't do anything crazy. We'll sort this
out when I take office. I personally am grateful he did that, because there were people in
Moscow arguing to Putin that they had to wage some kind of counterattack first. I mean, this
was a very dangerous moment that Obama created, unnoticed in this country. Unreported on.
But not only was it the tradition that the president-elect made contact with the Russians.
Backdoor. Everyone had done it. But in this case it was essential, because the crazies in
Moscow were urging Putin to do something based on what Obama had said. By the way, who's
vanished. On the question of Russiagate, Obama has disappeared himself. I mean Russiagate began
on Obama's watch as president. You'd think he'd have something to say. He hadn't said a
word.
PAUL JAY: But let me counter. I mean, I think the sanctions Obama put on Russia for
Russia's meddling in the U.S. elections was uncalled for; aggressive, and so on. And a
continuation of a bunch of aggressive policy. But their argument is Obama was the president,
and the sanctions had been implemented. And Trump was saying to Putin, don't worry, we're going
to get rid of them.
STEPHEN COHEN: No there's no record. This is-
PAUL JAY: I thought that was Flynn's conversation.
STEPHEN COHEN: No. No. What Flynn told Kislyak, so far as we know, I haven't heard
the tape, was do not overreact to this statement by Obama that your infrastructure is going to
be attacked, and we will discuss everything, maybe he said including sanctions, when Trump
takes the White House.
Now, let's back up a minute. Why shouldn't we discuss sanctions? The logic -- I don't
believe in sanctions. They're road rage. I mean, as we talk, a few nitwit senators are up on
the Hill trying to think up some new sanctions. And if you ask them what they're sanctioning
Russia for today, they couldn't tell you. Everything. In fact, they do tell you. It's called
for Putin's malign behavior in the world. It's not about Crimea anymore. It's not about voter
interference. It's just basically he's a malign character, and you can't have too many
sanctions.
Sanctions are road rage. When you don't have a real policy, you do sanctions. But what's
the logic of the sanctions? The sanction is we put this punishment on you. But when you change
your behavior we will remove the punishment. Isn't that what we say with sanctions? Therefore
sanctions have to be discussed if you're going to have diplomacy. So I would expect an American
president to say to the Kremlin we need to have a lot of discussions, including the discussion
of sanctions. The ones we've imposed.
Actually, by now, depending on what comes next, I don't think the Kremlin cares very
much. They've coped very nicely with the sanctions. Though it's hurting their ability to roll
over their loans with Western banks, it's true. But generally speaking, they've managed. And
Europe wants the sanctions ended, because it's hurt European manufacturers, I think there's
9,000 German firms that were or are making a profit in Russia. It's hurt European -- we have
almost no trade with Russia, the United States. Sanctions is -- hurting Europe.
PAUL JAY: Well, let's get back to Flynn. How could he not know that's being listened
to? And I guess they assume that this was not abnormal for an incoming president to have a
conversation like this.
STEPHEN COHEN:Flynn was a professional intelligence officer. Let's repeat that.
A professional intelligence officer. He knew everybody was listened to. It didn't bother him.
The president had told him to have conversations with the Russian ambassador. There was a
tradition of doing this. He had nothing to hide.
PAUL JAY: OK. There's a part of this that I don't think we're going to agree on, and
we're going to talk about that in the next-
STEPHEN COHEN: I don't even know you were disagreeing with me. Those are just facts I
gave you.
PAUL JAY: I didn't disagree up until this point. We might agree on something and then
disagree in the next segment. So please join us for the next segment of our series of
interviews with Stephen Cohen.
Stephen Cohen: "... [B]ecause of the loathing for Trump and because the Clinton people
couldn’t accept that she was defeated fair and square. So they made up a story. You
know, there’s this book Shattered which tells about how they sat around and said
we’ll blame it on the Russians."
The psychopaths in the Clinton campaign had no concern that the Russiagate meme would
cause enormous consequences in the US relationships with important governments around the
globe. Hillary Clinton attempted to damage Trump, the candidate that she wished for the
Republicans to nominate, by alleging he was "Putin's puppet." More importantly, Clinton
wanted to change the subject from her corruption that was evidenced in her leaked emails
(likely by the murdered Seth Rich to Assange). The emails, among other things, proved
that she and her toady Debbie Wasserman Schultz et al schemed to steal the nomination
from Bernie Sanders.
In fact Billary won the "election" by 3 million votes. But since we are not a
democracy it did not matter. Trump was appointed by America's elites, claiming otherwise
just serves the status quo. I'm sure Mr Cohen knows that?
It's about Russian interference alright, but not in the election, rather with
Washington's hegemonic ambitions in Eastern Europe (Ukraine), then in the Middle East
(Syria) and now in South America (Venezuela). Charles Krauthammer's "unipolar moment" is
over, the Bear is back.
Just a question Paul. Who is "too happy" that no collusion was found? Can you name
names? Russiagate debunkers like Glenn Greenwald and Aaron Mate may feel vindicated, but
I don't see happiness in the fact that the whole episode probably helps Trump.
"But I thought some people who’ve been critical of Russiagate were a little bit
too happy about this, because the more important, I thought, substance of what Mueller
says is that, in fact, Russia did interfere in the elections..."
If there was interference , it was , as Cohen says , on the level of jaywalking in its
seriousness. What would really constitute "an existential threat to American democracy"
is if this whole affair began and continued as a fabricated-from-whole-cloth stitch-up of
a candidate and then sitting President , orchestrated and implemented at the highest
levels of the CIA , FBI , Justice and State Depts. , etc., and possibly all the way up to
ex-Pres. Obama. If the origin of this whole mess is ever investigated properly , as it
should be , I hope TRNN will cover it and the ramifications of its findings at least as
thoroughly as it has the hoax itself , and will invite Stephen Cohen back to contribute
to that analysis. You certainly won't hear from him on the MSM , where such honesty and
clarity of thought are effectively banned.
Where is part 2? What is it that Paul Jay disagrees with Cohen? Sanctions are utterly
stupid. ALL sanctions against all countries should be removed, including those on Russia,
Iran, Venezuela, China and even North Korea. No self-respecting counties will submit to
the ridiculous demands of the terrorist empire because of sanctions.
Sanctions, embargoes, and tariffs, are a forms of taxation that harm the masses in the
state that applies them, while their rulers blame others for the resulting shortages and
higher prices.
fewer and fewer parties are concerning themselves about the US sanctions. not "even"
north korea, according to their latest communique. maybe that's why cohen says "forget
the sanctions."
Okay, Mr. Cohen spends a lot of time trashing the Clintons but is almost an apologist
for the Trump administration. He states correctly that the U.S. has meddled in Russian
politics in the past, notably in the 1920s and 1990s, which we probably shouldn't have
done but that does not make it okay for the Russians to do the same to us. His position
seems to be, tit-for-tat, eye-for-an-eye, so what, forget it. He dismisses, with
contempt, the idea that Russia meddled at all, but no one knows how much they meddled or
what the effects were because no one has looked into it.
Mr. Cohen states that Russia did not attack the U.S. by which he means militarily with
troops and missles. Obviously, that is true but so what. Is cyberassault not something
the U.S. should worry about? Also Mr. Cohen seems to imply that Vladimir Putin is not
that bad as leaders go, despite the poisonings, the assassinations, the imprisonment of
critics and banning of political opponents, and most egregious, the invasion of the
Ukraine and occupation of Crimea. He seems to think invading other countries is okay and
that the Europeans don't care because sanctions against Russia cause them economic
hardship. I suspect that many Europeans care very much about European countries invading
each other. He criticizes President Obama for placing sanctions on Russia and states that
Obama did so because the U.S. doesn't have a strategy regarding Russia. How does he think
the U.S. should respond? What does he think U.S. policy should be towards Russia?
Mr. Cohen defends Michael Flynn stating all new administrations contact Russia to
reassure them. Maybe so but that doesn't explain why Mr. Flynn failed to register as a
lobbyist for Turkey. Mr. Mueller would not have been able to hold Mr. Flynn's son
"hostage" if neither Flynn or his son had not done something illegal. Cohen also defends
Ms. Butina even though she was in contact with the National Rifle Association.
Altogether I don't find Mr. Cohen persuasive because of his dismissive arrogance of
everything supporting the Russiagate scandal. At this point no on is in a position to
accurately critique Russiagate until the report by Mr. Mueller is released.
It would have helped his case if he had expressed as much contempt for the Trump
Administration as he did of the Clinton and the Democrats such as some acknowledgement
that Trump is a dispicable, cruel, vicious and pathological narcissist. It also did not
help that Mr. Jay seemed embarrassed to question or critique Mr. Cohen's assertions.
Unfortunately in making his points Mr. Cohen takes too much information out of context
and leaves out far too many details of the Russiagate scandal.
I think if you listen more to professor Cohen (try Stephen Cohen John Batchelor show)
, you find acknowledgement of all of Trumps faults as well that you accurately described
and realize his "dismissive arrogance" relates to his informed knowledge of the
Russiagate scandal.
I couldn’t have put it any more coherently. I don’t find Mr. Cohen
persuasive at all, particularly after watching the Russian intelligence and counter
intelligence cohort at the House Intelligence Committee hearing. (They were extremely
knowledgeable.) After hearing them, this guy seems unbelievable to me. But! Paul got his
anti-Mueller report guy. At this point, this country is like a boulder ready to roll down
a cliff and finish democracy for good. Two of the issues I found ironic was that Mr.
Cohen 1) feels that Democrats must not think voters are very smart if they are swayed by
the Social Networks (ha!) and 2) he really believes (straight face) that our voting
system and elections in this country are solid and uncorrupted. Where has he been? Thank
you, Mark Swanson, for your eloquent analysis.
An historically factual and informative article once again based based on a false
premise. Trump was not elected. Billary won the election by 3 million votes. Trump was
appointed POTUS by the Electoral College, as Bush2 was appointed by the SCOTUS and then
employed a government official in Ohio to stuff electronic ballot boxes to secure himself
a second term, and the US media forced fed to desperate but credulous Americans the empty
suit Obomber turned out to be to. The US is not and has never been a Democracy, more a
police state run by Plutocrats . Mr Cohen simply trumpets the corporate approved
narrative offering incrementalism for obedience. Kissinger and friends, investment
advisers to most of the worlds tyrants, continues to facilitate Putin's end run around US
sanctions helping him invest his enormous fortune.
you don't like the rules? then change the rules first. Trump won the election fair and
square, following the rules. if the rules had been different, voters and candidates would
have behaved totally differently as well in terms of campaign strategies and voting.
Trump could have won the popular vote by a landslide. ever thought about that? no.
"... Trump's main problem in this respect is that the diversity of viewpoints within the military, the NSA or other government agencies might already be too narrow and he needs a Republican version of Stephen Cohen who has always advocated for engagement with Russia, along with other people from outside Washington DC but with experience in state legislatures for the various departments. ..."
"... I agree and I suspect Trump regards Putin as a fellow CEO and perhaps the best one on the planet. ..."
"... A more fundamental problem is that the US has not yet reached rock bottom. So, its delusions remain strong. Trump, as said before, may be a false dawn unless the bottom is closer than suspected and he has new allies (perhaps foreign allies). ..."
It is not about politics, but Trump's peculiar management style, Timofey Bordachev, Director
of the Center for Comprehensive European and International Studies of the Faculty of World Economy
and International Affairs at Russia's High School of Economics, told RIA Novosti.
"Those who have been studying the business biography of the newly elected president have
noted that he has always played off his high-ranking employees against each other. While doing
so he remained above the fight," he said.
And
Gevorg Mirzayan, an assistant professor of the Political Science department at the Financial
University in Moscow pointed out two purposes for the nominations.
The above brings rationality to the diverse selections made by Trump.
However, the black swan event will be an economic collapse (fast or protracted over several
years). That will be the defining event in the Trump presidency. I have no inkling how he or those
who may replace him would respond.
I had guessed myself that Trump was going to run the government as a business corporation. Surrounding
himself with people of competing viewpoints, and hiring on the basis of experience and skills
(and not on the basis of loyalty, as Hillary Clinton might have done) would be two ways Trump
can change the government and its culture. Trump's main problem in this respect is that the diversity
of viewpoints within the military, the NSA or other government agencies might already be too narrow
and he needs a Republican version of Stephen Cohen who has always advocated for engagement with
Russia, along with other people from outside Washington DC but with experience in state legislatures
for the various departments.
If running the US government as a large mock business enterprise brings a change in its culture
so it becomes more open and accountable to the public, less directed by ideology and identity
politics, and gets rid of people engaged in building up their own little empires within the different
departments, then Trump might just be the President the US needs at this moment in time.
Interesting that Russian academics have noted the outlines of Trump's likely cabinet and what
they suggest he plans to do, and no-one else has. Does this imply that Americans and others in
the West have lost sight of how large business corporations could be run, or should be run, and
everyone is fixated on fake "entrepreneurship" or "self-entrepreneur" (whatever that means) models
of running a business where it's every man, woman, child and dog for itself?
I agree and I suspect Trump regards Putin as a fellow CEO and perhaps the best one on the planet.
Trump may have noted how Putin did an incredible turnaround of Russia and it all started with
three objectives: restore the integrity of the borders, rebuild the industrial base and run off
the globalists/liberals/kreakles. I am certainly not the first one to say this and I think that
there is a lot of basis for that analysis. However, Trump will have a far more difficult challenge
and frankly I don't think he has enough allies or smarts to pull it off.
A more fundamental problem is that the US has not yet reached rock bottom. So, its delusions
remain strong. Trump, as said before, may be a false dawn unless the bottom is closer than suspected
and he has new allies (perhaps foreign allies).
Originally from: The 'Guccifer 2.0' Gaps in Mueller's Full Report April 18, 2019 •
12 Commentsave
Like Team Mueller's indictment last July of Russian agents, the full report reveals questions about Wikileaks' role that
much of the media has been ignoring, writes Daniel Lazare.
The five pages that the special prosecutor's report devotes to WikiLeaks are essentially lifted from Mueller's
indictment last July of 12 members of the Russian military
intelligence agency known as the GRU. It charges that after hacking the Democratic National Committee, the GRU used a specially-created
online persona known as Guccifer 2.0 to transfer a gigabyte's worth of stolen emails to WikiLeaks just as the 2016 Democratic
National Convention was approaching. Four days after opening the encrypted file, the indictment says, "Organization 1 [i.e. WikiLeaks]
released over 20,000 emails and other documents stolen from the DNC network by the Conspirators [i.e. the GRU]."
Attorney General William Barr holding press conference on full Mueller report, April 18, 2019. (YouTube)
Mueller's report says the same thing, but with the added twist that Assange then tried to cover up the GRU's role by
suggesting that murdered Democratic National Committee staffer Seth Rich may have been the source and by telling a congressman
that the DNC email heist was an "inside job" and that he had "physical proof" that the material was not from Russian.
All of which is manna from heaven for corporate news outlets eager to pile on Assange, now behind bars in London. An April 11,
2019, New York Timesnews analysis ,
for instance, declared that "[c]ourt documents have revealed that it was Russian intelligence – using the Guccifer persona – that
provided Mr. Assange thousands of emails hacked from the Democratic National Committee," while another Timesarticle published shortly after
his arrest accuses the WikiLeaks founder of "promoting a false cover story about the source of the leaks."
But there's a problem: it ain't necessarily so. The official story that the GRU is the source doesn't hold water, as a timeline
from mid-2016 shows. Here are the key events based on the GRU indictment and the Mueller report:
June 12: Assange
tells
Britain's ITV that another round of Democratic Party disclosures is on the way: "We have upcoming leaks in relation to Hillary Clinton,
which is great. WikiLeaks is having a very big year." June 14: The Democratic National Committee
accuses Russia of hacking its computers. June 15: Guccifer 2.0 claims credit for the hack. "The main part of the papers, thousands
of files and mails, I gave to WikiLeaks ," he
brags . "They will publish them soon."
June 22: WikiLeaks tells Guccifer via email: "Send any new material here for us to review and it will have a much higher impact
than what you are doing." July 6: WikiLeaks sends Guccifer another email: "if you have anything hillary related we want it
in the next tweo [ sic ] days prefable [ sic ] because the DNC [Democratic National Convention] is approaching and
she will solidify bernie supporters behind her after."Replies Guccifer: "ok . . . i " July 14: Guccifer sends WikiLeaks an
encrypted file titled "wk dnc link1.txt.gpg." July 18: WikiLeaks confirms it has opened "the 1Gb or so archive" and will release
documents "this week." July 22: WikiLeaks
releases more than 20,000 DNC emails and 8,000 other attachments.
According to Mueller and obsequious news outlets like the Times , the sequence is clear: Guccifer sends archive, WikiLeaks
receives archive, WikiLeaks accesses archive, WikiLeaks publishes archive. Donald Trump may not have colluded with
Russia, but Julian Assange plainly did. [Attorney General Will Barr, significantly calling WikiLeaks a publisher, said at
his Thursday press conference: " Under applicable law, publication of these types of materials would not be criminal unless the publisher
also participated in the underlying hacking conspiracy."]
Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein announcing in 2018 the grand jury indictment of 12 GRU agents. (Wikimedia Commons)
Avoiding Questions
The narrative raises questions that the press studiously avoids. Why, for instance, would Assange announce on June 12 that a big
disclosure is on the way before hearing from the supposed source? Was there a prior communication that Mueller has not disclosed?
What about the reference to "new material" on June 22 – does that mean Assange already had other material in hand? After opening
the Guccifer file on July 18, why would he publish it just four days later? Would that give WikiLeaks enough time to review some
28,000 documents to insure they're genuine?
Honor Bob Parry's legacy by
donating
to our Spring Fund Drive.
"If a single one of those emails had been shown to be maliciously altered," blogger Mark F. McCarty
observes , "Wikileaks' reputation would have been in tatters." There's also the question that an investigator known as Adam Carter
poses in Disobedient
Media : why would Guccifer brag about giving WikiLeaks "thousands of files" that he wouldn't send for another month?
The narrative doesn't make sense – a fact that is crucially important now that Assange is fighting for his freedom in the U.K.
New Yorker staff writer Raffi Khatchadourian sounded
a rare note of caution last summer when he warned that little about Guccifer 2.0 adds up. While claiming to be the source for
some of WikiLeaks ' most explosive emails, the material he released on his own had proved mostly worthless – 20 documents
that he "said were from the DNC but which were almost surely not," as Khatchadourian puts it, a purported Hillary Clinton dossier
that "was nothing of the sort," screenshots of emails so blurry as to be "unreadable," and so forth.
John Podesta: Target of a phishing expedition. (Voice of America via Wikimedia Commons)
While insisting that "our source is not the Russian
government and it is not a state party, Assange told Khatchadourian that the source was not Guccifer either. "We received quite a
lot of submissions of material that was already published in the rest of the press, and people seemingly submitted the Guccifer archives,"
he said somewhat cryptically. "We didn't publish them. They were already published." When Khatchadourian asked why he didn't put
the material out regardless, he replied that "the material from Guccifer 2.0 – or on WordPress – we didn't have the resources to
independently verify."
No Time for Vetting
So four days was indeed too short a time to subject the Guccifer file to proper vetting. Of course, Mueller no doubt regards this
as more "dissembling," as his report describes it. Yet WikiLeaks has never been caught in a lie for the simple reason that honesty
and credibility are all-important for a group that promises to protect anonymous leakers who supply it with official secrets. (See
"Inside WikiLeaks : Working with the Publisher that Changed the World,"
Consortium News , July 19, 2018.) Mueller, by contrast, has a rich history of mendacity going back to his days as FBI
director when he sought to cover up
the Saudi role
in 9/11 and assured Congress on the eve
of the 2003 invasion that Iraqi weapons of mass destruction pose "a clear threat to our national security."
Mueller with President George W. Bush on July 5, 2001, as he is being appointed FBI director. (White House)
So if the Mueller narrative doesn't hold up, the charge of dissembling doesn't either. Indeed , as ex-federal prosecutor Andrew
C. McCarthy
observes in The National Review , the fact that the feds have charged Assange with unauthorized access to a government
computer rather than conspiring with the Kremlin could be a sign that Team Mueller is less than confident it can prove collusion
beyond a reasonable doubt. As he puts it, the GRU indictment "was more like a press release than a charging instrument" because the
special prosecutor knew that the chances were
zero that Russian intelligence agents would surrender to a U.S. court.
Indeed, when Mueller charged 13 employees and three companies owned by Russian businessman Yevgeny Prigozhin with interfering
in the 2016 election, he clearly didn't expect them to surrender either. Thus , his team seemed taken aback when one of the alleged
" troll farms
" showed up in Washington asking to be heard. The prosecution's initial response, as McCarthy
put it , was to seek
a delay "on the astonishing ground that the defendant has not been properly served – notwithstanding that the defendant has shown
up in court and asked to be arraigned." When that didn't work, prosecutors tried to limit Concord's access to some 3.2 million pieces
of evidence on the grounds that the documents are too "
sensitive " for Russian eyes to see. If they are again unsuccessful, they may have no choice but to drop the charges entirely,
resulting in yet another " public relations
disaster " for the Russia-gate investigation.
None of which bodes well for Mueller or the news organizations that worship at his shrine. After blowing the Russia-gate story
all these years, why does the Times continue to slander the one news organization that tells the truth?
Daniel Lazare is the author of "The Frozen Republic: How the Constitution Is Paralyzing Democracy" (Harcourt Brace, 1996) and
other books about American politics. He has written for a wide variety of publications from The Nation to Le Monde Diplomatique
and blogs about the Constitution and related matters at D aniellazare.com .
The chaos all around us is what happens when the nation elects an incompetent, narcissistic,
impulsive and amoral man as president. This Christmas, heaven help us all.
Much of the government is shut down over symbolic funding for an
insignificant portion
of a useless border wall that President Trump said Mexico would pay for. The financial markets are having a nervous breakdown
that Trump and his aides are making worse.
... ... ...
It has become a cliche to quote William Butler Yeats's poem "
The
Second Coming
," written almost 100 years ago in the aftermath of World War I. But no one has said it better:
"Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; / Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world . . . And what rough beast, its
hour come round at last, / Slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?"
... ... ...
It is difficult, at the moment, to fully assess the damage Trump is wreaking. We have never had a president like him, so history
is a poor guide...
' doesn't this prove I was wrong about Trump and his movement all along?
I was very wrong to discount the role of character, personality, and intelligence: Trump
is simply not fit to be President '
Raimondo's reaction to Dump's incredible imbecility re the Syria 'chemical attacks
'
' A child could see through the fake "chemical attack" supposedly launched by Bashar
al-Assad just as his troops defeated the jihadists and Trump said he wanted out of Syria
'
Yes anyone watching that white helmets footage is immediately cringing for those poor kids
being abused as props in a macabre stage play
So he's not just stupid, and crazy – he's also a coward. He refuses
to confront the War Party head on, despite his campaign trail rhetoric. Just the other day he
was telling crowds in Ohio how we were on the way out of Syria because "we have to take care
of our own country." The crowd cheered. Would he go back to that same audience and tell them
we need to intervene in a country that's been wracked by warfare for years, with no real hope
of a peaceful settlement? Of course not.
Coulter:
He is a shallow, lazy ignoramus who just wants Goldman Sachs to like him.
We get words; the neocon banker NY scum, running and ruining this world on the fast track
since 9-11, get action. They also own the congressional swamp with its amazingly high
approval rating of 15%. They own the former liberal left, now the Resistance, that can turn
out half a million bleeding hearts in pussy hats but the same oddly can't be bothered to
protest war.
Although I believe the timing of the raid on Trump's lawyer's office to be convenient to
help persuade him to ignore his base and appease his owners, at this point I won't be
troubled when they throw him away.
FP: Is there any way you can predict what Trump will do, say, or tweet?
GA: I will tell you the advice I gave [to Paris] about the tweets. He once criticized the
French president [Emmanuel Macron], and people called me from Paris to say, "What should we
do?" My answer was clear: "Nothing." Do nothing because he will always outbid you. Because he
can't accept appearing to lose. You have restraint on your side, and he has no restraint on his
side, so you lose. It is escalation dominance.
FP: As ambassador, you bridged two very different presidents, Obama and Trump. Talk about
what that was like.
GA: On one side, you had this ultimate bureaucrat, an introvert, basically a bit aloof, a
restrained president. A bit arrogant also but basically somebody who every night was going to
bed with 60-page briefings and the next day they were sent back annotated by the president. And
suddenly you have this president who is an extrovert, really a big mouth, who reads basically
nothing or nearly nothing, with the interagency process totally broken and decisions taken from
the hip basically. And also, for an ambassador, you had a normal working administration with
Obama. People in the executive branch offices were able to explain to you what the president
was thinking or what the president was going to do. And suddenly it's the opposite. A lot of
offices are still empty. It's amazing -- after 55 months, a lot of people are changing
overnight.
It's the fourth G-7 [emissary] we've had in the White house in two years! So the first
problem is we have nobody in the offices or if they are there, they're going to leave. But on
top of that, even if you have somebody in the offices, they don't know what the president is
going to say. And if the president has said something, they don't know what he means.
Given that Russia's economy today is smaller than Italy's and its military budget wouldn't
buy a toilet seat or hammer in the U.S. military procurement system, the question of why Russia
would seem a great mystery outside of history. And left unstated is that the U.S. defense
industry needs enemies to survive. 'Radical Islam,' an invention of oil and gas industry flacks
that turned out to be serviceable for marketing Tomahawk missiles and stealth fighter jets as
well, lost some of its luster when ISIS and Al Qaeda came over to 'our side.' And humanitarian
intervention ain't what it used to be with Libya reduced to rubble and open-air slave markets
now dotting the landscape.
From 1948 through the early 1990s Russia was Pennywise the evil clown, helping to sell
bananas, nuclear weapons and cut-rate underwear around the globe wherever American empire
alighted. Costumed 'communists,' locals paid a day-rate to dress up and shout whatever slogans
conveyed evil most effectively, were a staple of CIA interventions from Iran to Guatemala to
the streets of New York, Boston and Los Angeles. Never mind that the slayer of monsters is more
monstrous than an army of evil clowns, as the Koreans, Vietnamese, Laotians, Cambodians,
Nicaraguans, El Salvadorans, Chileans, Iraqis, Afghanis, Yemenis and on and on, were to
learn.
The big why (?) here would suggest an eternal mystery were it not for the arithmetic we
learned as tykes. The U.S. has an annual military budget that is larger than the next seven
evil empires combined. Killing people and blowing shit up is what America does. Stated
reverse-wise, what is the point of being able to end all human life on earth more than once?
Yet the U.S. can do it 3X -- 5X or 30X -- 50X, depending on which analysis is chosen. And while
it would be anti-historical to remove mal-intent as motive, an alternative explanation of the
militarization of the police is 'overstock,' that there is nothing else to do with the stuff
that the Pentagon produces.
This would seem a tremendous waste of resources under any reasonable theory of their
efficient use (e.g. capitalism). The explanation of 'national defense' reads as legitimate
until history is brought back in. For a few thousand years, the argument against maintaining a
standing army was that standing armies tend to get used. Preparations for armed conflict
facilitate armed conflict. The mobilizations for WWI and WWII were mobilizations, not drawdowns
from existing military inventory. There is something to be said for wars requiring large
expenditures of time, effort and resources from everyone for whom they are undertaken.
Otherwise, they are likely to be started lightly.
The U.S. has long been the most militaristic
nation in the world. This probably doesn't read right to most Americans. 'We' are a
peace-loving nation that only sends in the military as a last resort, goes the myth. And 'we'
changed the name from the Department of War to the Department of Defense. It was early in the
twentieth century that U.S. General Smedley Butler proclaimed that 'war is a racket' (racket =
organized crime) as he described his military career as a ' gangster for capitalism .' The business of war in support
of capitalism had long been a business in its own right, just ask Wall Street.
When the George W. Bush administration created the Department of Homeland Security following
9/11, the obvious question from people who thought about such things was: what are these people
going to do all day? With daily briefings presented to Mr. Bush entitled ' Bin Laden determined to strike in U.S.
'before 9/11, the only intelligence failure, if that is what it was, occurred in the White
House. Mr. Bush's entourage had been rumbling about going back to Iraq to 'finish the job'
since the end of his father's war. How much of a leap was it then to assume that Mr. Bush's WMD
scam was a pretext for re-invading Iraq?
But the question isn't rhetorical. With 240,000 people employed by DHS to find terrorists,
terrorists will be found. The basic insight is that justifying one's employment is crucial to
keeping it. In this light, the FBI counter-terrorism unit spent its time since 2001 enticing
poor and desperate people to claim each other as terrorists. The first person to point out that
there are no terrorists would be the first to receive a pink slip. And the same is true of
government contracting. Brave entrepreneurs who feed at the trough of military largesse need to
justify their existences. If they don't, some other proud patriot will step forward and do so.
A logic of necessity becomes a legitimating belief system More broadly, one could argue that
manufacturing terrorists has been the strategic goal of U.S. military operations for much of
the last century. If you bomb enough villages and wedding parties, people will fight back.
Wasn't this the implied storyline of anti-communist agitprop like Red Dawn and anti-Muslim
agitprop like Zero Dark Thirty -- if you invade 'our' country and / or bomb 'our' villages and
wedding parties, we will fight back. As a business proposition, the more people that are
killed, the more legitimate the operation is made to appear. Make the weapons, then employ
hundreds of thousands of people to explain why 'we' need to bomb villages. Then make more
weapons.
Graphic: Time Magazine was the voice of post-War liberalism in the 1970s -- it reflected
the opinions emanating from American officialdom through a faux-critical lens. This cover
featuring Muammar Gaddafi presaged the Obama administration's destruction of Libya by 35 years.
The main difference then was relative honesty about U.S. motives -- 'Oil' was the lede in 1973,
where 'humanitarian' concerns drove the American propaganda effort in 2011. Note: 'Arab' was
replaced by 'Muslim extremist' following the Iranian Revolution in 1979. Source: Time,
Inc.
Propaganda theory is relevant here because of the ease with which the Russiagate story was
sold -- all evidence, no matter how contradictory, was claimed to point in only one direction.
Contrariwise, Russia isn't the Soviet Union. America's political leaders have long supported
strongmen and dictators. The biggest threat to free and fair elections in the U.S. is American
oligarchs followed by Israel. The Democrat running in the 2016 presidential election openly
manipulated the 1996 Russian presidential election. Russia today is a neoliberal petrostate.
Vladimir Putin is admired in Russia because he booted out corrupt American 'advisors' who were
looting the country. In other words, Russia today isn't Russia!
With the dissolution of the Soviet Union and ostensible end of the first Cold War, a '
peace dividend ' of
reduced military spending was expected to fund increased domestic spending, the classic 'guns
versus butter' formulation shifted in favor of butter. A drop to pre-WWII levels of military
spending would have meant 95%+ of the military-industrial complex went away. Following a very
brief drop in the rate of growth of military spending in the early 1990s, a recession caused by
the looting of Savings & Loans and its aftermath led to the argument that 'the economy'
couldn't withstand a reduced military. September 11 th , 2001 was the best day ever
for U.S. military contractors. America was back in the business of industrial-scale
slaughter.
Early on, the American defense industry tried a few new enemies on for size. The George W.
Bush administration's WMD scam targeted an audience that had been primed by several decades of
anti-Muslim propaganda (see Time cover above) tied to oil geopolitics. The only WMDs found in
Iraq had come from the Reagan administration in its effort to keep Iraq warring with Iran in
the Iran-Iraq war. Current American amnesia over the genesis of Islamophobia is quaint. The New
York Times has been demonizing
Muslims since the 1970s . It was hardly incidental that 'reporting' on the Iraq war
contained breathless descriptions of newly created instruments of mass slaughter.
However, there were two tacks that propelled the Iraq War forward. Humanitarian intervention
had been the liberal formulation for selling the carpet bombing of civilian populations as in
the interest of those being bombed. The term was used for the aerial bombardment of civilian
populations in Bosnia-Herzegovina in the mid-1990s. And it was the back-up explanation for the
American war against Iraq -- to remove an evil dictator in order to liberate the people of
Iraq. It was also used to justify the U.S. / NATO bombing of Libya in 2011. To the certain
dismay of the defense industry, none of those interventions retained the patina of good
intentions once it became known that the target nations had been functionally destroyed.
Russiagate has been a godsend for those who profit from destruction. As the story goes, the
wily Russian bear, led by an evil dictator and newly trained in the technologies of modernity,
set loose a witch's brew of inter-continental ballistic internet messages to sow dissent
amongst the brothers and sisters of die Vaterland united by their common bond of loving
America. For younger readers, the claim that foreign 'agitation' motivated the Civil Rights and
anti-War movements, and more broadly, the American Left, has been a mainstay of CIA and FBI
propaganda since these agencies were created. Old playbooks are good playbooks?
Those with a sense of humor, if humor includes installing a drunken buffoon to head a
nuclear armed foreign power, might offer that 'Trump' is the English translation of 'Yeltsin.'
In 1996 the American President colluded with people inside the Russian government to overturn
the democratic will of the Russian people to install Boris Yeltsin as President of Russia. Yuk,
yuk -- an unstable jackass was installed to head a foreign government. The 'payback' narrative
no-doubt motivated true belief amongst some American officials after 2016. But alas, as with
bombed villages and wedding parties, unless you just will not stop fucking with other people,
they generally have other things to do than plot revenge.
None of the propagators of the phony WMD stories suffered from passing off state propaganda
as news. The New York Times and Washington Post found themselves on the winning side of the
'fake news' scam to shut down the opposition press. Even Judith Miller, brief heroine of the
free press for being 'stove-piped' by Dick Cheney, went on to a well-paid gig at Fox News,
wrote an autobiography that more than just her immediate family read and now lives as a
'celebrity.' Heroes of the #Resistance like David Corn, Rachel Maddow and Michael Isikoff have
the proceeds from book sales and television appearances to sustain them until their services
are needed to sell the next scam-with-a-purpose.
The economic role of American defense spending will lead to endless iterations of WMD and
Russiagate scams until the Pentagon is shut down. And that's the good part. The wars that these
scams support are the bane of humanity. Their true costs, in terms of lives destroyed, appear
to be meaningless to people living in twenty-room houses who want to live in thirty room
houses. Winding down the warfare state would be less politically fraught if people had
non-murderous ways of paying their bills. But how was this not understood as the warfare state
was being built?
Finally,
apologists for Russiagate claim that it has been nowhere near as dangerous as WMD lies.
Let's see: a cadre of national security officials spent two-and-one-half years claiming that it
has secret evidence that the President of the U.S. colluded with the leader of a foreign
government to assume power and then use his office for the benefit of that foreign leader.
Following, the domestic press claimed that the U.S. 'was under attack' and 'was at war' with
this foreign power. Meanwhile, the U.S. went about arming anti-Russian militias on Russia's
border while unilaterally abrogating a short-and-intermediate range nuclear weapons treaty
after publicly announcing that it was 'modernizing' its stockpile of
short-and-intermediate-range nuclear weapons.
Respectfully, this has all been a tad less than constructive.
Now that Mueller's $40
million Humpty Trumpty investigation is over and found wanting of its original purpose (to retire
Trump), perhaps the ruling class can return without interruption to the business of destroying the
world with ordnance, greenhouse gases, and regime changes.
A few more CIA-organized
blackouts in Venezuela (it's a simple trick if one follows the Agency's "
Freedom
Fighter's Manual
"), and the US will come to the rescue, Grenada style, and set up yet another
neoliberal regime. There is a small solace that with Trump, Pompeo, and Bolton, there is at least a
semblance of transparency in their reckless interventions. The assessed value of Guaido and Salman,
they forthrightly admit, is in their countries' oil reserves. And Russians better respect the
Monroe Doctrine and manifest destiny if they know what's good for them. Crude as they may be,
Trump's men tell it like it is.
And when
Bolton
speaks
of "the Western Hemisphere's shared goals of democracy, security, and the rule of law," he is of
course referring to US-backed coups, military juntas, debt bondage, invasions, embargoes,
assassinations, and other forms of gunboat diplomacy.
That the US is not already formally at war with Russia (even with NATO forces all along
its borders) has only to do with the latter's nuclear arsenal deterrent.
Since World War
II, a period some describe as a "
a
period of unprecedented peace,
" the US war machine has wiped out some 20 million people,
including more than 1 million in Iraq since 2003, engaged in regime change of at least 36
governments, intervened in at least 82 foreign elections, including Russia (1996), planned more
than 50 assassinations of foreign leaders, and bombed over 30 countries. This is documented
here
and
here
.
Despite unending US and US-supported assaults on Africa and western and central Asia,
the authors who see postwar unprecedented peace argue that it's Russia and China, not the US, that
represent the real threats to peace and deserve to be treated as "outcasts."
That NATO has
warships plying the Black Sea and making port calls at the ethnically Russian Ukraine city of
Odessa and is conducting war games from Latvia to Bulgaria and Ukraine represents unprecedented
peace? While NATO, which together has 20 times the military spending of Russia and includes member
states along virtually the entire perimeter of Russia, in Western propaganda Russia is the
aggressor.
Although the US corporate media may have missed the news, the rest of the world gets the
fact that the greatest threat to peace on the planet is Uncle Sam.
In 2013, a
WIN/Gallup
International poll
of 66,000 people in 65 countries found that the US was considered by far the
most dangerous state on earth (24% of respondents), while Russia didn't even register statistically
on that poll. In 2017, a
Pew
poll
found the same perception of US power and that such a view had increased to 38% and had grown in 21
of 30 countries compared to 2013. Even America's neighbors, Canada and Mexico, see the US as a
major threat to their countries, worse than either China or Russia. The mainstream media (MSM)
stenographers' myopia in failing to cover this story is not an oversight. Carl Bernstein, of
Watergate exposé fame,
documented
in
1977 the fact that from the early 1950s to the late 1970s, the MSM (
New York Times
,
Washington
Post
, NBC, ABC, CBS, and the rest) had regularly served as overseas informers for the CIA.
It would be hard to believe that those ties are not still intact given the level of collaboration
among the CIA, the MSM, and the Democratic Party in the Russiagate conspiracy drama.
Context is everything.
In blaming others for the instability of the Middle East, it is important to bear in
mind that for 36 years since Reagan launched air attacks on Beirut and parts of Syria, the US, and
its ally Israel, has been using the greater Middle East region as a testing ground for its weapons
systems.
This has meant repeated bombing and droning of Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan,
Libya, Somalia, Iran, Yemen, Kuwait, and Sudan, and increased weapons sales to the region to assure
continuous instability and profits. The US has "special forces" operating in two-thirds of the
world's countries and non-special forces stationed in three-quarters of them, altogether over 800
military bases and installations in as many as 130 countries (the Pentagon refuses to give the
exact number). By comparison, apart from several bases in some of the former Soviet republics,
Russia has a naval resupply facility in Vietnam and small temporary leased naval and airport
stations in Syria. China opened a combined naval and army base in Djibouti in 2017 and an
"unofficial military presence" in Tajikistan. There is nothing remotely close to equivalence.
We can expect a continuing outcasting of Russia, either under a second Trump presidency
or, if the long dark shadow of the Clintons prevails, a Joe Biden White House.
Biden
claims without the benefit of evidence that currently "
the
Russian government is brazenly assaulting the foundations of Western democracy around the world
,"
as if the huge imbalance of military forces and the long history of US interventions against
liberal democracies and socialist states were unknown or irrelevant. In his (and the
establishment's) heavy-handed uses of propaganda, Biden has learned well the tactics of Goebbels –
repeat the lies often enough to make the imperial state appear as the victim.
With regard to a brazen assault on democracy, Biden might take a cue from Clinton, who knew how
to capitalize on her power position by signing off on huge arms sales to the Saudis (e.g., a
$29
billion sale
of fighter jets to that country to be used against Yemen) and other Gulf States
while securing tens of millions of dollars in donations from the sheikhs ($25 million from Saudi
Arabia alone) to her private foundation, run by her husband. This is all the more contemptuous
given that
she
acknowledged
in 2013: "The Saudis and others are shipping large amounts of weapons clandestine
financial and logistic support to ISIL and other radical Sunni groups in the region and pretty
indiscriminately – not at all targeted toward the people that we think would be the more moderate,
least likely, to cause problems in the future."
In other words, she knew the Saudis and other Gulf dictators were arming ISIS (ISIL) and other
caliphate actors but continued to keep them as allies and patrons. She also took $800 thousand for
her 2016 campaign (almost double what Trump received) and some $3 million for her private
foundation from
oil and
gas companies
after approving lucrative gas pipeline in the Canadian tar sands. Part of the
foundation staff's business was to arrange meetings of top donors meetings with the then secretary
of state. Following Clinton and Obama's lead and without a second thought, Trump has authorized US
energy companies to sell the Saudi monarchy nuclear power technology and assistance.
In foreign policy, indeed, it's hard to see any meaningful difference between Republican
and Democratic administrations.
Obama and John Kerry sent Undersecretary of State for
Europe and Eurasia
Victoria Nuland
to
Kiev's Maidan to cheer on the 2014 coup, hand out sandwiches to protesters, and give marching
orders to her ambassador there to arrange for Yatsenyuk to be prime minister and to "fuck the EU."
Poroshenko, a regular informer at the US embassy, as WikiLeaks revealed, was already in the bag for
president. Biden was brought in to "midwife" and "help glue this thing" by pressuring the
still-ruling Yanukovych to step down in favor of the US-designated coup leaders. Along the same
lines, Trump's then ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, joined Venezuelan protesters outside UN
headquarters in New York, using a megaphone to publicly call for a coup against Maduro. "I will
tell you," she told the group, "the U.S. voice is going to be loud."
Both the Ukraine and Venezuela interventions are in part a grand strategy to isolate Russia.
However, the orchestration of a new Cold War against Russia and to implicate Trump as a
Kremlin puppet has failed, and the problem for Russiagate propagandists is how to keep the
conspiracy theory alive now that Mueller's unsuccessful hunt for 5thcolumnists is in the dustbin
.
The leading Russia scholar,
Stephen
Cohen
, who has been professionally marginalized because of his skepticism toward the CIA
narrative, sees the impact of a larger scandal – the corruption of the Democratic Party and its
minions in the media that formed an alliance with the spooks. He asks:
"what about the legions
of high-ranking intelligence officials, politicians, editorial writers, television producers, and
other opinion-makers, and their eager media outlets that perpetuated, inflated, and prolonged this
unprecedented political scandal in American history ?"
Another question is, how would the mainstream media financially survive an ending of
Russiagate, if indeed the media moguls allow it to end?
This spectacular failure of the
"fourth estate" in covering the Clinton and Democrats' defeat in 2016 greatly weakened their trust
status, which has been in quite steady decline since the 1970s, especially among Republicans.
Democrats tend to look more favorably on the largely partisan liberal MSM for obvious reasons.
However, as of December 2018, according to an
IPSOS/Reuters
poll
, only 44% of Americans has much (16%) or some (28%) confidence in the MSM, compared to
hardly any (48%). On whether MSM news organizations are more interested in making money than
telling the truth, 59% agreed with the former assessment. No known organization has published
findings on MSM trust since the completion of the Mueller debacle.
What is to be made politically of the Russia obsession?
Russiagate, which Matt
Taibbi calls "this generation's WMD," can be seen as serving three broad major purposes.
It has given the Democratic Party leadership and its partners in the CIA and MSM a
cause célčbre inorder to salvage the status and image of the party and distract from its
disastrous electoral defeats from 2008 to 2016.
It thereby serves as an alternative
reality to the widespread recognition that the ruling forces in the party have no genuine
popular agenda and represent corporate, banking, neoliberal, and neoconservative militarist
projects designed under Bill Clinton's New Democrat agenda.
On foreign policy, Russiagate puts the Democrats to the right of the Republicans,
similar to the way that John Kennedy in the 1960 campaign accused the Eisenhower (and VP Nixon)
administration of weakening America's defenses, which presently enables the energy and defense
industries and their lobbyists to unduly influence the perception of international threats and
flashpoints. Democrats in the House and Senate voted overwhelmingly for the 2019 $716 billion
defense budget, over and above what even Trump requested. In 2018, five military contractors –
Northrup Grumman, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, and Raytheon – provided key
political leaders in both parties with $14.4 million in addition to $94 million spent on
lobbying efforts that year. Oil & gas spent $89 million on the election campaign and $125
million on lobbying.
And, third, it serves to stifle the political left in and outside the party
and the demands for progressive legislative changes activated by Bernie Sanders in 2016 and by
newer members like Ilhan Omar, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, and Tulsi Gabbard.
Where is the center of public political confidence these days?
Certainly not
with the mainstream media, which is even lower than that for Trump. Even in terms of its vaunted
claims of press freedom, the US fares quite badly. Reporters Without Borders ranked the US number
45th worldwide (of 180 countries cited) in press freedom in its 2018 report. Tory-led Britain slid
from 33rd in 2014 to 40th– only Italy and Greece were behind the UK among western European
countries. And although Trump hasn't helped with his attacks on the media (and more than
reciprocated by the media's extraordinarily hostile coverage of the president), the situation
wasn't much better under Obama, who threatened whistle blowers in the press with enforcing the 1917
Espionage Act. This is law that may be pressed against the journalist Julian Assange. There still
exists no "shield law" guaranteeing journalists the right to protect their sources' identities.
Journalism students should be concerned for another reason as well:Newspaper employment between
2001 and 2016 has been cut by more than half, from 412,000 to 174,000, according to the Bureau of
Labor Statistics.
William Arkin, who quit NBC News as a political commentator last January, accused the station of
peddling "ho-hum reporting" that "essentially condones" an endless US war presence in the Middle
East and Africa. He also took the network to task for not reporting "the failures of the generals
and national security leaders," and essentially becoming "a defender of the government against
Trump" and a "cheerleader for open and subtle threat mongering."
In his parting comments, he wrote:
"I'm alarmed at how quick NBC is to mechanically
be in favor of policies that just spell more conflict and more war. Even on Russia, though we
should be concerned about the brittleness of our democracy that it is so vulnerable to
manipulation, do we really yearn for the Cold War?"
It may be whistling in the wind, but there are more important things to worry about than whether
"the Russians" exposed the DNC's perfidious behavior in 2016. It would be more worthwhile for
Democrats to demand programs that eliminate child poverty, which is at 20% in the US, compared to
an OECD average of 13%. It might also be useful to concentrate a bit more on the white working
class and working poor that went to Trump in 2016, whose kids make up 31% of the child poverty
bracket (black children are 24%, and Latino children are 36%).
And while they're at it, they might try to change the fact that
the US ranks 25thout of
29 industrialized countries in investments in early childhood education or the fact that the
disgraceful American infant mortality rate at 5.8 deaths per 1,000 live births is 50% higher than
the OECD average (3.9%)
. Many of the parents of these less privileged children are serving
long sentences in prison for non-violent crimes, the discarded citizens who form the highest
incarceration rate in the world. Overall, the Stanford Center on Inequality and Poverty ranked the
US 18th out of 21 wealthy countries on measures of labor markets, poverty rates, safety nets,
wealth inequality, and economic mobility. On the other hand, the US has more than 25% of the
world's 2,208 billionaires. This is American exceptionalism at its worst.
The corporate-run market system and the calamities it is bringing to the world depends
on such distractions.
As the
New York Times
journalist and defender of US global
supremacy, Thomas Friedman, has noted, "The hidden hand of the market will never work without a
hidden fist. McDonald's cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas, the designer of the U.S. Air
Force F-15. And the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley's technologies to
flourish is called the U.S. Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps." In his view, the system needs
protecting, for which his "journalism" and most of the MSM are certainly doing their part.
Unless the rather soft left within the Democratic Party can somehow capture the public
imagination, the Democrats' political agenda,
the MSM and their cohorts in the deep state
will likely continue to report fake Russian conspiracies
around the world.
Russiagate is a propaganda industry that keeps on giving.
In the
longue
durée
of American elections, the question is what discourse will dominate the next campaign –
social justice and a rational foreign policy or more aggressive polemics about Russia aimed at a
steady pathway to nuclear war?
There is so much obvious
obfuscation and deflection taking place by the (((MSM))) as to
real issues and guilty parties in world and domestic affairs.
People... PLEASE... use the internet... with all of its
remaining free and accessible qualities to glean truth. Yes...
you will come across countless contradictions, but if you have
half a brain to use in the processing of data, you won't find it
hard to ascertain what is really going on. It is up to YOU to
figure it out... not Tucker Carlson, not Laura Ingraham, not
Rachel Maddow. No. YOU.
Do it. Be confident in your conclusions. Pass along to those
you know and love those conclusions. If you do this, the
tentacles of truth will spread within this body of jewish lies
and serve as our leukocytes.
He's turned out to be a ziocon and Bibi's bitch instead. He's surrounded himself with
neocons. And he's also Wall St's bitch as his primary concern is stock prices. He wants the Fed
to lower already low rates and grow its multi-trillion dollar "emergency" balance sheet even
more. The federal government will add a trillion dollars to the national debt each year of his
term. Isn't this exactly what the establishment of both parties want?
In any case, the hammer needs to come down hard on the putschists, so that law enforcement
& the intelligence agencies don't become an extra-constitutional 4th branch of government
accountable only to themselves. We'll see how far the Trump administration will go in holding
these seditionists to account?
Barr says that the Mueller report insists that Russia attempted to interfere in U.S.
elections:
First, the report details efforts by the Internet Research Agency, a Russian company with
close ties to the Russian government, to sow social discord among American voters through
disinformation and social media operations.
How exactly was it established that the IRA intended to "sow social discord". Is there any
IRA witness that said so? Any documents? No. It is a made up reasoning. The IRA activities
were driven by commercial interests. To get as many page-views as possible IRA personnel
posted memes on both sides of the political spectrum simply because that is where the
viewership is. Just ask Foxnews or CNN. There was no political intent in the IRA's activity.
To claim that it intended to "sow social discord" is baseless nonsense.
The claims by social networks that "Russians" did this or that are dubious. Twitter for
example recently
revised its count of "Russian trolls":
On Feb. 8, Twitter removed 228 accounts from the Russian IRA dataset because the
social-media company now believes these accounts were operated by a different trolling
network located in Venezuela. "We initially misidentified 228 accounts as connected to
Russia," Yoel Roth, Twitter's head of site integrity, wrote in an online post. "As our
investigations into their activity continued, we uncovered additional information allowing
us to more confidently associate them with Venezuela."
...
Twitter's change to its data undercuts all of these analyses of the troll farm's 2017
activity , Clemson researchers said. There was no surge in IRA Twitter activity in
mid-2017, and the high-volume accounts that churned out links to ReportSecret were, in
fact, being operated by a different, unknown group operating out of Venezuela, according to
the updated data.
Twitter is reluctant to discuss how it connects accounts to trolling networks.
Twitter "is reluctant" because the company has simply no way to find that some real person
driven account is a "troll". It is a completely subjective judgement.
How exactly was it established that the IRA intended to "sow social discord". Is
there any IRA witness that said so? Any documents? No. It is a made up reasoning. The IRA
activities were driven by commercial interests. To get as many page-views as possible IRA
personnel posted memes on both sides of the political spectrum simply because that is where
the viewership is. Just ask Foxnews or CNN. There was no political intent in the IRA's
activity. To claim that it intended to "sow social discord" is baseless nonsense
That does not answer who paid for the clicks, and what was the information the clicks
led to. Basically a foreign power is not supposed to run election adverts.
Memes on both sides of the political spectrum could very well have been anti-Hillary ads
for Republicans, DNC leaks for Democrats, and pro Hillary/anti Sanders stuff for Sanders
supporters, the idea being to motivate Republicans to vote and disgust Democrats to keep
them from voting.
Facebook is THE tool you would use to create confusion and cause a break up of social
relations, simply by its psychological user profiles and the ability to spread news to some
groups but not to others unchecked from the outside.
Any professional in psychological warfare would have a go just for testing.
Cambridge Analytics was a British psychological warfare company - and
they cooperated with Russia .
Either business is global or it is not, and if you privatise secret service it is global
business :-))
thanks b... i look forward to your comments after reading the full report...
"the IRA intended to "sow social discord""... it could be argued social networks -
facebook, twitter, instagram and etc. etc. "sow social discord"... is that russias fault
too?
obviously there is way too much subjectivity in all of this.. the fact they cia/fbi are
unwilling, or unable to define how the clinton e mails came out is another way to add to
the subjectivity here.. nothing concrete - just specualation.. russia released them and
etc. etc. speculation... where is the proof as b asks? there is none, but there is plenty
of subjective speculation and innuendo - all abusing a foreign country... how ethnocentric
and convenient that is!
here is a subjective thought.. this is just what the usa deep state wants and just what
the western msm is happy to fulfill..
A federal judge has rejected special counsel Robert Mueller's request to delay the first
court hearing in a criminal case charging three Russian companies and 13 Russian citizens
with using social media and other means to foment strife among Americans in advance of
the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
What was not yet available until last night was the transcript of the hearing. The reason
the Concord Management attorneys called the case a 'proverbial ham sandwich' was because
one of the entities indicted by the Mueller team, Concord Catering, was not in existence
at the time the crimes were alleged to have taken place.
One of the Russian companies charged by Mueller, Concord Management and Consulting LLC,
hired American lawyers to defend it an American court -- the US prosecutors are fighting
tooth and nail to to prevent the obtaining o pre-trial discovery of documents ... 3 million
documents have been declared by the prosecutors as being "sensitive" and non-discoverable
... the battle continues.
British propaganda is clearly as close to neofascist propaganda as one can get... British neocons are even closer to neofascists then the US neocons. And British security services are closer to
the Third Reich security services then any other.
Skripals is a such a grandiose false flag operation that Gellen (of operation Gladio fame) probably would be amazed and humbled.
Notable quotes:
"... The official narrative of the Salisbury incident is ever-fluctuating. Seemingly each and every article, news segment, official statement or documentary about any element of the case contains new information, requiring the established account to be at least partially rewritten and/or contradicting established elements of the story.... ..."
"... If nothing else, that Haynes was willing to transmit an apparently obvious fiction speaks volumes about the willingness of mainstream journalists to parrot each and every fresh claim in the Skripal case, even if it wildly conflicts with what they themselves have written previously. ..."
"... Oh dear oh dear.. It appears the UK may be denying there were any poor ducks involved... https://twitter.com/haynesdeborah/status/1118409471754153984 ..."
It seems highly reasonable to conclude the NY Times item has blown away any remaining
truthfulness to the Skripal Saga and the entire Saga--like Russiagate--can be concluded to be
a very serious hoax, and that there's no reason whatsoever to trust anything said by UK's
Tory government.
"The official narrative of the Salisbury incident is ever-fluctuating. Seemingly each and
every article, news segment, official statement or documentary about any element of the case
contains new information, requiring the established account to be at least partially
rewritten and/or contradicting established elements of the story....
"If nothing else, that Haynes was willing to transmit an apparently obvious fiction speaks
volumes about the willingness of mainstream journalists to parrot each and every fresh claim
in the Skripal case, even if it wildly conflicts with what they themselves have written
previously."
"Difficult to verify your version of events given it involves nameless officials. Knowing
you're often used by security services to peddle propaganda seemed a reasonable assumption
they'd urged you to backtrack your earlier advocacy as story detonates official #Skripal
narrative."
It seems highly reasonable to conclude the NY Times item has blown away any
remaining truthfulness to the Skripal Saga and the entire Saga--like Russiagate--can be
concluded to be a very serious hoax, and that there's no reason whatsoever to trust anything
said by UK's Tory government.
Regarding the likely continuance of anti-Russian rhetoric,
this Philip Giraldi item informs us of the following:
"A current bill originally entitled the 'Defending American Security from Kremlin
Aggression Act (DASKA) of 2019,' is numbered S-1189 [linked to within item]. It has been
introduced in the Senate which will ' require the Secretary of State to determine whether the
Russian Federation should be designated as a state sponsor of terrorism and whether
Russian-sponsored armed entities in Ukraine should be designated as foreign terrorist
organizations.' The bill is sponsored by Republican Senator Cory Gardner of Colorado and is
co-sponsored by Democrat Robert Menendez of New Jersey.
"The current version of the bill was introduced on April 11th and it is by no means clear
what kind of support it might actually have, but the fact that it actually has surfaced at
all should be disturbing to anyone who believes it is in the world's best interest to avoid
direct military confrontation between the United States and Russia."
Giraldi generally concludes the sponsoring Senators are insane--"The Senatorial commentary
is, of course, greatly exaggerated and sometimes completely false regarding what is going on
in the world, but it is revealing of how ignorant American legislators can be and often
are"--but we just finished a witch hunt fueled by such insanity. Some anti-Projection
medication is drastically needed for all too many people wielding power in The Swamp.
One wonders if Halper, Dearlove, and Haspel ran the 'op' to initiate a new McCarthyism.
Reinforced by US IC "findings" (17 intelligence agencies agree!! Except not - that was a lie)
pushed by Brennan and Clapper.
Then consider what appears to be a cover-up by Mueller, Comey, and Barr (Note: Mueller is
Comey's mentor and Barr is close friends with Mueller) as outlined here: New
VIPS Memo :
So, if it wasn't the Russians, [then] who left the "Russian" bread-crumb "fingerprints?"
We do not know for sure; on this question we cannot draw a conclusion based on the
principles of science -- at least not yet. We suspect, however, that cyber warriors closer
to home were responsible for inserting the "tell-tale signs" necessary to attribute "hacks"
to Russia....
Binney, a plain-spoken, widely respected scientist, began by telling Pompeo that his
(CIA) people were lying to him about Russian hacking and that he (Binney) could prove it.
Pompeo reacted with disbelief, but then talked of following up with the FBI and NSA. We
have no sign, though, that he followed through.... [Furthermore[ we told Attorney General
Barr five weeks ago, [that] we consider Mueller's findings fundamentally flawed on the
forensics side and ipso facto incomplete. We also criticized Mueller for failing to
interview willing witnesses with direct knowledge, like WikiLeaks' Julian Assange.
If, as we strongly suspect, Mueller is relying for forensics solely on CrowdStrike,
the discredited firm hired by the DNC in the spring of 2016, he is acting more in the mold
of Inspector Clouseau than the crackerjack investigator he is reputed to be....
You [addressing Pres. Trump] may be unaware that in March 2017 lawyers for Assange
and the Justice Department (acting on behalf of the CIA) reportedly were very close to an
agreement under which Assange would agree to discuss "technical evidence ruling out certain
parties" in the leak of the DNC emails" and agree to redact some classified CIA
information, in exchange for limited immunity. According to the investigative reporter John
Solomon of The Hill, Sen. Mark Warner, D,VA, Vice Chair of the Senate Intelligence
Committee, learned of the incipient deal and told then-FBI Director Comey, who ordered an
abrupt "stand down"and an end to the discussions with Assange.
Lastly, given the above, isn't it curious that Trump himself happened to further
Russiagate suspicions and the Wikileaks sting by: hiring Manafort, appealing to Wikileaks and
Russia to release emails, frequently praising Putin?
<> <> <> <> <> <> <> <> <>
IMO the Deep State had two main objectives in the 2016 Presidential election: elect a
nationalist President and initiate a new McCarthism. Discrediting Wikileaks ran a close
third. And settling scores with Flynn was also important to them (Flynn had told the world
that the Obama Administration made a "willful decision" to support ISIS).
I am not sure if it is clear for folks on the far side of NYT paywall that NYT reported on "children and ducks" not merely
as a quote of CIA director, but as a straight fact. This is the caption of one of the photos illustrating the article: "A former
Russian intelligence officer, Sergei Skripal, and his daughter were poisoned last year in Britain in a slipshod attack that also
sickened children, killed ducks and required careful cleanup.CreditWill Oliver/EPA, via Shutterstock"
I'm willing to believe a lot of things about the Brits and Haspel, but "stupid" isn't one of them. That they tried the Skripal
stunt demonstrates they had great confidence in their control of the UK and US press, and I'll concede that confidence was justified.
Note Haspel hasn't denied any aspect of the news item.
Why perpetrate a hoax like the Skripal Saga, which was all too real for the one confirmed dead.
Taregt: Russia
Why? Previous sanctions not performing as anticipated--indeed, they are actually backfiring.
But if that policy line's already a proven failure, why double-down?
When faced with failure, Neocons always double-down.
Meanwhile, sanctions employed for almost 4 years when Skripal Act 1 begins clearly aren't working, which brings up the question
of how Russia is actually perceived by the genuine International Community--did the provocations and sanctions diminish Russia's
standing in the world prior to March 2018?
Given ever growing attendance to Russian sponsored and located symposiums, Russia's reputation seems to be growing at the expense
of the smearing nations.
Motive for Skripal Hoax: To do what sanctions couldn't.
Outcome of Skripal Hoax: Russian reputation higher than ever. Indeed, the two hoaxes have had the opposite affect on Russia's
international standing and the entire sanctions regime helped to make Russia stronger than it otherwise would be without their
imposition.
"The media's interest in the well-being of a foreign population is directly proportional
to the West's interest in toppling its government, while editorial standards are inversely
proportional to its enemy status."--John McEvoy
So, lets employ this maxim to Russiagate and the Skripal Saga and the respective national
media. In the first case, the Russian public's completely ignored unless it's a member of the
so-called opposition while Putin and Russia get slandered constantly. The same treatment goes
for the UK media and a case could be made that the two act in tandem, implying
innerconnectivity between their spy agencies as suspected.
"... The Steele dossier is British, Orbis intelligence = British, Institute for statecraft / Integrity Initiative =
British, Skripal defection. Location, evidence, statements = British, the list goes on and on. ..."
"... The UK's propaganda machine rivals and even surpasses Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany. ..."
The Steele dossier is British, Orbis intelligence = British, Institute for statecraft / Integrity Initiative = British,
Skripal defection. Location, evidence, statements = British, the list goes on and on.
You'd think someone might have noticed something of a trend by now.
They just don't bother anymore, the level of double black psy-ops and gaslighting is a mine field of disinformation. That's what
you get when Washington - Obama, gives the green light to propagandizing their people. It's escalated, like we haven't noticed,
under Trump despite his pathetic attempts at assuring folks it's fake news.
The UK's propaganda machine rivals and even surpasses Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany. I watched about 10 minutes of a
documentary about Easter Island, as an example, and it was revisionist to the nth degree. Just absolute rubbish insinuating that
white European travelers destroyed the Island. This is what British kids are now being marinated in, "He who controls the past"
"... Assange accomplished more in 2010 alone than any of his preening media antagonists will in their entire lifetime, combined. Your feelings about him as a person do not matter. He could be the scummiest human on the face of Earth, and it would not detract from the fact that he has brought revelatory information to public that would otherwise have been concealed. He has shone light on some of the most powerful political factions not just in the US, but around the world. This will remain true regardless of whether Trump capitulates to the 'Deep State' and goes along with this utterly chilling, free speech-undermining prosecution. ..."
"... My support was based on the fact that Assange had devised a novel way to hold powerful figures to account, whose nefarious conduct would otherwise go unexamined but for the methods he pioneered. ..."
The nine-year gap – long after Manning had been charged, found guilty, and released from prison – suggests that there is something
ulterior going on here. The offenses outlined in the indictment are on extraordinarily weak legal footing. Part of the criminal 'conspiracy,'
prosecutors allege, is that Assange sought to protect Manning as a source and encouraged her to provide government records in the
public interest.
This is standard journalistic practice.
And it is now being criminalized by the Trump DoJ, while liberals celebrate from the sidelines – eager to join hands with the
likes of Mike Pompeo and Lindsey Graham. You could not get a more sinister confluence of political fraudsters.
They – meaning most Democrats – will never get over their grudge against Assange for having dared to expose the corruption of
America's ruling party in 2016, which they believed help deprive their beloved Hillary of her rightful ascension to the presidential
throne. Once again, Rep. Tulsi Gabbard is among the few exceptions.
The DNC and Podesta email releases, now distilled reductively into the term 'Russian interference,' contained multitudinous newsworthy
revelations, as evidenced by the fact that virtually the entire US media reported on them. (Here, feel free to refresh your memory
on this as well.) But for no reason other than pure partisan score-settling, elite liberals are willing to toss aside any consideration
for the dire First Amendment implications of Assange's arrest and cry out with joy that this man they regard as innately evil has
finally been ensnared by the punitive might of the American carceral state.
Trump supporters and Trump himself also look downright foolish. It takes about two seconds to Google all the instances in which
Trump glowingly touted WikiLeaks on the 2016 campaign trail. 'I love WikiLeaks!' he famously proclaimed on October 10, 2016 in Wilkes-Barre,
Penn.
Presumably this expression of 'love' was indication that Trump viewed WikiLeaks as providing a public service. If not, perhaps
some intrepid reporter can ask precisely what his 'love' entailed. He can pretend all he wants now that he's totally oblivious to
WikiLeaks, but it was Trump himself who relayed that he was contemporaneously reading the Podesta emails in October 2016, and reveling
in all their newsworthiness. If he wanted, he could obviously intercede and prevent any unjust prosecution of Assange. Trump has
certainly seen fit to complain publicly about all matter of other inconvenient Justice Department activity, especially as it pertained
to him or his family members and associates. But now he's acting as though he's never heard of WikiLeaks, which is just pitiful:
not a soul believes it, even his most ardent supporters.
Sean Hannity became one of Assange's biggest fans in 2016 and 2017, effusively lavishing him with praise and even visiting him
in the Ecuadorian embassy in London for an exclusive interview. One wonders whether Hannity, who reportedly speaks to his best buddy
Trump every night before bedtime, will counsel a different course on this matter. There's also the question of whether Trump's most
vehement online advocates, who largely have become stalwart defenders of WikiLeaks, will put their money where their mouth is and
condition their continued support on Assange not being depredated by the American prison system.
Assange accomplished more in 2010 alone than any of his preening media antagonists will in their entire lifetime, combined.
Your feelings about him as a person do not matter. He could be the scummiest human on the face of Earth, and it would not detract
from the fact that he has brought revelatory information to public that would otherwise have been concealed. He has shone light on
some of the most powerful political factions not just in the US, but around the world. This will remain true regardless of whether
Trump capitulates to the 'Deep State' and goes along with this utterly chilling, free speech-undermining prosecution.
I personally have supported Assange since I started in journalism, nine years ago, not because I had any special affinity for
the man himself (although the radical transparency philosophy he espoused was definitely compelling). My support was based on
the fact that Assange had devised a novel way to hold powerful figures to account, whose nefarious conduct would otherwise go unexamined
but for the methods he pioneered. As thanks, he was holed up in a tiny embassy for nearly seven years – until yesterday, when
they hauled him out ignominiously to face charges in what will likely turn out to be a political show trial. Donald Trump has the
ability to stop this, but almost certainly won't. And that's all you need to know about him.
That was Neo-McCarthyim hysteria plain and simple; and it still is continuing as "FullOfSchiff" fqrse.
Notable quotes:
"... Can you think of a more vulgar and disgraceful manifestation of Trump-Russia media malfeasance than Rachel Maddow? Her deluded nightly conspiratorial rants may have been lucrative for MSNBC, but she fed viewers a complete fraud for three years. Now her show is undergoing a genuine existential crisis after Robert Mueller's exoneration of Trump . ..."
"... The harm Maddow inflicted is unforgivable and she should obviously resign, go into exile, and take up some other line of work: perhaps gardening. That said, she has also become something of a scapegoat. ..."
"... As contemptible as Rachel undoubtedly is, dwelling on her absolves the rest of the industry from acknowledging what really happened: a structural calamity of epic proportions, implicating almost all of them, which has utterly destroyed the reputation of the media writ large. And for good reason. ..."
"... (Brennan infamously declared Trump guilty of treason on Twitter following the Helsinki summit). ..."
"... Last week, Wheeler finally admitted her suspicion that the FBI may have just decided she is 'crazy.' Yes, sounds plausible. ..."
"... Sadly, all the media figures who might have been assigned to legitimate evidence-based inquiries were wrapped up in the never-ending Russia melodrama, based on the hunch that it would result in the revelation of treasonous collusion, followed by the arrest of Trump's family and his swift impeachment. None of this happened. So what was the point? ..."
"... Most disturbing of all is how otherwise-smart journalists and commentators lost their minds and integrity throughout the debacle. It was all a joke, a scam, and I've barely even scratched the surface here. It will take years to fully sift through the wreckage ..."
'Boom!': an autopsy of the
media after the Mueller bombshellDunking on Rachel Maddow may be fun, but she's far
from the sole perpetratorMichael
Tracey Rachel Maddow
Can you think of a more vulgar and disgraceful manifestation of Trump-Russia media
malfeasance than Rachel Maddow? Her deluded nightly conspiratorial rants may have been
lucrative for MSNBC, but she fed viewers a complete fraud for three years. Now her show is
undergoing a genuine existential crisis after Robert Mueller's exoneration of Trump .
The harm Maddow inflicted is unforgivable and she should obviously resign, go into exile,
and take up some other line of work: perhaps gardening. That said, she has also become
something of a scapegoat. It's convenient to disavow Maddow's excesses if you're a journalist
who wants to pretend that the media failures which gave rise to Trump-Russia weren't a
full-scale indictment of their entire profession. To act as though the misconduct was somehow
confined to one unhinged cable news personality would be a gross distortion.
As contemptible as Rachel undoubtedly is, dwelling on her absolves the rest of the industry
from acknowledging what really happened: a structural calamity of epic proportions, implicating
almost all of them, which has utterly destroyed the reputation of the media writ large. And for
good reason.
Easy as it might be to pooh-pooh Maddow as some zany outlier, the undeniable reality is that
the sick conspiratorial mindset she embodied was thoroughly mainstream: it infected virtually
every sector of elite American culture, from journalism, to entertainment, to the professional
political class. Rachel is just the tip of the rotten iceberg.
Take, for instance, Keith Olbermann. Keith was the most influential host on MSNBC during the
George W. Bush years, when audiences ate up his furious denunciations of the Iraq War, which
scratched a genuine itch because of the prevailing pro-war media conformity of the time.
Olbermann gave voice to frustrated liberals who felt that their well-founded grievances were
not being represented in the popular media, and his style came to be emulated across the
industry (including by the host he recruited for a top spot on the network, Rachel Maddow.)
Then came the Trump era, when Olbermann's brain appeared to explode. He began recording
short video rants for GQ magazine, which rank among the most mind-bendingly deranged
content produced throughout the entire Russiagate ordeal. Please, just watch this unbelievable
screed from December 2016:
'We are at war with Russia,' Olbermann gravely proclaims. The inauguration of Donald Trump,
he prophesies, will mark 'the end of the United States as an independent country.' Anyone who
rejects this analysis is a 'traitor' says Olbermann, and in league with 'Russian scum.' His
recommendation is to thwart Trump via some harebrained Electoral College scheme where electors
are intimidated into violating their duty to vote according to the election outcome in their
respective states and districts.
I covered this attempted coup at the time, which failed, but was
supported by leading Democrats ranging from Hillary Clinton campaign communications
director Jennifer Palmieri to Harvard Law Professor Laurence Tribe; as well as Michael Moore,
Lawrence Lessig, Peter Beinart, DeRay McKesson, Paul Krugman, and Neera Tanden. Prominent
liberals had been melodramatically whinging for months about how appalled they were by Trump's
alleged propensity to violate 'norms,' but the next minute they turned around and demanded that
all norms governing the centuries-old Electoral College process be thrown out the window. The
wild propaganda promoted by Olbermann had become the standard, mainstream view among American
liberals: fundamentally corrupting their capacity to view subsequent political events with any
semblance of rationality.
Despite their truly insane offerings, focusing solely on demented opinionators like
Olbermann and Maddow still lets ostensibly 'neutral' journalists off the hook. The amount of
journalistic resources squandered on the Trump-Russia boondoggle, for instance by the New
York Times and the Washington Post , will never be fully quantified. Both newspapers
were lavished with Pulitzer Prizes and every other pointless accolade for their supposedly
intrepid journalism. Their constant 'bombshell scoops' routinely ricocheted across Twitter
before they were injected into the rest of the turbocharged media ecosystem, each one
breathlessly touted on cable news for hours at a time. The harsh truth is that most all of
these 'scoops' were predicated on a fiction. There was supposed to be a core conspiracy, which
was meant to explain why Trump associates kept getting caught in lies – why their
communications were extrajudicially intercepted, why they were surveilled on dubious pretenses.
But no underlying conspiracy was ever revealed. The whole thing was based on a fairytale.
Shouldn't the Times and WaPo therefore apologize and give back their Pulitzers?
Or at very least toss them in the dumpster.
Benjamin Wittes, the LawFare website guru and arguably the most lauded Twitter authority on
the Trump-Russia scam, became well-known for his fun slogan, 'BOOM!,' which he would gleefully
tweet every time a supposed bombshell article burst on the scene. Here's a Washington
Post
story from October 21 last year headlined 'Special counsel examines conflicting accounts as
scrutiny of Roger Stone and WikiLeaks deepens,' which got the Wittes 'boom'
treatment. Wow, very dramatic! Sounds a lot like Mueller and his squad were closing in on Stone
as the evil mastermind behind some grand Trump-Russia conspiracy plot, given his suspicious
ties to WikiLeaks, right? The only problem is, when Stone was indicted three months later,
Mueller not only brought zero charges alleging Stone as party to any conspiracy, he
dispelled such notions.
All the correspondence cited in Mueller's indictment showed that
Stone had no
advanced knowledge of WikiLeaks releases or any privileged access to its operations. Roger
Stone was just doing what Roger Stone does best: bullshitting.
Stone was eventually charged by Mueller for making false statements, but again: none of
those statements pertained to a conspiracy cover-up. They pertained to the dirty trickster
being who he's been for decades: a fabulist who frequently misrepresents himself and gets in
stupid feuds with fellow political hucksters. The October 2018 story about which Wittes tweeted
'boom' ultimately had no real significance. Like so many other stories touted at the time as an
incredible BOMBSHELL, everyone got amped up over a total fantasy. The story had no serious
value, other than to temporarily scintillate now-discredited obsessives like Wittes.
Special scorn should be reserved for those in prominent media positions who ought to have
known better, but indulged day after day in conspiratorial nonsense anyway. Take Chris Hayes,
the popular 8pm MSNBC host, who unlike Maddow has a journalistic background (he was formerly
the Washington Editor of The Nation magazine). Theoretically, Hayes should have been imbued
with a greater sense of ingrained skepticism regarding CIA and FBI claims, which are what drove
the entire Trump-Russia investigation to begin with. He is also a genuinely intelligent person,
having (ironically) written the excellent Twilight of
the Elites (2012), a book which examined the propensity for upper-crust society to
engage in self-defeating groupthink.
But Hayes too ended up witlessly amplifying the most
obscene Russiagate antics – no doubt influenced by the pressure of having to turn in big
ratings every night. His shows were always brimming with security state spooks like John Brennan
, the former CIA Director and proven
fantasist . Brennan was eventually hired by NBC, becoming one of Hayes's colleagues
despite having played a central role in instigating the original Trump-Russia investigation in 2016 and inflaming its most
incendiary elements (Brennan infamously declared Trump guilty of treason on Twitter following
the Helsinki summit).
For further insight on the subject, Hayes generally turned to pseudo-journalistic figures
like Natasha Bertrand of The Atlantic , whose frenetically conspiratorial Russia
coverage has also proven to have been total bunk – as well as former prosecutors and
FBI
officials like Chuck Rosenberg, disreputable security state apparatchiks like former NSA
lawyer Susan Hennessey, and outright charlatans like purported 'intelligence expert' Malcolm
Nance. (Here's an example from 2016 of the esteemed Nance getting tricked by a Twitter
troll.)
Hayes even went so far as to promote the theory that Trump had been colluding with
Russia since 1987, a story somehow featured on the cover of New
York magazine despite drawing on source material that literally originated with the
recently deceased, notorious madman Lyndon LaRouche. Hayes's descent into fact-free mania
culminated with his
declaration to Stephen Colbert on March 8 last year that Trump and his associates were
'super guilty' of collusion. Whoops!
While many once-respectable media figures like Hayes have seen their reputations inserted
directly into the toilet, maybe the most bizarre case of all is Marcy Wheeler, the independent
journalist known as @emptywheel .
Wheeler appeared on Hayes's first show after Mueller decisively cleared Trump of collusion
– you know, the central tenet of the Special Counsel's mandate. The fact that Hayes would
have Wheeler on at that moment – after the entire Trump-Russia drama was definitively
exposed as a ludicrous fantasy – showed that Hayes was committed to perpetuating the
deceit even in the face of all countervailing evidence, whether unconsciously or consciously.
That's because Marcy Wheeler is almost certainly a deluded basket case.
The most obvious evidence for this is Wheeler's sensational admission in July 2018 that she
burned a source to the FBI, voluntarily and proactively, thereby committing one of
journalism's mortal sins. Wheeler justified her demented action on numerous fronts. First, she
claimed that she possessed bombshell, smoking gun info that proved a Trump-Russia conspiracy,
and felt a patriotic duty to hand this over to the FBI – in retribution for what she
called Russia's 'attack' on the United States. Let's remember, shall we, that said attack at
most amounted to some Twitter bots, goofy Facebook memes, and spear-phished Gmail accounts:
John Podesta famously clicked on a phony link, which led to his emails being swiped. Hardly
9/11 or Pearl Harbor, wouldn't you say? However, those comparisons have been seriously made by
various prominent elected officials, including Rep.
Jerrold Nadler of New York, who would have presided over impeachment proceedings had things
panned out differently.
When pressed – even after the Mueller clearly asserted that no such Trump-Russia
conspiracy ever existed – Wheeler still refuses to divulge any details about the
extraordinary dispositive evidence she mysteriously claims to possess. Second, Wheeler further
justified her insane conduct by insisting she could literally be killed by some unknown
sinister alliance of Russians and Trump-backed mafia figures, or something ( I'm not making this up .).
Shamefully, Wheeler's outlandish assertions were treated as gospel by members of the media who
failed to apply even a modicum of critical scrutiny; Margaret Sullivan of the Washington
Post
heralded Wheeler as following her conscience and wrote this about the supposed Russian hit
squad out to get her: 'Overly dramatic? Not really. The Russians do have a penchant for
disposing of people they find threatening.' Utter lunacy. Since the Mueller finding, Wheeler
has strangely not revealed any additional information about the nature of these would-be
assassins.
Think about it. For months, Wheeler dangled cryptic hints about the explosive info that she
alone supposedly knew about, enthralling blog readers and Twitter followers – and earning
her major platforms not just on MSNBC but even the New York Times , where she
contributed columns
that contained blatant falsehoods. In the pages of the world's most influential newspaper, she
claimed that Mueller had been 'hiding' evidence showing Trump's participation in a Russia
conspiracy, and it would all come out once Mueller issued his final verdict. No dice.
Last week, Wheeler finally admitted her suspicion that the FBI may have just decided
she is 'crazy.' Yes, sounds plausible.
So much journalistic energy was wasted chronicling the ins-and-outs of the Russiagate
non-story. Imagine if instead that time was devoted to reporting in the public interest: like,
say, I don't know – investigating the militaristic think tanks which attempted to
undermine Trump's key diplomatic initiatives (such as North Korea), or how Trump was co-opted
by the Republican donor class, or his various actual corruptions that didn't happen to involve
any international espionage conspiracy.
Sadly, all the media figures who might have been
assigned to legitimate evidence-based inquiries were wrapped up in the never-ending Russia
melodrama, based on the hunch that it would result in the revelation of treasonous collusion,
followed by the arrest of Trump's family and his swift impeachment. None of this happened. So
what was the point?
Most disturbing of all is how otherwise-smart journalists and commentators lost their minds
and integrity throughout the debacle. It was all a joke, a scam, and I've barely even scratched
the surface here. It will take years to fully sift through the wreckage.
Vindictiveness not always play in the vindictive party favour.
You may love Assange you may hate Assange for his WikiLeaks revelation (And Vault 7 was a
real bombshell), but it is clear that it will cost Trump some reputation out of tini share that
still left, especially in view of Trump declaration "I love Wikileaks"
For seven years, we have had to listen to a chorus of journalists, politicians and "experts"
telling us that Assange was nothing more than a fugitive from justice, and that the British and
Swedish legal systems could be relied on to handle his case in full accordance with the law.
Barely a "mainstream" voice was raised in his defence in all that time.
... ... ...
The political and media establishment ignored the mounting evidence of a secret grand jury
in Virginia formulating charges against Assange, and ridiculed Wikileaks' concerns that the
Swedish case might be cover for a more sinister attempt by the US to extradite Assange and lock
him away in a high-security prison, as had happened to whistleblower Chelsea Manning.
... ... ...
Equally, they ignored the fact that Assange had been given diplomatic status by Ecuador, as
well as Ecuadorean citizenship. Britain was obligated to allow him to leave the embassy, using
his diplomatic immunity, to travel unhindered to Ecuador. No "mainstream" journalist or
politician thought this significant either.
... ... ...
They turned a blind eye to the news that, after refusing to question Assange in the UK,
Swedish prosecutors had decided to quietly drop the case against him in 2015. Sweden had kept
the decision under wraps for more than two years.
... ... ...
Most of the other documents relating to these conversations were unavailable. They had been
destroyed by the UK's Crown Prosecution Service in violation of protocol. But no one in the
political and media establishment cared, of course.
Similarly, they ignored the fact that Assange was forced to hole up for years in the
embassy, under the most intense form of house arrest, even though he no longer had a case to
answer in Sweden. They told us -- apparently in all seriousness -- that he had to be arrested
for his bail infraction, something that would normally be dealt with by a fine.
... ... ...
This was never about Sweden or bail violations, or even about the discredited Russiagate
narrative, as anyone who was paying the vaguest attention should have been able to work out. It
was about the US Deep State doing everything in its power to crush Wikileaks and make an
example of its founder.
It was about making sure there would never again be a leak like that of Collateral Murder,
the military video released by Wikileaks in 2007 that showed US soldiers celebrating as they
murdered Iraqi civilians. It was about making sure there would never again be a dump of US
diplomatic cables, like those released in 2010 that revealed the secret machinations of the US
empire to dominate the planet whatever the cost in human rights violations.
Now the pretence is over. The British police invaded the diplomatic territory of Ecuador --
invited in by Ecuador after it tore up Assange's asylum status -- to smuggle him off to jail.
Two vassal states cooperating to do the bidding of the US empire. The arrest was not to help
two women in Sweden or to enforce a minor bail infraction.
No, the British authorities were acting on an extradition warrant from the US. And the
charges the US authorities have concocted relate to Wikileaks' earliest work exposing the US
military's war crimes in Iraq -- the stuff that we all once agreed was in the public interest,
that British and US media clamoured to publish themselves.
Still the media and political class is turning a blind eye. Where is the outrage at the lies
we have been served up for these past seven years? Where is the contrition at having been
gulled for so long? Where is the fury at the most basic press freedom -- the right to publish
-- being trashed to silence Assange? Where is the willingness finally to speak up in Assange's
defence?
It's not there. There will be no indignation at the BBC, or the Guardian, or CNN. Just
curious, impassive -- even gently mocking -- reporting of Assange's fate.
And that is because these journalists, politicians and experts never really believed
anything they said. They knew all along that the US wanted to silence Assange and to crush
Wikileaks. They knew that all along and they didn't care. In fact, they happily conspired in
paving the way for today's kidnapping of Assange.
They did so because they are not there to represent the truth, or to stand up for ordinary
people, or to protect a free press, or even to enforce the rule of law. They don't care about
any of that. They are there to protect their careers, and the system that rewards them with
money and influence. They don't want an upstart like Assange kicking over their applecart.
Now they will spin us a whole new set of deceptions and distractions about Assange to keep
us anaesthetised, to keep us from being incensed as our rights are whittled away, and to
prevent us from realising that Assange's rights and our own are indivisible. We stand or fall
together.
Jonathan Cook won the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His books include
"Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East"
(Pluto Press) and "Disappearing Palestine: Israel's Experiments in Human Despair" (Zed Books).
His website is www.jonathan-cook.net .
This should be an uncomfortable time for the “journalists” of the
Establishment. Very few will speak up as does Mr. Cook. Watch how little is said about the
recent Manning re-imprisonment to sweat out grand jury testimony. Things may have grown so
craven that we’ll even see efforts to revoke Mr. Assange’s awards.
This is also a good column for us to share with those people who just might want not to
play along with the lies that define Exceptionalia.
… from the moment Julian Assange first sought refuge in the Ecuadorean embassy in
London, they have been telling us we were wrong, that we were paranoid conspiracy
theorists. We were told there was no real threat of Assange’s extradition to the
United States, that it was all in our fevered imaginations.
It all reminds me of Rod Dreher’s Law of Merited Impossibility: “That’ll
never happen. And when it does , boy won’t you deserve it!”
Equally, they ignored the fact that Assange had been given diplomatic status by Ecuador,
as well as Ecuadorean citizenship. Britain was obligated to allow him to leave the embassy,
using his diplomatic immunity, to travel unhindered to Ecuador. No “mainstream”
journalist or politician thought this significant either.
Why would they? They don’t even recognize diplomatic status for heads of state who
get in their way! Remember what they did to President Evo Morales of Bolivia back when he was
threatening to grant asylum to Ed Snowden? Here’s a refresher:
People who just watch corporate media think Julian Assange is a bad guy who deserves life
in prison, except those who watch the great Tucker Carlson. Watch his recent show where he
explains why our corporate media and political class hate Assange.
He is charged with encouraging Army Private Chelsea Manning to send him embarrassing
information, specifically this video of a US Army Apache helicopter gunning down civilians in
broad daylight in Baghdad.
But there is no proof of this, and Manning has repeatedly said he never communicated to
Assange about anything. Manning got eight years in prison for this crime; the Apache pilots
were never charged. and now they want to hang Assange for exposing a war crime. I have
recommend this great 2016 interview twice, where Assange calmly explains the massive
corruption that patriotic FBI agents refer to as the “Clinton Crime Family.”
This gang is so powerful that it ordered federal agents to spy on the Trump political
campaign, and indicted and imprisoned some participants in an attempt to pressure President
Trump to step down. It seems Trump still fears this gang, otherwise he would order his
attorney general to drop this bogus charge against Assange, then pardon him forever and
invite him to speak at White House press conferences.
“… they ignored the fact that Assange was forced to hole up for years in
the embassy, under the most intense form of house arrest, even though he no longer had a
case to answer in Sweden.”
Meh! Assange should have walked out the door of the embassy years ago. He might have ended
up in the same place, but he could have seized the moral high ground by seeking asylum in
Britain for fear of the death penalty in the US, which was a credible fear given public
comments by various US officials. By rotting away in the Ecuadorian embassy, be greatly
diminished any credibility he might have had to turn the UK judicial system inside out to his
favour. Now he’s just a creepy looking bail jumper who flung faeces against the wall,
rather than being a persecuted journalist.
@Johnny Rottenborough Millionaire politicians on both sides of the political fence get
very emotional about anything that impacts their own privacy & safety and the privacy
& safety of their kin, while ignoring the issues that jeopardize the privacy & safety
of ordinary voters. While corporate-owned politicians get a lot out of this game,
ordinary voters who have never had less in the way of Fourth Amendment privacy rights, and
whose First Amendment rights are quickly shrinking to the size of Assange’s, do not get
the consolation of riches without risk granted to bought-off politicians in this era’s
pay-to-play version of democracy. It’s a lose / lose for average voters.
Mr Cook’s criticism of the mainstream media (MSM) is absolutely justified.
It seems to me that their hatred of Mr Assange reflects the unfortunate fact that, while
he is a real journalist, they actually aren’t. Instead, they are stenographers for
power: what Paul Craig Roberts calls “presstitutes” (a very happy coinage which
exactly hits the bull’s eye).
The difference is that real journalists, like Mr Assange, Mr Roberts and Mr Cook, are
mainly motivated by the search for objective truth – which they then publish, as far as
they are able.
Whereas those people who go by the spurious names of “journalist”,
“reporter”, “editor”, etc. are motivated by the desire to go on
earning their salaries, and to gain promotion and “distinction” in society. (Sad
but true: social distinction is often gained by performing acts of dishonesty and downright
wickedness).
Here are some interesting quotations that cast some light on this disheartening state of
affairs. If you look carefully at their dates you may be surprised to find that nothing has
changed very much since the mid-19th century.
‘Marr: “How can you know that I’m self-censoring? How can you know that
journalists are…”
‘Chomsky: “I’m not saying you’re self censoring. I’m sure
you believe everything you’re saying. But what I’m saying is that if you believed
something different, you wouldn’t be sitting where you’re
sitting”’.
‘If something goes wrong with the government, a free press will ferret it out and it
will get fixed. But if something goes wrong with our free press, the country will go straight
to hell’.
‘There is no such a thing in America as an independent press, unless it is out in
country towns. You are all slaves. You know it, and I know it. There is not one of you who
dares to express an honest opinion. If you expressed it, you would know beforehand that it
would never appear in print. I am paid $150 for keeping honest opinions out of the paper I am
connected with. Others of you are paid similar salaries for doing similar things. If I should
allow honest opinions to be printed in one issue of my paper, I would be like Othello before
twenty-four hours: my occupation would be gone. The man who would be so foolish as to write
honest opinions would be out on the street hunting for another job. The business of a New
York journalist is to distort the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to vilify, to fawn at
the feet of Mammon, and to sell his country and his race for his daily bread, or for what is
about the same — his salary. You know this, and I know it; and what foolery to be
toasting an “Independent Press”! We are the tools and vassals of rich men behind
the scenes. We are jumping-jacks. They pull the string and we dance. Our time, our talents,
our lives, our possibilities, are all the property of other men. We are intellectual
prostitutes’.
‘The press today is an army with carefully organized arms and branches, with
journalists as officers, and readers as soldiers. But here, as in every army, the soldier
obeys blindly, and war-aims and operation-plans change without his knowledge. The reader
neither knows, nor is allowed to know, the purposes for which he is used, nor even the role
that he is to play. A more appalling caricature of freedom of thought cannot be imagined.
Formerly a man did not dare to think freely. Now he dares, but cannot; his will to think is
only a willingness to think to order, and this is what he feels as his liberty’.
– Oswald Spengler, “The Decline of the West” Vol. II, trans. C.F.
Atkinson (1928), p. 462
‘How do wars start? Wars start when politicians lie to journalists, then believe
what they read in the press’.
Very good article. There is one point that I would like to make: Assange asked for asyl
before he went to the embassy of Ecuador and Ecuador gave him asylum. This meant that they
had an obligation to protect him. It’s really unbeliavable that a country gives asylum
to someone and half way tells that they have changed their mind and will let the person be
arrested. ” We told you you would be safe with us, but now we just changed our
mind”. Assange also became a citizen of Ecuador and this possibly means that Ecuador
couldn’t have let him been arrested in their embassy by the police of another country
without a process against him in Ecuador and without him having the right to defend himself
in a court. Many countries don’t extradit their citizens to other countries.
Another remark. For years there were uncountable articles about Assange in The Guardian.
Those articles were read by many people and got really many comments. There were very fierce
discussions about him with thousends of comments. With time The Guardian turned decisively
against him and published articles againt him. There were people there who seemed to hate
him. In the last days there were again many articles about him. They pronounce themselves
discretely against his extradition to the US even if showing themselves to be critical of him
as if trying to justify their years of attacks against him. But one detail: I didn’t
find even one article in The Guardian where you can comment the case. Today for instance you
can comment an article by Gaby Hinsliff about Kim Kardashian. Marina Hyde talks in an article
about washing her hair (whatever else she wants to say, with 2831 comments at this moment).
But you don’t find any article about Assange that you can comment. 10 or 8 or 5 years
ago there were hundreds of articles about him that you could comment.
UK PM May said about Assange – “no one is above the law” –
proving she is a weak sister without a clue.
No one is above the law except the British government, which ignored the provisions of the
EU Withdrawal Act requiring us to leave on March 29th.
No one is above the law except for the US and the UK which have illegally deployed forces
to Syria against the wishes of the government in Damascus.
And Tony Blair, a million dead thanks to his corruption. He should be doing time in a
Gulag for his evil crimes.
And of course, the black MP for Peterborough – Fiona Onasanya – served a mere
three weeks in jail for perverting the course of justice, normally regarded as a very serious
offence. But she was out in time – electronic tag and curfew notwithstanding – to
vote in the House of Commons against leaving the EU.
"... My search for the roots of this particularly vicious and extremely dangerous hate campaign began in a Dartmouth College Russian Foreign Policy course, which led me to the book, "Russophobia: Anti-Russian Lobby and American Foreign Policy" by San Francisco State University Professor Andrei P. Tsygankov (2009). ..."
"... Then in Italy the following winter, I discovered the work of the Swiss journalist, Guy Mettan, in the Italian geopolitical journal, LiMes: an excerpt from his book, "Creating Russophobia: From the Great Religious Schism to Anti-Putin Hysteria" (2017). ..."
"... "More than merely dominate, the American superpower now seeks to control history. Such cosmic ambition is accompanied by an equally vast sense of entitlement, of special dispensation to pursue its aims." (p.3) ..."
"... Never-the-less, Mearsheimer is backed up by Richard Sakwa, Professor of Russian and European Politics at the University of Kent. In Sakwa's book, "Russia Against the Rest: The Post-Cold War Crisis of World Order", 2017, we turn to the section on "Reality Wars and American Power" on p. 217 to read: "It does indeed seem that Russia and Western elites live in totally different worlds, divided by different epistemological understandings of the nature of contemporary reality. The Ukraine crisis crystallized the profound differences between Russian and Atlanticist understandings of the breakdown and its causes." And he continues on p. 218: "Elite and policy-maker perceptions and attitudes forged in the Cold War years sustain these legacies and frame the discussions of such crucial issues as NATO enlargement, democracy promotion in the post-Soviet area, and strategic arms talks." Adding that these "are no longer so much legacies as self-regenerating narratives and modes of discourse that preclude a more open-ended understanding of the dynamics and concerns of Russia today." ..."
"... From another perspective: Mettan's chapter on "German Russophobia" set me thinking that this "Western Supremacy" political-cultural pathology known as Russophobia is like the racism which I knew growing up in totally segregated Oklahoma. ..."
"... So, here's a Swiss journalist punching a hole in this wall of Russophobic Western Supremacy and through that gaping hole, we are reminded that the Russians are Europe's neighbors who sacrificed more than 26 million of their own lives to save Europe, America and Russia from the Nazis. ..."
"... And the week following the August 7, 2018 Trump-Putin Helsinki summit, will surely go down in psychiatric circles as another case of mass media-political delusions led by cheer-leader-in-chief, Rachel Maddow of MSNBC. ..."
"... Never-the-less, after a very long run of American "regime change" abroad leaving a bloody trail of destruction, dictatorships and chaos from Iran in 1953, when we joined with the British to overthrow the democratically-elected President Mohammad Mossadegh to maintain the Brit-US control of its oil on through Guatemala, Vietnam and Chile to name a few of our interventions we were back for a second round with "coalitions of the willing" or not? ..."
"... So how is it that we now have contemporary Inquisitors persecuting so many truth tellers ..."
Russophobia, as psycho-social-political pathology, is diagnosed as a disorder in The West since before the 1000-year-old Roman-Orthodox
religious schism and most recently manifested with a vengeance in the course of the 2013-14 with Edward Snowden's revelations of
mass surveillance by the US and its covert activities leading to the Ukraine coup with Russophobia used thereafter as a weapon of
mass deception to inflame this latent pathology in the public.
After more than a year since we first heard the BBC "breaking news" about the "Russians Poisoning the Skipals", all we have are
allegations, but there is still no real evidence to present before a judge and jury for a just trial, only media propaganda which
has provoked even more fear and hysteria meant to distract people from the government's bungling and high level of anxiety over Brexit
by once again blaming Russia . Never-the-less, it prompted politicians to administer instant sanctions against Russia as punishment.
That first day, the "evidence", presented in the usual clipped, "authoritative" British accents, included interviews with a conservative
British MP, then the former US Ambassador to Russia, Alexander Vershbow (2001-05), now with the notoriously hawkish US-based think
tank, the Atlantic Council. Thus, the three of them: the BBC "journalist" and the two "experts", colluded to transform false allegations
into "facts"... fueled, as always, by their perpetual prejudice, RUSSOPHOBIA, in the course of their propaganda war to force Russia
to surrender to American-led Western Domination or else: have their economy destroyed & their people suffer. Indeed, it is a threat
to the whole world played to the discord of rattling nuclear swords with a chorus of vindictive Russian oligarchs, whom Putin expelled
for robbing the Russian people. So, now living in London as expats, they would seem to be the more likely culprits. All the while
elsewhere in London, thanks to our "special US-UK relationship", Julian Assange has been excommunicated and imprisoned in a tiny
"cell" at the Ecuador embassy for revealing embarrassing American secrets via Wikileaks.
There we have it: the poisoning of our minds by the media and politicians which are owned and controlled by the US-UK-EU 1%, who
benefit from Western Hegemony. So, these deluded few are now desperately defending it from the rising powers led by Russia and China
with India not far behind demanding a multi-polar, democratic world order.
My search for the roots of this particularly vicious and extremely dangerous hate campaign began in a Dartmouth College Russian
Foreign Policy course, which led me to the book, "Russophobia: Anti-Russian Lobby and American Foreign Policy" by San Francisco State
University Professor Andrei P. Tsygankov (2009). And there, the detoxification of my mind began as I studied his deft, well-documented
deconstruction of the political propaganda disseminated "by various think tanks, congressional testimonials, activities of NGOs and
the media" (preface p. XIII)
Then in Italy the following winter, I discovered the work of the Swiss journalist, Guy Mettan, in the Italian geopolitical journal,
LiMes: an excerpt from his book, "Creating Russophobia: From the Great Religious Schism to Anti-Putin Hysteria" (2017).
There, Mettan
informs us that this psycho-social pathology in Western Civilization" goes back more than 1000 years: to the division of Christendom
between the Orthodox and Roman churches. Indeed, his research into the depths of history confirms the diagnosis by our renowned American
psychiatrist, Robert Jay Lifton, in his 2003 book, "Superpower Syndrome: America's Apocalyptic Confrontation with the World".
Therein, Lifton states: "More than merely dominate, the American superpower now seeks to control history. Such cosmic ambition is accompanied
by an equally vast sense of entitlement, of special dispensation to pursue its aims." (p.3) And Mettan's analysis of Russophobia
also underscores the work of University of Chicago Professor John J. Mearsheimer, our leading international relations "realist" in
his three Henry L. Stimson lectures at Yale University November 2017: "The Roots of Liberal Hegemony", "The False Promises of Liberal
Hegemony" and "The Case for Restraint": with
his book
, "The Great Delusion: Liberal Dreams, International Realities" published in 2018.
But what about "Russian Aggression" in Ukraine & Crimea?
In the first place, it was the astute Mearsheimer, who, in the Sept-Oct 2014 Foreign Affairs, informed us "Why the Ukraine Crisis
is the West's Fault: The Liberal Delusions That Provoked Putin" (pp 77-89), but the American foreign policy establishment, together
with ambitious politicians and the me-too media, paid no heed and continues to repeat its fabricated "facts".
Never-the-less, Mearsheimer is backed up by Richard Sakwa, Professor of Russian and European Politics at the University of Kent.
In Sakwa's book, "Russia Against the Rest: The Post-Cold War Crisis of World Order", 2017, we turn to the section on "Reality Wars
and American Power" on p. 217 to read: "It does indeed seem that Russia and Western elites live in totally different worlds, divided
by different epistemological understandings of the nature of contemporary reality. The Ukraine crisis crystallized the profound differences
between Russian and Atlanticist understandings of the breakdown and its causes." And he continues on p. 218: "Elite and policy-maker
perceptions and attitudes forged in the Cold War years sustain these legacies and frame the discussions of such crucial issues as
NATO enlargement, democracy promotion in the post-Soviet area, and strategic arms talks." Adding that these "are no longer so much
legacies as self-regenerating narratives and modes of discourse that preclude a more open-ended understanding of the dynamics and
concerns of Russia today."
Karl Rove: "We're an empire now; we create our own reality."
[In 2004, journalist Ron Suskind wrote in The New York Times magazine that a top White House strategist for President George W.
Bush -- identified later as Karl Rove, Bush's Deputy White House Chief of Staff -- told him, "We're an empire now, we create our
own reality."]
Thus, we've become trapped in a contrived "reality" promulgated by neo-conservative warriors under cover of neo-liberal "democracy-spreading-humanitarian-interventionists"
to justify an American Empire promoting itself as the indispensable "Liberal World Order". However, under that global order, as Sakwa
points out on p. 219: "If a foreign power is considered to have violated 'international order', then it can be overthrown" as a rationale
for American "regime change" anywhere around the world: whether to control the supply of copper in Chile or oil in Iran. And, with
its eye on Russia's vast oil, gas and other natural resources, America claims the right to threaten Russia by ringing it with weapons
which we would not abide were the Russians to place missiles in Mexico as the Soviets did in Cuba to defend it after our "Bay of
Pigs" invasion that brought humanity to the brink of nuclear war. Thus, Russia was defending itself in Ukraine against further NATO
expansion while Crimean citizens, by majority vote in a democratic referendum, chose to rejoin Russia as they had been one country
ever since Catherine the Great except for an interval in the '50s when Crimea was" gifted" to Ukraine while they were all members
of the Soviet Union.
"Ditching Solzhenitsyn, Defender of Russia"
And not to forget that in 1974, after being expelled from the Soviet Union, Alexandr Solzhenitsyn and his family fled first to
Zurich then to Vermont in 1976 and lived on a farm near Cavendish, where he continued to write and publish his work. Meanwhile, Mettan,
as a journalist covering events related to Russia, became quite distressed over "the widespread prejudices, cartloads of clichés
and systematic anti-Russian biases of most western media." And he went on to say that "the more I traveled, discussed and read, the
wider I perceived, the more the gap of incomprehension and ignorance between Western Europe and Russia became evident.
"That was why, during the 1990s, I was shocked by the way the West treated Solzhenitsyn. For decades, we had published, celebrated,
and acclaimed the great writer as bearing the torch of anti-Soviet dissidence. We had praised Solzhenitsyn to the skies as long as
he criticized his native country, communist Russia. But as soon as he emigrated, realizing that he preferred to isolate himself in
his Vermont retreat to work rather than attending anticommunist conferences, western media and academics began to distance themselves
from the great writer.
"The idol no longer matched the image they had built and was becoming a hindrance to their academic and journalistic career plans.
And once Solzhenitsyn had left the United States to go back to Russia and defend his humiliated, demoralized motherland that was
being sold at auction, raising his voice against the Russian 'Westernizers' and pluralist liberals who denied the interests of Russia
to better revel in the troughs of capitalism, he became a marked man, an outdated, senile writer, even though he himself had not
changed in the least, denouncing with the same vigor the defects of market totalitarianism as those of communist totalitarianism.
"He was booed, despised, his name was dragged through the mud for his choices, often by the very people who had praised his first
fights. Despite that, against all odds, against the most powerful powers that were trying to dissuade him, Solzhenitsyn defended
his one and only cause, that of Russia. He was not forgiven for having turned his pen against that West that had welcomed him and
felt it was owed eternal gratitude. A dissident today, a dissident wherever truth compelled, such was his motto. This deserves to
be remembered." Mettan, pp. 15-16 in "Creating Russophobia".
Russophobia: akin to Racism
From another perspective: Mettan's chapter on "German Russophobia" set me thinking that this "Western Supremacy" political-cultural
pathology known as Russophobia is like the racism which I knew growing up in totally segregated Oklahoma.
Until in high school, I
became so perplexed and appalled by the curtain of hate and "justifications" in which we were smothered: the Negro schools on the
other side of town? and why were there separate waiting rooms, drinking fountains & restrooms in bus and train stations?...that I
began poking holes in the curtain to see what was outside...and found a book in the library: "South of Freedom" by Carl Rowan, an
African-American Minneapolis Star Tribune journalist, describing his journey from South to North. So, thanks to what I learned from
Rowan, I began to tear the whole damned curtain down...at least in my mind.
Whom the Gods would destroy, they first drive mad?
So, here's a Swiss journalist punching a hole in this wall of Russophobic Western Supremacy and through that gaping hole, we are
reminded that the Russians are Europe's neighbors who sacrificed more than 26 million of their own lives to save Europe, America
and Russia from the Nazis.
These are not poor "niggers" from the Eurasian ghetto we've been trying to club into submission as second-class
citizens of "The Liberal World Order" dominated by US; they're nuclear-armed and no longer willing to sit at a separate, inferior
table with no vote and no voice over who makes the rules...nor are China, India and Brazil. And last year, while the wave of Russophobic
hysteria over alleged "Russian poisoning" was rolling out of the UK and engulfing the Western world in the latest siege of mass madness
with only Jeremy Corbyn, leader of the British Labor party, having the courage to stand up in Parliament on the Ides of March and
demand Evidence! only to be pilloried by the mindless politicians and media led by the once esteemed BBC.
And the week following
the August 7, 2018 Trump-Putin Helsinki summit, will surely go down in psychiatric circles as another case of mass media-political
delusions led by cheer-leader-in-chief, Rachel Maddow of MSNBC.
Meanwhile, not to forget that it was Hearst newspaper propaganda that whipped the American public into a war frenzy to support
our first step in empire-building: our 1898 intervention in Cuba's war for independence from the Spanish Empire which had dominated
all of Latin America for 500 years. As the former NYTimes journalist/bureau chief in Istanbul, Berlin & Central America, Stephen
Kinzer reminds us in his latest book "The True Flag: Theodore Roosevelt, Mark Twain, and the Birth of American Empire", Twain, Booker
T. Washington and even Andrew Carnegie leading a handful of other anti-imperialists...were not able to prevail against Roosevelt
with his Rough Riders and the Hearst newspapers' war propaganda.
Regime Change Comes Home
Never-the-less, after a very long run of American "regime change" abroad leaving a bloody trail of destruction, dictatorships
and chaos from Iran in 1953, when we joined with the British to overthrow the democratically-elected President Mohammad Mossadegh
to maintain the Brit-US control of its oil on through Guatemala, Vietnam and Chile to name a few of our interventions we were back
for a second round with "coalitions of the willing" or not?
In the Middle East where our regime-change machine managed to plow its
way through Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya before breaking down in Syria. Until now it's been brought home again, renovated and renamed
"RussiaGate" for another attempt at removing a President for trying to mend US relations with Russia. Though even after more than
a year of Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller's investigations accompanied by such cinematic support as the movie, "Felt", another
"Watergate" re-run. Did anyone else notice the resemblance between "Felt" and Mueller? And despite the media's commemoration of its
44-year-old "moment of courage" with the movie "The Post" to promote Trump's ouster, our democratically-elected President, as of
this writing, remains in power. However, in this rush to "regime change", didn't the our "ruling elite" read Jane Mayer's "The Danger
of President Pence" in the 10/23/17 New Yorker? At least the 70s' "ruling class" was smart enough to remove an unqualified Vice President
Spiro (who?) Agnew before "regime changing" Nixon and replacing him with the more or less benign Gerald Ford.
A Florentine Epiphany
But back to last January in Florence, Italy, when I was hiking in the hills beyond the Piazzale Michelangelo, with its spectacular
view of that Renaissance city and its centerpiece, the Duomo, I came across the Villa Galileo, which had been his last home after
his trial as a "heretic", during which to save himself from torture and execution, he was forced to deny his helio-centric vision
and henceforth lived under "villa arrest", from 1631 until his natural death in 1642. While pondering his fate, I continued walking
along the gently rising, ever-narrowing road between ancient stone walls overlooking villas and olive groves until I reached the
peak, where I felt as if I were standing on top of the world as I contemplated both the Arno and Ema river valleys far below and
where I swear I heard Galileo declare: "The world does not turn on an American axis!"
The 21st Century Inquisition
So how is it that we now have contemporary Inquisitors persecuting so many truth tellers such as Edward Snowden, our electronic
age "Solzhenitsyn?" in Russian exile; Chelsea Manning, imprisoned some 7 years for revealing US brutality in Iraq; Julian Assange
confined to his Ecuadorian Embassy exile in London since August 2012; Katharine Gun, a whistleblower attempting to stop the Iraq
invasion, who faced 2 years of British imprisonment before her case was dropped; James Risen, former New York Times journalist who
was persecuted by our "justice" system for revealing our government's surveillance of US!
Any Good Sense Left?
So, do we the people have enough good sense & independent thinking left to follow the advice of Henry David Thoreau?
"Let us settle ourselves, and work and wedge our feet downward through the mud and slush of opinion, and prejudice, and tradition,
and delusion, and appearance, that alluvion which covers the globe, through Paris and London, through New York and Boston and
Concord, through church and state, through poetry and philosophy and religion, till we come to a hard bottom and rocks in place,
which we can call reality."
"Walden" 1854
If not, the Doctor prescribes Shock Therapy:
For a week, a month, or however long it takes to cleanse and open the mind, one must adhere to strict abstinence from Mainstream
Media propaganda, junk news, pseudo analysis, fake photos, TV & videos including absolutely NO phony "for, by & of the people" NPR,
PBS, BBC or other Government-funded Neo or LibCon Imperial tranquilizer.
"... Those who started Russia probe were attempting a 'coup', AG must start investigation – Trump ..."
"... The coup happened in earnest on 9/11 and the people who started the Russia probe were just doing what they do: sow division
and strife within the domestic population to allow them to continue operating in an unfettered manner in service to their master, Zionism.
..."
"... "When the Mueller report is released, it would be wonderful if he explained why neither he, the senate, nor any one of the
federal law or intelligence agencies who have all given opinions on the matter, has ever taken the simple first step of examining the
DNC servers. He won't." ..."
"... Friends and associates of all of these 'ringleaders' (in single-quotes because my suppositions are based on indirect evidence)
have gotten key positions in the Trump Administration. ..."
The coup happened in earnest on 9/11 and the people who started the Russia probe were just doing what they do: sow division
and strife within the domestic population to allow them to continue operating in an unfettered manner in service to their master,
Zionism.
"When the Mueller report is released, it would be wonderful if he explained why neither he, the senate, nor any one of
the federal law or intelligence agencies who have all given opinions on the matter, has ever taken the simple first step of examining
the DNC servers.
He won't."
Nor will there be any answer to the unasked questions that after Murray's open statement about he knowing the leaker and the
revelation of the metadata why none of the people involved were questioned.
"Dems face an awkward choice: continue to defend those who gave them a discredited (& self-defeating) conspiracy theory, or
acknowledge that those people, including intel officials, acted improperly."
I'm sure we'll be discussing what Ray McGovern has dubbed Deep State Gate now that Russiagate's ended. I linked to Ray's essay
earlier, which focused on BigLie media's roll.
IMO the notion that a few senior Intelligence officials (mostly FBI) tried to overthrow Trump is silly to the point of being
laughable. But that is the fall-back position that is being ... ur, Trumped up. The fact is, Trump has done everything that the
Deep State and establishment could have wanted: expanded the military budget, cut taxes, reduced regulations, etc.
While some will complain loudly (for now), the whole affair will slowly fade away because, as I've previously noted, the
best explanation for Russiagate is that the Deep State selected Trump and ran an anti-Russia psyop to spur neo-McCarthyism. As
part of that effort, it seems highly likely that they attempted to settle scores with Wikileaks/Assange and Michael Flynn.
FBI failures - to follow investigative procedures; to include important information to the FISA court, etc. - are best explained
as part of the bi-partisan Deep State consensus to pursue an anti-Russia agenda.
Anyone that thinks that senior people would participate in such activities without the cover of higher-ups is smoking something.
Brennan, Mueller, Hillary, McCain, and Kissinger have the collective power to form and initiate a strategy to meet the challenge
from Russia and China.
It all goes back to the 2014 surprise realization that Russia had grown a backbone and that the Russia-China Alliance was a
serious threat to AZ Empire's NWO. That point of view was described by Kissinger in August 2014, in which Kissinger ALSO called
for MAGA.
Trump entered the race for President 10 months later as the only MAGA candidate.
Friends and associates of all of these 'ringleaders' (in single-quotes because my suppositions are based on indirect
evidence) have gotten key positions in the Trump Administration.
Trump himself is close to the Clintons.
VP Pence was close to McCain.
Gina Haspel is Brennan's gal at CIA.
AG Wm Barr is close to Robert Mueller.
Neocon Bolton - close to Kissinger or Kissinger acolytes.
Correspondence with Edward Snowden, and
the key to freedom for Julian Assange
A member of our Belgian Jewish community is in touch with Edward Snowden in Russia, both
sharing the role of being significant global dissidents who used to live in the USA.
We are publishing here a copy of some of that correspondence between those two figures,
as it discusses the likelihood of how both Edward Snowden and Julian Assange are being betrayed
and actively harmed by the American lawyers and US-UK media companies claiming to 'represent'
them, including America's ACLU (America's Civil Liberties Union), the UK Guardian and New York
Times newspapers, and Glenn Greenwald.
All these groups and journalists, are apparently hiding thousands of pages of legal files,
about the corruption and bribery of US federal (national) judges who are the same judges who
would put Julian Assange or Edward Snowden on trial ... even though these lawyers and
journalists all know that exposing the crimes of the bribed US judges, is the quick key to
releasing Julian Assange from threats that confine him to his refuge in the Ecuadorean Embassy
in London, and key to more safety and freedom for Snowden as well.
US Attorney General Eric Holder is accused of sponsoring criminal acts of deception against
the UK, Sweden, Russia and other countries, hiding 'smoking gun' evidence of US judge bribery,
in order to harm and destroy both Julian Assange and Edward Snowden. Google Inc has agreed to
censor and hoax the internet and hide dozens of web pages about this.
This bribery is said to be funded by Britain's Pearson plc, with the Guardian and New York
Times accused of accepting Pearson-funded bribes to print fake 'news' to obstruct and pervert
justice so that the UK will not prosecute Pearson's bribery of US high judges and
government.
Mr Snowden is also facing the terrifying possibility that his name is being abused by
these parties, New York Times, Guardian and Greenwald, for the sake of entrapping other
dissidents and whistleblowers into 'trusting' these journalists, who might then convey
dissident names to the US regime in order to silence and murder them. It seems possible the
Guardian and New York Times have already given Snowden files back to the US regime.
The correspondence with Edward Snowden makes reference to the police file with several EU
countries, who are beginning investigations and prosecutions, starting in Finland, of the
CIA-tied Wikipedia website, for fundraising fraud ... that police file significantly discusses
the evidence of bribery of US federal judges who are the same judges who would put Edward
Snowden and Julian Assange on trial in America, and how Wikipedia, actually an American
CIA-controlled 'Trojan horse' for inserting lies on targeted topics, has been used to plant
lies about that judicial bribery - the police dossier text is here:
Here is a screenshot of a Google Inc 'search results' page, with tiny text at the bottom
admitting that Google is censoring a large number of search results, about Edward Snowden's
correspondent, a major witness to the crimes involving the same US judges who would put Edward
Snowden or Julian Assange on trial:
'So the Mueller report is finally in, and it appears that hundreds of millions of Americans
have, once again, been woefully bamboozled. Weird, how this just keeps on happening. At this
point, Americans have to be the most frequently woefully bamboozled people in the entire
history of woeful bamboozlement. If you didn't know better, you'd think we were all a bunch of
hopelessly credulous imbeciles that you could con into believing almost anything, or that our
brains had been bombarded with so much propaganda from the time we were born that we couldn't
really even think anymore.'
Brilliant. That really is the central message of '1984'. A lot of the brainwashing,
particularly to liberals is ego massaging.They are led to believe they have superior education,
intelligence and information.Even in the slipstream of this insanity, it's unlikely you will
find a liberal whose confidence in his cultural superiority is even slightly dented.
'If there is hope,' wrote Winston, 'it lies in the proles.' .
'The great majority of proles did not even have telescreens in their homes'.
Thanks so much CJ for putting my mind at ease. I feel much better now knowing it was all just
a big mistake. Actually, in corporate management courses they don't use the term "mistake".
They prefer "learning experience". I have certainly learned a lot during this McCarthy rerun
episode.
Whew. Now we can all turn our attention to Saddam Maduro who is most surely some kind of a
Hitler, or Stapn, or, SOMETHING. Even Trump haters can agree with him on that one, lead by
the Bezos Post and the New York peTimes.
Is Mueller another of Putin's puppets? I ask because it simply isn't credible that he
couldn't find any evidence of collusion, as Adam Schiff has seen it and he has said so
repeatedly. So all Mueller had to do was ask Schiff – hey, even Tucker Carlson
asked.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Attorney General William Barr said on Wednesday he would look into
whether U.S. agencies illegally spied on President Donald Trump's 2016 campaign, sparking
criticism from Democrats who accused him of promoting a conspiracy theory.
Barr, who was appointed by Trump, is already facing criticism by congressional Democrats for
how he has handled the release of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's report on the probe of
Russian interference in the 2016 election, and his comments about surveillance brought more
derision from Democratic senators.
His testimony echoed longstanding allegations by Trump and Republican allies that seeks to
cast doubt on the early days of the federal investigation in an apparent attempt to discredit
Mueller, law enforcement and intelligence agencies.
IMO the notion that a few senior Intelligence officials (mostly FBI) tried to overthrow Trump
is silly to the point of being laughable.
Not to all of us, it isn't. The part I don't understand is the Why of their effort. Did
they have some scheme to get rid of Pence too? Or was it all mindless blind hatred because he
took down their Goddess Hillary?
Posted by: Zachary Smith | Apr 10, 2019 11:49:22 PM |
71 ZS @ 68 said in part;"assuming the Corporate Democrats don't force one of their candidates
Big Corporations want on the ballot. Which is, of course, most of them."
I assume what you speculated on above, will happen.
The democratic party is irredeemable as it operates as one arm of the duopoly. I don't see any
meaningful distinction between "Corporate Democrats" and progressive Democrats except this:
progressive Democrats give the Democratic Party cover to support the establishment.
IMO domestic policy can no longer be considered separately from Empire. "Progressive
Democrats" are forced encouraged by their Party to support the military and
ignore foreign policy.
<> <> <> <> <> <> <>
IMO the only grouping that is currently viable/strong alternative is the libertarians. If they
could bring conservatives and (real) progressives together, then we could see a real challenge to
the "radical center" (which actually rules as center-right).
But conservatives, (real) progressives, and libertarians are underfunded and constantly get
played.
Posted by: librul | Apr 11, 2019 12:06:23 AM |
74 Zachary Smith @71:
Not to all of us, it isn't. The part I don't understand is the Why of their effort.
Well of course the WHY baffles you, because the only WHY that makes sense is what I described
and that will never be allowed to come out publicly because then people will see that their
democracy is a sham.
The "managed democracy" that we have in USA subverts the will of the people to the Empire.
Posted by: Jackrabbit | Apr 11, 2019
12:08:56 AM |
75"Germany still owes Israel $19 billion for the Holocaust. The new estimate was
calculated by independent American economist Sidney Zabludoff, a former CIA, White House and U.S.
Treasury official."
Posted by: John Smith | Apr 11, 2019 12:13:27 AM |
76 @ 74: Why did Russiagate start in the first place? The short answer is IMO, diversion.
Another answer could be, that DJT stood on a stage, and asked another country to find his
opponents e-mails.
Posted by: ben | Apr 11, 2019 12:34:51 AM |
77 @ librul #74
Though I hadn't seen that before, the general theme is in agreement with what I believe is the
truth. Even ignorant and thuggish goons like Trump can be victims of a crime, and I believe
that's what happened here.
Posted by: Zachary Smith | Apr 11, 2019 12:52:57 AM |
78 I find it piquant that the vice president of the US attacks a Venezuelan ambassador at the
UN and then ramps up his aggression...by retreating.
Pence is so certain that the other guy doesn't belong, that he himself walks away. Every
schoolyard would see this behavior for exactly what it is. Animals would understand it clearly
also, in terms of pecking order.
How perfect this action is in matching precisely what we've been watching the US do in several
military theaters for some time now. The louder and the ruder the bluster, the more certain we
can be that it covers pure emptiness. And that the US is tangibly retreating under cover of the
smoke.
The cowardice is becoming palpable.
Posted by: Grieved | Apr 11, 2019 12:53:10 AM |
79 ben
Well, why did "America First" Trump ask Russia to do that? (And later ask Wikileaks to release
the DNC emails!)
And why did "America First" Trump hire Manafort who had extensive Russian contacts and
pro-Russian activities that drew the ire of US officials?
These (and more) played into Russiagate hysteria that followed the election and were not in
keeping with Trump's "America First" rhetoric.
Now, long after the election, we see additional strangeness like Roger Stone's claims of a
contact at Wikileaks.
"IDF's chief rabbi-to-be permits raping women in wartime."
Just how does that differ from Daesh's behavior? Or was it the IDF that told Deash such
behavior was okay? I'm pretty certain that rabbi is afoul of fundamental Mosaic Law and thus
shouldn't be a rabbi.
----------------------
"The Talmud: The Steinsaltz Edition," Ketubot 11b, vol. 7 (NY: Random House, 1991), p.
145:
"If a grown man has intercourse with a little girl less than three years old, all agree that
it is not a significant sexual act "
"If a man engages in homosexual intercourse with a minor who is under the age of nine,
whether actively or passively, he is exempt as with regard to ritual law..."
.
Posted by: John Smith | Apr 11, 2019 1:02:54 AM |
81 @ Grieved with the UN/Pence story....here is China's take on the situation
"
UNITED NATIONS, April 10 (Xinhua) -- The Chinese ambassador to the United Nations on Wednesday
rejected U.S. Vice President Mike Pence's accusation against China over Venezuela.
"China categorically rejects the accusation," Ma Zhaoxu, China's permanent representative to
the United Nations, told a Security Council meeting on the situation in Venezuela.
"Earlier in his intervention, the U.S. representative leveled an unfounded accusation on
China's position on Venezuela in the Security Council," he said, referring to Pence's remarks
that Russia and China obstructed Council action on Venezuela with their veto power.
China has all along maintained friendly and cooperative relations with other countries around
the world, including Venezuela, on the basis of the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence, he
said.
"We support peoples of all countries in independently choosing their development paths that
cater to their national conditions. We never interfere in other countries' internal affairs, nor
do we impose anything on other countries," Ma added.
Members of the Security Council should faithfully abide by the purposes and principles of the
UN Charter and the universally recognized norms of international relations, genuinely respect the
choices of peoples of other countries, and do more positive and practical things for the people
of Venezuela rather than the opposite, said the Chinese envoy.
"
Posted by: psychohistorian | Apr
11, 2019 1:02:58 AM |
82 WJ @51 ... FWIW, as of this writing I'm having no trouble accessing the naked capitalism
site.
Posted by: John Anthony La Pietra | Apr 11, 2019 1:05:26 AM |
83 Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Instagram March 10, 2019:
"Israel is not a state of all its citizens. According to the Nation-State Law that we
passed, Israel is the nation-state of the Jewish People -- and them alone."
Posted by: John Smith | Apr 11, 2019 1:07:35 AM |
84 @ Jackrabbit #75
I"m not sure we disagree very much, for I also believe our "democracy" is thoroughly managed,
and "sham" is quite a good word for it. The part I don't understand is why you seem to object to
pointing out efforts by the 'managers' to correct the error of a slam dunk election going bad.
Hillary was supposed to be in the White House. More than one nation had been making
advance payments to the Clinton Foundation to purchase her goodwill. She was the dream for Big
Banking, the apartheid Jewish state, and probably a lot more folks. That didn't happen, and some
people became unhinged.
It is a fascinating, though rather grim, story, spanning the First World War, the creation of
the states of Israel, Iraq, Syria and Saudi Arabia, and taking in Lawrence of Arabia, all the way
to the fall of Gadaffi in Libya, the Syria Civil War and Rise of the so-called Islamic State,
among other things. It's a story of long-term manipulation, insidious indoctrination, and secret,
almost 'mythical' works of literature.
These two ideologies – Wahhabism in Islam and Zionism which is linked primarily to the
Jewish religion – may seem like unrelated entities on the surface of it
Posted by: John Smith | Apr 11, 2019 1:16:39 AM |
86 @ Zachary Smith who wrote about Clinton II
"
She was the dream for Big Banking, the apartheid Jewish state, and probably a lot more folks.
"
So that makes Trump a nightmare for Big Banking, the apartheid Jewish state, etc., right?
I encourage you to understand how much you are being played. If Big Banking has both of them,
whom is being played?
Posted by: psychohistorian | Apr
11, 2019 1:17:13 AM |
87 Zachary Smith @78:
Though I hadn't seen that before, the general theme is in agreement with what I believe is
the truth.
I think that you're not thinking this through.
You're question of WHY, is still unanswered.
> WHY did the hold back on Russian-influence allegations during the election? Hillary was suppose to win, sure. But why not ENSURE that win?
> WHY did they continue with Russiagate after the election? They engaged in Treasonous behavior because Hillary was butthurt?
She supposedly got 3 million more votes than Trump; how badly could her ego be bruised?
> WHY did the establishment hate Trump so much? He's delivered all they could want and more.
> Why did Russiagate force Trump to bend to Deep State wishes? Ha! It didn't! Trump has always maintained that there was no Russia collusion. And now the
Mueller Report confirms this. Trump's Cold War policy continues the Deep State's same policy -
because Trump is part of the team.
This is not meant to be exhaustive. There are many other questions that you could ask because
there's a lot that doesn't add up - unless Russiagate was a Deep State psyop with bi-partisan
support (as I've described).
Posted by: Jackrabbit | Apr 11, 2019
1:21:14 AM |
88 Zachary Smith @85: efforts by the 'managers' to correct the error
Because it makes no sense.
If they got their wish and "corrected" the error by overthrowing Trump, there would be a civil
war. Which is counter-productive in the extreme.
But they don't need to take such drastic action 'cause Trump does that the Deep States wants
anyway! So what are they trying to "correct"?!?
Posted by: Jackrabbit | Apr 11, 2019
1:29:31 AM |
89 correction: ... what the Deep State wants ...
Posted by: Jackrabbit | Apr 11, 2019
1:30:30 AM |
90 Alleged ongoing Military Coup in Sudan today, another just happened in Algeria... Haftar
making moves in Libya, could all just be a coincidence, then again, maybe not? Anyone got
anything? Wondering what Mr B. thinks..
Posted by: EtTuBrute | Apr 11, 2019 5:08:30 AM |
91 Assange has just been expelled from the embassy and arrested
Posted by: Kadath | Apr 11, 2019 5:53:11 AM |
92 @ 92 * time for everyone to stand up for human rights promoter Assange?
The end of capitalism, in disguise. US pol structure does not allow for such, as the US (and
other West, the US is just a stellar ex.) are ruled by rapacious coproratist (typo) oligarchs.
Won't happen.
Posted by: Noirette @ 7
I don't think the issue is to end capitalism, but economic Zionism (all known as capitalism
changed into monopoism) is on its way out. Revolutionaries, all over the world, are in place to
revert monopolism back to capitalism and democracy back to human rights.**
She [Hillary] was the dream for Big Banking, the apartheid Jewish state, and probably a lot
more folks. That didn't happen, and some people became unhinged. by Zachary Smith @85 As things
have turned out.. we might have all been better off with Hillary than Trump.. Next time around I
am going to vote for the most obvious liar, and the candidate with the most stinking capaign
promises. looking back over the elections since Abe Lincolm was assassinated by the city of
London.. because Lincoln was moving to make USA its own bank and to issue its own currency..
**
At http://representativepress.org/IsraelViolatesResolution.html
c/b found the pre conditions, all of which Israel agreed to,
for admission of Israel into the UN..
1. he status of jerusalem w/n/b altered
2. Palestinans w/b permitted to return
3. The partition agreement w/become the final borders.
Text of General Assembly Resolution 273 of May 11, 1949 admitting Israel into the UN, notes
Israel agreed to comply with Resolution 194 : UNITED NATIONS General Assembly A/RES/273 (III) 11
May 1949
what is really interesting is to take a look at the low life supporting this UN action at the
press, in the white house and at the MIC. Many supporters there played at hugmongous part in the
rest of the rise of Economic Zionism which depends on leg breaker USA to get its way..
Posted by: snake | Apr 11, 2019 6:18:53 AM |
93
Julian Assange has been arrested and dragged out of the embassy. he does not look well.
"I went to the Black Agenda link and saw nothing more than "sheepdog" being used as an insult
and as a reason not to consider that candidate. Do you have any specifics for Gabbard not being
sincere in wanting to stop endless wars?"
She's a Democrat, a leading cadre of an indelibly war-mongering political party (in addition
to being the oldest, longest-running pro-capitalist party on Earth; by definition a socialist
also could never be a Democrat).
Therefore by definition she has to be pro-war, just as anyone who's anti-war could never be a
Democrat. (That's just one of many, many reasons I could never possibly even consider the
Democrats; it's a non-starter.)
"Sheepdog" is not an insult. (Well, not just an insult.) It's a technical term for a
pro-system politician who pretends to be "progressive", "socialist", "radical" etc. but is really
no such thing where it comes to any real action. The purpose is to keep people from straying
outside the fold of the Democrat Party (Sanders is the most notorious example, a con artist his
entire career), or of electoralism as such (the "Green Party" version).
"I'm aware the woman is totally in bed with the apartheid Jewish State, but then, who
isn't?"
And still you ask if it's possible even in principle for her to be anti-war?
Posted by: Russ | Apr 11, 2019
6:32:23 AM |
95 On Assange -
So where are the NGO/MSM/liberals human rights supporters now defending Assange?! What a
joke.
Extradition to the US is a no brainer, apparently Assange was right about residing in the
embassy.
Is this a Trump or rather what I believe - a deep state/CIA/FBI operation? Trump have after
all been quite positive on Assange as far as the clinton email leak.
Posted by: Zanon | Apr 11, 2019 6:33:55 AM |
96 whatever happened to that old "insurance" file WikiLeaks put out way back in 2011 when
this whole thing started which they threaten to release the encryption keys for if Assange was
arrested/harmed. Did they already release the contents through WikiLeaks. I recall that one of
Assange's old partners turned traitor after he was bribed by the US and stole thousands of
documents and passwords in an effort to sabotage WikiLeaks. If Wikileaks does have anything
they've been holding back, now is the time to release it. Wikileaks may have western legal
tradition on it's side, but in the Outlaw empire the law means nothing, only force and bribery
hold sway.
In a larger sense, while the US empire may have won this round, they may end up rueing this
day, as I am certain there are dozens of closet Wikileaks supporters within the US/British
governments who will be outraged by these actions and they will strike back in their own ways. At
the very least I suspect that Moreno will suffer severe consequences from this action. We already
know that some of his own diplomats leaked this expulsion in advance in hopes of sabotaging it
and the former President Correa has just declared Moreno the 'Greatest traitor in Ecuadorian
history', so I gleefully expect some daggers to find their way into his backside in the near
future (most probably leaking documents to WikiLeaks showing Moreno's involvement in massive
corruption - not that there's anything unique about corruption in South American governments)
Posted by: Kadath | Apr 11, 2019 7:38:34 AM |
97 @45 Zachary Smith
I would like to see Tulsi (or any other anti-war candidate) take the mantle of the democratic
party on an anti-war platform.
I posted the link to bring attention to the efforts being made (and coincidentally mentioned
by wendy davis @42) of efforts to create a true anti-war 3d party. I think it would be easier at
this point in time to create a new 3d party focused on reducing military spending than to urge
the democrat or republican party to adopt a half hearted effort at limiting us military
misadventures. Both parties are fragile and susceptible to splintering in the current environment
and this does improve the chances for a viable 3d party to emerge.
I don't think the author was insulting to Gabbard. It read to me like he was explaining the
role any anti-war candidate would play in a party controlled by the established democratic party.
You can already see the obstacles being put in her way by the way she is being down-played in the
press.
b4real
Posted by: b4real | Apr 11, 2019 8:22:00 AM |
98 @43 Dadda: " A true Zen saying!"
"... The Dems, of course, will cherry-pick passages from the report that can most effectively be spun together into a fantastic web of collusion. And like most conspiracy theorists, they will allege things that can never be proven or disproven. That basic fact alone will allow them to keep expressing outrage and carry on with their accusations about collusion and obstruction for as long as they choose. ..."
"... Different Democrats will parrot one or more of these, depending on whether they are in a safe or vulnerable district. For example, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), in the heart of an overwhelmingly Democratic region, will likely employ all four points, while a newly elected Democrat in a district won by Trump might focus only on the first. ..."
"... Oh, one last thing. Here is what the Democrats will not say: We appreciate all the work that went into this report. This counterintelligence investigation was very thorough, there is no evidence of collusion or obstruction of justice, so we look forward to going back to the job we were elected to do: legislating for the benefit of the American people. ..."
Now that Attorney General William Barr has promised to release the Mueller report in all its glory within the next few days, we
thought it considerate to save you time you'll never get back watching the establishment media's reaction by informing you in advance
of just how the Democrats are going to respond.
But, you say, the report has not even been released, so how could you know what the Democrats will say? Well, they have been at
this collusion delusion for more than two years now, we have witnessed the lengths to which they are willing to go in an effort to
take down President Trump, and they have only a few bullets left in their chamber. We can state with overwhelming confidence that
they will fire all of them.
But let's start by reaffirming something as certain as the sun rising in the east: The Democrats will not accept the
validity
of the report in whatever form they receive it. That would, after all, require them to stop spinning their conspiracy theories, and
we can't have that.
From there, we move seamlessly to a preview of the four prefabricated talking points that will launch the Democrats' spin cycle.
We call them the Mueller final four, because this is the last chance to demagogue the issue of Trump-Russia collusion. You need only
to fill in the blanks using yet-to-be-determined passages from the report.
So without further ado, we present the talking points Democrats will provide for the elite media to dutifully repeat and amplify:
Talking Point 1 (mildest of the four): While we thank and commend Mr. Mueller for his work, the scope of his investigation
was necessarily limited by his specific mandate and the special counsel law itself. There are just so many areas Mueller was not
able to probe, thus at least six, and perhaps as many as nine, of our congressional committees must take the baton and continue
running down the track. It is undoubtedly the highest and best use of our time, because as legislators we are elected to investigate
(LINOs – legislators in name only?). After all, even though the financial disclosure forms Trump filed during the presidential
campaign are far more revealing than any tax return, we must do everything possible to force the release of Trump's tax returns
anyway. He is the first presidential candidate in 40 years not to release his tax returns, so he must be hiding something. And,
of course, we need to dig into the entire history of the Trump organization, because we have deep suspicions all manner of crookedness
is hidden in there.
Talking Point 2 : While the conduct outlined does not quite rise to the level of criminality, the report details events
and conversations that are deeply disturbing, primarily (fill in most easy-to-spin passages of report). Remember that not all
improper, shameful, and traitorous conduct is felonious. Though the special counsel falls just short of uncovering collusion,
he also refused to issue a recommendation on
obstruction of justice . We
all know that the attorney general is little more than a bootlicking hack taking orders from Trump, ipso facto his finding of
no obstruction is likely some sort of coverup. And even though we lauded Rod Rosenstein for his stewardship of the special counsel
investigation, even Rosenstein, in concurring with Barr's judgment on obstruction, has evidently fallen under the spell of the
president and, like Barr, cannot be trusted.
Talking Point 3 : Yes, the report contains no direct evidence of anything other than process and financial crimes that
occurred either during the special counsel investigation itself or before Trump ran for president, and those have already been
litigated. But there is ample circumstantial evidence of conspiracy between Trump operatives and the Russians to interfere in
the election. For example, (fill in name of alleged conspirator) and (fill in name of another alleged conspirator) spoke to (fill
in name of alleged Russian conspirator) less than two weeks apart. Mueller is by nature conservative in his judgments, no matter
that an overwhelming majority of the lawyers he hired are politically active, anti-Trump Democrats who contributed to Hillary
Clinton, Barack Obama, or both. And regardless of whether he felt it appropriate to launch military-style raids on Michael Flynn
and Roger Stone. So we must investigate this circumstantial evidence and connect the dots ourselves.
Talking Point 4 : The redactions in this report are clear evidence that someone is trying to hide the parts that likely
reveal actual collusion. The crooked attorney general and deplorable president used the cover of (choose one: grand jury testimony/classified
information/interviews with completely innocent subjects) to redact the truth. Yes, all of that testimony and information must
be redacted by law or by long-standing department regulations and precedent, but we nevertheless repeat our demand that the entire
report, unredacted, be released, or we will launch yet more investigations on the cover-up by Barr and, of course, Trump. What
are you hiding with these redactions, Mr. Barr?
The Dems, of course, will cherry-pick
passages
from the report that can most effectively be spun together into a fantastic web of collusion. And like most conspiracy theorists,
they will allege things that can never be proven or disproven. That basic fact alone will allow them to keep expressing outrage and
carry on with their accusations about collusion and obstruction for as long as they choose.
Different Democrats will parrot one or more of these, depending on whether they are in a safe or vulnerable district. For
example, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), in the heart of an overwhelmingly Democratic region, will likely employ all four points,
while a newly elected Democrat in a district won by Trump might focus only on the first.
Oh, one last thing. Here is what the Democrats will not say: We appreciate all the work that went into this report. This counterintelligence
investigation was very thorough, there is no evidence of collusion or obstruction of justice, so we look forward to going back to
the job we were elected to do: legislating for the benefit of the American people.
So there you go. Everything you need to know about the Democrats' response to the Mueller report before it is even released.
"... In 2016 Hillary Clinton lost a sure-fire election to Donald Trump and, looking for an excuse, jumped on the Russia claim. Putin Derangement Syndrome was ramped up to a much more dangerous level. War-level dangerous. ..."
In an especially imbecile display in 2015, Western reporters (unable to find his website)
thinking he hadn't been
seen for several days started a contest of speculation about coups, death, wars, plastic
surgery, secret births and other nonsense; when he "re-appeared", the story went down the
Memory Hole.
For some reason, Americans personalise everything. In meetings with US intelligence agencies
I was always fascinated how they would reduce every complicated reality to a single individual.
But it isn't Saddam, or Assad, or Qaddafi, or Osama, or Aidid, or Milosevic, or Maduro, or
Castro or any of the other villains-of-the-day, it's a whole country : these people got
to the top for good reasons. Removing the boss makes some difference but never all the
difference. They go but they never leave a Washington-friendly country behind and Washington
does it all over again somewhere else. This peculiar blindness drives Putin Derangement
Syndrome and has infected everybody else.
But Putin is much worse than the others. The other enemies had relatively weak countries but
Russia could obliterate the USA. But worse, Putin's team has steadily become more powerful and
more influential. And worst of all, he's still there: huffing and puffing has not blown him
down, sanctions strengthen the economy and there is nothing to suggest he won't be succeeded by
someone who carries on the same policies. It's a whole country, not just one man.
But laughing has passed – Putin Derangement Syndrome has become dangerous.
In 2016 Hillary Clinton lost a sure-fire election to Donald Trump and, looking for an
excuse, jumped on the Russia claim. Putin Derangement Syndrome was ramped up to a much more
dangerous level. War-level dangerous.
Clinton's victory was
99% certain until it wasn't and excuses were needed. Clinton
went through a lot of them but "Russian interference" was always the big one.
That strategy had been set within twenty-four hours of her concession speech. [9 November
2016] Mook and Podesta assembled her communications team at the Brooklyn headquarters to
engineer the case that the election wasn't entirely on the up-and-up. For a couple of hours,
with Shake Shack containers littering the room, they went over the script they would pitch to
the press and the public. Already, Russian hacking was the centerpiece of the argument. (From
Shattered
, quoted
here .)
In What Happened, Clinton also says Russian President Vladimir Putin's support for Trump was
driven by his own anti-women sentiment, stacking the deck against her: "What Putin wanted to do
was...influence our election, and he's not exactly fond of strong women, so you add that
together and that's pretty much what it means." At press events for her memoir, Clinton
continues to warn Americans against Russia's power over Trump and the country. "The Russians
aren't done. This is an ongoing threat, and that is one of the reasons why I wrote the book and
one of the reasons I'm talking about it," she said on Sunday at Southbank Centre's London
Literature Festival. (
Newsweek )
(None of these "experts" ever seem to wonder why Putin's influence, so decisive far away,
is so ineffective in Ukraine or Georgia. But then, it's not actually a rational, fact-based
belief, is it?)
The entire ramshackle construction is collapsing: if Mueller says there was no collusion
then even the last ditch believers will have to accept it:
Robert Mueller Prayer Candles are out of stock, time to
toss the other tchotchkes , it wasn't a Mueller Christmas after all . Clinton's
fabrication had two parts to it: 1) Putin interfered/determined the election 2) in collusion
with Trump. When the second part is blown up, so must the first be. And then what will happen
to all the loyal little allies crying "ours were interfered with too"!? The two halves of the
story had the same authors and the same purpose: if one dies, so must the other. Now that Trump
is secured from the
obstruction charges that hung there as long as Mueller was in session , he is free to
declassify the background documents that will show the origin, mechanics, authors and extent of
the conspiracy.
And he has said he will . In the process, both halves of the story will be destroyed:
they're both lies.
Will the exposure of the plot and the plotters end the war-talk stage of Putin Derangement
Syndrome? In a rational world, it would (but can its believers be embarrassed by the exposure
of their credulity? Can they be made to think it all over again from the beginning?). It is
true that Russia stands in the way of the neocons and liberal interventionists who have been
guiding Washington this century, but that hardly means that Putin is the enemy of the American
people. Because, properly considered, it's the neocons/liberal interventionists and their
endless wars burning up lives, money and good will that are the enemies of Americans; in that
respect Putin (unintentionally) stands with the true best interests of the American people. But
the propaganda is so strong and the hysteria so unrestrained, that anyone who suggests that
blocking the war party is in the best interests of Americans would be run out of town on a
rail. (
As the attacks on Tulsi Gabbard show .) The USA is far down the rabbit hole. (Although I
should say US elites: a
Rasmussen poll shows that slightly more Americans think Clinton colluded with a foreign power
than think Trump did . Considering the news coverage of the last two and a half years,
that's a very interesting finding.)
So, the sad conclusion is that Putin Derangement Syndrome will probably endure and the best
we can hope for is that it is dialled down a bit and the "act of war" nonsense is quietly
forgotten. Derangement was strong before the interference/collusion lie and it will exist as
long as Putin does: the war party is too invested in personalities ever to realise that it's
Russia, not its president, that's the obstacle. Let alone ever understand that much of what
Moscow does is a pushback against Washington's aggression.
"What the hell? I worked so hard on this -- if I wasn't colluding with the Trump
campaign, who the hell was I colluding with?" said the dumbfounded Russian president, growing
increasingly angry as he scrolled through his email inbox and recounted his numerous efforts at
covert communication with individuals who he had thought were high-ranking Trump officials, but
now he suspected were bots or anonymous internet trolls."
Money quote: "The Russian collusion investigation was based solely on the dodgy Steele Dossier that was discredited here from
the get-go. This was a product of British Intelligence Community. The intent was to keep and then to get Donald Trump out of the White
House. It failed but they did succeed in turning him into a neo-lib-con fellow traveler. There are clear parallels between the end stages
of the Soviet Union and the American Empire. My take since the Iraq Invasion is that they are insane. The ruling elite is detached from
reality, incompetent and arrogant. Sooner or later someone with their facilities still intact will lead a middle-class revolt against
the global plutocracy to restore democracy and reverse the rising inequality. We were lucky that the fall of the Soviet Union did not
lead to a nuclear war. The next time a nuclear armed Empire crashes we may not be so fortunate."
Notable quotes:
"... Among interesting dates, it appears that Stefan Halper was already trying to reach out to Lokhova in January-February 2016 – a lot earlier than his approaches to Papadopoulo s and Page. This was done through Professor Christopher Andrew, co-convenor with Halper and the former MI6 had Sir Richard Dearlove of the ‘Cambridge Intelligence Seminar.’ ..."
"... Meanwhile, Lokhova has set up a blog on which she has posted a some interesting relevant material, with perhaps more to come. It is very well worth a look.(See https://www.russiagate.co.uk .) ..."
"... Of particular interest, to my mind, is the full text of her – unpublished – May 2017 interview with the ‘New York Times.’ This points us back to is the fact – of which Lokhova shows no signs of awareness – that the idea that the Western powers and the Russians might have a common interest in fighting jihadist terrorism has been absolute anathema to many key figures on both sides of the Atlantic, with Dearlove certainly among them. ..."
"... ‘AN APOLOGY: Yesterday, I compared @nytimes journalists, who smeared @GenFlynn and accused me of being a Russian spy, to cockroaches. In good conscience, I must apologize to the cockroaches for the distress caused to them for being compared to @nytimes #Russiagate hoaxers. Sorry!’ ..."
"... The centerpiece of this is a proposal submitted to the FCO in August last year by what seems to be essentially the same consortium whose existence as a government contractor has now been made public. The ‘Institute for Statecraft’ has vanished, and one consortium member, ‘Aktis Strategy’, has gone into liquidation. But other key members are the same. ..."
"... A central underlying premise is that if anyone has any doubts as to whether the ‘White Helmets’ are a benevolent humanitarian organisation, or the Russians were responsible for the poisoning of the Skripals or the shooting down of MH17, the only possible explanation is that their minds have been poisoned by disinformation. ..."
"... In fact, what is at issue an ambitious project to co-ordinate and strengthen a very large number of organisations in different countries which are committed to a relentlessly Russophobic line on everything. (The possibility that it might not be very bright to push Russia into the arms of China, the obviously rising power, does not seem to have occurred to these people – perhaps they need less ons from Sir Halford Mackinder, or indeed Niccolò Machiavelli, on ‘statecraft.’) ..."
"... The clear close integration of other cyber people from the ‘Atlantic Council’ into Orwellian ‘information operations’ sponsored by the British Government simply puts these facts into sharp relief. ..."
"... There has to be a strong possible ‘prima facie’ case that anyone in authority prepared to accept the ‘digital forensics’ from ‘CrowdStrike’ is complicit in the conspiracy against the constitution, and/or the conspiracy to cover-up that conspiracy. This certainly goes for Comey, and I think it also goes for Mueller." ..."
"... I'd recommend for reading Alexei Yurchak's "Everything Was Forever, Until It was No More: The Last Soviet Generation." Its about a class of apparatchiks and bureaucrats and hangers on who spoke this arcane, abstract dogmatic language that anyone normal had long since given up trying to understand. It had long ceased to have any relevance or attachment to the lives lived by ordinary, increasingly suffering people, who started talking to each other in practical and direct language. ..."
"... The Russian collusion investigation was based solely on the dodgy Steele Dossier that was discredited here from the get-go. This was a product of British Intelligence Community. The intent was to keep and then to get Donald Trump out of the White House. It failed but they did succeed in turning him into a neo-lib-con fellow traveler. ..."
"... There are clear parallels between the end stages of the Soviet Union and the American Empire. My take since the Iraq Invasion is that they are insane. The ruling elite is detached from reality, incompetent and arrogant. Sooner or later someone with their facilities still intact will lead a middle-class revolt against the global plutocracy to restore democracy and reverse the rising inequality. We were lucky that the fall of the Soviet Union did not lead to a nuclear war. The next time a nuclear armed Empire crashes we may not be so fortunate. ..."
"Dan, Thanks for the reference, which I will follow up. Unfortunately, although Bongino has produced a lot of extremely valuable
material, a lot of it is buried in the 'postcasts', searching through which is harder than with printed materials. It would greatly
help if there were transcripts, but of course those cost money.
I am still trying to fit the exploding mass of information which has been coming out into a coherent timeline. Part of the
problem is that there is so much appearing in so many different places. In addition to trying to think through the implications
of the information in this post and the subsequent exchanges of comments, I have been trying to make sense of evidence coming
out about the British end of the conspiracy.
An important development here has been rather well covered by Chuck Ross, in a recent ‘Daily Caller’ piece headlined ‘Cambridge
Academic Reflects On Interactions With 'Spygate’ Figure’ and one on ‘Fox’ by Catherine Herridge and Cyd Upson, entitled ‘Russian
academic linked to Flynn denies being spy, says her past contact was “used” to smear him.’ However, the evidence involved has ramifications
which they cannot be expected to understand, as yet at least.
At issue is the attempt to use the – apparently casual – encounter between Lieutenant-General Flynn and Svetlana Lokhova at a
dinner in Cambridge (U.K.) in February 2016 to smear him by, among other things, portraying her as some kind of ‘Mata Hari’ figure.
Among interesting dates, it appears that Stefan Halper was already trying to reach out to Lokhova in January-February 2016
– a lot earlier than his approaches to Papadopoulo s and Page. This was done through Professor Christopher Andrew, co-convenor with
Halper and the former MI6 had Sir Richard Dearlove of the ‘Cambridge Intelligence Seminar.’
This suggests that this was not simply a case Halper acting on his own. It also I think brings us back to the central importance
of Flynn’s visit to Moscow in December 2015.
Meanwhile, Lokhova has set up a blog on which she has posted a some interesting relevant material, with perhaps more to come.
It is very well worth a look.(See https://www.russiagate.co.uk
.)
Of particular interest, to my mind, is the full text of her – unpublished – May 2017 interview with the ‘New York Times.’ This
points us back to is the fact – of which Lokhova shows no signs of awareness – that the idea that the Western powers and the Russians
might have a common interest in fighting jihadist terrorism has been absolute anathema to many key figures on both sides of the Atlantic,
with Dearlove certainly among them.
Some of Lokhova’s comments on ‘twitter’ are extremely entertaining. An example, with which I have much sympathy:
‘AN APOLOGY: Yesterday, I compared @nytimes journalists, who smeared @GenFlynn and accused me of being a Russian spy, to
cockroaches. In good conscience, I must apologize to the cockroaches for the distress caused to them for being compared to @nytimes
#Russiagate hoaxers. Sorry!’
Meanwhile, another interesting recent ‘tweet’ comes from Eliot Higgins, of ‘Bellingcat’ fame. He is known to some skeptics as
‘the couch potato’ – perhaps he should be rechristened ‘king cockroach.’ It reads:
‘Looking forward to gettin g things rolling with the Open Information Partnership, with @bellingcat, @MDI_UK, @DFRLab, and @This_Is_Zinc
https://www.openinformation...’
There is an interesting ‘backstory’ to this. The announcement of an FCO-supported ‘Open Information Partnership of European Non-Governmental
Organisations, charities, academics, think-tanks and journalists’, supposedly to counter ‘disinformation’ from Russia, came in a
written answer from the Minister of State, Sir Alan Duncan, on 3 April.
In turn this followed the latest in a series of releases of material either leaked or hacked from the organisations calling themselves
‘Institute for Statecraft’ and ‘Integrity Initiative’ by the group calling themselves ‘Anonymous’ on 25 March.
The centerpiece of this is a proposal submitted to the FCO in August last year by what seems to be essentially the same consortium
whose existence as a government contractor has now been made public. The ‘Institute for Statecraft’ has vanished, and one consortium
member, ‘Aktis Strategy’, has gone into liquidation. But other key members are the same.
A central underlying premise is that if anyone has any doubts as to whether the ‘White Helmets’ are a benevolent humanitarian
organisation, or the Russians were responsible for the poisoning of the Skripals or the shooting down of MH17, the only possible
explanation is that their minds have been poisoned by disinformation.
An interesting paragraph reads as follows:
‘An expanded research component could generate better understanding of the drivers (psychological, sociopolitical, cultural
and environmental) of those who are susceptible to disinformation. This will allow us to map vulnerable audiences, and build scenario
planning models to test the efficiency of different activities to build resilience of those populations over time.’
They have not yet got to the point of recommending psychiatic treatment for ‘dissidents’, but these are still early days. The
‘Sovietisation’ of Western life proceeds apace.
In fact, what is at issue an ambitious project to co-ordinate and strengthen a very large number of organisations in different
countries which are committed to a relentlessly Russophobic line on everything. (The possibility that it might not be very bright
to push Russia into the arms of China, the obviously rising power, does not seem to have occurred to these people – perhaps they
need less ons from Sir Halford Mackinder, or indeed Niccolò Machiavelli, on ‘statecraft.’)
Study of the proposal hacked/leaked by ‘Anonymous’ bring out both the ‘boondoggle’ element – there is a lot of state funding available
for people happy to play these games – and also the strong transatlantic links.
A particularly significant presence, here, is the ‘DFRLab’. This is the ‘Digital Forensic Research Lab’ at the ‘Atlantic Council’,
where Eliot Higgins is a ‘nonresident senior fellow.’ The same organisation has a ‘Cyber Statecraft Initiative’ where Dmitri Alperovitch
is a ‘nonresident senior fellow.’
It cannot be repeated often enough that it is difficult to see any conceivable excuse for the FBI to fail to secure access to
the DNC servers. One would normally moreover expect that, on an issue of this sensitivity, they would have the ‘digital forensics’
done by their own people.
There can be no conceivable excuse for relying on a contractor selected by the organisation which is claiming that there has been
a hack, when an alternative possibility is a leak: and the implications of the alternative possibility could be devastating for that
organisation.
To rely on a contractor linked to the notoriously Russophobic ‘Atlantic Council’ is even more preposterous.
The clear close integration of other cyber people from the ‘Atlantic Council’ into Orwellian ‘information operations’ sponsored
by the British Government simply puts these facts into sharp relief.
There has to be a strong possible ‘prima facie’ case that anyone in authority prepared to accept the ‘digital forensics’ from
‘CrowdStrike’ is complicit in the conspiracy against the constitution, and/or the conspiracy to cover-up that conspiracy. This certainly
goes for Comey, and I think it also goes for Mueller."
OT but related, just watched a former naval Intelligence officer, now working for the Hoover Institute interviewed on FOX about
the Rooshins in Venezuela. Said, the 100 Russians are there to protect Maduro because he cannot trust his own army. Maduro's days
are numbered because he is toxically unpopular.
Got me thinking, our Intelligence services are good at psy-ops and keeping our gullible MSM in line but God help us if we ever
actually needed real Intelligence about a country. I remember about a month ago how all of these 'Think Tank Guys' were predicting
how the only people loyal to Maduro were a few of his crony Generals, that the rank and file military hated him and there were
going to be mass defections.
It didn't happen and we are all just supposed to forget that.
[not a socialist, don't have any love for Maduro, I just know that I will never learn anything of about Venezuela from these think
tank dudes, we are just getting groomed]
Venezuela isn't about "socialism," or even Maduro--it's about the oil. They have the largest proven reserves in the world, though
much of it is non-conventional and would need a ton of investment to exploit. But it's their oil, not ours, and we have no right
to meddle in their internal affairs.
Venezuela is neither about socialism nor oil in my opinion. It is everything to do with the neocons. And Trump buying into their
hegemonic dreams. Notice the resurrection of Elliott Abrams of Iran-Contra fame as the man spearheading this in a triumvirate
with Bolton & Pompeo. IMO, a perfect foil for Putin & Xi to embroil the US in another regime change quagmire that further weakens
the US.
"There can be no conceivable excuse for relying on a contractor selected by the organisation which is claiming that there has
been a hack, when an alternative possibility is a leak: and the implications of the alternative possibility could be devastating
for that organisation.
To rely on a contractor linked to the notoriously Russophobic 'Atlantic Council' is even more preposterous."
True; and true. It is also true that the Clinton e-mail investigation was faux, a limp caricature of what an investigation
would look like when it is designed to uncover the truth. Allowing a subject's law firm to review the subject's e-mails from when
she was in government for relevancy is beyond preposterous. An investigation conducted in the normal way by apolitical Agents
in a field office would not walk away from a trove of evidence empty handed.
The inter-relatedness and overlapping of DoJ, CIA, and FBI personnel assigned to the Clinton e-mail case, the Russophobic nightmare
of a 'case' targeting Carter Page, and by extension, the Trump presidential campaign, and yes, the Mueller political op, all reek
of political bias and ineptitude followed by more political bias; and then culmination in a scorched earth investigation more
characteristic of something the STASI might have undertaken than American justice.
Early morning raids, gag orders, solitary confinements, show indictments that will never see adjudication in a court room - truly
unbelievable.
In your opinion was this surveillance, criminal & counter-intelligence investigation as well as information operations against
Trump centrally orchestrated or was it more reactive & decentralized?
There are so many facets. Fusion GPS & Nellie Ohr with her previous CIA connection. Her husband Bruce at the DOJ stovepiping
the dossier to the FBI. Brennan and his EC. Clapper and his intelligence assessment. Halper, Mifsud, Steele along with Hannigan
and the MI6 + GCHQ connection. Downer and the Aussies. FISA warrants on Page & Papadopolous. The whole Strzok & Page texting.
Comey, Lynch & the Hillary exoneration. McCabe. Then all the Russians. And the media leaks to generate hysteria.
I'd recommend for reading Alexei Yurchak's "Everything Was Forever, Until It was No More: The Last Soviet Generation." Its
about a class of apparatchiks and bureaucrats and hangers on who spoke this arcane, abstract dogmatic language that anyone normal
had long since given up trying to understand. It had long ceased to have any relevance or attachment to the lives lived by ordinary,
increasingly suffering people, who started talking to each other in practical and direct language.
And yet the chatterati
continued to chatter and invent ludicrously unreal worlds and analyses of the actual world they lived in until... bang... it was
no more.
I'd skip the first few chapters which are full of impenetrable marxist jargon.
The Russian collusion investigation was based solely on the dodgy Steele Dossier that was discredited here from the get-go.
This was a product of British Intelligence Community. The intent was to keep and then to get Donald Trump out of the White House.
It failed but they did succeed in turning him into a neo-lib-con fellow traveler.
There are clear parallels between the end stages of the Soviet Union and the American Empire. My take since the Iraq Invasion
is that they are insane. The ruling elite is detached from reality, incompetent and arrogant. Sooner or later someone with their
facilities still intact will lead a middle-class revolt against the global plutocracy to restore democracy and reverse the rising
inequality. We were lucky that the fall of the Soviet Union did not lead to a nuclear war. The next time a nuclear armed Empire
crashes we may not be so fortunate.
Some of Lokhova’s comments on ‘twitter’ are extremely entertaining. An
example, with which I have much sympathy:
‘AN APOLOGY: Yesterday, I compared @nytimes journalists, who smeared @GenFlynn
and accused me of being a Russian spy, to cockroaches. In good conscience, I must apologize
to the cockroaches for the distress caused to them for being compared to @nytimes #Russiagate
hoaxers. Sorry!’
Some of Lokhova’s comments on ‘twitter’ are extremely entertaining. An
example, with which I have much sympathy:
‘AN APOLOGY: Yesterday, I compared @nytimes journalists, who smeared @GenFlynn
and accused me of being a Russian spy, to cockroaches. In good conscience, I must apologize
to the cockroaches for the distress caused to them for being compared to @nytimes #Russiagate
hoaxers. Sorry!’
In its Russiagate coverage, The New York Times has repeatedly offered a
graphic accusing the President's retinue of "more than 100 contacts with Russian nationals." This decision to question the loyalty
of people who have had contact with a Russian national -- so, for just knowing or meeting a Russian -- has been a staple of
New York Times coverage.
"More than 100 contacts with Russian nationals." It's incredible that this can even be an allegation -- in our paper of record
-- there in explainer graphics almost every day, for more than two years now.
It smacks of the famous Senator Joseph
McCarthy speeches
in the 1950s: "I have in my hand a list of 205 [or 57, or 81] "
And yet no one ever seemed to mind.
After all, as former intelligence chief (and
liar to Congress ) James Clapper has
asserted on television, "Russians
are almost genetically driven to co-opt, penetrate, gain favor." Worse, I may have already been co-opted and penetrated without even
knowing it! As Clapper
said
recently on CNN when asked if Trump could be "a Russian asset," it is "a possibility, and I would add to that a caveat, whether
witting or unwitting."
Unwitting!
So you can be an unwitting traitor?
Infected with Russian mind-control, like a zombie?
Yes. As mainstream media have argued repeatedly and quite explicitly.
Over a sinister animation of black and white human cells being penetrated by bright red virus particles, the narration begins:
"The thing about a virus is it doesn't destroy you head-on. Instead, it brings you down -- from the inside. Turning your own cells
into enemies."
This incredible film is well worth watching to see how ill our body politic has become. As the red virus invades cell after cell,
the narration goes on: "This story is about a virus -- a virus created five decades ago by a government, to slowly and methodically
poison its enemies. But it's not a biological virus, it's more like a political one. And chances are, you've already been infected."
Animation cuts abruptly to Donald Trump.
The evil genius behind this virus? The Leonid Brezhnev-era KGB. (Really! I'm not making this up!)
"If you feel like you don't know who to trust anymore, this might be the thing that's making you feel that way," the narrator
says, as the animation shows more and more black and white
cells hopelessly succumbing to the red virus -- reds spreading everywhere, bringing us down from within, as it were. "If you feel
exhausted by the news, this could be why. And if you're sick of it all and you just want to stop caring, then we really need to talk."
Animation cuts to a human eye, now filled like a zombie's with infected red sclera.
Amazing. I thought I was exhausted by the news and sick of it all because the journalists have all become exhausting and sickening;
because whenever I turn on NPR or open up The New York Times , I feel like Jennifer Connelly in "A Beautiful Mind"when
she walks into the garage and discovers it's a shrine to
paranoid schizophrenia, and realizes with horror that Russell Crowe's back home with the baby about to give it a bath.
But no. "Chances are," I'm already infected by a KGB virus. Cut to face of Donald Trump.
Makes sense. After all, I have personally had "more than 100 contacts with Russian nationals." I guess I better turn myself in.
(For anti-viral treatments? Re-education? A struggle session?)
Russian research team which claimed to have detected signs of intelligent life in Washington has now discovered the life there
not to be quite so intelligent after all.
A Russian spokesman, who wishes to remain anonymous, told our Moscow science correspondent -- who also wishes to remain anonymous
-- that the Washington atmosphere has been poisoned by huge clouds of putrid hot air belching from the corporate media. He explained
that such a hostile environment makes it almost impossible for intelligent life to survive, let alone evolve a sustainable culture.
The Russian team believes there may still be small pockets of intelligent life elsewhere on the North American continent but without
the necessary conditions they need to thrive they are destined to disappear without trace.
Speaking off the record, the Russian spokesman, who asked us not to disclose his identity, added that hopes of finding intelligent
life in London, Paris, Berlin and other Western European locations, where it might be expected to flourish, are fading fast. Though
it is believed intelligent life once existed in Occiental Europe, an atmosphere suitable for the maintenance of such life has all
but evaporated.
Russian research team which claimed to have detected signs of intelligent life in Washington has now discovered the life there
not to be quite so intelligent after all.
A Russian spokesman, who wishes to remain anonymous, told our Moscow science correspondent -- who also wishes to remain anonymous
-- that the Washington atmosphere has been poisoned by huge clouds of putrid hot air belching from the corporate media. He explained
that such a hostile environment makes it almost impossible for intelligent life to survive, let alone evolve a sustainable culture.
The Russian team believes there may still be small pockets of intelligent life elsewhere on the North American continent but without
the necessary conditions they need to thrive they are destined to disappear without trace.
Speaking off the record, the Russian spokesman, who asked us not to disclose his identity, added that hopes of finding intelligent
life in London, Paris, Berlin and other Western European locations, where it might be expected to flourish, are fading fast. Though
it is believed intelligent life once existed in Occiental Europe, an atmosphere suitable for the maintenance of such life has all
but evaporated.
by Scott |
Interviews Aaron Maté discusses the aftermath of the Russia investigation
and what it's revealed about mainstream American journalists. In addition to seriously undermining media credibility, the obsession
with possible Russian influence over the president has made it next to impossible for Trump to do anything that might be seen as
helpful for Putin, like pulling troops out of Syria or pushing for nuclear detente.
Russiagate is about keeping Russian down via additional sections. As simple as that. Epidemics of Neo-McCarthyism also
helps to cement cracks in the US neoliberal facade and, as such, is very helpful for the US elite.
It also absolves Neoliberal Democrats of the political fiasco of the century -- rejection of establishment candidate by
the majoring of working Americans which happened when Hillary Clinton was defeated by a person with zero political experience and no
political patty behind him.
Notable quotes:
"... "The results of Mueller's investigations are a disgrace to the U.S. and their political elite. It's now confirmed that all their allegations have been plucked out of thin air. The media have played a shameful role of lie-mongers in a campaign built on lies. The adherents of this conspiracy theory are discredited. Only an idiot can believe them now." ..."
"... We've seen anti-Russian xenophobia spread into the American mainstream. Etched in our minds are comments like the one James Clapper, the former director of national intelligence, made in an interview when he said that Russians are "almost genetically driven to co-opt, penetrate, gain favor, whatever." ..."
"... To those of us who paid attention to American media and politics over the past two years, it quickly became clear that too many in the United States know nothing about our country. ..."
Alexey Pushkov, a former diplomat and a political analyst,
tweeted to his 360,000 followers on Tuesday
, following the release of Attorney General William Barr's summary of the report:
"The results of Mueller's investigations are
a disgrace to the U.S. and their political elite. It's now confirmed that all their allegations have been plucked out of thin air.
The media have played a shameful role of lie-mongers in a campaign built on lies. The adherents of this conspiracy theory are discredited.
Only an idiot can believe them now."
To the Kremlin and its supporters, Russia is the aggrieved party here, and the government's consistent denials of interfering
in America's internal affairs have been fully vindicated. Appearing on the Russian talk show "60 Minutes," Maria Zakharova, a spokeswoman
for the foreign ministry, said the ministry was preparing a report to name and shame the "brigade of propagandists" -- pointing at,
among others, Fareed Zakaria -- who tried to tie Mr. Trump to Russia. She added that "apologies are expected."
... ... ...
...it becomes clear that whatever the outcome of
the Mueller investigation, our relationship with America has changed.
We've seen anti-Russian xenophobia spread into the American mainstream. Etched in our minds are comments like the one James
Clapper, the former director of national intelligence,
made in an interview when he
said that Russians are "almost genetically driven to co-opt, penetrate, gain favor, whatever."
... ... ...
In the atmosphere where "contacts with Russians" has become cause for suspicion, every bank transaction and visa application faces
extra scrutiny. I've heard from people I know about how exchange programs, conferences and businesses are suffering.
To those of us who paid attention to American media and politics over the past two years, it quickly became clear that too many
in the United States know nothing about our country. Ominous images of onion-shaped domes
taking over the
White House baffled us; St. Basil's Cathedral is not part of the Kremlin complex and has no political connotation. The ubiquity
of hammers and sickles in visuals accompanying Trump-Russia reports seemed likewise absurd. Our country hasn't been Communist for
about 30 years.
But we need to understand the Mueller expedition was witch hunt form the beginning to the end, and the fact that Mueller
backed off means that some pressure was exerted on him to stay within civilized discourse, or...
I doubt that Mueller of his anthrax investigation fame would have any problems to implicate Trump in non-existent crimes. That
would means the false assumption that he has some integrity, which his 9/11 behavioud fully contradict of.
In this sense lawyers from Mueller team complain about Mueller betrayal: he carefully selected the most Trump hating lawyers
and brought them for a witch hunt, but at the end he backed off. Ma be under pressure from Israel lobby.
Notable quotes:
"... The legal system isn't supposed to "damage" people, it is supposed to find them innocent or guilty. Shame on Mueller for appointing such disgraceful and unprofessional people. ..."
Greenwald is a consistent voice of sanity from the political left. Need more such sane
voices to restart cultural debate. Because as we all know, politics is downstream from
culture.
He is right tribalism is wrong. What Covington and all the fake stories should teach us it
to make sure that we look at the facts. The hard part is finding the good journalists so you
can support them.
. Gee.....I wonder why the big media firms are having to layoff huge numbers of their
workforce? Could it be that they have destroyed their own credibility and the revenue is no
longer there to support the bloated staffs they once had, because people are going elsewhere
for their information?
The legal system isn't supposed to "damage" people, it is supposed to find them innocent
or guilty. Shame on Mueller for appointing such disgraceful and unprofessional people.
But her time as an Anchor ain't long. She spent two years promoting a hoax. Maybe she came to
believe it herself.
Notable quotes:
"... This whole phenomena seems to b a result of the intersection between political propaganda and the deep psychological wounds of those liberals who were abandoned by their father, particularly female ones. ..."
"... Because those conspiracy theories pale in comparison and importance to claiming the President is a Russian agent and/or asset, which was endorsed by a former CIA head, a former DNI, high level officials in the FBI, who also spied on the opposition campaign using a now totally discredited opposition research dossier, as well as every Democratic candidate for President except maybe Tulsi. ..."
"... Especially ignominious was her much-hyped Trump tax return show. Not sure how she skated on that doozy, despite violating the New York State civil code in the process. ..."
"... I'd love for someone to leak her medical and psychiatric records for public consumption. See how she feels when the shoe's on the other foot. ..."
After watching their increasingly deranged behavior, I have come to believe that
"Trump-Putin" represents a type of compound bad father figure in the psychology of
liberals.
This whole phenomena seems to b a result of the intersection between political propaganda
and the deep psychological wounds of those liberals who were abandoned by their father,
particularly female ones.
If you listen to the ones farthest down the rabbit hole, the constant use of therapy
language "betrayed" "hurt" "violated" etc is very telling.
Maddow and crew have now created a Frankenstein monster that they cannot control. It is
going to get much worse.
What an idiotic article, Maddow is a complete prostitute for the establishment. She does not
have anything to do with Infowars, nor is she like them in any way.
Gene: "I think Rachel has a long way to go before she gets to 911 Trutherism, Sandy Hook and
Pizzagate."
Right, of course. Because those conspiracy theories pale in comparison and importance to
claiming the President is a Russian agent and/or asset, which was endorsed by a former CIA
head, a former DNI, high level officials in the FBI, who also spied on the opposition
campaign using a now totally discredited opposition research dossier, as well as every
Democratic candidate for President except maybe Tulsi.
That sort of thinking is well-grounded, happens every day in America, and has mainstream
respectability, right?
After the Mueller report comes out, maybe she will play the psychosis card, like Alex
Jones?
Especially ignominious was her much-hyped Trump tax return show. Not sure how she skated
on that doozy, despite violating the New York State civil code in the process.
I'd love for someone to leak her medical and psychiatric records for public consumption.
See how she feels when the shoe's on the other foot.
Peter Van Buren nails it. He captures the essence of what happened to Maddow, what she did,
what she became. Lots of memorable lines. Great piece. Thanks.
Once one figures out the cast of highly influential characters that have created this
movement, one can gain a better understanding of the anti-Russia movement and why it
exists.
I agree with most of this. The press and mainstream liberals have attacked Trump from a
McCarthyist paranoid Russiaphobic perspective. As a lefty I would be happy to see MSNBC go
out of business. I don't think it helps the left or the country to balance a highly dishonest
conservative cable network with a dishonest liberal one.
But it is likely that Barr spun the report summary in a favorable direction for Trump. I
don't mean there was collusion, but there might well be obstruction. I don't think he wanted
any sort of investigation into himself or his colleagues because of the more mundane forms of
corruption that exist in his circles. Barr was careful to say the report didn't take a stand
on this, so there was probably some material in there that makes Trump look bad.
Early on, someone dubbed her Rachel MadCow. It's only become truer as time goes on. When
someone goes in that deep on a false conspiracy theory, it's hard to believe they can ever
climb back out.
The entire russiagate conspiracy theory is preposterous on its face. Without repeating the
numerous other debunkings, a person with half the intelligence routinely ascribed to V.V.
Putin would have enough sense to pick a less erratic and more effective patsy, one who could
be blackmailed, one who might actually get something done.
However, on this page we will see cultists frantically condemn this story with a treasure
trove of spin, shifting goalposts, shifting burdens of proof, slandering the messenger,
arguments from ignorance, arguments from authority, assuming facts not in evidence, "six
degrees of separation" type arguments, speculation, jumping to wild conclusions, outrageous
bigotry, gross misunderstanding of law and generally showing the world why prosecution is
something best left to professionals.
This is a valuable lesson in cognitive dissonance. Those who want to believe will find
reasons to continue to do so.
The comet came and went, the cultists are still here.
I believe the MSM is much like Washington DC. You can enter with the best of motives and
intentions, wanting only to do good, but soon you are so covered in slime and muck that you
end up just as corrupt as the worst offender. Plus, you have become utterly incapable of
introspection. You never, ever doubt yourself or your opinion. It's a psychopath academy.
"Maddow's foremost concern has been alleged Trump-Moscow collusion, which she has
repeatedly suggested has continued beyond the election. Here she is on March 9:
Maddow: What's getting to be, I think, particularly unsettling, is that simultaneously, we
are number one, nailing down more direct connections between the Trump campaign and the
Russian government at the time the Russian government was influencing our election. Number
two, at the same time, we are also starting to see what may be signs of continuing influence
in our country. Not just during the campaign but during the administration. Basically, signs
of what could be a continuing operation."
Barr quoting Mueller: "The investigation did not establish that members of the Trump
Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference
activities."
Was she wrong about that, and were you wrong about that?
Instead of Mueller Truthers I'm thinking of renaming folks Mueller Waiters. Wait for the
investigation to end, wait for the summary, wait for the redacted report, wait for the full
report, wait for the underlying documents, wait for the hearings, wait for the tax documents,
wait for wait for something we like.
When it is all said and done, main street will have to make up their own minds about the
media. I as an example cancelled my digital subscriptions to the NYT and the Washington Post,
when Barr made his announcement. I had quit ever watching either CNN or MSNBC a long timer
ago. All that we were subjected to was media bias supporting the deep state. That is not
journalism.
Money quote: "Instead of protecting people, the Magnitsky case helps the "bad guys" to demonstrate to their Russian compatriots
that the West is rotten to the core, its policies are created by compliant stooges (lying thieves and useful idiots), and more rockets
should be built to confront America's injustice towards Russia and others. A lie can never really protect anyone, in my humble opinion.
But the problem is worse. It turns human rights into a hypocritical ideology to protect the interests of the powers that be, a bit like
the slogans about brotherhood and justice in the Soviet Union. "
Notable quotes:
"... Taught in tandem with William Browder's book Red Notice , this film can provide students with a real-life experience in the practice of critical thinking. The film also allows us to revive a discussion of Hayden White's penetrating analysis of the ways in which the structure of the form necessarily influences the content of any artistic or historical narrative. The vehicle of the docudrama that Nekrasov uses in his film, and the competing narratives about the circumstances leading to Magnitsky's death, merit literary and intellectual analysis, along with geopolitical commentary. ..."
"... The Magnitsky Act – Behind the Scenes is about the ways in which the notion of human rights is sometimes used as a fake alibi for white-collar crimes. Though I explore just one case, I think that I have managed to show that those ways are exceptionally sophisticated and efficient, and enlist all the major media, civil society, NGOs, governments, parliaments, and major international organizations. ..."
"... The Magnitsky Act, in my view, is not a weapon that can protect people. The Magnitsky Act was designed to punish those deemed murderers and torturers of Magnitsky. Well, if my film demonstrates that Magnitsky was not murdered (by the people Browder claims he was murdered by), nor was he tortured, the Magnitsky Act is nonsensical. You cannot punish someone for something that did not happen. Can you then say, never mind, human rights violations happen, and it's good to have a mechanism to punish violators even if there's no evidence that people named as violators are guilty? I don't think one can say "never mind". Neither legally, nor, morally. ..."
"... There is no evidence whatsoever that the government of the United States conducted independent investigations of the policemen and the judges who were supposedly involved in the death of Magnitsky. And no one seems to be concerned of course about the rights of those on the Magnitsky list, who can't even reply to the accusations, let alone have the accusations verified by an independent investigator or judge. ..."
In 2016, Andrei Lvovich Nekrasov, a well-known Russian film-maker, playwright, theater director, and actor, released a docudrama
entitled, The Magnitsky Act -- Behind the Scenes . Although the film won many artistic accolades, including a special commendation
from the Prix Europa Award for a Television Documentary, public screenings were abruptly canceled in both Europe and the United States.
Political pressure from various constituents and the threat of lawsuits from William Browder, the American-British billionaire and
human-rights activist, ensured the limitation of the film to a single website. To the knowledge of this author, there has been only
one public screening of The Magnitsky Act -- Behind the Scenes in the United States. In June 2016, Seymour Hersch, a renowned investigative
journalist, presided over a showing of the film at the Newseum in Washington, DC, that generated much controversy. The American press
has not been kind to either the film or the director, Andrei Nekrasov. The Washington Post, The New York Times, The New Yorker,
and The Daily Beast all seem to agree that the film is an overt work of Russian propaganda that aims to introduce confusion
about the circumstances leading to the death of tax accountant, Sergei Magnitsky, in the minds of the viewers. The Putin administration,
which has been the prime target of both the 2012 Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Accountability Act and the 2016 Global Magnitsky Human
Rights Accountability Act, has good reason to promote a film that questions the circumstances surrounding Magnitsky's untimely death
in Moscow's Butyrka Prison in 2009.
Despite a flood of persuasive articles and editorials by well-known journalists suggesting that this inconvenient film deserves
no more than a quick burial, I was drawn to reconsider both the film and the political controversy that it continues to create for
two main reasons. First, as the collapse of the Soviet Union and our own recent presidential campaigns show, we can never entirely
prohibit the intrusion of propaganda or politically slanted content into the public sphere. Instead, as a historian and faculty member
who serves at a public university, I believe that it is my job to teach our students how to diagnose an issue, and how to consider
the many sides that a story necessarily involves. As an intellectual process this has immense value both in and of itself. Source
criticism is a time tested and reliable means through which we can make sense of an event or a phenomenon. Our students need to learn
both the mechanics and the intellectual value of analyzing a source and should be able to evaluate the nature of political content
whether it is embedded in a Facebook post, a scholarly article, or a documentary.
The Magnitsky Act -- Behind the Scenes can serve as an important vehicle to introduce the contested nature of historical
truth, and as a prism, it allows us to view the multiple modes through which various versions of the truth are disseminated in the
twenty-first century. Taught in tandem with William Browder's book Red Notice , this film can provide students with a
real-life experience in the practice of critical thinking. The film also allows us to revive a discussion of Hayden White's penetrating
analysis of the ways in which the structure of the form necessarily influences the content of any artistic or historical narrative.
The vehicle of the docudrama that Nekrasov uses in his film, and the competing narratives about the circumstances leading to Magnitsky's
death, merit literary and intellectual analysis, along with geopolitical commentary.
Second, I am concerned by the fact that both critics and supporters have turned the debate about the film into a referendum on
William Browder, his business dealings as well as his global human rights activism, and the Putin administration. In this interview
with Andrei Nekrasov, I turn the spotlight back on the film-maker, his motivations for making the film, and on his political experiences
since the release of the film. It is important to remember that in the past Nekrasov has made several politically charged films including
Disbelief (2004), and Poisoned by Polonium: The Litvinenko File (2007) -- films that are extremely critical of the
Putin administration. Nekrasov, a student of philosophy and literature, is in the unique position of having experienced censorship
in the Soviet Union, Putin's Russia, and in the democratic countries of Western Europe and the United States.
1) Why did you want to make a film about the Magnitsky Act? What drew you to this project?
Andrei Nekrasov : I felt that the story of Magnitsky, in its accepted version, was very powerful and important. I thought that
Sergei Magnitsky was a hero, and I wanted to tell the story of the modern hero, my compatriot. His case seemed very special because
Magnitsky, a tax lawyer (in reality, an accountant) had come from the world of capitalism, to symbolize all that is good and moral
in modern Russia. I believed that Magnitsky did not surrender under torture and sacrificed his life fighting corruption.
2) Who has funded the making of this film and what motivated them to invest in this production?
AN : The film was produced by Piraya Film, a Norwegian company. There is a long list of funders, and none are from Russia. (Please
visit www.magnitskyact.com for further information). And they are all
very "mainstream." I believe in the United States and Russia it is easier to construe the specific reasons that motivate funders,
who are mostly private, to support a project. In Europe, where more public money is available for the arts, the state is more or
less obliged to fund the cultural process. So I submit an idea to a producer, and if they like it, they introduce it into a complex
system of funding that is supposed to be politically neutral. Only quality matters, in theory. In practice "quality" has political
aspects, and its interpretation is open to prejudices.
But it would be a simplification to say the film was funded because I had set out to tell Browder's version of the Magnitsky case.
Those funders who were (through their commissioning editors) monitoring the editing process, ZDF/ARTE, for example, became aware
of the inconsistencies in Browder's version and supported my investigation into the truth. What they did not realize was who, and
what, we were all dealing with. They did not realize that Browder was supported by the entire political system of North America and
Western Europe. They realized that only when they were told by politicians to stop the film. And they obeyed, contrary to what I
thought was their principles.
3) How has the role of censorship, both in Russia and the West, affected your artistic career?
AN : Censorship has had a very strong and damaging impact on my career. But while censorship in Russia had never been something
surprising to me, the way that the film T he Magnitsky Act – Behind the Scenes was treated by western politicians was totally
unanticipated and shocking. Yet, intellectually, the experience was very illuminating. The pro-Western intelligentsia of Russia,
a class to which I have belonged, idolizes the West and believes that the freedom of expression is an essential and even intrinsic
part of Western culture. The notion that the interests of economically powerful groups can set a geopolitical agenda and that easily
overrides democratic freedom of expression is considered to be a remnant of Soviet era thinking. So I had to have a direct and personal
experience of Western censorship to realize that that notion is rooted in reality.
The issue of censorship in Russia is, on the other hand, often misunderstood in the West. There is no direct political censorship
of the kind that existed in the Soviet Union, and that possibly exists in countries like China today. Many popular Russian news outlets
are critical of the government, and of Putin personally as evidenced by the content in media outlets such as Ekho Moskvy, Novaya
Gazeta, Dozhd TV, New Times, Vedomosti, Colta. ru, and others. The internet is full of mockery of Putin, his ministers and of
his party's representatives. There is neither a system nor the kind of wellresourced deep state structures that control the flow
of information. Many Russian media outlets, for example, repeat Browder's story of Magnitsky killed by the corrupt police with the
state covering it up. All that is perfectly "allowed" while Putin angrily condemns Browder as a criminal and Browder calls himself
Putin's number one enemy. In reality, it is not allowed but simply happens because of the lack of consistent political censorship.
However, you will hardly ever hear a proper analysis and criticism in the Russian media of the big corporations, and of the oligarchs
that make up the state. It is also true that such acute crises as military operations, such as Russian-Georgian war of 2008 produce
intolerance to the voices of the opposition. My film Russian Lessons (2008) about the suffering of the Georgians during that
short war and its aftermath wasbanned in Russia. But nationalism is not only a government policy. It's the prevailing mood. The supposedly
democratic leader of the opposition, that the West seems to praise and support, Alexei Navalny, was on the record insulting Georgians
in jingo-nationalistic posts during the war. The film industry is, of course, easier to steer in the "right direction" as films,
unlike articles and essays, are very expensive to produce. But Russia is a complex society, deeply troubled, but also misunderstood
by the West. If my films, such as Poisoned by Polonium: The Litvinenko File , and Russian Lessons (2010) were attacked
by pro-government media, then some of my articles were censored by the independent, "opposition" outlets, such as Ekho Moskvy
.
4) Did you actually begin filming the movie with an outcome of supporting Browder's story in mind, as you represent in the
film, or did you plan from the start of the filming process to end the film as it now stands?
AN : I started filming the story. I totally believed in the story that Browder had told me, and all the mainstream media repeated
after him.
5) You know that there are many more "disappeared" journalists and others listed in the formal US Congress Magnitsky Act
who have suffered from the effects of corrupt power in Russia. Why did you not address the fates of some of those others as well
in your film?
AN : I may be misunderstanding this question, but I do not see how addressing the fates of "disappeared" journalists and others'
would be relevant to the topic of my film in its final version. I obviously condemn the "disappearance" of journalists and others.
In Russia journalists disappear usually by being "simply" shot (not in "sophisticated" Saudi ways), and as far as I remember only
one is referred to in The Magnitsky Act , Paul Khlebnikov. He was the editor of Forbes, Russia , and was shot in 2004
when Bill Browder was a great fan of Vladimir Putin and continued to be for some time. I have not seen any evidence or even claim,
that Putin may have been behind that murder. I was a friend of Anna Politkovskaya, perhaps the most famous of all Russian journalists
who was assassinated in the recent past. She is featured in my film, Poisoned by Polonium .
The Magnitsky Act – Behind the Scenes is about the ways in which the notion of human rights is sometimes used as a
fake alibi for white-collar crimes. Though I explore just one case, I think that I have managed to show that those ways are exceptionally
sophisticated and efficient, and enlist all the major media, civil society, NGOs, governments, parliaments, and major international
organizations.
6) Does William Browder's role in the formulation of the Magnitsky Act invalidate its value and that of the Global
Magnitsky Act, in seeking to provide protection for those suffering from the effects of deadly and corrupt power such as the recently
deceased Saudi Arabian journalist, Jamal Khashoggi?
AN : Let me, for the argument's sake, pose myself what would seem like a version of your question: "Would Browder's role in creating
a weapon that could protect someone like Khashoggi from deadly and corrupt power invalidate that weapon?" My answer would be, no,
it would not invalidate that weapon. However, we are dealing with a fallacy here, in my humble opinion. The Magnitsky Act, in
my view, is not a weapon that can protect people. The Magnitsky Act was designed to punish those deemed murderers and torturers of
Magnitsky. Well, if my film demonstrates that Magnitsky was not murdered (by the people Browder claims he was murdered by), nor was
he tortured, the Magnitsky Act is nonsensical. You cannot punish someone for something that did not happen. Can you then say, never
mind, human rights violations happen, and it's good to have a mechanism to punish violators even if there's no evidence that people
named as violators are guilty? I don't think one can say "never mind". Neither legally, nor, morally.
There is no evidence whatsoever that the government of the United States conducted independent investigations of the policemen
and the judges who were supposedly involved in the death of Magnitsky. And no one seems to be concerned of course about the rights
of those on the Magnitsky list, who can't even reply to the accusations, let alone have the accusations verified by an independent
investigator or judge.
Instead of protecting people, the Magnitsky case helps the "bad guys" to demonstrate to their Russian compatriots that the West
is rotten to the core, its policies are created by compliant stooges (lying thieves and useful idiots), and more rockets should be
built to confront America's injustice towards Russia and others. A lie can never really protect anyone, in my humble opinion. But
the problem is worse. It turns human rights into a hypocritical ideology to protect the interests of the powers that be, a bit like
the slogans about brotherhood and justice in the Soviet Union.
Choi Chatterjee is a Professor of History at California State University, Los Angeles. Chatterjee, along with Steven Marks,
Mary Neuberger, and Steve Sabol, edited The Wider Arc of Revolution in three volumes (Slavica Publishers).
Relationship with the only nation on Earth besides US is the main casualty of Russiagate. Ever since the religious schism of 1054,
the West has failed to understand Russia. In the 19th Century only Harvard even offered a Russian language course. Our main ally,
Britian, has been irrationally Russophobic since Benjamin Disraeli. There is no evidence of Russian interference in the 2016 election.
The Internet Research Institute was a commercial click bait business, staffed by underpaid grad students, not KGB spies. The DNC
files were not hacked, they were downloaded by disgruntled Bernie Bros and given to Wikileaks.
Trump gave Putin the respect he deserves at Helsinki. Putin has done much for his country, and the world, by checking Western
Imperialism in the Ukraine, Syria, and now Venezuela. History will recognize Putin as the preeminent statesman of the early 21
Century, and will honor Trump to the extent Trump recognizes that.
"The great progressive hope – America was run by a Russian stooge – was over and
done." Peter, have you been hiding out with the Taliban in Tora Bora? Progressives vehemently
detest Raddow Maddow. She represents to them the faux millionaire liberals at MSNBC (
pejoratively nicknamed as "MSDNC" by them ) and at CNN.
Just go online and surf over to The
Jimmy Dore Show on YouTube. He has only utter contempt for Rachael Maddow.
His anger over the
corrupt liberal elites around Hilary Clinton who stole the primary season from Senator Bernie
Sander borders on a psychotic break with reality.
And he had a moment of spritual
schedenfruede when the Mueller report came out and showed her to the obvious fraud that she
is?
If you are unable to distinguish between the liberal wing and the progressive wing within
the Democratic Party, who are waging a bitter civil war against each other, how can I take
you as a serious commentator on politics?
Ian: "It's a problem when conservatives cannot tell the difference between legitimate
inquiries into a president's conduct."
More whitewashing of Maddow's multi-year campaign of journalistic malpractice and public
disinformation.
Lovely it's a problem when conspiracy theorists masquerading as "broadcasters" speculate
about the President being a Russian agent and/or asset, engaging in espionage and treason,
all without evidence, call such claims legitimate inquiries, and then refuse to apologize
when such claims are thoroughly debunked by the Special Counsel.
Again, Barr quoting Mueller: "The investigation did not establish that members of the
Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election
interference activities."
MSNBC's Rachel Maddow lost a whopping 20 percent of her audience after the release of the Mueller Report proved
she shamelessly deceived her audience for more than two years.
The
release
of this report -- you know, the one that exonerates President Trump of any and all allegations of Russia
collusion, is, arguably, the biggest news of the last two years -- and in the heat of this massive news cycle that
lands directly in Maddow's sweet spot, a huge chunk of her audience just up and disappeared.
For two years a cloud of illegitimacy hung over the Trump presidency and for two years the establishment media,
most especially MSNBC and CNN, maniacally fire hosed the American people with fake news to smear the president as a
Russian spy. But of all those guilty of spreading this dishonest hysteria, no one came close to Rachel Maddow.
Night after relentless night, over two-plus years, Maddow kept her suckers on the hook by weaving from whole cloth
a conspiracy tale about Trump being owned by Putin. And with this tale came the promise that Trump's removal from
office was always right around the corner, and that Robert Mueller would be the deliverer -- the angel who would end
the nightmare of a terrible national mistake known as the Trump presidency.
Because this hysteria was everywhere (except in the conservative media that got everything right), there was no
way to warn Maddow's suckers that they were in fact suckers, that like a cult leader promising the end of the world,
she was hustling them, lying to them, and enriching herself in the process to the tune of about $10 million a year.
Maybe now, though, the Cult of Maddow is cracking. I doubt it, but there is some hope in the latest numbers
On Monday March 18, four days before the Mueller Report proved her a liar, 2.977 million people tuned in to
Maddow's carnival bark.
This past Monday, the 25th, three days after the Mueller Report proved her a liar, only 2.513 million tuned in, a
loss of nearly 500,000 viewers.
Lawrence O'Donnell -- whose show immediately follows Maddow and who is almost as obsessed with deceiving his
audience about those damn, dirty Reds -- took a similar hit: a drop from 2.2 million to 1.845 million.
In my decade or so of media coverage, MSNBC has rarely pinged my radar. Who cares about an openly left-wing outlet
being openly left-wing? If CNN would stop its laughable pose as objective, that fake news network would probably
never hear from me again.
This thing with Maddow, though, is bigger because she's a snake oil saleswoman, a bunco artist, a grifter selling
vials of hope filled with lies. For years, and only as a means to stay in the ratings fight with Sean Hannity, Maddow
deliberately played millions and millions of people for suckers, for rubes She hustled them, lied to them, deceived
and hoaxed them in the most cynical way imaginable.
Mueller's got the goods, she promised, and Trump will be marched in cuffs out of the Oval Office, and you must
tune in every single night or you will miss
The Most Important Development Yet
.
And it was all bullshit, a con, a fever swamp of desperate dot-connecting backed by maniacal talking heads and
unhinged "experts" screaming about treason! and indictments! and bombshells! and walls closing in!
So is it possible, dare we dream The Truth has set as much as 20 percent of Maddow's gullible viewers free?
Or is this just more denial and avoidance by the Cult of Rachel. The Daily Beast (that first reported Maddow's
ratings dive) describes it
this way
: "[I]t's also possible that the Mueller disappointment drove loyal viewers away in much the same way
that people avoid looking at their 401(k)s when the stock market is down."
My guess is that the suckers will be back. Maddow will pivot with a wrist flick and a never-mind right into the
next fever dream.
There's a market among neurotic leftists for the drug of delusional denial and the Hoax Queen's got an endless
supply.
Follow John Nolte on Twitter
@NolteNC
.
Follow his Facebook Page
here
.
After watching their increasingly deranged behavior, I have come to believe that
"Trump-Putin" represents a type of compound bad father figure in the psychology of
liberals.
This whole phenomena seems to b a result of the intersection between political propaganda
and the deep psychological wounds of liberals who were abandoned by their father,
particularly female ones.
If you listen to the ones farthest down the rabbit hole, the constant use of therapy
language "betrayed" "hurt" "violated" etc is very telling.
Maddow and crew have now created a Frankenstein monster that they cannot control. It is
going to get much worse.
What an idiotic article, Maddow is a complete prostitute for the establishment. She does not
have anything to do with Infowars, nor is she like them in any way.
Gene: "I think Rachel has a long way to go before she gets to 911 Trutherism, Sandy Hook and
Pizzagate."
Right, of course. Because those conspiracy theories pale in comparison and importance to
claiming the President is a Russian agent and/or asset, which was endorsed by a former CIA
head, a former DNI, high level officials in the FBI, who also spied on the opposition
campaign using a now totally discredited opposition research dossier, as well as every
Democratic candidate for President except maybe Tulsi.
That sort of thinking is well-grounded, happens every day in America, and has mainstream
respectability, right?
How Rachel Maddow Turned Into Infowars
She's still spinning Russiagate conspiracy tales, even as her ratings come crashing down.
By
Peter Van Buren
•
April 5, 2019
Rachel Maddow (MSNBC screenshot)
Though she doesn't often bring it up these days, MSNBC's Rachel Maddow remembers how the
media abetted the Bush administration's lies justifying the 2003 Iraq invasion. That was when elite (in many cases
handpicked) journalists spent months serving as stenographers for the push to war, parroting every carefully crafted
leak without question. They dismissed skeptics as disloyal and spiked stories that would have raised questions about the
narrative. When they got caught, they declared "never again."
Yet with Rachel
Maddow as their poster child (along with David Corn, Luke Harding, Chris Hayes, the entire staff at CNN, and hundreds
more), journalists over the last two years repeated
every
mistake
their predecessors had made in 2003.
They treated
gossip
as fact because it came from a "source"
and told us to just trust them. They blurred the lines between first-hand knowledge, second- and third-hand hearsay, and
"people familiar with the matter" to build breaking news out of manure. They marginalized skeptics as "useful idiots."
(Glenn Greenwald, who called bull on Russiagate from the beginning, says MSNBC
banned
him after he criticized Maddow. He'd
been a regular during the Bush and Obama years.)
They accepted negative information at face value and discarded information that did
not fit their pre-written narrative of collusion.
The Washington Post
never even ran a story about how its reporters came up
empty
after working for months to prove that Michael Cohen met with Russian agents in Prague.
Advertisement
They went all in with salacious headlines, every story a sugar high. They purposefully
muddled the impact of an indictment versus an actual conviction. They conflated anyone from Russia with the Russian
government. They never paused to ask why there weren't "Sources: Trump is Innocent" stories that later needed to be
walked back; the errors were somehow all on one side. They became a machine as trustworthy as the politicians they
relied on.
Though the wars across the Middle East the media helped midwife are beyond sin, the
damage done to journalism itself is far
worse
this time around. With Maddow in the lead, journalists went a step further than just shoddy reporting, proudly declaring
their partisanship (once the cardinal sin of journalism) and placing themselves at the center of the story. In one
critic's
words
,
"In purely journalistic terms, this is
an epic disaster."
So there was Maddow, night after night in front of her serial killer burlap board,
Trump and Putin surrounded by blurry images of Carter Page and George Papadopoulos, she running twine between pins so
her viewers could keep up with her racing intellect. Anyone with a Russian-y surname "had ties to Putin," "connections
to Russian intelligence," or was at least an oligarch. She nurtured an unashamed crush on deep state clowns that the
Rachel Maddow of a few years back would have smirked at -- Brennan, Clapper, Comey.
She ignored or downplayed other news, devoting
over
50
percent of her airtime to Russiagate alone (Trump's Muslim visa ban got
less than 6 percent). She worked to convince Americans that the cornerstone of justice was not "innocent until proven
guilty" but "if there's smoke there's fire." She joined journalists in knowingly publishing material whose veracity they
doubted, centering on the
Steele dossier
.
Maddow became Infowars. She moved beyond the simpleton advocacy journalism of Bush lie
peddling journo tools. She was going to save the country. So she created a story out of whole cloth that reinforced her
political beliefs and convinced people it was true. And it was all justified because the fate of the republic itself
hung in the balance. Any day now, Trump would peel off a rubber mask Scooby Doo-style to reveal that he was Putin all
along.
And then, after years of being held together by the incantation "just wait for Mueller
Time," one day it all fell apart. The Mueller report summary was short, but it answered the most important question ever
asked about a president: Trump was not a Russian asset. There was no Russiagate, no conspiracy, collusion, cooperation,
or indictments, none to come and none sealed we didn't know about, and no treason or perjury charges over the Moscow
hotel or the Trump Tower meeting or anything else. The accusations were as explicit as was the conclusion. It. Did. Not.
Happen.
The great progressive hope -- America was run by a Russian stooge -- was over and done.
Maddow's response? Break another cardinal rule of journalism and bury the lede. Okay, sure, Bill Barr
says
Mueller didn't find collusion if you wanna
believe that, but what matters now is that, even after Robert Mueller did not find evidence of obstruction he could
charge, and the FBI before him did not find any, and Bill Barr confirmed he did not find it, Maddow still
knows
obstruction took place. And if only she could see the full Mueller report, she would explain it all to you. (Maddow is
promoting
a "day of action" for Americans to take to the streets and demand the report.) It wasn't the Russians; it was old man
Barr in the drawing room with the candlestick! Trump is guilty of failing to obstruct an investigation that cleared him!
Meanwhile, after waiting two years for Mueller, waiting two weeks for Barr to release
the report was unconscionable. But two days for Barr to write the summary was too fast, proof the fix was in. Trump
threatens the rule of law, but when the system works according to the law and the attorney general makes a lawful
decision, it's all an inside-job-cover-up-crisis.
A big
focus
for Maddow this week was a foreign
government-owned company resisting an old Mueller subpoena. The case is in front of a grand jury, so the public does not
know what company it is, what government is involved, what the case itself concerns, or whether it has any connection to
Trump, Russia, or the Spiders from Mars. But listening to Maddow spin it all out, it sounds VERY BIG.
Over the course of a recent evening, she tied what she dubbed The Mystery Case into
Watergate (the same court being used as in 1974 is about the only connection), and because the Watergate judge released
some grand jury testimony to help drive Nixon from office, this bodes ill for Trump keeping the dirt Rachel just knows
is there secret. It could break this wide open!
The whole oral manifesto was delivered Howard Beale-like in what seemed like one long
breath, with the certainty of someone who sees ghosts and is frustrated you can't see them too. It got so bad that
recently Maddow was
corrected
by her own
producers
in real time.
It took the
New York Times
over a year after the Iraq war started to issue a mild "mistakes were made" kind of
self-rebuke
. At some point with Russiagate,
many people will come to understand that there aren't more questions than answers. They'll abandon the straw man of
waiting for prosecutors to issue a magic Certificate of Exoneration because they'll understand that prosecutors end
things by deciding not to prosecute.
But it's hard to see Maddow returning to earth orbit. Instead of a reflective pause,
she is spinning ever-more complex and nonsensical conspiracy tales, talking faster and faster to cover the gaps in
logic. It is sad, but there are psychiatric terms for people who refuse to accept facts and insist they alone understand
a world you can't even see. Delusion. Denial. Psychosis. Obsession. Paranoia.
Maddow is a sad story. Others playing the cable news game never had her intellect
(looking at you, Don Lemon and Chris Cuomo). They were weekend Vichy, showbiz grifters. But Maddow believed. Her goal
was to end the Trump presidency on her own. And to do so, she devolved from what Glenn Greenwald
called
"this really smart, independent thinker
into this utterly scripted, intellectually dishonest, partisan hack."
There's a difference between being wrong once in a while (and issuing corrections) and
being wrong for two years on both the core point as well as the evidence. There is even more wrong with purposefully
manipulating information to drive a specific narrative, believing that the ends justify the means.
In journalism school, the first is called making a mistake. The second, Maddow's
offense, is called propaganda.
"Maddow's audience has dipped on her two days back on the air since Attorney General
William P. Barr reported that special counsel Robert Mueller had found no collusion between
Trump and Russia's efforts. Her audience of 2.5 million on Monday was 19% below her average
this year, and it went down further to 2.3 million on Tuesday, the Nielsen company said.
Meanwhile, her head-to-head competitor on Fox News Channel, Sean Hannity, saw his audience
soar on Monday to 4 million viewers, a 32% increase from his average. It slipped to 3.57
million on Tuesday. One of Trump's most prominent media fans, Hannity was to interview the
president on Wednesday's show."
"Were these gun rights folks potentially a conduit for Russian money alongside other forms of
Russian government influence on our 2016 campaign?" -- Rachel Maddow, MSNBC, July 25, 2018
Let me add my two cents. If you accuse someone of wrong-doing, and the accusation is serious,
then two points:
1. A basic moral principle undergirding what we call "civilization" is the notion that the
burden of proof is on the accuser. It is the accuser that must prove the accusation. The
accused, or any of the accused defenders, DO NOT HAVE TO "PROVE" ANYTHING, PERIOD.
2. The more serious the accusation, the stiffer the burden of proof. Period.
Because of their flagrant disregard for these basic principles, what we call the
"mainstream media" in the U.S. has shown itself to be utterly worthless and untrustworthy.
And the MORE serious the issue, the LESS trustworthy it is!
Just like the Muslim freshman Congresswoman Ilhan Omar's courageous stand against the
fascist duopoly's attempt to crush her for daring to not back down from calling AIPAC a foreign
lobby was a watershed moment in confronting the uncritical support of a RW Israeli government,
Greenwald's blistering takedown of fellow journalist David Cay Johnston, and by extension the
entire American MSM, is another watershed moment in the growing divide between media
corporatists (Neoliberals & Neocons), who are straining themselves to keep afloat a Duopoly
system that could arguably be called fascism which has been in place since at least the turn of
the century (if not longer), and the surging dissidents who see this as the fundamental problem
above all else.
The Red Herring Russia Hysteria Meltdown turned out to be a proxy battle between the few
dissenters who believe that the capitalist Duopoly is the real problem (with Money In Politics
being the cement that keeps it together) and have never bought into this farce; and the many
mainstream media lapdogs, $hillary zombies and Democratic Party loyalists who concocted and
desperately wanted needed to believe it. They completely melted down to lose all
sense of reason and rationale in their hyperventilation to keep propped up the rotting edifice
of a party and system within which those players have been able to continue getting rich from
and to go merrily believing that dutifully voting for the Lesser of Two Evils is the full
enshrinement of the Greatest Democracy Money Can Buy In The World .
The idea that electioneering, which is what placing ads is (even a minuscule amount), could
be conflated with collusion by a foreign government to steal an election, was so laughably
outrageous. Furthermore, to imply that our elections were so pure and that we didn't do such
things around the world ourselves (despite that the CIA had brutally intervened in over 50 elections
globally ), just put the icing on our incredulity. As for Trump's criminality, there was
plenty of that to go around. But where was the media to thoroughly vet him during the campaign?
Nowhere in sight, or rather televising gawking at his non-stop, car crash porn of a
campaign which was driving advertising dollars into their pockets. But we were supposed to
believe they suddenly got into gear once he was elected and became these super sleuths? What a
fucking joke.
There were only a relative handful of us who never believed this infuriating garbage.
Virtually the entire MSM engaged in one of the worst, most embarrassing examples of propaganda
the country has ever seen, as Taibbi writes here and
here. It confoundingly gripped even some of the smarter people we all knew. Lost to
propaganda. But then they ultimately lost, big-time.
What was at risk? Only nuclear war with Russia. And, just as consequential, this farce took
up all the air in the room, spreading false hope to demented $hillary losers who could be found
whimpering on their couches curled up in the fetal position in front of MSNBC every night, a
bottle of white wine atop the magazines on the coffee table. One could gather up a trove of
issues that weren't talked about at all by the MSM, including the massive teacher's strikes
happening all over the country, continued health insurance nightmares, the existential threat
of climate change, rampant poverty, widespread depressed wages and overworking, Yemen, Trump's
outrageously corrupt cabinet and their massive power grabs, etc., etc., etc.
It is right now that this country, and especially its journalists, have to have a
completely honest existential dialogue about what has been going on, how we got here, who is
responsible and what is driving it (which we know will probably never come, though there are
some signs of admission, which I've started to compile for another essay).
For this reason, the interview really has to be seen to be experienced. The anger at all
this just wells up in Greenwald and he really doesn't hold back. As we know he's long been one
of the very quickest-minded, most cogent and incisive journalists of this era. Under normal
circumstances few can withstand his sheer power of his lightning intellect. This poor shlub,
who has written some really good things about income inequality and Wall St criminality but
carried on the lie, was so justifiably exposed for his dumb stance and continued obstinacy
about it.
But if you're short for time here's some of the best segments (though you really should see
Greenwald's disgust).
He lit into Rachel Maddow, the MSM and the Democratic Party. He slammed the highest rated
liberal show host who "every single night misled millions of liberals into believing something
that was totally false," calling that decision "extremely grave and serious," and saying that
"there will be no reckoning and consequences for this story that the media got radically,
fundamentally and deliberately wrong for almost three years now in a very dangerous way."
(all emphasis mine)
This is the saddest media spectacle I've ever seen, since I began practicing journalism in
2005. And what makes it even sadder is to watch all of the people who vested their
journalistic credibility into what proved to be a complete and total fraud and scam continue
to try and cling to some vestige of credibility by continuing to spin conspiracy theories
that are even more reckless and more unhinged than the ones to which we've been subjected for
three years .
... I believe that Donald Trump is one of the most corrupt people ever to occupy the White
House. I am certain that he's guilty of all kinds of crimes -- war crimes as president,
financial crimes as a business person. One of the reasons why those of us who were so angry
about this obsession on Russia and collusion, aside from the fact that it was so dangerous to
ratchet up tensions between two nuclear-armed powers this way instead of trying to forge a
peace between these two countries, is precisely because it took the oxygen away from all of
the things that the Trump administration is doing that is so damaging, in lieu of this
idiotic, moronic, Tom Clancy-type espionage thriller, where we were talking about Putin
blackmailing Donald Trump with pee-pee tapes and Donald Trump being a Russian agent since
1987, which was a cover story that was on New York magazine, that Chris Hayes put on MSNBC.
Just all kinds of moronic conspiracies, that we love to mock other countries' medias for
circulating and disseminating, drowned out our airwaves and our discourse for three years,
preventing us from focusing on the real, substantive damage that the Trump administration is
doing and that Donald Trump's corruption entails.
He eviscerated Johnston's mealy-mouthed walk backs and continued spinning of this through
the course of the interview, and the proxy MSM:
But the reality is, the media chose to focus on this. Everybody knows this. David Cay
Johnston was on your show, Amy, a week ago, and he said, "Donald Trump, I believe, is a
Russian agent." We now have a full-scale, 20-month investigation by somebody that everybody
agreed was a man of great integrity who would get to the bottom of all of this, who had full
subpoena power. And David keeps trying to imply, which is totally false, that all that
Mueller said was, "Oh, it just doesn't rise to the level of criminality." That is not what he
said. He said, after 20 months of a full-scale investigation -- which, by the way, included
hours of interrogating Donald Trump Jr. before Congress, all of the transcripts of which were
made available to Mueller, which he could have prosecuted Trump Jr. on for perjury and
obstruction had Donald Trump Jr. lied about anything, but he chose not to. He said, "After
reviewing all of this evidence, I am concluding that this did not happen," not that it
doesn't rise to the level where I can criminally prosecute. He's saying there was no
collusion.
The game is over, and it's time to be honest about it. And the more we try to cling to
this and invent new -- you know what it reminds me of? In 2003, when the neocons finally had
to face the truth that there were no WMDs, that they had fabricated that, that the media had
misled millions of people around the world for years, and they started saying, "Um, maybe
Saddam hid them in Syria. Maybe they're buried in places we just haven't looked yet." It's
time to face the truth. The media got this story wrong. They obsessed on this for three
years, and all this time there was no evidence for it. It was just a conspiracy theory.
Rachel Maddow, the most influential liberal TV host in the country, every single night misled
millions of liberals into believing something that was totally false, and there will be no
media consequences for it. And that is extremely grave and serious, no matter how much is
true about how corrupt Donald Trump is in his financial dealings or any of the other stuff
that people are now trying to deflect our attention onto.
Then he turned to the fundamental questions of the actual election, never discussed in the
MSM:
Why did millions of people vote for a complete joke of a game show host? And how did the
Democrats lose the presidency to one of the most embarrassing spectacles of a candidate in
U.S. history? What is the prevailing ideology of the ruling class that has turned millions
and millions of people, and to this country, into such angry citizens that they either refuse
to vote or vote for the person who promises to burn down the entire system? Why are they so
angry? What has happened to their economic security? What ideology and what group of people
are responsible for that? What has Donald Trump been doing in realigning the United States
away from the Western Europe and to Saudi despots, and the collusion that actually happened,
which was from the Israeli government during the election in order to undermine Obama's
policies? All those kinds of questions could have been asked and should have been asked, but
it all got drowned out because we were all so much more fascinated by this superficial, kind
of very appealing and melodramatic espionage thriller, that has completely destroyed the
credibility of the U.S. media and so tragically vindicated Donald Trump in a way that
probably is the greatest gift that has been given to him throughout his entire
presidency.
When reminded that last year Chomsky said the rest of the world was looking at our media's
obsession that Russia's meddling in the election helped Trump was a "joke", he said this:
Well, that's been the other critical point this entire time, is this kind of melodrama
over the outrage that any country would dare to interfere in our sacred and glorious
democracy, when, as Noam Chomsky just pointed out and has spent the last 40 years pointing
out, the United States has done very little since the end of World War II but going around
the world and interfering in every single democracy that they can find , literally, including
the country in which I'm currently living, which is Brazil, where they overthrew a
democratically elected government in 1964 and then proceeded to impose a military regime for
21 years, and also Russia, where they openly boasted about helping to elect Boris Yeltsin
because he would privatize everything and that would be good for U.S. industry, or even
agitating anti-Putin resistance in parliamentary elections under Hillary Clinton's reign as
secretary of state .
This doesn't make it right for Russia to do it, but we've never kept in perspective the
fact that interfering or meddling in other countries' elections or governance is not some
grave, aberrational, never-before-heard drama that the entire world has to stop and lament
and put an end to. It's normal business. We're currently, right now, in the process of trying
to change the government of Venezuela openly, and have done so over and over around the
world. And that's why Noam Chomsky says that all of this moral outrage of Americans at the
idea that somebody would interfere in or meddle in our democracy has made the U.S. a
laughingstock to the hundreds of millions of people -- billions, in fact -- who live in
countries where the U.S. has done this and far, far worse for decade after decade after
decade .
Painting the pig's face
1. The left never had a dog in this race. This was always an in-house squabble between
different wings of the establishment. Late-stage capitalism is in terminal crisis, and the
biggest problem facing our corporate elites is how to emerge from this crisis with their
power intact. One wing wants to make sure the pig's face remains painted, the other is happy
simply getting its snout deeper into the trough while the food lasts...
The leaders of the Democratic party are less terrified of Trump and what he represents
than they are of us and what we might do if we understood how they have rigged the political
and economic system to their permanent advantage.
It may look like Russiagate was a failure, but it was actually a success. It deflected the
left's attention from endemic corruption within the leadership of the Democratic party, which
supposedly represents the left. It rechannelled the left's political energies instead towards
the convenient bogeymen targets of Trump and Russian president Vladimir Putin.
Mired in corruption
What Mueller found -- all he was ever going to find -- was marginal corruption in the
Trump camp. And that was inevitable because Washington is mired in corruption. In fact, what
Mueller revealed was the most exceptional forms of corruption among Trump's team while
obscuring the run-of-the-mill stuff that would have served as a reminder of the endemic
corruption infecting the Democratic leadership too.
An anti-corruption investigation would have run much deeper and exposed far more. It would
have highlighted the Clinton Foundation, and the role of mega-donors like James Simons,
George Soros and Haim Saban who funded Hillary's campaign with one aim in mind: to get their
issues into a paid-for national "consensus".
Further, in focusing on the Trump camp -- and relative minnows like Paul Manafort and
Roger Stone -- the Russiagate inquiry actually served to shield the Democratic leadership
from an investigation into the much worse corruption revealed in the content of the DNC
emails.
Trump empowered
2. But it's far worse than that. It is not just that the left wasted two years of
political energy on Russiagate. At the same time, they empowered Trump, breathing life into
his phoney arguments that he is the anti-establishment president, a people's president the
elites are determined to destroy...
The other wing of the neoliberal establishment, the one represented by the Democratic
party leadership, fears that exposing capitalism in this way -- making explicit its
inherently brutal, wrist-slitting tendencies -- will awaken the masses, that over time it
will risk turning them into revolutionaries. Democratic party leaders fear Trump chiefly
because of the threat he poses to the image of the political and economic system they have so
lovingly crafted so that they can continue enriching themselves and their children.
The whole thing is excellent. You should read it.
There is a serious reckoning going on right now. Call 'em what you will,
Neoliberals/Corporatists/Beltway/Necons, are being exposed for all-time. The curtain is off the
hooks on its way down.
The whole Red Herring RussiaGate Hysteria Meltdown strikes me as this:
It was concocted first and foremost as a distraction from the shock suffered by Hillary
fans and the MSM that HRC was such a horrible, highly disliked and untrustworthy candidate,
and that she pathetically lost to a candidate with the same characteristics in a contest of
who was absolutely just a little less detested than the other. The scorned $hillary
sycophants, who willfully refused to step outside the bubble of It's Her Turn - All Things
Hillary world, had their hubris so shaken, rattled and rolled that for their sanity, and by
extension the rest of the country who also believed that ours wasn't such a rotting system
that could upchuck a demented clown like Trump, they had to insist blame lie elsewhere
(racism, Russia, etc) than their laughably horrible campaign and a roiling disgust with
politics as usual.
The mass hysteria of Trump/Russia shooting out like a fire hydrant every night on cable
tv and social media was also designed as the perfect foil for covering up the flagrant and
brazen collusion to cheat Bernie out of the nomination. "Who cares about that, when we have a
president illegally occupying the White House as a puppet of Putin?" All of the legitimate
evidence of electoral fraud, voter roll purges, caucus cheating, insider collusion, paid
media hatchet jobs, etc (in other words, everything the Repubs are charged with but that the
DNC did to Bernie) got buried under this avalanche. This is probably the thing that'll remain
most enraging to me: all of that massive, genuine support for a movement candidate viciously
torn to pieces, having the effect of a whole next generation of folks crippled in their
belief about electoral politics.
Secondarily, this also served as the perfect cover, taking up all the air in the room, to
having the discussion about our entire election process. Beginning with the elephant in the
room: "how did it come this - first of all, that the two most hated candidates were our only
choices (most people never consider a third party, which is a whole other subject)? The 2016
election process should have ripped the mask off of the false pride we have in our decrepitly
corrupt elections, in which the whole process has been nothing more than an Auction House to
the Highest Bidder, at every level. Then there's the "electoral college," the private
national committees running the parties' elections, the debate limitations, "superdelegates,"
gerrymandering, no active and real membership in either party (only an expectation usually
driven by fear and threat, that you blindly keep showing up to vote for your party).
It was also a huge, wildly lame gambit to inure the Democrats from having to address the
real issues that are effecting people, hoping instead to be able to run again only as "We're
Not Trump." Poll after poll showed most Americans could care less about Russia , with almost
every issue polling higher.
The Mueller deification was also a natural reaction by a soft and pampered American
people who have been conditioned to look for heroes to swoop in and make everything ok
again, as can be found in a child's fable. Nobody wants to do the hard work anymore of
being civilly engaged, informed and asking questions. Consumerism, social media
self-aggrandizement and 24/7 entertainment have replaced it.
This was the Democrats lazy way out, which was the perfect foil for a lazy citizenry who
have come to expect coddling in every aspect of their lives. It was also what they're
expected to do on behalf of their donors. Few can be bothered to be involved civically in
any way, show up in person to support an oppressed or marginalized faction (not just sign
an online petition). A lot of this simply boiled down to a salient truth few wanted to
accept: that almost all politicians are paid to do as little as possible for the people,
biding their time in office ruffling as few feathers as possible, for the express purpose
of then re-entering the political world as lobbyists so that they can enrich their campaign
donors exponentially after they've learned the ropes inside.
It's so obvious why most Bernie supporters, but not all - because a good bit fell into
the all-consuming MSM trap of Russia propaganda and became afflicted with Trump Derangement
Syndrome, never bought into this ludicrous bullshit. They had endured being firsthand
witnesses to the rampant election fraud being pulled by the DNC during the 2106 primary, of
which the MSM completely and utterly turned a blind eye. If it was possible that the media
could collude in that way, then it was possible that the media could do the same for the
opposite.
The irony of it still stings: the media with its resources could have easily turned up
easily verifiable evidence of tampering and kinds of fraud during the DNC primary; but
instead they went all in for the most absurd and ridiculous hare-brained scheme that the
Orange Buffoon was the one who colluded with Russia to steal the election. If any of these
Beltway, cocktail party lapdogs had just once ventured out of their gated communities and
conventional thinking to be bothered to visit the heartland they would have seen that the
country was in the midst of a populist revolution, most prominently dominated by support
for Bernie Sanders but also to a slightly lesser degree for Drumpf.
There's a major chasm starting to split the land, between those who cling to the myth of
American Exceptionalism and fealty to the two political parties of the Duopoly, and a
burgeoning movement of people distrustful of the power structure and its propaganda to hide the
truth about a dying system.
"... "You know all of this has been invented, made up by people who are in opposition to President Trump with a view to shedding a negative light on what Trump is doing," ..."
"... Meetings between Russian diplomatic officials and Trump's campaign team before the election were routine and normal, and part of a process to figure out what a potential U.S. candidate will do should he or she come to power, Putin said. But those meetings, particularly those involving the former Russian ambassador to the U.S., were twisted by Trump's opponents. ..."
"... "For me, it's very bizarre," Putin said. "I don't understand what someone saw there that was out of place in those meetings, and why all this should turn into a kind of 'spymania.'" ..."
Accusations that Donald Trump's team colluded with the Kremlin during the 2016 U.S.
presidential election campaign are an invention of the American president's opposition that has
sparked "spymania" in Washington, Russian President Vladimir Putin said Thursday.
"You know all of this has been invented, made up by people who are in opposition to
President Trump with a view to shedding a negative light on what Trump is doing," Putin said,
responding to a U.S. journalist's question during his annual marathon news conference in
Moscow.
Meetings between Russian diplomatic officials and Trump's campaign team before the election
were routine and normal, and part of a process to figure out what a potential U.S. candidate
will do should he or she come to power, Putin said. But those meetings, particularly those
involving the former Russian ambassador to the U.S., were twisted by Trump's opponents.
"For me, it's very bizarre," Putin said. "I don't understand what someone saw there that was
out of place in those meetings, and why all this should turn into a kind of 'spymania.'"
This article by late Robert Parry is from 2016 but is still relevant in context of the
current Ukrainian elections and the color revolution is Venezuela. The power of neoliberal
propaganda is simply tremendous. For foreign events it is able to distort the story to such an
extent that the most famous quote of CIA director William Casey "We'll know our disinformation
program is complete when everything the American public believes is false" looks like
constatation of already accomplished goal.
Exclusive: Several weeks before Ukraine's 2014 coup, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State
Nuland had already picked Arseniy Yatsenyuk to be the future leader, but now "Yats" is no
longer the guy, writes Robert Parry.
In reporting on the resignation of Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, the major
U.S. newspapers either ignored or distorted Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland's
infamous intercepted
phone call before the 2014 coup in which she declared "Yats is the guy!"
Though Nuland's phone call introduced many Americans to the previously obscure Yatsenyuk,
its timing – a few weeks before the ouster of elected Ukrainian President Viktor
Yanukovych – was never helpful to Washington's desired narrative of the Ukrainian people
rising up on their own to oust a corrupt leader.
Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland, who pushed for the
Ukraine coup and helped pick the post-coup leaders.
Instead, the conversation between Nuland and U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt
sounded like two proconsuls picking which Ukrainian politicians would lead the new government.
Nuland also disparaged the less aggressive approach of the European Union with the pithy
put-down: "Fuck the E.U.!"
More importantly, the intercepted call, released onto YouTube in early February 2014,
represented powerful evidence that these senior U.S. officials were plotting – or at
least collaborating in – a coup d'etat against Ukraine's democratically elected
president. So, the U.S. government and the mainstream U.S. media have since consigned this
revealing discussion to the Great Memory Hole.
On Monday, in reporting on Yatsenyuk's Sunday speech in which he announced that he is
stepping down, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal didn't mention the Nuland-Pyatt
conversation at all. The New York Times did mention the call but misled its readers regarding
its timing, making it appear as if the call followed rather than preceded the coup. That way
the call sounded like two American officials routinely appraising Ukraine's future leaders, not
plotting to oust one government and install another.
The Times
article by Andrew E. Kramer said: "Before Mr. Yatsenyuk's appointment as prime minister in
2014, a leaked recording of a telephone conversation between Victoria J. Nuland, a United
States assistant secretary of state, and the American ambassador in Ukraine, Geoffrey R. Pyatt,
seemed to underscore the West's support for his candidacy. 'Yats is the guy,' Ms. Nuland had
said."
Notice, however, that if you didn't know that the conversation occurred in late January or
early February 2014, you wouldn't know that it preceded the Feb. 22, 2014 coup. You might have
thought that it was just a supportive chat before Yatsenyuk got his new job.
You also wouldn't know that much of the Nuland-Pyatt conversation focused on how they
were going to "glue this thing" or "midwife this thing," comments sounding like prima facie
evidence that the U.S. government was engaged in "regime change" in Ukraine, on Russia's
border.
The 'No Coup' Conclusion
But Kramer's lack of specificity about the timing and substance of the call fits with a long
pattern of New York Times' bias in its coverage of the Ukraine crisis. On Jan. 4, 2015, nearly
a year after the U.S.-backed coup, the Times published an "investigation" article declaring
that there never had been a coup. It was just a case of President Yanukovych deciding to leave
and not coming back.
That article reached its conclusion, in part, by ignoring the evidence of a coup, including
the Nuland-Pyatt phone call. The story was co-written by Kramer and so it is interesting to
know that he was at least aware of the "Yats is the guy" reference although it was ignored in
last year's long-form article.
Instead, Kramer and his co-author Andrew Higgins took pains to mock anyone who actually
looked at the evidence and dared reach the disfavored conclusion about a coup. If you did, you
were some rube deluded by Russian propaganda.
"Russia has attributed Mr. Yanukovych's ouster to what it portrays as a violent,
'neo-fascist' coup supported and even choreographed by the West and dressed up as a popular
uprising," Higgins and Kramer
wrote . "Few outside the Russian propaganda bubble ever seriously entertained the Kremlin's
line. But almost a year after the fall of Mr. Yanukovych's government, questions remain about
how and why it collapsed so quickly and completely."
The Times' article concluded that Yanukovych "was not so much overthrown as cast adrift by
his own allies, and that Western officials were just as surprised by the meltdown as anyone
else. The allies' desertion, fueled in large part by fear, was accelerated by the seizing by
protesters of a large stock of weapons in the west of the country. But just as important, the
review of the final hours shows, was the panic in government ranks created by Mr. Yanukovych's
own efforts to make peace."
Yet, one might wonder what the Times thinks a coup looks like. Indeed, the Ukrainian coup
had many of the same earmarks as such classics as the CIA-engineered regime changes in Iran in
1953 and in Guatemala in 1954.
The way those coups played out is now historically well known. Secret U.S. government
operatives planted nasty propaganda about the targeted leader, stirred up political and
economic chaos, conspired with rival political leaders, spread rumors of worse violence to come
and then – as political institutions collapsed – watched as the scared but duly
elected leader made a hasty departure.
In Iran, the coup reinstalled the autocratic Shah who then ruled with a heavy hand for the
next quarter century; in Guatemala, the coup led to more than three decades of brutal military
regimes and the killing of some 200,000 Guatemalans.
Coups don't have to involve army tanks occupying the public squares, although that is an
alternative model which follows many of the same initial steps except that the military is
brought in at the end. The military coup was a common approach especially in Latin America in
the 1960s and 1970s.
' Color Revolutions'
But the preferred method in more recent years has been the "color revolution," which
operates behind the façade of a "peaceful" popular uprising and international pressure
on the targeted leader to show restraint until it's too late to stop the coup. Despite the
restraint, the leader is still accused of gross human rights violations, all the better to
justify his removal.
Later, the ousted leader may get an image makeover; instead of a cruel bully, he is
ridiculed for not showing sufficient resolve and letting his base of support melt away, as
happened with Mohammad Mossadegh in Iran and Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala.
But the reality of what happened in Ukraine was never hard to figure out. Nor did you have
to be inside "the Russian propaganda bubble" to recognize it. George Friedman, the founder of
the global intelligence firm Stratfor, called Yanukovych's overthrow "the most blatant coup
in history."
Which is what it appears if you consider the evidence. The first step in the process was to
create tensions around the issue of pulling Ukraine out of Russia's economic orbit and
capturing it in the European Union's gravity, a plan defined by influential American neocons in
2013.
On Sept. 26, 2013, National Endowment for Democracy President Carl Gershman, who has been a
major neocon paymaster for decades, took to the op-ed page of the neocon Washington Post and
called Ukraine "the biggest prize" and an important interim step toward toppling Russian
President Vladimir Putin.
At the time, Gershman, whose NED is funded by the U.S. Congress to the tune of about $100
million a year, was financing scores of projects inside Ukraine training activists, paying for
journalists and organizing business groups.
As for the even bigger prize -- Putin -- Gershman wrote: "Ukraine's choice to join Europe
will accelerate the demise of the ideology of Russian imperialism that Putin represents.
Russians, too, face a choice, and Putin may find himself on the losing end not just in the near
abroad but within Russia itself."
At that time, in early fall 2013, Ukraine's President Yanukovych was exploring the idea of
reaching out to Europe with an association agreement. But he got cold feet in November 2013
when economic experts in Kiev advised him that the Ukrainian economy would suffer a $160
billion hit if it separated from Russia, its eastern neighbor and major trading partner. There
was also the West's demand that Ukraine accept a harsh austerity plan from the International
Monetary Fund.
Yanukovych wanted more time for the E.U. negotiations, but his decision angered many western
Ukrainians who saw their future more attached to Europe than Russia. Tens of thousands of
protesters began camping out at Maidan Square in Kiev, with Yanukovych ordering the police to
show restraint.
Meanwhile, with Yanukovych shifting back toward Russia, which was offering a more generous
$15 billion loan and discounted natural gas, he soon became the target of American neocons and
the U.S. media, which portrayed Ukraine's political unrest as a black-and-white case of a
brutal and corrupt Yanukovych opposed by a saintly "pro-democracy" movement.
Cheering an Uprising
The Maidan uprising was urged on by American neocons, including Assistant Secretary of State
for European Affairs Nuland, who passed out cookies at the Maidan and reminded Ukrainian
business leaders that the United States had invested $5 billion in their "European
aspirations."
A screen shot of U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland
speaking to U.S. and Ukrainian business leaders on Dec. 13, 2013, at an event sponsored by
Chevron, with its logo to Nuland's left.
Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona, also showed up, standing on stage with right-wing extremists
from the Svoboda Party and telling the crowd that the United States was with them in their
challenge to the Ukrainian government.
As the winter progressed, the protests grew more violent. Neo-Nazi and other extremist
elements from Lviv and other western Ukrainian cities began arriving in well-organized brigades
or "sotins" of 100 trained street fighters. Police were attacked with firebombs and other
weapons as the violent protesters began seizing government buildings and unfurling Nazi banners
and even a Confederate flag.
Though Yanukovych continued to order his police to show restraint, he was still depicted
in the major U.S. news media as a brutal thug who was callously murdering his own people. The
chaos reached a climax on Feb. 20 when mysterious snipers opened fire, killing both police and
protesters. As the police retreated, the militants advanced brandishing firearms and other
weapons. The confrontation led to significant loss of life, pushing the death toll to around 80
including more than a dozen police.
U.S. diplomats and the mainstream U.S. press immediately blamed Yanukovych for the sniper
attack, though the circumstances remain murky to this day and some investigations have
suggested that the lethal sniper fire came from buildings controlled by Right Sektor
extremists.
To tamp down the worsening violence, a shaken Yanukovych signed a European-brokered deal on
Feb. 21, in which he accepted reduced powers and an early election so he could be voted out of
office. He also agreed to requests from Vice President Joe Biden to pull back the police.
The precipitous police withdrawal opened the path for the neo-Nazis and other street
fighters to seize presidential offices and force Yanukovych and his officials to flee for their
lives. The new coup regime was immediately declared "legitimate" by the U.S. State Department
with Yanukovych sought on murder charges. Nuland's favorite, Yatsenyuk, became the new prime
minister.
Throughout the crisis, the mainstream U.S. press hammered home the theme of white-hatted
protesters versus a black-hatted president. The police were portrayed as brutal killers who
fired on unarmed supporters of "democracy." The good-guy/bad-guy narrative was all the American
people heard from the major media.
The New York Times went so far as to delete the slain policemen from the narrative and
simply report that the police had killed all those who died in the Maidan. A typical Times
report on March 5, 2014, summed up the storyline: "More than 80 protesters were shot to death
by the police as an uprising spiraled out of control in mid-February."
The mainstream U.S. media also sought to discredit anyone who observed the obvious fact that
an unconstitutional coup had just occurred. A new theme emerged that portrayed Yanukovych as
simply deciding to abandon his government because of the moral pressure from the noble and
peaceful Maidan protests.
Any reference to a "coup" was dismissed as "Russian propaganda." There was a parallel
determination in the U.S. media to discredit or ignore evidence that neo-Nazi militias had
played an important role in ousting Yanukovych and in the subsequent suppression of anti-coup
resistance in eastern and southern Ukraine. That opposition among ethnic-Russian Ukrainians
simply became "Russian aggression."
Nazi symbols on helmets worn by members of Ukraine's Azov battalion. (As filmed by a
Norwegian film crew and shown on German TV)
This refusal to notice what was actually a remarkable story – the willful unleashing
of Nazi storm troopers on a European population for the first time since World War II –
reached absurd levels as The New York Times and The Washington Post buried references to the
neo-Nazis at the end of stories, almost as afterthoughts.
The Washington Post went to the extreme of rationalizing Swastikas and other Nazi symbols by
quoting one militia commander as calling them "romantic" gestures by impressionable young men.
[See Consortiumnews.com's " Ukraine's
'Romantic' Neo-Nazi Storm Troopers ."]
But today – more than two years after what U.S. and Ukrainian officials like to
call "the Revolution of Dignity" – the U.S.-backed Ukrainian government is sinking into
dysfunction, reliant on handouts from the IMF and Western governments.
And, in a move perhaps now more symbolic than substantive, Prime Minister Yatsenyuk is
stepping down. Yats is no longer the guy.
Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The
Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, America's Stolen
Narrative, either in print here or
as an e-book (from
Amazon and
barnesandnoble.com ).
Khalid Talaat , April 16, 2016 at 20:39
Is it too far fetched to think that all these color revolutions are a perfection of the
process to unleash another fake color revolution, only this time it is a Red, White and Blue
revolution here at home? Those that continue to booze and snooze while watching the tube will
not know the difference until it is too late.
The freedom and tranquility of our country depends on finding and implementing a
counterweight to the presstitutes and their propaganda. The alternative is too
destructive in its natural development.
Abe , April 15, 2016 at 18:49
Yats and Porko are the guys who broke Ukraine. By the end of December 2015, Ukraine's
gross domestic product had shrunk around 19 percent in comparison with 2013. Its decimated
industrial sector needs less fuel. Yatsie did a heck of a job.
The timing of "Yats" departure is ominous. Mid-April, six weeks from now would be the
first chance to renew the invasion of DPR Donesk/Lugansk."Yats" failed in 2014, and didn't
try in 2015. Who is "the new guy"? Will the new Prime Minister begin raving about renewing
the holy war to recover the lost oblasts? 2016 is really Ukraine's last chance. Ukraine
refuses to implement Minsk2, and they have been receiving lots of new weapons. I believe
President Putin put the Syrian operation on " standby" not only to avoid approaching the
border, provoking a Turkish intervention, but also so he can give undistracted attention to
DPR Donesk/Lugansk.
Bill Rood , April 12, 2016 at 11:50
I guess I must be inside the Russian propaganda bubble. It was obvious to me when I
looked at the YouTube videos of policemen burning after being hit with Molotov
cocktails.
We played the same game of encouraging government "restraint" in Syria, where we
demanded Assad free "political prisoners," but we now accuse him of deliberately encouraging
ISIS by freeing those people, so that he can point to ISIS and ask, "Do you want that?"
Targeted leaders are damned if they do and damned if they don't.
Andrei , April 12, 2016 at 10:26
"the Ukrainian coup had many of the same earmarks as such classics as the
CIA-engineered regime changes in Iran in 1953 and in Guatemala in 1954", Romania 1989 Shots
were fired by snipers in order to stirr the crowds (sounds familiar?) and also by the army
after Ceasescu ran away, which resulted in civilians getting murdered. Could it possibly be
that it was said : "Iliescu (next elected president) is the guy!" ?
Joe L. , April 12, 2016 at 11:00
Check out the attempted coup against Hugo Chavez in Venezuela 2002, that is very
similar with protesters, snipers on rooftops, IMF immediately offering loans to the new coup
government, new government positions for the coup plotters, complacency with the media
– propaganda, funding by USAID and the National Endowment for Democracy etc. John
Pilger documents how the coup occurred in his documentary "War on Democracy" –
https://vimeo.com/16724719 .
archaos , April 12, 2016 at 09:45
It was noted in the minutes of Verkhovna Rada almost 2 years before Maidan 2 , that
Geoffrey Pyatt was fomenting and funding destabilisation of Ukraine.
All of Svoboda Nazis in parliament (and other fascisti) then booed the MP who stated
this.
Mark Thomason , April 12, 2016 at 06:57
Also, the Dutch voted "no" on the economic agreement the coup was meant to force through
instead of the Russian agreement accepted by the President it overthrew. Now both "Yats" and
the economic agreement are gone. All that is left is the war. Neocons are still happen.
They wanted the war. They really want to overthrow Putin, and Ukraine was just a tool in
that.
Realist , April 12, 2016 at 05:51
You're right, it doesn't have to be the military that carries out a coup by deploying
tanks on the National Mall. In 2000, it was the United States Supreme Court that exceeded
its constitutional authority and installed George W. Bush as president, though in reality he
had lost that election. I wonder when that move will rightfully be characterized as a coup by
the historians.
"On Sept. 26, 2013, National Endowment for Democracy President Carl Gershman, who has
been a major neocon paymaster for decades, took to the op-ed page of the neocon Washington
Post and called Ukraine "the biggest prize" and an important interim step toward toppling
Russian President Vladimir Putin."
It should be remembered that Victoria Nuland took up the post of Assistant Secretary of
State for European and Eurasian Affairs in Washington on September 18, 2013.
Coincidentally, two other women closely connected to events in Ukraine were also in
Washington during September 2013.
Friend of Nuland and boss of the IMF, which has its own HQ in Washington, Christine
Lagarde was swift to respond to a Ukraine request for IMF loans on February 27th 2014, just
five days after the removal of Yanukovych on February 22nd. Lagarde is pictured with
Baronness Catherine Ashton in Washington in a Facebook entry dated September 30th 2013.
Ashton was High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy at the
time.
Though visiting Kiev at the same time as Nuland in February 2014 Catherine Ashton never
appeared in public with her, which seems a little odd considering the women were on the same
mission, and talking to the same people. Nevertheless, despite appearing shy of being
photographed with each other the two women weren't quite so shy of being pictured with
leaders of the coup, including the right wing extremist, Oleh Tyahnybok.
Ashton refused to be drawn into commenting on Nuland's "Fuck the E.U.!" outburst,
describing Nuland as "a friend of mine." The two women certainly weren't strangers, they had
worked closely together before. September 2012 saw them involved in discussions with Iran
negotiator Saeed Jalili over the country's supposed nuclear arms ambitions.
The question is not so much whether the three women talked about Ukraine's future –
it would be ridiculous to think they did not – but how closely they worked together,
and exactly how closely they might have been involved in events leading up to the overthrow
of the legitimate government in Kiev. More on this here:
Another failed "regime change". Aren't these guys (Neoconservatives) great. They fail,
piss off/kill millions, yet seem to keep making money and retaining power. Time to WAKE UP
AMERICA.
Skip Edwards , April 11, 2016 at 20:06
Read "The Devil'Chessboard" by David Talbot to understand what has been occurring as a
result of America's Dark, Shadow government, an un-elected bunch of vicious psychopaths
controlling our destiny; unless stopped. Get a clue and realize that "Yats is our guy"
Victoria Nuland was Hillary Clinton's "gal." Hillary Clinton is Robert Kagen's "gal." Time to
flush all these rats out of the hold and get on with our lives.
Joe L. , April 11, 2016 at 18:40
Mr. Parry thank you for delving into the proven history of coups and the parallels with
Ukraine. It amazes me how anyone can outright deny this was a coup especially if they know
anything about US coups going back to WW2 (Iran 1953, Guatemala 1954, Chile 1973, attempt in
Venezuela 2002 etc. – and there are a whole slew more). I read before, as you have
rightly pointed out, that in 1953 the CIA led a propaganda campaign in Iran against Mossadegh
as well as financing opposition protesters and opposition government officials. Another
angle, as well, is looking historically back to what papers such as the New York Times were
reporting around the time of the coup in Iran – especially when we know that the
US/Britain overthrew the democratically elected Mossadegh for their own oil interests
(British Petroleum):
New York Times: "Mossadegh Plays with Fire" (August 15, 1953):
The world has so many trouble spots these days that one is apt to pass over the odd one
here and there to preserve a little peace of mind. It would be well, however, to keep an eye
on Iran, where matters are going from bad to worse, thanks to the machinations of Premier
Mossadegh.
Some of us used to ascribe our inability to persuade Dr. Mossadegh of the validity of our
ideas to the impossibility of making him understand or see things our way. We thought of him
as a sincere, well-meaning, patriotic Iranian, who had a different point of view and made
different deductions from the same set of facts. We now know that he is a power-hungry,
personally ambitious, ruthless demagogue who is trampling upon the liberties of his own
people. We have seen this onetime champion of liberty maintain martial law, curb freedom of
the press, radio, speech and assembly, resort to illegal arrests and torture, dismiss the
Senate, destroy the power of the Shah, take over control of the army, and now he is about to
destroy the Majlis, which is the lower house of Parliament.
His power would seem to be complete, but he has alienated the traditional ruling classes
-the aristocrats, landlords, financiers and tribal leaders. These elements are
anti-Communist. So is the Shah and so are the army leaders and the urban middle classes.
There is a traditional, historic fear, suspicion and dislike of Russia and the Russians. The
peasants, who make up the overwhelming mass of the population, are illiterate and
nonpolitical. Finally, there is still no evidence that the Tudeh (Communist) party is strong
enough or well enough organized, financed and led to take power.
All this simply means that there is no immediate danger of a Communist coup or Russian
intervention. On the other hand, Dr. Mossadegh is encouraging the Tudeh and is following
policies which will make the Communists more and more dangerous. He is a sorcerer's
apprentice, calling up forces he will not be able to control.
Iran is a weak, divided, poverty-stricken country which possesses an immense latent wealth
in oil and a crucial strategic position. This is very different from neighboring Turkey, a
strong, united, determined and advanced nation, which can afford to deal with the Russians
because she has nothing to fear -and therefore the West has nothing to fear. Thanks largely
to Dr. Mossadegh, there is much to fear in Iran.
My feeling is that the biggest sin that our society has is forgetting history. If we
remembered history I would think that it would be very difficult to pull off coups but most
media does not revisit history which proves US coups even against democracies. I actually
think that the coup that occurred in Ukraine was similar to the attempted coup in Venezuela
in 2002 with snipers on rooftops, immediate blame for the deaths on Hugo Chavez where media
manipulated the footage, immediate acceptance of the temporary coup government by the US
Government, immediately offering IMF loans for the new coup government, government positions
for many of the coup plotters, and let us not leave out the funding for the coup coming from
USAID and the National Endowment for Democracy. I also remember seeing the New York Times
immediately blaming Chavez and praising the coup but when the coup was overturned and US
fingerprints started to become revealed (with many of the coup plotters fleeing to the US)
then the New York Times wrote a limited retraction buried in their paper. Shameless.
SFOMARCO , April 11, 2016 at 15:16
How was NED able to finance "scores of projects inside Ukraine training activists,
paying for journalists and organizing business groups", not to mention to host such
dignitaries as Cookie Nuland, Loser McCain and assorted Bidens? Seems like a recipe for a
coup "hidden in plain sight".
Bob Van Noy , April 11, 2016 at 14:36
Ukraine, one would hope, represents the "Bridge Too Far" moment for the proponents of
regime change. Surely Americans must be catching on to what we do for selected nations in the
name of "giving them their freedoms". The Kagan Family, empowered by their newly endorsed
candidate for President, Hillary Clinton, will feel justified in carrying on a new cold war,
this time world wide. Of course they will not be doing the fighting, they, like Dick Cheney
are the self appointed intellects of geopolitical chess, much like The Georgetown Set of the
Kennedy era, they perceive themselves as the only ones smart enough to plan America's
future.
Helen Marshall , April 11, 2016 at 17:11
I wish. How many Americans know ANYTHNG about what has happened in Ukraine, about Crimea
and its history, and/or could even locate them on a map?
Pastor Agnostic , April 12, 2016 at 04:11
Nuland is merely the inhouse, PNAC female version of Sidney Blumenthal. Which raises the
scary question. Who would she pick to be SecState?
"... Among the scope memo's few unredacted lines are allegations regarding Paul Manafort's "colluding with Russian government officials to interfere with the 2016 elections." The only known source for those allegations is the Steele dossier. What that strongly suggests is that under those redactions are other fabricated allegations that were also drawn from the Clinton-funded smear campaign -- a dirty-tricks operation that was led by Fusion GPS founder and conspiracy theorist Glenn Simpson. ..."
"... Saturday Night Live ..."
"... While the length of Mueller's investigative process may have protected the FBI from the president's immediate rage, the release of the report has exposed the deep corruption and personal narcissism of the press and its professional networks of "experts" and "sources." ..."
"... Russiagate was an information operation from the beginning, in which dozens of individual reporters and institutions actively partnered with paid political operatives like Glenn Simpson and corrupt law enforcement and intelligence officials like former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe and senior DOJ official Bruce Ohr to smear Trump and his circle, and then to topple him. None of what went on the last two years would have been possible without the press, an indispensable partner in the biggest political scandal in a generation. ..."
It will take weeks for the elite pundit class to unravel all the
possible implications and subtexts embedded in Robert Mueller's final report on the charge that
Donald Trump and his team colluded with Russia to fix the 2016 election. The right claims that
the report exonerates Trump fully, while the left contends there are lots of nuggets in the
full text of the final report that may point to obstruction of justice, if not collusion.
But here's all you need to know about the special counsel probe:
First, after nearly two years, the special counsel found no credible evidence of collusion.
It found no credible evidence of a plot to obstruct justice, to hide evidence of collusion. The
entire collusion theory, which has formed the center of elite political discourse for over two
years now, has been publicly and definitely proclaimed to be a hoax by
the very person on whom news organizations and their chosen "experts" and "high-level sources"
had so loudly and insistently pinned their daily, even hourly, hopes of redemption.
Mueller should have filed his report on May 18, 2017 -- the day after the special counsel
started and he learned the FBI had opened an investigation on the sitting president of the
United States because senior officials at the world's premier law enforcement agency thought
Trump was a Russian spy. Based on what evidence? A dossier compiled by a former British spy,
relying on second- and third-hand sources,
paid for by the Clinton campaign .
Instead, the special counsel lasted 674 days, during which millions of people who believed
Mueller was going to turn up conclusive evidence of Trump's devious conspiracies with the
Kremlin have become wrapped up in a collective hallucination that has destroyed the remaining
credibility of the American press and the D.C. expert class whose authority they promote.
Mueller knew that he wasn't ever going to find "collusion" or anything like it because all
the intercepts were right there on his desk. As it turned out, two of his prosecutors,
including Mueller's so-called "pit bull," Andrew Weissman, had been briefed on the
Steele dossier prior to the 2016 election and were told that it came from the Clintons, and was
likely a biased political document.
Weissman left, or was pushed out of, his employment with the special counsel a few weeks
ago, after the arrival of a new attorney general, William Barr, who had deep experience in
government, including stints at the Justice Department and the CIA. Knowing what we know now,
here's what seems most likely to have just happened: Barr looked at the underlying documents on
which Mueller's investigation was based. First, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein's May
17, 2017, memo appointing the former FBI director to take supervision of the FBI's
investigation of Trump. And more importantly, the Aug. 2, 2017,
memo from Rosenstein outlining the scope of the investigation.
Among the scope memo's few unredacted lines are allegations regarding Paul Manafort's
"colluding with Russian government officials to interfere with the 2016 elections." The only
known source for those allegations is the Steele dossier. What that strongly suggests is that
under those redactions are other fabricated allegations that were also drawn from the
Clinton-funded smear
campaign -- a dirty-tricks operation that was led by Fusion GPS founder and conspiracy
theorist Glenn Simpson.
And now, after all the Saturday Night Live skits, the obscenity-riddled Bill Maher
and Stephen Colbert routines, the half a million news stories and tens of millions of tweets
all foretelling the end of Trump, the comedians and the adult authority figures are exposed as
hoaxsters, or worse, based on evidence that was always transparently phony.
The Mueller report is in. But the abuse of power that the special counsel embodied is a
deadly cancer on American democracy. Two years of investigations have left families in ruins,
stripping them of their savings, their homes, threatening their liberty, and dragging their
names through the mud. The investigation of the century was partly based on the possibility
that Michael Flynn, a combat veteran who served his country for more than three decades, might
be a Russian spy -- because of a dinner he once attended in Moscow, and because as incoming
national security adviser he spoke to the Russian ambassador to Washington. What rot.
While the length of Mueller's investigative process may have protected the FBI from the
president's immediate rage, the release of the report has exposed the deep corruption and
personal narcissism of the press and its professional networks of "experts" and "sources."
Instead of providing medicine, the press chose instead to spread the disease through a body
that was already badly weakened by the advent of "free" digital media
. Only, it
wasn't free .
* * *
The media criticism of the media's performance covering Russiagate is misleadingly anodyne
-- OK, sure the press did a bad job, but to be fair there really was a lot of suspicious stuff
going on and now let's all get back to doing our important work. But two years of false and
misleading Russiagate coverage was not a mistake, or a symptom of lax fact-checking.
Russiagate was an information operation from the beginning, in which dozens of individual
reporters and institutions actively partnered with paid political operatives like Glenn Simpson
and corrupt law enforcement and intelligence officials like former FBI Deputy Director Andrew
McCabe and senior DOJ official Bruce Ohr to smear Trump and his circle, and then to topple him.
None of what went on the last two years would have been possible without the press, an
indispensable partner in the biggest political scandal in a generation.
The campaign was waged not in hidden corners of the internet, but rather by the country's
most prestigious news organizations -- including, but not only, The New York Times , the
Washington Post , CNN, and MSNBC. The farce that has passed for public discourse the
last two years was fueled by a concerted effort of the media and the pundit class to
obscure gaping holes in logic as well as law. And yet, they all appeared to be credible
because the institutions sustaining them are credible .
... ... ...
Americans still want and need accurate information on which to base their decisions about
their own lives and the path that the country should take. But neither the legacy media nor the
expert class it sustains is likely to survive the post-dossier era in any
recognizable form . For them, Russiagate is an extinction level event.
"... "I'm sorry for calling the Russiagaters idiots, morons, drooling imbeciles, stupid, gullible sheep, foam-brained human livestock, tinfoil pussyhat-wearing delusional conspiracy theorists, demented cold war-enabling McCarthyite bootlickers, oafish slug-headed slime creatures, energy-sucking, CIA-coddling wastes of space and oxygen, and an embarrassment to the human species" ..."
"... " He then put on a pair of sunglasses and rode off on a motorcycle due east into the rising sun, while the smooth notes of a single saxophone resounded through the D.C. cityscape." ..."
The report contains many shocking revelations which prove that Attorney General William Barr
deceived the world in his summary of its contents, as astute Trump-Russia collusion theorists
have been
claiming since it emerged .
For example, while Barr's excerpted quote from the report may read like a seemingly
unequivocal assertion, "[T]he investigation did not establish that members of the Trump
Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference
activities," it turns out that the full sentence reads very differently:
" It is totally not the case that the investigation did not establish that members of
the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election
interference activities."
The following sentence is even more damning: "It definitely did establish that that
happened."
The report goes on to list the evidence for numerous acts of direct conspiracy between
Trump allies and the Russian government, including a detailed description of the footage from
an obtained copy of the notorious "kompromat" video, in which Trump is seen paying Russian
prostitutes to urinate on a bed once slept in by Barack and Michelle Obama, as well as other
documents fully verifying the entire Christopher Steele dossier which was published by
BuzzFeed in January 2017.
Other evidence listed in the report includes communication transcripts in which Russian
President Vladimir Putin is seen ordering President Trump to bomb Syria, stage a coup in
Venezuela, arm Ukraine, escalate against Russia in America's Nuclear Posture Review, withdraw
from the INF treaty and the Iran deal, undermine Russia's fossil fuel interests in Germany,
expand NATO, and maintain a large military presence near Russia's border.
... ... ...
Obviously I owe the world a very big apology. I'm sorry for calling the Russiagaters idiots, morons, drooling imbeciles,
stupid, gullible sheep, foam-brained human livestock, tinfoil pussyhat-wearing delusional conspiracy theorists, demented cold
war-enabling McCarthyite bootlickers, oafish slug-headed slime creatures, energy-sucking, CIA-coddling wastes of space and
oxygen, and an embarrassment to the human species. Clearly, because of their indisputable vindication this April the first 2019,
they are definitely none of these things.
RightLineBacker, (Edited)
After recovering from a near heart attack...and loading my weapons in preparation of taking to the streets... I noticed it
was April 1st. Funny & not funny at the same time.
Damn! Back to my beer & popcorn.
desertboy
"I'm sorry for calling the Russiagaters idiots, morons, drooling imbeciles, stupid, gullible sheep, foam-brained human
livestock, tinfoil pussyhat-wearing delusional conspiracy theorists, demented cold war-enabling McCarthyite bootlickers,
oafish slug-headed slime creatures, energy-sucking, CIA-coddling wastes of space and oxygen, and an embarrassment to the
human species"
Me too. It's worth repeating.
noshitsherlock
" He then put on a pair of sunglasses and rode off on a motorcycle due east into the rising sun, while the smooth
notes of a single saxophone resounded through the D.C. cityscape."
"... Washington has made many policies strongly influenced by' the demonizing of Putin -- a personal vilification far exceeding any ever applied to Soviet Russia's latter-day Communist leaders. ..."
"... As with all institutions, the demonization of Putin has its own history'. When he first appeared on the world scene as Boris Yeltsin's anointed successor, in 1999-2000, Putin was welcomed by' leading representatives of the US political-media establishment. The New York Times ' chief Moscow correspondent and other verifiers reported that Russia's new leader had an "emotional commitment to building a strong democracy." Two years later, President George W. Bush lauded his summit with Putin and "the beginning of a very' constructive relationship."' ..."
"... But the Putin-friendly narrative soon gave away to unrelenting Putin-bashing. In 2004, Times columnist Nicholas Kristof inadvertently explained why, at least partially. Kristof complained bitterly' of having been "suckered by' Mr. Putin. He is not a sober version of Boris Yeltsin." By 2006, a Wall Street Journal editor, expressing the establishment's revised opinion, declared it "time we start thinking of Vladimir Putin's Russia as an enemy of the United States." 10 , 11 The rest, as they' say, is history'. ..."
"... In America and elsewhere in the West, however, only purported "minuses" reckon in the extreme vilifying, or anti-cult, of Putin. Many are substantially uninformed, based on highly selective or unverified sources, and motivated by political grievances, including those of several Yeltsin-era oligarchs and their agents in the West. ..."
"... Putin is not the man who, after coming to power in 2000, "de-democratized" a Russian democracy established by President Boris Yeltsin in the 1990s and restored a system akin to Soviet "totalitarianism." ..."
"... Nor did Putim then make himself a tsar or Soviet-like autocrat, which means a despot with absolute power to turn his will into policy, the last Kremlin leader with that kind of power was Stalin, who died in 1953, and with him his 20-year mass terror. ..."
"... Putin is not a Kremlin leader who "reveres Stalin" and whose "Russia is a gangster shadow of Stalin's Soviet Union." 13 , 14 These assertions are so far-fetched and uninfoimed about Stalin's terror-ridden regime, Putin, and Russia today, they barely warrant comment. ..."
"... Nor did Putin create post-Soviet Russia's "kleptocratic economic system," with its oligarchic and other widespread corruption. This too took shape under Yeltsin during the Kremlin's shock-therapy "privatization" schemes of the 1990s, when the "swindlers and thieves" still denounced by today's opposition actually emerged. ..."
"... Which brings us to the most sinister allegation against him: Putin, trained as "a KGB thug," regularly orders the killing of inconvenient journalists and personal enemies, like a "mafia state boss." ..."
"... More recently, there is yet another allegation: Putin is a fascist and white supremacist. The accusation is made mostly, it seems, by people wishing to deflect attention from the role being played by neo-Nazis in US-backed Ukraine. ..."
"... Finally, at least for now. there is the ramifying demonization allegation that, as a foreign-policy leader. Putin has been exceedingly "aggressive" abroad and his behavior has been the sole cause of the new cold war. ..."
"... Embedded in the "aggressive Putin" axiom are two others. One is that Putin is a neo-Soviet leader who seeks to restore the Soviet Union at the expense of Russia's neighbors. Fie is obsessively misquoted as having said, in 2005, "The collapse of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the twentieth century," apparently ranking it above two World Wars. What he actually said was "a major geopolitical catastrophe of the twentieth century," as it was for most Russians. ..."
"... The other fallacious sub-axiom is that Putin has always been "anti-Western," specifically "anti-American," has "always viewed the United States" with "smoldering suspicions." -- so much that eventually he set into motion a "Plot Against America." ..."
"... Or, until he finally concluded that Russia would never be treated as an equal and that NATO had encroached too close, Putin was a full partner in the US-European clubs of major world leaders? Indeed, as late as May 2018, contrary to Russiagate allegations, he still hoped, as he had from the beginning, to rebuild Russia partly through economic partnerships with the West: "To attract capital from friendly companies and countries, we need good relations with Europe and with the whole world, including the United States." 3 " ..."
"... A few years earlier, Putin remarkably admitted that initially he had "illusions" about foreign policy, without specifying which. Perhaps he meant this, spoken at the end of 2017: "Our most serious mistake in relations with the West is that we trusted you too much. And your mistake is that you took that trust as weakness and abused it." 34 ..."
"... <img src="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/amazon-avatars-global/default._CR0,0,1024,1024_SX48_.png"> P. Philips ..."
"... "In a Time of Universal Deceit -- Telling the Truth Is a Revolutionary Act" ..."
"... Professor Cohen is indeed a patriot of the highest order. The American and "Globalists" elites, particularly the dysfunctional United Kingdom, are engaging in a war of nerves with Russia. This war, which could turn nuclear for reasons discussed in this important book, is of no benefit to any person or nation. ..."
"... If you are a viewer of one of the legacy media outlets, be it Cable Television networks, with the exception of Tucker Carlson on Fox who has Professor Cohen as a frequent guest, or newspapers such as The New York Times, you have been exposed to falsehoods by remarkably ignorant individuals; ignorant of history, of the true nature of Russia (which defeated the Nazis in Europe at a loss of millions of lives) and most important, of actual military experience. America is neither an invincible or exceptional nation. And for those familiar with terminology of ancient history, it appears the so-called elites are suffering from hubris. ..."
THE SPECTER OF AN EVIL-DOING VLADIMIR PUTIN HAS loomed over and undermined US thinking about Russia for at least a decade. Inescapably,
it is therefore a theme that runs through this book. Henry' Kissinger deserves credit for having warned, perhaps alone among prominent
American political figures, against this badly distorted image of Russia's leader since 2000: "The demonization of Vladimir Putin
is not a policy. It is an alibi for not having one." 4
But Kissinger was also wrong. Washington has made many policies strongly influenced by' the demonizing of Putin -- a personal
vilification far exceeding any ever applied to Soviet Russia's latter-day Communist leaders. Those policies spread from growing complaints
in the early 2000s to US- Russian proxy wars in Georgia, Ukraine, Syria, and eventually even at home, in Russiagate allegations.
Indeed, policy-makers adopted an earlier formulation by the late Senator .Tolm McCain as an integral part of a new and more dangerous
Cold War: "Putin [is] an unreconstructed Russian imperialist and K.G.B. apparatchik.... His world is a brutish, cynical place....
We must prevent the darkness of Mr. Putin's world from befalling more of humanity'." 3
Mainstream media outlets have play'ed a major prosecutorial role in the demonization. Far from aty'pically', the Washington Post's
editorial page editor wrote, "Putin likes to make the bodies bounce.... The rule-by-fear is Soviet, but this time there is no ideology
-- only a noxious mixture of personal aggrandizement, xenophobia, homophobia and primitive anti-Americanism." 6 Esteemed
publications and writers now routinely degrade themselves by competing to denigrate "the flabbily muscled form" of the "small gray
ghoul named Vladimir Putin." 7 , 8 There are hundreds of such examples, if not more, over many years. Vilifying
Russia's leader has become a canon in the orthodox US narrative of the new Cold War.
As with all institutions, the demonization of Putin has its own history'. When he first appeared on the world scene as Boris Yeltsin's
anointed successor, in 1999-2000, Putin was welcomed by' leading representatives of the US political-media establishment. The New
York Times ' chief Moscow correspondent and other verifiers reported that Russia's new leader had an "emotional commitment to building
a strong democracy." Two years later, President George W. Bush lauded his summit with Putin and "the beginning of a very' constructive
relationship."'
But the Putin-friendly narrative soon gave away to unrelenting Putin-bashing. In 2004, Times columnist Nicholas Kristof inadvertently
explained why, at least partially. Kristof complained bitterly' of having been "suckered by' Mr. Putin. He is not a sober version
of Boris Yeltsin." By 2006, a Wall Street Journal editor, expressing the establishment's revised opinion, declared it "time we start
thinking of Vladimir Putin's Russia as an enemy of the United States." 10 , 11 The rest, as they' say, is history'.
Who has Putin really been during his many years in power? We may' have to leave this large, complex question to future historians,
when materials for full biographical study -- memoirs, archive documents, and others -- are available. Even so, it may surprise readers
to know that Russia's own historians, policy intellectuals, and journalists already argue publicly and differ considerably as to
the "pluses and minuses" of Putin's leadership. (My own evaluation is somewhere in the middle.)
In America and elsewhere in the West, however, only purported "minuses" reckon in the extreme vilifying, or anti-cult, of Putin.
Many are substantially uninformed, based on highly selective or unverified sources, and motivated by political grievances, including
those of several Yeltsin-era oligarchs and their agents in the West.
By identifying and examining, however briefly, the primary "minuses" that underpin the demonization of Putin, we can understand
at least who he is not:
Putin is not the man who, after coming to power in 2000, "de-democratized" a Russian democracy established by President
Boris Yeltsin in the 1990s and restored a system akin to Soviet "totalitarianism." Democratization began and developed in
Soviet Russia under the last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, in the years from 1987 to 1991.
Yeltsin repeatedly dealt that historic Russian experiment grievous, possibly fatal, blows. Among his other acts, by using tanks,
in October 1993, to destroy Russia's freely elected parliament and with it the entire constitutional order that had made Yeltsin
president. By waging two bloody' wars against the tiny breakaway province of Chechnya. By enabling a small group of Kremlin-connected
oligarchs to plunder Russia's richest assets and abet the plunging of some two-thirds of its people into poverty' and misery',
including the once-large and professionalized Soviet middle classes. By rigging his own reelection in 1996. And by' enacting a
"super-presidential" constitution, at the expense of the legislature and judiciary but to his successor's benefit. Putin may have
furthered the de-democratization of the Yeltsin 1990s, but he did not initiate it.
Nor did Putim then make himself a tsar or Soviet-like autocrat, which means a despot with absolute power to turn his
will into policy, the last Kremlin leader with that kind of power was Stalin, who died in 1953, and with him his 20-year mass
terror. Due to the increasing bureaucratic routinization of the political-administrative system, each successive Soviet leader
had less personal power than his predecessor. Putin may have more, but if he really is a "cold-blooded, ruthless" autocrat --
"the worst dictator on the planet" 1 " -- tens of thousands of protesters would not have repeatedly appeared in Moscow
streets, sometimes officially sanctioned. Or their protests (and selective arrests) been shown on state television.
Political scientists generally agree that Putin has been a "soft authoritarian" leader governing a system that has authoritarian
and democratic components inherited from the past. They disagree as to how to specify, define, and balance these elements, but
most would also generally agree with a brief Facebook post, on September 7, 2018, by the eminent diplomat-scholar Jack Matlock:
"Putin ... is not the absolute dictator some have pictured him. His power seems to be based on balancing various patronage networks,
some of which are still criminal. (In the 1990s, most were, and nobody was controlling them.) Therefore he cannot admit publicly
that [criminal acts] happened without his approval since this would indicate that he is not completely in charge."
Putin is not a Kremlin leader who "reveres Stalin" and whose "Russia is a gangster shadow of Stalin's Soviet Union."
13 , 14 These assertions are so far-fetched and uninfoimed about Stalin's terror-ridden regime, Putin, and Russia
today, they barely warrant comment. Stalin's Russia was often as close to unfreedom as imaginable. In today's Russia, apart from
varying political liberties, most citizens are freer to live, study, work, write, speak, and travel than they have ever been.
(When vocational demonizers like David Kramer allege an "appalling human rights situation in Putin's Russia," 1 " they
should be asked: compared to when in Russian history, or elsewhere in the world today?)
Putin clearly understands that millions of Russians have and often express pro-Stalin sentiments. Nonetheless, his role in
these still-ongoing controversies over the despot's historical reputation has been, in one unprecedented way, that of an anti-Stalinist
leader. Briefly illustrated, if Putin reveres the memory of Stalin, why did his personal support finally make possible two memorials
(the excellent State Museum of the History of the Gulag and the highly evocative "Wall of Grief') to the tyrant's millions of
victims, both in central Moscow? The latter memorial monument was first proposed by then-Kremlin leader Nikita Khrushchev, in
1961. It was not built under any of his successors -- until Putin, in 2017.
Nor did Putin create post-Soviet Russia's "kleptocratic economic system," with its oligarchic and other widespread corruption.
This too took shape under Yeltsin during the Kremlin's shock-therapy "privatization" schemes of the 1990s, when the "swindlers
and thieves" still denounced by today's opposition actually emerged.
Putin has adopted a number of "anti-corruption" policies over the years. How successful they have been is the subject of legitimate
debate. As are how much power he has had to rein in fully both Yeltsin's oligarchs and his own, and how sincere he has been. But
branding Putin "a kleptocrat" 16 also lacks context and is little more than barely informed demonizing.
A recent scholarly book finds, for example, that while they may be "corrupt," Putin "and the liberal technocratic economic
team on which he relies have also skillfully managed Russia's economic fortunes." 1 ' A former IMF director goes further,
concluding that Putin's current economic team does not "tolerate corruption" and that "Russia now ranks 35th out of 190 in the
World Bank's Doing Business ratings. It was at 124 in 2010." 18
Viewed in human teims, when Putin came to power in 2000, some 75 percent of Russians were living in poverty. Most had lost
even modest legacies of the Soviet era -- their life savings; medical and other social benefits: real wages; pensions; occupations;
and for men life expectancy, which had fallen well below the age of 60. In only a few years, the "kleptocrat" Putin had mobilized
enough wealth to undo and reverse those human catastrophes and put billions of dollars in rainy-day funds that buffered the nation
in different hard times ahead. We judge this historic achievement as we might, but it is why many Russians still call Putin "Vladimir
the Savior."
Which brings us to the most sinister allegation against him: Putin, trained as "a KGB thug," regularly orders the killing
of inconvenient journalists and personal enemies, like a "mafia state boss." This should be the easiest demonizing axiom to dismiss
because there is no actual evidence, or barely any logic, to support it. And yet, it is ubiquitous. Times editorial writers and
columnists -- and far from them alone -- characterize Putin as a "thug" and his policies as "thuggery" so often -- sometimes doubling
down on "autocratic thug" 19 -- that the practice may be specified in some internal manual. Little wonder so many politicians
also routinely practice it, as did US Senator Ben Sasse: "We should tell the American people and tell the world that we know that
Vladimir Putin is a thus. He's a former KGB aaent who's a murderer." 20
Leaving aside other world leaders with minor or major previous careers in intelligences services. Putin's years as a KGB intelligence
officer in then -East Germany were clearly formative. Many years later, at age 67. he still spoke of them with pride. Whatever
else that experience contributed, it made Putin a Europeanized Russian, a fluent Geiman speaker, and a political leader with a
remarkable, demonstrated capacity for retaining and coolly analyzing a very wide range of information. (Read or watch a few of
his long interviews.) Not a bad leadership trait in very fraught times.
Moreover, no serious biographer would treat only one period in a subject's long public career as definitive, as Putin demonizers
do. Why not instead the period after he left the KGB in 1991, when he served as deputy to the mayor of St. Petersburg, then considered
one of the two or three most democratic leaders in Russia? Or the years immediately following in Moscow, where he saw first-hand
the full extent of Yeltsin-era corruption? Or his subsequent years, while still relatively young, as president?
As for being a "murderer" of journalists and other ''enemies." the list has grown to scores of Russians who died, at home or
abroad, by foul or natural causes -- all reflexively attributed to Putin. Our hallowed tradition puts the burden of proof on the
accusers. Putin's accusers have produced none, only assumptions, innuendoes, and mistranslated statements by Putin about the fate
of "traitors." The two cases that firmly established this defamatory practice were those of the investigative journalist Anna
Politkovskaya, who was shot to death in Moscow in 2006; and Alexander Litvinenko, a shadowy one-time KGB defector with ties to
aggrieved Yeltsin-era oligarchs, who died of radiation poisoning in London, also in 2006.
Not a shred of actual proof points to Putin in either case. The editor of Politkovskaya's paper, the devoutly independent Novaya
Gazeta. still believes her assassination was ordered by Chechen officials, whose human-rights abuses she was investigating. Regarding
Litvinenko, despite frenzied media claims and a kangaroo-like "hearing" suggesting that Putin was "probably" responsible, there
is still no conclusive proof even as to whether Litvinenko's poisoning was intentional or accidental. The same paucity of evidence
applies to many subsequent cases, notably the shooting of the opposition politician Boris Nemtsov, "in [distant] view of the Kremlin,"
in 2015.
About Russian journalists, there is, however, a significant overlooked statistic. According to the American Committee to Protect
Journalists, as of 2012, 77 had been murdered -- 41 during the Yeltsin years, 36 under Putin. By 2018, the total was 82 -- 41
under Yeltsin, the same under Putin. This strongly suggests that the still -- pairtially corrupt post-Soviet economic system,
not Yeltsin or Putin personally, led to the killing of so many journalists after 1991, most of them investigative reporters. The
former wife of one journalist thought to have been poisoned concludes as much: "Many Western analysts place the responsibility
for these crimes on Putin. But the cause is more likely the system of mutual responsibility and the culture of impunity that began
to form before Putin, in the late 1990s.""
More recently, there is yet another allegation: Putin is a fascist and white supremacist. The accusation is made mostly, it
seems, by people wishing to deflect attention from the role being played by neo-Nazis in US-backed Ukraine. Putin no doubt regards
it as a blood slur, and even on the surface it is, to be exceedingly charitable, entirely uninformed. How else to explain Senator
Ron Wyden's solemn warnings, at a hearing on November 1, 2017, about "the current fascist leadership of Russia"? A young scholar
recently dismantled a senior Yale professor's nearly inexplicable propounding of this thesis.' 3 My own approach is
compatible, though different.
Whatever Putin's failings, the fascist allegation is absurd. Nothing in his statements over nearly 20 years in power are akin
to fascism, whose core belief is a cult of blood based on the asserted superiority of one ethnicity over all others. As head of
a vast multi-ethnic state -- embracing scores of diverse groups with a broad range of skin colors -- such utterances or related
acts by Putin would be inconceivable, if not political suicide. This is why he endlessly appeals for harmony in "our entire multi-ethnic
nation" with its "multi-ethnic culture," as he did once again in his re-inauguration speech in 2018. 24
Russia has, of course, fascist-white supremacist thinkers and activists, though many have been imprisoned. But a mass fascist
movement is scarcely feasible in a country where so many millions died in the war against Nazi Geimany, a war that directly affected
Putin and clearly left a formative mark on him. Though he was born after the war, his mother and father barely survived near-fatal
wounds and disease, his older brother died in the long German siege of Leningrad, and several of his uncles perished. Only people
who never endured such an experience, or are unable to imagine it, can conjure up a fascist Putin.
There is another, easily understood, indicative fact. Not a trace of anti-Semitism is evident in Putin. Little noted here but
widely reported both in Russia and in Israel, life for Russian Jews is better under Putin than it has ever been in that country's
long history."
Finally, at least for now. there is the ramifying demonization allegation that, as a foreign-policy leader. Putin has been
exceedingly "aggressive" abroad and his behavior has been the sole cause of the new cold war.26 At best, this is an
"in-the-eve-of-the-beholder" assertion, and half-blind. At worst, it justifies what even a German foreign minister characterized
as the West's "war-mongering" against Russia."
In the three cases widely given as examples of Putin's "aggression," the evidence, long cited by myself and others, points
to US-led instigations, primarily in the process of expanding the NATO military alliance since the late 1990s from Germany to
Russia's borders today. The proxy US-Russian war in Georgia in 2008 was initiated by the US-backed president of that country,
who had been encouraged to aspire to NATO membership. The 2014 crisis and subsequent proxy war in Ukraine resulted from the longstanding
effort to bring that country, despite large regions' shared civilization with Russia, into NATO.
And Putin's 2015 military intervention
in Syria was done on a valid premise: either it would be Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in Damascus or the terrorist Islamic
State -- and on President Barack Obama's refusal to join Russia in an anti-ISIS alliance. As a result of this history, Putin is
often seen in Russia as a belatedly reactive leader abroad, as a not sufficiently "aggressive" one.
Embedded in the "aggressive Putin" axiom are two others. One is that Putin is a neo-Soviet leader who seeks to restore the Soviet
Union at the expense of Russia's neighbors. Fie is obsessively misquoted as having said, in 2005, "The collapse of the Soviet Union
was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the twentieth century," apparently ranking it above two World Wars. What he actually
said was "a major geopolitical catastrophe of the twentieth century," as it was for most Russians.
Though often critical of the Soviet system and its two formative leaders, Lenin and Stalin, Putin, like most of his generation,
naturally remains in part a Soviet person. But what he said in 2010 reflects his real perspective and that of very many other Russians:
"Anyone who does not regret the break-up of the Soviet Union has no heart. Anyone who wants its rebirth in its previous form has
no head." 28 , 29
The other fallacious sub-axiom is that Putin has always been "anti-Western," specifically "anti-American," has "always viewed
the United States" with "smoldering suspicions." -- so much that eventually he set into motion a "Plot Against America."30
, 31 A simple reading of his years in power tells us otherwise. A Westernized Russian, Putin came to the presidency in
2000 in the still prevailing tradition of Gorbachev and Yeltsin -- in hope of a "strategic friendship and partnership" with the United
States.
How else to explain Putin's abundant assistant to US forces fighting in Afghanistan after 9/1 1 and continued facilitation of
supplying American and NATO troops there? Or his backing of harsh sanctions against Iran's nuclear ambitions and refusal to sell
Tehran a highly effective air-defense system? Or the information his intelligence services shared with Washington that if heeded
could have prevented the Boston Marathon bombings in April 2012?
Or, until he finally concluded that Russia would never be treated as an equal and that NATO had encroached too close, Putin was
a full partner in the US-European clubs of major world leaders? Indeed, as late as May 2018, contrary to Russiagate allegations,
he still hoped, as he had from the beginning, to rebuild Russia partly through economic partnerships with the West: "To attract capital
from friendly companies and countries, we need good relations with Europe and with the whole world, including the United States."
3 "
Given all that has happened during the past nearly two decades -- particularly what Putin and other Russian leaders perceive to
have happened -- it would be remarkable if his views of the W^est, especially America, had not changed. As he remarked in 2018, "We
all change." 33
A few years earlier, Putin remarkably admitted that initially he had "illusions" about foreign policy,
without specifying which. Perhaps he meant this, spoken at the end of 2017: "Our most serious mistake in relations with the West
is that we trusted you too much. And your mistake is that you took that trust as weakness and abused it." 34
"In a Time of Universal Deceit -- Telling the Truth Is a Revolutionary Act" is a well known quotation (but probably not of
George Orwell). And in telling the truth about Russia and that the current "war of nerves" is not in the interests of either the
American People or national security, Professor Cohen in this book has in fact done a revolutionary act.
Like a denizen of Plato's cave, or being in the film the Matrix, most people have no idea what the truth is. And the questions
raised by Professor Cohen are a great service in the cause of the truth. As Professor Cohen writes in his introduction To His
Readers:
"My scholarly work -- my biography of Nikolai Bukharin and essays collected in Rethinking the Soviet Experience and Soviet
Fates and Lost Alternatives, for example -- has always been controversial because it has been what scholars term "revisionist"
-- reconsiderations, based on new research and perspectives, of prevailing interpretations of Soviet and post-Soviet Russian
history. But the "controversy" surrounding me since 2014, mostly in reaction to the contents of this book, has been different
-- inspired by usually vacuous, defamatory assaults on me as "Putin's No. 1 American Apologist," "Best Friend," and the like.
I never respond specifically to these slurs because they offer no truly substantive criticism of my arguments, only ad hominem
attacks. Instead, I argue, as readers will see in the first section, that I am a patriot of American national security, that
the orthodox policies my assailants promote are gravely endangering our security, and that therefore we -- I and others they
assail -- are patriotic heretics. Here too readers can judge."
Cohen, Stephen F.. War with Russia (Kindle Locations 131-139). Hot Books. Kindle Edition.
Professor Cohen is indeed a patriot of the highest order. The American and "Globalists" elites, particularly the dysfunctional
United Kingdom, are engaging in a war of nerves with Russia. This war, which could turn nuclear for reasons discussed in this
important book, is of no benefit to any person or nation.
Indeed, with the hysteria on "climate change" isn't it odd that other than Professor Cohen's voice, there are no prominent
figures warning of the devastation that nuclear war would bring?
If you are a viewer of one of the legacy media outlets, be it Cable Television networks, with the exception of Tucker Carlson
on Fox who has Professor Cohen as a frequent guest, or newspapers such as The New York Times, you have been exposed to falsehoods
by remarkably ignorant individuals; ignorant of history, of the true nature of Russia (which defeated the Nazis in Europe at a
loss of millions of lives) and most important, of actual military experience. America is neither an invincible or exceptional
nation. And for those familiar with terminology of ancient history, it appears the so-called elites are suffering from hubris.
I cannot recommend Professor Cohen's work with sufficient superlatives; his arguments are erudite, clearly stated, supported
by the facts and ultimately irrefutable. If enough people find Professor Cohen's work and raise their voices to their oblivious
politicians and profiteers from war to stop further confrontation between Russia and America, then this book has served a noble
purpose.
If nothing else, educate yourself by reading this work to discover what the *truth* is. And the truth is something sacred.
America and the world owe Professor Cohen a great debt. "Blessed are the peace makers..."
Schiff is a typical witch hunter (or Cheka goon, if you wish ;-) , much like Mueller staff was. What is unclear why
theywant to unseat Trump with his complete falding to neocons and strong pro-Israel stance?
Notable quotes:
"... It was the DNC and Ukraine. They wanted HRC to win. No collusion was on President Trump's side. All the top players in the FBI and DOJ played games and lost. President Trump won and plays the game better than those on the DNC. Their game book has been showed to be stupid. ..."
"... Brennan thinks he's the smartest guy in the room. He spins lies like a hungry spider. Brennan, Clapper, Schiff, Swalwell, and some others need to go. ..."
Trump HATER Brennan - says: "U.S. PERSONS" - meaning Schiff, Comey, Obama, Strozk, His
Lover, The OBAMAS, - are all THOSE "U.S. PERSONS" who gave him the so-called "INTELLIGENCE" -
at WHAT POINT does "UN-VERIFIED INFO" become a TREASONOUS WEAPONIZED INSTRUMENT of an
ATTEMPTED COUP D'eta against the President Of The United States of America.
Seditious liar Schifty Adam Schiff was involved in criminal leaking of classified
information to Democrat propaganda machines CNN and MSNBC -- Should not just resign but held
accountable for his crimes and major role he played in the Coup attempt against the duly
elected US president
If Brennan didn't know, he admits to being incompetent. If he did know, he is complicit.
He accused someone of treason without evidence. Losing his security clearance is not justice.
He needs to pay a bigger price.
Gowdy is correct. Had there been something there, yes perhaps then people should see it.
When there results yield "not even probable cause", it probably shouldn't be released in it's
entirety.
It was the DNC and Ukraine. They wanted HRC to win. No collusion was on President Trump's
side. All the top players in the FBI and DOJ played games and lost. President Trump won and
plays the game better than those on the DNC. Their game book has been showed to be
stupid.
Adam Schiff claims there is clear evidence, yet never states what this evidence is. Yet it
is so clear that Muller, the FBI, the Senate investigation and the House spent two years and
never found it. Must be extremely transparent to the point of not existing period. I think
Schiff needs to not only step down, but he needs to see a psychitatrist.
"... "I'm sorry for calling the Russiagaters idiots, morons, drooling imbeciles, stupid, gullible sheep, foam-brained human livestock, tinfoil pussyhat-wearing delusional conspiracy theorists, demented cold war-enabling McCarthyite bootlickers, oafish slug-headed slime creatures, energy-sucking, CIA-coddling wastes of space and oxygen, and an embarrassment to the human species" ..."
"... " He then put on a pair of sunglasses and rode off on a motorcycle due east into the rising sun, while the smooth notes of a single saxophone resounded through the D.C. cityscape." ..."
The report contains many shocking revelations which prove that Attorney General William Barr
deceived the world in his summary of its contents, as astute Trump-Russia collusion theorists
have been
claiming since it emerged .
For example, while Barr's excerpted quote from the report may read like a seemingly
unequivocal assertion, "[T]he investigation did not establish that members of the Trump
Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference
activities," it turns out that the full sentence reads very differently:
" It is totally not the case that the investigation did not establish that members of
the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election
interference activities."
The following sentence is even more damning: "It definitely did establish that that
happened."
The report goes on to list the evidence for numerous acts of direct conspiracy between
Trump allies and the Russian government, including a detailed description of the footage from
an obtained copy of the notorious "kompromat" video, in which Trump is seen paying Russian
prostitutes to urinate on a bed once slept in by Barack and Michelle Obama, as well as other
documents fully verifying the entire Christopher Steele dossier which was published by
BuzzFeed in January 2017.
Other evidence listed in the report includes communication transcripts in which Russian
President Vladimir Putin is seen ordering President Trump to bomb Syria, stage a coup in
Venezuela, arm Ukraine, escalate against Russia in America's Nuclear Posture Review, withdraw
from the INF treaty and the Iran deal, undermine Russia's fossil fuel interests in Germany,
expand NATO, and maintain a large military presence near Russia's border.
... ... ...
Obviously I owe the world a very big apology. I'm sorry for calling the Russiagaters idiots, morons, drooling imbeciles,
stupid, gullible sheep, foam-brained human livestock, tinfoil pussyhat-wearing delusional conspiracy theorists, demented cold
war-enabling McCarthyite bootlickers, oafish slug-headed slime creatures, energy-sucking, CIA-coddling wastes of space and
oxygen, and an embarrassment to the human species. Clearly, because of their indisputable vindication this April the first 2019,
they are definitely none of these things.
RightLineBacker, (Edited)
After recovering from a near heart attack...and loading my weapons in preparation of taking to the streets... I noticed it
was April 1st. Funny & not funny at the same time.
Damn! Back to my beer & popcorn.
desertboy
"I'm sorry for calling the Russiagaters idiots, morons, drooling imbeciles, stupid, gullible sheep, foam-brained human
livestock, tinfoil pussyhat-wearing delusional conspiracy theorists, demented cold war-enabling McCarthyite bootlickers,
oafish slug-headed slime creatures, energy-sucking, CIA-coddling wastes of space and oxygen, and an embarrassment to the
human species"
Me too. It's worth repeating.
noshitsherlock
" He then put on a pair of sunglasses and rode off on a motorcycle due east into the rising sun, while the smooth
notes of a single saxophone resounded through the D.C. cityscape."
"... The purpose is very simple: to create the perception that the government of Russia still somehow controls or manipulates the US government and thus gains some undeserved improvements in relations with the U.S. Once such perception is created, people will demand that relations with Russia are worsened to return them to a "fair" level. While in reality these relations have been systematically destroyed by the Western establishment (CFR) for many years. ..."
"... It's a typical inversion to hide the hybrid war of the Western establishment against Russian people. Yes, Russian people. Not Putin, not Russian Army, not Russian intelligence services, but Russian people. Russians are not to be allowed to have any kind of industries, nor should they be allowed to know their true history, nor should they possess so much land. ..."
"... Russians should work in coal mines for a dollar a day, while their wives work as prostitutes in Europe. That's the maximum level of development that the Western establishment would allow Russians to have (see Ukraine for a demo version). Why? Because Russians are subhumans. ..."
"... The end goal of the Western establishment is a complete military, economic, psychological, and spiritual destruction of Russia, secession of national republics (even though in some of them up to 50% of population are Russians, but this will be ignored, as it has been in former Soviet republics), then, finally, dismemberment of what remains of Russia into separate states warring with each other. ..."
"... The very concept of Russian nation should disappear. Siberians will call their language "Siberian", Muscovites will call their language "Moscovian", Pomorians will call their language "Pomorian", etc. The U.S. Department of State will, of course, endorse such terminology, just like they endorse the term "Montenegrian language", even though it's the same Serbo-Croatian language with the same Cyrillic writing system. ..."
The purpose is very simple: to create the perception that the government of Russia still somehow controls or manipulates
the US government and thus gains some undeserved improvements in relations with the U.S. Once such perception is created, people
will demand that relations with Russia are worsened to return them to a "fair" level. While in reality these relations have been
systematically destroyed by the Western establishment (CFR) for many years.
It's a typical inversion to hide the hybrid war of the Western establishment against Russian people. Yes, Russian people.
Not Putin, not Russian Army, not Russian intelligence services, but Russian people. Russians are not to be allowed to have any
kind of industries, nor should they be allowed to know their true history, nor should they possess so much land.
Russians should work in coal mines for a dollar a day, while their wives work as prostitutes in Europe. That's the maximum
level of development that the Western establishment would allow Russians to have (see Ukraine for a demo version). Why? Because
Russians are subhumans.
Whatever they do, it's always wrong, bad, oppressive, etc. Russians are bad because they're bad. They must be "taught a lesson",
"put into their place". It would, of course, be beneficial and highly profitable for Europeans to break with Anglo-Saxons and
to live in peace and harmony with Russia, but Europeans simply can not overcome their racism towards Russians. The young Europeans
are just as racist, with their incessant memes about "squatting Russians in tracksuits", "drunken Russians", etc., as if there's
nothing else that is notable about a country of 147 million people.
The end goal of the Western establishment is a complete military, economic, psychological, and spiritual destruction of
Russia, secession of national republics (even though in some of them up to 50% of population are Russians, but this will be ignored,
as it has been in former Soviet republics), then, finally, dismemberment of what remains of Russia into separate states warring
with each other.
The very concept of Russian nation should disappear. Siberians will call their language "Siberian", Muscovites will call
their language "Moscovian", Pomorians will call their language "Pomorian", etc. The U.S. Department of State will, of course,
endorse such terminology, just like they endorse the term "Montenegrian language", even though it's the same Serbo-Croatian language
with the same Cyrillic writing system.
Yes, "Trump was selling himself as a traitor to a corrupt class, someone who knew how soulless and greedy the ruling elite was because
he was one of them. " But he turned to be a fake, a marionette who is controlled by neocons like hapless Bush II.
Notable quotes:
"... Last weekend, I published a book chapter criticizing the Russiagate narrative, claiming it was a years-long press error on the scale of the WMD affair heading into the Iraq war. ..."
"... The overwhelming theme of that race, long before anyone even thought about Russia, was voter rage at the entire political system. ..."
"... The anger wasn't just on the Republican side, where Trump humiliated the Republicans' chosen $150 million contender , Jeb Bush (who got three delegates, or $50 million per delegate ). It was also evident on the Democratic side, where a self-proclaimed "Democratic Socialist" with little money and close to no institutional support became a surprise contender . ..."
"... Trump was gunning for votes in both parties. The core story he told on the stump was one of system-wide corruption, in which there was little difference between Republicans and Democrats. ..."
"... Perhaps just by luck, Trump was tuned in to the fact that the triumvirate of ruling political powers in America – the two parties, the big donors and the press – were so unpopular with large parts of the population that he could win in the long haul by attracting their ire, even if he was losing battles on the way. ..."
"... The subtext was always: I may be crude, but these people are phonies, pretending to be upset when they're making money off my bullshit . ..."
"... Trump was selling himself as a traitor to a corrupt class, someone who knew how soulless and greedy the ruling elite was because he was one of them. ..."
Faulty coverage of Donald Trump's 2016 campaign later made foreign espionage a more plausible explanation for his ascent to power
Last weekend, I published a book chapter criticizing the Russiagate
narrative, claiming it was a years-long press error on the scale of the WMD affair heading into the Iraq war.
Obviously (and I said this in detail), the WMD fiasco had a far greater real-world impact, with hundreds of thousands of lives
lost and trillions in treasure wasted. Still, I thought Russiagate would do more to damage the reputation of the national news media
in the end.
A day after publishing that excerpt, a
Attorney General
William Barr sent his summary of the report to Congress, containing a quote filed by Special Counsel
Robert Mueller : "[T]he investigation did not establish
that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities."
Suddenly, news articles appeared arguing people like myself and Glenn Greenwald of the Intercept were
rushing to judgment
, calling us bullies whose writings were intended to leave reporters "cowed" and likely to "
back down from aggressive coverage of Trump ."
This was baffling. One of the most common criticisms of people like Greenwald, Michael Tracey, Aaron Mate, Rania Khalek, Max Blumenthal,
Jordan Chariton and many others is that Russiagate "skeptics" - I hate that term, because it implies skepticism isn't normal and
healthy in this job - were really secret Trump partisans, part of a "horseshoe" pact between far left and far right to focus attention
on the minor foibles of the center instead of Trump's more serious misdeeds. Even I received this label, and I once wrote a book
about Trump called Insane Clown President .
A typical social media complaint:
@mtaibbi and all his deplorable followers. The truth will come out
and your premature celebrations are embarrassing.
It's irritating that I even have to address this, because my personal political views shouldn't have anything to do with how I
cover anything. But just to get it out of the way: I'm no fan of
Donald Trump .
I had a well-developed opinion about him long before the 2016 race started. I once interned for Trump's nemesis-biographer, the
late, great muckraker Wayne Barrett
. The birther campaign
of 2011 was all I ever needed to make a voting decision about the man.
I started covering the last presidential race in 2015 just as I was finishing up a book about the death of Eric Garner called
I Can't Breathe . Noting that
a birther campaign started by "peripheral political curiosity and reality TV star Donald Trump" led to 41 percent of respondents
in one poll believing Barack Obama was "not even American," I wrote:
If anyone could communicate the frustration black Americans felt over Stop-and-Frisk and other neo-vagrancy laws that made
black people feel like they could be arrested anywhere, it should have been Barack Obama. He'd made it all the way to the White
House and was still considered to be literally trespassing by a huge plurality of the population.
So I had no illusions about Trump. The Russia story bothered
me for other reasons, mostly having to do with a general sense of the public being misled, and not even about Russia.
The problem lay with the precursor tale to Russiagate, i.e. how Trump even got to be president in the first place.
The 2016 campaign season brought to the surface awesome levels of political discontent. After the election, instead of wondering
where that anger came from, most of the press quickly pivoted to a new tale about a Russian plot to attack our Democracy. This conveyed
the impression that the election season we'd just lived through had been an aberration, thrown off the rails by an extraordinary
espionage conspiracy between Trump and a cabal of evil foreigners.
This narrative contradicted everything I'd seen traveling across America in my two years of covering the campaign. The overwhelming
theme of that race, long before anyone even thought about Russia, was voter rage at the entire political system.
The anger wasn't just on the Republican side, where Trump humiliated the Republicans' chosen
$150 million
contender , Jeb Bush (who got three delegates, or
$50 million per delegate ). It was also evident on the Democratic side, where a self-proclaimed "Democratic Socialist" with little
money and close to no institutional support became
a surprise contender
.
Because of a series of press misdiagnoses before the Russiagate stories even began, much of the American public was unprepared
for news of a Trump win. A cloak-and-dagger election-fixing conspiracy therefore seemed more likely than it might have otherwise
to large parts of the domestic news audience, because they hadn't been prepared for anything else that would make sense.
This was particularly true of upscale, urban, blue-leaning news consumers, who were not told to take the possibility of a Trump
White House seriously.
Priority number-one of the political class after a vulgar, out-of-work game-show host conquered the White House should have been
a long period of ruthless self-examination. This story delayed that for at least two years.
It wasn't even clear Trump whether or not wanted to win. Watching him on the trail, Trump at times went beyond seeming disinterested.
There were periods where it looked like South Park's "
Did I offend you? " thesis was true, and he was
actively trying to lose, only the polls just wouldn't let him.
Forget about the gift the end of Russiagate might give Trump by allowing him to spend 2020 peeing from a great height on the national
press corps. The more serious issue has to be the failure to face the reality of why he won last time, because we still haven't done
that.
... ... ...
Trump, the billionaire, denounced us as the elitists in the room. He'd call us "bloodsuckers," "dishonest," and in one line that
produced laughs considering who was saying it, "
highly-paid ."
He also did something that I immediately recognized as brilliant (or diabolical, depending on how you look at it). He dared cameramen
to turn their cameras to show the size of his crowds.
They usually wouldn't – hey, we don't work for the guy – which thrilled Trump, who would then say something to the effect of,
"See! They're
very dishonest people ." Audiences would turn toward us, and boo and hiss, and even throw little bits of paper and other things
our way. This was unpleasant, but it was hard not to see its effectiveness: he'd re-imagined the lifeless, poll-tested format of
the stump speech, turning it into menacing, personal, WWE-style theater.
Trump was gunning for votes in both parties. The core story he told on the stump was one of system-wide corruption, in which there
was little difference between Republicans and Democrats.
...
Perhaps just by luck, Trump was tuned in to the fact that the triumvirate of ruling political powers in America – the two parties,
the big donors and the press – were so unpopular with large parts of the population that he could win in the long haul by attracting
their ire, even if he was losing battles on the way.
...
The subtext was always: I may be crude, but these people are phonies, pretending to be upset when they're making money off my
bullshit .
I thought this was all nuts and couldn't believe it was happening in a real presidential campaign. But, a job is a job. My first
feature on candidate Trump was called "
How
America Made Donald Trump Unstoppable ." The key section read:
In person, you can't miss it: The same way Sarah Palin can see Russia from her house, Donald on the stump can see his future.
The pundits don't want to admit it, but it's sitting there in plain view, 12 moves ahead, like a chess game already won:
President Donald Trump
It turns out we let our electoral process devolve into something so fake and dysfunctional that any half-bright con man with
the stones to try it could walk right through the front door and tear it to shreds on the first go.
And Trump is no half-bright con man, either. He's way better than average.
Traditional Democratic audiences appeared thrilled by the piece and shared it widely. I was invited on scads of cable shows to
discuss ad nauseum the "con man" line. This made me nervous, because it probably meant these people hadn't read the piece, which among other things posited the failures
of America's current ruling class meant Trump's insane tactics could actually work.
Trump was selling himself as a traitor to a corrupt class, someone who knew how soulless and greedy the ruling elite was because
he was one of them.
...
The only reason most blue-state media audiences had been given for Trump's poll numbers all along was racism, which was surely
part of the story but not the whole picture. A lack of any other explanation meant Democratic audiences, after the shock of election
night, were ready to reach for any other data point that might better explain what just happened.
Russiagate became a convenient replacement explanation absolving an incompetent political establishment for its complicity in
what happened in 2016, and not just the failure to see it coming. Because of the immediate arrival of the collusion theory, neither
Wolf Blitzer nor any politician ever had to look into the camera and say, "I guess people hated us so much they were even willing
to vote for Donald Trump."
Post-election, Russiagate made it all worse. People could turn on their TVs at any hour of the day and see anyone from Rachel
Maddow to Chris Cuomo openly reveling in Trump's troubles. This is what Fox looks like to liberal audiences.
Worse, the "walls are closing in" theme -- two years old now -- was just a continuation of the campaign mistake, reporters confusing
what they wanted to happen with what was happening . The story was always more complicated than was being represented.
And then Stephen Cohen of The Nation , another voice of reason, sent me a copy of his
book, "
War With Russia? " It's a collection of his heretical writings about our new, unnecessary
Cold War, and the opening essay ,
adapted from a talk he gave in Washington D.C., made me ashamed of my silence.
"Some people who privately share our concerns -- again, in Congress, the media,
universities and think tanks -- do not speak out at all. For whatever
reason -- concern about being stigmatized, about their career, personal
disposition -- they are silent. But in our democracy, where the cost of dissent
is relatively low, silence is no longer a patriotic option," Cohen wrote, adding, "We
should exempt from this imperative young people, who have more to lose. A few have sought my
guidance, and I always advise, 'Even petty penalties for dissent in regard to Russia could
adversely affect your career. At this stage of life, your first obligation is to your family
and thus to your future prospects. Your time to fight lies ahead'."
Well, what was my excuse?
Special Prosecutor Robert S. Mueller has now turned in his findings, and there's not much
there. For weeks beforehand, mainstream media warned about this -- exhorting
readers against succumbing to feeling "disappointed".
Disappointed? I guess, as my friend Taibbi has noted , it would have
been an immense relief had the U.S. president been found to be a high-level traitor. We
could have all brought picnic lunches to his execution.
Right before the species-ending war with Russia.
In their fanatic loyalty to the narrative, what used to be my favorite media have stridently
reminded us that, Mueller aside, "it's not over!" The "focus of the investigation" will move
now to the New York prosecutors, to House committees. The American intelligentsia will
continue to dream up wild theories -- they'll be Scotch-taped on every vertical
surface, connected by bits of yarn and magic marker scribbles and hyperverbal mania.
The question now is, has the Mueller report finally freed up the rest of us to challenge the
more insane flights of fantasy? Or is it instead so close to the 2020 presidential
elections -- and so legally dangerous for some of the intelligence insiders who
have tried to bring down the president -- that skeptical journalists more than
ever will be bullied to keep silent?
Rootless Whataboutism
As a test case -- a first step on the road to journalistic recovery --
can I suggest we at least retire the insane, Orwellian term "whataboutism?"
Whataboutism really deserves consideration as a "Word of the Year", and not in a good way.
There have been multiple non-ironic media reports about this odious concept,
on NPR , in the
Huffington Post ,
in The Washington Post , you name it.
"His campaign may or may not have conspired with Moscow," The Washington Post
told us awhile back, "but President Trump has routinely employed a durable old Soviet
propaganda tactic 'whataboutism,' the practice of short-circuiting an argument by asserting
moral equivalency between two things that aren't necessarily comparable."
NPR's version also claims that whataboutism is a Soviet-tainted practice. "It's not exactly
a complicated tactic -- any grade-schooler can master the
'yeah-well-you-suck-too-so-there' defense," NPR says. "But it came to be associated with the
USSR because of the Soviet Union's heavy reliance upon whataboutism throughout the Cold War and
afterward, as Russia."
Yet in my experience, it's not so much a Soviet tactic as an American one --
specifically, it's a way of demanding a loyalty oath to the anti-Trump resistance.
I have occasionally dared express skepticism about the entire overblown story that Russia
was involved in our 2016 elections at all. That's right. I don't buy it. I am not
entirely convinced that "Russian bots and trolls" infected anyone's mind by, say, taking
positions both for and against gun control after the Parkland high school mass shooting, or
by setting up
anti-masturbation hotlines , or by
giving bad reviews to "Star Wars: the Last Jedi."
I am also not entirely convinced that the Russians, having supposedly decided at the highest
levels of their government to try to sink Hilary Clinton's candidacy, couldn't think of
anything more clever than to spear-phish campaign manager John Podesta's G-mail.
Nor do I
share the concerns of The Times of London that the Russian animated cartoon "Masha
and the Bear" is part of a soft propaganda drive to weaken the minds of Estonian children ahead
of their eventual annexation by Red Army tanks.
Yet before I can even offer any subtler qualification of all this -- sure,
there is Russian-government, let's say, "illicit computer and social media activity" out there,
mixed with a lot of other noise signals (click-bait farms, which explains at least some of the
infamous Internet Research Agency's activities; ordinary Russians with pro-Kremlin positions
and personal Facebook accounts; and yes, people sitting on their beds who weigh 400 pounds),
but it has to be weighed against -- I'll be cut off.
"That's whataboutism ," I've been told flatly.
It's actually not -- that doesn't even meet the absurd quasi-official
definitions of this new Kafkaesque term -- but that's the whole point.
Disagreement is by its very nature whataboutist . Every skeptical question, after all,
could technically begin, "But what about ?"
Of course, it's far, far worse if I truly commit a whataboutism and -- God
forbid! God forbid! – I express curiosity about The New York Times
reporting about millions flowing to the Clintons and associated with the Russian purchase
of American uranium mines.
Whataboutism! It's so comparable to the old Soviet thought crimes --
Trotskyite, wrecker, cosmopolitan, rootless cosmopolitanism Every time I hear someone
flag a statement as guilty of whataboutism, I mentally add " rootless whataboutism."
People tell me Mueller missed the point. It's about Russian oligarch and Kremlin money,
invested in Trump real estate -- it's not over! All hail the Southern District
prosecutors! OK, let's see it, I'm open to that possibility. But if all Russian money is
tainted just because it's "oligarchical" -- good luck defining that
! -- then is it O.K. for the spouse of then-Secretary of State Hilary Clinton to
take $500,000 for a single hour's work, a speech in Moscow, for one of the most famous
"oligarch" banks?
"That's whataboutism! NPR and The Washington Post say that's a
Soviet-favored tactic! Your loyalty is thus suspect two-fold. Have you had contact with
any Russian nationals?"
Communists and Crickets
"EVIDENCE POINTS TO RUSSIA AS MAIN SUSPECT IN BRAIN INJURY ATTACKS ON DOZENS OF U.S.
DIPLOMATS" was the report by
MSNBC in September 2017, and they flogged that big scoop for months, and have never
really apologized for it.
Two dozen American diplomats in Cuba suffered headaches, dizziness and other vague symptoms
they blamed on strange sounds -- sounds some of them tape-recorded and supplied
to journalists, doctors and the government. "It sounds sort of like a mass of crickets," was
the opening line of the Associated Press report about the recordings (which you can
listen to yourself here ).
But no. Not crickets. As MSNBC reported, our intelligence services had intercepted
Russian communications (!) revealing the sounds were "some kind of microwave weapon,"
one so sophisticated that our top government minds were at a loss.
We might not know how it works, MSNBC reported, but we did know it was a weapon, and
"now Russia is the leading suspect."
"This is not an accident," reported anchorwoman Andrea Mitchell then. "This is not a
microwave listening device gone bad. This is an attack -- against American
diplomats and intelligence officers, and this was targeting."
What an amazing allegation. The Russian government was beaming a mysterious, high-tech
weapon at our citizens ; we had intercepted communications that made this
clear.
For more than a year, I and colleagues with Russia-reporting experience would be grilled
about this, and would just have to shrug apologetically. We just didn't know what to say. It
didn't make a lot of face-value sense -- why exactly would Russian agents, amid
all this rabid anti-Russia hysteria, beam a secret brain-frying weapon at two-dozen random
American diplomats and their family members in Cuba, for weeks apparently? What would be the
logic behind giving these random-seeming people headaches and making them dizzy and even
causing "brain injuries similar to concussions"?
As a physician, I also shared the s
kepticism of colleagues published about this in the Journal of the American Medical
Association. Playing odds, I agreed with those critics that I would have assumed either a
mass psychogenic illness or a viral infection more likely etiologies than a secret Siberian
death ray. I also read "brain injuries similar to concussions" as, "brain injuries that don't
show up on objective testing." (Of course, I've not examined any of these patients or reviewed
their cases so it's not for me to say.)
But in our fevered Russophobic environment, no one wanted to entertain alternative
scenarios -- after all, we don't even understand this sophisticated
weapon, which our intelligence agencies assure us (anonymously) they have intercepted Russian
communications bragging about, so how dare we debate the logic behind its use? (Maybe
this is how they control the president!)
Then three months ago, American scientists published in a peer-review journal their analysis
of the dastardly recordings and
identified the sounds : Crickets. Caribbean crickets.
Specifically, the echoing call of the male, short-tailed indies. During mating season.
But did MSNBC apologize, or retract?
Crickets.
Instead, during a historically cold week this winter, MSNBC star Rachel Maddow used
the excuse of a government panel about energy security to go on a Jack D. Ripper about Russia
someday deciding to freeze middle America to death.
"It is like negative 50 degrees in the Dakotas right now. What would happen if Russia killed
the power in Fargo today? What would happen if all the natural gas lines that service Sioux
Falls just 'poofed', on the coldest day in recent memories, and it wasn't in our power
whether or not to turn them back on?" Maddow asked. "What would you do if you lost heat indefinitely --
as the act of a foreign power! -- on the same day the temperature in
your front yard matched the temperature in Antarctica? I mean, what would you and your family
do?"
Gee, I don't know Rachel. What would my family and I do if Russia launched a nuclear weapon
at my front yard? I guess we'd all die. I guess I don't know who to trust anymore, I feel
exhausted by the news, sick of it all, I just want to stop caring, and you seem to feel the
same, and omigosh Rachel, we've been infected by the red virus!
'They Hate our Freedoms'
James Comey, the former FBI director, testified before the Senate after his firing that the
Russians are "coming after America," because, "They think that this great experiment of ours is
a threat to them, and so they're going to try to run it down and dirty it up as much as
possible."
Right. It's because "they hate our freedoms."
Where have I heard that before?
People had been waiting breathlessly for Mueller's report, but in reality, everything we
needed to know was right there in the first report -- the January 6, 2017, grand
announcement, the big reveal by our Intelligence Community -- the consensus of
CIA, FBI and NSA -- "Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent U.S.
Elections."
I remember finishing that report at the time and thinking:
Holy Cow, they have nothing.
Nothing!
Of the 15 pages with any meat to them in that report, seven were a long, bizarre complaint
about the existence and activities of RT (formerly RussiaToday ), the
Kremlin-sponsored English-language news channel.
Our intelligence agencies reported that RT has become "the most-watched foreign news
channel in the UK," had more YouTube viewers than the BBC or CNN , and was
surpassing al-Jazeera in New York and Washington D.C. ( Voice of America , which
is the U.S. government version of RT , has no sense of humor or passion and so no
viewers anywhere outside of Foggy Bottom.)
RT's success was, per the intelligence report, thanks to a combination of lavish
Kremlin funding and an alluring editorial slant. The intelligence report quoted RT's
editor as saying her station got lots of new viewers after offering sympathetic coverage of the
Occupy Wall Street movement. The intelligence report continued:
In an effort to highlight the alleged "lack of democracy" in the United States, RT broadcast,
hosted, and advertised third-party candidate debates and ran reporting supportive of the
political agenda of these candidates. The RT hosts asserted that the US two-party system does
not represent the views of at least one-third of the population and is a "sham." RT's reports
often characterize the United States as a "surveillance state" and allege widespread
infringements of civil liberties, police brutality, and drone use RT has also focused on
criticism of the US economic system, US currency policy, alleged Wall Street greed, and the
US national debt. Some of RT's hosts have compared the United States to Imperial Rome and
have predicted that government corruption and "corporate greed" will lead to US financial
collapse RT runs anti-fracking programming, highlighting environmental issues and the impacts
on public health
This was hilarious of course -- a public snit by our intel communities about
Russians racking up big numbers among American viewers in Washington and New York , just
by offering mildly critical takes on drone killings and fracking and "alleged Wall Street
greed" ("alleged"? Really ?). We were promised a major assessment of any improper
Russian influences on our 2016 electoral process and we got -- this? A formal
complaint that Russian TV gave Bernie Sanders and Jill Stein too much air time?
All this bitching and moaning about RT -- which, remember, is not some
secret plot, but just a public TV station you can go watch on YouTube or not watch
-- takes up well more than half of that grand intelligence community assessment.
It really speaks volumes about what was on their minds. And again, my conclusion reading it two
years ago was: So, they've got nothing.
The one caveat, though, was that there was a classified appendix. There's always a
classified appendix. So, who knew what was in that ? After all, immediately and in the
two years since, intelligence officials have occasionally been cited -- always
anonymously! --
in The Guardian ,
The New Yorker , and The
New York Times -- as claiming to have intercepted communications between the
Trump team and the Russian government.
Well, by now, we should realize the appendix is a myth.
First, we now know that
at least part of it -- and, I would guess, probably all of it --
was nothing more than the Steele report, the infamous document first posted on
BuzzFeed , that collection of anti-Trump opposition research paid for by the Hilary Clinton
campaign. (You know -- the pee tape stuff.)
And we now also know, courtesy of Robert Mueller's report, that there are no "intercepted
communications" between Russians and the Trump campaign teams. Just like there are no Russian
intercepts about secret Siberian brain-frying rays in Cuba, because that, again, was the mating
call of a short-tailed Caribbean cricket.
I don't know what's funnier about all of this -- and it is damned funny,
really -- the fact that all of this has actually happened , or the fact
that I feel the need to come out of journalistic retirement to help point it out.
A
President With a Traitor's Heart -- for Six More Years
And that's the way it is, and has been, all along for these past two years. There have been
non-stop media allegations that, one way or another, our narcissistic, loud-mouthed, overtly
racist U.S. president has a traitor's heart. Any errors or inaccuracies -- and
there have been a shocking number of retracted "scoops," as well as screwups like the Caribbean
crickets that have just been ignored -- are excused in service of this larger
truth: Our president has a traitor's heart.
But I already knew that! We all did!
We knew it the moment he said , "Russia, if you're listening, I
hope you'll be able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing" -- referencing
some official e-mails of Hilary Clinton's that were improperly handled and got deleted. (Among
the onion layers of irony to this political season is that Trump pioneered the 21st century
witch hunt. There has never been any evidence that Clinton's deleted emails represent anything
at all -- yet Trump hammered away at this as if it mattered, until one day it
did. And he didn't even suggest investigations, he skipped straight to "lock her up!").
Being racist, or stupid, or sexist, or a bully, or a New York real estate developer
-- all of these are deep character flaws. They are not always crimes. (Sexually
assaulting someone is always a crime, however, even if you are a TV star and remember
your breath mints.)
And yet, again, we already knew all of this. Remember this transcript
from The New York Times ?
Trump : I did try and fuck her. She was married and I moved on her very heavily. In fact, I
took her out furniture shopping. She wanted to get some furniture. I said, "I'll show you
where they have some nice furniture." I took her out furniture -- I moved on
her like a bitch. But I couldn't get there.
Trump : Yeah, that's her [peeking out a trailer window at a different target, an
approaching actress] . I better use some Tic Tacs just in case I start kissing her. You
know, I'm automatically attracted to beautiful -- I just start kissing them.
It's like a magnet. Just kiss. I don't even wait. And when you're a star, they let you do it.
You can do anything.
Billy Bush [a fawning minor TV personality] : Whatever you want.
Trump : Grab 'em by the pussy. You can do anything.
Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States.
I share your pain. And I have no doubt he'd trade his own son for majority ownership of a
moderately nice golf course. But I'm also, frankly, no longer very interested in him. I'm much
more interested in us -- the rest of us.
What happened to us?
Well, I'll amend that slightly. I am of course quite interested in seeing Donald Trump leave
office. I suspect, however, that these two-plus years of journalistic malpractice --
a politically-motivated Red Scare at a time when we don't even have any Reds anymore,
just Russians -- has locked in his second term. (What's that? Impeachment
you say? Oh please. He'd set up a government-in-exile in Mar-a-Lago and then he'd be around for
twenty more years instead of six. And he'd have half the nation with him the entire
time.) So thank you for that, MSNBC and NPR and New York Times.
"... Senator Rand Paul, a Kentucky Republican, tweeted: "Time to investigate the Obama officials who concocted and spread the Russian conspiracy hoax!" Representative Mark Meadows, a North Carolina Republican, said "underlying documents" supporting what became Mueller's probe should be released to the public. ..."
"... A McCain associate, David Kramer, acknowledged in a deposition in a libel case that he spread word of the dossier to several news organizations. ..."
President Donald Trump and a key ally, Senate Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham, said Monday that after Robert Mueller closed
his Russia probe, they want an investigation of the investigators.
Graham said at a news conference that Attorney General William Barr should appoint a new special counsel to examine why the U.S.
government, under President Barack Obama, decided to open an investigation into Russian election interference in 2016, and whether
it was an excuse to spy on Trump's campaign.
"Was it a ruse to get into the Trump campaign?" Graham said at the news conference. "I don't know but I'm going to try to find
out."
Trump told reporters at the White House that unspecified "people" behind the Russia probe would "be looked at."
The remarks show that Trump and some of his allies have retribution and score-settling on their minds after Mueller found no evidence
that the president or his campaign colluded with the Kremlin's election interference. It's unclear whom Trump wants investigated,
but possibilities include former FBI Director James Comey, whom he fired in May 2017; Obama's CIA Director John Brennan, whom Trump
stripped of his security clearance last year; and other former intelligence and Justice Department officials who have vocally criticized
the president.
The stage is also set for dueling and contradictory congressional investigations. In the House, controlled by Democrats, several
committees have opened investigations into the president's financial and business affairs, and Judiciary Chairman Jerrold Nadler
said Sunday he wants Barr to testify soon on his finding that Mueller didn't produce sufficient evidence that Trump obstructed justice
by interfering in the Russia inquiry.
The Senate Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, on Monday blocked a vote on a measure by the Democratic leader, Chuck
Schumer of New York, calling for Mueller's report to be made public. McConnell said Barr should have time to consider which portions
of the report can be publicly released given concerns about classified information, ongoing investigations and other information
protected by law.
Republican Allies
Several other Republicans backed Graham and Trump on Monday. Senate Oversight Committee Chairman Ron Johnson of Wisconsin said
he'd like to work with Graham "to get those answers for the American public."
"We need to find out what happened," he said in an interview.
Senator Rand Paul, a Kentucky Republican, tweeted: "Time to investigate the Obama officials who concocted and spread the Russian
conspiracy hoax!" Representative Mark Meadows, a North Carolina Republican, said "underlying documents" supporting what became Mueller's
probe should be released to the public.
"Let them decide for themselves whether this investigation was warranted -- or whether it was a two-year long episode of political
targeting, driven by FBI and DOJ executives who wanted to retaliate against a legitimately elected president," Meadows said in an
interview.
Graham said his committee would also look into the FBI's handling of the inquiry into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's
use of a private email server, saying that Comey's actions in that investigation "did affect" the 2016 election. Comey held a news
conference in July 2016 to announce that Clinton wouldn't be charged with a crime, and then announced less than two weeks before
the election that the investigation had been re-opened after additional emails were discovered.
'Evil Things'
Trump's indication that unnamed people responsible for the probe would be investigated was vague. He didn't name anyone, and after
he made similar remarks on Sunday, White House deputy press secretary Hogan Gidley told reporters that Barr hadn't been directed
to open any investigations of Democrats.
"People that have done such harm to our country," Trump complained on Monday. "We've gone through a period of really bad things
happening. Those people will certainly be looked at. I've been looking at them for a long time and I'm saying, why haven't they been
looked at. They lied to Congress. Many of them. You know who they are. They've done so many evil things."
Trump added that he hasn't considered pardoning anyone convicted in connection to Mueller's probe.
Graham said he planned to talk with Barr on Monday and hoped to hold a public hearing with the attorney general to explain his
findings in the Mueller probe. Barr sent a four-page letter to Congress on Sunday summarizing Mueller's findings, which have not
been publicly released.
"I'm asking him to lay it all out," Graham said.
Both Trump and Graham said they support Barr publicly releasing as much of Mueller's report as possible. The investigation turned
out "100 percent" as it should have, Trump told reporters.
Dossier Distribution
Trump has previously singled out individuals over their role in the probe, calling for an investigation into the "
other side " of the investigation. He's mentioned Comey, former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, former FBI employees Peter
Strzok and Lisa Page, and Justice Department attorney Bruce Ohr.
Graham also said he advised his friend and Senate colleague John McCain to give the FBI the so-called Steele dossier on Trump,
rebutting the president's accusations that McCain tried to hinder his 2016 election.
Graham told reporters that McCain, an Arizona Republican who died last year, had shown him the unverified collection of intelligence
reports on Trump's links to Russia that was put together by a former British spy, Christopher Steele. Steele was commissioned to
compile the information by an opposition research firm hired by Democrats.
McCain put the dossier in his safe and handed it over to the FBI the next day, Graham said.
A McCain associate, David Kramer, acknowledged in a deposition in a libel case that he spread word of the dossier to several news
organizations.
-- With assistance by Billy House
( Updates with McConnell blocking Schumer measure in seventh paragraph. ) Published on March 25, 2019 12:37 PM
Updated on March 25, 2019 5:58 PM
Seems to me what that BigLie's about is this tale: Relations with Russia during the
post-USSR age were going along swell until Russia began involved in the Venezuelan
Crisis.
The attempt is to try a new narrative using a different angle to blame Russia which is the
goal of the BigLie. Signal a new line of approach in dealing with the attitude toward Russia
to the trusty echoers of His Master's Voice.
So Russiagate smoothly transferred in Neo-McCarthyism and it will poison the US political atmosphere for a decade or two.
Notable quotes:
"... But as I foresaw well before the summary of Mueller's "Russia investigation" appeared, there is unlikely to be much, if any. Too many personal and organizational interests are too deeply invested in Russiagate. Not surprisingly, leading perpetrators instead immediately met the summary with a torrent of denials, goal-post shifts, obfuscations, and calls for more Russiagate "investigations." ..."
"... Clamorous allegations that the Kremlin "attacked our elections" and thereby put Trump in the White House, despite the lack of any evidence, cast doubt on the legitimacy of American elections ..."
"... Persistent demands to "secure our elections from hostile powers" -- a politically and financially profitable mania, it seems -- can only further abet and perpetuate declining confidence in the entire electoral process ..."
"... Still more, if some crude Russian social-media outputs could so dupe voters, what does this tell us about what US elites, which originated these allegations, really think of those voters, of the American people? ..."
"... Mainstream media are, of course, a foundational institution of American democracy, especially national ones, newspapers and television, with immense influence inside the Beltway and, in ramifying synergic ways, throughout the country. Their Russiagate media malpractice, as I have termed it, may have been the worst such episode in modern American history. ..."
"... Almost equally remarkable and lamentable, we learn that even now, after Mueller's finding is known, top executives of the Times and other leading Russiagate media outlets, including The Washington Post and CNN, " have no regrets ." ..."
"... Leading members of the party initiated, inflated, and prolonged it. They did nothing to prevent inquisitors like Representatives Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell from becoming the cable-news face of the party. Or to rein in or disassociate the party from the outlandish excesses of "The Resistance." With very few exceptions, elected and other leading Democrats did nothing to stop -- and therefore further abetted -- the institutional damage being done by Russiagate allegations. ..."
"... Rachel Maddow continues to hype "the underlying reality that Russia did in fact attack us." By any reasonable definition of "attack," no, it did not, and scarcely any allegation could be more recklessly warmongering, a perception the Democratic Party will for this and other Russiagate commissions have to endure, or not. (When Mueller's full report is published, we will see if he too indulged in this dangerous absurdity. A few passages in the summary suggest he might have done so.) ..."
"... Finally, but potentially not least, the new Cold War with Russia has itself become an institution pervading American political, economic, media, and cultural life. Russiagate has made it more dangerous, more fraught with actual war, than the Cold War we survived, as I explain in War with Russia? Recall only that Russiagate allegations further demonized "Putin's Russia," thwarted Trump's necessary attempts to "cooperate with Russia" as somehow "treasonous," criminalized détente thinking and "inappropriate contacts with Russia" -- in short, policies and practices that previously helped to avert nuclear war. Meanwhile, the Russiagate spectacle has caused many ordinary Russians who once admired America to now be " derisive and scornful " toward our political life. ..."
But as I foresaw well before the summary
of Mueller's "Russia investigation" appeared, there is unlikely to be much, if any. Too many personal and organizational interests
are too deeply invested in Russiagate. Not surprisingly, leading perpetrators instead immediately met the summary with a torrent
of denials, goal-post shifts, obfuscations, and calls for more Russiagate "investigations." Joy Reid of MSNBC, which has been
a citadel of Russiagate allegations along with CNN, even suggested that Mueller and Attorney General William Barr were themselves
engaged in " a cover-up
."
Contrary to a number of major media outlets, from Bloomberg News to The Wall Street Journal , nor does Mueller's
exculpatory finding actually mean that "
Russiagate
is dead " and indeed that " it expired
in an instant ." Such conclusions reveal a lack of historical and political understanding. Nearly three years of Russiagate's
toxic allegations have entered the American political-media elite bloodstream, and they almost certainly will reappear again and
again in one form or another.
This is an exceedingly grave danger, because the real costs of Russiagate are not the estimated $25–40 million spent on the Mueller
investigation but the corrosive damage it has already done to the institutions of American democracy -- damage done not by an alleged
"Trump-Putin axis" but by Russsigate's perpetrators themselves. Having examined this collateral damage in my recently published book
War with Russia? From Putin and Ukraine to Trump and Russiagate , I will only note them here.
§ Clamorous allegations that the Kremlin "attacked our elections" and thereby put Trump in the White House, despite the lack
of any evidence, cast doubt on the legitimacy of American elections everywhere -- national, state, and local. If true, or even
suspected, how can voters have confidence in the electoral foundations of American democracy? Persistent demands to "secure our
elections from hostile powers" -- a politically and financially profitable mania, it seems -- can only further abet and perpetuate
declining confidence in the entire electoral process.
Still more, if some crude Russian social-media outputs could so dupe voters, what does this tell us about what US elites,
which originated these allegations, really think of those voters, of the American people?
§ Defamatory Russsiagate allegations that Trump was a "Kremlin puppet" and thus "illegitimate" were aimed at the president but
hit the presidency itself, degrading the institution, bringing it under suspicion, casting doubt on its legitimacy. And if an "agent
of a hostile foreign power" could occupy the White House once, a "Manchurian candidate," why not again? Will Republicans be able
to resist making such allegations against a future Democratic president? In any event, Hillary Clinton's failed campaign manager,
Robby Mook, has already told us that there will be a "
next time ."
§ Mainstream media are, of course, a foundational institution of American democracy, especially national ones, newspapers
and television, with immense influence inside the Beltway and, in ramifying synergic ways, throughout the country. Their Russiagate
media malpractice, as I have termed it, may have been the worst such episode in modern American history. No mainstream media
did anything to expose, for example, two crucial and fraudulent Russiagate documents -- the so-called Steele Dossier and the January
2017 Intelligence Community Assessment -- but instead relied heavily on them for their own narratives. Little more need be said here
about this institutional self-degradation. Glenn Greenwald and a few others followed and exposed it throughout, and now Matt Taibbi
has given us a meticulously documented
account of that systematic malpractice , concluding that Mueller's failure to confirm the media's Russiagate allegations "is
a death-blow for the reputation of the American news media."
Nor, it must be added, was this entirely inadvertent or accidental. On August 8, 2016, the trend-setting New York Times
published on its front page
an astonishing editorial manifesto by its media critic. Asking whether "normal standards" should apply to candidate Trump, he
explained that they should not: "You have to throw out the textbook American journalism has been using for the better part of the
past half-century." Let others decide whether this Times proclamation unleashed the highly selective, unbalanced, questionably
factual "journalism" that has so degraded Russiagate media or instead the publication sought to justify what was already underway.
In either case, this remarkable -- and ramifying -- Times rejection of its own professed standards should not be forgotten.
Almost equally remarkable and lamentable, we learn that even now, after Mueller's finding is known, top executives of the
Times and other leading Russiagate media outlets, including The Washington Post and CNN, "
have no regrets ."
§ For better or worse, America has a two-party political system, which means that the Democratic Party is also a foundational
institution. Little more also need be pointed out regarding its self-degrading role in the Russiagate fraud. Leading members of the
party initiated, inflated, and prolonged it. They did nothing to prevent inquisitors like Representatives Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell
from becoming the cable-news face of the party. Or to rein in or disassociate the party from the outlandish excesses of "The Resistance."
With very few exceptions, elected and other leading Democrats did nothing to stop -- and therefore further abetted -- the institutional
damage being done by Russiagate allegations.
As for Mueller's finding, the party's virtual network, MSNBC, remains undeterred.
Rachel Maddow
continues to hype "the underlying reality that Russia did in fact attack us." By any reasonable definition of "attack," no, it
did not, and scarcely any allegation could be more recklessly warmongering, a perception the Democratic Party will for this and other
Russiagate commissions have to endure, or not. (When Mueller's full report is published, we will see if he too indulged in this dangerous
absurdity. A few passages in the summary suggest he might have done so.)
§ Finally, but potentially not least, the new Cold War with Russia has itself become an institution pervading American political,
economic, media, and cultural life. Russiagate has made it more dangerous, more fraught with actual war, than the Cold War we survived,
as I explain in War with Russia? Recall only that Russiagate allegations further demonized "Putin's Russia," thwarted Trump's
necessary attempts to "cooperate with Russia" as somehow "treasonous," criminalized détente thinking and "inappropriate contacts
with Russia" -- in short, policies and practices that previously helped to avert nuclear war. Meanwhile, the Russiagate spectacle
has caused many ordinary Russians who once admired America to now be "
derisive and scornful
" toward our political life.
"... All of these people who are in or have passed through leadership positions in America are entirely valid representatives of Americans in general. You may imagine they are faking cluelessness to avoid acknowledging responsibility for their crimes, but the cluelessness is quite real and extends to the entire population. ..."
"... Decades ago while in a leftist organization debate was raised as to how to find valid information to inform ourselves with. It was well understood that the vast majority of the western corporate mass media was a brainwashing operation to keep the masses clueless and supporting imperialist war but, we reasoned, the ruling class itself would need to be kept informed with quality information in order to feel confident that they were making good decisions. ..."
"... But things change. Note how the Russiagate skeptics in the US were attacked by the desperately faithful: If you focused attention on flaws in the Russiagate conspiracy theory then the general consensus was that you were defending Trump. ..."
"... This condition has arisen from literally generations of propaganda instilling as reality in American media consumers the myth of "American Exceptionalism" . The current crop of American adults have been raised by parents who themselves have been thoroughly indoctrinated in this alter reality. The disease is literally universal across the nation, from lowliest and most oppressed Black transvestites to the CEOs of the biggest corporations. ..."
"... The Washington Post used to be one of the journals that the elites looked to in order to help inform their decisions, but now in the post-truth, or relative truth, world these information sources have increasingly sought to align their information products with the "proper" relative truths that reinforce the myth of "American Exceptionalism" , even if that is in conflict with objective and empirical reality. ..."
"... In short, Washington Bezos Post writers are not moronic or drunk. They are delusional . They are in the grips of a delusion that afflicts the entire United States, and portions of the rest of the world as well ..."
"... WashingtonBezos Post writers are moronic or
drunk."
What ails them is far more complicated and vastly more sinister.
One often hears people say of other countries "It isn't the people of Elbonia whom I
hate, it is their government." It may be difficult for some in Europe, where there
remains a vestige of an imperative to foster a worldview based upon objective reality, to
come to grips with the fact that the problem with America has metastasized and spread to the
level of the individual citizens... all of them, to one degree or another. You don't
like Trump? Bolton? Clinton?
All of these people who are in or have passed through leadership positions in America are
entirely valid representatives of Americans in general. You may imagine they are faking
cluelessness to avoid acknowledging responsibility for their crimes, but the cluelessness is
quite real and extends to the entire population.
How did this happen to America?
Decades ago while in a leftist organization debate was raised as to how to find valid
information to inform ourselves with. It was well understood that the vast majority of the
western corporate mass media was a brainwashing operation to keep the masses clueless and
supporting imperialist war but, we reasoned, the ruling class itself would need to be kept
informed with quality information in order to feel confident that they were making good
decisions.
With this in mind we identified journals and sources that the capitalist elites
themselves relied upon to inform their decisions.
Things like the CIA World Factbook,
for instance, even though created by an organization devoted to disinformation, could be
trusted back then to be relatively dependable.
But things change. Note how the Russiagate skeptics in the US were attacked by the
desperately faithful: If you focused attention on flaws in the Russiagate conspiracy theory
then the general consensus was that you were defending Trump. The possibility that you could
be defending reason and truth is still dismissed out of hand. Why is that? Because in America
(it's a mind disease spreading to Europe, apparently) truth is relative and reason has become
just whatever justifies what you wish to be the truth; therefore, those who propose a
"truth" that conflicts with what people want to believe are agents of some enemy.
This condition has arisen from literally generations of propaganda instilling as reality
in American media consumers the myth of "American Exceptionalism" . The current crop
of American adults have been raised by parents who themselves have been thoroughly
indoctrinated in this alter reality. The disease is literally universal across the nation,
from lowliest and most oppressed Black transvestites to the CEOs of the biggest corporations.
As prior generations of the ruling elites from the post WWII era who still retained some
sense for the importance of objective reality have died off they have been replaced by the
newer generation for whom reality is entirely subjective. If they want to believe their
gender is mountain panda then that's their right as Americans! Likewise if they want to
believe that America's bombing is humanitarian and god's gift to the species, then anyone who
suggests otherwise is obviously a KGB troll.
The Washington Post used to be one of the journals that the elites looked to in order to
help inform their decisions, but now in the post-truth, or relative truth, world these
information sources have increasingly sought to align their information products with the
"proper" relative truths that reinforce the myth of "American Exceptionalism" ,
even if that is in conflict with objective and empirical reality.
To do otherwise would be to
aid and give comfort to America's "enemies" (do keep in mind that America is a nation
at war - has been for decades - and that workers in the corporate mass media are very much
conscious of their roles in that ongoing war effort, to the point that they see themselves as
information warriors fighting shadowy enemies that only exist in their own relative reality
bubbles).
In short, WashingtonBezos Post writers are not moronic or drunk.
They are delusional . They are in the grips of a delusion that afflicts the
entire United States, and portions of the rest of the world as well.
Some Americans have
broken free from this Matrix-like delusion, but the numbers remain somewhat small...
certainly less than one or two percent of the population, and those who have broken free of
the delusion will never be given a soapbox to speak to the rest of the population from by the
corporate elites.
I think you have wildly underestimated the number of Americans who are very aware of what is
going on with our country and the world. More than 40% of eligible voters elect not to
participate in elections realizing the futility of it, and withholding their consent to this
regime. It's a feature of propaganda to engender feelings of hopelessness, helplessness, and
feelings of isolation by falsely portraying a consensus among the population for the policies
of the regime. Resist!
"... Woodward was Naval intelligence. Watergate was the coup that established the Bush cabal. ..."
"... "What, then, is the US doing in Syria, Iraq, Poland, Lithuania, South Korea, Japan, etc ad nauseam?" Full Spectrum Dominance is ubiquitous like an atmosphere i.e. you're not supposed to notice. Are you this persnickety with oxygen too? ..."
"... Russiagate became a convenient replacement explanation absolving an incompetent political establishment for its complicity in what happened in 2016, and not just the failure to see it coming. Because of the immediate arrival of the collusion theory, neither Wolf Blitzer nor any politician ever had to look into the camera and say, "I guess people hated us so much they were even willing to vote for Donald Trump ..."
In an era of generally warming ties between the Trump administration and Moscow , Russia's
deepening involvement in Venezuela is creating a flash point by challenging the U.S. effort
to force Maduro from office.
What please are the signs that we are in an "in an era of generally warming ties between
the Trump administration and Moscow" ?
The piece includes nothing that supports that claim.
The U.S. is occupying parts of Syria against Russia's will. It is threatening Russia by
positioning ever more NATO forces at its borders. Trump left the INF treaty with Russia. He
opposed Russia
wherever he could . Nothing of that has changed.
In fact yesterday Bloomberg
reported that the U.S. is reading new sanctions against Russia for the MI6 stunt of
vanishing Sergej Skripal:
The White House has received a long-awaited package of new sanctions on Russia, intended to
punish the Kremlin for a 2018 nerve-agent attack on a former Russian spy in the U.K.
Last week Russia deployed some 100 military technicians and cyber-defense specialists to
Venezuela. They will test and probably upgrade Venezuela's S-300 air defense systems. They
will also help to check the control systems of Venezuela's Simón Bolívar
Hydroelectric Plant and the Guri Dam that trice led to large scale electricity outages during
the last month. Venzuela suspects that U.S. cyber attacks led to those failures.
Also yesterday Trump's special envoy for Venezuela Elliot Abrams and National Security
Advisor John Bolton
threatened even more sanctions against Russia for its hardly existing footprint in
Venezuela:
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has been given a list of options to respond to Russia's
growing presence in Venezuela in support of Maduro, including new sanctions, said Elliott
Abrams, the U.S. special representative for Venezuela.
"We have options and it would be a mistake for the Russians to think they have a free
hand here. They don't," Abrams told reporters at the State Department.
U.S. President Donald Trump earlier this week said "Russia has to get out" of Venezuela
and said "all options" were open to force Russia to do so after two Russian air force
planes carrying nearly 100 military personnel landed outside Caracas.
Trump's national security adviser John Bolton issued a second warning on Friday in a
strongly worded formal statement.
"We strongly caution actors external to the Western Hemisphere against deploying
military assets to Venezuela, or elsewhere in the Hemisphere, with the intent of
establishing or expanding military operations," Bolton said.
"We will consider such provocative actions as a direct threat to international peace and
security in the region. We will continue to defend and protect the interests of the United
States, and those of our partners in the Western Hemisphere," he said.
Again we ask: What please are the signs that we are "in an era of generally warming ties
between the Trump administration and Moscow"?
What is the purpose of making that claim?
Posted by b on March 30, 2019 at 01:17 PM |
Permalink
Comments Anything less than a war against Russia, somewhere, anywhere, is "warming
relations" to the psycho-Russophobes.
Never Mind the Bollocks , Mar 30, 2019 1:29:10 PM |
link
John Anthony La Pietra , Mar 30, 2019 1:46:52 PM |
link
My first thought is that they still haven't caught on to (or caught up with) the sarcasm in
b's list of things the Common Orange-Crested Dotard and his flock have "done for" Russia, and
are continuing to try to link Trump and Putin even in the absence of help from Mueller.
it is stretching it to say because the mueller investigation can up ziltch, that the ties are
warming with russia.. more warm milk with arsenic in it as i see it... it's not like the wapo
has never offered arsenic before is it??
Warming ties? It is an extraordinary way to describe things. I can only see the choice of
words as yet another attempt to blame Russia for the deterioration in relations. i.e. Trump
is trying to mend fences and look what they do!
"We strongly caution actors external to the Western Hemisphere against deploying military
assets to Venezuela, or elsewhere in the Hemisphere, with the intent of establishing or
expanding military operations," Bolton said.
"We will consider such provocative actions as a direct threat to international peace
and security in the region.
What, then, is the US doing in Syria, Iraq, Poland, Lithuania, South Korea, Japan, etc ad
nauseam? Are all of these countries also in the US backyard? When the US is creating
provocations on the Russian and Chinese borders many thousands of miles from the US, are
Russia and China to blame for "threatening" the US's backyard in Lithuania and South Korea
etc?
The US have not noticed that the virtual world they have created for themselves conflicts
with the reality on the ground. Instead of correcting their erroneous world-view they try to
imagine changes in the world into conformation with their erroneous world-view, thereby
making the error even greater. They are descending into ever increasing madness.
The Russians don't realize that the US are the unassailable Masters of the Universe, if more
countries like Germany and Russia ignore their sanctions they will look like a paper tiger
and lose their credibility, I look forward to that day.
OMG! How far the mighty MSM doyen The Washington Post has fallen. Those halcyon days of
Woodward and Bernstein are now but a distant memory. The shinning victory of driving the
hated President Richard Nixon from high office has dimmed to the level of a fading myth. Sic
transit gloria! That vaunted stable of journalists that once terrified and bedeviled those at
the acme of political power, has sunk to the nadir of the profession, to wit: supermarket
tabloids! We will miss you Walter Cronkite! Farewell Edward R. Murrow! Good bye H.L. Mencken.
The Fourth Estate is in the hands of morons and drunks. We the people have lost.
For the globalist hawk, Bolton's grasp on geography is quite limited.
The far eastern part of Russia is actually in the western hemisphere. So, Russia is
technically part of western hemisphere too.
BTW, only 3 European countries are completely in western hemisphere: Iceland, Ireland and
Portugal.
UK, France and Spain are partly in both. The rest of Europe is in the eastern hemisphere, and
no part of the US is in it.
@ BM | Mar 30, 2019 2:26:15 PM | 9
" The US have not noticed that the virtual world they have created for themselves
conflicts with the reality on the ground. Instead of correcting their erroneous world-view
they try to imagine changes in the world into conformation with their erroneous world-view .
. . "
And it's not just the so-called "leadership." There is, for example, a once-pretty-good
left-wing site that has become a groveling pseudo-left site, with a significant number of
members who think of something that they wish were true, and then just post comments stating
that it is true, and absolutely refuse to acknowledge any evidence to the
contrary.
@15
I should have said that they WON'T walk away from the table. They sit there begging for
credit to play another hand, and too many Americans will be only to happy to extend that
credit.
The Americans believe they have full spectrum dominance. They believe they can dictate terms
to Russia. They are probably right. I worry about them being wrong.
The answer is that WaPo wants to cast doubt on Mueller's reluctant finding of no collusion.
If WaPo did not hint at friendly relations between the Trump White House and the Kremlin, it
would be admitting that its Russiagate reporting has been fake news for years. As WaPo
reports it, it's just the same old Trump-Putin bromance.
They won't walk away from the table.. by: mourning dove @ 16; <= it more like they will
continue to hide under the table.. i have yet to see a competent accurate list of events and
concerns that justify.. invasion.... if anyone knows of one, please post it.
A set up? <= "Generally warning ties" will soon give way to OUTRAGE
that "Trump's Syrian appeasement encouraged Putin to meddle in Venezeula!!!"by: Jackrabbit |
@ 6
The fact that the current US administration is reviving the nearly two century old Monroe
Doctrine speaks volumes. I'm curious as to how much success they are going to have with
'whipping' the dissenters
back in line?
When Hollywood no longer produces anything remotely resembling genuine comedy and all that
the US film industry is useful for is generating live-action cartoon propaganda trash like
"Captain Marvel" to recruit more cannon fodder for US wars around the planet, the world is in
serious need of true stand-up comedy and outlets like Jeff Bozo's The Washington Post bravely
step in to fill the breach.
Maybe if WaPo wants to report any real news its readers can take seriously, it should
advertise for another Saudi journalist to write op-eds for it and then send that journalist
to the Saudi embassy in Istanbul.
B asked why the purpose of the claim
"
In an era of generally warming ties between the Trump administration and Moscow,
"
Era is a term usually associated with geologic time but can be abused to mean any time frame
as it is here to say that black is white in State Dept. speak but to answer the why look at
the rest of the sentence
"
Russia's deepening involvement in Venezuela is creating a flash point by challenging the U.S.
effort to force Maduro from office.
"
To me the US is saying the we have done regime change before and got away with it ( within
the era) but are being opposed now and bullying is our modus operendi if we can't use force
so get out of our way.
So far as the Monroe Doctrine is concerned, the US is breaching it while Russia appears to be
upholding it. Monroe was protecting Latin American countries, and none more than Venezuela,
from imperialism; asserting their right to independence and self rule. Trump is denying them
those rights by insisting on its power to determine what form their government should take
and who should compose it.
While it seems unlikely that the US will actually invade Venezuela it seems extremely
probable that the US will employ, train, arm and direct mercenary terrorists to make life in
Venezuela as difficult as it can. In this enterprise it will have the support of most of
Venezuela's corrupt neighbours, who fear the spirit of the Bolivarian experiment much more
than Washington does. This means that, with idiots like Bolsonaro and Duque in nominal
command, anything might happen and that blood will flow.
Today there is news that Trump has cut off aid to Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador. What
is to be made of that?
OMG! How far the mighty MSM doyen The Washington Post has fallen. Those halcyon days of
Woodward and Bernstein are now but a distant memory. The shinning victory of driving the
hated President Richard Nixon from high office ... a ... myth ... morons ... We the people
...
Posted by: GeorgeV | Mar 30, 2019 2:43:57 PM | 12
Woodward was Naval intelligence. Watergate was the coup that established the Bush
cabal.
[aside for b: thank you for forcing us to beacon to Google our presence and comments on
your site. The "secret team" says danke.]
They lost control of Saudi Arabia, after trying to take down MBS and then betraying him by
unexpectedly allowing waivers on Iranian oil in November.
The U.S. cannot take down Iran without Venezuelan oil. What is worse, right now they don't
have access to enough heavy oil to meet their own needs.
Controlling the world oil trade is central to Trump's strategy for the U.S. to continue
its empire. Without Venezuelan oil, the U.S. is a bit player in the energy markets, and will
remain so.
Having Russia block the U.S. in Venezuela adds insult to injury. After Crimea and Syria,
now Venezuela, Russia exposes the U.S. as a loud mouthed-bully without the capacity to back
up its threats, a 'toothless tiger', an 'emperor without clothes'.
If the U.S. cannot dislodge Russia from Venezuela, its days as 'global hegemon' are
finished. For this reason the U.S. will continue escalating the situation with ever-riskier
actions, until it succeeds or breaks.
In the same manor, if Russia backs off, its resistance to the U.S. is finished. And the
U.S. will eventually move to destroy Russia, like it has been actively trying to do for the
past 30 years. Russia cannot and will not back off.
Venezuela thus becomes the stage where the final act in the clash of empires plays out.
Will the world become a multi-polar world, in which the U.S. becomes a relatively isolated
and insignificant pole? Or will the world become more fully dominated by a brutal, erratic
hegemon?
Trump campaigned on detente with Russia. Trump has made an effort to stand by his promises,
no matter how ill conceived or misguided.
Looks like a shot across his bow, warning him not keep the one campaign promise that could
actually lead away from the abyss?
As for the WaPo, Bezos dependence on military contracts is an obvious motivation plus
whatever the NSA has collected on him.
As for his editors, journalists and many of the most irrational in government, something in
the amphetamine family. Euphoria trumps conscience and gives the false impression that you
are the smartest guy in the room. Makes logic and reasoning by cooler heads impossible.
The next day let down invites repeat ingestion.
Most unfortunate of all is the willingness of readers to swallow this sort of fear mongering
and fairy stories without question, even to the point of defending them.
I wonder what the eventual outcome will be when enough of us realize that the social contract
between ourselves, our government and those institutions that are meant to support us are
well and truly broken.
Thaks b, now that is a delightful question to pose on the eve of April fool's day.
My suggestion is that Cambridge Analytica and others backing Trump and the yankee imperial
machine have been taking measurements of USA citizens opinions and are staggered by the
results. They are panicked!
I suspect that the cool aid is not working effectively these days and that far too many
people see through the charades and lies. An interesting story lurks behind this and the
entire 'hate russia' and 'monkey mueller' episode.
The attitudes of the masses are spinning out of the manipulative hands of the deep state
and the oligarchs. Do any of our comrades have a handle on this type of research and the
implication for voter attitudes?
"... WashingtonBezos Post writers are moronic or drunk."
What ails them is far more complicated and vastly more sinister.
One often hears people say of other countries "It isn't the people of Elbonia whom I
hate, it is their government." It may be difficult for some in Europe, where there
remains a vestige of an imperative to foster a worldview based upon objective reality, to
come to grips with the fact that the problem with America has metastasized and spread to the
level of the individual citizens... all of them, to one degree or another. You don't
like Trump? Bolton? Clinton? All of these people who are in or have passed through leadership
positions in America are entirely valid representatives of Americans in general. You may
imagine they are faking cluelessness to avoid acknowledging responsibility for their crimes,
but the cluelessness is quite real and extends to the entire population.
How did this happen to America?
Decades ago while in a leftist organization debate was raised as to how to find valid
information to inform ourselves with. It was well understood that the vast majority of the
western corporate mass media was a brainwashing operation to keep the masses clueless and
supporting imperialist war but, we reasoned, the ruling class itself would need to be kept
informed with quality information in order to feel confident that they were making good
decisions. With this in mind we identified journals and sources that the capitalist elites
themselves relied upon to inform their decisions. Things like the CIA World Factbook,
for instance, even though created by an organization devoted to disinformation, could be
trusted back then to be relatively dependable.
But things change. Note how the Russiagate skeptics in the US were attacked by the
desperately faithful: If you focused attention on flaws in the Russiagate conspiracy theory
then the general consensus was that you were defending Trump. The possibility that you could
be defending reason and truth is still dismissed out of hand. Why is that? Because in America
(it's a mind disease spreading to Europe, apparently) truth is relative and reason has become
just whatever justifies what you wish to be the truth; therefore, those who propose a
"truth" that conflicts with what people want to believe are agents of some enemy.
This condition has arisen from literally generations of propaganda instilling as reality
in American media consumers the myth of "American Exceptionalism" . The current crop
of American adults have been raised by parents who themselves have been thoroughly
indoctrinated in this alter reality. The disease is literally universal across the nation,
from lowliest and most oppressed Black transvestites to the CEOs of the biggest corporations.
As prior generations of the ruling elites from the post WWII era who still retained some
sense for the importance of objective reality have died off they have been replaced by the
newer generation for whom reality is entirely subjective. If they want to believe their
gender is mountain panda then that's their right as Americans! Likewise if they want to
believe that America's bombing is humanitarian and god's gift to the species, then anyone who
suggests otherwise is obviously a KGB troll.
The Washington Post used to be one of the journals that the elites looked to in order to
help inform their decisions, but now in the post-truth, or relative truth, world these
information sources have increasingly sought to align their information products with the
"proper" relative truths that reinforce the myth of "American Exceptionalism" ,
even if that is in conflict with objective and empirical reality. To do otherwise would be to
aid and give comfort to America's "enemies" (do keep in mind that America is a nation
at war - has been for decades - and that workers in the corporate mass media are very much
conscious of their roles in that ongoing war effort, to the point that they see themselves as
information warriors fighting shadowy enemies that only exist in their own relative reality
bubbles).
In short, WashingtonBezos Post writers are not moronic or drunk.
They are delusional . They are in the grips of a delusion that afflicts the
entire United States, and portions of the rest of the world as well. Some Americans have
broken free from this Matrix-like delusion, but the numbers remain somewhat small...
certainly less than one or two percent of the population, and those who have broken free of
the delusion will never be given a soapbox to speak to the rest of the population from by the
corporate elites.
To bevin@27, I suggest you review your history of the 1902 and 1903 blockade of
Venezuela, particularly with regards to the enactment of the Roosevelt Corollary to the
Monroe Doctrine.
@ Maracatu with the Engdhal link saying the real threat to the US is China
The real threat to the Western empire (which owns the US) is the concept of socialistic
finance which China is evolving. The West wants China to evolve to be the next host for private finance empire.....
And its not working so we get this show we see as the bully of private finance is allowed
to die of its own cancer....total erosion of public trust.
Assuming the West will not go nuclear over Venezuela, when that loss of Venezuela becomes
apparent to the rest of the world, the knives will come out and empire will eviscerate itself
as former colonies cut themselves loose.
"What, then, is the US doing in Syria, Iraq, Poland, Lithuania, South Korea, Japan, etc ad
nauseam?" Full Spectrum Dominance is ubiquitous like an atmosphere i.e. you're not supposed to
notice. Are you this persnickety with oxygen too?
I think you have wildly underestimated the number of Americans who are very aware of what is
going on with our country and the world. More than 40% of eligible voters elect not to
participate in elections realizing the futility of it, and withholding their consent to this
regime. It's a feature of propaganda to engender feelings of hopelessness, helplessness, and
feelings of isolation by falsely portraying a consensus among the population for the policies
of the regime. Resist!
YES. I totally support that and would add that the response to the lucid campaign of the
Sanders run for presidency and the current rising wave from that has the oligarchy
spooked.
In addition the 'one belt one road' infrastructure scheme has the Yankees totally out
foxed. That is why the USA continue to meddle in Afghanistan and the western Islamic province
of China plus threaten Iran etc etc. There is likely to be no future if oil and coal are
pursued and even if there were no global warming from those sources they are soon (within a
century) to be eclipsed by solar/hydro energy systems.
The oligarchy has lost its grip, its credibility and soon its masses: see Gillet
Jaunes.
By regime, I'm not referring to whoever sits in the Oval Office, but rather this system of
domination. MSM does not accurately depict the attitudes and opinions of Americans, or anyone
else. It only represents what they want us to think.
One though I should add is that the future for rapid retrofit of energy and hydro Computer
Numerically Controlled machine networks. After Stuxnet attack in Iran and now the same in
Venezuela there will be few nation states that will be satisfied with the older systems.
New technology will oust the old and likely from China or Russia.
Seems to me what that BigLie's about is this tale: Relations with Russia during the
post-USSR age were going along swell until Russia began involved in the Venezuelan
Crisis. The attempt is to try a new narrative using a different angle to blame Russia
which is the goal of the BigLie. Signal a new line of approach in dealing with the
attitude toward Russia to the trusty echoers of His Master's Voice. That's what it
seems, b.
"Russiagate became a convenient replacement explanation absolving an incompetent political
establishment for its complicity in what happened in 2016, and not just the failure to see it
coming. Because of the immediate arrival of the collusion theory, neither Wolf Blitzer nor
any politician ever had to look into the camera and say, "I guess people hated us so much
they were even willing to vote for Donald Trump."
As a peedupon all I can see is that the elite seem to be fighting amongst themselves or
(IMO) providing cover for ongoing elite power/control efforts. It might not be about
private/public finance in a bigger picture but I can't see anything else that makes sense
Thanks for the tip. Coincidentally I have just been reading Mark Twain's autobiography on
that matter.
But I was talking not of the Roosevelt corollary nor of the post Spanish War era but Monroe
and 1823. It is instructive that Monroe's Secretary of State at the time was John Q Adams
who, it is generally held, was largely responsible for its wording. It was undoubtedly aimed
in the first instance at Spain and intended to deter it from attempting to re-establish its
influence, militarily.
Of course the Doctrine depended upon the co-operation of the British who, through the Royal
Navy, supplied the force needed to prevent Spain, or possibly France acting as its proxy,
from foing then what the US is doing now.
Thanks for the Taibbi link. I hadn't seen it, and found him to be in good form. I do think
he ought to have spoken more about how bad Trump's Primary opponents were.
Most of those reporters were going to slant their stories the way their bosses wanted.
Their jobs are just too nice to do otherwise. Getting Trump as Hillary's opponent had to have
been a goal for the majority of them. He was the patsy who would become squished roadkill in
the treads of The Most Experienced Presidential Candidate In History. More on that for people
with strong stomachs:
Hillary Clinton is a knowledgeable, well-prepared, reasonable, experienced, even-tempered,
hardworking candidate, while her opponent is a stubbornly uninformed demagogue who has been
proven again and again to be a liar on matters big and small. There is no objective basis
on which to equate Hillary Clinton to her opponent.
The author had it half right. Turns out the voters knew quite a bit about Trump,
and still preferred him to the Butcher of Libya.
In an article entitled Why the
double standard on justice for Canadians, Chinese? Ambassador Lu cut through the noise
being created by the media and western political class by exposing the over bloated western
surveillance state known as the Five Eyes which he properly identified as the outgrowth of the
unconstitutional Patriot Act, the Prism surveillance system which has annihilated all semblance
of privacy among trans-Atlantic nations.
After describing the double standard applied by Canadian elites who have constructed a
narrative that always paints China as the villain of the world while portraying the west as
"free and democratic" Ambassador Lu stated :
"these same people have conveniently ignored the PRISM Program, Equation Group, and
Echelon -- global spying networks operated by some countries that have been engaging in
large-scale and organized cyber stealing, and spying and surveillance activities on foreign
governments, enterprises, and individuals. These people also took a laissez-faire attitude
toward a country that infringes on its citizens' privacy rights through the Patriot Act. They
shouted for a ban by the Five Eyes alliance countries . on the use of Huawei equipment by these
countries' own enterprises"
For those who may not be aware, the Five Eyes is the name given to the British
GCHQ-controlled surveillance structure that involves the four primary Anglo-Saxon Commonwealth
countries (Britain, Canada, Australian and New Zealand) along with the United States. This is
the deep state that has been dedicated to overthrowing American President Donald Trump since
MI6 and their junior partners in America began organising Russia-gate in 2015-when it became
apparent that Trump had a serious chance of defeating the Deep State candidate Hillary
Clinton.
As many patriotic whistle blowers such as Bill Binney, Ray McGovern, and Edward Snowden
have
exposed throughout recent years , the Five Eyes system that the Ambassador referenced was
formed in the "post-911 world order" as a means of overriding each nations' constitutional
protection of its own citizens' by capitalising on a major legal loop hole (viz: Since it is
technically illegal for American intelligence agencies to spy on Americans without warrant, and
for CSIS to do the same to Canadians, it is claimed that it is okay for British/Canadian
intelligence agencies to spy on Americas and visa versa).
The Chinese Ambassador didn't stop there however, but went one step further, ending his
op-ed with a controversial claim which has earned him much criticism in the days since its
publication. It was in his closing paragraph that Ambassador Lu made the uncomfortable point
that the double standards employed against China and the west's willingness to ignore the Five
Eyes "is due to Western egotism and white supremacy" . Is this the "belligerent and
unfounded name calling" that his detractors are labelling it, or is there something more to
it?
When we look to the origins of the Five Eyes, which goes back MUCH further than September
11, 2001 , we can clearly see that Lu Shaye is touching a very deep and truthful nerve.
Cecil Rhodes and the Racist Roots of the Deep State
19 th Century spokesman for the British Empire, Cecil Rhodes wrote his infamous
"Seventh
Will" in 1877 where, speaking on behalf of an empire dying in the midst of the global
spread of republican institutions, called for the formation of a new plan to re-organise the
Empire, and re-conquer all colonial possessions that had been contaminated by republican ideas
of freedom, progress, equality and self-determination
[1] . Rhodes stated:
"I contend that we are the finest race in the world and that the more of the world we
inhabit the better it is for the human race. Just fancy those parts that are at present
inhabited by the most despicable specimens of human beings what an alteration there would be if
they were brought under Anglo-Saxon influence, look again at the extra employment a new country
added to our dominions gives. I contend that every acre added to our territory means in the
future birth to some more of the English race who otherwise would not be brought into existence
. Why should we not form a secret society with but one object the furtherance of the British
Empire and the bringing of the whole uncivilised world under British rule for the recovery of
the United States for the making the Anglo-Saxon race but one Empire "
[2]
Race Patriot" Cecil Rhodes from Punch Magazine lording over Africa
The Rhodes Trust was set up at his death in 1902 to administer the vast riches accrued
during Rhodes' exploitation of diamond mines in Africa. Steered by Lord Alfred Milner, it was
this Trust which gave birth to the Round Table Movement and Rhodes Scholarship Fund which
themselves have been behind the creation of a century's worth of indoctrinated technocrats who
have permeated all branches of government, finance, military, media, corporate and academia-
both in America and internationally
[3] .
The Round Table Movement, (working in tandem with London's Fabian Society) didn't replace
the old British Empire's power structures, so much as re-define their behaviour based upon the
re-absorption of America back into the Anglo-Saxon hive. This involved centralising control of
the education of their "managerial elite" with special scholarship's in Oxford and the London
School of Economics- then sending the indoctrinated victims in droves back into their
respective nations in order to be absorbed into the British Empire's governance structures in
all domains of private and public influence. In Fabian Society terms, this concept is known as
"permeation theory"
[4] .
Although it sometimes took the early removal of nationalist political leaders from power,
via intrigue, coups or assassination, the 20 th century was shaped in large measure
by the cancerous growth of this British-directed network that sought to undo the republican
concept that progress and cooperation were the basis for both sovereignty and international law
as laid out in the
Treaty of Westphalia of 1648
[5] .
This is the deep state that President Roosevelt warned of when
he said in 1936"The economic royalists complain that we seek to overthrow the
institutions of America. What they really complain about is that we seek to take away their
power." This is the deep state that outgoing President Eisenhower warned of when he spoke of the
"acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military
industrial complex" in 1961 and that John Kennedy fought against when he fired Allen Dulles
and threatened to"splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter into the winds" . It is what Ronald
Reagan contended with when he attempted to break the world out of the Cold War by working with
Russia and other nations on Beam defense in 1983. It is this structure that owned
Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller's entire career , from his 1980s railroading of Lyndon
LaRouche into prison to his cover up of the Anglo-Saudi role in 911 as CIA director to his
efforts to impeach President Donald Trump today
[6] .
It is this same complex which is the direct outgrowth of the racist British-run drug wars on
China and suppression of India and Africa throughout the 19 th and 20 th
centuries.
In Canada, this was the network that destroyed the plans of nationalist Prime Minister John
Diefenbaker after he fired the Rhodes Scholar Governor of the Bank of Canada in 1959 during a
desperate struggle to take control of the national bank in order to fund his
Northern Vision
[7] . Earlier, it was this group that Lincoln-admirer Prime Minister Wilfred Laurier warned
of after his defeat in 1911 when he said "Canada is now governed by a junta sitting at
London, known as "The Round Table", with ramifications in Toronto, in Winnipeg, in Victoria,
with Tories and Grits receiving their ideas from London and insidiously forcing them on their
respective parties."
[8]
The lesson to be learned is that the Deep State is not "American" as many commentators have
assumed. It is the same old British Empire from which America brilliantly broke free in 1776
and which Cecil Rhodes and Milner led in re-organising on behalf of the monarchy at the
beginning of the 20 th century. It was racist when Lords Palmerston and Russell ran
it in the 19 th century and it continues to be racist today.
So when Ambassador Lu says "the reason why some people are used to arrogantly adopting
double standards is due to Western egotism and white supremacy – in such a context, the
rule of law is nothing but a tool for their political ends and a fig leaf for their practising
hegemony in the international arena" he is not being "belligerent or provocative", but is
rather hitting on a fact which must be better understood if the deep state will finally be
defeated and nations liberated to work with the new spirit of progress and cooperation
exemplified by China's Belt and Road
Initiative which is quickly spreading across the earth.
Footnotes
[1] By 1876, the American Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia showcased to a world
audience the success of the "American System of Political Economy" which asserted that the
value and behaviour of money was contingent upon the physical productive growth of the nation
rather than "British-system free markets". Lincoln's system was being adopted across South
American nations, Japan, China, India and many European powers as well (including Russia) which
had grown tired of being manipulated by British imperial intrigues.
[4] For anyone in Canada wishing to learn about this in greater depth, they may wish to ask
Canadian technocratic Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland how her experience as a Rhodes Scholar
shaped her career.
[6]
Robert Mueller Is an Amoral Legal Assassin: He Will Do His Job If You Let Him by Barbara
Boyd , October 1, 2017 larouchepac.com. A common denominator among all of the mentioned
American leaders is not only that they waged war on the deep state structures but made constant
attempts to work constructively with Russia, China, India and other nations for industrial and
scientific development. This policy of "win-win cooperation" is antagonistic to all systems of
empire and is the reason why the Empire hates China and the potential created with Trump's
intention to work with both China and Russia.
[8] O.D. Skelton, The Life of Sir Wilfrid Laurier, p. 510
BIO: Matthew J.L. Ehret is a journalist, lecturer and founder of the Canadian Patriot Review. His works have been
published in Executive Intelligence Review, Global Resesarch, Global Times, Nexus Magazine, Los
Angeles Review of Books, Veterans Today and Sott.net. Matthew has also published the book
"The Time has Come for Canada to Join the New Silk Road " and three volumes of the Untold
History of Canada (available on untoldhistory.canadianpatriot.org). He has been associated with
the Schiller Institute since 2006.
Liked it? Take a second to support The Duran on Patreon!
President Donald
Trump and his White House team have been cleared of collusion with the Kremlin in the 2016
presidential election. That startling conclusion by Special Counsel Robert Mueller after nearly two
years of investigation,
might be
viewed
by
some as giving Trump freedom to now get on with normalizing relations with Moscow. Don't bet on it.
Mueller's report, and US attorney general William Barr's appraisal of it, only partially
vindicate Trump's long-held claims that the whole so-called "Russiagate" story is a "hoax".
Yes, Mueller and Barr conclude that neither Trump nor his campaign team "conspired" with Russia
to win the presidential race.
But Democrat opponents are now dredging up the possibility
that Trump "unwittingly" facilitated Kremlin cyber operations to damage his 2016 rival for the
White House, Hillary Clinton.
In his
summary
of Mueller's
report, Barr unquestioningly accepts as fact the otherwise contentious claim that Russia interfered
in the US election. Democrats and the anti-Trump US news media have not been deterred from pursuing
their fantasy that the Kremlin allegedly meddled in US democracy.
Trump has been cleared,
but Russia has certainly not. It very much continues to have the smear of interference slapped all
over its image.
At the heart of this narrative – bolstered by Mueller and Barr – is the false claim that Russian
cyber agents hacked into the Democrat party computer system during 2016 and released emails
compromising Clinton to the whistleblower website Wikileaks. That whole claim has been reliably
debunked
by
former NSA technical expert William Binney and other former US intelligence officials who have
shown indisputably that the information was not hacked from outside, but rather was released by an
insider in the Democrat party, presumably based on indignation over the party's corruption
concerning the stitch-up against Clinton's rival nomination for the presidential ticket, Bernie
Sanders.
That is real scandal crying out to be investigated, as well as the Obama administration's
decision to unleash FBI illegal wiretapping and dirty tricks against Trump as being a "Russian
stooge". The Russian collusion charade was always a distraction from the really big serious crimes
carried out by the Obama White House, the FBI and the Democrat party.
In any case, the notion that Russia interfered in the US elections – even without
Trump's collusion – has become an article of faith among the American political and media
establishment.
That lie will continue to poison US-Russia relations and be used to justify more economic
sanctions being imposed against Moscow. Trump may be cleared of being a "Kremlin stooge". But he
will find no political freedom to pursue a normalization in bilateral relations because of the
predictable mantra about Russia interfering in American democracy.
But there is a deeper reason why there will be no reset in US-Russia relations.
And it has nothing to do with whether Trump is in the White House. The problem is a strategic one,
meaning it relates to underlying geopolitical confrontation between America's desired global
hegemony and Russia's rightful aspiration to be an independent foreign power not beholden to
Washington's dictate.
"... Nowhere in any corporate media coverage will you see the collapse of the collusion narrative used as an opportunity to re-examine the Russian attack narrative, based as it is unassailably (they would have us believe) on the twin pillars of the January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment and Mueller's never-to-be-tried indictments of a raft of obscure Russians. ..."
"... Yes. The Dismal Faking MSM are NOT going to let go of their Russophobic Orwellian propaganda – it clearly serves purposes (the MIC's being one, surely). ..."
"... Trump the Siberian Candidate was a useful part of the hate campaign against Russia, but ultimately expendable, like one stage in a multi-stage rocket booster ..."
"... The important work goes on, regardless of what happens to one individual like Donald, or one species like Homo sapiens. ..."
"... This Russia-Trump collusion thing is and has been a criminal conspiracy to undermine and possibly remove from office an elected President, and it has taken Russian-American relations down to a plainly dangerous level. ..."
"... I think there's evidence that this conspiracy was a product of Hillary Clinton, her staff, the DNC, elements of the FBI, FBI director Comey, CIA director Brennan, other elements of the CIA, elements of British intelligence, possibly elements of the Ukrainian govt., and possibly persons tied into the corrupt Clinton "charity" foundation and its networks. ..."
"... The US govt. is deeply corrupt – murderously corrupt – that's been plain at least since the Kennedy assassination in 1963, followed by the murders of a number of other prominent American political figures. ..."
"As the clamoring din of Russia-gate falls into the memory hole, a large empty space will
open up. So why not use this space to push forward some new exciting ideas. Space means
possibilities."
It's sad, but in a very important way, I don't think that's true.
One of the neat tricks of Russia-gate all along has been that while such prolonged and
sententious effort has been devoted to the question of "collusion" – i.e. TrumpWorld's
alleged disloyal canoodling with Russia – which was always destined to come up dry in
the end, the underlying allegation of the Russian "attack on our democracy" – i.e. the
thing Trump was supposedly colluding *in* – has been allowed to solidify into an
undisputed fact, despite being likewise unproven, and in reality just as false, or at best
wildly overblown.
Nowhere in any corporate media coverage will you see the collapse of the collusion
narrative used as an opportunity to re-examine the Russian attack narrative, based as it is
unassailably (they would have us believe) on the twin pillars of the January 2017
Intelligence Community Assessment and Mueller's never-to-be-tried indictments of a raft of
obscure Russians.
Rather, the Russian attack story is getting all the more play now in corporate media as
they try to salvage the Russia-gate debacle from the Mueller disappointment.
(This has been playing out on MSNBC as I have been composing this comment: Chris Hayes
just had on a congressman who used the very phrase "attack on our democracy" referring to
what he considers an undisputed fact, and now David Corn and Michael Isikoff are on,
energetically moving the goalposts away from the collapsing collusion fairy tale. For what
it's worth, Isikoff and Hayes are showing a little more discomfort than Corn, who is
full-steam-ahead on perfidious Muscovy.)
That has always been the main event: convincing the U.S. public of Russian enmity and
aggression – the Threat – to ensure the diametrically opposed reality remains
outside the mainstream.
There will be some dead-enders who will try to keep the Trump side of Russia-gate alive
(obstruction of justice!), but most of that energy will eventually be diverted to the vast
cesspool of Trump's financial dealings, which has always been the more promising and
legitimate route for exposing the Orange Schmegegge's corruption.
Meanwhile the campaign to keep the U.S. public squarely behind the drive to Make Earth
Great Again (for the subterranean archaea prokaryotes that will survive the nuclear exchange
unscathed, that is) continues, and has even been strengthened by Russia-gate's sinister
propagandistic sleight-of-hand.
Zhu , March 26, 2019 at 02:02
Soon it'll be "China, China, China!"
AnneR , March 26, 2019 at 09:32
Yes. The Dismal Faking MSM are NOT going to let go of their Russophobic Orwellian
propaganda – it clearly serves purposes (the MIC's being one, surely).
This morning on NPR (don't recall the Beeb World Service, but all too likely there as
well) while the presenters, facilitators – whatever they're called – were
presenting the non-existence of *collusion* they continued with their assertions, at some
length, that Russia *had meddled* in the 2016 election, had hacked the DNC server etc.,
etc.
No if, ands or buts, evidence lacking or not. And they proceeded to 'warn' about the
'strong likelihood' of both Russia (read the Kremlin, read Putin) and China doing the same
for the 2020 election: so be warned, folks if the Strumpet gets re-elected it won't be
because of anything the Demrats have done or not done, won't be because the Demrats'
candidate is HRC in drag, attractively turned out. No. It will be Putin's and Xi's doing.
Meanwhile, the country that really does interfere in our elections and policies –
via oodles of money contributed by its lobbying group supporters (and I gather there will be
another such "legal" lobbying entity established in DC for smaller donors to continue to, see
Alison Weir's article at Mint Press News) – neither has to register as a foreign agent
nor cease and desist its influence over our politicians (who are all too clearly buyable).
Nor is the UK getting hauled over the coals, or threatened with war, being beleaguered by
sanctions for its real interference in our politics.
Thank you Caitlin for your usual good work.
David G , March 26, 2019 at 11:02
Trump the Siberian Candidate was a useful part of the hate campaign against Russia, but
ultimately expendable, like one stage in a multi-stage rocket booster .
The important work goes on, regardless of what happens to one individual like Donald,
or one species like Homo sapiens.
Pft , March 25, 2019 at 20:04
So you have obstruction preventing the finding of evidence. Mueller proclaims no evidence
found, punts on obstruction charges, presenting only the facts indicating obstruction. New AJ
Barr, a relic from Iran Gate and close to Mueller, concludes there is not sufficient evidence
of obstruction.
Mueller and Barr cover it up as they have been doing for 30-40 years. Why is anyone
surprised? I never was big on Russia gate but collusion with Russian Mafia and Israel and
certainly conflict of interest over the proposed Trump Tower in Moscow certainly should have
been exposed, as should a DNC insiders complicity in releasing the emails
Tom Kath , March 25, 2019 at 19:30
Caitlin, I get the overwhelming message that you consider Trump the worst possible POTUS
and that Hilary, Sanders, or any other POSSIBLE alternatives would be even worse.
When it comes to the realistically POSSIBLE, we do have to settle for the lesser of two
evils. I believe the Yanks have actually done just that, and it seems pointless to argue so
vehemently against all possibilities.
Could you be making a case for Tulsi by omission?
mauisurfer , March 25, 2019 at 18:54
I have never worked as a prosecutor, but I have taught criminal law at an accredited state
university law school.
Mueller's report states: "While this report does not conclude that the president committed
a crime, it also does not exonerate him."
This is the first time I ever heard such a statement. I have never heard of a criminal
investigation that concluded that the defendant was "not exonerated".
The prosecutor is not empowered to make statements intended to influence public opinion.
It seems to be a 100% political statement, 100% extralegal comment. The purpose of a criminal investigation is to find crime and prosecute it. It is NOT to
exonerate or "not exonerate". If insufficient evidence is found to proceed with criminal
prosecution, then the job is done, the prosecutor is not empowered to comment about ifs,
buts, or maybes, or about exoneration.
Such comments are contrary to our system of criminal justice, which supposedly assumes
innocence until guilt is proven beyond reasonable doubt.
Reply
Maxwell Quest , March 25, 2019 at 22:27
Yes, Mueller's statement: "while this report does not conclude that the President
committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him" appears to be a sop thrown to the media
and the DNC, in short, those that hired him to prosecute Trump er, I mean investigate Trump's
supposed crime of collusion.
It certainly muddies the waters, and is a wishy-washy, cowardly declaration. It's outside
his mandate as Special Counsel and borders on slander. In his blog today Howard Kunstler
referred to Mueller's parting aspersion as a "nice red poison cherry" on top of the
report.
I've always felt that Mueller knew from the very beginning that this was a witch hunt, and
the sloppy commentary added to his report only confirms it in my mind.
Mike Lamb , March 26, 2019 at 12:16
Could it be that this is Mueller's "Comey moment"?
A lot of voters are fed up with the continuous barrage of hate coming from the Left
towards President Trump. If the Left keeps on coming up with more and more investigations
after the Mueller report found no collusion on the president's part voters are going to get
fed up with the whole debacle this could well backfire on Democrats and conservative
Republicans might just take back the House.
Eric32 , March 25, 2019 at 17:41
>people will be left to their own devices for a few precious moments. They won't know
what to think. <
Well, here's what I think
This Russia-Trump collusion thing is and has been a criminal conspiracy to undermine
and possibly remove from office an elected President, and it has taken Russian-American
relations down to a plainly dangerous level.
Why not get something positive out of it?
I think there's evidence that this conspiracy was a product of Hillary Clinton, her
staff, the DNC, elements of the FBI, FBI director Comey, CIA director Brennan, other elements
of the CIA, elements of British intelligence, possibly elements of the Ukrainian govt., and
possibly persons tied into the corrupt Clinton "charity" foundation and its networks.
The US govt. is deeply corrupt – murderously corrupt – that's been plain at
least since the Kennedy assassination in 1963, followed by the murders of a number of other
prominent American political figures.
Why not use this recent obvious conspiracy to start a real investigation using a newly
created, large well funded investigative organization independent of the above mentioned
corrupted organizations, to investigate what has going on?
If this most recent deep state operation is allowed to pass un-investigated, without
punishment and a long overdue rooting out of what's been making this country's government
sick and corrupt, it's going to be taken as a sign of encouragement by certain actors, with
future actions that will make past ones look mild.
Deniz , March 25, 2019 at 17:41
You are putting far too much faith in the American people's attention span. Omar's
comments on AIPAC were erased in a matter of days by a conveniently timed terror attack. We
are in the middle of March Madness, currently the single most important event in the majority
of American's lives. This is why Assange was so brilliant in waiting until weeks before the
election to release the Clinton emails.
"... This was artificially created Saddam WDM II hysteria and many people became hooked. MSM honchos with some integrity should publicly commit hara-kiri, but that's too much to ask as they are mostly chickenhawks that have no honor. They never spent time in rat infested foxholes under bombardment. ..."
It is very difficult to find a black cat in a dark room, if there is none 😉
Despite being a Professor of Economics, and having a Russian speaking wife you are utterly incompetent in this area and are
completely brainwashed by the neoliberal/neocon MSM. You tend to subconsciously equate Russia and the USSR. For your
information, Russia is a neoliberal state; much like the USA and Putin is promoter of neoliberal capitalism, although in less
man-eating mutation than in the USA.
For your information Mueller investigation was a part of color revolution against Trump launched by intelligence services in
the same way they launch color revolution in other countries. It is unclear to me why they did that, but that fact if provable
And the sequence of event, especially questioning the legitimacy of election, and Mueller appointment gambit with Comey as a
sacrificing pawn, corresponds to what you can learn from the books of CIA-connected writer Gene Sharp - the reference source
on color revolution mechanics. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_Sharp
It is not clear to me why the Deep State in the USA (as well as in GB) has such an allergic reaction and viewed Trump as a
threat to the US governed world neoliberal empire, because Trump, as corrupt as he is, he is a part of NYC neoliberal elite
and in no way a revolutionary. And it was clear that he will execute the same "bait and switch" maneuver as Obama betraying
his election promises.
Which actually happened three months after inauguration when he bombed Syria targets without any investigation of a
chemical attack - which most probably was stages by jihadists (supposedly he was influenced by Ivanka; actually Javanka is
another problem of this corrupt administration and suggest completely different course of the investigation; hopefully by the
Southern District of NY - I would like Jared Kushner going to jail with or without Trump)
But it was a color revolution. Which so far failed.
So you better stop writing such detached from reality statements as "But on the matter of collusion we have piles of
evidence that this has occurred, and the evidence is the large pile of indictments that Mueller has brought forward against a
lot of people, with many of those charged with having unreported meetings and dealings with Russians," This is such a low
level of IQ that it hurts. Naivety unacceptable for a Professor pretending to be a political analyst.
In reality this was a false flag operation to present Russia as the culprit. Highly successful operation I would say.
Russia serves as a very convenient scapegoat for such things.
And having an external scapegoat and projecting into it all the ills helped to cement cracks in the neoliberal façade, when
the US population rejected neoliberal's elite candidate. In addition, it allowed to launch NeoMcCartyism campaign in MSM for
the suppressing the internal dissent, when anybody who question the US foreign wars or the rule of financial oligarchy can be
framed as Putin's agent.
So this is another classic method of suppressing the dissident voices including whose who argue for the return of the New
Deal Capitalism and/or are against foreign wars. Looks at how MSMs treat Tulsi Gabbard visit to Syria. Does not it remind you
something ?
So most of your writings on this particular topic are just an implicit repetition of State Department taking points infused
into your brain via MSMs you read. You have no first hand sources about Russia. That's why I would strongly recommend you to
stop writing on this topic. You just disgrace yourself.
ilsm , March 28, 2019 6:35 pm
merde,
Let the Russiagate foul ball fly out of bounds in to the stands!
Oening day is soon and US don't need any more conspiracy theories over Russia and Putin beating Clinton.
Mueller brought no indictments against Trump or any US citizen for conspiracy with Russians. The reason the Mueller report is "confidential" has nothing to do with national security. It has to do with federal grand jury
legal process. No indictments means the grand juries that prosecutors have plead to with under cooked nothing burgers returned no indictments!
Not getting an indictment may not be an exoneration for media propagandists who have pounded conspiracy theories for 28 months,
but it is pretty close for anyone tired of the moral equivalent of seeing Saddam doing 9/11 perpetrated over and over again.
All those indictments associated with Russiagate are 'procedural' like misspeaking to inquisitors.
Get over it Clinton lost to Trump!
likbez , March 28, 2019 10:35 pm
ilsm.
"Not getting an indictment may not be exoneration for media propagandists who have pounded conspiracy theories for 28 months,
but it is pretty close for anyone tired of the moral equivalent of seeing Saddam doing 9/11 perpetrated over and over again."
This is a very apt observation. This was artificially created Saddam WDM II hysteria and many people became hooked. MSM honchos
with some integrity should publicly commit hara-kiri, but that's too much to ask as they are mostly chickenhawks that have no honor.
They never spent time in rat infested foxholes under bombardment.
How idiotic it would be if the Earth were destroyed because this crazy neocon warmonger Hillary Clinton lost, couldn't accept
it, and invented a story for lying liars to lie about, while the Deep State launched a color revolution to depose Trump because
he did not fully conform to Washington neocons foreign policy script
In retrospect he changed nothing; Trump foreign policy is just a continuation of "Full spectrum dominance" madness ( Bolton
and Pompeo would be perfect for Hillary Administration after routine sex change operation )
Academic stooges of this new Iraq WDM II hysteria should at least repent, but as Barkley demonstrated in his response this
is way too difficult for them.
He is still, as Trump Jr put it, "FullOfSchiff"
Immense damage has been done to Russo-Us relations. Will it be repaired? Can it be repaired?
"... When the mainstream news is a joke, the court jesters are the only ones allowed to tell the truth. But Jimmy is exceptionally well informed. ..."
"... So, now the nation is in the midst of a New Cold War and a renewed arms race between two world powers -- all because this woman and her criminally liable hordes in the Democratic Party and the idiotic corporate media pedalled this insanity. I only hope there is a special place in the ninth circle of Hell for Mdm. Clinton and her lickspittles. ..."
"... This is right on point. There were two main reasons for this (perhaps fatal) error on the Democrats' part. First, they made common cause with neo-cons, retired intelligence chiefs, Congressional hawks, Pentagon officials, and other advocates of a revived American Empire. ..."
"... Second, they let Donald Trump dictate the mode of political discourse (ultra-personal, characterological, conspiracy-minded, etc.) and thought that they could beat him at his own game. The first error was criminal and the second stupid. We may have to support some Democrat in 2020 to get rid of Mr. Trump, but we clearly need a new political party to represent the interests of working people in social justice and peace. ..."
You neglected to mention American comedian Jimmy Dore who practically single-handedly
spent the past two and a half years ferociously combating the Russiagate conspiracy myth with
some of the best amateur investigative journalism in the world essentially alone while
building up his base of a half-million subscribers.
He has been praised by the likes of Aaron Maté, Tulsi Gabbard, and Glen Greenwald
for his incredible work.
He has been such a force for truth that even Bernie Sanders has timidly ignored and
avoided his show.
The Jimmy Dore Show on YouTube ranks up there with The Intercept in journalistic integrity
and diligence. In a sane world, Jimmy Dore would be deserving of a Presidential Medal of
Freedom.
JRGJRG , March 26, 2019 at 11:19
When the mainstream news is a joke, the court jesters are the only ones allowed to tell
the truth. But Jimmy is exceptionally well informed.
Eddie , March 26, 2019 at 13:59
Indeed, Jimmy Dore the self-styled "jag-off" comedian working out of his garage informed
growing numbers of us of us who were willing to peel our eyeballs away from the cavalcade of
celebrity ravings on MSNBC, CNN, New York Times, Washington Post, et al. Hillary Clinton, in
her vainglorious attempt to find a scapegoat for her political ineptitude blamed her loss on
her invented Trump-Putin "collusion."
So, now the nation is in the midst of a New Cold War and a renewed arms race between two
world powers -- all because this woman and her criminally liable hordes in the Democratic
Party and the idiotic corporate media pedalled this insanity. I only hope there is a special
place in the ninth circle of Hell for Mdm. Clinton and her lickspittles.
This is right on point. There were two main reasons for this (perhaps fatal) error on the
Democrats' part. First, they made common cause with neo-cons, retired intelligence chiefs,
Congressional hawks, Pentagon officials, and other advocates of a revived American Empire.
Second, they let Donald Trump dictate the mode of political discourse (ultra-personal, characterological, conspiracy-minded, etc.) and thought that they could beat him at his own
game. The first error was criminal and the second stupid. We may have to support some
Democrat in 2020 to get rid of Mr. Trump, but we clearly need a new political party to
represent the interests of working people in social justice and peace.
Mueller knows
became the cornerstone
belief of nearly all reporters who covered the Russia investigation. Journalists reveled in the idea of being kept
out of the loop, thrilled to defer to the impenetrable steward of national secrets, the interview-proof Man of
State. He was no blabbermouth Donald Trump, this Mueller! He won't tell us a thing!
"... "How idiotic it would be if the Earth were destroyed because Hillary Clinton lost, couldn't accept it and invented a story for lying liars to lie about." ..."
What's next week's answer going to be? A free, skeptical and challenging media is important; what happens when it's just a big
typing pool waiting for Big Brother's Dictaphone?
"How idiotic it would be if the Earth were destroyed because Hillary Clinton lost, couldn't accept it and invented a story
for lying liars to lie about."
That sums it up for me. "Do not go gentle delusionally into that good night"
RUSSIA RELATIONS. Immense damage has been done.
Will it be repaired? Can it be repaired? Russia is not a joke country in Disneyland and we're
not characters in a Marvel comic.
How idiotic it would be if the Earth were destroyed because Hillary Clinton lost,
couldn't accept it and invented a story for lying liars to lie about. Much will depend on
whether Trump starts a real investigation so that the falsity is exposed.
Amazing level of polemic and diplomatic skills. That's really high class my fiends. Rare for
any US politician: most are suckers that can answer only prepared questions. MSNBC presstitutes
should be ashamed, but they have not shame. amasing !!!
In this segment, we look at Tulsi's savvy and brutally honest rebuttal when the Morning
Show hosts allege that "Russia" is looking to help Tulsi when the 2020 Democratic Primary
election
"Mueller Finds No Trump-Russia
Conspiracy",
read
the
front page headline of Sunday's
New York Times.
Bit by bit, mainstream American
consciousness is slowly coming to terms with the death of the thrilling conspiracy theory that the
highest levels of the US government had been infiltrated by the Kremlin,
and with the
stark reality that the mass media and the Democratic Party spent the last two and-a-half years
monopolizing public attention with a narrative which never had any underlying truth to it.
There are still holdouts, of course.
Many people invested a tremendous
amount of hope, credibility, and egoic currency in the belief that Robert Mueller was going to
arrest high-ranking Trump administration officials and members of Trump's own family, leading seedy
characters to "flip" on the president in their own self-interest and thereby providing evidence
that will lead to impeachment.
Some insist that Attorney General William Barr is holding
back key elements of the Mueller report,
a claim which is premised on the absurd belief
that Mueller would allow Barr to lie about the results of the investigation without speaking up
publicly. Others are still holding out hope that other investigations by other legal authorities
will turn up some Russian shenanigans that Mueller could not, ignoring Mueller's sweeping subpoena
powers and unrivaled investigative authority. But they're coming around.
The question still remains, though:
what the hell happened? How did a fact-free
conspiracy theory come to gain so much traction among mainstream Americans? How were millions of
people persuaded to invest hope in a narrative that anyone objectively analyzing the facts knew to
be completely false?
The answer is that they were told that the Russiagate narrative was legitimate over and over
again by politicians and mass media pundits, and,
because of
a
peculiar phenomenon
in the nature of human cognition,
this repetition made it seem
true.
The rather uncreatively-named
illusory
truth effect
describes the way
people are more likely to believe something is true
after hearing it said many times.
This is due to the fact that the familiar feeling we
experience when hearing something we've heard before feels very similar to our experience of
knowing that something is true. When we hear a familiar idea, its familiarity provides us with
something called
cognitive
ease
, which is the relaxed, unlabored state we experience when our minds aren't working hard at
something. We also experience cognitive ease when we are presented with a statement that we know to
be true.
We have a tendency to select for cognitive ease, which is why
confirmation
bias
is a thing; believing ideas which don't cause cognitive strain or dissonance gives us more
cognitive ease than doing otherwise.
Our evolutionary ancestors adapted to seek out
cognitive ease so that they could put their attention into making quick decisions essential for
survival, rather than painstakingly mulling over whether everything we believe is as true as we
think it is. This was great for not getting eaten by saber-toothed tigers in prehistoric times, but
it's not very helpful when navigating the twists and turns of a cognitively complex modern world.
It's also not helpful when you're trying to cultivate truthful beliefs while surrounded by screens
that are repeating the same bogus talking points over and over again.
I'm dealing with a perfect example of the perils of cognitive ease right now. Writing this essay
has required me to move outside my familiar comfort zone of political commentary and read a bunch
of studies and essays, think hard about new ideas, and then figure out how to convey them as
clearly and concisely as possible without boring my audience.
This movement away from
cognitive ease has resulted in my checking Twitter a lot more often than I usually do, and seeking
so much distraction that this essay will probably end up getting published about twelve hours later
than I had intended.
Having to read a bunch of scholars explaining the precise reasons why
I'm acting like such an airhead hasn't exactly helped my sense of cognitive ease any, either.
Science has been aware of the illusory truth effect since 1977,
when
a
study found
that subjects were more likely to evaluate a statement as true when it's been
repeatedly presented to them over the course of a couple of weeks, even if they didn't consciously
remember having encountered that statement before. These findings
have
been replicated
in numerous studies since, and new research in recent years has shown that the
phenomenon is even more drastic than initially believed. A 2015 paper titled "
Knowledge
Does Not Protect Against Illusory Truth
" found that the illusory truth effect is so strong that
sheer repetition can change the answers that test subjects give,
even when they had been in
possession of knowledge contradicting that answer beforehand
. This study was done to test the
assumption which had gone unchallenged up until then that the illusory truth effect only comes into
play when there is no stored knowledge of the subject at hand.
"Surprisingly, repetition increased statements' perceived truth, regardless of
whether stored knowledge could have been used to detect a contradiction,"
the paper
reads.
"Reading a statement like 'A sari is the name of the short pleated skirt worn by Scots'
increased participants' later belief that it was true, even if they could correctly answer the
question 'What is the name of the short pleated skirt worn by Scots?'"
Stored knowledge tells pretty much everybody that the "short, pleated skirt worn by Scots" is a
kilt, not a sari, but simply repeating the contrary statement can convince them otherwise.
This explains why we all know people who are extraordinarily intelligent, but still
bought into the Russiagate narrative just as much as our less mentally apt friends and
acquaintances.
Their intelligence didn't save them from this debunked conspiracy theory,
it just made them more clever in finding ways of defending it. This is because the illusory truth
effect largely bypasses the intellect, and even one's own stored knowledge, because of the way we
all reflexively select for cognitive ease.
You can understand, then, how a populace who is consuming repetitive assertions,
innuendo, and incriminating questions on a daily basis through the screens that they look at many
times a day could be manipulated into believing that Robert Mueller would one day reveal evidence
which will lead to the destruction of the Trump administration.
The repetition leads to
belief, the belief leads to trust, and before you know it people who are scared of the president
are reading the
Palmer Report
every day and parking themselves in front of Rachel Maddow
every night and letting everything they say slide right past their skepticism filters, marinating
comfortably in a sedative of cognitive ease.
And that repetition has been no accident. CNN producer John Bonifield was
caught
on video
nearly two years ago admitting that CNN's CEO Jeff Zucker was personally instructing
his staff to stay focused on Russia even in the midst of far more important breaking news stories.
"My boss, I shouldn't say this, my boss yesterday we were having a discussion about this
dental shoot and he goes and he was just like I want you to know what we are up against here,"
Bonifield told an undercover associate of James O'Keefe's
Project Veritas
.
"And he goes, just to give you some context, President Trump pulled out of the climate
accords and for a day and a half we covered the climate accords.
And the CEO of CNN said
in our internal meeting, he said good job everybody covering the climate accords, but we're done
with it, let's get back to Russia.
"
(And before you get on me about O'Keefe's shady record, CNN
said
in a statement
that the video was legitimate and disputed none of its content, saying only that
it stands by Bonifield and that "Diversity of personal opinion is what makes CNN strong, we welcome
it and embrace it.")
Zucker, for his part,
told the
New York Times
in
an article published yesterday that
he was "entirely comfortable" with CNN's role in
promoting the Russiagate conspiracy theory the way that it did.
"We are not investigators. We are journalists, and our role is to report the facts as
we know them, which is exactly what we did,"
Zucker said.
"A sitting president's own Justice Department investigated his campaign for collusion with a
hostile nation. That's not enormous because the media says so. That's enormous because it's
unprecedented."
"We are not investigators"? What the fuck kind of dumbass shit is that?
So it's
not your job to investigate whether what you're reporting is true or false? It's not your job to
investigate whether the anonymous sources you're basing your reports on might be lying or not? It's
not your job to investigate whether or not you'd be committing journalistic malpractice with the
multiple
completely bullshit stories
your outlet has been humiliated by in the last two years? It's not
your job to weigh the consequences of deliberately monopolizing public attention on a narrative
which consists of nothing but confident-sounding assertions and innuendo?
"We are not investigators." So? You're not dentists or firefighters either, what's your
point?
That has nothing to do with the mountains of journalistic malpractice you've been
perpetrating by advancing this conspiracy theory, nor with the inexcusable brutalization you've
been inflicting upon the American psyche with your deliberate nonstop repetition of bogus
assertions, innuendo, and incriminating questions.
The science of modern propaganda has been in research and development
for
over a century
.
If you think about how many advances have been made in other military
fields over the last hundred years, that gives you a clear example of how sophisticated an
understanding the social engineers must now have of the methods of mass manipulation of human
psychology. We may be absolutely certain that there are people who've been working to drive the
public narratives about western rivals like Russia, and that they are doing so with a far greater
understanding of the concepts we've touched on in this essay than we have at our disposal.
The manipulators understand our psyches better than we understand them ourselves, and
they're getting more clever, not less.
The only thing we can do to keep our heads while
immersed in a society that is saturated with propaganda is be as relentlessly honest as possible,
with ourselves and with the world. We'll never be able to out-manipulate the master manipulators,
but we can be real with ourselves about whether or not we're selecting for cognitive ease rather
than thinking rigorously and clearly. We can be truthful with our friends, family, coworkers and
social media followers wherever untruth seems to be taking hold. We can do our very best to shine
the light of truth on the puppeteers wherever we spot them and ruin the whole goddamn show for
everyone.
It may not seem like a lot, but truth is the one thing they can't manipulate,
whether it's truth about them, truth about the world, or truthfulness with yourself. The lying
manipulators got us into this mess, so only truth can get us out.
"... Namely, that America is suffering Regime Failure. Thus, wrong-headed Washington policies have brought prosperity to Wall Street but not main street, which is what actually explains why Trump won the left-behind precincts of Flyover America. ..."
"... Regime Failure has also fostered confrontation with Russia when it is no threat to homeland security at all, but so doing has vilified Putin and Russia to the point that random dots of RussiaGate got woven into a preposterous theory of collusion. ..."
"... The foundation document which turned these random developments into the Russia Collusion story, of course, was the January 6, 2017 report entitled, "Assessing Russian Activities And Intentions in Recent US Elections". The report was nothing of the kind, of course, and is now well-understood to have been written by outgoing CIA director John Brennan and a hand-picked posse of politicized analysts from the CIA, FBI and NSA. It was essentially a political screed thinly disguised as the product of the professional intelligence community and was designed to discredit and sabotage the Trump presidency. ..."
"... William Binney, who is the father of modern NSA internet spying technologies, says that the DNC emails were leaked on a thumb-drive and couldn't have been hacked as a technical matter; and equally competent analysts have shown that Guccifer 2.0 is almost surely a NSA contrived fiction based on the oldest trick in the police precinct station house – planting evidence, in this case telltale Cyrillic letters and the name of a notorious head of the Soviet secret police. ..."
"... So what we are left with is the fact that Binney, a NSA veteran and actually the father of much of today's NSA internet spying capability, says that the recorded download speed of the DNC emails could only have been done by plugging a thumb-drive into the machines on site. That is, nothing downloads across 5,000 miles of digital expanse at the recorded 22.7 megabytes per second. ..."
"... The pure grandstanding nature of this blow against the purported election meddling of the nefarious Russians is more than evident in the 3,000 ads IRA bought on Facebook for about $100,000 – more than half of which were posted after the election. ..."
"... Yet here's a typical example of how the Russians stormed into America's sacred election space – even if according to Facebook this particular ad got less than 10,000 "impressions" and the mighty sum of 160 "shares" . For crying out loud, it didn't take any nefarious Russian intelligence agent to post this kind of cartoonish Islamophobia. There are millions of American xenophobes more than happy to do it with their own dime, time and bile. ..."
Now that the giant Mueller Nothingburger (with a side of
crow-flavored fries, per Jim Kunstler) has been officially delivered unto the mainstream
media's wailing and gnashing of teeth, the essence of the matter should be obvious: To wit,
the RussiaGate Collusion story was always way above the pay grade of the legal sleuths and
gunslingers who wasted $25 million on it – and notwithstanding 2,800 subpoenas, 500
witnesses, 40 FBI agents and 21 lawyers.
This prosecutorial blitzkrieg had no chance of discovering the nefarious facts of
conspiracy, however, because there never were any worthy of adult consideration. To the
contrary, from day #1 the whole cock-and-bull story was based on a syllogism which held that
Trump's very election victory and support for rapprochement with Russia were in themselves
proof of a conspiracy with the Kremlin to steal the election.
That is to say, by the lights of the Dems, official Washington and their mainstream media
echo chamber, Hillary Clinton could not have lost the 2016 election to the worst GOP
candidate in history including Barry Goldwater and Alf Landon (true) without the sinister
intervention of a foreign power hostile to Hillary.
Therefore, Putin and the Russians elected Trump. Q.E.D.
Likewise, Russia is perforce the enemy that Washington needs in order to stay in the
business of Empire. So advocacy of rapprochement with Moscow was per se evidence that the
Kremlin had blackmail (kompromat for the RussiaGate cognoscenti) on Trump and his
campaign.
Once these predicates were established, of course, any old dog-eared "facts" could be hung
on the frame in order to establishment an air of verisimilitude.
But now we know. Strip away the false predicates and the flotsam and jetsam of the case
fall flat on their face. Even 22 months of Mueller Time couldn't stich together a
Humpty-Dumpty that never was.
As it happens, however, there has been all along a perfectly plausible alternative
explanation for why Trump won and why repairing relations with Russia made eminent good
sense.
Namely, that America is suffering Regime Failure. Thus, wrong-headed Washington
policies have brought prosperity to Wall Street but not main street, which is what actually
explains why Trump won the left-behind precincts of Flyover America.
Regime Failure has also fostered confrontation with Russia when it is no threat to
homeland security at all, but so doing has vilified Putin and Russia to the point that random
dots of RussiaGate got woven into a preposterous theory of collusion.
What is left without the syllogistic predicates, of course, are the ludicrous threadbare
facts of the case.
After all, can there be anything more pitiful after 22 months of prosecutorial scorched
earth on the Russian collusion file than Mueller's list of indictments. These include:
13 Russian college kids for essentially practicing English as a third language at a St.
Petersburg troll farm for $4 per hour;
12 Russian intelligence operatives who might as well have been picked from the GRU
phonebook;
Baby George Papadopoulos for mis-recalling an irrelevant date by two weeks;
Paul Manafort for standard Washington lobbyist crimes committed long before he met
Trump;
Michael Cohen for shirking taxes and running Trump's bimbo silencing operation;
Michael Flynn for doing his job talking to the Russian Ambassador and confusing the
confusable Mike Pence on what he said and didn't say about Obama's idiotic 11th hour
Russian sanctions;
Rick Gates for helping Manafort shakedown the Ukrainian government and other oily
Washington supplicants.;
Sam Patten, another Manafort operative who forgot to register correctly as a foreign
agent;
Richard Pinedo, a grifter who never met Trump and got caught selling forged bank
accounts on-line to Russians for a couple bucks each;
Alex van der Zwaan, a Dutch lawyers who wrote a report for Manafort in 2012 and
misreported to the FBI what he told Gates about it.
That's all she wrote and it's about as pathetic as it gets. Mueller should have been
guffawed out of town on account of this tommyrot long before belatedly delivering a report
that proved exactly that.
So it is perhaps a measure of the degree to which the Imperial City has fallen prey to the
Trump Derangement Syndrome that the five core events of the case survived as long as they
did. In fact, it has long been evident from public information that there was nothing
nefarious about any of these ragged building blocks of the case:
Baby George Papadopoulos's drunken conversation with a London professor who has long
since disappeared and was likely a CIA asset;
Carter Page's self-promotion into a bogus FISA warrant;
the completely innocent June 2016 Trump Tower meeting;
the disputed case regarding whether the DNC was the victim of a hack or a leak;
and
the ludicrous efforts of the Russian troll farm in St. Petersburg.
The foundation document which turned these random developments into the Russia Collusion
story, of course, was the January 6, 2017 report entitled, "Assessing Russian Activities And
Intentions in Recent US Elections". The report was nothing of the kind, of course, and is now well-understood to have been
written by outgoing CIA director John Brennan and a hand-picked posse of politicized analysts
from the CIA, FBI and NSA. It was essentially a political screed thinly disguised as the
product of the professional intelligence community and was designed to discredit and sabotage
the Trump presidency.
And it was lied about over and over by the MSM who called it an assessment of the 17 US
intelligence agencies when it was nothing of the kind, and said so right on the cover
page.
In fact, when we first read this ballyhooed report our thought was that someone at the
Onion had pilfered the CIA logo and published a sidesplitting satire.
The 9-pager on RT America, which is presented as evidence of "Kremlin messaging", is so
sophomoric and hackneyed that it could have been written by a summer intern at the CIA. It
consists entirely of a sloppy catalogue of leftist and libertarian based dissent from
mainstream policy that has been aired on RT America on such subversive topics as Occupy Wall
Street, anti-fracking, police brutality, foreign interventionism and civil liberties.
Actually, your editor has appeared dozens of times on RT America and advocated nearly
every position cited by the CIA as evidence of nefarious Russian propaganda.
And we thought it up all by ourselves!
So, yes, we do think US intervention in Syria was wrong; that Georgia was the aggressor
when it invaded South Ossetia; that the American people have been disenfranchised and need to
"take this government back"; that Washington runs a "surveillance state" where civil
liberties are being ridden roughshod upon; that Wall Street is riven with "greed" and the "US
national debt" is out of control; that the two-party system is a "sham "and that it doesn't
represent the views of "one-third of the population" (at least!); and that most especially
after killing millions in unnecessary wars Washington has "no moral right to teach the rest
of the world".
So there you have it: Policy views on various topics that are embraced in some instances
by both your libertarian editor and the left-wing Nation magazine were held to be examples of
Russian messaging, and alarming evidence of nefarious meddling in our electoral process at
that.
In fact, the single proposition in the entire ten-pages of political opinionating that
relates to an actual Russian intrusion (other than the hideous St. Petersburg troll farm
which we debunk below) in the American electoral process is the completely discredited notion
that the Russian GRU hacked the DNC emails and handed them off to WikiLeaks
No, not at all.
William Binney, who is the father of modern NSA internet spying technologies, says that
the DNC emails were leaked on a thumb-drive and couldn't have been
hacked as a technical matter; and equally competent analysts have shown that
Guccifer 2.0 is almost surely a NSA contrived fiction based on the oldest trick in the police
precinct station house – planting evidence, in this case telltale Cyrillic letters and
the name of a notorious head of the Soviet secret police.
Indeed, if the Russians did it – from a troll farm in St. Petersburg or the Kremlin
itself – the fingerprints from any remote hacking operation would be all over the
computers involved. Moreover, the National Security Agency (NSA) would have a record of the
breach stored at one of its server farms because it does capture and store everything that
comes into the US over the internet.
Said record, of course, would amount to the Smoking Intercept. So the only thing Mueller
really needed to do was to call the head of NSA and request the NSA intercept –
something he obviously didn't do or it would have leaked long ago.
In the alternative, if NSA has no such record, he could have confiscated the DNC computers
– which had never even been inspected by the FBI, let alone taken into custody –
to determine whether William Binney is right.
That didn't happen, either, or it too would have leaked in a heartbeat.
So what we are left with is the fact that Binney, a NSA veteran and actually the father of
much of today's NSA internet spying capability, says that the recorded download speed of the
DNC emails could only have been done by plugging a thumb-drive into the machines on site.
That is, nothing downloads across 5,000 miles of digital expanse at the recorded 22.7
megabytes per second.
In short, if the Russians hacked them, the evidence is all there in the hard drives; and
if they didn't, the entire RussiaGate hoax should have been shutdown long ago.
That's because the only thing that remotely smacks of untoward meddling by the Kremlin is
the DNC emails – and even then, they only concerned intra-party squabbles between the
Clinton and the Sandernista factions of the Dem party that were already well advertised and
known to the American electorate.
Cyber Garbage From the St. Petersburg Troll Farm
By contrast, another prime exhibit in the meddling narrative is the pitiful efforts of the
Russian troll farm called the Internet Research Agency (IRA). This is was cited over and over
by the RussiaGaters as evidence of Putin's nefarious hand at work, but did they ever
investigate the matter?
The fact is, the IRA was such a belly-splitting joke that they only thing it proved is
that prosecutor Mueller did actually indict 13 Russian-speaking ham sandwiches.
Indeed, the joker in the whole deck is that the nefarious"troll farm" in St. Petersburg
was not even a Russian intelligence agency operation at all.
It was just "Russian" even by the careful terminology of Barr's summary. As it happened,
the RussiaGate hysteria had reached such a point that any contact with any of Russia's 144
million citizens became inherently suspect, as if that beleaguered nation had become a race
of evildoers.
Actually, the IRA was the relatively harmless Hobby Farm of a fanatical Russian oligarch
and ultra-nationalist, Yevgeny Prigozhin, who has a great big beef against Imperial
Washington's demonization of Russia and Vlad Putin. Apparently, the farm was
(it's apparently being disbanded) the vehicle through which he gave Washington the middle
finger and buttered up his patron.
Prigozhin is otherwise known as "Putin's Cook" because he made his fortune in St.
Petersburg restaurants that Putin favored and via state funded food service operations at
Russian schools and military installations.
Like most Russian oligarchs not in jail, he apparently tithes in gratitude to the Kremlin:
In this case, by bankrolling the rinky-dink operation at 55 Savushkina Street in St.
Petersburg that was the object of Mueller's pretentious foray into the flotsam and jetsam of
social media low life.
Prigozhin's trolling farm was grandly called the Internet Research Agency (IRA), but what
it actually did was hire (apparently) unemployed 20-somethings at $4-8 per hour to pound out
ham-handed political messaging on social media sites like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter,
YouTube, etc. They banged away twelve hours at a shift on a quota-driven
paint-by-the-internet-numbers basis where their output was rated for engagements, likes,
retweets etc.
Whatever these keyboard drones might have been, they were not professional Russian intel
operators. And the collection of broken English postings strewn throughout Mueller's
indictment were not one bit scary.
The pure grandstanding nature of this blow against the purported election meddling of the
nefarious Russians is more than evident in the 3,000 ads IRA bought on Facebook for about
$100,000 – more than half of which were posted after the election.
Yet here's a typical example of how the Russians stormed into America's sacred election
space – even if according to Facebook this particular ad got less than 10,000
"impressions" and the mighty sum of 160 "shares" . For crying out loud, it didn't take any nefarious Russian intelligence agent to post this
kind of cartoonish Islamophobia. There are millions of American xenophobes more than happy to
do it with their own dime, time and bile.
So how do these things differ? Conspiracy and cooedination both imply some amount of
planning and direction, with for conspiracy some sort of communication and agreement on the
plan with the other conspiring party, namely the Russians. What apparently the Mueller report
finds is none of that: no central plan or direction or the making of such a plan with the
Russians. This indeed looks like it is true, although some of what went on around the Trump
Tower meeting gets pretty borderline, even as that seems to have been sort of a mutually
botched meeting.
But on the matter of collusion we have piles of evidence that this has occurred, and the
evidence is the large pile of indictments that Mueller has brought forward against a lot of
people, with many of those charged with having unreported meetings and dealings with Russians,
including passing of information back and forth, with many of these then lying about all this,
and with some of these people pleading guilty of what they were charrged with. These actions
have involved very clearly in many cases collusion with the Russians rhese people were dealing
with. The crucial diffeeence is that it appears that all this collusion was unplanned and
undirected. It was disorganized and spontaneous collusion, although serious enough to bring
about efforts to cover up what was going on by many, including apparently Trump himself, even
if AG Barr has decided he did not commit obstruction of justice.
Six of Trump's closest associates have been indicted in connection with this. I only note
that Dana Milbank of WaPo agrees with me: lots of collusion, which is different from
conspiracy, which Trump is too stupid to actually engage in.
As it is, Anonymous, I happen to be very well informed about Russia and pay close
attention to it, probably more than you on both counts. So spouting about "Russian-itis" just
makes you poorly informed and stupid.
As it is, I am increasingly disgusted that most of the media has simply rolled over and
bought the Trump/Hannity line that "no collusion" is what has been shown. It has not. Again,
the word does not appear in the Bar letter.
It is very difficult to find a black cat in a dark room, if there is none
Despite being a Professor of Economics, and having a Russian speaking wife you are
utterly incompetent in this area and are completely brainwashed by the neoliberal/neocon
MSM. You tend to subconsciously equate Russia and the USSR. For your information, Russia is
a neoliberal state; much like the USA and Putin is promoter of neoliberal capitalism,
although in less man-eating mutation than in the USA.
For your information Mueller investigation was a part of color revolution against Trump
launched by intelligence services in the same way they launch color revolution in other
countries. It is unclear to me why they did that, but that fact is provable
And the sequence of event, especially questioning the legitimacy of election, and
Mueller appointment gambit with Comey as a sacrificing pawn, corresponds to what you can
learn from the books of CIA-connected writer Gene Sharp -- the reference source on color
revolution mechanics. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_Sharp
It is not clear to me why the Deep State in the USA (as well as in GB) has such an
allergic reaction and viewed Trump as a threat to the US governed world neoliberal empire,
because Trump, as corrupt as he is, is a part of NYC neoliberal elite and in no way a
revolutionary. And it was clear that he will execute the same "bait and switch" maneuver as
Obama betraying his election promises.
Which actually happened three months after inauguration when he bombed Syria targets
without any investigation of a chemical attack -- which most probably was staged by
jihadists (supposedly he was influenced by Ivanka; actually Javanka is another problem of
this corrupt administration and suggest completely different course of the investigation;
hopefully by the Southern District of NY -- I would like Jared Kushner going to jail with
or without Trump)
But it was a color revolution. Which so far failed.
So you better stop writing such detached from reality statements as "But on the matter
of collusion we have piles of evidence that this has occurred, and the evidence is the
large pile of indictments that Mueller has brought forward against a lot of people, with
many of those charged with having unreported meetings and dealings with Russians," This is
such a low level of IQ that it hurts. Naivety unacceptable for a Professor pretending to be
a political analyst.
In reality this was a false flag operation to present Russia as the culprit. Highly
successful operation I would say. Russia serves as a very convenient scapegoat for such
things.
And having an external scapegoat and projecting into it all the ills helped to cement
cracks in the neoliberal façade, when the US population rejected neoliberal's elite
candidate. In addition, it allowed to launch NeoMcCartyism campaign in MSM for the
suppressing the internal dissent, when anybody who question the US foreign wars or the rule
of financial oligarchy can be framed as Putin's agent.
So this is another classic method of suppressing the dissident voices including whose
who argue for the return of the New Deal Capitalism and/or are against foreign wars. Looks
at how MSMs treat Tulsi Gabbard visit to Syria. Does not it remind you something ?
So most of your writings on this particular topic are just an implicit repetition of
State Department taking points infused into your brain via MSMs you read. You have no first
hand sources about Russia. That's why I would strongly recommend you to stop writing on
this topic. You just disgrace yourself.
"... What this implies is that the received wisdom amongst bourgeois Democrats -- the bosses, bank managers, academics, realtors and administrative class, looks to be what it is: a combination of class loathing that their 'lessors' didn't perceive the munificent blessing of their electoral choice; mass delusion on the part of self-styled 'high-information voters' about who really controls American 'democracy;' and studied ignorance of the consequences of the last half-century of bi-partisan neoliberal governance. ..."
"... Most damaging to the burgeoning left in the U.S. is the deeply ugly character assassination of poor and working-class voters carried out by the urban bourgeois, many from the self-described radical left. People I know and like, but with whom I disagree politically but am working hard to convert, have spent the last three years being derided as traitorous, marginally literate hicks too stupid to know they are pawns of the Kremlin. The irony, if you care to call it that, is that they knew the Russian interference story was cynical bullshit all along while the graduate degree crowd was following every twist and turn as if it were true knowledge. ..."
"... The New York Times and Washington Post have been publishing politically motivated 'fake news' in support of establishment interests since their inceptions. Their service to powerful interests is why they are still around. The FBI, CIA and NSA have been putting out politically motivated bullshit since their respective inceptions. They exist to serve the rich and powerful against all comers. To claim these as bastions of integrity was always a tough sell. To continue to claim it is the stuff from which revolutions are made. In this case, right-wing revolutions. ..."
"... While the urban bourgeois have long been dismissive of the 'burn it down' contingent of Trump voters, they seem incapable of seeing their own roles as defenders of the establishment as corrupt and ultimately, politically suicidal. ..."
"... . Hillary Clinton lost the 2016 election because she is a corrupt, neoliberal, militaristic piece of shit ..."
"... Lying sacks of shit like James Clapper and John Brennan will tie their lots to whomever will fund their adventures in mal-governance as the world burns and species become extinct. The tragedy here is that there are real issues in need of resolution. ..."
Two years ago authors Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes
wrote in their book
Shattered: Inside Hillary Clinton's Doomed Campaign that within 24 hours
of her 2016 electoral loss, Hillary Clinton's senior campaign staff decided
to blame the loss on Russian interference. Given the apparent source of the
charge in
opposition research
funded by the Clinton campaign , the move seemed both desperate and pathetic
-- a thread for Clinton's true believers to hang onto, an effort to keep campaign
contributions rolling in and a ploy to cleave liberals from the left through
red-baiting.
For perspective, from the time leading up to the 2016 election through today,
I chose to live amongst poor and working-class people of color, with occasional
forays into the rural working and middle classes and the urban bourgeois. What
became apparent early on is that the audience for the Russian interference story
was the urban and suburban bourgeois who had seen their lots by-and-large restored
by Barack Obama's bank bailouts and who had no knowledge of, or interaction
with, the 90% of the country that is living, by degree, hand-to-mouth.
What this implies is that the received wisdom amongst bourgeois Democrats
-- the bosses, bank managers, academics, realtors and administrative class,
looks to be what it is: a combination of class loathing that their 'lessors'
didn't perceive the munificent blessing of their electoral choice; mass delusion
on the part of self-styled 'high-information voters' about who really controls
American 'democracy;' and studied ignorance of the consequences of the last
half-century of bi-partisan neoliberal governance.
"Prior to the 2016 presidential election, if one were to ask what single
act could seal a new Cold War with Russia, align liberals and progressives
with the operational core of the American military-industrial-surveillance
complex, expose the preponderance of left-activism as an offshoot of Democratic
Party operations and consign most of what remained to personal invective
against an empirically dangerous leader, consensus would likely have it
that doing so wouldn't be easy."
The Clinton campaign's decision to blame her electoral loss on Russian interference
demonstrates why she was, and still is, unqualified to hold elected office.
In the first, the U.S. – Russian rivalry is backed-up by hair-trigger nuclear
arsenals that could end the world in a matter of minutes. Inciting tensions
based on self-serving lies is stunningly reckless. In the second, the claim
demonstrates utter contempt for her most loyal followers by feeding them purposely
misleading explanations of the loss. And most damagingly for political opponents
of Donald Trump, these actions give credence to the insurgent status of his
retro-Republicanism against liberal and left defenders of the political establishment.
Most damaging to the burgeoning left in the U.S. is the deeply ugly character
assassination of poor and working-class voters carried out by the urban bourgeois,
many from the self-described radical left. People I know and like, but with
whom I disagree politically but am working hard to convert, have spent the last
three years being derided as traitorous, marginally literate hicks too stupid
to know they are pawns of the Kremlin. The irony, if you care to call it that,
is that they knew the Russian interference story was cynical bullshit all along
while the graduate degree crowd was following every twist and turn as if it
were true knowledge.
The Democratic Party 'leadership' that pursued this story is as stupid as
it is corrupt. The purpose of Russia-gate was apparently to keep the Party faithful,
faithful. But as was demonstrated in 2016, the faithful alone can't win an election.
This leadership turned what could have been an effective 'give 'em enough rope'
strategy against arrogant jackass Trump back on itself. The establishment-left
had been in the process of giving self-described socialists someone to vote
for in 2020. Too-clever-by-half liberal twaddle about 'post-truth' now has liberals
-- universally conflated with the left, perceived as both idiots and liars.
And rightly so.
Democrats who spent the last three years making less than plausible (and
politically retrograde) accusations against Mr. Trump likely still don't understand
their current position. Their call for an exhaustive investigation carried out
by people they trust was honored. While the investigation was underway, the
mainstream press put one ludicrous fantasy after another forward as news. This
while a host of real issues affecting real people's lives were studiously ignored.
As incredulous as I am that it could be done, liberal Democrats have made corrupt
oligarch Trump appear to be righteously aggrieved. Who says these people have
no talent?
The New York Times and Washington Post have been publishing politically
motivated 'fake news' in support of establishment interests since their inceptions.
Their service to powerful interests is why they are still around. The FBI, CIA
and NSA have been putting out
politically motivated bullshit since their respective inceptions. They exist
to serve the rich and powerful against all comers. To claim these as bastions
of integrity was always a tough sell. To continue to claim it is the stuff from
which revolutions are made. In this case, right-wing revolutions.
While the urban bourgeois have long been dismissive of the 'burn it down'
contingent of Trump voters, they seem incapable of seeing their own roles as
defenders of the establishment as corrupt and ultimately, politically suicidal.
I voted for a woman for president and a black man for vice president in
2016. But they weren't Democrats. Hillary Clinton lost the 2016 election
because she is a corrupt, neoliberal, militaristic piece of shit. Ironically,
or not, most of Trump voters I've spoken with know more about the Democrats'
actual record than the highly educated urban bourgeois pontificating on NPR
or in the New York Times.
A quick bet is that the 2020 presidential election is now Donald Trump's
to lose. Lying sacks of shit like James Clapper and John Brennan will tie
their lots to whomever will fund their adventures in mal-governance as the world
burns and species become extinct. The tragedy here is that there are real issues
in need of resolution. The Democrats' three-year adventure in red-baiting
served to legitimate a financial-military-industrial complex that apparently
intends to end the planet as it makes as many people miserable in the process
as is possible. Congratulations assholes.
Join the debate on Facebook More articles by:
Rob Urie
Rob Urie is an artist and political economist. His book
Zen Economics is published by CounterPunch Books.
Russiagate is a story about greed and lust for power manifesting as treachery and corruption.
As a hoax it is notable for it's size and duration and damage done. But it is nothing at all
compared to 9/11. I am impressed by the sheer silliness of Russiagate and the tenacious
ignorance of those who still believe the corporate media.
Doubling down is just stupid. And that war pig Rachel Maddow lost 500k viewers. That's why she cries. she
sries about lst money.
She does not cry about deceived and brainwashed public, which was subjected to unprecedented Neo-McCarthyism complagn for more
then a year.
Notable quotes:
"... The MSNBC host, who has devoted countless hours of airtime to gossiping about the alleged ties between President Donald Trump and the Kremlin, struggled to keep her composure while discussing the end of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation, which wrapped up on Friday without issuing any further indictments ..."
"... Maddow didn't succumb to this unexpected and shocking injustice, however, and reassured her viewers that Mueller's decision not to issue a single collusion-related indictment is the "start of something apparently, not the end of something." ..."
"... "Very rough night at MSNBC. Rachel Maddow looks like she's going to cry. Chris Hayes glasses are all fogged up," noted radio host Mark Simone. ..."
"... "This is what it looks like when you've deliberately misled your audience for two years, and then the music stops, and the bill comes due. @maddow," tweeted OANN White House Correspondent Emerald Robinson. ..."
"... "#Maddow either choking on kitty litter chunks or facing the hard cold reality she's the worst journalist in television history," quipped actor and conservative commentator James Woods. ..."
"... "So can those of us on the left criticize Trump on the actual issues now, and FINALLY give up on #Russiagate? For 2 years, @maddow has lead @MSNBC in selling us the narrative that Trump colluded w/ Russia What will @maddow do now? Double down or actually do journalism?" asked author and activist Dennis Trainor Jr. ..."
"... Later on Saturday, Maddow mocked the suggestion that she was watery-eyed and might have held back tears. ..."
Crying for indictments? Maddow 'holds backs tears' as she discusses end of Mueller probe (VIDEO)
The MSNBC host, who has devoted countless hours of airtime to gossiping about the alleged ties between President Donald Trump
and the Kremlin, struggled to keep her composure while discussing the end of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation, which
wrapped up on Friday without issuing any further indictments.
According to the Daily Caller, Maddow came
close to crying as she commented
on the Russiagate-deflating development. Many on Twitter insisted that she actually shed tears. A clip of the broadcast shows a watery-eyed
Maddow seemingly grappling with the reality that Donald Trump and his family will not be frog-marched out of the White House.
Maddow didn't succumb to this unexpected and shocking injustice, however, and reassured her viewers that Mueller's decision not
to issue a single collusion-related indictment is the "start of something apparently, not the end of something."
The internet laughed and laughed.
"Very rough night at MSNBC. Rachel Maddow looks like she's going to cry. Chris Hayes glasses are all fogged up," noted
radio host Mark Simone.
Very rough night at MSNBC. Rachel Maddow looks like she's going to cry. Chris Hayes glasses are all fogged up.
"This is what it looks like when you've deliberately misled your audience for two years, and then the music stops, and the
bill comes due. @maddow," tweeted OANN White House Correspondent Emerald Robinson.
This is what it looks like when you've deliberately misled your audience for two years, and then the music stops, and the bill
comes due. @maddowhttps://t.co/4bkBUEwx8y
"#Maddow either choking on kitty litter chunks or facing the hard cold reality she's the worst journalist in television history,"
quipped actor and conservative commentator James Woods.
"What's going on with Maddow? Has she been hospitalized? Sedated?" inquired journalist Michael Tracey.
Others expressed exasperation at Maddow's refusal to face the music, accusing the MSNBC host of ignoring real, pressing issues
as she leads her Russiagate crusade.
"So can those of us on the left criticize Trump on the actual issues now, and FINALLY give up on #Russiagate? For 2 years,
@maddow has lead @MSNBC in selling us the narrative that Trump colluded w/ Russia What will @maddow do now? Double down or actually
do journalism?" asked author and activist Dennis Trainor Jr.
So can those of us on the left criticize Trump on the actual issues now, and FINALLY give up on
#Russiagate ?
For 2 years, @maddow has lead
@MSNBC in selling us the narrative that Trump colluded
w/ Russia
What will @maddow do now? Double down or actually
do journalism?
Doubling down is just stupid. And that war pig Rachel Maddow lost 500k viewers. That's why she cries. she
sries about lst money.
She does not cry about deceived and brainwashed public, which was subjected to unprecedented Neo-McCarthyism complagn for more
then a year.
Notable quotes:
"... The MSNBC host, who has devoted countless hours of airtime to gossiping about the alleged ties between President Donald Trump and the Kremlin, struggled to keep her composure while discussing the end of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation, which wrapped up on Friday without issuing any further indictments ..."
"... Maddow didn't succumb to this unexpected and shocking injustice, however, and reassured her viewers that Mueller's decision not to issue a single collusion-related indictment is the "start of something apparently, not the end of something." ..."
"... "Very rough night at MSNBC. Rachel Maddow looks like she's going to cry. Chris Hayes glasses are all fogged up," noted radio host Mark Simone. ..."
"... "This is what it looks like when you've deliberately misled your audience for two years, and then the music stops, and the bill comes due. @maddow," tweeted OANN White House Correspondent Emerald Robinson. ..."
"... "#Maddow either choking on kitty litter chunks or facing the hard cold reality she's the worst journalist in television history," quipped actor and conservative commentator James Woods. ..."
"... "So can those of us on the left criticize Trump on the actual issues now, and FINALLY give up on #Russiagate? For 2 years, @maddow has lead @MSNBC in selling us the narrative that Trump colluded w/ Russia What will @maddow do now? Double down or actually do journalism?" asked author and activist Dennis Trainor Jr. ..."
"... Later on Saturday, Maddow mocked the suggestion that she was watery-eyed and might have held back tears. ..."
Crying for indictments? Maddow 'holds backs tears' as she discusses end of Mueller probe (VIDEO)
The MSNBC host, who has devoted countless hours of airtime to gossiping about the alleged ties between President Donald Trump
and the Kremlin, struggled to keep her composure while discussing the end of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation, which
wrapped up on Friday without issuing any further indictments.
According to the Daily Caller, Maddow came
close to crying as she commented
on the Russiagate-deflating development. Many on Twitter insisted that she actually shed tears. A clip of the broadcast shows a watery-eyed
Maddow seemingly grappling with the reality that Donald Trump and his family will not be frog-marched out of the White House.
Maddow didn't succumb to this unexpected and shocking injustice, however, and reassured her viewers that Mueller's decision not
to issue a single collusion-related indictment is the "start of something apparently, not the end of something."
The internet laughed and laughed.
"Very rough night at MSNBC. Rachel Maddow looks like she's going to cry. Chris Hayes glasses are all fogged up," noted
radio host Mark Simone.
Very rough night at MSNBC. Rachel Maddow looks like she's going to cry. Chris Hayes glasses are all fogged up.
"This is what it looks like when you've deliberately misled your audience for two years, and then the music stops, and the
bill comes due. @maddow," tweeted OANN White House Correspondent Emerald Robinson.
This is what it looks like when you've deliberately misled your audience for two years, and then the music stops, and the bill
comes due. @maddowhttps://t.co/4bkBUEwx8y
"#Maddow either choking on kitty litter chunks or facing the hard cold reality she's the worst journalist in television history,"
quipped actor and conservative commentator James Woods.
"What's going on with Maddow? Has she been hospitalized? Sedated?" inquired journalist Michael Tracey.
Others expressed exasperation at Maddow's refusal to face the music, accusing the MSNBC host of ignoring real, pressing issues
as she leads her Russiagate crusade.
"So can those of us on the left criticize Trump on the actual issues now, and FINALLY give up on #Russiagate? For 2 years,
@maddow has lead @MSNBC in selling us the narrative that Trump colluded w/ Russia What will @maddow do now? Double down or actually
do journalism?" asked author and activist Dennis Trainor Jr.
So can those of us on the left criticize Trump on the actual issues now, and FINALLY give up on
#Russiagate ?
For 2 years, @maddow has lead
@MSNBC in selling us the narrative that Trump colluded
w/ Russia
What will @maddow do now? Double down or actually
do journalism?
What actually happened with RussiaGate? A cabal of government officials colluded with the
Hillary Clinton campaign to interfere in the 2016 election and, failing to achieve their
desired outcome, engineered a two-years-plus formal inquisition to deflect attention from their
own misconduct and attempt to overthrow the election result.
The Cable News characters, quite a few of them lawyers, were litigating the living shit out
of the story on Sunday night in their usual spirit of obdurate rank dishonesty. For instance,
Jeffrey Toobin, who plays Attorney General on CNN, went off on the infamous 2016 Trump Tower
Meeting in which the president's son, Donald, Jr., met with Russian lawyer Natalia V.
Veselnitskaya. Toobin omitted to mention that Ms. Veselnitskaya was, at that very time, on the
payroll of Fusion GPS, Hillary Clinton's "oppo" research contractor. In other words, Trump
Junior was set up.
That was characteristic of the collusion that actually occurred between
the Hillary campaign, the FBI, the DOJ, the CIA, the NSA, the UK's MI6 intel agency, and the
Obama White House, striving to prevent the election of a TV reality show star, and to disable
him afterwards -- also of the news media's role in the whole interminable scam of RussiaGate.
Their fury and despair were as vivid the night of March 24, 2019, as on November 8, 2016. And
now they will attempt to spark off a sequel.
Rachel Maddow, for instance, struggling to maintain her dignity after two years playing
Madame DeFarge on MSNBC, tried to console her fans with the prospect of Mr. Trump getting raked
over the coals by the DOJ's Southern District of NY prosecutors for crimes as yet unpredicted
-- really, whatever they might find if they turn over enough rocks in Manhattan. Perhaps she
doesn't know how the justice system actually works in this country: we prosecute crimes not
persons. In places like Stalin's Soviet Union and Hitler's Germany, you first choose a person
to eliminate and then fit them to a crime. If no crime can be found, one is easily
manufactured. In the USA, a predicate crime is required before you can launch a prosecution.
Perhaps the actual Attorney General, Mr. Barr, will advise the avid staff of the Southern
District of NY how this works.
There remains also, the rather sweeping panorama of misconduct and probable crime among the
government (and former government) players in the agencies mentioned above. Does the full
Mueller Report mention, for instance, that the animating document claiming that Trump colluded
with Russia was manufactured by Mrs. Clinton's employees? And that this document was used time
and again improperly and illegally to prolong the inquisition? How could Mr. Mueller not
acknowledge that? And if not, what sort of investigation was this?
You are forced to ask: did Mr. Mueller play an honorable role in this epic, multilayered
scandal? And is Mr. Mueller himself an honorable character, or something less than that? I
believe we'll find out. The other team is coming to bat now -- and just in time for MLB's
opening day, too. The Mueller report has been a shocking disappointment to the so-called
"resistance," but what about the as-yet-unreleased DOJ Inspector General's report on these very
matters ? Or the parallel investigation of federal prosecutor John Huber, who is charged
specifically with looking into the malfeasance of the RussiaGate investigators? Or whatever
action the Attorney General himself launches in the wake of all this? Or whether Mr. Trump
finally declassifies the mountains of documents behind the simple failure to find him guilty of
any crime? My favorite college professor and mentor, David Hamilton, once put a curious
question to us when we were vexing him for some reason now forgotten: "Why," he asked, "Did
Achilles drag Hector around the city of Troy three times?"
So, If they would trample Trump's constitutional rights by abusing this bogus fisa warrant
system, shouldn't we assume they are 10 times as likely to abuse it to spy on average
americans, who have no chance of protecting themselves from the police state they have built
since 9-11? Revoke the patriot act. It is unconstitutional anyway, though Trump rewarded the
man who helped write it with the Supreme court position. We have a small window to claw back
the rights they stripped from us. If we don't do it now, when these programs are called into
question, these deep state turds will do whatever they can to consolidate their hold on the
US. I'm not too hopeful, myself. Seeing the blatant piracy they are attempting in Venezuela,
even after the failures in Iraq and Syria, doesn't do much to console me as to America's
future. My relatives came here from England and Germany with little more than the clothes on
their backs. It may be time to look for greener pastures if we are going to be a proxy of
Israel, and a deep state, stripped of our inherent rights bit by bit until we aren't allowed
to leave.
First is the multipart crime committed by Hillary Clinton and her cabal of deep state
co-conspirators to rig a primary, which they did against Bernie Sanders, then attempt to
steal an election by using various intelligence connections in the FBI and CIA to dig up dirt
on candidate Trump in the form of a fake Russia dossier, then petition the DOJ with only
parts of it, to get a warrant to spy on him and ultimately discredit him. Then in the event
he won, use that dossier to concoct a fake Trump/Russia collusion scandal in order to
delegitimize and hopefully reverse the Trump Presidential victory. This was treasonous and
seditious to its core and those conspirators should be investigated as thoroughly as Mueller
investigated Trump and all of his acquaintances.
The second was the Mainstream media's part in all of this mess. They so eagerly bought
into the false narrative and went out of their way, like good little bolsheviks, and
disseminated unproven and unsubstantiated "fake news" that was fed to them each morning by
democrat operatives and consultants, 24/7/365 . Every mainstream media reporter (and I use
that term loosely), and every late night talk host on CNN, MSNBC, NBC, ABC, CBS, NPR, NY
Times, Washington Post, and others, as well as every guest pundit opined without proof, and
pounded the table to every lemming who would listen, that Trump had to be guilty and was in
fact guilty because, well, they didn't like him. These reporters and pundits spread rumors,
called him names such as racist and nazi, etc, etc, with no basis in fact, which was an
historically new low, even for state based propaganda. (FOX news, to their credit, did not).
This agenda driven media overstepped the boundaries of good reporting and journalistic
ethical standards and set the news business back 250 years. What American journalists,
reporters and pundits did in the name of the first amendment "free press" was a national and
global disgrace.
Well said. You forget to mention, as did the article, Mueller's seditious criminal past.
Worst of all - Madcow and the rest of the MSM did a serious smear job on the Russian
government, at a time of already heightened propaganda against a country that could reduce
the USA to ashes. Also - there is the collusion of the UK government and the equally
ridiculous Skripal affair.
It is profoundly sad none of the ringleaders and real provocateurs will be prosecuted, and
things will continue to deteriorate until there is a nuclear war. Because the entire system
is rotten to the core and the citizens don't care about truth or justice.
Thanks for your additional comments. While I'm hopeful Hillary and her co-conspirators
will be investigated, indicted, tried and found guilty of sedition and treason in breaking
laws of at least 6 different acts, I don't believe Republicans have the spine or intestinal
fortitude to make their case, even if they have proof beyond any reasonable doubt to the
extent a first year law student could argue and win the case open and shut.
Also, I do not believe, even for one Milli-second, that public verbal sparring of
political leaders or their hyperbole in the midst of tough negotiations, will ever lead
civilized nations of the world to a nuclear war. it is done purely for effect and political
strategy in their home nations.
That said, you are correct that the media's continuously negative anti-Trump, anti-America
tone for two straight years, did not help trade negotiations or international relations, and
in fact, put the US at a distinct disadvantage. It's a small wonder President Trump has
achieved all the successes he has in spite of this. He deserves great credit.
Mueller knew this was all lies and BS within weeks of taking the job and put on this
charade for 2 YEARS and ruined the lives of innocent people. Mueller is not the good guy here
at all.
That was characteristic of the collusion that actually occurred between the Hillary
campaign, the FBI, the DOJ, the CIA, the NSA, the UK's MI6 intel agency, and the Obama White
House...
After the IG report is released in April, we need to start real investigations.
Congressional and Senate hearings are kabuki! President Trump needs to hire outside lawyers
as a special counsel to get to the bottom of this treason! I don't trust anyone in DOJ to do
that!
It's on..Trump just made an extremely strong statement about "this must NEVER happen to
ANY President EVER again" in response to a question from a journo..
This implies they have any concept of decency or shame to begin with.
They've been planning the SpecialCounsel-Russiagate to Congressional-Obstruction pivot
since 2017... as continued albatross around Trump & MAGA's neck.
Trump better get voter fraud under control to win 2020.
"... Is it even possible to have any sense of NUANCE to debating investigations of Trump & his "Russian connections"? It's actually possible to OPPOSE Cold War II with Russia and yet, still be suspicious of Trump's dealings with foreign powers–including Russia (how about all the MONEY LAUNDERING for Russian OLIGARCHS Trump's done by selling them real estate?) ..."
"... But, REGARDLESS if "Russian interference" had ANY role in the 2016 Election, Donald Trump is being revealed as a CORRUPT LIAR who raises the WORST elements in American life: to quote a famous witness: he's a racist, a con man and a cheat. ..."
"... The USA has become a theater state. Concrete achievements, concrete evidenve, do no matter. All that matters is theatrical statements, dramatic actions. ..."
"... Of course, the US Empire is waning, its capacity to dominate gone, it will behave rather badly. However, if sufficient fervor may be stirred, the populace may yet embrace an end-times crusade and rally round the flag, once more, to deal with foul and evil Russia, with China thrown in, just for good measure. ..."
There are two certainties we can rely upon as we await Mueller's final word, none a cause for relief.
The special counsel's office did not undertake a credible investigation of the two core charges related to the 2016 elections
-- that Russian intelligence hacked Democratic National Committee email servers while colluding with Donald Trump as he sought
the presidency. Mueller failed to call numerous key witnesses, and failed to pursue alternative theories, a duty of any investigator
in Mueller's position. These omissions are more or less fatal to the legitimacy of Mueller's work.
Among the mainstream Democrats who have incessantly hyped the "Russia-wrecked-our-elections" story, there is no remorse for
the damage it has done to our governing institutions, our foreign policy, and our national security. Russia-gate has consolidated
Cold War II. The chance to rebuild mutually beneficial relations with Moscow has been damaged.
Patrick Lawrence, a correspondent abroad for many years, chiefly for the International Herald Tribune, is a columnist, essayist,
author, and lecturer. His most recent book is "Time No Longer: Americans After the American Century" (Yale). Follow him @thefloutist.
His web site is www.patricklawrence.us. Support his work via www.patreon.com/thefloutist
.
" The chance to rebuild mutually
beneficial relations with Moscow has been damaged. "
Why else was this narrative initiated by the Corporate Democrats? Expecting
the person who lead the cover up of the crimes of 9/11 was great comedy, indeed.
Is it even possible to have any sense of NUANCE to debating investigations of Trump & his "Russian connections"? It's actually
possible to OPPOSE Cold War II with Russia and yet, still be suspicious of Trump's dealings with foreign powers–including Russia
(how about all the MONEY LAUNDERING for Russian OLIGARCHS Trump's done by selling them real estate?)
How do any of the nay-sayers of investigating them feel about Trump's (seemly obvious) CORRUPTION of campaign & post-election
trolling for Putin's permission to build his decades long dream of a TRUMP TOWER MOSCOW? or Son-In-Law-In-Charge-of-Middle-East-Peace
Jared Kushner's attempts at "back channel" (NON-transparent) communications with Russian government? or Trump himself making sure
there's NO RECORD of any of his one-0on-one conversations with Putin?
At the very least, it appears thta Donald Trump has more interests in HIS MONEY than in U.S. foreign policy.
That any progresisve/leftist could see Trump as a "peace activist" is a joke! He's had TWO YEARS to bring the troops home from
Iraq & Afghanistan & the other 5 countries that President Obama started wars on & he hasn't done it. Trump has RAISED Pentagon
budget & put people with ECONOMIC CONFLICTS OF INTEREST into his Cabinet–like the BOEING executive now as Sec. of Defense.
I DISLIKE Hillary Clinton & did NOT vote for her–or Trump. I think there are MANY reasons she lost the election -- not the
least of which is her long terrible record when it comes to EVERYONE–except the 1%.
The rooted-in-PRESERVING-SLAVERY/Antiquated Electoral College was another reason. James Comey's announcements in both JULY
& OCT. 106 didn't help -- nor did, what looks like Russian targeting of specific white working class Midwest voters.
But, REGARDLESS if "Russian interference" had ANY role in the 2016 Election, Donald Trump is being revealed as a CORRUPT
LIAR who raises the WORST elements in American life: to quote a famous witness: he's a racist, a con man and a cheat.
nomad March 24, 2019 at 09:57 Lydia,
If you had disconnected yourself from the 2 party system, what do you see?
You will see one party, not two, that associates itself with the elites, not the regular voters.
The regular voters are just pawn pieces on the political chess board that is played with or removed.
I see a corrupt system that both parties belong to, and its members serve it for their own interests.
If both parties were good, where are the business, military, educational, political, financial, legal, and medical reforms that
apply to everyone?
Why are most government politicians above the law?
Why do executive-level government get executive healthcare while the majority of its citizens get
less than this?
Why is the U.S hated by some countries?
Why is the U.S. government so corrupt? If you look at the corruption index, the U.S. is negatively trending downwards over time. https://www.transparency.org/cpi2018?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIlvH8gvOa4QIVZBh9Ch0usQonEAAYASAAEgIfj_D_BwE
Why does the U.S. still have so much debt from the past, the present, and going towards the future? http://www.usdebtclock.org/
For our government system, it does not make a difference who is in charge after this president and its congress.
If you had watched the movie Matrix, don't be a battery.
William March 22, 2019 at 17:47
Mueller's failure to interview the absolutely vital witnesses is obvious to those who have kept up with related events and
information since the beginning. This, however, amounts to such an extremely small number that it is fairly obvious that the truth
about "Russia Gate" will be as quickly forgotten as the Bush administrations lying us into war with Iraq.
Dave churbuck March 22, 2019 at 13:10 The corrup people that are and will continue to do the
never ending investigations make a lot of money.
By do the investigations they protect the guilty which are the investigators themselves.
They also insure that the Clinton Cartel will never get caught . Think about that.
Reply
O
Society March 22, 2019 at 11:51 Did you see James Comey let the public down gently and try to quell the riots ahead of time
with the seal of his authenticity?
The USA has become a theater state. Concrete achievements, concrete evidenve, do no matter. All that matters is theatrical
statements, dramatic actions.
O Society March 21, 2019
at 13:07 Truth is Donald Trump is a tool. Like a weedeater or a vacuum, except in reverse. His job is to make a mess like a chaos
snowmachine. Crap all over the Oval Office, the military, and any coherent notion of policy and government as being for good of
the people.
With Russia (and all other simmering wars), Trump does whatever the neoconservatives tell him to do because he has no foreign
policy or ideology of his own. Don't overthink it. There's no 4D chess going on here, just pissing on things, marking his territory.
In fact, Trump has no economic, domestic, or foreign ideology other than "Me." Therefore, any benefit to anyone not named "Me"
which may come from anything he does is coincidental. Collateral damage, so to speak. Inadvertent to the hoisting of the Great
Leader's social status.
Trump is against blacks because he is white. He is against women because he's a man. He's against the regular people because
he's an oligarch. Simple.
DH Fabian March 22, 2019 at 01:01 Agree, and take a look at what Trump did. He reinforced economic sanctions against
Russia, increased US "meddling" in Ukraine, increased US/NATO troops near the Russian border, and we've been subjected to
two years of anti-Russian propaganda. And yes, Trump is about Trump. Period.
Reply
Eddie March 24, 2019 at 12:05 Yes O'S, as I've
noted a number of times before, the 'Occam's razor' POV here (which I and some others subscribed to) is that Trump basically
ran for office as a PR event, to help his always shady/chronically financially troubled scam empire by getting name recognition
to help fool potential investors. His stated political views were by and large entirely opportunistic and irrelevant --
- for instance, he supposedly used to be a liberal Democratic supporter who reportedly supported abortion rights and advocated
for Hillary Clinton. Trump was more stunned than elated when he won on election night (you could almost see him thinking
'Oh crap, NOW I might actually have to do some WORK, and it'll be in the public eye, where I can't con people as easily
as I do investors'), and his wife reportedly cried, but not tears of joy. To impute any serious political policies to the
man is to vastly exaggerate his interest in politics. He never previously held any elected office, which tells us a lot.
Reply
Gary March 21, 2019 at 08:11 It is clear the author
& responders do not understand geo-politics. As US imperialism continues its hegemonic actions, like the expansion of NATO,
it is clear the Russians need to foil this aggression. How do they do it short of nuclear war? They need to disrupt bourgeois
democracy in order to maintain & spread real democracy, i.e., socialist democracy. It doesn't matter that the October Revolution
was destroyed which Putin said recently is the worst thing that happened in the 20th century. There is still a desire to reestablish
socialism. In addition the US doesn't want that nor will it tolerate a powerful capitalist Russia. Writers at Consortium don't
seem to understand this facet of geo-politics. Why? Because writers & readers here are of the bourgeoisie & are not Marxists
even though they seem to be defending Russia & speak about preventing a Cold War II.
O Society March 20, 2019 at 14:42 There's a clear pattern in Donald Trump's life, as well as the life of his father, and his
father before that.
They'll steal and lie and scam and defraud the public, and get away with it.
We all know that's how the American Fairytale ends: He shat all over the place and someone else cleaned it up. Again.
Eddie March 24, 2019 at 15:22 As per your link to the article by Nomi Prins, and other similar articles going back to the
80's, Trump is easily the most financially corrupt POTUS we've seen in our generation (I was born in '49), possibly the worst
ever, at least on a personal-business basis (things like the Teapot Dome scandal were more 'political-financial' corrupt, a
somewhat different category, though in the end it's obviously all CORRUPTION*). It's sad that the US has gotten to this point
politically -- - to have someone so ill-suited and corrupt as our POTUS -- - but maybe as some critics have said Trump IS an
appropriate symbol of the crass country we've become..? If that's true or not, maybe he'll serve as a 'bottoming-out' signal
to enough of the US electorate to examine our overall culture and start a correction to more humanistic policies.
* Side note: Zephyr Teachout (quoted in the link) wrote an excellent book "Corruption in America: From Benjamin Franklin's
Snuff Box to Citizens United", which is a very readable, informative book on that timely subject.
O Society March 19, 2019 at 23:55 You can't believe
the president. You can't believe anything anyone says about the president either.
Whomever had the bright idea to make sure no one believes anything coming out of Washington DC for the foreseeable future
Tom
March 20, 2019 at 04:02 "We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is
false"
CIA Director William Casey
Tom March 19, 2019 at 16:18 The very fact that the servers were never
inspected by the FBI but a private company that has a history of being anti Russia completely ruined the investigation and chain
of evidence that breached their own laws and never sought any interview with Ambassador Craig Murray who said he knows who leaked
the evidence says it all.
Craig Murray is banned from the USA.
Why?
Anarcissie March 19, 2019 at 15:00 I was quite interested in the early reports of supposed foreign influences and hacks of
the 2016 election, because to some extent computer security has been part of my métier. I soon realized that very little actual
evidence was being presented in comparison with the wild stories being circulated. So I don't think it's surprising that Mueller
appears to be coming up with nothing substantial (unless there's a big surprise awaiting us all). Mueller did not call a number
of the obvious witnesses (as noted above) because he knew they could not offer anything.
The House investigation is motivated by two things: (1) Democrats promised that if they got control of the House they would
investigate and maybe impeach Trump; (2) CYA procedures. The main effort of the Democratic Party leadership is keeping the Left
down; Russiagate was supposed to distract people from concerns like climate change, health care, education costs, and so on; the
Democratic leadership's donor class wants this sort of thing to be stopped or diverted. Hence the constant focus on Trump and
the conspiracy fables associated by them with him. They have now made a number of gaffes, not just Russiagate, which have to be
covered up and put out of mind if possible.
Those who went along with all this, especially those who indulged in McCarthyism, should be reminded of it frequently.
Lisa March 19, 2019 at 14:13 Concerning the first charge, Russian intelligence hacking the DNC computers, there is one more
witness whom Mueller never contacted, although he sent a message to Mueller and volunteered to be interviewed:
Kim Dotcom / Twitter 8. Aug. 2018
"I certainly know that Wikileaks didn't get it from Russia. I know who was the Wikileaks DNC source. I was involved. The Mueller
indictment of 12 Russians will never be tested in Court, it's a scam, initiated by Hillary Clinton. Mueller is a political hitman
tasked to end Trump."
It seems that both sides are steering the discussion to another dimension, being frustrated in advance of the coming Mueller
report. The Democrats are starting new investigations on other issues on Trump, not pushing the impeachment project further, the
other side is worried that the Mueller report will leave the question open, undecided, so that everyone can stick to their original
suspicions, and the country is left in turmoil.
Reply
DH Fabian March 19, 2019 at 21:56 It was reported
some time ago that the DNC servers hadn't been hacked at all. It was determined that someone who had direct access to the computers
had simply downloaded a huge number of files onto ordinary thumb drives, and these were passed along, ultimately to Wikileaks.
Reply
Norumbega March 20, 2019 at 18:21 I hadn't been aware
of Kim Dotcom's 2018 Tweet, but he is one of several potential witnesses to the matter in whom Mueller has shown zero interest
in interviewing.
I discuss this matter in a long post under last week's VIPS memo. In combination this witness evidence further underscores
that what Mueller is doing cannot by any stretch be considered an honest investigation:
Gregory Kruse March 19, 2019 at 13:34 Paranoiac hyperbole,
is it?
Reply
Jeff Harrison March 19, 2019 at 13:32 Yes, it's pretty
clear that the Democrats want to do to the Republicans what the Republicans did to the Democrats under Clinton and Obama. Hobble
the president that they don't want to consider legitimate. The Democrats have a couple of problems. One is that when there was
no there there in Clinton's case special persecutor Starr was able to get salacious bits on Clinton and essentially trap him into
a formal form of perjury because Clinton didn't want to admit that he had had sex with "that woman". Trump doesn't give a sh*t.
God and the gang know who he's been sleeping with and he doesn't care so the prudish, hypocritical sanctimony of the evangelicals
won't get him. The other problem is essentially that impeachment isn't really the vehicle to remove presidents you don't like.
That's what elections are for. You can't impeach him for something he did five years ago.
It really is too bad that he didn't depose Christopher Steele. Christopher Steele gives new meaning to the line out of the
Charlie Daniels hit where Uneasy Rider says, "he may look dumb, but that's just a disguise. He's a mastermind in the ways of espionage".
So, not only aren't today's Democrats very competent, they can't hire competent help, either.
It's not clear to me what the country does when neither political party is competent.
O Society March 19, 2019 at 13:19 Donald Trump is nothing more than an aristocrat. He got his family millions from his dad,
Fred, whose own mother, Elizabeth, started him in real estate. It's a family of rich grifters.
Yet the Democratic party doesn't go after all the Trump's financial fraud and scams. It's all Spy vs. Spy Russia baloney instead.
Why?
O Society March 19, 2019 at 17:21 Oh, I think we all know Trump is as crooked as a stick in water. There's mountains of
corruption in his family, at least a century's worth of fraud and scams to hold up in the sunlight.
The so called "meritocracy" – aka aristocracy, oligarchy, elite, plutocrats, etc – don't want to turn over rocks looking
for Trumps financial corruption because they're all hiding fraud and scams of their own.
Meritocracy itself is a fraud. These aren't our best and brightest and most worthy running things, they're celebrities and
vampires, just like Trump is.
Are you ready to expose how the selfish bastards rig the game to keep the rest of us from getting any of their so called
"merit?"
The first rule of Rich Club is you don't talk about Rich Club!
Eric32 March 19, 2019 at 13:18 The US is a bizarrely corrupt dysfunctional country.
The two countries that (past and present) interfere the most in US politics and elections are Israel and Britain. The corrupt
FBI didn't include them in its politicized "investigation".
Due to Hillary's incompetent attempts to hide her emails from examination via FOIA requests by using her own insecure servers,
Russia and all other countries with competent computer intelligence capabilities likely have all her emails dealing with State
Dept. classified and unclassified info. They also likely have her emails dealing with the corrupt Clinton "charity" foundation
dealings.
Despite the above, the evidence indicates Wikileaks got the DNC emails showing corrupt activities, not from Russia or any other
country, but from a DNC onsite data transfer to a USB thumb drive, which was later physically transferred to wiki (involving Craig
Murray) . Seth Rich, a DNC employee whose subsequent murder remains unsolved, has been all but named by Assange as the DNC source.
Big Russian money flowed to Bill Clinton for speeches. Big Russian money flowed to the obviously corrupt Clinton foundation
as "donations".
Bill Clinton said: "I left the White House [2001] $16 million in debt". A Forbes magazine analysis of Clinton tax returns had
them pulling in $240 million over the ensuing 15 years.
What do the Clintons have to offer in books and speeches that would pull in that kind of money?
And yet, all the legal and press attention goes to supposed Trump corruption.
So far at least, nobody has been able to point to any any dirt on Trump that could have been used as blackmail leverage, which
is somewhat amazing for an operator who was involved in New York real estate, casinos and hotels.
Glennn March 19, 2019 at 14:14 Russiagate has been a smashing success. It has turned the bulk of the liberal Democratic
voting bloc into Russiaphobic cold warriors who don't seem overly concerned with the almost certain dire consequences of such
insanity. They seem eager to see their freedoms set aside so the rebranded Democratic Neocons can protect them from boogeymen.
It's never been easier in all of human history to inform oneself, yet we find ourselves surrounded by astonishing ignorance
as sites like this see their traffic from search reduced by tricks done by the corporate providers of the search engines. I
foolishly thought that Trump would cause a leftward movement in the population, and to a limited degree it has. I'm just shocked
at how many of my friends and family are totally sucked in by Russiagate and surrounding manipulations. I see no sign that
they learned anything from the 2016 debacle.
Skip Scott March 20, 2019 at 08:58 Yes, there would be at least as much "meat" examining the Clintons' finances as there
is in examining Trump's.
By your wording I'm not sure if you realize that you are talking about two different sets of emails. Hillary's emails for
while she was SoS have no doubt been obtained by the Russians and the Chinese, and any country with an interest in monitoring
US foreign policy that has hacking capability. That she got away with that without being prosecuted is astounding. The DNC
emails could also have been hacked, but all evidence supports a leak being the source for Wikileaks. As Putin said, why would
they bother to try to influence the election, when US foreign policy never changes no matter who is president. If the DNC and
Podesta were hacked by foreign powers, it was likely just done for information.
(I just re-read your comment more carefully and see that you are likely aware that we're talking about separate sets of
emails.)
hetro March 19, 2019 at 12:48 Also not investigated is the role of the Clinton forces, including Obama, in perpetuating the
myth of collusion as cover action for a) a failed election b) problems with The Clinton Foundation. Further on the not emphasized
includes the ICA of January 2017 relying on Crowdstrike, a dubious intelligence service to begin with in the employ of Hillary
Clinton. The earmarks of a fantastic propaganda scheme, involving supposedly reliable agencies of the US government, are clear
and demonstrable under the noses of those who still clamor there must be something legitimate about Mueller and his investigation
fiasco. If we needed further indications of corruption in high places, following the Democratic Party's lead in fixing the 2016
presidential nomination for Clinton, it came speedily along thereafter, with an apparent, "Oh, gee, those nasty Russians are responsible!"
response from a heavily brainwashed public. It would seem we need an official investigation of the investigation to join the enquiries
of Mr. Lawrence, William Binney, et al.
As to Robert Reich, he was "paranoiacally hyperbolic" back in 2016 and has only added to the TDS hysteria.
DW Bartoo March 19, 2019 at 12:25 Of course, the Mueller investigation was never intended to definitively answer any serious
questions, including why the FBI never insisted upon taking charge of the DNC computers allowing, instead, the allegations of
a private firm to stand as "evidence".
As you say, the harm done by the "Russia did it!" claim is immense and will have increasingly dire consequences as time goes
on.
The point and purpose of the Mueller spectacle is to allow evidence-free speculation to entrance the political system, not
just to excuse Hillary and the financial class Democrats of any responsibility for their loss in the election of 2016, but also
to shift attention away from the dismal failure of perpetual warfare and neoliberal austerity, in the service of military empire
and global capitalist extraction, even as the capacity of the planet to support human existence is daily diminished.
As long as the many can be kept distracted, the existential issues of nuclear war and environmental collapse may be avoided
by the political class.
Even such ideas as genuine health care or a more sane, humane, and sustainable economic system can be kept from ever becoming
something that people ought think and talk about.
If all problems may be attributed to Trump and Russia, then getting back to the Clinton-Bush-Obama daze of "business as usual"
will drone on most happily and a new Cold War may be heated up as the next thrilling adventure.
Of course, the US Empire is waning, its capacity to dominate gone, it will behave rather badly. However, if sufficient
fervor may be stirred, the populace may yet embrace an end-times crusade and rally round the flag, once more, to deal with foul
and evil Russia, with China thrown in, just for good measure.
exiled off mainstreet March 19, 2019 at 11:53
This is certainly an accurate view of the problem. He mentions Robert Reich, who along with the rest of the 'mainstream" Democrats
jumped the shark long ago on this issue, which has destroyed the legitimacy of the democratic party. Reich lost any claim on rationality
by following the conventional wisdom. Meanwhile, Trump's defense against the false charges bolstered the neocon element in the
Republican party. I don't see how this ends well.
this is much worse that WDM case. It poisoned relations with Russia at least for a
generation. People who planned and executed Russiagate color revolution, of which Mueller witch
hunt was an integral part are criminals. All of them.
But Russiagate told us a lot about British and Israeli influence on the Us presidential
elections, as well as CIA and FBI machinations.
Robert Mueller has come up empty handed, exposing two years of relentless Russiagate
propaganda and the media that sold it.
The short version? Mueller is done. His report
unambiguously states there was no collusion or obstruction. He was allowed to follow every lead
unfettered in an investigation of breathtaking depth.
It cannot be clearer. The report summary
states, "The Special Counsel's investigation did not find that the Trump campaign or anyone
associated with it conspired or coordinated with Russia in its efforts to influence the 2016 US
Presidential Election the report does not recommend any further indictments, nor did the
Special Counsel obtain any sealed indictments that have yet to be made public."
Robert Mueller did not charge any Americans with collusion, coordination, or criminal
conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia. The special counsel also considered whether
members of the Trump campaign "coordinated," a much lower standard defined as an "agreement,
tacit or express," with Russian election interference activities. They did not.
Everything -- everything -- else we have been told since the summer of 2016 falls,
depending on your conscience and view of humanity, into the realm of lies, falsehoods,
propaganda, exaggerations, political manipulation, stupid reporting, fake news, bad judgment,
simple bull, or, in the best light, hasty conclusions.
As with Dorothy's ruby slippers, the proof of no collusion has always been with us. There
was a guilty plea from Michael Flynn, Trump's national security advisor, on one count of
perjury unrelated to Russiagate. Flynn lied about a legal meeting with the Russian ambassador.
Rick Gates, deputy campaign manager, pled guilty to conspiracy and false statements unrelated
to Russiagate. George Papadopoulos, a ZZZ-level adviser, pled guilty to making false statements
about legal contact with the Russians. Michael Cohen ,
Trump's lawyer, pled guilty to lying to Congress about a legal Moscow real estate project. Paul
Manafort , very briefly Trump's campaign chair, pled guilty to conspiracy charges unrelated
to Russiagate and that for the most part occurred before he even joined the campaign. Roger
Stone, who never officially worked for Trump, awaits a trial that will happen long after
Mueller turns off the last lights in his office.
Mueller did indict some Russian citizens for hacking, indictments that in no way tied them
to anything Trump and which will never see trial. Joseph Mifsud, the Russian professor who
supposedly told Papadopoulos Moscow had "thousands of Hillary's emails," was never charged
.
Carter Page, subject of FISA
surveillance and a key
actor in the Steele dossier, was also never charged. After hours of testimony about
that infamous June 2016 Trump Tower meeting to discuss Hillary's email and other meeting around
the Moscow hotel, no one was indicted for perjury.
The short version of Russiagate? There was no Russiagate.
What Will Happen Next is already happening. Democrats are throwing up smoke demanding that
the full Mueller report be made public. Even before AG Barr released the summary, Speaker
Pelosi
announced that whatever he decided to release wouldn't be enough. One Dem on CNN warned
they would need the FBI agents' actual handwritten field notes.
Adam Schiff said , "Congress is going to
need the underlying evidence because some of that evidence may go to the compromise of the
president or people around him that poses a real threat to our national security." Schiff
believes his committee is likely to discover things missed by Mueller, whose report indicates
his team interviewed about 500 witnesses, obtained more than 2,800 subpoenas and warrants,
executed 500 search warrants, obtained 230 orders for communications records, and made 13
requests to foreign governments for evidence.
Mueller may still be called to testify in front of Congress, as nothing will ever be enough
for the #Resistance cosplayers now in charge. Overnight, the findings, made by Mueller the
folk hero , the
dogged Javert, the Marine on his last patrol, suddenly weren't worth puppy poo unless we could
all look over his shoulder and line-by-line second guess him. MSNBC host Joy Reid, for her
part, has already
accused Mueller of covering up the crime of the century .
The New York Times
headline "As Mueller Report Lands, Prosecutorial Focus Moves to New York" says the rest --
we're movin' on! Whatever impeachment/indictment fantasies diehard Dems have left are being
transferred from Mueller to the Southern District of New York. The SDNY's powers, we are
reminded with the tenacity of a bored child in the back seat, are outside of Trump's control,
the Wakanda of justice.
The new holy land is called Obstruction of Justice, though pressing a case against Trump
in a process that ultimately exonerated him will be a tough sell. In a sentence likely to fuel
discussion for months, the attorney general quotes Mueller, "While this report does not
conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him."
It sounds dramatic, but in fact it means that, while taking no position on whether
obstruction took place, Mueller concluded that he did not find enough evidence to prosecute. In
the report, he specifically turns over to the attorney general any decision to pursue
obstruction further. Barr and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, meanwhile, have already
determined
that the evidence does not support prosecution of the president for obstruction of justice.
Mueller also specifically noted that obstruction of justice requires proof of intent, and
since he found that Trump, et al, did not conspire with Russia, there can be no intent to
obstruct an investigation Trump knew could not lead to anything. The case is thus closed
judicially (Mueller having essentially telegraphed the defense strategy), though Democrats are
likely to quixotically keep pursuing it.
What's left is corruption. Politico has already published a
list of 25 "new" things to investigate about Trump, trying to restock the warehouse of broken
impeachment dreams (secret: it's filled with sealed indictments no one will ever see). The
pivot will be from treason to corruption: see the Cohen hearings as Exhibit A. Campaign finance
minutiae , real estate assessment questions, tax cheating from the 1980s, a failed Buffalo
Bills purchase years ago how much credibility will any of that have now with a public realizing
it has been bamboozled on Russia?
At some point, even the congresswoman with the most Twitter followers is going to have to
admit there is no there there. By digging the hole they are standing in even deeper, Dems will
only make it more obvious to everyone except Samantha Bee's interns that they have nothing.
Expect to hear "this is not the end, it's only the end of the beginning" more often, even if it
sounds more needy than encouraging, like a desperate ex checking in to see if you want to meet
for coffee.
Someone at the DNC might also ask how this unabashed desire to see blood drawn from
someone surnamed Trump will play out with potential 2020 purple voters. It is entirely possible
that the electorate is weary and would like to see somebody actually address immigration,
health care, and economic inequality
now that we've settled the Russian question.
That is what is and likely will happen. What should happen is a reckoning.
Even as the story fell apart over time, a large number of Americans and nearly all of the
mainstream media still believed that the president of the United States was a Russian
intelligence asset -- in Clinton's own words, " Putin's
puppet ." How did that happen?
A mass media that bought lies about nonexistent weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and
then promised "never again!" did it again. The New York Times , WaPo, CNN, MSNBC, et al,
reported falsehoods to drive a partisan narrative. They gleefully created a serial killer's
emptywheel -like bulletin board
covered in blurry photos connected by strands of yarn.
Another generation of journalists soiled themselves. They elevated mongerers like Seth
Abramson, Malcolm Nance, and Lawrence Tribe, who vomited nonsense all over Twitter every afternoon
before appearing before millions on CNN. They institutionalized unsourced gossip as their ledes
-- how often were we told that the walls were closing in?
That it was Mueller time? How often was the public put on red alert that
Trump/Sessions/Rosenstein/Whitaker/Barr was going to fire the special prosecutor? The mass
media featured only stories that furthered the collusion tall tale and silenced those skeptical
of the prevailing narrative, the same way they failed before the Iraq war.
The short version: there were no WMDs in Iraq. That was a lie and the media promoted it
shamelessly while silencing skeptical voices. Now Mueller has indicted zero Americans for
working with Russia to influence the election. Russiagate was a lie and the media promoted it
shamelessly while silencing skeptical voices.
The same goes for the
politicians , alongside Hayden
,
Brennan , Clapper, and
Comey , who told Americans that the president they elected was a spy working against the
United States. None of that was accidental. It was a narrative they desperately wanted to be
true so they could profit
politically regardless of what it did to the nation. And today the whitewashing is already
ongoing (watch out for tweets containing the word "regardless").
Someone should contact the ghost of Consortium News's Robert Parry , one of the earliest and most
consistent skeptics of Russiagate, and tell him he was right all along. That might be the most
justice we see out of all this.
This article is over a year old, but it really explains what this with hunt was about -- to deflect real interference in the US
election as well as exonerate Hillary fiasco. The way Russian were selected is a typical "projected" Anti-Semitism -- persecution on
the base on national origin without any solid fact, but with plenty of prejudices due to Russia Soviet past. What a gang of scamsters
the US neoliberal elite became !
Russiagate Revisited
35 The
anti-Russian hysteria in Washington has slipped beyond self-parody. We now have front-row seats in a theatre of the absurd, watching
the media furor explode after Robert Mueller's 'indictments' of 13 Russians and three Russian companies for interfering in the 2016
presidential elections.
Mueller's actions deserve the scare quotes because they are not really indictments at all. The accused parties will never be extradited
or brought to trial. Nor is it clear that their actions rise to the level of crimes. The supposed indictments are merely dramatic
accusations, a giant publicity stunt.
Even if they were real indictments, they would not be convictions. American journalists seem to have forgotten that distinction.
In contemporary American jurisprudence, prosecutors routinely get rubber stamps from grand juries. A grand jury, the adage goes,
will indict a ham sandwich. For a g-man on a white horse like Mueller, universally lionised in the mainstream media, a grand jury
would probably indict a peanut butter sandwich.
One of the most bizarre aspects of Russiagate is the magical transformation of intelligence agency heads into paragons of truth-telling
– a trick performed not by reactionary apologists for domestic spying, as one would expect, but by people who consider themselves
liberals. There is something genuinely absurd about a former director of the FBI – which along with the CIA and NSA has long been
one of the gravest threats to democracy in America – solemnly warning of the threat to democracy posed by Russian meddling in the
election.
And what was the nature of that alleged meddling? The pseudo-indictments are clear: the meddlers had nothing to do with the Russian
government and nothing to do with the Trump campaign – except that they sometimes 'communicated with unwitting individuals' associated
with it. And the Russians' activities had no impact on the outcome of the election. Mueller's assignment was to investigate whether
the Russian government colluded with the Trump campaign to promote his victory over Hillary Clinton. None of the current charges
has anything to do with this. (Nor does Mueller's recent indictment of Alex van der Zwaan, an attorney and associate of Trump's crony
Paul Manafort.) The pseudo-indictments merely add to the billowing clouds of innuendo that have characterised the Russiagate narrative
from the beginning.
According to Mueller's accusations, the meddlers began their operations long before the campaign began and certainly before anyone
thought Trump had a snowball's chance in hell; they posed as Muslims, black activists, white Southerners, among other social types,
all posting slogans and invective on social media. After the election, they staged pro-Trump and anti-Trump rallies. Somehow the
media have made this mishmash fit the Russiagate narrative, assuming it reveals a coherent Kremlin plan to elect Trump.
So what is the point of these sham indictments? It is fair to speculate that there is more going on here than a simple search
for truth. Early on in the 37-page document that was
released to such fanfare, the FBI makes a revealing assertion, claiming that the Russians aimed 'to sow discord in the US political
system' – as if vigorous debate were not an appropriate state of affairs for a democratic polity; as if the normal expression
of democracy is bland conformity to policies fashioned by elites. By explicitly linking the Russians with support for the Sanders
and Trump campaigns, Mueller's pseudo-indictments identify dissent from the Washington consensus with foreign subversion. They reinforce
the reigning orthodoxy and tighten the boundaries of permissible public discourse.
The consequences are potentially catastrophic. By focusing on the manufactured menace of Russiagate, the Democratic Party leadership
can continue to ignore its own failures as well as the actual menace posed by Trump. And by fostering the fantasy of a vast Russian
plot against America, the mainstream media can shut down reasonable foreign policy debate and promote a dangerous, unnecessary confrontation
with a rival power. The final act in Washington's theatre of the absurd has yet to be written, but the denouement looks dark.
Leonid Bershidsky is very superficial and decided to put rose glasses. In reality color revolution against Trump was a
very dangerous event. It is the next stop after Patriot Act in sliding toward totalitarism in the USA. It really demonstrates
that existence of super-powerful and well financed intelligence agencies is incompatible with the democracy even in limited
form that existed int he USA. They necessarily emerged as kingmakers, the new Praetorian Guard. The level of control by
intelligence agencies of major MSM proved to be stggeringly effective. They all sing in unison that same song: Russia,
Russia, Russia.
Another sad fact is the level of influence British government and British intelligence agencies exhibited in the USA.
Steele dossier was an unpresended level of interference in the US elections. Yet another the power of pro-Israel lobby.
Russiagate might be dead but neo-McCarthyism is alive and flourishing... It proves very easy to poison relations between two
countries for at least a generation using the power of neoliberal MSM and intelligence agencies who control them.
Another intere4sting observation is that FBI in this story played the role of Gestapo or STASI -- political police. That's
totalitarism. May be this inverted totalistism, but still totolistrism. Empires can's allow to be democratic.
One doesn't need the full text of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's report on Russian interference into the 2016
U.S. presidential election to know that Russiagate, perhaps the most powerful anti-Donald Trump narrative of the
last three years, is dead. But it wasn't completely pointless: We can learn important things about both Russia and
the U.S. from it.
People who pushed the conspiracy theory are already busy telling their audiences that Trump
still isn't out of legal trouble. None of the legalistic niggling, however, will change the basic fact: A
thorough, hard-hitting two-year investigation by a team that can't be accused of being Trump sympathizers has
found no proof of a conspiracy that has dominated U.S. airwaves since before Trump got elected. After this, any
further political use of Russiagate can, and will, be deflected with an eye-roll.
The millions of words written about the conspiracy that wasn't will interfere with a meaningful post-mortem. I
find it unnecessary to recall, as my one-time Moscow Times colleague
Matt
Taibbi did
, the lurid details of the dot-connecting orgy; I haven't kept links to the hundreds of tweets in
which I was accused of being a shill for Russian President Vladimir Putin when I consistently doubted the
narrative. It's important now to be clear-eyed, no matter if you bought the conspiracy theory or not.
One thing that's important to realize is that regional expertise matters. For example, it was
obvious
to people with some understanding of Moscow's inner workings that looking into the famous Trump Tower
meeting on June 9, 2016, wasn't going to yield evidence of Trump-Putin collusion because, at the Russian end, the
people involved weren't credible as Kremlin emissaries.
That these signs were largely ignored is evidence that the level of Russia expertise in the U.S. media and
intelligence community is lower than it should be. Investing in raising it, both through educational programs and
through making more knowledgeable voices heard, should prevent embarrassing mistakes in the future.
... ... ...
On the other hand, it distracted many Americans from the real causes of Hillary Clinton's defeat and Trump's
victory. Those causes, at the forefront of media attention for a short while after the election, were about the
Democrats' failure to engage certain poor and middle class voters. Russiagate, however, made Putin's evil trickery
the issue. It worked in the short term, but failed in the longer-run – also in both countries.
... ... ...
And in the U.S., the Democrats have clearly shot themselves in the foot. Instead of wasting their time on Russiagate...
All of this reminds me of the first combat scene in 'Full Metal Jacket'. Joker is being
helicoptered into the battle at Hue, and the door gunner is just firing his M-60 nonstop, yelling 'Get some! Come on! Get
some!', as people below are running and getting shot. Joker says, 'Aren't you afraid that you might be killing innocent
women......or children?'. The door gunner says,
If they run, they're VC.
If they stand still, they're WELL TRAINED VC!'.
No matter the result, what is found or is not, to the left, Trump will always be waiting for
his next check written in Cyrillic and denominated in rubles.
"... The bent cops at the FBI and the madmen like Brennan, Clapper and Comey, who treacherously used the government's forces against the Constitution, must be punished so severely as to make an example that will dissuade other midgets on horseback from making similar attempts to overturn the results of elections. ..."
"... At the bottom of the cauldron overflowing with political misdeeds shines the face of Hillary Clinton and the army of clever people who ran her 2016 campaign. They devised the clever, clever idea of creating the Steele Dossier in cahoots with Washington co-conspirators and the even more clever idea of marketing it back into the US political bloodstream through British intelligence channels by feeding it to the erratic and spiteful senator from Arizona whose staff peddled it all over Washington and New York. There must be retribution for this. ..."
"... I would be most interested if one of the legally competent members of this Committee – Robert Willman perhaps? – could give us us an idea of what charges could be leveled against Christopher Steele under U.S. law in relation to his clearly central role in this conspiracy. ..."
"... It also seems reasonably clear that he was not acting in isolation, and that there is a strong 'prima facie' case that senior figures in the British 'intelligence community' – notably Robert Hannigan and probably Sir Richard Dearlove – were involved, in which case the complicity is likely to have gone very much further. ..."
"... They devised the clever, clever idea of creating the Steele Dossier in cahoots with Washington co-conspirators and the even more clever of marketing it back into the US political bloodstream through British intelligence channels, by feeding it to the erratic and spiteful senator from Arizona whose staff peddled it all over Washington and New York. ..."
"... Both sides were furiously engaged in throwing mud at each other. Situation normal. Then an odd thing happens. A particularly foolish piece of mud comes along. All that Golden Showers nonsense. Regard that as normal if we please. I expect worse comes along sometimes. Then it turns out that that piece of mud comes from an Intelligence source. Situation no longer normal. ..."
"... The coup may be over, but the witch hunt will continue; ..."
"... Col. Lang is absolutely correct that those involved in attempting to reverse the results of the 2016 election, de-legitimize an elected president, and remove him should be thoroughly pursued through all avenues and procedures of the civil and criminal law. ..."
"... It's a dirty business. If half this stuff is true, and not just layers of increasingly unbelievable cover stories (I mean, a tangential example, is the whole Skripal thing a weirdly, too obviously fake cover show for what was in reality a "witness protection" operation? A witness who could and would reveal much? On this matter even, perhaps. Such obvious deceptions are harmful to respect for authority and the law.) ..."
There were no major disagreements between Mueller and his managers at the U.S. Department of
Justice (DOJ).
The Russians who tried to interfere in the 2016 election were exposed and charged -- but no
American was charged with any effort to conspire with Moscow and hijack the election.
the "Steele dossier" that was the main FISA evidence was paid for with funds
from Hillary Clinton
's campaign and the Democratic Party;
Christopher Steele, the dossier's author, had told a senior DOJ official he was desperate to
defeat Trump;
most of the dossier was not verified before it was used as evidence of alleged Trump-Russia
collusion; and
agents collected statements from key defendants such as Papadopoulos and Carter Page during
interactions with an FBI informant that strongly suggested their innocence.
Such omissions are so glaring as to constitute defrauding a federal court. And each and
every participant to those omissions needs to be brought to justice.
An upcoming DOJ inspector general's report should trigger the beginning of that
accountability in a court of law, and President Trump can assist the effort by declassifying
all evidence of wrongdoing by FBI, CIA and DOJ officials. " The Hill
------------
Pilgrims, the seditious conspiracy to depose the elected president of the United States for
conspiracy to commit treason with the Government of the Russian Federation has been
defeated.
The bent cops at the FBI and the madmen like Brennan, Clapper and Comey, who treacherously
used the government's forces against the Constitution, must be punished so severely as to make
an example that will dissuade other midgets on horseback from making similar attempts to
overturn the results of elections.
At the bottom of the cauldron overflowing with political misdeeds shines the face of Hillary
Clinton and the army of clever people who ran her 2016 campaign. They devised the clever,
clever idea of creating the Steele Dossier in cahoots with Washington co-conspirators and the
even more clever idea of marketing it back into the US political bloodstream through British
intelligence channels by feeding it to the erratic and spiteful senator from Arizona whose
staff peddled it all over Washington and New York. There must be retribution for this.
The leftist press is already discounting the results of Mueller's investigation while
gloating over how long the Democratic held House of Representatives can continue to search
through Trump's life trying to find criminality.
AG Barr should stand Mueller up next to him at a press conference to make clear the results
of his report and to answer questions about it. After that the prosecutions should begin.
pl
I would be most interested if one of the legally competent members of this Committee –
Robert Willman perhaps? – could give us us an idea of what charges could be leveled
against Christopher Steele under U.S. law in relation to his clearly central role in this
conspiracy.
It also seems reasonably clear that he was not acting in isolation, and that there is a
strong 'prima facie' case that senior figures in the British 'intelligence community' –
notably Robert Hannigan and probably Sir Richard Dearlove – were involved, in which
case the complicity is likely to have gone very much further.
The argument that declassification of relevant documentation would harm the intelligence
relationship between the U.S. and U.K. has clearly been made with great emphasis from this
side.
In fact, it is pure bollocks. A serious investigation on your side, which could lead to
the kind of clean-out which should have happened when the scale of the corruption of
intelligence in the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq became clear, might pave the way for us
to reconstruct reasonably functional intelligence services.
Doing this on both sides of the Atlantic might pave the way for a reconstruction of an
intelligence relationship which was actually beneficial to both countries, as in recent years
it patently has not been.
Whether there is a realistic prospect of people on your side opening the cans of worms on
ours, as well as your own, of course remains a moot point.
I'm glad the Steele affair has been examined at the American end -
"They devised the clever, clever idea of creating the Steele Dossier in cahoots with
Washington co-conspirators and the even more clever of marketing it back into the US
political bloodstream through British intelligence channels, by feeding it to the erratic and
spiteful senator from Arizona whose staff peddled it all over Washington and New York.
"
What about the UK end? We're fussing over some little local difficulties in the UK at the
moment and at our end the questions still remain - Who in the UK authorised it and how high did it go?
The problem with criminal prosecution is one must cite a Brit or US law which was violated.
The only ones in US law that I am aware of stipulate that the plotting must be by means of
violence, "by force". All this appears to me to be only the propagation of rumors.
I think it might be more the investigation of the propagation of rumours. Think back to that election campaign, and to the period before the inauguration.
Both sides were furiously engaged in throwing mud at each other. Situation normal. Then an
odd thing happens. A particularly foolish piece of mud comes along. All that Golden Showers
nonsense. Regard that as normal if we please. I expect worse comes along sometimes. Then it
turns out that that piece of mud comes from an Intelligence source. Situation no longer normal.
With respect it is not propagating rumours to ask how that happened. As for my own
interest in the affair, it is not propagating rumours to ask how a senior UK ex-Intelligence
Officer comes to be mixed up in it all. I suppose I started to look on it as rather more than a prank or a few cogs slipping when
that senior UK ex-Intelligence Officer got whisked away to a safe house. We're a penny
pinching lot over here and we don't run to that sort of thing for nothing.
An investigation could certainly be predicated on the reasonable suspicion that Steele, et
al, conspired to defraud the United States, in this case a purposeful and knowing smear of a
candidate for office; also, another potential violation could be lying to the FBI, T 18 USC
1001.
The problem, as I see it, is sorting out the malignant from the merely incompetent. As I've
argued many times, the dossier should have been dismissed from the outset as a pile of
garbage, empty of actionable content, because the ultimate sources could not be vetted: the
information could not be said to be either credible or reliable. The information was acted on
by screening it behind the reliabilty and credibility, so called, of Steele. So it would be
necessary to show that Steele knew that the information, point by point, was false. This
could be difficult. Steele's first line of defense would be that he threw everything that he
heard from anyone at all into the mix in the expectation that the "professionals" would
figure it out.
Yes, they were all partisan, Steele, his sources, his bosses, the so called
professionals, and their partisanship would be easy to prove; and yes, almost assuredly their
partisanship contributed, perhaps even explained, their defective judgement as to how to
handle the scurrilous information, especially on the part of the so called professionals, but
proving they actually knew the materials to be false would be difficult.
They couldn't know
that it was false because they had no ability to run down the sources. The professionals
would defend themselves by saying they had no ability to vet the sources but the information
represented such a serious security threat that they had no alternative but to try to vet the
information by launching the investigation against the targets. This puts the cart before the
horse, represents an astonishing lack of judgement, especially considering the "exalted"
positions in the Intel Community the people exercising the bad judgement occupied, but there
it is - "we thought we were doing the right thing."
Perhaps this defense could be overcome by
demonstrating that people at such high and important heights of government could not possible
be so stupid... maybe.
And of course we have the orchestrated leaks to various media, the orchestrated unmaskings,
all of which kept the media frenzy fired up. All in all, it was the greatest political dirty
trick ever attempted in American Politics, and did devastating damage to both domestic
tranquility and national security. Trump survived, but the damage done is incalculable.
So It pains me greatly to think that the reckoning will likely have to be political rather
than criminal because the malice that can be demonstrated is so admixed and even overshadowed
by incompetence and judgement flaws; and even a political reckoning given the state of the
country is so uncertain.
I hope that I am wrong and that some kind of prosecution can be fashioned because of the
sheer enormity of violence that was done to our electoral system, surpassing by far the
chickenshit case Mueller brought against the Russian troll farm; but I fear that I am right.
It hurts to think that so much damage can be caused by scheming little political weasels and
that they all may well walk away scot free; and even be lionized by their political confreres
as having tried to do the right thing. This is the state of American politics today!!!
I see that some of the midgets on horseback are saying that they will bring Mueller before
congress to explain himself. Their knight in shining armor has failed to return with the holy
grail. A couple even suggested that perhaps Mueller has been influenced by the Russians or
somehow intimated by Trump.
The coup may be over, but the witch hunt will continue;
and that
+ all the crazy Marxism (social and economic), bad immigration policy and Green New Deal is
going to doom the Democrats in 2020. They look like they are jumping off a final sake fueled
banzai charge. Maybe they think the best defense is a good offense re; the prosecutions that
should happen. What is the chance that Mueller will pass *all* he has learned to help get the
criminal cases under way?
On 13 July 2018, when announcing the indictment of 12 Russian military officers by the
Mueller group for "conspiring to interfere" in the 2016 presidential election, Deputy
Attorney General Rod Rosenstein admitted that no "interference" actually happened. In this
video of his announcement, starting at 5 minutes, 52 seconds into it and ending at the 6
minute, 5 second mark, he says--
"There is no allegation in this indictment that any American citizen committed a crime.
There is no allegation that the conspiracy changed the vote count or affected any election
result."
Col. Lang is absolutely correct that those involved in attempting to reverse the results
of the 2016 election, de-legitimize an elected president, and remove him should be thoroughly
pursued through all avenues and procedures of the civil and criminal law.
However, I am concerned that the new attorney general, William Barr, will not do so based
on his past associations and work. I hope I am wrong about that, but I am not optimistic.
It's a dirty business. If half this stuff is true, and not just layers of increasingly
unbelievable cover stories (I mean, a tangential example, is the whole Skripal thing a
weirdly, too obviously fake cover show for what was in reality a "witness protection"
operation? A witness who could and would reveal much? On this matter even, perhaps. Such
obvious deceptions are harmful to respect for authority and the law.)
I'm wrestling with the idea that 'twas ever thus and now with the internet its workings
are revealed to a "lay" audience with no connection to the dark arts of the spy business. But
I am curious, with the good Colonel's indulgence, if the new tools of the trade have made
things which should be secret not possible to be kept secret?
Amen to the prosecutions. If there is seen to be no accountability for this fraud then we are
seriously damaging what's left of democracy. Who, in their right mind, is going to publicly
support and assist a political candidate who is not "Swamp approved" if they face the threat
of thereby triggering their own, and their family's destruction by the judicial system?
I suggest that even a pardon is not enough for those entrapped in this mess. There needs
to be restitution.
To put that another way, in my opinion, "birther" allegations could be passed off as
political tactics. Nobody got hurt. It is just good luck that Russiagate hasn't resulted in
suicide or worse - so far.
I certainly agree that consequences must be brought to bear: lying politicians without a
shred of evidence, nor did they offer any for their lies; press for their utter and complete
malfeasance and corruption without a shred of evidence, the doj/fbi corrupted and coup
plotting officials,and finally the shame to all who shrieked about "evil" putin, russia the
aggressor, etc. It has set our discourse back decades, forced any critics of this insanity
into the shadows, and completely killed any attempt at normal diplomacy between nations.
I noted one astute writer as equating this russiagate insanity to the lies surrounding wmd
and the destruction of iraq. Close. The damage from this criminality is incalculable!
Will the shrillest of all in the press lose their jobs? Nah, not a chance. Prob get raise
or promotion.Will the brennans, clintons, clappers, et al do the perp walk. Nah, not a
chance. High paid lawyers will tie the courts up for years if not decades.
And america has the institutional memory of a gnat. And of course, the question is as to
high up did this criminality go? I personally do not believe it is a question-it is obvious
to me. The major question for me is how high up the prosecution, if any, will go.
Problem is...who's going to do the prosecuting?
The DOJ - protector of the swamp - has become thoroughly corrupted as an arm of the
Democrat-media party.
Should (can) Trump appoint a special prosecutor as far as possible from the DOJ?
The president might use this and any Republican-led prosecutions as leverage to work out
deals that will allow him to achieve his agenda. I think he'll need to given how the
Democrats intend to use their house majority to launch investigations and hearings to find
something, anything to howl about and impede his agenda.
Still need to see the full report. I hope it is releasable. Otherwise the conspiracy theories
or leaks will never let up. The article cited is a partisan opinion piece, not a news report.
It accepts the fallback stance that yes, crimes were committed but collusion by Trump was not
among them. This actually seems possible if only in light of the chaotic condition of the
campaign.
That said, I would not be surprised to find collusion discounted. Not that the Russians
didn't interfere. That would be entirely in character. But I don't know any reason for
supposing that they would have a better understanding of American political dynamics than the
Americans who make good livings being the best in that arena. The Russians seem to have been
doing the same things as numerous other players. They shouldn't have been in that game, but
there is no strong reason for according them Superman status. Their strongest feature seems
to have been sheer quantity. Outrage over their actions often seems to flow from a poor grasp
of the real nature of normal political process.
"The Russians seem to have been doing the same things..."
Multiple members of the FBI and DOJ seem to have been interfering in the 2016 Presidential
election. How many other federal and state elections did they interfere with?
Can you cite a single piece of hard evidence, not simply allegation, that proves the Russians
interfered in the 2016 election? If so, please cite it, since I know of none. Thank you.
"... Back in November of 2016, the American people were so fed up with the neoliberal oligarchy that everyone knows really runs the country that they actually elected Donald Trump president ..."
"... The oligarchy that runs the country responded to the American people's decision by inventing a completely cock-and-bull story about Donald Trump being a Russian agent who the American people were tricked into voting for by nefarious Russian mind-control operatives, getting every organ of the liberal corporate media to disseminate and relentlessly promote this story on a daily basis for nearly three years, and appointing a special prosecutor to conduct an official investigation in order to lend it the appearance of legitimacy. Every component of the ruling establishment (i.e., the government, the media, the intelligence agencies, the liberal intelligentsia, et al.) collaborated in an unprecedented effort to remove an American president from office based on a bunch of made-up horseshit which kind of amounts to an attempted soft coup. ..."
"... It now appears that the world will see that the so-called "Russia Gate" investigation was nothing more than the pro-Clintonista BS that Trump always claimed it was. ..."
"... As for the Clintons, both Bill and Hillary, they should be treated like the creeps they are: corrupt, opportunistic and power hungry. Like Typhoid Mary, they infect everything they touch ..."
"... I'm also convinced that Trump and Clinton colluded, but that they did so in order to get her elected. I don't think he really wanted the job. But still, Hillary can do nationalist, and the designs of the Empire would have proceeded either way. ..."
"... Trump is a crook who takes money wherever he can get it, from subcontractors foolish enough to work for him to bankers dumb enough to believe his financial statements. No doubt he has helped Russian crooks sanitize their booty, but that is apparently too difficult for Mueller to prove. ..."
"... It is not good news that this troglodyte was not indicted, but it is good news that Russia was not found guilty of electing him. Russiagate is an existential issue for the "national security" establishment and just another propaganda offensive designed to justify the largely useless & destructive activities of the Pentagon. ..."
"... It is time to build cooperation not continue the stupidity of US unilateralism and pursuit of global hegemony. Trump and his team have to be removed from office. Democrats don't need Russiagate to do it. The truth will work better. ..."
Back in November of 2016, the American people were so fed up with the neoliberal oligarchy
that everyone knows really runs the country that they actually elected Donald Trump
president. They did this fully aware that Trump was a repulsive, narcissistic ass clown who
bragged about "grabbing women by the pussy" and jabbered about building "a big, beautiful
wall" and making the Mexican government pay for it. They did this fully aware of the fact
that Donald Trump had zero experience in any political office whatsoever, was a loudmouth
bigot, and was possibly out of his gourd on amphetamines half the time. The American people
did not care. They were so disgusted with being conned by arrogant, two-faced, establishment
stooges like the Clintons, the Bushes, and Barack Obama that they chose to put Donald Trump
in office, because, fuck it, what did they have to lose?
The oligarchy that runs the country responded to the American people's decision by
inventing a completely cock-and-bull story about Donald Trump being a Russian agent who the
American people were tricked into voting for by nefarious Russian mind-control operatives,
getting every organ of the liberal corporate media to disseminate and relentlessly promote
this story on a daily basis for nearly three years, and appointing a special prosecutor to
conduct an official investigation in order to lend it the appearance of legitimacy. Every
component of the ruling establishment (i.e., the government, the media, the intelligence
agencies, the liberal intelligentsia, et al.) collaborated in an unprecedented effort to
remove an American president from office based on a bunch of made-up horseshit which kind of
amounts to an attempted soft coup.
It now appears that the world will see that the so-called "Russia Gate" investigation was
nothing more than the pro-Clintonista BS that Trump always claimed it was. The Clintons once
again, both Bill and Hillary, have managed to raise a vicious, loud mouthed thug in the White
House to the status of some kind of martyr. What a country America it is. One thing should be
clear however. Any politician or media pundit that towed the pro-Clintonista line should be
barred from public office or the media forever.
As for the Clintons, both Bill and Hillary,
they should be treated like the creeps they are: corrupt, opportunistic and power hungry.
Like Typhoid Mary, they infect everything they touch. There is one difference between Typhoid
Mary, and Bill and Hillary: Typhoid Mary didn't realize what she was doing, the Clintons did!
sorry to double post, but it just occurred to me that they pulled a classic DC move: if you
have something humiliating or horrible to admit, do it on a friday night.
i have to wonder if the entire western media is cynically praying for a (coincidentally
distracting) school shooting or terrorist attack within the next two days.
I have close friends that have been on the MSNBC/Maddow Kool-Ade for years. Constantly
declaring Mueller was on the verge of closing in on Trump and associates for treason with the
Russians. On Friday night after dinner at our home, the TV was tuned to MSNBC so they could
watch their spiritual leader Rachel Maddow....what a pitiful sight (both Maddow and friends).
No one was going to jail or be impeached for conspiring with Putin.....how on how could that
be true. Putin personally stole the election from Clinton and THEY are just going to let him
walk was the declaration a few feet from my chair. Normally, I would recommend grieve
counseling, but they are still my friends ... now they can go back to blaming Bernie for
Clinton's loss. Maybe I will recommend grieve counseling!
DontBelieveEitherPropaganda , Mar 23, 2019 2:27:18 PM |
link
@dltravers: Apart from the "goyim" you may be right.. But if you want to claim with that
Trumps opponents where under the pressure of the Zionists, you got it all wrong man.. ;) No
presidents been more under the Zionist thumb than DJT.
That ofc doesnt make Hillarys Saudi and Muslim brotherhood connections better.. ;)
Anyway, cheers to the end of this BS! And lets hope that Trump has now payed off his debts
with Adelson now that he secured Bibis reelection. But dont hold your breath.. ;)
"very politician, every media figure, every Twitter pundit and everyone who swallowed this
moronic load of bull spunk has officially discredited themselves for life".
I wish so, but that's not how the exceptional nation of US of A works, as demonstrated by
the Iraq WMD fiasco case. In fact, very politician, every media figure, every Twitter pundit
(about Saddam's WMD" BS) is alive and well, spreading more BS. What is even more depressing
is that the huge chunk of this exceptional nation cannot have enough of the BS and is
chanting "give me more, give me more...".
The Dems were stupid to gin up the Russian collusion.
However some good things have come out of the investigation. It cost taxpayers 2 million
but recouped over 25 million from those convicted of fraud and tax evasion.
And its not over, Mueller has sent 5 to 7 referrals or evidence/witnesses to SDNY, EDNY, DC,
EDVA, plus the National Security and Criminal Divisions. These from information turned up
crimes unrelated to his Russia probe and allegedly concerning Trump or his family business, a
cadre of his advisers and associates. They are being conducted by officials from Los Angeles
to Brooklyn.
The bad news is it exposed how wide spread and corrupt the US has become...in private and
political circles.
The other bad news is most of the Trump lovers and Trump haters are too stupid to drop
their partisan and personal blinders and recognize that ....ITS THE CORRUPTION STUPID.
b you have repeatedly made the case that this whole thing was kicked off by the Steele
dossier. That is factually incorrect. The first investigation was already running before the
dossier ever materialized. That investigation spawned the special prosecutors investigation
when Trump fired Comey and then went on TV and said it was because of the Russia
investigation. The Russia investigation was originally kicked off by Papadopoulos drinking
with the the Australian ambassador and bragging about what the campaign was doing with
Russia. Remember the original evidence was presented to the leadership of both the House and
the Senate when they were both controlled by the Republican party and every one that was
briefed came out on camera and said the Justice dept was doing the right thing in pursuing
this.
I think the Democrats should lose Hillary down a deep hole and not let her near any of the
coming campaign events. But this came about because of the actions of the people around
Trump. Not because Hillary controls the US government from some secret bunker some where.
One could argue Russiagate was on the contrary quite a success. The Elites behind the scheme
never believed it would end up with Trump's impeachment. What they did accomplish though is a
deflection via "Fake News" from the Dem's election failures & shenanigans and refocus the
attention towards the DNC's emerging pedophilia scandals (Weiner, the Podesta's, Alefantis,
etc) & suspicious deaths (Seth Rich, etc) towards a dead-end with the added corollary of
preventing US/Ru rapprochement for more then half an administration..
Blooming Barricade , Mar 23, 2019 3:10:02 PM |
link
The deeply tragic thing about this for the media, the neocons, and the liberals is that they
brought it upon themselves by moving the goalposts continuously. If, after Hillary lost, they
had stuck to the "Russia hacked WikiLeaks" lie, then they probably have sufficient proof from
their perspective and the perspective of most of the public that Russia helped Trump win. In
this case it would be remembered by the Democrats like the stolen election of 2000 (albeit
the fact that it was a lie this time). They had multiple opportunities to jump off this
train. Even the ridiculous DNI report could have been their final play: "Russia helped
Trump." Instead of going with 2000 they went with 2001, aka 9-11, with the same neocon
fearmongers playing the pipe organ of lies. As soon as they accepted the Steele Dossier,
moving the focus to "collusion" they discredited themselves forever. Many of the lead
proponents were discredited Iraq war hawks. Except this time it was actually worse because
the whole media bought into it. This leaves an interesting conundrum: there were at least
some pro-Afghanistan anti-Iraq warmongers who rejected the Bush premise in the media, so they
took over the airwaves for about two years before the real swamp creatures returned. This
time, it will be harder to issue a mea culpa. They made this appear like 9-11, well, this
time the truthers have won, and they are doomed.
Societies collapse when their systems (institutions) become compromised. When they are no
longer capable of meeting the needs of the population, or of adapting to a changing world.
Societal systems become compromised when their decision making structures, which are
designed to ensure that decisions are taken in the best interest of the society as a whole,
are captured by people who have no legitimacy to make the decisions, and who make decisions
for the benefit of themselves, at the expense of society as a whole.
Russia-gate is a flagrant example of how the law enforcement and intelligence institutions
have been captured. Their top officials, no longer loyal to their country or their
institution, but rather to an international elite (including the likes of Soros, the
Clintons, and far beyond) have used these institutions in an attempt to delegitimize a
constitutionally elected president and to over turn an election. This is no less than treason
of the highest order.
Indeed, the actions much of the Washington establishment, as well as a number
international actors, since Trump was elected seems suspiciously like one of the 'Color
Revolutions' that are visited upon any country who's citizens did not 'vote right' the first
time. Over-throw the vote, one way or another, until the result that is wanted is achieved.
None of these 'Color Revolutions' has resulted in anything good for the country involved.
Rather they have resulted in the destruction of each country's institutions, and eventually
societal collapse.
In the U.S. the capturing of systems' decision making structures is not limited to
Russia-Gate and the overturning of the electoral system. Their are other prime examples:
- The capture of the Air Transport Safety System by Boeing that has resulted in the recent
737 Max crashes, and likely the destruction of the reputation of the U.S. aviation industry,
in an industry where reputation is everything.
- The capture of the Financial Regulatory System, by Wall Street, who in 1998 rewrote the
rules in their own favor, against the best interests of the population as a whole. The result
was the 2008 financial crisis and the inability of the U.S. economy to effectively recover
from that crisis.
- This capture is also seen in international diplomatic systems, where the U.S. is
systematically by-passing or subverting international law and international institutions,
(the U.N. I.C.J., I.N.F. treaty) etc., and in doing so is destroying these institutions and
the ability to maintain peace.
The result of system (institution) capture is difficult to see at first. But, in time, the
damage adds up, the ability of the systems to meet the needs of the population disappears,
and societal decline sets in.
It looks today like the the societal decline is acellerating. Russia-gate is just one of
many indicators.
Your comment on the BBC is on the mild side. I listen to it when I drive in in the morning
and also get annoyed sometimes. When it is reporting on the Westminster bubble it is
factually accurate as far as I can judge. Apart from that, and particularly in the case of
the BBC news, we're in information control territory.
But accept that and the BBC turns into quite a valuable resource. It's well staffed, has
good contacts, and picks up what the politicians want us to think with great accuracy.
In that respect it's better than the newspapers and better also than the American media.
Those news outlets have several masters of which the political elite is only one. The BBC has
just the one master, the political elite, and is as sensitive as a stethoscope to the
shifting currents within that political elite.
So I wouldn't despise the BBC entirely. It tells us how the politicians want us to think.
In telling us that it sometimes gives us a bearing on what the politicians et al are doing
and what they intend to do.
The never-Trumpers will never let their dreams die. Of course, they never oppose Trump on
substantive issues like attempting a coup in Venezuela, withdrawing from the INF treaty,
supporting the nazis in Ukraine, supporting Al Qaeda forces in Syria, etc. But somehow
they're totally against him and ready to haul out the latest stupid thing he said as their
daily fodder for conversation...
renfro @ 10 said;"The Dems were stupid to gin up the Russian collusion."
Uh no, just doing their job of distracting the public, while ignoring the real issues
the
American workers care about. You know, the things DJT promised the workers, but has never
delivered.(better health care for all, ending the useless wars overseas, an
infrastructure
plan to increase good paying jobs), to name just a few.
The corporate Dems( which is the lions share of them), are bought and paid for to
distract, and they've done it well.
The Bushes, the Clintons, the Obamas, and most who have come before, are of the same
ilk.
Bend over workers and lube up, for more of the same in 2020...
I profoundly disagree with the notion that Russiagate had anything to do with Hillary's
collusion with the DNC. Gosh, that is naive at best.
1) Hillary didn't need to collude against Sanders - the additional money that she got from
doing so was small change compared the to overall amount she raised for her campaign.
2) Sanders was a long-time friend of the Clintons. He boasted that he's known Hillary
for over 25 years.
3) Sanders was a sheepdog meant to keep progressives in the Democratic Party. He was
never a real candidate. He refused to attack Hillary on character issues and remained loyal
even after Hillary-DNC collusion was revealed.
When Sanders had a chance to total disgrace Hillary, he refused to do so. Hillary
repeatedly said that she had NEVER changed for vote for money but Warren had proven that
she had: Hillary changed her vote on the Bankruptcy Bill for money from the credit card
industry.
4) Hillary didn't try to bury her collusion with the DNC (as might be expected), instead
she used it to alienate progressive voters by bring Debra Wasserman-Shultz into her
campaign.
5) Hillary also alienated or ignored other important constituencies: she wouldn't
support an increase in the minimum wage but accepted $750,000 from Goldman Sachs for a
speech; she took the black vote for granted and all-but berated a Black Lives Matters
activist; and she called whites "deplorables".
Hillary threw the race to her OTHER long-time friend in the race: Trump. The
Deep-State wanted a nationalist and that's just what they got.
6) Hillary and the DNC has shown NO REMORSE whatsoever about colluding with Sanders and
Sanders has shown no desire whatsoever to hold them accountable.
IMO Russiagate (Russian influence on Trump) and accusations of "Russian meddling" in the
election are part of the same McCarthyist psyop to direct hate at Russia and stamp out any
dissent. Trump probably knowingly, played into the Deep State's psyop by:
> hiring Manafort;
> calling on Russia to release Hillary's emails;
> talking about Putin in a admiring way.
And it accomplished much more than hating on Russia:
> served as excuse for Trump to do Deep State bidding;
> distracted from the real meddling in the 2016 election;
> served as a device for settling scores:
- Assange isolated
(Wikileaks was termed an "agent of a foreign power");
- Michael Flynn forced to resign
(because he spoke to the Russian ambassador).
hopehely , Mar 23, 2019 3:49:15 PM |
link The US owes Russia an official apology. And also Russia should get its stolen
buildings and the consulate back. And maybe to get paid some compensation for the injustice
and for damages suffered. Without that, the Russiagate is not really over.
If memory serves me correctly, the initial accusations of collusion between DJT's
presidential campaign and the Kremlin came from Crowdstrike, the cybersecurity company hired
by the Democratic National Committee to oversee the security of its computers and databases.
This was done to deflect attention away from Hillary Clinton's illegal use of a personal
server at home to conduct government business during her time as US State Secretary (2009 -
2013), business which among other things included plotting with the US embassy in Libya (and
the then US ambassador Chris Stevens) to overthrow Muammar Gaddhafi's government in 2011, and
conspiring also to overthrow the elected government in Honduras in 2010.
The business of Christopher Steele's dossier (part or even most of which could have been
written by Sergei Skripal, depending on who you read) and George Papadopoulos' conversation
with the half-wit Australian "diplomat" Alexander Downer in London were brought in to bolster
the Russiagate claims and make them look genuine.
As B says, Crowdstrike does indeed have a Ukrainian nationalist agenda: its founder and
head Dmitri Alperovich is a Senior Fellow at The Atlantic Council (the folks who fund
Bellingcat's crapaganda) and which itself receives donations from Ukrainian oligarch Viktor
Pinchuk. Crowdstrike has some association with one of the Chalupa sisters (Alexandra or
Andrea - I can't be bothered dredging through DuckDuckGo to check which - but one of them was
employed by the DNC) who donated money to the Maidan campaign that overthrew Viktor
Yanukovych's government in Kiev in February 2014.
thanks b... i would like russiagate to be finished, but i tend to see it much like kadath
@2.. the link @2 is worth the read as a reminder of how far the usa has sunk in being a
nation of passive neocons... emptywheel can't say no to this as witnessed by her article
from today.. ) as a consequence, i agree with @14 dh-mtl's conclusion - "It looks today
like the the societal decline is acellerating. Russia-gate is just one of many indicators."
the irony for those of us who don't live in the usa, is we are going to have watch this
sad state of affairs continue to unravel, as the usa and the west continue to unravel in
tandem.. the msm as corporate mouthpiece is not going to be tell us anything of relevance..
instead it will be continued madcow, or maddow bullshit 24-7... amd as kadath notes @2 - if
any of them are to step up as a truth teller - they will be marginalized or silenced... so
long as the mainstream swallow what they are fed in the msm, the direction of the titanic is
still on track...
@19 hopehely... you can forget about anything like that happening..
What Difference Does it Make?
They don't really need Russia-gate anymore. It bought them time. As we speak nuclear bombers
make runs near Russian borders every day and Russian consulates get attacked with heavy
weaponry in the EU and no Russian outlet is even making a reference,while Israel is ready to
move heavy artillery in to Golan targeting Russia bases in Syria and China raking all their
deals for civilian projects in the Med.
Russia got stuffed in the corner getting all the punches.
What a horrible witch hunt, but the msm will keep on denying and keep creating new hoaxes
about Trump, Russia.
Heck the media even deny there was no collussion, they keep spinning it in different ways!
Thanks for citing Caitlin Johnstone's wonderful epitaph, b--Russiavape indeed!
During the fiasco, the Outlaw US Empire provided excellent proof to the world that it does
everything it accused Russia of doing and more, while Russia's cred has greatly risen.
Meanwhile, there're numerous other crimes Trump, his associates, Clinton, her
associates--like Pelosi--ought to be impeached, removed from office, arrested, then tried in
court, which is diametrically opposed to the current--false--narrative.
Scotch Bingeington , Mar 23, 2019 4:47:39 PM |
link
The people who steered us into two years of Russiavape insanity are the very last people
anyone should ever listen to ever again when determining the future direction of our world.
Yes, absolutely. And not just regarding the world's future, but even if you happen to be
in the same building with one of them and he/she bursts into your already smoke-filled room
yelling that the house is on fire.
Btw, whatever authority has ever ruled that "ex-MI6 dude" Steele (who doesn't remind me of
steel at all, but rather of a certain nondescript entity named Anthony Blair) is in fact
merely 'EX'? He himself? The organisation? The Queen perhaps?
Expose them at every opportunity, they should not get away with this like nothing
happend:
If you think a single Russiagate conspiracist is going to be held accountable for media
malpractice, you clearly haven't been awake the past 2 decades. No one will pay for being
wrong. This profession is as corrupt & rotten as the kleptocracy it serves
defeatism isn't the answer -- should remind & mock these hacks every opportunity.
Just need to be aware of the beast we're up against.
The establishment plays on peoples fears and so we all sink together as we all cling to
our "lesser evils", tribal allegiances, and try to avoid the embarrassment of being
wrong.
Although everyone is aware of the corruption and insider dealing, no one seems to want to
acknowledge the extent, or to think critically so as to reveal any more than we already
know.
It's almost as though corruption (the King's nudity) is a national treasure and revealing
it would be a national security breach in the exceptional nation.
And so to the Deep State cabal continues to rule unimpeded.
The oligarchy that runs the country responded to the American people's decision by
inventing a completely cock-and-bull story about Donald Trump being a Russian agent who the
American people were tricked into voting for by nefarious Russian mind-control operatives,
getting every organ of the liberal corporate media to disseminate and relentlessly promote
this story on a daily basis for nearly three years
Posted by: Ken | Mar 23, 2019 2:09:31 PM | 4
You people don't get it do you?
'The Plan' was to get rid of Turkey-Russia-Israel (and a few others) with one fell
swoop....
Russia gate was both a diversion from the real collusions (Russian Mafia , China and Israel)
and a clever ruse to allow Trump to back off from his campaign promise to improve relations
with Russia. US policy toward Russia is no different under Trump than it was during Obamas
administration. Exactly what the Russia Gaters wanted and Trump delivered.
That Mueller could find nothing more than some tax/money laundering/perjury charges in
which the culprits in the end get pardoned is hardly surprising given his history. Want
something covered up? Put Mueller on it.
To show how afraid Trump was of Mueller he appointed his long term friend Barr as AJ and
pretended he didn't know how close they were when it came out. There is no lie people wont
believe. Lol
Meanwhile Trumps Russian Mafia connections stay under the radar in MSM, Trump continues as
Bibi's sock puppet, the fake trade war with China continues as Ivanka is rolling in China
trademarks .
The Rothschild puppet that bailed out Trumps casinos as Commerce Secretary overseeing
negotiations that will open the doors for more US and EU (they willy piggy back on the deal
like hyenas) jobs to go to China (this time in financial/services) and stronger IPR
protections that will facilitate this transfer, and will provide companies more profits in
which to buyback stocks but wont bring manufacturing jobs back.
The collusion story has been hit badly and it will likely lose its momentum, but I wonder how
far reaching this loss of momentum is. There are many variants. The 'unwitting accomplice' is
an oxymoron which isn't finished yet. The Russians hacking the election: not over. The
Russians sowing discord and division. Not over. Credibility of the Russiagate champions
overall? Not clear. Some could take a serious hit. Brennan and other insiders who made it
onto cable tv?
It is possible that the whole groupthink about Russiagate changes drastically
and that 'the other claims' also lose their credibility but it's far from certain. After
years of building up tension Russia's policies are also changing. I think they have shown
restraint but their paranoia and aggressiveness is also increasing and some claims will
become true after all.
"Russiagate" has always been a meaningless political fraud.
When folks like Hillary Clinton sign on to something and give it a great deal of weight,
you really do know you are talking about an empty bag of tricks. She is a psychopathic liar,
one with a great deal of blood on her hands.
My problem with this official result is that it may tend to give Trump a boost, new
credibility.
The trouble with Trump has never been Russia - something only blind ideologues and people
with the minds of children believe - it is that he is genuinely ignorant and genuinely
arrogant and loud-mouthed - an extremely dangerous combination.
And in trying to defend himself, this genuine coward has completely surrendered American
foreign policy to its most dangerous enemies, the Neocons.
Blaming Russiagate on Hillary is very easy for those who hate her or hope that Trump will
deliver on his faux populist fake-agenda.
No one wants to contemplate the possibility that Hillary and Trump, and the duopoly they
lead, fixed the election and planned Russiagate in advance.
It seems a bridge too far, even for the smart skeptics at MoA.
So funny.
Trump has proven himself to be a neocon. He broke his campaign promise to investigate
Hillary within DAYS of being elected. He has brought allies of his supposed enemies into his
Administration.
Yet every one turns from the possibility that the election was fixed. LOL.
The horrible possibility that our "democracy" is managed is too horrible to contemplate.
Lets just blame it all on Hillary.
Those who have been holding their breath for two years can finally exhale. I guess the fever
of hysteria will have to be attended a while longer. A malady of this kind does not easily
die out overnight. Those who have been taken in, and duped for so long, can not so easily
recover. The weight of so much cognitive dissonance presses down on them like a boulder. The
dust of the stampeded herd behind Russiagate is enough paralyze the will of those who have
succumbed.
As Joseph Conrad once wrote, "The ways of human progress are inscrutable."
Russiagate is a pendulum, it reached the dead point, it would hange in the air for a moment,
then it would start swinging right backwards at full speed crashign everything in the way!
It would be revealed, it was Russia who paid Muller to start that hysteria and stole money
from American tax-payers and make America an international laughing stock. "Putin benefited
from it", highly likely!
Muller's investigation is paid for with Manafort's seized cash and property and Manafort
has made Yanukovich king of Ukraine, so Manafort is Putin's agent, so Muller is working of
Putin's money, so it was Putin's collusion everything that Muller is doing! Highly
likely.
There is no "Liberal Media". Those whom claim to be Liberal and yet support the Warmonger
Democratic Party (Republican lite) are frauds. Liberalism does not condone war and it most
certainly does not support wars of aggression - especially those wars waged against
defenseless nations. Neither can liberalism support trade sanctions or the subjugation of
Palestinians in the Apartheid State of ISreal.
We must be very careful with the words we choose, in order to paint the correct
conjuncture and not to throw the bathtub with the baby inside.
It's one thing to say Bernie Sanders is not a revolutionary; it's another completely
different thing to say he was in cahoots with the Clintons.
If Bernie Sanders really was a "friend" of the Clintons, then he wouldn't even have
disputed the primaries against Hillary. Not only he chose to do so, but he only didn't win
because the DNC threw all its weight against him.
Now, I agree he's not a revolutionary socialist. He's an imperialist who believes the
spoils of the empire should be also used to build a Scandinavian-style Welfare State for the
American people only. A cynic would tell you this would make him a Nazi without the race
theme, but you have to keep in mind societies move in a dialectical patern, not a linear one:
if you preach for "democratic socialism", you're bringing the whole package, not only the
bits you want.
I believe the rise of Bernie Sanders had an overall positive impact in the world as it
exists. Americans are more aware of their own contradictions (more enlightened) now than
before he disputed those faithful primaries of 2016. And the most important ingredient for
that, in my opinion, was the fact he was crushed by both parties; that the "establishment"
acted in unison not to let him get near the WH. That was a didactic moment for the American
people (or a signficant part of it).
But I agree Russiagate went well beyond just covering the Clintons' dirt in the DNC.
It may have be born like that, but, if that was the case, the elites quickly realized it
had other, ampler practical uses. The main one, in my opinion, was to drive a wedge between
Trump's Clash of Civilizations's doctrine -- which perceives China as the main long term
enemy, and Russia as a natural ally of the West -- and the public opinon. The thing is most
of the American elite is far too dependent on China's productive chain; Russia is not, and
can be balkanized.
There is a funny video compilation of the TV talking heads predicting the end of Trump, new
bombshells, impeachment, etc., over the last two years.
Unfortunately, the same sort of compilation could be made of sane people predicting "this new
information means the end of Russiagate" over the same time period.
The truth is that the truth doesn't matter, only the propaganda, and it has not stopped, only
spun onto new hysteria.
As others have said, hard core Russiagaters will likely not be convinced that they have been
wrong all along. They have too much emotional investment in the grand conspiracy theory to
simply let it go. Rather, they will forever point to what they believe are genuine bits of
evidence and curse Mueller for not following the leads. And the Dems in the House of
Representatives will waste more time and resources on pointless investigations in an effort
to keep the public sufficiently distracted from more important matters, such as the endless
wars and coups that they support. A pox on all their houses, both Democrats and
Republicans.
"...hard core Russiagaters will likely not be convinced that they have been wrong all along."
Wrong about what? There seems to be "narrative" operative here that there are only two
positions on this matter: the "right" one and the "wrong" one and nothing else.
Ben's and other comments might make this a little bit superfluous but it's short.
A case of divide and conquer against the population
This time it was a fabricated scandal.
Continued control over "facts" and narratives, the opportunity for efficient misdirection
and distraction, stealing and wasting other people's time and effort, spurious disagreements,
wearing down relations.
The illusion of choice, (false) opposition, blinded "oversight", and mythical claims
concerning a civilian government (in the case of the US: "of, for, and by" or something like
that).
Who knew or knows is irrelevant as long as the show goes on. There's nothing to prove
anything significant about who if anyone may or may not be behind the curtain and thus on
towards the next big or small scandal we go because people will be dissatisfied and hungry
and ready to bite as hard as possible on some other bait for or against something.
Maybe "Russiagate" was impeccably engineered or maybe it organically outcompeted other
distractions on offer that would ultimately also waste enormous amounts of time and
effort.
Management by crisis
The scandals, crises, "Science says" games and rubbish, outrage narratives, and any other
manipulations attempt and perhaps succeed at controlling the US and the world through
spam.
Jonathan @39: Of course it was fixed. That's what the Electoral College is for.
Well, you can say the same think about money-as-speech , gerrymandering, voter
suppression, etc. Despite all these, Americans believe that their democracy works.
I contend that what we witnessed in 2016 was a SHOW. Like American wrestling. It was
(mostly) fake. The proper term for this is kayfabe .
My advice to the yanks mourning Russiagate: move to the UK. The sick Brits will keep the
Russia hating cult alive even after they spend a decade puking over Brexit.
Jackrabbit @18
So, you don't think HRC qualifies as a nationalist? She can't fake populist, but she can do
nationalist.
I also think she is much too ambitious to have intentionally thrown the election. It was her
turn dammit! Take a look at her behavior as First Lady if you think she's the kind of
personality that is content to wield power from behind the scenes.
They didn't fall for the Steele dossier. I recall that emptywheel had discredited the dossier
during the election as it was known to have been rejected by major media outlets leading up
to the election. I think they merely fell behind the others as the outgoing administration,
the Democrats, the CIA, and the media chose to use the dossier to 'blackmail' Trump.
The most important fruit of russiagate, from the view of the establishment of the hegemon, is
that America has now taken a giant step towards full bore censorship.
We must be very careful ... and not to throw the bathtub with the baby
inside.
Don't we already have plenty of evidence that there is no precious democratic baby in the
bath? What do you think the Yellow Vests are doing every weekend?
If Bernie Sanders really was a "friend" of the Clintons, then he wouldn't even have
disputed the primaries against Hillary.
Why not? Do you know him personally? Can you vouch for him?
Bernie referred to Hillary as "my friend" many times on the campaign trail. He told
Politico that he's known her for 25 years but they are not "best friends". That's Sander's
typical word judo. Like when he was asked about Zionism, his response: what's
that?
The fact is, Bernie is friendly with all the top Democrats: Obama campaigned for him
and Schumer wouldn't allow funding for democratic candidates that opposed him.
Then there's other strangeness. Like Bernie's refusal to release his 2014 tax
returns. Bernie said his returns were "boring" but when his 2015 tax return was delayed the
press asked him to release his 2014 return (Hillary boasted that she had released 10 years of
returns). Bernie refused.
Now, I agree he's not a revolutionary socialist.... I believe the rise of Bernie
Sanders had an overall positive impact in the world as it exists.
Really? LOL. Sanders REFUSED to lead a Movement for real change. That might've changed things
for the better Mi>- like the Yellow Vests are changing things for the better.
What have we seen from the Democratics since 2016? Bullshit like Russiagate,
meaningless astroturf activism around bathrooms and statues, and outlandish policies like
open borders. These things just irritate most Americans and will lead to more failure for the
Democrats and another 4 years for Trump.
Lastly, you said nothing about Bernie's refusal to attack Hillary on character
issues and to counter her assertion that she NEVER changed her vote for money. Other
examples: Bernie refused to discuss Hillary's home email server, never mentioned Hillary's
well known work to squash investigations of Bill Clinton for abusing women (Jennifer
Flowers), and didn't talk about other scandals like Benghazi ("What difference does it make")
and her glee at the overthrow of Quadaffi ("we came, we saw, we kicked his ass").
And what of Trump? He was the ONLY republican populist in a field of 19. Do you find
that even a little bit strange?
We must be very careful ... and not to throw the bathtub with the baby
inside.
Don't we already have plenty of evidence that there is no precious democratic baby in the
bath? What do you think the Yellow Vests are doing every weekend?
If Bernie Sanders really was a "friend" of the Clintons, then he wouldn't even have
disputed the primaries against Hillary.
Why not? Do you know him personally? Can you vouch for him?
Bernie referred to Hillary as "my friend" many times on the campaign trail. He told
Politico that he's known her for 25 years but they are not "best friends". That's Sander's
typical word judo. Like when he was asked about Zionism, his response: what's that?
The fact is, Bernie is friendly with all the top Democrats: Obama campaigned for him and
Schumer wouldn't allow funding for democratic candidates that opposed him.
Then there's other strangeness. Like Bernie's refusal to release his 2014 tax returns.
Bernie said his returns were "boring" but when his 2015 tax return was delayed the press
asked him to release his 2014 return (Hillary boasted that she had released 10 years of
returns) . Bernie refused.
Now, I agree he's not a revolutionary socialist.... I believe the rise of Bernie
Sanders had an overall positive impact in the world as it exists.
Really? LOL. Sanders REFUSED to lead a Movement for real change. That might've changed things
for the better Mi>- like the Yellow Vests are changing things for the better.
What have we seen from the Democratics since 2016? Bullshit like Russiagate, meaningless
astroturf activism around bathrooms and statues, and outlandish policies like open borders.
These things just irritate most Americans and will lead to more failure for the Democrats and
another 4 years for Trump.
Lastly, you said nothing about Bernie's refusal to attack Hillary on character issues and
to counter her assertion that she NEVER changed her vote for money. Other examples: Bernie
refused to discuss Hillary's home email server, never mentioned Hillary's well known work to
squash investigations of Bill Clinton for abusing women (Jennifer Flowers), and didn't talk
about other scandals like Benghazi ("What difference does it make") and her glee at the
overthrow of Quadaffi ("we came, we saw, we kicked his ass").
And what of Trump? He was the ONLY republican populist in a field of 19. Do you find that
even a little bit strange?
mourning dove @57: Exactly! It's the Electoral College that decides elections, not
voters.
Do you think Hillary didn't know that? She refused to campaign in the three mid-western
states that would've won her the electoral college. Each of the states were won by Trump by a
thin margin.
Gosh and Blimey!
Comment #56 in a thread about an utterly corrupt political system and no-one has mentioned
the pro-"Israel" Lobby?
Words fail me. So I'll use someone else's...
From Xymphora March 21, 2019.
"Truth or Trope?" (Sailer):
"Of the top 50 political donors to either party at the federal level in 2018, 52 percent
were Jewish and 48 percent were gentile. Individuals who identify as Jewish are usually
estimated to make up perhaps 2.2 percent of the population.
Of the $675 million given by the top 50 donors, 66 percent of the money came from Jews and 34
percent from gentiles.
Of the $297 million that GOP candidates and conservative causes received from the top 50
donors, 56 percent was from Jewish individuals.
Of the $361 million Democratic politicians and liberal causes received, 76 percent came from
Jewish givers.
So it turns out that Rep. Omar and Gov. LePage appear to have been correct, at least about
the biggest 2018 donors. But you can also see why Pelosi wanted Omar to just shut up about
it: 76 percent is a lot."
Next up another false flag operation. The thing is, it would have be non-trivial and
involving the harming of people to jolt the narrative back to that favoring the deep state.
And taking off the proverbial media table, that Mueller found no collusion. Yes, election in
2016 no collusion, but Putin was behind the latest horrific false flag, "oh look, Trump is
not confronting Putin"...
Not even getting into the "treason", "putin's c*ckholster", "what's the time on Moscow,
troll!" crap we've been subjected to for 3 years, please enjoy this mashup: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjUvfZj-Fm0.
I've said before that she's a terrible strategist and she ran a terrible campaign and she's
terribly out of touch. I think she expected a cake walk and was relying on Trump being so
distasteful to voters that they'd have no other option.
I think Trump legitimately won the election and I don't believe for a second that she won the
popular vote. There were so many problems with the election but since they were on the losing
side, nobody cares. In 2012 I didn't know anyone else who was voting for Jill Stein, way too
many people were still in love with Obama. She got .4% of the vote. In 2016 most of the
people I knew were voting for Jill Stein, she drew a large crowd from DemExit, but they say
she got .4% of the vote. Total bullshit. There was also ballot stuffing and lots of other
problems, but it still wasn't enough.
I'm also convinced that Trump and Clinton colluded, but that they did so in order to get her
elected. I don't think he really wanted the job. But still, Hillary can do nationalist, and
the designs of the Empire would have proceeded either way.
Trump is a crook who takes money wherever he can get it, from subcontractors foolish enough
to work for him to bankers dumb enough to believe his financial statements. No doubt he has
helped Russian crooks sanitize their booty, but that is apparently too difficult for Mueller
to prove.
It is not good news that this troglodyte was not indicted, but it is good news that
Russia was not found guilty of electing him. Russiagate is an existential issue for the
"national security" establishment and just another propaganda offensive designed to justify
the largely useless & destructive activities of the Pentagon.
It is time to build
cooperation not continue the stupidity of US unilateralism and pursuit of global hegemony.
Trump and his team have to be removed from office. Democrats don't need Russiagate to do it.
The truth will work better.
"... RussiaGate was never a sustainable narrative. It was ludicrous from the beginning. And now that it has ended with a whimper there are a lot of angry, confused and scared people out there. ..."
"... And now his report is in. There are no new indictments. And by doing so he is saving his reputation for the future. And that is your biggest tell that Hillary's blackmail is now worthless. ..."
"... They don't fear her anymore because RussiaGate outed her as the architect. Anything else she has is irrelevant in the face of trying to oust a sitting president from power. ..."
"... The Deep State and The Davos Crowd stand revealed and reviled. If they don't do something dramatic then the anger from the rest of the country will also be palpable come election time. Justice is not done simply by saying, "No evidence of collusion." ..."
"... It's clear that RussiaGate is a failure of monumental proportions. Heads will have to roll. But who will be willing to fall on their sword at this point? Comey? No. McCabe? No. ..."
"... If there is no collusion, if RussiaGate is a scam, then all roads lead back to Hillary as the sacrificial lamb. ..."
"... If there is any hope of salvaging the center of this country for the Democrats, the ones that voted against Hillary in 2016, then there is no reason anymore not to indict Hillary as the architect of RussiaGate. ..."
"... And hope that is enough bread and circuses to distract from the real storm ahead of us. ..."
"... Hillary is the epitome of evil. ..."
"... I don't think Hillary is enough. I want McCabe, Comey, Mueller, Rosenstein, Loretta Lynch, Obama, Lois Lerner, Blasey Ford, Brennan, Clapper, Abedin, Weiner, Cheryl Mills, Susan Rice, Strzok, Page, Sally Yates, all of the phony FISA cohort brought to justice. ..."
"... Her DNC cabal cooked in less than 24 hours from the election defeat a conspiracy of Russian meddling and now, when more information became available, HCR is involved in two separate cases of foreign collusion, The Steele dossier, with Russo-Anglo meddling and another a Ukrainian one, which is now under investigation and the purpose was getting their help for becoming elected. ..."
"... Without a doubt the Russian collusion is the most serious one, because it deliberately sabotaged diplomatic relations with Russia and lead into to a new cold war era. This also raised substantially risks for a direct confrontation with catastrophic consequences. The damage from these treacherous acts is huge and the felony bears pretty much all hallmarks of treason. Se deliberately undermined her own nation´s interests and rather risked even a war simply, because she is a psychopath, who refused to concede the defeat in due elections and instead wanted to hide real reasons for her loss to any cost for everybody else, "because it was her turn to get elected". ..."
"... HIS NAME WAS SETH RICH ..."
"... It is clear that from the beginning, fraudulent FISA warrants, that it was a case of Obama's administration digging dirt on Trump believing that when Hillary wins there will be nobody to hold them responsible ..."
"... When Hillary lost there was only one way out for them to justify that kind of abuse, to find something, anything on Trump so they can say that they were right. Worse than Watergate by orders of magnitude, involving FBI, DOJ and WH itself. ..."
During most of the RussiaGate investigation against Donald Trump I kept saying that all
roads lead to Hillary Clinton.
Anyone with three working brain cells knew this, including
'Miss' Maddow, whose tears of disappointment are particularly delicious.
Robert Mueller's investigation was designed from the beginning to create something out of
nothing. It did this admirably.
It was so effective it paralyzed the country for more than two years, just like Europe has
been held hostage by Brexit. And all of this because, in the end, the elites I call The Davos
Crowd refused to accept that the people no longer believed their lies about the benefits of
their neoliberal, globalist agenda.
Hillary Clinton's ascension to the Presidency was to be their apotheosis along with the
Brexit vote. These were meant to lay to rest, once and for all time, the vaguely libertarian
notion that people should rule themselves and not be ruled by philosopher kings in some distant
land.
Hillary's failure was enormous. And the RussiaGate gambit to destroy Trump served a laundry
list of purposes to cover it:
Undermine his legitimacy before he even takes office.
Accuse him of what Hillary actually did: collude with Russians and Ukrainians to effect
the outcome of the election
Paralyze Trump on his foreign policy desires to scale back the Empire
Give aid and comfort to hurting progressives and radicalize them further undermining our
political system
Polarize the electorate over the false choice of Trump's guilt.
Paralyze the Dept. of Justice and Congress so that they would not uncover the massive
corruption in the intelligence agencies in the U.S. and the U.K.
Isolate Trump and take away every ally or potential ally he could have by turning them
against him through prosecutor overreach.
Hillary should have been thrown to the wolves after she failed. When you fail the people she
failed and cost them the money she cost them, you lose more than just your funding. What this
tells you is that Hillary has so much dirt on everyone involved, once this thing started
everyone went along with it lest she burn them down as well.
Burnin' Down da House
Hillary is the epitome of envy. Envy is the destructive sin of coveting someone else's life
so much they are obsessed with destroying it. It's the sin of Cain. She envies what Trump has,
the Presidency. And she was willing to tear it down to keep him from having it no matter how
much damage it would do. She's worse than the Joker from The Dark Knight.
Because while the Joker is unfathomable to someone with a conscience there's little stopping
us from excising him from the community completely., even though Batman refuses.
Hillary hates us for who we are and what we won't give her. And that animus drove her to
blackmail the world while putting on the face of its savior.
And that's what makes what comes next so obvious to me. RussiaGate was never a sustainable
narrative. It was ludicrous from the beginning. And now that it has ended with a whimper there
are a lot of angry, confused and scared people out there.
Mueller thought all he had to do was lean on corrupt people and threaten them with
everything. They would turn on Trump. He would resign in disgrace from the public outcry. It
didn't work. In the end Paul Manafort, Michael Cohen and Roger Stone all held their ground or
perjured themselves into the whole thing falling apart.
Andrew Weissman's resignation last month was your tell there was nothing. Mueller would
pursue this to the limit of his personal reputation and no further. Just like so many other
politicians.
Vote Your Pocketbook
With respect to Brexit I've been convinced that it would come down to reputations. Would the
British MP's vote against their own personal best interests to do the bidding of the EU? Would
Theresa May eventually realize her historical reputation would be destroyed if she caves to
Brussels and betrays Brexit in the end? Always bet on the fecklessness of politicians. They
will always act selfishly when put to the test. While leading RussiaGate, Mueller was always
headed here if he couldn't get someone to betray Trump.
And now his report is in. There are no new indictments. And by doing so he is saving his
reputation for the future. And that is your biggest tell that Hillary's blackmail is now
worthless.
They don't fear her anymore because RussiaGate outed her as the architect. Anything else she
has is irrelevant in the face of trying to oust a sitting president from power. The
progressives that were convinced of Trump's treason are bereft; their false hope stripped away
like standing in front of a sandblaster. They will be raw, angry and looking for blood after
they get over their denial.
Everyone else who was blackmailed into going along with this lunacy will begin cutting deals
to save their skins. The outrage over this will not end. Trump will be President when he stands
for re-election.
The Wolves Beckon
The Democrats do not have a chance against him as of right now. When he was caving on
everything back in December it looked like he was done. That there was enough meat on the
RussiaGate bones to make Nancy Pelosi brave. Then she backed off on impeachment talk.
Oops....
... ... ...
The Deep State and The Davos Crowd stand revealed and reviled. If they don't do something
dramatic then the anger from the rest of the country will also be palpable come election time.
Justice is not done simply by saying, "No evidence of collusion."
It's clear that RussiaGate is
a failure of monumental proportions. Heads will have to roll. But who will be willing to fall
on their sword at this point? Comey? No. McCabe? No. There is only one answer. And Obama's
people are still in place to protect him. I said last fall that " Hillary would
indict herself. " And I meant it. Eventually her blackmail and drive to burn it all down
led to this moment.
The circumstances are different than I expected back then, Trump didn't win the mid-terms.
But the end result was always the same. If there is no collusion, if RussiaGate is a scam, then
all roads lead back to Hillary as the sacrificial lamb.
Because the bigger project, the erection of a transnational superstate, is bigger than any
one person. Hillary is expendable. Lies are expensive to maintain. The truth is cheap to
defend. Think of the billions in opportunity costs associated with this. Once the costs rise
above the benefits, change happens fast. If there is any hope of salvaging the center of this
country for the Democrats, the ones that voted against Hillary in 2016, then there is no reason
anymore not to indict Hillary as the architect of RussiaGate.
We all know it's the truth. So, the cheapest way out of this mess for them is to give the
MAGApedes what they want, Hillary.
And hope that is enough bread and circuses to distract from the real storm ahead of us.
I don't think Hillary is enough. I want McCabe, Comey, Mueller, Rosenstein, Loretta Lynch,
Obama, Lois Lerner, Blasey Ford, Brennan, Clapper, Abedin, Weiner, Cheryl Mills, Susan Rice,
Strzok, Page, Sally Yates, all of the phony FISA cohort brought to justice. Think of the
taxpayer money wasted on this ridiculous Mueller investigation! The Roger Stone arrest was an
outrage. Who tipped off CNN? Who ordered it? What was with the attack dogs and machine guns?
And now we have Nadler trying to destroy anyone and everyone who ever did business with
Trump. All those 80 people who got letters from him asking for documents will now be
bankrupted by legal fees.
According to Scott Adams, one recipient is refusing to
cooperate -- he's saying "I can't afford for me and family to be destroyed." He put the request
for documents in a drawer. He has no money for lawyers.
This insanity and abuse of power has
got to stop. Meanwhile, nothing gets done in Congress. We're all looking at censorship,
tilted search engines, de-monetization, being beat up on campus for trying to express an
opinion, being accosted in a restaurant (or, VP Pence, from the stage ("Hamilton"), getting
sucker-punched for wearing a MAGA hat, having elections stolen through myriad Dem cheating
methods, and NOTHING is being done.
Her DNC cabal cooked in less than 24 hours from the election defeat a conspiracy of Russian
meddling and now, when more information became available, HCR is involved in two separate
cases of foreign collusion, The Steele dossier, with Russo-Anglo meddling and another a
Ukrainian one, which is now under investigation and the purpose was getting their help for
becoming elected.
Without a doubt the Russian collusion is the most serious one, because it deliberately
sabotaged diplomatic relations with Russia and lead into to a new cold war era. This also
raised substantially risks for a direct confrontation with catastrophic consequences. The
damage from these treacherous acts is huge and the felony bears pretty much all hallmarks of
treason. Se deliberately undermined her own nation´s interests and rather risked even a
war simply, because she is a psychopath, who refused to concede the defeat in due elections
and instead wanted to hide real reasons for her loss to any cost for everybody else, "because
it was her turn to get elected".
It is clear that from the beginning, fraudulent FISA warrants, that it was a case of
Obama's administration digging dirt on Trump believing that when Hillary wins there will be
nobody to hold them responsible.
When Hillary lost there was only one way out for them to
justify that kind of abuse, to find something, anything on Trump so they can say that they
were right. Worse than Watergate by orders of magnitude, involving FBI, DOJ and WH itself.
"... Sites that use Disqus that allow shadow banning or steal and sell your information are just plain evil. ..."
"... The marketing of Russiagate™ was no act of "stupidity". News outlets didn't erroneously "swallow" anything. They acted as agents of the Globalist American Establishment/Deep State which was attempting to shake an interloper (Trump) off its back or, at the very least, to completely tie his hands in policy-making terms. Too bad that same Deep State has created a "Cadillac of (P)residential prerogative over the years which Trump has been driving right over their little blood-stained hands....as an added benefit, this new brand of hyper-partisan "Yellow Journalism" sold papers...to some ..."
"... How many fake headlines were created? How many panels of propaganda spreading "experts" were assembled? How many drooling sycophant hosts made this their everyday routine to stir the 'divide the nation' pot as they swore to God and the American People that the President was an asset of a foreign provocateur subverting the Republic? ..."
One thing left out is the ability of readers to call BS on a story i.e. a robust comment section for debates. In other words,
the Media's ability to simply ignore criticism enabled them to go off into their own Russiagate universe. Places that still allow
competing narratives and diverse opinions, like ZeroHedge, are the main places I read anymore. If a link leads to WaPo or NYT,
I bail instantly.
Sites that use Disqus that allow shadow banning or steal and sell your information are just plain evil.
Won't even go there.
Bananaamerican , 4 hours ago (Edited)
One thing I massively disagree with Taibbi on: "news outlets once again 'swallowed' a massive disinformation campaign, only
this error is many orders of magnitude more stupid than any in the recent past, WMD included"
The marketing of Russiagate™ was no act of "stupidity". News outlets didn't erroneously "swallow" anything.
They acted as agents of the Globalist American Establishment/Deep State which was attempting to shake an interloper (Trump) off
its back or, at the very least, to completely tie his hands in policy-making terms. Too bad that same Deep State has created a
"Cadillac of (P)residential prerogative over the years which Trump has been driving right over their little blood-stained hands....as
an added benefit, this new brand of hyper-partisan "Yellow Journalism" sold papers...to some
4 hours ago
(Edited)
Spot on. There was no misunderstanding. Everyone in The Swamp and MSM knew and accepted their assigned roles. That's why their
was nary a retraction. Retractions played no part in their goals.
Nael, 1 hour ago
Agreed. They were totally complicit. How many fake headlines were created? How many panels of propaganda spreading "experts" were
assembled? How many drooling sycophant hosts made this their everyday routine to stir the 'divide the nation' pot as they swore
to God and the American People that the President was an asset of a foreign provocateur subverting the Republic?
All of this reminds me of the first combat scene in 'Full Metal Jacket'. Joker is being
helicoptered into the battle at Hue, and the door gunner is just firing his M-60 nonstop, yelling 'Get some! Come on! Get
some!', as people below are running and getting shot. Joker says, 'Aren't you afraid that you might be killing innocent
women......or children?'. The door gunner says,
If they run, they're VC.
If they stand still, they're WELL TRAINED VC!'.
No matter the result, what is found or is not, to the left, Trump will always be waiting for
his next check written in Cyrillic and denominated in rubles.
This is the most grandiose False flag propaganda operation known to the mankind. McCarthyism while more vicious was just a blip
of the screen in comparison this this tide of disinformation and insinuations. Iraq WDM resulted in more casualties but was much
more short term. Damage for the USA from this false flag operation might even exceed the damage for Iraq WDM fiasco.
British government and intelligence serves were active participants and in this sense "Skripals poisoning" looks
like a perverted form of "witness protection:" program. A false flag operation on the top of a false flag operation
("Russiagate").
What is amazing is how unapt were the major players.
Notable quotes:
"... Nobody wants to hear this, but news that Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller is headed home without issuing new charges is a death-blow for the reputation of the American news media. ..."
"... A few weeks after that hearing, Steele gave testimony in a British lawsuit filed by one of the Russian companies mentioned in his reports. In a written submission , Steele said his information was "raw" and "needed to be analyzed and further investigated/verified." He also wrote that (at least as pertained to the memo in that case) he had not written his report "with the intention that it be republished to the world at large." ..."
"... That itself was a curious statement, given that Steele reportedly spoke with multiple reporters in the fall of 2016, but this was his legal position. This story about Steele's British court statements did not make it into the news much in the United States, apart from a few bits in conservative outlets like The Washington Times. ..."
"... The Steele report was the Magna Carta of #Russiagate. It provided the implied context for thousands of news stories to come, yet no journalist was ever able to confirm its most salacious allegations: the five year cultivation plan, the blackmail, the bribe from Sechin, the Prague trip, the pee romp, etc. In metaphorical terms, we were unable to independently produce Steele's results in the lab. Failure to reckon with this corrupted the narrative from the start. ..."
"... "Just called," Page said to McCabe. "Apparently the DAG [Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates] now wants to be there, and WH wants DOJ to host. So we are setting that up now. ... We will very much need to get Cohen's view before we meet with her. Better, have him weigh in with her before the meeting. We need to speak with one voice, if that is in fact the case." ..."
"... Someday I hope that Hillary has to be rolled up to testify about the Benghazi business. Grab the guns and the gold (and the oil). Ukraine gold: check. Libyan gold and weapons: check. ..."
The Iraq war faceplant damaged the reputation of the press. Russiagate just destroyed it...
Note to readers: in light of news that Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller's investigation is complete, I'm releasing this chapter
of Hate Inc. early, with a few new details added up top. Nobody wants to hear this, but news that Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller
is headed home without issuing new charges is a death-blow for the reputation of the American news media.
As has long been rumored
, the former FBI chief's independent probe will result in multiple indictments and convictions, but no "
presidency-wrecking
" conspiracy charges, or anything that would meet the layman's definition of "collusion" with Russia.
With the caveat that even this news might somehow turn out to be botched, the key detail in the many stories about the end of
the Mueller investigation was best expressed
by the New York Times :
A senior Justice Department official said that Mr. Mueller would not recommend new indictments.
The Times tried to soften the emotional blow for the millions of Americans trained in these years to place hopes for the overturn
of the Trump presidency in Mueller. Nobody even pretended it was supposed to be a fact-finding mission, instead of an act of faith.
The Special Prosecutor literally became a religious figure during the last few years, with
votive candles sold in his image and Saturday Night Live cast members
singing "
All I Want for Christmas is You " to him featuring the rhymey line: "Mueller please come through, because the only option is
a coup."
The Times story today tried to preserve Santa Mueller's reputation, noting Trump's Attorney General William Barr's reaction was
an "endorsement" of the fineness of Mueller's work:
In an apparent endorsement of an investigation that Mr. Trump has relentlessly attacked as a "witch hunt," Mr. Barr said Justice
Department officials never had to intervene to keep Mr. Mueller from taking an inappropriate or unwarranted step.
Mueller, in other words, never stepped out of the bounds of his job description. But could the same be said for the news media?
For those anxious to keep the dream alive, the Times published its usual graphic of Trump-Russia "contacts," inviting readers
to keep making connections. But in a
separate piece by Peter
Baker , the paper noted the Mueller news had dire consequences for the press:
It will be a reckoning for President Trump, to be sure, but also for Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel, for Congress,
for Democrats, for Republicans, for the news media and, yes, for the system as a whole
This is a damning page one admission by the Times. Despite the connect-the-dots graphic in its other story, and despite the astonishing,
emotion-laden editorial the paper also ran suggesting "
We don't need to read the Mueller
report " because we know Trump is guilty, Baker at least began the work of preparing Times readers for a hard question: "Have
journalists connected too many dots that do not really add up?"
The paper was signaling it understood there would now be questions about whether or not news outlets like themselves made a galactic
error by betting heavily on a
new, politicized approach , trying to be true to "history's judgment" on top of the hard-enough job of just being true. Worse,
in a brutal irony everyone should have
seen coming , the press has now handed Trump the mother of campaign issues heading into 2020.
Nothing Trump is accused of from now on by the press will be believed by huge chunks of the population, a group that (perhaps
thanks to this story) is now larger than his original base. As Baker notes, a full 50.3% of respondents in
a poll conducted this month said they agree with Trump the Mueller probe is a "witch hunt."
Stories have been coming out for some time now hinting Mueller's final report might leave audiences "
disappointed
," as if a President not being a foreign spy could somehow be bad news.
Openly using such language
has, all along, been an indictment. Imagine how tone-deaf you'd have to be to not realize it makes you look bad, when news does not
match audience expectations you raised. To be unaware of this is mind-boggling, the journalistic equivalent of walking outside without
pants.
There will be people protesting: the Mueller report doesn't prove anything! What about the 37 indictments? The convictions? The
Trump tower revelations? The lies! The meeting with Don, Jr.? The financial matters ! There's an ongoing grand jury investigation,
and possible sealed indictments, and the House will still investigate, and
Stop. Just stop. Any journalist who goes there is making it worse.
For years, every pundit and Democratic pol in Washington hyped
every new Russia headline like the Watergate break-in. Now, even Nancy Pelosi has said impeachment is out, unless something "so
compelling and overwhelming and bipartisan" against Trump is uncovered it would be worth their political trouble to prosecute.
The biggest thing this affair has uncovered so far is Donald Trump paying off a porn star. That's a hell of a long way from what
this business was supposedly about at the beginning, and shame on any reporter who tries to pretend this isn't so.
The story hyped from the start was espionage: a secret relationship between the Trump campaign and Russian spooks who'd helped
him win the election.
The betrayal narrative was not reported at first as metaphor. It was not "Trump likes the Russians so much, he might as well be
a spy for them." It was literal spying, treason, and election-fixing – crimes so severe, former NSA employee John Schindler told
reporters, Trump "
will die in jail ."
In the early months of this scandal, the New York Times said Trump's campaign had "repeated contacts" with Russian intelligence;
the Wall Street Journal told us our spy agencies
were withholding intelligence
from the new President out of fear he was compromised; news leaked out our spy chiefs had even told other countries like Israel
not to share their intel with us, because the Russians might have "leverages of pressure" on Trump.
CNN told us Trump officials had been in "constant contact" with "Russians known to U.S. intelligence," and the former director
of the CIA, who'd helped kick-start the investigation that led to Mueller's probe, said the President was guilty of "high crimes
and misdemeanors," committing acts "
nothing short of treasonous ."
Hillary Clinton insisted Russians "could not have known how to weaponize" political ads unless they'd been "guided" by Americans.
Asked if she meant Trump, she said, "
It's pretty hard not to ." Harry Reid similarly said he had "no doubt" that the Trump campaign was "
in on the
deal " to help Russians with the leak.
None of this has been walked back. To be clear, if Trump were being blackmailed by Russian agencies like the FSB or the GRU, if
he had any kind of relationship with Russian intelligence, that would soar over the "overwhelming and bipartisan" standard, and Nancy
Pelosi would be damning torpedoes for impeachment right now.
There was never real gray area here. Either Trump is a compromised foreign agent, or he isn't. If he isn't, news outlets once
again swallowed a massive disinformation campaign, only this error is many orders of magnitude more stupid than any in the recent
past, WMD included. Honest reporters like ABC's Terry Moran understand: Mueller coming back empty-handed on collusion means a "
reckoning for the media ."
Of course, there won't be such a reckoning. (There never is). But there should be. We broke every written and unwritten rule in
pursuit of this story, starting with the prohibition on reporting things we can't confirm.
#Russiagate debuted as a media phenomenon in mid-summer, 2016. The roots of the actual story, i.e. when the multi-national investigation
began, go back much further, to the previous year at least. Oddly, that origin tale has not been nailed down yet, and blue-state
audiences don't seem terribly interested in it, either.
By June and July of 2016, bits of the dossier compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele, which
had been funded by the Democratic National Committee through the law firm Perkins Coie (which in turn hired the opposition research
firm Fusion GPS), were already in the ether.
The Steele report occupies the same role in #Russiagate the tales spun by Ahmed Chalabi occupied in the WMD screwup. Once again,
a narrative became turbo-charged when Officials With Motives pulled the press corps by its nose to a swamp of unconfirmable private
assertions.
Some early stories, like a July 4, 2016 piece by Franklin Foer in Slate called "
Putin's Puppet ," outlined future Steele themes in "circumstantial" form. But the actual dossier, while it influenced a number
of pre-election Trump-Russia news stories (notably
one by Michael Isiskoff of Yahoo! that would be
used in a FISA warrant application ), didn't make it into print for a while.
Though it was shopped to
at least nine news organizations during the summer and fall of 2016, no one bit, for the good reason that news organizations
couldn't verify its "revelations."
The Steele claims were explosive if true. The ex-spy reported Trump aide Carter Page had been offered fees on a big new slice
of the oil giant Rosneft if he could help get sanctions against Russia lifted. He also said Trump lawyer Michael Cohen went to Prague
for "secret discussions with Kremlin representatives and associated operators/hackers."
Most famously, he wrote the Kremlin had kompromat of Trump "deriling" [sic] a bed once used by Barack and Michelle Obama by "employing
a number of prostitutes to perform a 'golden showers' (urination) show."
The piece didn't have pee, Prague, or Page in it, but it did say Russian intelligence had material that could "blackmail" Trump.
It was technically kosher to print because Corn wasn't publishing the allegations themselves, merely that the FBI had taken possession
of them.
A bigger pretext was needed to get the other details out. This took place just after the election, when four intelligence officials
presented copies of the dossier to both President-Elect Trump and outgoing President Obama.
From his own
memos , we know FBI Director James Comey, ostensibly evincing concern for Trump's welfare, told the new President he was just
warning him about what was out there, as possible blackmail material:
I wasn't saying [the Steele report] was true, only that I wanted him to know both that it had been reported and that the reports
were in many hands. I said media like CNN had them and were looking for a news hook. I said it was important that we not give
them the excuse to write that the FBI has the material or [redacted] and that we were keeping it very close-hold [sic].
Comey's generous warning to Trump about not providing a "news hook," along with a promise to keep it all "close-held," took place
on January 6, 2017. Within four days, basically the entire Washington news media somehow knew all about this top-secret meeting and
had the very hook they needed to go public. Nobody in the mainstream press thought this was weird or warranted comment.
Even Donald Trump was probably smart enough to catch the hint when, of all outlets, it was CNN that first broke the story of "Classified
documents presented last week to Trump"
on January 10 .
At the same time, Buzzfeed
made
the historic decision to publish the entire Steele dossier, bringing years of pee into our lives. This move birthed the Russiagate
phenomenon as a never-ending, minute-to-minute factor in American news coverage.
Comey was right. We couldn't have reported this story without a "hook." Therefore the reports surrounding Steele technically weren't
about the allegations themselves, but rather the journey of those allegations, from one set of official hands to another. Handing
the report to Trump created a perfect pretext.
This trick has been used before, both in Washington and on Wall Street, to publicize unconfirmed private research. A short seller
might hire a consulting firm to prepare a report on a company he or she has bet against. When the report is completed, the investor
then tries to get the SEC or the FBI to take possession. If they do, news leaks the company is "under investigation," the stock dives,
and everyone wins.
This same trick is found in politics. A similar trajectory
drove negative headlines in the scandal surrounding New Jersey's Democratic Senator Bob Menendez, who was said to be under investigation
by the FBI for underage sex crimes (although some
were skeptical
). The initial story didn't hold up, but led to other investigations.
Same with the so-called "
Arkansas project ," in which millions of Republican-friendly private research dollars produced enough noise about the Whitewater
scandal to create years of headlines about the Clintons. Swiftboating was another example. Private oppo isn't inherently bad. In
fact it has led to some incredible scoops, including Enron. But reporters usually know to be skeptical of private info, and figure
the motives of its patrons into the story.
The sequence of events in that second week of January, 2017 will now need to be heavily re-examined. We now know,
from his own testimony , that former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper had some kind of role in helping CNN do
its report, presumably by confirming part of the story, perhaps through an intermediary or two (there is some controversy over whom
exactly was contacted, and when).
Why would real security officials help litigate this grave matter through the media? Why were the world's most powerful investigative
agencies acting like they were trying to move a stock, pushing an private, unverified report that even Buzzfeed could see had factual
issues? It
made no sense at the time , and makes less now.
In January of 2017, Steele's pile of allegations became public, read by millions. "It is not just unconfirmed," Buzzfeed
admitted
. "It includes some clear errors."
Buzzfeed's decision exploded traditional journalistic standards against knowingly publishing material whose veracity you doubt.
Although a few media ethicists wondered
at it , this seemed not to bother the rank-and-file in the business. Buzzfeed chief Ben Smith is still
proud of
his decision today. I think this was because many reporters believed the report was true.
When I read the report, I was in shock. I thought it read like fourth-rate suspense fiction (I should know: I write fourth-rate
suspense fiction). Moreover it seemed edited both for public consumption and to please Steele's DNC patrons.
Steele wrote of Russians having a file of "compromising information" on Hillary Clinton, only this file supposedly lacked "details/evidence
of unorthodox or embarrassing behavior" or "embarrassing conduct."
We were meant to believe the Russians, across decades of dirt-digging, had an empty kompromat file on Hillary Clinton, to say
nothing of human tabloid headline Bill Clinton? This point was made more than once in the reports, as if being emphasized for the
reading public.
There were other curious lines, including the bit about Russians having "moles" in the DNC, plus some linguistic details that
made me wonder at the nationality of the report author.
Still, who knew? It could be true. But even the most cursory review showed the report had issues and would need a lot of confirming.
This made it more amazing that the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, Adam Schiff, held hearings on March 20,
2017 that blithely read out Steele report details as if they were fact. From Schiff's opening statement:
According to Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence officer who is reportedly held in high regard by U.S. Intelligence,
Russian sources tell him that Page has also had a secret meeting with Igor Sechin (SEH-CHIN), CEO of Russian gas giant Rosneft
Page is offered brokerage fees by Sechin on a deal involving a 19 percent share of the company.
I was stunned watching this. It's generally understood that members of congress, like reporters, make an effort to vet at least
their prepared remarks before making them public.
But here was Schiff, telling the world Trump aide Carter Page had been offered huge fees on a 19% stake in Rosneft – a company
with a $63 billion market capitalization – in a secret meeting
with a Russian oligarch who was also said to be "a KGB agent and close friend of Putin's."
(Schiff meant "FSB agent." The inability of #Russiagaters to remember Russia is not the Soviet Union became increasingly maddening
over time. Donna Brazile still hasn't deleted her tweet about how "
The Communists are now dictating the
terms of the debate ." )
Schiff's speech raised questions. Do we no longer have to worry about getting accusations right if the subject is tied to Russiagate?
What if Page hadn't done any of these things? To date, he hasn't been charged with anything. Shouldn't a member of Congress worry
about this?
A few weeks after that hearing, Steele gave testimony in a British lawsuit filed by one of the Russian companies mentioned in
his reports. In a
written submission , Steele said his information was "raw" and "needed to be analyzed and further investigated/verified." He
also wrote that (at least as pertained to the memo in that case) he had not written his report "with the intention that it be republished
to the world at large."
That itself was a curious statement, given that Steele reportedly spoke with multiple reporters in the fall of 2016, but this
was his legal position. This story about Steele's British court statements did not make it into the news much in the United States,
apart from a few bits in conservative outlets like The Washington Times.
I contacted Schiff's office to ask if the congressman if he knew about Steele's admission that his report needed verifying, and
if that changed his view of it at all. The response (emphasis mine):
The dossier compiled by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele and which was leaked publicly several months
ago contains information that may be pertinent to our investigation. This is true regardless of whether it was ever intended for
public dissemination. Accordingly, the Committee hopes to speak with Mr. Steele in order to help substantiate or refute each of
the allegations contained in the dossier.
Schiff had not spoken to Steele before the hearing, and read out the allegations knowing they were unsubstantiated.
The Steele report was the Magna Carta of #Russiagate. It provided the implied context for thousands of news stories to come, yet
no journalist was ever able to confirm its most salacious allegations: the five year cultivation plan, the blackmail, the bribe from
Sechin, the Prague trip, the pee romp, etc. In metaphorical terms, we were unable to independently produce Steele's results in the
lab. Failure to reckon with this corrupted the narrative from the start.
For years, every hint the dossier might be true became a banner headline, while every time doubt was cast on Steele's revelations,
the press was quiet. Washington Post reporter Greg Miller went to Prague and led a team looking for evidence Cohen had been there.
Post reporters, Miller said, "literally spent weeks and months trying to run down" the Cohen story.
"We sent reporters through every hotel in Prague, through all over the place, just to try to figure out if he was ever there,"
he said, "and came away empty."
This was heads-I-win, tails-you-lose reporting. One assumes if Miller found Cohen's name in a hotel ledger, it would have been
on page 1 of the Post. The converse didn't get a mention in Miller's own paper. He only told the story during a discussion
aired by C-SPAN about a new book he'd published. Only The Daily Caller and a few conservative blogs picked it up.
It was the same when Bob Woodward said, "I did not find [espionage or collusion] Of course I looked for it, looked for it hard."
The celebrated Watergate muckraker – who once said he'd
succumbed to "groupthink"
in the WMD episode and added, "I blame myself mightily for not pushing harder" – didn't push very hard here, either. News that
he'd tried and failed to find collusion didn't get into his own paper. It only came out when Woodward was promoting his book Fear
in a discussion with conservative host Hugh Hewitt.
When Michael Cohen testified before congress and denied under oath ever being in Prague, it was the same. Few commercial news
outlets bothered to take note of the implications this had for their previous reports. Would a man clinging to a plea deal lie to
congress on national television about this issue?
Perhaps worst of all was the episode involving Yahoo! reporter Michael Isikoff. He had already been part of one strange tale:
the FBI double-dipping when it sought a FISA warrant to conduct secret surveillance of Carter Page, the would-be mastermind who was
supposed to have brokered a deal with oligarch Sechin.
In its FISA application, the FBI included both the unconfirmed Steele report and Isikoff's September 23, 2016 Yahoo! story, "
U.S. Intel Officials probe ties between Trump adviser and Kremlin ." The Isikoff story, which claimed Page had met with "high
ranking sanctioned officials" in Russia, had relied upon Steele as an unnamed source.
This was similar to a laundering technique used in the WMD episode called "stove-piping," i.e. officials using the press to "confirm"
information the officials themselves fed the reporter.
But there was virtually no non-conservative press about this problem apart from a Washington Post story pooh-poohing the issue.
(Every news story that casts any doubt on the collusion issue seems to meet with an instantaneous "fact check" in the Post .) The
Post insisted the FISA issue wasn't serious among other things because Steele was not the "foundation" of Isikoff's piece.
Isikoff was perhaps the reporter most familiar with Steele. He and Corn of Mother Jones , who also dealt with the ex-spy, wrote
a bestselling book that relied upon theories from Steele, Russian Roulette , including a rumination on the "pee" episode. Yet Isikoff
in late 2018 suddenly said he believed the Steele report would turn out to be "
mostly
false ."
Once again, this only came out via a podcast, John Ziegler's "Free Speech Broadcasting" show. Here's a transcript of the relevant
section:
Isikoff: When you actually get into the details of the Steele dossier, the specific allegations, you know, we have not seen
the evidence to support them. And in fact there is good grounds to think some of the more sensational allegations will never be
proven, and are likely false.
Ziegler: That's...
Isikoff: I think it's a mixed record at best at this point, things could change, Mueller may yet produce evidence that changes
this calculation. But based on the public record at this point I have to say that most of the specific allegations have not been
borne out.
Ziegler: That's interesting to hear you say that, Michael because as I'm sure you know, your book was kind of used to validate
the pee tape, for lack of a better term.
Isikoff: Yeah. I think we had some evidence in there of an event that may have inspired the pee tape and that was the visit
that Trump made with a number of characters who later showed up in Moscow, specifically Emin Agalarov and Rob Goldstone to this
raunchy Las Vegas nightclub where one of the regular acts was a skit called "Hot For Teacher" in which dancers posing as college
Co-Ed's urinated – or simulated urinating on their professor. Which struck me as an odd coincidence at best. I think, you know,
it is not implausible that event may have inspired...
Ziegler: An urban legend?
Isikoff: ...allegations that appeared in the Steele dossier.
Isikoff delivered this story with a laughing tone. He seamlessly transitioned to what he then called the "real" point, i.e. "the
irony is Steele may be right, but it wasn't the Kremlin that had sexual kompromat on Donald Trump, it was the National Enquirer.
"
Recapping: the reporter who introduced Steele to the world (his September 23, 2016 story was the first to reference him as a source),
who wrote a book that even he concedes was seen as "validating" the pee tape story, suddenly backtracks and says the whole thing
may have been based on a Las Vegas strip act, but it doesn't matter because Stormy Daniels, etc.
Another story of this type involved a court case in which Webzilla and parent company XBT sued Steele and Buzzfeed over the mention
their firm in one of the memos. It came out in court testimony that Steele had culled information about XBT/Webzilla from a
2009 post on CNN's "iReports"
page .
Asked if he understood these posts came from random users and not CNN journalists who'd been fact-checked, Steele replied, "
I do not ."
This comical detail was similar to news that the second British Mi6 dossier released just before the Iraq invasion had been
plagiarized in part from a thirteen year-old student thesis from California State University, not even by intelligence people,
but by mid-level functionaries in Tony Blair's press office.
There were so many profiles of Steele as an "
astoundingly
diligent " spymaster straight
out of LeCarre : he was routinely
described like a LeCarre-ian grinder like the legendary George Smiley, a man in the shadows whose bookish intensity was belied
by his "average," "neutral," "quiet," demeanor, being "more low-key than Smiley." One would think it might have rated a mention that
our "Smiley" was cutting and pasting text like a community college freshman. But the story barely made news.
This has been a consistent pattern throughout #Russiagate. Step one: salacious headline. Step two, days or weeks later: news emerges
the story is shakier than first believed. Step three (in the best case) involves the story being walked back or retracted by the
same publication.
That's been rare. More often, when explosive #Russiagate headlines go sideways, the original outlets simply ignore the new development,
leaving the "retraction" process to conservative outlets that don't reach the original audiences.
This is a major structural flaw of the
new fully-divided media
landscape in which Republican media covers Democratic corruption and Democratic media covers Republican corruption. If neither
"side" feels the need to disclose its own errors and inconsistencies, mistakes accumulate quickly.
This has been the main difference between Russiagate and the WMD affair. Despite David Remnick's post-invasion protestations that
"nobody got [WMD] completely right," the Iraq war was launched against the objections of the 6 million or more people who did get
it right, and protested on the streets
. There was open skepticism of Bush claims dotting the press landscape from the start, with people like
Jack Shafer tearing apart every Judith Miller story
in print. Most reporters are Democrats and the people hawking the WMD story were mostly Republicans, so there was political space
for protest.
Russiagate happened in an opposite context. If the story fell apart it would benefit Donald Trump politically, a fact that made
a number of reporters queasy about coming forward. #Russiagate became synonymous with #Resistance, which made public skepticism a
complicated proposition.
Early in the scandal, I appeared on To The Point, a California-based public radio show hosted by Warren Olney, with Corn of Mother
Jones. I knew David a little and had been friendly with him. He once hosted a book event for me in Washington. In the program, however,
the subject of getting facts right came up and Corn said this was not a time for reporters to be picking nits:
So Democrats getting overeager, overenthusiastic, stating things that may not be [unintelligible] true ? Well, tell me a political
issue where that doesn't happen. I think that's looking at the wrong end of the telescope.
I wrote him later and suggested that since we're in the press, and not really about anything except avoiding "things that may
not be true," maybe we had different responsibilities than "Democrats"? He wrote back:
Feel free to police the Trump opposition. But on the list of shit that needs to be covered these days, that's just not high
on my personal list.
Other reporters spoke of an internal struggle. When the Mueller indictment of the Internet Research Agency was met with exultation
in the media, New Yorker writer Adrian Chen, who broke the original IRA story, was
hesitant to come forward with some mild qualms about the way the story was being reported:
"Either I could stay silent and allow the conversation to be dominated by those pumping up the Russian threat," he said, "or I
could risk giving fodder to Trump and his allies."
"What I meant to write is, I wasn't skeptical," he said.
Years ago, in the midst of the WMD affair, Times public editor Daniel Okrent noted the paper's standard had moved from "Don't
get it first, get it right" to "Get it first and get it right." From there,
Okrent wrote , "the next devolution was an obvious one."
We're at that next devolution: first and wrong. The Russiagate era has so degraded journalism that even once "reputable" outlets
are now only about as right as politicians, which is to say barely ever, and then only by accident.
Early on, I was so amazed by the sheer quantity of Russia "bombshells" being walked back, I started to keep a list. It's well
above 50 stories now. As has been noted by Glenn Greenwald of the Intercept and others, if the mistakes were random, you'd
expect them in both directions , but Russiagate errors uniformly go the same way.
In some cases the stories are only partly wrong, as in the case of the famed "
17 intelligence agencies said Russia was behind the hacking " story (it was actually four: the Director of National Intelligence
"hand-picking" a team from the FBI, CIA, and NSA).
In other cases the stories were blunt false starts, resulting in ugly sets of matching headlines:
" Trump
Campaign Aides had repeated contacts with Russian Intelligence ," published by the Times on Valentine's Day, 2017, was an important,
narrative-driving "bombshell" that looked dicey from the start. The piece didn't say whether the contact was witting or unwitting,
whether the discussions were about business or politics, or what the contacts supposedly were at all.
Normally a reporter would want to know what the deal is before he or she runs a story accusing people of having dealings with
foreign spies. "Witting" or "Unwitting" ought to be a huge distinction, for instance. It soon after came out that people like former
CIA chief John Brennan don't think this is the case. "Frequently, people who are on a treasonous path do not know they're on a treasonous
path,"
he said, speaking of Trump's circle.
This seemed a dangerous argument, the kind of thing that led to trouble in the McCarthy years. But let's say the contacts were
serious. From a reporting point of view, you'd still need to know exactly what the nature of such contacts were before you run that
story, because the headline implication is grave. Moreover you'd need to know it well enough to report it, i.e. it's not enough to
be told a convincing story off-the-record, you need to be able to share with readers enough so that they can characterize the news
themselves.
Not to the Times, which ran the article without the specifics. Months later, Comey blew up this "contacts" story in public, saying,
" in the
main, it was not true ."
As was the case with the "17 agencies" error, which only got fixed when Clapper testified in congress and was forced to make the
correction under oath, the "repeated contacts" story was only disputed when Comey testified in congress, this time
before the
Senate Intelligence Committee . How many other errors of this type are waiting to be disclosed?
Even the mistakes caught were astounding. On December 1, 2017, ABC reporter Brian Ross claimed Trump "as a candidate" instructed
Michael Flynn to contact Russia. The news caused the Dow to plummet 350 points. The story was retracted almost immediately and
Ross was suspended .
Bloomberg reported Mueller subpoenaed Trump's Deutsche Bank accounts; the subpoenas turned out to be of
other
individuals' records. Fortune said C-SPAN
was hacked after Russia Today programming briefly interrupted coverage of a Maxine Waters floor address. The New York Times
also ran the story, and it's
still up, despite C-SPAN insisting its own "internal routing error" likely caused the feed to appear in place of its own broadcast.
CNN has its own separate sub-list of wrecks. Three of the network's journalists
resigned after a story purporting to tie Trump advisor Anthony Scaramucci to a Russian investment fund was retracted. Four more
CNN reporters (Gloria Borger, Eric Lichtblau, Jake Tapper and Brian Rokus) were bylined in a story that claimed Comey was expected
to refute Trump's claims he was told he wasn't the target of an investigation. Comey blew that one up, too.
In another CNN scoop gone awry, "
Email pointed Trump campaign to WikiLeaks documents ," the network's reporters were off by ten days in a "bombshell" that supposedly
proved the Trump campaign had foreknowledge of Wikileaks dumps. "It's, uh, perhaps not as significant as what we know now," offered
CNN's Manu Raju in a painful on-air retraction .
The worst stories were the ones never corrected. A particularly bad example is "
After Florida School Shooting,
Russian 'Bot' Army Pounced ," from the New York Times on Feb 18, 2018. The piece claimed Russians were trying to divide Americans
on social media after a mass shooting using Twitter hashtags like #guncontrolnow, #gunreformnow and #Parklandshooting.
The Times ran this quote high up:
"This is pretty typical for them, to hop on breaking news like this," said Jonathon Morgan, chief executive of New Knowledge,
a company that tracks online disinformation campaigns. "The bots focus on anything that is divisive for Americans. Almost systematically."
About a year after this story came out, Times reporters Scott Shane and Ann Blinder
reported that the same outfit,
New Knowledge , and in particular that same Jonathon Morgan, had participated in a cockamamie scheme to fake Russian troll activity
in an Alabama Senate race. The idea was to try to convince voters Russia preferred the Republican.
The Times quoted a New Knowledge internal report about the idiotic Alabama scheme:
We orchestrated an elaborate 'false flag' operation that planted the idea that the Moore campaign was amplified on social media
by a Russian botnet
The Parkland story was iffy enough when it came out, as Twitter
disputed
it, and another of the main sources for the initial report, former intelligence official Clint Watts, subsequently
said he was "not convinced" on the whole "bot thing."
But when one of your top sources turns out to have faked exactly the kind of activity described in your article, you should at
least take the quote out, or put an update online. No luck: the story remains up on the Times site, without disclaimers.
Russiagate institutionalized one of the worst ethical loopholes in journalism, which used to be limited mainly to local crime
reporting. It's always been a problem that we publish mugshots and names of people merely arrested but not yet found guilty. Those
stories live forever online and even the acquitted end up permanently unable to get jobs, smeared as thieves, wife-beaters, drunk
drivers, etc.
With Russiagate the national press abandoned any pretense that there's a difference between indictment and conviction. The most
disturbing story involved Maria Butina. Here authorities and the press shared responsibility. Thanks to an indictment that initially
said the Russian traded
sex for favors, the Times and other outlets flooded the news cycle with breathless stories about a redheaded slut-temptress come
to undermine democracy, a "real-life Red Sparrow," as ABC put it.
But a judge threw out the sex charge after "five minutes" when it turned out to be based on a
single joke text to a friend who had taken Butina's car for inspection.
It's pretty hard to undo public perception you're a prostitute once it's been in a headline, and, worse, the headlines are still
out there. You can still find stories like "
Maria Butina, Suspected
Secret Agent, Used Sex in Covert Plan " online in the New York Times.
Here a reporter might protest: how would I know? Prosecutors said she traded sex for money. Why shouldn't I believe them?
How about because, authorities have been lying their faces off to reporters since before electricity! It doesn't take much investigation
to realize the main institutional sources in the Russiagate mess – the security services, mainly – have extensive records of deceiving
the media.
As noted before, from World War I-era tales of striking union workers being German agents to the "missile gap" that wasn't (the
"gap" was leaked to the press before the Soviets had even one operational ICBM) to the Gulf of Tonkin mess to all the smears of people
like Martin Luther King, it's a wonder newspapers listen to whispers from government sources at all.
In the Reagan years National Security Adviser John Poindexter spread false stories about Libyan terrorist plots to The Wall Street
Journal and other papers. In the Bush years, Dick Cheney et al were selling manure by the truckload about various connections between
Iraq and al-Qaeda, infamously including a story that bomber Mohammed Atta met with Iraqi intelligence officials in Prague.
The New York Times
ran a story that Atta was in Prague in late October of 2001, even giving a date of the meeting with Iraqis, April 8, or "just
five months before the terrorist attacks." The Prague story was another example of a tale that seemed shaky because American officials
were putting the sourcing first on foreign intelligence, then on reporters themselves. Cheney cited the Prague report in subsequent
TV appearances, one of many instances of feeding reporters tidbits and then selling reports as independent confirmation.
It wasn't until three years later, in 2004, that Times reporter James Risen definitively killed the Atta-in-Prague canard (why
is it always Prague?) in a story entitled "
No evidence of meeting with Iraqi ." By then, of course, it was too late. The Times also
held a major dissenting piece by Risen about the WMD case, "C.I.A. Aides Feel Pressure in Preparing Iraqi Reports," until days
after war started. This is what happens when you start thumbing the scale.
This failure to demand specifics has been epidemic in Russiagate, even when good reporters have been involved. One of the biggest
"revelations" of this era involved a story that was broken first by a terrible reporter (the Guardian's Luke Harding) and followed
up by a good one (Jane Mayer of the New Yorker ). The key detail involved the elusive origin story of Russiagate.
Mayer's piece, the March 12, 2018 "
Christopher
Steele, the Man Behind The Trump Dossier " in the New Yorker , impacted the public mainly by seeming to bolster the credentials
of the dossier author. But it contained an explosive nugget far down. Mayer reported Robert Hannigan, then-head of the GCHQ (the
British analog to the NSA) intercepted a "stream of illicit communications" between "Trump's team and Moscow" at some point prior
to August 2016. Hannigan flew to the U.S. and briefed CIA director John Brennan about these communications. Brennan later testified
this inspired the original FBI investigation.
When I read that, a million questions came to mind, but first: what did "illicit" mean?
If something "illicit" had been captured by GCHQ, and this led to the FBI investigation (one of several conflicting public explanations
for the start of the FBI probe, incidentally), this would go a long way toward clearing up the nature of the collusion charge. If
they had something, why couldn't they tell us what it was? Why didn't we deserve to know?
I asked the Guardian: "Was any attempt made to find out what those communications were? How was the existence of these communications
confirmed? Did anyone from the Guardian see or hear these intercepts, or transcripts?"
Their one-sentence reply:
The Guardian has strict and rigorous procedures when dealing with source material.
That's the kind of answer you'd expect from a transnational bank, or the army, not a newspaper.
I asked Mayer the same questions. She was more forthright, noting that, of course, the story had originally been broken
by Harding , whose
own report said "the precise nature of these exchanges has not been made public."
She added that "afterwards I independently confirmed aspects of [Harding's piece] with several well-informed sources," and "spent
months on the Steele story [and] traveled to the UK twice for it." But, she wrote, "the Russiagate story, like all reporting on sensitive
national security issues, is difficult."
I can only infer she couldn't find out what "illicit" meant despite proper effort. The detail was published anyway. It may not
have seemed like a big deal, but I think it was.
To be clear, I don't necessarily disbelieve the idea that there were "illicit" contacts between Trump and Russians in early 2015
or before. But if there were such contacts, I can't think of any legitimate reason why their nature should be withheld from the public.
If authorities can share reasons for concern with foreign countries like Israel, why should American voters not be so entitled?
Moreover the idea that we need to keep things secret to protect sources and methods and "tradecraft" (half the press corps became
expert in goofy spy language over the last few years, using terms like "SIGINT" like they've known them their whole lives), why are
we
leaking news of our ability to hear Russian officials cheerin g Trump's win?
Failure to ask follow-up questions happened constantly with this story. One of the first reports that went sideways involved a
similar dynamic: the contention that some leaked DNC emails were forgeries.
MSNBC's "Intelligence commentator" Malcolm Nance, perhaps the most enthusiastic source of questionable #Russiagate news this side
of Twitter conspiracist Louise Mensch,
tweeted on October 11, 2016: " #PodestaEmails
are already proving to be riddled with obvious forgeries &
#blackpropaganda not even professionally done."
As noted in The Intercept and elsewhere, this was re-reported by the likes of
David Frum (a key member of the club that has now contributed to both the WMD and Russiagate panics) and MSNBC host
Joy Reid . The reports didn't stop until roughly October of 2016, among other things because the Clinton campaign kept suggesting
to reporters the emails were fake. This could have been stopped sooner if examples of a forgery had been demanded from the Clinton
campaign earlier.
Another painful practice that became common was failing to confront your own sources when news dispositive to what they've told
you pops up. The omnipresent Clapper told Chuck Todd on March 5, 2017, without equivocation, that there had been no FISA application
involving Trump or his campaign. " I can deny it ," he
said.
It soon after came out this wasn't true. The FBI had a FISA warrant on Carter Page. This was not a small misstatement by Clapper,
because his appearance came a day after Trump claimed in a tweet he'd had his "
wires tapped ." Trump was widely ridiculed for this claim, perhaps appropriately so, but in addition to the Page news, it later
came out there had been a FISA warrant of Paul Manafort as well, during which time Trump may have been the subject of "
incidental " surveillance.
Whether or not this was meaningful, or whether these warrants were justified, are separate questions. The important thing is,
Clapper either lied to Todd, or else he somehow didn't know the FBI had obtained these warrants. The latter seems absurd and unlikely.
Either way, Todd ought to been peeved and demanded an explanation. Instead, he had
Clapper back on again within months and gave him the usual softball routine, never confronting him about the issue.
Reporters repeatedly got burned and didn't squawk about it. Where are the outraged stories about all the scads of anonymous "people
familiar with the matter" who put reporters in awkward spots in the last years? Why isn't McClatchy demanding the heads of whatever
"four people with knowledge" convinced them to
double down on the Cohen-in-Prague story ?
Why isn't every reporter who used "New Knowledge" as a source about salacious
Russian troll stories
out for their heads (or the heads of the congressional sources who passed this stuff on), after reports they faked Russian trolling?
How is it possible NBC and other outlets continued to use
New Knowledge as a source in stories identifying antiwar Democrat Tulsi Gabbard as a Russian-backed candidate?
How do the Guardian's editors not already have Harding's head in a vice for hanging them out to dry on the most
dubious un-retracted story in modern history – the tale that the most watched human on earth, Julian Assange, had somehow been
visited in the Ecuadorian embassy by Paul Manafort without leaving any record? I'd be dragging Harding's "well placed source" into
the office and beating him with a hose until he handed them something that would pass for corroborating evidence.
The lack of blowback over episodes in which reporters were put in public compromised situations speaks to the overly cozy relationships
outlets had with official sources. Too often, it felt like a team effort, where reporters seemed to think it was their duty to take
the weight if sources pushed them to overreach. They had absolutely no sense of institutional self-esteem about this.
Being on any team is a bad look for the press, but the press being on team FBI/CIA is an atrocity, Trump or no Trump. Why bother
having a press corps at all if you're going to go that route?
This posture all been couched as anti-Trump solidarity, but really, did former CIA chief John Brennan – the same Brennan who should
himself have faced charges for
lying to congress about hacking the computers of Senate staff – need the press to
whine on his behalf when Trump yanked his security clearance? Did we need the press to hum Aretha Franklin tunes, as ABC did,
and chide Trump for lacking
R-E-S-P-E-C-T for the CIA? We don't have better things to do than that "work"?
This catalogue of factual errors and slavish stenography will stand out when future analysts look back at why the "MSM" became
a joke during this period, but they were only a symptom of a larger problem. The bigger issue was a radical change in approach.
A lot of #Russiagate coverage became straight-up conspiracy theory, what Baker politely called "connecting the dots ." This was
allowed because the press committed to a collusion narrative from the start, giving everyone cover to indulge in behaviors that would
never be permitted in normal times.
Such was the case with Jonathan
Chait's #Russiagate opus , "PRUMP TUTIN: Will Trump be Meeting With his Counterpart – or his Handler?" The story was also pitched
as "What if Trump has been a Russian asset since 1987," which recalls the joke from The Wire: "
Yo, Herc, what if your mother and father never met ?" What
if isn't a good place to be in this business.
This cover story (!) in New York magazine was released in advance of a planned "face-to-face" summit between Trump and Putin,
and posited Trump had been under Russian control for decades. Chait noted Trump visited the Soviet Union in 1987 and came back "fired
up with political ambition." He offered the possibility that this was a coincidence, but added:
Indeed, it seems slightly insane to contemplate the possibility that a secret relationship between Trump and Russia dates back
this far. But it can't be dismissed completely.
I searched the Chait article up and down for reporting that would justify the suggestion Trump had been a Russian agent dating
back to the late eighties, when, not that it matters, Russia was a different country called the Soviet Union.
Only two facts in the piece could conceivably have been used to support the thesis: Trump met with a visiting Soviet official
in 1986, and visited the Soviet Union in 1987. That's it. That's your cover story.
Worse, Chait's theory was first espoused in Lyndon Larouche's "
Elephants and Donkeys " newsletter
in 1987, under a headline, "Do Russians have a Trump card?" This is barrel-scraping writ large.
It's a mania. Putin is literally in our underpants. Maybe, if we're lucky, New York might someday admit
its report claiming Russians set up an anti-masturbation hotline to trap and blackmail random Americans is suspicious, not just
because it seems absurd on its face, but because its source is the same "New Knowledge" group that admitted to faking Russian influence
operations in Alabama.
This ultimately will be the endgame of the Russia charade. They will almost certainly never find anything like the wild charges
and Manchurian Candidate theories elucidated in the Steele report. But the years of panic over the events of 2016 will lead to radical
changes in everything from press regulation to foreign policy, just as the WMD canard led to torture, warrantless surveillance, rendition,
drone assassination, secret budgets and open-ended, undeclared wars from Somalia to Niger to Syria. The screw-ups will be forgotten,
but accelerated vigilance will remain.
It's hard to know what policy changes are appropriate because the reporting on everything involving the Russian threat in the
last two to three years has been so unreliable.
I didn't really address the case that Russia hacked the DNC, content to stipulate it for now. I was told early on that this piece
of the story seemed "solid," but even that assertion has remained un-bolstered since then, still based on an "
assessment " by the intelligence services that
always had issues, including the use of things like RT's "anti-American" coverage of fracking as part of its case. The government
didn't even examine the DNC's server, the kind of detail that used to make reporters nervous.
We won't know how much of any of this to take seriously until the press gets out of bed with the security services and looks at
this whole series of events all over again with fresh eyes, as journalists, not political actors. That means being open to asking
what went wrong with this story, in addition to focusing so much energy on Trump and Russia.
The WMD mess had massive real-world negative impact, leading to over a hundred thousand deaths and trillions in lost taxpayer
dollars. Unless Russiagate leads to a nuclear conflict, we're unlikely to ever see that level of consequence.
Still, Russiagate has led to unprecedented cooperation between the government and Internet platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and
Google, all of which are censoring pages on the left, right, and in between in the name of preventing the "sowing of discord." The
story also had a profound impact on the situation in places like Syria, where Russian and American troops have sat across the Euphrates
River from one another, two amped-up nuclear powers at a crossroads.
As a purely journalistic failure, however, WMD was a pimple compared to Russiagate. The sheer scale of the errors and exaggerations
this time around dwarfs the last mess. Worse, it's led to most journalists accepting a radical change in mission. We've become sides-choosers,
obliterating the concept of the press as an independent institution whose primary role is sorting fact and fiction.
We had the sense to eventually look inward a little in the WMD affair, which is the only reason we escaped that episode with any
audience left. Is the press even capable of that kind of self-awareness now? WMD damaged our reputation. If we don't turn things
around, this story will destroy it
Taibbi is spot on, and in depth with this writing. The main stream media sold Americans on the Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Almost 2 decades later, we have spent 6 trillion dollars, 8 millions lives have been lost, and millions of refugees have flooded
out of those countries, causing instability in Europe and beyond. For the past 2 years, 24/7, we have not been able to escape
the claims of Russiagate. He does not mention how the very same media gave Trump 24/7 coverage long before he was elected, and
in fact this free publicity, is probably why Trump is in the White House today. Without the constant press coverage of his campaign,
coverage that was not provided to other candidates, he would most likely not have found his way to the White House. Taibbi does
not go on to tell us what the motivation of the press is, or what he thinks can be done. News shows in the US have become little
more than entertainment. Many of us no longer rely on main stream press for any real news. The mass media has become irrelevant
at it's best, and dangerous, at it's worst. The driving force behind the so called news today, is the advertising dollars, and
the politics of the owners of the networks. How can we have a "free press" when just a few individuals own all the major news
outlets? We are not going to get the real news on tv of from the big newspapers, as long as the power is in the hands of a few
rich and powerful individuals, who decide what is news.
"Fools rush in where angels fear to tread" - Alexander Pope
The rash or inexperienced will attempt things that wiser people are more cautious of.
Finally the libs will agree that guns do have their place in society. These crazy zealots may just blow their own brains out
or just find the nearest cliff. Ace Hardware is loading up on rope.
hmmm....just imagine if - sleyers money contribution fo impeach trump was turned into a movie where a "sponsor" drew up a hit
list of batshit crazy MSM "personalities" to include late night "comfuckedupedians"
Even if you were stupid enough to believe Trump was getting dirt on Hillary from the Russians, what is wrong with that? Is
there a law against that? Why is it OK for Obama and the FBI to get away with wiretapping Trump during the election? Why is it
OK for NSA to wiretap All Americans and store all their conversations and internet traffic on hard drives?
Steele, Orbis, Pablo Miller, Salisbury, Porton Down, golden-shower dossier supposedly written by a native Russian speaker with
an intelligence background....it all makes me wonder what happened to Skripal.
"Skripalgate" is suppressed by UK law. All russians are evil in the UK. The fact that (as with tony Bliar and yellowcake Iraq)
any sitting government can prosecute another country without a trial, witnesses or evidence - as in the Skripals and within the
FUKUS cabal that bombed syria because of - "chlorine barrel bomb attacks on civilians" who later showed up unscathed in Den Haag.
UK governments cannot be held to account for their actions domestically or overseas.
Both parties have been playing up the threat from Russia for decades. The Military Industrial Complex was built on creating
fear about the possibility of war with Russian. The military industrial complex owns Congress, so of course Congress is going
to play up this threat. " The reason why media is working so hard to create the impression that Russia is actively conspiring
against is because conflict with the former Soviet Union is good for business." We can expect this to continue in one form or
another. If Americans were not afraid of Russia, we would not support a defense budget that is equal to all other countries in
the world combined.
Right. The depth of your analysis is impressive. You seem to have an unlimited knowledge of world and national affairs too.
Other than some stalking tendencies, why do you post on ZH? You don't really seem to have any interest in the content, or the
discussion.
I dont want to type up everything that led me to believe this. But the racism, his empathy towards certain muslims groups and
how he treated the war, the prisoner release, the sailors broadcasted on tv about drifting into territorial waters, I mean it
was so obvious how he felt about America.
Pile on his efforts to interfere in the election and eavesdrop, unmasking with Hillary getting and receiving emails from her
home brew server not to mention her foundation pulling in 145 million from Russia.
The CIA is sickening to what has developed over the last 20 years
Blind: If so, it just means it will not be reported on in the MainStream Media(MSM) and soon forgotten.
The same people who own the private central bank and currency, also own the MSM, and they control the narrative on ALL TOPICS.
And control of narrative mean control of what people think.
Control of money and mind means TOTAL control of a country.
Nothing will change until control of minds is returned to the people, then issuance of currency can be returned to the government.
Alex Jones' of Infowars got it right when he said "There's a war on for your mind!" ... even though he became a turncoat himself,
soon after.
Hillary lost a freaking election. After almost 3 freaking years of coup d'état the left deserves mocking humiliation. Mock
them ruthlessly. Never, ever let them forget the horrible thing that they did.
Never stop making fun of them and reminding them how stupid and crazy they acted during this humiliating period of US history.
Never let them forget what they did to the nation or what they cost us all. Never let Democrats forget how much time and energy
they wasted, how very, very wrong they were.
Every politician, every media figure, every Twitter pundit and everyone who swallowed this moronic load of Russia! Russia!
Russia! has utterly discredited themselves for life. They executed and failed to accomplish a coup d'état. These are the very
last people anyone should ever listen to ever again when determining the future direction of our world or an ice cream truck.
Refuse them, laugh at them, ignore them. They earned it and deserve nothing but the greatest disdain.
Without Russia, ASSAD would be long gone and IRAN would have been bombed to oblivion, and Greater Israhell would have been
fulfilled and ruling over the MidEast.
There was never real gray area here. Either Trump is a compromised foreign agent, or he isn't.
Of course there isn't. But this doesn't mean that a prosecutor like Mueller can prove this beyond any reasonable doubt. In
fact it is quite likely that he cannot. The only charge that should be fairly easy to establish is obstruction of justice.
Without knowing what is in the report, Taibbi really jumps the gun here. Especially given the comparison to WMDs.
I knew there were no WMDs in Iraq before the invasion because I followed, and chose to believe, a credible diplomat like Hans
Blix over the dog and pony show that Colin Powell put on. But WMDs are very tangible you either find the hardware or you do not.
Yet, what Putin and Trump discuss without a single other American in the room nobody knows but the Kremlin and Trump.
"It has been people, individuals who have banded together, ordinary people who simply saw what needed to be done and came
together and supported those ideals who have made the difference.
They've marched, they've bled and yes, some of them died. This is hard. Every good thing is. We have done this before. We
can do this again ."
Hardly the call for violent civil war at which it has been portrayed.
The most coiffed, manicured, made up sacks of **** ever to glorify the airwaves tell US what THEY think and get paid handsome
salaries for their effort to overthrow the American system. Freedom of Speech? That'll be gone in a heartbeat if THEY get power.
We have an obligation to not just protect it but a greater one to preserve it.
"I didn't really address the case that Russia hacked the DNC, content to stipulate it for now." - exce
The State Department paused its investigation of the Secretary's emails so as not to interfere with the Mueller investigation.
Here we see Taibbi writes an exhaustive condemnation of the Western press while leaving out the very crux of the story, the very
source of the stolen DNC emails was Clapper and Brennan pretending to be Guccifer 2.0.
Pitiful attempt at redemption there Matt. Seriously, go **** your self.
"After reading several articles, it seemed clear that key difficulties for Russians communicating in English include: definite
and indefinite articles, the use of presuppositions and correct usage of say/tell and said/told. Throughout 2017, I
constructed a corpus of Guccifer 2.0's communications
and analyzed the frequency of different types of mistakes. The
results of this work
corroborate Professor Connolly's assessment.
Overall, it appears Guccifer 2.0 could communicate in English quite well but chose to use inconsistently broken English at
times in order to give the impression that it wasn't his primary language. The manner in which Guccifer 2.0's English was broken,
did not follow the typical errors one would expect if Guccifer 2.0's first language was Russian.
To date, Connolly's language study has not drawn any significant objections or criticism."
Here's the goddam thing IMO. There is this thing called freedom of the press, it's constitutionally protected, no different
than the right to bear arms.
But just because I have the right to carry an M+A 9mm around, that doesn't mean I can point it at the guy who cut me off in
traffic. In that case, I go to jail.
For almost three years now, I've been hearing "bombshell" after unsourced "bombshell" from CNN/MSNBC/WaPo/NPR/NYT et. al. Here's
how it usually goes:
"NPR has been unable to independently confirm, but other major news organizations are reporting that . . ."
"CNN is working to confirm a bombshell report from the Washington Post . . ."
"The New York Times, echoing other major news outlets, is reporting that . . ."
And now let's turn to our panel of experts to "unpack" this latest revelation . . .
These people have criminally abused their rights, and those rights need to be taken away.
Otschelnik,
If Rachel Maddow, Chris Mathews, Judy Woodruff, Chuck Todd, Anderson Cooper, Brian Stelter, Chris Hayes, Mika Brzezinski,
Don Lemon, Alysin Camerota, Lawrence O'Donnell had the slightest inkling of professional integrity, and human conscience -
they'd commit seppuku on national live TeeVee to restore their honor.
A rope leash, 3 hours ago
In his effort to cleanse himself of the slimy residue of his profession, Tiabbi has written a fine piece here, a nice
little documentation of press collusion with government spooks and political operatives.
If a little honest reporting will offer some redemption to damned journalists, his name was Seth Rich.
hooligan2009, 3 hours ago
don't forget that Obama was PERSONALLY and DIRECTLY involved in all aspects of Russiagate.
read between these lines
On Oct. 14, 2016, Page again wrote to McCabe, this time concerning a meeting with the White House.
"Just called," Page said to McCabe. "Apparently the DAG [Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates] now wants to be there,
and WH wants DOJ to host. So we are setting that up now. ... We will very much need to get Cohen's view before we meet with
her. Better, have him weigh in with her before the meeting. We need to speak with one voice, if that is in fact the case."
newworldorder, 3 hours ago
The simple truth here is that most Americans no longer have any critical thinking skills, - all media realized this a long
time ago, and catered to their audience.
The Benjamin Franklin famous quote in answer to the question of "what kind of government have you given us?" rings very hollow
after 240+ years. The "Republic" exists in name only, because its people have not protected it, after the passing of the WW2
generation.
Unrestricted, open borders invasion disguised as alleged migration, and the legalization of an eventual 100+ million new
"migrant" voters will be the final nail on the coffin of the US Republic by 2030.
Mob rule will finally destroy the greatest Republic ever conceived by the mind of men.
Mike Rotsch, 3 hours ago (Edited)
If "open borders" is your measuring stick on Americans' critical-thinking skills, then where does that place Europeans?
They actually have them officially.
Paracelsus, 3 hours ago
Someday I hope that Hillary has to be rolled up to testify about the Benghazi business. Grab the guns and the gold (and
the oil). Ukraine gold: check. Libyan gold and weapons: check.
Ghaddafi actually warned the west that after him would come a deluge of illegals (okay refugees: young males, black, often
Islamic, with little respect for women or experience with western society).
While I have reservations about Trump and his policies, the MSM owe him a huge mea culpa.
So Brennan conspired with MI6 and Clinton wing of Dems to bring down Trump. Trump was falsely
accused of colliding with Russia while he openly collided with Israel. Of course colliding with
Israel is not a crime in the USA as political establishment assumes that the interests of both
countries are identical. This is pretty far from being true. Israel plays its own and sometime
harmful for the USA game in the Middle East. And Israel agents of influence like Kushner, Pompeo,
Haley and Bolton really infiltrated the Trump administration, unlike mythical Russian.
Now the question is: was Brennan acted in the interests of MI6 only, or only of Mossad?
Brennan's pipe dream was all but obliterated on Friday when Mueller submitted his
report to the Justice Department. Officials at the agency said that no more
indictments will be submitted in the 22-month old investigation. There are also no
indictments that have been issued under seal. The last indictment in the investigation was
handed down on Jan. 24 against Trump confidant Roger
Stone .
Of the three dozen indictments or guilty pleas obtained in the investigation, none have
involved charges of conspiracy between Trump associates and Russian government officials.
It does remain unclear whether Mueller recommended Trump for impeachment proceedings, or
whether he found non-criminal evidence of links between Trumpworld and the Kremlin. Attorney
General William Barr said in a letter Friday afternoon that he will likely provide a summary of
the investigation to the Houe and Senate Judiciary Committees as soon as this weekend.
The Robert Mueller
investigation which monopolized political discourse for two years
has
finally concluded
,
and his anxiously awaited report has been submitted to Attorney
General William Barr. The results are in and the debate is over: those advancing the conspiracy
theory that the Kremlin has infiltrated the highest levels of the US government were wrong, and
those of us voicing skepticism of this were right.
The contents of the report are still secret, but CNN's Justice Department reporter Laura Jarrett
has told us all we need to know,
tweeting
,
"Special Counsel Mueller is not recommending ANY further indictments am told."
On top
of that, William Barr
said
in a letter
to congressional leaders that there has been no obstruction of Mueller's
investigation by Justice Department officials.
So that's it, then.
A completely unhindered investigation has failed to
convict a single American of any kind of conspiracy with the Russian government, and no further
indictments are coming. The political/media class which sold rank-and-file Americans on the lie
that the Mueller investigation was going to bring down this presidency were liars and frauds, and
none of the goalpost-moving that I am sure is already beginning to happen will change that.
It has been obvious from the very beginning that the Maddow Muppets were being sold a
lie.
In 2017 I wrote an article titled "
How
We Can Be Certain That Mueller Won't Prove Trump-Russia Collusion
", saying that Mueller would
continue finding evidence of corruption "since corruption is to DC insiders as water is to fish",
but he will not find evidence of collusion. If you care to take a scroll through the angry comments
on that article, just on Medium alone, you will see a frozen snapshot of what the expectations were
from mainstream liberals at the time.
They had swallowed the Russiagate narrative hook,
line and sinker, and they believed that the Mueller investigation was going to vindicate them. It
did not.
I've been saying Russiagate is bullshit from the beginning, and
I've been called a Trump
shill, a Kremlin propagandist, a Nazi and a troll every day for saying so by credulous mass
media-consuming dupes who drank the Kool Aid
. And I've only taken a fraction of the flack
more high profile Russiagate skeptics like Glenn Greenwald and Michael Tracey have been getting for
expressing doubt in the Gospel According to Maddow.
The insane, maniacal McCarthyite
feeding frenzy that these people were plunged into by nonstop mass media propaganda drowned out the
important voices who tried to argue that public energy was being sucked into Russia hysteria
and used to manufacture support for
dangerous
cold war escalations
with a nuclear superpower.
Just think what we could have done with that energy over the last two years. Think how much
public support could have been poured into the sweeping progressive reforms called for by the
Sanders movement, for example, instead of constant demands for more sanctions and nuclear posturing
against Russia. Think how much more attention could have been drawn to Trump's actual horrific
policies like his facilitation of Saudi butchery in Yemen or his regime change agendas in Iran and
Venezuela, his support for ecocide and military expansionism and the barbarism of Jair Bolsonaro
and Benjamin Netanyahu. Think how much more energy could have gone into beating back the
Republicans in the midterms, reclaiming far more House seats and taking the Senate as well,
gathering momentum for a presidential candidacy that truly threatens Trump instead of 9,000 primary
candidates who will probably be selected by superdelegates after the first ballot when there's too
many of them to establish a clear majority
under
the new rules.
We must never let them forget what they did or what they cost us all. We must never let
mainstream Democrats forget how crazy they got, how much time and energy they wasted, how very,
very wrong they were and how very, very right we were.
Never stop reminding them of this.
Never stop mocking them for it.
Never
stop mocking their idiotic Rachel Maddow worship. Never stop mocking the Robert Mueller prayer
candles. Never stop making fun of the way they blamed all their problems on Susan Sarandon. Never
stop reminding them of those stupid pink vagina hats. Never stop mocking them for elevating Louise
Mensch and Eric Garland. Never stop mocking them for creating the fucking Krassenstein brothers.
Every politician, every media figure, every Twitter pundit and everyone who swallowed
this moronic load of bull spunk has officially discredited themselves for life.
Going
forward, authority and credibility rests solely with those who kept clear eyes and clear heads
during the mass media propaganda blitzkrieg, not with those who were stupid enough to believe what
they were told about the behaviors of a noncompliant government in a post-Iraq invasion world.
The people who steered us into two years of Russiavape insanity are the very last people
anyone should ever listen to ever again when determining the future direction of our world.
I think Russiagate is a deliberate Jewish ploy to distract Trump
supporters, and others, from the fact that Trump is very deeply
involved in Israelgate. It's a sophisticated strategy designed to
demonize Russia and favor Israel at the same time. The fact that
America will bear the burden is lost on the Dumbfuck, if the
narcissict is capable of caring in the first place. Obama was a
brilliant *** handler compared to this man.
I believe that Trump and all the neocons along with Sheldon
Adelson and Netenyahu pulled this BIG costly Shenanigan off to
divert attention away from what Trump was doing for Israel.
And lets be clear.....both Democrats and Republicans are failing
America.
The fringe lunatics on both sides have hijacked the
umbrella party. The Zionist cretins/MIC whores on the Right and
SJW Snowflakes/ War Party on the Left are both owned by the
bankster/corporate ruling classes. They are the same turd on
foreign policy.
Its time to balkanize and butcher both parties.
The Deep State needs contrived divisions and dichotomies to
split Americans. People should see past these pathetic attempts to
divide the population.
Even Caitlin misses what's going on here. I'm kinda disappointed,
but hey no one gets everything right and she does have to earn a
buck wherever she can. I get that
The new McCarthyism has been
embraced far and wide in Murika, by both parties, all the MSM. But
that's just a ruse for the home team, to recreate the USSR
bogeyman for political purposes and to feed the MIC. It's worked,
polls show Murikan sheep are more a feared of the Russian bogeyman
than they have been since the cold war
Russia isn't encroaching on America's borders, PNAC is
encroaching on theirs.
That said, the Mueller effort is more than what you think, it's
like a bird dog and it flushed many a bird of prey for shotgun
totin' prosecutors, if they be inclined to fire. And that is how
the game works in the world of dirty sum bitches and misc
psychopaths.
Like the big ***** guy in the movie Platoon said, 'the rich
always **** over the poor, that's the way it's always been.'
Recent events can be explained rather accurately if one knows
history. Which most people don't apparently.
This is just a
re-run of cold war psyops. Except this time, the USSA will meet
the fate of the USSR in its own way.
The Jewish Marxists that ran away from Russia and infested
America, are now drowning in their lies, and gotta vent
somewhere! They are behind the MSM, and cozy dalliance between
the Deep State and useful idiot Leftards.
Glancing at various Twatter feeds over the years...and I couldn't
help but notice that the number of ****-for-brains Americans who
fell for the Russiagate psyop was simply staggering.
I guess its
these gullible morons that the powers-that-be relied on in the
vaunted dumbassocracy, to get away with distracting away from
their own crimes. But alas, the day of judgement always arrives,
and the ******** implodes. It depends on how many of them awaken
in the process, to render this reckoning as either a bang or a
whimper.
"... No one says Trump is a saint. But the deep state wanted to cover its tracks. Dems and deep state hated that their preferred candidate didn't win. They ended up achieving their goal of delegitimizing 2016 and distracting the country for 2 years. ..."
"... They tried to delegitimize the 2016 Election but failed to do so. ..."
The Mueller investigation is complete and this is a simple fact that will never go away: not one single American was charged,
indicted or convicted for conspiring with Russia to influence the 2016 election - not even a low-level volunteer. The number is zero.
Compare what cable hosts (let's leave them unnamed) & Democratic operatives spent two years claiming this would lead to - the
imprisonment of Don, Jr., Jared, even Trump on conspiracy-with-Russia charges - to what it actually produced. A huge media reckoning
is owed.
Don't even try to pretend the point of the Mueller investigation from the start wasn't to obtain prosecutions of Americans guilty
of conspiring with Russia to influence the outcome of the election or that Putin controlled Trump through blackmail. Nobody will
believe your denials.
Are we now ready to rid ourselves of the thrilling espionage fantasy that Trump is controlled by Putin and the Kremlin using blackmail?
There's no way Robert Mueller would have gone 18 months without telling anyone about this if it were true, right? How could that
be justified?
Perhaps now we can focus on the actually consequential actions the Trump administration is taking and finally move past the deranged
conspiracy theories that have drowned US discourse for 2+ years. A side benefit will be not ratcheting up tension between 2 nuclear-armed
powers.
Giving up these exciting conspiracy theories about international blackmail & convening panels to decipher all the genius hidden
maneuvers of Mueller will be bad for cable ratings, book sales & the Patreon accounts of online charlatans. But it'll be very healthy
in all other ways.
The desperate attempts to salvage something from this debacle by the Mueller dead-enders are just sad. Yes, the public hasn't
read the Mueller report. But we *know* he ended his investigation without indicting a single American for conspiring with Russia
to influence the election
Trump, Jr. testified for hours and hours before Congress, including about the Trump Tower meeting. If he lied there, or to Mueller,
why didn't Mueller indict him for perjury, lying to Congress or obstruction? Same questions for Kushner. Stop embarrassing yourselves.
If Mueller found evidence that Putin controls Trump & forces him to act against US interests & in favor of Russia - not just with
a pee-pee tape but with financial blackmail - what could possibly justify keeping that a secret through the end of the investigation?
It's ludicrous.
US discourse has been drowned for 2+ years with conspiratorial, unhinged, but highly inflammatory and unhinged idiocy - playing
games with two nuclear-armed powers because of anger over the 2016 election. It's time to stop. Mueller ended his work. We see the
public indictments.
So many in the media devoted endless airtime & print & pixels misleading people to believe Mueller was coming to arrest & prosecute
Trump, Jr, Kushner & so many others for conspiring with Russia over the election & obstruction. None of that happened. You can't
pretend it away.
They was never the point. No one says Trump is a saint. But the deep state wanted to cover its tracks. Dems and deep state hated
that their preferred candidate didn't win. They ended up achieving their goal of delegitimizing 2016 and distracting the country
for 2 years.
"... The White House didn't immediately respond to requests for comment. But in another stand-off with House Democrats, Cipollone on Thursday rejected a request renewed last week from Cummings and two other committee chairmen for information on Trump's communications with Russian President Vladimir Putin. ..."
"... Cummings said the committee obtained a document that "appears" to show that McFarland conducted official business on her personal email account. He said the document was related to efforts by McFarland and other White House officials to transfer sensitive U.S. nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia "in coordination with Tom Barrack, a personal friend of President Trump and the chairman of President Trump's inaugural committee." ..."
"... Regarding Trump's communications with Putin, Cummings, House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff and Foreign Affairs Chairman Eliot Engel say they are examining the substance of in-person meetings and phone calls, the effects on foreign policy, and whether anyone has sought to conceal those communications. ..."
"... The Constitution gives the executive branch exclusive power to conduct foreign relations, Cipollone said. "Congress cannot require the president to disclose confidential communications with foreign leaders." ..."
A key House Democrat is renewing demands that the White House turn over documents about the use of private texts or emails by
Jared Kushner, saying Kushner's lawyer acknowledged that the senior aide used the non-secure WhatsApp application to communicate
with foreign leaders.
House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Elijah Cummings said in a letter sent Thursday to White House Counsel
Pat Cipollone that the administration has failed to produce documents tied to Kushner and other officials despite requests from the
committee since 2017. Cummings also sought a briefing on how the official messages are being preserved.
... ... ...
The White House didn't immediately respond to requests for comment. But in another stand-off with House Democrats, Cipollone on
Thursday rejected a request renewed last week from Cummings and two other committee chairmen for information on Trump's communications
with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
WhatsApp
Cummings, to underscore his concern about whether unsecured White House communications have included classified information, said
in his letter that Lowell acknowledged during the December meeting that Kushner had used WhatsApp to communicate with foreign leaders.
Kushner is a senior White House adviser and the son-in-law of President
Donald Trump , overseeing the administration's Middle
East policies among other issues. Cummings said he and then-Oversight Chairman
Trey Gowdy , a Republican who has since retired from Congress,
met with Lowell in December.
Cummings's letter said Lowell said that Kushner has been in compliance with the law, and that he takes "screenshots" of communications
on his private WhatsApp account and forwards them to his official White House email account or to the National Security Council.
Cummings wrote that when asked whether Kushner ever used WhatsApp to discuss classified information, Lowell replied, "That's above
my pay grade."
The focus on Kushner and others follows the earlier investigations by the Justice Department and Republican-controlled congressional
committees of Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server when she served as secretary of state during the Obama administration.
'Alternative Means'
In Thursday's letter, Cummings said the White House's refusal to turn over documents is "obstructing the committee's investigation
into allegations of violations of federal records laws" and potential breaches of national security. He demanded that the White House
say by March 28 whether it intends to comply voluntarily with the renewed requests.
"If you continue to withhold these documents from the committee, we will be forced to consider alternative means to obtain compliance,"
Cummings said.
... ... ....
K.T. McFarland
Cummings also wrote that his committee has obtained new information about other White House officials that raises additional security
and federal records concerns about the use of private email and messaging applications.
His letter said others may have been involved in the practice while they worked at the White House, including former deputy national
security adviser K.T. McFarland and former chief strategist
Steve Bannon.
Cummings said the committee obtained a document that "appears" to show that McFarland conducted official business on her personal
email account. He said the document was related to efforts by McFarland and other White House officials to transfer sensitive U.S.
nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia "in coordination with Tom Barrack, a personal friend of President Trump and the chairman of President
Trump's inaugural committee."
The chairman said another document appeared to show that Bannon received documents "pitching the plan from Mr. Barrack through
his personal email account," at a time Bannon was at the White House and working on broader Middle East policy.
Regarding Trump's communications with Putin, Cummings, House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff and Foreign Affairs Chairman
Eliot Engel say they are examining the substance of in-person meetings and phone calls, the effects on foreign policy, and whether
anyone has sought to conceal those communications.
In a written response Thursday, Cipollone wrote, "While we respectfully seek to accommodate appropriate oversight requests, we
are unaware of any precedent supporting such sweeping requests."
The Constitution gives the executive branch exclusive power to conduct foreign relations, Cipollone said. "Congress cannot require
the president to disclose confidential communications with foreign leaders."
In a joint statement on Thursday night, Cummings, Engel and Schiff said that the Obama administration had "produced records describing
the president and secretary of state's calls with foreign leaders." The congressmen added that "President Trump's decision to break
with this precedent raises the question of what he has to hide."
( Updates with statement from Cummings, Schiff and Engel, in final paragraph.
"... George Galloway and Steve Topple of the Canary posted this video on the ongoing transatlantic attack campaign against the left wing, including Ilhan Omar, Jeremy Corbyn, and the Yellow Vests under the canard that they are anti-Semitic. This has now reached the level of the transnational RussiaGate hysteria to the point where it is obviously a coordinated smear by global corporate and political Establishment and ruling class people to muzzle the voice of a rising generation which is anti-capitalist and anti-war. ..."
George Galloway and Steve Topple of the Canary posted this video on the ongoing transatlantic attack campaign against the
left wing, including Ilhan Omar, Jeremy Corbyn, and the Yellow Vests under the canard that they are anti-Semitic. This has now
reached the level of the transnational RussiaGate hysteria to the point where it is obviously a coordinated smear by global corporate
and political Establishment and ruling class people to muzzle the voice of a rising generation which is anti-capitalist and anti-war.
@4 Adam Curtis is always great, I personally preferred The Trap and his short film on Nixon, but Hypernormalisation is arguably
the most powerful and illustrative film of our times. It would be perfect if it weren't for the Russia segment.
anti-semitism... regarding the 2 links on corbyn - both very good btw and worth checking out if you are interested. i find
it disturbing how this topic can be pushed to the forefront 24/7, or ad nauseam... for me, the only purpose it seems to serve
is to inadvertently turn people completely off everything to do with israel.. obviously the initial purpose here is to smear corbyn
in the hopes that the mud sticks.. either way, the fact it is in the news constantly is a clear heads up the media is not neutral,
or unbiased in it's selection of the topics put before people on a regular basis..
Speaking of anti-semitism, what do Dershowitz, Netanyahoo, Adelson and Trump all have in common?
https://journal-neo.org/2019/03/10/the-netanyahu-problem/
Here's the thing (if any of the stated things in the article are true): Bibi's up for re-election on the 9th, and not looking
too well, it seems. Elijah Magnier has sounded alarm bells, too:
https://ejmagnier.com/2019/03/07/syria-preparing-its-missiles-for-the-next-battle-with-israel/
Things might be getting quite interesting in the next weeks. Oh, we can add Corbyn
with the anti-semitism accusations against him and the Brexit mess into the mix, too, with the big vote on May's deal on Tuesday.
It's small wonder why there is so much talk of anti-semitism these days, given the stellar cast of characters involved.
The anti-semistism charges against Corbyn only seem potentially damaging because they occur in the echo chamber of a media system
unanimously organised against him and the anti-imperialism that he supports.
There are signs-one of which is the desperation
of the media in making ever more extreme charges- that the campaign has had very little effect. Labour Party membership is increasing
steadily, the largest political party in Europe gets larger every week, making the party financially independent (it relies much
less now than it ever has in the past on Union financing) and organisationally stronger, as thousands of energetic, intelligent
youthful people volunteer to work for it.
Part of the antisemitism campaign has consisted of MPs going out on a limb and, with maximum publicity, resigning from the
party, thus saving the members the messy job of expelling them or refusing to select them for re-election. At the same time local
party organisations, long strongholds of municipal and regional bosses and Blairite politics, are being re-captured by the membership.
Both Scotland and Wales, for example, are now led by anti-imperialist socialists. Two years ago they were centres of anti-Corbyn
organising.
These things are important because this is a demonstration of the way that a media system, by consistently promoting the interests
of the 'elites' loses its credibility. Most of those who read and contribute to this site were once regular and comnplacent consumers
of the MSM. We used if not to accept uncritically then at least to take as probably true the 'news' on public broadcasters and
quality broadsheets. Now we realise that they are utterly unreliable retailers of propaganda.
The good news is that this is becoming a majority attitude- we are on the way to a situation, already achieved in France I
suspect, in which nothing from the state is taken on trust. And people are making up their own minds after comparing information,
thru places such as this one, with each other.
To get back to Corbyn, I find it hard to believe that he will not only win the next general election but in doing so lead a
new sort of party, backed by a powerful and massive popular movement, full of committed, if often mild reforming, socialists into
Parliament.
If that happens it will only be fair if the Israeli government be asked to take a bow for 'going over the top' to such an extent
that it is going to be difficult to convince anyone that Corbyn is other than spotlessly clear, politically and highly principled.
Jeremy Corbyn is a dead man walking. His failure to stand by his allies (from Ken LIvingstone to the more recent Chris Williamson)
within the Labour Party as they have been successfully picked off, victims of anti-semetic smear campaigns, has seriously undermined
his leadership and increasingly isolated him within his own party. Corbyn's policy of accommodation and appeasement is obviously
failing and has only emboldened his attackers. From his failure to geld the Blairites within his party by expelling its most vocal
zionist mouthpieces (the odious Margaret Hodge and Joan Ryan being prime examples) to Labour's adoption of IHRA's redefinition
of anti-semetism to include anti-zionism, Corbyn's appeasement policy has been an unmitigated disaster, leaving him effectively
neutered in the face of this unremitting onslaught as his poll numbers continue to drop. Even George Galloway, a staunch Corbyn
supporter, is despairing of this state of affairs.
We should not idealize nether Israelis not Palestinians. the latter were pushed by Israeli policies to more fundamentalist Islam.
Changes of anti-Semitism is nor the favorite tool of Israeli lobby to smear critics of Israeli polices.
Notable quotes:
"... The flood of exaggerated claims of antisemitism make it harder to deal with any real instances of antisemitism. The credibility of well-founded allegations is undermined by the less credible ones and real perpetrators are more likely not to be held to account. Crying wolf is dangerous when there are real wolves around the corner. This was the reality that Chris Williamson was drawing attention to. ..."
"... Right now, the establishment -- represented by Richard Dearlove, a former head of the MI6 -- is maliciously trying to frame Corbyn's main adviser, Seumas Milne, as a Kremlin asset. ..."
"... Jewish is about race, religion and place of origin, Zionism is about economics and unabashed wealth: the two concepts are polar opposites. Very few non wealthy Jews are zionist. ..."
"... The gods of finance don't really care about a few dead self-identifying Jews. Once it happens there will be no more pretence of niceness or democratic nonsense and the Orwellian police-state crackdown can proceed in earnest but now with almost everyone's blessing. Expect the very same thing everywhere across Europe and the Anglosphere. ..."
"... Anti-Semitism has re-established itself on the left partly by way of an ideology of anti-colonialism. Believing Western colonial power to be the worst evil in history – a progressive orthodoxy that has been inculcated in Western education systems for decades – sections of the left relativise the Holocaust, treating it as only one among many crimes against humanity. At the same time, they see Israel as the worst embodiment of colonialism – hence the demand that, alone among the world's states, it must demonstrate its "right to exist". ..."
"... Antisemitism in the UK used to mean hostility to the pushiness, greed and mad manners of successful Jews like Philip Green, but it has now been redefined to mean someone who thinks the Palestinians should not be used as target practice. ..."
"... Antisemitism here is a middle and upper class thing. There are so few Jews in some parts of the UK that many people have never met a Jew. I was over 30 before I ever knew anyone who was Jewish. ..."
"... Where is the sanctimonious Catholic Church to anathemize the major war criminal Tony Blair the Pious? ..."
"... British Labor MP Tam Dalyell has charged that Prime Minister Tony Blair was "being unduly influenced by a cabal of Jewish advisers" ..."
"... The comment echoed remarks by U.S. Republican Patrick Buchanan, who was accused of anti-Semitism when in an article last March, he described a predominantely Jewish group of advisers to President Bush as "a cabal of polemicists and public officials [who] seek to ensnare our country in a series of wars that are not in America's interests." ..."
"... You're confusing the issue. The issue is this: it's not anti-Semitic to be anti-Zionist. All the rest is squid ink. ..."
"... McCarthyism is the extension of the European dark age inquisition. Nowadays the American glosses over McCarthyism with the terms democracy, neo-liberal order, and human rights. Any idealism other than the American's must be denied, even in the accused own defence. The American presents the accused as an enemy so dangerous, their ideas so corrupting, that they must be silenced from the outset. Their only chance of rehabilitation is prostration before their accusers and utter repentance. ..."
"... Antisemitism in the UK used to mean hostility to the pushiness, greed and mad manners but it has now been redefined to mean someone who thinks the Palestinians should not be used as target practice. ..."
"... On Twitter, Corbyn wrote: "The UN says Israel's killings of demonstrators in Gaza – including children, paramedics and journalists – may constitute 'war crimes or crimes against humanity'". ..."
"... The UN report, published earlier this week, said: "The Israeli security forces killed and maimed Palestinian demonstrators who did not pose an imminent threat of death or serious injury to others when they were shot, nor were they directly participating in hostilities," adding that the protests had been "civilian in nature". ..."
"... "A quite incredible story out of England has not received much media coverage in the United States. It concerns how the Israeli Embassy in London connived with government officials to "take down" parliamentarians and government ministers who were considered to be critical of the Jewish State. It was also learned that the Israeli Embassy was secretly subsidizing and advising private groups promoting Israeli interests, including associations of Members of Parliament (MPs)." ..."
"McCarthyism" is a word thrown around a lot nowadays, and in the process its true meaning -- and horror -- has been increasingly
obscured.
McCarthyism is not just the hounding of someone because their views are unpopular. It is the creation by the powerful of a perfect,
self-rationalising system of incrimination -- denying the victim a voice, even in their own defence. It presents the accused as an
enemy so dangerous, their ideas so corrupting, that they must be silenced from the outset. Their only chance of rehabilitation is
prostration before their accusers and utter repentance.
McCarthyism, in other words, is the modern political parallel of the witch hunt.
In an earlier era, the guilt of women accused of witchcraft was tested through the ducking stool. If a woman drowned, she was
innocent; if she survived, she was guilty and burnt at the stake. A foolproof system that created an endless supply of the wicked,
justifying the status and salaries of the men charged with hunting down ever more of these diabolical women.
And that is the Medieval equivalent of where the British Labour party has arrived, with the suspension of MP Chris Williamson
for anti-semitism.
Revenge of the Blairites
Williamson, it should be noted, is widely seen as a key ally of Jeremy Corbyn, a democratic socialist who was propelled unexpectedly
into the Labour leadership nearly four years ago by its members. His elevation infuriated most of the party's MPs, who hanker for
the return of the New Labour era under Tony Blair, when the party firmly occupied the political centre.
Corbyn's success has also outraged vocal supporters of Israel both in the Labour party -- some 80 MPs are stalwart members of
Labour Friends of Israel -- and in the UK media. Corbyn is the first British party leader in sight of power to prefer the Palestinians'
right to justice over Israel's continuing oppression of the Palestinians.
For these reasons, the Blairite MPs have been trying to oust Corbyn any way they can. First through a failed re-run of the leadership
contest and then by assisting the corporate media -- which is equally opposed to Corbyn -- in smearing him variously as a shambles,
a misogynist, a sympathiser with terrorists, a Russian asset, and finally as an "enabler" of anti-semitism.
This last accusation has proved the most fruitful after the Israel lobby began to expand the definition of anti-semitism to include
not just hatred of Jews but also criticism of Israel. Labour was eventually forced to accept a redefinition,
formulated by the International
Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, that conflates anti-Zionism -- opposition to Israel's violent creation on the Palestinians' homeland
-- with anti-semitism.
Guilt by association
Once the mud stuck through repetition, a vocal group of Labour MPs began denouncing the party for being "institutionally anti-semitic",
"endemically anti-semitic" and a "cesspit of anti-semitism". The slurs continued relentlessly, even as statistics proved the accusation
to be groundless. The figures
show
that anti-semitism exists only in the margins of the party, as racism does in all walks of life.
Meanwhile, the smears overshadowed the very provable fact that anti-semitism and other forms of racism are rearing their head
dangerously on the political right.
But the witchfinders were never interested in the political reality. They wanted a never-ending war -- a policy of "zero tolerance"
-- to root out an evil in their midst, a supposed "hard left" given succour by Corbyn and his acolytes.
This is the context for understanding Williamson's "crime".
Despite the best efforts of our modern witchfinder generals to prove otherwise, Williamson has not been shown to have expressed
hatred towards Jews, or even to have made a comment that could be interpreted as anti-semitic.
One of the most experienced of the witchfinders, Guardian columnist Jonathan Freedland, indulged familiar McCarthyite tactics
this week in trying to prove Williamson's anti-semitism by association. The MP was what Freedland
termed a
"Jew baiter" because he has associated with people whom the witchfinders decree to be anti-semites.
'Too apologetic'
Shortly before he found himself formally shunned by media commentators and his own parliamentary party, Williamson twice confirmed
his guilt to the inquisitors.
First, he dared to challenge the authority of the witchfinders. He suggested that some of those being hounded out of Labour may
not in fact be witches. Or more specifically, in the context of constant claims of a Labour "anti-semitism crisis", he
argued that the party had been "too apologetic" in dealing
with the bad-faith efforts of those seeking to damage a Corbyn-led party.
In other words, Williamson suggested that Labour ought to be more proactively promoting the abundant evidence that it was indeed
dealing with what he called the "scourge of anti-semitism", and thereby demonstrate to the British public that Labour wasn't "institutionally
anti-semitic". Labour members, he was pointing out, ought not to have to keep quiet as they were being endlessly slandered as anti-semites.
As Jewish Voice for Labour, a Jewish group supportive of Corbyn,
noted :
The flood of exaggerated claims of antisemitism make it harder to deal with any real instances of antisemitism. The credibility
of well-founded allegations is undermined by the less credible ones and real perpetrators are more likely not to be held to account.
Crying wolf is dangerous when there are real wolves around the corner. This was the reality that Chris Williamson was drawing
attention to.
As with all inquisitions, however, the witchfinders were not interested in what Williamson actually said, but in the threat he
posed to the narrative they have created to destroy their enemy, Corbynism, and reassert their own power.
So his words were ripped from their context and presented as proof that he did indeed support witches.
He was denounced for saying what he had not: that Labour should not apologise for its anti-semitism. In this dishonest reformulation
of Williamson's statement, the witchfinders claimed to show that he had supported anti-semitism, that he consorted with witches.
No screening for documentary
Second, Williamson compounded his crime by publicly helping just such a readymade witch: a black Jewish woman named Jackie Walker.
He had booked a room in the British parliament building -- the seat of our supposed democracy -- so that audiences could see a
new documentary on an earlier Labour witch hunt. More than two years ago the party suspended Walker over anti-semitism claims.
The screening was to inform Labour party members of the facts of her case in the run-up to a hearing in which, given the current
atmosphere, it is likely she will be expelled. The screening was sponsored by Jewish Voice for Labour, which has also warned repeatedly
that anti-semitism is being used malevolently to silence criticism of Israel and weaken Corbyn.
Walker was seen as a pivotal figure by those opposed to Corbyn. She was a co-founder of Momentum, the grassroots organisation
established to support Corbyn after his election to the leadership and deal with the inevitable fallout from the Blairite wing of
MPs.
Momentum expected a rough ride from this dominant faction, and they were not disappointed. The Blairites still held on to the
party machinery and they had an ally in Tom Watson, who became Corbyn's deputy.
Walker was one of the
early victims
of the confected claims of an Labour "anti-semitism crisis". But she was not ready to roll over and accept her status as witch. She
fought back.
From lynching to witch hunt
First, she produced a one-woman show about her treatment at the hands of the Labour party bureaucracy -- framed in the context
of decades of racist treatment of black people in the west -- called The Lynching
.
And then her story was turned into a documentary film, fittingly called
Witch Hunt . It sets out very clearly the machinations of the Blairite
wing of MPs, and Labour's closely allied Israel lobby, in defaming Walker as part of their efforts to regain power over the party.
For people so ostensibly concerned about racism towards Jews, these witchfinders show little self-awareness about how obvious
their own racism is in relation to some of the "witches" they have hunted down.
But that racism can only be understood if people have the chance to hear from Walker and other victims of the anti-semitism smears.
Which is precisely why Williamson, who was trying to organise the screening of Witch Hunt, had to be dealt with too.
Party in disrepute
Walker is not the only prominent black anti-racism activist targeted. Marc Wadsworth, another longtime ally of Corbyn's, and founder
of the Anti-Racist Alliance, was "outed" last year in another confected anti-semitism scandal. The allegations of anti-semitism were
impossible to stand up publicly, so finally he was
booted out on a catch-all
claim that he had brought the party "into disrepute".
Jews who criticise Israel and support Corbyn's solidarity with Palestinians have been picked off by the witchfinders too, cheered
on by media commentators who claim this is being done in the service of a "zero tolerance" policy towards racism. As well as Walker,
the targets have included
Tony Greenstein, Moshe Machover, Martin Odoni, Glyn Secker and Cyril Chilson.
But as the battle in Labour has intensified to redefine anti-Zionism as anti-semitism, the deeper issues at stake have come to
the fore. Jon Lansman, another founder of Momentum, recently
stated : "I don't want any Jewish
member in the party to be leaving. We are absolutely committed to making Labour a safe space."
But there are a set of very obvious problems with that position, and they have gone entirely unexamined by those promoting the
"institutional anti-semitism" and "zero tolerance" narratives.
Lobby's covert actions exposed
First, it is impossible to be a home to all Jews in Labour, when the party's Jewish members are themselves deeply split over key
issues like whether Corbyn is a force for good and whether meaningful criticism of Israel should be allowed.
A fanatically pro-Israel organisation like the Jewish Labour Movement will never tolerate a Corbyn-led Labour party reaching power
and supporting the Palestinian cause. To pretend otherwise is simple naivety or deception.
That fact was demonstrably proven two years ago in the Al Jazeera undercover documentary The Lobby into covert
efforts
by Israel and its UK lobbyists to undermine Corbyn from within his own party through groups like the JLM and MPs in Labour Friends
of Israel. It was telling that the party machine, along with the corporate media, did its best to keep the documentary out of public
view.
The MPs loudest about "institutional anti-semitism" in Labour were among those abandoning the party to join the Independent Group
this month, preferring to ally with renegade Conservative MPs in an apparent attempt to frustrate a Corbyn-led party winning power.
Institutional racism on Palestinians
Further, if a proportion of Jewish Labour party members have such a heavy personal investment in Israel that they refuse to countenance
any meaningful curbs on Israel's abuses of Palestinians -- and that has been underscored repeatedly by public comments from the JLM
and Labour Friends of Israel -- then keeping them inside the party will require cracking down on all but the flimsiest criticism
of Israel. It will tie the party's hands on supporting Palestinian rights.
In the name of protecting the "Israel right or wrong" crowd from what they consider to be anti-semitic abuse, Labour will have
to provide institutional support for Israel's racism towards Palestinians.
In doing so, it will in fact simply be returning to the status quo in the party before Corbyn, when Labour
turned a blind eye
over many decades to the Palestinians' dispossession by European Zionists who created an
ugly anachronistic state where rights accrue based on one's ethnicity and religion rather than citizenship.
Those in Labour who reject Britain's continuing complicity in such crimes -- ones the UK set in motion with the Balfour Declaration
-- will find, as a result, that it is they who have no home in Labour. That includes significant numbers of anti-Zionist Jews, Palestinians,
Muslims and Palestinian solidarity activists.
Safe space for whom?
If the creation of a "safe space" for Jews in the Labour party is code, as it appears to be, for a safe space for hardline Zionist
Jews, it will inevitably require that the party become a hostile environment for those engaged in other anti-racism battles.
Stripped bare, what Lansman and the witchfinders are saying is that Zionist Jewish sensitivities in the party are the only ones
that count, that anything and everything must be done to indulge them, even if it means abusing non-Zionist Jewish members, black
members, Palestinian and Muslim members, and those expressing solidarity with Palestinians.
This is precisely the political black hole into which simplistic, kneejerk identity politics inevitably gets sucked.
Right now, the establishment -- represented by Richard Dearlove, a former head of the MI6 -- is maliciously
trying
to frame Corbyn's main adviser, Seumas Milne, as a Kremlin asset.
While the witchfinders claim to have unearthed a "pattern of behaviour" in Williamson's efforts to expose their smears, in fact
the real pattern of behaviour is there for all to see: a concerted McCarthyite campaign to destroy Corbyn before he can reach No
10.
Corbyn's allies are being picked off one by one, from grassroots activists like Walker and Wadsworth to higher-placed supporters
like Williamson and Milne. Soon Corbyn will stand alone, exposed before the inquisition that has been prepared for him.
Then Labour can be restored to the Blairites, the members silenced until they leave and any hope of offering a political alternative
to the establishment safely shelved. Ordinary people will again be made passive spectators as the rich carry on playing with their
lives and their futures as though Britain was simply a rigged game of Monopoly.
If parliamentary politics returns to business as usual for the wealthy, taking to the streets looks increasingly like the only
option. Maybe it's time to dust off a Yellow Vest.
Jonathan Cook won the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His books include "Israel and the Clash of Civilisations:
Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East" (Pluto Press) and "Disappearing Palestine: Israel's Experiments in Human Despair"
(Zed Books). His website is www.jonathan-cook.net .
LONDON – Many of the key players in the escalating British campaign to boycott Israel are Jewish or Israeli, the Jewish
Chronicle revealed in an investigation published Thursday.
According to the investigation, the Jewish academics justify their stance as part of the struggle for Palestinian rights
and ending Israel's occupation of Palestinian territories.
The report stated that a high proportion of the academics were deeply involved in UCU, the University and College Union,
which last month sparked an international outcry by voting to facilitate a boycott of Israeli academic institutions.
Anti-boycott figures suggest that the campaign has been fuelled by a well-organized mix of far-left activists and Islamic
organizations, the JC reported. In reality, the main proponents are a loosely knit collection of academics and trade unionists
linked to groups such as the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Jews for the Boycotting of Israeli Goods, and Bricup, the British
Committee for Universities of Palestine
Working class British do not have their own intellectuals. The Jewish intelligentsia's humanist and realist wings are at war.
Gilad Atzmon is being described without qualification as an Anti Semite in popular British newspapers, which never mention
that he is Jewish.
It used to be that Atzmon being a Jew would protect him from accusations of antisemitism, and he would have be described as
"self hating". Unfortunately the main intellectuals of the pro Palestinian movement are are humanist Jewish intellectuals, often
of Israeli origin and the simple minded white gentiles of the Labour Party foolishly think that they are protected. The brilliant
public relations and political experts working for the realist Israel-supporting Jews always lead with their Sunday punch and
go nuclear with a moralising onslaught on white gentiles to get them to altruistically punish anyone Israel does not like. And
it always works. Yet humanist Jews bleating about the Palestinians can always convince the more intellectual humanitarian white
gentiles into supporting the Palestinians. So it will be never ending.
Britain is done. The laws passed show any idea or statement that criticizes Jews and Israel is antisemitic. Atzmon was foolish
to believe that he had some protection from attacks because he was Jewish. They made an example out of him for the rest of those
who do not fall in line with the belief that all true knowledge comes from the Jews and Israel.
The only chance that Britain has is the fact that the crazy Muslim hoards may actually turn on the Magic Jews and start to
murder them. The Jews may have overplayed their hand with immigration just like in France. The Brits have been pummel into cuckolds
as their world is being destroyed by both the Jews and the Muslims.
It works because the majority Israeli-bought politicians let it work. It works because we the public let the politicians get away
with it.
I'm beginning to think that the only way to expose and end this false equivalency [criticism of Israel = anti-semitism) is
for the 80% [yes!] of Europeans who support Palestine against Israel to show up in droves to their respective parliaments and
insist on being imprisoned according to the law.
It's curious that the Labour Party – in both its Blair and Corbyn manifestations – actively encourages the ethnic displacement
of white Britons from their ancient motherland, with their policy of massive uncontrolled immigration, but weeps great big sobs
and tears about the ethnic displacement of one group of foreigners by another group of foreigners.
Corbyn promised, in the party's manifesto, to back the Brexit referendum result. Now, at the worst possible time, he has reneged
on that promise. He had one thing going for him – his reputation as "principled". There is no move more fatal to that reputation
than what he has just done.
Thankfully, Theresa May has a sense of duty and, I think, will outmanoeuvre him in the end. But
as innumerable denizens of this board will ask themselves: so what if Corbyn stands against British democracy, national sovereignty,
any form of border control? So what if he promotes avowed anti-British racists to his shadow cabinet? At least he probably dislikes
Jews
Ah, yes but it is "unfair to conclude the last bit" – even while the rest is straightforward matter of record "he has Jewish
supporters". Great, but those Jews, who remain Jeremy Corbyn supporters, after his great stab in the back over Brexit, are his
collaborators in his attempt to fatally wound Britain as a nation. That tells me all I need to know about their politics. May
they reflect on their grim dishonesty.
If parliamentary politics returns to business as usual for the wealthy, taking to the streets looks increasingly like the
only option. Maybe it's time to dust off a Yellow Vest.
I've been thinking the same. The political systems in the UK and the US are so putrid that street demonstrations seem the only
way forward.
Issue by issue they can be Brexit or Anti-War, and the minority elites are obliged to use their security forces (with all the
risks that that involves).
One should not merge or confuse, by any means rationally imaginable, -- "Economic Zionism (EZ)", a system of economics that claims
it enjoys exclusive right to establish and enforce its monopoly rule over all persons and things, -- -with --
-- "racial bias", a system that claims it enjoys exclusive right to establish and enforce its Jews-Only rule over all persons
and things.
Jewish is about race, religion and place of origin, Zionism is about economics and unabashed wealth: the two concepts are
polar opposites. Very few non wealthy Jews are zionist.
Zionism has long exploited the myth that wealth established by EZ only comes to a Jewish tribal member who is faithful to the
needs and wants of Zionism. This propaganda has a long history being the key that has opened the door to make many Zionist projects
successful.
the fact that the crazy Muslim hoards may actually turn on the Magic Jews and start to murder them
Of course, it is what is desired and very likely the real reason that they are there in the first place. The gods of finance
don't really care about a few dead self-identifying Jews. Once it happens there will be no more pretence of niceness or democratic
nonsense and the Orwellian police-state crackdown can proceed in earnest but now with almost everyone's blessing. Expect the very
same thing everywhere across Europe and the Anglosphere.
When you fail, or refuse, to understand the root source of the growth of a poisonous thing, you aint ever got no hope better than
a soothing fart in Hell to make a correction.
Anglo-Saxon Puritanism was a Judaizing heresy rising from the specifics of Anglophone rebellion against Christendom, which
'reformation' itself began from Saxon Martin Luther's theorizing how to feel as 'saved' just by being who he was as Jews felt
by being Jews – salvation by faith ONLY became Luther's Christian version of salvation by Jewish blood ONLY. Then Luther cemented
even more the Judaizing of the movement by declaring that the Pharisaic definition of Scripture was the defintion of the Old Testament.
A Judaizing heresy will always produce culture that is pro-Jewish and anti-Christendom and anti-peoples most closely seen as
still reflecting Christendom.
Anglo-Saxon Puritanism was the Protestant precursor of the French Revolution. It swept away all that had been in place before,
so thoroughly that it was the final piece of remaking, at points inverting, the national character that had existed before the
16th century.
The best moniker for that new English culture is WASP, though that initial letter seems to make no sense until the US was on
the scene. However, UK WASP Elites were quite busy during the 18th century explaining how the Irish were subhuman, and by the
dawn of the 19th century political cartoons of the Irish as simian were common – before such images were ever used for blacks
in the USA. That WASP culture then began a rather systematic war to exterminate all cultures native to the British Isles that
were not in step with WASP culture.
All cultures produced by, shaped by, finalized by Judiaizing heresy will not merely evolve so that they become staunchly pro-Jewish,
but that necessarily occurs as they also wage at least culture war to exterminate non-Judaizing white Christian cultures . WASP
culture is defined by WASPs using whatever force required (including forcing huge populations into indentured servitude and rather
large segments into chattel slavery) to batter all non-WASP whites into accepting the overlordship of all thins WASP.
WASP culture immediately signaled that it favored Jews over all non-WASP peoples native to the British Isles – Oliver Cromwell,
a truly quintessential WASP invited Jews back into England legally and granted special rights and privileges that the vast
majority of British Isles natives did not have.
The above pattern was far from a one time thing. It is a major factor even throughout the 19th century: the world's all time
largest and richest empire saw Jewish wealth explode and Jews able to flex their political and cultural power openly, while perhaps
a slim majority of the white natives of the British Isles languished barely on or below the poverty line. It was a world in which
even Charles Dickens had to bow to Jewish demands to rewrite Oliver Twist so that Fagin not only was not identified as a Jews,
open preying on the poorest whites, but that he remove all markers that Fagin was indeed almost certainly a Jew.
The Jewish problem cannot be separated from the WASP problem. You cannot have WASP culture that is not philoSemitic. And WASP
Elites always act to ally with Jews (and by the Victorian era, the
other' Semites: Arabs and Mohammedans) while acting to harm the best interests of the vast majority of white Gentiles.
John Gray on Corbyn's anti-Semitism as a strange subset of his anti-Britishness:
Anti-Semitism has re-established itself on the left partly by way of an ideology of anti-colonialism. Believing Western
colonial power to be the worst evil in history – a progressive orthodoxy that has been inculcated in Western education systems
for decades – sections of the left relativise the Holocaust, treating it as only one among many crimes against humanity. At the
same time, they see Israel as the worst embodiment of colonialism – hence the demand that, alone among the world's states, it
must demonstrate its "right to exist".
Claims that anti-Semitism is being "weaponised" in an attempt to undermine Corbyn are the opposite of the truth. More than
a personal failure, Corbyn's complicity in anti-Semitism is a symptom of the morbid politics he embodies.
Corbyn needs to unleash the huge Labour Party membership on the Blairite traitors in its ranks, especially the MPs. Driven out
into the wilderness they will die off and Labour can consolidate itself against its non-external critics.
Antisemitism in the UK used to mean hostility to the pushiness, greed and mad manners of successful Jews like Philip Green,
but it has now been redefined to mean someone who thinks the Palestinians should not be used as target practice.
Antisemitism here is a middle and upper class thing. There are so few Jews in some parts of the UK that many people have
never met a Jew. I was over 30 before I ever knew anyone who was Jewish.
The middle class and upper class British antisemites see Jews as unpleasant and underhand rivals, but for a working class man
like Chris Williamson, who would probably not have known any Jews when he was growing up in Derby, Jews would have been just another
religious group. I've known many people who have met him. He has no interest in religion. His main concerns are veganism and animal
welfare. His holidays are cycling tours around the nearby national park. He is really just a 1970s hippy in a suit. To tar someone
like that with the old antisemitism canard will backfire. The intelligent British person knows Williamson is not the antisemite
type.
Interestingly, Sir John Chilcot believed as late as 2016 that about 150,000 Iraqis were killed during the invasion and subsequent
instability. The figure was in fact well over one million. This much was known years earlier. Chilcott, covering for his friend
Tony Blair did not read the mounting evidence – or more likely, just ignored it.
The 2006 Lancet survey calculated fatalities at well over 650,000 just three years into the conflict and the 2007 ORB survey
that actually surveyed fifteen of the eighteen governorates within Iraq found that number was somewhere between 1,033,000
and a staggering 1,220,588 . Since then, the violence created by the vacuum has continued and many more civilians have
died. The numbers above do not include deaths after 13 years of sanctions imposed by the UN.
Many members of the general public in Britain might mistakenly think that the bombing has stopped in Iraq and Syria – but
they would be wrong. In fact, in the last four years, Britain has spent over Ł300 million on weapons fired from its air forces,
including drones. The cost does not include personnel, wages, equipment, maintenance, fuel, air bases, etc.
Analysis of data conducted by human rights group Reprieve in 2014 concluded that of 41 men targeted by coalition drone strikes
a further 1,147 innocent civilians were killed simply for being in the way.
Where is the sanctimonious Catholic Church to anathemize the major war criminal Tony Blair the Pious?
Mr Blair made a career out of attacking the enemies of Israel, sending his country into more wars than any prime minister
ever before in history as the UK joined the US in fighting the perceived enemies of Israel both militarily and politically,
advantaging the Zionist cause.
The award is presented by the Dan David Foundation, based at Tel Aviv University
British Labor MP Tam Dalyell has charged that Prime Minister Tony Blair was "being unduly influenced by a cabal of Jewish
advisers"
The comment echoed remarks by U.S. Republican Patrick Buchanan, who was accused of anti-Semitism when in an article
last March, he described a predominantely Jewish group of advisers to President Bush as "a cabal of polemicists and public
officials [who] seek to ensnare our country in a series of wars that are not in America's interests."
Who cares about Israel in this case? He supports another Brexit referendum, supports open borders with the 3rd world, and
is probably a full fledged communist (a Jewish, anti white ideology).
The Jews and the muslims can squabble over petty details, I'm more worried about what will benefit European nations.
His election would be disastrous for the white, European race. Of course, I do fully expect for a hard shift against Israel
as Muslims grow their populations in Europe.
@anon
declare immigration <=fraudulent unwind/ deportation
declare <feminism<= unworkable restore/ patriarchy
Why should the Jews be permitted to declare anything; no one appointed them king?
Instead, what is needed is for the people to hold a referendum that declares race homogenizing immigration to be a technique
capable of use by proponents of Economic Zionism(EZ) to impose divide and conquer strategies on race resolved populations
in order to generate racial unrest and conflict . When divided; the people cannot organize, to throw the rascals out!
EZ monitors and destroys cooperative working together because sooner or later such groups organize with common objects which
involve finding ways to resist nasty outcomes fostered by economic zionism).
I believe the civil rights movement in America was fostered in great measure by privately instituted racial unrest and conflict
objectives.
I've been 'watching' Britain the last few years thru the BBC and other outlets and am slightly amazed at how much they are controlled
by the Jooz and American NEOCONS. Their foreign policy is almost completely Neo coon . They've kept to the Iran
deal, but under the slightest pressure from big Joo they will fold. The charade of the poising last year of two Russian
expats, just as Russia was hosting the World Cup was disgustingly transparent. MI6 is a joo run intelligence service. It's
amazing how Britain has turned into a multi cult whore and slut of the KIKE! It started with Disraeli! They should have been 'pogromed'
out back then!
Israel is not a global outlier for humanitarian issues, so people assume Corbyn's obsession with it has something
to do with it being lived in by Jews.
They're only sort of right. In fact, it is because it is a well-organised country of more Western people than those they're
in conflict with. In other words, Corbyn dislikes Israel, and Jews to some degree, as an extension of his oikophobia.
His oikophobia is best show in his grim betrayal over Brexit. This last part is unforgivable.
McCarthyism is the extension of the European dark age inquisition. Nowadays the American glosses over McCarthyism with the
terms democracy, neo-liberal order, and human rights. Any idealism other than the American's must be denied, even in the accused
own defence. The American presents the accused as an enemy so dangerous, their ideas so corrupting, that they must be silenced
from the outset. Their only chance of rehabilitation is prostration before their accusers and utter repentance.
@Ned
LudlamHuge membership of aging Trots LARPing as the youth and only being less than half of what the Green party
got in votes at the last election
The Conservatives ran their last campaign with a clear Brexit position and honesty over no tax cuts and no big government spending
increases because we're bankrupt. I don't think there's ever been such a truthful but unexciting campaign by a political party.
I don't think any party will make that mistake again. Corbyn instead ran on a lie over Brexit and infinite gibs for everyone.
It is sad that the latter softened his loss considerably.
Couldn't agree more. The "Left's" core value in the US and UK is white genocide. It really doesn't matter what Corbyn thinks
about the Jew-occupied territories in Palestine as long as he's assisting the Jewish occupation in the UK.
Yeah, Too bad about Corbin. He's a good bloke. Trump should give him a green card and make him Secretary Of Labor. Do we still
have a Secretary Of Labor?
Here's some data on the last Labour MP -- an Ian Austin -- who quit because of 'anti-semitism.' His recorded foreign trips over
the last three years make fascinating reading.
Will the Supreme Court Finally Protect the Right Not to Work on the Sabbath?
The Supreme Court may be on the verge of correcting a constitutional injustice that has affected the lives and careers of thousands
of religiously observant employees for almost half a century. It can do so in a case that the justices have obviously been taking
very seriously during their recent private conferences.
The case involves an Orlando, Florida, training instructor, Darrell Patterson, who sued his former employer, Walgreen Co.,
for religious discrimination. Patterson is a member of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, which prohibits work on the Sabbath.
Walgreen scheduled Patterson for a Saturday shift, and fired him when he refused the assignment. The case made it to the Eleventh
Circuit federal appeals court, which ruled for Walgreen. The court held that forcing Walgreen to guarantee that Patterson would
never have to work on Saturdays posed an undue hardship on the corporation. Patterson and his church, backed by several other
religious groups, have asked the Supreme Court to hear his case, and the court will soon decide whether to do so.
The second sentences is completely perverse. "McCarthyism" was created by "the powerful," but it was the communists and
their fellow travelers in high places seeking to avoid detection and accountability by incriminating McCarthy, a self-rationalizing
smear that worked out very well for them.
True enough, it was the communists (or rather Jewish activists) and their fellow travelers in high places who created the "McCarthyism"
meme.
It was constructed as a psychological shield against future interference in their subversion – the same as the "Anti-Semitism"
and "Conspiracy Theory" memes.
For example, the MSM have trained the US public to regard anyone who questions the government account of 9/11 as a sort of
far out nutcase looking for UFOs. If you don't believe it, read the factual impossibilities of the government 9/11 account in
the literature of Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth https://www.ae911truth.org/
and try presenting some of the evidence in a friendly way (e.g. that the towers didn't collapse due to fire) in a middle class
social setting – and see what happens.
"Taken together, these four volumes constitute an extraordinary commentary on a basic weakness in the Soviet system. The Soviets
are heavily dependent on Western technology and innovation not only in their civilian industries, but also in their military programs.
An inevitable conclusion from the evidence in this book is that we have totally ignored a policy that would enable us to neutralize
Soviet global ambitions while simultaneously reducing the defense budget and the tax load on American citizens." . . .
" His book tells at least part of the story of the Soviet Union's reliance on Western technology, including the infamous Kama
River truck plant, which was built by the Pullman-Swindell company of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, a subsidiary of M. W. Kellogg
Co. Prof. Pipes remarks that the bulk of the Soviet merchant marine, the largest in the world, was built in foreign shipyards.
He even tells the story (related in greater detail in this book) of the Bryant Chucking Grinder Company of Springfield, Vermont,
which sold the Soviet Union the ball-bearing machines that alone made possible the targeting mechanism of Soviet MIRV'ed ballistic
missiles. "
"The communists (high-ups in the FDR and Truman administrations who were, secretly working for Stalin, e.g. Alger Hiss,
Harry Dexter White, Lauchlin Bernard Currie) . . . "
It wasn't just the US government 'supporting' the S.U.?
@anarchyst
But McCarthy's lawyer was Ray Cohen, the queer jew. Ray Cohen was also Trump's mentor. And Ray Cohen was also a close friend of
Roger Stone, who is also a fairy of some flavor or another. Stone was recently crudely raided by the FBI, for lying about Trump's
non-connections to jewish mafia in Russia, which Trump clearly has.
I have no idea what this all means, except that satanists like Crowley were also into weird forms of bisexuality.
@Tyrion
2 Please ponder on the following before accusing others in the lack of humanness.
Antisemitism in the UK used to mean hostility to the pushiness, greed and mad manners but it has now been redefined
to mean someone who thinks the Palestinians should not be used as target practice.
@Tyrion
2 John Gray is a genuine intellectual and, as far as I know, of solid working class origins. However he was associated with
the Conservative party rather than Labour and very greatly influenced by his friendship with Isaiah Berlin. Gray is good example
of how white gentile intellectuals not of the left attack the hapless Labour white gentiles by drawing a bien pensant parallel
between racial anti Semitism, the Holocaust and antiZionism.
Racist attitudes have existed in sections of the British left throughout much of its history. What is unprecedented is that
anti-Semitism is now an integral part of a new style of politics promoted by the leader of the Labour Party. [ ]
Claims that anti-Semitism is being "weaponised" in an attempt to undermine Corbyn are the opposite of the truth. More than
a personal failure, Corbyn's complicity in anti-Semitism is a symptom of the morbid politics he embodies. But is the British
conscience now so lax and coarse that voters are ready to propel into power a party led, and in its current form largely created,
by a shifty figure whose most genuine quality is a deep-seated affinity with the politics of conspiracy and hate?
A few years ago the contest for the Labour party came down to a choice e between the Milibrands: two sons of a Trotskyite theoretician
and his wife that had hastened to Britain during WW2, because they were Jewish people.
The Miliband days are over. So was the brothers' epic battle worth it? Despite their flaws, David and Ed Miliband are two
of the most talented Labour politicians of their generation. Theirs is both a political and a personal tragedy
'The relationship between these two siblings irrevocably changed the day Ed decided he wanted to be leader of the Labour
party, too.' Photograph: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images
The leaders of disinvestment and antiZionism are the humanist wing of the Jewish intelligentsia. The Israel Lobby essay of
Mearshiemer and Walt that latter became best selling screed was was commissioned by London Review of Books's Mary-Kay Wilmers.
"I'm unambiguously hostile to Israel because it's a mendacious state". Wilmers is Jewish, and has used 25 million of family trust
money for the LRB. The intellectual, financial and organisational resources behind antZionism are are almost completely supplied
by humanistic Jewish intellectuals.
Not convinced? How about brilliant biologist Steven Rose (once Britain's youngest full professor and chair of department. )
a founder member of the British Society for Social Responsibility in Science in the 1960s, and more recently they have been
instrumental in calling for a boycott of Israeli academic institutions for as long as Israel continues its occupation of the
Palestinian Territories, on the grounds of Israeli academics' close relationship with the IDF. An open letter[6] initiated
by Steven and Hilary Rose, and also signed by 123 other academics was published in The Guardian on 6 April 2002.[7] In 2004
Hilary Rose and he were the founding members of the British Committee for Universities of Palestine.[5][8]
Gray is not alone in failing to mention anything about the identity of the most formidable antiZionists.
Jonathon Cook, just another example of his people trying to monopolize all political positions (hint: he has been a dual citizen,
Israeli and Brit for some years, so that means ).
I found this site, according to the search engine's blurb, it was his. Not now.
I do not think that he is now connected to it, but the contents are very strange. Worth looking, esp. if interested in the
pathologies of 'the religion of peace'.
He is surely the least worth reading of commentators here, I can see that Mr. Unz prints 'Cook' articles for the commenary
on Brit politics, but surely there must be an actual British person who is actually living there writing good commentary, instead
of a former crypto-Jew now living in Israel (but still making big efforts to stay as crypto as possible)?
Corbyn shaming and humiliating the Brit sellout elite that genuflects to the Jews.
Corbyn calls for UK to condemn Israel's targeting of Palestinians
March 2, 2019 at 1:37 pm | Published in: Europe & Russia, Israel, Middle East, News, Palestine, UK
Head of the British Labour Party Jeremy Corbyn has called for the UK government to condemn Israel's killing of Palestinians
as well as to freeze arms sales to the occupation state.
His remarks came in the wake of a UN report which found that Israel might have committed war crimes against Palestinians.
On Twitter, Corbyn wrote: "The UN says Israel's killings of demonstrators in Gaza – including children, paramedics and
journalists – may constitute 'war crimes or crimes against humanity'".
"The UK government must unequivocally condemn the killings and freeze arms sales to Israel."
The UN report, published earlier this week, said: "The Israeli security forces killed and maimed Palestinian demonstrators
who did not pose an imminent threat of death or serious injury to others when they were shot, nor were they directly participating
in hostilities," adding that the protests had been "civilian in nature".
@Tyrion
2 The member of the House of Lords (Baron) Glasman is the 100% Jewish son of a businessman who had his own manufacturing company.
Though he talks a lot of sense, I really don't see Maurice Glasman being the mastermind of the the Labour Party's "Blue" school
of strategic thought (see here
) is an indication that the indigenous British working class are producing their own thinkers. Did it really need a Jewish academic
to say that Labour were in a 'weird space where we thought that a real assault on the wage levels of English workers was a positive
good'?
Even if they thought it, white gentiles in the Labour Party did not dare articulate the obvious truth that mass immigration
under Labour was 'an unofficial wages policy'. There is a lack of confidence in their own thought processes among everyone but
Jews, and not just in the Labour Party.
John Gray's book Black Mass had the thesis of a link between the Bible's 1,000-year reign of the saints, Christian millenarianism
, Nazism's a 1000-year Reich Auschwitz and the Enlightenment which Gray sees as explaining the invasion of Iraq but when he actual
identified the people responsible for influencing Bush, he was, as Damian Thompson noted in a review, too nervous to mention that
they, and others (pre 9/11 Wolfowitz had been like 'a parrot' about toppling Saddam ), wanting an invasion of Iraq were mostly
Jewish. Some people say Rumsfeld (a gentile with what Jews think is a very Jewish sounding name) was the prime mover in that perhaps
forgetting his support of Saddam's Iraq complete with its open nuclear construction project during the Reagan Presidency. Rumsfeld
was greatly influenced by the Albert Wohlsetter
, who became the guru of Richard Perle who dated Wohlsetter's daughter when they met at Hollywood High School (Ron Unz was born
in Hollywood).
Holliwood is exceptionally Jewish, because it is basically Jews who make films that people will pay to see,. They understand
human nature and how to work with it, and thus Jews have a greater power to influence or force of moral suasion than other people.
As a result the great debates in the West come down to arguments between Jews as with the vendetta between
Bernard Brodie and Wohlsetter
(who without any official position, invented the Missile Gap for JFK and the Window Of Opportunity for Reagan).
@Tyrion
2Israel is not a global outlier for humanitarian issues.
You lie so effortlessly, so carefree, with such nonchalance, such blithe. How do you do it?
The Jew "humanitarian" obsession with getting Iran has let to this.
Over 80,000 kids under the age of five have died of starvation in Yemen, UN chief says
"Children did not start the war in Yemen, but they are paying the highest price. Some 360,000 children are suffering from
severe acute malnutrition, fighting for their lives every day. And one credible report put the number of children under 5 who
have died of starvation at more than 80,000," Guterres told a donor conference in the Swiss city of Geneva on Tuesday.
The merit for having introduced into the Ukrainian Constitution the engagement to enter officially into NATO goes to Parliamentary
President Andriy Parubiy. Co-founder in 1991 of the Ukrainian National-Socialist Party, on the model of Adolf Hitler's
National-Socialist Party; head of the neo-Nazi paramilitary formations which were used in 2014 during the putsch of Place Maďdan
under US/NATO command, and in the massacre of Odessa ; head of the Ukraine National Security and Defense Council, which,
with the Azov Battalion and other neo-Nazi units, attacked Ukrainian civilians of Russian nationality in the Eastern part of
the country and used his squadrons for acts of ferocious abuse, the plunder of political headquarters and other auto-da-fés
in a truly Nazi style.
Ukraine is already linked to NATO, of which it is a partner: for example, the Azov Battalion, whose Nazi character is represented
by the emblem copied from that of the SS unit Das Reich, has been transformed into a special operations regiment, equipped
with armoured vehicles and trained by US instructors from the 173rd Airborne Division, transferred to Ukraine from Vicence,
and seconded by other NATO members.
Not a peep from Britsh purists of holo-biz persuasion. LFI chair Joan Ryan, in particular, is not "disturbed' at all by the
NATO cooperation with Ukrainian neo-Nazi. The Friends of Israel in the UK accept cordially the "good" neo-Nazis that have been
accepted by the Jewish State itself:
@Sean
On the other hand, why do the pro-Palestinian intellectuals in the diaspora always lose out? Why are they incapable of ever showing
influence in any serious way in the Jewish community? Why is it not a widely known reality that most diaspora have views on Israel
similar to the broad opinion in their host countries or even more radical inline with their socio-political stance elsewhere?
Perhaps they don't get much support from the others because they don't want to give it. If even the likes of Rachel Riley and
Stephen Fry are on the anti-Corbyn witchhunt, what is the attitude of the average Jew?
For god's sake, Riley is barely Jewish, (to the point that practically nobody knew she considered herself Jewish until now)
never lived a second in Israel and yet is so emotionally attached to it that she waged a full spectrum media campaign (complete
with the typical selfie of her looking sad after online 'assault') in service of silencing any dissent on Israel.
As Atzmon himself has noted, the entry of large numbers of Jews in the pro-Palestinian movement shifted it's agenda to one
less and less accommodating to Palestinian interests and less demanding of Israel. See MondoWeiss.
Please explain, brainwashed American. Childhood brainwashing is remarkably effective.
These people are right and they know it. If you can't afford to got to hospital and get deeper in debt because you can't afford
the interest payments, just borrow for a flight to Cuba and stay there. You will get the hospital care and not sink deeper into
debt.
Or are you about to start screaming about the most vicious, evil Communist of all time, Jesus of Nazareth, who said, "Sell
all you have and give to the poor"?
Or do you know some objective specifics that the rest of us should know about?
Sometimes soon the FUK, the Former United Kingdom, will have to get used to the fact, that they are not an Empire anymore.
The Lobby has helped the Tories in Britain a lot recently in painting Corbyn as an anti-Semite. Making sure that Corbyn
never becomes prime minister is a big issue for them.
The payback for the Israeli help given is, of course, banning Hizbullah.
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- –
the UK has really gone insane! did they ban bds and anyone opposed to zionism too? only a matter of time
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- –
The UK's been in gross violation of International Law for decades on end, the latest determination by the WCJ on the Chomoro
Islanders is its latest defeat and proof of its terrorizing policies. Then we have the subject of support for terrorists in
Syria and terrorism in Venezuela. Some brave, enterprising folk ought to plant a passel of Hezbollah flags on the grounds of
the minister's house, then report him for his crime of being in possession of banned material. And yet another reason for Scots
to vote for independence and the end of Union, as I'm certain Scots don't want to be associated with a terror state like Britain.
The UK government has been supporting the terrorists of all stripes including White Helmets and Al Qaeda -- as was ordered
by their masters in Tel Aviv and the Friends of Israel in the UK. The traitorous fools still believe in the chosenites' omnipotence.
But what happens when this anti-Semitic nonsense creates the White Christian Radicals who want to avenge the murder of the Christ
that was done by the Hebrews. Are they ready for that?
Jewish is about race, religion and place of origin,
Modern Jews are not a religion, not a race, and have no place of origin. They are a gang forever imprisoned in an inherited
totalitarian culture by childhood brainwashing to hate all non-Jews. The first thing they are taught is that the non-Jews have
always hated the Jews and wanted to kill them, when the reverse is true.
Most Jews are atheists. It is on record that David Ben-Gurion was an atheist, but still he was a Jew. So Judaism is not a religion.
As for place of origin, it is about how far the proselytizing rabbis reached in the cosmopolitan world of the Macedonian and
Roman empires, where travel was safe and the whole world shared Greek as its lingua franca.
Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye compass land and sea to make one proselyte, and when he is made,
ye make him twofold more the child of hell than yourselves. [Matt. 23:15, original in Greek!]
The mark of modern Jews is that hypocrisy, pretending they are the victims, that everyone wants to kill them. It goes back
at least as far as the Book of Esther, a fictitious story about how the Persians wanted to kill all the Jews for a trivial reason.
Jew-hating is an incurable disease. Under certain democratic conditions it may not flourish well. Under certain conditions
the germ may even appear to die, but it never does die even in most ideal climate. [Leon Uris, Exodus ]
"Angry arguments broke out in the West Virginia statehouse on Friday after the state Republican Party allegedly set up an anti-Muslim
display in the rotunda linking the 9/11 terror attacks to a freshman congresswoman from Minnesota.
The display featured a picture of the World Trade Center in New York City as a fireball exploded from the one of the Twin Towers,
set above a picture of Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar, who is Muslim. "'Never forget' – you said. . ." read a caption on the
first picture. "I am the proof – you have forgotten," read the caption under the picture of Omar, who is wearing a hijab.
One staff member was physically injured during the morning's confrontations, and another official resigned after being accused
of making anti-Muslim comments. Several Democrats objected to the display, and reportedly got into an argument with the House's
sergeant at arms, Anne Lieberman, after she allegedly made an anti-Muslim remark.
Del. Mike Angelucci, D-Marion, charged Lieberman had said "all Muslims are terrorists." "I am furious, and I don't want to
see her representing the people of this great state in the House again," Angelucci said of Lieberman, who became the state's first
female sergeant at arms last year. Speaking to West Virginia Public Broadcasting, Lieberman denied she'd made the comment. By
the end of the day she had submitted her resignation "effective immediately," officials said
It's amazing how Britain has turned into a multi cult whore and slut of the KIKE! It started with Disraeli!
I haven't read his books. I might be a little pedantic here. But I have read his biography by a French Jew, André Maurois,
a famous author. Disraeli was a Christian. Jewish childhood. But never knew that till he went to school and found that he and
another pupil were treated differently when the time came for the class on religion. Great puzzle for him and Sarah to work out.
And instead of bar-mitzvah, which he had probably never heard of, he went to baptism.
@Tyrion
2 LOL. Israel lives parasitically off of stolen land and it's fifth column in the West preventing even remotely balanced policy
towards it. It really is amazing how you fail to see how transparent your bullshit is.
Soon Corbyn will stand alone, exposed before the inquisition that has been prepared for him.
No. He will have support from Ireland and Scotland. The Brits, artificial famines, and exporting cheap labour and slaves abroad:
An artificial famine
"A Celtic cross stands high above the waters at the western end of Canada's Grosse Isle. The Cross bears inscription in Gaelic,
French and English, carved on ebony panels."
" Children of the Gael died in their thousands on this island having fled from the laws of the foreign tyrants and an
artificial famine in the years 1847-48.
God's loyal blessing upon them. Let this monument be a token to their name and honour from the Gaels of America. God save Ireland."
"That is the translation from the Gaelic inscription. The bitterness of the accusatory Gaelic inscription is absent from the
English dedication. [ ] The French dedication is similarly lacking in bitterness."
Edward Laxton, The Famine Ships, The Irish Exodus to America . An Owl Book, Henry Holt and Company, New York.
@Anonymous
These are very valid points, but the fact is, the powers that be are terrified of his election for a reason. The sad fact is,
political hope these days lies with the Left, since the cuck right is beyond useless, and there is currently little hope for a
legitimate opposition Right movement. It would be thoroughly demonized in the US and subject to arrest in toilets like Britain
or France. AOC is a very stupid girl, but people like her and Corbyn deserve some consideration, unfortunately.
Israel conspires against the Mother of Parliaments
"A quite incredible story out of England has not received much media coverage in the United States. It concerns how the
Israeli Embassy in London connived with government officials to "take down" parliamentarians and government ministers who were
considered to be critical of the Jewish State. It was also learned that the Israeli Embassy was secretly subsidizing and advising
private groups promoting Israeli interests, including associations of Members of Parliament (MPs)."
It's absolutely amazing how even the very concept of Jewry (let alone their actual existence) can sow such enormous discord all
up and down the political spectrum, with such myriad permutations and combinations thereof.
At the end of the day, there has to be a kind of benign neglect towards the Jews, BUT ONLY after each and every last single
one of them has moved to Israel, by force if necessary. None of them should be allowed to live ever again in any other nation-state,
nor have any controlling interests in anything outside of Israel. Otherwise the rest of us will be back at each other's throats
again in no time.
If they're all in one spot, attending to their own interests, then fine, so be it. They can do whatever they want to and with
their immediate moslem neighbors, as long as the rest of the world doesn't feel obliged to assist, resist, or even care very much.
At that point it should all be left up to them. Truly, a pox on all their houses.
In a much-cited October 2003 essay in The New York Review of Books, Judt called to dismantle the state and to replace it
with "a single, integrated, bi-national state" between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea – a recipe for national suicide
for the sovereign Jewish entity. This categorical rejection of Zionism put him in a class with other contemporary Jewish intellectuals
of the Diaspora such as Jacqueline Rose, Michael Neumann and Joel Kovel,
I suppose they are not taken seriously by people with their hands on the levers of power and governments, because they are
asking too much. Diaspora intellectuals represent the intelligentsia's view, which is that ethnic domination of a nations-state
as with the Jewish state of Israel is incompatible with humanist principles.
Lots of politicians get elected by sounding as if they are humanists, but then they are responsible for a state and they start
to obey the dictates of realism. Withdrawing from the occupied territories is now quite clearly something Israel has no intention
of ever doing, although it would not require the evacuation of more than 48,000 people (9000 families) according to this
The information in the above link was quite surprising to me, and it seems that expulsion of the West Bank Arabs is, for the
foreseeable future, a long way from of being the best solution for Israel.
Nevertheless as Ehud Barak said "Every attempt [by the State of Israel] to keep hold of this area [the West Bank and Gaza]
as one political entity leads, necessarily, to either a nondemocratic or a non-Jewish state. Because if the Palestinians vote,
then it is a binational state, and if they don't vote it is an apartheid state." I think the Palestinians position is stronger
than Israel and its Lobby want anyone to know, so they are making maximum efforts to stifle debate. But the Palestinians are holding
out for much more that just a state, partly because of Western internationalists.
@Sean
Your post reminds me of my Great Aunt, who was prone to saying things like "your birthday is the 2nd of July and mine is in September,
that's amazing, because 2 + 7 (July) = 9 (September)" as if this was meaningful.
The reductio ad adsurdum of this where you try to include Rumsfeld in a special peri-Jew category on account of the sound of
his name
@Tyrion
2 The Jewish State is indeed an outlier considering its hypocrisy, including holo-biz profiteering schema based on the alleged
"superior morality" and "eternal victimhood" and other Anne Frank specialties:
@Sean
The progressives are Janus-faced. In that on one they believe in the perfect, but on the other hand they let it be the enemy of
the good, thus they end up rejecting realistic achievement and instead exult in bringing it low. They, and their allies, seem
to be mostly riffs on Year Zero cults. No wonder they get all loved up for Islamist fanaticism.
Idolators, perfectionists and slavish decandents, all at once. Naturally, they're strongest among the coddled and well-to-do.
Let's all sit around and worship the golden calf to absolute excess, while we fade away or starve. There can be no middle ground
between perfection or complete embrace of the other.
@Che
Guava Why do you call Cook a crypto-Jew? His claim to Israeli citizenship is based only on his marriage to an Israeli citizen
and she is a Christian Palestinian.
@james
charles Another individual whom, like Corbyn, claimed to be for British sovereignty all of his political career in order to
signal his patriotism but then, when push came to shove, he campaigned for Remain.
Worse, when given a second chance and the backing of a public vote to go for Brexit, again like Corbyn, Duncan doubled down
and ended up dismissing the vote as a mere "working class tantrum".
With his "soak the poor", "open borders", "let them eat cultural enrichment" attitude, he is the Marie Antoinette of British
politics.
Crime is a legal definition. This means that to commit big crime you make it legal. Or, you
can try to enhance your commercial business or money making organization by getting conduct
made into a crime that is competition to your activity, like is found in copyright law, and is
done by state governments that make gambling illegal but have state-run lotteries in which the
odds of winning are so remote they make the negative percentage in Las Vegas casino games look
like a paragon of virtue. This also means that the concept of a crime is created by a
government, even though it is commonly thought to be bad behavior (or a failure to act), as
described by social relations, culture, religion, and human biology (with murder opposed by the
instinctive act of self defense). Conduct that is said to be bad enough is defined as a crime
and involves the government using force directly against the actor at least in the form
initially of an arrest, possible imprisonment, or later if an order from a criminal court case
is not followed.
The ongoing jabbering in the mass media -- starting in November 2016 when Donald Trump
was elected president -- declared that all sorts of conduct was illegal, as a civil or criminal
case, or should be the subject of charges for impeachment. A lot of that talk can be described
as horse manure, but it has had a real effect on the public, which effect has been and is the
intent. It reached a fever pitch last week when Judge T.S. Ellis III, an American hero, in
a federal court in the Eastern District of Virginia, sentenced Paul Manafort in one of his two
criminal cases to 47 months in prison, which was noticeably below the "sentencing guidelines
range" of 235 to 293 months--
Television talkers expressed shock and dismay that Manafort received such a "low" sentence
below the guidelines and they look forward with glee to his second sentencing on 13 March,
beginning at 9:30 a.m., eastern time, in federal court in Washington DC, with Judge Amy Berman
Jackson presiding. Her rulings can be described as statistically matching to a degree those
requested by government prosecutors in cases brought by "special counsel" Robert Mueller, who
was tasked to investigate "interference" in the 2016 presidential election by the Russian
government, with attention to "collusion" by the Trump campaign, but mysteriously not involving
possible collusion with Russia by the Hillary Clinton campaign.
Just as important as the definition of a crime are the rules of procedure and evidence that
govern a criminal justice system from start to finish, such as: detaining and arresting a
person, questioning a suspect, confinement or release before a trial (if any), pretrial court
hearings, a trial itself by a jury or otherwise, any appeal of a trial's verdict, ordering a
sentence of punishment or a consequence to the finding of guilt, suspending a sentence through
probation, operating a prison, the power of a president or governor to pardon a person's
conviction or commute the sentence, and so forth.
This brings us to the Federal Sentencing Guidelines, a deceptive name if there ever was
one. They are part of the Comprehensive Crime Control Act of 1984 (CCCA), disguised inside
House Joint Resolution 648, "A joint resolution making continuing appropriations for the fiscal
year 1985, and for other purposes", which became Public Law 98-473 and which president Ronald
Reagan signed on 12 October 1984. That legislation shifted the existing federal criminal law so
extensively that it can accurately be described as a radical change. Whether becoming a law in
1984 was a coincidence or an arrogant expression by implementing some of the meaning in George
Orwell's novel "Nineteen Eighty-four" (published in 1949) is not known.
The so-called guidelines came from the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984, introduced by Senator
Edward Kennedy (Dem. Massachusetts), and they became part of the Comprehensive Crime Control
Act of 1984, which in turn was Title 2 of the continuing appropriations bill, Public Law
98-473. In the legislation, Congress created the United States Sentencing Commission, and it
would write the new sentencing rules, and federal judges would have to sentence someone within
the "guideline range" set by the commission. This smaller "guideline range" was within the
regular "range of punishment" set by Congress as a possible minimum to maximum sentence for
each particular crime Congress defined. Before the CCCA, if a defendant was found guilty, the
federal judge had the power and discretion to sentence the person to anything within the
regular range of punishment established by Congress, and order probation if allowed in that
instance. But the sentencing guidelines took that discretion away from the federal judge,
and required the sentence to be within the guideline range. The self-righteous language that
supposedly allowed a judge to "depart" from the guideline range in a certain way was laughable
as a practical matter.
When the sentencing guidelines became law, the sentencing commission magically was said to
become part of the judicial branch of government, where it resides today [1].
When the sentencing guidelines kicked in and became operational, a court challenge followed.
The case made it to the U.S. Supreme Court, as United States v. Mistretta, 488 U.S. 361 (1989),
and even though at that time "liberals" such as Judges William Brennan, Thurgood Marshall, and
John Paul Stevens were on the court, the decision was 8 to 1 that the guidelines were
constitutional, with the lone dissenter being none other than Antonin Scalia [2]. Sometimes
Judge Scalia would pull back covering language about an issue and shine a light on what was
really going on. He did so at the start of his dissent--
"While the products of the Sentencing Commission's labors have been given the modest name
'Guidelines,' see 28 U.S.C. 994(a)(1) (1982 ed., Supp. IV); United States Sentencing
Commission Guidelines Manual (June 15, 1988), they have the force and effect of laws,
prescribing the sentences criminal defendants are to receive. A judge who disregards them
will be reversed, 18 U.S.C. 3742 (1982 ed., Supp. IV). I dissent from today's decision
because I can find no place within our constitutional system for an agency created by
Congress to exercise no governmental power other than the making of laws."
As some sort of smiling rationale is always given for a new law or governmental action, the
sentencing guidelines were promoted as providing certainty and fairness in sentencing and
avoiding unwarranted disparities among defendants with similar records found guilty of similar
offenses. Never mind that the differences between individual human beings, their backgrounds,
and behavior are basically unlimited and disparate in reality. The existence of reality was not
part of the new game, and "disparity" was claimed to be a bad thing. Asserted to be just as bad
was the difference between federal judges and the sentences they imposed. Surprisingly, one of
the original members of the sentencing commission, Paul Robinson, objected to what was created
as a final product, and Judge Scalia quoted him--
" ' Under the guidelines, the judge could give the same sentence for abusive sexual
contact that puts the child in fear as for unlawfully entering or remaining in the United
States. Similarly, the guidelines permit equivalent sentences for the following pairs of
offenses: drug trafficking and a violation of the Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act;
arson with a destructive device and failure to surrender a cancelled naturalization
certificate; operation of a common carrier under the influence of drugs that causes injury
and alteration of one motor vehicle identification number; illegal trafficking in explosives
and trespass; interference with a flight attendant and unlawful conduct relating to
contraband cigarettes; aggravated assault and smuggling $11,000 worth of fish.' Dissenting
View of Commissioner Paul H. Robinson on the Promulgation of the Sentencing Guidelines by the
United States Sentencing Commission 6-7 (May 1, 1987) (citations omitted)".
The point was and is that laws are to be made by Congress, and not from scratch by
delegating the power to a type of commission, which Judge Scalia called "a sort of
junior-varsity Congress". This context also raises thoughts about the separation of powers in
the structure of the federal government.
Sentencing in federal court became a process of assigning a certain number of points to
certain factors, and adding them up and subtracting some to reach a numerical score, and after
that looking at a grid and finding the pigeon hole telling you, and the handcuffed judge, what
the sentence within the new, smaller range of punishment could be. If you think that such a
process is surreal, it is. The sentencing scheme with its new commission became a sprawling
monster, not only in its text and procedures, but also in its expenditure of time and money and
court litigation, which continues to this day. Here is the current version of the sentencing
guidelines manual, in excess of 500 pages, which you can read if your stomach can stand
it--
After the guidelines became effective in 1987 and the Mistretta opinion was handed down in
1989, the problems generated by the new system became more and more obvious and acute. Despite
dissatisfaction expressed in the legal community, Congress did nothing, and it took 15 years
until 2004 for another case with some substance to be accepted by the Supreme Court for review,
called United States vs. Booker, 543 U.S. 220 (2005). It produced an unusual decision
consisting of two separate majority opinions, with each one made up of a different group of
five judges, and several dissenting opinions [3].
One opinion ruled that two sections of the Sentencing Reform Act that made the guidelines
mandatory had to be severed and excised from that law because a conflict existed between facts
that might be found by a jury through a defendant's Sixth Amendment right to a jury trial, and
what could be done under the mandatory aspects of the sentencing guidelines. Invalidating the
two sections made the guidelines effectively advisory , but the "[federal] district courts,
while not bound to apply the Guidelines, must consult those Guidelines and take them into
account when sentencing", and the "courts of appeals review sentencing decisions for
unreasonableness" (see pages 246-267, pdf pages 448-469). The supreme court did not have the
intestinal fortitude to strike down the entire sentencing guidelines regime, and instead wrote
around the problems, split hairs, and kept the system mostly in place, requiring the trial
judge to still consider the "numerous factors that guide sentencing", and a court of appeals
can review the judge's sentence and decide whether it is "unreasonable".
Judge Stephen Breyer is the author of that particular majority opinion in the Booker case
that kept the guidelines mostly in place; Supreme Court Judge John Paul Stevens wrote the other
majority opinion. One of the original members of the U.S. Sentencing Commission from 1985-1989
was a judge on the federal First Circuit Court of Appeals named Stephen Breyer, who was on that
court from 1980-1994. He was nominated to the U.S. Supreme Court by president Bill Clinton and
took his seat on 3 August 1994.
The world is indeed small, for in the Booker case before the supreme court in 2004, two
lawyers involved in writing the brief (the written argument) for the Justice Department to
support the guidelines were Christopher Wray, now the FBI Director, and Michael Drebeen, who
has been in the Solicitor General's office in the Justice Department and who has been working
at least part time since 2017 for -- you guessed it -- special counsel Robert Mueller [4]. In
this New York Times newspaper story from 6 June 2017 about Christopher Wray being nominated to
be FBI Director, at the beginning of the story is a photograph from February 2004 of three men
standing together -- James Comey (the Deputy Attorney General), Robert Mueller (FBI Director),
and Christopher Wray (Chief of the Criminal Division in the Justice Department) [5]. To
slightly modify the immortal words of comedian George Carlin, "It's a small club, and you're
not in it".
The growing mutation of the sentencing system continues, with endless quibbling among
lawyers in court, judges, and the sentencing commission through litigation over detailed
bureaucratic parts of the guidelines attempting to identify and pull under control every
conceivable variation of a person, the person's conduct, and different factors that might be
considered in a sentence, and assign a number to it, ultimately producing your guideline and
criminal history levels. The sentencing commission has published a selected annotation of 85
supreme court cases from the Mistretta decision in 1989 to one from 2018, with a brief
discussion of each opinion [6].
You can now see and understand the real reason for the U.S. Sentencing Commission and the
carefully crafted system of assigning numbers to points and designing strict categories to
include and control every possible factor about ordering a sentence for a crime.
This system removes the sentencing power and discretion from the courts and judges in the
judicial branch and gives them to the prosecuting attorneys in the executive branch, through
the Department of Justice and the offices of U.S. Attorneys. It has been and is a clever and
diabolical transfer to the prosecuting authority of one of the most important functions in a
criminal justice system: the sentencing punishment or consequence given to a defendant.
I, the federal prosecutor, will decide what your sentence will be by the offenses I decide
to charge you with. All I have to do is get a guilty verdict from a jury trial or from a trial
to the judge if you agree to have a judge alone hear and decide the trial. Or obtain a guilty
plea from you to a charge and on terms that I agree to, whether that guilty plea results from
your objective decision about your conduct, or whether you are coerced into pleading guilty by
the sheer number of charges with possible sentences I have filed against you, or you plead
guilty because you have run out of money and cannot afford a trial, or I threaten to charge
your wife or family members also if you do not plead guilty to what I agree you can plead to.
The judge is so constrained and limited by the sentencing guideline scheme that I am not
worried at all about the sentence you will get; I have no downside risk there.
The presentence investigation report (PSI) about Paul Manafort from the federal probation
office was filed on 6 March and is not publicly available, as is standard practice. Manafort's
sentencing hearing on 13 March is taking on the aura of a spectacle, boosted by the
government's allegation that he violated the terms of his plea agreement, and after the
courageous departure downward from the sentencing guidelines by Judge T.S. Ellis III last week.
Whether Judge Ellis's sentence may be the subject of review by appeal is another dense
issue.
Meanwhile, in the pending case of Gen. Michael Flynn (ret.), a status report by the lawyers
was filed on 12 March. It requested that his sentencing hearing be rescheduled--
Politicians, the press, and candidates announcing a year before the presidential primaries
begin are blathering on clownlike about who has verbally offended whom, which newly invented
group should have new "rights", whether someone is cis-gender, whether the president had sexual
contact with a floozy pornographic movie performer and whether a legal payment to her to keep
it confidential violated campaign finance laws (it did not), and on and on.
All the while, they are blithely unaware that playing out right in front of their faces is a
radical transformation of federal criminal law, consolidating the ultimate governmental power
in the branch that executes the police power, while federal judges with a lifetime appointment
and all office facilities and perks paid for by taxpayers, dither and refuse to honestly
describe and resist what has been happening. All federal judges except for two. One, Antonin
Scalia, left this world in 2016, but was the only one on the supreme court standing against the
slick usurpation of the democratic process and sentencing discretion. The other one, T.S. Ellis
III, is still with us, and he not only understands what the sentencing guidelines really are,
but he also assessed a sentence as it used to be done, without the double meaning of 1984.
[2] The official version of a Supreme Court opinion is in a book called the United States
Reports. The Supreme Court has a digital version of its opinions in the pdf computer format
going back only to volume 509, and the Mistretta opinion is in volume 488. Other internet
websites have reproduced the opinion.
[3] The supreme court opinion is in a bound volume on the court's website, but I do not have
the software at hand to pull it out as a separate document. The full volume of 1,259 pages in
the pdf computer format is 3.9 megabytes in size and can be viewed or downloaded. The Booker
opinion is on pdf pages 422 to 536, and on book pages 220 to 334.
Thank you Robert for the education. Most people, even educated ones don't grasp the scale,
scope and intricacies of our governmental apparatus. I know the more I learn, the more I
become convinced we have a leviathan that is manipulated, twisted, overly complex and one
that is working only for the ruling elites. We have to cut this behemoth down to size. And
follow Taleb's maxims of "Skin in the Game" and "Anti-fragile" meaning simplicity.
"The point was and is that laws are to be made by Congress, and not from
scratch by delegating the power to a type of commission, which Judge
Scalia called 'a sort of junior-varsity Congress' ". Such as the Consumer Financial
Protection Bureau.
On the NYT story, you have to love how transparent the propaganda is, and yet they (Bolton, Pompeo, Rubio) don't care whatsoever.
Oh, and not one critical word about people throwing Molotov cocktails. Like that's a perfectly normal, non-violent means of protest.
I'm 72 and I don't watch any main stream news. All they do is "spin" the whatever the
"party line" of the so called "right" or "left". Oh yes, US Government, keep your bloody
hands off of South America.
I❤You Jimmy. You tell us the truth. And the truth is so hard to come by. So on
behalf of the rest of us...THANK YOU! Hugs and many many kisses on your cheeck. I send you my
love and respect.
No accident I spend most of my time on YouTube, at least I know where they are coming from
at the moment. I got pushed out of Common Dreams, Truth Out and Truth Dig by Hillary bots
during the 2016 primary. You couldn't have a conversation there anymore. It was all Bernie
hate all the time and everyday. I sought news and conversation here on YouTube then.
I am neither a Millienal nor am I Russian but I am a critical thinker who doesn't fall for
the CIA narrative of MSM. Keep doing what your doing Jimmy.
I'm 72 and I don't watch any main stream news. All they do is "spin" the whatever the
"party line" of the so called "right" or "left". Oh yes, US Government, keep your bloody
hands off of South America.
I❤You Jimmy. You tell us the truth. And the truth is so hard to come by. So on
behalf of the rest of us...THANK YOU! Hugs and many many kisses on your cheeck. I send you my
love and respect.
Why won't Twitter and Facebook ban Liars like Jake Tapper for telling lies about
Healthcare and other issues in the United States? He is nothing more than a
propagandist.
No accident I spend most of my time on YouTube, at least I know where they are coming from
at the moment. I got pushed out of Common Dreams, Truth Out and Truth Dig by Hillary bots
during the 2016 primary. You couldn't have a conversation there anymore. It was all Bernie
hate all the time and everyday. I sought news and conversation here on YouTube then. Plus
when I need to recharge I can find kitten and puppy videos.
Facebook, Twitter and YouTube may be privately owned, but they are the public square. So
this stuff is a violation of the first amendment. We need the ACLU to take this to the
Supreme Court (I can't stand him, but Alex Jones is an ideal test case). With respect to
funding, we should always expect the worst (even progressive media like TYT, just look at how
they have treated Tulsi - TYT is obviously compromised by some pro-establishment funding
source).
Last year marked the 40th anniversary of the publication of Edward W. Said's pioneering
book, Orientalism , as well as fifteen years since the Palestinian-American
intellectual's passing. To bid farewell to such an important scholar shortly after the 2003
U.S. invasion of Iraq, which Said fiercely criticized until his dying breath before succumbing
to leukemia, made an already tremendous loss that much more impactful. His seminal text forever
reoriented political discourse by painstakingly examining the overlooked cultural imperialism
of colonial history in the West's construction of the so-called Orient. Said meticulously
interrogated the Other-ing of the non-Western world in the humanities, arts, and anthropology
down to its minutiae. As a result, the West was forced to confront not just its economic and
political plunder but the long-established cultural biases filtering the lens through which it
viewed the East which shaped its dominion over it.
His writings proved to be so influential that they laid the foundations for what is now
known as post-colonial theory. This became an ironic category as the author himself would
strongly reject any implication that the subjugation of developing countries is a thing of the
past. How apropos that the Mandatory Palestine-born writer's death came in the midst of the
early stages of the 'War on Terror' that made clear Western imperialism is very much alive.
Despite its history of ethnic cleansing, slavery, and war, the United States had distinguished
itself from Britain and France in that it had never established its own major colonies within
the Middle East, Asia or North Africa in the heart of the Orient. According to Said, it was now
undergoing this venture as the world's sole remaining superpower following the end of the Cold
War with the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.
Today's political atmosphere makes the Bush era seem like eons ago. Thanks to the shameful
rehabilitation of neoconservatism by centrist extremists, Americans fail to understand how
Trumpism emerged from the pandora's box of destructiveness of Bush policies that destabilized
the Middle East and only increased international terrorism. Since then, another American enemy
has been manufactured in the form of the Russian Federation and its President, Vladimir Putin,
who drew the ire of the West after a resurgent Moscow under his leadership began to contain
U.S. hegemony. This reached a crescendo during the 2016 U.S. Presidential election with the
dubious accusations of election interference made by the same intelligence agencies that sold
the pack of lies that Iraq possessed Weapons of Mass Destruction. The establishment has even
likened the alleged intrusion by Moscow to 9/11.
If a comparison between the 2001 attacks that killed nearly 3,000 Americans and the still
unproven allegations of Russian meddling seems outrageous, it is precisely such an analogy that
has been made by Russiagate's own biggest proponents, from neoconservative
columnist Max Boot to Hillary
Clinton herself . Truthfully, it is the climate of hysteria and dumbing down of discourse
to such rigid dichotomies following both events where a real similarity can be drawn. The 'with
us or against us' chasm that followed 9/11 has reemerged in the 'either/or' post-election
polarity of the Trump era whereby all debate within the Overton window is pigeonholed into a
'pro vs. anti-Trump' or 'pro vs. anti-Russia' false dilemma. It is even perpetrated by some on the
far left , e.g. if one critiques corporate media or Russiagate, they are grouped as
'pro-Trump' or 'pro-Putin' no matter their political orientation. This dangerous atmosphere is
feeding an unprecedented wave of censorship of dissenting voices across the spectrum.
In his final years, not only did Edward Said condemn the Bush administration but highlighted
how corporate media was using bigoted tropes in its representations of Arabs and Muslims to
justify U.S. foreign policy. Even though it has gone mostly undetected, the neo-McCarthyist
frenzy following the election has produced a similar travesty of caricatures depicting Russia
and Vladimir Putin. One such egregious example was a July 2018 article in the
Wall Street Journal entitled "Russia's Turn to Its Asian Past" featuring an illustration
portraying Vladimir Putin as Genghis Khan. The racist image and headline suggested that Russia
is somehow inherently autocratic because of its past occupation under the Mongol Empire during
its conquest of Eastern Europe and the Kievan Rus state in the 13th century. In a conceptual
revival of the Eurocentric trope of Asiatic or Oriental despotism, the hint is that past
race-mixing is where Russia inherited this tyrannical trait. When the cover story appeared,
there was virtually no outcry due to the post-election delirium and everyday fear-mongering
about Russia that is now commonplace in the media.
The overlooked casual racism used to demonize Russia in the new Cold War's propaganda
doesn't stop there. One of the main architects of Russiagate, former Director of National
Intelligence James R. Clapper, in an
interview with NBC's Meet the Press on the reported meddling stated :
"And just the historical practices of the Russians, who typically, almost genetically
driven to co-opt, penetrate, gain favor, which is a typical Russian technique. So we were
concerned."
Clapper, whose Office of the DNI published the Intelligence Community Assessment
(ICA) "Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US Elections", has been widely
praised and cited by corporate media as a trustworthy source despite his previous history of
making intentionally false statements at a public hearing of the Senate Intelligence Committee
denying that the National Security Agency (NSA) was unconstitutionally spying on U.S.
citizens.
The disclosures of NSA activities by whistleblower Edward Snowden that shocked the world
should have discredited Clapper's status as a reliable figure, but not for mainstream media
which has continuously colluded with the deep state during the entire Russia investigation. In
fact, the scandal has been an opportunity to rehabilitate figures like the ex-spymaster
complicit in past U.S. crimes from surveillance to torture. Shortly after the interview with
NBC, Clapper repeated his prejudiced sentiments against Russians
in a speech at the National Press Club in Australia:
"But as far as our being intimate allies, trusting buds with the Russians that is just not
going to happen. It is in their genes to be opposed, diametrically opposed, to the United
States and to Western democracies."
The post-election mass Trump derangement has not only enabled wild accusations of treason to
be made without sufficient evidence to support them, but such uninhibited xenophobic remarks to
go without notice or disapproval.
In fact, liberals have seemingly abandoned their supposed progressive credence across the
board while suffering from their anti-Russia neurological disorder. In an exemplar of yellow
journalism, outlets like NBC News published sensational articles
alleging that because of the perceived ingratiation between Trump and Putin, there was an
increase in Russian 'birth tourism' in the United States. More commonly known by the pejorative
'anchor babies', birth tourism is the false claim that many immigrants travel to countries for
the purpose of having children in order to obtain citizenship. While there may be individual
cases, the idea that it is an epidemic is a complete myth -- the vast majority of
immigration is motivated by labor demands and changes in political or socio-economic factors in
their native countries, whether it is from the global south or Eastern Europe. Trump has been
rightfully criticized for promoting this falsehood regarding undocumented immigrants and his
executive orders targeting birthright citizenship, but it appears liberals are willing to
unfairly apply this same fallacy toward Russians for political reasons.
This connected continents of Europe and Asia have 70% of the world population, so it is the
center of the world. But the United States is not a local power, it's thousands of miles away
from it. Therefore, the US NEEDS conflicts in Europe and Asia to maintain its influence in
the world stage and its status of "safe haven for capita", as it found out in WW2 that can be
very profitable.
Peace and integration in Europe and Asia is the last thing the US wants. This is why it'd
try its hardest to stir up tension in Europe, Asia and MiddleEast. The Russians were naive to
believe it was about Communism.
World dominance has been very profitable for the capital class, whether the cost for world
dominance worth it for the working class, is open for debate, as citizens of the dominate
nation enjoy nice benefits too.
China's Pearl River delta is the site of the most dramatic urbanization in human history.
The area is home to nearly 70 million people. It contributes an eighth of China's GDP, with
an economy worth $1.5 trillion - roughly the same as Australia and Spain, and nearly as big
as Russia and South Korea.
Now the Chinese government has outlined its plans to unite what it calls the Greater Bay
Area into a giant megalopolis, and transform it into a high-tech centre that could rival
California's Silicon Valley and Japan's Tokyo Bay.
China's Pearl River delta is the site of the most dramatic urbanization in human history.
The area is home to nearly 70 million people. It contributes an eighth of China's GDP, with an
economy worth $1.5 trillion - roughly the same as Australia and Spain, and nearly as big as
Russia and South Korea.
Now the Chinese government has outlined its plans to unite what it calls the Greater Bay
Area into a giant megalopolis, and transform it into a high-tech centre that could rival
California's Silicon Valley and Japan's Tokyo Bay.
Interview is about forthcoming book "Peak
Trump" In "Peak Trump", Stockman goes after all the sacred cows: Military spending, entitlement spending, MAGA, Trump's tax cut,
the intelligence budget, and the Wall. Trump is a symptom of the problem. He wanted to drain the swamp but failed to do so. He never
really had a good chance of doing that, but he failed to make the most of the chance he had. We are where we are because of decades
of Congressional and monetary mismanagement
All in the name of empire... the Deep state in non-particular and Trump proved to be a "naked king"
At 15:49 min Ron Paul asks the question about Tulsi... She positioned herself as noninterventionists and has similar foreign policy
as Ron Paul used to have. Stockman answer was very interesting and informative.. MSM journalists are essentially federal contractor,
lobbyists of MIC.
He also mentioned that Trump falls from the bait. And the appointment of Elliot Abrams was real betrayal of his voters.
Notable quotes:
"... He was smart enough to understand that the commonplace observation codified as the Laffer Curve, while true, didn't mean that DC could just go on an endless spending spree and expect increased tax revenues to exceed the avarice of politicians, though. ..."
"... No, I don't think Stockman's rhetoric was a lie. He did end up getting shoved out of the Reagan regime, after all, precisely because he resisted giving every cabinet secretary all the money they wanted and, as you say, insisted that the tax cuts needed to be accompanied by spending cuts. ..."
"... But supply-side economics is, perversely, a departure from sound economic policy in the direction of central planning . Its premise is that instead of production being driven by diffuse demand, money should be concentrated in the hands of a few who "know better" what should be produced. ..."
"... And in practice, the "entrepreneurs" intended to benefit were the businesses who already had the clout to make themselves part of the political class, not the guy in his garage designing a better mousetrap. ..."
"... The Laffer Curve is an interesting but much over-used (and badly used) observation: There is a tax revenue curve with a top to it. That is, as you raise taxes, revenues go up ... until the taxation gets onerous enough that additional earnings beyond bare subsistence strike people as not worth the input, beyond which point tax INcreases produce revenue DEcreases. ..."
David Stockman was one of my conservative heroes during the Reagan years. He was the one person in the Administration who seemed
to have an honest understanding of economics. It's nice to see that his experiences with the reality of the DC swamp have made
him go all the way to describing himself as a libertarian, rather than a conservative.
He could have sold out, given up any modicum of principle, and simply become a multi-millionaire Republican Party establishment
hack.
I would venture to say he and I have some policy differences, but it's always nice to see when someone embraces their best,
rather than their worst, instincts.
My recollection of Stockman's economics from those years (based on e.g. The Triumph of Politics) was that he was all-in on
"supply side" economics, which is twaddle. He was smart enough to understand that the commonplace observation codified as
the Laffer Curve, while true, didn't mean that DC could just go on an endless spending spree and expect increased tax revenues
to exceed the avarice of politicians, though.
Yes, supply side is bogus, but my observations were that Stockman was quite critical of the spending increases that the Administration
put forth. He approved of the so called tax-cuts, but he did so with the understanding that there would be spending cuts along
with them.
My own recollections (I was alive back then, but not as politically conscious as I am now) were that Stockman was not endorsing
the supply side theory so much as his own idea that cuts in government spending were necessary, and that tax cuts would put pressure
on Congress and the administration to cut spending. The irony is that, for whatever reason, tax revenues overall increased by
60% in Reagan's two terms, yet spending increased almost 100%. This certainly disproves the idea that there was ever a revenue
problem, and that it has always been a spending problem.
In any event, Stockman was just about the only person with an official capacity in DC, who actually worked toward spending
cuts. Unless you are saying that his rhetoric was a lie, and he was just like all the others. If that is the case then, of course,
you could always be right.
No, I don't think Stockman's rhetoric was a lie. He did end up getting shoved out of the Reagan regime, after all, precisely
because he resisted giving every cabinet secretary all the money they wanted and, as you say, insisted that the tax cuts needed
to be accompanied by spending cuts.
But supply-side economics is, perversely, a departure from sound economic policy in the direction of central planning .
Its premise is that instead of production being driven by diffuse demand, money should be concentrated in the hands of a few who
"know better" what should be produced.
True, the central planning class in question was, broadly and not very honestly defined, "entrepreneurs" rather than government
bureaucrats, but the principle was the same. And in practice, the "entrepreneurs" intended to benefit were the businesses
who already had the clout to make themselves part of the political class, not the guy in his garage designing a better mousetrap.
"But supply-side economics is, perversely, a departure from sound economic policy"
Perhaps the most damning thing about it was that the stated goal was to increase the federal government's revenue. What person
in their right mind would wish to give even more money and power to the federal government?
The Laffer Curve is an interesting but much over-used (and badly used) observation: There is a tax revenue curve with a
top to it. That is, as you raise taxes, revenues go up ... until the taxation gets onerous enough that additional earnings beyond
bare subsistence strike people as not worth the input, beyond which point tax INcreases produce revenue DEcreases.
for the first time in weeks (months?) i don't see anything about mueller or russia on the
featured articles at the guardian. are they implicitly going to admit it was all bullshit,
without ever acknowledging it? (by "they" i mean the msm).
Unfortunately the article does not mention the term McCarthyism, which is fully applicable. Also the role of CNN of the
voice of Clinton wing of Democratic Party presuppose the attitudes the Caitlin is complaining about. This is a party MSM
masquerading as impendent new outlet. This are neoliberal presstitutes and warmongers, for the lack of stronger worlds.
Also correlation with RT policies does undermine the US foreign policy. We need only decide whether this is a good or bad
thing and whether the US imperial policies are good for American people, or only for large transnational corporations. I
think Tucker Carlson also undermines the US foreign policy and as such you can find a correlation between his positions and
RT position. Now what ?
Money quote: "the possibility of
an American opposing US warmongering and the political establishment which drives it without
being ordered to by a rubles-dispensing FSB officer was a completely alien idea to them."
Yes, they actually care only in the "politically correct" reason for suppression. So the only new moment is blatant
hypocrisy. But that's how all societies work and in this sense there is nothing special in the fact that dissident voices
are suppressed. In middle ages heretics were burned at the stake.
The situation is interesting because neoliberalism is definitely on the decline and as such represent now (unlike
say 10 year ago) and rich target of attack and as the USA support it neoliberal empire such attacks usually attack the US
foreign policy. The real question is what alternative the particular outlet proposes -- the return to the New Deal
Capitalism in some form or shape, or new socialist experiment is some form of shape.
Notable quotes:
"... CNN knew that Facebook was going to be suspending the pages of her company Maffick Media before she did, suggesting a creepy degree of coordination between the two massive outlets to silence an alternative media platform. ..."
"... the US government has found a legal loophole to suppress speech, in this case speech that is critical of destructive US government policies around the world. ..."
"... Thirdly, and in my opinion weirdest of all, the article goes to great lengths to make the fact that a dissident media outlet supports the same foreign policy positions as Russia look like something strange and nefarious, instead of the normal and obvious thing that it is. ..."
"... the possibility of an American opposing US warmongering and the political establishment which drives it without being ordered to by a rubles-dispensing FSB officer was a completely alien idea to them. ..."
"... Nimmo said the tone of Maffick's pages is 'broadly anti-US and anti-corporate. That's strikingly similar to RT's output. Maffick may technically be independent, but their tone certainly matches the broader Kremlin family.' ..."
"... This is a truly obnoxious mind virus we're seeing the imperial narrative controllers pushing more and more aggressively into mainstream consciousness today : that anyone who opposes the beltway consensus on western interventionism is not simply an individual with a conscience who is thinking critically for themselves, but is actually "boosting the Kremlin narrative" ..."
"... Don't even subscribe to an anti-establishment subreddit. Those things are all Russian. Listen to Big Brother instead. Big Brother will protect you from their filthy Russian lies. ..."
"... "If CNN would like to hire me to present facts against destructive US wars and corporate ownership of our political system, I'll gladly accept," Khalek told me when asked for comment ..."
"... Russian media influence is not their actual target. Their actual target is leftist, antiwar and anti-establishment voices. That's what they're really trying to eliminate. ..."
"... It doesn't take any amount of sympathy for Russia to see that the unipolar empire is toxic for humanity, and most westerners who oppose that toxicity have no particular feelings about Russia any more than they have about Turkey or the Philippines ..."
In an extremely weird article titled " Russia is backing a viral video company aimed at American
millennials ", CNN reports that Facebook has suspended popular dissident media outlet "In
The Now" and its allied pages for failing to publicly "disclose" its financial ties to a
subsidiary of RT.
According to CNN, such disclosures are not and have never been an actual part of Facebook's
official policy, but Facebook has made the exceptional precondition of public disclosure of
financial ties in order for In The Now to return to its platform.
I say the article is extremely weird for a number of reasons.
Firstly , according to In The Now CEO Anissa Naouai, CNN knew that Facebook was going to be
suspending the pages of her company Maffick Media before she did, suggesting a creepy degree of
coordination between the two massive outlets to silence an alternative media platform.
Secondly, the article reports that CNN found out about Maffick's financial ties thanks to a
tip-off from the German Marshall Fund, a narrative control firm which receives funding from the
US government. In The Now 's Rania Khalek has described this tactic as
"a case where the US government has found a legal loophole to suppress speech, in this case
speech that is critical of destructive US government policies around the world."
Thirdly, and in my opinion weirdest of all, the article goes to great lengths to make the
fact that a dissident media outlet supports the same foreign policy positions as Russia look
like something strange and nefarious, instead of the normal and obvious thing that it is.
The article repeatedly mentions the fact that all the people working for In The Now "claim"
to be editorially independent as opposed to being told what to report by Kremlin officials, a
notion which Khalek says was met with
extreme skepticism when she was interviewed for the piece by CNN. As though the possibility of
an American opposing US warmongering and the political establishment which drives it without
being ordered to by a rubles-dispensing FSB officer was a completely alien idea to them.
Check out the following excerpt, for example of this bizarre attitude:
"Ben Nimmo, a senior fellow for information defense at the Atlantic Council's Digital
Forensic Research Lab, told CNN that while Russian state-backed outlets claim to be
editorially independent, 'they routinely boost Kremlin narratives, especially those which
portray the West negatively.'
"Nimmo said the tone of Maffick's pages is 'broadly anti-US and anti-corporate. That's
strikingly similar to RT's output. Maffick may technically be independent, but their tone
certainly matches the broader Kremlin family.' "
This is a truly obnoxious mind virus we're seeing the imperial narrative controllers pushing
more and more aggressively into mainstream consciousness today : that anyone who opposes the
beltway consensus on western interventionism is not simply an individual with a conscience who
is thinking critically for themselves, but is actually "boosting the Kremlin narrative". If you
say it in an assertive and authoritative tone like Mr Nimmo does, it can sound like a perfectly
reasonable position if you don't think about it too hard. If you really look at it directly,
though, what these manipulators are actually saying is "Russia opposes western interventionism,
therefore anyone who opposes western interventionism is basically Russian."
Which is of course a total non-argument. You don't get to just say "Russia bad" for two
years to get everyone riled up into a state of xenophobic hysteria and then say "That's
Russian!" at anything you don't like. That's not a thing. More to the point, though, there is
no causal relationship between the fact that Russia opposes western interventionism and the
fact that many westerners do.
As we
discussed recently , there will necessarily be inadvertent agreement between Russia and
westerners who oppose western interventionism, because Russia, like so many other sovereign
nations, opposes western interventionism. If you discover that an American who opposes US
warmongering and establishment politics is saying the same things as RT, that doesn't mean
you've discovered a shocking conspiracy between western dissidents and the Russian government,
it means people who oppose the same things oppose the same things.
We're seeing this absurd gibberish spouted over and over again by the mainstream media now.
The other day the delightful pro-Sanders subreddit WayOfTheBern was
smeared as a Russian operation by the Washington Times, not because the Washington Times
had any evidence anywhere supporting that claim, but because the subreddit's members are
hostile to Democratic presidential hopefuls other than Sanders, and because its posts
"consistently support positions that would be amenable to the Kremlin." All this means is that
the subreddit is full of people who support Bernie Sanders and oppose US government
malfeasance, yet an entire article was published in a mainstream outlet treating this as
something dangerous and suspicious.
If you really listen to what the CNNs and Ben Nimmos and Washington Timeses are actually
trying to tell you, what they're saying is that it's not okay for anyone to oppose any part of
the unipolar world order or the establishment which runs it . Never ever, under any
circumstances. Don't work for a media outlet that's funded by the Russian government even
though no mainstream outlets will ever platform you. Don't even subscribe to an
anti-establishment subreddit. Those things are all Russian. Listen to Big Brother instead. Big
Brother will protect you from their filthy Russian lies.
"If CNN would like to hire me to present facts against destructive US wars and corporate
ownership of our political system, I'll gladly accept," Khalek told me when asked for
comment.
"But the corporate media doesn't allow antiwar voices a platform. In The Now does. I've
worked for dozens of different outlets, from Vice to Al Jazeera to RT, and my message has
always been the same: leftist, antiwar and pro justice and equality. People should be asking
why US mainstream media outlets that claim to be free and independent refuse to air critical
and adversarial voices like mine."
Why indeed? Actually, if CNN is so worried about Russian media influence in America, all
they'd have to do is put on a few shows featuring leftist, antiwar and pro-justice voices and
that would be the end of it. They could easily out-spend RT by a massive margin, buy up all the
talent like Khalek, Lee Camp and Chris Hedges, put on a sleek, high-budget show and steal RT
America's audience, killing it dead and drawing all anti-establishment energy to their
material.
But they don't. They don't, and they never will. Because Russian media influence is not
their actual target. Their actual target is leftist, antiwar and anti-establishment voices.
That's what they're really trying to eliminate.
So yes, Moscow will of course elevate some western voices who oppose the power establishment
that is trying to undermine and subvert Russia. Those voices will not require any instruction
to speak out against that establishment, since that's what they'd be doing anyway and they're
just grateful to finally have a platform upon which to speak. And it is good that they're
getting a platform to speak. If western power structures have a problem with it, they should
stop universally refusing to platform anyone who opposes the status quo that is destroying
nations abroad and squeezing the life out of citizens at home.
It doesn't take any amount of sympathy for Russia to see that the unipolar empire is toxic
for humanity, and most westerners who oppose that toxicity have no particular feelings about
Russia any more than they have about Turkey or the Philippines. Sometimes Russia will come in
and give them a platform in the void that has been left by the mainstream outlets which are
doing everything they can to silence them. So what? The alternative is all dissident voices
being silenced. The fact that Russia prevents a few of them from being silenced is not the
problem. The problem is that they are being silenced at all.
* * *
Thanks for reading! My articles are 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.
"... Halper is reportedly a longtime CIA and FBI informant, and has been involved in US politics at the highest levels for decades, becoming George H.W. Bush's National Director for Policy Development during his presidential campaign. After Bush lost to Reagan, Halper worked as Reagan's Deputy Assistant Secretary of State - where he served under three different Secretaries . ..."
"... He then became a senior advisor to the Department of Defense and DOJ between 1984 and 2001. Halper's former father-in-law was Ray Cline, former Deputy Director of the CIA . He also allegedly spied on the Carter administration - collecting information on foreign policy (an account disputed by Ray Cline). ..."
A top FBI official admitted to Congressional investigators last year
that the agency had contacts within the Trump campaign as part of operation "Crossfire
Hurricane," which sounds a lot like FBI "informant" Stefan Halper - a former Oxford University
professor who was
paid over $1 million by the Obama Department of Defense between 2012 and 2018, with nearly
half of it surrounding the 2016 US election.
According to portions of transcripts published on Tuesday by the
Epoch Times of a Aug. 31, 2018 deposition by Trisha Anderson, the FBI relied on sources who
"already had campaign contacts" in order to surveil the Trump team.
"To my knowledge, the FBI did not place anybody within a campaign but, rather, relied upon
its network of sources, some of whom already had campaign contacts, including the source that
has been discussed in the media at some length beyond Christopher Steele ," said Anderson - who
was the #2 attorney at the FBI's Office of General Counsel, and had extensive involvement with
the Trump counterintelligence investigation.
Halper is reportedly a longtime CIA and FBI informant, and has been involved in US politics
at the highest levels for decades, becoming George H.W. Bush's National Director for Policy
Development during his presidential campaign. After Bush lost to Reagan, Halper worked as
Reagan's Deputy Assistant Secretary of State - where he served under three different Secretaries
.
He then became a senior advisor to the Department of Defense and
DOJ between 1984 and 2001. Halper's former father-in-law was Ray Cline, former Deputy Director
of the CIA . He also allegedly spied on the Carter administration - collecting information
on foreign policy (an account disputed by Ray Cline).
Halper's involvement in surveilling the Trump campaign was exposed by the Daily Caller 's
Chuck Ross, who reported that the 74-year-old spook was enlisted by the FBI to befriend and spy
on three members of the Trump campaign during the 2016 US election .
Halper received a DoD contract from the Obama administration for $411,575 - made in two payments, and had a
start date of September 26, 2016 - three days after a September 23
Yahoo! News article by Michael Isikoff about Trump aide Carter Page, which used information
fed to Isikoff by "pissgate" dossier creator Christopher Steele . The FBI would use the Yahoo!
article along with the unverified "pissgate" dossier as
supporting evidence in an FISA warrant application for Page. Halper approached Page during
an election-themed conference at Cambridge on July 11, 2016, six weeks after the September 26
DoD award start date. The two would stay in contact for the next 14 months, frequently meeting
and exchanging emails .
He said that he first encountered the informant during a conference in mid-July of 2016
and that they stayed in touch. The two later met several times in the Washington area. Mr.
Page said their interactions were benign. -
New York Times
And as the Daily Caller reports, Halper used a decades-old association with Paul Manafort to
break the ice with Page.
In September 2016, the FBI would send Halper to further probe Trump aide George Papadopoulos
on an allegation he made that Russia had "dirt" on Hillary Clinton. According to Papadopoulos
in an interview with Dan Bongino, Halper angrily accused him of working with Russia before
storming out of a meeting.
Halper essentially began interrogating Papadopoulos, saying that it's "obviously in your
interest to be working with the Russians" and to "hack emails." " You're complicit with
Russia in this, isn't that right George " Halper told him. Halper also inquired about
Hillary's hacked emails, insinuating that Papadopoulos possessed them. Papadopoulos denied
knowing anything about this and asked to be left alone. -
Bongino.com
All of these blatant crimes done by the Democrat cheerleading swamp creatures NEVER get
investigated and I am starting to wonder what the hell Trump is doing. Is he stupid or is all
of this just a charade and they are all on the same team. How could this creep Rod Rosenstein
have been left at his position until this time? It makes no sense to me. Sure all of these
rodents have control files on each other but come on how scared are they? It's ridiculous. If
Trump soon gets impeached I'll hold him responsible himself for not doing anything.
They are all on the same team. Trump was never your saviour. He was designed to be a
distraction so the 0.01% that own both parties can rape you some more.
Correct. It's all a big lie and show for the uninformed masses. God help these liars when
all the Qanon followers wake up to this truth. All this 'tremendous winning' bs will
boomerang back big time.
The above Halper story has been circulating for about a year now, so this isn`t
actually big news. As for the FBI and the CIA subverting just about every political campaign
or social movement in existence: Well, duh. The deep state and its satanic minions will
remain in control as long as such "intelligence" and State Security agencies (the FBI is
essentially nothing but a US version of the SS) are allowed to exist.
Alex Acosta works out an illegal deal for Epstein = Trump gives Acosta a cabinet position
= Trump is a protector of Pedo protectors = Trump doesn't give 2 shits about Pedos
In the last few weeks, we have witnessed two pillars of the Russiagate narrative continue to
disintegrate and erode. First, we heard
that a bipartisan inquiry by the Senate Intelligence Committee admitted that they have yet to
find evidence indicating that the Trump campaign coordinated with Russia in the run-up to the
2016 US Presidential election. Secondly, new light was shed on the process by which the DNC
Emails published by WikiLeaks may have been sourced, thanks to two reports:
one authored by former NSA Technical Director Bill Binney and former CIA analyst Larry
Johnson, with the other work penned by Disobedient Media's
Adam Carter.
Of course, this does not entail that the establishment-backed media will stop promoting the
neo-McCarthyist insanity that has held legacy press audiences captive for the last two and a
half years.
No Evidence For Trump-Russia Collusion
A recent report from NBC related an
admission from both Democratic and Republican members of the Senate Intelligence Committee,
indicating that they have discovered no evidence of Trump-Russia collusion to date. NBC's report reads in part:
"The Senate Intelligence Committee's investigation into the 2016 election has uncovered no
direct evidence of the Trump campaign conspiring with Russia, Democrats and Republicans on
the committee told NBC News. But different parties' investigators in the probe, which is
winding down, disagree over the implications of a pattern of contacts between Trump
associates and Russians."
Let's review that again: the only thing the Democrats and Republicans disagree on is the
significance of an alleged "Pattern of contacts between Trump associates and Russians."
Note: the "pattern" here does not specify that the "Russians" in question were associated in
any sense with the Russian government. One should not have to stress the significance of
differentiating between a nationality versus affiliation with the Kremlin. Meanwhile, the
characterization of "Trump associates" is entirely vague.
To conclude from such sentiments that anyone who so much as has "contacts" with "Russians"
(again, not the same thing as contacts with proxies or employees of the Russian state) must be
working at the behest of Putin would represent an intense strain of xenophobia, if not outright
racism.
Independent journalist and comedian Jimmy Dore also commented on NBC's report,
saying: "For two and a half years, [Rachel Maddow] has been an out-of-her-mind conspiracy
theorist. She said that Russia is going to freeze you when it gets cold... These people are the
biggest conspiracy liars in the world."
One does not have to rely on the statements of the Senate Intelligence Committee to
understand that no shred of evidence of Trump-Russia collusion has yet been shown to the
public. Last month, The Nation's Aaron Mate wrote:
"Not a single Trump official has been accused of colluding with the Russian government or
even of committing any crimes during the 2016 campaign. As The New York Times recently noted,
"no public evidence has emerged showing that [Trump's] campaign conspired with Russia."
In the wake of the latest news regarding such lack of evidence, Mate wrote via Twitter :
The Intercept's Glenn Greenwald also
chimed in on NBC's report, writing via Twitter: "When even NBC, [Ken Dilanian] and Democrats
(excuse the redundancy) are admitting this so clearly in the first paragraph of their article,
it's time for people to start facing some facts about what they've been telling people."
Of course, many have long pointed to evidence countering the Trump-Russia collusion
narrative, expecting such contrary evidence to become the "
death of Russiagate. " Unfortunately for the sake of truth and sanity, it seems that this
writer's opinion on the immortality
of Russiagate is going to continue to prove true, as long as the saga serves the
establishment's need for deflection from real election interference and other pressing domestic
issues.
"Standing on the shoulders of this methodical evidence, it seems at this point that no
amount of contrary evidence, exposure or implosion will ultimately kill the undead Russiagate
monster. If that were possible, the Thing would have been put irrevocably into the ground
over a year ago. Or six months ago. Or a few weeks ago."
Russian Hacking Narrative Implodes
The Russian hacking aspect of the scandal was also severely discredited in recent days, in
the wake of two new
reports . One article was authored by
Disobedient Media's Adam Carter, with a separate piece published by
Bill Binney and Larry Johnson . Binney is a former NSA Technical Director; Johnson an
ex-CIA analyst. Both are active members of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity
(VIPS).
The two articles discussed revelations arising from studies of the DNC Emails released by
WikiLeaks in 2016. We remind our readers that, while Adam Carter, Disobedient Media, The
Forensicator, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, Stephen McIntyre, and others have
regularly reported regarding documents published by the Guccifer 2.0 persona, the latest pieces
focus instead on the DNC Emails as published days before the DNC convention.
Though this writer will not attempt to present every aspect or technical detail contained in
the
articles, we will endeavor to make our readers aware of the essential points which
Carter , Binney, and Johnson have raised.
Carter's work suggests that the DNC Emails were originally accessed via a USB thumb drive or
similar device, concluding: "The evidence strongly suggests that the first three batches of DNC
emails were transferred via a USB storage device at some stage between acquisition and then
subsequently being published by WikiLeaks."
As noted by Carter, such a scenario aligns with allegations made by former UK Ambassador
Craig Murray, who claimed that he was the
recipient of the files via an intermediary rather than the original source. Carter adds:
"However, transfer speeds observed for the batches with last-modified dates matching the dates
of acquisition indicate that they were transferred at approximately 3 megabits/second, a lot
slower than we would expect if it were a local or LAN transfer, so the transfer we're looking
at likely involved a remote transfer at some point between acquisition and delivery ."
Carter continued: "... It seems likely that the original emails were copied soon after
acquisition... The (hypothetical) existence of an intermediary doesn't tell us anything about
the individual (or individuals) who originally acquired the emails. Thus, this scenario does
not necessarily rule out the possibility of an insider acquiring the emails. If we
contemplate the intermediate use of cloud storage, this could have been used as a method to
decouple the acquisition of the emails from delivery to another party that subsequently
delivered them to Wikileaks."
The article by
Binney and Johnson also discusses the relevance of indications that the DNC emails
published by WikiLeaks were likely accessed via a storage device, rather than leaked. They
state in part:
"An examination of the Wikileaks DNC files do not support the claim that the emails were
obtained via spearphishing. Instead, the evidence clearly shows that the emails posted on the
Wikileaks site were copied onto an electronic media, such as a CD-ROM or thumb-drive before
they were posted at Wikileaks... We believe that Special Counsel Robert Mueller faces major
embarrassment if he decides to pursue the indictment he filed--which accuses 12 Russian GRU
military personnel and an entity identified as, Guccifer 2.0, for the DNC hack -- because the
available forensic evidence indicates the emails were copied onto a storage device."
Binney and Johnson conclude: "Taken together, these disparate data points combine to paint
a picture that exonerates alleged Russian hackers and implicates persons within our law
enforcement and IC taking part in a campaign of misinformation, deceit and incompetence. It
is not a pretty picture."
The Real Cost Of Russiagate
Though Russiagate may be summed up as a never-ending theatrical performance designed to hold
attention rather than prove itself, that ineffability does not mean that the saga has had no
tangible effects in the real world. Regardless of what one makes of the legitimacy of
Russiagate or any one of its sub-narratives, we can all agree that it has wreaked havoc
directly and indirectly on many fronts.
Journalist and award-winning author Patrick Lawrence wrote a ground-breaking article with
The Nation in August of 2017, covering a
Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) memorandum to President Trump. The memo, and Lawrence's article,
indicated that the Guccifer 2.0 persona had published documents that were likely accessed
locally, rather than hacked remotely.
The repercussions for Lawrence - professional, financial, personal - continued for many
months. In an interview, Lawrence told Disobedient Media: "My working principle from the
first is that disagreements and other such matters internal to a publication - any
publication - shouldn't be aired outside the newsroom door. When I was trained, you'd be
summarily fired if you went public with such a stunt. I thought this at the time my article
came out, and on that same principle, I won't comment now." Lawrence concluded: "I should add
I have no reason to retract a single syllable of what I wrote."
A hit-piece authored last year by
Duncan Campbell saw the
doxxing of Disobedient Media's Adam Carter, putting his livelihood in jeopardy and
conflating anonymity with wrongdoing, among other things. Campbell's text received much
criticism from
this outlet and others for its disastrously inaccurate depiction of the opinion of Bill Binney and other VIPS members.
NSA Whistleblower Thomas Drake was also quoted in the piece , comparing CIA
veteran and VIPS co-founder Ray McGovern with George W. Bush's politicization of intelligence
in the lead-up to the Iraq War.
Most readers do not require the reminder that McGovern and other members of VIPS were
strongly opposed to the faulty intelligence used by the Bush administration as a pretext for
the 2003 war in Iraq. This history makes Drake's comparison particularly odious and is
additionally damaging because like McGovern, Drake is a respected member of VIPS. Disobedient
Media reached out to Drake for comment on this point and others, to which we received no reply
by the time of publication.
McGovern spoke with Disobedient Media, saying:
" I knew Tom Drake to be a straight shooter, an impression strengthened by our teamwork in
Moscow presenting Ed Snowden with the Sam Adams integrity award that Tom himself had won two
years before. I normally cut Tom some slack, in view of all he has been through. But when he
belatedly took issue with the key VIPS memo of July 24, 2017 on "Russian hacking," and made
claims unsupported by evidence (claims strongly challenged by his fellow NSA "alumni" in
VIPS), I, as chair of that memo, had to call him out of order. He reacted poorly and seems
now to be in for further embarrassment."
Disobedient Media also spoke with Bill Binney, who told this author:
"Tom has been a friend of mine for about 20 years. During that time he has demonstrated
sound analytic judgment on technical issues with the exception of one. That is the issue of
Russiagate and association with the Trump campaign and administration. In this case, I
believe he has allowed himself to be diverted by the rather large hoard of emotionally
motivated who are intent on associating the Russians with Trump to form the basis for
impeachment. They have and continue to convict Trump based on statements made by large
numbers of people - as if that were proof of anything. So, on this issue, a good chunk of the
US population have lost their objectivity and instead of demanding proof based on observable
facts (available to be inspected) they accept assertions generated by emotion. The true test
will be in a court of law where all these assertions would be treated as hearsay and
inadmissible as none are first-hand observers."
Disobedient Media has been separately smeared by entities like
Media Bias Fact Check , whose report appraising this outlet laughably alleged that we have
been a "defender" of the Guccifer 2.0 persona. While such an absurd statement would carry no
weight with even the most cursory of Disobedient Media's readers, it is nonetheless noteworthy
in that it specifically uses a false neo-McCarthyist narrative to attempt to assassinate the
credibility of this outlet.
When asked about the real-world implications of Russiagate thus far, Ray McGovern - who, as
we remind our readers, is a former CIA analyst with decades of experience during the cold
war period - expressed deep concern, saying:
"I worry about what conclusions President Putin may draw from attempts to demonize him and
to make Russia a pariah. Inflammatory rhetoric can be prelude to war. Worse still, the
temperament and hubris of President Trump's advisers are a far cry from the sage, sober
advice Ambassador Llewellyn Thompson, for example, gave President Kennedy during the Cuban
missile crisis in 1962. Shattered, at this point, is any residual hope Putin may have
harbored that Trump would be able to improve ties with Russia. Trump is not his own man.
Putin, thus, must prepare for the worst. This is the most serious damage from the Russia-gate
narrative so far."
Patrick Lawrence also appraised the damage done by Russiagate in a piece published via
Consortium News,
writing: "Numerous sets of sanctions against Russia, individual Russians, and Russian entities
have been imposed on the basis of this great conjuring of assumption and presumption."
As described by McGovern and Lawrence, the tensions raised between two major nuclear powers
is perhaps the most important real-world result of over two years of neo-McCarthyist fervor in
the US. However, the smearing of members of the independent press and the worsening division
amongst VIPS members comprise additional serious damage stemming from a
scandal-that-never-was.
In terms of the larger political picture, Russiagate has been endlessly hyped to
deflect from public outrage that rightfully erupted in response to
overt election interference by the Democratic Party in the 2016 primary season. It has been
used in an attempt to mask the failure of the Democrats and specifically Hillary Clinton as a
Presidential candidate.
As long as the legacy press continues to use Russiagate to
gaslight the public from focusing on ongoing domestic election interference, it remains
imperative to point out that Russiagate, to date, has no basis whatsoever in fact. For that
reason, Disobedient Media will continue to report on the subject as it develops.
... they have yet to find evidence indicating that the Trump campaign coordinated with
Russia in the run-up to the 2016 US Presidential election.
He was very careful in saying that they did not find direct evidence. Knowing very well
that it would be reported like this as the public does not know what this legal technical
term means.
And that is exactly what is needed right now to give Mueller the space he needs.
Beautifully played.
Don't you find it suspicious that Russiagate is abruptly winding down. Mueller waits until
a week later to issue his non-report when nobody is paying attention. Russiagate is
disappearing and the only reason big enough for that is WAR. They want "unity" between the
parties so we can all be good patriots and start Iraq V2.0 or WWIII. The last time the
parties buried the hatchet like this was before invading Iraq after 911 attacks.
The only collusion was between the FBI and a foreign national to create a phony dossier of
bald faced lies in an attempt to take down the POTUS and invalidate a free and fair
election.
Somehow, the Leftist media does not think that is newsworthy.
These narratives, like the build up to the Iraq war, have a foreign policy context to
them, for which unsuspecting Americans know nothing about
This war on Russia accelerated under Obama's watch.
How many RUSSIAGATERS know about Obama/Nuland/McCain regime change in Ukraine that put
neonazis on RUSSIAS border?
How many Russiagaters know that Obama ordered the Ukies to blow up flight MH-17 with 298
people onboard in a false flag attack to justify FRAUDULENT sanctions on Russia?
How many Russiagaters know that it is dual Israeli Democrats pushing this narrative most?
Schumer, SCHIFF, CARDIN, who was responsible for the fraudulent Magnistsky Act, along with
fraud Bill Browder, a CIA asset who owes hundreds of millions to the Russian government in
back taxes ? There are more dual Israelis involved from Congress too.
Lastly, how many Russiagaters know anything about foreign policy?
What a convenient narrative to throw out in blaming Russia for Clinton's loss, but which
serves the deep state well that has Russia on it's target list for regime change and
balkanizing by a bunch of dual Israeli psychopaths & two whack Christian Zionist
extremists (Pompeo, Pence)
It always comes down to ISRAEL, doesn't it? Russia did the unthinkable in interfering in
Greater Israhell! Stopping the US, Saudi Israhelli war on Syria.
Most Russiagaters can't find Russia on a map
I do wonder how many Americans really buy this ********
100 million did not vote in 2016 and my guess is that most Americans don't give one hoot
about Russia at all. Busy just trying to survive.
A couple of years ago, CNN did a poll asking Americans how they see Russia, and most DID
NOT care nor think about Russia. The reporter who helped with the poll laughed when asked why
CNN continued to go on and on about Russia knowing people didn't care.
Just laughed. Coming from the same crowd at CNN that called viewers dumbshits and were
laughing about that too .I can't recall verbatim what they said but maybe someone here can
recall better than I.
Russiagate is a neocunt war narrative. Russiagate is a smokescreen for Israhelli influence
in our government
Russiagate is a cover-up for many crimes committed by Democrats and the DNC, including but
not limited to primary rigging and election fraud and URANIUM ONE in which Mueller himself
was involved .
more important than having a foreign policy context, is their
"Totalitarianism for Dummies" aspect
How many RUSSIAGATERS know about Obama/Nuland/McCain regime change
how many russiagaters don't think there's anything hypocritical about Obama not returning
the Peace Prize to the Nobels.
it is dual Israeli Democrats pushing this narrative most? Schumer, SCHIFF, CARDIN,
won't they be surprised when a new Israeli Government expects their support for some
pro-Russian, anti-US controversy about foreign policy, trade, military, etc. legislation or
action?
can't find Russia on a map
hyperbole
I seem to agree with you on most of the important things, except for your ending.
a smokescreen for Israhelli influence in our government
I think God named the Jews His Chosen People, but He never mentions what they were chosen
for or chosen to do. The point being that if you believe in God, then Jews' self-promoting,
self-aggrandizing chosenness is irrefutable evidence of the Existence Of God.
Not the God of Forgiveness like Christ. But the God of the Cities of the Plain.
I wonder if Christians can ever accept the fact that the God that Christ became was first
God the Creator, who gave mankind its choice between good and evil?
This world has indeed come to a fork in the road. If what is common knowledge to one set
of people is "discovery" to another set, then they are not even living in the same universe.
There are two roads here onwards. Either we eliminate the purveyors of false narratives or we
are turning the population into ignorant masses again.
Rosenstein Mueller are unconstitutional Brief from Miller in regards to Mueller being duly
appointed..........
"
1
STATEMENT OF JURISDICTION
The district court had subject-matter jurisdiction to enforce a subpoenaissued by the
Special Counsel to Appellant to appear before the grand jury on June29, 2018. After denying
the motion to quash the subpoena on July 31, 2018, thecourt issued a contempt order on August
10, 2018, but stayed the order pendingappeal. Appellant filed his notice of appeal on August
13, 2018. This Court has jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. 1291 to review the final order.
STATEMENT OF THE ISSUES
1. Whether Congress, under the Appointments Clause of Article II, § 2, of
the U.S. Constitution, "established by law" the appointment of a private attorney toserve
as a special counsel as an "Officer of the United States."
2. Whether Special Counse
l Robert S. Mueller III (the "Special Counsel")was unconstitutionally appointed because he
is a "principal officer" under the
Appointments Clause of Article II, and thus was required to be
--
but was not
--
appointed by the President with the Advice and Consent of the Senate.
3. Whether Congress "by Law vest[ed] the Appointment" of the SpecialCounsel as an
"inferior Officer []" in "Head of the [Justice] Department[ ]," andthus, under the "Excepting
Clause," was unconstitutionally appointed because he
2
was required to be
--
but was not
--
appointed by Attorney General Jeff Sessionsrather than by Deputy Attorney General Rod
Rosenstein.""
The War Party (AKA Democrats) do not regard inflaming tensions with a nuclear power abroad
if the result is to deliver political power into their own hands at home.
They are defective psychopaths, dangerous people who should be tried for treason and
incarcerated for life as a merciful alternative to hanging in the gallows which they so
richly deserve.
With the majority of the left and quite a few Republicans (who for all intents and
purposes are Democrats with an "R" next to their name) Russiagate has become just like the
man-made global warming scam. They continue to believe it like a religion, regardless of
mounting facts to the contrary, because it serves a purpose for them.
Suddenly, the Democrats want to support Trump, the man they insisted was a dangerous
foreign agent, in leading us to war with Venezuela. Demotards are truly insane fucked up
little moppets with **** for brains!!!
The media in most countries report the news in a neutral manner. Since the Judaists bought
the media, they turned media into weapons of terror, by:
a. Fake news -- outright lies (eg. calling alien invaders "migrants").
b. Manufacturing scandals that THEY make up eg. blackface.
c. Harassing and abusing patriots and others and calling them racists, getting them fired from
jobs, etc.
None of these are legitimate jobs of the media. The New York Times and most Zionists
controlled media in this country are therefore criminal enterprises and terrorist organizations
and these criminals belong in prison.
That's a natural reaction to the revelation of Andrew G. McCabe, the former deputy FBI
director, that top Justice Department officials, alarmed by Donald Trump's firing of former
Bureau director James Comey, explored a plan to invoke the 25th Amendment and kick the duly
elected president out of office.
According to New York Times reporters Adam Goldman and Matthew Haag, McCabe made the
statement in an NBC 60 Minutes interview to be aired on Sunday. He also reportedly said
that McCabe wanted the so-called Russia collusion investigation to go after Trump for
obstructing justice in firing Comey and for any instances they could turn up of his working in
behalf of Russia.
The idea of invoking the 25th Amendment was discussed, it seems, at two meetings on May
16, 2017. According to McCabe, top law enforcement officials pondered how they might recruit
Vice President Pence and a majority of cabinet members to declare in writing, to the Senate's
president pro tempore and the House speaker, that the president was "unable to discharge the
powers and duties of his office." That would be enough, under the 25th Amendment, to install
the vice president as acting president, pushing aside Trump.
But to understand what kind of constitutional crisis this would unleash and the precedent it
would set, it's necessary to ponder the rest of this section of the 25th Amendment. The text
prescribes that, if the president, after being removed, transmits to the same congressional
figures that he is indeed capable of discharging his duties, he shall once again be president
after four days. But if the vice president and the cabinet majority reiterate their declaration
within those four days that the guy can't govern, Congress is charged with deciding the issue.
It then takes a two-thirds vote of both houses to keep the president removed, which would have
to be done within 21 days, during which time the elected president would be sidelined and the
vice president would govern. If Congress can't muster the two-thirds majority within the
prescribed time period, the president "shall resume the powers and duties of his office."
It's almost impossible to contemplate the political conflagration that would ensue under
this plan. Citizens would watch those in Washington struggle with the monumental question of
the fate of their elected leader under an initiative that had never before been invoked, or
even considered, in such circumstances. Debates would flare up over whether this comported with
the original intent of the amendment; whether it was crafted to deal with physical or mental
"incapacitation," as opposed to controversial actions or unsubstantiated allegations or even
erratic decision making; whether such an action, if established as precedent, would destabilize
the American republic for all time; and whether unelected bureaucrats should arrogate to
themselves the power to set in motion the downfall of a president, circumventing the
impeachment language of the Constitution.
For the past two years, the country has been struggling to understand the two competing
narratives of the criminal investigation of the president.
One narrative -- let's call it Narrative A -- has it that honorable and dedicated federal
law enforcement officials developed concerns over a tainted election in which nefarious Russian
agents had sought to tilt the balloting towards the candidate who wanted to improve
U.S.-Russian relations and who seemed generally unseemly. Thus did the notion emerge, quite
understandably, that Trump had "colluded" with Russian officials to cadge a victory that
otherwise would have gone to his opponent. This narrative is supported and protected by
Democratic figures and organizations, by adherents of the "Russia as Threat" preoccupation, and
by anti-Trumpers everywhere, particularly news outlets such as CNN, The Washington Post
, and The New York Times .
The other view -- Narrative B -- posits that certain bureaucratic mandarins of the
national security state and the outgoing Obama administration resolved early on to thwart
Trump's candidacy. After his election, they determined to undermine his political standing, and
particularly his proposed policy toward Russia, through a relentless and expansive
investigation characterized by initial misrepresentations, selective media leaks, brutal law
enforcement tactics, and a barrage of innuendo. This is the narrative of most Trump supporters,
conservative commentators, Fox News, and The Wall Street Journal editorial page, notably
columnist Kimberley Strassel.
The McCabe revelation won't affect the battle of the two narratives. As ominous and
outrageous as this "deep state" behavior may seem to those who embrace Narrative B, it will be
seen by Narrative A adherents as evidence that those law enforcement officials were out there
heroically on the front lines protecting the republic from Donald J. Trump.
And those Narrative A folks won't have any difficulty tossing aside the fact that McCabe was
fired as deputy FBI director for violating agency policy in leaking unauthorized information to
the news media. He then allegedly violated the law in lying about it to federal investigators
on four occasions, including three times while under oath.
Indeed, Narrative A people have no difficulty at all brushing aside serious questions posed
by Narrative B people. McCabe is a likely liar and perjurer? Doesn't matter. Peter Strzok, head
of the FBI's counterespionage section, demonstrated his anti-Trump animus in tweets and emails
to Justice official Lisa Page? Irrelevant. Christopher Steele's dossier of dirt on Trump,
including an allegation that the Russians were seeking to blackmail and bribe him, was compiled
by a man who had demonstrated to a Justice Department official that he was "desperate that
Donald Trump not get elected and passionate about him not being president"? Not important. The
dossier was paid for by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic Party? Immaterial.
Nothing in the dossier was ever substantiated? So what?
Now we have a report from a participant of those meetings that top officials of the
country's premier law enforcement entity sat around and pondered how to bring down a sitting
president they didn't like. The Times even says that McCabe "confirmed" an earlier
report that deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein suggested wearing a wire in meetings with
Trump to incriminate him and make him more vulnerable to the plot.
There is no suggestion in McCabe's interview pronouncements or in the words of Scott Pelley,
who conducted the interview and spoke to CBS This Morning about it, that these federal
officials ever took action to further the aim of unseating the president. There doesn't seem to
be any evidence that they approached cabinet members or the vice president about it. "They were
speculating, 'This person would be with us, this person would not be,' and they were counting
noses in that effort," said Pelley. He added, apparently in response to Rosenstein's
insistence that his comments about wearing a wire were meant as a joke, "This was not perceived
to be a joke."
What are we to make of this? Around the time of the meetings to discuss the 25th Amendment
plot, senior FBI officials also discussed initiating a national security investigation of the
president as a stooge of the Russians or perhaps even a Russian agent. These talks were
revealed by The New YorkTimes and CNN in January, based on closed-door
congressional testimony by former FBI general counsel James Baker. You don't have to read very
carefully to see that the reporters on these stories brought to them a Narrative A sensibility.
The Times headline: "F.B.I. Opened Inquiry into Whether Trump Was Secretly Working on
Behalf of Russia." CNN's: "Transcripts detail how FBI debated whether Trump was 'following
directions' of Russia." And of course, whoever leaked those hearing transcripts almost surely
did so to bolster the Narrative A version of events.
The independent journalist Gareth Porter, writing at Consortium News, offers a penetrating
exposition of the inconsistencies, fallacies, and fatuities of the Narrative A matrix, as
reflected in how the Times and CNN handled the stories that resulted from what were
clearly self-interested leaks.
Porter notes that a particularly sinister expression in May 2017 by former CIA director
John O. Brennan, a leading Trump antagonist, has precipitated echoes in the news media ever
since, particularly in the Times . Asked in a committee hearing if he had intelligence
indicating that anyone in the Trump campaign was "colluding with Moscow," Brennan dodged the
question. He said his experience had taught him that "the Russians try to suborn individuals,
and they try to get them to act on their behalf either wittingly or unwittingly."
Of course you can't collude with anybody unwittingly. But Brennan's fancy expression has the
effect of expanding what can be thrown at political adversaries, to include not just conscious
and nefarious collaboration but also policy advocacy that could be viewed as wrongheaded or
injurious to U.S. interests. As Porter puts it, "The real purpose is to confer on national
security officials and their media allies the power to cast suspicion on individuals on the
basis of undesirable policy views of Russia rather than on any evidence of actual collaboration
with the Russian government."
That seems to be what's going on here. There's no doubt that McCabe and Rosenstein and
Strzok and Brennan and Page and many others despised Trump and his resolve to thaw relations
with Russia. They viewed him as a president "who needed to be reined in," as a CNN report
described the sentiment among top FBI officials after the Comey firing.
So they expanded the definition of collusion to include "unwitting" collaboration in order
to justify their machinations. It's difficult to believe that people in such positions would
take such a cavalier attitude toward the kind of damage they could wreak on the body
politic.
Now we learn that they actually sat around and plotted how to distort the Constitution, just
as they distorted the rules of official behavior designed to hold them in check, in order to
destroy a presidential administration placed in power by the American people. It's getting more
and more difficult to dismiss Narrative B.
Robert W. Merry, longtime Washington journalist and publishing executive, is the
author most recently of President McKinley: Architect of the American Century. MORE FROM THIS
AUTHOR
You're right, it didn't change a thing in the full-throated support to depose an elected
President they disagree with. The bureaucratic cabal has long had a more informal absolute
veto over who can even run for President. This guy challenged that hegemony of insider power
brokers, and caused the revelation that we have morphed into a Potemkin-style, managed
democracy, in which we don't choose who gets to run, just which of their choices we are allowed
to approve.
Such is the decadent trajectory, of republics that transition into empires, where
democratic accountabilty to the governed, domestic and foreign, decays in favor of empire
administrators and their elite beneficiaries and their sinecures at the expense of the
majority.
People rail against Trump as some sort of would-be Caesar, but he is elected, while those
permanent unaccountable "national security" czars acting in secrecy they are willing to
transfer all power to, are not.
No form of popular government can survive when secret police recording everything and spying
on the population become the real power.
"It's difficult to believe that people in such positions would take such a cavalier attitude
toward the kind of damage they could wreak on the body politic."
What we don't want to recognize is that people in such positions are, in fact, just that
dumb. It is unfortunately true. While not a Trump supporter, I would be out on the streets with
them if these jacka$$es had tried to pull this off. They should ALL be immediately terminated
and any benefits revoked.
Last night (Feb 14, 2019) Tucker Carlson interviewed retired Harvard law professor Alan
Dershowitz (1:04-3:36):
Carlson: "Professor, thanks very much for coming on. So now the suspicions of many are
confirmed by one of the players in it. The Department of Justice discussed trying to remove the
President using the 25 Amendment. What's your reaction to that?
Dershowitz: "Well, if that's true, it is clearly an attempt at a coup d'état.
Relating to what your former guest said, let's take the worst case scenario: Let's assume the
President of the United States was in bed with the Russians, committed treason, committed
obstruction of justice -- the 25 Amendment simply is irrelevant to that. That's why you have an
impeachment provision. The 25th amendment is about Woodrow Wilson having a stroke. It's about a
president being shot and not being able to perform his office. It's not about the most
fundamental disagreements. It's not about impeachable offenses. And any Justice Department
official who even mentioned the 25th Amendment in the context of President Trump has committed
a grievous offense against the Constitution. The framers of the 25th amendment had in mind
something very specific. And trying to use the 25th amendment to circumvent the impeachment
provisions, or to circumvent an election is a despicable act of unconstitutional
power-grabbing. And you were right when you said it reminded me of what happens in third world
countries. Look, these people may have been well-intentioned. They may believe that they were
serving the interests of the United States. But you have to obey the law and the law is the
Constitution and the 25th Amendment is as clear as could be: incapacity, unable to perform
office. That's what you need. That's why you need 2/3 of the House and 2/3 of the Senate
agreeing. And it has to be on the basis of a medical or psychological incapacity. Not on the
basis of even the most extreme crimes -- which there is no evidence were committed -- but even
if they were, that would not be basis for invoking the 25th Amendment. And I challenge any
left-wing person to get on television and to defend the use of the 25th Amendment. I challenge
any of my colleagues who are in the "Get Trump At Any Cost" camp to come on television and
justify the use of the 25 Amendment other than for physical or psychiatric incapacity.
Carlson: I bet they're doing that right now. This is an attack on our system, I would say,
not just the President. Alan Dershowitz, thank you very much.
Dershowitz: It is an attack on our system. It's an attack on the constitution. Thank
you.
How many millions of dollars did Bill and Hill receive from Russians? How much of America's
uranium deposits did Hillary sell to Russians during her time in the Obama administration? The
New York Times informs us:
" . . . the sale gave the Russians control of one-fifth of all uranium production capacity
in the United States. Since uranium is considered a strategic asset, with implications for
national security, the deal had to be approved by a committee composed of representatives from
a number of United States government agencies. Among the agencies that eventually signed off
was the State Department, then headed by Mr. Clinton's wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton.
"As the Russians gradually assumed control of Uranium One in three separate transactions
from 2009 to 2013, Canadian records show, a flow of cash made its way to the Clinton
Foundation. Uranium One's chairman used his family foundation to make four donations totaling
$2.35 million. Those contributions were not publicly disclosed by the Clintons, despite an
agreement Mrs. Clinton had struck with the Obama White House to publicly identify all donors.
Other people with ties to the company made donations as well.
"And shortly after the Russians announced their intention to acquire a majority stake in
Uranium One, Mr. Clinton received $500,000 for a Moscow speech from a Russian investment bank
with links to the Kremlin that was promoting Uranium One stock.
"At the time, both Rosatom and the United States government made promises intended to ease
concerns about ceding control of the company's assets to the Russians. Those promises have been
repeatedly broken, records show."
I wonder how much howling and how many allegations of "collusion" with Russia we'd be
hearing if the name Clinton were removed from the NY Times article and the name Trump were
inserted?
The article states: " top officials of the country's premier law enforcement entity sat around
and pondered how to bring down a sitting president they didn't like."
-- -- -- --
Which makes one wonder if "The rule of law" is becoming the rule of outlaws? When the
non-elected in the justice profession appear to have their own agenda.
Trump is an idiot, but his enemies in the lib-Dem-media Establishment are far worse: corrupt,
deceitful, arrogant, and lawless. Exhibit A is Andrew McCabe.
That's why I'll vote for the Idiot-in-Chief (again) in 2020. Because the alternative makes
me vomit.
"The pages of this publication drift further and further into utter insanity and
despicable defense of Trump. Stand up for the values of the Constitution, or something, but
not for this man who is no more than a self-enriching demagogue with no understanding of the
reactionary politics he uses to delude the rubes and attract asinine threadbare pieces like
this one."
Actually no. Consider me the inverse of Peter. I didn't vote for Trump due to the character
weaknesses Peter describes. However, what I see is a seriously flawed man who has served the
useful purpose of revealing an echo chamber of flawed and self-serving biases shared by the
media and political establishment of this country. I see CNN, the NY Times, the Washington
Post, and even some key leaders of our security services in a completely different light than I
did two years ago. I am thankful for the clarity. I consider Merry's article to be a
contribution in that direction.
"Peter" sez: "Can't imagine why career law enforcement officials were concerned with a guy they
knew to be a criminal taking over the office of the presidency."
Weird but no one has shown any actual criminal behavior by said President. Two years later
still no charges. But Peter and these "career law enforcement officials" KNEW he was a
criminal. Then Peter appeals to the Constitution, apparently oblivious to the fact that the
Constitution doesn't make any provisions for plotting to remove the lawfully elected President
because you don't like just because you "know" he is a "criminal", in spite of any actual
evidence.
"After his election, they (the deep state) determined to undermine his political standing, and
particularly his proposed policy toward Russia, through a relentless and expansive
investigation characterized by initial misrepresentations, selective media leaks, brutal law
enforcement tactics, and a barrage of innuendo. This is the narrative of most Trump supporters,
conservative commentators, Fox News, and The Wall Street Journal editorial page, notably
columnist Kimberley Strassel."
The trouble with that is it completely ignores the ton of evidence pointing to really
nefarious stuff.
Lots of times, when there's smoke, there's fire. And when the smoke is overwhelming there
probably is a fire. A big one.
Trump has been going after the Russians since his inauguration. Therefore, those trying to
remove him from office are likely the actual Russian agents. Of course they would need smoke
and mirrors to hide that fact and deflect attention from themselves. It just so happens that
Russian spies are trained by the FSB to accuse others of being a spy, for just this purpose.
I'm looking at you, John O. (Oleg?) Brennan
No matter who the President is, there is some group of people in Washington is ALWAYS trying to
bring him down. Who those people are, and how large and powerful the group is, depends on a
variety of factors. But a competent president manages to enact his agenda while staying one
step ahead of his intriguers. Obama and GWB accomplished both, more or less because they were
intelligent men of good character (though Obama was much smarter and better man than W)
While Bill Clinton's character was too low to avoid impeachment he was a smart and able
administrator. Trump has both low character and low intellect so it is not surprising A. that
many people want to bring him down and B. that they have been pretty effective.
Politics may be a blood sport in Washington but that's not the same as a "deep state". And
Trump can't compete and win with anyone in Washington who doesn't grovel before him like the
supine Senate Republicans. And that is no one's fault but his.
You wanting Trump to be a Russian agent does not make him one. It never
will. Get over it. , ,
February 16, 2019 at 12:08 am
"If it turns out that Trump IS a Russian asset, will you apologize, Robert Merry? Because he
certainly acts like one. And, as REAL Republicans used to say, if it looks like a duck, walks
like a duck, and quacks like a duck, maybe it's a duck."
@One Guy Yeah, because sending deadly aid to Ukraine is so pro-Russian. What an idiot you
are!
"Can't imagine why career law enforcement officials were concerned with a guy they knew to be a
criminal taking over the office of the presidency. Shame on them!"
They also "knew" Martin Luther King Jr. was a Soviet agent.
The issue with the 25th amendment, is that the President's character flaws or mental deficiency
were known and very visible before the election. Is it constitutionally proper for Congress to
suspend a President for a preexisting condition that was known to and unhidden from voters? If
Congress did that, it means Congress has a veto over who the public is allowed to vote in as
President.
Forget the Covington students, Andrew McCabe and his lady co-workers have some pretty punchable
faces. (Ok, I'm enough of a sexist to not punch a lady. I'd use eye-rolling and mocking
gestures instead.)
The problem is not the existence of the deep state. It's inevitable that there will be
unelected officials who will continue to shape policy regardless of who is elected President.
The problem is that the deep state is blatantly working to undermine its elected
leadership. If you can't in good conscience work with your President, the honorable thing
to do is resign as some undoubtedly have. It's not an excuse for insubordination.
They removed both Kennedy brothers. Why not to remove Trump?
Notable quotes:
"... This FBI/CIA (plus British intelligence etc.) attempt to destroy and remove an elected President will end the same way as the bank fraud that damaged the US economy 11 yrs ago. ..."
"... I think what the Intel Agencies were really concerned about was Trump's statement "wouldn't it be great to get along with Russia." They were worried about detente, not influence. Trump threatened to remove their number one bogeyman, which would put at risk trillions of dollars for the MIC. What if he dared to negotiate a nuclear arms reduction treaty? What if he dared to share intelligence regarding terrorists with Russia, as Obama attempted before he was brought to heel? Trump has been emasculated by RussiaGate, and Mueller's "Theater of the Absurd" continues to ensure that Trump toes the line. The intel agencies don't need to remove him from power because they are the ones with the REAL power. ..."
"... In such a world "voting" and "democracy" are simply fairy tales "told by an idiot, full of sound and fury and signifying nothing." They exist only as meaningless abstractions used to help insure we the populace remain compliant and don't take to the streets like the Yellow Vests in France. Which of course is our only chance whatsoever to in any meaningfully way impact this completely corrupt uber-violent corporate-feudal paradise we find ourselves now inhabiting. ..."
Former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe, in an
explosive interview with CBS's "60 Minutes," said that in early 2017, in the
aftermath of President Donald Trump's firing of former FBI Director James Comey, he and other
FBI officials discussed the possibility of recruiting a cabinet secretary to help push the
president out of office by using the Constitution's 25 th Amendment
McCabe further contended that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein offered to wear a wire
when he was around Trump in order to gather evidence against him. (Rosenstein
denies the allegation.) McCabe said that Justice Department officials believed at the time
that Trump may have obstructed justice by firing Comey, and they worried that Trump was somehow
under the influence of the Russian government. In the end, nothing came of the plan. Regardless
of one's feelings toward President Trump and his policies, what McCabe is describing is nothing
less than a coup attempt. It's something that happens in weak or nascent democracies, following
interference by the CIA perhaps. It should never happen here.
Trump has long had an antagonistic relationship with the FBI, the CIA and other elements of
the intelligence community. Indeed, in early 2017, when news of the FISA warrants and the
private intelligence Steele dossier began to leak out, Trump began to tweet his disgust at news
of impending investigations of him, his campaign, and his business dealings.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer responded almost immediately, saying "(The president)
is being really dumb to do this." "This" was to take on the intelligence agencies, the
so-called Deep State, in public. A few days later, Schumer went on MSNBC to sharpen his warning
to Trump, saying, "Let me tell you, you take on the intelligence community -- they have six
ways from Sunday at getting back at you."
But Trump was right. The intelligence community -- the FBI, CIA, the NSA and other
three-letter agencies -- are too powerful, too entrenched and two well-funded. And they have
far too little oversight. They're a threat to our democracy, not the saviors of it. That is why
it pains me to see Democrats lining up behind them to attack Trump.
Presidents Come and Go
I was a member of that "Deep State" throughout my 15 years at the CIA. I can tell you from
first-hand experience that the CIA doesn't care who the president is. Neither does the FBI.
Senior CIA and FBI officers are there for decades, while presidents come and go. They know that
they can outwait any president they don't like. At the very least, at the CIA, they could made
administrative decisions that would hamstring a president: Perhaps they don't carry out that
risky operation. Maybe they don't target that well-placed source. Maybe they ignore the
president's orders knowing that in four years or eight years he or she will just go away.
Even worse, these same organizations -- the FBI and the CIA -- are the ones that have sought
to undermine our democracy over the years. Don't forget programs like COINTELPRO , the FBI's operation to force
Martin Luther King Jr. to commit
suicide ; the infiltration of peace groups; the CIA's efforts to control the media with
Operation
Mockingbird ; the CIA's illegal spying on American
citizens ; the CIA
hacking into the computers of the Senate Intelligence Committee; and the Agency's
extrajudicial
assassination program ; to name a few.
McCabe's almost offhanded comments on "60 Minutes," that the FBI actively considered
deposing a sitting president should be cause for alarm. Set partisan politics aside for a
moment. We're talking about deposing a sitting president . We're talking about
wearing a wire to catch a sitting president saying something because you're angry that
he fired your boss. Even the idea of it is unprecedented in American history.
John Kiriakou is a former CIA counterterrorism officer and a former senior
investigator with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. John became the sixth whistleblower
indicted by the Obama administration under the Espionage Act -- a law designed to punish spies.
He served 23 months in prison as a result of his attempts to oppose the Bush administration's
torture program.
Hillary and the DNC stole the nomination from Sanders and gave Sanders voters a stiff
middle finger meanwhile Hillary via Bill Talked Trump into Running as a REPUBLICAN ..
Hillary was the neo con neo liberal candidate ..Trump was never supposed to win and even
he was shocked it happened ..Melania even cried .
its worse than you think
Why Did Bernie Abandon Tim Canova & Election Integrity
Also Integrity Initiative infiltrated the Sanders campaign and boosted anti-Jill Stein
messaging. The only good thing about all this investigations nonsense is that we see how
blatantly rigged and/or manipulated US elections are by intelligence agencies on top of the
pre-manipulation by the corporate giants.
Babyl-on , February 17, 2019 at 1:13 pm
Thomas Piketty in his typically tedious economic research, has shown that there is and has
been for centuries a core block of Western capital. This core capital has not in the past 500
years ever had a year of loss, they gained in profit ALWAYS no matter the empire or democracy
war or peace – that is EVERY SINGLE YEAR.
Institutions are instruments of power they are not power itself. These institutions are
given instructions by those who represent the core block of Western capital. The US
government and all its agencies serve ONLY the interests of core capital.
Today that block of core capital has grown to over 41 trillion dollars. It is the largest
block of capital anywhere in the world, it's influence is deeply saturated throughout Western
society and culture.
Peter Phillips has produced a tremendous book providing the evidence of this block of
capital and the structure which communicates its orders to the World Bank, Fed and the "deep
state" and the EU and its institutions. GIANTS: The Global Power Elite.
There are no secret societies running the world the power elites do it in plane sight. We
know their names from history and in the present. Metici, Borgas – parts of those
fortunes are in the 41 trillion. Rockefeller, Rothschild, Buffet are in the world today.
Robert Kagen and his forces which represent the 41 trillion ALWAYS get what they want and
they have for 500 years. Imagine, 500 years of taking more "profits" than any other faction
of the population. But it is not just business, there is also theft, the way England stole in
today's dollars 45 trillion dollars worth of goods from India – they simply set up a
shell game and took everything and paid nothing. This is why their fortunes grow so much
better than others – just outright theft. It is not a capitalist system, it is
Feudalism.
This basic block of Western capital is openly pro war because within the 41 trillion are
the arms corporations which they control just as one example.
The methods of this, possibly the most enduring power unit in human history, are clear
throughout the historical record. They are ruthless, ALWAYS advancing pushing probing looking
for opportunities. They never rest or give any quarter. Governments come and go, empires come
and go but the core capital under any and all conditions profits every year.
While the phrase was first written in the years after WWII "Global full spectrum
domination." has been the marching order for this capital for centuries.
This small group of elites will settle for nothing except everything. For them there is no
morality, no good guys or bad buys, just winners and losers and they have won every battle
for power and money for 500 years, even in years where things didn't go well they still made
more that the economic growth of the economy.
It is the power of that 41 trillion which is destroying the planet and making perpetual
war for their own pleasures and profit.
Talk of impeachment of a president or "The Constitution" changing the government are
useless acts unless you can come up with a plan to take the assets of these monsters and to
distribute them appropriately so that human institutions serve people instead of slaughtering
for profit elites.
It is going to be far more difficult to deal with entrenched elites with a 500 year
success record but until its power is finally dissipated.
Idimalink , February 17, 2019 at 12:08 pm
The FBI, CIA, the NSA and other three-letter agencies are the enemy. Their spooks must
exposed as perpetrators of crime; heinous crimes.
errorum propagationi , February 17, 2019 at 2:55 pm
"The FBI, CIA, the NSA and other three-letter agencies are the enemy. Their spooks must
exposed as perpetrators of crime; heinous crimes."
And yet despite the tough-talking, empty-rhetoric, Trump continues to bow to the same.
Their crimes continue. The NSA is STILL collecting all data from EVERY citizen of the U.S., yet Trump has ensured
even-greater secrecy of those actions by that agency. The CIA is STILL interfering in the politics of other countries, and STILL running
drugs.
The FBI continues to ignore crimes by the .001 percent (incluing pedophilia, child
trafficking, financial crimes, white collar crimes, etc.).
Trump continues to call for the draconian prosecution of those whom sought to expose the
actions of these agencies.
Propaganda only works when it isn't recognized as such.
Trump's actions are called the propaganda of diversion & distraction.
Both Trump and Hillary were HIGHLY unpopular, yet the mindless masses are forced into not
only accepting either, but ultimately defending the instilled "leader".
You are proof of the effectivness of that propaganda.
Trump is an Entertainer, first and foremost.
His job is to lead mere followers like you to believing the roles he plays, into accepting
the same wholly corrupted system. "Partisan" politics is increasingly being scripted like episodes of entertainment, like
the Jerry Springer show.
Have you ever bothered to consider that the largest "news" media are similarly owned by
the same corporations that own the largest entertainement media?
I used to work for a image & footage library ..the firms are using stock images, video
& sound for both their entertainment & "news". Have you ever bothered to examine the true underlying ownership of the highly consolidated
corporate media?
CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, etc are all largely owned by the same firms, via large stock
holdings.
Trump is an Entertainer serving each of these subsidiaries.
The viewership/ratings of each has climbed.
The more "contention" (mere diversion & distraction) Trump creates, the more the loyal
viewers of these media continue to indulge in the nonsense.
"Partisan" followers, the sheep, are doing the same of their respective parties, each of
which are controlled by the same elite.
Don't believe it, take a look at the campaign finance & investment portfolios of the
largest candidates of each party (including the "Dems", "GOP", "Progs" and
"Libertarians").
The true "Deep State" is much larger than Trump.
Those few Agents he has called-out & sought to damage, are just small cogs in the much
larger system.
Absolutely nothing has changed. The mindless masses are so easily herded. Instincts of the Herd in Peace & War – Wilfred Trotter
Propaganda – Edward Bernays
The deep state kills presidents. It why Trump has his own security ..smart move. Trump tried to take them on and was called a TRAITOR ..and criminals like Brenner and
clapper and Haden work for MSNBC and CNN now? The USSR wasnt so blatant .
Spot on. Trump is PT Barnum, not Martin Luther King. He's not fighting to "save America
from the Deep State." Trump's a clown riding a unicycle juggling chainsaws. He's a circus
charlatan, not some hero demolishing the FBI to save John Q Public from the spooks. Sheep
indeed.
Scott Hunter , February 17, 2019 at 11:49 am
Spot on!!! Accountability is the next step Integrity is the key and has always been the
key to walking a path that brings contentment.
Thank you for your service John Kiriakou!!!
Billy , February 17, 2019 at 11:47 am
The Emsils reveal Hillary cheated Bernie. She needed to distract. Brennan, Clapper and the
FBI assisted her. When she lost they switched over from distract to removal mode. The entire
MSM is also complicate in this illegal coup. They're not fake news they're propagandist.
MSM fired Ed Shultz for wanting to cover Sanders . MSM fired Jesse Ventura for being anti war . MSM fiired Phil Donahue for being against the Iraq wars .. Brennan and Clapper and Haden are proved Bush criminals who now work for the MSM and CNN
liars ,war mongers and torture enthusiasts .
I like John and the information he puts out for us. But I just don't buy this. I see this
just as I did the 2016 election cycle for the republican party. A circus of over 21
candidates and everyone and the media all against Trump. But who got all the free time in the
media and ended up being the president? I didn't buy the fake disdain from the republicans
towards Trump because I knew they were licking their chops wanting him in their. With Trump
they could take the country to the right as far as they wanted. And here we are looking at a
fascist state now. The US has leaped right into the fire of the fourth reich. All that in
2016 was us being duped into a false illusion of Trump can't possibly win while the plan was
make him win. I honestly believe the whole 2016 election cycle was one big illusion to take
over the country. A coup over the population.
Trump and these intelligence agencies are working just fine together. This is all just
another illusion as the country continues to move towards fascism with the rest of the world.
Still working together in Syria, Iran, Venezuela, Africa and a list of other countries, along
with right here among us is the FBI. After all, right there in the article it states as much.
These entities and Trump essentially have the same agenda. And what we;re getting is a dose
of perception management to duped us from the reality of it being the reality. And just like
the founder of this news site has taught us, the media is the tool to make it work for
them.
Anne Jaclard , February 17, 2019 at 9:19 pm
Agree that Trump is a corporate military-intelligence flunky like his predecessors but
that doesn't justify the FBI/CIA manipulation, as it was based merely on dovish (but ignored
in office, of course) campaign rhetoric. What if Tulsi Gabbard or Bernie Sanders, or somebody
better than either of them (neither are super great) get spied upon or ousted by a militarist
cabal for the same reasons?
Jeff Harrison , February 17, 2019 at 10:40 am
It can't happen here . I'm telling you my dear, it can't happen here. – Frank Zappa
in a tune of the same name.
But, John, it already has. Mark Felt, aka Deep Throat, pissed off that he wasn't made FBI
director at Hoover's death, brought down a President, Nixon, out of personal pique. He
revealed secrets that never should have been secrets to Woodward & Bernstein and brought
Nixon down. Our evil ways in the rest of the world have come home to roost. You spoke of the
Church committee's reforms. I doubt there's much left of Frank Church's reforms. The three
letter surveillance state is the new Praetorian Guard. There is naught to be done but disband
the whole lot of 'em if we want our democracy back. I know everybody will be screaming that
Oh NO! We can't do that! But, ah, yes we can (to steal someone else's bullshit line).
The Ticoes of Costa Rica, after they got their government back from the military after a 1948
coup simply disbanded the military. No more military to junta. Haven't had a coup since.
There's two trite but very true lines:
Bullshit walks and money talks,
What goes around comes around. (and it's starting to come around. We'd better do something
about it or we will regret it. But that would mean we'd have to give up our imperial
pretensions and we all know that's not going to happen.)
anon4d2 , February 17, 2019 at 9:43 pm
We could certainly re-purpose 80% of our military to building infrastructure in developing
nations, without any opposition from them or additional expense, and improve our security and
international standing. We could completely eliminate the unconstitutional spying upon
citizens without any opposition, and use the same employees for humanitarian purposes.
But of course oligarchy must first be deposed, which historically has required invasion or
revolution. Where oligarchy controls mass media and elections, education and activism won't
get us there. Invasion is no longer a likely path. So the revolution will be the bloodiest in
history, likely after the mass media are discredited, the economy ruined by foreign embargo,
and oligarchy no longer able to provide the bread and circus needed to quell the
peasants.
If that string of disasters does not happen, we may have a permanent tyranny, a society
that explicitly accepts and honors tyranny, a curse upon humanity until its destruction.
JOHN WHITE , February 17, 2019 at 10:29 am
THEY DID NOT COME CLOSE TO A COUP..
THE COUP IS STILL GOING ON ..
So now I know what the 25th amendment to the Constitution is about. Impeachment would be
messy incapacitation would be quick and half the public, feeling helpless, would soon
forget.
Discussion of this reminds me of the things we accused the Stalin regime of doing, which
they well may have. Here today, gone tomorrow.
We cannot be sure this is all true, but the mere fact that it is floating around is
chilling. Impeachment with its uncertain outcome would be messy, using the 25th amendment
would be relatively quick if all your ducks were lined up.
Can we describe the Trump syndrome as anything else than mass hysteria. It has gotten so
bad that no matter what Trump proposes, forces go to work to prevent it from happening lest
he get credit for it. The merit of what he proposes, be damned, it's his idea and we are not
going to let it happen.
Who and what is at risk. A besieged President, anxious to survive, can do crazy things
which his crazy enemies happen to believe are good ideas. Things like detente with Russia are
set aside as is an effort to achieve normal relations with North Korea. Things like creating
a crisis with Iran or pulling out of a nuclear treaty are either praised or accepted. It all started minus day one of this guys presidency and it just won't stop. Hard to say
how it could end, but the options are pretty
scary.
The authors point is that we have elections to decide who shall be president and the
intoxicated crew in Washington, New York and Hollywood need to accept that.
Eric32 , February 17, 2019 at 9:06 am
This FBI/CIA (plus British intelligence etc.) attempt to destroy and remove an elected
President will end the same way as the bank fraud that damaged the US economy 11 yrs ago.
Nothing real will be done, and the disease will just get deeper and more widespread.
MBeaver , February 17, 2019 at 9:51 pm
I often look at politics like I look at software.
If you have bugs, you fix them quickly before they can hurt your customers too much and they
decide to ditch your software or look for an alternative somewhere else.
Here they are being ignored for decades and decades and many people exploit them, because
they can flourish on them, like a criminal uses bugs in software to circumvent security. Like
parasites. But the vast majority and the system itself is getting damaged by them. People
adapt to them, and become as dishonest as the minority. It gets worse and worse until there
is no way back and ends in a disaster.
Dave , February 17, 2019 at 8:18 am
Are McCabe and others going to face any consequences for their actions? I have some
doubts.
Skip Scott , February 17, 2019 at 7:35 am
"McCabe said that Justice Department officials believed at the time that Trump may have
obstructed justice by firing Comey, and they worried that Trump was somehow under the
influence of the Russian government."
I think what the Intel Agencies were really concerned about was Trump's statement
"wouldn't it be great to get along with Russia." They were worried about detente, not
influence. Trump threatened to remove their number one bogeyman, which would put at risk
trillions of dollars for the MIC. What if he dared to negotiate a nuclear arms reduction
treaty? What if he dared to share intelligence regarding terrorists with Russia, as Obama
attempted before he was brought to heel? Trump has been emasculated by RussiaGate, and
Mueller's "Theater of the Absurd" continues to ensure that Trump toes the line. The intel
agencies don't need to remove him from power because they are the ones with the REAL
power.
("Trump has been emasculated by RussiaGate, and Mueller's "Theater of the Absurd"
continues to ensure that Trump toes the line.")
I quite agree, and with your comment in mind I'd say that one could quite rationally argue
that in fact a deep state coup "has actually taken place" and was in fact quite successful.
Trump will most certainly "not" be normalizing relations with Russia if he wants to remain
president. This is the power of the deep state carried out through relentless MSM propaganda,
evidence and "reality" be damned.
In such a world "voting" and "democracy" are simply fairy tales "told by an idiot, full of
sound and fury and signifying nothing." They exist only as meaningless abstractions used to
help insure we the populace remain compliant and don't take to the streets like the Yellow
Vests in France. Which of course is our only chance whatsoever to in any meaningfully way
impact this completely corrupt uber-violent corporate-feudal paradise we find ourselves now
inhabiting.
"The intel agencies don't need to remove him from power because they are the ones with the
REAL power." – spot on!
jadez , February 17, 2019 at 6:46 am
MAYBE MR John Kiriakou should familiarize himself with the Constitution..and the 25th
amendment which he acknowledges was to be used to "oust"..a sitting president.
i do not disagree or challenge his integrity regarding the actions of the agencies he
writes about yet at the same time to dismiss out of hand a constitutional avenue of removing
a president for say BEING an actual agent of a foreign government can not be dismissed based
strictly on the idea that presidents "come and go"!
Abby , February 18, 2019 at 12:29 am
I'm pretty sure that Kiriakou knows all about the constitution and the 25th amendment. The
problem that he's discussing here is that if a president is unfit to continue his presidency
then it's up to his cabinet and congress to remove him, not the intelligence agency's
job.
Where was the proof that Trump was being an actual agent of a foreign government? There
was none at the time of this attempted coup and so far Mueller hasn't shown any. Manafort is
guilty of breaking tax laws, not anything to do with collusion with people in Russia. Nor has
he shown that anyone else was or is either. And do you honestly think that if a president was
working with a foreign government that congress would just sit patiently by as Mueller
dragged his feet for two years looking into that? I think not.
Seby , February 17, 2019 at 5:02 am
Excellent in more detailed analysis of this power struggle in the US plutocracy at NEO
recently.
3 Major Divisions in the American Ruling Class by Caleb Maupin.
To precis
Division #1: Saudi Wahabbis vs. The Muslim Brotherhood
Division #2: The Pentagon vs. Intel Agencies
Division #3: The Rich vs. The Ultra-Rich
The ability of those in power to manipulate
the ways ordinary people think, act and vote has allowed for an
inverted totalitarianism
which turns the citizenry into their own prison wardens, allowing those with real power to continue doing as they please unhindered
by the interests of the common man.
In neoliberal MSM there is positive feedback loop for "Trump is a Russian agent" stories. So the meme feeds on itself.
Notable quotes:
"... And yet the trending, most high-profile stories about Trump today all involve painting him as a Putin puppet who is working to destroy America by taking a weak stance against an alarming geopolitical threat. This has had the effect of manufacturing demand for even more dangerous escalations against a nuclear superpower that just so happens to be a longtime target of U.S. intelligence agencies. ..."
"... the mass media is not in the business of reporting facts, it's in the business of selling narratives. Even if those narratives are so shrill and stress-inducing that they imperil the health of their audience. ..."
"... Trump is clearly not a Russian asset, he's a facilitator of America's permanent unelected government just like his predecessors, and indeed as far as actual policies and administration behavior goes he's not that much different from Barack Obama and George W Bush. Hell, for all his demagogic anti-immigrant speech Trump hasn't even caught up to Obama's peak ICE deportation years ..."
"... Used to be that the U.S. mass media only killed people indirectly, by facilitating establishment war agendas in repeating government agency propaganda as objective fact and promulgating narratives that manufacture support for a status quo which won't even give Americans health insurance or safe drinking water ..."
"... Now they're skipping the middle man and killing them directly by psychologically brutalizing them so aggressively that it ruins their health, all to ensure that Democrats support war and adore the U.S. intelligence community . ..."
"... The social engineers responsible for controlling the populace of the greatest military power on the planet are watching France closely, and understand deeply what is at stake should they fail to control the narrative and herd ordinary Americans into supporting U.S. government institutions. ..."
"... The ability of those in power to manipulate the ways ordinary people think, act and vote has allowed for an inverted totalitarianism which turns the citizenry into their own prison wardens, allowing those with real power to continue doing as they please unhindered by the interests of the common man. ..."
The always excellent Moon of Alabama blog has just
published a sarcasm-laden piece documenting the many, many aggressive maneuvers that this administration has made against the
interests of Russia, from pushing for more NATO funding to undermining Russia's natural gas interests to bombing Syria to sanctioning
Russian oligarchs to dangerous military posturing.
<picture deleted>
And yet the trending, most high-profile stories about Trump today all involve painting him as a Putin puppet who is working
to destroy America by taking a weak stance against an alarming geopolitical threat. This has had the effect of manufacturing demand
for even more dangerous escalations against a nuclear superpower that just so happens to be a longtime target of U.S. intelligence
agencies.
If the mass media were in the business of reporting facts, there would be a lot less "Putin's puppet" talk and a lot more "Hey,
maybe we should avoid senseless escalations which could end all life on earth" talk among news media consumers. But there isn't,
because the mass media is not in the business of reporting facts, it's in the business of selling narratives. Even if those narratives
are so shrill and stress-inducing that they imperil the health of their audience.
Like His Predecessors
Trump is clearly not a Russian asset, he's a facilitator of America's permanent unelected government just like his predecessors,
and indeed as far as actual policies and administration behavior goes he's
not that much different
from Barack Obama and George W Bush. Hell, for all his demagogic anti-immigrant speech Trump
hasn't even caught up to Obama's peak ICE deportation years.
If the mass media were in the business of reporting facts, people would be no more worried about this administration than they
were about the previous ones, because when it comes to his administration's actual behavior, he's just as reliable an upholder of
the establishment-friendly status quo as his predecessors.
Used to be that the U.S. mass media only killed people indirectly, by facilitating establishment war agendas in repeating
government agency propaganda as objective fact and promulgating narratives that manufacture support for a status quo which won't
even give Americans health insurance or safe drinking water.
They do this for a reason, of course. The Yellow Vests protests in France have continued unabated for their
ninth consecutive week , a decentralized populist uprising resulting from ordinary French citizens losing trust in their institutions
and the official narratives which uphold them.
The social engineers responsible for controlling the populace of the greatest military power on the planet are watching France
closely, and understand deeply what is at stake should they fail to control the narrative and herd ordinary Americans into supporting
U.S. government institutions. Right now they've got Republicans cheering on the White House and Democrats cheering on the U.S.
intelligence community, but that could all change should something happen which causes them to lose control over the thoughts that
Americans think about their rulers.
Propaganda is the single most-overlooked and under-appreciated aspect of human society. The ability of those in power to manipulate
the ways ordinary people think, act and vote has allowed for an
inverted totalitarianism
which turns the citizenry into their own prison wardens, allowing those with real power to continue doing as they please unhindered
by the interests of the common man.
The only thing that will lead to real change is the people losing trust in corrupt institutions and
rising like lions against them. That gets increasingly likely as those
institutions lose control of the narrative, and with trust in the mass media at an all-time low, populist uprisings restoring power
to the people in France, and media corporations
acting increasingly weird and insecure , that looks more and more likely by the day.
"... Baker said McCabe was cool, calm and collected throughout the discussions, telling lawmakers: "At this point in time, Andy was unbelievably focused and unbelievably confident and squared away. I don't know how to describe it other than I was extremely proud to be around him at that point in time because I thought he was doing an excellent job at maintaining focus and dealing with a very uncertain and difficult situation. So I think he was in a good state of mind at this point in time." ..."
"... According to McCabe, Rosenstein "raised the issue and discussed it with me in the context of thinking about how many other cabinet officials might support such an effort," adding that Rosenstein was "definitely very concerned about the president, about his capacity and about his intent at that point in time." ..."
Two Trump Cabinet officials were "ready to support" a DOJ scheme to invoke the 25th Amendment to remove President Trump , according
to
Bloomberg and
Fox News , citing closed-door testimony from the FBI's former top lawyer, James Baker - who said that the claim came from Deputy
Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.
The testimony was delivered last fall to the House Oversight and Judiciary Committees. Fox News has confirmed portions of the
transcript. It provides additional insight into discussions that have returned to the spotlight in Washington as fired FBI Deputy
Director Andrew McCabe revisits the matter during interviews promoting his forthcoming book. -
Fox News
While Baker did not identify the two Cabinet officials, he says that McCabe and former FBI lawyer Lisa Page approached him to
relay their conversations with Rosenstein, including their discussions of the 25th Amendment scheme. "I was being told by some combination
of Andy McCabe and Lisa Page, that, in a conversation with the Deputy Attorney General, he had stated that he -- this was what was
related to me -- that he had at least two members of the president's Cabinet who were ready to support, I guess you would call it,
an action under the 25th Amendment," Baker told the Congressional committees.
The 25th Amendment allows for the removal of a sitting president from office through various mechanisms - including the majority
of a president's Cabinet agreeing that the commander-in-chief is incapable of performing his duties.
Rosenstein - who is slated to leave the Justice Department in the near future, has denied the claims. Baker said McCabe was cool,
calm and collected throughout the discussions, telling lawmakers: "At this point in time, Andy was unbelievably focused and unbelievably
confident and squared away. I don't know how to describe it other than I was extremely proud to be around him at that point in time
because I thought he was doing an excellent job at maintaining focus and dealing with a very uncertain and difficult situation. So
I think he was in a good state of mind at this point in time."
McCabe, meanwhile
told "60 Minutes" in an interview set to air Sunday night that Rosenstein was concerned about Trump's "capacity."
According to McCabe, Rosenstein "raised the issue and discussed it with me in the context of thinking about how many other cabinet
officials might support such an effort," adding that Rosenstein was "definitely very concerned about the president, about his capacity
and about his intent at that point in time."
"Rosenstein was actually openly talking about whether there was a majority of the cabinet who would vote to remove the president?"
asks CBS News anchor Scott Pelly, to which McCabe replied: " That's correct. Counting votes or possible votes. "
The New York Times
first reported
last year that McCabe alleged in memos that Rosenstein had talked about using the 25th Amendment to oust Trump -- or wearing a
wire to surreptitiously monitor the president -- in the hectic days in May 2017 after Trump fired James B. Comey as FBI director.
At the time, Rosenstein disputed the reporting. -
WaPo
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) called the 25th Amendment scheme a "
bureaucratic coup " led by enemies of President Trump. On Sunday morning, Graham said he would subpoena McCabe and Rosenstein
"if that's what it takes" to get to the bottom of the 25th Amendment claim.
On Thursday, the DOJ issued a statement claiming that Rosenstein rejects McCabe's version of events "as inaccurate and factually
incorrect," and also denied that Rosenstein ever approved wearing a "wire" to record Trump.
"The deputy attorney general never authorized any recording that Mr. McCabe references," reads the DOJ statement. "As the deputy
attorney general previously has stated, based on his personal dealings with the president, there is no basis to invoke the 25th Amendment,
nor was the DAG in a position to consider invoking the 25th Amendment."
McCabe, meanwhile, walked back some of his "60 Minutes" statements . On Friday a spokeswoman for the former Deputy Director said:
"Certain statements made by Mr. McCabe, in interviews associated with the release of his book, have been taken out of context and
misrepresented," adding "To clarify, at no time did Mr. McCabe participate in any extended discussions about the use of the 25th
Amendment, nor is he aware of any such discussions."
Baker acknowledged during his testimony that he was not directly involved in the May 2017 discussions, rather, McCabe and Page
approached him contemporaneously following a meeting with Rosenstein in the days following former FBI Director James Comey's firing.
"I had the impression that the deputy attorney general had already discussed this with two members in the president's Cabinet
and that they were onboard with this concept already," said Baker.
Question: "Do you know what direction that went? Was it Mr. Rosenstein seeking out members of the Cabinet looking to pursue
this 25th Amendment approach or was it the other way around?"
Baker: "What I recall being said was that the Deputy Attorney General had two members of the Cabinet. So he – how they came
to be had, I don't know, but "
Question: "So he had two members, almost like he was taking the initiative and getting the members?"
Baker: "That would be speculation on my part." -
Via Fox News
Baker also suggested that "Lisa and Andy" did not know the names of the Cabinet officials who were on board with the 25th Amendment
scheme.
Baker testified in October that the alleged discussions took place during an uncertain and anxious time at the FBI and DOJ
after Comey's termination, and that the mood was "pretty dark":
Question: "Did people tell you that the DAG (Deputy Attorney General) was upset?"
Baker: "Yes."
Question: "Did they tell you that he was making jokes?"
Baker: "No."
Question: "Did they tell you that..."
Baker: " This was not a joking sort of time. This was pretty dark. " -
Via Fox News
"Our choice now seems to be between a "new war" and a new world. As always, the forces of reaction and wealth are telling us
we have no choice but war, and no right or power to decide. They are calling for a secret investigation, a secret conviction,
a secret method of execution, and a totally secret war abroad.
"The American people as a whole are the only ones in the world who have the right to decide on a national response to this
tragedy, and it must be one that takes into account the rights of all the other peoples and nations of the world."
"... This is the behavior of a media class that is interested in selling narratives, not reporting truth. And yet the mass media talking heads are all telling us today that we must continue to trust them. ..."
"... More accountability in media than in politics, Chuck? Really? Accountability to whom? Your advertisers? Your plutocratic owners? Certainly not to the people whose minds you are paid exorbitant sums to influence; there are no public elections for the leadership of the mass media. ..."
"... CNN, for the record, has been guilty of an arguably even more embarrassing Russiagate flub than Buzzfeed 's when they wrongly reported that Donald Trump Jr had had access to WikiLeaks' DNC email archives prior to their 2016 publication, an error that was hilariously due to to the simple misreading of an email date by multiple people ..."
"... The mass media, including pro-Trump mass media like Fox News, absolutely deserves to be distrusted. It has earned that distrust. It had earned that distrust already with its constant promotion of imperialist wars and an oligarch-friendly status quo, and it has earned it even more with its frenzied promotion of a narrative engineered to manufacture consent for a preexisting agenda to shove Russia off the world stage. ..."
"... The mainstream media absolutely is the enemy of the people; just because Trump says it doesn't mean it's not true. The only reason people don't rise up and use the power of their numbers to force the much-needed changes that need to happen in our world is because they are being propagandized to accept the status quo day in and day out by the mass media's endless cultural engineering project . ..."
"... They are the reason why wars go unopposed, why third parties never gain traction, why people consent to money hemorrhaging upward to the wealthiest of the wealthy while everyone else struggles to survive. The sooner people wake up from the perverse narrative matrix of the plutocratic media, the better. ..."
Following what the Washington Post
has described as "the highest-profile misstep yet for a news organization during a period
of heightened and intense scrutiny of the press," mass media representatives are now flailing
desperately for an argument as to why people should continue to place their trust in mainstream
news outlets.
On Thursday Buzzfeed News delivered
the latest "bombshell" Russiagate report to fizzle within 24 hours of its publication, a
pattern that is now so consistent that I've personally made a practice of declining to comment
on such stories until a day or two after their release. "BOOM!" tweets were issued by
#Resistance pundits on Twitter, "If true this means X, Y and Z" bloviations were made on mass
media punditry panels, and for about 20 hours Russiagaters everywhere were riding the high of
their lives, giddy with the news that President Trump had committed an impeachable felony by
ordering Michael Cohen to lie to Congress about a proposed Trump office tower in Moscow, a
proposal which died within weeks
and the Kremlin never touched .
There was reason enough already for any reasonable person to refrain from frenzied
celebration, including the fact that the story's two authors, Jason Leopold and Anthony
Cormier, were giving the press two very different accounts of
the information they'd based it on, with Cormier telling CNN that he had not personally seen
the evidence underlying his report and Leopold telling MSNBC that he had. Both Leopold and
Cormier, for the record, have already previously suffered a
Russiagate faceplant with the clickbait viral story that Russia had financed the 2016
election, burying the fact that it was a Russian election .
Then the entire story came crashing down when Mueller's office took the extremely rare step
of issuing an
unequivocal statement that the Buzzfeed story was wrong , writing simply, "BuzzFeed's
description of specific statements to the special counsel's office, and characterization of
documents and testimony obtained by this office, regarding Michael Cohen's congressional
testimony are not accurate."
According to journalist and economic analyst Doug Henwood, the print New York Times covered
the Buzzfeed report on its front page when the story broke, but the report on Mueller's
correction the next day was shoved back to page 11 .
This appalling journalistic malpractice makes it very funny that NYT's Wajahat Ali had the gall
to tweet , "Unlike the Trump
administration, journalists are fact checking and willing to correct the record if the Buzzfeed
story is found inaccurate. Not really the actions of a deep state and enemy of the people,
right?"
This is the behavior of a media class that is interested in selling narratives, not
reporting truth. And yet the mass media talking heads are all telling us today that we must
continue to trust them.
"Those trying to tar all media today aren't interested in improving journalism but
protecting themselves," tweeted NBC's Chuck Todd.
"There's a lot more accountability in media these days than in our politics. We know we
live in a glass house, we hope the folks we cover are as self aware."
More accountability in media than in politics, Chuck? Really? Accountability to whom? Your
advertisers? Your plutocratic owners? Certainly not to the people whose minds you are paid
exorbitant sums to influence; there are no public elections for the leadership of the mass
media.
"Mueller didn't do the media any favors tonight, and he did do the president one,"
griped
the odious Chris Cuomo on CNN. "Because as you saw with Rudy Giuliani and as I'm sure
you'll see with the president himself, this allows them to say 'You can't believe it! You can't
believe what you read, you can't believe what you hear! You can only believe us. Even the
Special Counsel says that the media doesn't get it right.'"
"The larger message that a lot of people are going to take from this story is that the
news media are a bunch of leftist liars who are dying to get the president, and they're
willing to lie to do it, and I don't think that's true" said Jeffrey Toobin on a CNN panel , adding "I
just think this is a bad day for us."
"It does reinforce bad stereotypes about the news media," said Brian Stelter on the same CNN
panel.
"I am desperate as a media reporter to always say to the audience, judge folks
individually and judge brands individually. Don't fall for what these politicians out there
want you to do. They want you to think we're all crooked. We're not. But Buzzfeed now, now
the onus is on Buzzfeed. "
CNN, for the record, has been guilty of an arguably
even more embarrassing Russiagate flub than Buzzfeed 's when they wrongly reported that
Donald Trump Jr had had access to WikiLeaks' DNC email archives prior to their 2016
publication, an error that was hilariously due to to the simple misreading of an email date by
multiple people.
The mass media, including pro-Trump mass media like Fox News, absolutely deserves to be
distrusted. It has earned that distrust. It had earned that distrust already with its constant
promotion of imperialist wars and an oligarch-friendly status quo, and it has earned it even
more with its frenzied promotion of a narrative engineered to manufacture consent for a
preexisting agenda to shove Russia off the world stage.
The mainstream media absolutely is the enemy of the people; just because Trump says it
doesn't mean it's not true. The only reason people don't rise up and use the power of their
numbers to force the much-needed changes that need to happen in our world is because they are
being propagandized to accept the status quo day in and day out by the mass media's endless
cultural engineering project .
They are the reason why wars go unopposed, why third parties
never gain traction, why people consent to money hemorrhaging upward to the wealthiest of the
wealthy while everyone else struggles to survive. The sooner people wake up from the perverse
narrative matrix of the plutocratic media, the better.
"... You can take this to the bank. Hardcore Russiagaters will never give up their belief in collusion and Russian influence in the 2016 campaign -- never. Congress and Mueller will be accused of engaging in a coverup. ..."
"... Thus, even if the Mueller report is underwhelming, I think that the Democrats and TDS-saturated Trump opponents will attempt to rehabilitate it by pretending that it contains important loose ends that need to be pursued. In other words, to perpetuate the Mueller-driven political Russophobia by all other available means. ..."
"... Russiagate has exposed the great degree of corruption within the Justice Department bureaucracy, particularly within FBI, and within the entire Democrat Party. ..."
"... Since this is obviously not going to be allowed to happen, and since these people get away with everything, expect this to never end, despite all evidence to the contrary. It doesn't matter if they've been exposed as CIA propagandists or Integrity Initiative stooges, the game goes on...and on.... the job security of these disgraced columnists is the greatest in the Western world. ..."
"... Stephen Cohen discusses how rational viewpoints are banned from the mainstream media, and how several features of US life today resemble some of the worst features of the Soviet system. https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/02/12/stephen-cohen-on-war-with-russia-and-soviet-style-censorship-in-the-us/ ..."
"... The US needs an enemy, how else can they ask NATO members to cough up 2% of GDP [just for one example Germany's GDP is nearly 4 Trillion dollars [2017] for defence spending, what a crazy sum all NATO members must fork out to please the US, but then most of that money must be spent on the US MIC 'interoperability' of course. ..."
"... Another great damage of Russiagate was the instigating of a nuclear arms race directed primarily at Russia, and ideologically justified by its diabolical policies. ..."
"... Russiagate was very successful. You just have to understand the objectives. It was a great distraction. Diverting peoples attention from the continued fleecing of the "real people" which are the bottom 90% by the "Corporate People" and their Government Lackeys. ..."
"... It provided an excuse for the acting CEO (a figurehead) of the Corporate Empire to go back on many of the promises made that got him elected, and to fill the swamp with Neocon and Koch Brother creatures with the excuse the Deep State made him do it. More proof that there is no deception that is too ridiculous to be believed so long as you have enough pundits claiming it to be so ..."
"... If you've done just a cursory look into Seth Rich, you'd be very suspicious about the story of his life and death. IMO Assange/Wikilleaks were set up. And Flynn was set up too. What they are doing is Orwellian: White Helmets, election manipulation, propaganda, McCarthism, etc. If you're not angry, you're not paying attention. ..."
"... See also this primer on Mueller's MO. ..."
"... The button pushers behind the Trump collusion and Russia election hacking false narratives got what they wanted: to walk the democrats and republicans straight into Cold War v2; to start their campaign to suppress alternative voices on the internet; to increase military spending; and more, more, more war. ..."
"... Russiagate was very successful <=pls read, re-read Pft @ 46.. he listed many things. divide and conquer accomplished. a nation state is defined as an armed rule making structure, designed by those who control a territory, and constructed by the lawyers, military, and wealthy and run by the persons the designers appoint, for the appointed are called politicians. ..."
"... At the beginnng of Russiagate, I wrote on Robert Parry's Consirtium News that Russiagate is Idiocracy piggy-backing on decades and literally billions of dollars of anti-Soviet and anti-Russian propaganda. How hard would it be to brainwash an already brainwashed population? ..."
"... The purveyors of Russiagate will re-compose themselves, brush off all reports and continue on. One just cannot get away from one's nature, even when that nature is pure idiocy. ..."
"... Russiagate will not go away unfortunately because it has evolved in the "Russiagate Industry". As mentioned by others, the Russiagate Industry has been very profitable for many industries and people. Russiagate has generated an entire cottage industry of companies around censorship and "find us a Russian". Dow Jones should have an index on the Russiagate Industry. ..."
For more than two years U.S. politicians, the media and some bloggers hyped a conspiracy theory. They claimed that Russia had
somehow colluded with the Trump campaign to get him elected.
An obviously fake 'Dirty Dossier' about Trump, commissioned by the Clinton campaign, was presented as evidence. Regular business
contacts between Trump flunkies and people in Ukraine or Russia were claimed to be proof for nefarious deals. A Russian
click-bait company was accused of manipulating the U.S. electorate by posting puppy pictures and crazy memes on social media.
Huge investigations were launched. Every rumor or irrelevant detail coming from them was declared to be - finally - the evidence
that would put Trump into the slammer. Every month the walls were closing in on Trump.
Finally the conspiracy theory has run out of steam. Russiagate
is finished :
After two years and 200 interviews, the Senate Intelligence Committee is approaching the end of its investigation into the 2016
election, having uncovered no direct evidence of a conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia, according to both Democrats
and Republicans on the committee.
...
Democrats and other Trump opponents have long believed that special counsel Robert Mueller and Congressional investigators would
unearth new and more explosive evidence of Trump campaign coordination with Russians. Mueller may yet do so, although Justice
Department and Congressional sources say they believe that he, too, is close to wrapping up his investigation.
Nothing, zero, nada was found to support the conspiracy theory. The Trump campaign did not collude with Russia. A few flunkies
were indicted for unrelated tax issues and for lying to the investigators about some minor details. But nothing at all supports the
dramatic claims of collusion made since the beginning of the affair.
In a recent statement House leader Nancy Pelosi was reduced
to accuse Trump campaign officials of doing their job:
"The indictment of Roger Stone makes clear that there was a deliberate, coordinated attempt by top Trump campaign officials to
influence the 2016 election and subvert the will of the American people. ...
No one called her out for spouting such nonsense.
Russiagate created a lot of damage.
The alleged Russian influence campaign that never happened was used to
install censorship on social media. It was used
to undermine the election of progressive Democrats. The weapon salesmen used it to push for more NATO aggression against Russia.
Maria Butina, an innocent Russian woman interested in good relation with the United States, was
held in solitary confinement
(recommended) until she signed a paper which claims that she was involved in a conspiracy.
In a just world the people who for more then two years hyped the conspiracy theory and caused so much damage would be pushed out
of their public positions. Unfortunately that is not going to happen. They will jump onto the next conspiracy train continue from
there.
Posted by b on February 12, 2019 at 01:38 PM |
Permalink
Comments next
page " Legally, Maria Butina was suborned into signing a false declaration. If there were the rule of law, such party or
parties that suborned her would be in gaol. Considering Mueller's involvement with Lockerbie, I am not holding my breath. FWIW the
Swiss company that made the timers allegedly involved in Lockerbie have some
comments of its own .
I will be really glad when this 'get Russia' craziness is over, but I suspect even if the Mueller investigation has nothing,
all the same creeps will be pulling out the stops to generate something... Skripal, Integrity Initiative, and etc. etc. stuff
like this just doesn't go away overnight or with the end of this 'investigation'... folks are looking for red meat i tell ya!
as for Maria Butina - i look forward to reading the article.. that was a travesty of justice but the machine moves on, mowing
down anyone in it's way... she was on the receiving end of all the paranoia that i have come to associate with the western msm
at this point...
Hillary's loss is actually best explained as her throwing the election to Trump . The Deep State wanted a nationalist
to win as that would best help meet the challenge from Russia and China - a challenge that they had been slow to recognize.
= ... to smear Wikileaks as a Russian agent
The DNC leak is best explained as a CIA false flag.
= ... to remove and smear Michael Flynn
Trump said that he fired Flynn for lying to VP Pence but Flynn's conversations with the Russian Ambassador after Obama threw
them out for "meddling" in the US election was an embarrassment to the Administration as Putin's Putin's decision not to respond
was portrayed as favoritism toward the Trump Administration.
You can take this to the bank. Hardcore Russiagaters will never give up their belief in collusion and Russian influence in
the 2016 campaign -- never. Congress and Mueller will be accused of engaging in a coverup. This is typical behavior for conspiracy
theorists.
I hope that Russiagate is indeed "finished", but I think it needs to be draped with garlic-clove necklaces, shot up with silver
bullets, sprinkled with holy water, and a wooden stake driven through its black heart just to make sure.
I don't dispute the logical argument B. presents, but it may be too dispassionately rational. I know that the Russiagate
proponents and enthralled supporters of the concept are too invested psychologically in this surrealistic fantasy to let go, even
if the official outcome reluctantly admits that there's no "there" there.
The Democratic Party, one of the major partners mounting the Russophobic psy-op, has already resolved to turn Democratic committee
chairmen loose to dog the Trump administration with hearings aggressively flogging any and all matters that discredit and undermine
Trump-- his business connections, social liaisons, etc.
They may hope to find the Holy Grail: the elusive "bombshell" that "demands" impeachment, i.e., some crime or illicit conduct
so heinous that the public will stand for another farcical impeachment proceeding. But I reckon that the Dems prefer the "soft"
impeachment of harassing Trump with hostile hearings in hopes of destroying his 2020 electability with the death of a thousand
innuendoes and guilt-by-association.
Thus, even if the Mueller report is underwhelming, I think that the Democrats and TDS-saturated Trump opponents will attempt
to rehabilitate it by pretending that it contains important loose ends that need to be pursued. In other words, to perpetuate
the Mueller-driven political Russophobia by all other available means.
Put more succinctly, I fear that Russiagate won't be finished until Rachel Maddow says it's finished. ;)
Once a hypothesis is fixed in people's minds, whether true or not, it's hard to get them to let go of it. And let's not forget
how many times the narrative changed (and this is true in the Skripal case as well), with all past facts vanishing to accommodate
a new narrative.
So I, like others, expect the fake scandal to continue while many, many other real crimes (the US attempted
coup in Venezuela and the genocidal war in Yemen, for instance) continue unabated.
Putin solicits public input for essential national
policy goals . If ever there was a template to follow for an actual MAGAgenda, Putin's Russia provides one. While US politicos
argue over what is essentially Bantha Pudu, Russians are hard at work improving their nation which includes restructuring their
economy.
Russiagate has exposed the great degree of corruption within the Justice Department bureaucracy, particularly within FBI,
and within the entire Democrat Party.
I very much doubt it it is over. Trump is corrupt and has links to corrupt Russians. Collusion, maybe not, but several
stinking individuals are in the frame for, guess what - ...bring it on... The fact that Hilary was arguably even worse (a point
made ad-nauseum on here) is frankly irrelevant. The vilification of Trump will not affect the warmongers efforts. He is a useful
idiot
for a take on the alternative reality some are living in
emptywheel has an article up on the nbc link b provides and the article on butina is discussed in the comments section...
as i said - they are looking for red meat and will not be happy until they get some... they are completely zonkers...
Blooming Barricade , Feb 12, 2019 2:55:18 PM |
link
Now that this racket has been admitted as such, I expect all of the media outlets that devoted banner headlines, hundreds of thousands
of hours of cable TV time, thousands of trees, and free speech online to immediately fire all of their journalists and appoint
Glenn Greenwald as the publisher of the New York Times, Michael Tracey at the Post, Aaron Matte at the Guardian, and Max Blumenthal
at the Daily Beast.
Since this is obviously not going to be allowed to happen, and since these people get away with everything, expect this
to never end, despite all evidence to the contrary. It doesn't matter if they've been exposed as CIA propagandists or Integrity
Initiative stooges, the game goes on...and on.... the job security of these disgraced columnists is the greatest in the Western
world.
The US needs an enemy, how else can they ask NATO members to cough up 2% of GDP [just for one example Germany's GDP is nearly
4 Trillion dollars [2017] for defence spending, what a crazy sum all NATO members must fork out to please the US, but then most
of that money must be spent on the US MIC 'interoperability' of course.
Then of course Russia has to be surrounded by NATO should they try and take over Europe by surging through the Fulda gap./s
Then of course there are the professional pundits who have built careers on anti Russian propaganda, Rachel Maddow for instance
who earns 30,000$ per day to spew anti Russian nonsense.
Another great damage of Russiagate was the instigating of a nuclear arms race directed primarily at Russia, and ideologically
justified by its diabolical policies.
I'm sorry b is so down on Conspiracy Theories, since they reveal quite real staged homicidal false flag operations of US power.
Feeding into the stigmatizing of the truth about reality is not in the interests of the earth's people.
somehow I see this "revelation: tied to Barr's approaching tenure. I think they (FBI/DOJ) didn't want his involvement in their
noodle soup of an investigation and the best way to accomplish that was to end it themselves. I also suspect that a deal has been
made with Trump, possibly in exchange for leaving his family alone.
So we will see no investigation of Hillary, her 650,000
emails or the many crimes they detailed (according to NYPD investigation of Weiner's laptop) and the US will continue to be at
war all day, every day. Team Swamp rules.
Meanwhile, MSM is prepping its readers for the possibility that the Mueller report will never be released to us proles. If that's
the case, I'm sure nobody will try to use innuendo to suggest it actually contains explosive revelations after all...
Harry, its vitally important as the US desperately wants to keep Europe under its thumb and to stop this European army which
means Europe lead by Paris and Berlin becomes a world power. Trump's attempts to make nice with Russia is to keep it out of the
EU bloc.
Well, the liberal conspiracy car crash ensured downmarket Mussolini a second term, it appears...Hard Brexit Tories also look likely
to win thanks to centrist sabatoge of the left. You reap what you sow, corporate presstitutes!
Sane people have predicted the end of Russiagate almost as many times as insane people have predicted that the "smoking gun that
will get rid of Trump" has been found. And yet the Mighty Wurlitzer grinds on, while social media is more and more censored.
I expect it all to continue until the 2020 election circus winds up into full-throated mode, and no one talks about anything but
the next puppet to be appointed. Oops, I mean "elected".
You also need to behead the corpse, stuff the mouth with a lemon and then place the head down in the coffin with the body in
supine (facing up) position. Weight the coffin with stones and wild roses and toss it into a fast-flowing river.
Russiagate won't be finished until a wall is built around Capitol Hill and all its inhabitants and worker bees declared insane
by a properly functioning court of law.
I also suspect that a deal has been made with Trump, possibly in exchange for leaving his family alone. So we will see no
investigation of Hillary ...
Underlying your perspective is the assumption that USA is a democracy where a populist "outsider" could be elected President,
Yet you also believe that Hillary and the Deep State have the power to manipulate government and the intelligence agencies and
propose a "conspiracy theory" based on that power.
Isn't it more likely that Trump made it clear (behind closed doors, of course) that he was amenable to the goals of the Deep
State and that the bogus investigation was merely done to: 1) cover their own election meddling; 2) eliminate threats like Flynn
and Assange/Wikileaks; 3) anti-Russian propaganda?
Dowd, Trump's former lawyer on Russiagate stated there may not even be a report. If this is the case then the Zionist rulers have
gotten to Mueller who no doubt figured out that the election collusion breadcrumbs don't lead to Putin, they lead to Netanyahu
and Zionist billionaire friends! So Mueller may have to come up with a nothing burger to hide the truth.
B is the only alternative media blogger I've followed for a significant amount of time without becoming disenfranchised. Not because
he has no blind spot - his is just one I can deal with... optimism.
I will believe Russiagate is finished when expelled Russian staff gets back, when the US returns the seized Russian properties,
when the consulate is Seattle reopens and when USA issues formal apology to Russia.
Posted by: hopehely | Feb 12, 2019 5:14:49 PM |
link
Nobody has ever advanced the tiniest shred of credible evidence that 'Russia' or its government at any level was in any way implicated
either in Wikileaks' acquisition of the DNC and Podesta emails or in any form of interference with the Presidential election.
This has been going on for three years and not once has anything like evidence surfaced.
On the other hand there has been an abundance of evidence that those alleging Russian involvement consistently refused to listen
to explore the facts.
Incredibly, the DNC computers were never examined by the FBI or any other agency resembling an official police agency. Instead
the notorious Crowdstrike professionally russophobic and caught red handed faking data for the Ukrainians against Russia were
commissioned to produce a 'report.'
Nobody with any sense would have credited anything about Russiagate after that happened.
Thgen there was the proof, from VIPS and Bill Binney (?) that the computers were not hacked at all but that the information
was taken by thumbdrive. A theory which not only Wikileaks but several witnesses have offered to prove.
Not one of them has been contacted by the FBI, Mueller or anyone else "investigating."
In reality the charges from the first were ludicrous on their face. There is, as b has proved and every new day's news attests,
not the slightest reason why anyone in the Russian government should have preferred Trump over Clinton. And that is saying something
because they are pretty well indistinguishable. And neither has the morals or brains of an adolescent groundhog.
Russiagate is over, alright, The Nothingburger is empty. But that means nothing in this 'civilisation': it will be recorded
in the history books, still to be written, by historians still in diapers, that "The 2016 Presidential election, which ended in
the controversial defeat of Hillary Clinton, was heavily influenced by Russian agents who hacked ..etc etc"
What will not be remembered is that every single email released was authentic. And that within those troves of correspondence
there was enough evidence of criminality by Clinton and her campaign to fill a prison camp.
Another thing that will not be recalled is that there was once a young enthusiastic man, working for the DNC, who was mugged
one evening after work and killed.
The 'no collusion' result will only spur the 'beginning of the end' baboons to shout even more, they'll never stop until they
die in their beds or the plebs of the Republic made them adore the street lamp posts, you'll see. The former is by far more likely,
the unwashed of American have never had a penchant for foreign affairs except for the few spasms like Vietnam.
There was collusion alright but the only Russians who helped Trump get elected and were in on the collusion are citizens of ISRAEL
FIRST, likewise for the American billionaires who put Trump in the power perch. ISRAEL FIRST.
That's why Trump is on giant billboards in Israel shaking hands with the Yahoo. Trump is higher in the polls in Israel than
in the U.S. If it weren't that the Zionist upper crust need Trump doing their dirty work in America, like trying today get rid
of Rep. Omar Ilhan, then Trump would win the elections in Ziolandia or Ziostan by a landslide cause he's been better for the Joowish
state than all preceding Presidents put together. Mazel tov to them bullshet for the rest of us servile mass in the vassal West
and Palestinians the most shafted class ever. Down with Venezuela and Iran, up with oil and gas. The billionare shysters' and
Trump's payola is getting closer. Onward AZ Empire!
He proved himself so easy to troll during the election. It wouldn't surprise me if aim of the domestic intelligence agencies all
along was to get him elected and have a candidate they could manipulate.
At least Germany has the good sense not to throw taxpayer money at the F-35.
German F-35 decision sacrifices NATO capability for Franco-German industrial cooperation I don't know what they have
in mind with a proposed airplane purchase. If they need fighters, buy or lease Sweden's Gripen. If attack airplanes are what they're
after, go to Boeing and get some brand new F-15X models. If the prickly French are agreeable to build a 6th generation aircraft,
that would be worth a try.
Regarding Rachel Maddow, I recently had an encounter with a relative who told me 1) I visited too many oddball sites and 2)
he considered Rachel M. to be the most reliable news person in existence. I think we're talking "true believer" here. :)
It wouldn't surprise me if aim of the domestic intelligence agencies all along was to get him elected and have a candidate
they could manipulate.
Considering how those "intelligence agencies" are hard pressed to find their own tails, even if you allow them to use both
hands, it would surprise me.
That Trump would turn out to be a tub of jello in more than just a physical way has been a surprise to an awful lot of us.
Russiagate was very successful. You just have to understand the objectives. It was a great distraction. Diverting
peoples attention from the continued fleecing of the "real people" which are the bottom 90% by the "Corporate People" and their
Government Lackeys.
It provided an excuse for the acting CEO (a figurehead) of the Corporate Empire to go back on many of the promises made
that got him elected, and to fill the swamp with Neocon and Koch Brother creatures with the excuse the Deep State made him do
it. More proof that there is no deception that is too ridiculous to be believed so long as you have enough pundits claiming it
to be so
Allowed the bipartisan support for the clamp down on alt media with censorship by social media (Deep State Tools) and funded
by the Ministry of Truth set up by Obama in his last days in office to under the false pretense of protecting us from foreign
governments interference in elections (except Israel of course) . Similar agencies have been set up or planned to be in other
countries followig the US example such as UK, France, Russia, etc.
Did anyone really expect Mr "Cover It Up " Mueller to find anything? Mueller is Deep State all the way and Trump is as well,
not withstanding the "Fake Wrestling " drama that they are bitter enemies. All the surveillance done over the past 2-3 decades
would have so much dirt on the Trumpet they could silence him forever . Trump knew that going in and I sometimes wonder if he
was pressured to run as a condition to avoid prosecution. Pretty sure every President since Carter has been "Kompromat"
If you've done just a cursory look into Seth Rich, you'd be very suspicious about the story of his life and death. IMO
Assange/Wikilleaks were set up. And Flynn was set up too. What they are doing is Orwellian: White Helmets, election manipulation,
propaganda, McCarthism, etc. If you're not angry, you're not paying attention.
Russians and likely at the behest of the Russian state interfered and it was fair payback for Yeltsin's election. It is time to
move on but not in feigned ignorance of what was done. Was it "outcome" affecting, possibly, but not clearly and if the US electoral
college and electoral system generally is so decrepit that a second level power in the world can influence then its the US's fault.
It's not like the 2000 election wasn't a warning shot about the rottenness of system and a system that doesn't understand a
warning shot deserves pretty much what it gets. But there's enough non-hype evidence of acts and intent to say yes, the Russians
tried and may have succeeded. They certainly are acting guilty enough. but still close the book move and move on to Trump's 'real'
crimes which were done without a Russian assist.
I seem to recall former UK Ambassador to Uzbekistan Craig Murray saying that it was not a hack and that he had been handed
a thumb drive in a field near American University by a disgruntled Democrat whistleblower. Further, I seem to recall William Binney,
former NSA Technical Leader for intelligence, conducting an experiment to show that internet speeds at the time would not allow
the information to be hacked - they knew the size of the files and the period over which they were downloaded. Plus, Seth Rich.
So why does anyone even believe it was a hack, @32 THN?
Just another comment re Mueller. There is a great documentary by (Dutch, not Israeli---different person) Gideon Levy, Lockerbie
Revisited. The narration is in Dutch, but the interviews are in English, and there is a small segment of a German broadcast. The
documentary ends abruptly where one set of FBI personnel contradict statements by another set of FBI personnel. See also
this primer on Mueller's MO.
reply to Les 42
"It wouldn't surprise me if aim of the domestic intelligence agencies all along was to get him elected and have a candidate they
could manipulate."
Not the intelligence agencies, the Military IMO. They knew HC for what she was; horrifically corrupt and,again IMO,they know
she is insane.
They saw and I think still see Trump as someone they could work with, remember Rogers (Navy) of the NSA going to him immediately
once he was elected? That was the Military protecting him as best they could.
They IMO have kept him alive and as long as he doesn't send any troops into "real" wars, they will keep on keeping him alive.
This doesn't mean Trump hasn't gone over to the Dark Side, just that no military action will take place that the military command
doesn't fully support.
Again, I could be wrong, he could be backed by fiends from Patagonia for all I really know:)
The button pushers behind the Trump collusion and Russia election hacking false narratives got what they wanted: to walk the
democrats and republicans straight into Cold War v2; to start their campaign to suppress alternative voices on the internet; to
increase military spending; and more, more, more war.
Boy, I hope Jackrabbit sees this. Everyone knows I believe Trump is the anointed chosen of the Zionist 1%. There was no Russia
collusion; it was Zionist collusion with a Russian twist...
Oh yeah! Forgot to mention the latest. Trump is asking Kim to provide a list of his nuclear scientists! Before Kim acts on this
request, he should call up the Iranian government for advise 'cause they have lots of experience and can warn Kim of what will
happen to each of those scientists. They'll be put on a kill-list and will be extrajudicially wacked as in executed. Can you believe
the chutzpah? Trump must think Kim is really stupid to fall for that one!
Aye! The thought of six more years of Zionist pandering Trump. Barf-inducing prospect is too tame.
The view from the hermitage is, we are in the age of distractions. Russiagate will be replaced with one of a litany of distractions,
purely designed to keep us off target. The target being, corruption, vote rigging, illegal wars, war crimes, overthrowing sovereign
governments, and political assasinations, both at home and abroad. Those so distracted, will focus on sillyness; not the genuine
danger afoot around the planet. Get used to it; it's become the new normal.
@76Hw
I have yet to read anything more delusional, nay, utterly preposterous. Methinks you over-project too much. Even Trump would have
a belly-ache laugh reading that sheeple spiel. You're the type that sees the giant billboard of Zionist Trump and Yahoo shaking
hands and drones on and on that our lying eyes deceive us and it's really Trump playing 4-D chess. I suppose when he tried to
pressure Omar Ilhan into resigning her seat in Congress yesterday, that too was reverse psychology?
Trump instagramed the billboard pic, he tweeted it, he probably pasted it on his wall; maybe with your kind of wacky, Trump
infatuation, you should too!
Russiagate is finished because Mueller discovered an embarrassing fact: The collusion was and always will be with Israel. Here's
Trump professing his endless love for Zionism:
Trump Resign
Russiagate was very successful <=pls read, re-read Pft @ 46.. he listed many things. divide and conquer accomplished.
a nation state is defined as an armed rule making structure, designed by those who control a territory, and constructed by the
lawyers, military, and wealthy and run by the persons the designers appoint, for the appointed are called politicians.
Most designs of armed nation states provide the designers with information feedback and the designers use that information
to appoint more obedient politicians and generals to run things, and to improve the design to better serve the designers. The
armed rule making structure is designed to give the designers complete control over those targeted to be the governed. Why so
stupid the governed? ; always they allow themselves to be manipulated like sheep.
When 10 angry folks approach you with two pieces of ropes: one to throw over the tree branch under which your horse will be
supporting you while they tie the noose around your neck and the other shorter piece of rope to tie your hands behind ..your back
you need at that point to make your words count , if five of the people are black and five are white. all you need do is
say how smart the blacks are, and how stupid the whites are, as the two groups fight each other you manage your escape. democrat
vs republican= divide to conquer. gun, no gun = divide to conquer, HRC vs DJT = divide to conquer, abortion, no abortion = divide
to conquer, Trump is a Russian planted in a high level USA position of power = divide to conquer, They were all in on it together,,
Muller was in the white house to keep the media supplied with XXX, to keep the law enforcement agencies in the loop, and to advise
trump so things would not get out of hand ( its called Manipulation and the adherents to the economic system called Zionism
For the record, Zionism is not related to race, religion or intelligence. Zionism is a system of economics that take's no captives,
its adherents must own everything, must destroy and decimate all actual or imaginary competition, for Zionist are the owners and
masters of everything? Zionism is about power, absolute power, monopoly ownership and using governments everywhere to abuse the
governed. Zionism has many adherents, whites, blacks, browns, Christians, Jews, Islamist, Indians, you name it among each class
of person and walk of life can be found persons who subscribe to the idea that they, and only they, should own everything, and
when those of us, that are content to be the governed let them, before the kill and murder us, they usually end up owning everything.
1. why the Joint non nuclear agreement with Iran and the other nuclear power nations, that prevented Iran from developing nuclear
weapons, was trashed? Someone needs to be able to say Iran is developing ..., at the right time.
2. Why Netanyohu made public a video that claimed Iran was developing nuclear stuff in violation of the Iran non nuclear agreement,
and everybody laughed,
3. Why the nuclear non proliferation agreement with Russia, that terminated the costly useless arms race a decade ago, has
been recently terminated, to reestablish the nuclear arms race, no apparent reason was given the implication might be Russia could
be a target, but
4. why it might make sense to give nukes to Saudi Arabia or some other rogue nation, and
5. why no one is allowed to have nuclear weapons except the Zionist owned and controlled nation states.
Statement: Zionism is an economic system that requires the elimination of all competition of whatever kind. It is a winner
get's all, takes no prisoners, targets all who would threaten or be a challenge or a threat; does not matter if the threat is
in in oil and gas, technology or weapons as soon as a possibility exist, the principles of Zionism would require that it be taken
out, decimated, and destroyed and made where never again it could even remotely be a threat to the Empire, that Zionism demands..
Hypothesis: A claim that another is developing nuclear weapon capabilities is sufficient to take that other out?
I am glad that most commenters understand that Russiagate will not go away. But the majority appear to miss the real reason. Russiagate
is not an accusation, it is the state of mind.
At the beginnng of Russiagate, I wrote on Robert Parry's Consirtium News that Russiagate is Idiocracy piggy-backing on
decades and literally billions of dollars of anti-Soviet and anti-Russian propaganda. How hard would it be to brainwash an already
brainwashed population?
The purveyors of Russiagate will re-compose themselves, brush off all reports and continue on. One just cannot get away
from one's nature, even when that nature is pure idiocy. Of course, the most ironic in the affair is that it is the so called
US "intellectuals", academics and other assorted cretins who are the most fervent proponents. If you were wondering how Russia
can make such amazing defensive weapons that US can only deny exist and wet dream of having, there is your answer. It is the state
of mind. The whole of US establishment are legends in their on lunch time and totally delusional about the reality surrounding
them - both Russiagate and MAGA cretins, no report can help the Russiagate nation.
Finally, I am thinking of that crazy and ugly professor bitch from the British Cambridge University who gives her lectures
naked to protest something or other. I am so lucky that I do not have to go to a Western university ever again. What a catastrophic
decline! No Brexit can help the Skripal nation.
Russiagate is finished, but is DJT also among the rubble?
Hardly any money for the border wall and still lingering in the ME?
If Hoarsewhisperer proves to be correct above re: DJT, he will really have to knock our socks off before election 2020. To
do this he will have to unequivocally and unceremoniously withdraw from the MENA and Afghanistan and possibly declare a National
Emergency for more money for the wall.
The problem is, when he does this, he will look impulsively dangerous and this may harm his mystique to the lemmings who need
a president to be more "presidential."
My money is on status quo all the way to 2020 and the rethugz hoping the Dems will eat their own in an orgy of warring identities.
The collusion story may be faltering, but the blame for Russia poisoning the Skripals lives on. The other night on The News Hour,
"Judy" led off the program with this: "It has been almost a year since Kremlin intelligence officers attempted to kill a Russian
defector in the British city of Salisbury by poisoning him with a nerve agent. That attack, and the subsequent death of a British
woman, scared away tourists and shoppers, but authorities and residents are working to get the town's economy back on track. Special
correspondent Malcolm Brabant reports."
Russiagate will not go away unfortunately because it has evolved in the "Russiagate Industry". As mentioned by others,
the Russiagate Industry has been very profitable for many industries and people. Russiagate has generated an entire cottage industry
of companies around censorship and "find us a Russian". Dow Jones should have an index on the Russiagate Industry.
Here is one recent example. You know the measles outbreak in the US Pacific Northwest. Yup, the Russians. How do we know.
A government funded research grant. The study found that 899 tweets caused people to doubt vaccines. Looks like money is
to be had even by academics for the right results.
"... Cohen said the censorship that he has faced in recent years is similar to the censorship imposed on dissidents in the Soviet Union. ..."
"... Washington Post ..."
"... "Katrina and I had a joint signed op-ed piece in the New York Times ..."
"... Washington Post ..."
"... "The alternatives have been excluded from both. I would welcome an opportunity to debate these issues in the mainstream media, where you can reach more people. And remember, being in these pages, for better or for worse, makes you Kosher. This is the way it works. If you have been on these pages, you are cited approvingly. You are legitimate. You are within the parameters of the debate." ..."
"... "When I lived off and on in the Soviet Union, I saw how Soviet media treated dissident voices. And they didn't have to arrest them. They just wouldn't ever mention them. Sometimes they did that (arrest them). But they just wouldn't ever mention them in the media." ..."
"... "And something like that has descended here. And it's really alarming, along with some other Soviet-style practices in this country that nobody seems to care about – like keeping people in prison until they break, that is plea, without right to bail, even though they haven't been convicted of anything." ..."
"... "That's what they did in the Soviet Union. They kept people in prison until people said – I want to go home. Tell me what to say – and I'll go home. That's what we are doing here. And we shouldn't be doing that." ..."
"... Russell Mokhiber is the editor of the Corporate Crime Reporter.. ..."
Cohen has largely been banished from mainstream media.
"I had been arguing for years -- very much against the American political media grain --
that a new US/Russian Cold War was unfolding -- driven primarily by politics in Washington, not
Moscow," Cohen writes in War with Russia. "For this perspective, I had been largely
excluded from influential print, broadcast and cable outlets where I had been previously
welcomed."
On the stage at Busboys and Poets with Cohen was Katrina vanden Heuvel, the editor of
The Nation magazine, and Robert Borosage, co-founder of the Campaign for America's
Future.
Cohen said the censorship that he has faced in recent years is similar to the censorship
imposed on dissidents in the Soviet Union.
"Until some period of time before Trump, on the question of what America's policy toward
Putin's Kremlin should be, there was a reasonable facsimile of a debate on those venues that
had these discussions," Cohen said. "Are we allowed to mention the former Charlie Rose for
example? On the long interview form, Charlie would have on a person who would argue for a very
hard policy toward Putin. And then somebody like myself who thought it wasn't a good idea."
"Occasionally that got on CNN too. MSNBC not so much. And you could get an op-ed piece
published, with effort, in the New York Times or Washington Post ."
"Katrina and I had a joint signed op-ed piece in the New York Times six or
seven years ago. But then it stopped. And to me, that's the fundamental difference between this
Cold War and the preceding Cold War."
"I will tell you off the record – no, I'm not going to do it," Cohen said. "Two
exceedingly imminent Americans, who most op-ed pages would die to get a piece by, just to say
they were on the page, submitted such articles to the New York Times , and they were
rejected the same day. They didn't even debate it. They didn't even come back and say –
could you tone it down? They just didn't want it."
"Now is that censorship? In Italy, where each political party has its own newspaper, you
would say – okay fair enough. I will go to a newspaper that wants me. But here, we are
used to these newspapers."
"Remember how it works. I was in TV for 18 years being paid by CBS. So, I know how these
things work. TV doesn't generate its own news anymore. Their actual reporting has been
de-budgeted. They do video versions of what is in the newspapers."
"Look at the cable talk shows. You see it in the New York Times and Washington
Post in the morning, you turn on the TV at night and there is the video version. That's
just the way the news business works now."
"The alternatives have been excluded from both. I would welcome an opportunity to debate
these issues in the mainstream media, where you can reach more people. And remember, being in
these pages, for better or for worse, makes you Kosher. This is the way it works. If you have
been on these pages, you are cited approvingly. You are legitimate. You are within the
parameters of the debate."
"If you are not, then you struggle to create your own alternative media. It's new in my
lifetime. I know these imminent Americans I mentioned were shocked when they were just told no.
It's a lockdown. And it is a form of censorship."
"When I lived off and on in the Soviet Union, I saw how Soviet media treated dissident
voices. And they didn't have to arrest them. They just wouldn't ever mention them. Sometimes
they did that (arrest them). But they just wouldn't ever mention them in the media."
"Dissidents created what is known as samizdat – that's typescript that you circulate
by hand. Gorbachev, before he came to power, did read some samizdat. But it's no match for
newspapers published with five, six, seven million copies a day. Or the three television
networks which were the only television networks Soviet citizens had access to."
"And something like that has descended here. And it's really alarming, along with some
other Soviet-style practices in this country that nobody seems to care about – like
keeping people in prison until they break, that is plea, without right to bail, even though
they haven't been convicted of anything."
"That's what they did in the Soviet Union. They kept people in prison until people said
– I want to go home. Tell me what to say – and I'll go home. That's what we are
doing here. And we shouldn't be doing that."
Cohen appears periodically on Tucker Carlson's show on Fox News. And that rankled one person
in the audience at Busboys and Poets, who said he worried that Cohen's perspective on Russia
can be "appropriated by the right."
"Trump can take that and run on a nationalistic platform – to hell with NATO, to
hell with fighting these endless wars, to do what he did in 2016 and get the votes of people
who are very concerned about the deteriorating relations between the U.S. and Russia," the
man said.
Cohen says that on a personal level, he likes Tucker Carlson "and I don't find him to be a
racist or a nationalist."
"Nationalism is on the rise around the world everywhere," Cohen said. "There are
different kinds of nationalism. We always called it patriotism in this country, but we have
always been a nationalistic country."
"Fox has about three to four million viewers at that hour," Cohen said. "If I am not
permitted to give my take on American/Russian relations on any other mass media, and by the
way, possibly talk directly to Trump, who seems to like his show, and say – Trump is
making a mistake, he should do this or do that instead -- I don't get many opportunities
– and I can't see why I shouldn't do it."
"I get three and a half to four minutes," Cohen said. "I don't see it as consistent with my
mission, if that's the right word, to say no. These articles I write for The Nation ,
which ended up in my book, are posted on some of the most God awful websites in the world. I
had to look them up to find out how bad they really are. But what can I do about it?"
"... Maté explains why he thinks this narrative ultimately aligns with the longstanding interests of U.S. establishment power. He calls it a "privilege protection racket" that thrives on distraction and misdirection, turning the public away from a real critique of the rise of Trumpism that would otherwise implicate the neoliberal policies of democrats and conservatives alike, foreign policy think tanks, and the media. ..."
Aaron is gong to break down "Russiagate," taking a sober look at the media frenzy of
"bombshell" stories asserting a Russian conspiracy behind the 2016 election.
Maté explains why he thinks this narrative ultimately aligns with the
longstanding interests of U.S. establishment power. He calls it a "privilege protection racket"
that thrives on distraction and misdirection, turning the public away from a real critique of
the rise of Trumpism that would otherwise implicate the neoliberal policies of democrats and
conservatives alike, foreign policy think tanks, and the media.
And in a prior NBC News article Tuesday morning, Dilanian
spelled out :
After two years and 200 interviews , the Senate Intelligence Committee is approaching the
end of its investigation into the 2016 election, having uncovered no direct evidence of a
conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia , according to both Democrats and
Republicans on the committee.
MSNBC anchor Hallie Jackson and her guest panelists' faces looked visibly confused and
uncomfortable as they learned the Senate report is going in the opposite direction of
everything MSNBC and other mainstream outlets have been breathlessly reporting on a near 24/7
basis.
More importantly, if this is a precursor of what the Mueller report concludes in a few
weeks/months, the TV station that built its current reputation on the premise of Russian
collusion, may have no option but to go on indefinite hiatus.
Watch the segment below, with host Hallie Jackson appearing to grow exasperated by the
2:20 mark : "If and when the president, as he may inevitably do, points to these
conclusions and says look, the Senate intelligence committee found I am not guilty of
conspiracy... he would be correct in saying that? "
Dilanian noted that while the Republican chair of the committee made what he characterized
as "partisan" comments the week prior, it turned out be unanimous fact. "What I found," he
said, "is that Democrats don't dispute that characterization ."
But perhaps sensing how "contrary" to the network's own hysterical 'Russiagate' coverage his
reporting was, he tried to soften the blow, saying, "But, again, no direct proof of a
conspiracy. As one democratic aide said to me, 'we never thought we were going to find a
Democrat between Trump and Vladimir Putin saying let's collude, but the question is how do we
interpret all these various contacts between the Trump campaign and Russia.'"
Hallie Jackson followed with further probing: "Not to put too fine a point on it, but I want
to make sure I'm understanding this..." and asked "If and when the president, as he may
inevitably do, points to these conclusions and says look, the Senate intelligence committee
found I'm not guilty of conspiracy... he would be correct in saying that? "
Her face looking rather incredulous at this point, Dilanian responded by invoking the
Mueller investigation, reassuring her his inquiry is not complete and likely could uncover more
information. But then the bottom line: "That said, Trump will claim vindication through this,
and he'll be partially right," he said. But Dilanian also noted the Senate intel committee has
access to classified material, which means "if there was an intercept between officers
suggesting they were conspiring with the Trump campaign, [the committee] would see that. And
that has not emerged."
"So that evidence does not exist, and Trump will claim vindication," he repeated.
Yet after all this, during the full segment Vice News guest panelist Shawna Thomas actually
invoked impeachment in what appeared a desperate attempt to grasp for anything . "There's two
things I question about [the report]," she began.
"Number one, if and when the report finally comes out from the Senate intelligence
committee, is there anything in there that will cause, especially some of these new House Dems,
to start to clamor, even if there isn't 'conspiracy' or 'collusion', for impeachment?" said
Thomas.
But then she tried to deflate the whole thing, upsetting as it was for purveyors of the
collusion narrative: "The other thing is, based on what Ken is saying, it's all stuff we knew
already," she said.
Right... cause in MSNBC's Russiagate-land "the walls are closing in" on Trump, constantly.
Except the network just woke up to the reality that it's not the case.
We only wonder what Rachel Maddow will be left with after this.
"... "Am I crazy?" -Bari Weiis Well Bari Weiis you're either crazy or you're a yet another worthless establishment shill whose job is spread deliberate misinformation about the most genuine anti-war candidate running at a time when the entire MSM, MIC, and the neoliberal rightwing establishment (including AIPAC) is deliberately smearing her to immediately kill her campaign. And you didn't come across as crazy so... ..."
This woman had NO CLUE what she was talking about. She thought she was on a show that would just tow the party line and let
her get away with wrong statements. She's just repeating what critics say with no idea of the truth. What a fool. As a woman,
THIS IS WHY I WON'T JUST VOTE FOR ANY WOMAN. We are just as capable of being stupid as anyone else.
Bari: "I think Tulsi Gabbard is an Assad toadie." Joe: "What do you mean by toadie?" Bari: "Oh, I don't know what that means."
Joe: "Okay, I looked it up, and it's like a sycophant." Bari: "Then Tulsi is like an Assad sycophant." Joe: "So what do you mean
by that?" Bari: "I'm not sure what sycophant means either." Joe: "I looked up the definition, it's like a suck-up." Bari: "All
right, Tulsi is an Assad suck-up." Joe: "Could you explain that further?" Bari: "I don't know what suck means." Joe: "It's what
you're doing right now."
"Am I crazy?" -Bari Weiis Well Bari Weiis you're either crazy or you're a yet another worthless establishment shill whose job
is spread deliberate misinformation about the most genuine anti-war candidate running at a time when the entire MSM, MIC, and
the neoliberal rightwing establishment (including AIPAC) is deliberately smearing her to immediately kill her campaign. And you
didn't come across as crazy so...
I will be very surprised if neocons would not frame her Putin toady as well. This is how this
system works. It eliminates undesirable to the neoliberals candidates with 100% efficiency.
They
serve as local STASI and some former STASI official might well envy neocons efficiency of
silencing opponents (with much less blood and overt repression, by pure magic of neocon
propaganda ).
Notable quotes:
"... She has "monstrous ideas, she's an Assad toady," Weiss tells Rogan. ..."
"... Rogan then reads the definition: "Toadies. The definition of toadies: A person who flatters or defers to others for self-serving reasons." "A sycophant. So I did use it right!" Weiss exclaims. "So she's an Assad sycophant? Is that what you're saying?" "Yeah, that's, proven -- known -- about her." ..."
"... When Rogan asks what Gabbard has said that qualifies her as a sycophant, Weiss replies: "I don't remember the details." ..."
"... Gabbard, who announced her presidential campaign on January 11, has drawn incredible amounts of ire from mainstream Democrats tripping over themselves for war with Syria because in January 2017, Gabbard met with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and denounced the opposition rebels in the country's civil war as "terrorists." ..."
"... She has also expressed skepticism about accusations that Assad's government has used chemical weapons during the conflict and spoken out against cruise missile attacks by the US and its allies against the country. ..."
Monday to discuss current events, but
things got embarrassing when she went in on Gabbard, a progressive Democrat whose foreign
policy positions have turned more than a few heads.
Neocon NY Times columnist Bari Weiss smeared Tulsi Gabbard (who bravely opposed regime
change and US support for Salafi-jihadist contras) as an "Assad toady," then couldn't
spell/define toady or offer any evidence to prove her smear. Embarrassingly funny pic.twitter.com/m0MLaHFPiX
When Rogan asks for clarification, she says, "I think that I used that word correctly." She
then asks someone off camera to look up what toady means. "Like toeing the line," Rogan says,
"is that what it means?" "No, I think it's like, uh " and Weiss drones off without an answer.
She then attempts to spell it, and can't even do that. "T-O-A-D-I-E. I think it means what I
think it means "
Rogan then reads the definition: "Toadies. The definition of toadies: A person who flatters
or defers to others for self-serving reasons." "A sycophant. So I did use it right!" Weiss
exclaims. "So she's an Assad sycophant? Is that what you're saying?" "Yeah, that's, proven --
known -- about her."
When Rogan asks what Gabbard has said that qualifies her as a sycophant,
Weiss replies: "I don't remember the details."
"We probably should say that before we say that about her -- we should probably read it,
rather, right now, just so we know what she said," Rogan notes. "I think she's, like, the
motherlode of bad ideas," Weiss then says. "I'm pretty positive about that, especially on
Assad. But maybe I'm wrong. I don't think I'm wrong." It seems to us here at Sputnik that such
claims should be made with a bit more confidence than this. So let's set the record
straight.
Gabbard, who announced her presidential campaign on January 11, has drawn incredible amounts
of ire from mainstream Democrats tripping over themselves for war with Syria because in January
2017, Gabbard met with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and denounced the opposition rebels in
the country's civil war as "terrorists."
She has also expressed skepticism about accusations that Assad's
government has used chemical weapons during the conflict and spoken out against cruise missile
attacks by the US and its allies against the country.
"Initially I hadn't planned on meeting him," Gabbard, an Iraq War veteran, told CNN's Jake
Tapper following the meeting. "When the opportunity arose to meet with him, I did so, because I
felt it's important that if we profess to truly care about the Syrian people, about their
suffering, then we've got to be able to meet with anyone that we need to if there is a
possibility that we could achieve peace. And that's exactly what we talked about."
"I have seen this cost of war firsthand, which is why I fight so hard for peace," Gabbard
said. "And that's the reality of the situation that we're facing here. It's why I have urged
and continue to urge [US President Donald] Trump to meet with people like Kim Jong Un in North
Korea, because we understand what's at stake here. The only alternative to having these kinds
of conversations is more war."
Moreover, in a March 2016 speech before Congress, Gabbard called Assad
"a brutal dictator," noting that her opposition to what she called a "war bill" was over the
legal ramifications that she feared would lead to the overthrow of Assad, which she opposes on
anti-interventionist grounds.
"[T]oppling ruthless dictators in the Middle East creates even more human suffering and
strengthens our enemy, groups like ISIS and other terrorist organizations, in those countries,"
Gabbard
said at the time.
Gabbard has been thoroughly demonized for her pro-peace views by global liberal media, as
Trump has been for his moves to end the war in Syria and avoid another on the Korean Peninsula.
For example, The Daily Beast's
article announcing her candidacy called Gabbard "Assad's Favorite Democrat" in its
headline; a Haaretz
headline from last week say she had "Tea With Assad," and the Washington Post has
called her "Assad's Mouthpiece in Washington." The UK Independent
called her a "defender of dictators."
It's not clear what Weiss had in mind when she called Gabbard a "sycophant" and a "toady,"
since the congresswoman's rhetoric about Assad has consisted of skepticism and opposition to
intervention, and she hasn't hesitated to call the Syrian president a "brutal dictator." What
Gabbard's treatment has demonstrated is that a Democrat who steps out of line from the party's
pro-regime change agenda in Syria and who condemns Muslim extremists associated with Daesh and
al-Qaeda should be prepared to suffer for it in the mainstream media.
I love Tulsi; her ad was great. She's the only dem I would vote for at this point. Kamala is an evil hypocrite. And Tulsi's
right, love is the most powerful force in the planet.
Wake up folks -Tulsi would not have run if Bernie was going run. Bernie will endorse her early on and she will have a much
tougher fight than he did, because while Sanders caught the corporate establishment sleeping in 2016, they are now frightened
and see Gabbard coming. They will use every dirty trick at their disposal to keep her from catching fire -and that begins with
dividing progressives like us. Tulsi is not perfect because no one is perfect. But she is young, bright and fucking fearless compared
to other politicians about putting the long term good of the American people above the moneyed interests who think they own our
media and our government. This is why the establishment despises her more than even Sanders. 2020 will reveal weather or not we
can retake ownership of our media and our government. That fight will require all of us - so Kyle get on the bus!
Tulsi is an amazing candidate in her own right, but IMO she would be a perfect VP pick for Bernie. She has the amazing foreign
policy cred and would really shore up Bernie's weakest areas.
Tulsa Gabbard's ad doesn't mention the people who die in the countries we invade. That's 600k people in Iraq for example. A
significant omission me thinks.
The Aloha Spirit Law is a big deal in Hawaii. Government officials are required to approach dignitaries from other countries
or states with the spirit of aloha. "Aloha" means mutual regard and affection and extends warmth in caring with no obligation
in return. Aloha is the essence of relationships in which each person is important to every other person for collective existence.
I think that's what we want in a President or a diplomat.
She's great and unique as she doesnt fall back to identity politics and sjwism as much as the standard left politicians. I
hope she doesnt bend her ethics when the sjws come for her. I'm putting my trust in her. I hope she wins. And if she isn't in
the race, i wont be voting.
The question I would love her to address specifically is will her campaign focus on decreasing military spending like Bernie
Sanders? She has a military background and the US loves war. This ad is good but it is tip toing around the MIC ( military industrial
complex) She can be non interventionist but not decrease military spending is what worries me
This is why we need Gabbard on the debate stage. She will push the Overton window on revealing to the public what our military
is actually doing overseas. She's also a staunch progressive. Bernie/Tulsi 2020. Their weakness match well with each other, and
Tulsi was one of the first to jump ship on the sinking DNC ship when Hillary got caught cheating being the DNC. Keep small donations
going into your favorite progressive candidates to hear their voice. It doesn't work any other way folks.
Intervention isn't only an issue about morality. As Dwight Eisenhower put it (even though he himself was far from an anti imperialist),
you can't have an endless stream of money dedicated to military endeavors AND a sufficient investment in domestic public priorities.
This easily explains why we have increasingly decrepit infrastructure, increasingly worse performing education, increasingly worse
performing health care, absurdly insufficient regulation between government and business (although the pay to play system certainly
is the top reason) and a generally decaying public atmosphere. Beyond the fact that getting involved everywhere creates humanitarian
crises, countless dead people, hopelessly destroyed countries, and so much more, even if other countries haven't in return bombed
our shores from sea to sea, even if generally speaking those who consider not only the US but Americans the "enemies" haven't
overwhelmed with non stop attacks, this non stop and ever growing appetite for more money for more war priorities has created
the very decline we see in our country today. Until there is a change in priorities in general, these problems in the US will
only continue to get worse.
Man, Tulsi made me tear up. She's my girl. This message reminds me more of the message of Jesus than many of the fundamentalists.
She's not even Christian, yet represents Christ very well. I love this woman.
Prepare for BAE, Systems, Boeing, Lockheed Martin and other weapons corporations and their bum lickers to launch a viscous
smear campaign against her suggesting she's somehow a Neo Nazi communist anti Semitic islamophobic islamist.
Tulsi 2020 she's saying some of the same things Trump said in his 2016 campaign. Unfortunately, he didn't deliver. Per the
corporate Democrates, making America better is a bad thing.
Tulsi can actually beat Trump...if she gets the nomination. The wars are the elephant in the room, and whoever is willing to
take that on full force, can win.
Muller investigation is at least 50% about the masking cracks in neoliberal facade with
Russia interference smoke screen (and, especially Hillary fiasco as War Party candidate) , as it
is about deposing of Trump. It also puts pressure of Trump to behave as War Party expect him,
or...
Looks like the "United War Party" (which encompass most Republicans and Democrats) felt the
threat to the money flows and acted accordingly. Add to this interest of Deep State (especially
CIA) are completely opposite to the end of foreign wars that Trump professed.
Notable quotes:
"... What causes otherwise intelligent people to put their faith in conspiracy theories? A common explanation on the Right is that these conspiracies are cynically concocted to overthrow the Trump presidency. Another explanation points to declining standards of journalism, i.e., reporters being too incompetent to refute groundless claims. Both reasons have merit yet both fail to explain the peculiar estrangement from reality that a belief in baseless conspiracies represents. ..."
"... When the luminescence of France began to fade and the revolutionary army began to falter, the Jacobins felt there could only be one explanation: conspiracy. Only a deep-seated plot could be preventing France the Savior from vanquishing retrograde monarchs. From the beginning, the virtuous Jacobins saw themselves as fighting a conspiracy against the rights of humanity. Hence the Reign of Terror, with the guillotine deployed against priests and nobles who were seen as forming the core opposition to a better world. ..."
"... Idealism and conspiracy theories are, it seems, opposite sides of the same coin. When the dream fails to materialize, its validity is not questioned; instead the search to find those who connived against it begins. ..."
"... Fukuyama's Hegelianism was both warmed over and unmoored from reality. And yet the foreign policy establishment swooned over him. The Bush 43 administration fell so hard for him that they tried to give history a little push by invading Iraq. ..."
"... Or consider the globalist dreaming of the elites that Samuel P. Huntington labeled "Davos men." In the Davos dream, culture, history, and religion are archaic relics of a world fading away. National borders are disappearing, and a new global order is emerging, led by secular multilateral institutions staffed by an all-knowing "cosmopolitan" elite ..."
"... With cultures clashing, nationalism on the march, and religious wars raging, the Davos men continue to worship their dream from the safety of their Gulfstream jets. ..."
"... And to the Davos men, only a conspiracy can explain the election of Donald Trump. How else could such a regressive development have occurred when history is cascading toward open borders, democracy, and international institutions? How could an American president question the value of NATO and other alliances whose glorious mission is to midwife the end of history by democratizing everything from Lisbon to the Urals? ..."
"... But Trump and Putin will not be permitted to conspire against the dream. Their conspiracy must be destroyed, even at the risk of nuclear war. Special counsels must be created, eavesdropping must be expanded, foreign spies must be employed, and jackbooted agents must break down every door linked to this insidious conspiracy. The ruling elites are prepared to tear up the Constitution itself to save humanity from this diabolical cabal. ..."
"... The resilience of the Russia conspiracy in the minds of our establishment should remind us that the primary obstacle to a sensible foreign policy is our ideologized culture, in which the Western outlook of common sense has been eroded by a Romantic utopian idealism. When people within reach of massive military power are this estranged from reality, the situation can only be described as frightening. ..."
"... With you on "Davos Man" (Love that expression!) and the Trump conspiracy idiocy, though! Two thumbs up! ..."
"... You are making this much too complicated. The cultural stuff had some importance, but much more fundamentally Trump threatened the money/power game of the War Party. They have just about won anyway, because Trump is stupid. So, maybe they will just let Russia-gate fade out. ..."
"... Neolibs and neocons are . Dreamers. GIGO. Whoever wrote the headline and lede made sense, the author might want to match that. The text as is is a useful exhibit for: "to see the world how they wish it to be rather than how it is." Jacobins at Davos? Idealists with lots of loot? ..."
"... At one time, any occurrence that the establishment of the day didn't like was automatically blamed on Jews. No evidence necessary. Because Jews. If you questioned the conspiracy theory, you were instantly accused of being in league with "them". Today's establishment does the same, except they substitute "Russia" for "Jews". Anything they don't like is automatically blamed on Russia. No evidence necessary. Because Russia. Question the conspiracy theory and get accused of being a "Russian troll". ..."
"... If only HRC and her friends were in the White House all these current conspiracies and Mueller investigation wouldn't be an issue. Be the eighth wonder of the world, if Trump survives the deep state. ..."
"... Unfortunately, this article overreaches. I agree that Russiagate is an excuse that liberals embrace to excuse the disastrous failures of Clinton and the Democratic Party, but you don't need to connect this with some grand theorizing about the history of conspiracy theories. People simply don't want to admit their side did anything wrong. ..."
"... And as SteveK9 points out, it's really about how the mainstream War Party wants to keep Trump in line. Trump is a loose cannon. They want a steady reliable warmonger. ..."
"... Call me a child, then, but wisdom often comes from the mouth of babes. There is no evidence that Russia interfered in the 2016 election. Read The phoney indictment of the Internet Research Institute. It admits it was a commercial enterprise. It was nothing but a commercial click bait operation. Similarly, the DNC was not hacked, the data was downloaded to a USB, probably by a disaffected Sanders supporter, possibly Seth Rich. Also, Germany, Macedonia, the Netherlands have investigated alleged Russian interference in their elections, and found none. ..."
The Intercept 's Glenn Greenwald recently compiled a list of the
top 10 "most embarrassing media failures on the Trump-Russia story." All of them exhibit a
common theme: Russian conspiracies are undermining American interests everywhere. Greenwald's
piece was followed by a bizarre New York Timesstory from
January 16 with the headline: "Trump and Putin: Five Meetings Infused With Mystery." The story
implied something sinister in undisclosed conversations between the two leaders while offering
no evidence whatsoever.
What causes otherwise intelligent people to put their faith in conspiracy theories? A
common explanation on the Right is that these conspiracies are cynically concocted to overthrow
the Trump presidency. Another explanation points to declining standards of journalism, i.e.,
reporters being too incompetent to refute groundless claims. Both reasons have merit yet both
fail to explain the peculiar estrangement from reality that a belief in baseless conspiracies
represents.
In the early stages of the French Revolution, the Jacobins imagined that the beacon of a
democratic France would shine across the world and tyrannical kings would topple before its
luminescence. The Jacobin imagination was polluted by utopian idealism, the ideology that
causes people to see the world how they wish it to be rather than how it is.
When the luminescence of France began to fade and the revolutionary army began to
falter, the Jacobins felt there could only be one explanation: conspiracy. Only a deep-seated
plot could be preventing France the Savior from vanquishing retrograde monarchs. From the
beginning, the virtuous Jacobins saw themselves as fighting a conspiracy against the rights of
humanity. Hence the Reign of Terror, with the guillotine deployed against priests and nobles
who were seen as forming the core opposition to a better world.
Idealism and conspiracy theories are, it seems, opposite sides of the same coin. When
the dream fails to materialize, its validity is not questioned; instead the search to find
those who connived against it begins.
Like the Jacobins, the foreign policy establishment in the United States has for decades
hitched its wagons to idealistic dreaming. The Romantic ideas of Hegel and Rousseau permeate
their thinking. Consider the establishment's obsequious reaction to Francis Fukuyama's "
end of
history " thesis. Fukuyama presented himself as the all-seeing gnostic who had divined the
direction of all human history. One does not need the acumen of an Aristotle to know
that this was far from an original thesis. Fukuyama's Hegelianism was both warmed over and
unmoored from reality. And yet the foreign policy establishment swooned over him. The Bush 43
administration fell so hard for him that they tried to give history a little push by invading
Iraq.
Or consider the globalist dreaming of the elites that Samuel P. Huntington labeled
"Davos men." In the Davos dream, culture, history, and religion are archaic relics of a world
fading away. National borders are disappearing, and a new global order is emerging, led by
secular multilateral institutions staffed by an all-knowing "cosmopolitan" elite .
The reality of a borderless world is global migration that threatens to extinguish much of
Western civilization in a generation or two. With cultures clashing, nationalism on the
march, and religious wars raging, the Davos men continue to worship their dream from the safety
of their Gulfstream jets.
And to the Davos men, only a conspiracy can explain the election of Donald Trump. How
else could such a regressive development have occurred when history is cascading toward open
borders, democracy, and international institutions? How could an American president question
the value of NATO and other alliances whose glorious mission is to midwife the end of history
by democratizing everything from Lisbon to the Urals?
For those in a dream world, the only possible explanation for Trump is a conspiracy. His
presidency was hatched by Vladimir Putin, the world leader with the strongest reasons for
slowing the progressive march of history. Trump won the election because Putin has the powers
of a Rasputin. He can thwart history by crossing his eyes, pulling secret levers, and deploying
hackers.
But Trump and Putin will not be permitted to conspire against the dream. Their
conspiracy must be destroyed, even at the risk of nuclear war. Special counsels must be
created, eavesdropping must be expanded, foreign spies must be employed, and jackbooted agents
must break down every door linked to this insidious conspiracy. The ruling elites are prepared
to tear up the Constitution itself to save humanity from this diabolical cabal.
The resilience of the Russia conspiracy in the minds of our establishment should remind
us that the primary obstacle to a sensible foreign policy is our ideologized culture, in which
the Western outlook of common sense has been eroded by a Romantic utopian idealism. When people
within reach of massive military power are this estranged from reality, the situation can only
be described as frightening.
William S. Smith is research fellow at and managing director of the Center for the
Study of Statesmanship at The Catholic University of America.
"In the early stages of the French Revolution, the Jacobins imagined that the beacon of a
democratic France would shine across the world and tyrannical kings would topple before its
luminescence. The Jacobin imagination was polluted by utopian idealism, the ideology that
causes people to see the world how they wish it to be rather than how it is."
And yet, idealism or not, republican ideals DID spread around the world and WERE taken up
to oppose, undercut, reign in or overthrow monarchies from Latin America through the Middle
East, and from Europe (e.g., the bourgeois members of the Duma singing "La Marseillaise"
after the abdication of the Tsar) to Asia and Africa.
"When the luminescence of France began to fade and the revolutionary army began to falter,
the Jacobins felt there could only be one explanation: conspiracy. Only a deep-seated plot
could be preventing France the Savior from vanquishing retrograde monarchs. From the
beginning, the virtuous Jacobins saw themselves as fighting a conspiracy against the rights
of humanity. Hence the Reign of Terror, with the guillotine deployed against priests and
nobles who were seen as forming the core opposition to a better world."
I don't doubt the pernicious influence of conspiracy theories, I really don't – I'm
a Trotskyist, for Heaven's sake! – but the author might also acknowledge the reality of
the threats that the Jacobins faced. The armies of the united crowned heads of Europe that
had been sent against France, for instance. That the church and aristocracy WERE parts of the
old order (official estates, remember?), some of whose members WERE actually fighting to
restore the old regime and then drown, as they always drowned past peasant and popular
rebellions, in blood.
With you on "Davos Man" (Love that expression!) and the Trump conspiracy idiocy,
though! Two thumbs up!
You are making this much too complicated. The cultural stuff had some importance, but
much more fundamentally Trump threatened the money/power game of the War Party. They have
just about won anyway, because Trump is stupid. So, maybe they will just let Russia-gate fade
out.
Neolibs and neocons are . Dreamers. GIGO. Whoever wrote the headline and lede made sense,
the author might want to match that. The text as is is a useful exhibit for: "to see the
world how they wish it to be rather than how it is." Jacobins at Davos? Idealists with lots
of loot?
At one time, any occurrence that the establishment of the day didn't like was
automatically blamed on Jews. No evidence necessary. Because Jews. If you questioned the
conspiracy theory, you were instantly accused of being in league with "them". Today's
establishment does the same, except they substitute "Russia" for "Jews". Anything they don't
like is automatically blamed on Russia. No evidence necessary. Because Russia. Question the
conspiracy theory and get accused of being a "Russian troll".
Are we supposed to take this seriously? Your entire "argument" against the so-called Russia
Conspiracy is itself nothing more than a conspiracy theory: an overwrought, paranoid, absurd
conspiracy theory involving The Establishment, Davos Elites, Neo Liberals, et al.
There isn't enough publicly-disclosed evidence to support the claim that Russian
interference tilted the 2016 election decisively in Trump's favor or that Trump has conspired
with or been compromised by Russia. But only a child would believe that Russia didn't
actively interfere in the election, or that various Trump associates didn't have
inappropriate contacts and dealings with Russian entities, which they then lied about and
continue to lie about.
If only HRC and her friends were in the White House all these current conspiracies and
Mueller investigation wouldn't be an issue. Be the eighth wonder of the world, if Trump
survives the deep state.
CLW produces an argument from ignorance. "Just because we have no publicly available evidence
to prove that Trump is in fact Mickey Mouse just means we need to look harder! In the
meantime, we can safely assume that Trump has round black ears and a tail.".
In the meantime, I suggest you learn about the burden of proof – the burden of proof
is on those asserting the existence of a conspiracy (and you in particular are mighty short
on details!) and not on those debunking it.
Unfortunately, this article overreaches. I agree that Russiagate is an excuse that
liberals embrace to excuse the disastrous failures of Clinton and the Democratic Party, but
you don't need to connect this with some grand theorizing about the history of conspiracy
theories. People simply don't want to admit their side did anything wrong.
And as SteveK9 points out, it's really about how the mainstream War Party wants to
keep Trump in line. Trump is a loose cannon. They want a steady reliable warmonger.
CLW says "But only a child would believe that Russia didn't actively interfere in the
election, or that various Trump associates didn't have inappropriate contacts and dealings
with Russian entities, which they then lied about and continue to lie about." It took a child
to point out that the emperor had no clothes on, while the adults pretended that a falsehood
was tru. Perhaps more children are needed today to point out the truth and ignore blatant
propaganda.
Call me a child, then, but wisdom often comes from the mouth of babes. There is no
evidence that Russia interfered in the 2016 election. Read The phoney indictment of the
Internet Research Institute. It admits it was a commercial enterprise. It was nothing but a
commercial click bait operation. Similarly, the DNC was not hacked, the data was downloaded
to a USB, probably by a disaffected Sanders supporter, possibly Seth Rich. Also, Germany,
Macedonia, the Netherlands have investigated alleged Russian interference in their elections,
and found none.
"... Trump's lack of knowledge and dismal understanding of major issues have always been some of his biggest weaknesses, but the problem here is even worse than that. The president is not merely ignorant and unfamiliar with the relevant issues. We have known that all along. According to this report, he is determined to remain ignorant and fixed in his mistaken views about a wide range of issues, and the officials serving under him are enabling this so that they don't make him angry at them. The point isn't that intelligence agencies get everything right (they don't), but on the issues where the president has publicly differed from their assessments he is consistently getting things wrong because that makes it easier for him to pretend that his policies are succeeding when everyone else can see that they aren't. ..."
"... There is nothing wrong with informed skepticism of official claims. It would be unhealthy and dangerous to accept official claims without testing them and putting them under scrutiny. Unfortunately, that isn't what Trump is doing. He is reflexively rejecting all evidence that undermines his own official claims about the nuclear deal, North Korea, and many other things, and he is doing that because the evidence proves his claims to be false. ..."
Timereports
on Trump's unwillingness or inability to consider evidence that contradicts what he thinks he knows about foreign policy issues:
What is most troubling, say these officials and others in government and on Capitol Hill who have been briefed on the episodes,
are Trump's angry reactions when he is given information that contradicts positions he has taken or beliefs he holds. Two intelligence
officers even reported that they have been warned to avoid giving the President intelligence assessments that contradict stances
he has taken in public.
Trump's lack of knowledge and dismal understanding of major issues have always been some of his biggest weaknesses, but the
problem here is even worse than that. The president is not merely ignorant and unfamiliar with the relevant issues. We have known
that all along. According to this report, he is determined to remain ignorant and fixed in his mistaken views about a wide range
of issues, and the officials serving under him are enabling this so that they don't make him angry at them. The point isn't that
intelligence agencies get everything right (they don't), but on the issues where the president has publicly differed from their assessments
he is consistently getting things wrong because that makes it easier for him to pretend that his policies are succeeding when everyone
else can see that they aren't.
That invincible ignorance has serious consequences for U.S. policies and interests and for our relations with other states. One
of those consequences was the decision to renege on the nuclear deal with Iran because the president wrongly believed that they aren't
complying with the deal when all evidence shows that they have been complying from the beginning. Trump declared the deal to be "horrible,"
and so he refuses to consider the proof that shows his opposition to be baseless. At the same time, he imagines that there has been
great progress with North Korean disarmament because it flatters him to think that this is true.
There is nothing wrong with informed skepticism of official claims. It would be unhealthy and dangerous to accept official claims
without testing them and putting them under scrutiny. Unfortunately, that isn't what Trump is doing. He is reflexively rejecting
all evidence that undermines his own official claims about the nuclear deal, North Korea, and many other things, and he is doing
that because the evidence proves his claims to be false.
This is not even a question of whether one happens to agree or disagree with the president's policies. The president simply makes
things up or repeats the lies that others have told him, and he then uses this garbage information to defend policies that make no
sense. That makes it practically impossible for the president to learn or change course when a policy is failing, because he is apparently
unable or unwilling to accept new information that doesn't bolster his preconceived notions of how clever and effective his decisions
have been. An unwillingness to listen to dissenting views and a refusal to consider contradictory evidence are among the greatest
flaws of our worst presidents, and they presage many more terrible decisions in the next two years.
From comments: "Miller also admits that the dossier's broad claims are more closely aligned with reality, but that the document
breaks down once you focus on individual claims. " What?!?
Notable quotes:
"... FBI and CIA sources told a Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post reporter that they didn't believe a key claim contained in the "Steele Dossier ..."
"... The Post 's Greg Miller told an audience at an October event that the FBI and CIA did not believe that former longtime Trump attorney Michael Cohen visited Prague during the 2016 election to pay off Russia-linked hackers who stole emails from key Democrats, reports the Daily Caller 's Chuck Ross. ..."
"... Miller also admits that the dossier's broad claims are more closely aligned with reality, but that the document breaks down once you focus on individual claims. ..."
"... Steele, using Kremlin sources, claimed in his dossier that Cohen and three associates went to Prague in August 2016 to meet with Kremlin officials for the purpose of discussing "deniable cash payments" made in secret so as to cover up "Moscow's secret liaison with the TRUMP team." ..."
FBI and CIA sources told a Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post reporter that they didn't believe a key claim contained in the
"Steele Dossier," the document the Obama FBI relied on to obtain a surveillance warrant on a member of the Trump campaign.
The Post 's Greg Miller told an audience at an October event that the FBI and CIA did not believe that former longtime Trump
attorney Michael Cohen visited Prague during the 2016 election to pay off Russia-linked hackers who stole emails from key Democrats,
reports the Daily Caller 's Chuck Ross.
"We've talked to sources at the FBI and the CIA and elsewhere -- they don't believe that ever happened," said Miller during the
October event which aired Saturday on C-SPAN.
We literally spent weeks and months trying to run down... there's an assertion in there that Michael Cohen went to Prague to
settle payments that were needed at the end of the campaign. We sent reporters to every hotel in Prague, to all over the place
trying to - just to try to figure out if he was ever there, and came away empty . -Greg Miller
Ross notes that WaPo somehow failed to report this information, nor did Miller include this tidbit of narrative-killing information
in his recent book, "The Apprentice: Trump, Russia, and the Subversion of American Democracy."
Miller also admits that the dossier's broad claims are more closely aligned with reality, but that the document breaks down
once you focus on individual claims.
Steele, using Kremlin sources, claimed in his dossier that Cohen and three associates went to Prague in August 2016 to meet
with Kremlin officials for the purpose of discussing "deniable cash payments" made in secret so as to cover up "Moscow's secret liaison
with the TRUMP team."
Cohen's alleged Prague visit captured attention largely because the former Trump fixer has vehemently denied it, and also
because it would seem to be one of the easier claims in Steele's 35-page report to validate or invalidate.
Debate over the salacious document was reignited when
McClatchy reported April 15 that
special counsel Robert Mueller had evidence Cohen visited Prague. No other news outlets have verified the reporting, and Cohen
denied it at the time.
Cohen last denied the dossier's allegations in late June, a period of time when he was gearing up to cooperate with prosecutors
against President Donald Trump . Cohen served as a cooperating witness for prosecutors in both New York and the special counsel's
office. - Daily Caller
Cohen's attorney and longtime Clinton pal Lanny Davis vehemently denied on August 22, one day after Cohen pleaded guilty in his
New York case - that Cohen had never been to Prague, telling Bloomberg " Thirteen references to Mr. Cohen are false in the dossier,
but he has never been to Prague in his life ."
Trump never ceases to crack me up. While his (terrible) current lawyer, declares on TV that there was collusion but it just
didn't last long, Trump calls his former lawyer/fixer at "Rat".
This is just too funny, I mean this is the President of the United States calling his former personal lawyer a "Rat" which
of course is a common mob term for a witness testifying against you.
monkeyshine
Of course it never happened, just like Manafort didn't make 3 trips to London to meet Julian Assange. These fictions were just
used as a pretext for diving into the backgrounds of Trump's political supporters and find crimes to charge them with.
The Cohen raid was particularly egregious, a likely violation of attorney-client privilege. Not suprisingly the American Bar Association
is silent.
brewing_it
So here is a WaPo reporter saying they sent reporters to every hotel in Prague to find out if Cohen had been there, they spent
weeks and weeks researching, interviewing, and nothing. What they are not saying is that they also spent shitloads of Bezo's money
exploring all the other fake dossier claims.
And nothing.....all you hillarytards have been completely scammed by, your pulses sent aflutter with clickbait and page views
and thats it. So sorry you losers.
Demologos
Yeah, like rubles are worth anything outside of Russia. Gold on the other hand ...
But seriously, you two should get a room. If you can't see the conspiracy in the Strzok/Page texts, the setup of Papadapoulous
by the Brits, the phony FISA warrant using the FBI informant, the setup of General Flynn, and the seedy cast of characters in
the DOJ breaking laws right and left, you should be checked for brain wave activity. You probably think the Russians paid for
all of the above too. Go suck a bag of Russian dicks.
Why, it is apparently the following, which is surely a red hot smoking gun. That is,
one that condemns the FBI, not Trump; and shows that the NYT , which once courageously
published the Pentagon Papers and had earned the above sobriquet for its journalistic
stateliness, sense of responsibility and possession of high virtue, has degenerated into a War
Party shill – not to say the journalistic equivalent of a comfort woman:
Mr. Trump had caught the attention of FBI counterintelligence agents when he called on
Russia during a campaign news conference in July 2016 to hack into the emails of his opponent,
Hillary Clinton. Mr. Trump had refused to criticize Russia on the campaign trail, praising
President Vladimir V. Putin. And investigators had watched with alarm as the Republican Party
softened its convention platform on the Ukraine crisis in a way that seemed to benefit
Russia.
Well, for crying out loud!
Any journalist worth his salt would know that Trump's July 2016 shout-out to the Russians
was a campaign joke. At best, it was merely an attempt to cleverly state in one more way the
running GOP theme about Hillary's missing 30,000 emails. How many times before that had Sean
Hannity delivered his riff about Hillary's alleged hammer-smashing of 13 devices and
acid-washing with BleachBit of the missing emails?
"... Professor Cohen is indeed a patriot of the highest order. The American and "Globalists" elites, particularly the dysfunctional United Kingdom, are engaging in a war of nerves with Russia. This war, which could turn nuclear for reasons discussed in this important book, is of no benefit to any person or nation. ..."
"In a Time of Universal Deceit -- Telling the Truth Is a Revolutionary Act" is a well known quotation (but probably not of George
Orwell). And in telling the truth about Russia and that the current "war of nerves" is not in the interests of either the American
People or national security, Professor Cohen in this book has in fact done a revolutionary act.
Like a denizen of Plato's cave, or being in the film the Matrix, most people have no idea what the truth is. And the questions
raised by Professor Cohen are a great service in the cause of the truth. As Professor Cohen writes in his introduction To His
Readers:
"My scholarly work -- my biography of Nikolai Bukharin and essays collected in Rethinking the Soviet Experience and Soviet
Fates and Lost Alternatives, for example -- has always been controversial because it has been what scholars term "revisionist"
-- reconsiderations, based on new research and perspectives, of prevailing interpretations of Soviet and post-Soviet Russian history.
But the "controversy" surrounding me since 2014, mostly in reaction to the contents of this book, has been different -- inspired
by usually vacuous, defamatory assaults on me as "Putin's No. 1 American Apologist," "Best Friend," and the like. I never respond
specifically to these slurs because they offer no truly substantive criticism of my arguments, only ad hominem attacks. Instead,
I argue, as readers will see in the first section, that I am a patriot of American national security, that the orthodox policies
my assailants promote are gravely endangering our security, and that therefore we -- I and others they assail -- are patriotic
heretics. Here too readers can judge."
Cohen, Stephen F.. War with Russia (Kindle Locations 131-139). Hot Books. Kindle Edition.
Professor Cohen is indeed a patriot of the highest order. The American and "Globalists" elites, particularly the dysfunctional
United Kingdom, are engaging in a war of nerves with Russia. This war, which could turn nuclear for reasons discussed in this
important book, is of no benefit to any person or nation.
Indeed, with the hysteria on "climate change" isn't it odd that other than Professor Cohen's voice, there are no prominent
figures warning of the devastation that nuclear war would bring?
If you are a viewer of one of the legacy media outlets, be it Cable Television networks, with the exception of Tucker Carlson
on Fox who has Professor Cohen as a frequent guest, or newspapers such as The New York Times, you have been exposed to falsehoods
by remarkably ignorant individuals; ignorant of history, of the true nature of Russia (which defeated the Nazis in Europe at a
loss of millions of lives) and most important, of actual military experience. America is neither an invincible or exceptional
nation. And for those familiar with terminology of ancient history, it appears the so-called elites are suffering from hubris.
I cannot recommend Professor Cohen's work with sufficient superlatives; his arguments are erudite, clearly stated, supported
by the facts and ultimately irrefutable. If enough people find Professor Cohen's work and raise their voices to their oblivious
politicians and profiteers from war to stop further confrontation between Russia and America, then this book has served a noble
purpose.
If nothing else, educate yourself by reading this work to discover what the *truth* is. And the truth is something sacred.
America and the world owe Professor Cohen a great debt. "Blessed are the peace makers..."
This is a compelling book that documents and examines the senseless and dangerous demonizing of Russia and Putin. Unfortunately,
the elites in Washington and mass media are not likely to read this book. Their minds are closed. I read this book because I was
hoping for an explanation about the cause of the new cold war with Russia. Although the root cause of the new cold war is beyond
the scope of this book, the book documents baseless accusations that grew in frequency and intensity until all opposition was
silenced. The book documents the dangerous triumph of group think.
"On my planet, the evidence linking Putin to the assassination of Litvinecko, Nemtsov, and Politkovskaya and the attempt
on the Skripals is strong and consistent with spending his formative years in the KGB. The naive view from Cohen's planet is
presented on p 6 and 170."
Ukrainian history. That's evident to any attentive reader. I just want to state that Ukrainian EuroMaydan was a color revolution
which exploited the anger of population against the corrupt neoliberal government of Yanukovich (with Biden as the best friend,
and Paul Manafort as the election advisor) to install even more neoliberal and more corrupt government of Poroshenko and cut Ukraine
from Russia. The process that was probably inevitable in the long run (so called Baltic path), but that was forcefully accelerated.
Everything was taken from the Gene Sharp textbook. And Ukrainians suffered greatly as a result, with the standard of living dropping
to around $2 a day level -- essentially Central Africa level.
The fact is that the EU acted as a predator trying to get into Ukraine markets and displace Russia. While the USA neocons (Nuland
and Co) staged the coup using Ukrainian nationalists as a ram, ignoring the fact that Yanukovich would be voted out in six months
anyway (his popularity was in single digits, like popularity of Poroshenko those days ;-). The fact that Obama administration
desperately wanted to weaken Russia at the expense of Ukrainians eludes you. I would blame Nuland for the loss of Crimea and the
civil war in Donbass.
Poor Ukrainians again became the victim of geopolitical games by big powers. No that they are completely blameless, but still...
It looks like you inhabit a very cold populated exclusively with neocons planet called "Russiagate." So Professor Cohen really
lives on another planet. And probably you should drink less American exceptionalism Kool-Aid.
BuzzFeed Throws Hail Mary: Publishes New Trump Tower Moscow Docs
After last week's embarrassing debacle in which special counsel Robert Mueller issued a rare statement
calling bullshit on BuzzFeed over their Trump Tower Moscow report that Trump ordered his attorney Michael Cohen to lie about
the timeline, the beleaguered news outlet has taken a
second bite at the
apple with a new report (oddly written by a completely different journalist) refuting comments by Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani
that "no plans were ever made" for the project.
Not so fast Rudy ...
In their new report, BuzzFeed claims that the Trump Tower Moscow idea was "led by Trump's then-lawyer, Michael Cohen, and his
associate Felix Sater" despite
writing in November that Sater both thought of and spearheaded the idea , turning to Cohen to "get it off the ground" while overpromising
that he could seal the deal through his Russian connections that never panned out.
Sater, a brash real estate promoter who pleaded guilty to racketeering in 1998 and became a
longtime
asset to US law enforcement and intelligence agencies, had worked with the Trump Organization on deals in the past and said
he came up with the idea. Cohen, Sater recalled, said, "Great idea." -
BuzzFeed
Today's "gotcha," however is that the project had progressed much further than Giuliani claimed on Monday when he told the New
Yorker "no plans were ever made. There were no drafts. Nothing in the file."
Not true , writes BuzzFeed' s Azeen Ghorayshi.
The president and his representatives have dismissed the project as little more than a notion -- a rough plan led by Trump's
then-lawyer, Michael Cohen, and his associate Felix Sater, of which Trump and his family said they were only loosely aware as
the election campaign gathered pace.
On Monday, his lawyer,
Rudy Giuliani ,
said "the proposal was in the earliest stage," and he went on to tell the
New Yorker that "no plans were ever made. There were no drafts. Nothing in the file."
However, hundreds of pages of business documents, emails, text messages, and architectural plans, obtained by BuzzFeed News
over a year of reporting, tell a very different story. Trump Tower Moscow was a richly imagined vision of upscale splendor on
the banks of the Moscow River. -
BuzzFeed
Trump Tower Moscow hasn't exactly been a secret, admits BuzzFeed , noting that Donald Trump tweeted about it following the 2013
Miss Universe pageant, and writing in his book The Art of the Deal that he had been trying to expand his business empire into Russia
for over 30 years.
Over the last week, Giuliani admitted to the New York Times that the Trump Tower Moscow discussions were "going on from the day
I announced to the day I won," Giuliani quoted Trump as saying. He then
walked back those comments , claiming in a statement: "My recent statements about discussions during the 2016 campaign between
Michael Cohen and then-candidate Donald Trump about a potential Trump Moscow 'project' were hypothetical and not based on conversations
I had with the President."
In other words, Giuliani is a walking gaffe machine - which we already knew.
That said, the Trump Tower moscow project appears to have been much more developed than anyone in the Trump camp has acknowledged.
According to a finalized letter of intent signed by Donald Trump on Oct. 28, 2015, the tower would have "approximately 250
first class, luxury residential condominiums."
It would be located in Moscow City, a former industrial complex outside of the city center that has since been converted into
an ambitious commercial district clustered with several of the tallest skyscrapers in Europe.
Its hotel portion would feature "approximately 15 floors" and contain "not fewer than 150 hotel rooms," the letter of intent
stated. The building would feature a luxury spa and fitness center, a commercial component "consistent with the overall luxury
level of the Property," and an office space "consistent with Class A luxury office properties," as well as "luxury" parking. -
BuzzFeed
Also in the plan was "The Spa By Ivanka Trump," as well as a $50 million penthouse suite that they would give to Russian President
Vladimir Putin. "My idea was to give a $50 million penthouse to Putin and charge $250 million more for the rest of the units," Sater
told BuzzFeed in November. "All the oligarchs would line up to live in the same building as Putin."
Show Trump the money
The Trump Organization stood to make $4 million on an up-front payment for the deal; 25% of which would be paid upon execution
of the licensing agreement, another quarter when they finalized a location, and the other half a week before the project's groundbreaking
- or two years after the execution of the licensing agreement, whichever came first.
From there on out, Trump's company would also get a cut of all the condominium sales at the tower, the agreement stated. From
the total selling price of each unit, his company would get 5% for sales up to $100 million, 4% for the next bracket up to $250
million, 3% for anything between that and $500 million, 2% for anything up to $1 billion, and thereafter, a solid cut of 1%. For
commercial and office spaces, it would get a 3% cut of all the rent. It'd get another 3% of sales on food and beverages, spa and
fitness center use, and conference fees.
The deal also stipulated how much Trump's management company would get paid for running operations at Trump Tower Moscow over
25 years. For the first five years, it would get 3% of all revenue generated by operating the hotel per month. Over the next two
decades, it'd receive a flat 4%. In addition, the management company would also receive a monthly "incentive fee" -- an additional
20% of the gross operating profit for the hotel -- subject to annual negotiations. -
BuzzFeed
At the end of the day, Trump Tower Moscow has never happened - and Trump himself has turned out to be the worst "Putin Puppet"
ever after slapping heavy sanctions on Moscow and selling Ukraine weapons that the Obama administration wouldn't.
"Let's make this happen and build a Trump Moscow," wrote Sater to Cohen in October of 2015. "And possibly fix relations between
the countries by showing everyone that commerce & business are much better and more practical than politics. Help world peace and
make a lot of money, I would say that's a great lifetime goal for us to go after."
STOP THE ******* PRESSES..........BOMB SHELL......BOMB SHELL REPORT...THE WALLS ARE CLOSING IN....ORANGE HAIR PRESIDENT SOON
TO BE WARING ORANGE JUMPSUIT....
Dateline Moscow 2013........
The crime:
American Developer explores possibilities of building a hotel in Moscow.
The media won't understand talking to Russians to build in Russia and not talking to George Soros first is NOT a crime. Just
because that's what THEY do concerning everything doesn't mean Trump has to also.
zzzzzzzzzz, but the ****-0-craps will be all rage and fury over some sort of fantasy land egotistical it'll never happen building
in Moscow. Pretty pictures, though.
And to the idiot poster who keeps claiming this is 'bribery', that means 1) there would have to be something to be given in
return that was unlawful on some level, and 2) there was intent, and 3) a discussion about the nature and quality of the bribe
actually took place between the bribor and bribee.
I get the uniparty thing, but some of the leftie dickheads that post here are really stupid. Colossally dumb.
Somebody said below we get nothing but bolshevik-speak from these marxists. They open the mouth and voila! a 'fact' is born.
And on that basis a conviction. Matters not if the 'fact' disappears someday, so long as today the 'fact' gives them the
pretense to destroy someone that gets in their way.
The 60's hippies 'left' was all down on the 'man'. 'I just want to be freeeeeeee man' they would say.
ha, such bulls-. The truth is they are all lining up at the govt trough to get their piece of the action. It doesn't matter
that they f- people over, destroy lives, and freedom for all, so long as they get a juicy title, paycheck and pension.
Pure, 100% commie bulls-.
These people need to put on a red shirt and a bulls' eye, have a war against them declared, and then they can be mowed down
one at a time until they run away from govt and never return, or they are all gone.
We are no doubt headed for all out neo-USSA communism. Better make sure you keep your guns!
And when (not if) the ****-0-craps have total power, the first thing they'll do is make it impossible to get a gun, and then
find a means to confiscate them. Before any tyranny we always see the new tyrant go after the guns. Then when the ppl are unarmed,
they move in for the kill - literally.
The commie jackass 'leaders' always talk about this it's for the children, safety, etc. But we all know that is a farce. The
real purpose is to disarm. Culturally, they have made us all capitulate to deviancy, where nobody dares question the immoral homosexual
behavioral choice. That is the kind of world we live in. Next stop, pedoland. "Don't judge me bro'".
Given that we now know (if we did not know already) that at LEAST 65% of the population is completely dependent on the government,
we live in a land where there are ultimate sheep, demented immoral sheep, government dependent and not productive sheep. We are
surrounded by people who are totally brainwashed, are easily swept up with the latest new world order dogma, and won't fight back
against anything, but accept everything, and do as they are told - for a morsel of bread.
Not sure what the solution is, but if you are a person with a moral compass in fairly good working order, and don't want your
pocket picked, and your business totally compromised by some bureaucrat. best be looking for one.
The media won't understand talking to Russians to build in Russia and not talking to George Soros first is NOT a crime. Just
because that's what THEY do concerning everything doesn't mean Trump has to also.
zzzzzzzzzz, but the ****-0-craps will be all rage and fury over some sort of fantasy land egotistical it'll never happen building
in Moscow. Pretty pictures, though.
And to the idiot poster who keeps claiming this is 'bribery', that means 1) there would have to be something to be given in
return that was unlawful on some level, and 2) there was intent, and 3) a discussion about the nature and quality of the bribe
actually took place between the bribor and bribee.
I get the uniparty thing, but some of the leftie dickheads that post here are really stupid. Colossally dumb.
Somebody said below we get nothing but bolshevik-speak from these marxists. They open the mouth and voila! a 'fact' is born.
And on that basis a conviction. Matters not if the 'fact' disappears someday, so long as today the 'fact' gives them the
pretense to destroy someone that gets in their way.
The 60's hippies 'left' was all down on the 'man'. 'I just want to be freeeeeeee man' they would say.
ha, such bulls-. The truth is they are all lining up at the govt trough to get their piece of the action. It doesn't matter
that they f- people over, destroy lives, and freedom for all, so long as they get a juicy title, paycheck and pension.
Pure, 100% commie bulls-.
These people need to put on a red shirt and a bulls' eye, have a war against them declared, and then they can be mowed down
one at a time until they run away from govt and never return, or they are all gone.
We are no doubt headed for all out neo-USSA communism. Better make sure you keep your guns!
And when (not if) the ****-0-craps have total power, the first thing they'll do is make it impossible to get a gun, and then
find a means to confiscate them. Before any tyranny we always see the new tyrant go after the guns. Then when the ppl are unarmed,
they move in for the kill - literally.
The commie jackass 'leaders' always talk about this it's for the children, safety, etc. But we all know that is a farce. The
real purpose is to disarm. Culturally, they have made us all capitulate to deviancy, where nobody dares question the immoral homosexual
behavioral choice. That is the kind of world we live in. Next stop, pedoland. "Don't judge me bro'".
Given that we now know (if we did not know already) that at LEAST 65% of the population is completely dependent on the government,
we live in a land where there are ultimate sheep, demented immoral sheep, government dependent and not productive sheep. We are
surrounded by people who are totally brainwashed, are easily swept up with the latest new world order dogma, and won't fight back
against anything, but accept everything, and do as they are told - for a morsel of bread.
Not sure what the solution is, but if you are a person with a moral compass in fairly good working order, and don't want your
pocket picked, and your business totally compromised by some bureaucrat. best be looking for one.
The media won't understand talking to Russians to build in Russia and not talking to George Soros first is NOT a crime. Just
because that's what THEY do concerning everything doesn't mean Trump has to also.
zzzzzzzzzz, but the ****-0-craps will be all rage and fury over some sort of fantasy land egotistical it'll never happen building
in Moscow. Pretty pictures, though.
And to the idiot poster who keeps claiming this is 'bribery', that means 1) there would have to be something to be given in
return that was unlawful on some level, and 2) there was intent, and 3) a discussion about the nature and quality of the bribe
actually took place between the bribor and bribee.
I get the uniparty thing, but some of the leftie dickheads that post here are really stupid. Colossally dumb.
Somebody said below we get nothing but bolshevik-speak from these marxists. They open the mouth and voila! a 'fact' is born.
And on that basis a conviction. Matters not if the 'fact' disappears someday, so long as today the 'fact' gives them the
pretense to destroy someone that gets in their way.
The 60's hippies 'left' was all down on the 'man'. 'I just want to be freeeeeeee man' they would say.
ha, such bulls-. The truth is they are all lining up at the govt trough to get their piece of the action. It doesn't matter
that they f- people over, destroy lives, and freedom for all, so long as they get a juicy title, paycheck and pension.
Pure, 100% commie bulls-.
These people need to put on a red shirt and a bulls' eye, have a war against them declared, and then they can be mowed down
one at a time until they run away from govt and never return, or they are all gone.
We are no doubt headed for all out neo-USSA communism. Better make sure you keep your guns!
And when (not if) the ****-0-craps have total power, the first thing they'll do is make it impossible to get a gun, and then
find a means to confiscate them. Before any tyranny we always see the new tyrant go after the guns. Then when the ppl are unarmed,
they move in for the kill - literally.
The commie jackass 'leaders' always talk about this it's for the children, safety, etc. But we all know that is a farce. The
real purpose is to disarm. Culturally, they have made us all capitulate to deviancy, where nobody dares question the immoral homosexual
behavioral choice. That is the kind of world we live in. Next stop, pedoland. "Don't judge me bro'".
Given that we now know (if we did not know already) that at LEAST 65% of the population is completely dependent on the government,
we live in a land where there are ultimate sheep, demented immoral sheep, government dependent and not productive sheep. We are
surrounded by people who are totally brainwashed, are easily swept up with the latest new world order dogma, and won't fight back
against anything, but accept everything, and do as they are told - for a morsel of bread.
Not sure what the solution is, but if you are a person with a moral compass in fairly good working order, and don't want your
pocket picked, and your business totally compromised by some bureaucrat. best be looking for one.
The media won't understand talking to Russians to build in Russia and not talking to George Soros first is NOT a crime. Just
because that's what THEY do concerning everything doesn't mean Trump has to also.
zzzzzzzzzz, but the ****-0-craps will be all rage and fury over some sort of fantasy land egotistical it'll never happen building
in Moscow. Pretty pictures, though.
And to the idiot poster who keeps claiming this is 'bribery', that means 1) there would have to be something to be given in
return that was unlawful on some level, and 2) there was intent, and 3) a discussion about the nature and quality of the bribe
actually took place between the bribor and bribee.
I get the uniparty thing, but some of the leftie dickheads that post here are really stupid. Colossally dumb.
Somebody said below we get nothing but bolshevik-speak from these marxists. They open the mouth and voila! a 'fact' is born.
And on that basis a conviction. Matters not if the 'fact' disappears someday, so long as today the 'fact' gives them the
pretense to destroy someone that gets in their way.
The 60's hippies 'left' was all down on the 'man'. 'I just want to be freeeeeeee man' they would say.
ha, such bulls-. The truth is they are all lining up at the govt trough to get their piece of the action. It doesn't matter
that they f- people over, destroy lives, and freedom for all, so long as they get a juicy title, paycheck and pension.
Pure, 100% commie bulls-.
These people need to put on a red shirt and a bulls' eye, have a war against them declared, and then they can be mowed down
one at a time until they run away from govt and never return, or they are all gone.
We are no doubt headed for all out neo-USSA communism. Better make sure you keep your guns!
And when (not if) the ****-0-craps have total power, the first thing they'll do is make it impossible to get a gun, and then
find a means to confiscate them. Before any tyranny we always see the new tyrant go after the guns. Then when the ppl are unarmed,
they move in for the kill - literally.
The commie jackass 'leaders' always talk about this it's for the children, safety, etc. But we all know that is a farce. The
real purpose is to disarm. Culturally, they have made us all capitulate to deviancy, where nobody dares question the immoral homosexual
behavioral choice. That is the kind of world we live in. Next stop, pedoland. "Don't judge me bro'".
Given that we now know (if we did not know already) that at LEAST 65% of the population is completely dependent on the government,
we live in a land where there are ultimate sheep, demented immoral sheep, government dependent and not productive sheep. We are
surrounded by people who are totally brainwashed, are easily swept up with the latest new world order dogma, and won't fight back
against anything, but accept everything, and do as they are told - for a morsel of bread.
Not sure what the solution is, but if you are a person with a moral compass in fairly good working order, and don't want your
pocket picked, and your business totally compromised by some bureaucrat. best be looking for one.
Justin Case
Keep shoveling that Russia this, that, manure narrative for general consumption. What sanctions? Umm, I'll get back to you
after we extradite the Huawei CEO and extort billions from the corporation for doing business with our (Israel's) adversary.
You voted for this? He talks out of both sides of his mouth. Why do people vote to have someone rule over them?
Among few good things that Trump have done to the USA is that he destoryed credibility of
neoliberal MSM. They all are now firmly belong to the "fake news" catagory.
Notable quotes:
"... C. J. Hopkins is an award-winning American playwright, novelist and political satirist based in Berlin. His plays are published by Bloomsbury Publishing (UK) and Broadway Play Publishing (USA). His debut novel, ZONE 23 , is published by Snoggsworthy, Swaine & Cormorant Paperbacks. He can be reached at cjhopkins.com or consentfactory.org . ..."
So the corporate media have gone and done it again. As they have, repeatedly, for the last
two and half years, they shook the earth with
a "bombshell" story proving beyond any reasonable doubt that Donald Trump colluded with the
Russians to steal the presidency from Hillary Clinton, or at least committed an impeachable
felony in connection with something to do with the Russians, or Ukrainians, or other Slavic
persons which story turned out to be inaccurate, or not entirely accurate, or a bunch of
horseshit.
This time it was BuzzFeed's Jason Leopold, " a
reporter with a checkered past " (i.e., a history of inventing
his sources ) who broke the "bombshell" Russiagate story that turned out to be a bunch of
horseshit. Leopold, and his colleague Anthony Cormier, reported that Trump had directed his
attorney, Michael Cohen, to lie to Congress about plans to construct a Trump Tower in Moscow,
thus suborning perjury and obstructing justice. Their sources for this "bombshell" story were
allegedly "two federal law enforcement officials involved in an investigation of the
matter."
Approximately twenty-four hours later, Special Counsel Robert Mueller's office (i.e., the
office "involved in an investigation of the matter") stated that the BuzzFeed story was "not
accurate," which is a legal term meaning "a bunch of horseshit."
BuzzFeed is standing by its story , and is working to determine what, exactly, Mueller's
office meant by "not accurate." Ben Smith, BuzzFeed's Editor-in-Chief, has called on Mueller
"to make clear what he's disputing."
Liberals and other Trump-obsessives have joined in the effort to interpret the Special
Counsel's office's cryptic utterance. French hermeneuticists have been reportedly called in to
deconstruct the meaning of "accurate." Professional Twitter
semioticians are explaining that "not accurate" doesn't mean "wrong," but, rather, refers
to something that is "accurate," but which the user of the word doesn't want to disclose
publicly, or that legal terms don't mean what they mean or something more or less along those
lines.
But Greenwald's list is just a small sample of the Russiagate stories that have turned out
to be horseshit. For the record, here are several more:
"Seventeen intelligence agencies"
confirm Russia interfered in the U.S. elections (
New York Times ) Russia interfered in the Brexit referendum (
The Guardian ) Russia interfered in the German elections ( Reuters )
Russia hacked the French elections ( Politico and numerous other
outlets ) Michael Cohen conspired with the Russians in Prague ( BuzzFeed
)
I am using the terms "horseshit" and "a bunch of horseshit" (as opposed to terms like
"failures" and "errors"), not just to be gratuitously vulgar, but, also, to try to make a
point. One is not supposed to use these terms in connection with "serious," "respected" news
outlets. Which is why journalists like Greenwald and Aaron Maté (who have extensively
reported on the corporate media's ongoing production and dissemination of horseshit) do not use
such terms in the course of their reporting, and instead use less inflammatory terms like
"false," "inaccurate," "mistake," and "error." Principled journalists like Greenwald and
Maté are constrained by (a) their journalistic ethics, (b) their integrity, and (c)
their belief in the idea of a "free and independent press," which is one of the pillars of
Western democracy.
Being neither a respected journalist nor a believer in the existence of an "independent
press," I am under no such constraints. Because I'm not trying to get or keep a job, or
maintain a "respectable" reputation, I'm free to call a spade a spade and a bunch of horseshit
a bunch of horseshit. I am also free to describe "journalists" like Leopold,
Luke Harding ,
Craig Timberg ,
Franklin Foer , and many of their corporate media colleagues (not to mention
TV clowns like Rachel Maddow ) as the liars and rank propagandists they are. I don't need
to pretend their fabricated stories are simply the result of "shoddy journalism," or
"over-reliance on official sources," or any other type of "error" or "failure." These people
know exactly what they are doing, and are being extremely well paid to do it. They went to
school to learn how to do it. Then they butt-sucked and back-stabbed their way up the ladder of
establishment power to be able to do it.
Yes, of course, there are still principled journalists working for the corporate media, but
they are doing so by walking a very fine line. No one has to tell them where it is. Every
professional journalist knows precisely where it is, and what it is there for. Though they are
permitted to walk right up to it, occasionally (to keep them from feeling like abject whores),
one step over it and they will be cast into the Outer Darkness of the Blogosphere and
excommunicated from the Church of Respectable Journalism. If you don't believe me, just ask
Seymour Hersh, or John Pilger, or any other journalistic heretic.
If Russiagate serves no other useful purpose, it is at least exposing the corporate media as
the propaganda factories that they are. Given the amount of obviously fabricated horseshit they
have disseminated during the last two years, you'd have to be a total moron or a diehard
neoliberal cultist not to recognize the function they perform within the global capitalist
ruling establishment (which is essentially no different than the function the establishment
media perform in any other society, namely, to disseminate, maintain, and reify the official
narrative of its ruling classes).
Sadly, there's no shortage of morons and cultists. I don't blame the morons, because well,
they're morons. The cultists are another species entirely. These are people who, no matter how
often the corporate media feed them another "explosive," "bombshell" Russiagate story that
turns out to be a bunch of horseshit, will defend the concept of the "independent media" like
head-shaven, bug-eyed Manson followers. Confront them with facts contradicting their beliefs
and they close their eyes and start chanting and humming and repetitiously babbling banishing
spells. The notion that the Western corporate media may serve the interests of the ruling
establishment (just like the media in every other society serve that society's ruling classes)
is unimaginable and tantamount to heresy.
This fetishization of "the independent press" is a phenomenon unique to Western capitalism.
Basically, it's a childish fairy tale, like believing that Santa Claus is an actual person or
that voting in elections in a corporate oligarchy has anything to do with actual democracy.
Think about it dispassionately for a minute. Why would any ruling establishment permit a
genuinely "independent" press to disseminate ideas and information willy-nilly throughout
society? If it did, it wouldn't last very long.
Most people understand this intuitively, which is why the corporate media relentlessly
repeat the mantra-like phrase, "free and independent press," over, and over, and over again.
Seriously, switch on NPR, or have a look at The Guardian or the Washington Post, or any of the
other corporate media repeatedly reminding you how "independent," "free" and "democratic" they
are. It's essentially Neuro-linguistic programming.
So let's not be shocked when the corporate media continue to bombard us with "bombshell"
stories about Trump and Russia that turn out to be horseshit. Personally, I welcome these
stories. The more corporate media horseshit the better! Who knows, if they dish out enough
blatant horseshit, more people might lose their "trust in the media," and begin to investigate
matters themselves. I know, that makes me a Nazi, right? Or at least a Russian propagandist? I
mean, encouraging folks to distrust the corporate media? Isn't there some kind of law against
that? Or have they not quite gotten around to that yet?
C. J. Hopkins is an award-winning American playwright, novelist and political satirist
based in Berlin. His plays are published by Bloomsbury Publishing (UK) and Broadway Play
Publishing (USA). His debut novel, ZONE 23 , is
published by Snoggsworthy, Swaine & Cormorant Paperbacks. He can be reached at cjhopkins.com or consentfactory.org .
The Associated Press (AP) reports the latest bad news for the press: " Just 6 Percent of
People Say They Trust the Media ."
Carole Feldman and Emily Swanson began: Trust in the news media is being eroded by
perceptions of inaccuracy and bias, fueled in part by Americans' skepticism about what they
read on social media. Just 6 percent of people say they have a lot of confidence in the
media, putting the news industry about equal to Congress and well below the public's view of
other institutions.
Most people understand this intuitively, which is why the corporate media relentlessly
repeat the mantra-like phrase, "free and independent press,"
People inversely brag about their short comings.
Militarized police states brag about their freedom.
A well heeled synchophant brags about his independence.
Dudes with small dicks -- big belt buckle and big hat.
I used to listen to the BBC and NPR until the corporo-globalist bias became unbearable. I
laughed at incidents such as Marketplace mocking the public's concern about GMO's. But it
went off the rails in 2016. They may have backed off from Trump Derangement Syndrome a bit
since then, but I've noticed that they have to call themselves "credible." Maybe if they say
that enough times we'll believe it, eh?
The Greenwald link is pretty important and I bookmarked it. These fake news outlets do
everything in their power to scrub these mistakes from the Google machine once they happen.
They remove stories, videos -- everything, in the hopes of shoving it all down the memory
hole. And since other fake news outlets don't hold them accountable, they get away with it.
This is why it's important to take screen shots of fake news and download videos if possible,
to create a record that's permanent and useful when you need it.
More than 6% of the population are technically, and this is the technical term, retarded
-- they are mentally disabled.
I know it's obvious our media is propaganda, but I don't think it's quite so obvious such
that adults watching Sesame Street who fully enjoy it (nothing wrong with that!) are aware of
it.
I would like to think it's true, but I think the Associated Press article is not true,
after all, can you identify their funding sources?
This fetishization of "the independent press" is a phenomenon unique to Western
capitalism. Basically, it's a childish fairy tale, like believing that Santa Claus is an
actual person or that voting in elections in a corporate oligarchy has anything to do with
actual democracy.
Great article. Articles on this theme should be published daily. The fetish must be
destroyed.
There is at least one other person who calls corporate media what it is, and it ain't
"mainstream."
"Sparkie" ain't gonna be happy about it either."Sparky" chewed me out good for correcting
the incomparable and always superb Linh Dinh for using the disgusting and inaccurate term,
"mainstream" when referring to coprophilic media. Oh, and speaking of "horseshit" one wag
suggested we call it main steam media, for accuracy as well as for giggles and that's
fine by me.
the corporate media relentlessly repeat the mantra-like phrase, "free and independent
press," over, and over, and over again. Seriously, switch on NPR, or have a look at The
Guardian or the Washington Post, or any of the other corporate media repeatedly reminding
you how "independent," "free" and "democratic" they are. It's essentially Neuro-linguistic
programming.
It's blatantly obvious that the same can be said about the self-legitimizing term,
"mainstream," too, so bless you sir, and to (bleep) with the Sparkies of the world.
Confront them with facts contradicting their beliefs and they close their eyes and start
chanting and humming and repetitiously babbling banishing spells.
Not only is Hopkins correct, but what he says about corporate media is not new. The Civil
Rights movement presented by the media was false. The media promotion of the US re-engaging
in Europe in the post WW1 period so we could defend dear ole England and sacred democracy.
The media preparing us for our need to fight WW1 so we could end all wars was false. The
media stirring us to go into Cuba and end the awfully evil Spanish Empire so we could start
the process of ending all empires
N o doubt it is a pleasure for you because C.J. Hopkins managed to scribble 1500
words about fake news without even once mentioning the CIA.
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public
believes is false."
-- CIA Director, William Casey
Of course, our resident Bumpkin of Unz would have you believe that the CIA is a
corporation.
"The CIA owns everyone of any significance in the major media."
-- former CIA Director William Colby
So you see Sheete, the term "corporate media" is entirely inaccurate -- a red herring, a
misleading label, a pig in a poke -- because it entirely excludes, avoids, overlooks, and
completely dismisses the role of our intelligence agencies in creating fake news ,
a.k.a. disinformation and propaganda.
The notion that the Western corporate media may serve the interests of the ruling
establishment (just like the media in every other society serve that society's ruling
classes) is unimaginable and tantamount to heresy.
This comes close to the term "regime media," which I like as a replacement for the
clunky-but-common terms "Mainstream Media" or MSM. "
Hopkins uses "corporate media," which appears fifteen times here including in the
title.
Several commenters have noted the problems with the term "mainstream media":
While better than "mainstream media," I'm not sure "corporate media" is sufficient.
"Corporate media," as a term, may wrongly convey the notion that the 'media' in question
complaisantly both [1] broadcasts the ruling ideology (interventionist capitalist
liberal democracy and multicultacracy) and [2] 'megaphones' (Steve Sailer's useful term)
against enemies thereto, coordinating our regular Two-Minute Hates.
That characterization misses an important point, to wit:
The 'media' (in the sense of the "MSM") as we know it today, is itself consciously
part of the ruling apparatus . Not complaisantly, but actively; not lackeys on the
side, but right at the regime's core. A useful distinction. Hence "regime media."
Jun. 14, 2012 These 6 Corporations Control 90% Of The Media In America
That's consolidated from *50* companies back in 1983. But the fact that a few companies
own everything demonstrates "the illusion of choice," Frugal Dad says.
Tom Charles Huston testified before the Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental
Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, commonly known as the Church Committee,
on the 43-page plan he presented to the President Nixon and others on ways to collect
information about anti-war and "radical" groups, including burglary, electronic
surveillance, and opening of mail.
Lippmann-Dewey debate, which is known to academics but not the general public in the
United States, the home country of both authors. Obviously, John Dewey is famous as one
of the most important American philosophers, and for his international influence in the
field of education. By contrast, Walter Lippmann has been somewhat forgotten, though he
was a major journalist in the 1920s and 1930s. He was a widely familiar author at the
time, and wrote some cynical things about American democracy. The story America tells
itself politically is that since we're a democracy in which the citizens rule themselves,
there is a paramount need for an excellent public education so that the citizens can vote
wisely. We ourselves are the leaders. But of course it doesn't work that way in practice.
We actually have a surplus of ignorant and uninformed people who pay no attention to the
nuances of policy, and who vote based on the workings of demagoguery and short-sighted
self-interest. Any number of foolish decisions have been made by the American public.
This leads Lippmann to take the somewhat cynical line that America is destined to be
ruled by technocrats. We need experts to run things; the people are too clueless to rule
themselves. We'll pretend we have a democracy, but we actually don't. Now, Dewey reads
this, and he is temperamentally more optimistic, and he thinks: 'This is a really
stimulating book, but Lippmann is wrong. He is setting the bar too high for the people.
People were never supposed to be educated in depth about every issue, which is an
impossible demand. Even Lippmann doesn't have the time to master every issue, and he
covers politics for a living. Instead, Dewey says, political issues generate their own
publics in each case. I might care deeply about seven political issues. I might care
about national health insurance, but I don't care about gay marriage, or vice versa. So I
get involved in one debate and not the other. I take the trouble of becoming informed
about issues that interest me.
@Hail
Hail says: "The 'media' (in the sense of the "MSM") as we know it today, is itself
consciously part of the ruling apparatus. Not complaisantly, but actively; not lackeys on
the side, but right at the regime's core ":
Exactly. The MSM is the government [CIA/NSA/ etc. etc.] grinning right at you as
it continually lies , albeit behind a very thin veil of supposed integrity/respectability
that the general public still refuses to see through.
By way of illustration of this "outrageous" assertion of mine, here is part of a video
analysis of the original 5 channel US MSM "live" coverage of the morning of Sept. 11 2001,
which clearly demonstrates that on that morning, all 5 US networks broadcast entirely fake
"live" footage [ i.e. C.G.I. prefabricated imagery] for about 102 minutes :
So you see Sheete, the term "corporate media" is entirely inaccurate
I never claimed it was perfect. I do claim that the term, "mainstream," in this context
is entirely inaccurate and misleading. And you should be nice, as you admonished me,
regarding the author of this article. As for your complaint that he didn't mention the CIA,
may I remind you that he wrote, as you noticed, an article, not an encyclopedia.
Anyway, you have yet to establish that the CIA and our corporate masters are entirely
separate entities. Even a Dumb Sheete such as myself would find it somewhat, if not
entirely, incredible if they were.
But of course too everyone knows by now that Jews, Israel and Mossad did 9/11 all by
their lonesomes, and the CIA and the Air Force had nothing to do with it.
Ahem, you forgot to mention big, coprophilic, media. Please try to practice the
inclusiveness that you preach.
one step over [the line] and they will be cast into the Outer Darkness of the
Blogosphere and excommunicated from the Church of Respectable Journalism. If you don't
believe me, just ask Seymour Hersh, or John Pilger, or any other journalistic
heretic.
To this list I might also add CBS' Sharyl Attkisson, and Larry Conners of KMOV-TV, who
had the big brass balls to question the $85 million the Obamas spent on vacations.
NR kicked Derb to the curb, but that gutter's littered with Internet flotsam who
presumed integrity.
@Sean
Sean says: "Lippmann-Dewey debate, which is known to academics but not the general
public in the United States, the home country of both authors. "
Debate summary: 2 know-it-alls debating about how "best" to run everybody else's lives
[and with straight faces, I've no doubt].
Two sides of the same [pro-statist] coin, in other words. Oh, and one minor issue one
"thinks" that a ruling technocracy is "the answer".
Sean says: "Obviously, John Dewey is famous as one of the most important American
philosophers, and for his international influence in the field of education."
You mean: Dewey was important in the field of "public education" , otherwise known as
brainwashing.
"... Only the minor Russian RT channel provides, up-to-a-point, some alternative views, defending the American, British and French people's sovereignty, but they can't do much. Paradoxically, RT does not broadcast in Russian and its English-language broadcasts can't be seen in Russia. The rest of the Russian media doesn't differ much from the Western variety. ..."
"... And not only for politics. They want to draw and implement their agenda on all topics disregarding our views. ..."
There is not a single newspaper in the US that supports the views of the US President.
Nobody defended him when he was
accused , brazenly, in-your-face, of being a Russian agent. Nobody supported him when he
called to bring the troops home from Syria. Nobody came to his aid when he mulled parting with
NATO. There are tens of millions of men and women who voted for him, but he has only his
Twitter account at his disposal.
The media
accuses Trump of paying too little attention to Israel's needs. Israel needs US troops in
Syria and in Germany, US jets in Spain and Qatar, US ships in Italy and the Gulf. Israel needs
the US to lead NATO to contain Russia. If Israel needs it, the US should provide,
says Daniel Shapiro, the ex-ambassador. Not a single American newspaper, not a single US
statesman cared to reply that President Trump had been elected by the American people to do
what is needed for them, not for Israel.
The US is not an exception. Millions of French people support the GJ, but not a single
newspaper, not a single TV channel gives them a platform. They are called anti-Semites for they
are revolted by Danny Cohn-Bendit and Bernard-Henri Levi, who are Jewish. They are also called
homophobes because they want to ban same-sex "marriage". They are being attacked by the
bankers' storm-troopers, the Antifa, and no media defends them.
Millions of Brits support Jeremy Corbyn, but all the mainstream media is against him, even
the state-supported BBC, even the Labour Guardian. Corbyn is accused of anti-Semitism, for
Corbyn speaks for the workers and against the bankers. Nobody defends him and there is no
mainstream media to speak for him.
Only the minor Russian RT channel provides, up-to-a-point, some alternative views, defending
the American, British and French people's sovereignty, but they can't do much. Paradoxically,
RT does not broadcast in Russian and its English-language broadcasts can't be seen in Russia.
The rest of the Russian media doesn't differ much from the Western variety.
The mainstream media from Tokyo to Paris to Los Angeles speaks in one voice. All other
opinions had been pushed out of mainstream discussion. It is good that we have the internet and
sites like Unz Review
that allow us to express our views. The problem is with delivery. How can we deliver to the
public? The real mainstream media has so many more views and viewers! For them, hundreds of
thousands or even millions of views are not unusual.
We need our social networks to deliver the ideas and exchange opinions, to inform readers of
our publications, to convince and rally. In over-populated, nuclearized world, with family and
neighbourhood ties torn, there is no substitute for these networks. And Facebook and Twitter
could help us. Google could help us.
Alas, they betrayed us, too. The social networks
And not only for politics. They want to draw and implement their agenda on all topics
disregarding our views.
BuzzFeed's credibility has been seemingly dented by Special Counsel Robert Mueller's recent
dismissal of one of its 'Russiagate' stories. However, it is not the first time its stories on
Russia raised flags or were proven false. The New York-based news outlet has been holding
nothing back over the recent years as it diligently pressed the so-called 'Russiagate'
narrative about a supposed collusion between the US President Donald Trump and Moscow. Its
recent exploits, which claimed Trump told his ex-lawyer, Michael Cohen, to lie to Congress to
cover up some of his dealings with Russia, however, apparently led it a bit too far, as it
earned a rebuke from the office
of Robert Muller – the man in charge of the investigation into the very same alleged
collusion, among other aspects of perceived Russia's meddling into the 2016 elections.
'After this I don't even know if I can trust Buzzfeed's cat listicles anymore'
https://t.co/b4vyIKJAUL
The news sparked a wave of criticism on
the social media, with many people saying that the news outlet's credibility is now
discredited.
But was it that flawless before?
Buzzfeed was the first to publish the infamous Steele dossier – a report by an MI6
spy-turned-private investigator – which contained unverified allegations that Russia held
information on Trump which it was using to blackmail the US president. It also alleged
sustained and close working contacts between Trump aides and Kremlin representatives.
None of these allegations, which were used by the FBI as a reason for obtaining a spy
warrant against Trump adviser Carter Page, have been proven as of now. Instead, it was
revealed that the report
was based on information fed through people close to Hillary Clinton – Trump's rival at
the 2016 presidential elections.
Meanwhile, some of the reporters, who worked with the dossier, admitted that the
document's claims are "likely false." Christopher Steele himself also revealed
that one of his goals in compiling the report was to provide Clinton with a legal basis to
challenge the 2016 election results.
The publication of the dossier has brought a string of defamation lawsuits not only against
Steele but against BuzzFeed as well. The news media outlet was sued by the owners of a Russian
Alfa Bank and a Russian tech
expert Aleksey Gubarev who
were all mentioned in the infamous dossier. At the same time, Trump's personal lawyer also
filed a
defamation lawsuit against the company for pushing the Steele report.
However, Buzzfeed apparently does hope to get away with it. In case of Gubarev, a US court
already ruled in favor of the
news outlet in December 2018, citing a "fair report privilege." The businessman earlier
scolded the publication as "one of the most reckless and irresponsible moments in modern
journalism."
Steele was the source of another controversial episode in the history of BuzzFeed's attempts
to propagate the 'Russiagate' narrative. In March 2018, it claimed that the FBI was covering
the true causes of the death of a Russian media tycoon in Washington in 2015.
Citing a "secret report " by Steele, it claimed the man was allegedly killed by
associates of a Russian oligarch, who happens to be close to the Kremlin, the news outlet said.
A sheer coincidence, apparently. It also did not bother to give any plausible explanation as to
why the FBI, which did not hesitate to point a finger at Moscow in the past, would hide such
information at all.
Anyway, the whole story was debunked just days later
when the Metropolitan Police said the death of the tycoon was an accident. This fact did not
get much attention in the West, though. Neither did it cool BuzzFeed's ardor in stirring up
anti-Russian hysteria.
Buzzfeed was once notorious for
traffic-generating "listicles" , but has since become an impressive outlet for deep
investigative journalism under editor-in-chief Ben Smith. That outlet was prominently in the
news this week thanks to its "bombshell" story about President Trump and Michael Cohen: a story
that, like so many others of its kind,
blew up in its face , this time when the typically mute Robert Mueller's office took the
extremely rare step to
label its key claims "inaccurate."
But in homage to BuzzFeed's past viral glory, following are the top ten worst media failures
in two-plus-years of Trump/Russia reporting. They are listed in reverse order, as measured by
the magnitude of the embarrassment, the hysteria they generated on social media and cable news,
the level of journalistic recklessness that produced them, and the amount of damage and danger
they caused. This list was extremely difficult to compile in part because news outlets
(particularly CNN and MSNBC) often delete from the internet the video segments of their most
embarrassing moments. Even more challenging was the fact that the number of worthy nominees is
so large that highly meritorious entrees had to be excluded, but are acknowledged at the end
with (dis)honorable mention status.
Note that all of these "errors" go only in one direction: namely, exaggerating the grave
threat posed by Moscow and the Trump circle's connection to it. It's inevitable that media
outlets will make mistakes on complex stories. If that's being done in good faith, one would
expect the errors would be roughly 50/50 in terms of the agenda served by the false stories.
That is most definitely not the case here. Just as was true in 2002 and 2003, when the media
clearly wanted to exaggerate the threat posed by Saddam Hussein and thus all of its "errors"
went in that direction, virtually all of its major "errors" in this story are devoted to the
same agenda and script:
10. RT Hacked Into and Took Over C-SPAN (Fortune)
On June 12, 2017, Fortune claimed that RT had hacked into and taken over C-SPAN and that
C-SPAN "confirmed" it had been hacked. The whole story was false :
9. Russian Hackers Invaded the U.S. Electricity
Grid to Deny Vermonters Heat During the Winter (WashPost)
On December 30, 2016, the Washington Post reported that "Russian hackers penetrated the U.S.
electricity grid through a utility in Vermont," causing predictable outrage and panic, along
with threats from U.S. political leaders. But then they kept diluting the story with editor's
notes – to admit that the malware was found on a laptop not connected to the U.S.
electric grid at all – until finally acknowledging, days later, that the whole story was
false, since the malware had nothing to do with Russia or with the U.S. electric grid:
8. A New, Deranged, Anonymous Group Declares
Mainstream Political Sites on the Left and Right to be Russian Propaganda Outlets and WashPost
Touts its Report to Claim Massive Kremlin Infiltration of the Internet (WashPost)
On November 24, 2016, the Washington Post
published one of the most inflammatory, sensationalistic stories to date about Russian
infiltration into U.S. politics using social media, accusing "more than 200 websites" of being
"routine peddlers of Russian propaganda during the election season, with combined audiences of
at least 15 million Americans." It added: "stories planted or promoted by the disinformation
campaign [on Facebook] were viewed more than 213 million times."
Unfortunately for the paper, those statistics were provided by a new, anonymous group that
reached these conclusions by classifying long-time, well-known sites – from the Drudge
Report to Clinton-critical left-wing websites such as Truthout, Black Agenda Report, Truthdig,
and Naked Capitalism, as well as libertarian venues such as Antiwar.com and the Ron Paul
Institute. – as "Russian propaganda outlets," producing one of the longest Editor's Note
in memory appended to the top of the article (but
not until two weeks later , long after the story was mindlessly spread all throughout the
media ecosystem):
7. Trump Aide Anthony Scaramucci is Involved in a
Russian Hedge Fund Under Senate Investigation (CNN)
On June 22, 2017, CNN reported that Trump aide Anthony Scaramucci was involved with the
Russian Direct Investment Fund, under Senate investigation. He was not. CNN retracted the story
and forced the three reporters who published it to leave the network.
6. Russia Attacked
U.S. "Diplomats" (i.e. Spies) at the Cuban Embassy Using a Super-Sophisticated Sonic Microwave
Weapon (NBC/MSNBC/CIA)
On September 11, 2017, NBC News and MSNBC
spread all over its airwaves a claim from its notorious CIA puppet Ken Dilanian that Russia
was behind a series of dastardly attacks on U.S. personnel at the Embassy in Cuba using a sonic
or microwave weapon so sophisticated and cunning that Pentagon and CIA scientists had no idea
what to make of it.
But then teams of neurologists began calling into doubt that these personnel had suffered
any brain injuries at all – that instead they appear to have experienced collective
psychosomatic symptoms – and then biologists published findings that the "strange sounds"
the U.S. "diplomats" reported hearing were identical to those emitted by a common Caribbean
male cricket during mating season.
5. Trump Created a Secret Internet Server to
Covertly Communicate with a Russian Bank (Slate)
4. Paul Manafort Visited Julian Assange Three
Times in the Ecuadorian Embassy and Nobody Noticed (Guardian/Luke Harding)
On November 27, 2018, the Guardian
published a major "bombshell" that Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort had somehow managed
to sneak inside one of the world's most surveilled buildings, the Ecuadorian Embassy in London,
and visit Julian Assange on three different occasions. Cable and online commentators
exploded.
Seven weeks later,
no other media outlet has confirmed this ; no video or photographic evidence has emerged;
the Guardian refuses to answer any questions; its leading editors have virtually gone into
hiding; other media outlets have expressed serious doubts about its veracity; and an Ecuadorian
official who worked at the embassy has called the story a complete fake:
3. CNN Explicitly Lied About Lanny Davis Being Its
Source – For a Story Whose Substance Was Also False: Cohen Would Testify that Trump Knew
in Advance About the Trump Tower Meeting (CNN)
On July 27, 2018, CNN
published a blockbuster story : that Michael Cohen was prepared to tell Robert Mueller that
President Trump knew in advanced about the Trump Tower meeting. There were, however, two
problems with this story: first, CNN got caught blatantly lying when its reporters claimed that
"contacted by CNN, one of Cohen's attorneys, Lanny Davis, declined to comment" (in fact, Davis
was one of CNN's key sources, if not its only source, for this story), and second, numerous
other outlets retracted the story after the source, Davis, admitted it was a lie. CNN, however,
to this date has refused to do either:
2. Robert Mueller Possesses Internal Emails and
Witness Interviews Proving Trump Directed Cohen to Lie to Congress (BuzzFeed)
1. Donald Trump Jr. Was Offered Advanced Access to
the WikiLeaks Email Archive (CNN/MSNBC)
The morning of December 9, 2017, launched
one of the most humiliating spectacles in the history of the U.S. media. With a tone so
grave and bombastic that it is impossible to overstate, CNN went on the air and announced a
major exclusive: Donald Trump, Jr. was offered by email advanced access to the trove of DNC and
Podesta emails published by WikiLeaks – meaning before those emails were made public.
Within an hour, MSNBC's Ken Dilanian, using a tone somehow even more unhinged, purported to
have "independently confirmed" this mammoth, blockbuster scoop, which, they said, would have
been the smoking gun showing collusion between the Trump campaign and WikiLeaks over the hacked
emails (while the YouTube clips have been removed, you can still watch one of the amazing MSNBC
videos
here ).
There was, alas, just one small problem with this massive, blockbuster story: it was totally
and completely false. The email which Trump, Jr. received that directed him to the WikiLeaks
archive was sent after WikiLeaks published it online for the whole world to see, not before.
Rather than some super secretive operative giving Trump, Jr. advanced access, as both CNN and
MSNBC told the public for hours they had confirmed, it was instead just some totally pedestrian
message from a random member of the public suggesting Trump, Jr. review documents the whole
world was already talking about. All of the anonymous sources CNN and MSNBC cited somehow all
got the date of the email wrong.
To date, when asked how they both could have gotten such a massive story so completely wrong
in the same way, both CNN and MSNBC have adopted the posture of the CIA by maintaining complete
silence and refusing to explain how it could possibly be that all of their "multiple,
independent sources" got the date wrong on the email in the same way, to be as incriminating
– and false – as possible. Nor, needless to say, will they identify their sources
who, in concert, fed them such inflammatory and utterly false information.
Sadly, CNN and MSNBC have deleted most traces of the most humiliating videos from the
internet, including demanding that YouTube remove copies. But enough survives to document just
what a monumental, horrifying, and utterly inexcusable debacle this was. Particularly amazing
is the clip of the CNN reporter (see below) having to admit the error for the first time, as he
awkwardly struggles to pretend that it's not the massive, horrific debacle that it so obviously
is:
Dishonorable Mention:
ABC News' Brian Ross is fired for
reporting Trump told Flynn to make contact with Russians when he was still a candidate;
in fact, Trump did that after he won.
The New York Times c laimed Manafort provided
polling data to Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, a person "close to the Kremlin"; in fact, he
provided them to Ukrainians, not Russians.
Crowdstrike, the firm hired by the DNC, claimed they had evidence that Russia hacked
Ukrainian artillery apps;
they then retracted it .
Bloomberg and the WSJ reported Mueller subpoenaed Deustche Bank for Trump's financial
records; the NYT said
that never happened .
Rachel Maddow devoted 20 minutes at the start of her show to very melodramatically
claiming a highly sophisticated party tried to trick her by sending her a fake Top Secret
document modeled after the one published by the Intercept, and said it could only have come
from the U.S. Government (or the Intercept) since the person obtained the document before it
was published by us and thus must have had special access to it; in fact,
Maddow and NBC completely misread the metadata on the document ; the fake sent to Maddow
was created after we published the document, and was sent to her by a random member of the
public who took the document from the Intercept's site and doctored it to see if she'd fall
for an obvious scam. Maddow's entire timeline, on which her whole melodramatic conspiracy
theory rested, was fictitious.
The U.S. media and Democrats spent six months claiming that all "17 intelligence
agencies" agreed Russia was behind the hacks; the NYT finally
retracted that in June, 2017: "The assessment was made by four intelligence agencies --
the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Central Intelligence Agency, the
Federal Bureau of Investigation and the National Security Agency. The assessment was not
approved by all 17 organizations in the American intelligence community."
AP claimed on February 2, 2018, that the Free Beacon commissioned the Steele Dossier;
they thereafter acknowledged that was false and
noted, instead: "Though the former spy, Christopher Steele, was hired by a firm that was
initially funded by the Washington Free Beacon, he did not begin work on the project until
after Democratic groups had begun funding it."
Widespread government and media claims that accused Russian agent Maria Butina offered
"sex for favors" were
totally false (and scurrilous).
After a Russian regional jet crashed on February 11, 2018, shortly after it took off from
Moscow, killing all 71 people aboard, Harvard Law Professor and frequent MSNBC contributor
Laurence Tribe
strongly implied Putin purposely caused the plane to go down in order to murder Sergei
Millian, a person vaguely linked to George Papadopoulos and Jared Kushner; in fact, Millian
was not on the plane nor, to date, has anyone claimed they had any evidence that Putin
ordered his own country's civilian passenger jet brought down.
Special mention:
As I've said many times, the U.S. media has become quite adept at expressing extreme
indignation when people criticize them; when politicians conclude that it is advantageous to
turn the U.S. media into their main adversary; and when people turn to "fake news" sites.
If, however, they were willing to devote just a small fraction of that energy to examining
their own conduct, perhaps they would develop the tools necessary to combat those problems
instead of just denouncing their critics and angrily demanding that politicians and news
consumers accord them the respect to which they believe they are entitled.
The problem is not Russia; the problem is the crisis of neoliberalism in the USA. And related legitimization of neoliberal
elite, which now Deep State is trying ot patch with anti-Russian hysteria
Notable quotes:
"... That is, in the modern history of US-Russian summits, we are told by a former American ambassador who knows, the "secrecy of presidential private meetings has been the rule, not the exception." He continues, "There's nothing unusual about withholding information from the bureaucracy about the president's private meetings with foreign leaders . Sometimes they would dictate a memo afterward, sometimes not." Indeed, President Richard Nixon, distrustful of the US "bureaucracy," sometimes met privately with Kremlin leader Leonid Brezhnev while only Brezhnev's translator was present. ..."
Baseless Russiagate allegations continue to risk war with Russia.
Anti-Trump Frenzy Threatens to End Superpower Diplomacy | The Nation
The New Year has brought a torrent of ever-more-frenzied allegations that President Donald Trump has long had a conspiratorial relationship
-- why mince words and call it "collusion"? -- with Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin.
Why the frenzy now? Perhaps because Russiagate promoters in high places are concerned that special counsel Robert Mueller will
not produce the hoped-for "bombshell" to end Trump's presidency. Certainly,
New York Times columnist
David Leonhardt seems worried, demanding, "The president must go," his drop line exhorting, "What are we waiting for?" (In some
countries, articles like his, and there are very many, would be read as calling for a coup.) Perhaps to incite Democrats who have
now taken control of House investigative committees. Perhaps simply because Russiagate has become a political-media cult that no
facts, or any lack of evidence, can dissuade or diminish.
And there is no new credible evidence, preposterous claims notwithstanding. One of The New York Times '
own recent "bombshells,"
published on January 12, reported, for example, that in spring 2017, FBI officials "began investigating whether [President Trump]
had been working on behalf of Russia against American interests." None of the three reporters bothered to point out that those "agents
and officials" almost certainly included ones later reprimanded and retired by the FBI itself for their political biases. (As usual,
the Times buried its self-protective disclaimer deep in the story: "No evidence has emerged publicly that Mr. Trump was secretly
in contact with or took direction from Russian government officials.")
Whatever the explanation, the heightened frenzy is unmistakable, leading the "news" almost daily in the synergistic print and
cable media outlets that have zealously promoted Russiagate for more than two years, in particular the Times , The Washington
Post , MSNBC, CNN, and their kindred outlets. They have plenty of eager enablers, including the once-distinguished Strobe Talbott,
President Bill Clinton's top adviser on Russia and until recently president of the Brookings Institution.
According to Talbott
, "We already know that the Kremlin helped put Trump into the White House and played him for a sucker . Trump has been colluding
with a hostile Russia throughout his presidency." In fact, we do not "know" any of this. These remain merely widely disseminated
suspicions and allegations.
In this cult-like commentary, the "threat" of "a hostile Russia" must be inflated along with charges against Trump. (In truth,
Russia represents no threat to the United States that Washington itself did not provoke since the end of the Soviet Union in 1991.)
For its own threat inflation, the Times featured not an expert with any plausible credentials but Lisa Page, the former FBI
lawyer with no known Russia expertise, and who was one of those reprimanded by the agency for anti-Trump political bias. Nonetheless,
the Times quotes Page
at length : "In the Russian Federation and in President Putin himself you have an individual whose aim is to disrupt the Western
alliance and whose aim is to make Western democracy more fractious in order to weaken our ability to spread our democratic ideals."
Perhaps we should have guessed that the democracy-promotion genes of J. Edgar Hoover were still alive and breeding in the FBI, though
for the Times , in its exploitation of the hapless and legally endangered Page, it seems not to matter.
Which brings us, or rather Russiagate zealots, to the heightened "threat" represented by "Putin's Russia." If true, we would expect
the US president to negotiate with the Kremlin leader, including at summit meetings, as every president since Dwight Eisenhower has
done. But, we are told, we cannot trust Trump to do so, because,
according to The Washington Post , he has repeatedly met with Putin alone, with only translators present, and concealed
the records of their private talks, sure signs of "treasonous" behavior, as the Russiagate media first insisted following the Trump-Putin
summit in Helsinki in July 2018.
It's hard to know whether this is historical ignorance or Russiagate malice, though it is probably both. In any event, the truth
is very different. In preparing US-Russian (Soviet and post-Soviet) summits since the 1950s, aides on both sides have arranged "private
time" for their bosses for two essential reasons: so they can develop sufficient personal rapport to sustain any policy partnership
they decide on; and so they can alert one another to constraints on their policy powers at home, to foes of such détente policies
often centered in their respective intelligence agencies. (The KGB ran operations against Nikita Khrushchev's détente policies with
Eisenhower, and, as is well established, US intelligence agencies have run operations against Trump's proclaimed goal of "cooperation
with Russia.")
That is, in the modern history of US-Russian summits, we are told by a former American ambassador who knows, the "secrecy
of presidential private meetings has been the rule, not the exception." He continues, "There's nothing unusual about withholding
information from the bureaucracy about the president's private meetings with foreign leaders . Sometimes they would dictate a memo
afterward, sometimes not." Indeed, President Richard Nixon, distrustful of the US "bureaucracy," sometimes met privately with Kremlin
leader Leonid Brezhnev while only Brezhnev's translator was present.
Nor should we forget the national-security benefits that have come from private meetings between US and Kremlin leaders. In October
1986, President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev met alone with their translators and an American official who took
notes -- the two leaders, despite their disagreements, agreed in principle that nuclear weapons should be abolished. The result,
in 1987, was the first and still only treaty abolishing an entire category of such weapons, the exceedingly dangerous intermediate-range
ones. (This is the historic treaty Trump has said he may abrogate.)
And yet, congressional zealots are now threatening to subpoena the American translator who was present during Trump's meetings
with Putin. If this recklessness prevails, it will be the end of the nuclear-superpower summit diplomacy that has helped to keep
America and the world safe from catastrophic war for nearly 70 years -- and as a new, more perilous nuclear arms race between the
two countries is unfolding. It will amply confirm a thesis set out in my book
War with Russia? -- that anti-Trump
Russiagate allegations have become the gravest threat to our security.
The following correction and clarification were made to the original version of this article on January 17: Reagan and Gorbachev
met privately with translators during their summit in Reykjavik, Iceland, in October 1986, not February, and Reagan was also accompanied
by an American official who took notes. And it would be more precise to say that the two leaders, despite their disagreements, agreed
in principle that nuclear weapons should be abolished.
Stephen F. Cohen is professor emeritus of politics and Russian studies at Princeton and NYU and author of the new book
War with Russia? From Putin and
Ukraine to Trump and Russiagate . This commentary is based on the most recent of his weekly discussions of the new US-Russian
Cold War with the host of the John Batchelor radio show. (The podcast is
here . Previous installments, now in their fifth year, are at
TheNation.com . )
"... Buzzfeed's CEO should do the honorable thing and commit hari kari like the Japanese do when losing face, then the company should close up shop. ..."
"... Buzzfeed's CEO should do the honorable thing and commit hari kari like the Japanese do when losing face, then the company should close up shop. ..."
The
Washington Post's Greg Miller reported Sunday that President Donald Trump's confiscation
of the translator's notes from a one-on-one conversation with Russian President Vladimir
Putin in 2017 was "unusual." This is incorrect. It was unprecedented. There is nothing like
it in the annals of presidential history.
Not really. Other U.S. leaders held long private meetings with their counterparts without
notes being taken.
When Richard Nixon met Leonid Brezhnev he did not even bring his own interpreter:
Nixon would meet Brezhnev alone, the only other person in attendance being Viktor
Sukhodrev, the Soviet interpreter. "Our first meeting in the Oval Office was private, except
for Viktor Sukhodrev, who, as in 1972, acted as translator." Nixon on Brezhnev's 1973 visit.
RN, p.878 . Therefore, the only "notes" that would exist would be those of the Soviet
interpreter. Not sure he would have time to make notes and translate and, even if he did so,
whether those notes would be housed in any US archive.
Nixon's White House office was bugged. There are probably tape recordings of the talks.
There might also be recordings of the Trump-Putin talks.
Mr. Reagan and Mr. Gorbachev began their second day of talks with a private meeting that had
been scheduled to last 15 minutes but ran for nearly 70 minutes, with only interpreters
present . They met in a small room in the Soviet Mission , with the Soviet leader seated in a
small armchair and Mr. Reagan on a sofa.
In the afternoon, they meet alone for a little over 20 minutes and then again for 90
minutes. All told, the two leaders have spent 4 hours and 51 minutes alone , except for
interpreters, over the two days here.
That the FBI agents involved in the decision were avid haters of Russia and of Trump has
surely nothing to do with it. That the opening of a counter-intelligence investigation gave
them the legal ability under Obama's EO12333 to use NSA signal intelligence against Trump is
surely irrelevant.
What the FBI people really were concerned about is Trump's public record of favoring Russia
at each and every corner.
Trump obviously wants better diplomatic relations with Russia. He is reluctant to counter
its military might. He is doing his best to make it richer. Just consider the headlines below.
With all those good things Trump did for Putin, intense suspicions of Russian influence over
him is surely justified.
Trump obviously wants better diplomatic relations with Russia. He
is reluctant to counter its military might. He is doing his best to make it richer. Just
consider the headlines below. With all those good things Trump did for Putin, intense
suspicions of Russian influence over him is surely justified.
When one adds up all those actions one can only find that Trump cares more about Russia,
than about the U.S. and its NATO allies. Only with Trump being under Putin's influence,
knowingly or unwittingly, could he end up doing Russia so many favors.
The
Washington Post's Greg Miller reported Sunday that President Donald Trump's confiscation
of the translator's notes from a one-on-one conversation with Russian President Vladimir
Putin in 2017 was "unusual." This is incorrect. It was unprecedented. There is nothing like
it in the annals of presidential history.
Not really. Other U.S. leaders held long private meetings with their counterparts without
notes being taken.
When Richard Nixon met Leonid Brezhnev he did not even bring his own interpreter:
Nixon would meet Brezhnev alone, the only other person in attendance being Viktor
Sukhodrev, the Soviet interpreter. "Our first meeting in the Oval Office was private, except
for Viktor Sukhodrev, who, as in 1972, acted as translator." Nixon on Brezhnev's 1973 visit.
RN, p.878 . Therefore, the only "notes" that would exist would be those of the Soviet
interpreter. Not sure he would have time to make notes and translate and, even if he did so,
whether those notes would be housed in any US archive.
Nixon's White House office was bugged. There are probably tape recordings of the talks.
There might also be recordings of the Trump-Putin talks.
Mr. Reagan and Mr. Gorbachev began their second day of talks with a private meeting that had
been scheduled to last 15 minutes but ran for nearly 70 minutes, with only interpreters
present . They met in a small room in the Soviet Mission , with the Soviet leader seated in a
small armchair and Mr. Reagan on a sofa.
In the afternoon, they meet alone for a little over 20 minutes and then again for 90
minutes. All told, the two leaders have spent 4 hours and 51 minutes alone , except for
interpreters, over the two days here.
That the FBI agents involved in the decision were avid haters of Russia and of Trump has
surely nothing to do with it. That the opening of a counter-intelligence investigation gave
them the legal ability under Obama's EO12333 to use NSA signal intelligence against Trump is
surely irrelevant.
What the FBI people really were concerned about is Trump's public record of favoring Russia
at each and every corner.
Trump obviously wants better diplomatic relations with Russia. He is reluctant to counter
its military might. He is doing his best to make it richer. Just consider the headlines below.
With all those good things Trump did for Putin, intense suspicions of Russian influence over
him is surely justified.
Trump obviously wants better diplomatic relations with Russia. He
is reluctant to counter its military might. He is doing his best to make it richer. Just
consider the headlines below. With all those good things Trump did for Putin, intense
suspicions of Russian influence over him is surely justified.
When one adds up all those actions one can only find that Trump cares more about Russia,
than about the U.S. and its NATO allies. Only with Trump being under Putin's influence,
knowingly or unwittingly, could he end up doing Russia so many favors.
"... The current round of bullshit is not about justifying the investigation, it is about concealing MI6 taking a leading role in the attempted coup. ..."
A Russian American was put on sanctions list based on Forbes list of Russian billionaires.
This guy founded a high tech industrial laser company employing over a thousand American
workers. Forbes realized they f'ed this guy over and took him off their Russian billionaire
list. But too late--he remains sanctioned.
In my experience, just about everyone here, including hordes of supposedly educated people
who really should know better, believe it. They really do. However, most of them don't
care--it's merely something to snark about or score points in a political conversation with,
not anything they perceive as an actual threat to their way of life.
It's nothing more than the undying legacy of anti-communism and racism thrown in for good
measure. It echoes the German Nazis and their treatment of Slavs (slaves, unter menchen). We
need only look at how the US viewed the Japanese (and the Germans) during WWII, with
Roosevelt calling for their extermination (I'll find the source).
And of course, there's US slavery and extermination of the original inhabitants that also
feeds into the psychosis.
London was said to be very subdued the day news came through that Sweden's Charles the twelfth
had been crushed at Poltava in 1709 . North Western European economic interests have clashed
with Russian across many centuries. Had Charles been successful in the Ukraine a new level of English and Swedish alliance was
in the offing .
I just read about Trump's AG candidate, commenting on the 'Russian interference' in US
elections ....and i'm struck that these are not stupid people....they are either totally
IGNORANT of the facts and analysis .....or they are good ol boys, ready to tow the deep state
lie, so they too can feed at the trough. It saddens me in either case ....what hope can one
entertain when such cretins and low lifes are the supposed LEADERS of the democratic west. I
hold no hopes.
Proof by absurdity. Trump and Deep State work together. MAGA is a policy choice as much as it is a
campaign slogan. Everyone wants to rail against the anti-Trump forces. Oh it feels so good. That Trump has
proven to be a faux populist like Obama is ignored. WTF? Welcome to the rabbit hole.
I didn't live through the entire Anti-Communist Crusade, but was certainly cognitively aware
of it from JFK's inauguration in 1961 until the USSR's dissolution. I very closely studied
the events that led to an emergent Russian Federation and the device meant to corral the
"Near-Abroad"--The Commonwealth of Independent States. Admittedly, I was somewhat horrified
by Yeltsin's attack on Russia's Duma's White House in 1993 and eagerly read Kargalitsky's
account as it was the only one written by a Parliamentarian in English and published in 1994.
It was possible to discern the outright looting of Russia and former Soviet nations, but the
depth of evil involved wasn't made clear until some publications in the late 1990s
documenting the Rape of Russia; all of which made clear what the underlying intent of the
Anti-Communist Crusade entailed, and that that Crusade wouldn't end until Russia was
absolutely broken and enslaved by NATO/Outlaw US Empire. As many have opined, the Cold
War/Anti-Communist Crusade never ended; rather, it just entered a new phase/chapter, and
that's what we're living through today. But as b portrays, the level of hysterics paraded via
BigLie Media go far beyond anything from the previous chapter and probably outweigh those
employed during Red Scares I and II combined.
It seems fairly plain to see that delusional madness and anger have combined as the
motivating factors, but why/what sparked them and when? IMO, when was during Carter's
presidency with the why/what being several seemingly disparate but connected happenings:
Church Committee Hearings; Stagflation; Iranian Islamic Revolution; OPEC actions; losing grip
on Latin America; informal end to War on Poverty, and institution of Neoliberalism and
Zerosumism; changing of Coldwarrior Guard to Israel First Coldwarrior Guard. The culmination
was CIA gaining control of Executive with DCI GHW Bush becoming Veep to senile, dementia
addled POTUS Reagan.
Interconnected with the above is the prepping of the World Trade Center buildings for
demolition during Clinton's 2nd term, the operative question being: Would the False Flag be
perpetrated by Gore/Liberman, or was Bush/Cheney deemed to do the deed by Deep State actors;
or does this aspect even matter--Liberman was as much of a Neocon as Cheney, all 4 are Israel
Firsters, and Gore was already a War Criminal due to his participation in Clinton's numerous
illegalities. Sure, the Bush/Cheney cabal was more radical; but given what we observed during
Clinton/Gore, Deep State support was quite abundant. The dismemberment of Yugoslavia was
finished and Kosovo created, Afghanistan was already targeted and Joint Vision 2010
--the blueprint for the Outlaw US Empire's Full Spectrum Dominance Policy--was published in
1996. Interestingly, at no time known to me has the Policy articulated by the authors of
Joint Vision 2010 or its update Joint Vision 2020 been announced by any POTUS
or senior member of the Duopoly as THE #1 policy goal of the Outlaw US Empire despite both
papers being available to the public. (If he were still alive, IF Stone would have written
about both umpteen numbers of times; while true to form, BigLie media remains 100% mute.)
Despite all the preparations and Trillions of dollars spent and looted, The failure to
implement the Yinon Plan seems to be directed at Russia, although it was indigenous Iraqis
who are responsible for the plan's defeat.
So, is the lying vitriol we're subjected to the result of Russian actions or the inability
to attain the #1 policy goal due to mistakes made at all levels--Deep State and Federal
Government? Recall that Russia/Putin didn't start to actively parry Outlaw Empire moves until
2008, well after the Yinon Plan's defeat by Iraqis.
Blooming Barricade , Jan 15, 2019 5:02:35 PM |
link
This inane narrative has gone too far. It's actually threatening chances for human survival
with its nationalism, poor focus, and banality:
--
"The key focus of the so-called "left" in the world's most polluting country, run by an
ecocidal vandal who deserves to be in the running for most destructive rulers of all time, is
whether or not that vandal is taking orders from the Russian Federation.
Let me repeat that: in the most wasteful society in human history, the forces designated
to oppose the rape of the planet and corporate slavery are concerned with treason and
betrayal of the "nation."
MSNBC: "The worst case scenario that we`ve all been talking about, which is the
possibility that the president had somehow been co-opted and was in the pocket of the
Russians."
THIS is the "worst case scenario" according to the "social justice" network of the
American "left?"
If we were to step back and look at this terrible situation honestly, we could only
conclude that American liberals, and the Democratic Party, are right-wing nationalist forces
concerned with geopolitical gambits and preservation of military alliances.
This isn't the politics of 2019, or 1999. It's the politics of 1819 - but even then, it's
the right wing politics of 1819, as there was already a left dedicated to popular solidarity
and social ownership existing, clandestinely, in the shadows of European cities.
It's worth analyzing how a "Seattle" would play out if it were to occur in the context of
today's US political discourse: the protestors would be seen as nationalist anti-Semites
doing the bidding of Putin, and perhaps Xi Jinping. The leaking of the Multilateral Agreement
on Investment would be condemned instantly as "information warfare." A focus on environmental
issues would be viewed in the context of "energy geopolitics." Indymedia would be shut down
by the authorities as a vehicle for "sowing discord" in Europe against NATO and
liberalism."
@14 karlof1... good post.. i don't know the answer to your questions, but it seems like a bit
of both but mostly the later... i am unaware of this joint vision 2010 paper..
As b points out, and Erelis @6, among others confirms, Kaplan's article in Slate is
worthless. Discredited by everything that has happened over the past two years.
The question is whether it matters. Who reads Slate? Are those who follow Kaplan anything
more than partisans, far beyond the reach of logical argument, committed to the Zionist
project and US hegemony, who read him for comfort and laughs rather than critically.
Kaplan, after twenty odd years of consistently being wrong and consistently impelling the
United States into foreign disasters, costly in lives and treasure, is a busted flush
politically. The only people his ravings effect are the true believers who are simply looking
for someone to articulate their idiotic prejudices.
This, after all is a man whose wife, an Obama/ Clinton favourite, parodying Marie Antionette,
midwifed the Bandera Reich in Kiev.
There is little point in arguing with him, just feed him ever more rope and he will hang
himself, his spouse, his country(s) and the Ukraine and its allies too.
Given the part we know about how self serving, corrupt and incompetent our IC is I fear it is
the tip of the iceberg. So many decades they have learned they can do as they will with
impunity. If I am not mistaken they are partly self financing through likely illegal and
unethical activities. They have gone rogue. Currently the dems think it's fitting however
they will also feel the bite. How will we ever gain control of our country.
Which are more salient--domestically: The attacks on Russia or those against Trump? Lots of
Trumpian, GOP and Corporate Democrat policy ploys go against the majority of the polity and
the National Interest. Unfortunately, the bloc known as the Resistance includes a 5th Column
consisting of most Corporate Democrats, who are essentially Republicans wearing donkey heads.
BigLie Media wants to promote the GOP & Corporate Democrat policy ploys, so the
anti-Russian news assault serves to cover-up popular domestic issues, like
this one regarding taxation and related income disparity . (Amazing that 60
Minutes provided Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez airtime to outline her proposals--airtime that
was meant to cut her down to size but backfired.)
As I outlined earlier, what I see as the struggle is for control of the Federal
Government--CIA/Deep State vs the American People--with the Anti-Communist Crusade used as
cover to diminish rights while enriching actors controlling government, which is exactly what
we see now. Yes, Trump's a player, but with few friends and little coaching. Arguably, his
only asset is the position he occupies.
He essentially became a Republican Obama, save Nobel Peace Price. If Obama was/is a CIA-democrat, this guy is a
Deep State controlled republican. In any case he betrayed his voters in a way that resembles Obama betrayal. One has a
fake slogan "change we can believe in" that other equally fake "Make [middle] America Great Again" (which means restoration
of well-being of middle class and working class in my book, not the continuation of Obama foreign wars, and tax cuts for for
corporations and super rich.
And that means that he lost a considerable part of his electorate: the anti-war republicans
and former Sanders supporters. He might do good and not to try to run in 2020. He definitely is no economic nationalist.
Compare his policies with Tucker Carlson Jan 2, 2019
speech to see the difference. He is
"national neoliberal" which rejects parts of neoliberal globalization based on treaties and
prefer to bully nations to compliance that favor the US interests instead of treaties.
And his "fight" with the Deep State resemble so closely to complete and unconditional
surrender, that you might have difficulties to distinguish between the two.
Most of his appointees would make Hillary proud. That that extends beyond rabid neocons like Haley, Mattis, Bolton and
Pompeo.
Notable quotes:
"... The Washington Post is without a doubt the most pro-establishment among all large mainstream publications, not only do they defend the narratives of the Deep State but actively attacks anyone who challenges them. ..."
"... Jeff Bezos owner of the Washington Post is also a contractor with the CIA and sits on a Pentagon advisory board all part of doing everything he can to cozy up and ingratiate himself to the establishment on which his empire is built. ..."
"... It's really sad that people in the public believe this stuff. It's insane and ridiculous. We're living in an Insane Asylum and the ones who should be there for the safety of themselves and others are walking around giving orders to Media and USG, fomenting war and making a mockery of laws and "normal behaviors. ..."
"... They flooded the news with the old Helsinki/Putin stuff to hide the real news. Lisa Page's testimony revealed that John Carlin, Mueller's former chief of staff was running the Russia investigation from the DOJ end, showing another conflict of Mueller's. Now Mueller is covering for two best friends, Comey and Carlin and he has to frame Trump to save them. ..."
"... The testimony also showed FBI David Bowditch was heavily involved, and Bowditch is now 2nd in command at the FBI and blocking the public release of witness testimony, and one reason for it is it reveals his involvement. ..."
"... It is also now revealed that John Brennan CIA had the dossier before the FBI, and the dossier was likely written by Nellie Ohr, who belonged to a CIA group, and then the dossier was laundered by Steele to look like foreign intelligence to get the Crossfire Hurricane investigation started on Trump. You would think it would be big news that Russians may have had nothing to do with the dossier but the media doesn't see it that way ..."
Washington
Post stating that he "has gone to extraordinary lengths to conceal details" of his
discussions with Russian President Vladimir Putin - telling Fox News host Jeanine Pirro in a
phone interview that he would be willing to release the details of a private conversation in
Helsinki last summer.
"I would. I don't care," Trump told Pirro, adding: "I'm not keeping anything under wraps. I
couldn't care less."
"I mean, it's so ridiculous, these people making up," Trump said of the WaPo report.
The president referred to his roughly two-hour dialogue with Putin in Helsinki -- at which
only the leaders and their translators were present -- as "a great conversation" that
included discussions about "securing Israel and lots of other things."
"I had a conversation like every president does," Trump said Saturday. "You sit with the
president of various countries. I do it with all countries." -
Politico
In July an attempt by House Democrats to subpoena Trump's Helsinki interpreter was quashed
by Republicans.
"The Washington Post is almost as bad, or probably as bad, as the New York Times," Trump
said.
When Pirro asked Trump about a Friday night New York Times report that the FBI had opened an
inquiry into whether he was working for Putin, Pirro asked Trump "Are you now or have you ever
worked for Russia, Mr. President?"
"I think it's the most insulting thing I've ever been asked," Trump responded. "I think it's
the most insulting article I've ever had written."
Trump went on an
epic tweetstorm Saturday following the Times article, defending his 2017 firing of former
FBI Director James Comey, and tweeting that he has been "FAR tougher on Russia than Obama, Bush
or Clinton. Maybe tougher than any other President. At the same time, & as I have often
said, getting along with Russia is a good thing, not a bad thing. I fully expect that someday
we will have good relations with Russia again!"
rumcho
Jeff Bezos paid $250 million for Washington Post, five years later he gets a government contract with the CIA for $600
million. Are you connecting the dots? You do the numbers. This is how fascism works. Bezos is a crony capitalist joker.
is Trump waiting for Mueller to lay down his cards? Head him off at the pass and arrest Obama, Rice, Jarrett, Lynch, Comey,
Rosenstein and McCabe all on day 1
best defense is a good offense. Make the narrative about Dem sedition not impending House impeachment hearings.
You are President, start acting like it. Make them fear you.
your re-election depends on Mike Obama not being your opponent.
Let it Go
WaPo, again?
The Washington Post is without a doubt the most pro-establishment among all large mainstream publications, not only do
they defend the narratives of the Deep State but actively attacks anyone who challenges them.
Jeff Bezos owner of the Washington Post is also a contractor with the CIA and sits on a Pentagon advisory board all
part of doing everything he can to cozy up and ingratiate himself to the establishment on which his empire is built. The
article below delves into how WaPo is behind many of the big stories that manipulate America and moves the needle of public
opinion in huge ways.
It's really sad that people in the public believe this stuff. It's insane and ridiculous. We're living in an Insane Asylum
and the ones who should be there for the safety of themselves and others are walking around giving orders to Media and USG,
fomenting war and making a mockery of laws and "normal behaviors.
shadow54
They flooded the news with the old Helsinki/Putin stuff to hide the real news. Lisa Page's testimony revealed that
John Carlin, Mueller's former chief of staff was running the Russia investigation from the DOJ end, showing another conflict
of Mueller's. Now Mueller is covering for two best friends, Comey and Carlin and he has to frame Trump to save them.
The testimony also showed FBI David Bowditch was heavily involved, and Bowditch is now 2nd in command at the FBI and
blocking the public release of witness testimony, and one reason for it is it reveals his involvement.
It is also now revealed that John Brennan CIA had the dossier before the FBI, and the dossier was likely written by
Nellie Ohr, who belonged to a CIA group, and then the dossier was laundered by Steele to look like foreign intelligence to
get the Crossfire Hurricane investigation started on Trump. You would think it would be big news that Russians may have had
nothing to do with the dossier but the media doesn't see it that way.
Then there is the news that Fusion GPS worked with the Democracy Integrity Project and Knew Knowledge to run a fake Russian
bots campaign against Roy Moore. The Democracy Integrity Project was started by Feinstein's aide and with New Knowledge wrote
a report on Russian bots for the Senate Intelligence Committee. So the Senate Intelligence Committee hired creators of fake
Russian bots to write a report on Russian bots.
In my view, at the moment the deed is done. The president signed onto the report acknowledged
the he accepts the report has even gone as far to say, he blames Pres. Putin
Another backtrack, just muddies the waters, and mat be acceptable because no one wants to
accept the real consequences of a president who has repudiated the one state president he
most desired to make a deal with -- the jig is up.
Whether kabuki theater or real gamesmanship --
A threshold has been crossed and uncrossing it is going to be tricky and in my further
humiliation for the wh. The analysis here mattered before the president agreed with the
report. But when he did, this analysis, becomes moot. Having a chit chat about de-escalating
nuclear tensions is quaint in light of the president acknowledging that russia has in fact
undermined the US democratic process. This is a serious charge and no amount of changing the
subject, crying foul, or pretending it was all a big misunderstanding is going to change
that.
I think it would have been prudent for the president to hold fire in Helsinki and read the
report and then responded . He did make any of those choices. It matters not how exposed the
establishment in wanton eagerness to have their way, wh has embraced the matter. it is on
record and . . . oh well. I see merit in maintaining his original position of disbelief --
however, the president did a complete about face -- and there is no question of that or the
implications.
On Smerconish's show today, Bob Baer, spy extraordinaire, (read his books) asserted that the
various bits and pieces of circumstantial "evidence" about Trump's contacts with and attitude
toward Russia, as well as those of his flunkies and relatives amount to a "good enough" case
for Trump being a Russian agent of influence.
That is how a HUMINT spook judges such things. It
is a matter of probabilities, not hard evidence.
Assets of an alien government are not always
witting (understanding) of their status from the POV of the foreign government, but that does
not necessarily make other than agents. Sometimes they think they are merely cooperating in a
good and normal way when, in fact, the relationship is much deeper. Jane Fonda in North Vietnam
would be an example.
It seems injudicious, to say the least, for a former CIA guy to float the notion in public
that there is a good enough case, whatever that means, to think the President of the US was
an Russian Agent of Influence based on "bits and pieces of circumstantial evidence." I would
say probably intemperate as well. Using it in the current climate, it ammounts to a slur.
And what exactly are we to make of the spook expression "Agent of Influence?" I would say
that unless one knows a good deal about the proclivites of the very person who is using the
expression and what is going on in his mind, one shouldn't want to make very much of it at
all. The expression comprehends pretty much of everything and anything, for good, for bad,
for indifferent; for behavior that nobody in the whole wide world would find worrisome except
someone in the CIA or the CI Branches of today's FBI. Such concerns come when Agencies have
been politicized.
It's dangerous enough that these people find an internal use for the term. I would speculate
that some such cover set them off on Carter Page and ensuing FISA debacle.
Bought and owned. One can guess that there is much compromising financial and probably other
information on the Clinton Foundation in the missing emails that Russia (and likely every
other intelligence agency on the planet), and from elsewhere, has, given her lack of
comprehension of the basics of security or that classification is not only for the little
people.
In Bob Baer's 1st book He said that he was able to confirm that it was Israel that attacked
the USS Liberty. As a CIA officer he was trying, without success ,to recruit a local
government radio operator.(probably Egyptian) He said that soon after the attack the
prospective recruit came to him and volunteered to cooperate.Surprised at this sudden change
of heart Baer asked what had happened?.He said that he had listened to the entire attack of
the USS Liberty and the communication between the Israeli planes and their command station.
.The recruit said that he now believed that the US and Israel could not be allies because the
US would never permit an ally to get away with attacking a US vessel and murdering American
sailors.
As a student officer at Ft. Holabird I read the transcripts generated by NSA of the chatter
between the Israeli planes and their command. There is not doubt whatever that the attack was
deliberate and sustained for hours. I have written aout this many times. Look in the archive.
https://turcopolier.typepad...
The Internet Research Agency (IRA) paid $100,000 for Facebook ads and then charged its
customers for the clickbait service (between 25 and 50 U.S. dollars per post for promotional
content). So even if the IRA didn't manage to make a profit, the net cost for them must have
been much lower than $100,000.
Does anyone know how much revenue it made from that operation? Facebook must know but
they've kept quiet about it. Same with Mueller.
This is the typical level of repression that exist in Police State: any politician who deviates from the "Inner Party" (aka Deep
State) course is branded as Russian spy and "counterintelligence" dogs are send to sniff any dirty clothing that might exist to and
this politician career.
Notable quotes:
"... counterintelligence investigators had to consider whether the president's own actions constituted a possible threat to national security. Agents also sought to determine whether Mr. Trump was knowingly working for Russia or had unwittingly fallen under Moscow's influence. ..."
"... "anybody who fires corrupt Comey must be a Russian spy." ..."
"... Wow, just learned in the Failing New York Times that the corrupt former leaders of the FBI, almost all fired or forced to leave the agency for some very bad reasons, opened up an investigation on me, for no reason & with no proof, after I fired Lyin' James Comey, a total sleaze! ..."
President Trump on Saturday lashed out after a Friday evening report in the
New York Times that US
law enforcement officials " became so concerned by the president's behavior " in the days after Trump fired James Comey as FBI director,
that "t hey began investigating whether he had been working on behalf of Russia against American interests. "
According to the NYT, agents and senior F.B.I. officials " had grown suspicious of Mr. Trump's ties to Russia during the 2016
campaign " but held off on opening an investigation into him, the people said, in part because they were uncertain how to proceed
with an inquiry of such sensitivity and magnitude.
What happened next? Well, a collusion narrative was born and carefully crafted as the paper explains:
The president's activities before and after Mr. Comey's firing in May 2017, particularly
two
instances in which Mr. Trump tied the Comey dismissal to the Russia investigation, helped prompt the counterintelligence aspect
of the inquiry, the people said.
The odd inquiry carried "explosive implications" as counterintelligence investigators had to consider whether the president's
own actions constituted a possible threat to national security. Agents also sought to determine whether Mr. Trump was knowingly working
for Russia or had unwittingly fallen under Moscow's influence.
The criminal and counterintelligence elements were coupled together into one investigation, former law enforcement officials
said in interviews in recent weeks, because if Mr. Trump had ousted the head of the F.B.I. to impede or even end the Russia investigation,
that was both a possible crime and a national security concern. The F.B.I.'s counterintelligence division handles national security
matters.
Even so, "...some former law enforcement officials outside the investigation have questioned whether agents overstepped in opening
it ."
Then, in paragraph nine we read " No evidence has emerged publicly that Mr. Trump was secretly in contact with or took direction
from Russian government officials. " Or, as The Washington Examiner 's Byron York sums it up:
Some were even more laconic, summarizing the "scoop" as "anybody who fires corrupt Comey must be a Russian spy."
Put another way:
Responding to the "bombshell" NYT report - which curiously resurrects the "Russian collusion" narrative right as Trump is set
to test his Presidential authority over the border wall, the president lashed out over Twitter .
Wow, just learned in the Failing New York Times that the corrupt former leaders of the FBI, almost all fired or forced
to leave the agency for some very bad reasons, opened up an investigation on me, for no reason & with no proof, after I fired
Lyin' James Comey, a total sleaze!"
Funny thing about James Comey. Everybody wanted him fired, Republican and Democrat alike. After the rigged & botched Crooked
Hillary investigation, where she was interviewed on July 4th Weekend, not recorded or sworn in, and where she said she didn't
know anything (a lie), the FBI was in complete turmoil (see N.Y. Post) because of Comey's poor leadership and the way he handled
the Clinton mess (not to mention his usurpation of powers from the Justice Department).
My firing of James Comey was a great day for America. He was a Crooked Cop who is being totally protected by his best friend,
Bob Mueller, & the 13 Angry Democrats - leaking machines who have NO interest in going after the Real Collusion (and much more)
by Crooked Hillary Clinton, her Campaign, and the Democratic National Committee. Just Watch!
I have been FAR tougher on Russia than Obama, Bush or Clinton. Maybe tougher than any other President. At the same time, &
as I have often said, getting along with Russia is a good thing, not a bad thing. I fully expect that someday we will have good
relations with Russia again!
Lyin' James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Peter S and his lover, agent Lisa Page, & more, all disgraced and/or fired and caught in
the act. These are just some of the losers that tried to do a number on your President. Part of the Witch Hunt. Remember the "insurance
policy?" This is it! -Donald Trump
Update: Comey has responded over Twitter with a pithy FDR quote:
Although we seem to recall that Democrats were Comey's enemy when he reopened Hillary Clinton's email investigation during the
election.
While there is nothing new here confirming Trump was colluding with Russia, as Byron York asks following the article, was the
New York Times story about Trump, or about FBI malfeasance?
"... Look at Russiagate. An excellent recent article by Ray McGovern for Consortium News titled "A Look Back at Clapper's Jan. 2017 'Assessment' on Russia-gate" reminds us on the two-year anniversary of the infamous ODNI assessment that the entire establishment Russia narrative is built upon nothing but the say-so of a couple dozen intelligence analysts hand-picked and guided by a man who helped deceive the world into Iraq, a man who is so virulently Russophobic that he's said on more than one occasion that Russians are genetically predisposed to subversive behavior. ..."
"... That January 2017 intelligence assessment has formed the foundation underlying every breathless, conspiratorial Russia story you see in western news media to this very day, and it's completely empty. The idea that Russia interfered in the US election in any meaningful way is based on an assessment crafted by a known liar , from which countless relevant analysts were excluded, which makes no claims of certainty, and contains no publicly available evidence. It's pure narrative from top to bottom, and therefore the "collusion" story is as well since Trump could only have colluded with an actual thing that actually happened, and there's no evidence that it did. ..."
"... So now you've got Trump being painted as a Putin lackey based on a completely fabricated election interference story, despite the fact that Trump has actually been far more hawkish towards Russia than any administration since the fall of the Soviet Union. ..."
"... The narrative matrix of America's political/media landscape is a confusing labyrinth of smoke and funhouse mirrors distorting and manipulating the public consciousness at every turn. It's psychologically torturous, which is largely why people who are deeply immersed in politics are so on-edge all the time regardless of where they're at on the political spectrum. The only potentially good thing I can see about this forceful brutalization of the public psyche is that it might push people over the edge and shatter the illusion altogether. ..."
"... Trust in the mass media is already at an all-time low while our ability to network and share information that casts doubt on official narratives is at an all-time high, which is why the establishment propaganda machine is acting so weird as it scrambles to control the narrative, and why efforts to censor the internet are getting more and more severe. ..."
Earlier this week, President Donald Trump tweeted the following:
"Endless Wars, especially those which are fought out of judgement mistakes that were made
many years ago, & those where we are getting little financial or military help from the
rich countries that so greatly benefit from what we are doing, will eventually come to a
glorious end!"
The tweet was warmly received and celebrated by Trump's supporters, despite the fact that it
says essentially nothing since "eventually" could mean anything.
Indeed, it's
looking increasingly possible that nothing will come of the president's stated agenda to
withdraw troops from Syria other than a bunch of words which allow his anti-interventionist
base to feel nice feelings inside. Yet everyone laps it up, on both ends of the political
aisle, just like they always do:
Trump supporters are acting like he's a swamp-draining, war-ending peacenik...
...his enemies are acting like he's feeding a bunch of Kurds on conveyor belts into
Turkish meat grinders to be made into sausages for Vladimir Putin's breakfast, when in
reality nothing has changed and may not change at all.
How are such wildly different pictures being painted about the same non-event? By the fact
that both sides of the Trump-Syria debate have thus far been reacting solely to narrative.
This has consistently been the story throughout Trump's presidency: a heavy emphasis on
words and narratives and a disinterest in facts and actions. A rude tweet can dominate
headlines for days, while the actual behaviors of this administration can go almost completely
ignored. Trump continues to more or less advance the same warmongering Orwellian globalist
policies and agendas as his predecessors along more or less the same trajectory, but frantic
mass media narratives are churned out every day painting him as some unprecedented deviation
from the norm. Trump himself, seemingly aware that he's interacting entirely with perceptions
and narratives instead of facts and reality, routinely makes things up whole cloth and often
claims he's "never said" things he most certainly has said. And why not? Facts don't matter in
this media environment, only narrative does.
Look at Russiagate. An
excellent recent article by Ray McGovern for Consortium News titled "A Look Back at
Clapper's Jan. 2017 'Assessment' on Russia-gate" reminds us on the two-year anniversary of the
infamous ODNI assessment that the entire establishment Russia narrative is built upon nothing
but the say-so of a couple dozen intelligence analysts hand-picked and guided by a man who
helped deceive the world into Iraq, a man who is so virulently Russophobic that he's
said on more than one occasion that Russians are genetically predisposed to subversive
behavior.
That January 2017 intelligence assessment has formed the foundation underlying every
breathless, conspiratorial Russia story you see in western news media to this very day, and
it's completely empty. The idea that Russia interfered in the US election in any meaningful way
is based on an assessment crafted by a known liar , from which countless relevant
analysts were excluded, which makes no claims of certainty, and contains no publicly available
evidence. It's pure narrative from top to bottom, and therefore the "collusion" story is as
well since Trump could only have colluded with an actual thing that actually happened, and
there's no evidence that it did.
So now you've got Trump being painted as a Putin lackey based on a completely fabricated
election interference story, despite the fact that Trump has actually
been far more hawkish towards Russia than any administration since the fall of the Soviet
Union. With the nuclear brinkmanship this administration has been playing with its only nuclear
rival on the planet, it would be so incredibly easy for Trump's opposition to attack him on his
insanely hawkish escalation of a conflict which could easily end all life on earth if any
little thing goes wrong, but they don't. Because this is all about narrative and not facts,
Democrats have been paced into supporting even more sanctioning, proxy conflicts and nuclear
posturing while loudly objecting to any sign of communication between the two nuclear
superpowers, while Republicans are happy to see Trump increase tensions with Moscow because it
combats the collusion narrative. Now both parties are supporting an anti-Russia agenda which
existed in secretive US government agencies
long before the 2016 election .
And this to me is the most significant thing about Trump's presidency. Not any of the things
people tell me I'm supposed to care about, but the fact that the age of Trump has been
highlighting in a very clear way how we're all being manipulated by manufactured narratives all
the time.
Humanity
lives in a world of mental narrative . We have a deeply conditioned societal habit of
heaping a massive overlay of mental labels and stories on top of the raw data we take in
through our senses, and those labels and stories tend to consume far more interest and
attention than the actual data itself. We use labels and stories for a reason: without them it
would be impossible to share abstract ideas and information with each other about what's going
on in our world. But those labels and stories get imbued with an intense amount of belief and
identification; we form tight, rigid belief structures about our world, our society, and our
very selves that can generate a lot of fear, hatred and suffering. Which is why it feels so
nice to go out into nature and relax in an environment that isn't shaped by human mental
narrative.
This problem is exponentially exacerbated by the fact that these stories and labels are
wildly subjective and very easily manipulated. Powerful people have learned that they can
control the way everyone else thinks, acts and votes by controlling the stories they tell
themselves about what's going on in the world using mass media control and financial political
influence, allowing ostensible democracies to be conducted in a way which serves power far more
efficiently than any dictatorship.
See how both A and B herd the public away from opposing the dangerous pro-establishment
agendas being advanced by this administration? The dominant narratives could not possibly be
more different from what's actually going on, and the only reason they're the dominant
narratives is because an alliance
of plutocrats and secretive government agencies exerts an immense amount of influence over
the stories that are told by the political/media class.
The narrative matrix of America's political/media landscape is a confusing labyrinth of
smoke and funhouse mirrors distorting and manipulating the public consciousness at every turn.
It's psychologically torturous, which is largely why people who are deeply immersed in politics
are so on-edge all the time regardless of where they're at on the political spectrum. The only
potentially good thing I can see about this forceful brutalization of the public psyche is that
it might push people over the edge and shatter the illusion altogether.
Trust in the mass media is already at an all-time low while our ability to network and share
information that casts doubt on official narratives is at an all-time high, which is why the
establishment propaganda machine is
acting so weird as it scrambles to control the narrative, and why efforts to censor the
internet are getting more and more severe. It is possible that this is what it looks like when
a thinking species evolves into a sane and healthy relationship with thought. Perhaps the
cracks that are appearing all over official narratives today are like the first cracks
appearing in an eggshell as a bird begins to hatch into the world.
Hacking syndicate Anonymous has just released its fourth tranche of documents hacked from
the internal servers of the Institute for Statecraft and its subsidiary, the Integrity
Initiative. Several explosive files raise serious questions about the shadowy British state and
NATO-funded 'think tank' and its connections with the Skripal affair.
The files were
released just after 2:30pm GMT on January 4 -- I've barely scratched the surface of the
content, but what I've seen so far contains a panoply of bombshell revelations -- to say the
least, the organization(s) now have serious questions to answer about what role they played in
the poisoning of Sergei Skripal in March, and its aftermath both nationally and
internationally.
Sinister Timeline
One file
apparently dating to "early 2015" -- "Russian Federation Sanctions" -- written by the
Institute's Victor Madeira outlines "potential levers" to achieve Russian "behaviour change",
"peace with Ukraine", "return [of] Crimea", "regime change" or "other?". The suggested "levers"
span almost every conceivable area, including "civil society", "sports", "finance" and
"technology".
In the section marked "intelligence", Madeira suggests simultaneously expelling "every RF
[Russian Federation] intelligence officer and air/defense/naval attache from as many countries
as possible". In parentheses, it references 'Operation Foot' , the expulsion of over
1000 Soviet officials from the UK in September 1971, the largest expulsion of intelligence
officials by any government in history.
The section on sports also suggests "advocating the view [Russia] is unworthy of hosting
[sporting] events" -- and the section marked "information" recommends the sanctioning of
'Russian' media "in West for not complying with regulators' standards".
2015 File
Written By Victor Madeira on Possible Anti-Russian Actions
In April that year, Institute for Statecraft chief Chris Donnelly was
promoted to Honorary Colonel of SGMI (Specialist Group Military Intelligence), and
in
October he met with General Sir Richard Barrons. Notes from the meeting don't make clear
who said what, but one despaired that "if no catastrophe happens to wake people up and demand a
response, then we need to find a way to get the core of government to realise the problem and
take it out of the political space."
"We will need to impose changes over the heads of vested interests. We did this in the
1930s. My conclusion is it is we who must either generate the debate or wait for something
dreadful to happen to shock us into action. We must generate an independent debate outside
government. We need to ask when and how do we start to put all this right? Do we have the
national capabilities [and/or] capacities to fix it? If so, how do we improve our harnessing of
resources to do it? We need this debate now. There is not a moment to be lost," they said.
Operation IRIS Begins
On 4 March 2018, former Russian military officer and double agent for MI6 Sergei Skripal and
his daughter Yulia were poisoned in Salisbury, England.
Within days, the Institute had submitted a proposal to the Foreign & Commonwealth
Office, "to study social media activity in respect of the events that took place, how news
spread and evaluate how the incident is being perceived" in a number of countries.
The bid was accepted, and the Initiative's 'Operation Iris' was launched. Under its
auspices, the Institute employed 'global investigative solutions' firm Harod Associates to
analyze social media activity related to Skripal the world over.
It also conducted media monitoring of its own, with Institute 'research fellow' Simon
Bracey-Lane
producing regular 'roundups' of media coverage overseas, based on insights submitted by
individuals connected to the Initiative living in several countries. One submission, from an
unnamed source in Moldova, says they "cannot firmly say" whether the country's media had its
"own point of view" on the issue, or whether news organizations had taken "an obvious
pro-Russian or pro-Western position", strongly suggesting these were key questions for the
Initiative.
Integrity Initiative Seeks Intelligence On How Overseas Media Reported Skripal
Incident
Moreover though, there are clear indications the Institute sought to shape the news
narrative on the attack -- and indeed the UK government's response.
One file dated March 11 appears to be a briefing document on the affair to date, with key
messages bolded throughout.
It opens by setting out "The Narrative" of the incident -- namely "Russia has carried out
yet another brutal attack, this time with a deadly nerve agent, on someone living in
Britain".
"Use of the nerve agent posed a threat to innocent British subjects, affecting 21 people and
seriously affecting a police officer. This is not the first time such an attack has been
carried out in the UK 14 deaths are believed to be attributable to the Kremlin Russia has
poisoned its enemies abroad on other occasions, most notably then-candidate for the Presidency
of Ukraine, Viktor Yushchenko, in 2004. Russian political activist Vladimir Kara-Murza has been
poisoned twice; and the journalist Anna Politkovskaya was also poisoned and later shot dead.
Since Putin has been running Russia, the Kremlin has a history of poisoning its opponents in a
gruesome way," the "narrative" reads.
The file goes on to declare the British response has been "far too weak it's essential the
government makes a much stronger response this time" -- and then lists "possible, realistic,
first actions", including banning RT and Sputnik from operating in the UK, boycotting the 2018
World Cup, withdrawing the UK ambassador from Moscow and expelling the Russian ambassador to
the UK, and refusing/revoking visas to leading Russians within Vladimir Putin's "circle", and
their families.
Post-Skripal Incident Anti-Russian Actions Recommended by Integrity Initiative
It's not clear who the document was distributed to -- but it may have been given to
journalists within the Initiative's UK 'cluster', if not others. This may explain why the
Institute's "narrative", and its various recommended "responses" utterly dominated mainstream
media reporting of the affair for months afterwards, despite the glaring lack of evidence of
Russian state involvement in the attack.
It's extremely curious so many of the briefing document's recommendations almost exactly --
if not exactly -- echo several of the suggested "levers" outlined in the 2015 document. It's
also somewhat troubling the "Global Operation Foot" spoken of in that file duly came to pass on
March 28 2018, with over 20 countries expelling over 100 Russian diplomats.
Likewise, it's striking Victor Madeira, the Institute staffer who made the recommendations
in 2015, made many media appearances discussing the poisoning following the incident
routinely documented by the Institute. Security consultant Dan Kaszeta also wrote a number
of articles for the Integrity Initiative website about chemical weapons following the attack --
including a July 14 article, How could Novichok have poisoned people four months after the
Skripal attack? --receiving 40
pence per word .
Invoice submitted to
Integrity Initiative by Dan Kaszeta Strange Connections
The Institute's bizarrely intimate connections with the incident don't end there. Another document
apparently dating to July 2018 contains the contact details of Pablo Miller, Skripal's MI6
recruiter, handler and -- unbelievably -- neighbor in Salisbury. Anonymous claims the document
is an invitee list for a meeting the Institute convened between a number of individuals and
Syria's highly controversial White Helmets group, but this is yet to be verified.
Whatever the truth of the matter, the latest document dump raises yet further questions
about how and why it was BBC Diplomatic and Defense Editor Mark Urban -- who was in the same
tank regiment as Miller after leaving University -- came to meet with Skripal in the year
before his poisoning. When I attended the
launch of his book on the affair in October -- The Skripal Files -- he was evasive
on whether he played a role in connecting him with Skripal, and denied Miller was Skripal's
recruiter.
The latest trove also raises yet further questions about the activities of the Institute for
Statecraft and Integrity Initiative. In light of these revelations, reading the record of
Donnelly's meeting with General Barrons takes on an acutely chilling quality. It may be that
purely serendipitously the pair got their "catastrophe", their "something dreadful", which
"[woke] people up" and made the government "realise the problem" posed by Russia -- or it could
be they one way or another played a facilitative role of some kind.
After months of refusing to answer the vast number of questions I and thousands of others
have submitted to the paired organizations, it's high time for them to break cover, and be
honest with the public.
Images removed. Please brose the original to view them.
Notable quotes:
"... "Russian disinformation." ..."
"... "network of networks" ..."
"... It's notable that many of the draconian anti-Russia measures that the group advocated as far back as 2015 were swiftly implemented following the Skripal affair – even as London refused to back up its finger-pointing with evidence. ..."
"... "study social media activity in respect of the events that took place, how news spread, and evaluate how the incident is being perceived" ..."
"... "global investigative solutions" ..."
"... What role did # IntegrityInitiative play in the # Skripal affair? I looked for answers from a brief look at the newly released files. More very much to follow.... ..."
"... "pro-Russia troll accounts" ..."
"... "bombarding the audience with pro-Kremlin propaganda and disinformation relevant to the Skripal case." ..."
"... Another document , dated March 11, 2018 – and titled "Sergei Skripal Affair: What if Russia is Responsible?" – contains a "narrative" ..."
"... These included boycotting the 2018 World Cup, starting campaigns to boycott the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline from Russia to Germany, blocking Russian access to the SWIFT international banking system, and banning "RT TV and Sputnik from operating in the UK." ..."
"... "to publicize what has been happening with their Muslim brethren in Crimea since the Russian invasion [sic]" ..."
"... "threat Russia poses." ..."
"... This would certainly explain the evidence-deficient echo chamber that emerged in the aftermath of Skripal's poisoning ..."
"... One of the more intriguing revelations from the fresh leaks is a document from 2015, in which Victor Madeira of the Institute for Statecraft proposes a series of measures targeting Russia, including mass expulsion of diplomats along the lines of 1971's Operation Foot. ..."
"... "the largest collective expulsion of Russian intelligence officers in history." ..."
"... "Makes you think " ..."
"... The new trove of hacked documents also revealed an unexplained link between the II and Skripal himself – a connection made all the more noteworthy by the group's central role in coordinating an evidence-free campaign to blame and punish Moscow for the alleged nerve-agent attack. A document from July 2018 contains contact details for Pablo Miller, Skripal's MI6 recruiter, handler and (conveniently) neighbor in Salisbury. Miller, it seems, had been invited to a function hosted by the Institute. ..."
"... It was already known that Pablo Miller, the MI6 handler of Sergej Skripal, attended # IntegrityInitiative meetings. There is now more material to draw a connection. It is indeed possible that IfS/II initiated the affair. ..."
"... Ł2,276.80 in July 2018 during the # Skripal # Novichok affair for writing articles on the subjects of poison gas; nerve agents; treatment; nerve agent persistency & # PortonDown @ RTUKproducer 160 1:24 PM - Jan 4, 2019 ..."
"... It's not clear to what degree Miller is or was involved with the group, but his appearance on an Integrity Initiative guest list adds another layer of mystery to a coordinated campaign which sought to impose punishments on Moscow that were drawn up years in advance. ..."
The Integrity Initiative, a UK-funded group exposed in leaked files as psyop network, played a key role in monitoring and molding
media narratives after the poisoning of double agent Sergei Skripal, newly-dumped documents reveal. Created by the NATO-affiliated,
UK-funded Institute for Statecraft in 2015, the Integrity Initiative was
unmasked in November after hackers
released documents detailing a web of politicians, journalists, military personnel, scientists and academics involved in purportedly
fighting "Russian disinformation."
The secretive, government-bankrolled "network of networks" has found itself under scrutiny for
smearing UK Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn
as a Kremlin stooge – ostensibly as part of its noble crusade against anti-Russian disinformation. Now, new
leaks show that the organization played a central role in shaping media narratives after Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia
were mysteriously poisoned in Salisbury last March.
It's notable that many of the draconian anti-Russia measures that the group advocated as far back as 2015 were swiftly implemented
following the Skripal affair – even as London refused to back up its finger-pointing with evidence.
Operation Iris
Days after the Skripals were poisoned, the Institute solicited its services to the Foreign & Commonwealth Office, offering to
"study social media activity in respect of the events that took place, how news spread, and evaluate how the incident is being
perceived" in a number of countries.
After receiving the government's blessing, the Integrity Initiative (II)
launched
'Operation Iris,' enlisting "global investigative solutions" firm Harod Associates to analyze social media activity
related to Skripal.
What role did # IntegrityInitiative
play in the # Skripal affair? I looked for answers
from a brief look at the newly released files. More very much to follow....
However, Harod's confidential
report
did more than just parse social media reactions to the Skripal affair: It compiled a list of alleged "pro-Russia troll accounts"
accused of "bombarding the audience with pro-Kremlin propaganda and disinformation relevant to the Skripal case."
Among those who found themselves listed as nefarious thought-criminals were Ukrainian-born pianist Valentina Lisitsa, and a gentleman
from Kent who goes by Ian56 on Twitter.
Neocon Fascist, al-Qaeda Supporting Treasonous Scumbag @ Benimmo
is having a laugh with Ł2m of Taxpayers money. Nimmo should be IN JAIL for Fraud & Treason
"The Insider" - the same "Insider", that was credited by Bellingcat with "outing Boshirov and Petrovas GRU agents"
- has investigated and found me guilty of passing Putin orders to French yellow jackets. I kid you not.
Another
document , dated March 11, 2018 – and titled "Sergei Skripal Affair: What if Russia is Responsible?" – contains a "narrative"
of the Skripal incident, which blames Russia and President Vladimir Putin personally, as well as containing a number of recommended
actions.
These included boycotting the 2018 World Cup, starting campaigns to boycott the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline from Russia to
Germany, blocking Russian access to the SWIFT international banking system, and banning "RT TV and Sputnik from operating in the
UK."
Other suggestions included propaganda directed at British Muslims "to publicize what has been happening with their Muslim
brethren in Crimea since the Russian invasion [sic]" and getting members of parliament to publicize the "threat Russia poses."
It's not clear who the document was drawn up for, but it may have been provided to II-affiliated journalists in the UK and other
countries.
This would certainly explain the evidence-deficient echo chamber that emerged in the aftermath of Skripal's poisoning
– which the UK and its allies unanimously blamed on Moscow.
Ahead of its time?
One of the more intriguing revelations from the fresh leaks is a
document from 2015, in which Victor Madeira of the Institute for Statecraft proposes a series of measures targeting Russia, including
mass expulsion of diplomats along the lines of 1971's Operation Foot.
Coincidentally, more than 100 Russian diplomats were expelled from 20 Western countries in an apparently show of solidarity with
the UK following the Skripal attack. At the time, UK Prime Minister Theresa May welcomed what she said was "the largest collective
expulsion of Russian intelligence officers in history."
Former MP George Galloway noted that the documents, written long before the Salisbury events, also call for the arrest of RT and
Sputnik contributors (such as himself), adding: "Makes you think "
The new trove of hacked documents also revealed an unexplained link between the II and Skripal himself – a connection made
all the more noteworthy by the group's central role in coordinating an evidence-free campaign to blame and punish Moscow for the
alleged nerve-agent attack. A document from July 2018 contains contact details for Pablo Miller, Skripal's MI6 recruiter, handler
and (conveniently) neighbor in Salisbury. Miller, it seems, had been invited to a function hosted by the Institute.
It was already known that Pablo Miller, the MI6 handler of Sergej Skripal, attended
# IntegrityInitiative meetings. There
is now more material to draw a connection. It is indeed possible that IfS/II initiated the affair.
It's not clear to what degree Miller is or was involved with the group, but his appearance on an Integrity
Initiative guest list adds another layer of mystery to a coordinated campaign which sought to impose punishments on Moscow that were
drawn up years in advance.
Some of neocon/neoliberal critiqur below are valid. But what if Trump policy from the very beginning was based on the idea to
declare national emergency and then use those powers to appropriate the funds? Bush declared fake war of terror with
much success before. Now it might be Trump turn
Notable quotes:
"... "Deals are my art form. Other people paint beautifully on canvas or write wonderful poetry. I like making deals, preferably big deals." ..."
"... Donald Trump, "The Art of the Deal" ..."
"... Left reeling and desperate, he said on Friday and again on Sunday that he may declare a national emergency on the southern border so he can simply appropriate the taxpayer funds he wants. Such a move may not even be legal , would prompt Democrats to file a lawsuit to stop him regardless, and is likely to further alienate some Republicans worn down by his antics. ..."
"Deals are my art form. Other people paint beautifully on canvas or write wonderful poetry. I like making
deals, preferably big deals."
--
Donald Trump, "The Art of the Deal"
***************
President Trump's supporters elected him, in part, because they saw him as a wily tycoon and deft dealmaker who
could shake up Washington and bring decades of business know-how to the Oval Office.
He was always ready to tap into those beliefs. "We need a PRESIDENT with strength, stamina, heart and
incredible deal making skill if our country is ever going to be able to prosper again!" he
tweeted
a few months after launching his presidential bid in 2015.
Trump, in reality, was never a peerless or even a particularly skillful dealmaker, and many of the most
significant business transactions he engineered
imploded
. Instead, he made his way in the world as an indefatigable self-promoter, a marketing confection and
a human billboard who frequently licensed his name to buildings and products paid for by others.
In Trump's professional life, his
inept dealmaking
often came home to roost in
unmanageable debts
and
serial bankruptcies
. In his more recent political and presidential life it has
revealed itself
through
bungled, hapless efforts
to overturn the Affordable Care Act; forge a nuclear agreement with North Korea; wage
trade wars with China, Mexico and Canada; retain control of the House of Representatives; turn military and
diplomatic strategy on its head; lay siege to sensible immigration policy; and, now,
force a government shutdown
to secure funding for a prized project -- a wall along the U.S.'s southern border.
Striking lasting deals requires intimacy with the finer points of what every party wants out of a negotiation,
realistic goals, maturity, patience, flexibility -- and enough leverage so the other side can't simply stall or
walk away from the table. Trump hasn't met any of those prerequisites in his repeated efforts to fulfill his
campaign promise to build a wall, a promise that played to the most xenophobic and bigoted portion of his base
while
not addressing
any of the
real shortcomings
or
necessary enhancements
of
federal
immigration policy
.
"Policy" and "Trump" don't really coexist, of course. The president lacks the interest or sophistication to
steep himself in policy details, so he enters the immigration debate and dealmaking for his wall at a distinct
disadvantage. For as much as he disparages politicians and public service, Trump is surrounded by Democrats and
Republicans who have immersed themselves in immigration discussions for years. Expertise does matter, after all --
and Trump doesn't have it.
The most visible reminder of the raw amateurism that has undermined Trump's dealmaking came in December during
a memorable White House visit with a pair of Democrats, Representative Nancy Pelosi and Senator Charles Schumer.
As the trio gradually became unsettled over policy differences that could lead to a government shutdown, Trump,
ready to perform for the media he had invited to observe the chat, sallied forth in a burst of bravado.
"I am proud to shut down the government for border security," Trump
told
Schumer. "I will take the mantle. I will shut it down. I'm not going to blame you for it."
Unforced error.
Trump -- undoubtedly content to prove he's willing to burn things down to get his own way -- needlessly
publicized himself as the author of the shutdown that ultimately arrived. Hmmm. Let's think about that. Doesn't
every politician in Washington with a sense of the town's history know that voters grow weary of government
shutdowns and tend not to like those responsible for them? Newt Gingrich, whom Trump has occasionally solicited
for input, surely knows this. Back in
1995
and 1996, when Gingrich was speaker of the House, then-President Bill Clinton maneuvered to hang a
government shutdown around the speaker's neck -- inflicting permanent political damage on the once-ascendant
Gingrich.
A word to the wise: If you get saddled with a reputation as a guy who likes to blow up things it can be hard to
orchestrate deals. ("President Trump is a terrible negotiator," Schumer recently
said
, highlighting how much leverage the president has lost in the wall negotiations.)
Trump also missed chances last year, when Republicans still controlled the House, to
seal deals
that might have given him significantly more funding for a wall than the $5 billion he wants -- and
is unlikely to get -- now. Early in the year, hampered by his inability to be flexible or understand the other
side's needs, Trump opposed a bipartisan Senate proposal that offered $25 billion for a wall as long as a path to
citizenship was opened for 1.7 million young, undocumented immigrants living in the U.S.
Just before Christmas, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell got Republicans behind a short-term funding
package to keep the government open until February. That proposal didn't include money for a wall, and Trump was
prepared to support it until backlash from conservative media pundits Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh and Laura
Ingraham
convinced him to retreat
. Lacking clear goals for a deal -- did he want to keep the government open or did he
want to dig in behind a wall? -- Trump left his own party befuddled and empowered Democrats.
In recent days, Schumer and Pelosi have said they're unwilling to give Trump more than $1.3 billion to build a
border fence (not a wall) and that they won't commit taxpayer funds to Trump's wall. The president responded that
he then would be willing to leave the government unfunded and shuttered indefinitely -- a posture he is unlikely to
be able to maintain and a negotiating strategy for which few in his White House or his party had been prepared.
Good dealmakers prepare their teams so they can get the support they need to move a negotiation across the
finish line. But Trump has apparently overlooked the fact that his administration's signature accomplishments --
landing
two conservative
justices
on the Supreme Court, pushing through a
major tax overhaul
, and passing
criminal justice reform
-- had been initiated and guided by Republican dealmakers more able than him.
Building a wall, on the other hand, has been Trump's personal piece of performance art and he has invoked
fantasies to promote it (like, for example, compelling Mexico to foot the bill). He has also become so emotionally
attached to the effort that he's put himself at a strategic disadvantage. The president is now so consumed with
appearing to win, that he may not win at all.
Left reeling and desperate, he said on Friday and again on Sunday that he may declare a national emergency
on the southern border so he can simply appropriate the taxpayer funds he wants. Such a move
may not even be legal
, would prompt Democrats to file a lawsuit to stop him regardless, and is likely to
further alienate some Republicans worn down by his antics.
This, however,
is who the president is
. He's focused on fostering his own, carnivalesque image, and he has little real
interest in policy outcomes. And he's been here before. In 1988, he overpaid in a deal for the
Plaza Hotel
because he was irrationally enamored of the property. A few years later he lost it in bankruptcy.
Around the same time, he bungled negotiations for another project that would have made him a
transformative figure
in New York real estate because he couldn't exercise the restraint, foresight and
financial discipline needed to get the deal done. In 1996, he passed on selling a stake in one of his casinos that
would have netted him about $180 million and helped prop up his struggling
Atlantic City
operation
because he didn't want his name removed from the property.
None of those episodes humbled him.
"We need a dealmaker in the White House, who knows how to think innovatively and make smart deals," he
tweeted
back in 2011.
"... Mr. Dubelier has depicted Mr. Mueller as a rogue prosecutor willfully ignoring Justice Department guidelines. ..."
"... He has accused Mr. Mueller of creating a "make-believe crime" against his Russian client, Concord Management and Consulting, which is accused of funding a troll farm that interfered in the 2016 election. ..."
"... " Mr. Dubelier is exactly right on Mr. Mueller 's motives and tactics," said Sidney Powell, whose book "License to Lie" exposes years of Justice Department scandals. "His lieutenant Weissmann is the poster boy for prosecutorial misconduct and has no regard for the facts or the law. He will make up whatever he wants to win, and the entire like-minded team views as an accomplishment everyone whose life they destroy in pursuit of their objective." ..."
"... The Washington defense attorney seemed to catch the Mueller team off guard by immediately demanding disclosure of evidence. Disclosure, Mr. Dubelier argues, is a sacred legal right in America, even for the oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin, Concord 's chief with close ties to Russian leader Vladimir Putin. ..."
"... Mr. Dubelier argues that people are free to create fake accounts. It's done all the time, he says. "When it comes to political speech, one is free to pretend to be whomever he or she wants to be and to say whatever he or she wants to say," he said at an Oct. 15 hearing. ..."
"... "That's why in this case this special counsel made up a crime to fit the facts that they have," Mr. Dubelier said. "And that's the fundamental danger with the entire special counsel concept: that they operate outside the parameters of the Department of Justice in a way that is absolutely inconsistent with the consistent behavior of the Department of Justice in these cases for the past 30 years." ..."
"... But he wasn't done. There is an ongoing battle over Concord 's access to "sensitive" evidence that Mr. Mueller won't let its officers see because they are Russians with ties to Mr. Putin. Mr. Dubelier has expressed exasperation. "This equates to the burden of preparing for trial without any ability to discuss the evidence with the client who is to be put on trial," he said. "This has never happened before in reported case law because the notion is too ludicrous to contemplate." ..."
"... On another matter, Mr. Dubelier is accusing the Mueller team of skullduggery. Judge Friedrich last summer approved the prosecutor's request for a "firewall counsel" to review evidence for its national security implications. ..."
"... In another pre-trial argument, Mr. Dubelier is the first defense attorney to ask this question: Why isn't British ex-spy Christopher Steele, who was paid by Democrats to obtain anti- Trump information from the Kremlin to influence 2016 voting, being investigated by the Justice Department for election interference just like the Russians? ..."
"... Mr. Steele didn't register under the Justice Department 's Foreign Agent Registration Act, under which Mr. Mueller has brought charges against a number of defendants, including the Concord team. Judge Friedrich rejected Mr. Dubelier 's argument of "selective prosecution." ..."
A former federal prosecutor has emerged as special counsel
Robert
Mueller
's most persistent courtroom critic.
It's not Rudolph W. Giuliani, a former U.S. attorney and now President
Trump
's
ubiquitous defender, or any of cable TV's prosecutors-turned-pundits.
He is
Eric
A. Dubelier
, a litigator for the Reed Smith law firm who knows international law and the D.C. playing
field. He served eight years prosecuting cases as a
Justice
Department
assistant U.S. attorney in Washington. He refers to his former employer as "the real
Justice
Department
," implying that
Mr.
Mueller
's team is something less.
His biting remarks have come in months of court filings and oral arguments.
Mr.
Dubelier
has depicted
Mr.
Mueller
as a rogue prosecutor willfully ignoring
Justice
Department
guidelines.
He has accused
Mr.
Mueller
of creating a "make-believe crime" against his Russian client, Concord Management and
Consulting, which is accused of funding a troll farm that interfered in the 2016 election.
So far, the federal judge presiding over the case has sided with
Mr.
Mueller
.
Mr. Dubelier
charges that the Mueller team violated the confidentially of
Concord
's
counter evidence while hiding documents
Concord needs
for its defense. The prosecutor wants to "whisper secrets to the judge,"
Mr.
Dubelier
says, as
Mr.
Mueller
is calculating the "short-term political value of a conviction" and not worrying about an
appeals court defeat years later.
An example: In a Dec. 20 motion,
Mr.
Dubelier
resurrected a botched case spearheaded by
Mr.
Mueller
's top prosecutor, Andrew Weissmann.
Mr. Weissmann headed the
Justice
Department
's Enron task force nearly two decades ago. He won a conviction against the accounting firm
Arthur Andersen for shredding the defunct energy firm's financial documents.
Years later, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously reversed the conviction. The 2005 decision effectively said
that Andersen, by then out of business and its 28,000 employees gone, hadn't committed a crime.
"Mr.
Dubelier
is exactly right on
Mr.
Mueller
's motives and tactics," said Sidney Powell, whose book "License to Lie" exposes years of
Justice
Department
scandals. "His lieutenant Weissmann is the poster boy for prosecutorial misconduct and has no
regard for the facts or the law. He will make up whatever he wants to win, and the entire like-minded team
views as an accomplishment everyone whose life they destroy in pursuit of their objective."
'Made up a crime to fit the facts'
Concord Management and Consulting is an unlikely client. Legal observers opined that when
Mr.
Mueller
brought charges against various Russians who hacked computers and trolled the 2016 election, no
defendant would travel the nearly 5,000 miles to show up for trial.
No defendant has personally arrived. But
Concord
did
appear quickly after the February indictment. Of 28 Russian individuals and firms charged with election
interference by
Mr.
Mueller
, only
Concord
has
appeared in U.S. District Court, in this instance in the person of the aggressive
Mr.
Dubelier
.
The Washington defense attorney seemed to catch the Mueller team off guard by immediately demanding
disclosure of evidence. Disclosure,
Mr.
Dubelier
argues, is a sacred legal right in America, even for the oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin,
Concord
's
chief with close ties to Russian leader Vladimir Putin.
Concord
is accused of an elaborate conspiracy with another Russian operation, the Internet Research
Agency. The indictment accuses
Concord
of
providing the troll farm $1.2 million monthly to defraud the U.S. The two firms set up fake personas and
false Twitter accounts, Facebook ads and other social media posts mostly to disparage Hillary Clinton and
support
Donald
Trump
.
In a separate case,
Mr.
Mueller
brought charges in July against 12 Russian intelligence officers for hacking Democratic
computers, stealing emails and funneling them to three websites for distribution.
Mr. Dubelier
argues that people are free to create fake accounts. It's done all the time, he says.
"When it comes to political speech, one is free to pretend to be whomever he or she wants to be and to say
whatever he or she wants to say," he said at an Oct. 15 hearing.
"That's why in this case this special counsel made up a crime to fit the facts that they have,"
Mr.
Dubelier
said. "And that's the fundamental danger with the entire special counsel concept: that they
operate outside the parameters of the
Department
of Justice
in a way that is absolutely inconsistent with the consistent behavior of the
Department
of Justice
in these cases for the past 30 years."
Mr. Dubelier
lost that argument with U.S. District Judge Dabney L. Friedrich, who rejected his bid to
dismiss the case.
But he wasn't done. There is an ongoing battle over
Concord
's
access to "sensitive" evidence that
Mr.
Mueller
won't let its officers see because they are Russians with ties to Mr. Putin.
Mr. Dubelier
has expressed exasperation.
"This equates to the burden of preparing for trial without any ability to discuss the evidence with the
client who is to be put on trial," he said. "This has never happened before in reported case law because the
notion is too ludicrous to contemplate."
What
Mr.
Mueller
has turned over is often irrelevant to mounting a defense, such as promotion emails for airlines
and personal naked selfie photographs,
Mr.
Dubelier
said in a December filing.
The special counsel is keeping most relevant information between himself and Judge Friedrich, excluding
Mr.
Dubelier
.
Why no probe of dossier writer?
Mr. Mueller
won the argument over "sensitive" material. He now wants to hold closed sessions with the
judge over classified information -- again, without
Mr.
Dubelier
.
Mr. Dubelier
responded in a Dec. 27 filing: "The Special Counsel has made up a crime that has never been
prosecuted before in the history of the United States, and now seeks to make up secret procedures for
communicating ex parte [meaning no defense counsel present] to the court which have never been employed in
any reported criminal case not involving classified discovery."
The defense attorney admitted his motion is "likely fruitless" because Judge Friedrich previously has ruled
against
Concord
.
Many documents are in Russian, a culturally different language than English.
One Russian word,
Mr.
Dubelier
says, "can be translated into the English words 'chief,' 'boss' or 'chef' -- a distinction that
is critically important since international media often refers to Mr. Prigozhin as 'Putin's chef.'"
On another matter,
Mr.
Dubelier
is accusing the Mueller team of skullduggery.
Judge Friedrich last summer approved the prosecutor's request for a "firewall counsel" to review evidence
for its national security implications.
Mr. Dubelier
said he submitted evidence to the firewall lawyer only to see it fall into the hands of
Mr.
Mueller
's team, who began using it to further investigate
Concord
.
"Surely a remarkable coincidence,"
Mr.
Dubelier
said.
In another pre-trial argument,
Mr.
Dubelier
is the first defense attorney to ask this question: Why isn't British ex-spy Christopher
Steele, who was paid by Democrats to obtain anti-
Trump
information
from the Kremlin to influence 2016 voting, being investigated by the
Justice
Department
for election interference just like the Russians?
Mr. Steele didn't register under the
Justice
Department
's Foreign Agent Registration Act, under which
Mr.
Mueller
has brought charges against a number of defendants, including the
Concord
team.
Judge Friedrich rejected
Mr.
Dubelier
's argument of "selective prosecution."
Mr. Mueller
's counter-motion boils down to this: Mr. Prigozhin is a criminal fugitive who blatantly
interfered in the U.S. election and is not entitled to sensitive national security information he would
share with the Kremlin intelligence.
In a new battleground, the Mueller team wants to show the judge top secret material to persuade her to keep
it from the defense.
"Disclosure of such information could cause exceptionally grave damage to the national security," the
Mueller filing stated.
Judge Friedrich ruled in June that Mr. Prigozhin is prohibited from viewing non-classified sensitive
information that details how the government obtained evidence.
The Mueller team argued: "Discovery in this case contains sensitive information about investigative
techniques and cooperating witnesses that goes well beyond the information that will be disclosed at trial
Information within this case's discovery identifies sources, methods, and techniques used to identify the
foreign actors behind these interference operations the government has particularized concerns about
discovery in this case being disclosed to Russian intelligence services."
Mr. Mueller
says that as long as Mr. Prigozhin, whom the U.S. sanctioned and then indicted for election
interference, remains in Russia, he isn't entitled to see sensitive evidence.
Russophobia is the standard deflection trick, designed to cement cracks in neoliberal society facade. And deep distrust of common
people toward neoliberal elite. With neoliberal elite completely immersed in its own groupthink, which reaches the level "Let them eat
cakes".
Notable quotes:
"... We have seen this play out in the US in the continuing obsession, fronted by Troll-Finder General Robert Mueller, over alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 US presidential election. And the same obsession has emerged in the UK, too, with politicians and pundits claiming that a shadowy network of Russian influence tipped the EU referendum in favour of Leave. ..."
"... It is never quite clear how the 'Russians' or 'Putin' did all this, beyond Facebook ads and decidedly dubious talk of so-called dark money. But then clarity is not the point for this stripe of Russia-maniac. He or she simply wants to believe that Trump or Brexit were not what they were. Not expressions of popular will. Not manifestations of popular discontent. Not democratic exercises. ..."
While Russia-mania is widespread among today's political and cultural elites, it is not uniform.
For an older, right-wing section of the Western political and media class, otherwise known as the Cold War Re-Enactment Society,
Russia looms large principally as a military, quasi-imperial threat. Jim Mattis, the former US marine and general, and now US defence
secretary, said Russia was responsible
for 'the biggest attack [on the world order] since World War Two'. Whether this is true or not is beside the point. What matters
is that Russia appears as a military aggressor. What matters is that Russia's actions in Ukraine – which were arguably a defensive
reaction to NATO and the EU's expansion into Russia's traditional ally – are grasped as an act of territorial aggrandisement. What
matters is that Russia's military operations in Syria – which, again, were arguably a pragmatic intervention to stabilise the West-stoked
chaos – are rendered as an expression of imperial aggression. What matters is that Russian state involvement in the poisoning of
the Skripals in Salisbury – which, given its failure, proved Russian incompetence – is presented as 'part of a pattern of Russian
aggression against Europe and its near neighbours, from the western Balkans to the Middle East', to
quote Theresa May.
And it matters because, if Russia is dressed up as the West's old Cold War adversary, just with a new McMafia logo, then the crumbling,
illegitimate and increasingly pointless postwar institutions through which Western elites have long ordered the world, suddenly look
just that little bit more solid, legitimate and purposeful. And none more so than NATO.
This is why NATO has this year been accompanying its statements
warning Russia to 'stop its reckless pattern of
behaviour' with some of the
largest military exercises since the fall of the Berlin Wall nearly three decades ago. Including one in November in Norway, involving
50,000 troops, 10,000 vehicles, 250 aircraft and 60 warships.
Then there is the newer form of Russia-mania. This has emerged from within the political and cultural elite that came to power
after the Cold War, ploughing an uninspiring third way between the seeming extremes of the 20th century's great ideologies. Broadly
social democratic in sentiment, and elitist and aloof in practice, this band of merry technocrats and their middle-class supporters
have found in 'Russia' a way to avoid having to face up to what the populist revolt reveals – that the majority of Western citizens
share neither their worldview nor their wealth. Instead, they use 'Russia' to displace the people as the source of discontent and
political revolt.
We have seen this play out in the US in the continuing obsession, fronted by Troll-Finder General Robert Mueller, over alleged
Russian meddling in the 2016 US presidential election. And the same obsession has emerged in the UK, too, with politicians and pundits
claiming that a shadowy network of Russian influence tipped the EU referendum in favour of Leave.
It is never quite clear how the 'Russians' or 'Putin' did all this, beyond Facebook ads and decidedly dubious talk of so-called
dark money. But then clarity is not the point for this stripe of Russia-maniac. He or she simply wants to believe that
Trump or
Brexit were not what they were. Not expressions of popular
will. Not manifestations of popular discontent. Not democratic exercises.
No, they were the result, as one Tory MP
put it , of 'the covert and overt forms of malign influence used by Moscow'.
Or, in
the words of an Observer columnist, 'a campaign that purported to be for the "left behind" was organised and funded by men with
links across the global network of far-right American demagogues and kleptomaniac dictators such as Putin'.
Such has been the determination to blame 'Russia' or 'Putin' for the political class's struggles, that in August Tom Watson, Labour's
conspiracy-theory-peddling deputy leader,
called for a public inquiry into an alleged Russian Brexit plot. '[Voters] need to know whether that referendum was stolen or
not', he said.
Such a call ought to be mocked. After all, it is absurd to think 'Russia', 'Putin' and the trolls are the power behind every populist
throne. But the claims aren't mocked – they're taken as calls to action. Think of anything viewed as a threat to our quaking political
and cultural elites in the West, and you can bet your bottom ruble that some state agency or columnist is busy identifying Putin
or one of his legion of bots and trolls as the source. The
gilet jaunes protests
in France?
Check . Climate change?
Check . Italy's Five Star Movement?
Check
.
And all this from a nation with a GDP
equivalent to Spain, an ageing, declining population, and a failing infrastructure. The reality of Russia is not that of a global
threat, but of a struggling state. Russia is weak. Yet in the minds of those clinging desperately to the status quo, 'Russia' has
never been more powerful.
The USA is treating Russia the same way it treated the USSR and run all kind of subversive operations against it.
Notable quotes:
"... This is Naked Capitalism fundraising week. 1440 donors have already invested in our efforts to combat corruption and predatory conduct, particularly in the financial realm. Please join us and participate via our donation page , which shows how to give via check, credit card, debit card, or PayPal. Read about why we're doing this fundraiser, what we've accomplished in the last year and our current goal, more original reporting . ..."
"... By John Helmer , the longest continuously serving foreign correspondent in Russia, and the only western journalist to direct his own bureau independent of single national or commercial ties. Helmer has also been a professor of political science, and an advisor to government heads in Greece, the United States, and Asia. He is the first and only member of a US presidential administration (Jimmy Carter) to establish himself in Russia. Originally published at Dances with Bears ..."
"... In June 1933, he bought the Washington Post at a bankruptcy auction, for $825,000 ..."
"... It [USA] has always been fighting on foreign soil since it was formed by violence against a lawful sovereign. ..."
"... This Vast Southern Empire ..."
"... A mentor in shamelessness: the man who taught Trump the power of publicity Roy Cohn, the lawyer who embraced infamy during the McCarthy hearings and Rosenberg trial, influenced Donald Trump to turn the tabloids into a soapbox ..."
"... Angels in America ..."
"... For the life of me, I still cannot figure out why people are in an absolute panic over Russian "agents" buying $100,000.00, or whatever, worth of advertising promoting either or both sides of the election when U.S.citizens and Political Parties spent over $1.6 billion. ..."
"... Are American citizens really so stupid as to fall for the amazingly, brilliantly conceived and placed $100K worth of Russian advertising, so clever that it superseded $1.6 billion worth of U.S. citizen ads? ..."
"... Or (to misquote Shakespeare/Macbeth) is it a tale told by propagandists, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing? ..."
Yves here. An important bit of history that can't be repeated too often: when the Clinton
Administration decided to move NATO into former Warsaw Pact countries, violating a
understanding made as part of the peaceful dissolution, George Kennan said it would prove to be
the worst geopolitical mistake the US ever made.
By John Helmer , the
longest continuously serving foreign correspondent in Russia, and the only western journalist
to direct his own bureau independent of single national or commercial ties. Helmer has also
been a professor of political science, and an advisor to government heads in Greece, the United
States, and Asia. He is the first and only member of a US presidential administration (Jimmy
Carter) to establish himself in Russia. Originally published at Dances with
Bears
Joseph Alsop and George Kennan started the kind of Russia-hating in Washington which, today,
President Vladimir Putin, like the businessmen around him, think of as a novelty that cannot
last for long.
Alsop was a fake news fabricator, and such a narcissist as to give the bow-ties he wore a
bad name. Kennan was a psychopath who alternated bouts of aggression to prove himself with
bouts of depression over his cowardice. For them, Russia was a suitable target. The Washington
Post was the newspaper which gave their lunacy public asylum. This, according to a fresh
history by a university professor from California, started in 1947, long before the arrival in
Washington of the anti-communist phobia known after the name of Senator Joseph McCarthy.
Russia-hating was an American upper-class phenomenon, cultivated in the offices, cocktail
parties, clubs, and mansions of the deep state, as it emerged out of World War II. It needed a
new enemy to thrive; it fastened on Russia (aka the Soviet Union) as the enemy.
McCarthyism was an American lower-class phenomenon. It focused on the loyalty or disloyalty
of the upper-class deep-staters. That wasn't the same thing as Russia-hating; Wall Street
bankers, Boston lawyers, homosexuals, Jews, communists, were all the enemy. As the Senator from
Wisconsin characterized it himself in 1952, "McCarthyism is Americanism with its sleeves
rolled." He implied – without a middle-class tie; certainly not an upper-class
bow-tie.
Russia was not an enemy which united the two American lunacies, for they hated each other
much more than they hated the Russians. The Soviet Politburo understood this better then than
the Kremlin does now.
Gregg Herken's The Georgetown
Set , is so named because it records the activities of Alsop, Kennan and several other
State Department, Central Intelligence Agency and White House officials who lived as neighbours
in the Georgetown district of the capital city, together with Katharine (Kay) and Philip
Graham, proprietor managers of the Washington Post. The district – once a chartered city
of Maryland and river port, which was absorbed into the federal District of Columbia in 1871 --
was expensive, relatively speaking then; more so now. The richest of the set, including Alsop,
had town houses in Georgetown, and rural retreats in Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and
Connecticut.
They were a set because because, as Herken said succinctly to an interviewer , "they got
together every Sunday for supper and, basically, they ran the country from those meetings." As
the book elaborates, they thought they were running the world. With a longer time lapse in
which to view the evidence, they were also losing it.
Newspapers exposed in the book for collaborating in all the deceits, failures and war crimes
of the history have reacted by calling
Herken's effort a "provincial corner". The New Yorker opined that the Russia-hating
and Russia war-making which Herken retells are dead and gone. "The guests at the Sunday
soirées no doubt felt that they were in the cockpit of history. But the United States is
a democracy, not a Wasp Ascendancy There was once an atmosphere of willingness that made a
system of bribes and information exchanges seem, to the people involved, simply a way of
working together for a common cause in a climate of public opinion that, unfortunately,
required secrecy. No one got rich from the arrangement. People just lost track of what was
inside their bubble and what was outside, as people tend to do. Vietnam was the reality check.
'I've Seen the Best of It' was the title Alsop gave to his memoirs. Things hadn't been the same
since, he felt. He was right about that, and we should be thankful." In the New York media
business these days it's possible to publish a selfie of pulling your own leg.
The Washington Post has deflected the indictment against itself by describing Herken's work
as "a very strange book (A) a rehash of the history of the Cold War as experienced in certain
Washington circles and (B) an almost obsessive recapitulation of the life and journalism of
Joseph Alsop." Alsop is dismissed as unworthy of a history at all because he was "utterly
repellent: arrogant, patronizing, imperious, uninterested in anyone except himself."
That's the truth about Alsop. The truth about the Washington Post is buried in this line by
the Post's books editor about the hand that fed him: "it must be very hard for people who did
not live through the '50s and '60s to understand how obsessed the American people were with the
threat from Moscow." That line appeared in
print on November 7, 2014. It was already history, that's to say, a misjudgement. How
monumentally mistaken is obvious now.
In covering the period from 1946 to 1975, Herken's research does repeat much of the history
of the Cold War which has been told elsewhere. It starts on February 22, 1946, the date of the
"Long Telegram", No. 511 -- Kennan's despatch from the US Embassy in Moscow to the State
Department, setting out his strategy of so-called containment and much more besides. Read it in
the declassified original
. Most of the war-fighting and other war crimes which the telegram set in motion under Kennan's
1948 rubrics, "organized political warfare" and "preventive direct action", are reported in
Herken's book; so too are Kennan's frequent funks, failures of conviction, reversals of
judgement, and pleas for help.
The book ends on December 30, 1974, the date of Alsop's last column. Alsop concluded with
the line: "I have never known the American people to be really badly wrong, if only they were
correctly and fully informed."
Herken shows how self-deluded and professionally delusional that was -- not because of
Alsop's character but because of his sources. Herken documents that they ran upwards from
foot-soldiers (also lubricious sailors) to presidents and cabinet secretaries. Herken doesn't
think the same of Kennan, who gets to walk off stage, aged 101, sounding more sceptical of
overthrowing Saddam Hussein than he ever was in his prime and in power to direct schemes of
what we call state terrorism today.
Left to right: Kennan died in 2005, aged 101; Alsop died in 1989 aged 78; Frank Wisner
died in 1965 aged 56. The deeper Herken gets into the private papers, the more he refers to his
subjects by their diminutives and nicknames – Joe, Oppie, Beetle, Dickie, the Crocodile,
Wig, Jack, Wiz, Soozle, Vangie, et al.
What is fresh about the sources is that Herken has had access to the private notes, letters
and diaries of the Alsop family; the Kennan diaries and letters; and the private papers of
Frank Wisner, the first director of covert operations against Russia. Wisner went mad and
killed himself, as did Graham. There's no doubt about the suicide outcome of their madness.
In the case of the mad ex-Defence Secretary James Forrestal his fatal jump from the window
of the Navy hospital in Bethesda, Maryland, in May 1949 might have been a homicidal push.
Herken concludes that Forrestal's death was "the first senior-ranking American casualty of the
Cold War." Herken thinks of their madness as anomalies. The history shows they were
normalities.
Missing from this history is any reference to official documents, now declassified; press
reporting of the time; or interviews with veterans of the same events but on other sides
– Russian and Soviet; British; German; French; Polish; Vietnamese; Chinese. This isn't so
much a fatal flaw in Herken's (right) book as the reason why his history is repeating itself
today. Call this a variation on Karl's Marx's apothegm that history starts as tragedy and
repeats itself as farce. Herken's blindness to this is as revealing as the Washington Post's
madness, not yet as suicidal as its former proprietor's, today.
So mesmerized is Herken by the moneyed backgrounds of his subjects and sources, and by the
amount of black cash from the US Government they spent on operations, he forgets to report what
they did to fill their own pockets. The claim by the New Yorker that "no one got rich from the
arrangement" – Alsop's fake news fabrications – is false, but Herken touches only
in passing on how they made (or kept) their money. Alsop's column, for example, was sold to 200
newspapers, and at one time claimed a readership of 25 million. His family inheritance is
recorded, but not its annual revenue value. Alsop's payola included silk shirts from Alfred
Kohlberg, a textile importer from China who backed Chiang Kai-shek against Mao Tse-tung, as did
Alsop. Alsop's patrons included Convair (General Dynamics), the company building the US Air
Force Atlas missile for procurement of which Alsop reported fictions about Soviet missile
strength.
In the US power which Alsop, Kennan and Wisner believed without hesitation, Herken is not
less a believer. "Anything could be achieved", Herken quotes a New York Times reporter quoting
Wisner. When the US force multiple changed, however, and US allies or agents were outgunned,
outspent, outnumbered, or outwitted, they were unable to acknowledge miscalculation,
attributing defeat instead to the superior force or guile of their adversaries, especially the
Russians.
This is madness, and there is good reason for recognizing the symptoms again. In 1958, when
Herken says Wisner's paranoid manias were becoming obvious to his friends and colleagues,
"Frank put forward a theory that the careless comment which had gotten George Kennan kicked out
of the Soviet Union was evidence the Soviets had succeeded in an area where the CIA's own
scientists had failed: mind control. Some agency hands alleged that Wisner attributed his own
increasingly bizarre behaviour to the Kremlin's sly manipulation."
From Washington in 1958, fast forward to Washington in 2017; for mind control and sly
manipulation, read Russian hacking and cyber warfare. From Wisner's and Kennan's balloon drops
of leaflets and broadcasts by Radio Free Europe, fast forward to Russia Today Television and
Russian infiltrations of Twitter, Google, the Democratic National Committee, and the Trump
organization.
It stands to reason (ahem!) that if you think what the US Government and its journalists
were doing then was mad, you are might conclude that what they is doing now is just as mad
– and not very different. When the incumbent president and his Secretary of State
publicly call for IQ tests on each other, all reason has failed. "The nation," as Alsop had
written, "had simply taken leave of all sense of proportion." That was in March 1954.
If you fast forward to now, there's one difference. Today the lunatic Russia warfighters
don't retire. They also don't fade away. Today's sleek successors to mad Wisner and mad Graham
sleep easily in their beds a-nights. For what they've done and do, they wouldn't dream of
taking shotguns to their heads.
Herken retells the story of the campaign Alsop waged against McCarthyism at the State
Department, against McCarthy himself, and the vulnerability Alsop himself presented until the
Boston lawyer Joseph Welch put an end to McCarthy on June 9, 1954 : "Have you no sense of decency,
sir, at long last?" Welch famously said. "Have you left no sense of decency?" The recurring
history reveals why, even if there are plenty of people to say the same thing today to the
Washington Post, New York Times, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, the madness will continue
repeating itself.
Wisner's son married the stepmother of Nicolas Sarkozy. This facilitated the Sarkozy
family's links with Wall Street (Guillaume at Credit Suisse and Carlyle and Nicolas'
stepdaughter Judith Martin (daughter of France's Bruce Forsyth and Cecilia Albeniz) at Morgan
Stanley, the latter at Canary Wharf).
A year ago, before his elimination in the Republicain primary, Sarko met executives from
Goldman Sachs to discuss a move from London to Paris due to Brexit. Sarko promised bespoke
personal and corporate tax arrangements in return for a relocation and fanfare. Sarko was
keen on the fanfare and planned to exploit that, thinking it would be a PR coup soon between
his election and the August shut down.
Kay Graham was the daughter of a former partner at Lazard Freres. Her father bought the
WaPo after his retirement. The family and its plaything rag formed part of Operation
Mockingbird.
Also worth mentioning that he purchased the WaPo in 1933. Per wikipedia, " In June
1933, he bought the Washington Post at a bankruptcy auction, for $825,000 ".
Pre-sages Bezos buying the WaPo on the cheap too. Can't say I would have thought of Bezos
as being a Russia scare-monger. I guess it's the flip-side of regime change. If you're in the
regime preservation business, perhaps that means regime changing your enemies. In which case,
never let a good crisis go to waste. And if a crisis isn't available well if a newspaper
can't figure out how to manufacture a crisis out of the available pool of evil-doers, then
really why even have a newspaper?
Bezos to Russia, "It's nothing personal, it's just business". Bezos to Trump, "It's
personal."
Seems like that is the under the radar amount of supposed funding for Fronts.
Slowly it dawned on me, or I simply put two and two together realizing I was working for a
CIA/MI6 Front. Explained why mediocrities, liars & thieves had secure jobs.
American Airlines is most probably the inheritor of Air America's freight operations,
station agents, & to pilots a great system for overt & covert operations gets 685
million a year.
IN-Q-TEL the CIA retirement benefits fund for agents gets 685 million as well.
I don't remember where I read the figures. See what you find out?
When I worked the independent movie scene in NYC all the budgets were 100 thousand
dollars.
Now how you know, or the commentators know what they are saying here, I don't know. We are
aware that the US power structure found it convenient to blame, or imply the blame for all
that was stupid and violent in politics in the US on the Russians who as a secretive
organization by habit made the picture plausible.
If oligarchs money fleeing Russia came to America and was a source of Industrial Service
Banking it would be a victory. As it is the working classes in the US and Russia end up with
the same leaders only different.
As it is the game is the same with it being real estate and art.
If there is one thing about Russians, they lust to possess beauty.
Otherwise from my experience they are difficult to do business with and you get more respect
when you up front don't trust them so they can act like Russians.
I pitched to the Atlantic "Statehood for Russia" when the Cold War supposedly ended.
With the propaganda going into what Americans look at and voter system hacking it is evident
they want to be a state.
Outstanding article and excellent commentary points and to elaborate just on several facts
stated: ("Wisner went mad and killed himself, as did Graham.") -- this might have been the
case, but most curiously, both Wisner and Graham were first treated at Chestnut Lodge
Sanitarium in Rockville, MD at the CIA's MK ULTRA wing, then they both would return home and
commit suicide?! This was also the facility where the CIA would send a research nutritionist
(do not know whether they connived her, or it was against her will, etc., but she did not
work for the Agency) who was researching an Amazonian plant with unique properties, and after
her treatment, she never mentioned said plant or research ever again?!.
Also, this is where Richard Helms, then CIA director, had his famous auto accident right
before giving testimony before the Church Committee (when he perjured himself and later was
officially censured by Congress). Helms claimed he was seeing a psychoanalyst (basis for a
simpleton movie from Hollywood called "The President's Analyst" -- probably involved Harry
Weinstein) -- but it was because Helms was shredding all the MK ULTRA files kept there prior
to appearing before the Church Committee.
And Joe Alsop was cousin to several CIA dudes, Kermit Roosevelt and Archibald Roosevelt,
whereupon he received his "tips" or misinformation.
And the Colonel explains Sarkozy's familial background quite nicely, but to further add it
was Wisner and John Negroponte, working through the Franco-American Foundation, who were
supposed to be behind the concocted false scandals against Sarkozy's presidential opponent
which allowed Sarkozy to win the election the first time. (The second time, Sarkozy was
behind that NYC airport "incident" which blow up in his face, resulting in a Hollande
victory.)
There are further Wall Street links in the Sarkozy family. Olivier, half-brother of
Nicolas, was at CS First Boston and worked briefly with our company on an engagement some
years ago. His colleagues remarked on his pedigree and ability to open doors where others
couldn't.
So the USA had no hand in arming Japan and encouraging them to attack Russia, successfully
in 1904? Who stirred up Japan, forcing them with battleships to trade, actually firing on
Japan. USA has always had war plans for the invasion of every country on Earth, since the Civil
War, if not before.
It has always been fighting on foreign soil since it was formed by violence against a
lawful sovereign. Except for 20 years!!!
WWII was a result of rearmament of Germany, by USA and its banker allies. They wanted USSR
in ashes. In the end they had to rescue Germany, failing in that and losing half of Europe.
That must be smart!
It [USA] has always been fighting on foreign soil since it was formed by violence
against a lawful sovereign.
The monarchy of George III? Lawful sovereign? Who elected George III? Nobody. Who elected
the members of Parliament? Nobody in America, and only adult males who could meet stringent
properly requirements in Britain. Britain in 1775/1776 was definitely not a lawful sovereign
over any territory in the North American continent.
Don't forget Woody Wilson sending the troops to Vladivostok after WW1. Communism was
always regarded as an existential threat by the then WASPy, now not so WASPy elites.
And re Kennan, the recent Ken Burns Vietnam documentary shows him casting doubts on the
Vietnam intervention at a Congressional hearing. Kennan said the policy was like the elephant
being terrified of the mouse. So his Russia obsession does seem to have been more about power
rivalry than ideological apostasy.
If this is true, why did the US send 17.5 M tons of material to the USSR, through
Lend Lease ,
during WW2?
Roughly 17.5 million tons of military equipment, vehicles, industrial supplies, and food
were shipped from the Western Hemisphere to the USSR, 94% coming from the US. For
comparison, a total of 22 million tons landed in Europe to supply American forces from
January 1942 to May 1945.
One item typical of many was a tire plant that was lifted bodily from the Ford Company's
River Rouge Plant and transferred to the USSR. The 1947 money value of the supplies and
services amounted to about eleven billion dollars.
Wasn't Henry Ford supposed to be a Na*i?
While repayment of the interest-free loans was required after the end of the war under
the act, in practice the U.S. did not expect to be repaid by the USSR after the war. The
U.S. received $2M in reverse Lend-Lease from the USSR. This was mostly in the form of
landing, servicing, and refueling of transport aircraft; some industrial machinery and rare
minerals were sent to the U.S. The U.S. asked for $1.3B at the cessation of hostilities to
settle the debt, but was only offered $170M by the USSR. The dispute remained unresolved
until 1972, when the U.S. accepted an offer from the USSR to repay $722M linked to grain
shipments from the U.S., with the remainder being written off.
So $722M in 1972 dollars for $11B in 1947 dollars?
If this is true, why did the US send 17.5 M tons of material to the USSR, through Lend
Lease, during WW2?
They suspended their death wish because without the USSR they could very well have lost to
the Nazis. Short of a successful invasion of Britain, the availability to the Nazis of a
small portion of the tank and aerial forces that were getting chewed up in the Soviet Union
would have led to the easy conquest of North Africa and the loss of the Suez canal. That
would have been hard for the Allies to recover from. Once the war was won it was time to
shift back into playing the innocent party responding to Soviet aggression.
The U.S. also sent $20 million in food aid to the Soviets during the famine of 1921-1922.
The U.S. attitude towards Russia / Soviet Union is complex and contradictory. Members of the
U.S. establishment mostly opposed the Soviets, but future President Herbert Hoover's role in
the famine relief project shows that there were exceptions.
By the 1930s, the behavior of Stalin justified opposition to the Soviets, although I think
that for a long time, many (perhaps most) of the Americans who opposed them did so for the
wrong reasons.
Hoover's role in famine relief was about more than food distribution. By 1911-1912 or so
he was director of the Russo-Asiatic Corporation and had extensive oil, mining, and timber
interests in Russia, all of which made him very, very wealthy. These interests were
relinquished prior to the Revolution, which Hoover vehemently opposed. According to Sayers
and Kahn in The Great Conspiracy Against Russia, "He was to remain one of the world's
bitterest foes of the Soviet Government for the rest of his life. It is a fact, whatever his
personal motive may have been, that American food sustained the White Russians and fed the
storm troops of the most reactionary regimes in Europe which were engaged in suppressing the
upsurge of democracy after the First World War. Thus American relief became a weapon against
the peoples' movements in Europe."
This is Disaster Capitalism 100 years ago.
The quote is footnoted. The footnote reads: "Herbert Hoover's activities as Food Relief
Administrator were directed toward giving aid to the White Russians and withholding all
supplies to the Soviets. Hundreds of thousands starved in Soviet territory. When, finally,
Hoover bowed to public pressure and sent some food to the Soviets he continued according to a
statement by a Near East Relief official in the New York World in April, 1922 -- to
'interfere with the collection of funds for famine-stricken Russia.' In February, 1992, when
Hoover was Secretary of Commerce, the New York Globe made this editorial comment:
'Bureaucrats centered throughout the Department of Justice, the Department of State and the
Department of Commerce for purposes of publicity are carrying on a private war with the
Bolshevist Government Washington propaganda has grown to menacing proportions Messrs. Hughes
and Hoover and Dougherty will do well to clean their houses before public irritation reaches
too high a point. The American people will not long endure a presumptuous bureaucracy which
for its own wretched purposes is willing to let millions of innocent people die."
In 1919, when the American Relief Administration first offered to help Russia, it's very
plausible that they only wanted to help the regions under White control. But the Soviets
refused foreign assistance at that time. In 1921, when the famine was worse, the Whites
didn't control much outside of portions of Siberia. I think the worst areas of famine were in
eastern Ukraine and the nearby parts of Russia. I don't think the Whites controlled any of
that territory any longer, but I could be wrong. I think that Hoover's aid helped a lot of
people in Soviet areas. And yes, he was anti-communist.
Also there was considerable sympathy towards Germany among the Latin American elites.
Several countries, such as Paraguay and Argentina, would likely have jumped aboard the Axis
bandwagon if it began to look like they'd come out on top.
The percentage of battle deaths incurred by the Germans on the Eastern front was at a
minimum 70%, and by some counts over 90%. If Operation Barbarosa had not been launched in
1941 and a truce had held on that front it is unlikely that the Anglo-American alliance could
have sustained a a landing on continental Europe in the west. This would have especially been
the case if the Germans, instead of putting their chips on Barbarosa, had been able to
successfully shut off British use of the Suez Canal, and thus deprive them of ready access to
the resources from India and especially the oil from Iran. Given British naval dominance of
the Mediterranean, however, this would have been difficult unless they were able to negotiate
passage to the Levant by land through Turkey and the Balkans.
Agreed. Instead of peddling diagnoses he would do well to stick with the attacking the
crudity of Kennan's view of world affairs. Kennan saw the Soviets as akin to "windup toys"
that were somehow driven to expand. In this he completely failed to account for the fact that
the Soviets were potentially autarchic, while the capitalist West was governed by
accumulation imperatives that pushed for market expansion. He doesn't bother himself with the
problem but jumps right into rationalizing base construction and an arms race. That Kennan is
seen as a kind of geostrategic genius speaks volumes regarding the self-deluded mindlessness
of US foreign policy.
This article sounds more like an angry emotional outburst from Helmer. It wouldn't
surprise me if he's one of the people taking a lot of crap in all this Russian propaganda
hysteria.
Yes, I know about his depression. But the claim that he was a psychopath? That stretches
believability. Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, John Wayne Gacy, and Ted Bundy were examples of
psychopaths. I don't think that George Kennan was like them.
Russia-phobia is actually 100 years old. Strangely, I haven't seen any commemoration of
the centenary of 1917 Revolution. Nobody can deny that it was a world-changing event.
The Bolshevik Revolution, that overtook the Kerensky Revolution shocked the world to the
core, particularly the Church. It quickly alienated even syndicalists and anarchists, because
it developed into a strong centralized state, not the bottom up movement that Lenin found
when he entered Petrograd.
The last 4 years of Nato intervention in the Baltics, Poland and
the Ukraine have shown that the world has never recovered from that shock. British opposition
to Russia goes even deeper, back to the Great Game and the Crimean War. Without Churchill
vehemently opposing Russia in general and Stalin in particular would there even be a Nato?
History is more about continuity than discontinuity.
I'm glad you mentioned Churchill. Since the first Directors of the OSS and the CIA were
complete Anglophiles and modeled their collection techniques on Britian's SIS (MI-6) (until,
of course, those famous British spies were uncovered), it is not surprising that our first
after the war "enemies" were the same as Churchill's enemies
I have a sneaking suspicion that the troubles of the world have such a basic foundation
that if they are ever solved, people will look back, marveling at the simplicity of the
answers.
Humans have always faced the dilemma of how to organize society. The main sticking points
being how to control personal ambition in ones own group and how to get the work done that
needs doing- including protecting oneself form ones neighbors who are dealing with the same
issues.
Capitalism, and the west in general, seem to turn personal ambition loose. It takes a
persons personal confrontation and experience with the universe and makes that the primary
motivator for organization. It serves to reward the aggressive while insulating failure as a
personal shortcoming, not a flaw in the system. The Catholic religion, which underpins such a
system by giving it a spiritual legitimacy. The individual can have a personal relationship
with the creator of the universe- with the moderating teaching of caring for the poor to curb
excessive personal ambition or too close a connection. That hasn't worked out so well as the
poor are with us still and the argument is given that the poor will be with us forever. The
Divine right of Kings and all that.
Godless Communists challenged all that and the results still haven't worked themselves
out.
Endless wars seem to be an excuse to justify recurring cycles of hate. Love your God, and
spite your enemies.
The promise of Socialism is that the tools of science and reason can be used to relieve
human suffering and provide for a meaningful life. That vision remains unborn because those
sentiments are always snuffed out as quickly as they take hold.
I have a sneaking suspicion that the troubles of the world have such a basic foundation
that if they are ever solved, people will look back, marveling at the simplicity of the
answers.
I have the exact same suspicion. We might, in fact, understand the basic foundation and
already have the solutions but, to use your words, they are always snuffed out as quickly as
they take hold -- which is itself its own intractable problem.
Interesting observation about McCarthyism as a feature of the lower classes. Particularly
about what the hate and fear was directed against: bankers, lawyers, Jews, homosexuals,
communists One of the big actors in that great national drama was a fella named Roy Cohn, who
kind of fell into almost all of those categories (except maybe "communist", though with Cohn,
who was also a mob lawyer and buddy of J. Edgar Hoover, who knows?).
And for Trump haters, or those who are trying to "understand" the guy, there's even a
great big Cohn Connection, which is fun to read about here: " A mentor in shamelessness:
the man who taught Trump the power of publicity
Roy Cohn, the lawyer who embraced infamy during the McCarthy hearings and Rosenberg trial,
influenced Donald Trump to turn the tabloids into a soapbox " ,
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/apr/20/roy-cohn-donald-trump-joseph-mccarthy-rosenberg-trial
Interesting observation about McCarthyism as a feature of the lower classes.
I noted that too. It gives credence to Matt Stoller's observation that the elites / 1%ers
are not monolithic but are fractions that can and do fight each other.
Tangentially, I saw the Angels in America in London, which includes a vivid
portrait of Roy Cohn. On his deathbed, watched over by Ethel Rosenberg, Cohn dekes Rosenberg
into singing him off to his last sleep out of pity A touching moment until Cohn sits up and
yells "Fooled ya!" (paraphrasing).
America was born of conquest. The North American continent is/was vast in scale and
resources. The vision was never to live in such a place as more to conquer it and extract its
resources. That mentality is still prominent as the resource base has not been depleted yet
and energies are directed to further exploitation- fracking and the opening of the arctic
regions. Even now, an argument can be made that American corporations are more concerned
about exploiting their customers for profit, than the health of the citizenry. That is the
motivational force behind our governing elite, not some attachment to the land and its people
and the desire to make the world a better place.
American Exceptionalism is based on conquest and the right for individuals to exploit
those resources to their own end. By that standard it continues to be a success. Communism,
in principle, was an ideology opposed to that vision. Under no circumstances can such an
ideology be allowed to exist, so was set for extermination by force and disinformation. Once
that process takes hold, you live in a world devoid of reality. It is fantasy.
Naked greed cannot be justified for long without some form of damage taking place in the
human psyche. Reflection is not prevalent in the American creed. The rise of American
Corporations to the detriment of the nations citizens is a confirmation of that fact. For how
can a nation be "Great" if its citizens are driven into poverty?
You become a Nation of crazy people.
Greed and misuse of Power lead to crazy. Instead of trying to talk sense to crazy people,
sanity lies in the opposite direction. Less greed and an articulation of the proper use of
power. Implementation is another matter.
Thanks for the reading suggestions, and I especially second the the mention of Douglass's
JFK and the Unspeakable. TTBOMK although it's nearly ten years old it's the best analysis out
there of the John Kennedy assassination.
Saying "Russia (aka the Soviet Union)" (as Helmer does) is akin to saying "California (aka
The United States". It is a false statement.
The Soviet Union (1917-1991) was a materialist anti-christian, anti religious totalitarian
State. Godlessness was the ruling precept of Soviet society.
In 1923, Lenin created the first Soviet Concentration Camp, at the "re-purposed", Russian
Orthodox Solovetsky Monastery. Solovetsky was used as the prototype for the Gulag network of
camps. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solovki_prison_camp
IMO, today, the USA is the World Epicenter of materialism, internationalism, greed and
godlessness.
Conversely, Russia (2017) is a Nationalist, Orthodox Christian Democracy. No wonder our
materialistic rulers are so "hysterically", (The APA says, "conversion disorder". Casual
psychiatric diagnosis of opponents is a breeze now!), fearful of Russia, and the Biblical,
little David, with his sling and stone (Putin).
There is a vast body of scholarly work on the origins of the Cold War from many different
perspectives, into which context this analysis is trivial and downright loopy. The Georgetown
Set got us into it? It was "mad" to oppose the Soviet Union and now Russia? Oh, please.
Western opposition to Russian communism pre-dates Joe Alsop and his bowties by decades.
The revolutionary regime that weakened the WWI alliance and prolonged that bloody war by
making a separate peace with Germany wasn't going to be well-liked by its former allies in
the first place. The same regime preached the violent overthrow of democratically-elected
western governments, who reacted as one might expect, including the (poorly-considered)
intervention of 1918-1920.
Stalin then gave the world many, many reasons not to trust Russia – brutal
repression on a hitherto unheard of scale, mass murder, disastrous economic policies leading
to mass famine, show trials and active promotion of Soviet-style take-overs elsewhere. Even
before WWII and the start of the Cold War there was plenty not to like. During the war,
Western governments bowed to geopolitical reality and allied with the USSR, despite Stalin's
cynical deal with Hitler to divide Poland just before, but Poland provides one of the best
samplings of why opposing the USSR/Russia after geopolitical realities changed at the end of
the war was not only understandable but a very good idea. Shortly after Russia took over in
eastern Poland the NKVD rounded up and brutally murdered 22,000 military officers, police
officers, public officials and assorted intellectuals, i.e. anyone who could think
independently and oppose Russian rule, and threw the bodies into pits dug in the Katyn
Forest. The Soviets denied this for decades, blaming it on the Nazi's, but finally fessed up
in 1990 during perestroika, now best understood as a brief twinkling of light in Russia's
dark history. Reports had leaked out of the massacre and other Soviet atrocities during the
war, which played a large role in mobilizing another major force in U.S. politics that was
deeply skeptical of the USSR after the war – ethnic Eastern Europeans.
The West and Russia did do deals at Yalta and Tehran on spheres of influence, but there
was ambiguity as to what that meant and words were thrown in about national
self-determination and free elections. After the war the West (mostly) promoted democratic
government, at least in Europe, while the Soviets laughed at the joke and imposed their
brutal regimes anywhere they could. Stalin's last living legacy is the horror show in North
Korea, where he installed a Soviet agent as head of the regime, now a dynasty. Kennan's Long
Cable/Article X, which is still well worth reading, dealt with the causes of Soviet
expansionism as part of Russia's long, troubled history and urged containment as an
alternative to more active opposition ("roll-back"), which largely worked in Europe. As the
counterpoint to containment, when Sec State Dean Acheson omitted Korea from the U.S.
"defensive perimeter" in his January 1950 speech, the North invaded the South with Soviet
support five months later. It was after that experience that containment went global.
With the exception of Kennan, the people mentioned may have had influence but were not the
real policy makers. Truman, George Marshall and Dean Acheson were the primary architects of
U.S postwar policy. Only Acheson lived in Georgetown, and he thought Alsop was a "pest."
Acheson took on Kennan as his staff chief because he had deep expertise on Russia and largely
made sense. The off-hand comments in the article about Kennan being a psychopath and coward
were made with no support and are at odds with his reputation as a pragmatist and
traditionalist in foreign policy. He was recently most well known for his quaint view that
the U.S. should declare wars as required by the Constitution before getting into them. Alsop
was a commentator not a policy maker and was regarded as somewhat of a fringe character, not
least because he was gay in the 1950s. As for the rest of the U.S. elite at the time, far
more of them had been sympathetic to Russia in their youths than rabid anti-communists. The
typical Cold Warrior was made that way not by bowtie-wearing but by sober, mature observation
of what the Soviet regime was all about.
So let's do fast-forward to the present day. No one with an objective understanding of
Russian history is at all surprised that a regime headed by one of their former secret
policemen is tampering with elections, fomenting political divisions and trying to disrupt
the western alliance. All the evidence supports those conclusions and more comes out every
day. Facebook, Google, the scope is astounding. In Helmer's piece we see the birth of a new
phenomenon, on the same intellectual level as climate-change denial. It's electing-tampering
denial.
I think if NC-ers wanted to read official propaganda, they could just subscribe to NYT.
The only thing that your comment demonstrates is that you've no idea what "objective
understanding of Russian history" could possibly be.
Was that an argument? The problem Russian apologists have is that periodically, after
years or decades of denial, the truth finally comes out from a Russian source, usually when
it's convenient to blame their predecessor. Khrushchev finally admitted Stalin's "mistakes",
like anyone really needed confirmation that his regime had murdered millions. Gorbachev
finally had the guts to admit the NKVD liquidated the Polish elite, which everyone else
(except the "useful idiots") had known for a long time, etc. That was the context of the Cold
War and the original posting. U.S. containment policy responded to real actions and constant
lying by the USSR as it imposed totalitarian regimes throughout Eastern Europe and elsewhere,
not some goofy chatter at Georgetown cocktail parties. Every one of those countries, as soon
as they had freedom to choose, bolted for the West and NATO.
As for election-tampering denial, sure looks like it's real. This was a new twist –
deny something simply because it's been reported in the NYT (Russian sources, and Donald
Trump, being so much more credible). But some other historical truth-telling pertains here.
If you want to understand what Vladimir Putin and his fellow secret policemen did in East
Germany, despite decades of denial, you can now go to the Stasi archives. It's a museum that
documents 44 years of soul-crushing repression, cynical manipulation of neighbor against
neighbor and systematic subversion of anyone or any group that might speak up against the
state. It's not hard at all to believe that someone who came of age with that background
would take advantage of such an easy way to undermine their U.S. adversaries. In fact, it's
hard to believe they wouldn't.
Well said. Thank you. My comment was much shorter, but said many of the same things. It
was censored. Much shorter version: Asserting that George Kennan was a lunatic is lunacy.
For the life of me, I still cannot figure out why people are in an absolute panic over
Russian "agents" buying $100,000.00, or whatever, worth of advertising promoting either or
both sides of the election when U.S.citizens and Political Parties spent over $1.6
billion.
Are American citizens really so stupid as to fall for the amazingly, brilliantly conceived
and placed $100K worth of Russian advertising, so clever that it superseded $1.6 billion
worth of U.S. citizen ads?
Or (to misquote Shakespeare/Macbeth) is it a tale told by propagandists, full of sound and
fury, signifying nothing?
"After the war the West (mostly) promoted democratic government, at least in Europe, "
Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the play?
I am surprised no one else responded to this screed. I agree that the Soviet Union had a
horrific human rights record, but that little snippet I quote above is like a relic from the
silliest days of Cold War propaganda. As for Russian meddling, the evidence is that probably
something happened, in my opinion, but if people were serious they would keep some sense of
proportion. I read the NYT articles and melodramatic language is doing an awful lot of work
with regards to the Facebook claims.
If I accepted everything I have read at face value our
democracy was so fragile literally anyone willing to hire some hackers and spend a minuscule
amount of money could have destroyed it. Heck, if I and a few friends were willing to
mortgage our homes and cash in our retirement funds we could fund its destruction
ourselves.
Richard Spence, professor of history at the University of Idaho, has just published "Wall
Street and the Russian Revolution: 1905 – 1925." This is a fascinating book that I
would think at least some of the above commenters would be interested in. Spence has updated
Anthony Sutton's earlier work with new/more archival research and access to new/more recently
declassified documents.
I haven't finished it as it came in the mail yesterday, but it does have a few interesting
comments about George Kennan not the above George Kennan but his distant cousin who in 1891
published a book entitled "Siberia and the Exile System." So it seems that Russia-hating ran
in the family. The cousin Kennan claimed to have assisted in the distribution of a ton and a
half of literature to Russian POWs in Japan during the Russo-Japanese War. This, according to
Kennan, was financed by Jacob Schiff and caused many of the POWs to become liberals and
revolutionaries opposed to the Tsar.
Fleshing out the role of capitalist/financial interests in the Revolution is certainly
important. These were the deep state actors of 100 years ago. The names of the people and the
interests they represent may have changed, but the chicanery hasn't.
" the Clinton administration decided to move NATO into former Warsaw Pact nations,
violating a understanding made as part of the peaceful dissolution". The "peaceful
dissolution" of the Soviet "union", I presume?
NATO was formed in 1948 in response to the Soviet refusal to withdraw from the Eastern
European nations it continued to control with puppet governments and Soviet troops after
WWll. The Soviets responded by forming the Warsaw Pact -- consisting of those very same
nations: (East) Germany, Poland, Czechoslavakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, and Albania. The
only time Warsaw Pact troops were used militarily was against its own members -- Hungary in
1956, and Czechoslavakia in 1968.
The collapse of the USSR started in 1989, with the collapse of the Berlin Wall, and
culminated in 1991 with the failed coup by hardliners against Gorbachev in August of 1991,
though the official end did not come until the formal dissolution on December 26, 1991.
In the following years, all of the Warsaw Pact nations, plus the illegally annexed and
occupied Baltic nations of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, having regained their sovereignty,
all made a point of joining NATO -- to make sure that the Russian bear did not return to do
even more damage.
What "understanding" was violated? It is a popular myth that the Russians were "promised"
that NATO would not expand to the east. Who made this promise to who, and under what
authority? Did the nations of Eastern Europe, after half a century of Russian control,
voluntarily cede the power to determine their future alliances to the Clinton Administration?
The premise is absurd on its face. In any case, how do you keep a "promise" to a political
entity- the USSR- which no longer exists?
Russian interference in Ukraine, and the forced annexation of Crimea (reminiscent of
Stalin's annexation of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania in 1940), has validated the pragmatism
of its former vassal states in joining NATO. Russia is not being threatened by its neighbor's
membership in NATO; to them, Russia is the threat.
You should ask Jim Baker, who had confirmed that an agreement regarding NATO was made. In
addition to many other people present at the time Why try at revisionist history now ?
And FIY, Estonia, Latvia, and Litva were a part of the czarist Russia for more than 300 yrs.
Soviet Union gave up the territories in the terrible peace it had to sign with Germany before
the end of WWI. After the next war, which it won, it simply took back the areas – kinda
like the French took back Alsace-Lorraine, after victory over German in WWI.
Knowing history is really a good thing
More Russians troops are buried in the soil of the Crimea than the US lost in Europe
during WWI &WWII as well. The West or it's proxies have been after it for nearly as long
as The Great Game has been in play. But that's what Russia gets for helping Lincoln by
keeping France and Britain from actively coming in on the side of the Confederates. Never
help an ingrate.
That's two misreadings of history. There was no agreement not to expand NATO, which is
confirmed by both Jim Baker and Mikhail Gorbachev, the other guy there at the table. The only
agreement made was that NATO would not put nuclear weapons or non-German troops in the former
GDR. That agreement has been kept.
The Baltic states had all declared their independence from Russia before the Russian peace
with Germany, so they weren't anyone's to give. If they were ever "transferred" to Germany
they didn't stay German for long – in fact a couple of them defeated German armies in
battle towards the end of WWI. They were all independent by 1920, part of the wave of
national self-determination after WWI that saw the liberation of lots of smaller countries
that had been dominated by one of the defunct empires. Lithuania, of course, hadn't always
been so small – at one point it was the largest country in Europe and included parts of
what became Russia. Comparisons with Alsace are absurd on several levels.
"... That's pretty rich, coming from a country and from people who actually genuinely, and in proven ways, have subverted democracy in Europe since the late 1940s - Italy being one of the clearest cases. ..."
"... For the life of me I cannot figure why Americans want a war/conflict with Russia. I can't believe it has to do with the economy. There's got to be a far better nefarious reason. Even during the real cold war we tried to avoid conflict. Absolute insanity. ..."
"... American media has graduated from simply repeating the lies of "unnamed government sources" to repeating the lies of any organization unofficially blessed by the powers that be. ..."
"... In that The Narrative is tightly controlled in the corporate media, not matter how strong the proofs or arguments about the falsity of these propaganda campaigns are, little or no circulation of those proofs or arguments wlll reach the general public. ..."
"... The thing that bothers me, is the fact that the MIC Globalists don't care what we think or how poor their deceptions are. ..."
"... The cleverest trick used in propaganda against a specific country is to accuse it of what the accuser itself is doing. ..."
"... I've always put it down to the Washington Establishment having a severe case of psychological projection. ..."
"... The warmongering is not intended to make any sense - not many people are trained in critical thinking and logic, and even when they are, they can be swamped by their own emotions or other people's emotions. ..."
"... Propaganda is intended to appeal to people's emotions and fears. You can try reading works by Edward Bernays - "Crystallizing Public Opinion" (1923) and "Propaganda" (1928) - to see how he uses his uncle Sigmund Freud's theories of the mind to create strategies for manipulating public opinion. ..."
"... The American Security State needs enemies to exist, otherwise there's no need for the "security" which translates into big bucks for the Military-Industrial-Congressional-Media Complex. They can't agree on the ranking of the enemies: North Korea is a threat to the world! Iran is....! Russia is...! China is....! But the threats are there, and they are pure evil (TPTB contend). ..."
"... Sad but definitely correct. The first casualty of war is the truth. It's dead in the USA and allies. Therefore, they're at war with Russia and China. If Russia is down, China will be dealt with. ..."
"... Some years ago, I noticed the American media and politicians were sort of going soft (actually mushy) in the brain department, but I was told not to be so judgemental. As the months went by, I saw more and more people saying "they have gone nuts". So, it turns out I am not alone after all. ..."
"... That madness comes from having no behavioural limits, no references outside of your own opinion but groupthink, and manipulating the language to suit your ambitions (the Orwellism of the US media has been repeatedly pointed at). Simply put, you don't know anymore what's what outside of the narrative your group pushes, you go nuts. The manipulators ends up caught in their lies. All the more when they makes money out of it, which would be the case of all those think tanks and media. ..."
"... Honestly, the story of democracy (by capitalist/liberal class) is a grand BS, to be modest. The only thing what was truthful, paradoxically, is who is "lesser evil" of two. Or the Bigger one in unrestrained capitalism, savage and monopoly, predatory and a fascists one. ..."
"... War or the threat of war is needed to distract attention from rapidly devolving societal bonds and immense economic inequality. ..."
"... The US is progressing toward a fascist police state; therefore, Russia is said to be a horrible dictatorship run by Putin. The US traditionally meddles in elections around the world, including Russia; therefore, the Russians are said to meddle in US elections. The US is the most aggressive country on the planet, occupying and bombing dozens of countries; therefore, the Russians are accused of "aggression." And so on ..."
"... The US actually spends $75 billion per year---more than Russia's entire $69 billion defense budget---spying on and meddling in the politics of virtually every nation on earth. An outfit within NSA called Tailored Access Operations (TAO) has a multi-billion annual budget and does nothing put troll the global internet and does so with highly educated, highly paid professionals, not $4 per hour keyboard jockeys." ..."
"... Zbignew Brzezenski explained in his 1997 book "The Grand Chessboard" why global hegemony required taking control over Russia (and how to do it, which boils down to taking the other chess pieces off the board (Iraq/Ukraine/etc. and then pulling off a "color revolution," coup or military conquest). ..."
"... Msm, bellingcat and other think tanks - they push their anti Russian racism too far making a large section of westerners just tired of their hysteria. Exposing their own racism and paranoia. ..."
"... Globalization . . . is a program to create private corporate rights to trade, invest, lend or borrow money and buy and own property anywhere in the world without much hindrance by national governments. It would bar governments from most of the common methods of helping or protecting their national industries and employment. It is a winners' program promoted chiefly by some business interests, governments and neoclassical economists in Europe and the United States. ..."
"... One of its purposes is to intensify international competition for jobs. Together with other Right policies it is likely to maintain some unemployment in the rich countries and reduce the wage rates of their lower-paid workers, and reduce the proportion of secure employment. Hugh Stretton, Economics: A New Introduction ..."
"... The anti-russian think tanks, msm, bellingcat etc push this too much, making them look stupid. ..."
"... Assange: "Regardless of whether IRA's activities were audience building through pandering to communities or whether a hare-brained Russian government plan to "heighten the differences" existed, its activities are clearly strategically insignificant compared to the other forces at play." ..."
The U.S. mainstream media are going nuts. They now make up and report stories based on the
uncritical acceptance of an algorithm they do not want to understand and which is known to
produce fake results.
SAN FRANCISCO -- One hour after news broke about the school shooting in Florida last week,
Twitter accounts suspected of having links to Russia released hundreds of posts taking up
the gun control debate.
The accounts addressed the news with the speed of a cable news network. Some adopted the
hashtag #guncontrolnow. Others used #gunreformnow and #Parklandshooting. Earlier on
Wednesday, before the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland,
Fla., many of those accounts had been focused on the investigation by the special counsel
Robert S. Mueller III into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election.
In other words - the "Twitter accounts suspected of having links to Russia" were following
the current news just as cable news networks do. When a new sensational event happened they
immediately jumped onto it. But the NYT authors go to length to claim that there is some
nefarious Russian scheme behind this that uses automated accounts to spread divisive
issues.
Those claims are based on this propaganda project:
Last year, the Alliance for Securing Democracy, in conjunction with the German Marshall
Fund, a public policy research group in Washington, created a website that tracks hundreds
of Twitter accounts of human users and suspected bots that they have linked to a Russian
influence campaign.
The "Alliance for Securing Democracy" is
run by military lobbyists, CIA
minions and neo-conservative propagandists. Its
claimed task is:
... to publicly document and expose Vladimir Putin's ongoing efforts to subvert democracy
in the United States and Europe.
There is no evidence that Vladimir Putin ever made or makes such efforts.
The ASD "Hamilton 68" website shows graphics with rankings of "top items"
and "trending items" allegedly used by Russian bots or influence agents. There is nothing
complicate behind it. It simply tracks the tweets of 600 Twitter users and aggregates the
hashtags they use. It does not say which Twitter accounts its algorithms follows. It
claims
that the 600 were selected by one of three criteria: 1. People who often tweet news that also
appears on RT (Russia Today) and Sputnik News, two general news sites
sponsored by the Russian government; 2. People who "openly profess to be pro-Russian"; 3.
accounts that "appear to use automation" to boost the same themes that people in group 1 and
2 tweet about.
Nowhere does the group say how many of the 600 accounts it claims to track belong to which
group. Are their 10 assumed bots or 590 in the surveyed 600 accounts? And how please does one
"openly profess" to be pro-Russian? We don't know and the ASD won't say.
On December 25 2017 the "Russian influence" agents or bots who - according to NYT - want
to sow divisiveness and subvert democracy,
wished everyone
a #MerryChristmas.
The real method the Hamilton 68 group used to select the 600 accounts it tracks is
unknown. The group does not say or show how it made it up. Despite that the NYT reporters,
Sheera Frenkel and Daisuke Wakabayashi, continue with the false assumptions that most or all
of these accounts are automated, have something to do with Russia and are presumably
nefarious:
Russian-linked bots have rallied around other divisive issues, often ones that President
Trump has tweeted about. They promoted Twitter hashtags like #boycottnfl,
#standforouranthem and #takeaknee after some National Football League players started
kneeling during the national anthem to protest racial injustice.
The automated Twitter accounts helped popularize the #releasethememo hashtag , ...
The Daily Beast reported earlier that the last claim is
definitely false :
Twitter's internal analysis has thus far found that authentic American accounts, and not
Russian imposters or automated bots, are driving #ReleaseTheMemo . There are no preliminary
indications that the Twitter activity either driving the hashtag or engaging with it is
either predominantly Russian.
The same is presumably true for the other hashtags.
The Dutch IT expert and blogger Marcel van den Berg was wondering how Dutch
keywords and hashtags showed up on the Hamilton 68 "Russian bots" dashboard. He found (
Dutch ,
English auto translation) that the dashboard is a total fraud:
In recent weeks, I have been keeping a close eye on Hamilton 68. Every time a Dutch hashtag
was shown on the website, I made a screenshot. Then I noted what was playing at that moment
and I watched the Tweets with this hashtag. Again I could not find any Tweet that seemed to
be from a Russian troll.
In all cases, the hash tags that Hamilton 68 reported were trending topics in the
Netherlands . In all cases there was much to do around the subject of the hashtag in the
Netherlands. Many people were angry or shared their opinion on the subject on Twitter. And
even if there were a few tweets with Russian connections between them, the effect is zero.
Because they do not stand out among the many other, authentic Tweets.
Van den Berg lists a dozen examples he analyzed in depth.
The anti-Russian Bellingcat group around couch blogger Eliot Higgins is sponsored
by the NATO propaganda shop Atlantic Council . It sniffs through open source stuff
to blame Russia or Syria wherever possible. Bellingcat was recently a victim of the
"Russian bots" - or rather of the ASD website. On February 10 the hashtag #bellingcat trended
to rank 2 of the
dashboard.
Bellingcat was thus, according to the Hamilton 68 claims, under assault by hordes
of nefarious Russian government sponsored bots.
The Bellingcat folks looked into the issue and found
that only six people on Twitter, none
of them an automated account , had used the #bellingcat hashtag in the last 48 hours. Some of
the six may have opinions that may be "pro-Russian", but as Higgins himself
says :
[I]n my opinion, it's extremely unlikely the people listed are Russian agents
The pro-NATO propaganda shop Bellingcat thus debunked the pro-NATO propaganda
shop Alliance for Securing Democracy.
The fraudsters who created the Hamilton 68 crap seem to have filled their database with
rather normal people from all over the world who's opinions they personally dislike. Those
then are the "Russian bots" who spread "Russian influence" and divisiveness.
Moreover - what is the value of its information when six normal people out of millions of
active Twitter users can push a hashtag with a handful of tweets to the top of the
dashboard?
But the U.S. media writes long gushing stories about the dashboard and how it somehow
shows automated Russian propaganda. They go to length to explain that this shows "Russian
influence" and a "Russian" attempt to sow "divisiveness" into people's minds.
This is nuts.
Last August, when the Hamilton 68 project was first released, the Nation was the
only site critical of it. It
predicted :
The import of GMF's project is clear: Reporting on anything that might put the US in a bad
light is now tantamount to spreading Russian propaganda.
It is now even worse than that. The top ranking of the #merrychristmas hashtag shows that
the algorithm does not even care about good or bad news. The tracked twitter accounts are
normal people.
The whole project is just a means to push fake stories about alleged "Russian influence"
into U.S. media. Whenever some issue creeps up on its dashboard that somehow fits its false
"Russian bots" and "divisiveness" narrative the Alliance for Securing Democracy
contacts the media to spread its poison. The U.S. media, - CNN, Wired, the New York Times -
are by now obviously devoid of thinking journalists and fact checkers. They simple re-package
the venom and spread it to the public.
How long will it take until people die from it?
Posted by b on February 20, 2018 at 03:15 PM |
Permalink
Comments next page " It's all too reminiscent of Duck Soup:
"to publicly document and expose Vladimir Putin's ongoing efforts to subvert democracy in the
United States and Europe."
That's pretty rich, coming from a country and from people who actually genuinely, and in
proven ways, have subverted democracy in Europe since the late 1940s - Italy being one of the
clearest cases.
For the life of me I cannot figure why Americans want a war/conflict with Russia. I can't
believe it has to do with the economy. There's got to be a far better nefarious reason. Even
during the real cold war we tried to avoid conflict. Absolute insanity.
Gee, what could go wrong formulating policy founded upon a series of Big Lies? Kim Dotcom says he has
important info the FBI refuses to hear. At the Munich
Security Conference , neocon Nicholas Burns, former US Ambassador to NATO, details my
assertion's factual basis that current policy is being formed on a series of Big Lies: "Will
NATO strengthen itself to contain Russian power in Eastern Europe giving what Russian
[sic] has done illegally in Crimea, in the Donbass, and in Georgia ?" [Bolded text are
the Big Lies.]
Clearly, this entire psyop was premeditated and its design was hastily done
contemporaneously with Russia's Syria intervention. NSA/CIA/FBI knew of HRC's security
breeches and rightly assumed their contents would find their way into the election, so the
general plan was ready to go prior to WikiLeaks publications. b has uncovered much, and I
hope he's planning to publish a book about the entire affair.
Ken @ 4: There doesn't necessarily need to be One Major Reason for going to war. There may be
several reasons all feeding and reinforcing one another and creating a psychological climate
in which Going To War is seen as the only solution and is inevitable. The reasons are not
just economic and political but cultural and historical.
In some countries allied with the US, the politicians in power are the ideological
descendants of those who collaborated with Nazi Germany - so in a sense they are committed to
"correcting" what they see as wrong. In the case of current Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo
Abe, he is the grandson of a former prime minister who once served in General Tojo's World
War II cabinet.
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2012/12/26/national/formed-in-childhood-roots-of-abes-conservatism-go-deep/#.WoyZCG9uaUk
That's why pinning down the reason for wanting a war against Russia is so difficult.
Since the FBI never inspected the DNC's computers first-hand, the only evidence comes from
an Irvine, California, cyber-security firm known as CrowdStrike whose chief technical
officer, Dmitri Alperovitch, a well-known Putin-phobe, is a fellow at the Atlantic Council,
a Washington think tank that is also vehemently anti-Russian as well as a close Hillary
Clinton ally.
Thus, Putin-basher Clinton hired Putin-basher Alperovitch to investigate an alleged
electronic heist, and to absolutely no one's surprise, his company concluded that guilty
party was Vladimir Putin. Amazing! Since then, a small army of internet critics has chipped
away at CrowdStrike for praising the hackers as among the best in the business yet
declaring in the same breath that they gave themselves away by uploading a document in the
name of "Felix Edmundovich," i.e. Felix E. Dzerzhinsky, founder of the Soviet secret
police.
As noted cyber-security expert Jeffrey Carr observed with regard to Russia's two main
intelligence agencies: "Raise your hand if you think that a GRU or FSB officer would add
Iron Felix's name to the metadata of a stolen document before he released it to the world
while pretending to be a Romanian hacker. Someone clearly had a wicked sense of humor."
muddy waters.. paid for propaganda.... look at all the russian bots, lol... cold war 2 / mccarthyism 2 is in effect... the historic parallels are marked. thank you
neo cons! it's working... the ordinary person in the usa can't be this stupid can they?
when does ww3 kick in? is that really what these idiots want? or is it just to prolong the
huge defense budget?
This is about conditioning voters in Europe and the United States for a long war with Russia
and China. In other words, a return to the 1950s. It is not working and becoming increasingly
hysterical because societies are not nearly as cohesive as they once were, and the mainstream
political parties, while better funded and more top-down organized, are basically hollow. The
collapse is coming. Four years or ten, take your pick.
@4 "For the life of me I cannot figure why Americans want a war/conflict with Russia."
Most Americans probably don't. Just the chosen few with the deepest fall-out shelters. The
idea is to keep piling the pressure on to countries like Iran and Russia in the hope that
their populations will rise up and demand the freedoms that we enjoy in the West....things
like uncensored wardrobe malfunctions and transgender washrooms.
let's imagine that we have the pyramid of evilness, by which we measure bestiality of one
regime and its constituency. my firm belief is that us would be on the top of that pyramid.
Only dilemma would be between Zionist entity and the US.
"How could the masses be made to desire their own repression?" was the question Wilhelm
Reich famously asked in the wake of the Reichstagsbrandverordnung (Reichstag Fire Decree,
February 28, 1933), which suspended the civil rights protections afforded by the Weimar
Republic's democratic constitution.
Hitler had been appointed chancellor on January 30, 1933
and Reich was trying to grapple with the fact that the German people had apparently chosen
the authoritarian politics promoted by National Socialism against their own political
interests.
Ever since, the question of fascism, or rather the question of why might people
vote for their own oppression, has never ceased to haunt political philosophy.2 With Trump
openly campaigning for less democracy in America -- and with the continued electoral
success of far-right antiliberal movements across Europe -- this question has again become
a pressing one.
An American people is in perfect harmony with its regime.
Remember the "USS MAINE"! Media have long agitated for War in US History. Nothing sells newspapers
like a good ole war! Demonizing is a way to achieve it. What is sure is that this is a one way street.
Once over the cliff, there is no turning back.
How do you tell people that, at the flick of your magic switch, Putin is in fact
a swell guy and wonderful human being? Once love is gone who goes back
to the filthy, abhorrent and estranged spouse?
Surely the US establishment is playing with fire thinking they will successfully
ride out any conflict and come out on top secure in their newly reestablished
hegemony on the smoldering ruins of Humanity.
Make no mistake, we are all on the road to hell. Better enjoy todays peace as
tomorrow word will be filled with the sweet music of cemeteries.
@15 "An American people is in perfect harmony with its regime."
I'm not so sure. I think there are many Americans who deeply distrust their government.
But of course they don't want to appear unpatriotic. There are also many who are apathetic
and many simply don't know how to change things.
It's horrible I know to quote a Nazi, but Goring had this right:
Göring: Why, of course, the people don't want war. Why would some poor slob on a farm
want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his
farm in one piece? Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia nor in
England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all,
it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to
drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or
a Communist dictatorship.
Gilbert: There is one difference. In a democracy, the people have some say in the matter
through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare
wars.
Göring: Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always
be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they
are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country
to danger. It works the same way in any country.
American media has graduated from simply repeating the lies of "unnamed government sources"
to repeating the lies of any organization unofficially blessed by the powers that be. The
skills required to repeat the text verbatim serve them well in both cases. Skepticism is only
reserved to anyone who tries to introduce logic or facts into the equation--such as when Jill
Stein was interviewed on MSNBC recently. How dare Ms. Stein try to bring FACTS into the
discussion!
In that The Narrative is tightly controlled in the corporate media, not matter how strong the
proofs or arguments about the falsity of these propaganda campaigns are, little or no
circulation of those proofs or arguments wlll reach the general public.
Thanks Jen. It still makes no sense. As a veteran of the Vietnam fiasco, I was pretty much
government oriented until McNamara outed the whole thing whining about haw sorry he was.
59,000 dead and he's sorry. They were able to hide the Gulf of Tonkin BS until then. After
that I researched the reasons for each war/conflict the USA started and could find no logical
reasons except hunger for power. But the little sandbox wars won't destroy the world like a
major war/conflict with Russia and it goes nuclear. Almost every politician, and major news
organizations are pushing for a war/conflict with Russia. This is insanity as no one will win
a war like this and I am sure they know that,,, but they keep the war drums beating anyhow.
It simply doesn't make sense. But Thanks again.
Same for dh, #14. Things are soooo stupid, your joking may be closer to the truth than you
know. :-)
Thank you for the post. I will save it and use it liberally, with proper attributions.
When one challenges the tribe on places like Twitter, it is hard to tell who is a real idiot
and who is a bot. How do you know? Maybe that the bots go away fairly quickly and the idiots
hang around to argue ad infinitum.
The thing that bothers me, is the fact that the MIC Globalists don't care what we think or how
poor their deceptions are. The public perception that "russia did it!!" continues to rise. I
wonder what the public acceptance level needs to be for them to execute a MAJOR false flag
event. They seem to think they are still on target, and its just a short matter or time...
They are going to do this when the perception management is complete... We really do not need another one of their disasters
The bully pushes and pushes until stopped by the first serious push back. The dynamic of the
west and the neocon/Zionists at the core is essentially that of the bully. Nations like
Venezuela and the Philippines have started to push back, and I hope and feel fairly confident
that they will both survive the rage of the US. In some part, they have begun to show the
actual powerlessness of the bully.
But the really killer nations - Russia and China - are holding their water as they
strengthen their force. I believe that one very serious push back from either of them in the
right circumstances will stop the bully. And yet, as they bide their time, we see a curious
phenomenon wherein the US is destroying itself from the inside.
It's as if all of the forces that exist to control the country - the lockstep media, the
fully rigged markets, the hysterical military, the bought legislature and the crooked courts
- are all acting far more strongly than should be necessary. The entire system is
over-reacting, over-reaching, over-boiling. And in the course of this, the US is actually
shedding power, and at an amazing rate. But not from the action of Russia but from its
non-action, the empty space that that allows the bully's dynamic to over-reach, all the way
to complete failure.
Is it possible that deep in the security states of Russia and China there's even a study
and a model for this? Is the collapse of the US actually being gamed by Russia and China -
and through the totally counter-intuitive action of non-action?
Hey b,
Just wanted to let you know that Joe Lauria mentioned your blog and the article you wrote on
the indictment of the 13 Russians. He was on Loud and Clear (Sputnik Radio, Washington DC)
today and brought you up at the start of the program.
Glad to see you get some recognition for all the great work you've been doing :)
Ken @ 24: The warmongering is not intended to make any sense - not many people are trained in
critical thinking and logic, and even when they are, they can be swamped by their own
emotions or other people's emotions.
Propaganda is intended to appeal to people's emotions
and fears. You can try reading works by Edward Bernays - "Crystallizing Public Opinion"
(1923) and "Propaganda" (1928) - to see how he uses his uncle Sigmund Freud's theories of the
mind to create strategies for manipulating public opinion. https://archive.org/details/EdwardL.BernaysPropaganda
Bernays' books influenced Nazi and Soviet propaganda and Bernays himself was hired by the
US government to justify in the public mind the 1954 US invasion of Guatemala.
You may be aware that Rupert Murdoch, head of News Corporation which owns the Wall Street
Journal, FOX News and 20th Century Fox studios, is also on the Board of Directors of Genie
Energy which owns a subsidiary firm that was granted a licence by an Israeli court to explore
and drill for oil and natural gas in Syria's (and Israeli-occupied) Golan Heights.
The national media speaks as one -with one consistent melody day after day. Who is the
conductor?
When will one representative of the mainstream media sing solo? There must be a Ray
McGovern somewhere among the flock.
Many of my thoughts as well.
The U.S.'s greatest fault is its tacit misunderstanding of just what russia is in fact.
They utterly fail to understand the Russian character; forged over 800 years culminating with
the defeat of Nazi Germany, absorbing horrific losses; the U.S. fails to understand the
effect upon the then Soviets, become todays Russians.
Even the god's have abandoned the west...
I watched bbc news this am in the hope that I would get to see the most awful creature at the
2018 olympics cry her croc tears (long story - a speed skater who cuts off the opposition but
has been found out so now when she swoops in front of the others they either skate over her
leading to tearful whines from perp about having been 'pushed', or gets disqualified for
barging. Last night she got disqualified so as part of my study on whether types like this
believe their own bullshit I thought I'd tune in but didn't get that far into the beebs
lies)
The bulk of the bulletin was devoted to a 'lets hate Russia' session which featured a
quisling who works for the russian arm of BBC (prolly just like cold war days staffed
exclusively by MI6/SIS types). This chap, using almost unintelligible english, claimed he had
proof at least 50 Russian Mercenaries (question - why are amerikan guns for hire called
contractors [remember the Fallujah massacre of 100,000 civilians because amerikan contractors
were stupid] yet Russian contractors are called mercenaries by the media?) had been killed in
Syria last week. The bloke had evidence of one contractor's death not 50 - the proof was a
letter from the Russian government to the guy's mother telling her he didn't qualify for any
honours because he wasn't in the Russian military.
The quisling (likely a Ukranian I would say) went on to rabbit about the bloke having also
fought in Donbass under contract - to which the 'interviewer (don't ya love it when media
'interview' their own journos - a sure sign that a snippet of toxic nonsense is being
delivered) led about how the deceitful Russians had claimed the only Russians fighting in
Donbass were contractors - yeah well this bloke was a contractor surely that proves the
Russians were telling the truth.
It's not what these propagandists say; they adopt a tone and the audience is meant to hate
based on that even when the facts as stated conflict with the media outlet's point of view.
Remember the childhood trick of saying "bad dog" ter yer mutt in loving tones - the dog comes
to ya tail wagging & licks yer hand. This is that.
The next item was more Syria lies - white helmets footage (altho the beeb is now mostly
giving them an alternative name to dodge the facts about white helmets) of bandaged children
with flour tipped on their heads.
The evil Syrians and Russians are bombarding Gouta - nary a word about the continuous
artillery barrage Gouta has subjected the citizens of Damascus to for the past 4 years, or
that the Syrians have repeatedly offered truces and safe passage for civilians. Any injured
children need to ask their parents why they weren't allowed to take advantage of the frequent
offers of transport out. Maybe the parents are worried 'the resistance' will do its usual and
blow up the busloads of children after luring them over with candy.
Anyway I switched off after that so never did learn if little miss cheat had a cry.
Thank you for reporting on this. The people behind the so-called Alliance for Securing
Democracy need to be exposed for the warmongering frauds that they are. Regardless of what
one thinks of him, Trump was correct when he said that NATO is obsolete.
The American Security State needs enemies to exist, otherwise there's no need for the
"security" which translates into big bucks for the Military-Industrial-Congressional-Media
Complex. They can't agree on the ranking of the enemies: North Korea is a threat to the
world! Iran is....! Russia is...! China is....! But the threats are there, and they are pure
evil (TPTB contend).
So the whole scenario makes perfect sense from that standpoint.
re Felix E. Dzerzhinsky: Ukrainian fascists have a particular hatred of Felix because he was
both a Bolshevik and a Pole.
I hate to do this but I just posted this elsewhere, at Off Guardian, where the Guardian is
back into its highest gears promoting war.
"The wardrums are beating in a way not heard since 1914-there is no reason for war except the
best reason of all: an imperial ruling class sees its grip slipping and will chance
everything rather than endure the humiliation of adjusting to reality.
"China is in the position that the US was in 1914-it can prevent the war or wait until the
combatants are too exhausted to defend their paltry gains.
Given the realities of nuclear warfare-which seem not to have sunk in among the Americans,
perhaps because they mistake a bubble for a bomb shelter- the wise option is to prevent war
by publicly warning against it. In the hope that brought face to face with reality the masses
will besiege their governments, as we can easily do, and prevent war.'
Sad but definitely correct. The first casualty of war is the truth. It's dead in the USA and
allies. Therefore, they're at war with Russia and China. If Russia is down, China will be
dealt with.
The horrible thing with the US attitude is that you do a white thing, you're attacking them
and if you do a black thing, you're attacking them too. This attitude is building hostility
against Russia. It's like programming a pet to be afraid of something. The western people are
being programmed into hating Russia, dehumanizing her people, cutting every tie with Russia
and transforming any information from Russia into life threatening propaganda. A war for our
hearts is running. The US population is being coerced into believing that war against Russia
is a vital necessity.
It will be a war of choice from the US "elites". Clinton announced it and the population
had chosen Trump for that reason.
You're wondering why they're doing it. I suppose that their narrative is losing its grip on
the western populations. They're also conscious of it. If they lose it, they'll have to face
very angry mobs and face the void of their lives. Everything they did was either useless or
poisonous. It means to be in a very bad spot. They're are therefore under an existential
threat.
Russia proved time and again that it's possible to get out of their narrative. Remember their
situation when Eltsin was reelected with the western help.
The Chicago boys were telling the
Russian authorities how to run the economy and they made out of the word democrat a synonym
of thief. They were in the narrative and the result was a disaster. Then, they woke up and
started to clean the house. I remember the "hero" of democracy whose name was "Khodorovsky
(?)". In the west he was a freedom fighter and in Russia he stole something like Rosneft.
This guy and others of the same sort were described in the west as heroes, pionniers and so
on. They were put back into submission to the law. The western silence about their stealings,
lies and cheating is still deafening me.
It was the first Russian crime. The second one was
to survive the first batch of sanctions against them (I forgot the reason of the sanctions).
They not only survived they thrived. It was against the western leading economic ideology. A
third crime was to push back Saakachvili and his troops with success.
The fourth was to put
back into order the Tchechen. Russia was back into the world politics and history. They were
not following the script written for them in Washington and Brussels. They were having a
political system putting limits to the big companies. And, worst of it, it works.
Everybody in the west who can read and listen would have noticed that they are making it.
More, with RT and Sputnik giving info outside the allowed ones or asking annoying questions
(western journalists lost that habit with their new formation in the schools of journalism -
remember the revolution in their education was criticised and I missed why - very curious to
discover why), they were exposing weaknesses of the western narrative. On the other side
their narrative became so poor and so limited that any regular reader would feel bored
reading the same things time and again and being asked to pay for it at a time his salary was
decreased in the name of competitivity. The threat to their narrative was ready. They had to
fight it.
It's becoming a crime to think outside their marks. It's becoming a crime to read outside
their marks. I don't even talk about any act outside their marks. Now, it's going to be a
crime of treason to them in war time.
I do feel sadness because many will die from their fear of losing their grip on our minds. I
do feel sadness because they have lost and are in denial about it. I do feel sadness because
those death aren't necessary. I do feel sadness because those people can't face the
consequences of their actions. They don't have the necessary spine. Their lives were useless
and even toxic. They could start repairing or mitigating their damages but it would need a
very different worldview, a complete conversion to another meaning of life outside the
immediate and maximal profit.
You have aptly described the most dangerous country on this planet.
That country must not be appeased, at any cost, because it would surely end us forever...
Conclusion regarding IP address data:
What we're seeing in this IP data is a wide range of countries and hosting providers. 15% of
the IP addresses are Tor exit nodes. These exit nodes are used by anyone who wants to be
anonymous online, including malicious actors.
Overall Conclusion:
The IP addresses that DHS provided may have been used for an attack by a state actor like
Russia. But they don't appear to provide any association with Russia. They are probably used
by a wide range of other malicious actors, especially the 15% of IP addresses that are Tor
exit nodes.
The malware sample is old, widely used and appears to be Ukrainian. It has no apparent
relationship with Russian intelligence and it would be an indicator of compromise for any
website.
Partisan @15: "With Trump openly campaigning for less democracy in America -- and with the
continued electoral success of far-right antiliberal movements across Europe -- this question
has again become a pressing one."
The above is entirely backwards. The bottom 2/3rds is frustrated by the LACK of democracy
in the US and that's a major reason many voted against the (in fact anti-democratic) elite's
desired candidate, Hillary.
70% of the voting age public was dissatisfied or very dissatisfied with both candidates,
and 40% of Americans didn't vote, so that means whichever of Clinton/Trump won, she/he would
win with approval of only 10% of the electorate. That's the best example possible of our
anti-democratic reality (it's not a worry or a threat, it's already here).
In the case of both Europe and the US, many people are generally very dissatisfied with
the anti-democratic response by the elite to 'the will of the people' that there be much less
immigration into countries with high unemployment and 'race to the bottom' labor conditions.
That's nearly the entire basis of what the corporate media calls 'the move right'... When in
fact restricting immigration is a pro-labor and therefore 'left' policy ... Except in the
confused and deliberately stupid political discourse the elite media pushes so hard.
Some years ago, I noticed the American media and politicians were sort of going soft
(actually mushy) in the brain department, but I was told not to be so judgemental. As the
months went by, I saw more and more people saying "they have gone nuts". So, it turns out I
am not alone after all.
That madness comes from having no behavioural limits, no references outside of your own
opinion but groupthink, and manipulating the language to suit your ambitions (the Orwellism
of the US media has been repeatedly pointed at). Simply put, you don't know anymore what's
what outside of the narrative your group pushes, you go nuts. The manipulators ends up caught
in their lies. All the more when they makes money out of it, which would be the case of all
those think tanks and media.
One could argue that they are not going mad, that they know full well they are lying, but
I beg to differ: they don't see anymore how ridiculous or how dumb or smart their arguments
are. That would be congruent with a real loss of touch with reality. One wonders what
they see when they look at themselves in a mirror, a garden variety propagandist or a
fearless anti-Putin crusader?
Well, it is not...if you are believer in "democracy". Honestly, the story of democracy (by capitalist/liberal class) is a grand BS, to be
modest. The only thing what was truthful, paradoxically, is who is "lesser evil" of two. Or
the Bigger one in unrestrained capitalism, savage and monopoly, predatory and a fascists
one.
One way or other result is the same, it is: Barbarism.
When "trending on Twitter" became a news item in and of itself, I began to despair for the
future of reporting, political discourse and ultimately, democracy in America. Twitter and FB
are at best a source of information for news reporting, but not a source of news in
themselves.
We made ourselves vulnerable to any and every sort of pernicious manipulation and in the
end, we just about deserve everything we get.
The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the
same time over the means of mental production. The ruling ideas are nothing more than the
ideal expression of the dominant material relationships.
It is partially tied direct to the economy of the warmongers as trillions of dollars of
new cold war slop is laying on the ground awaiting the MICC hogs. American hegemony is
primarily about stealing the natural resources of helpless countries. Now in control of all
the weak ones, it is time to move to the really big prize: The massive resources of Russia.
They (US and their European Lackeys) thought this was a slam dunk when Yeltsin, in his
drunken stupors, was literally giving Russia to invading capitalist. Enter Putin, stopped the
looting .........connect the dots.
Media and its politicians have lost it completely,
and if you criticize them, well then of course you are a... "russian bot". Unfortunately 90% of westerners buy this western
MSM influence propaganda campaign, WW3
with Russia will come easy.
At risk of being censored and/or convicted of Thought Crime - it is *remarkable* how very
highly disproportionate the number of Jewish Zionists is who are in the media and in Congress
and in ThinkTankistan and shouting about Russian meddling, 'aggression,' and the like.
It's too bad it is forbidden to examine this phenomena as one part of the matrix of power
and lies leading the US into conflict with Russia, no?
I don't think Bill Kristol and David Frum and Jeff Goldberg are either honest nor
primarily concerned with American national security, nor the lives of MENA civilians. I think
they care only about using American blood and treasure to facilitate Israeli lebensraum,
however bloody and expensive.
Trump survives only if he dances for the Deep State *and* Likud.
Chris Hedges has an article on the similar situation in Germany almost 100 years ago.
"In 1923 the radical socialist and feminist Clara Zetkin gave a report at the Communist
International about the emergence of a political movement called fascism. ...." https://www.truthdig.com/articles/how-we-fight-fascism/
Partisan @54: The facts contradict the statement in the quote that Trump was "openly
campaigning for less democracy." He wasn't. He in fact campaigned in part as a populist who
would oust (or at least repeatedly ridicule) an anti-democratic elite. If you've overlooked
that and believe more or less the opposite, you can't understand the 2016 election or the
elite's virulently anti-democratic reaction to it.
Earlier I wrote about the following relationship: Khodorkovsky - The Interpreter -
Henry Jackson Society (UK) .
With Bush and the Iraq War, Dutch PM Balkenende and FM de Hoop Scheffer were seen as the
poodle of the White House. In recent years PM Mark Rutte [of MH-17 crash fame] can be
considered its puppy. Perhaps a parrot would suit better.
I noticed a former journalist Hubert Smeets hs partnered with some people to found a
"knowledge center" Window on Russia [Raam op Rusland]. Laughable, funded by the Dutch Foreign
Ministry and a Dutch-Russia cultural exchange Fund. Preposturous in its simplicity and harm
for honest reporting.
US media has gone bonkers. The original claim was Russian meddling and Russian
interference in the election. Then, a sort of bridging meme showed up (see also b
above), undermining democracy or subverting it. This in turn then morphed into
promoting divisive issues which is new (circa 2018, not before?)
Imho. US pols make it their business to create divisive issues, diviusses
(neologism), to the point of inventing rubbish ones. Part of the US public embraces that sh*t
as well, > tribalism and religious economics in lieu of policy politics. So such actions
should be viewed as gloriously democratic, ;) - ok easy to make fun.
The emphasis on 'divisive' is curious, it signals that some managers are calling for
'union' - 'cohesion' - 'group soldering' facing the outside enemy, threat.
Russia has really become the all-purpose épouvantail scarecrow, specter of
doom, etc. An awareness of the high costs of divisiveness if uncontrolled -> massive
social unrest, at extreme, civil war -- and that these are to be avoided, is evidenced.
Heh, or the whole storm is just fluff that distracts, occupies the pixels, airwaves, a
jamboree of knee-jerk reactions irrelevant to the present World Situation, with practically
no important body - faction of the PTB, Trump, the MIC, lame outsiders like the EU, etc.
having any clue.
The accusation is a lot like accusing somebody of despoiling an outhouse by crapping in
it, along with everyone else, but the outhouse in question had a sign on its door that read
"No Russians!" and the 13 Russians just ignored it and crapped in it anyway.
The reason the Outhouse of American Democracy is posted "No Russians!" is because Russia
is the enemy. There aren't any compelling reasons why it should be the enemy, and treating it
as such is incredibly foolish and dangerous, but that's beside the point. Painting Russia as
the enemy serves a psychological need rather than a rational one: Americans desperately need
some entity onto which they can project their own faults.
The US is progressing toward a
fascist police state; therefore, Russia is said to be a horrible dictatorship run by Putin.
The US traditionally meddles in elections around the world, including Russia; therefore, the
Russians are said to meddle in US elections. The US is the most aggressive country on the
planet, occupying and bombing dozens of countries; therefore, the Russians are accused of
"aggression." And so on
@Noirette 70
Yes, claiming that Russians are promoting polical division is silly -- the divisions were
already there. gizmodo
, Jun 12, 2014: It's Been 150 Years Since the U.S. Was This Politically Polarized
Nevertheless, now in WIRED
magazine: Their [Agency] goal was to enflame "political intensity through supporting radical
groups, users dissatisfied with [the] social and economic situation, and oppositional social
movements."
Bernie Sanders said he on Wednesday, "felt compelled to address Russian interference
during the US election. Sunday.... he was not aware and believes Russian bot promoting
him and went as far to said WikiLeaks published Hillary's email stolen by the
Russia....."
Can you really trust that lying basted? I'm probably one of the few MoA refused to
believe and trust Bernie Sanders and the fuckup Democrats .
Excellent article summarizing much of what B has posted and more.
"Finally, and as long was we are on the topic, here is what a real troll farm looks like.
[Picture of NSA] Yet this vast suite of offices in Fort Meade, Maryland, where 20,000 SIGINT
spies and technicians work for the NSA, is only the tip of the iceberg.
The US actually spends $75 billion per year---more than Russia's entire $69 billion
defense budget---spying on and meddling in the politics of virtually every nation on earth.
An outfit within NSA called Tailored Access Operations (TAO) has a multi-billion annual
budget and does nothing put troll the global internet and does so with highly educated,
highly paid professionals, not $4 per hour keyboard jockeys."
Great article. Great comments. I LOVE MoA! And it's great to see b getting recognition.
james wrote: "There aren't any compelling reasons why it should be the enemy"
You know the following; I think you're just too decent a human being to understand how
psychopaths operate. Russia is a huge area with enormous natural resources as well as a
large, educated populace. Zbignew Brzezenski explained in his 1997 book "The Grand
Chessboard" why global hegemony required taking control over Russia (and how to do it, which
boils down to taking the other chess pieces off the board (Iraq/Ukraine/etc. and then pulling
off a "color revolution," coup or military conquest).
Ziggy also noted that once Russia was incorporated, China is the next, and largely last
target.
Jen: NICE JOB putting together a big picture, from Bernays' control of the masses all the
way to Genie Energy. Add in Oded Yinon and PNAC and the "foreign policy blunders" that led to
the present situation in MENA look like a carefully-constructed, long-game being played "by
the book."
Fairleft. Any leftist/socialist movement which is not global is doomed to failure. This
has always been true, but with "offshoring" of manufacturing jobs and the internet
untethering many "white collar" jobs from any given geological location(s), workers must see
ourselves as a global entity rather than national or regional players - because that is
certainly how the 0.01% see us (and themselves).
"Workers of the world UNITE" is more true today than a century and a half ago.
nations that do not have to face costs arising from environmental, health or safety
legislation will almost always prevail in the world market over those that have some concern
for the environment and the workers.
That is the main issue I have with globalization.
Competing on wages is one thing; that can be a great impetus to become more efficient and
productive, but if we do nothing to force other countries to clean up their act, they will
have no impetus to do so and we will continue to lose jobs to the international competition,
no matter how efficiently we work.
Msm, bellingcat and other think tanks - they push their anti Russian racism too far making a
large section of westerners just tired of their hysteria. Exposing their own racism and
paranoia.
"....borderless globalization has been a catastrophe for most of the underdeveloped world's
businesses and workers."
it is always annoying when I see the 'globalization" argument is used whether from the
right or left. The globalization has started by the moment when us humans begin to roaming on this
planet. there are millions of examples yet somehow globalization is of recent phenomenon.
Lapis Lazuli mineral used in making blue color and paint is found on clay pottery in
Mesopotamia's ancient city of Ur. That city is also place where many legend originated which
were taken by major religion and can be found in their holy books. See even the myth are globalizied from very early on.
Most of the people do not even know what it is, not those who are writing about it.
Globalization . . . is a program to create private corporate rights to trade, invest, lend
or borrow money and buy and own property anywhere in the world without much hindrance by
national governments. It would bar governments from most of the common methods of helping
or protecting their national industries and employment. It is a winners' program promoted
chiefly by some business interests, governments and neoclassical economists in Europe and
the United States.
One of its purposes is to intensify international competition for jobs.
Together with other Right policies it is likely to maintain some unemployment in the rich
countries and reduce the wage rates of their lower-paid workers, and reduce the proportion
of secure employment.
the observable and demonstrable attempts are clearly futile, and have been pretty
much reduced to spasms and tantrums, largely devoid of cognizance, not to mention legality,
but certainly dangerous nonetheless.
no sir ree bob, we get our multipolar world or we scavenge a dead landscape of Alamogordo glass .
Assange: "Regardless of whether IRA's activities were audience building through pandering
to communities or whether a hare-brained Russian government plan to "heighten the
differences" existed, its activities are clearly strategically insignificant compared to the
other forces at play."
Cybersecurity "experts" in the United States have long alleged that "Russian bots" were used
to meddle in the 2016 elections.
But, as it turns out, the authors of a Senate report on "Russian election meddling" actually
ran the false flag meddling operation themselves.
A week before Christmas, the Senate Intelligence Committee released a report accusing Russia
of depressing Democrat voter turnout by targeting African-Americans on social media. Its
authors , New Knowledge , quickly became a household name. Described by the New
York Timesas a
group of "tech specialists who lean Democratic," New Knowledge has ties to both the U.S.
military and the intelligence agencies.
Morgan and Fox have both struck gold in the " Russiagate " scheme, which sprung into being
after Hillary Clinton blamed Moscow for Donald Trump's presidential victory in 2016. Morgan,
for example, is one of the developers of the Hamilton 68 Dashboard, the online tool that
purports to monitor and expose narratives being pushed by the Kremlin on Twitter. And also
worth mentioning, that dashboard is bankrolled by the German Marshall Fund's Alliance for
Securing Democracy – a collection of Democrats and neoconservatives funded in part by
NATO (North AtTreaty Tready Organization) and
USAID (United States Agency for International Development).
It is worth noting that the 600 " Russia-linked " Twitter accounts monitored by the
dashboard is not disclosed to the public either, making it impossible to verify these claims.
This inconvenience has not stopped Hamilton 68 from becoming a go-to source for hysteria-hungry
journalists, however. Yet on December 19, a New York Times
story revealed that Morgan and his crew had created the fake army of Russian bots, as well
as several fake Facebook groups, in order to discredit Republican candidate Roy Moore in
Alabama's 2017 special election for the U.S. Senate.
Working on behalf of the Democrats, Morgan and his crew created an estimated 1,000 fake
Twitter accounts with Russian names, and had them follow Moore. They also operated several
Facebook pages where they posed as Alabama conservatives who wanted like-minded voters to
support a write-in candidate instead . In an internal memo, New Knowledge boasted that it had
" orchestrated an elaborate 'false flag' operation that planted the idea that the Moore
campaign was amplified on social media by a Russian botnet ." – RT
This scandal is being perpetrated by the
United States media and has so far deceived millions, if not more. The botnet claim made a
splash on social media and was further amplified by
Mother Jones , which based its story on "expert opinion" from Morgan's dubious creation,
Hamilton 68.
Things got even weirder when it turned out that Scott Shane, the author of the Tim es
piece, had known about the meddling for months because he spoke at an event where the
organizers boasted about it!
Shane was one of the speakers at a meeting in September, organized by American Engagement
Technologies, a group run by Mikey Dickerson, President Barack Obama's former tech czar.
Dickerson explained how AET spent $100,000 on New Knowledge's campaign to suppress Republican
votes, "enrage " Democrats to boost turnout, and execute a " false flag " to hurt Moore. He
dubbed it " Project Birmingham ." -RT
There really was meddling in American democracy by " Russian bots. " Except those bots
weren't run from Moscow or St. Petersburg but from the offices of Democrat operatives chiefly
responsible for creating and amplifying the " Russiagate " hysteria over the past two years in
a
textbook case of psychological projection ,
brainwashing, and
Nazi-style propaganda campaigns.
"... At risk of being censored and/or convicted of Thought Crime - it is *remarkable* how very highly disproportionate the number of Jewish Zionists is who are in the media and in Congress and in ThinkTankistan and shouting about Russian meddling, 'aggression,' and the like. ..."
"... I don't think Bill Kristol and David Frum and Jeff Goldberg are either honest nor primarily concerned with American national security, nor the lives of MENA civilians. I think they care only about using American blood and treasure to facilitate Israeli lebensraum, however bloody and expensive. ..."
"... Trump survives only if he dances for the Deep State *and* Likud. ..."
At risk of being censored and/or convicted of Thought Crime - it is *remarkable* how very
highly disproportionate the number of Jewish Zionists is who are in the media and in Congress
and in ThinkTankistan and shouting about Russian meddling, 'aggression,' and the like.
It's too bad it is forbidden to examine this phenomena as one part of the matrix of power
and lies leading the US into conflict with Russia, no?
I don't think Bill Kristol and David Frum and Jeff Goldberg are either honest nor
primarily concerned with American national security, nor the lives of MENA civilians. I think
they care only about using American blood and treasure to facilitate Israeli lebensraum,
however bloody and expensive.
Trump survives only if he dances for the Deep State *and* Likud.
"... Ever since US Crude Oil peaked its production in 1970, the US has known that at some point the oil majors would have their profitability damaged, "assets" downgraded, and borrowing capacity destroyed. At this point their shares would become worthless and they would become bankrupt. The contagion from this would spread to transport businesses, plastics manufacture, herbicides and pesticide production and a total collapse of Industrial Civilisation. ..."
@4 "For the life of me I cannot figure why Americans want a war/conflict with
Russia."
Ever since US Crude Oil peaked its production in 1970, the US has known that at some
point the oil majors would have their profitability damaged, "assets" downgraded, and
borrowing capacity destroyed. At this point their shares would become worthless and they
would become bankrupt. The contagion from this would spread to transport businesses, plastics
manufacture, herbicides and pesticide production and a total collapse of Industrial
Civilisation.
In anticipation of increasing Crude Oil imports, Nixon stopped the convertibility of
Dollars into Gold, thus making the Dollar entirely fiat, allowing them to print as much of
the currency as they needed.
They also began a system of obscuring oil production data, involving the DoE's EIA and the
OECD's IEA, by inventing an ever-increasing category of Undiscovered Oilfields in their
predictions, and combining Crude Oil and Condensate (from gas fields) into one category (C+C)
as if they were the same thing. As well the support of the ethanol-from-corn industry began,
even though it was uneconomic. The Global Warming problem had to be debunked, despite its
sound scientific basis. Energy-intensive manufacturing work was off-shored to cheap
labour+energy countries, and Just-in-Time delivery systems were honed.
In 2004 the price of Crude Oil rose from $28 /barrel up to $143 /b in mid-2008. This
demonstrated that there is a limit to how much business can pay for oil (around $100 /b).
Fracking became marginally economic at these prices, but the frackers never made a profit as
over-production meant prices fell to about $60 /b. The Government encourages this destructive
industry despite the fact it doesn't make any money, because the alternative is the end of
Industrial Civilisation.
Eventually though, there must come a time when there is not enough oil to power all the
cars and trucks, bulldozers, farm tractors, airplanes and ships, as well as manufacture all
the wind turbines and solar panels and electric vehicles, as well as the upgraded
transmission grid. At that point, the game will be up, and it will be time for WW3. So we
need to line up some really big enemies, and develop lots of reasons to hate them.
Thus you see the demonisation of Russia, China, Iran and Venezuela for reasons that don't
make sense from a normal perspective.
It is partially tied direct to the economy of the warmongers as trillions of dollars of
new cold war slop is laying on the ground awaiting the MICC hogs. American hegemony is
primarily about stealing the natural resources of helpless countries. Now in control of all
the weak ones, it is time to move to the really big prize: The massive resources of Russia.
They (US and their European Lackeys) thought this was a slam dunk when Yeltsin, in his
drunken stupors, was literally giving Russia to invading capitalist. Enter Putin, stopped the
looting .........connect the dots.
"The Only Meddling "Russian Bots" Were Actually Demorats Experts
masquerading as progressive Republicans and Democrats"............FIFY
It's all they have left after being rendered politically irrelevant and statistically
insignificant in November 2016 by the deplorables. ROFLMAO.........this civil war needs to
die in federal government so we do not waste money in mass deportations to an established
island nation surrounded by 1000 nautical miles of water.
"Election tampering via false identity" sounds like the right kind of language for
a federal law -- but I'm betting there is something already out there (at state/fed level),
and am not wild about yet more laws (which [[[they]]] get to ignore anyway).
a text book case of "projection" by demorats -their own crimes of sedition and treason
projected onto trump via the russians.
one can only hope that Mueller has found the proof that DemoRats were responsible for
attempts to rig the presidential elections - aided and abetted by criminal journalists also
guilty of sedition and treason.
As if it ******* matters at this point. Get real. We are watching a display of raw power
right now. Well connected individuals are calling the shots right now, well outside of the
legal system. If you haven't realized that over the past 2 years, you haven't been paying
attention. Furthermore, no amount of factual proof is going to result in the actual criminals
being held to account. The thing that is most difficult for Americans to grasp is that they
do not control their own government and have not for many decades. They do not have an equal
system of justice. Instead, the US is ruled by a secret oligarchy which exists above the US
legal code. This is the harsh reality we are watching be revealed right now.
We're watching an attempted display of raw power...that hasn't been going as
planned. If it had, Trump would either be gone or automagically transformed into the next
iteration of BushBama. We are fly in the ointment...buzz buzz
No prosecution... our DOJ does not prosecute anything political... no matter how serious
the felony. Just ask the ***-maggots Hillary, Brennan, Comey, Clapper and Lynch.
Wow! What does Sherlock Holmes Mueller think of this? This story makes Mueller out to be
the biggest fraud of all time and his attorneys tantamount to the Keystone Cops. Where are
they on all this?
At the inception of this entire RussiaGate spectacle I suggested that it was a political
distraction to take the attention away from the rejection by the people of neoliberalism which
has been embraced by the establishments of both political parties.
And that the result of the investigation would be indictments for perjury in the covering up
of illicit business deals and money laundering. But that 'collusion to sway the election' was
without substance, if not a joke.
Everything that has been revealed to date tends to support that.
One thing that Aaron overlooks is the evidence compiled by William Binney and associates
that strongly suggests the DNC hack was no hack at all, but a leak by an insider who was
appalled by the lies and double dealing at the DNC.
In general, RussiaGate is a farcical distraction from other issues as they say in the video.
And this highlights the utterly Machiavellian streak in the corporate Democrats and the Liberal
establishment under the Clintons and their ilk who care more about money and power than the
basic principles that historically sustained their party. I have lost all respect for them.
But unfortunately this does open the door for those who use this to approve of the
Republican establishment, which is 'at least honest' about being substantially corrupt servants
to Big Money who care nothing about democracy, the Constitution, or the public. The best of
them are leaving or have already left, and their party is ruined beyond repair.
This all underscores the paucity of the Red v. Blue, monopoly of two parties, 'lesser of two
evils' model of political thought which has come to dominate the discussion in the US.
We are heavily propagandized by the owners of the corporate media and influencers of the
narrative, and a professional class that has sold its soul for economic advantage and access to
money and power.
Is this shadow of Integrity Initiative in the USA ? This false flag open the possibility that other similar events like
DNC (with very questionable investigation by Crowdstrike, which was a perfect venue to implement a false flag; cybersecurity area is
the perfect environment for planting false flags), MH17 (might be an incident but later it definitely was played as a false flag), Skripals
(Was Skripals poisoning a false flag decided to hide the fact that Sergey Skripal was involved in writing Steele dossier?) and Litvinenko
(probably connected with lack of safety measures in the process of smuggling of Plutonium by Litvinenko himself, but later played a
a false flag). All of those now should be re-assessed from the their potential of being yet another flag flag operation
against Russia. While Browder was a MI6 operation from the very beginning (and that explains
why he abdicated the US citizenship more convincingly that the desire to avoid taxes) .
Notable quotes:
"... Democratic operative Jonathon Morgan - bankrolled by LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman, pulled a Russian bot "false flag" operation against GOP candidate Roy Moore in the Alabama special election last year - creating thousands of fake social media accounts designed to influence voters . Hoffman has since apologized, while Morgan was suspended by Facebook for "coordinated inauthentic" behavior. ..."
"... Really the bigger story is here is that these guys convincingly pretended to be Russian Bots in order to influence an election (not with the message being put forth by the bots, but by their sheer existence as apparent supporters of the Moore campaign). ..."
"... By all appearances, they were Russian bots trying to influence the election. Now we know it was DNC operatives. Yet we are supposed to believe without any proof that the "Russian bots" that supposedly influenced the 2016 Presidential election were, actually, Russian bots, and worthy of a two year long probe about "Russian collusion" and "Russian meddling." ..."
"... The whole thing is probably a farce, not only in the sense that there is no evidence that Russia had any influence at all on a single voter, but also in the sense that there is no evidence that Russia even tried (just claims and allegations by people who have a vested interest in convincing us its true). ..."
For over two years now, the concepts of "Russian collusion" and "Russian election meddling" have been shoved down our throats
by the mainstream media (MSM) under the guise of legitimate concern that the Kremlin may have installed a puppet president in Donald
Trump.
Having no evidence of collusion aside from a largely unverified opposition-research dossier fabricated by a former British spy,
the focus shifted from "collusion" to "meddling" and "influence." In other words, maybe Trump didn't actually collude with Putin,
but the Kremlin used Russian tricks to influence the election in Trump's favor. To some, this looked like nothing more than an establishment
scheme to cast a permanent spectre of doubt over the legitimacy of President Donald J. Trump.
Election meddling "Russian bots" and "troll farms" became the central focus - as claims were levied of social media operations
conducted by Kremlin-linked organizations which sought to influence and divide certain segments of America.
And while scant evidence of a Russian influence operation exists outside of a handful of indictments connected to a St. Petersburg
"Troll farm" (which a liberal journalist
cast serious doubt ov er), the MSM - with all of their proselytizing over the "threat to democracy" that election meddling poses,
has largely decided to ignore actual evidence of "Russian bots" created by Democrat IT experts, used against a GOP candidate in the
Alabama special election, and amplified through the Russian bot-detecting "Hamilton 68" dashboard developed by the same IT experts.
Democratic operative Jonathon Morgan - bankrolled by LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman, pulled a Russian bot "false flag" operation
against GOP candidate Roy Moore in the Alabama special election last year - creating thousands of fake social media accounts designed
to influence voters . Hoffman has since apologized, while Morgan was suspended by Facebook for "coordinated inauthentic" behavior.
As Russian state-owned RT puts
it - and who could blame them for being a bit pissed over the whole thing, "it turns out there really was meddling in American democracy
by "Russian bots." Except they weren't run from Moscow or St. Petersburg, but from the offices of Democrat operatives chiefly responsible
for creating and amplifying the "Russiagate" hysteria over the past two years in a textbook case of psychological projection. "
A week before Christmas, the Senate Intelligence Committee released a report accusing Russia of depressing Democrat voter turnout
by targeting African-Americans on social media. Its authors, New Knowledge, quickly became a household name.
Described by the
New York Times
as a group of "tech specialists who lean Democratic," New Knowledge has ties to both the US military and intelligence agencies.
Its CEO and co-founder Jonathon Morgan previously worked for DARPA, the US military's advanced research agenc y. His partner,
Ryan Fox, is a 15-year veteran of the National Security Agency who also worked as a computer analyst for the Joint Special Operations
Command (JSOC). Their unique skill sets have managed to attract the eye of investors, who pumped $11 million into the company
in 2018 alone.
...
On December 19, a New York Times story revealed that Morgan and his crew had created a fake army of Russian bots, as well as
fake Facebook groups, in order to discredit Republican candidate Roy Moore in Alabama's 2017 special election for the US Senate.
Working on behalf of the Democrats, Morgan and his crew created an estimated 1,000 fake Twitter accounts with Russian names,
and had them follow Moore. They also operated several Facebook pages where they posed as Alabama conservatives who wanted like-minded
voters to support a write-in candidate instead.
In an internal memo, New Knowledge boasted that it had "orchestrated an elaborate 'false flag' operation that planted the idea
that the Moore campaign was amplified on social media by a Russian botnet."
It worked. The botnet claim made a splash on social media and was further amplified by Mother Jones, which based its story
on expert opinion from Morgan's other dubious creation, Hamilton 68. -
RT
Moore ended up losing the Alabama special election by a slim margin of just
In other words: In November 2017 – when Moore and his Democratic opponent were in a bitter fight to win over voters – Morgan
openly promoted the theory that Russian bots were supporting Moore's campaign . A year later – after being caught red-handed orchestrating
a self-described "false flag" operation – Morgan now says that his team never thought that the bots were Russian and have no idea
what their purpose was . Did he think no one would notice? -
RT
Disinformation warrior @ jonathonmorgan attempts to control
damage by lying. He now claims the "false flag operation" never took place and the botnet he promoted as Russian-linked (based
on phony Hamilton68 Russian troll tracker he developed) wasn't Russian https://www.
newknowledge.com/blog/about-ala bama
Even more strange is that Scott Shane - the journalist who wrote the New York Times piece exposing the Alabama "Russian bot" scheme,
knew about it for months after speaking at an event where the organizers bragged about the false flag on Moore .
Shane was one of the speakers at a meeting in September, organized by American Engagement Technologies, a group run by Mikey
Dickerson, President Barack Obama's former tech czar. Dickerson explained how AET spent $100,000 on New Knowledge's campaign to
suppress Republican votes, " enrage" Democrats to boost turnout, and execute a "false flag" to hrt Moore. He dubbed it "Project
Birmingham." - RT
Shane told BuzzFeed that he was "shocked" by the revelations, though hid behind a nondisclosure agreement at the request of American
Engagement Technologies (AET). He instead chose to spin the New Knowledge "false flag" operation on Moore as "limited Russian tactics"
which were part of an "experiment" that had a budget of "only" $100,000 - and which had no effect on the election.
New Knowledge suggested that the false flag operation was simply a "research project," which Morgan suggested was designed "to
better understand and report on the tactics and effects of social media disinformation."
While the New York Times seemed satisfied with his explanation, others pointed out that Morgan had used the Hamilton 68 dashboard
to give his "false flag" more credibility – misleading the public about a "Russian" influence campaign that he knew was fake.
New Knowledge's protestations apparently didn't convince Facebook, which
announced last week that five
accounts linked to New Knowledge – including Morgan's – had been suspended for engaging in "coordinated inauthentic behavior."
- RT
They knew exactly what they were doing
While Morgan and New Knowledge sought to frame the "Project Birmingham" as a simple research project, a leaked copy of the operation's
after-action report reveals that they knew exactly what they were doing .
"We targeted 650,000 like AL voters, with a combination of persona accounts, astroturfing, automated social media amplification
and targeted advertising," reads the report published by entrepreneur and executive coach Jeff Giesea.
The rhetorical question remains, why did the MSM drop this election meddling story like a hot rock after the initial headlines
faded away?
criminal election meddling, but then who the **** is going to click on some morons tactic and switch votes?
anyone basing any funding, whether it is number of facebook hits or attempted mind games by egotistical cuck soyboys needs a serious
psychological examination. fake news is fake BECAUSE IT ISNT REAL AND DOES NOT MATTER TO ANYONE but those living in the excited misery
of their tiny bubble world safe spaces. SOCIAL MEDIA IS A CON AND IS NOT IMPORTANT OR RELEVANT TO ANYONE.
far more serious is destroying ballots, writing in ballots without consent, bussing voters around to vote multiple times in different
districts, registering dead voters and imperosnating the corpses, withholding votes until deadlines pass - making them invalid.
Herdee , 10 minutes ago
NATO on behalf of the Washington politicians uses the same bullsh*t propaganda for continual war.
Mugabe , 20 minutes ago
Yup "PROJECTION"...
Yippie21 , 21 minutes ago
None of this even touches on the 501c3 or whatever that was set up , concerned Alabama voters or somesuch, and was funneled
a **** load of money to be found to be in violation of the law AFTER the election and then it all just disappeared. Nothing to
see here folks, Democrat won, let's move on. There was a LOT of " tests " for the smart-set in that election and it all worked.
We saw a bunch of it used in 2018, especially in Texas with Beto and down-ballot races. Democrats cleaned up like crazy in Texas,
especially in Houston.
2020 is going to be a hot mess. And the press is in on it, and even if illegal or unseemly things are done, as long as Democrats
win, all good... let's move on. Crazy.
LetThemEatRand , 21 minutes ago
The fact that MSM is not covering this story -- which is so big it truly raises major questions about the entire Russiagate
conspiracy including why Mueller was appointed in the first place -- is proof that they have no interest in journalism or the
truth and that they are 100% agenda driven liars. Not that we needed more proof, but there it is anyway.
Oldguy05 , 19 minutes ago
Dimz corruption is a nogo. Now if it were conservatives.......
CosineCosineCosine , 23 minutes ago
I'm not a huge fan, but Jimmy Dore has a cathartic and entertaining 30 minutes on this farce. Well worth the watch:
Really the bigger story is here is that these guys convincingly pretended to be Russian Bots in order to influence an election
(not with the message being put forth by the bots, but by their sheer existence as apparent supporters of the Moore campaign).
By all appearances, they were Russian bots trying to influence the election. Now we know it was DNC operatives. Yet we
are supposed to believe without any proof that the "Russian bots" that supposedly influenced the 2016 Presidential election were,
actually, Russian bots, and worthy of a two year long probe about "Russian collusion" and "Russian meddling."
The whole thing is probably a farce, not only in the sense that there is no evidence that Russia had any influence at all
on a single voter, but also in the sense that there is no evidence that Russia even tried (just claims and allegations by people
who have a vested interest in convincing us its true).
dead hobo , 30 minutes ago
I've been watching Scandal on Netflix. Still only in season 2. Amazing how nothing changes.They nailed it and memorialized
it. The MSM are useful idiots who are happy to make money publicizing what will sell the best.
chunga , 30 minutes ago
The media is biased and sucks, yup.
The reason the reds lost the house is because they went along with this nonsense and did nothing about it, like frightened
baby chipmunks.
JRobby , 33 minutes ago
Only when "the opposition" does it is it illegal. Total totalitarian state wannabe stuff.
divingengineer , 22 minutes ago
Amazing how people can contort reality to justify their own righteous cause, but decry their opposition for the EXACT same
thing. See trump visit to troops signing hats as most recent proof. If DJT takes a piss and sprinkles the seat, it's a crime.
DarkPurpleHaze , 33 minutes ago
They're afraid to expose themselves...unlike Kevin Spacey. Trump or Whitaker will expose this with one signature. It's
coming.
divingengineer , 20 minutes ago
Spacey has totally lost it. See his latest video, it will be a powerful piece of evidence for an insanity plea.
CosineCosineCosine , 10 minutes ago
Disagree strongly. I think it was excellent - perhaps you misunderstood the point? 6 minutes Diana Davidson look at it clarifies
Craig Murray is right that "As the Establishment feels its grip slipping, as people wake up to the appalling economic exploitation by the few that underlies
the very foundations of modern western society, expect the methods used by the security services to become even dirtier."
Collapse of neoliberal ideology and rise of tentions in neoliberal sociarties resulted in unprecedented increase of covert and false
flag operations by British intelligence services, especially against Russia, which had been chosen as a convenient scapegoat.
With Steele dossier and Skripal affair as two most well known.
New Lady Macbeth (Theresa May) Russophobia is so extreme that her cabinet derailed the election of a Russian to head
Interpol.
Looks like neoliberalism cannot be defeated by and faction of the existing elite. Only when shepp oil end mant people will
have a chance. The US , GB and EU are part of the wider hegemonic neoliberal system. In fact rejection of neoliberal
globalization probably will lead to "national neoliberals" regime which would be a flavor of neo-fascism, no more no less.
Notable quotes:
"... The British state can maintain its spies' cover stories for centuries. ..."
"... I learnt how highly improbable left wing firebrand Simon Bracey-Lane just happened to be on holiday in the United States with available cash to fund himself, when he stumbled into the Bernie Sanders campaign. ..."
"... It is, to say the least, very interesting indeed that just a year later the left wing, "Corbyn and Sanders supporting" Bracey-Lane is hosting a very right wing event, "Cold War Then and Now", for the shadowy neo-con Institute for Statecraft, at which an entirely unbalanced panel of British military, NATO and Ukrainian nationalists extolled the virtues of re-arming against Russia. ..."
"... the MOD-sponsored Institute for Statecraft has been given millions of pounds of taxpayers' money by the FCO to spread covert disinformation and propaganda, particularly against Russia and the anti-war movement. Activities include twitter and facebook trolling and secretly paying journalists in "clusters of influence" around Europe. Anonymous helpfully leaked the Institute's internal documents. Some of the Integrity Initiative's thus exposed alleged covert agents, like David Aaronovitch, have denied any involvement despite their appearance in the documents, and others like Dan Kaszeta the US "novichok expert", have cheerfully admitted it. ..."
"... By sleuthing the company records of this "Scottish charity", and a couple of phone calls, I discovered that the actual location of the Institute for Statecraft is the basement of 2 Temple Place, London. This is not just any basement – it is the basement of the former London mansion of William Waldorf Astor, an astonishing building . It is, in short, possibly the most expensive basement in London. ..."
"... Which is interesting because the accounts of the Institute for Statecraft claim it has no permanent staff and show nothing for rent, utilities or office expenses. In fact, I understand the rent is paid by the Ministry of Defence. ..."
"... I have a great deal more to tell you about Mr Edney and his organisation next week, and the extraordinary covert disinformation war the British government wages online, attacking British citizens using British taxpayers' money. Please note in the interim I am not even a smidgeon suicidal, and going to be very, very careful crossing the road and am not intending any walks in the hills. ..."
"... I am not alleging Mr Bracey-Lane is an intelligence service operative who previously infiltrated the Labour Party and the Sanders campaign. He may just be a young man of unusually heterodox and vacillating political opinions. He may be an undercover reporter for the Canary infiltrating the Institute for Statecraft. All these things are possible, and I have no firm information. ..."
"... one of the activities the Integrity Initiative sponsors happens to be the use of online trolls to ridicule the idea that the British security services ever carry out any kind of infiltration, false flag or agent provocateur operations, despite the fact that we even have repeated court judgements against undercover infiltration officers getting female activists pregnant. The Integrity Initiative offers us a glimpse into the very dirty world of surveillance and official disinformation. If we actually had a free media, it would be the biggest story of the day ..."
"... As the Establishment feels its grip slipping, as people wake up to the appalling economic exploitation by the few that underlies the very foundations of modern western society, expect the methods used by the security services to become even dirtier. ..."
"... You can bank on continued ramping up of Russophobia to supply "the enemy". ..."
The British state can maintain its spies' cover stories for centuries. Look up Eldred Pottinger, who for 180 years appears
in scores of British history books – right up to and including William Dalrymple's Return of the King – as a British officer who
chanced to be passing Herat on holiday when it came under siege from a partly Russian-officered Persian army, and helped to organise
the defences. In researching
Sikunder Burnes, I discovered and published from the British Library incontrovertible and detailed documentary evidence that
Pottinger's entire journey was under the direct instructions of, and reporting to, British spymaster Alexander Burnes. The first
historian to publish the untrue "holiday" cover story, Sir John Kaye, knew both Burnes and Pottinger and undoubtedly knew he was
publishing lying propaganda. Every other British historian of the First Afghan War (except me and latterly
Farrukh Husain) has just followed Kaye's official propaganda.
Some things don't change. I was irresistibly reminded of Eldred Pottinger just passing Herat on holiday, when I learnt how
highly improbable left wing firebrand Simon Bracey-Lane
just happened to be on holiday in the
United States with available cash to fund himself, when he stumbled into the Bernie Sanders campaign.
Recent university graduate Simon Bracey-Lane took it even further. Originally from Wimbledon in London, he was inspired to
rejoin the Labour party in September when Corbyn was elected leader. But by that point, he was already in the US on holiday. So
he joined the Sanders campaign, and never left.
"I had two weeks left and some money left, so I thought, Fuck it, I'll make some calls for Bernie Sanders," he explains. "I just
sort of knew Des Moines was the place, so I just turned up at their HQ, started making phone calls, and then became a fully fledged
field organiser."
It is, to say the least, very interesting indeed that just a year later the left wing, "Corbyn and Sanders supporting" Bracey-Lane
is hosting a very right wing event, "Cold War Then and Now", for the shadowy neo-con Institute for Statecraft, at which an entirely
unbalanced panel of British
military, NATO and Ukrainian nationalists extolled the virtues of re-arming against Russia.
Nor would it seem likely that Bracey-Lane would be involved with the Integrity Initiative. Even the mainstream media has been
forced to give a few paragraphs to the outrageous Integrity Initiative, under which the MOD-sponsored Institute for Statecraft
has been given millions of pounds of taxpayers' money by the FCO to spread covert disinformation and propaganda, particularly against
Russia and the anti-war movement. Activities include twitter and facebook trolling and secretly paying journalists in "clusters of
influence" around Europe. Anonymous helpfully leaked the Institute's internal documents. Some of the Integrity Initiative's thus
exposed alleged covert agents, like David Aaronovitch, have denied any involvement despite their appearance in the documents, and
others like Dan Kaszeta the US "novichok expert", have cheerfully admitted it.
The mainstream media have
tracked down
the HQ of the "Institute for Statecraft" to a derelict mill near Auchtermuchty. It is owned by one of the company directors, Daniel
Lafayeedney, formerly of D Squadron 23rd SAS Regiment and later of Military Intelligence (and incidentally born the rather more prosaic
Daniel Edney).
By sleuthing the company records of this "Scottish charity", and a couple of phone calls, I discovered that the actual location
of the Institute for Statecraft is the basement of 2 Temple Place, London. This is not just any basement – it is the basement of
the former London mansion of William Waldorf Astor, an astonishing building.
It is, in short, possibly the most expensive basement in London.
Which is interesting because the accounts of the Institute for Statecraft claim it has no permanent staff and show nothing
for rent, utilities or office expenses. In fact, I understand the rent is paid by the Ministry of Defence.
Having been told where the Institute for Statecraft skulk, I tipped off journalist Kit Klarenberg of Sputnik Radio to go and physically
check it out. Kit did so and was
aggressively
ejected by that well-known Corbyn and Sanders supporter, Simon Bracey-Lane. It does seem somewhat strange that our left wing
hero is deeply embedded in an organisation that
launches troll attacks on Jeremy Corbyn.
I have a great deal more to tell you about Mr Edney and his organisation next week, and the extraordinary covert disinformation
war the British government wages online, attacking British citizens using British taxpayers' money. Please note in the interim I
am not even a smidgeon suicidal, and going to be very, very careful crossing the road and am not intending any walks in the hills.
I am not alleging Mr Bracey-Lane is an intelligence service operative who previously infiltrated the Labour Party and the
Sanders campaign. He may just be a young man of unusually heterodox and vacillating political opinions. He may be an undercover reporter
for the Canary infiltrating the Institute for Statecraft. All these things are possible, and I have no firm information.
But one of the activities the Integrity Initiative sponsors happens to be the use of online trolls to ridicule the idea that the
British security services ever carry out any kind of infiltration, false flag or agent provocateur operations, despite the fact that
we even have repeated court judgements against undercover infiltration officers getting female activists pregnant. The Integrity
Initiative offers us a glimpse into the very dirty world of surveillance and official disinformation. If we actually had a free media,
it would be the biggest story of the day.
As the Establishment feels its grip slipping, as people wake up to the appalling economic exploitation by the few that underlies
the very foundations of modern western society, expect the methods used by the security services to become even dirtier.
You can
bank on continued ramping up of Russophobia to supply "the enemy".
As both Scottish Independence and Jeremy Corbyn are viewed as
real threats by the British Establishment, you can anticipate every possible kind of dirty trick in the next couple of years, with
increasing frequency and audacity
"... In his just published book, War With Russia? ..."
"... To paraphrase Putin: "You are making Russia a threat by declaring us to be one, by discarding facts and substituting orchestrated opinions that your propagandistic media establish as fact via endless repetition." ..."
"... Cohen is correct that during the Cold War every US president worked to defuse tensions, especially Republican ones. Since the Clinton regime every US president has worked to create tensions. What explains this dangerous change in approach? The end of the Cold War was disadvantageous to the military/security complex whose budget and power had waxed from decades of cold war. Suddenly the enemy that had bestowed such wealth and prestige on the military/security complex disappeared. ..."
"... The New Cold War is the result of the military/security complex's resurrection of the enemy. In a democracy with independent media and scholars, this would not have been possible. But the Clinton regime permitted in violation of anti-trust laws 90% of the US media to be concentrated in the hands of six mega-corporations, thus destroying an independence already undermined by the CIA's successful use of the CIA's media assets to control explanations. Many books have been written about the CIA's use of the media, including Udo Ulfkotte's "Bought Journalism," the English edition of which was quickly withdrawn and burned. ..."
Throughout the long Cold War Stephen Cohen, professor of Russian studies at Princeton University and New York University was a
voice of reason. He refused to allow his patriotism to blind him to Washington's contribution to the conflict and to criticize only
the Soviet contribution. Cohen's interest was not to blame the enemy but to work toward a mutual understanding that would remove
the threat of nuclear war. Although a Democrat and left-leaning, Cohen would have been at home in the Reagan administration, as Reagan's
first priority was to end the Cold War. I know this because I was part of the effort. Pat Buchanan will tell you the same thing.
In 1974 a notorious cold warrior, Albert Wohlstetter, absurdly accused the CIA of underestimating the Soviet threat. As the CIA
had every incentive for reasons of budget and power to overestimate the Soviet threat, and today the "Russian threat," Wohlstetter's
accusation made no sense on its face. However he succeeded in stirring up enough concern that CIA director George H.W. Bush, later
Vice President and President, agreed to a Team B to investigate the CIA's assessment, headed by the Russiaphobic Harvard professor
Richard Pipes. Team B concluded that the Soviets thought they could win a nuclear war and were building the forces with which to
attack the US.
The report was mainly nonsense, and it must have have troubled Stephen Cohen to experience the setback to negotiations that Team
B caused.
Today Cohen is stressed that it is the United States that thinks it can win a nuclear war. Washington speaks openly of using "low
yield" nuclear weapons, and intentionally forecloses any peace negotiations with Russia with a propaganda campaign against Russia
of demonization, vilification, and transparent lies, while installing missile bases on Russia's borders and while talking of incorporating
former parts of Russia into NATO. In his just published book, War With Russia? , which I highly recommend, Cohen makes a
convincing case that Washington is asking for war.
I agree with Cohen that if Russia is a threat it is only because the US is threatening Russia. The stupidity of the policy toward
Russia is creating a Russian threat. Putin keeps emphasizing this. To paraphrase Putin: "You are making Russia a threat by declaring
us to be one, by discarding facts and substituting orchestrated opinions that your propagandistic media establish as fact via endless
repetition."
Cohen is correct that during the Cold War every US president worked to defuse tensions, especially Republican ones. Since the
Clinton regime every US president has worked to create tensions. What explains this dangerous change in approach? The end of the Cold War was disadvantageous to the military/security complex whose budget and power had waxed from decades of
cold war. Suddenly the enemy that had bestowed such wealth and prestige on the military/security complex disappeared.
The New Cold War is the result of the military/security complex's resurrection of the enemy. In a democracy with independent media
and scholars, this would not have been possible. But the Clinton regime permitted in violation of anti-trust laws 90% of the US media
to be concentrated in the hands of six mega-corporations, thus destroying an independence already undermined by the CIA's successful
use of the CIA's media assets to control explanations. Many books have been written about the CIA's use of the media, including Udo
Ulfkotte's "Bought Journalism," the English edition of which was quickly withdrawn and burned.
The demonization of Russia is also aided and abetted by the Democrats' hatred of Trump and anger from Hillary's loss of the presidential
election to the "Trump deplorables." The Democrats purport to believe that Trump was installed by Putin's interference in the presidential
election. This false belief is emotionally important to Democrats, and they can't let go of it.
Although Cohen as a professor at Princeton and NYU never lacked research opportunities, in the US Russian studies, strategic studies,
and the like are funded by the military/security complex whose agenda Cohen's scholarship does not serve. At the Center for Strategic
and International Studies, where I held an independently financed chair for a dozen years, most of my colleagues were dependent on
grants from the military/security complex. At the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, where I was a Senior Fellow for three
decades, the anti-Soviet stance of the Institution reflected the agenda of those who funded the institution.
I am not saying that my colleagues were whores on a payroll. I am saying that the people who got the appointments were people
who were inclined to see the Soviet Union the way the military/security complex thought it should be seen.
As Stephen Cohen is aware, in the original Cold War there was some balance as all explanations were not controlled. There were
independent scholars who could point out that the Soviets, decimated by World War 2, had an interest in peace, and that accommodation
could be achieved, thus avoiding the possibility of nuclear war.
Stephen Cohen must have been in the younger ranks of those sensible people, as he and President Reagan's ambassador to the Soviet
Union, Jack Matloff, seem to be the remaining voices of expert reason on the American scene.
If you care to understand the dire threat under which you live, a threat that only a few people, such as Stephen Cohen, are trying
to lift, read his book.
If you want to understand the dire threat that a bought-and-paid-for American media poses to your existence, read Cohen's accounts
of their despicable lies. America has a media that is synonymous with lies.
If you want to understand how corrupt American universities are as organizations on the take for money, organizations to whom
truth is inconsequential, read Cohen's book.
If you want to understand why you could be dead before Global Warming can get you, read Cohen's book.
"... Having said that, still worrying that the CIA devotes time to finding out what Maureen Dowd might write! ..."
"... It is true that Mazzetti's emails with the CIA do not shock or surprise in the slightest. But that's the point. With some noble journalistic exceptions (at the NYT and elsewhere), these emails reflect the standard full-scale cooperation – a virtual merger – between our the government and the establishment media outlets that claim to act as "watchdogs" over them." ..."
"... A few years ago the New York Times reported that there had been a successful coup in Venezuela - toppling Chavez. The story turned out to be inaccurate. The NY Times finally revealed their source - US State Dept... who were using NYT to give critical mass and support to their dream end to a thorn in their side. ..."
"... The New York Times-all the news the CIA decided is fit to print. ..."
Great column. The NYT does do some good things, such as give us Paul Krugman three times a
week, some important reporting and articulate editorial opposition to the republican
nightmare, but they are much, much too close to the government, as evidenced by their asking
for permission to print news the White House disapproves of.
They are also devoted to denying their readers an accurate picture of American foreign
policy. I frequently comment on threads there and my contributions nearly always get posted,
except when I use the word empire. I have never succeeded in getting that word onto their
website , nor have I seen it make it into anyone else's comment. It is like the famous
episode of Fawlty Towers. "Don't mention the empire.'' Stories and commentaries sometimes
describe specific aspects of US policy in negative terms, but connecting the dots is
obviously forbidden.
Bill Keller is like a character from The Wire. The perfect example of the kind of
authority-revering careerist that butt-kisses his way to the top in institutions.
most of the story seems to come down to the usual kind of thing we see from Judicial
Watch - manufactured outrage over almost nothing
I think part of the outrage here is the extent to which it's almost hard to muster the
energy because it's become so much the norm for the NYTimes to be in bed with whoever is in
power in Washington at any given time. It's the sort of thing that should be "they did
what!!!!?" but instead it's "yeah, well, Judith Miller, Wen Ho Lee, etcetc ... >long
drawn-out sigh<." So, perhaps there is some manufacturing of outrage, but not unreasonably
so if you take a step back and look at what's going on.
Having said that, still worrying that the CIA devotes time to finding out what Maureen
Dowd might write!
"This cynicism – oh, don't be naive: this is done all the time – is precisely
what enables such destructive behavior to thrive unchallenged.
It is true that Mazzetti's emails with the CIA do not shock or surprise in the slightest.
But that's the point. With some noble journalistic exceptions (at the NYT and elsewhere),
these emails reflect the standard full-scale cooperation – a virtual merger –
between our the government and the establishment media outlets that claim to act as
"watchdogs" over them."
Once a corrupt practice is sufficiently perceived as commonplace, then it is transformed
in people's minds from something objectionable into something acceptable. Indeed, many
people believe it demonstrates their worldly sophistication to express indifference toward
bad behavior by powerful actors on the ground that it is so prevalent. This cynicism
– oh, don't be naive: this is done all the time – is precisely what enables
such destructive behavior to thrive unchallenged.
This is extremely important, and manifestly true. One runs into such people all the
time.
I haven't read any comments yet, but it would not surprise me to find some of them already
here.
Even worse, I've done it myself on occasion, most recently just the other day on a Cif
thread. Though I will say this; this kind of bullshit is not so much "transformed in people's
minds from something objectionable into something acceptable ", as grudgingly
transformed into something unstoppable , but still toxic and objectionable.
That's mighty thin gruel as an alibi, but the reality for a lot of ordinary working people
is they get fucking tired of it, and yes, they do get discouraged, then cynical and hardened
to it all.
That, of course, is part of the plan.
I'm unaware of a "source" being a person who requests documents from the reporter for doing
damage control on behalf of the boss. (Not that I'd worry about Dowd either.) How exactly is
this secret national intel? I'm glad this came out. We are being manipulated by the govt.
through its minions in the media. The entire incident, from the glorious movie to this
revelation is a fraud.
I found this interesting example of media manipulation at nakedcapitalsim.org:
"Pro-marijuana group endorses Obama The Hill. This purported group, which claims 10,000
members, appears to be just one guy with a PO Box and a press list. But don't count on your
average reporter digging deeper than the news release.":
Read more at http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/08/links-82812.html#717LX1oL7dfPsb7I.99
The breadth and depth of propagandizing of citizens is astounding. I wonder what it's like
to have so little integrity. What kind of person so readily sells out their fellow citizen
with lies? It's scary because people read these things and they have no idea they are lies.
People are making decisions based on manufactured "facts". It's very difficult to find actual
information and I can tell you from personal experience, Obama supporters cling desperately
to "authorities" like the NYTimes to maintain their belief in the goodness of dear
leader.
This weird big-brother relationship goes both ways.
A few years ago the New York Times reported that there had been a successful coup in
Venezuela - toppling Chavez. The story turned out to be inaccurate.
The NY Times finally revealed their source - US State Dept... who were using NYT to give
critical mass and support to their dream end to a thorn in their side.
Nice investigative journalism. A couple of years ago the NYTmade a big deal of publicly
firing a low level writer for making up articles from his NY apt when he was supposed to be
in the field. He was hardly the worst of the bunch.
Great article and thankfully I do not trust big newspapers in the USA especially the New York
Times since it has being caught lying about Weapons of Mass Destructions in Iraq to justify
the Iraq War. Judith Millar was the liar then.
Read CounterPunch and smaller publications for the truth.
The NYT is all about selling ads on a Sunday. It really is a corrupt rag.
"this didn't come from me and please delete after you read." -- Mazzetti
This could serve as the epitaph for our times. This (Shock and Awe, drones, the Apache
Massacre, Guantanamo, killing children, etc.) didn't come from US (even though it did)
because ...our crimes can be deleted through that magical "we're too big and bad to fail"
button.
See, nothing to worry about.
(Except future historians who will not be blindfolded and gagged and who will
therefore have some choice things to say about the journalists who were fully complicit
in the crimes of this lawless era.)
They are not only presstitutes, they are degenerative presstitutes...
Notable quotes:
"... I love how the NYT mentions how no public evidence has emerged, to skirt around the fact that if there were internal evidence (from some gov agency or private citizen) it would've leaked by now. There is no such thing as evidence which hasn't been leaked in an alleged scandal of this size. ..."
"... Further, the corporate news media gave Trump something like $2 billion dollars worth of advertising in free airtime. That's a much larger impact -- around 20 times Clinton's campaign costs IIRC -- than any alleged hacked e-mails (though the e-mails were leaked not hacked, and that played a role. As well as the FBI's investigation into Clinton's illegal email server which was public fact at the time) or social media interference. ..."
"... Banks, defense contractors and oil companies decide who the President is and what their Cabinet will look like (see Obama's leaked CitiBank memo "recommending" executives to his 2009 Cabinet). Russians and the American people do not. ..."
"... John Pilger's essay: Hold the Front Page, the Reporters are Missing appropriately describes this BigLie media item b dissected, while also observing, "Although journalism was always a loose extension of establishment power, something has changed in recent years," prior to providing Why this is so. ..."
"... but a journalism self-anointed with a false respectability: a liberal journalism that claims to challenge corrupt state power but, in reality, courts and protects it, and colludes with it. ..."
"... The amorality of the years of Tony Blair, whom the Guardian has failed to rehabilitate, is its echo. [My emphasis] ..."
"... on journalism and it being usurped by social media behemoths google, facebook, twitter and etc - i found this cbc radio) interview last night worth recommending.. ..."
"... That New York Times piece was amazing. Belief anything the US Gov't/anti-Russian lobby and other nut cases tell you, unquestioningly. Investigative journalism at its best! ..."
"... Accept the most stupid evidence with blinking an eye. Even if one believes the collusion argument, try to be a bit critical. And always believe that a GRU hacker will put Felix Dzerzinnsky's name in their program. For heaven's sake he was Cheka, the forerunner of the KGB, not the GRU which was military intelligence. ..."
"After the security briefing and everyone cleared out, McCabe shut the door to
Priebus's office. This is very weird, thought Priebus, who was standing by his
desk.
"You know this story in The New York Times?" Priebus knew it all too well.
McCabe was referring to a recent Times story of February 14 that stated, "Phone records
and intercepted calls show that members of Donald J. Trump's 2016
presidential campaign and other Trump associates had repeated contacts with
senior Russian intelligence officials in the year before the elections, according to four
current and former American officials."
The story was one of the first bombs to go off about alleged Trump-Russian
connections after Flynn's resignation.
"It's total bullshit," McCabe said. "It's not true, and we want you to know
that. It's grossly overstated."
Oh my God, thought Priebus.
"Andrew," he said to the FBI deputy, "I'm getting killed."
The story about Russia and election meddling seemed to be running 24/7 on
cable news, driving Trump bananas and therefore driving Priebus bananas.
"This is crazy," Trump had told Priebus. "We've got to stop it. We need to
end the story."
McCabe had just walked in with a big gift, a Valentine's Day present. I'm
going to be the hero of this entire West Wing, Priebus thought.
"Can you help me?" Priebus asked. "Could this knockdown of the story be
made public?"
"Call me in a couple of hours," McCabe said. "I will ask around and I'll let
you know. I'll see what I can do."
Priebus practically ran to report to Trump the good news that the FBI would
soon be shooting down the Times story
Two hours passed and no call from McCabe. Priebus called him."I'm sorry, I can't," McCabe
said.
"There's nothing I can do about it. I tried, but if we start issuing comments on individual
stories, we'll be doing statements
every three days." The FBI could not become a clearinghouse for the accuracy of news stories.
If the FBI tried to debunk certain stories, a failure to comment could be seen as a
confirmation.
"Andrew, you're the one that came to my office to tell me this is a BS story,
and now you're telling me there's nothing you can do?"
McCabe said that was his position.
"This is insanity," Priebus said. "What am I supposed to do? Just suffer, bleed out?"
"Give me a couple more hours."
Nothing happened. No call from the FBI. Priebus tried to explain to Trump,
who was waiting for a recanting. It was another reason for Trump to distrust and
hate the FBI, a pernicious tease that left them dangling.
About a week later on February 24 CNN reported an exclusive: "FBI Refused
White House Request to Knock Down Recent Trump-Russia Story." Priebus
was cast as trying to manipulate the FBI for political purposes.
The White House tried and failed to correct the story and show that McCabe
had initiated the matter.
Four months later on June 8, Comey testified under oath publicly that the
original New York Times story on the Trump campaign aides' contacts with
senior Russian intelligence officials "in the main was not true."
The Mueller Hoax is unraveling.
Posted by: Sid2 | Sep 20, 2018 3:03:44 PM | 3
The Mueller Hoax is unraveling, and concommittently the NYT is digging in; ergo ,
the NYT is also unravelling! The NYT will permanently damage its reputation with its own
readers.
I love how the NYT mentions how no public evidence has emerged, to skirt around the
fact that if there were internal evidence (from some gov agency or private citizen) it
would've leaked by now. There is no such thing as evidence which hasn't been leaked in
an alleged scandal of this size.
Further, the corporate news media gave Trump something like $2 billion dollars worth of
advertising in free airtime. That's a much larger impact -- around 20 times Clinton's
campaign costs IIRC -- than any alleged hacked e-mails (though the e-mails were leaked
not hacked, and that played a role. As well as the FBI's investigation into Clinton's illegal
email server which was public fact at the time) or social media interference.
Banks, defense contractors and oil companies decide who the President is and what their
Cabinet will look like (see Obama's leaked CitiBank memo "recommending" executives to his
2009 Cabinet). Russians and the American people do not.
John Pilger's essay: Hold
the Front Page, the Reporters are Missing appropriately describes this BigLie media
item b dissected, while also observing, "Although journalism was always a loose extension of
establishment power, something has changed in recent years," prior to providing Why this is
so.
Want to highlight this additional bit from Pilger:
"Journalism students should study this [New book from Media Lens Propaganda Blitz ]
to understand that the source of "fake news" is not only trollism, or the likes of Fox news,
or Donald Trump, but a journalism self-anointed with a false respectability: a liberal
journalism that claims to challenge corrupt state power but, in reality, courts and protects
it, and colludes with it.
The amorality of the years of Tony Blair, whom the Guardian has
failed to rehabilitate, is its echo. [My emphasis]
IMO, the bolded text well describes BigLie Media. I wonder what George Seldes would say
differently from Pilger if he were alive. Unfortunately, Pilger failed to include MoA as a
source in his short list of sites having journalistic integrity.
on journalism and it being usurped by social media behemoths google, facebook, twitter and
etc - i found
this cbc radio) interview last night worth recommending..
That New York Times piece was amazing. Belief anything the US Gov't/anti-Russian lobby and
other nut cases tell you, unquestioningly. Investigative journalism at its best!
Accept the most stupid evidence with blinking an eye. Even if one believes the collusion
argument, try to be a bit critical. And always believe that a GRU hacker will put Felix
Dzerzinnsky's name in their program. For heaven's sake he was Cheka, the forerunner of the
KGB, not the GRU which was military intelligence.
"... Rather, they seem to appear to reveal a plot by the British intelligence and security services working in collusion with then CIA Director John Brennan to subvert the course of the 2016 election in favor of the Deep State and Establishment favorite Hillary Clinton. How did that one work out? ..."
And there are other friends in unlikely
places. Beleaguered British Prime Minister Theresa May is wailing loudly
against a Trump threat
to reveal classified documents relating to Russiagate. The real problem is that
the documents apparently don't expose anything done by the Russians.
Rather, they seem to appear to reveal
a plot by the British intelligence and security services
working in collusion with then CIA Director
John Brennan to subvert the course of the 2016 election in favor of the Deep State and Establishment
favorite Hillary Clinton. How did that one work out?
So how about it? Teenagers who get in
trouble often have to ditch their bad friends to turn their lives around. There is still a chance for the
United States if we keep our distance from the bad friends we have been nurturing all around the world,
friends who have been convincing us to make poor choices. Get rid of the ties the bind to the Saudis,
Israelis, Ukrainians, Poles, and yes, even the British. Deal fairly with all nations and treat everyone the
same, but bear in mind that there are only two relationships that really matter – Russia and China. Make a
serious effort to avoid a war by learning how to get along with those two nations and America might actually
survive to celebrate a tricentennial in 2076.
You don't say; British Collusion to influence the 2016 US Presidential elections. Why, if the
beneficiary was anyone other than a Democrat, much less one named Clinton, someone might
actually appoint a Special Counsel to look into it, not to mention the misdeeds of the
various agencies and departments who aided and abetted it.
"You don't say; British Collusion to influence the 2016 US Presidential elections."
MI6, along with elements of the CIA, was behind the Steele Dossier. Representatives of
John Brennan met in London to discus before the go ahead was given. They later put Michael
Steele onto the project; he was a guy with credible Russian contacts. Basically, the scam
worked like this:
They funneled an MI6 intelligence file to Michael Steele (governments routinely keep such
files on influential foreigners and what they are up to) so he could use his contacts to
launder the information and make it appear that it came from sources within Russia; they then
funneled the report back to elements of the FBI so they could use it to justify to the FISA
court a spying campaign on Trump (the FBI illegally withheld the source of the document);
they found nothing proving any Russian connection but they kept the spy program going; they
tried justifying the spy program with a fake story involving a reliable asset that once
passed information from Jimmy Carter's campaign to George H.W. Bush in an effort to help
Reagan win the 1980 election; they later paid the asset nearly a quarter million dollars for
his efforts using a fake "India-China" grant despite the grant running to 2018, the asset
attempted to get a job in the Trump administration so he could act as a mole ; the Obama
regime purposely mishandled information in regards to the spying program (ex: Michael Steele
leaked his document to various news sources before the election and later lied to congress
about it), ensuring it would leak to the press; the Obama regime illegally unmasked elements
of Trump's personal contacts so they could clandestinely leak suggested targets off the
record to the right people
They lost the election anyway, so they then planted dirt and negative press to make the
document look legit – lies about Manafort meeting Assange (Guardian is funded by the
British government to police the left), WaPo lies claiming a vast Russian conspiracy just as
Trump came into office (it was an effort to delegitimize him and create calls for Hillary to
take his place), leaking bank records, the special counsel .and leaking information on Trump
policies to the media using a secret security clearance credentials program enacted by Obama.
They also ran interference through CIA guys like Mark Warner in an effort to cover up the
mole they planted; they falsely asserted this was a national security issue when the man's
identity was well-known to the press and he was never an undercover spy like Jarret was, at
least not in recent history.
To put this all into perspective, imagine the following scenario:
The government takes cctv footage of you at a grocery store; in the background there is an
attractive woman. The woman then goes missing. The government illegally reads your emails and
finds that you like sexual jokes. The government then interviews a friend of yours who claims
that you once made a risque rape joke back in college. They also plant a mole in your
workplace who befriends you and reports back all of your politically incorrect humor. Then
the cops find the woman's body and the government claims that you killed her because you were
in the area at the time and you make bad jokes, which has been confirmed by multiple credible
people. You look guilty, don't you? The government 1) took information out of context 2)
laundered circumstantial evidence through a credible witness when they originally obtained it
elsewhere using nefarious sources. That's what they did to Trump, but much much much
worse.
a plot by the British intelligence and security services to subvert the course of the 2016
election in favor of the Deep State and Establishment favorite Hillary Clinton. How did that
one work out?
Deep State and Establishment stooge Donald Trump.
There is still a chance for the United States if we
"... As for the self-licking ice cream cone that "mainstream media" have become, and how they overlook little peccadilloes like feeding at the government PR trough and helping Cheney and Bush attack Iraq, well – now, now – let's not be nasty. Here's how Jill Abramson, The New York Times Washington Bureau Chief from 2000 to 2003, while the Times acted as drum major for the war, lets Bob Woodward off the hook for his own abysmal investigative performance. ..."
"... Are we to believe that the Abramsons, Woodwards, et al. of the media elite simply missed the WMD deception? ..."
Dishonest (not "mistaken") intelligence greased the skids for the
widespread killing and maiming in the Middle East that began with the Cheney/Bush "Shock and
Awe" attack on Iraq. The media reveled in the unconscionable (but lucrative) buzzword
"shock-and-awe" for the initial attack. In retrospect, the real shock lies in the awesome
complicity of virtually all "mainstream media" in the leading false predicate for this war of
aggression – weapons of mass destruction (WMD).
Only one major media group, Knight Ridder, avoided the presstitution, so to speak. It
faced into the headwinds blowing from the "acceptable" narrative, did the investigative
spadework, and found patriotic insiders who told them the truth. Karen Kwiatkowski, who had a
front-row seat at the Pentagon, was one key source for the intrepid Knight Ridder
journalists. Karen tells us that her actual role is accurately portrayed by the professional
actress in the Rob Reiner's film Shock and Awe .
Other members of the Sam Adams Associates were involved as well, but we will leave it to
them to share on Saturday evening how they helped Knight Ridder accurately depict the prewar
administration/intelligence/media fraud.
Intelligence Fraud
More recently, former National Intelligence Director James Clapper added a coda to
pre-Iraq-War intelligence performance. Clapper was put in charge of imagery analysis before
the Iraq war and was able to conceal the fact that there were were no weapons of mass
destruction in Iraq. In his memoir, Clapper writes that Vice President Cheney "was pushing"
for imagery analysis "to find (emphasis in original) the WMD sites."
For the record, none were found because there were none, although Clapper –
"eager to help" – gave it the old college try. Clapper proceeds, in a matter-of-fact
way, to blame not only pressure from the Cheney/Bush administration, but also "the
intelligence officers, including me, who were so eager to help that we found what wasn't
really there."
Regarding those Clapper-produced "artist renderings" of "mobile production facilities for
biological agents"? Those trucks "were in fact used to pasteurize and transport milk,"
Clapper admits nonchalantly. When challenged on all
this while promoting his memoir at the Carnegie Endowment in Washington, Clapper gave not the
slightest hint that it occurred to him his performance was somewhat lacking.
Media: Consequential Malfeasance
As for the self-licking ice cream cone that "mainstream media" have become, and how
they overlook little peccadilloes like feeding at the government PR trough and helping Cheney
and Bush attack Iraq, well – now, now – let's not be nasty. Here's how Jill
Abramson, The New York Times Washington Bureau Chief from 2000 to 2003, while the
Times acted as drum major for the war, lets Bob Woodward off the hook for his own abysmal
investigative performance.
Reviewing Woodward's recent book on the Trump White House, Abramson praises his "dogged
investigative reporting," noting that he has won two Pulitzer Prizes, and adds: "His work has
been factually unassailable." Then she (or perhaps an editor) adds in parenthesis: "(His
judgment is certainly not perfect, and he has been self-critical about his belief, based on
reporting before the Iraq War, that there were weapons of mass destruction.)"
Are we to believe that the Abramsons, Woodwards, et al. of the media elite simply
missed the WMD deception? (Hundreds of insiders knew of it, and some were willing to
share the truth with Knight Ridder and some other reporters.) Or did the media moguls simply
hunker down and let themselves be co-opted into helping Cheney/Bush start a major war? The
latter seems much more likely: and transparent attempts to cover up for one another, still,
is particularly sad – and consequential. Having suffered no consequences (for example,
in 2003 Abramson was promoted to Managing Editor of the NYT ), the "mainstream media"
appear just as likely to do a redux on Iran.
This is why there will be a premium on honest insider patriots, like Karen Kwiatkowski, to
rise to the occasion and try to prevent the next war. Bring along your insider friends on
Saturday; they need to know about Karen and about Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in
Intelligence.
Please do come and join us in congratulating Karen Kwiatkowski and the other SAAII members
who also helped Knight Ridder get the story right. (Those others shall remain unnamed until
Saturday.) And let insiders know this: they are not likely to hear about all this
otherwise.
Date : Saturday, December 8, 2018
Time : 6:30 PM Showing of film, "Shock and Awe" – 8:00 PM Presentation 17th
annual Sam Adams Award – Ceremony will include remarks by Larry Wilkerson, 7th SAAII
awardee (in 2009)
Place : The Festival Center, 1640 Columbia Road, NW, Washington, DC 20009
FREE : But RSVP, if you can, to give us an idea of how many to expect; email:
[email protected]
ALL WELCOME : Lots of space in main conference room
Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the
Saviour in inner-city Washington. His 27-year career as a CIA analyst includes serving as
Chief of the Soviet Foreign Policy Branch and preparer/briefer of the President's Daily
Brief. He is co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS). William
Binney worked for NSA for 36 years, retiring in 2001 as the technical director of world
military and geopolitical analysis and reporting; he created many of the collection systems
still used by NSA. Reprinted with permission from Consortium News .
The Last but not LeastTechnology is dominated by
two types of people: those who understand what they do not manage and those who manage what they do not understand ~Archibald Putt.
Ph.D
FAIR USE NOTICEThis site contains
copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically
authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available
to advance understanding of computer science, IT technology, economic, scientific, and social
issues. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such
copyrighted material as provided by section 107 of the US Copyright Law according to which
such material can be distributed without profit exclusively for research and educational purposes.
This is a Spartan WHYFF (We Help You For Free)
site written by people for whom English is not a native language. Grammar and spelling errors should
be expected. The site contain some broken links as it develops like a living tree...
You can use PayPal to to buy a cup of coffee for authors
of this site
Disclaimer:
The statements, views and opinions presented on this web page are those of the author (or
referenced source) and are
not endorsed by, nor do they necessarily reflect, the opinions of the Softpanorama society.We do not warrant the correctness
of the information provided or its fitness for any purpose. The site uses AdSense so you need to be aware of Google privacy policy. You you do not want to be
tracked by Google please disable Javascript for this site. This site is perfectly usable without
Javascript.
10 hours ago Rational Agent:
1 day ago Independents view Rachael Maddow, Chris Cuomo and Sean Hannity as hate peddlers who spin, lie and twist every single issue to fit their fantasy of how the world exists. I cannot imagine how anyone with a brain or any semblance of logic could be a regular viewer of these hate mongers. If one does a cursory analysis of the predictions these people have made over the past couple of years, you will quickly see how ridiculous and wrong they have been. The bigger problem is that they represent their news organizations and only add to the distrust and declining reliance that rational folks have of the Media.
2 days ago [she is] Just another CIA mouthpiece.
Members of the Senate Intelligence Committee look at a placard showing 'Russian social media manipulation' at a November 1, 2017 hearing. © REUTERS/Joshua Roberts Follow RT on
The Senate Intelligence Committee's final report on 'Russian interference' in the 2016 US presidential election is short on evidence and long on reheated assertions and innuendo from 'experts' exposed as actual election meddlers. There is little new in the 85-page , partially redacted document released on Tuesday, that has not been made public by the committee previously – including the accusations that "Russia" focused on stoking anger and resentment among African-Americans, for example .
READ MORE: Another nail in Russiagate coffin? Federal judge destroys key Mueller report claim
Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images
Siavosh Hosseini/NurPhoto via Getty Images
September 12, 2019 © Photo: Wikimedia Certainly, there are many things that President Donald Trump can rightly be criticized for, but it is interesting to note how the media and chattering classes continue to be in the grip of the highly emotional but ultimately irrational "Trump derangement syndrome (TDS)." TDS means that even the most ridiculous claims about Trump behavior can be regurgitated by someone like Jake Tapper or Rachel Maddow without anyone in the media even daring to observe that they are both professional dissemblers of truth who lie regularly to enhance their professional resumes.
Aaron Maté
View our current issue Subscribe today and Save up to $129.
© AFP 2018 / Timothy A. CLARY Congresswoman
Tulsi Gabbard Speaks the Truth on Syria, Gets Smeared by the Mainstream Media
© AP Photo / Marco Garcia 'Assad's
Mouthpiece in Washington': Controversial Dem. Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard Announces 2020
Run
© REUTERS / Omar Sanadiki US Lawmakers
Call for Syria Strategy Where Assad Leaving Post, Russian Military Pulls Out
©
AP Photo/ J. Scott Applewhite
House Democrats Will Expand Russiagate in 2019 to Push Trump Toward War
2015 File
Written By Victor Madeira on Possible Anti-Russian Actions
Integrity Initiative Seeks Intelligence On How Overseas Media Reported Skripal
Incident
Post-Skripal Incident Anti-Russian Actions Recommended by Integrity Initiative
Invoice submitted to
Integrity Initiative by Dan Kaszeta Strange Connections
